Nuclear safety in the United States inadvertently reversed pipe restraints at the Diablo Canyon Power Plant reactors, compromising seismic protection systems, which further undermined confidence in nuclear safety. All of these well-publicised events, undermined public support for the U.S. nuclear industry in the 1970s and the 1980s. In 2002, the USA had what former NRC Commissioner Victor Gilinsky termed "its closest brush with disaster" since Three Mile Island's 1979 meltdown; a workman at the Davis-Besse reactor found a large rust hole in the top of the reactor pressure vessel. Recent concerns have been expressed about safety issues affecting a large part of the nuclear fleet of
Behavior of nuclear fuel during a reactor accident to form two molecules of carbon monoxide. This is one of the processes which limits the working life of this type of reactor. In a water-cooled reactor the action of radiation on the water (radiolysis) forms hydrogen peroxide and oxygen. These can cause stress corrosion cracking of metal parts which include fuel cladding and other pipework. To mitigate this hydrazine and hydrogen are injected into a BWR or PWR primary cooling circuit as corrosion inhibitors to adjust the redox properties of the system. A review of recent developments on this topic has been published. In a loss-of-coolant accident (LOCA) it