LEAP OF FAITH
Quigg, Catherine
Leap of Faith As the President says, there's always work for those who truly want it BY CATHERINE QUIGG Clad in white cotton overalls, rubber gloves, baggy suit, loose-fitting boot-liners, and a...
...About two-thirds of the men hired with me reached their dose limit about the same time I did—within two weeks and for just a few minutes inside the steam generator...
...There is nothing to stop a jumper from working at more than two plants in a quarter—except an early death...
...Melville figures there were some 23,520 temporary workers in the 66,800-member nuclear power industry workforce in 1976—or 35 per cent of the total...
...The NRC defines temporary workers as "transients" hired and terminated by two or more employers in one calendar quarter...
...Our first Sunday, we made $150 just sitting...
...Mike took class notes...
...Mike himself is a twenty-five-year-old graduate of Southern Illinois University with a degree in airline management and hopes of becoming a flight instructor...
...It is a responsibility that the nuclear industry has not met...
...There were pools of water on the floor...
...In addition to a whole-body dose of 2,030 millirem, Mike also received 1,920 millirem to his arms, legs, feet, and hands, and trace deposits of radioactive iodine, cobalt, cesium, and manganese inside his body...
...Mike's indoctrination began with a movie explaining what jumpers do and cautioning that radiation can cause cancer and birth defects...
...Their numbers have soared from fifty-seven in 1972 to 1,311 in 1976...
...Now, eleven days and 2,030 millirem later, he was headed for involuntary retirement...
...We knew that as soon as we got close to 3,000 millirem we'd be on the street— whether we got it in two days or two weeks...
...Water had dripped down on him from overhead pipes as he and his fellow workers filed through a cavernous tunnel in the reactor containment building of Commonwealth Edison Company's Zion nuclear power station near Chicago...
...A single chest x-ray produces an average "effective" dose of twenty millirem...
...The following day—his last at Zion—he made two quick jumps and picked up about 670 millirem in four and a half minutes (or so he figured by reading his dosimeters...
...His first jump was 1,400 millirem...
...Ifi all, Mike put in ten and a half minutes of generator repair work in eleven days on the payroll of Atlantic Nuclear Services, for which he received $1,110—big money for a blood bank bus driver who had been out of work for a year...
...It was not only the best-paying job I could find for the amount of time...
...But they put the problem in perspective by noting that 10 per cent of the population "is born deformed anyway," and that radiation is also a cancer treatment tool...
...If you work fast, you just work up more sweat...
...One thing we all had in common—we all needed money...
...No big deal, they say...
...The NRC's limit is 3,000 millirem per quarter...
...By her definition, temporaries include not just the "jumpers" who do high-risk repair and maintenance work but also welders, divers, health physicists, radiation monitors, cleanup and decontamination workers, and electrical workers...
...Instructors were careful to point out to him there was a potential risk of getting cancer or siring a crippled child from radiation exposure...
...The narrowness of that definition obscures the scope of the occupational radiation problem caused by commercial nuclear power plant operations...
...In a recent report, The Temporary Worker in the Nuclear Power Industry, she contends that temporary workers should more properly include all in the industry except those hired directly by nuclear power stations on a permanent basis...
...It was easy to feel safe, said Mike, if that's how you wanted to feel...
...Mike says his experience is not unique...
...Someone else outside the steam generator would determine when we had enough radiation and could come out of the generator...
...This was an increase from 5,250 of a total 44,795 workers (or 11.7 per cent) in 1972...
...The total exposure to radiation of all nuclear plant workers shot up fourfold from 1969 to 1980, according to a report issued in October by the General Accounting Office...
...A disproportionate share of occupational radiation exposure has been going to temporary workers in recent years...
...The instructors, the film, and the literature reassured him that radiation "exposure limits for all workers are within Government limits which are far below the level that could cause ill effects...
...That was the start of Mike Balboa's career as a jumper...
...Some of the jumpers he met at Zion work regularly at another nuclear power station at Point Beach, Wisconsin...
...Even for a fourteen-hour day, it was good money...
...C.Q...
...Even more reassuring was a two-page pamphlet entitled Zion Station Radiation Protection Guides and Helpful Hints...
...Melville estimates that the nuclear plant force could grow to 150,000 individuals by the year 2000, of whom 84,000 would be temporary...
...Since there is no central occupational radiation data bank for temporary workers, the responsibility for reporting past radiation exposures to a prospective employer rests with the job applicant...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission's quarterly radiation exposure limits...
