Stay Young Forever, Stay Blunt Forever

The Legend of Flying Immortals Outside the Sky

That year, one of our senior brothers was very awesome. He fooled the professor and made a reactor with 65MPa pressure. Hmm, what’s the concept of 65MPa? For those who haven’t worked in factories, you probably don’t have an intuitive understanding. Let me put it this way: the popcorn that used to be roasted over the fire with turning, remember how loud the “pop” sound was? That’s 0.4MPa.

Of course, 65MPa is not a big deal in reality. Most who have worked in factories would show contempt. The problem was this senior brother was very bold. When the reactor was presented for discussion, the professor asked why there was no safety valve or rupture disc. The senior brother said they were designed but would be added in production. So the reactor without the three critical parts was officially put into commission.

It didn’t take long, probably a bit over two months. The senior brother took a group of fourth-year undergraduates, told two juniors to watch the reactor overnight for automatic temperature control, then went out. The two juniors drew lots, the lucky one went to break up with his girlfriend, the unlucky one went to play World of Warcraft at the internet cafe. So the reactor officially entered automatic mode.

Next, the thermocouple for temperature control predictably broke. Tragically, there was no redundant design with three thermocouples. So it started heating up, soon reached runaway reaction, and around 2 AM, you know what happened - a huge boom blew up our shabby building’s floor.

Later investigation found that the explosion pressure inside the reactor probably exceeded 200MPa, ripping it in half. The bigger half stayed at the university, the smaller half flew out of campus, over the residential area, over the affiliated middle school, over a certain commercial street… Fortunately when it dropped down it didn’t kill anyone, otherwise a huge iron lid flying down from the sky and taking a life at 2 AM would truly be an accidental slash by a sword immortal.

Back then the greedy idiots hadn’t taken over all leadership positions at our school yet, so a cleanup crew was organized within 3 hours based on the floor damage to estimate the flight path and speed/angle, public and private vehicles swarmed over to search, and the fragments of the magic treasure that descended to earth were recovered before dawn. The person responsible was dealt with sternly, no need to mention that.

The only noteworthy thing was the air force - they actually came later to ask if we had launched something, because the parabolic trajectory when the reactor was ejected had triggered their radar that night. Of course, that air force story might be fiction later added by gossipers to spice up the bragging, so I’m including it here just for a laugh.

Two Senior Brothers Who Valued Safety

Once, our lab needed to clean out waste liquid tanks, a rather large one. After opening the manhole and ventilating, passing the oxygen and explosive checks, and getting the vessel entry permit, we started clearing the sludge at the bottom.

The problem was the sludge contained a bit of everything. As soon as we started digging, explosive gases came out. So it was reported. The two senior brothers responsible for the job came - the older and the younger one. The younger brother went down to see if they could set up a water gun to wash away the extremely hard accumulated old sludge.

The older brother was crafty - he pulled up the construction light inside the tank, saying it’s not explosion-proof, and told the younger brother to take out his cell phone too, afraid an incoming call might create sparks. He emphasized we must take safety seriously, can’t overlook any danger, blah blah. So the younger brother put on a face mask and entered the tank. It was pitch black down there without even a cell phone light to see anything. What to do? So the younger brother took out a lighter for illumination.

Then the older brother keeping watch at the manhole flew away, and the younger brother in the tank turned into popcorn.

Please Don’t Push Against Your Teammate When Extending the WOT Gun!

In a certain experimental setup, the utility engineering provided low pressure steam. So someone used the steam to blow and sweep the pipelines and chemical equipment. But a valve inside the equipment wasn’t fully closed, so aromatic hydrocarbons blew back into the steam system. Various service stations and steam traps drained it out without further action.

Finally one day, a fire inevitably started again. Everyone rushed to grab fire extinguishers. One senior brother quickly came over hugging a large steam line - the firefighting steam hose. Seeing the senior holding a big thick pipe, two junior brothers followed behind to help drag the steam hose. The three-man team swiftly approached the flames, aimed at the fire base, and opened the valve. Boom!

The result was obvious - the aromatic hydrocarbons ejected by the steam jet quickly ignited upon meeting the flames, rapidly intensifying the fire. The senior brother tried to retreat facing the raging fire, but the two juniors were behind him, everyone was stuck together unable to withdraw. They were engulfed by the flames in an instant.

When burned by the flames, the senior brother still persisted in not letting go of the steam hose, otherwise as soon as he released it, the flammable substances in the hose would have sprayed the entire corridor and large lab, making the fire uncontrollable. One junior was knocked to the ground, the other fell on top of him, their legs intertwined so neither could stand up and run away immediately. They blocked the senior brother, who also couldn’t back away.

Soon, the flammable contents in the steam line were depleted, and intense steam burst out, suppressing the fire.

From then on, we required testing the extinguisher first when putting out fires - even if you have water inside, at least find out if it works before rushing to the scene!

Wear Safety Harness As Required

The constructed experimental setup was finally to be dismantled. Everyone scrambled for this job, for reasons better left unsaid. After weighing options, the workers who got it in the end turned out to be ordinary migrant workers. So we gave them safety training, talked for 15 minutes but only 3 out of 60 people didn’t doze off, and were named study models.

These workers then started cutting with oxyacetylene torches. We supervised closely, not giving anyone workload credit unless they wore safety harness. Several senior brothers climbed onto the top of the setup, saw everyone with double-hooked safety harnesses, then… tragedy struck!

