Every once in a while, you find something so egregious that you can't let it pass without comment. There is nothing so important in this world that you can trust the maintenance men to do it right, not even a nuclear submarine.
The Royal Navy used superglue to repair a nuclear reactor, with an urgent investigation being ordered into the matter.
Maintenance workers used the glue to fix a damaged nuclear reactor on a Trident submarine while it was dry docking for a refurbishment and refuel at HMNB Devonport in Plymouth.
The submarine carries Trident ballistic missiles and is one of four nuclear powered nuclear submarines.
It was discovered by engineers while they were preparing to set the reactor to full power.
Workers are accused of supergluing bolt heads back on instead of properly replacing them.
Emphasis mine.
The article doesn't go into any detail about what bolts these were or where they were missing from, but it sounds like Frick and Frack twisted a few bolts off and glued the heads back on to make everything look nice. If they were on some non-critical item like a wiring bracket or similar, this is a tempest in a teapot. On the other hand, if it was in a pump body, pipe flange or something like that, it could potentially sink the ship. The wrong thing breaks at the wrong time, it can go kaboom.
Still, the mere fact that some asshole glued the heads back on to cover up what they'd done means that now they have to go check every bolt. Almost worse than deliberate sabotage, really. Somebody will likely go to jail.
3 comments:
I might dispute the "tempest in a teapot" if the bolts were just for something like a wiring bracket. Doing it there would potentially indicate they might also have cut corners / did sub-standard work elsewhere, potentially even on critical systems.
Further, lets go hypothetical here and say it was for a wiring harness. Now, an emergency of some sort strikes, people need to move FAST through the sub, and because of the nature of the emergency, these glued bolt heads drop off, letting the wiring in the harness dangle, tangling up some sailor heading to wherever they need to be. Best case, you have a slightly injured seaman. Worst case? "For want of a sailor, the sub was lost."
But it does seem we're on the same page as far as punishment goes, someone needs to get smacked hard for this.
((mechanical engineer hat on))
Should have used duct tape
Superglue is routinely used as thread locker in various industries as opposed to Loctite. It could have been as mundane as that. Specifications on a nuclear reactor would be particularly stringent whether or not it reflected reality. We'd need more information to make an informed judgement.
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