Friends Say They Have That Certain Glow
San Diego Reader (1981-07-09) Neal Matthews
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Shut San Onofre,
Stop Nuke Dump
The idlers who guzzle beer
all day and loaf around the
alley beside Sam's Market in
Mission Beach, near Santa
Clara Place, aren't sure
whether they should still hang
out with Max Manning. Since
Manning testified a couple of
weeks ago before the federal
board considering licensing of
units two and three at the San
Onofre nuclear power plant,
the guys in the alley have
wondered if some sinister hit
man will come looking for their
buddy one of these lazy days.
"I'm scared, sure," said
Manning, 49, as his associates
lounged in teh alley and shot
flies with a plastic fly-swatter
gun. Manning gave testimony
about his experiences while
working as a "jumper"
repairing steam generators last
May in San Onofre's unit-one
power plant. He and two other
jumpers at the hearing
disparaged the repair work they
and more than a thousand other
jumpers performed on the
generators, alleging shoddy
workmanship, widespread drug
use, and radiation overdoses.
Their testimony prompted a
formal investigation into their
charges by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission.
Manning and another worker
who testified, Dave Pierce,
stood in an alley last Thursday
morning and waited for the two
investigators to arrive and take
Pierce's statement. (Manning
had already met with them.)
"We're scared of teh FBI, the
Mafia," said Manning. "Hell,
the guys in the alley don't
want to get shot."
Manning and Pierce, who
sleep in their cars down at
Mission Beach, both have
chilling stories to tell about
their stints at San Onofre. "We
were all just a bunch of
derelicts, all street types,
totally down and out,"
Manning explained. "There
were a lot of ex-cons, junkies
-- and I know junkies 'cause I
live with 'em." Manning,
Pierce and others who worked
on the $67 million repair
project say that the majority of
the people who answered
newspaper ads promising $500
a week with no experience
necessary were out of work,
out of luck, and willing to sign
releases stating that if they
became sterile due to radiation
exposure, they wouldn't sue
the company, Southern
California Edison. They also
say that, even though the work
was simple, the nature of it and
the conditions in which it had
to be performed made it
impossible to do it right.
Southern California Edison, on
the other hand, says the work
was thoroughly inspected
before the power plant was
fired up again early in June.
The plant had been shut
down last April due to
corrosion and sludge
deiscovered in the three
steam-generating units.
These generators are gigantic
plumbing systems, each filled
with about 3500 pipes, through
which runs 600-degree water
that has been in the
reactor's core. When the plant
is operating, thepipes are
submerged in water, andd the
hot pipes create the team that
turns the electric turbines. The
steam generators, located next
to the reactor core, are thirteen
years old and were never meant
to be serviced, so the
technicians charged with
reparing them had no
precedents to follow.
Evidently, the improvised
their way as the work
progressed. "It wasn't a
cut-and-dried thing," said
Manning. "They were trying
things as they went."
What the engineers decided
to do was force metal sleeves,
about thirty inches long, up
into the bottoms of the
corroded tubes. A company
called Atlantic Nuclear
Services was contracted to do
the work, and last fall they
began placing ads in the _Union_
and _Tribune_ calling for people
to work in a highly radioactive
environment, inside the steam
generator, installing the
sleeves. Hundreds of workers
were recruited from Orange
County and San Diego County.
The office down here was
originally on Poplar Street
near Fairmont in East San Diego.
Manning says he never showed
anybody identification when he
applied; he doesn't even have a
driver's license. Applicants
were given basic skills test
and physicals. One jumper,
John, who lives down in
Mission Beach, said, "I
couldn't believe they were
hiring this assortment of
people. It was like high school,
they wouldn't let you flunk the
test. There was this one guy, I
was standing right next to him.
The nurse was trying to take his
blood pressure and she couldn't
get him to turn his arm over.
When he finally did, there were
these huge needle tracks going
up his arms. They took him."
Said another jumper, David
Nightingale, "When I went
there, I felt like it was 1931,
I'd lost everything, and I was
standing in a soup line."
The company took busloads
of the jumpers to San
Onofre every day, including
Sundays, until the job was
completed. Manning, Pierce,
Nightingale, and John all say
dope and booze were consumed
on the buses. They were given
a day's training in whatever job
they were to perform, They
were also given classes and
tested on the dangers of
radioactivity. Then the
workers, about 150 at a time,
were garrisoned in two trailers
on "Jap Mesa" east of the
power plant site. As they were
needed, they were summoned
by name over an intercom.
Most spent five and
ten minutes inside the steam
generator before they were
"burned out" by receiving
their maximum dose of
radiation, as set by the
company. The jumpers played
cards, drank, smoked dope,
snorted cocaine, and read while
they waited to be called. At
least one, David Nightingale,
says he prolonged his stay (and
fattened his pay) by bribing a
supervisor with cocaine, so he
wouldn't be called down into
the generator. He was able to
stay thirteen days, pocketed
$1480, and spent a total of
about thirty minutes inside the
generator. But he say that
when he was inside his plastic
protective suit ripped and he
was soaked with contaminated,
radioactive water.
Special tools had to be
manufactured for the work, and
these were constantly breaking
down, say the jumpers ("I did
the best I could to break
equipment, to prolong my
stay," Nightingale admitted).
They squatted down with the
rows of pipe hanging in a
semicircule above them, and
were instructed through
headphones which pipe to work
on and what to do with it.
Some of the sleeves would not
go all the way up into the
pipes, making it impossible for
those pipes around it to receive
sleeves, say the jumpers,
because of the way the
equipment operated. These
sleeves were eventually cut off
with a hacksaw. Nightingale
says many of the pipes were
split after workers got
through with them, and many
that were supposed to receive
sleeves did not. And while
working as an inspector,
Nightingale says he certified
work he knew to be inadequate.
After the sleeves were
inserted and expanded by water
pressure, they were supposed
to be soldered at the top. Dave
Pierce, who at one time
charged with inspecting these
solders, told the NRC
investigators that fully half of
them failed the inspection. In
March the engineers
abandoned this procedure and
began "hard rolling," or
bending over the mouth of the
sleeves in order to attach them
inside the pipes. Nightingale
says that this required the
jumpers to place a tool
perfectly straight up inside the
sleeve, and that often this as
not accomplished, resulting in
damage to the pipes. "Nobody
cared about the work," said
Pierce, "people were just there
for the money."
At the end of the project the
pipes that could not be repaired
or had suffered damage were
simply plugged. A Southern
California Edison spokesman
says only about ten percent of
the pipes received plugs and
that the generator's
performance won't be affected
by them. The jumpers,
however, contend that closer to
twenty percent of teh pipes
were plugged. Max Manning,
who was trained to insert
plugs was sent down into the
generator on May 3, at about
one o'clock in the afternoon..
He was told to take a wire
brush and ream out the inside
of some tubes, but almost as
soon as he got inside the
cramped space he passed out.
He was jerked out of it through
a small port and his protective
suit was ripped off his body.
He says he was laid down right
there in the highly
contaminated area and given
heart massage. Somebody
thrust his radioactive glove into
Manning's mouth to keep him
from swallowing his tongue.
The guys in the alley look at
Manning a little funny these
days, and hesitate to let
him drink from their bottles.
-- N.M.