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Shake Hands with Danger

John C.

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The sign thing in a nuke plant likely is a spin off from the US Navy. A man of war has signs on everything. But the thing with it is that every sign has a life of death meaning. All water tight doors have a sign that designates when they are supposed to be closed or open and what is behind it. Every frame on a ship is labeled by its position in the vessel. Every piece of equipment is labeled by what it is and where it is at. All the valves in the piping are labeled by position and type of system. All the piping is painted a certain color to designate what is on the inside. If the pipes are covered in lagging, the description is printed on the lagging every so many feet and in each compartment that the piping runs through. It all has a meaning and a purpose and you absorb it quickly because your life may depend on it. You run drills on it all the time to make all of this automatic. That's probably why the US Navy has never had a nuclear accident that we know of.
 

kshansen

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Central New York, USA
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Retired Mechanic in Stone Quarry
The Nuke power station was like that. Kind of like the Harry Potter movie where that janitor was hanging 'Do NOT' signs to excess. Had signs in Every hall, on Every door, signs on standards, ropes by varied colors to differentiate different levels or layers, tags, labels, more signage and signs on fences or in the parking lots. As noted become numb to the excessive strategies yet the Safety or protection departments do not see that.

You mean like this warning sign:
warning sign!.jpg
 

DMiller

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Cheap "old" Geezer
Not too clear but in the picture below in a area not frequented but by a few are twelve signs within thirty feet, three alone for the 30# Fire Extinguisher on the cart, and four to the radioactive contaminated zone with the chair and PC just outside the spent fuel pool area where a danger do not enter and caution radioactive contaminants could be present signs every ten to fifteen feet. The Yellow Cloth Sheeting is for Foreign Materials Exclusion and also is marked such every panel, plus has Rad Area boundary rope on top rail and signs all way around!!.

Radiation levels were never bad except for refuel when pulled the hot load out of the pot to store in here. Water was tested daily and was never found to be contaminated except down close to the assemblies some 28 feet down. Kinda funny, out on Fuel Bridge Crane, had rope to access said FME when Inside a FME area, and contamination sign to access top walkway to inspect hoist on bottom side of walkway hatch inside a already known contamination potential zone, then more FME and Rad Boundary signs on the upper walkway.



IMG_0028.JPG
 
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Mother Deuce

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Jul 17, 2016
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New England
So much for the recommended standard that the height of the berm is supposed to be at least 50% of the height of the largest size of tyre fitted to any piece of equipment that rolls down the road..............:eek::eek:
That berm wouldn't stop a pickup, let alone a 793.

This is the nearest I could find to what we have. Imagine that buggy whip being red and mounted on top of the roll bar behind the cab. (see post #50)

View attachment 205803
I like the fully illuminated pole.
 

