Over the last few weeks, hundreds of itinerant nuclear-plant workers converged on a sleepy lakeside town south of Detroit. They arrived in pickup trucks, campers and SUVs, and are now working side-by-side to refuel the Fermi 2 reactor. It's one of 32 in the U.S. scheduled to have fuel rods replaced this spring - pandemic or not.Installing new rods is a huge undertaking, sometimes involving crews of 1,000 or more descending on a site for a month or so before moving on to the next one. The jobs are planned far in advance, for times when power demand is low and a plant can be taken out of service, and the tasks can't be put off.
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