THROWBACK THURSDAY The NBC Guy Interviews a Nuclear Power Plant Operator (2020)

To help those willing. I'm wanting but unable to help themselves. We are the Prepper Broadcasting Network. Hello everyone out there on Internet radio Land. Sorry about that couple seconds of dead air there. I didn't realize my mic was muted. Oh let's see where we are here. We got all kinds of stuff tonight. I mean, this is unbelievable. What's going on. Stock market crashed again today, I think like six hundred points. So they say this is the worst week in stocks since two thousand and eight, since the big financial crisis. Could be, I don't know. I'm not the financial guy. I am the NBC guy. Anyway, I wanted to give you guys some updates on certain things, and I definitely definitely want to play that interview that I have, and maybe I'll just lead with the interview. So this is a pre recorded show, and it's not because I don't want to be in the chat or anything like that. It's because I need practice pre recording shows because I kind of screwed it up last Friday. Hey, and I want to tell you guys, Monday Night's going to be a big show, big big show. It's going to be on at eight o'clock Monday night. I'm pretty sure it's eight o'clock. You'll get a lot of daily audio cashes between now and then. Chin. Lucius Fox, our guy in the chair, the one that is running the server that is our Prepper Broadcasting Network's EOC Emergency Operations Center, and all your Patreon people can access it right now. Everybody else will have access on Monday. Okay, so if you want to see what's going on right now. And he emailed me something very interesting that Congress has been briefed to start planning to telework or work from a remote location for an extended period of time. Isn't that interesting? That's very interesting. I thought. Ships in Paycom that's the Pacific Command, have been ordered that if they have been in one of the infected areas in Asia, they are supposed to stay at sea for the next fourteen days continuously. So the ships in Pacific Command are quarantining themselves by staying out at sea. We'll see how that goes. Of course, you know everything that went on today, over sixty countries now have the coronavirus. There's a guy I watched, doctor John Campbell. He is in the UK, and yesterday he did an update, and it was kind of funny because he said the only place No. He says, I have some good news. There are no cases in Antarctic. In Antarctica and he says, it's the only continent we have not had any coronavirus cases. So I thought that was pretty funny. Yep, sixty countries. Oh, I could tell you what happened in Romania. So if you saw the shelves in Italy, and I think it was Milan where they just wh I wiped out the supermarket. Okay, this is before Romania had their first case. When they saw what happened in Italy, they did the same thing. And I got this from you know, the relatives that are there. Maria's sister could only only get like macaroni and something else. So it was it was big. And now I'm going to play this interview for you. Uh. It actually turned out better since I lost it. So I'm gonna play this one and let me set it up for you. So this this guy is a nuclear power plant operator. He learned how to run reactors in the Navy and he transferred that knowledge to the civilian side and has been doing this for quite a few years. And he wants to remain anonymous because you know, you don't want you want to keep your job until retirement comes. So we're gonna call him Leroy Brown. But I have verified him. Everything he says is one hundred percent he is. He is the real deal. So let's see here if I can get this going without screwing up. Okay, I am here with my good friend Leroy Brown, and he is a nuclear power plant operator, and he actually works right in the control center, and we're going to ask him some questions that I get asked all the time when when I'm you know, out giving my talks and all that. So, Leroy, how you doing today? Not too bad? Well, I appreciate you coming on for a second time because that first one got deleted. Uh maybe maybe this time we even do better because you know, we had a practice run. Yeah. Well, Uh. Some of the things that I get asked all the time is if the power goes off in a nuclear power plant, can they shut this thing down without power? Can talk? Yeah? Yeah? I mean if we lose most of the power that the plant uses for normal operation is coming from the planet itself. Just ah, you know, self generated electricity comes from you know, we feed it back in and that power is the most of all the loads. If we lose off site power, then we have numerous diesel generators to supply all emergency loads to be able to shut the plant down. So yes, even with a loss of all power, it is not a problem to shut the plant down. Well, in banks of batteries, yeah, yeah. There's some, there's several, and all the systems we have there's all built in redundancy. So there's not just one system to do a job. There's two completely separate systems, you know, for redundancy and reliability. Yeah, and there's some large banks of batteries, you know, controlling different piece of pieces of equipment, instrumentation, everything like that. Yeah, I'm trying to remember all the things we talked about on the last interview because it was really good and I'm sorry i deleted no problem things