In addition to traveling to Farley Nuclear Plant, I also went to Hatch Nuclear Plant and Vogtle Electric Generating Plant. We traveled to Hatch just for one day on the jet again. Plant Hatch is located outside of Vidalia, Georgia. I noticed lots of onion plants and pine trees as we drove from the airport to the plant.
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| Plant Hatch (reactor and turbine building is on the left, vent stack is the tall tower on the right) |
I got to tour inside Hatch Nuclear Plant. At Hatch, the turbine building and nuclear reactors are combined into one building. We saw the same secondary side equipment as at Plant Farley, which was very similar, just laid out differently. Some of these differences were because Plant Hatch is a Boiling Water Reactor, while Plant Farley and Plant Vogtle are Pressurized Water Reactors. This time, however, I got to walk inside the radiologically controlled area (the primary side). I had to wear a TLD badge that measures the amount of radiological dose a person receives while inside. I got to pass through the air lock into the containment building that houses the nuclear reactor. For safety reasons, no one can go inside the actual reactor until there is an outage (a scheduled shutdown for maintenance and refueling).
As we were leaving the radiologically controlled area of Plant Hatch, we had to go through radiation detectors to ensure we did not pick up any radiation while inside. Before I could understand how they worked, I was pulled aside because I was over the detection limit. My coworker explained to me that this radiation was only a small amount of radioactive gas that was trapped by my clothing. After standing in front of a fan for five minutes, I went through the detector again, thankfully without any alarm. As an extra comfort, my TLD badge still read 0 as my radiation dosage, so I was not in any danger.
My final trip was to Vogtle Electric Generating Plant, about a 45 minute drive from Augusta, GA. A coworker in Chemistry and I traveled to the plant for four days. The distinguishing feature of Vogtle is its large twin cooling towers. While the hyperbolic shape of these towers is often associated with solely nuclear plants, many nuclear plants, like Farley and Hatch, do not have large cooling towers. In addition, other types of plants have similar towers, including many coal plants.
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| Plant Vogtle |
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| Plant Vogtle |
I had a great experience at Plant Vogtle. I got to experience extended business travel and stayed in a hotel in Augusta. I enjoyed the change of scenery and change in routine. I met many different people as I worked to update Remote Manager with the Chemistry department there.
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| Plant Vogtle (nuclear reactors are the dome-shaped buildings in the center) |
