Please send as far and wide as possible.

Thanks,
Robert Sterling
Editor, The Konformist
http://www.konformist.com

Davis-Besse shows its age; YOUR reactor could be next...
4/11/02
Russell D. Hoffman
rhoffman@...

A note from the author:

IGNORANCE ISN'T BLISS

I didn't care about "embrittlement" before. If something breaks you
replace it, right? Well, it's not so simple for nuclear reactors.
One brittle fracture of the wrong component can destroy a whole set
of other vital components, which can lead, in very short order
(fractions of a second) to a core meltdown, and the ruination of an
area the size of a STATE -- and in fact, we almost lost OHIO last
month! An accident at a nuclear power plant could kill and maim
millions of Americans.

Ask yourself:

Is Nuclear Energy worth the risk?

NO!

Please contact your congressional leaders about this matter! Please
send/fax/email this document to everyone you know. The Davis-Besse
nuclear reactor offered us a vital warning. We mustn't ignore it.

Thank you,
Russell Hoffman
A Concerned Citizen
-------------------------------------
What's happening to our reactors?
(And why aren't we reacting to it logically and urgently?)

* * * A SPECIAL REPORT * * *
by
Russell D. Hoffman and friends

April 10th, 2002

Contents:
1) Executive Summary/Layman's description of the problem
2) Allegations
3) Related current events and news items


On March 12th, 2002 it was discovered that the entire six-inch
Reactor Pressure Vessel (RPV) at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Reactor
(Ohio) had been CORRODED THROUGH by boric acid which dripped onto it
from "circular cracks" in reactor nozzles (flanges) which stick out
from the top of the RPV. All that held back the 2200 PSI hot water on
the other side was the 3/16's inch Inner Stainless Steel liner
(originally reported as 3/8ths of an inch thick, then as 1/2 inch
thick, but they seem to have finally agreed on a number and it's only
3/16ths of an inch). The liner had already bulged about 1/8th of an
inch. We were very near a LOSS OF COOLANT ACCIDENT possibly leading
to a CORE MELTDOWN. Why did this happen (and why aren't you hearing
about it on your nightly news show)?

Here's the problem: Many metal components in our nuclear reactors are
made of alloys, which are made from mixtures of elements (for
example, zinc and copper are used to make the alloy brass). Other
elements used in alloys include iron, nickle, carbon, manganese,
tungsten, titanium, molybdenum, chromium, manganese, etc.. A major
reason for using alloys is that the combination of elements has
properties that none of the individual elements has. For example, the
alloy might be stronger, or less vulnerable to corrosion, or easier
to weld than any of its components.

A major goal of alloy development is to make ductile, not brittle,
materials. Consider two non-alloy materials, diamond and gold.
Diamond, on the one hand (or finger), is very brittle (at room
temperature) and fractures (or "cleaves") into pieces when struck
with another very hard object. Gold, on the other hand, is
very "ductile" at room temperature, meaning when it is struck with
something, there is a small amount of "give" within the metal itself,
which spreads the force of the blow out into the object being struck,
and doesn't break apart the atomic structure of the metal (by, say,
cleaving). (With each blow, some damage will be done by striking the
object, and striking even a very ductile (malleable, soft, tractable)
metal repeatedly with a hard object will, usually, eventually
fracture all but the softest metals (gold, for instance, can be
hammered very thin without fracturing)).

Vibration, heat, and radiation all tend to de-compose and destroy
alloys. Harsh chemicals also destroy alloys. Understanding the
vulnerabilities of alloys is part of the science of metallurgy and a
key to understanding what recently happened at the Davis-Besse
Nuclear Reactor near Toledo, Ohio (as in, "HOLY TOLEDO, WE ALMOST HAD
A MELTDOWN!), and what is potentially happening at nuclear power
plants around the country (also jet engines, submarines, spacecraft,
pipelines, chemical plants, elevators,etc.).

Alloys are complex, both mathematically and physically. When you
mix .5% of one element, 99.4% of another, and .1% of a third, where
does each atom actually go? Is there an ideal state that these atoms
will stay in, and how can we get the mixture in that ideal state and
keep it that way?

The answer is, we can't get any mixture in an ideal configuration of
atoms, and even if we could, we can't keep it that way. Why not?

Because everything around us is moving with time. At an atomic level
the elements -- the individual atoms within an alloy -- are each
jiggling around, even in a solid steel alloy REACTOR PRESSURE VESSEL.
Heat makes the atoms move around more, and radiation also sends them
traveling around. These effects (and vibration as well) usually
combine (or occasionally they may cancel) with each other, producing
localized areas where there are less atoms of one type and more atoms
of another type, instead of the properly balanced mixture that was
originally intended. As the metal ages, little microscopic pockets of
various elements start to appear in the alloy; localized deviations
from the ideal alloy mixture occur within the structure. When this
happens, the material is no longer really an alloy. It's now just a
non-homogeneous mixture of elements. This can be very weak compared
to the strength of an alloy metal. These pockets can coalesce into
sheets and/or chains, which are lines or sheets of weakness in the
alloy which can lead to delamination, fracture, and catastrophic
failure -- like the holes in a sheet of postage stamps.

There are some alloys which the alloy-making industry has self-
called "SUPER"-alloys. Companies like General Electric, ABB, CE, B&W
and Westinghouse (and the utilities that buy the components from
them) used -- and use -- these alloys for welding such things as jet
engines and nuclear reactor pressure vessels.