happened, well, yeah, usually they happen to me and then I get yelled at for it. So we talked about if someone gets sick, you know, in a pandemic. You know, because we in a pandemic exercise, we as a template, we throw forty percent on the workforce and then you evalue what your workforce would be like with forty percent of the people missing. So one of the things that came out of a movie that the History Channel did. It was kind of like a mockumentary where they followed this group, this family, and they would cut away to the experts and they tell why something was going on, and it was a pandemic and then nuclear power plants failed which caused the grid to go down. And I think we discovered on our last talk that it was twenty percent of the power in the United States is provided by nuclear power plants and if they go down, chances are the grid's going to go down. So that was the thing behind them. So tell me about can someone fill in for you? And how many people deep do you have? Because I know you work like twelve hour shifts, right, Yeah, we. Work twelve on, twelve off and a rotating schedule, and you know, we have work hour limitations, you know, much like pilots and truck drivers that you know have legal maximum work hours. That they can do. So, I mean, we do have extra people, but you know plans as far as you know we talked last time, there's actually ninety some operating commercial reactors in the country, and if something like that happened, it's not like of those ninety six there's probably I would and again I'm probably at least fifty different not radically different designs. But no two plants are one hundred percent alike. If there are two at the same site, those are pretty much identical. Post of the time. But it's not like you could take somebody that's working at a plant, you know, say in Texas. Yeah, and they could come to a plant in New York or Pennsylvania and operated, They'd be a fish. Out of water, right, Yeah, because. There's not depth within the industry. And even if you left one plan and went to work at another one, you have to go back through, you know, all parts of two years of training to get to be fully qualified, certified to actually operate the equipment. Yeah. We were talking about this on the last interview, that these things are amazingly old and they were kind of built one of a kind at each locations. Correct, pretty much. Yeah, there were several different you know companies that built them, ge Westinghouse, but they're all a lot of them are just almost individual prototype units, not like the military where they'll build a fleet of chips and there could be you know, twenty or thirty and they're they're basically all identical. Yeah. Yeah, we talked about that too last time. They bet the standardization is in the military to where it's like ninety percent the same and the rest of it you just learn on the job exactly. Yeah. And your background is attack subs, right. Yes, that'st tax six eighty eight. Six eighty eight. And how long were you in that? A little over nine years? Okay, wow, and subs you had to go through that sub training dang uh. Well, if you're if you're in the back part of the boat, the reactor, guys the nukes, you actually did not have to go to sub school. Get the hell out. Yeah. They figured they put enough money in you in schooling, so they didn't send you to sub school. They figured you could learn that. Oh my gosh, because I know it's quite challenging. I mean you got to swim like a hundred feet go through certain hatches and stuff underwater. Wow. Yeah, I have no idea. I never did it swimming on a submarine. Yeah. Well, thank you for your service too. By the way, that was well, yeah, that was back during the Cold War where shit was real. You know, man, I know, just recalling the way we felt back then that I was, I was confident that one day US and the Soviets were going to go to war, and it was only a matter of time, and it was going to be bad. I mean, and you lived that. Holy crap, you are underwater living it. That was a long time ago. Thank goodness, that's never came to that. Oh yeah, I'll say, yeah, that was a long time ago. Gosh, trying to explain that to people these days, that young guys, it's it's like ancient history, the Cold War, you know, but back to nuclear actors. So they were old. I mean they're old now. There's very few on the on the drawing boards, right. You said there was one in Louisiana. Was it Georgia? Georgia okay? And the other one was scrapped after they spent billions of dollars getting it to the point where they got it to huh. Yeah, that was the one in South Carolina, Okay. I believe they just made the final decision not to go forward with it. I believe two years ago, or off least two or three years ago. Yeah, I think I remember that. I was at Prepper camp down and U. It's on the border between North and South Carolina, and some people were telling me about it. But you also brought up that because these things are so old, there is a certain amount of protection that we get that you wouldn't get with a newer plant. Can you explain that a little better? Yeah, roll switches and the old plants that are operating right now. I mean, when if you want to start a piece of equipment, open a vowel, close about when you turn a switch, it actually goes through wires, through an air system and operates