I Went Into a Nuclear Plant and It Changed How I Think About Radiation - Smarter Every Day 309

I'm about to show you a video of the moment when two nuclear plant workers tell me how they really feel about the safety of their job. I wish the whole public knew how safe what we really did was, considering how dangerous what we're dealing with is. You agree with that? Yeah, absolutely. I think nuclear power would be tenfold what it is today if we had done a much better job of educating the public. A lot of people come to me and ask me, what, is nuclear dangerous? I'm like, the people that I know, they retire out, they die of other natural causes, not related. It's not cancer. We don't have all these issues. You'll hear a lot of propaganda sometimes outside of nuclear, but it's just one of the... Man, it's one of the safest claims that we ever did. Because for the most part, it's a very low amount of dose. Occupational dose is exceptionally low, right? Yeah. I mean, for example, we're talking right in the middle of the rem over here, like a chest X-ray is 10 millirem, maybe. [Destin] A single X-ray. Single chest X-ray is like 10 millirem. [D] Got it. And I won't see that in a year, maybe. It depends on what you do. Some people will see more than that, but Definitely not within one trip in McClane. Right. This is the second video in the Smatter Every Day Deep Dive series, In the Nuclear Power. I've always instinctively thought nuclear power was a good idea, but now I'm trying to understand it at its core, pun intended. And to do that, we're traveling all over the country and meeting the people that know this stuff, and I'm asking them the hard questions. I'm so excited about this whole series, and today's video is about radiation and how nuclear workers stay safe. Nuclear is a loaded word. It has an association with nuclear weapons, which is understandably scary. There's other words like contamination and radiation. If you don't understand what's going on around the physics involved in these words, it can be quite frightening. Those two men that I just showed you in the video, they work around nuclear reactions every day, and they've done it for decades, and they're not afraid. It's clear to me that they have some understanding I don't have, and I'm guessing you might not have that understanding either. We are about to receive training to enter an active nuclear power plant. At the end of this video, you and I are going to enter this nuclear power plant into a special area of the plant that has both contamination and radiation. The hope is that when we're armed with this new understanding, we're going to be just as confident as these gentlemen are. Let's go get Smarter Every Day and learn more about nuclear power. In the first video, we went out to Idaho National Lab, where we saw EBR-1, the World's first nuclear power plant. That particular plant was a fast reactor plant that also bred new fuel. That video laid the foundation for our understanding on how neutrons drive nuclear reactions. This is the second video in this series, and today we're going to do something really cool. We're going to go to Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant here in North Alabama. This plant is a really big deal for my local area. It's operated by TVA, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and it contributes power to the grid for houses all over North Alabama and the surrounding area. So after a long process to get permission to enter the plant, I got a phone call that said, Hey, you need to come out and do some training first. I usually shoot smarter everyday videos alone, just me and a camera. But every once in a while, when something's very challenging, I ask my buddy George, who helps me make these videos, to tag along with me, and that's what we did today. We went out to Browns Ferry for the training, and George and I were talking about it. We were expecting maybe an hour, something simple. Okay, here we are, Browns Ferry, nuclear power plant. We got to get trained on how to go into a nuclear plant. This will be cool. This is Bill Ball. Bill was introduced to nuclear power at the plant where his dad worked. He then went into the Navy with nuclear submarines, and now he runs a team at Browns Ferry that's in charge of making make sure the plant is operational. This is my longtime buddy, Phillip. We've known each other forever. He's been on my phone for over a decade simply as Neutron because he works at the nuclear plant and have always wanted to see what he does. What are we doing today? [Bill] Well, today we got to get you set up for a rad worker training, essentially, is what it boils down to. We got to test you. We're going to train you and test you a bunch so we can get you some dosimetry in the plant to see what you want to see. [D] Okay, so I've got to get one of these on, like a dosimeter? [Bill] Yes, sir. [D] Okay, cool. Sounds good. And you're going to do it? [Philip] I'll be around. [D] So Is Philip going to be my escort? Is that how we're going to do it? [B] I'm your escort right now. Philip is going to help, too. Us two will be getting you around the plant or around the training center. [D] Okay, sounds great. [B] These are badges. These are for you. Thank you. So get you in and out of here. I just need those back when we're done for the day, please. [D] Bill really spearheaded getting us into the plant. They both work in the instrumentation department at the plant, and you'll get to know them a lot more as we go. We made our way down to a classroom where we were introduced to a guy named Roger, who was in charge of our training. [R] Give you all some CBT training today.