Mother Deuce

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The single problem of all the lights buzzers bells and sirens is the Human
I ride, MD and TS will fully first hand understand as so many will. All too many humans fail to See when they look, they glance for a car or a truck or something else and fail to see the multiple always on lights the shine of the chrome even the reflection off helmets or plexiglass either pull in front of or drive over motorcycles. Large machines become blind spot heaven and all the great grandiose or regulated safety devices will not stop one inadvertent action.
It is a continual drill. It is a little like flight training I guess. The miners are trying at all costs to avoid complacency. Mining done properly and safely is extremely repetitive and the theme does not change. To someone accustomed to the environment it should be a little like watching paint dry. Large machines moving 130,000 tons in a shift, two shifts a day with out any kind of safety issue. The safety dept is looking for a perfect zero regarding any issues and strives to reach zero and rarely manage it. There are about 3000 things that can go haywire in about a second. People don't so much rise to the occasion as they do to their level of training. That is why the drum never stops beating, signs with lock boxes on them are placed at shovels that are idle, down or being repaired. The key to the shovel is that box the door is clear so you can see it. If you have to enter the shovels working radius or pass a Cat by it and you have violate the radius you have to lock out that box on that sign. So an operator can not board that shovel start it and possibly kill you. This and those 3000 other things are spoke about being written in someones blood. It seems to be an unfortunate truism. We had young people come and go. a lot of them were not up to the 7 to 7 shifts, 7 days and 7 nights a month.People trying to party and then coming to work the following day looking half dead on three hours of sleep become a hazard quickly when you load them in a 793 and send them on a haul that is going to take 35 minutes at 7mph to get to the dump and all the way there the 793 is playing its very restful woooba woooba wooba tune the drive train chimes in and the heater is on high. Pretty soon their head weighs 50 pounds and a nap would be just the ticket... "park that truck in the tie down, I have another job for you tonight"
I have yet to work in that environment where there is "too much" emphasis on safety. You are striving for a safety culture not just a safety program. It needs to part of your thought process and part of any JSA. We have all of us done things that we knew at the time were sketchy, stood under a suspended load to adjust dunnage, used that frayed rigging or drove a vehicle that was so screwed up it should have been in a wrecking yard. I am just going to jump in that hole for a second and check the depth... then we will put the box in.
Work safe my friends like Dave says, look twice if you need to virtually nothing we do is worth killing or maiming yourself or even worse someone else. Do not allow the myriad of warning signs, lights, and ribbons numb you to the fact that there is a hazard. We are not much different than the police in this... Job #1 is going home alive with all the parts you had when you left still attached when you get home.
 

AzIron

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Jun 14, 2016
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Last week we were digging a job for a street lamp tie in on a job were 95 percent of the job was installed and backfilled we had to expose a duct bank with 18 conduit and I d the one to tie into the power company subbed there portion to a lineman sub

As we finished exposing the conduit and we were waiting on an I'd the line man were opening the transformer at that point we heard a bang and look up to see a transformer blow up and three guys runaway from it all on fire two were burned on 30 percent of there body the senior hand was burned on 95 percent of his body the transformer blew up and sprayed all three with oil.

Long story short they all ended up out of a job at a minimum for breaking major safety policies the senior hand got in a hurry because we were waiting on them and he decided to pull the fuses with out terminating the switch a half mile up the road there was still a load on the fuses when he popped them it blew the transformer and all the oil shot out flaming from the arc flash

10 minutes of decision making almost killed 3 guys shut down half a city block shut a gas station down for 3 days cost huge sums of money and made a lot of people late for work when they landed 2 helicopters in the intersection and the investigation shut the building we working on down for a week

Complacency will kill you more accidents happen within 2 miles of home then anywhere else I now unfortunately have the scene and smell of that accident to be my reminder of staying aware of my work
 

Truck Shop

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On lineman crews any lineman that's not comfortable with a situation the crew has to stop and have what's called a tailboard meeting. Agree on the procedure then move on if not the
Crew Foreman has to be brought in to settle any crew disputes before moving ahead. That's under the IBEW.
 

Nige

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G..G..G..Granville.........!! Fetch your cloth.
Wise words from MD. Done right, large-scale mining could be best described as repetitive and boring. That's where the complacency part comes in. I have always said that large open-pit mines can move up to a million tons a day despite their management, not because of it. They move those tons day-in, day-out, 365 days a year because everyone is EXPECTED to buy into the safety culture, not simply conform to a system. It's very difficult to explain to anyone who has never been exposed to it.

The most dangerous people to be around are those who consider the system as a roadblock that gets in the way of "Getting the work done". Well I've got new for you, the system isn't going to change so you either need a brain re-calibration or find another job.
 