that component. You can't buy that technology anymore. I mean it is completely obsolete. So now all. New plants and if a gas turbine, a cogen combined cycle plant, it's all automated. It's all you know, computer controlled, and that poses an issue with them as far as it right and cybersecurity, because obviously you would not want somebody to hack into a control system for the controls of a new power plant. Yeah, so it's very ironic that the old timy technology is actually a safety measure for the plant. Yeah, yeah, and better. Yeah, So all the gauges and stuff like that are the old analog gauges and exactly. Yeah, but along with that you get a certain level of protection that people are not going to hack into a nuclear power plant. Yeah, and I'm trying to think of the things that we talked about last time. So an EMP device that's detonated, let's say, over the middle part of the United States, do you have any idea how that might affect nuclear power plans and getting them to shut down? Honestly, I could not speak to that. You know, I'm assuming that it would affect our computer systems. You know, we do have computer systems for monitoring, but again, they all have a fail safe to them to where you. Can hook up a multi meter to get readings, you know, temperatures, pressures, things like that. Yeah, and I'm assuming that that technology would not be affected by that, right. You know, obviously all of our procedures that we use are all on computer, but then we've also got multiple sets of them in different locations, in different buildings, all up to date for emergency purposes. Okay, so you have like manuals and stuff on the shelf. Oh, yeah, lots and lots of them. Yeah. Well, I'm not so sure. I'd like to see the guy that comes in and pulls the manual off the shelf, you know, and starts stumbling, say, let's see how we shut this thing down? Now. Uh Now, we also talked about Fukushima and and Chernobyl. Now, what can you tell me about Chernobyl, because I've I was told that that was actually what they call a breeder reactor, and it was a reactor that actually made uh the plutonium in rich plutonium for nuclear bombs. Do you know anything about Chernobyl? I know the reactor was completely different from ours. Yeah, the design it was completely different. You know. It was graphite moderated, that's what they used to slow down the neutrons. The big difference there is it was it was not a commercial situation. It was the government controlling. Ours are civilian controlled and operators at civilian at our plants. They get their license from the government to operate that plan. So and their number one thing is that the health and safety of the public, so they could there can't be somebody standing over their shoulder telling them to do something that they don't agree is safe. Their license gives them their right to say no if there ever has to do anything that is in any way, shape or form unsafe. The Chernobyl happened because they were running a test. There was opposition to it, but because it was government controlled, they were forced to continue and obviously the result was not good. And you get training on these I mean, you study these accidents. We have to do training on them, either annually or every other year, you know, to go through it and make sure that people understand, you know, why it happened. Yeah. Well, I mean that's good to look at accidents, other accidents that you can you know, point out and learn from, like like three Mile Island, you know, that was that was our biggest incident. But that that right there, I think the biggest thing that happened there. There was a hydrogen bubble that formed inside the containment thing, and I think they might have vented some hydrogen at one time. That was a long time ago, though, Yeah. They actually, you know, and the big thing that came out of Three Mile Island was you know that that plant was brand new, I mean it was brand. New when that happened. Yeah, and they just realized that. The big takeaway from now one was they didn't train the operators enough and in the fundamentals, and they misdiagnosed the playing conditions. You know, they misdiagnosed that they actually drew a steam bubble in the core. So but yeah, and then Fukushima was the obviously. The other big one that wasn't you know that was mother nature caused that event, and you know, they learned it. Some of their systems were not as robust as what they thought they were, and all of the plants in this country, because of Fukushima about six years ago, seven years ago roughly had to go through major, major modifications to all their systems, to a lot of their systems to compensate or to mitigate the damages from design beyond design basis accidents. So when they designed the plants, they sat around and they thought about, Okay, what's the worst thing that could ever happen, how can we combat that. Well, then after Fukushima, nobody ever thought that could happen either, So they back and looked at them and put in even more fail safes and more tie ins to systems to get cooling water in, to get air systems connected, to get more electrical power. You know, each plant has got numerous you know, we've already got installed emergency equipment to do emergency shutdowns at coolings, and now they have temporary or portable equipment, portable generators, portable