DU Exclusive - What Nuclear Plant Engineers Find Funny - TMI and Flooding

[jberryhill]

Not too long ago, I found myself in a public place near someone who was
preparing a set of powerpoint slides.

Now, when you glance at a screen and see "Exelon 2011 Model Owners Meeting"
you can't help but think, "Owners of these things get together once a year
to commiserate?"

Well, it turns out they do a whole lot more than commiserate, given that
the first slide in his deck was entitled:

"TMI External Events - External Flood"

Again, I hate to seem like a nosy person, but, um, when you happen to
notice that someone is apparently working on a presentation to nuke reactor
owners on the subject of a flood event at Three Mile Island, then maybe
you'll forgive my curiousity tinged with my own mortal interest.


So, the guy was something of a comedian, since the first line on his slide
was:


"Hey let's build a nuclear power plant in the middle of a big river"

I'll bet that guy thinks he's a regular Ricky Gervais. But, aside from the
other slide that started "..and let's make sure there is a big operating
airfield nearby!", he spent most of his time on the subject of flood
protections as-designed at TMI, and a few problems that have come up.


I can use an image processing guru for the full uncompressed iPhone
pictures, but I also managed to take a few notes.

As you might now, the Susquehanna is a wide and shallow river, and that the
"Three Mile Island" is what amounts to a sandbar where the river has carved
out paths around it over time. Nonetheless, it is a river with significant
seasonal variation and sometimes flooding.

From his powerpoints, I gathered that the flood controls around the TMI
facility were designed based on a US Army Corps of Engineers "probable
maximum flood" calculation for the Susquehanna. It's sort of the "worst
flood you could expect in 100 years" type of thing.

Well, it turns out that the Corps has revised their PMF for Three Mile
Island by several feet, and according to the slides:

"New PMf higher than dikes planned to protect against flood"

"Potential for flood water to bypass flood boundary and not be discovered
until too late to stop it"

"Invalidates design"


This apparently causes a signicant problem with the "Air Intake Tunnel"

----

"One strategy was to look into recaclulating flood height v flow height"
and they apparently cherry-picked a geological consultancy to try to make
the numbers come out right, but were unsuccessful.

"Met Ed maintained dikes at <missed the number> but protect individual
structures with flood gates."

-----

"Walked down flood boundary and observed flood gate installations"

"The plant discovered a bypass of the flood boundary during walkdowns."

====

That's right kids... even under the microscope that is TMI decades later,
it was simply a novel idea to go take a look at the flood controls around a
nuclear plant in the middle of a god-damned river.

Ha-ha. Pretty funny.

And the bonus pictures:

[pansypoo53219]

1. corpse of engineers.

nt

[Electric Monk]

2. Pictures are so huge I can't read the text without scrolling left and right

and I have my monitor set at 1920x1200.

[jberryhill]

3. Yeah, I posted them raw....

Because I'm hoping that someone will do some image processing magic with them.

These pics have been in my iPhone for a couple of weeks, and I wanted to dump them, and the info, somewhere on the internet where perhaps someone with the right background will be able to put them to good use.

[Electric Monk]

4. There's a way to make links to them without them showing in the main post

I've seen it done, but not quite sure how myself.

Let me try something.... (prepare for some edits)

">click for full size

edit: Got it. Here's the code to use, for the link above, as an example.

Remove the extra spaces. Note the ascii period after the www. That's the trick.

[ link : www &#46; johnberryhill . com/tmi1.jpg | click for full size ]

[jberryhill]

5. Editing time expired :=(

Anyone interested in the pics should be able to find them now.

[Electric Monk]

6. Here's the code snippets for the post above, for anyone curious to learn

I've seen it done, but not quite sure how myself.

Let me try something.... (prepare for some edits)

[link:www.johnberryhill.com/tmi1.jpg|click for full
size]

edit: Got it. Here's the code to use, for the link above, as
an example.

Remove the extra spaces. Note the ascii period after the www.
That's the trick.

[ link : www . johnberryhill .
com/tmi1.jpg | click for full size ]

[Electric Monk]

7. Now that I've actually read your OP, kick (again) and rec.

I wish I'd been a plumber. - Albert Einstein

[jberryhill]

8. Kind of amazing what people will edit in a public place

Isn't it?

[Electric Monk]

9. Are you upset at me? Feel free to elaborate.

Your home website url where they are/were hosted was available to anyone viewing the OP with a simple right click. I didn't spill any big secrets there when I linked to it for a minute. I was trying to figure out which part of my html DU was having a problem with.

[jberryhill]

10. WTF?

I was talking about the dipshit working on the PowerPoint slides.

[Electric Monk]

11. I apologize for the confusion, I was being overly sensitive. nt

[Celebration]

12. Good gosh!

Excellent snooping! Definitely RECOMMENDED.

[Electric Monk]

13. kick nt