Cracks in nuclear facilities globally are not discussed openly and regularly so the public can understand the impacts of choosing electricity from nuclear power.
As an example, there were two reactors in Texas, USA experiencing the same problem as the reactors in Belgium.
February 4, 2018
By Dave Keating
Last summer, (click here) when the Belgian government revealed that seventy new cracks had been discovered in the boiler of the country’s Tihange 2 nuclear reactor, towns near the country’s borders reacted with exasperation.
The power plant lies just 60km from the triple border where Belgium, Germany and The Netherlands meet, close to the Dutch town of Maastricht and the German town of Aachen.
These were not the first cracks to be discovered. Tihange is now more than four decades old, but it was built to only have a lifespan of 30 years. Already in 2014 an inspection found thousands of small ‘microcracks’ in the reactor. The neighboring German state of Northrhine-Westphalia became so alarmed that it ordered iodine tablets for German citizens in case of a Belgian nuclear accident.
Tihange isn’t the only plant of concern. The Doel 3 reactor, near the Belgian port city of Antwerp next to the Dutch border, also has cracks. These reactors have been subject to sudden shutdowns which have caused disruption to the Belgian electricity network. The country is 40 percent reliant on nuclear power for its electricity....
