From my popular series of stories from the Wings of Terror squadron forums, here's a little taste.
Working refueling outages at nuclear power plant's has given me some "holy crap," "is that real," and even some "man that is cool!" moments. Here's a little story from the last kind of those moments.
The first outage I worked, my supervisor took me out to the 550+ foot high cooling tower, after we had shut it and the reactor down.
sorry for the bad quality, it was off an old phone back in 2003, and security doesn't approve of taking pictures
At the base of that tower, you can see those long support structures at angles, those are about 20ft from the ground to the base of the tower. At the base of tower at the top of them, there is a platform that comprises the entire bottom of the tower. I'd say from one edge of the bottom, to the other side, is probably around 75 yards. It's truly massive when you're standing at that level. There's a walkway system in a grid pattern, in between the walk ways there is a system of nozzles that spray the hot water we release into the atmosphere from our closed cooling system. We take lake water IN, run it through the system, clean it several times in our water treatment plant, then eject it into the base of the tower, a lot of it condenses and falls out all around the edge of that base, a 360 degree waterfall, complete with a concrete river and concrete pond. While it's running, you can hear and feel the vibrations all over the outside property.
Well, my supervisor took me up the building that runs along the side, inside there is a staircase. We walked in through a big steel door, and it reminded me of the canyons out in the American desert. You look up and, see a little hole with sky light poking through, it's massive, like those big caves in South America you can skydive in. All around us this stuff was falling, like falling leaves. He explained it was the algae that grows during operation, and when shut down, it dries out and falls off the inside of the tower. Cool stuff.
Well 2 years later, I asked him if I could go in while the plant was still running, he said, technically you could, and it wouldn't hurt you, but it was too big of a risk to do. Needless to say, after days of begging, in the middle of our shift, around 2 am, we loaded up in our truck and drove out. Looked around, made sure the perimeter cameras were all facing away, waited till security drove past on their constant rounds, and climbed the staircase.
As we got closer to the top of the stairs, I suddenly realized I could feel heat, and the noise, the rumbling was becoming almost unbearable. The few light bulbs in the staircase were flickering on and off, you could feel a massive pressure. We reached the top, to the steel door we had been through before. Only this time, the door was being sucked in, and blown out, pulsing, making quite a fearsome racket. He smiled and looked at me, and said, "You first Mark."
I hesitated for about 20 seconds, everything in my head was saying, "This is a really really really bad idea." But my curiosity got the best of me and I reached out too pull it open, only, I couldn't do it, it was being sucked in by the pressure too much for me alone to open, so he gripped it with me and we pried it open, and stuck a cinder block in to keep it open.
Wow, my first thought was, I've never seen a darkness that was white before. I realized, we were in a giant cloud. It was warm, just like a sauna, but the buzzing vibration was coming up through my feet, into my bones. It felt like were in a volcano. I couldn't see my own hand in front of my face, but it wasn't dark, it was just white. We walked about 20 feet out, but we turned back, it was just too unnerving to go any further.
After the hot water is injected into the base plates, the hottest water rises along the outer edges of the tower, rising to the top. The cooler water vapor in the middle comes falling back down in a thick cloud, that is where the waterfall comes from. I always figured the waterfall was just from the water being pumped out, it was too big of a flow it seemed to be coming from a water vapor cloud. Every minute something like 10 Olympic swimming pools of water comes out the top of the massive tower.
After getting back in our truck and heading back, I asked him how many times he's been in there like that, he replied, "That was my first time, I don't think anyone goes in there when it's running."
Next time I'll tell ya guys about the time I learned to love Texans, after being held by my feet 60 feet above the ground on the outside of the reactor