DMiller

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We did similar at the Power Station, where were to be MY Hands on switching or on disconnects, Loads came off first or we shut that entire event down right off. Many times reviewed the work to occur so we could walk it down Days to WEEKS advance just to make certain we did not injure nor kill anyone. MY Least comfort day I was sent to rack a 13800v circuit breaker down(motorized), got to the cabinet and noted was still CLOSED IN. All the work stopped until we found how the control room did not realize that issue and had not swapped to the cross tie breaker prior to THE CR sending us down there. Took two days to iron that situation out then resumed, that was during a confusing period of time in a refueling outage. I knew of at least two co-workers that would have tried to rack that down without looking or questioning and was procedure controlled.
 

Truck Shop

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The sign thing in a nuke plant likely is a spin off from the US Navy. A man of war has signs on everything. But the thing with it is that every sign has a life of death meaning. All water tight doors have a sign that designates when they are supposed to be closed or open and what is behind it. Every frame on a ship is labeled by its position in the vessel. Every piece of equipment is labeled by what it is and where it is at. All the valves in the piping are labeled by position and type of system. All the piping is painted a certain color to designate what is on the inside. If the pipes are covered in lagging, the description is printed on the lagging every so many feet and in each compartment that the piping runs through. It all has a meaning and a purpose and you absorb it quickly because your life may depend on it. You run drills on it all the time to make all of this automatic. That's probably why the US Navy has never had a nuclear accident that we know of.

Not to dispute you John but the signage in a nuke plant came before the Navy even thought of it.
My dad was No 1 lead sign painter at Hanford the gran-daddy of all nuclear sites. And yes they used a back ground color with all lettering on piping so the operator by look could see the type of
material inside and all valving was painted to match. And about safety in those days? {he worked there from 1946 to 1968, the super hot years}. He could not tell the family what he did other
than lettering Men and Women on the restroom doors. I remember him bringing home ammo boxes and placing them in the bathroom, although it was just a metal box at that time to us kids.
After he died and going through his personal effects we found records that he was radiation contaminated no less than 13 times. He retired at 66 and died six months later, he was carrying
a tumor the size of a football that was wrapped around his kidney and intestines. He stood 6'1" and weighed 103 lbs when he died of starvation. He lived in a diaper the last three months.
He past away in 1983. And I hate Nuke plants
 

John C.

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Truck Shop, I know where you are coming from. I didn't know about the early days of nuke power. I would guess that in 1946 they were thinking more in the way of bombs and not power generation. There are still people being hurt to this day at the Hanford reservation. The human race will pay for the nuclear poison for at least another thousand years at least. I am saddened to hear of your father's story.
I've taken the tour of the plant in Arco, Idaho where the first power generator was built and used and actually didn't notice the same kind of identification schemes that are seen on a nuclear ship. I'm sure you are right, just noting my ignorance.
 

Truck Shop

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I remember being with him in a Payless store in 1972 in Richland which is near Handford and where I was born, He ran onto a guy he knew and worked with at Hanford and talked with him a short bit.
I do remember him asking about different guy's he worked with on his paint crew that worked in the process area {there were 32 total at the time}. The mans reply was {Charley their all gone, dad never
said a word once we got back in the pickup. He knew.
 

DMiller

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Sorry to hear that TS, worked over twenty years in the hottest places in the plant, early days was significantly less presence of mind as to what radiation and types of radiation did to the human, they just did not know as they just understood and were exploring the explosive values. Near our first home in St. Charles County MO, was Weldon Springs Twnsp. That was a bustling place in the 19teens then WWII for explosives as TNT DNT, plastic explosive then they began the NEW Chemical Works for Malinkrodt, refined Uranium ore to Yellow Cake again having little knowledge of what intensifying these materials meant, they were just refining an ore. It is Currently the August A Busch Wildlife Area, a Park. Those uranium refining buildings stood for close to forty years vacant as radiation levels degraded by half lives, had left all the equipment and materials used sit exactly where left them as the last men an women were called to the office to be released from the operation no prior warning. That is now an encapsulated mound with ALL the plant buildings and machines buried for however long it takes to degrade.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weldon_Spring_Ordnance_Works