pumps, bulldozers, I mean. Just everything you could think of. And then there's actually the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has I believe it's two of them, one on the east side of the country, one on the west, and they've got mobilization areas where that if something does happen, they can mobilize more equipment and get it to any facility in the. Country within I believe twenty four hours. Oh okay, well that's cool. It's very interesting. Yeah, they designed this plant to withstand the earthquakes, and it survived the earthquake just fine. It was the tidle wave that came in that caused all the problems. Yeah, it took out their It took out their diesel generators, and then they lost all their their battery banks. Oh. People were actually they actually went out was you know, taking car batteries and bringing car batteries into the plant and wiring them up to get their instrumentation back. So you know, hey, and they always talk about that guy that flooded it with seawater. Can you say anything about that, because I think he saved the day. I mean, if you've exhausted every other source, so you know, that would obviously be the source of water you'd ever want to use. But any water is better than no water at that point. Yeah, that's the way I look at it. I think the guy saved the day by just doing that. I mean everybody, everybody told him no, no, no, and then you know, he pulled the switch. I mean it was to the point of what you know, what do you do? Hey? So we also talked about last time Yucca Mountain and that was shut down during the Obama administration. And you don't know of any other plans to start that back up, right, No, I do not, Okay, And we talked about the spent fuel. It has to be stored on site, so it's inside some pole barn somewhere. Oh. Well, there's two places the old fuel is stored. One is is a pole to spend fuel pole. Yeah, and that's. When the used fuel was taken out of the reactor. It goes into the spent fuel pole. It hangs out there for a couple of years until it decay and cools off. And then once it gets old enough and and decays enough, then it is actually taken out of there and put into dry storage facilities. Several of the fuel cells are put in. These are very large stainless steel casks, heavily shielded. The stuff is put in there. It has no cooling system because they're they're not producing heat, very very little heat anymore. And then they're they're loaded in there. It's all welded up, and then they're put into an extremely heavy duty, you know, concrete bunker. And that those facilities are right on site. Okay, So if if someone decided to crash a plane into this thing to try and you know, make it go you know, dirty bombish, it would be hard, hard to do. I don't think I don't think any airplane could touch anything to. Do with it. Okay, Okay, it's a pretty style structure. Oh okay, geez well, I always pictured a pole barn with fifty five gallon drum stacked in it. Yeah, that would be a good movie. Scene there, you go. Well, and then they, you know, when I participated in exercises and stuff like that in Pennsylvania emergency management, they would run these exercises and the local fire departments trained with all the people at the nuclear power plants, so they got to know these guys, I mean the community, you know, the emergency people in the community knew the people at the power plants. And there was this one situation where the ambulance had to respond and they just waved these guys on okay, and they didn't stop them, check credentials anything like that. And the question came up, how do you know you know, it could have been just some guy stolen ambulance and you know, came on to respond and the guy says, no, no, no, no, I know that guy. You know. So there's this close relationship that communities have with their emergency responders and I thought that was very interesting. You know. Well, yeah, and we do that. We do that also with the local fire departments at every site. You know, we are required to have annual drills, both announced and unannounced, with the local supporting fire departments that that you know, provide assistance if we need it. Yeah, and they do. I mean, they don't just wave them in, that's for darn shirt, you know. They they it is a very fast security check. Obviously, security what escort them, stay with them or turn them over to to us, you know, and then we'll take care of them in there. Because obviously they don't know their way around, don't know the equipment. They're there to fight a fire or help out in that way, right, But no, we we do the exact same thing. They come on site, and you know, there's been times when they have been called. Oh yeah, accidents happen, you know. Yeah, I mean you're you're doing stuff. I mean you're moving things, fixing things, and you know, accidents happened. So we also talked about your actual control room last time. That there's positive air pressure in the control room, which I thought was pretty impressive. Can you tell me anything about that? Yeah, I mean the control room and certain buildings are maintained. You know, the control room is maintained in a positive pressure so that there's no contaminants can get in there. It's got emergency volation system on it in case of anything, whether it be you know, nuclear or you know, possibly biological or anything