Newport News Virginia????

[Mike Cutler]

Hey folks. I will be spending a month working in Newport News Va. starting April 19th. Actually, we'll be working at Surry Power Station, and staying in Newport News. I work for Dominion.

I'm looking for any and all info you might have to give. Places to go, things to see, events, woodworking stuff, etc...

I was in the military a very long time ago, in Virginia Beach, but the last time I was there everything had changed a lot, and I could barely get around. Thank goodness they hadn't moved Oceana Naval Air Station. I kept my bearings by watching the jets in the air.

So. I am looking for the lowdown on the area.

We are staying in a place about 3 miles north of the James River Bridge(?) what type of area is this?

[Keith Outten]

Mike,

I live just a few miles from where you will be staying. Years ago I worked for Dominion Power in the Multiple Power Projects Division and was assigned to Surry during the Steam Generator Replacement Project. I will send you some info via Private Message and my phone number as well.

I hope your dose is low this quarter

[Jim Becker]

So, Mike...it' looks like you're going to learn a lot about the ShopBot system! Don't forget Colonial Williamsburg, however...

[Mike Cutler]

Mike,

I live just a few miles from where you will be staying. Years ago I worked for Dominion Power in the Multiple Power Projects Division and was assigned to Surry during the Steam Generator Replacement Project. I will send you some info via Private Message and my phone number as well.

I hope your dose is low this quarter

Thank You for the help Keith, I will really appreciate it.
My dose is low to nonexistent this quarter. The days of picking up indiscriminate dose are long gone. The NRC really started cracking down about 10 years ago. It's a very good thing in my opinion.

I did the S/G replacement here at Millstone, and we just got done replacing the head. We'll be replacing the pressurizer this fall. The lathe that they "turned" the reactor head on in Japan would have made Bill Grumbine go speechless. It looked like a giant 160 ton bowl when it was being machined.
North Anna did a head replacement a few years back. It was pretty a interesting. They had too find some heads already manufactured, because there was too much lead time on a having one built.
Apparently the French just happened to have a few spare reactor heads lying around that fit.We had to contract the services of the Russians to use one of their heavy military transport aircraft to fly it over. Pretty cool actually. They cut open the side of containment and put them in.

I like the big project work. Hopefully we'll begin construction on a new generation of plants here in the US sometime in the near future. This outage at Surry Power Station should just be a routine refueling, but it gives me a chance to go back down to Va. I like it down there quite a bit. So much history to see.
I remember getting lost in Fredricksburg last year, and I kept circling around this Battlefield. I was starting to get really annoyed at being lost, until I read the signs on the battlefield. It really caused me to cool my jets and take notice once I realized that this was a civil war battlefield, and what it really stood for. Very sobering.

Hopefully we'll be able to get together. I'd really like to see that shopbot in action.

Thank you for your generous offer.

[Keith Outten]

Very Cool,

North Anna was my home station, I was there with Stone & Webster Engineering for the construction of both units and took a job with the Vepco Maintenance Division when the plant went online. Years later when I was assigned to Surry I went back to North Anna to install all of the Three Mile Island Modifications that I had just finished at Surry. I also was in charge of the reactor coolant system flow splitter plate removal, they were cracking and the plates had to be removed. I did one more refueling outage at Surry after that and got transfered to the Fossil Division building new electrostatic precipitators at Possum Point and Chesterfield Power Stations. Not very exciting work for a "Nuke". I left Vepco when they tried to transfer me to Mount Storm for a three year outage.

I'm looking forward to your visits, the area is much more congested these days but there is much to see and do, my shop has undergone a major overhaul in the last two years as well with some very cool toys for signmaking