Where did the pins come from?
In 1980, during a fuel assembly reconstitution effort, two fuel rods broke into several pieces. Two of these pieces were short, one about 7 inches and the other about 17 inches. A fuel assembly consists of many fuel rods. Although the remaining segments of the fuel rods were retained in spent fuel assemblies stored in the spent fuel pool, these two short fuel rod segments could not be stored within a spent fuel assembly. Instead, these two segments were placed into a separate container located on the bottom of spent fuel pool, below approximately 40 feet of water.
