*** ANOTHER TEPCO FAIL*** Stainless steel piping cracking from boiling seawater!!!!

Stainless steel components are cracking, possibly from boiling seawater

"Nuclear safety officials said they suspected a breach in one or more of the plant's units — possibly a crack or hole in the stainless steel chamber around a reactor core containing fuel rods or the concrete wall surrounding a pool where spent fuel rods are stored."…"Radioactivity was on the rise in some units, Nishiyama said Saturday."

Some background on stainless steel corrosion

Stainless steel is extremely susceptible to chloride stress corrosion.The nuclear plant uses stainless steel piping, and the reactor vessel itself is stainless steel as well.
In laboratory tests of boiling chlorides, cracking of stainless steel at stress points (primarily welds) can occur within days. Seawater has 35 grams of chlorides per liter, compared to fresh water which has chlorides in the parts per billion.

TEPCO is incompetent

"Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa said late Friday that the U.S. government had made "an extremely urgent" request to switch to fresh water. He said the U.S. military was sending water to nearby Onahama Bay and that water injections could begin in the next few days. The U.S. 7th Fleet confirmed that barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of fresh water supplies were on their way."

This is another sad example of TEPCO's incompetence. TEPCO, not the US military, should have requested fresh water. And, they should have started the request as soon as seawater injections started. They waited until the reactor vessel is cracking from chloride stress cracks! And then, they didn't even request it, it's the US military requesting the fresh water. How stupid are these Japanese??????

Info compiled from:
[link to news.yahoo.com]
[link to www.theoildrum.com]