Tritium and the Transylvanian Alps

Last week there was an IAEA-sponsored workshop on the safety and licensing issues associated with facilities used for the separation of tritium from normal heavy water - fascinating stuff, eh?  Yeah.

I went as it was relating to the project I manage.  It was held at one of our contractor's locations in Ramnicu Valcea, north west of Bucharest.  It is about 5 hours from here so not a short trip.

After the usual delays at work, Dan and I left about 3 pm, struggled through Bucharest rush hour and the mountain road in the dark (and heavily populated with big trucks) arriving about 8 pm.  The high point of the evening was a dinner with the Canadian speakers (Canada is the leader in tritium removal technologies), not very exciting but we hoped it would get better tomorrow (it didn't for one of them, the chap who had the salmon was violently sick all night...).

It didn't for the rest either...

The workshop consisted of a series of 'death-by-Powerpoint' presentations which generally were very tedious.  This coupled with hard chairs and no tables to lean/write on meant for a long day.  What is it about people and Powerpoint?  One irritation is the presenter who writes his/her whole presentation on the slide and then, facing the screen, not the audience, proceeds to read it out word for word.  Another is the technical specialist who uses sliding/rotating words and awful colour combinations...we had all variants.  It's not that the subject was uninteresting (honest) - they just made it difficult to focus on the message.

We lasted a day and a half before we headed to our contractor's laboratory to view the pilot plant.  This has been under development since 1995 and is yet to go 'active'.  Make what you like from that.  It is substantial for a pilot plant, the main vessel costing some 8 million Euros...so it had better work soon and demonstrate the technology we need to use for the real plant.

Hotel

At about 4.30 Dan and I (with Dan's friend Ileana who'd turned up) set off for a small hotel in Voineasa, a small village tucked up in the Transylvanian Alps.  it was a very small informal hotel, but new and we were made to feel very welcoming.  Clearly, this was a great place for skiing - given a flake or two landing.  As you can see, it didn't look like any was on its way.  We ate at the hotel and had a few beers - we were late as Dan needed a new tyre on the way due to some damage caused earlier.

Dam & Fish Farm

Hotel at the summit - and open!

The plan next day was to drive north and then take one of the smaller mountain roads south (the Transfagarasan Highway) which would be very picturesque. We set off about 10.30h and drove some way up the windy road, climbing higher at quite a rate.  We stopped at a tourist spot (amidst the tat sellers) but it seemed like the road ahead was closed for the winter.  Dan's opinion was that 'they just tell you that to cover themselves...'.  Er, OK, so off we went further past a concrete barrier with the words (in Romanian) 'Road Closed Ahead'.   "They are just saying that" was the response.  Off we went further until we got to the lake at the summit - where there is a tunnel through the mountain (@ 2100 m). Guess what?  Yep. A big steel gate sits in the tunnel and....yes, locked shut.  

So, a coffee in a hotel perched on the lake side and we returned.  It wasn't so many kms, but a slow road as you can see from the photo (which doesn't do it justice).  It was a very good drive, pity we couldn't complete it, the gate being shut at the start of November until about May next.  I hope I'm still in RO to see it open!  The road is the one featured in Top Gear.

Northern approach

So, we drove back via a somewhat less appealing route but still interesting - through lot of small villages where seeing a couple of cars pass through was evidently still relatively unusual it seemed!  Avoiding loose cows and goats was a real challenge. 

I didn't record the number of kms driven, but it was a very interesting trip.  I had some scepticism over the use of 'Alps' however these mountains are very impressive and look like good skiing country in a short while.