Forsmark control rod inspection completed

Sweden's Vattenfall reported that it has completed inspecting all of the control rods both in the Forsmark 3 reactor and in fuel storage pools. The company said that, of the 197 rods inspected, some 25% have shown signs of cracking. It added that rods that passed visual tests will now undergo electronic testing to ensure they are not damaged. At the end of October, cracks were discovered in a control rod shaft at OKG's Oskarshamn 3 boiling water reactor (BWR) during an annual maintenance outage. Similar cracks were subsequently discovered in six more control rods. As a result, the Swedish radiation safety authority SSM called for immediate inspections at Swedish plants sharing similar control rod designs. Inspections at Forsmark 3 revealed similar problems to those at Oskarshamn. Vattenfall said that the reactor is not now expected to be restarted until late December. A spokesman for Forsmark told WNN that among the many options being studied to enable Forsmark 3 to be restarted was the replacement of the unit's damaged control rods with those from the shutdown Units 1 and 2 at the Barseback plant, which are of a similar design. However, he said much work needed to be done into the technicalities and feasibility of this option.