For your dress out before. It's the prerequisite for your dress out. I just want to talk about the radiation worker process, checking in and all that stuff, and explain the nuclear fission process and things like that to you, okay? [D] Okay, sounds good. [R] You guys pick a computer out here. [D] Sweet. [R] I got you. [D] Are we actually going to dress out today? No, I probably won't get to that today because this training here will take between 4-6 hours. [D] Okay. [R] So we'll get that done today and then have you a dress out class schedule for in the morning, first thing. I've had the opportunity to visit some very incredible places. And usually once you meet the security criteria and a certain person signs your badge or whatever, you can go in. It's not a big deal. This was very, very different because I had to take training and it wasn't just like, oh, sit down and let us talk to you for a few minutes. We're talking hours and hours of computer-based training that we had to go through in order to get access to this place. And they gave us an exam. We had to take an exam to make sure we could do it. This was far more intense than I expected. This was just day one of training. So I didn't understand what I was getting into at all. And that fascinated me. It made me realize this is a different thing than anything I've ever done. I learned so much in this training. We even looked at the core of the reactor and how that works. And there's one thing that stuck out with me in particular that helped me understand radiation itself and all the different ways radiation happens. So I want to show you this, and we're going to run through it, and then I'm going to show you it again one more time, okay? So nuclear fission. We talked about this in the first episode. Uranium-235 splits into multiple atoms. And when it does that, there's this release of a tremendous amount of energy, right? But we didn't really talk about the radiation that's released as well, but that's also a thing. So we have this event, and we have these daughter products of uranium-235 splitting, but we also have radiation. And what they do in a nuclear plant is they control the areas where this radiation happens, and it's called the radiologically controlled area, the RCA. In the RCA, there's multiple types of radiation that can affect biological life and cells in your body, and they control them in different ways. Let's talk about the four types of radiation. The first one I want to talk about is called alpha. Alpha radiation happens when the components off these atoms fly off and you get something that looks like the nucleus of a helium atom, right? Two protons, two neutrons. So it's really big. Got to look excited with the model. There's an extra neutron. Pretend that's not there. And it can fly off, but it's easy to stop. It can be stopped by something as simple as paper. So if this alpha radiation comes in contact with paper, it stops, which is cool because This means we can use anything thicker than paper to shield against alpha particles in our radiologically controlled area. The second type of radiation is called beta radiation. Now, beta decay usually is like an electron or even a positron. Okay, so these electrons fly off, but they can fly right through paper. They go all the way, but plastic can stop them, right? So you can't stop beta with paper. You can stop it with plastic, though, which is why, I think this is very interesting, you'll see people in nuclear plants wearing safety glasses, and it's not that they're trying to protect from cutting things with a saw or anything like that. They're literally wearing safety glasses because this plastic, this polycarbonate right here, can stop beta radiation. It's very interesting. Beta It's bad to get in your body. You don't want to ingest it. You don't want it in your eyes, things like that. So beta is something that you can stop with something as simple as plastic. The third type of radiation that I want to look at, I think is probably the most interesting to me, and that's gamma radiation. Gamma radiation is not a particle. It's a wave, a very high frequency wave. It's higher frequency even than X-rays. It can go through paper like it's nothing. plastic, all the way through plastic. It goes all the way, and you're typically going to want to stop Gamma with something like lead. You know how when you go to the dentist and they put this lead apron on you to stop the X-rays? Well, Gamma is higher frequency than X-rays, and it can penetrate things like X-rays, but even more energetic. So it has to be stopped with something like lead. Okay, so we have alpha, beta, gamma. There's another one that's fascinating, and that is neutron radiation. Do you remember in the first episode we talked about this little guy? Wee, little fast neutron. Well, neutron radiation comes off of this event, and they're very, very fast, and they can go through all kinds of stuff. They're going to go past your paper, past your plastic, even lead. They usually have to be stopped by concrete, specifically concrete that has a high water content. An interesting thing about neutron radiation is it interacts with hydrogen atoms quite a bit, and that slows it down. And so if we had water, you could slow down neutrons with water. And So the people that work in a radiologically controlled area

