For those 'per reactor' and 'per worker' dose levels, are we talking outages for major maintenance; or routine radiological work?
If it's outages, that's pretty impressive considering the hefty rad levels you fellers are working with. Hell, the per worker level comes out better than ELT's in overhaul on an old 688, and you folks are working with REAL radioactivity. It seems like the big kids' plant maintenance community is one to be proud of. You guys aren't pushing 1 rem x age, are you? I know that isn't a real requirement anymore, but I don't really know if I want that many zoomies in my life.
One big way that dose is cut on the commercial side is (get this) COMMON SENSE. To illustrate, one job I was involved in covering on the commercial side was the replacement of a 16" check valve coming right off of the T
H. General area dose rates (with shielding) varied from 30-200mR/hr depending on where you stood in relation to the pipes, with about 3R/hr one foot inside the open ends of the pipes. After the old valve was cut out, I was involved in grinding out the inner surface of the pipes right at the cut to clean them up for weld prep. The potential for contamination spread during the grinding was daunting. How would the Navy approach this? By installing and certifying a glovebag, grinding away about 1 square inch at a time, stopping to take about 6.022x10
23 swipes, and then repeating. All under the close scrutiny of about 27 supervisors. How was this approached in the commercial world? For starters, there were only three people on-scene, myself and the two welders doing the end-prep. (The 27 supervisors monitored the job from the luxury of their air conditioning via a CCTV camera and radio headsets.) Big ALARA savings, just in that aspect alone. And the other primary difference is that we completed the cleaning of both pipe ends in about 30 minutes, start to finish. The two glovebags (one for each open end of the pipe) were ready-to-go before we even got to the scene; all we did was walk up to one pipe, slip the glovebag over the pipe, pull it tight over the pipe and secure it batwing-fashion to the pipe, and start grinding. One welder held/supported the glovebag while the other did the work. As soon as the inner lip of the pipe was clean, the glovebag was slid into a waste bag and the end of the pipe was given a thorough but expeditious wipedown. Turn around to the other open end of the pipe and repeat. Start-to-finish the job was complete in about 30 minutes, and we didn't spread any contamination at the jobsite (or onto ourselves, either). One of the biggest things I've realized about Navy RadCon is exactly how far-and-away OVERKILL it is. I understand public fear & superstition as well as anybody else, but the NNPP has taken radiological controls
way to the extreme.