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Scuba Diver Survives Being Sucked Into Nuclear Plant (nydailynews.com)
mdsolar writes: A man scuba diving in Florida somehow survived being sucked into a nuclear power plant in a terrifying log flume ride. Christopher Le Cun was boating off the coast of Hutchinson Island when he and his friend went under to check out three large shadows beneath the waves that looked like buildings. After diving down, he felt a current that quickly pulled him toward one of three intake pipes, got sucked in and was immersed in darkness for five minutes in the water being taken to cool the St. Lucie Nuclear Power Plant. Le Cun told WPTV that he thought he was going to be chopped into tiny bits when he hit a turbine at the end of the 16-foot-wide, quarter-mile tube. However, the turbine never came, and the pipe eventually spat him out into a reservoir at the plant holding water used to cool the nuclear reactor. After finding a passing worker, Le Cun was able to call wife Brittany, who thought her husband was dead after seeing the shocked face of his diving partner.
Wow, I didn't see that coming...
Or this guy brought a torch under water, cut through the protective bars and then got sucked in.
I saw one of these rigs being repaired near Niagara falls. If its a similar setup, then the grills are not intended to be tamper proof, just keep out accidental intrusions. A diver would be easily able to bypass the protection, as it was similar to a latched gate for a metal fence. The whole thing was painted bright orange though, so there was no way anyone was going to mistake that for something friendly. Sounds like this intake could've used a coat of paint...
I wish I had a good sig, but all the good ones are copyrighted
It's not like you just come across pipes like this in open water, but no SCUBA diver worth their salt would get near an unknown pipe like that.
Differential pressure makes it terrifyingly easy to get pulled into something you can't get out of. This guy is incredibly lucky.
Title says it all. Everyone's favourite anti-nuke troll is running out of things to troll about.
probably something that Florida Power and Light needs to beef up a bit more - it's clearly insufficiently tamper/idiot proof.
Nothing can be made idiot proof, because idiots are so ingenious. You can put up a sign at a zoo, stating that the lions are wild animals, and you should at all means never enter their enclosure.
Some idiot will still crawl over the fence to pet the "Kitty-Kats".
And then sue the zoo. See cats in the microwave and hot coffee for examples.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
So its up to 99.99999999999999999999999999999999999999% to make even more warnings for the 0.00000000000000000000000000000000000000001% who cant read or comprehend language?
As you said, 2 instances across nearly 30 years? is not even remotely cause for speculation in this instance, given the idiots refusal to read or pay attention while scuba diving.
Are you under the impression that Nuclear power plants have great security?
More like rent-a-cop security from the guy off the night job at the mall.
The only thing of any real value there is the uranium in the tanks and it isn't something that could be moved by anyone without really special equipment.
I suppose you could drive a truck in with explosives and blow it up, but you could do that at the Mall of America as well and frankly scare far more people.
Nuke plants go down once in a while without such catastrophic consequences. Indian Point was just in the news for exactly this.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Any diver worth his salt knows that there is no such thing as a random buoy in the ocean. And you always check up to date charts. They are there for a reason, its your job to know the bloody reason.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Shit like this is marked on navigational charts, and there is a warning buoy. It isn't like this is some new feature either so if you happened not to have updated charts it wouldn't be there, the plant is decades old, your charts have it. Don't have charts? That's on you. Ocean navigation is serious business.
That aside, if you see something and you don't know what it is in the water, or see a buoy and don't know what it signifies, the right answer is to FIND OUT, not to go and look. Get on the radio and see what's up. In this case, even that wouldn't be necessary: This is right off the US coast, well within cellular range. He could have just pulled up maps on his smartphone.
Hopefully his lawsuit gets dismissed out of hand.
Heh. I like how this guy telling him to be risk taker drew the line at logging in to make his remark.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
The reservoir where the man surfaced does not appear to be within the secure area of the facility. One could jump into the water from a low bridge crossing on S Ocean Dr.
Beware of the Leopard.
You could just drive along Ocean Drive and get out of your car. You would be closer to the plant than where this guy popped up. He is not inside the plant at this stage.
Right, so you want to ignore something written in April, 2015 by multiple people and a huge organisation as being too out of date in exchange for a paper written by one person with a particular focus on moving to solar and wind?
The reservoir where the man surfaced does not appear to be within the secure area of the facility. One could jump into the water from a low bridge crossing on S Ocean Dr.
I would suspect that if the diver chose to continue ignoring warning buoys, dove, and walked the bottom of the reservoir he wound up in, he would eventually find yet another intake that would suck him in, and this one would likely be an impeller/pump-driven intake......