[singlepic id=417 w=200 float=right] First off, I should apologize. I haven’t done a post on work yet, and for the most part there isn’t much left. Some of you might not know that I work for the IceCube project. I have linked to their website, so if you want to know more about the science, check it out. I will try and do a post on the science behind the project a little later, but it can get pretty complicated.
What you should know is that my job mostly revolves around drilling extremely large holes. Holes in the ice sheet that are roughly 2500m deep and 0.5m wide. To make these holes, we heat water up to 190 F and pressurize it to 1000 PSI. Then we pump it down the hole to melt the ice. If you are wondering what a 2500m deep hole in ice looks like, an example is above.
So what kinds of daily activities are required to run this operation?
[singlepic id=415 w=200 float=right] Taping is one of the most critical and boring parts of the job. The hose we use to pump water down the hole cannot support its own weight, so it is necessary to tape a support cable to it. This happens roughly once every minute for the entire drill operation. On the way down we have to put the tape on. On the way up we take it off. It takes roughly 36 hours to drill a hole, so that equates to over 2000 taping operations. Everyone on the team takes turns doing this to ensure that no one is going insane taping. But I have taped for over 5 hours straight before. To pass the time we frequently make things out of the used up tape. Earlier in the season I made a bull head and horns. Unfortunately one of the horns broke off and it looks a little sad now.
[singlepic id=409 w=200 float=right] The other critical job during drilling is running the computers. This takes 2 people. One person runs computers that control the flow, temperature, and pressure of the water. The other runs the computers that control drilling speed. When this drill is running smoothly, this is fairly easy.
As you can see, it really only takes 3 or 4 people to run the drill when it is sailing smooth. The real work takes place between holes and when things go wrong. The entire system that heats and pressurizes the water contains hundreds of valves, miles of piping and hose, and thousands of gallons of water. Heaters stop working. Hoses burst. Generators break. Water tanks overflow. Stuff breaks and needs to be fixed quite often. Many of the parts we use were never designed to operate at such cold temperatures.
[singlepic id=419 w=200 float=right] Between holes it is also necessary to move the entire drilling portion of the operation. This is multiple huge hose and cable reels, a two story tower, a support building, several hundred feet of cable, a supply hose, etc. The drill head also has to be pulled from each hole and weighs over 800 lbs. This is the time when having 10+ guys around is extremely handy. During the move we have to shut down flow to the entire system, which we can only do for a little over an hour or else all the water will start freezing in the hoses.
That is a quick summary of what I do down here. The exciting news is that drilling is done! We completed 19 holes over the course of roughly 2 months. We did this way ahead of shecdule. As a result, we have today and tomorrow off. The rest of the week will be spent packing up the camp, winterizing everything, and moving stuff to next years site. Because we finished so far ahead of schedule, I am also out of here 5 days early. Originally scheduled to leave Feb 9th, I am now leaving on the 4th.
That is it for now. There is a big end of season party tonight, but hopefully I will get to post some more updates with the couple days off.
[singlepic id=438 w=520]