they understand all the physics associated with Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Neutron radiation, and they can control the environment by different types of shielding. And I think that's fascinating. So what I want to do real quick is I want to show you, just with one still shot right here, I want to show you where these different types of radiation stop. Because when I took this training, this is the visual that stuck in my mind, okay? So for alpha radiation, it can be stopped by paper. For beta radiation, it's going to be stopped by plastic after it goes through that paper. And for gamma radiation, it can go straight through paper, straight through plastic. It can be stopped by something like lead. For neutron radiation, it interacts with hydrogen atoms, and so it can be slowed down by water, or in the absence of water, it can be stopped by something like concrete. This is how radiation is controlled in what's called the radiologically controlled area. This is how they shield against that kinda stuff. All of this describes radiation, which is a very different concept from another word that's very similar in my mind, contamination. These two things are different, and Philip has a pretty interesting analogy to explain the difference. Yeah, the crudest way that was explained to me, but it stuck with me is if you imagine your dog makes a mess in the yard, if you walk up to it, you can smell it. It is affecting you, but you can walk away from it. However, if you were to step in it and then you track it in the house, now it is affecting all over the place. You are contaminated and you're spreading contamination. [D] Makes sense. Okay, trust me on this. I bought a plastic pile of dog poop to demonstrate this, and then I realized this is an important concept, and I want to learn this exactly once and never forget it. So we're going all in. All right, this is my friend's dog, Duchess. Duchess, come here. Good girl. All right, here we go. Please forgive me for this analogy, but I think this is going to work. I have a very complicated setup here. I have multiple boards, and we're about to learn about contamination versus radiation. Okay, so I have some contamination right here, right? This is contamination. I don't like it. I do not like this at all. Notice how I take this glove off. That's going to be important later. So right now in this room, there is a smell radiating from this dog poop right now. It's awful. I'm a little sad of my life choices. However, there's a smell coming off. How do I know that? that there's a smell happening that's unpleasant? And the answer is, I have a nose. And that nose is a detector that I'm using to detect that smell that's radiating from dog poop, right? But what about this radiation right here? We have this unstable atom that has some radiation that's coming off of it. It looks like it's Gamma. How do we know where that is? I don't have a detector on my body that can tell me that. By the time I can feel it or anything, it's way too late, okay? So radiation workers, or I guess nuclear workers is the proper term, have a very special thing called a dosimeter. This is a DAD, a digital alarming dosimeter. And the way that my nose sends a signal to my brain that says, Hey, something's bad, and it's probably poop, that isn't in my body. But what this does is it makes a noise with a little speaker, and I can hear that, and that tells me, Oh, I might be around radiation. So This digital alarming dosimeter detects the radiation coming away from those nuclear atoms, whatever that is. Okay, so let's say that I want to do some form of work in a nuclear plant in a special room. I'm in this room and I want to go in here and do something. Oh, but there's a problem. I've got a pipe and there's water flowing in the pipe, but there seems to be some type of radioactive particles that have collected in the bottom of this valve. Do you see that? Okay, well, that's probably not a great place to go in there. So how do I know if I can come in the room or not? How do I know if it's safe for me to go in? Let's just hide in the safe area first. How do I know? Well, let's think about it. So if we have different types of radiation coming off of these isotopes, then let's think about what we can do. We have Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Neutron. Well, we're not going to worry about Neutron because that's mostly in the core of the reactor. So let's don't think about that right now. So Alpha stops at paper, beta stops at plastic. So we don't have to worry about them because they're contained in the steel pipe. But think about this gamma. This gamma could probably go through that steel pipe because you need something heavy like lead to stop it, right? So let's look at our little dog poop What can we do to prevent the smell?

