Nuke Plant Pump Mishap
- Thread starter james ungehajer
- Start date
Back around 1992 when I worked at SUNY, my boss' wife was the radiation supervisor at one of the nuke plants on Lake Ontario near Oswego, NY. On a Sunday afternoon she took me on a cook's tour of the plant - the two of us went everywhere through the place and there were probably no more than a dozen people working there that day. It was a fascinating and terrifying experience I'll never forget. I doubt that would be even be possible today with security concerns post 9/11. At the time I was actually very surprised that an outside was allowed into the place (but not the control room, which had an armed guard, we just looked in the window).
FWIW, my lasting impressions were:
• These things are not the high tech environment you would expect. Instead they're more like a plumber's nightmare - a big factory with pipes and valves everywhere. There were leaky valves with buckets under them to catch the drips, which evidently had varying levels of radioactivity. Since she was the radiation supervisor, my friend would make comments like "dammit, I've been tellng them to fix that for two weeks" as we passed one. Pretty scary.
• The noise level was almost unbearable - vibration from the turbines. You had to wonder how much stress that put on everything inside, especially the people.
• Will never forget the eerie blue green glow coming from the spend fuel rods stored in a deep pool. The pool was at the very top of the containment dome, above the reactor. That always struck me as a strange location for something so toxic. And the only reason they were there at all was because there was nowhere to send the spent fuel offsite.
• It was really strange to wander for over an hour through that huge facility and hardly ever see another person.
• When going between different areas we would have to change our boot covers to avoid tracking radioactive water we stepped in to another area of the plant.
• I had to wear special radiation sensitive film badges and sign some legal paperwork before entering. A couple weeks later I got a letter from the NRC stating the amount of radiation I was exposed to, and how that compared to the total amount you're allowed in a lifetime.
• I asked her what happens when somebody gets an overdose, and she said they would go through decontamination which was basically just showering down. Then they would test you again and repeat until you were "cool" enough to leave the secured area.
I don't know how much this has changed, but the plant I went through was one of the oldest in the country (like the one in that article), and aside from newer computers and higher security it wouldn't surprise me if things were pretty much the same. The movie "China Syndrome" depicted the inside of the plant pretty accurately at the time.
FWIW, my lasting impressions were:
• These things are not the high tech environment you would expect. Instead they're more like a plumber's nightmare - a big factory with pipes and valves everywhere. There were leaky valves with buckets under them to catch the drips, which evidently had varying levels of radioactivity. Since she was the radiation supervisor, my friend would make comments like "dammit, I've been tellng them to fix that for two weeks" as we passed one. Pretty scary.
• The noise level was almost unbearable - vibration from the turbines. You had to wonder how much stress that put on everything inside, especially the people.
• Will never forget the eerie blue green glow coming from the spend fuel rods stored in a deep pool. The pool was at the very top of the containment dome, above the reactor. That always struck me as a strange location for something so toxic. And the only reason they were there at all was because there was nowhere to send the spent fuel offsite.
• It was really strange to wander for over an hour through that huge facility and hardly ever see another person.
• When going between different areas we would have to change our boot covers to avoid tracking radioactive water we stepped in to another area of the plant.
• I had to wear special radiation sensitive film badges and sign some legal paperwork before entering. A couple weeks later I got a letter from the NRC stating the amount of radiation I was exposed to, and how that compared to the total amount you're allowed in a lifetime.
• I asked her what happens when somebody gets an overdose, and she said they would go through decontamination which was basically just showering down. Then they would test you again and repeat until you were "cool" enough to leave the secured area.
I don't know how much this has changed, but the plant I went through was one of the oldest in the country (like the one in that article), and aside from newer computers and higher security it wouldn't surprise me if things were pretty much the same. The movie "China Syndrome" depicted the inside of the plant pretty accurately at the time.
Boyd,
that is pretty much my reccollection of the few times I was inside Oyster Creek. but that was YEARS ago (not that things have changed, excepy my memory. LOL).
I have been on the property more recently working on some training videos for them, but even that is drifting into the past, they no longer do local video production.
that is pretty much my reccollection of the few times I was inside Oyster Creek. but that was YEARS ago (not that things have changed, excepy my memory. LOL).
I have been on the property more recently working on some training videos for them, but even that is drifting into the past, they no longer do local video production.
When was the last time a plant was built in the USA though?
Look at any industrial building from the 60's-early 80's and they're all a mess.
Look at any industrial building from the 60's-early 80's and they're all a mess.
1996 - Watts Bar - Spring City, TN
This is when it went into operation.
(Seemed like a research project of a sort)
Good question. Many of the latest developments in nuclear power generation are innovations the U.S. has not taken advantage of because of our virtual moratorium on the building of new plants.