Fouling of Reactor Fuel at Humboldt Bay

This is very old documentation, a report dated January 25, 1967. Humboldt Bay has been permanently shut down for a long time. During the early days it had a lot of fouling of the fuel elements and the plant operators devised their own schemes for dealing with it. However, it is unlikely that the fouling at Humboldt exceeded the fouling of nearly four decades later at River Bend and other units.

Loads of stockholders' and ratepayers' dollars have been poured into mammoth heat transfer rigs and analyses worldwide. A lot has been written and likely a lot more has been buried. In any case, the impact of the severe fouling has been ignored in these facilities and in the licensing and selling of the related nuke plants.

This old letter reports my conversation with a senior AEC inspector of nuclear plants during a plane ride to LA from the Bay Area. We just happened to be on the same flight. Click to enlarge.