Workers had worn clothing home, 'borrowed' tools, contaminated houses and farm buildings, made families sick then the real investigating took place to figure out the causes, similar to the cases around Zinc and Lead mining. Turned out as to radiation protection did not exist, heavy metals poisoning was known but not to an extent, the workers were allotted a rad rate as a experiment only to find too high where kept dialing it back. The first men to die from radiation exposure in the US were in Chicago working with Fermi on the first reactor, used Uranium plates and as referred in the current day made a Pile of them to initiate reactions, a couple of men were removing plates placing them onto carts and inadvertently made a arrangement that created a severe reactive pile and each received a massive dose dying horribly in a few weeks.

Radiation comes in for rates from Uranics, Alpha(is in nearly every rock and soil in the world as a background radiation) even found in Bananas but not as harmful as des not penetrate clothing nor skin, Beta is a bit stronger up to and inclusive of X-rays, penetrates deeper and can if exposed repeatedly or acutely for longer periods of time damage tissues, Gamma, severe radiation, penetrates really deep, causes burns if presented long enough, shuts down certain organic activities and damages mucus membranes Eyes Throat Sinus Lungs Intestinal. Final is Neutron, the released energy from Atomic and Nuclear Fission, all reactions related to atomic weapons and reactors release that radiation, NOTHING is impenetrable and the effect as such shuts down the body's cellular ability to repair itself the tissues just die where you become a walking dead person, water is your friend as to a reasonable shield, water retained in Concrete NOT the concrete itself is the shield in the structures where as concrete cures that moisture dissipates and the shielding reduces. Had Neutron 'Windows' in the plant at power, had to duck and dive past thru wall penetrations to avoid being presented to it and wore special dosimeters just to record if HAD been exposed to it, head, hands, ankles and waist devices were worn and I had worn them. My dosage rates were less than one receives from a Dentist visit or a series of chest or back x-rays over a years time, that is how well the industry has evolved. I hear the news of 'Radiation' released from Fukushima traveling to the US, radiation is a effect, emission or energy not a material, radioactive materials are carried by water borne materials as dirt and dissolved solids not radiation as a generality. Those materials are filterable and removable as well just base water is the best shield for protection of them, the distance traveled from Fukushima to the US is such that a detectable emission can be noted but is barely above background levels in our own front yards, much of it has to be filtered out of the water to even detect it. All too much reporting today is remnant scare/fear of radiation from the early days.

Radiation Protection has come a LONG way since those days. I was 'Allowed' 2500 millirem(MR) radiation dose per year by the Company 5000MR by Fed, in a emergency that COULD be raised to 10,000 MR for acute dose rate but that was a Federal MAXIMUM. I received 1 Rem(1000MR) during Refuel 9 in four days, was booted out of the Containment building until area rates decreased and I only received 28mr for the last month of the refuel. Plans got better, operations flushed hot spots more often and during at power operation and just at refueling, we got those levels down to where received I less than 100mr for an entire refuel 40-90 days working in most of the hotter rad zones in the last refuels I worked. REM is Roentgen Equivalent Man, or what is considered known as Radiation damage levels to organics as flesh.

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/f...erview_of_Occupational_Radiation_Exposure.pdf

Ignorance is not a excuse but it was the cause so many got sick and died, sad but the lack of experienced science based knowledge does lead men down a primrose path at times. Received training on this annually so the base knowledge will be there until my mind fails or I die, will always be a consideration as to what long term affects it has made on my body.
 

Truck Shop

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I agree much has changed since the 40's, 50's and 60's, but the spent fuel and hazardous waste becomes the forever problem and nobody wants it buried in their state. I remember my dad telling me
about the many leaks that happened in those years and the hush-hush to keep it quite. In 1959 Hanford had a major leak of mid level radiation that floated over Spokane, N. Idaho, Montana and so on.
Richland, Pasco, and Kenewick had the highest levels of leukemia of anywhere in the U.S. except for Japan. With all the civilian deaths from people who worked there plus Their families More than likely
being exposed every time a ammo box was brought home-into the home for urine samples--There should Be A White Cross Five Hundred Feet High Erected At Hanford. With all that's wasted by this
government and the fact they want no responsibility for their actions-I think that's the least that could be done.
 

