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As the saying goes, "Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and hydrogen bombs." (Well, yes, I tacked that last one on.)
The better-late-than-never reports from the Japanese industry reminded me of the little mentioned Davis-Besse plant near horror show from just a couple years back. Davis-Besse is a nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio that had hidden corrosion problems on the top of the reactor vessel.
Acid ate a hole roughly the size of a pineapple in the top of the vessel head and only stopped because of a relatively thin (3/16 inch) stainless steel lining. The lining was cracking up. As I recall, estimates for vessel failure were a couple weeks.
Here are a couple of graphics and a photograph of the hole. Original web page for the first two graphics is Millimeters from Disaster - WISE and the photo is from a directory on the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering (UNENE) website. Some of these appear to be also available from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) follow up report. Another color photo of the hole is available here.
Evidently this is not a one-off problem. The Beznau-1 in Switzerland had similar corrosion problems in 1971.
The better-late-than-never reports from the Japanese industry reminded me of the little mentioned Davis-Besse plant near horror show from just a couple years back. Davis-Besse is a nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio that had hidden corrosion problems on the top of the reactor vessel.
Acid ate a hole roughly the size of a pineapple in the top of the vessel head and only stopped because of a relatively thin (3/16 inch) stainless steel lining. The lining was cracking up. As I recall, estimates for vessel failure were a couple weeks.
Here are a couple of graphics and a photograph of the hole. Original web page for the first two graphics is Millimeters from Disaster - WISE and the photo is from a directory on the University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering (UNENE) website. Some of these appear to be also available from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) follow up report. Another color photo of the hole is available here.
Evidently this is not a one-off problem. The Beznau-1 in Switzerland had similar corrosion problems in 1971.
