Diver sucked into nuclear power plant cooling system

[CoolCanuck]

I just wonder if the diver had seen this would he have swum over to take a closer look?

What is this??

 

[Nettie-NZ]

It's a glory hole!

Seriously it is - it's a intake, sometimes for hydro electric units, sometimes for spillways. Can also be for water supply reservoirs too.

Technical term is a 'bell mouth intake' but more common name is a glory hole.

 

[Reku]

why is there not a cage around that thing?

 

[JohnnyC]

Probably because the only time they kick that bitch on like that is under a set of controlled circumstances where they limit access to the waterways.

 

[Reku]

Bellmount intake videos!

Here's uh ... it doing stuff.

Here's some guy walking into it...

 

[CoolCanuck]

Holy crap. Not for all the tea in China. Just the picture of it makes me queasy!

 

[Nettie-NZ]

We hydro engineers get some excellent bits of kit to 'play' with. And yes, when you are talking about turbulent flows of hundreds of tons of water per second - there is definitely a need for 'do not enter'. (There is normally a boom or other barrier across the river/ canal upstream of the intake) It would be a quick way to make sushi of yourself!

 

[rjack321]

Are you suggesting that boaters should actually know about the various buoys and other navigational aids they may encounter? I'm pretty sure that the recreational boating community refers to that as heresy. In all fairness, a yellow buoy is a generic warning that's a bit like a traffic cone in the road. It's possible that these guys were anchored on the opposite side of the intake, and may have initially been 100 yards from the buoy.

Call me silly, but I'm inclined to think that if a company puts something hazardous in a public pool they should provide warning about that hazard that's more substantial than a single buoy.

A yellow buoy, either lighted or not is the standard navigational aid to mark an intake or outlet structure as well as a variety of other functions. You have to look at the chart and the labels to figure out what the buoy is marking and if its a hazard to you or your boat. See page 9 here:
https://www.uscgboating.org/images/486.PDF

For some vessels a shallow intake might be a threat and for others its no big deal. Navigational aids are not placed for the benefit of swimmers and divers.

White and orange buoys are used to delineate swimming areas but this wasn't anywhere near a swimming beach. Truthfully there should be a yellow day mark (a fixed yellow diamond mark instead of a buoy) on this site as a navigational marker with a sign underneath saying "intake pipeline, stay 100 yards away" or something like that.