Sliding gingerly into the pipe like a worm exploring its lair, the endoscopic camera found its target. In October, engineers at a nuclear reactor in Petten, in the Netherlands, pushed this instrument into a duct that carries water for the reactor’s cooling system. On their screens, they could see the problem: a bulge in the surface of the pipe. And it had grown larger since the last time they checked it. “It’s like a small part of your finger. It’s small, very small,” emphasizes Ronald Schram, a spokesman for NRG, the operator of the reactor.
Although diminutive, this deformity flung the radiopharmaceutical supply chain into disarray last month, leading to