Saturday 17 June 2023

Having landed in Paris at around 0500 from Johannesburg, we were lucky as arriving at the Prince de Galles hotel, they had a room ready for us. After a shower and some breakfast we took a stroll along the River Seine, arriving at the Sewer museum a few minutes before its 1000 opening. We sat on a bench and watched boats go up and down the river and people stroll and run by.

We could see the staff inside having a bit of a pre-opening yarn, eventually getting around to letting us in only a few minutes late. Showing our tickets we headed down a steep escalator through a turnstyle and into a large concrete tunnel.

Over the years as I have wandered through many of the worlds cities l have often wondered how they deal with all the waste water. Organised tours of the sewers in Paris have been running since 1889, when people were transported through the sewers in boats and wagons. The Paris sewers were first developed in the 14th century, when pollution became so bad it made the city almost unliveable, especially as raw sewerage was just tossed onto the streets eventually draining into the Seine River, where people also collected their drinking water. As the streets got paved they put a drain down the middle which still ended up in the river. Once the sewers were dug the grey water was taken by tunnel out of town and drained onto fields. Eventually that became too much and it started flowing back into the rivers so large treatment plants were built. Just from the original city, which has had a population of about 2m people since the 1900’s, millions of cubic meters of sewerage is pumped out to treatment stations every day. The museum, which not only has a collection of machinery and devices used now and in the past for keeping the flow going up, but also has large amounts of rather brown looking, smelly water rushing through the various drains and canals. Some of the waste water is now used in heat exchangers to help cool and heat buildings. There are masses of pipes and cables throughout the tunnels.

Tunnels run off in many directions there are lots of information boards on the walls but all in french.

A main canal carries a large amount of grey water. The boat on  the right is used for traveling through the canal and removing silt and fat build ups with high pressure pumps.

One of the many side tunnels that bring the grey water from the local buidings. They come with their own supply of sewer rats.

This machine is used to carry the lager balls that are in the next photos. These are used for unblocking tunnels, they drop them in and they roll off down the tunnel until they hit an obstruction; as the water builds up behind the ball a high pressure jet is created between the ball and the tunnel wall and this removes the obstruction. There are some smart people out there coming up with such ideas.

Some of the older equipment in the museum part. there are also some examples of boots, some with waders attached, others more like a sandal. I suppose it didn’t matter too much as one was sort of in the crap either way.

Sunday 25 June 2023 EDF Cruas-Meyse Nuclear Power Plant.

This plant is about 100kms north of where we live and last year I visited the plant after reading on their website that one could just rock up and do a tour. After hunting around for quite some time l found the information centre and discovered the tour they were talking about online was just a walk through the information centre. Eventually I established through google translate that you had to apply online at least 3 months in advance to visit the actual plant.

Applying on line and going through the security clearance process, which included sending in copies of our passports, we eventually got a date locked in.

We arrived at the information centre at 1400 hrs to be greeted by a very friendly french guide who took our passports and gave us an access card. There were about 20 people on the tour, most of which seemed to be family members of people that worked at the plant.

Soon we were all lead into a lecture theatre, where our guide gave us a rundown on the place and told us about the reactors and how much power each one generated. A little bit of metal was handed around representing the diameter of  one of the rods that is put into the reactor to make it work and also a bit of rock that the uranium is extracted from was passed around.

As I’m sure most of you are aware it is steam that’s actually used to power the turbines and generate the electricity. This is done in such a way that water is isolated in an area that flows around the reactor picking up the heat caused by the nuclear reaction and reaching temperatures of about 370° which then goes through a heat exchanger and transfers the heat to another lot of isolated water that turns into super- heated steam that powers the turbines which, in turn power the alternator or generator creating electricity. From there that water then goes through another heat exchanger and the heat is transferred to another isolated section of water that then flows into the large cooling house as steam which is then condensed back in the water and the process is repeated. These three separate lots of isolated water reduce to 0 the chances of radiation escaping into the atmosphere making the process pretty safe.

There are four pressurised reactors at this plant but generally only 2 or 3 are run at a time each supplying 915 Megawatts of electricity.

Fully operational in 1981, three of the four reactors were used to supply electricity to the Eurodif Uranium enrichment plant on the site until it closed in 2012. Research on nuclear weapons was and maybe still is carried out on the site somewhere.

There are around 1800 people working in the power plant, which during shutdowns increases to around 3000. The whole 600 hectare site employs around 5000 people.

Our lecture over we were handed helmets and safety boots that slipped in most cases over peoples shoes, with I presume some form of protection in them. Mine sort of stuck on the end of my shoes giving me feet longer than the average clown.

We set off to the security room where we were handed an electronic pass and a piece of paper with our ID copied onto it along with a number. As one would expect security is very tight here. We then wandered back over to a security gate where to enter the security pass was held on a sensor then you entered your number to get access. Through the gate we then entered a large control room. Strictly no photos allowed. As the guide gabbed on in french I looked around in amazement wondering how in the hell anyone could ever learn what all these buttons switches and lights did or meant. Sylvia explained to me later that this was a practice control room (bugger, I could have had a play with a few buttons). It looked very similar to the control room featured in the documentary movie about Chernobyl. Every two months every operator has to come here and do retraining and every two years they have to go through the whole certification process again. There are always 3 operators in each control room; they are not allowed to do stuff from memory. If an alarm comes up on one of the many panels they have to go to a drawer with that alarm code on it, pull out the instructions and follow them, which includes logging the fault. I noticed there were 4 phones at the end of the consul, one of them red!

