This paper discusses the discovery of the near through-wall corrosion of the reactor pressure vessel closure head at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in March 2002. Although no loss of coolant occurred and the reactor core always remained fully covered and cooled, this incident represented a significant degradation of the nuclear safety margin at the facility. This paper describes what caused the corrosion, why it occurred, what actions were taken to correct the root cause of the degradation and finally some lessons-learned from the incident.
展开▼
