An excerpt from CNN today:

 

QUOTE:

Vacuum causes $400M damage to nuclear submarine

 

 

A fire last month aboard a U.S. nuclear submarine that caused more than $400 million in damage may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner, the Navy said Wednesday.

"Preliminary findings indicate the fire started in a vacuum cleaner used to clean work sites at end of shift, and stored in an unoccupied space," the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard Congressional and Public Affairs Office said in a news release. "Specific details as to the cause and subsequent damage assessment are still being evaluated as part of ongoing investigations and will be released at a later date."

 

Public Affairs Officer Deb White said she did not know what kind of vacuum cleaner had been implicated in the blaze or whether the same machine was used by any other nuclear submarines.

 

UNQUOTE

 

Tom's prognostications...

 

It was not a Dyson! Why? Dyson's don't catch fire. Why? Dyson's don't cost $15,000. Why? Dyson's suck too hard to exist in a Submarine environment. Why? Dyson's are not rated "SUB SAFE". Why? Dyson's are made by a guy with a funny accent! :LMAO:

 

Seriously... As an American taxpayer, and as someone who has some knowledge of submarine equipment requirements, I find this totally amazing, if true. And just in the interest of full disclosure, in my time in the U.S. Navy, submarines were always targets! A smoking vacum cleaner hanging from the search scope would have been a target too great to ignore. :Nerd:

Bizarre....I am guessing a Shop Vac because they don't make them like they used to.

Sounds like a job for the US Department of Justice, those boys in the Hoover Building are specialists in this sort of thing. :LMAO:

 

Al

Or just don't vaccume?

 

How about this one Tom...

 

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/sub-support-contract-creating-canadian-controversy-04563/

I knew you could "blow a ship out of the water", but this ...

 

Bruno

"A fire last month aboard a U.S. nuclear submarine that caused more than $400 million in damage may have been caused by a vacuum cleaner . . .

 

That sucks . . . :LMAO:

Any kind of fire on a submarine is not a good thing....I guess this goes to show

This happened on the USS Miami.

 

As a Boston Celtics fan, I think Miami is going down again tonight.

Lots of puns.... :LMAO:

 

Thankfully I don't live in e'merica and my tax dollars won't pay for these puns

 

All the best to you my friends as I am a big big fan of the ole US of A

 

Cheers

So given the population of the USA, that vaccuum just cost each and every one of us a bit more than a dollar.

/sigh

So given the population of the USA, that vaccuum just cost each and every one of us a bit more than a dollar.

/sigh

 

You are 313,686,000 people so yep..more then a dollar for each of you

 

My nation is 4,430,400 people...so for our tax dollars, we are a bigger bang for our buck....We have a more efficient government and we have no submarines.

 

we are kind of like you guys before you signed your independence. You lot are just confusing and expensive :LMAO:

 

PS. My Nation is a Nuclear Free zone because of retaliation of Ronald Reagan not backing New Zealand after the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior....He decided to back France instead. The US Navy still has to live with that mistake...France's action was an act of war on New Zealand and Ronald Reagan didn't support us as allies, he chose to back France instead....lest we forget.

American Samoa has finally taken steps away from the USA after we began to align ourselves with the Pacific Rim without the USA as a reaction to that incident....Our diplomacy is working...

 

Cheers

"we are kind of like you guys before you signed your independence."

 

That's not really true though is it? NZ is de facto independent. Any connections with the UK are strictly ceremonial (e.g. the Commonwealth Head of State being the ruling British monarch), and I'd imagine that any proposals to cut those last ties would only be opposed by the more old-fashioned New Zealanders. Nobody here would object.

 

That said, I can imagine the two-fingered response from the people of New Zealand if any British government had the nerve to try to tell them how to run their country.

 

Pre-independence colonial America had to do as they were told, hence the Revolution.

Seriously... As an American taxpayer, and as someone who has some knowledge of submarine equipment requirements, I find this totally amazing, if true. And just in the interest of full disclosure, in my time in the U.S. Navy, submarines were always targets! A smoking vacum cleaner hanging from the search scope would have been a target too great to ignore. :Nerd:

 

Do those requirements extend to equipment used on a shipyard though? If any kind of fire is left unnoticed for too long it can become almost impossible to put out. At my university the entire faculty of architecture (a ten-story office block) burnt out and had to be condemned due to a short in a coffee machine that wasn't noticed in time.

Do those requirements extend to equipment used on a shipyard though?

 

Shipyards (mostly world-wide) have strict protocols on what can be taken and operated aboard a ship, and that gets even more stringent when it is a submarine.

Yup, where nuclear submarines are concerned, you'd be amazed at the precautions they normally take. I have a friend who works where they build the nuke subs for the RN up at Barrow, and he was telling me that when you go on board the things, even when they are being built and so not yet fully commissioned, you have to strip off and wear disposable boiler suits like the kind you see in clean rooms where they make computer components. And literally everything you take on board it has to be accounted for, for example, if you go on board the thing to work and then disembark later, and you don't have a pen you had when you went on board, then they want to know why, where that pen is, etc, and everything stops until they find out where that missing item is. It really is that strict.

 

Al