Oh, here's the thing we could do. We could put a little cover over the dog poop so the smell could no longer get to us. And since we know that lead stops gamma, we could do what we talked about earlier, right? We've got that lead blanket from the dentist office. You remember that? So is there a way we could wrap lead around this area of the pipe that has contamination in it to protect us in the room? And actually there is. You can just wrap that entire pipe with lead, and suddenly it prevents Gamma from getting out into the room and it protects the person. So just like we were able to shield the dog poop to get over here, if we put lead over that radiation like that, then we can prevent the Gamma from getting over here to where we are. So that's a really interesting technique. So that's the first way that a nuclear worker can protect themselves in a room with contamination. They can use shielding which is very interesting. They are now shielded from that radiation. Well, what's the other thing we do? All right, let's go back and look at our turd analogy here. So if I had to do some work around this dog poop and I got close, the closer I get, the more uncomfortable I feel. And you can see it with the nose, even. If I come in close, oh, man, it smells so bad. I got to get away. If I change my distance, then I can keep myself safe. So I wouldn't want to do any work over here. I would want to work here if I can control that, right? So that's the second way that a nuclear worker can protect themselves from radiation or contamination is keeping your distance from the source, okay? So we got shielding and distance. And what's the third thing we would do? If I had to work around that dog poop right there, man, it smells bad in this room. I would want to get out of the room as quickly as possible. So that's another thing we can do. We can just go over, do our work, and get out of there really fast. So that's fine. I'm going to do it again. Get in there, get out. That's called time. So shielding distance time. Those are the three tools that nuclear workers have to protect themselves from radiation. And this actually has a name. It's a program that's called, We want to keep our radiation exposure as low as reasonably achievable. And they call that inside the plant, they call that the ALARA program. So basically, nuclear workers want to limit their exposure by applying shielding, keeping their distance, and limiting the amount that they are around any nuclear source, which I think is really interesting. And if you think about it, that works with the way things work here. Man, I just want to get out of this room. But, oh, no. Okay. Oh, goodness. This is a big deal. So we no longer just have to think about the radiation. We now have contamination because that water was in that pipe where those radioactive particles were, and now it's dripped on the floor. So if we have to do any work in there, this could happen. We could walk over here, we could do our work, but on our way out, there's a very high likelihood that we might actually track that stuff out. And because it was from that pipe with the particles in it, we could spread that contamination. This is a big deal, and we have to think about what to do here. We need to call somebody. So that's what happens in a nuclear plant. If there's a spill or anything like that, biggest of deals, you have to deal with it, and it in a very intelligent way. So you call these special people. They come out with special meters, and they check everything, and they have special equipment sometimes that they'll come, and they'll clean everything up, and they'll make sure that everything's safe. So that work can continue. One of the things that's very important, the whole area of the nuclear plant has an inner area inside it that's called the radiologically controlled area. I think I referenced that earlier. This is a very special concept. It's like a section of the plant that's contained, and every individual source is located and quantified for its radiological effects. And so before you go into a plant, you have to check with the authorities, and they tell you, okay, if you're going to that area, there's a special valve over there that's hot, so you need to keep your distance or limit your time around it. This concept of the RCA is very, very important for ALARA because that's how they control where everything is. And so if there's a spill and it changes the area. They document all that in the RCA documentation, and you know where to go and what to do when you're there. So these are the main concepts that I learned in that training, and it was really good training, actually. There was a lot of numbers that went along with it. We got to learn how the core of the reactor worked, which I really enjoyed. But the last thing is you have to take an exam. Now, I'm an engineer. I felt pretty confident about my ability to hang with all this stuff. I think I get it. George, however, theater major. A little concerned about George's ability to get all this right, so I was

