Loading ...LOL, …but Three Mile Island was said to have been brought to a near miss to total meltdown by an overweight control room operator whose belly ‘apron’ obscured part of the control panel in front of him , or something of that nature .
Maybe obscured a warning light signalling a pending runaway that should have signalled him to scram the reaction (drop the absorber rods, to suck up the neutron flux and bring the reactor to forced shutdown ). The restart however is a lengthy process after a scram , resulting in a lot of lost generating revenue to the electrical utility .
Much better however to maintain a nuclear reaction margin of safety once criticality is achieved , rather than push the limit .
My crud scraping work was done following an orderly shutdown , when the entire reactor core would be emptied of fuel bundles and each one transferred to the spent fuel pool in an attached building via deep underwater channels . Every refuelling was a carefully choreographed operation . My work was on critical path since all other fuel movement was suspended while the fuel bundles I was to take crud samples from were brought to the edge of the fuel pool where my equipment was set up . I would typically be dressed out in full PC’s (protective clothing) ready to start at midnight , and on my feet working without a break of any kind , no food , no beverage , no bathroom breaks , non-stop until about five pm that afternoon . residual heat from the fuel elements heated the huge pool water volume to maybe 110 degrees , so I would lose 8 to 10 pounds of sweat in that one shift , obviating the need for a bathroom break during those 17 hours . That amount of lost electrolytes was a danger. When my shift was done , refuelling operations recommenced , my tech and I would doff our PC’s , get back into street clothes and pass through the radiation monitoring portals at the exit from each of the radiation control zones ( there were three before reaching plant exit and public areas ). We would return to our hotel and shower , meet in the lobby , and head out to a restaurant . Even though I had taken Gatorade after exiting , my arm muscles would lock up as I moved my fork to my mouth and have to pull it straight with the other arm . While reaching into my pocket to pay for my meal , my finger muscles would cramp and I would have to straighten them with my other hand . Had my heart muscles locked up , that would have finished me .
I was even called back out of retirement to do that work at a couple of plants .