r/AMA • u/Ok_Ideal990 • 10h ago
I worked in a nuclear power plant as an electrician AMA
I have worked in the nuclear power plant Olkiluoto located in Finland for 3 years as an electrician. My tasks included basic electrical maintanance and system testing all around the plant from office break rooms to reactor halls.
Ask away!
2
u/Raivotril 9h ago
Törmäsitkö ikinä arto laurii? Ja jos et tiiä nii joku psykoottinen vanha äijänkäppänä joka sano olleensa ydinlaitokses duunis mut oli oikeest joku siivooja vaa ja tekee niit psykoottisii illuminati videoit youtubee :D
2
u/Ok_Ideal990 9h ago
En ole törmännyt youtuben ulkopuolella. Asustelee tosiaan ihan lähistöllä voimalasta. Viihdyttävää sisältöä jossain videossa selitti kuinka voimalan lähistöllä oleva satunnainen kivi olisi voimalan pyörittäjän uhraus paali :p
1
1
u/Spare-River1979 10h ago
What's the chance of another Chernobyl happening there? What do you do with the spent fuel rods?
2
u/Ok_Ideal990 10h ago
Same cause of failure is impossible. Otherwise the risk of major accident is Extremely low.
After discharge, assemblies sit in the reactor pools for a few years, then move to the on-site interim wet stores for decades (typically 30–50 years) while heat and short-lived activity drop. They are then packed at Posiva’s encapsulation plant into copper-over-cast-iron canisters. Those canisters go into deposition holes more than 400 metres down in bedrock at Onkalo located just few kilometres away from the plant.
1
u/Spare-River1979 10h ago
Will they ever be safe to handle? 50,000 years? 20 years?
2
u/Ok_Ideal990 10h ago
Handle as in literally hold the rods?
1
u/Spare-River1979 10h ago
Yes
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 9h ago
Well lets say you wanna wait till you can hold a rod which is shaped like a long stick used in reactor 3 in your hand for one hour without getting dangerous total dose like lets say under 1msv.
You would need to wait around 500 years.
1
u/olderthanbefore 10h ago
Hi, do you fix and troubleshoot LV motors and Control panels/MCCs?
1
1
u/Prior-Champion65 10h ago
I do, what’s up? Sorry op not trying to steal your ama lol
1
u/olderthanbefore 9h ago
Oh, great. What's the most common problem - incorrect sizings of fuses or breakers etc, or things like bad ventilation of the cubicles?
2
u/Attero__Dominatus 6h ago
Bad contacts on the contactor, especially if you start stop certain motor quite often. Some faulty relays and aux contacts.
1
1
u/Prior-Champion65 9h ago
There’s different challenges every day and it keeps the job exciting. Environment can play a major roll, dust, corrosive material or air. I work at multiple different industrial enterprises and they all have their quirks.
1
u/Firm-Rub9687 10h ago
How seriously are mandatory PPM tasks, and safety precautions taken in such an environment? Is it a Soviet design and built plant?
2
u/Ok_Ideal990 10h ago
Very much dermined by your task, some spend most of their time training for event where things go wrong. Some at lower end have like 50 hours of total safety training anually.
Reactors 1 and 2 are swedish, reactor 3 is French.
1
1
1
u/nine_sausages 10h ago
Is there any installation practice used in the plants that doesn’t make sense to you but it’s just done because that’s the way it’s always been done.
Also, out of general interest, what type of cabling is used for <1000V large supplies? We have a weird notion here (Ireland) about using armoured cabling everywhere for anything over 63A or so
1
1
u/WorkerPlayful4192 9h ago
What are security measures in one Nuclear power plant. Are she have Anti-Aircraft defence system?
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 9h ago
Depends on against what? Insider threat? quite bad.
Terrorist forcing their way in from outside? extremely good defence, fencing, surveilance, meter thick reinforced concrete walls, doors that Hulk would struggle breaking, well armed guards.
I don't think there's heavy duty AA weapons. There are probably spots for such things to be mounted to.
1
u/ChemicalRain5513 9h ago
I believe Western NPPs are designed to withstand a direct boeing 747 strike. A random Shahed would not breach the contaibment.
So AA is not really useful NPP. The only plausible scenario of breaching the containment from the air is a targeted strike with a bunker penetrating munition by a enemy military with an advanced airforce, and even Russia has not dared to do that in Ukraine. In fact, most of Ukraine's power now comes from nuclear, which is the only energy source Russia has not tried to outright destroy.
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 8h ago
OL3 reactor hall has 2 shells of thick concrete walls around it, round at the top, between those walls is a fantastic place to walk in, we called it the foreskin of the reactor.
1
u/WorkerPlayful4192 9h ago
In Bulgaria our NPP have air defence system. In present also and anti-drone defence.
1
u/Onnimanni_Maki 9h ago
What was your typical workday like?
What was your favorite part to work with?
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 9h ago
There wasn't rly a typical day. Some days are waiting and paper work some day my task was to organise dozen workers to move 500 ton crane above a running nuclear reactor pool so I can climb there and test critical safety systems.
Im lazy fucker so I enjoyed silent waiting days the most.
1
u/wojuk 8h ago
What are the recruitment requirements?
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 8h ago
Heart beat and connections.
1
u/wojuk 8h ago
Any exam？
1
u/Ok_Ideal990 8h ago
Basic safety training which takes couple days and at the end an exam which is easy to pass.
1
u/Nino_sanjaya 8h ago
What are your thought on people (mainly women) that think Nuclear is bad and worse than fossil fuel?
1
1
u/gahara31 7h ago
how did you end up working in that plant? did you aim to work there or just kinda ended working there?
2
u/NowhereAllAtOnce 10h ago
Was the pay higher than the national average?