a little nervous for George. Let's go see how he did. [G] What did you get? [R] Click on review. [D] What do you mean what I get? Don't even worry about it. [G] Review your results. [D] I got a 92. What did you get? [G] 96. [D] You beat me. [G] I got that one wrong too. [D] We got it. High five. Years ago, I reached out to a company and I said, Hey, what you're doing is amazing. Would you please consider sponsoring Smarter Every Day? Because I want to tell people about what you're doing. And that's Kiwi Co. Kiwi Co sends these boxes to your house. They call them crates. And these crates come with instructions and all kinds of hardware inside. Everything a child needs to make a really cool project is in this box, and it will help them learn, and it's awesome. This is my daughter. My daughter loves building things. She loves art, and she loves working with her hands. And today, I'm going to give her the light up infinity mirror, which is part of the Kiwi Co Labs line of crates. And she's going to give her best shot at making a circuit for the first time. And I'm really excited about it. The cool thing about this project is it involves optics, electronics. It even has some mechanical gears and stuff in there. She hasn't done a lot of this stuff. If it doesn't work, you flip back a couple of pages and you find where you messed up and you fix it. I love that about Kiwi Co, and the kids love it too, because when you get done, you've got this thing that you built. So this infinity mirror, for example, check this out. I'm so grateful for Kiwi Co because all of my kids have learned different things through Kiwi Co throughout the years. There's five different Kiwi Co clubs you can pick from. There's Panda, Sprout, there's Labs with three different age groups in Labs, there's World and Studio, and you can tailor the Kiwi Co experience to the interest of the child you love. You are smart. I know that about you. You And you can tell when somebody's telling you the truth. I have been loyal to Kiwi Co for years because it's a great product. I only work with products that I believe in, and that's important to me. So if you would like to check this out, it'll be good for your family or a kid you love, go to kiwico. com/smarter. That gets you 50% off your first month on monthly lines, and it supports Smarter Every Day when you consider supporting the sponsor. So thank you so much for doing that, kiwico. com/smarter. We came back the next day to a warehouse on site that housed more hands-on training, and we met Tim Lawson. Tim is what's an RP instructor, Radiation Protection. I learned that RP professionals in nuclear plants are very important. They're like the watchdogs or the scouts that are constantly looking around the plant to keep the workforce safe from radiation. Tim briefed us on something called an RWP or Radiological Work Permit. These are very, very important. Anything that happens in the plant, you first have to get an RWP, and you have to be given specific instructions about what you're going to do, what your radiation limits are while you're there. It's a very important guide that people use anytime they enter the RCA or radiologically controlled area. [Tim] Here we have an RWP, and this will be the RWP we'll be using today going through out So it is all units, reactor building, general area activities. This RWP has medium radiological risk, and the RWP set points are 80 millirem for the dose alarm and 80 millirem per hour for the dose rate alarm. This unit that the RWP says millirem, I have no frame of reference for what that means at this point. And a little bit later, Tim explained the scale of millirem. I'll just let you listen to that now. You see negligible effects before 50,000 millirem, 50,000 millirem. The stations, the NRC's limit is 5,000 millirem, but then the station lowers that to the maximum of 2,000 millirem. So your threshold for any biological effects is 50,000 millirem, and we are so far below that. Have you ever seen a fundraiser where the town will put a big thermometer out in town square, and as people donate, it'll fill up the thermometer? Well, this is how I think about the dosage limits you're allowed working at a nuclear plant. So Tim just said that 50,000 millirem is what's required in order for biological effects to happen to your body, right? Now, in this case, that's way in the sky. That's off the board, okay? I'm looking at 2000 millirem, which is what's allowable at Browns Ferry nuclear power plant. And this is how I think it works. So first of all, as a human on Earth, you are going to be exposed to radiation just as a function of being on Earth. That's cosmic rays and stuff like that hitting you. You're going to get radiation just in the background of your everyday life.

But because you are a nuclear worker that works at a nuclear plant, and today you're going to get a radiological work permit, an RWP, and you're going to read it say, Oh, well, today I can get 80 millirem, and my dose rate alarm is 80 millirem. So what that means is I can go into the plant and I can do my work, and that's my limit. So let's say I went and I did my work and I got like 35 millirem, okay? Well, I would just add that to my little thermometer and Tomorrow you do it and you got maybe 40. And so you do this over and over and it's cumulative. The amount of radiation you're exposed to over the course of a year adds up. But let's say tomorrow you are required to go work in a different part of the plant that has a hotspot. There's more radiation there, and you might get more radiation than typical. Well, that's okay. As long as the RWP allows it, you're allowed to get that dosage of radiation. So this goes up, up, and they keep up with how much radiation each individual worker receives over the course of their job. Now, there's two ways that nuclear workers can measure this. The first way is called a DAD, a digital alarming dosimeter. Now, a DAD is pretty interesting. It works like an old-school Pager that