By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article Robert Aleksick was emphatic. “FAC is like roaches,” he said, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of exasperation. “Where you see one, there are bound to be more hidden away.” Aleksick should know about these hidden pests. As president of CSI Technologies, Inc., he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on FACs, or Flow Assisted Corrosion, a condition of degradation on the inside of pipes carrying superheated, radioactive w

By Roger Witherspoon Download and/or Print Article The unfolding events in the Gulf of Mexico underscore the importance of journalists not falling for the industrial mantra that catastrophic events can’t happen today because of “robust” safety systems and “built in redundancy” that ensure environmentally safe operations. Oil companies have been drilling in the Gulf for decades and their work has come a long way since the 1979 blowout of the Ixtoc 1 oil well in the Bay of Camp