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 Nuclear power is loving cool.Let's discuss the nuclear power industry and all the radioactive, nasty work involved with it! Nuclear power is an extremely cool thing that people very often know little about. For some it's a big evil ecological threat, for others it's a shame we (I'm American) don't use more of it. Right now the nuclear industry in the US is hurting pretty bad not only because of natural gas prices being extremely low due to shale gas being much more easily exploited across the country, but also because of negative opinions as a result of disasters such as Chernobyl and the more recent one at Fukishima Daiichi. That said, not all the world is having such a problem with nuclear energy. While us Americans only generate about 20% of our power with nuclear sites, France generates nearly 80% of theirs, and eastern European nations such as Slovakia, Ukraine (where Chernobyl's Unit 4 assploded), Hungary, and Belgium get close to if not just over 50% of their energy from ATOMS. Personally I think nuclear power is loving great and more of the world should be using it. While I think "green energy" like wind, solar, hydroelectric, etc. are awesome I don't think they're capable of being the primary energy sources for a first world nation yet. Hopefully some day. In fact, I like nuclear power so much that I work in the industry and get a good dose of dangerous radiation on every job to be one of the guys that helps maintain it! Who the gently caress are you? Nobody cares/suck my drat balls I'm a contractor in the nuclear power industry, specifically working on refueling outages. To get more specific, I actually work on the process of refueling. Nuclear reactors don't just run and run and run once they're first started up, you gotta put more fuel in like any other type of power generation. For this to happen, the unit has to be shut down and the containment opened so that assholes like me can get dressed up like a walking condom (sometimes double-bagged  ) and go inside to do very dangerous, important work. Most importantly the reactor itself has to be disassembled to open up the vessel so that spent fuel can be replaced, but while the unit is down a hellstorm of repairs, preventative maintenance/inspections, and decontamination also happens. Basically when a reactor is running, people only go in sparringly on hot jumps. Once they shut her down and crack open containment it looks like a godamn circus in there. There's almost always people performing any number of tasks on all levels of containment except when certain critical and dangerous evolutions are performed.In addition, my father did a full career as a Navy nuke and is now management at a plant, and my brother is a nuclear mechanic at that same plant (different department/chain of command). I'm the only one that's a road contractor (you sometimes hear us called carnies). I myself was going to be a Navy nuke as well but couldn't stay in the military because of medical reasons. So my family is tied pretty drat close to the nuclear world. Still don't care, this poo poo is boring Besides the fact that nuclear power plants are technologically badass and mind-bogglingly complex, doing my job means I get to see poo poo that most people never do. Seeing the inside of containment is pretty rad, and being a refueler puts me right in the reactor cavity for hours and hours during an outage. I've climbed on a reactor and done hard work real close to it in order to remove the head and upper internals for refueling. The last outage I did we lifted the lower internals (what's often called the vessel) after it was emptied for a modification. Normally the lowers are only pulled every ten years for inspection. But basically even guys that work a full career at a plant may not do some of the poo poo I've done. And there is a reason for that, it's hot as hell, highly radioactive, and just plain dangerous from an industrial safety standpoint. But you get to see poo poo like this first hand: Cherenkov Radiation  Polar crane at the top of containment - I've seen a crane like this lift as much as  Spent fuel pool - there's guys whose job it is to dive into these loving things  And guys dressed very similar to these adorable rascals...  ...doing everything from moonwalking in the reactor cavity to farting on each other, dryhumping very dangerous sources of radiation/eachother, leaving mean notes for other people, generally being dicks, and much, much, much more. A lot of shenanigans occur both during work and during the ample downtime between jobs. Some of it is rude, gross toilet humor though, so you've been warned. So let's discuss nuclear power and how godamn cool it is. If you're pro-nuke or not, it's pretty drat interesting poo poo. I'm also more than willing to ramble on about my own experiences and stories I've heard from tons and tons of other guys that've been in this poo poo a lot longer than I have, so ask me any question you want, or tell me I'm a moron for getting irradiated for money. For the record, I took none of those pictures, nor did they come from any plant I've worked at, just pulled it off google. I don't personally have any pictures because security, contaminating the camera, etc. If you're looking for Simpsons stuff/jokes you'll prolly have better luck here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3772573 Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 06:56 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 05:03