...One worker reached his limit in one week and was laid off...
...The amount of radiation these workers received was not insignificant...
...The most important lesson that trainees learned was one they figured out for themselves: Staying on the job—and the payroll—depended on staying below the radiation limits...
...The NRC's own records reveal that some worked for as many as five NRC licensees during one calendar quarter...
...That was the approximate equivalent of 101 chest x-rays and 384 x-rays to his extremities...
...He was hired following a physical examination and assigned with about 350 others to a jumper repair crew at the Zion nuclear power station...
...Approval to go beyond them is virtually automatic...
...After reaching their quarterly dose limit at Point Beach, they return to Zion to work till the next quarter begins...
...This would cover all individuals hired and terminated one or more times at one or more sites by one or more employers during any calendar quarter...
...Mike was told it would be all right to absorb 3,000 millirem on June 30 and another 3,000 on July 1—as long as the doses were in different quarters...
...But for Mike Balboa, who still worries about what price he may ultimately pay for those ten and a half minutes in the nuclear steam generators of Zion, once was enough.M Temporary Work, Permanent Damage The nuclear power industry depends increasingly on the willingness of temporary workers to risk their health for high pay, to absorb the cell-destroying radiation that goes with keeping aging plants and equipment in working order...
...Like most short-termers, Mike found out about jumping through a classified advertisement in a local newspaper offering $60 to $120 a day for maintenance and inspection helpers at "power facilities...
...He had absorbed his limit of radiation...
...They also learned for themselves that a jumper averages two or three jumps before he reaches the NRC's exposure limit for the quarter, and that Commonwealth Edison's "control points" are ignored as actual limits...
...The weekly and daily dose limits could be exceeded only with special approval...
...The average worker I knew got more than 2,000 millirem...
...I don't know anyone who got less than that...
...They gave him a film badge ring for each hand...
...Then Mike got dressed, returned to a trailer outside the reactor containment building, and waited for a van to take him back to a warehouse where he and other "jumpers" would remain on call...
...The GAO study said utilities have stayed within NRC dosage limits for individuals by "substantially increasing the number of workers exposed to radiation...
...The quarterly limits were what mattered...
...Then they equipped him with a portable oxygen tank and a radio transmitter and receiver...
...Men wearing face masks taped three radiation dosimeters to Mike's head...
...Most were about my age...
...Industry goes to great lengths to explain there are no temporary medically observable health effects from maximum permissible doses of radiation...
...Especially in times of high unemployment, many are all too willing to take a chance with their health...
...While he worked, powerful radiation streamed down from the open ends of steam tubes in the ceiling, just inches above his head...
...The men joked nervously about the water sloshing around their feet and wondered whether it was radioactive...
...However, the main concern of workers should be the delayed incidence of birth abnormalities, cancer, and leukemia...
...Mike Balboa absorbed about 1,100 mil-lirem of radiation—the equivalent of fifty-five frontal chest x-rays—in his first "jump" for Commonwealth Edison...
...His co-workers were a mixed lot: "There were whites and blacks, a Dartmouth graduate, a man near fifty just out of the Navy, and some guys in their late thirties...
...After an interview at Atlantic Nuclear Service's office in Waukegan, Illinois ("We weren't asked about our past medical radiation history—only if we'd worked in radiation areas before"), he signed a waiver releasing the company and its customers from any liability for damages that might result from his radiation exposure...
...Of those, some 3,880 were subjected to radiation of 1,000 millirem or more per quarter...
...Some can legally be exposed in one year to as much as 12,000 millirem of external radiation to the whole body, 5,000 millirem of internal radiation, and 18,750 millirem radiation to the arms, legs, feet, and hands...
...The only way a jumper can control his radiation is by quitting...
...No one gave him a written record of his exposure at termination time (it was to come a month and a half later) or warned him against seeking work at another nuclear plant before the current quarter ended...
...After six minutes, a voice on the radio told him to come out...
...Then they go back to Point Beach...
...Mike calculated that, under Commonwealth Edison's limit, the most radiation he could receive in three months would be the equivalent of twelve x-rays (based on the incorrect information given him that a chest x-ray gives an average 100 to 150 millirem dose...
...It informed the recruits that Commonwealth Edison's "control points" for whole-body radiation exposure are 1,250 millirem per quarter, far lower than the NRC's 3,000, and that the company also has set limits of 300 millirem per week and fifty millirem per day...