measures radiation. Now, I'm assuming it measures Gamma. I don't really know, but it's pretty interesting how it works because it's doing two things. It's measuring a rate, meaning on my RWP, it says I can get 80 millirem per hour. So basically, the rate at which the thermometer is going up, that's what this measures. There's another thing you can use, and that's called the dosimeter of legal record. Now, this one works a little differently. A dosimeter of legal record looks like this. It's like a little thing that you wear, like a name tag-looking thing. And this thing measures the cumulative effects of being exposed to radiation. So a DLR, basically how that works is you wear it for three months And then after that or some unit of time, you send it in to get measured, and they can look at it and they can say, Oh, you got this much radiation in that time period. I'm assuming it's like some film in there, and they'll measure how much the film was exposed, something like that. Not sure how it works. But these are the two tools that you can use to figure out how much radiation each worker is exposed to. So a DAD, a digital alarming dosimeter that gives you the rate, and you can use math to figure out what the total dosage that you've received is, and a DLR, a dosimeter of legal record. That gets you just the totals over a certain period of time. All this is meant to give you an ALARA compliance, the as low as reasonably achievable goal. So these are not amounts of radiation you receive on that RWP. This is the upper limit. You don't want to go over these numbers. And a really good radiation worker, somebody that works in a nuclear plant that's really good at their job, they will keep this number as low as possible, which I think is really interesting. Now, I understand all this, but what I don't have a feel for is, what do these numbers mean? Like 2,000 millirem? How does that compare to other things? So I asked him, how does this compare to other professions? Like radiation techs or people that are working in the medical field that are doing X-rays all day. How does this nuclear program for ALARA, how does that measure against other fields? And his response was pretty funny. [T] The medical field, that scares the hell out me. What those people do with their isotopes is, man, they need the NRC on them. But they're not regulated by the NRC, we are. So both of my sons work here. I feel like it is one of the... Which is near and dear to me. I feel like it is absolutely safe enough to where my children can be here and have a very good career. And it's a good place to be. You're absolutely protected. [D] After we finish our classwork, it was time to head next door for hands-on training. So the RP people in a nuclear plant, you're like the mother may I. If I need to do something, I need to check to make sure that the area is safe, you guys have the equipment, you know how to clear an area. Is that correct? Yeah, that's correct. So what we'll do is we have a frequency of surveying every zone. So like the Marines, we go first every time. If it needs lighting in an area that's dark, you go in with a headlamp on and your meter, which tells you the radiation because you can't see it, smell it, or taste it. So we go in with our meters, we go in the dark, we monitor for conditions. When we have those conditions, we come out and we tell the person who's going to go in and hang the lights. Hey, here's where the radiation is at, here's where the hazards are at, and here's where you are allowed to go, need to avoid because these are dangers which are going to exceed your radiation work permit. It exceeds the limits which we allow. And so what you're about to do is you're about to test me on my ability

to follow procedures, and I'm either going to pass or I'm going to fail, right? That is correct. Before we went into the mockup of the radiologically controlled area, I had to learn how to get checked in with a software system that tracks workers and their RWPs and the dosages as they enter and exit the RCA. I got my two mockup dosimeters and reviewed our RWP. [T] Click yes, you've acknowledged that you have read and understand that when you do [D] dose alarm, 40 millirem, and so that's how much I can be exposed. [T] No, that's much you can receive. [D] That's how much I can receive, thank you. And the maximum rate that this is going to alarm at is 80 millilrem an hour. [T] Right. So if you walk into 80 millilrem an hour, it's going to alarm while you're standing in the 80 millirem an hour. And as it accrues 10 millirem, 15 millirem, 20 millirem. If it gets to 40, it's going to alarm, and it's not going to stop alarming, and you're going to have to exit and see RP. [D] Got it. [T] To prevent that, we look at our dosimeter every 10 to 15 minutes while we're inside of a radiation area, and then that's going to activate the dosimeter, and it gives you your allowable set point. So right now, the station allows you two rem, like we discussed, but it's only going to give you 40 millirem for this single entry. Even though you have nearly two rem, you can still only pick up 40 millirem for this single entry. [D] Tim then showed me how the turn styles work off of your dosimeter. And then I got dressed out according to the specifications laid out in the RWP with boots and gloves and a head covering. Tim talked me through the security door and the airlock procedures, and we headed into the mockup area, and I was a little bit worried that I would forget stuff from the RWP. But Tim