TVA Watts Bar & Bechtel

So far I have been writing this blog as a memoir. By describing events that happened long ago, I am sure some looked different through the rose colored glasses of time. Today I want to describe the job I was just on at the TVA Watts Bar Nuclear Plant in Tennessee. I had gotten myself into a bit of financial difficulty by paying off my daughter’s student loan as a graduation gift and therefore depleting my savings account. I did this because the company I was working for had picked up a big project in Corning. I was going to be working steady for the next year, or so I thought! When the project was delayed, I found myself unable to pay the dual mortgages and bills that I can normally cover with unemployment and savings. I am old enough to retire, I am tired. I didn’t want to have to work out of town while my baby was a senior at high school. There is too much to do here, but away I went. MY BA Brad W. is totally awesome. I call him; he looks around and finds me a job. This time it was for a lower wage/benefit package and was only guaranteed for 48 hours weekly, but it beat UIC. Since it was supposed to last 3-4 months I decided to go to Sarasota first to fix some things there before the winter rental season. After a week there, I drove back up to TN. I had called around and found a cabin on Watts Bar Lake at the Piney Point Resort to rent for $550 monthly. That was the best part of this whole trip. Due to the last minute nature of this trip and the uncertainty of the duration, I had my dog Jamie with me. I had found a clean, quiet, comfortable place to stay. Jamie was able to be on his cable all day and then run with the camp dog after I got home. They would swim, play tug of war and chase squirrels until exhausted. The other good thing about the area was really good BBQ places. I mostly cooked at home, but would treat myself to a weekly dinner out. I would get take out so that one dinner lasted 2-3 meals. About the job…not so good! I had issues with the way things are run at Watts Bar. I am an experienced Nuke worker. I am good at following the rules, adhering to procedure, and am never afraid to stop if unsure to clarify any questions or ambiguities. As usual, initial training took a week to get through. My friend/fitters, CL and Mark G were also there. It is always nice to have someone to talk with about the strangeness of a new place. I found I had a really hard time understanding what people said. It wasn’t just the accent; I love the sweet Southern drawl. It was that the majority of the men had a mouth full of chew. Between the spitting and the garbled words I was clueless! The next week I went into the plant and was assigned to a crew. Our job was very simple. We were to weld into place the bumper pads that would guide the bumpers on the four steam generators, so that when the system started up and the generators expanded due to the heat, it would still be properly aligned. I had always worked maintenance, not new construction at nuclear plants, but still I couldn’t believe how different the procedures were at TVA. Normally everything is laid out to eliminate worker/human error. At TVA…not so much. Normally your foreman assigns duties and responsibilities daily. We had a crew of six who pretty much did whatever they felt like doing. Some disappeared for hours at a time. Mostly we sat around waiting for QC or our field engineer to give us necessary information to do the job. The drawings were terrible, old and hard to read. There was one drawing for all 4 generators, even though they were not identical, so that in each case you had to re-identify each bumper pad. There also had to be a certain measurement between pad and bumper to allowing for expansion. This wasn’t communicated to us until after we had taken down the pads, which weigh between 500-1000 lbs. each, so we had to pick them up again to get measurements, and then lower them again to clean and prep for welding. It was decided, after days of sitting around, that 75% of the components would have to be brought out of the plant and machined to fit specifications. During my third week I was sent to get rigging qualifications. TVA/Bechtel mouth the nuclear safety rules, but the guys in the field just aren’t following through. When I learned we were going about things all wrong, I went back into the plant to do it right, but no one would listen to me. They would do lifts without pre-planning on the lift or safety. There would be no barricades to prevent people from walking below the suspended load. It was absurd and dangerous. I finally refused to put my name on any more lifts. I simply assigned myself the duties of safety monitor, so that if things went wrong at least no one was below us. It was only a matter of time once the components were sent out to be worked on, but I was laid off after the 5th week along with many others. I am still mad at myself for leaving without telling these people what I think of their plant. They offer you an exit interview, but how do you express in a few words that their whole mindset and procedure is geared to frustration and failure. No one had looked at our project for over 20 years while the plant’s future was uncertain. No one knew that the specifications were so far off that major reworking would have to be done. Despite knowing that preheat for welding had to be done, no one made arrangements for it. No one made sure rigging was being done properly. These fitters I worked with really did want to do the job right, but that isn’t going to happen when the contractor is just there to make money. They hire and layoff monthly because they are paid a bonus on each new hire. When your workforce is just numbers to the contractor, it creates an atmosphere of apathy. Responsibility flowed down to the worker who had nowhere else to go with it. The Supervisor would push to have things done no matter what, so the guys I worked with just did it and hoped they wouldn’t get caught. If they pushed back, there would be sighs of disgust and comments about incompetency. Supervisors talk safety, but don’t follow through with it. Once again, best day on the job…my last one!