Abstract :
In February 2002, during a routine inspection at Ohio´s Davis-Besse nuclear power station, inspectors found three cracks in the lid of the reactor´s pressure vessel, the mighty steel cylinder that encloses the radioactive core. One crack was in the housing of a mechanism that drives control rods into the reactor core to manage the nuclear reaction. The flaws needed to be repaired, but there was no sense of urgency-that is, until workers began fixing the crack in the control rod mechanism and they felt a wiggle. A wiggle that was all wrong.
Keywords :
cracks; fission reactor coolants; fission reactor core control; fission reactor safety; nuclear power stations; pressure vessels; Davis-Besse nuclear power station; control rod mechanism; nuclear reaction; pressure vessel; radioactive core; reactor core; steel cylinder; wiggle; Fission reactors; Nuclear facility regulation; Nuclear power generation; Power generation; Power system reliability; Reactors;
