I spent 30 years running big tankers. It's a wild business with precipitous ups and downs. But there was one thing you could always count on. When things did not go well, the crew got blamed. In most tanker casualties, the crew made one or more mistakes. The investigation always focused on those mistakes. And then stopped. A crew screw up means we don't have to look into the culpability of the owner that provided the under-sized crew with a lousy, poorly maintained ship. Often we blamed the victim, rather that the perp.
Why did nuke availability increase dramatically after TMI. It was not because we figured out the system. We simply improved performance. It took cooperation and dedicated management. Plant availability went from 6x% to over 90 %. The only regulation after TMI that helped was the Maintenance Rule.
There is no doubt that the nuclear industry improved performance and plant output over time. Owners made investments in training, equipment and planning tools.
But PART of the improved performance was a result of increasing demand that provided strong incentives for owners to make the investments needed to maximize the output of their nuclear plants. The period of low capacity factors coincided with a period of excess generating capacity. There was less incentive to keep refueling outages as short as possible when there wasn't enough demand on the grid in the first place.
I used to work for Combustion Engineering. It was not a seamless switch over from coal to nuclear. The nuclear shop needed a 14,000 ton press to bend 12” thick plate for the pressure vessel. That press has been sold for scrap.
True, but that press was just a bigger version of machines CE already had. And I bet the guys who ran it were the same guys who ran the smaller presses. I was a big fan of CE marine boilers. They were the best out there. And even tanker size boilers had some pretty impressive steam drums.
The 14K ton press was a huge investment back in the 70’s. The press was 50 times bigger the presses for the fossil shop. The nuclear shop was completely separate from the fossil shop. Very little crossover of workers. Quality control standards were different as day and night. The saying goes in the nuclear shop, “We ship a pound of paper for every pound of steel. “
The piece explicitly refers to "technical" skills. Since you were there, what were the differences in the technical skills between the nuclear shop and the fossil shop?
Did not the initial nuclear press operators come from the fossil shop?
The difference, as you point out, was in the regulation mandated paperwork. That's the whole point that the piece is trying to make.
By the way, what did all that paperwork gain you? Was the failure rate of your fossil steam drums and high pressure feedheaters higher than the failure rate of the nuclear pressure vessels?
Yes, the failure rate was higher for fossil was than the nuclear pressure vessel. There was no where near the inspection and testing compared to the nuclear side. The sophisticated “internals” of the pressure vessels were not made by CE. They made by a company in Newington, NH. And yes the paper work made the quality of work on the nuclear side much higher. OK maybe only a half pound of paper was needed for each pound of steel. I think a fair comparison is quality control for a gasoline engine is not the same as a diesel engine. PS There are no more steam drive vessel. They are all diesel. Diesels can be repaired at sea. Turbines have to repaired in port. Better quality control.
You did not answer my question. What were the special technical skills required on the nuclear side?
Can you back up your statement that the fossil pressure vessel failure rate was higher than the nuclear? Can you give us one verifiable example of such a failure. In my 25 years as a tanker operator, I know of no such failure.
But it's your comments on diesels that destroys your credibility with me. Tanker owners resisted switching to diesels despite their fuel cost advantage on reliability and maintenance concerns. But with the development of the ultra low speed diesel, the fuel savings became overwhelming. All our second generation tankers were motor ships.
The owners' concerns were well-founded. The engines were a constant headache. Some 20 ships had bearing girder failures. The bearing girder is the support for the crankshaft bearings. The failure left the ships adrift. They had to be towed to the yard. Since the girders were welded into the massive baseplate, the repairs took weeks. You could replace just about anything on these big diesels, but there was no provision for changing out the baseplate.
Our ships avoided the bearing girder problem, but we had a whole series of other issues, including a massive failure of a piston liner. I know of at least five other such failures. Quality control had nothing to do with the difference in performance. The turbine tankers were simply more conservatively designed than the diesels.
I am sorry that didn’t answer your question. All I know is that there were two different shops. I don’t know if this was a conscious by Combustion Engineering or if it was a requirement of the NRC. The marine business was a small faction of the utility business and after years of operation there were a few failures of the superheater in the utility boilers, especially the coal fired ones.
