Piece of metal lodged in reactor at Palisades Nuclear Power Plant

Entergy's Palisades atomic reactor, and the Great Lake and surrounding region it puts at riskThe Kalamazoo Gazette has reported that a hunk of extraneous metal has become wedged in the reactor at Entergy's Palisades on the Lake Michigan shore in s.w. MI. Although the hunk of metal is not supposed to be there, Entergy's spokeswoman has expressed confidence that it won't un-wedge in the future, during full power operations (which include a ton of pressure per square inch inside the reactor pressure vessel), and re-wedge in a very bad way.

A hunk of metal that came loose and blocked coolant flow to nuclear fuel assemblies at the Fermi 1 experimental plutonium fast breeder reactor in Monroe County, MI caused the October 5, 1966 partial meltdown there, chronicled in John G. Fuller's classic book We Almost Lost Detroit (Reader's Digest, 1975), as well as Gil Scot Heron's song of the same title.