Stress corrosion cracking terminology insurance dispute

Tom presents the GPU Nuclear / attorney renaming of "stress corrosion cracking" as "stress-assisted cracking" specifically to defeat the insurance policy's corrosion exclusion. The teaching point: terminology is contract language as much as it is physics.

The fundamental question for the insurance carriers was: if all the damage was done in a half an hour, was that a slow process? Was that corrosion? The first press releases to come out of Three Mile Island, from GPU Nuclear which was the utility, the first day and a half they called it stress corrosion cracking, SCC. By the time the attorneys had gotten hold of it, they called it stress-assisted cracking, because the attorneys looked at their insurance contract which excluded corrosion — because corrosion is just a slow gradual wearing away. They knew that if they called it stress corrosion cracking, the insurance company was going to deny the thirty million claim. If they could change the name and call it stress-assisted cracking — well, what cracking is not stress-assisted? You start getting into the story about lawyers. You can go back to the Bible and see what the Bible says about lawyers. But in any case, that's what they do.