• Question: How do you make sure the power plant is safe for a submarine?

    Asked by Skycycle123 to Sarah on 7 Mar 2016. This question was also asked by Jazzy.
    • Photo: Sarah Hargreaves

      Sarah Hargreaves answered on 7 Mar 2016:

      This is a really good question and is what my job is all about. As part of the design we always have to think ‘what could go wrong?’, something might break for instance and then we have to ask ourselves the question of ‘what would happen to the power plant’. If something breaking would mean that the power plant would become unsafe to the people inside then we have two options:

      1. put in a back-up, so if it does break then the other one can take over and things can continue as normal, or
      2. put in another system, which will activate when something breaks to stop the plant becoming unsafe but means we won’t be able to operate the power plant as normal

      We go through this for every bit of the power plant to ensure that it will be safe to put into the submarine.

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