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| The corporate jet |
My first observation of the plant was the extreme levels of security. The entire plant was surrounded by a barrier, and you have the proper badge to drive through the first gate. To access the secured buildings, more badge checks, a hand scan, an X-ray scan of all bags, and a trip through the explosives detector were required. I was allowed in as a visitor, but had to be escorted at all times.
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| At Farley Nuclear Plant (reactor buildings are in top right corner) |
Donning hardhats, safety glasses, earplugs, and work gloves, we went inside the turbine building, which houses all of the secondary side, or non-radioactive, equipment. This included enormous heat exchangers, pumps, turbines, and piping structures. Most of this equipment is used to cool the nuclear reactors with controlled cooling water. We also went inside the secondary chemistry lab, where concentration and flow levels are continuously monitored and samples are taken directly from the different water streams. Near the lab were large tanks of chemicals that were added to the streams as needed. The entire building was very hot. On summer days like the one we went, the upper floors often reach 110°F. After leaving the building, we walked over to the sprawling switchyard, with behemoth transformers interconnected with wires. Seeing the equipment up close provided me a better understanding of the work I was doing at corporate, especially the sizes of the equipment. I also gained insight into the work environment at the plant compare to that at the corporate office.
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| Farley Nuclear Plant - Turbine Deck |
I also met many people that worked in the Chemistry department at the plant. It was obvious that everyone took safety and superior performance seriously. I also met some of the other people that worked for different departments of SNC traveling on the jet with us.
A few weeks later, after traveling to Plant Hatch, I traveled to Plant Farley again. This time we went by car and stayed for 2 days. I worked on continuing to setup the Remote Manager software for Farley. Traveling to the plant helped speed the process along since we could easily discuss with the site Chemistry department. I adjusted the pager alerting system so that instead of everyone receiving multiple useless pages during the middle of the night, only the urgent pages would be sent out to the appropriate personnel.