...Nuclear Regulatory Commission for a ninety-day period...
...His record also showed he received a total whole-body radiation dose of 1,030 millirem—somewhat below the 3,000-millirem permitted by the U.S...
...Mary H. Melville, research associate for the Center for Technology, Environment, and Development at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, says the nuclear industry's temporary workforce is actually at least eighteen times greater than the NRC's estimate of 1,311 "transient" workers in 1976...
...Reflecting on the seriousness of these concerns, Melville writes: "When tens of thousands of workers are exposed to ra-dation risk every year without the benefits of permanent employment, with disproportionate occupational risks, without truly adequate long-term compensation, with insufficient experience and knowledge of radiation risks to allow them to make an informed judgment, and when they are subject to restrictions on their economic freedom to make choices, then society has a responsibility to ensure that those workers are protected and that their rights are respected...
...He tried to concenCatherine Quigg is research director for Pollution and Environmental Problems, Inc., a public interest group in Palatine, Illinois...
...On April 25 the ANS people advised me that for all practical purposes I wasn't much good to them at 2,030 millirem, but if I wanted to work again I could leave my name and come back after July 1 when the new radiation quarter began...
...Mike scored 100 per cent on his "health physics" test...
...Highly mobile workers, such as jumpers, often employed by two or more utilities in one quarter, are the most vulnerable temporary workers...
...When they reached the steam generator they were quickly suited up...
...We knew the less we jumped the better, as far as pay was concerned," said Mike...
...Jumpers maximize their pay by stretching out their radiation exposure as long as possible...
...He climbed a twenty-foot ladder, squeezed through a narrow passageway, and jumped into "the hole"—a compartment just big enough for one person to work bent over or kneeling...
...Working at just two plants, their external dose could be as high as 6,000 millirem in one quarter, higher than the 5,000-millirem dose allowed to permanent nuclear workers for a whole year as a lifetime average...
...I took it without really knowing exactly what kind of work I'd be doing...
...it was the only job I could find...
...A single chest x-ray produces an estimated average "effective" dose of twenty millirem and an extremity X-ray gives less than five millirem...
...No health or medical insurance was offered...
...It had nothing to do with our speed or our skill in doing the job...
...Mike was ready to go to work...
...Mike needed a job—any job...
...An adequate supply of fresh bodies, willing to be "burned out" again and again, is what permits the industry's permanent workforce to remain on the job without exceeding the U.S...
...Nobody wanted to be picked to jump...
...Next came a mandatory one-day "health physics" training program by Westinghouse Electric Corporation instructors...
...For Mike Balboa and others who try their hand as jumpers in the nuclear industry, high radiation exposure—with its immeasurable risk to health and life—is the necessary price of the high pay that goes with the job...
...The jumpers learned that company 'control points' for radiation exposure are routinely ignored as actual limits Back at the staging area, technicians disconnected his respirator and headset, cut the plastic suit from his sweltering body, and "frisked" him with radiation measuring devices while another repairman headed up the ladder for the hole from which Mike had just emerged...
...As the total occupational exposure increases at nuclear reactors, more temporary workers are being employed to spread the risk...
...Leap of Faith As the President says, there's always work for those who truly want it BY CATHERINE QUIGG Clad in white cotton overalls, rubber gloves, baggy suit, loose-fitting boot-liners, and a hood topped with a plastic bubble headpiece, Mike Balboa stood looking up at a huge nuclear power steam generator one day last April, wondering what he had gotten himself into...
...Of the 23,500 temporary workers in 1976, Melville says roughly 5,800 were exposed to 500 millirem per quarter...
...I remember my plastic suit ripping on one occasion, but I didn't give it any thought at the time...
...The risks looked acceptable at first...
...One guy lost his artificial air when his portable hose disconnected, and he had to come out...
...Nonetheless, his internal dose bothers him most...
...That seemed tolerable...
...After a day of on-the-job training, he found himself playing cards and drinking soda pop with other rookies in the warehouse that serves as a jumper waiting room on the grounds of the Zion nuclear power station...
...Three days later he took another twenty-five mil-lirem by carrying equipment up to a platform at the entrance to the generator...
...Inside the steam generator, Mike went about his assigned tasks of setting up a camera and repairing steam tubes that had been damaged when a nozzle was accidentally left in the generator...
...Melville says it increased from 24 per cent in 1972 to 47.5 per cent in 1976...
...trate on the job to overcome the feeling of being so alone...
Vol. 46 • December 1982 • No. 12