DMiller

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We had twenty five years of fuel assemblies in our spent fuel pool, was closing in on capacity so opted to dry storage. Those containers are designed to transport the old stuff off to a storage site or to a Reconstitution site which during the plants that are built days was already built at Savannah River in N Carolina, Jimmy Carter got that shut down as did not want nuclear at all. If ever anyone determines the need reconstitution will recover 40% of the fuel assemblies as reusable fuel, the metals can be retired to a deep grave as they have no migratable materials just nickel alloy metals, the Inert pellets can be reused an unlimited amount of time as are a ceramic composite much as tooth crowns are made of. Only 7% of a fuel assembly is actually a fuel derivative. The old reactors at Hanford were Breeders, they actually produced More than they used in the fission process converting Uranium to plutonium, a evil type of reactor no longer used. Good friend of mine also now retired and so far still healthy at 74 had an Uptake, had to take plastic bags and a stack of paper plates home to poop on for a week and pee in sample bottles until the RadChem department determined he had passed the materials. Was a Fuel Flea, nearly microscopic particle of a fuel pellet that got loose from an assembly that had fretting damage. He did pass it and none the worse so far. Nearly all of our low rate radioactive metal cut out materials go to a metal melt facility to be produced into containers to haul radiologic materials, most radioactive labeled barrels are produced at that site as the metal is already hot may as well use it for storage of other materials.

What I can relate to is Nuclear is far and wide more prevalent than most people know. CT and PET Scanners, measuring devices in the mines for quantity of raw ores in silos and distributing drop heads off the silos, nuclear medicine is prolific where many cancers are treated with the very radioactive materials found in the reactors. So many devices and machines rely on nuclear forces to function even as smoke detectors.
Worst radiation dose received in my previous employer was at a coal fired plant, had two welders crawl into a silo to make some needed repairs, failed to cover shield the Source device to the flow measurement system, got a burst of some serious Beta Emission radiation where they had to report to a doctor for a month to test for internal damage. We had not any occurrence as severe as that at the Nuke.
 

Truck Shop

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I agree with what you printed above Dave to a point. The average American only understands with nuclear power their toaster provided them with a hot Pop Tart this morning. And I also understand
the need for optional power. There are pluses and minuses in everything.

A fellow here in town I know was attached to Curtis Le May's detail at the end of WWII and to 47. Curtis was asked by staff if he was still going to visit the facilities that made the bomb.
Quoting the man I talked to {Curtis-You saw what it did why would I want to go there}.
 

DMiller

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The Bombs were a Vile use of the energy but were a necessity by what I was educated on. Can only say the proliferation and spies that got that proliferation afoot was a bad deal, should have ended that weaponization a long time ago.
 

emmett518

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Not to dispute you John but the signage in a nuke plant came before the Navy even thought of it.
My dad was No 1 lead sign painter at Hanford the gran-daddy of all nuclear sites. And yes they used a back ground color with all lettering on piping so the operator by look could see the type of
material inside and all valving was painted to match. And about safety in those days? {he worked there from 1946 to 1968, the super hot years}. He could not tell the family what he did other
than lettering Men and Women on the restroom doors. I remember him bringing home ammo boxes and placing them in the bathroom, although it was just a metal box at that time to us kids.
After he died and going through his personal effects we found records that he was radiation contaminated no less than 13 times. He retired at 66 and died six months later, he was carrying
a tumor the size of a football that was wrapped around his kidney and intestines. He stood 6'1" and weighed 103 lbs when he died of starvation. He lived in a diaper the last three months.
He past away in 1983. And I hate Nuke plants

So sorry about your dad. He deserved better.
 
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