any of you guys ever work around nuke power in the private sector? (I have no experience with how nukes are run in military applications)
anyway. I worked at a nuke for awhile back when I was an apprentice. before I started there I thought nukes where clean, safe, efficent form of energy. after a couple months I realised its about as safe as watching a chimp play with a loaded pistol.
they talk up safety and standards alot but basicly it comes down to having enough paperwork to prove it's not your fault when things go wrong.
in the first 3 weeks I was there I heard of several huge problems that never where heard of outside the plant (stuff like- 1. contianment wall being breached while plant is in full operation. or 2. cooling system filter screens that had no record of anual servicing after 10-15 years of operation, when this was realised and they where checked it turns out that the screens where never installed and there was toejamloads of debris in the sump only luck stopped it from causing major cooling problems)
second the 'strict' adherance to regulation is a joke.
at the time I worked the nuke they told us that the feds say you can take upto 1,500 mrem every 3 months. but then they tell us how they hold there standard to 500. when my dose hit 450 I got an extension 1000, when I hit 900 my limit was bumped to 2k. oh ya, about those 3 month time frames, those are calandar 1/4's so they set up the outages so that you start the actual work (After training and such) in march and finish up in april or may. our work is opening up generators and entering them to prepare them for the robotic equipment. then after the robots are done we remove all equipment and close up the vesles. so we take all our dose at the start or finish of the outage. so anyway it's set up so that the outage stradles the end of a quarter. so while on paper I took 2,700++ rem in 6 months (well within the 3k for 6 months limit, in fact I took almost all of that in a 75 day period.
while talking with guys who had worked there for many years- and told me how the rules have chenged every year- I learned the great truth about nuke "every year they learn something new about nukes" it's as simple as that, but what they learn every year is that what they thought they knew last year is wrong.
so after 5 months of working in a nuke my opinion of them had changed 180 degrees.
a couple months later I campaigned heavy to ban them from this state.
and about the waste. didn't your mom every teach you to clean up after yourself? you don't make messes you can't clean up, then leave them for someone else to clean up (your kids?).
