Arizona: Palo Verde nuclear power plant reactor leaking. Engineers not sure how to stop it.

well it seems the nuke techs are just as important as the park rangers, because they've mostly all been furloughed for the shutdown.
the only people "monitoring" this leak are the govt inspectors who found it.(not full time staff)
if the techs who work there, WERE THERE, this problem would be solved.

there is no such thing as a "little" nuke leak.

It's all good. Slap some caliche on it and good to go.

Duct tape fixes everything.

Shades of the Davis-Bessie.

For 18 months the IN PLANT corporate inspectors were signing off on Inspection Tickets stating that they had PHYSICALLY INSPECTED the reactor inside the containment building on the regular schedule (once a month I believe).

An outside contractor went in to do a brief amount of work and VOILA the reactor lid had a hole in it that was a foot across and about 8 inches deep that even a cursory look at the lid showed. The outside contractor wasn't there to look at anything, just quickly fix something, but a HOLE the size of a BASKETBALL in the reactor lid is hard to miss.

Obviously the plant workers weren't bothering to do their once a month cursory look at the reactor at all ... just signing the paperwork without going into the containment building AT ALL!! ... for 18 months!!

Apparently acid had been dripping on the lid for well over a year and had eaten through it by nearly 80%!!

The plant was quickly shut down and the NRC later calculated that with nearly 80% of the steel was gone at the hole location and the plant was within weeks of losing pressure in the reactor (it was a pressurized water reactor) as the steel failed. MELTDOWN CITY!! in other words.

Corner cutting by nuclear plant operators is endemic!! It is amazing that we haven't had more meltdowns than 3 Mile Island in the US!

Its creepy just seeing it on the horizon. I live an hour away but work nearby sometimes. I did spend a day working on the plant grounds and was happy when finished!

All by design.