In the mid 1990s, independent of the laser peening developments ongoing in the United States and France, Yuji Sano of the Toshiba Corporation in Japan initiated the development of a laser peening system capable of laser peening welds in nuclear plant pressure vessels to mitigate stress corrosion cracking in these areas. The system used a low energy pulsed laser operating at a higher pulse frequency than the higher powered lasers. The laser beam was introduced into the pressure vessels through articulated tubes. Because the pressure vessels were filled with water, the process did not require a water overlay over the irradiated surface. However, the beam had to travel some distance through the water, necessitating using a shorter wavelength beam, 532 nm, to minimize dielectric breakdown of the beam in the water, instead of the 1054 nm beam used in the United States and France. Also, it was impractical to consider using an opaque overlay. This process is now known as Laser Peening without Coating (LPwC). It began to be applied to Japanese boiling water and pressurized water reactors in 1999.