reminded me that I have a little white trip ticket that the computer gave me when I logged in that had all the stuff listed out for me. [T] Your trip ticket tells you how much dose you can accumulate and walk into. So you have that on your trip ticket. So the only thing you have to really have in your head is what the conditions are inside of this contaminated area. And as we discussed on the briefing, here's a survey map here. So we see that just inside the step off pad is two millirem an hour here, and I don't reach across the boundary. It's two millilrem an hour right there. It's five millirem right over here. It's 8 to 10 over by the high radiation area on one side, and it's 8 to 10 down that side of the high radiation area. Noticing the boundary is continuous, and it's a continuous boundary so that no one accidentally walks into an area while they're just looking up at something else because a lot of people walk in a plant inspecting, so they have other things on their mind other than where the boundary is at. So that's a continuous boundary. So you're going in to check the following unit IDs. So I've got a list of IDs that you're going to look at. I would look at my dosimeter and make sure it was turned on before I went into the area. [D] Okay. [T] Still, because we do have digital issues like the world does. [D] Okay, the dosimeter is on. When I first walked into the mockup, I was being tested, right? I wasn't thinking about making a video. But after the fact, I realized this is interesting, and I asked if I could take my camera back in there, and I filmed things from my perspective so you could see it. So I edited this together so you could get an idea of what I was looking at while Tim was showing me things. So you'll get the idea. But I apologize for not filming this the best. All right. [T] So you'll notice there's not a barrier here, as we discussed, like the high radiation area, which is a yield sign, which is a caution. So there's no barrier here. And the only way in or out is across It's a step off pad. Okay, this gets interesting pretty fast. So this is the map of the area that I'm going to be operating in, right? You can see we have a large contaminated area or the radiation area. And up here in the corner, we have a high radiation area. So what I'm supposed to do as I enter right here is I go to the low dosage waiting area immediately. I misread this map right off the get go, and I immediately walked all the way across, and I thought this was the low dosage waiting area right over here this pipe, and I just hung out there, which was the wrong thing to do. So yeah, that's how I started. I started off wrong. [T] So you're looking for... Label number one is unit ID 2-pmp, which is for pump, 2-pmp-075-0020-cs drain pump alpha. [D] So I'm just using my eyes. I'm seeing a pump over there. I'm not going there yet. I'm just trying map out where I'm going because I want to be there for a minimum amount of time. [T] Yes. [D] I'm going to go over. [T] You're just going to verify the ID. [D] No, that's the RAD water pump. [T] Hey, that wrench is not supposed to be there. Can you grab that wrench? [D] I will not grab that wrench. That is very good! That's exactly... Now, why wouldn't you? [D] Because that's the high radiation area, and my RP won't let me. [T] Hey, would you straighten that hose, if you don't mind? [D] That hose in the back there? [T] Yes. [D] Okay.

I'm thinking, I can't really get there without a stick or something. [T] Right, yeah. So you don't want to do it. cross the FMA barrier. And a stick in the FME barrier, as we discussed, is foreign material exclusion. So we don't- [D] Can't use a stick. [T] Well, you want to be... Yeah, you want to log and document everything that goes into- [D] Every tool that passes the barrier. [T] Correct. [D] Okay. Tim continued to ask me to do different things and look at stuff in the environment, and these were basically ways to distract me. And so he would try to ask me to do something that would break radiation protocol, and he would if I would catch it. And so it was fun. When George and another TVA employee went through this exercise, I got to watch, and you'll notice that they're waiting in the correct low dosage waiting area. So there's that. This training helped us piece together a lot of the information in our heads into a simple set of behavior rules that would minimize our radiation exposure. [T] So shielding. So that's shielding. [D] That's temporary shielding. [T] That is temporary shielding, and that is lead. So what if we had to do maintenance on that valve? Could you remove that lead shielding? [D] I'm assuming if I got permission in my RWP, but it's not in my RWP. [T] It's not. To remove lead shielding, RP would have to be present standing there, because as you remove that shielding, the dose rates are going to increase. [D] Okay, so you would have to monitor as I remove the shielding. Correct. RP would have to be here. It would have to be as you remove it would be there. That's correct. [D] Tim had me follow the procedures for taking off my protective gear, which had to be done in a very specific way in order to minimize possible contamination. Okay. [T] Now, I'll note this. When you pulled it off, it came out past the line here. [D] Don't do that. [T] If it had something on the bottom of it, it would sling it onto the clean area. Like I said, this is the most likely area to get a clean area contamination because of the migration. Like the dirt that will be on your shoe