CE has been bought and sold since the heydays of the 70’s. It is not the manufacturing giant it once was. More to the point the skilled work force (fossil or nuclear) is not there anymore., at least in Chattanooga, TN.
Why did nuke availability increase dramatically after TMI. It was not because we figured out the system. We simply improved performance. It took cooperation and dedicated management. Plant availability went from 6x% to over 90 %. The only regulation after TMI that helped was the Maintenance Rule.
There is no doubt that the nuclear industry improved performance and plant output over time. Owners made investments in training, equipment and planning tools.
But PART of the improved performance was a result of increasing demand that provided strong incentives for owners to make the investments needed to maximize the output of their nuclear plants. The period of low capacity factors coincided with a period of excess generating capacity. There was less incentive to keep refueling outages as short as possible when there wasn't enough demand on the grid in the first place.
I used to work for Combustion Engineering. It was not a seamless switch over from coal to nuclear. The nuclear shop needed a 14,000 ton press to bend 12” thick plate for the pressure vessel. That press has been sold for scrap.
Late,
True, but that press was just a bigger version of machines CE already had. And I bet the guys who ran it were the same guys who ran the smaller presses. I was a big fan of CE marine boilers. They were the best out there. And even tanker size boilers had some pretty impressive steam drums.
The 14K ton press was a huge investment back in the 70’s. The press was 50 times bigger the presses for the fossil shop. The nuclear shop was completely separate from the fossil shop. Very little crossover of workers. Quality control standards were different as day and night. The saying goes in the nuclear shop, “We ship a pound of paper for every pound of steel. “
The piece explicitly refers to "technical" skills. Since you were there, what were the differences in the technical skills between the nuclear shop and the fossil shop?
Did not the initial nuclear press operators come from the fossil shop?
The difference, as you point out, was in the regulation mandated paperwork. That's the whole point that the piece is trying to make.
By the way, what did all that paperwork gain you? Was the failure rate of your fossil steam drums and high pressure feedheaters higher than the failure rate of the nuclear pressure vessels?
Yes, the failure rate was higher for fossil was than the nuclear pressure vessel. There was no where near the inspection and testing compared to the nuclear side. The sophisticated “internals” of the pressure vessels were not made by CE. They made by a company in Newington, NH. And yes the paper work made the quality of work on the nuclear side much higher. OK maybe only a half pound of paper was needed for each pound of steel. I think a fair comparison is quality control for a gasoline engine is not the same as a diesel engine. PS There are no more steam drive vessel. They are all diesel. Diesels can be repaired at sea. Turbines have to repaired in port. Better quality control.
You did not answer my question. What were the special technical skills required on the nuclear side?
Can you back up your statement that the fossil pressure vessel failure rate was higher than the nuclear? Can you give us one verifiable example of such a failure. In my 25 years as a tanker operator, I know of no such failure.
But it's your comments on diesels that destroys your credibility with me. Tanker owners resisted switching to diesels despite their fuel cost advantage on reliability and maintenance concerns. But with the development of the ultra low speed diesel, the fuel savings became overwhelming. All our second generation tankers were motor ships.
The owners' concerns were well-founded. The engines were a constant headache. Some 20 ships had bearing girder failures. The bearing girder is the support for the crankshaft bearings. The failure left the ships adrift. They had to be towed to the yard. Since the girders were welded into the massive baseplate, the repairs took weeks. You could replace just about anything on these big diesels, but there was no provision for changing out the baseplate.
Our ships avoided the bearing girder problem, but we had a whole series of other issues, including a massive failure of a piston liner. I know of at least five other such failures. Quality control had nothing to do with the difference in performance. The turbine tankers were simply more conservatively designed than the diesels.
I am sorry that didn’t answer your question. All I know is that there were two different shops. I don’t know if this was a conscious by Combustion Engineering or if it was a requirement of the NRC. The marine business was a small faction of the utility business and after years of operation there were a few failures of the superheater in the utility boilers, especially the coal fired ones.
CE has been bought and sold since the heydays of the 70’s. It is not the manufacturing giant it once was. More to the point the skilled work force (fossil or nuclear) is not there anymore., at least in Chattanooga, TN.
There is piece of trivia you might like to know.
In the 1960’s and later the upper management of CE was known as “the Kings Point” mafia. They were all graduates of the Merchant Marine Academy.