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Honky Dong Country posted:In addition, my father did a full career as a Navy nuke and is now management at a plant, and my brother is a nuclear mechanic at that same plant (different department/chain of command). I'm the only one that's a road contractor (you sometimes hear us called carnies). I myself was going to be a Navy nuke as well but couldn't stay in the military because of medical reasons.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:06
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a hole-y ghost posted:are these medical reasons related to... you know? lol im not gay. They popped me for asthma despite the fact that I don't get breathing problems. It's pretty stupid.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:10
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New-cu-lear.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:10
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SLICK GOKU BABY posted:New-cu-lear. Dude you have no idea how common this is even at nuclear sites. It's something you just learn to stop nerdraging over like ask/axe, specific/pacific E: what you don't stop raging over is Health Physics (the nerds that do all the radiological surveying and control dose rate limits, dosimitry, etc) being paranoid and dressing you up in so much gear that life is just pure pain on the job. Or when you don't allot you nearly enough dose to get a job done and then bitch at you for reaching 80% of your dose limit or popping a couple dose rate alarms.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:13
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so when you have to replace fuel is there like a robot thing that you operate to do that or what
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Apr 18, 2016 05:16
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what I mean to say is, is it like in the video game metro 2033 where you use like a crane to change the fuel or is there some kind of manual winch or what
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Apr 18, 2016 05:20
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I bet you also blew up Megaton in Fallout 3
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Apr 18, 2016 05:20
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a hole-y ghost posted:so when you have to replace fuel is there like a robot thing that you operate to do that or what That depends on the plant. I myself have never actually moved the fuel itself. At some plants being refuel means you take apart and put back the reactor, so that their in-house guys (usually from their Operations department re: Homer Simpson) operate what's called a manipulator crane to move fuel around. But not all plants even do that on their own. Some of them do refueling entirely with contractors but I've yet to do an outage at any of those.  That's a manipulator crane. The only thing refuel crews I've been on have used that for is to climb out on to the lift rigs for the head, upper/lower internals to pin them to the load. It's scary as poo poo because if you slipped and didnt have fall protection on or it failed, going in that pool is very, very bad. I don't think it'd give you a lethal dose...at least not immediately?....but it'd be very bad. But yeah you literally climb over that thing's railing into a big rear end crane hook and then down to the lift rig, all that beautiful blue water under you. That crane has a tube thing under it that grabs the fuel and moves it to a transfer canal built into the cavity that heads to the fuel pool.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:21
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Nuclear power is rad.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:23
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KawaiiAtomicBombs posted:I bet you also blew up Megaton in Fallout 3 Only once. I found out that not blowing up Megaton got you a cooler house.  Doc Friday posted:Nuclear power is rad. Indeed it is. I love my dumb gay job. Pays drat good too, and I make entry level pay.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:23
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when do you think the US will be more accepting of nuclear power? why has france taken to it so much?
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Apr 18, 2016 05:25
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Honky Dong Country posted:That depends on the plant. I myself have never actually moved the fuel itself. At some plants being refuel means you take apart and put back the reactor, so that their in-house guys (usually from their Operations department re: Homer Simpson) operate what's called a manipulator crane to move fuel around. But not all plants even do that on their own. Some of them do refueling entirely with contractors but I've yet to do an outage at any of those. so taking apart the reactor, what does this mean?