You wouldn’t stand on a bridge and fully cut away one side before cutting the other then fall down with the bridge, right? That kind of scene is usually just in cartoons, right?

In reality, when dismantling, people usually have time to jump to a safe spot when it’s about to collapse, because at the end there’s still a bit left connected. The senior brother inspecting could feel the section under his feet shaking, immediately realized what was happening, yelled “Holy f**k!” and leaped out in three steps to escape. Looking back, the migrant worker had started running slightly earlier but was already flailing his arms going down with the bridge portion.

The reason was simple: his safety harness was still hooked to the handrail of that bridge section…

After discussing this atypical high-altitude fall accident, we unanimously concluded that the labor intensity was too great, causing the migrant worker to work in a muddle and lead to this situation.

One Person vs. Two

We built a cylindrical furnace for thermal efficiency tests. At first the PID parameters of the gas control valve weren’t tuned well, so the valve kept fluctuating. Fortunately the fluctuation wasn’t too big. We urged two junior brothers to keep close watch at night, requiring dual manning with no sneaking off to internet cafes or girlfriends. We also reiterated the story of our homemade reactor mortar. The juniors all swore to stick to their posts (rather ominous).

That night, the two junior brothers dual-manned, sitting face to face at the table, sleeping very soundly.

The furnace gas control valve fluctuated too much, extinguishing the furnace. When extinguished, the flame detector should have reacted to start the automatic protection. But it didn’t, why? The detector probe was poor quality, no matter how they adjusted the flame intensity it just didn’t work right to trigger protection.

Luckily there was an alarm on the furnace temperature. So the junior woke up, immediately woke up the other, and saw the furnace temperature plummeting. They realized the furnace must have gone out.

What to do now? They should have reported to the senior brother. But the junior said no, the furnace was handed to us burning well, we let it go out, if we can’t even handle such a small thing how can we become people? It’s just a furnace, light it up again.

The other said this isn’t your household gas stove, do you know how to light it? The junior said even if he hadn’t eaten pork he’d seen pigs walk. He saw the senior brother light it, just bringing a lighter and giving it a spark, right? Watch and learn.

So the two came to the furnace, opened up the burner, adjusted the air inlet, opened the gas valve, deftly stuck in the lighter, flicked it on…

The boom was heard from 3 km away.

Why did it go fine when the senior brother did it? Because each time the senior brother came over, he’d first open the air inlet to blow out any accumulated explosive gases in the furnace, wait for those to dissipate before properly adjusting the air inlet and lighting it. Since he worked alone, walking back and forth provided just enough time to ventilate the furnace. The two juniors on each side moved too swiftly, opening and closing the air inlet without ventilating, so it flashed back. The juniors just copied the senior brother’s actions without understanding the reasoning behind them.

A Washing Story

Once, a heat exchanger had been running for too long, fouling and plugging it. Everyone decided to remove the tube bundle for cleaning. First they dealt with the heat exchanger, blowing it out from inlet to outlet, with the outlet piped to an underground waste oil tank. That day a senior brother brought two juniors to blow through it, but due to an unfortunate incident next door, the nitrogen pressure was low so they couldn’t blow through with nitrogen. The senior brother said they still had steam, so just blow with that, same thing.

After the senior brother gave instructions he left to raid in WOW. The juniors swiftly got to work. They blew steam for a while, checked, and saw steam coming out of the underground tank too. Seemed blown clean, so the juniors shut off the steam and called some laborers to help remove the heat exchanger cover.

Everyone came over shouting and hauling hydraulic wrenches, sledgehammers and whatnot. They rigged up the hoist, used the hydraulic wrench to pry open the cover, and whoosh - with the gap opened, highly volatile chemicals instantly gushed out like a waterfall. Luckily that stuff was heavier than air and colored so you could see it. They yelled to run away asap, everyone took off like lightning, one junior hit the emergency shutdown button on his way out the door.

The toxic gas alarm interlock then activated in the workshop, the exhaust ventilation instantly put the room under negative pressure, then nitrogen was injected to inert it. Fortunately there was no explosion! Everyone reassured each other to have narrowly escaped with their lives.

Why did chemicals enter the blown-out heat exchanger again? Because steam is hot. Upon shutting off, it condensed into a negative pressure inside the heat exchanger, sucking up substances from the underground tank.

A group of professors and senior brothers rushed over in protective gear, cursing up a storm when they saw the breach. After they finished, the on-duty supervisor meekly asked: Wasn’t XXX working with you? Where did he go? Did he get out?

Everyone was dumbfounded.

Crap!

Responsible People

Once, a certain expert developed a new type of anti-lightning flash coating that performed quite well after testing. So a factory wanted to use it. The expert took a group of senior brothers to the site. After they arrived, the power plant shut off the breakers, cleared and inspected, then the senior brothers’ team went up. They handled all the current transformers, coupling capacitors, and such. Done with that, they ordered the clearance removed. Everyone prepared to withdraw.

But the diligent construction foreman remembered some spots weren’t checked. He mentioned it to a junior brother, who thought let’s go check it out. The clearance was already locked up, so they called to get the key, opened the door and went in. When they got within 3 meters of the breaker, power was turned on over there.

110kV. The junior brother and foreman both failed tribulation, their accounts deleted for reincarnation.

The entire chemical plant shut down for 21 hours before resuming normal production.

Power fluctuation in North China Grid for 12 minutes.