My Middle Name is 'Todd', not 'Fart'

Last Tuesday was my first day of work. Monday I couldn't go in because SRNS (Savannah River Nuclear Solutions), who control a lot of operations of SRS (Savannah River Site). It can seem a little confusing. SRS is govt owned land by the DOE, so DOE has sole responsibility over it. However, it is controlled and ran by SRNS-the primary contractor. There is also SRNL which is the DOE lab that does a lof of research and other things for the DOE. The rest are all subcontractors-like who I work for. I work for The Shaw Group Environmental & Infrastructure, but am on what is called The MOX Project, which is headed up by Shaw-Areva. Shaw-Areva is a LLC company that was formed to build a Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Facility. Areva is a French nuclear company, and they have already built facilities like these before (La Hague and MELOX) so they have some experience; also considering that they have had no major accidents with reprocessing...ever. So they have teamed up with us, and we have taken most of their design added some of our US flair, so as to comply with our regulations and our performance factors, etc.

Now some folks may be asking:

-Whats this MOX thing?
Well heres some more nerd stuff (whether your interested in it or not) Mixed Oxide Fuel is just a mixture of Plutonium-239, 241 and Uranium-238, 235 to use as fuel in light water reactors (I'll save reactor types for another day..if your that interested).

-So where does this Plutonium you speak of come from?
Glad you asked. What we do is take nuclear warheads from our stockpile that we are trying to diminish and the nice people out at Pantex in Amarillo, TX take em mostly apart (which is totally cool btw I had the awesome pleasure of meeting them while in DC and learning all about it, but if i told ya then yes i truely would have to end your life) Then we get these Pu 'pits' delivered to our facility. We take out the Pu and reprocess it, through what is called aqueous processing. Its using a lot of nitric acid variants and organic solvents. Basically in the end we have nice clean mostly pure Pu-239. This is then ground up and mixed with the U238 that we have shipped to us too. We sinter it all together in pellets, pack it into rods, put the rods in assemblies and then voilà! (as the french would say) you have yourself fuel for reactor plants!

-Great we got fuel, big twow. Whats the use? Why is this any better?
Well there are some definite advantages to MOX fuel. First, MOX fuel will help deplete our nuclear warhead stockpile. Which is awesome. Any nuclear engineer that is for nuclear warfare or warheads or whatnot shouldnt be a nuclear engineer-cause they know what it does and the atrocities associated with it. Thats almost reason enough for it. But wait, theres more! Using MOX Fuel also helps prevent proliferation of nuclear material so no terrorist can come around and steal some Pu and make a dirty bomb or really low yield device. This is also a really big stepping stone for the US towards fuel reprocessing and closing the nuclear cycle. Currently we are on a "Once-Thru" cycle which means we use fuel rods and when they are 'spent' we put them in a box and lock em away (think Yucca Mtn). This is by far the most stupid thing ever! Back in the day Former President Jimmy Carter (who is himself a nuclear engineer no less!) more or less 'banned' the reprocessing of fuel and stuck us into this once thru cycle. It makes no sense! Along with other nuclear legislature he single-handidly brought the advancement of the commercial nuclear power age to a skretching halt. Thankfully this is slowly changing. If we can reprocess fuel then waste would go down at an incredible rate (no more need for Yucca!) So by having this facility we are at the forefront of the change of the nuclear age in the USA. Its nothing terribly new though, other people in the world most notably the French have been doing this (and extremely successfully!)

-Okay, Im really losing my interest in this, like seriously dude. Your freakin me out with all this geek speak. So all I want to know is, what are you actually doing there?
Currently, the facility is still in the construction phase. We're about 30% done, I think. What I do in the project is work on the Radiation Protection Team (and I will probably bounce over to the Criticality Team too). Its me and 2 others and we are making sure that the facility is properly shielded to reduce radiation exposure. This is mainly for when the workers are there, but we also have to look towards when it is deactivated too. So anything that has radiation around it, or could in a disaster situation, we must look at and figure out what the exposure would be and what we can do to keep it low. We also design the monitoring systems and devices to make sure we're always within ALARA (As Low As Reasonably Achievable) which every good nukee should know. That is more or less what I will be doing. Then after the facility is constructed, and if Im still there, then I will be part of the same team just more of a engineering monitoring approach.

Alright so that has been really long, but thats about me job. Its pretty cool, because I can go out onto the construction site which is literally right outside and see it all come together. Its also very hectic because a lot of people are working on the designing of this. So you might get a task done with one set of plans only to find out that the plans have changed...3 more times since. Its a good paycheck tho so Im fine with that for now! I got good benefits..I even set up my retirement plan yesterday! I plan on that after I pay off my loans to put in 20% and then I could be retired by 45! We'll see if I can keep that up haha. I work Mon-Thurs 10 hours a day so I have Fridays off. My drive to work is about 40 min in the morning which is a little longer than I wanted, but its 40 min of just basically straight driving, not much traffic so its not stressful. So in a way its like 12 hour days, but oh well. SRS is way out in the middle of freakin nowhere and it is also over 320 square miles so its not like you can live 5 min from work.

Huck is getting bigger. He ate his first puppy food the other day (in his very own puppy bowl), and walked up the stairs for the first time! It took a ton of coaxing and him struggling as hard as he could, but he was determined and finally made it! He's got good energy, he likes to bite alot so im gonna have to straighten that one out. House breaking him is going to be hard I can already tell..but hopefully I can do it. I need to go back to the store and get him some chew bones, treats, a collar. His body looks very daschund but his head is more lab. He sort of looks funny actually, Im skeptical that he'll get pretty tall but he is still young. And either way, Im gonna have to keep him. The little guys grown on me, what can I say.

Augusta has been fine so far. Not been doing much. I come home from work and just want to sit and do nothing cause its been a long day. Today some guys came over and we hung out had some drinks and played wii. They're either married or have a gf, with the exception of me and kevin, so they dont care so much about like 'going out' or whatever to very social places, and I of course am not doing that by myself. Its alright for now though because I have more stuff to take care of like get carpet laid down, get my furniture here, unpack everything. So having a social life should be put on the back burner I guess, right?

So I had to sit through my training class on Tuesday and miss the inauguration! It was sooo dumb. The 10 hour class I could have completed in 30 minutes. I could have walked in, flipped throught the book and probably scored a 100 on the test. Instead I had to sit there and listen to this guy go on and drone about everything for 10 hours. Then I took the test, and made a 100. He acted surprised, I was like Seriously!? There were a lot of other....not well educated folks though, so thats probably why it took so long. It had some general employee training parts so all folks on the MOX Project do it including all the construction laborers. So there were some people there that, ya know, had a little trouble reading and stuff-you could tell some probably didnt make it to high school even. It made it a little frustrating having to sit there all day, but safety is definitely first and especially when it comes to this facility so I see the merit. Anyways, when I finally got home I hoped on the ole intranet and watched the whole thing online. It was pretty cool. Im excited to see what Obama can do. I really hope that he's got what it takes and can help turn around the economy, foreign relations, energy crisis, etc of our country. Its stupid how some people are still all mad about him winning and hate him or whatever-it aint gonna change anything! Get over it! Support him! Support America! I wish him the best because I wish America the best. Sidenote: my advice to every human being is to read I Am America (And So Can You!) by Steven Colbert. You will not cease laughing and in the end....be completely unchanged by it.

This may have been my longest post yet. Im surprised your still here with me! So i'll leave you know with a little word of wisdom:

Do not meddle in the affairs of dragons because, to them, you are crunchy and taste good with ketchup.