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Apr 18, 2016 05:25
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OP what do you do with spent fuel rods. I imagine making keychain souvenirs is out of the question.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:30
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Ka0 posted:OP what do you do with spent fuel rods. I imagine making keychain souvenirs is out of the question. Atomic dildos.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:32
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Could you talk a little more about medicine for radiation poisoning? Being a big gay gamer nerd, I assumed that stuff from STALKER was theoretical, but not real.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:40
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Honky Dong Country posted:
Homer works at the neuculon plant
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Apr 18, 2016 05:41
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Outpost22 posted:when do you think the US will be more accepting of nuclear power? why has france taken to it so much? Honestly I have no drat clue man. It's hard to predict how people feel about things. But frankly, the more disasters happen the worse sentiment gets of course. But having said that, Chernobyl-style poo poo can't really happen with US reactors, Three Mile Island wasn't a big deal at all, and Fukishima's problems aren't really common with most American sites, so even the fear concerning those never made sense to me. I hope people come around, but like most issues that depends a lot on history and current events, as well as people actually learning about it. We've actually let a lot of our nuclear manufacturing capabilities fall by the wayside too. There's a lot of stuff in a plant that if it gets hosed up, we literally can't manufacture a replacement domestically and it has to be obtained from places like France, or from Mitsubishi/Westinghouse and companies like that. As far as France goes, I don't really know what lead to them being balls deep into nuclear power. It's something I haven't gotten around to reading about. Having said that, I know France doesn't really dance around environmental issues or organizations crying about DANGEROUS ATOMS, so for all I know that's kind of a cultural thing. I'd like to get some work over in France, and contractors like me do jobs out there, but it's not something I'm ready for. a hole-y ghost posted:whoa, so it is like the video game! In order to access the fuel in the vessel/lower internals, the reactor head and upper internals must be removed. Cold air intake and usually a missile shield have to be removed, along with cable trays and the wires in them from the top. Various monitoring apparatus has to be removed/covered, and then the studs have to be detensioned and removed. The studs are incredibly impressive. In the cherenkov radiation picture in the OP you can see them around that hole in the bottom of the pool, which is the vessel with fuel inside. I've never seen a plant leave the studs down there though, I've always removed them. But the studs aren't just torqued down, machines are used to actually stretch those big steel loving things by a few thousandths of an inch. While it's stretched, you torque down the nuts, and then the machine lets them go, resulting in an unbelievable amount of footpounds of torque. Once all that poo poo's removed, the reactor head is lifted up by that polar crane in the OP and transported down into the lower levels of containment where a bunch of poor loving lowly deconners get dressed up in doubles, a plastic suit, and respirators (lol decon is a poo poo job for morons) and clean the ever-living poo poo out of it. The cavity is flooded with boronated water in the process of moving the head too, as once the head is out of the way, radiation levels from the upper internals, vessel, and the fuel goes way the gently caress up. The head blocks a lot of that. A reactor head:  That process and how the head looks varies between plants. But after that's done a lifting rig is lowered down onto the upper internals and pinned to it by a couple guys climbing onto it from the manipulator crane. Then the upper internals are lifted up and set on a stand in the cavity. The upper internals don't leave the pool during the lift. And boom, now you have a view like that cherenkov rad pic and open access to the fuel rods. I didn't list every single little thing, but that's the jist of it. Once refeuling is over, you do all that in reverse to slap it back together. Takes about a week to disassemble and another week to put it back together. Upper Internals w/lift rig attached:  But basically the head grabs all the control rods on the upper internals and lifts and lowers them according to the needs of the operations dep when the unit is up and running. Keep in mind that this poo poo is almost nevery exactly the same at every plant. Different reactor designs, some different methods, and containment is almost never laid out exactly the same from plant to plant. Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 05:46 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 05:44
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very good thread dude. very cool job.
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Apr 18, 2016 05:46
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What's the medical outlook for someone with your type of job? Is this something you can only do for a few years or is it more like an airline pilot who gets more rads than usual per year but won't grow extra arms?
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Apr 18, 2016 05:51
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Big Mean Jerk posted:What's the medical outlook for someone with your type of job? Is this something you can only do for a few years or is it more like an airline pilot who gets more rads than usual per year but won't grow extra arms? if he doesn't glow in the dark, he's doing something wrong
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Apr 18, 2016 05:53
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Honky Dong Country posted:
I appreciate the effort yu put into this post but Americans are retarded and will never adopt
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Apr 18, 2016 05:53
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What kind of educational background do you need for this kind of work? Is it mostly on the job experience or is some background in nuclear engineering/science needed?
