Sometime ago I decided that it was about time that I went to pay a visit to Radcliffe-on-Soar power station - mainly as it's a right of passage for Elec. Eng students from around these parts. OK, so the Elec. in my thing relate to Electronics, something which a power stations isn't really... I'd say it was all rather electrical.
Anyways, yesterday I went on the trip with the IEEE Student Branch - first thing I'd done with them since I signed up 5 years ago!
It was all rather good fun - not like any of the other power stations (hyrdo, pumped storage hyrdo and nuclear) I'd been to. This was mainly down to it not being a place where vistors just drop in on a day out for a look around - it's more of a you book and they say yes, come along and have a look - it makes it more interesting in a way - because you're not separated from anything by fences or panes of glass.
A good example of this would be when we went into the control room and actually got to talk to the control room staff - none of this "and there's the control room staff playing with there knobs and dials" I've got else where that I've been.
There was a funny Homer moment when in the control room I asked what the big red flashing light that was above the panels for each of the 4 generation units, which had all been flashing since we had entered, was for... "oh, that just means that the controller of the units is a bit bone idle and hasn't cancelled all of those little flashing warning lights". Heh.
All in all it was a fun afternoon out and it was good that the guides who showed us round were jovial and made us laugh!