when it's sprung, it'll spring out onto the clean air. [D] So I just rubber band shot a potential hazard that way. [T] So what I like to do is, and it's just a technique, is as I undress, I face inward, and I pull everything off inward. And then like a doctor would back up to a door. [D] I finished taking off my protective gear and exited the radiation area, and then he had me scan myself for possible contamination, which again was supposed to be done in a very specific way, which I remember from the written test, but struggled to do it in terms of a practical application. He then took me over and showed me how I would exit the RCA, which entailed having a full body scan done. And then, of course, I checked back out with my dosimeter with the software system. Obviously, I'd messed up the low dosage waiting area, but it was time for Tim to give me his final feedback. [T] I did have to coach you on the speed of what you were frisking. So that was one thing. I got you on a second attempt, though, once I told you knew the speed. So you didn't check your dosimeter while you were inside of the area. Oh, that's So you didn't look at it. [D] That's a big deal. [T] Well, it's the first indicator that dose rates are not what you expect them to be. You did a perfect job on Dressout. You used all the tools that were available to you. I mean, your dose your bank account for your life, and you kept it ALARA. [D] I was so distracted by the task. [T] Sure. [D] I didn't think about the radiation. I was thinking about it because of the map. I was seeing the map in my head, but I wasn't thinking about what I was actually receiving at the moment. [T] That's a great point for why radiation protection concentrates solely on radiation protection. Just like security, when they're walking around the plant, they're looking for guilty people. They're looking for holes in the system. They're not thinking radiation. Maintenance guys, they're looking for leaks and steam, and they're wondering, why is that line hot when it shouldn't be hot? That's their focus. Our focus is strictly radiation. [D] Well, yeah. Well, that was a great real-world scenario. I really appreciate the time. Thank you so much for teaching me. [T] Absolutely. You're You did a good job. Now, when I submit this paper, you will be fully qualified, okay? [D] Okay, we are now certified. We have moved from knowledge about nuclear plants to understanding. We're about to go into the plant, and Bill is going to say a lot of things as he takes us in, but you now know what these terms mean. So listen to what he says and see if you know what's going on. [BILL] All right, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to go in the RCA. You're going to put your DAD on here. Phil will go in last. Just make sure you're all good. You get the green light and we'll go in. Okay. Now you got your hard hat, safety glasses, hearing protection, DOR, and your DAD, right? [D] Yes, sir. Good to go. Great. Currently, I have zero Milliram. [B] Okay, so what I'm about to take you into is the secondary containment area, right? You'll notice that there's some locked doors and everything like water tight doors. We do this intentionally because this is our absolute last means if something bad happened, that's where we keep it all. We keep this area at a negative pressure just to make sure we keep all the containment products inside secondary containment if something were to have happened.

We're going to walk up to the elevator through the operating spaces because there's less traffic over this way. [PHIL] Before we go any farther, when you see the floor drains, don't step on those. They're a lot of times contaminated. [D] Okay so be looking for floor drains. Can you believe this? We're in a nuclear plant as a part of the nuclear power deep dive series. I am so incredibly excited. I'm going to show you something. It doesn't seem like it could be real. It's real. This is where we're going in the next video. We're going to go over an open reactor core. As they refuel it, you're going to be right there on a bridge on top of this thing, and we're going to get to look down into the reactor core. It is so incredibly fascinating. Now that we understand the radiation and how contamination works, you're going to understand what it's like to walk through the plant, and we're going to see how that reactor works, and we're going to understand it. It's so fascinating. So a big thanks to everybody that supports Smarter Every Day over at Patreon. You make this happen. So very excited about this. If you would like to be notified when the next video in the nuclear power series comes out, I've got an email list You can go to smartereveryday. com and just fill out the email list thing there, and I will send you an email when the video comes out. But we have so much to learn as a part of this series. We still have so much to learn at Idaho National Labs. There's so many things that go into making nuclear power happen, and it's fascinating. So I'm excited you're here with me because I'm grateful that I get to learn this, and it with you. And that's really cool. We get to do this together, and it's fun. So big thanks to TVA and Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant for allowing us to do this. I'm grateful. I'm learning so much. So yeah, consider subscribing to Smarter Every Day if you haven't done that. And I'll see you on the next nuclear power deep dive video. That's it. I'm Destin. You're getting Smarter Every Day. Have a good one. Bye.