Engineers Can’t Repair Cracked Nuclear Reactor
Savannah River Plant engineers have been unable to repair hairline cracks that forced the shutdown of a nuclear reactor, raising doubts about whether the 31-year-old unit can be restarted, officials said Friday.
The plant’s C Reactor was shut down in 1985 after workers found the cracks, some 45 inches long, during a routine inspection of the reactor tank.
A report by the Energy Department at that time revealed that radioactive water had been leaking from the vessel at a rate of up to 18 gallons a day for two years.
Most of the leakage went into another containment vessel. The small amount that escaped into the ground never left the plant site, officials said.
Energy officials, citing national security concerns, refused to confirm that C Reactor will be decommissioned, but other sources in Washington and at the plant said they believed the reactor will be shut down permanently.
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