On top of the world

I am glad to see that mom has made her first post. Yesterday, I had the task with my other collegue to inspect welds in the reactor cotainment. The containment being the building that has concrete a thickness of around 3 feet or more followed by about 6 feet gap (where piping and duct work are, then a steel shell that is around 4 + inches thick surrounding the actual nuclear reactor. It was a grueling day, but I did get to climb (by way of fixed ladders) to the very top of the annulus. The top platform being about 870 feet. I only picked up 4.5 mrem of dose, which is very small considering how close I was to the reactor. In comparison, you definately get that much on a plane ride and probably more for an xray. It was pretty cool, I have some pictures of me on top. Not allowed to publish on the internet, for security reasons, I'm guessing.

Only downside, I was stuck in the hot room for about 45 minutes for picking up contamination. By the time waiting was letting the Radon to decay out of our hair or skin. More likely, it was the dirt that I got on myself from crawling under piping and ductwork. Even though nuclear plants are extremely clean. I believe the contamination was Radon gas, which is in everyone's home, and if you took your air filter for your A/C and held it next to a detector, you would be surprised at the level of radiation. However, this is just Radon decaying, and its decay products are not harmful in everyday doses.

Tell Mario I hope he gets better soon.


Nick