Yes Bag...We also have found bars with big hollows in the center. Kinda like a rotten tree trunk. And the distributors won't always be upfront with you on where the material is from, even when you ask for and get Certs.

Our suppliers have to provide certified domestic material under Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFARs). We just started an Inconel 625 project for a large defense contractor.

Quote:

I suspect that I'm not going to like the answers to these questions.

That assumes that you at some point are going to get a truthful, correct, concise and transparent answer from the operators, the government and the industry as well as scientists.

If you were shocked because you found the financial and real estate industries were riddled with fraud, corruption, sweetheart deals, government misdirection, law breakers and confidence people, get ready. You haven't seen anything yet.

Andrew i am betting on latter.

Further i believe TPTB were counting on a nuclear renaissance to lift economy out of doldrums.
Existing fleet of nuke plants is very old.
Basically in addition to shouldering our kids with debt,
so far as electric utility infrastructure goes we've launched them into 21st century driving a hundred unit fleet of '65 Chevys with every single used tire from last forty++ years still piled in the trunks.
A hundred new plants at a billion or three apiece would stimulate something.

that's just me - and my investment record is pretty dismal.
better do your own reading.

Most certainly a Chinese subcontractor that will be taken out and shot to hide the corruption that exists all the way to top of the Chinese Communist Party.

So what's new with parts from China? Anyone that has dealt with Wall Mart knows they have to be replaced 3x versus a suitable American replacement.

I wonder if this is the same subcontractor that made those semiconductor chips for the defense department.

They worst thing is that the state of California has parts of the bay bridge being built in China. How safe do you think that thing will be?

http://www.npr.org/2011/09/16/140515737/....

Karl D wrote..

So here's the question: Was the choice of alloy wrong -- an engineering failure -- or was there a manufacturing and inspection problem responsible?

And if the latter, where did the materials come from that the tubes were fabricated out of, and exactly where did that fabrication take place?

The phrase "The China Syndrome" seems oddly appropriate here. If we find out that this is a case of bad Chinese materials finding their way into critical nuclear reactor parts, that is.