A crucial moment came in 1944, when he set eyes on Tommy Flowers' racks of high-speed electronic code-cracking equipment at Bletchley Park.
Initially, the use of crack monitoring equipment was specified but the dimensions of the notches would not allow for installation of the gauges (Fig. 11).
The EPA report noted many ways water can be affected by fracking, whether by spills, cracks in equipment intended to seal wells, disposal of wastewater, contamination from chemicals or lowering groundwater levels.
He learned about a corrosion mechanism called high temperature hydrogen attack, or HTHA, which can cause tiny cracks in equipment, like the exchangers, subject to intense heat and pressure.
He had more practical concerns, like whether the camera switch hidden in his pocket would fail or a cow would smash into him and crack the recording equipment taped to his body.
Generally, a concrete crack near an equipment hatch causes containment functional failure and when pre-stressed tendons begin to yield, the containment structure would not continue to maintain its integrity.
But it had been cracked by heavy equipment, so granite from Zimbabwe and from Georgia was shipped to Italy to be cut for installation.
This endorsement of the CSB came from an executive of a corporation that the agency concluded in 2014 conducted deficient oversight of its Anacortes, Wash., refinery, continuing to operate it with severely cracked and degraded equipment to the point where an explosion occurred on April 2, 2010, killing seven workers.
The company's huge research budget means that it gets first crack at the newest equipment, he said, and enables Pfizer to spread bets across many different potential therapies.