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Apr 18, 2016 06:01
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Ka0 posted:OP what do you do with spent fuel rods. I imagine making keychain souvenirs is out of the question. SLICK GOKU BABY posted:Atomic dildos. Awww yisss dat soothing warmth against my prostate. But nah, from what I'm told it sits in that pool I posted a picture of for a number of years until the half-life of the fuel reduces how much radiation it's throwing off. Then they put it in big rear end casks that sit on another area of the site outside for a good long time until the radiation level drops to a point where it can be transported to a facility to basically be buried in a loving assload of concrete. Wicker Man posted:Could you talk a little more about medicine for radiation poisoning? Being a big gay gamer nerd, I assumed that stuff from STALKER was theoretical, but not real. I don't really know a lot about this, but a quick glance at wikipedia seems to indicate that you mostly treat the symptoms, though it mentions poo poo like blood therapies, microbial stuff, etc. But to a certain extent, once you're dosed, you're dosed. Unplanned acute radiation doses have happened to guys in the industry over the years, usually due to stupidly or less commonly, equipment failure. Even then, a lot of equipment failures can be traced back to stupidity. But I have never seen it happen, nor do I know much about what they do with you from there. I do know that if you get contaminated (what guys call being "crapped up") you get the everliving poo poo scrubbed out of you at a sink or even in a shower to try to remove the partical if they can't get it off via other means. As for "other means" I've seen foaming stuff like shaving cream used by deconners/HP, brilo pads, the sticky side of duct tape, dryer sheets, anything that seems to do okay at grabbing a tiny little particle of radioactive material. Most of the time you can't even see it. If you can see a hot particle, it's loving really really bad. I know a couple guys that found a loose particle in the hot particle bay of a decon facility and it was the size of a broken off pencil lead. It was putting off 1,300R/hr. So usually it's so small you can't see it. What people seem to hate the worst is getting shaved. If it's in your hair they will shave you. It does not matter what part of your body that hair is on, they will shave it. I've never seen/heard of somebody getting pubes or asshair crapped up though, but I have made fun of guys who had to have their entire body shaved from the waist up. Since I shave head and face bald every outage anyway, I get to just laugh and laugh and laugh. If you get crapped up internally you get a full body count daily. If it's really bad they'll make you poo poo and piss in bags and bring it in with you because contamination of that magnitude can't go unaccounted for. And if they decide you got crapped up because you were a moron, they may blacklist you at that plant. Even if they don't, every rad worker on site will loving hate you because after that HP tends to force everybody to wear more gear and respirators and poo poo and it just loving sucks. E: Shaquin posted:very good thread dude. very cool job. Thanks, I really appreciate it. I don't really write threads, nor consider myself a great poster so this is cool to see.
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Apr 18, 2016 06:02
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyCgRtLN6Ho Maybe if Wilfred Brimley had checked his goddamn blood sugar first he'd have realized the gauge was off. Masturbasturd fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 06:02
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Do you get poo poo from health insurance due to your work. I gather it's the type of job they wouldn't insure if they could help it.
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Apr 18, 2016 06:08
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Big Mean Jerk posted:What's the medical outlook for someone with your type of job? Is this something you can only do for a few years or is it more like an airline pilot who gets more rads than usual per year but won't grow extra arms? Mumpy Puffinz posted:if he doesn't glow in the dark, he's doing something wrong The glowing thing doesn't happen, but it does get joked about a lot. But the figure I see most often in various companies' training/literature is about an 8% increased chance of cancer. This is compounded by factors like being a smoker, like me. So I'm more likely to get cancer is the long and short of it. As for how bad, that depends a lot on what you read. I'm no academic, but if you are and have the patience I posted this in the Pripyat thread: http://www.bmj.com/content/351/bmj.h5359 The idiot's jist I got from it is that some follow-ups over the years have shown the risk increases for health problems from prolonged low dose exposure can be very similar to taking an acute dose of terrifying proportions a la Nagasaki/Hiroshima. There's still a fuckload of research and follow-ups going on with the subject so who knows what exactly we'll find out as time goes on. Basically there's a reason this poo poo pays good. Oh sorry, as for the shelf-life of this work for a guy, you can do this poo poo for a full career. In the US you can't take more than 5 rem to the torso in a year, there's other numbers for extremities/head/eyes/etc. but five is primarily the limit. A lot of companies go further than this by having limits as low as 2 rem per yeah. But yeah if you reach or exceed 5 rem it's a big loving deal. You cant take any more dose and they're extremely interested in learning how it happened, so get ready for the NRC and a bunch of company dweebs to crawl up your rear end. Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 06:09
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Honky Dong Country posted:Basically there's a reason this poo poo pays good.
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Apr 18, 2016 06:13
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*buzzes radioactively*
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Apr 18, 2016 06:19
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This is a good-rear end thread. Is it true that the US's knee-jerk NIMBY-ism about nukular power (immediately equating it to 3-mile island, Chernobyl, etc) has contributed to a legal/regulatory framework that make it hard to do fundamental updates to the infrastructure, and thus more dangerous than it needs to be?
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Apr 18, 2016 06:33
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Can I walk up to a nuke plant and Homer Simpson my way into a job?