But it turns out that these so-self-called "SUPER" alloys aren't so
super.

The "super" alloys are subject to embrittlement. Other names
for "embrittlement" include Wigner's Disease, Ostwald-Ripening,
Hardening, Spinodal Decomposition, Overageing (also
spelled "overaging"), and "Sensitization" / Osteoporosis (cute; as
in "sensitive to fracture").

Embrittlement causes -- or perhaps it is best to say enables --
"brittle fracture" and /or other opportunistic metal failure
including fatigue and corrosion (possibly all at once). Embrittled
metals are more easily destroyed when shocked by thermal or
vibrational stress, over-pressure, etc. (as in, a terrorist crashing
an airplane into a nuclear reactor). Also, chemicals can take hold
within the microscopic fractures that start to form, and can even run
down the chains and sheets, causing further corrosion and/or fatigue
and/or brittle fracture etc..

Things start to get very additive when you have leaky, embrittled
pipes dripping chemicals on embrittled components which are seldom if
ever inspected. It's a bad combination. It nearly cost us the Davis-
Besse nuclear reactor in Ohio, which could EASILY have led to a
meltdown, and the loss of millions of American lives. There are 69
other Pressurized Water Reactors operating in America that need to be
shut down forever. Our Boiling Water Reactors are also over-aged. All
the alloys in the reactors are becoming embrittled as we speak, they
are creating mountains of dangerous radioactive waste AS WE SPEAK
(which Nevada has sworn never to take), and they are liable to
catastrophically melt down at any moment. America can do better.
America can turn to renewable energy solutions.

The pipes, pumps, valves and vessels that make up our nation's
nuclear reactors are liable to completely break apart when something
small happens which over-stresses them. For example, due to
embrittlement, critical components could fail catastrophically as
an "unexpected" result of an earthquake or a terrorist attack.

The reactors are, in effect "developing osteoporosis" and this is a
very, very bad thing.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the whole nuclear
industry only expect a small problem to ever occur at their reactors,
like a pinhole leak which they can fix. That's wishful and dangerous
thinking.

The real question isn't even WHEN will this alloy or that alloy
become embrittled? Today? Tomorrow? 20 years from now? Because
embrittlement starts immediately, so the only question is, how
embrittled are the metals? The answers are hard to find, but the
indicators are absolutely terrifying.

A reactor meltdown of the fuel, one of the most serious of all
possible nuclear power plant accidents, can easily occur as a result
of a cascading sequence of problems which, if the initiating event
had happened at a younger, less EMBRITTLED reactor, would not have
cascaded into catastrophe.

The NRC pretends to not understand the whole concept of embrittlement-
leading-to-exponentially-cascading-failures (also known as chaos),
nor of embrittlement or any other age-related "force-multipliers" for
terrorists and earthquakes (rust never sleeps, either). The nuclear
industry pretends to not understand all this as well. That is why I
am writing this document. In the hope that you, dear reader, will
want to understand it, and tell your Congresspeople what a mess we
are in. We have to stop the juggernaut before the terrible risk the
citizens are taking because of corporate and government blindness
catches up with us.

In the rest of this document, I will attempt to show to you that,
unequivocally, the apparent ignorance within the nuclear industry
regarding problems with thermally-induced embrittlement of so-
called "super" alloys is in fact long-term FRAUD over many decades,
perpetrated upon the ratepayers, taxpayers, and citizens of the
United States and other countries by the: Alloy suppliers, nuclear
core designers and fabricators, and regulatory agencies (DOE and
NRC). That it is a willful ignorance which the public allows to
continue only at the greatest risk to our personal safety, our
environmental safety, and or country's security in these troubled
times.

In this effort, I am indebted to Dr. Siegel, who studied the matter
thoroughly for many decades, who worked in the heart of the nuclear
industry and who was fired three times -- from Westinghouse, from
PSE&G, and from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) -- in
each case, for refusing to be silent about what he had discovered
about EMBRITTLEMENT and the fears he had about the threat to safety
and security from these embrittled alloys' generic and endemic use in
nuclear reactors/jet engines/space shuttles/ and even nuclear
weapons. The IAEA, the NRC, DOE, EPRI, EEI, INPO, and the Nuclear
Industry may not want to listen, and definitely doesn't want YOU --
the reader -- to listen, but it's time we all listen anyway.

Very quietly, starting around 1988, DOE and NRC have funded a huge
program at the national laboratories (esp. ORNL, Argonne, Brookhaven,
and possibly LLNL and LANL), Siegel guestimates that by the time he
saw a long list of titles (by 1996, approximately, in other words 8
or 10 years later) the amount of money spent in DOE/NRC contracts
could have topped 10 to 40 billions dollars of your tax dollars --
thousands of reports. And yet they still act as though they have no
idea...

Russell Hoffman
A Concerned Citizen
Carlsbad, CA

What follows includes a number of names and dates, with some followed
by question-marks, indicating the exact reference has proven hard to
find in the time available. Nevertheless we feel this document
provides ample proof of FRAUD in the so-called SUPER-ALLOYS business.
They knew these reactors would fall apart. They expected us to run
out and buy replacement RPVs and so on. Instead we're letting the
nuclear power companies run the reactors even as they fall apart!

Note: The rest of this document has been clipped to fit in most email
systems, but it is available in its entirety online:
http://www.animatedsoftware.com/environm/besse/davisbe7.htm

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** Russell D. Hoffman, Owner and Chief Programmer
** P.O. Box 1936
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