like that. It's got emergency filtration systems uh to keep the operator. Safe nice and you know, and any. Of the places within the facility that are potentially contaminated, those are kept at a negative pressure so that nothing gets out and then that airflow then goes through a filtration process before it is vented the atmosphere, so it's all tightly controlled. Wow. Hey, so far this this interview is going way better than the last one. I think. The only thing we didn't talk about was the refueling of the of the reactor. And that was just one of my stories from from Pima that the Three Mile Island guy called up and said, okay, we're bringing the reactor back on line, and you know, we we logged it in and then a little while later he calls us back and said, okay, we have to take it offline. And I'm like, whoao, is there a problem? And he said, no, no, it just it just happens. And then you explained how these things are like they have their own personality. You want to talk a little bit about that. Yeah, you know, like my analogy last time was, you know, if you do a complete overhaul on a vehicle, you know, rebuild the engine bumper to bumper, new brakes, new fuel system, and you take. It down the road. I mean, one are the chances that something is not going to work right? Right? It happens, you know, and during a refueling outage and a plant, not only are you refueling the reactor, but you're also working on pretty much every system, doing a lot of maintenance, replacing components, rebuilding components, very complex literally thousands upon thousands. Of jobs are going on. Yeah, So when you bring the plant back up and get it online, everybody wants it to be perfect, and in a perfect world it would, but we don't live in a perfect world. So there are times that something didn't work the way it should, and you know, you shut the plant down if need be and fix that item and then bring it back online. It's not you know, it's not out of the normal for that to happen. Yeah, because this the refueling, you know, is your chance. I mean, it's shut off and it doesn't get shut off all that often so. Well, and and the reason it's shut down, the refueling part of an outage is probably one of, if not you know, it's one of the simplest things that happens in that you know, months to two month window refueling a reactor is not a hard thing to do, but the work on some of the supporting systems, cooling systems, instrumentation, you know, turbine controls, things like that. You know, nine times out of ten it's one of those jobs, is the reason. It has nothing to do with the reactor itself. It's just a support system. May not have come back online the way it should. Okay, well now there's a regular schedule for this, right. And they oh, absolutely absolutely. I mean it's super super precise. And then because you get that fuel win and you you know, you want to put it in and get it going. And of course you know, while it's down, you're not making electricity, you're not making money. So absolutely, Wow. Wow, I'm almost happy that the last interview got deleted. I mean almost happy. Oh boy, Friday. Friday was was rough. Oh I was. I was trying to hurry to get the kids from school and all this kind of stuff, and then I, you know, deleted it. My wife thought it was because I'm stressing over this virus, this coronavirus. Really, yeah, that's turning into no joke. That's gonna be It's gonna affect the United States in a great way. Well, it's gonna affect the whole world in a great way. This is gonna be ship something. I haven't seen the news in a couple of days, so I'm not totally up on it, right. Now, well as things go. The cases in Korea doubled again today. The ones in Italy have I don't know if they doubled, but they're up there. They closed all the schools and the universities. The ones in Iran. Iran is just going nuts. I mean, of course they're not reporting everything, so it's hard to say. But the very first two cases they reported, they died, so which means you know, they've been infecting people for twenty eight days. Yeah, so there's a lot more cases in Iran than they're reporting. And of course China, China. You can't trust any of the figures out of China. But yeah, this is this is crazy. Japan is is Japan and Singapore. I mean they're they're through the roof. Yeah, that's I mean, it's just gonna go crazy. It's gonna run us. Course, hopefully it won't be the thing that we remember twenty twenty for. Oh yeah, hey, well, thank you so much, Leroy. Is there anything Yeah, is there anything else you want to talk to our community about about nuclear power plants and and what you do? You put a lot of fears to rest in my in my book. Yeah, there's you know, there's there's nothing to be afraid about them. You know, the same thing as the plants are getting old, and you know, hopefully, you know, hopefully that they come around and start building some new ones, because it is a it is a viable way, and it's a very green you know, everybody talks about going green and everything. Well there's you know, there's only three ways to make the electricity green and that solar, wind and nuclear. Yep. So there's I mean, that's that is it. Yeah, and the three compliment each other extremely well. Yeah, I agree one thousand percent. I mean, Japan, the only country that we've ever nuked, has nuclear power plants in them and it's like and they have a lot of them too, I mean, for the size of the country and everything, what, they don't have a lot of resources, so they had to turn to something. