No its internal and causes tiny short circuits through the separator.
Eventually these raise the self-discharge rate to unmanageable
proportions ( but you will probably find that straight off charge you
still get sufficient capacity).

The cases are nickel plated steel
--
Keith Lewis

Right I must be getting confused then :-)
Not hard I suppose. I understand what you
are saying about the internal circuits now and
as for the casing I obviously can't tell my nickel
from my ally. Thinking back though and this is me
trying to scratch back some resemblance of intelligence,
our batteries were placed in aluminium bodied torches
and with the added ingredient of see water it could of
been that environment that was causing the corrosion
inside the inside the torch and on the battery.

Well that theory makes sense to me. Yeah good one
taz. taz slinks of congratulating him self on how he
pulled it back without any one noticing. ;-)
Cheers taz.