Torrential Rain

Bay City, Texas

Weather: low 58 degrees, high 78 degrees, cloudy and rainy, windy

To say that we had some rain today was an understatement. It came down in torrents, and when the rain did slow down, a rain coat was nice to have for going outside. The temperature when I left for work this morning was 74 degrees, and when the front passed through, it dropped to the upper 50s. It would have been nice to have a light jacket at work today.

We began moving the old reactor head early this morning, and were almost ready to move it through the equipment hatch and onto the transporter when work was stopped because of the severe weather headed our way. The project felt it would be unsafe to have workers outside with lightning, high winds, and heavy rain coming down at the same time we were moving a load weighing about 125 tons. We stopped about 0900 hours, and started the move again at 1200 hours. A short time later, it was discovered that the mechanism being used to pull the old head out of containment could not get traction on the wet surfaces. Sand was placed on the surface, with no improvement in traction. The rain kept coming down, and that didn’t help any.

Most other work for the outage is drawing to a close. Once the new head is in containment, work on it will be finished while the fuel is reloaded into the reactor. In about a week, most work will be finished and containment will be cleaned up. Testing on the new head will take a couple of days, and everything should be ready to start the reactor. At least I hope so. As I said before, things to do and places to go.

Carolyn's vertigo is acting up with this change in the weather. It seems that when the barometric pressure drops, she has more problems with the vertigo. When the pressure rises above 30 on the barometric scale, she does better, with less problems with dizziness and nausea. When we see our doctor next month, she is going to tell him our observations. Who knows, maybe the doctor will hear something from Carolyn that triggers a treatment that will help her.

More later, be safe.

Today’s State – California: Eureka!

Not all who wander are lost.