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Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one of th - deckeda - 03-18-2011
Back in college; it was a part time job at a small research facility, although I think the place also supplied some electricity to the campus. Talking about the nuclear reactor here, not the motel.
I worked for a while in the Topaz Lab. The gemstones would arrive from all over the world in small batches. The stones were clear. Some were rough cuts, others already cut/polished. PLEASE DO NOT STEAL ANY OF THE GEMSTONES AS THEIR OWNERS KNOW WHAT THE PACKAGE WEIGHS, AND A COLLEGE SOPHOMORE'S BODY PARTS AREN'T WORTH ENOUGH TO PAY THE DIFFERENCE. We'd open the boxes and bags and weigh the stones. I forget why or what we did next exactly. Insanely tedious.
The stones would be placed into small lead containers approximately 5" in diameter and 1 ft. long. The lead containers would be sealed tight and lowered into the reactor core's water pool. Sometimes I'd be tasked with going to the pool to deliver lead containers. The containers would be lowered into the pool, and stay submerged for some weeks.
The pool was in a room with subdued lighting, except the pool's interior---that was very well lit. Don't ask me what they had to do to replace lightbulbs in the fixtures in the pool. I should have asked, but was instead VERY ALERT to WATCH MY MOTHERFSCKING STEP and to NOT FALL INTO the MOTHERFSCKING WATER.
"That's the reactor core. The water keeps it cool. Don't get wet, EVER, or the Director and you will each have a Very Bad Day. But mostly you." It was a clear, easy message to understand.
There was always lots of "stuff" down in the pool. I never got too close to edge, mind you. Lots of "stuff" hanging into it but a few things also sitting on small shelves attached to the pool's wall.
The rim of the pool had an edge about a foot tall and a foot wide. No railing. As things would be removed from the pool, a few water drops would naturally land on the pool's edge, or perhaps on the floor nearby. A colored paper towel would be placed on the drops and we were told ignore any temptation, leave them be and to NEVER TO TOUCH a PAPER TOWEL. Please.
I never retrieved lead containers from the pool. Physics students who worked there did that. And they also stayed home for a week or so at a time every once in a while to "cool off," if you know what I mean.
The gemstones would come out of the lead containers a deep shade of blue. We ran them through a custom-designed tester that was the pride of the shop---on a platform we had to climb up to, there was a small table.
A vacuum-operated plexiglas sorter ran automatically every few seconds. We'd take 10 or 12 stones at time and put one each into an open slot, kind of how you'd put a quarter into a pay phone and the sorter would close and the stones would disappear down their 12 plastic clear pipes into the labyrinth, where they were weighed? and sorted into one of several categories for radioactivity. We had a small TV and a VCR to watch movies during that shift. There was even an antenna rotator control. They wanted you to have what you needed up there and to keep the thing going.
I don't remember what came next. I suppose they stayed in containers until someone else took them away. This operation ran 24/7 and was all controlled, recorded and synced from an IBM PC AT.
Next door to the lab was a lead-lined room, filled with small lock boxes in the walls, kind of like safety deposit boxes inside a bank's vault. The "hottest" stones stayed in the room for I think 24 months and the coolest stones about 6 months before being shipped back to their owners.
And eventually to folks like you, shopping at the department store for blue Topaz jewelry.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - mrbigstuff - 03-18-2011
wtf - was this a side business for a nuclear facility?
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - mattkime - 03-18-2011
so you're saying that japan is producing a lot of blue topaz.
i'm going to point my girlfriend to this post next time she wants jewelry.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - deckeda - 03-18-2011
Sure. Or maybe it was done for free so that they could learn stuff about what was going on. I didn't handle of the money of course---just the bling.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - decocritter - 03-18-2011
This means nothing without pictures.
Just kidding, tell us more.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - deckeda - 03-18-2011
mattkime wrote:
so you're saying that japan is producing a lot of blue topaz.
i'm going to point my girlfriend to this post next time she wants jewelry.
Doubtful activity at a commercial facility made for producing power. This is a small one run by the university, not a power plant per se.
And ... here's their Products and Services web site: http://www.murr.missouri.edu/ps.php
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - Mac1337 - 03-18-2011
What's he saying?
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - Chakravartin - 03-18-2011
Dakota wrote:
What's he saying?
He's saying that he drank the water at an experimental nuclear power generator and now he can leap tall buildings and lift a bulldozer over his head.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - Lux Interior - 03-18-2011
deckeda wrote: I should have asked, but was instead VERY ALERT to WATCH MY MOTHERFSCKING STEP and to NOT FALL INTO the MOTHERFSCKING WATER.
"That's the reactor core. The water keeps it cool. Don't get wet, EVER, or the Director and you will each have a Very Bad Day. But mostly you." It was a clear, easy message to understand.
I worked at our research reactor when I was a grad student. Let me tell you if you had fallen into the water, you would have....
...gotten wet.
Now, if you swam down to the reactor core, and hung out right next to it, you might be dead.
Water is a very effective shield. As good as lead as long as you have a lot of it.
It was a clear, easy message to understand.
Probably just a paper work nightmare for the director.
We also had a cobalt pool. No reactor just rods of Co-60 used as a source for gamma irradiation. We would put golf balls in it to get an extra 20-30 yards.
I never went to the basement. I think that is where they kept the evil-genius scientists who created mutant human-fish hybrids.
Re: Yes, I have slept at a Holiday Inn Express. AND I once worked at a nuclear facility. Here's my experience with one o - Mini 9 - 03-18-2011
Subject lines like this are exclusionary. I've never seen a commercial for this. They must really segregate them. I bet the poster has cable/dish tv, right? Oddly, I've never seen those on OTA/broadcast tv.