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out to do the work....
Workers at the Japanese Nuclear plants
Maybe I can help out here a little bit. It probably sounds stupid but I tried to make it as simple as possible.
The problem they have is the gamma dose rate, they can't get in close to do much, so they have to stay in an area that shields them.
Power plants have a bunch of little rooms all through them and usually about 4 elevations.
The ones I worked in have elevators and stairs to take you to the different elevations.
So lets say you have a reactor on the south end and a reactor on the north end, this would be a twin unit.
Then you will have a spent fuel pool in between the reactors (called the auxillary building).
I'm referring to a pressurized water reactor not a boiling water reactor like the Japanese have.
I have worked in boiling water power plants but spent more time in the pressurized ones.
I'm not intending to describe any particular plant I have worked it, I did however spend some time in 4 different plants, doing refuelings, generator change outs and piping change outs.
I worked at Mcguire in North Carolina, Indian point in New York, vermont Yankee in Vermont and Point Beach in Wisconsin.
I worked in radiation protection so I knew where the high and low gamma radiation was at.
I also worked in the State of Washington in 1981 and 1982 on a survey crew building one. This was in Satsop Washington.
So I have a working knowledge of a little bit of it.
I'll try and put this into easy simple to understand terms.
Before we go to work so to say, to try and get water to the reactor and spent fuel pool, we need to know a couple more things.
The other radiation is Neutron, but you only have this when you have fission (the reactor is under power)
Okay, were going to get dressed out to go around or near the plant to do some work, maybe haul some hoses or whatever.
They use coveralls like a mechanic would use only a little thicker material but not a lot, then a hood out of the same material and a little white skull cap under the hood something like a priest might wear to cover the hair on your head.
Then some thin plastic shoe covers that go up the ankle about 8 inches, then rubber boots like a farmer might wear about 8 inches tall also.
Then some cotton liners, like the little white glove that Michael Jackson wore then rubber gloves that go over the cotton liners up the wrist about 6 inches.
The cotton liners help absorb the sweat off your hand.
Okay were all dressed up and ready to go, nope not quite, we will put on a full face respirator just in case we have some airborne contamination floating around.
Now heres a pretty important thing in the dressing out process.
We use duct tape like you can buy at the hardware store.
You will duct tape the front zipper all the way from his crotch to his neck, then you tape the top of his boots, then his gloves at the top usually one time around the boots and gloves.
So now he has the coveralls on and the boots and gloves taped up, next he puts on the respirator, some body will dress him up so he doesn't get any hair in between the seal on the respirator and his forehead.
Then he will hold his hand over the respirator filter and suck in to see if he is getting any leakage on the edges.
Then you put on the skull cap and hood, then tape the hood to his shoulders and tape the hood to the out side edge of the respirator, then tape around where the top of the zipper is.
Also where ever you tape him up you want to leave about a 2 inch tab when he comes back from his work area you can get him undressed without struggling with the tape.
Also give him a couple of extra pairs of rubber gloves to stick in his pocket just in case.
Now by the time you get him dressed up he's starting to get warm and inside a power plant he could be starting to sweat.
So he's getting a tiny bit of stress before he even gets going.
Wearing a respirator will tire you pretty easily, plus you can't turn your head to far or squint or talk much or your respirator will leak and you will be sucking some contaminated outside air.
If the guy you just dressed out is a plant maintenance or plant operator he is trained and will carry a pocket dosimeter and an alarming meter so he doesn't get into a pretty high radiation field.
Now if you listened to some of the reports on the television you heard them mention scba.
scba is a self contained breathing apparatus.
It is for situations where the atmosphere might be oxygen deficient, or smoke (firefighters wear them) or in a nuclear plant a lot of airborne contamination and also surface contamination kind of like dust its contaminated but you just can't see it its so fine.
Also if your in a heavly contaminated area you may wear a full plastic suit instead of the coveralls and the plastic suit will be taped up very carefully, with absolutely no leaks around the respirator gloves and boots.
Scba has a harness with a tank on the back thats good for a little under an hour, I've been out of the business a few years and I can't remember for sure.
So the bottom line here is these workers are under stress right from the get go. The rubber boots are not a light weight material there kind of heavy.
The worker had somebody dress him and when he comes back somebody should help undress him unless he's has a lot of experience getting undressed, because he probably has looose (contaminated dust on his clothing and hood)
Allright were dressed out and ready to go to work, with a loss of onsite power you will need a flashlight and a tool pouch with what ever tools you need.
So a onsite rad protection technician will probably go along to keep them from going into a high radiation area, in an accident situation like this I would say your normal dose rates wil have changed.
The rad tech will also dress just like the worker.
In some cases you will put dosimeters on a guys wrist or ankles if that particular part of his body is touching something, like a pipe could have a lot of gamma radiation coming off from it and maybe have a hot spot only a few inches long in the same pipe.
All right were going to try to get a water hose just out side of the reactor containment building.
So the rad tech will have surveyed parts of the area and knows where they can get through, providing some water hasn't moved in the pipes or water has drained out of the pipes to make a higher or lower gamma dose rate.
Now we're ready to go, and you might start down in the lower level of the auxillary building because all those levels and all the little rooms have walls that help shield you from the gamma radiation.
It's not a go take a hose over here, it's how do you get there with out getting hit with a lot of gamma rays.
Its pretty cumbersome to work in one of these plants with coveralls and hood and respirator.
If you dress a guy out in plastics and he has them on for 45 minutes his head will be red as a beet and his inner clothes will be soaking wet, sometimes the same thing with just coveralls and a respirator on.
Now if you have 50 guys taking care of that many units I don't see how they can get anything done.
I'm getting tired and I might put some more out, but anyway for whats it worth this is kind of how it works.
Mr. Shraby
(Maybe Rachel would like this info to educate her audience?)
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