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MRC
·.... a video recorder
was when I was working on the construction site of a prototype nuclear reactor in 1970. Not at the clever end, we just welded piping together and put up steel-work, but keeping the supercritical steam inside the piping was rather important. After passing through the turbine the steam was relatively cool (I should know but I forget) and by some engineering magick (ISKBIF) was below atmospheric pressure. At that stage it was in a large chamber called the condenser, underneath the turbine.
One of the unusual requirements of this construction job was that it should be assembled under "clean" conditions. Normally for power stations it's assumed that all the piping will be full of rubbish, so a temporary boiler is brought in to get some reasonably high pressure steam and temporary piping is built to blast all the rubbish to the outside (it's quite spectacular to watch 😁) . Not a cheap operation, and if the temporary piping makes a break for the exit horrible damage is done [*]. So the bright sparks at UKAEA thought 'Why don't we insist it's built "clean" and save a lot of money?'
We declared our work in the turbine hall complete and one day a number of UKAEA people in smart suits arrived and asked us to take the inspection covers off the condenser. They had with them a largish reel-to-reel recorder, not audio, this was video. Attached to it was a chunky cable with what appeared to be a lens at the remote end and a light of some sort. The cable was inserted into the condenser and down the piping.
Bricks, welding rods, sandwiches, newspapers, a spanner or two and a used condom (???) were revealed -- and recorded of course. I was not party to the resulting discussions which would probably have happened way above our site manager's pay-grade, and I was only his gofer. So a temporary boiler had to be brought in and everything blasted out, probably adding at least a year to the finishing date. By then I was safely back in college but could get the latest chat from my friends back at the site control office in our HQ.
[*] Ironbridge B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbridge_power_stations The Wiki page mentions construction delays -- that was because the temporary pipework came adrift in the turbine hall, thrashed around and caused havoc with a resulting two years of delay. In the first month of our apprenticeships my class of wannabe engineers were taken to see the chaos caused and were warned to take sober note.
was when I was working on the construction site of a prototype nuclear reactor in 1970. Not at the clever end, we just welded piping together and put up steel-work, but keeping the supercritical steam inside the piping was rather important. After passing through the turbine the steam was relatively cool (I should know but I forget) and by some engineering magick (ISKBIF) was below atmospheric pressure. At that stage it was in a large chamber called the condenser, underneath the turbine.
One of the unusual requirements of this construction job was that it should be assembled under "clean" conditions. Normally for power stations it's assumed that all the piping will be full of rubbish, so a temporary boiler is brought in to get some reasonably high pressure steam and temporary piping is built to blast all the rubbish to the outside (it's quite spectacular to watch 😁) . Not a cheap operation, and if the temporary piping makes a break for the exit horrible damage is done [*]. So the bright sparks at UKAEA thought 'Why don't we insist it's built "clean" and save a lot of money?'
We declared our work in the turbine hall complete and one day a number of UKAEA people in smart suits arrived and asked us to take the inspection covers off the condenser. They had with them a largish reel-to-reel recorder, not audio, this was video. Attached to it was a chunky cable with what appeared to be a lens at the remote end and a light of some sort. The cable was inserted into the condenser and down the piping.
Bricks, welding rods, sandwiches, newspapers, a spanner or two and a used condom (???) were revealed -- and recorded of course. I was not party to the resulting discussions which would probably have happened way above our site manager's pay-grade, and I was only his gofer. So a temporary boiler had to be brought in and everything blasted out, probably adding at least a year to the finishing date. By then I was safely back in college but could get the latest chat from my friends back at the site control office in our HQ.
[*] Ironbridge B https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironbridge_power_stations The Wiki page mentions construction delays -- that was because the temporary pipework came adrift in the turbine hall, thrashed around and caused havoc with a resulting two years of delay. In the first month of our apprenticeships my class of wannabe engineers were taken to see the chaos caused and were warned to take sober note.