They wouldn’t  let us take photos but I did find some on the net; sorry the detail is not too good.

Leaving the control room we headed back over the security area or main entrance to the plant. All the  20 nuclear plants have a large statue representing something from the local area. With some 56 reactors and more on the way in 2021 they generated 68% of France’s power.

Once past the office we tagged in then went through the full airport type security where they checked the number matched our access card. Next it was through the radiation detection device. That done helmets on, long sleeves, boots checked and off we go. As it was a hot day we then wandered through the workshop area and out the back of the main plant building across from reactor 3. We stood in the shade as our guide explained how they get the fuel rods into the reactor and the spent fuel out and into a large concrete building on the river side of the reactor. This is the most secure building on the site.

The round buildings are the reactors, the square ones the spent fuel storage. The long rectangular building houses the generators.

From here we headed into the main plant room taking a lift up to the top floor. There are massive amounts of pipes of all sizes running through this place, most of them with aluminium encased lagging around them. This brought back memories as in the mid-seventies I worked doing the lagging and making the cladding on pipes at a new brewery that was built near Timaru in NZ’s South Island.

The steam turbine is huge with the steam entering at one end where there is a smaller turbine then it heads into the middle of the main turbine and splits off in two directions spinning the shaft at a constant speed which drives the shaft heading through to the generator. In this room it was both loud and impressive. The whole area was spotless, all the floors painted with walking paths marked on them and absolutely no rubbish to be seen.  We could do with a couple of these plants in NZ. Oops no we can’t as we are nuclear free.

After we has been back through the radiation detectors and handed in our passes and had our passports returned we walked back to the information centre. On the way the guide pointed out all the solar panels on the carpark roofs, which is a common site around southern France. The guide then went on to explain how they are part of a plan for EDF to reach a certain percentage of solar energy but 2030. If Sylvia understood right, they are not yet connected up.

We were also told about the massive back up generators they have inside in case an earthquake collapses a dam up river and floods the area as happened in Japan.

Monday 26 June 2023.

As i went for my morning stroll around the block here there was lots of activity. Summer is here and with an unusual amount of rain everything is looking rather lush. The stone fruit is being harvested with a big crop of nectarines being picked by hand. There is lots of activity in the many vineyards.

Nothing seems to be standardised, it must depend on the size of the owner as some have little tractors heading down the rows with big arms on the back spraying out what looks like a white powder others have a tank with a rotary device on the back dispersing a liquid. Then there is big machine which looks like it has just come out of a sci-fi movie that straddles a row with arms that do four rows at a time.

Some of the vines have the soil cultivated between the rows where others just let the grass grow. A narrow tractor with rubber tracks instead of back wheels carries out this task.

There is another narrow tractor that heads along with spinning disc blades that cut off the leaves on the outside of the vines as the grapes hang close to the centre. I presume this is to direct more nutrients to the grapes. A bit like any good business that gets rid of the deadwood that doesn’t make a contribution.

Having said that another vineyard tucks the long vines back into the central vines and mow’s the grass between the rows.

I would love to know the significance of all these different processes but around here english is just not spoken and my french has not progressed much past bonjour and merci.

Some of the local crops are now being harvested with large bins distributed around the paddock, which are loaded onto a trailer and pulled alongside the header to collect the grain.

Saturday 1 July 2023 A trip to Sault to look at the Lavender.

We had Louis, from Wakkestroom in South Africa, come and pay us a visit. We met in Sweden in 2014 and have kept in touch. I had hunted at his place a few years ago. We had decided a few weeks ago to go north into the hills and look at the real lavender, which only grows above 700 meters. Apparently the stuff that grows around here is not the full noise but is an offshoot, lavandine, that has a brighter colour and grows at lower altitudes. Some distance past Avignon heading northeast, we started to gain some altitude, eventually arriving at the top of a rather picturesque valley.

Another 20 or so kms we came to the town of Sault, where we enjoyed a nice lunch at Signoret Atelier a nice restaurant that overcharged us quite a bit.  Pity I paid the bill and not Sylvia. Sault is a typical old French village with narrow streets; we were lucky to be there before the busy season gets underway in a few weeks.

After lunch we headed down the road to one of the Lavender walking trails. Many of these crops look much better from a distance as up close there are a lot of weeds and grasses growing in the rows. There are quite a few old buildings and the area is very picturesque, something I just can’t seem to capture the full effect of on camera.

Walk over we then headed to Roussillon, an old town with a rather red tinge to it from the local rock harvested from around here. The town was busy and one definitely wouldn’t want to be here in August.

From here we could see the town of Gordes, which perched on the end of a ridge, looks really great from the outside bit is not much to look at when you get into it. We did a drive by and made the mistake to taking the road that runs around the back past the Sénanque Abbey, which is situated in amongst some lavender fields. Well every man and all three of his dogs, wives, kids and anyone else they could pack in the car had to come to have a look; the road was blocked, taking us nearly an hour to get around a couple of corners. Once that was over the drive home was an easy one.

Some of the brighter lavandine.