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Apr 18, 2016 06:38
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I love nuclear stuff. I have a big box of various radioactive material at school, along with all the requisite safety/detection equipment. I also have a supply of radioactive stuff at home that I've collected. My favorite piece is the Revigator, a water crock lined with uranium ore. 100,000 counts per minute on the Geiger counter. (Yes, you were supposed to drink water from it.) Do you have more pictures of the reactor? That's really cool
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Apr 18, 2016 06:47
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Cool_tony posted:What kind of educational background do you need for this kind of work? Is it mostly on the job experience or is some background in nuclear engineering/science needed? SLICK GOKU BABY posted:Can I walk up to a nuke plant and Homer Simpson my way into a job? As far as educational background, I don't think that really matters, at least for a nuclear contractor like me. I mean I'm assuming they want somebody who got through high school. Beyond that, any kind of mechanical experience, nuclear or otherwise, prolly helps. Getting into this poo poo and if you need nuke experience depends a lot on what you do. Hiring on permanently at a plant can be difficult for a lot of reasons. For one, they're good jobs so not many people just go "gently caress this poo poo" and bail. A lot if not most of them are heavily unionized too, so even in instances where some loving moron gets nailed for being drunk or something, it's still incredibly hard for the company to fire them. The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers is a pretty powerful organization that goes beyond just nuke power and into linemen, fossil fuel plants, just plain electricians, etc. What does help is nepotism. I doubt all companies are that way, but a lot of plants are infested with dynasties of workers. Lot of relatives floating around. Even as a contractor, it's easier to get in with the various staffing companies if you've got an in. For instance, my family is dug into the plant near me and was able to put my resume directly into the right hands/email box. From there, it's slightly easier to find more work, but as a contractor it's all temp work. You're there for the duration of the work and then you get your walking papers. After that it's all about hassling various recruiters and shooting resumes around like thick hot ropes on a porn set until something sticks. It doesn't all have to be nuclear either, as most of those companies work with fossil fuel plants, even various factories and really weird poo poo like garbage burning plants in Africa and other strange industrial facilities all over the place. But as for just being the average dick off the street trying to get in, I'm not in a great position to answer that. My first outage I got into from connections and while I was there I got information for a shitload of recruiters from other contractors and hassle them directly. I can't give that information out, but if you're asking for reasons beyond simple curiosity I know quite a few companies that do industrial contracting, including nuclear. Some even have full time employees that work for them directly: Day & Zimmerman Merrick Fermanite (I heard they got bought and are called something lame like Team something something) Westinghouse Areva (French owned, I believe) BHI I'm still pretty new to this so I'm still learning to get around, as well as get established with various recruiters. Best I can tell you is google those companies, send e-mails, make calls, etc., see where you get. You will need a resume, this isn't an application kind of thing, in my experience. E: Also FYI I plan on answering all this stuff, but I'm trying to group similar questions and not double post, so please be patient. Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 06:54 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 06:51
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no pictures of the simpsons?
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Apr 18, 2016 06:54
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genesplicer posted:I love nuclear stuff. I have a big box of various radioactive material at school, along with all the requisite safety/detection equipment. I also have a supply of radioactive stuff at home that I've collected. My favorite piece is the Revigator, a water crock lined with uranium ore. 100,000 counts per minute on the Geiger counter. (Yes, you were supposed to drink water from it.)
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Apr 18, 2016 06:54
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Philosopher King posted:no pictures of the simpsons? https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3772573 Go hogwild, friend!
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Apr 18, 2016 06:55
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Ka0 posted:Do you get poo poo from health insurance due to your work. I gather it's the type of job they wouldn't insure if they could help it. As a contractor I don't get health insurance at all. But from in-house guys at plants I've never heard that their medical sucks or that being a radworker causes them insurance problems. I'd be willing to bet the companies eat whatever baggage comes with health insurance as a radworker, monetarily. a hole-y ghost posted:around how much does it pay? and how much does something like decon pay This depends a lot on experience and what company you're with. My first outage was with one of the worst paying companies and I had no nuclear experience. I did that outage for $18/hr., a $2/hr. paycut from my previous position as a manager/assistant manager in apartment maintenance. That said, I pulled 72hrs./week for a bit over a month, so the overtime more than made up for it. Now I make about $6-7k for a month of outage work, which is still low. I've met guys that literally make about $15-20k in a full outage. There are plenty of them that don't do any other industrial contracting besides nuclear, which is all in the spriing and fall, and make enough money doing it that it's all the work they do in an entire year. I'll never get that far. I'm not going to do this forever. I'm gonna do this and get experience and whatnot until I can secure an in-house position with the plant I live near, like my old man and my brother. Even still, my parents have built a lot with their time in the civilian nuclear industry just since 03' when he left the navy, so there is a lot of money to be made. The nuclear world is small, dangerous, and highly specialized so even the shittier positions pay well. As for deconners, lmbo. As a deconner you're literally a contamination janitor. All you do is clean poo poo/people. I've heard they get paid as low as $15/hr., but I've never talked to those guys too much so I can't be certain. Far as contractors go, nuclear mechanics are the best paid. I'm in nuclear mechanics myself, but still in the helper range. I'll likely get a position in-house at the local plant before I become a full mechanic anyway. A topped-out mechanic at the plant local to me often makes more than the engineers the company employs lol. Engineers fuckin' suck. If you're an engineer, any goons out there, sorry, but you guys make my life a living hell at least a half dozen times in an outage.
