Nuclear Industry Welding HIstory

[johnc]

The DOE has declassified, released, scanned, and made available via a web site some of the earliest research into welding stainless steel pipeing for nuclear reactors and nuclear material processing equipment. For a welder, its pretty fascinating to read about the early efforts at TIG welding stainless steels and the radioactivity/corrosion issues they faced.

 

Most of the documents are from the Hanford facility.

 

http://www2.hanford.gov/declass/

 

A simpler search using "welding" turns up a lot of cool documents.

[JustinOlson]

Cool, I'll have to sit down and read those when I have time.

 

Justin

[Bluto]

I work with alot of welders who spent years at CBI in Illinois.

 

Lots of interesting stories about everything from welding reactor liners and tanks for nuc plants (we have 3 plants within 30 miles of eachother) to welding submarine hulls.

 

I have to do a few welds a week that ultrasonic tested but in that shop thier work was almost 100% xray tested, go below 98% pass rate and your pay took a hit.

 

 

Sam

[SHO-Z]

They use to say that you are not a pipe welder until you drove 1000 miles to test on a Nuc Power Plant Job. I did that so was a true pipe welder at one time I guess. I know that the "L" designator on SS came from Hanford.

 

The Nuc industy is going to have a hard time starting up building power plants finding welder. The ones that built the last ones are either retired or blind. And the information that they had on the trick of the trade are being lost.

[NCchris]

The Nuc industy is going to have a hard time starting up building power plants finding welder. The ones that built the last ones are either retired or blind. And the information that they had on the trick of the trade are being lost.

 

Sad tale but true, one of the by products of becoming a "service" oriented economy. Our skilled tradesmen have all had their jobs outscorced. I'll shut up now before becoming political!

chris

[johnc]

According to AWS there are 250,000 welding jobs in this country that are going unfilled. When I was at the Lincoln Electric Welding school in Cleveland there were outside companies there interviewing all the students for jobs across the country. A lot of the young kids doing the Pipe certifications were recruited to work in Alaska.

 

I talked at lunch with one 18 year old who accepted a position working on the pipline. He starts at $6,500 per month plus bonus with all room and board paid while he is up there working. He signed a two year contract and pocketted a $5,000 signing bonus.

 

WTF? When I was 18 I was making $3.25 an hour and paid for my own room and food.

[SHO-Z]

I work in Prudhoe Bay as an engineer for a union construction firm. We have not had problems getting welder, downhilll pipeliners. From what I hear from the nounion firms they are keeping there head above water with the welder on hand. Most firm really do not want rod burners directly out of school. You really need to be a pipefitter first and a welder second to survive. The maintinance work on the pipeline is union, DOT certs required. There was some work changing the pumps out that was done nounion by Veco Corp.