WTF?!? - Plastic bags, tape, broomsticks fix San Onofre leak (Remarkable Photo)

[kpete]

Once, nuclear power plants represented the height of America's technological prowess. But now that they're getting old, they're no longer gleaming fortresses of high-tech success. And when they break, sometimes they're fixed the old-fashioned way -- with a little ingenuity and masking tape.

The photo above was given to a local ABC news team in San Diego. It's a picture from inside the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, which sits on the California coast between Los Angeles and San Diego. The photo shows the leaky joint of a massive pipe that's been jerry-rigged with some plastic, masking tape, and broomsticks.

....................

http://m.upi.com/story/UPI-7181367502559/
http://www.10news.com/news/investigations/photograph-picture-given-to-team-10-shows-plastic-bags-tape-broomsticks-used-to-fix-leak-at-san-onofre-043013

[DJ13]

1. And we laughed at Bush's crazy duct tape and plastic sheeting idea

[NYC_SKP]

2. "In the meantime, plastic is in place to direct the water from the small leak to a drain."

It's clear from both articles that this is not a "fix" or a "repair", but instead a temporary setup to direct the dripping water toward a drain until such time as permanent repairs are made.

I've toured several powerplants, including nuclear and natural gas plants, and I can attest to the quality of maintenance of both (among those I've seen) and I am not concerned by this specific article, despite its alarming headline.

Once we deploy smart grid and find energy storage solutions and deploy more distributed energy generation, we can shut down all 104 of our reactors.

And our coal and NG plants, too!

[Control-Z]

3. Wasn't that the way Apollo 13

made it home? Not that it makes me any more comfortable, living as close as I do to San Onofre.

[Heywood J]

4. There's no Loctite for that? (NT)

[Wilms]

5. That's only because they ran out of these.