Ontario nuclear plant weld failure "unprecedented," documents show

[jpak]

http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=5b689d87-3396-4dc7-ba50-5276d4d7005c

OTTAWA -- When the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission was struggling last December with a shortage of medical isotopes sparked by the Chalk River reactor shutdown, it was also dealing with another Ontario nuclear plant where there had been an "unprecedented" weld failure on one fuel bundle.

In all, 10 defective welds were found on the fuel bundle, a collection of processed uranium rods resembling the barrel of a Gatling gun about a half-metre long.

The rods contain pellets of uranium dioxide - used to generate electricity by heating water into steam to drive turbines.

The defective bundle was discovered at the Bruce Power plant, north of Tiverton, Ont., in June 2007.

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[Atman]

1. This is the wave of the future, as Dick "Dick" Cheney attempts to FAST-TRACK n-plants

Cheney feels that on-site construction inspections are too onerous for the poor constructions companies, and that all new N-plants should receive fast-track approval. Meaning, NO INSPECTIONS until AFTER the plant is completed. Of course, you can bury a billion bad welds under a billion tons of concrete, and no one will see them. Until it's too late.

For Mr. Cheney, as always, personal profit trumps the safety of the planet every day of the week.

.

[madokie]

2. I can't wait until we have hundreds more of them myself

I've come to the conclusion that we need to build as many of them as we possibly can, safety and money be damned. Maybe after a while everything will be glowing so as we won't even need lights at night anymore, just think how much money that would save, health be damned though. Hell we could reproduce at a much faster rate than we do now so no one would hardly notice that the life expectency is horid as they'll be so many to move up into their spaces, yessiree an endless supply of humans to cater to the have alls. :sarcasm:

[NickB79]

3. You forgot this part

""Based on measurements of radiation levels, many of these welds did not fail until after the bundle was removed from the reactor," he said. "It is not unusual for the temperature change involved in removal to cause poor welds to completely fail.""

The unprecedented weld failures happened AFTER the fuel was loaded and run through the reactor, with no discernible effect on reactor function or safety.

[Nederland]

4. Thanks for pointing that out (nt)