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming back on and I will do everything I cannot to delete this. One's not a problem. Okay, thanks a lot, Leory, All right, thank you, Okay, everybody, I am back. Hey. Uh, if you hear her printer going, it's because this is pre recorded and I printed out an ebook for Maria on activated charcoal yeah, and I'm sure she's gonna find it interesting. But I usually don't have a printer going in the background, so you probably can hear it anyway. I want to tell you about Monday Night show. Oh, I want to tell you about becoming a Patreon member two dollars a month. Two dollars a month. You get exclusive content that you won't get anywhere else, and if you sign up right now, you can see what we're seeing in the EOC. The EOC, the Emergency Operations Center for Prepper Broadcasting is all the hosts have the ability to post things, well, all the hosts and Chin and a couple other people. So. As information comes to us, or let's say we're downtown shopping like today, I was at the Harbor Freight and I just happened by their masks. Okay, they're painting masks and things like that. They are completely out, and I asked the guy, said, Hey, are you going to restock this? He says, all our stuff comes from China, so I don't think we're going to be having any masks here soon. Yeah, oh gosh. So yeah. And pharmaceuticals. Pharmaceuticals, I'm sure Jay Fergie will talk about this on Saturday night. But we get a large amount of pharmaceuticals China, and I heard it was almost all of our antibiotics come from China. So the uh, they're already experiencing shortages in medications that that alert came out this afternoon. Hey well, I am not going to talk about, uh, the virus and all that kind of stuff because on Monday Night show. Monday Night Show is gonna be dedicated to it. You're gonna have five hosts on Monday Night. We're all gonna bring our unique perspective. I'm gonna tell you what we're doing here. You know what preps we're doing. I told people in the daily audio cash you might want to get a couple extra bucks out of the ATM. You sure don't want to have to be going to the ATM during this emergency, touching those buttons and getting that cash. Right, the cash could be contaminated. The lady in California could have and the chin brought this up could have gotten contaminated from handling money. It is possible. But here I go back on the virus again. Geez, you just can't get off the virus. Hey, well, I'm going to talk to you about the show's Danes Danes Show on Thursday night, all about the AK forty seven. And if you don't have his book, you got to go over to Amazon. It's ten bucks and it's more information in there about the AK forty seven than you ever thought you would know, or, as Maria calls it, the Kalishnikoff. Kalishnikoff is the name of the guy that invented it. It's basically a rifle that can be stamped out of sheet metal and it is the most prolific rifle in the world. Okay, there are none more than that one rifle. So if you're talking about a prepper instrument, okay, for interchangeable parts, for access to ammunition, that is the weapon to have. There's none more. Okay, So AK forty sevens and Getty's book. It's only ten bucks. Okay, good Hey everyone, I didn't know I was back on this thing just took off all of a sudden. See, I hope it's okay. Anyway, I'm gonna load it up whether it is or not. So my wife gave me some more information, and she also said, tell people what we're doing, so you know that, Oh I don't know about a month ago, I told you about a farmer that had this pig and it was a dollar a pound, and so we decided to end up going and getting it. So we have a bunch of pork out on the balcony right now. Thank god, it's it's cold enough. We had a cold snap, so we're going to process that tomorrow. You know, we're just fine tuning. We're fine tuning, because here's the deal. At some point, you got to pull the trigger. You got to stay in and not go out. And that's what we're gonna do. You know. I told her we need to update our will and that's that's that's not being fatalistic. Okay, that's pretty pairing, right, Prepper. That's what we do. And I said, I'm going to put all the you know, the account numbers and the insurance policies and all that on the fridge, you know, so that something happens. It's a good thing to have. Anyways, and you know, we're taking inventory of all our stuff and I think we're in great shape here. You never know until you actually get into it. This weekend, I'm going to get the generator out and make sure it's all serviced. And ready to go, and we'll see I have gas. I went and got you know, my gas points at the local supermarket, So have gas. And I think what I want to do here now is take a short break and upstairs for a second. So and I'm gonna take you out with the theme song here this is. This is an upbeat song. And now I think that we need to look at things positive and upbeat and not freak, not panic, because those are the things that are gonna get you. And we'll see you Monday night. Okay, take care and prep. On to help those willing and wanting but unable to help themselves. We are the Prepper Broadcasting Network.