I did finally learn that taking a red-eye home from the west coast after a finishing a training class on Friday is always a mistake

I've tried stuff like this before. It was so much easier when I could WFH after a trip, but sadly that isn't an option any more.

And going from a hectic outage to sedate office life repeatedly is a transition I will never get used to

And to have enough charisma to pull it off too

It's not as bad at home, but whenever I travel for work, it looks like I got into a fight with the bedding and lost. It's a bit absurd and does not help with work travel induced back pain

If LANL ever does a public tour of LANSCE again, I highly recommend it.

I mean, I'd do it. But the juxtaposition of stuff like this is always funny to me

Just for @nuclearanthro.bsky.social and @grantwtrent.bsky.social , the intersection of Florida and the old nuclear weapons program. Nothing says a fun family day like a visit to the neutron generator plant!

Before it became obscenely expensive, the diet version was my go to. Fortunately, there's a storebrand grapefruit soda that's 90% of the way there and way cheaper

Fortunately, the ventilation line up for that area was blowing in the right direction (previous inspection had issues with ventilation line up which caused the uptake), but not something you want to hear after you climbed down the long ladder

I had a trainee with me and both of us gave each other a pretty immediate "wtf" look. It was a bit shocking because we had an extremely thorough pre job brief before that (LHRA, CA, and confined space w/ a clearance order) and nobody mentioned experience from the last time

I usually wear a pair of shorts under my scrubs. A lot of the plant provided scrubs don't have a good pocket for an insulin pump, unfortunately.

In this particular case, it was helpful for other reasons. Fortunately I only lost my pants, didn't lose my boots/other clothes.

Ironically enough, that was not the job I picked up contamination on during that outage. That dubious honor belonged to the upper head nozzle exam where I lost my nice set of scrubs and had to wear the disposable scrubs on the walk of shame through the turbine deck back to my office

I had a much less serious USCB moment last year. I was under vessel at a PWR looking at bottom mounted instrumentation nozzles. And the examiner doing the inspection turned to his colleague and said something along the lines of "I hope we don't get an intake this time" as I could see dust floating

Less a normal hazard, but my first week was right after the arc flash accident too. That certainly gave me a healthy respect for high voltage sources and LO/TO. Which I will admit served me well in my career much later

I remember my boss giving me the hanta virus lecture when we found a dead rat next to the Lujan center exit. That was a delightful conversation

I mean LANL kind of felt like that during the summer when I interned there. Or maybe that's rose colored glasses from a decade of cynicism

The plant that I genuinely would have loved to visit was Big Rock Point. But it was gone long before my time

DAEC isn't much bigger, even if it is newer, as an example. Same with Monticello and the other small BWR/4 plants. Palisades is in that 600ish MW bucket too

The real question would be say Ft Calhoun or Pilgrim as examples.

Maybe? The single unit challenges are real (the ASP analysis for the DAEC derecho comes to mind), but the political environment has changed. And I don't just mean the administration. Given everything else in power generation, I think it could have hung on if it was today.

My boss was an SRO there. Both Oyster Creek and NMP1 are interesting little plants.

It's been an interesting couple of years. I started in the industry right before it looked like Dresden and Byron would close. It feels like a completely different world than it did back then

Speaking of the WB-57, I actually heard the one that crashed coming in for a landing. I was at a class right under the approach path. Still mad I didn't look out the window.

We added opt out tests this year. I would have used them, except I wanted to kill as much time as possible doing training

A Bert the Turtle plushie next to a 3d printed nuclear RPV

Just for reference of the size we're talking about

I mean, I 3-d printed it from publicly available files, so you too can do your own refueling outages (minus the tweaks I made to mine).

I am currently defueling and refueling the PWR model on my desk over and over again. I haven't done that since I was furloughed. Today is not great and solidarity to you and the cats.

I should stock up on the emergency oreos, shouldn't I?

Agreed and it's not just Iran. The constant phrasing around "domination" is creepy and weird

There's multiple versions for different firearms, even. Someone made one for the Yugoslavian SKS in days long past. The modern can cannons generally aren't even legally firearms

What makes a steel column missile resistant? I really want to know who marketed construction materials here

You're missing pustulent persimmon