Expendable, not so much... the company has a lot of money and time invested in training me. We actually had a guy get blown up about 5-6 years ago at another plant. Electricians had left grounds on the breakers, and operators not being electricians, he didn't know nor were they included in the LOTO. When he racked the bus in 4000 volts shorted to ground and blew his arc flash hood off. 3rd degree burns to his entire face. Had they not trained us to take in a deep breath before we rack breakers, he'd have inhaled all that super heated plasma.
After that they bought every operator brand new arc flash hear, instead of having a large and extra large for everyone to share. They also bought remote racking mechanisms so we can set a drill on the racking device, walk away 20' and be out of the main blast. 4160 still has a danger radius of I think 60' and before they upgraded out relays, it was 130' danger zone when racking the 4160s... That was a PAIN, we had to go thru the entire basement floor of the turbine building and clear everyone out, page out to stay clear of the turbine building and dress up in that heavy space suit pictured above. We're back down to a much lighter 40cal/cm3 now. And 480 is around 40' I think. They had a big study done after that incident too... they said the 480s we had were actually more dangerous than the 4160s. The company is in the process of changing all of those 50 year old breakers.