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Apr 18, 2016 07:13
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Honky Dong Country posted:Engineers fuckin' suck. If you're an engineer, any goons out there, sorry, but you guys make my life a living hell at least a half dozen times in an outage.
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Apr 18, 2016 07:16
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a hole-y ghost posted:can you elaborate? A lot of things. I've seen things that could be improved but have to go through engineering first, which can literally take a couple years. There's also smaller things like when you have to consult an engineer and it seriously take 3-4 hours to explain to them what everybody already knows so that they'll sign a paper and say "Okay." But the really big one is they all seem to be functionally retarded and get the entire outage into trouble with safety issues. I've seen engineers do stupid loving poo poo like wiping their face in an RCA (radiologically controlled area), not knowing how to use fall protection, dropping tools/parts/cameras into total FME (foreign material exclusion) areas, not using proper PPE, the list goes on. They have to be involved at certain points in a lot of procedures and it's always like pulling teeth trying to explain poo poo to them, and you're lucky if they don't get you in trouble with in-house safety people if not OSHA. genesplicer posted:Do you have more pictures of the reactor? That's really cool Everything in this thread was pulled from GIS, since I don't have any pictures of places I've actually worked on, but here's some more decent poo poo I haven't mentioned yet. Some of this poo poo can be hard to find pictures of so sorry about quality or in at least one case, water marks. Guys Standing on upper internals - I can only assume that's a reactor being built, or that whole reactor cavity would be flood and they'd prolly be dead  Seal table - what's sticking up are called flux thimbles. I'm told they're for taking various readings inside the vessel. During refueling they have to be pulled way up, at a lot of plants by hand, and it's the most back breaking work of the whole process. gently caress flux thimbles they suck so bad hrnngh  Lower Internals - Apparantly it's raised up during the decomissioning of a reactor in this picture, the top is covered. That thing prolly weighs well over 100 tons and is highly radioactive from taking so much neutron radiation for so long. Notice that nobody is visible in that picture. If somebody were standing in there, they'd die.  Another reactor head - I have never seen this kind and know literally nothing about it. Never worked on a reactor like that nor read about how it operates. I'm assuming that yellow thing is another type of manipulator crane that does all the operation of the control rods. the other type of head I posted does all that.  Reactor head being pulled - You can see the attached lift rig and the cavity is being filled with boronated water below  Otisburg posted:This is a good-rear end thread. In some cases yes. For instance, the first plant I worked at used to have deck plates that had to be taken down into the cavity and placed around the reactor so that cold air intake can be detached among other things. They're made of diamond plate and very heavy. We could crane them down in once because reasons, so the decision was made to rope them down. Somebody tied a poo poo knot and dropped one like thirty feet to the cavity floor. Luckily nobody was hurt and there was no equipment damage but it was a big deal. Now there's a box that stays in the cavity for the plates, and it took like two years to get the drat thing in there because engineering had to run reams of calculations on the drat thing, including seismic tolerances, etc. Basically nothing changes at a plant unless engineering has had a field day, and the NRC is cool with it, and that's besides management weighing utility v. cost v. safety, etc. It's a godamn nightmare of red tape and paperwork to work in the nuclear industry in general. So yeah, in some cases, the paranoia can get very extreme when it'd be much easier to just go "Hey this is a good idea let's do it." E: haaaaa think I've actually covered all relevant posts so far. This is fun. Also glad everybody likes the thread so far. Honky Dong Country fucked around with this message at 07:55 on Apr 18, 2016 |
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Apr 18, 2016 07:41
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I do high energy physics and spent several years as a nuclear systems engineer. Fun stuff that I miss doing.
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Apr 18, 2016 07:56
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