[ RadSafe ] Why some divers want to work in nuclear reactors

[Sandy Perle]

Why some divers want to work in nuclear reactors

Post Gazette Jan 18 - David Harner pulled on a fitted Lycra outfit 
with thin tubes snaking around his body carrying cold water. He 
attached pencil-thin monitoring devices to his thighs, biceps, chest 
and back. Co-workers helped him into a red rubber suit and a helmet 
attached to an oxygen line. Mr. Harner then lowered himself into a 
pool of warm water that had the faint, distant blue glow of fuel 
rods.  

"Not everyone would want to jump in a nuclear reactor," Mr. Harner 
says. "It's a definite breed."

Mr. Harner, 33 years old, belongs to a small corps of men and women 
who make their living in the underwater world of nuclear-power 
plants. Many first took up diving as a hobby, then attended 
commercial diving school. John Paul Johnston, executive director of 
Divers Institute of Technology in Seattle, says "the high-tech guys" 
are drawn to nuclear diving, rather than to other sorts of work, like 
offshore oil rigs.

Mr. Harner, whose father worked at a Michigan nuclear plant, started 
diving in muddy rivers where he could see little. Then, he was sent 
into the crystal-clear water of a reactor. There, he says, he was 
struck by how much he could see, including the numbers on the fuel 
rods about eight feet beneath him.

Mark White, 40, chose diving about 18 years ago rather than follow 
his father into the Ohio coal mines. He thought mining was a dying 
industry -- and too dangerous. "When you're 22 years old, and you can 
try something new and daring, it catches your imagination," says Mr. 
White, who dives and manages projects for Underwater Construction 
Corp., the largest nuclear diving company.

Divers are in great demand these days. Power companies need them to 
maintain many of the world's 442 nuclear reactors. They're also 
called on to repair aging bridges and water tanks. And oil companies 
need them to fix offshore platforms damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

That has done little to increase pay for nuclear divers, who start at 
salaries of about $30,000 a year. Experienced divers certified for 
specialized work can make close to $100,000. Offshore divers make 
still more but have to live on a ship for months at a time.

Nuclear reactors range in size, from 35 feet to 70 feet tall, and 14 
feet to 20 feet wide, depending on the type of technology. They are 
enclosed in steel-reinforced concrete structures. During operation, 
boiling water reactors are partially filled with about 60,000 gallons 
of water that circulates to cool the fuel and also turns into steam 
to power the turbine. Pressurized reactors hold 35,000 gallons of 
water during operations. When the reactor is shut down for refueling 
and maintenance, the vessel and secondary pools, also called the 
cavity, are filled with more than 500,000 gallons of water that 
further cools down the reactor and acts as a guard against radiation.

The nuclear divers measure assignments not only by the minute, but by 
millirems, a measure of radiation exposure. Diver Michael Pickart 
received about 450 millirems during a project last fall inside an 
Arkansas nuclear reactor's cavity. That's more than the average 
person's annual exposure to natural radiation -- 300 millirems 
according to the Nuclear Energy Institute. An X-ray delivers about 40 
millirems.

At the Arkansas plant, Mr. Pickart, 30, replaced underwater stainless-
steel tubes. In an underwater chair, the former construction worker 
cut and threaded new cylinders. He says he tries not to think about 
the risks.

"If you ever slipped out of the chair, it could ruin your day," he 
says. He hastens to add that plant workers would swiftly pull him to 
the surface by the cords attached to his suit.

Divers aim to keep exposure below 2,000 millirems a year, the limit 
set by most power companies. (The government allows individual divers 
to be exposed to 5,000 millirems a year.) When they near the maximum, 
divers are barred from nuclear plants, which typically pay better 
than other jobs do. After his work in Arkansas, Mr. Pickart got a mix 
of assignments. On a November job in Illinois, he worked primarily in 
a less-radioactive pool.

A dive is aborted at the first sign of trouble. Last year, David 
Klassen was forced to surface after a few minutes when dosimeters 
showed he was receiving too much radiation. The 28-year-old former 
Southern California scuba instructor had been working on a reactor 
dryer in Morris, Ill., which removes excess water from the steam that 
powers turbines.

Mr. Klassen says he later learned that his dosimeters had 
malfunctioned. The work "never lets you get too relaxed," he says.

The divers' equipment is the product of improvisation and 
experimentation. Conventional wet suits, which keep divers warm in 
cold water, aren't practical. The water in a nuclear plant is too 
warm, sometimes exceeding 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

Instead, nuclear divers wear a suit made of vulcanized rubber, which 
keeps them dry. To stay cool, they wear so-called cold suits, like 
the one Mr. Harner donned, developed for space walks in the 1960s. 
Including the special helmet, the gear can weigh about 100 pounds. 
That's more than twice as heavy as the gear commonly worn by 
recreational divers.

Before a project begins, plant technicians measure radiation in the 
pool. Divers wear as many as a dozen dosimeters -- on their knees, 
arms, chest, back, feet and hands -- to track exposure. On the refuel 
floor, generally five stories up, workers monitor the dives and 
follow the real-time radiation readings on computers.

Mr. Pickart's cold suit burst on a recent job, dousing the dosimeters 
with water and causing them to short out. His dive quickly ended. 
"There's no way to monitor you," he says, if the dosimeters fail. 
"They're not going to leave you down there to get cooked."

The divers, mostly in their 20s and 30s, sometimes travel as a small 
team to plants as distant as Taiwan and Korea. They live on daily 
room-and-board allowances of as little as $55 and often share motel 
rooms to save money.

In the fall, more than a dozen divers from Underwater Construction, 
in Essex, Conn., bunked for one to three weeks at the Wingate Inn, in 
Joliet, Ill. Underwater Construction has been working on nuclear 
plants since the 1970s. The divers were divided into groups of four 
to eight for projects at two nearby nuclear plants.

Kyra Richter, 37, recently quit Underwater Construction after three 
years to work, in operations, at a nuclear plant. Diving is "what I 
love to do, but there's no future," she says, adding that the dives 
would get harder as she gets older.

Ms. Richter also says she was paid less, and given less interesting 
assignments, than male divers. On one recent assignment, she remained 
"on deck" holding divers' safety cords for more than a week, rather 
than diving.

Michael Pellini, Underwater Construction's vice president and co-
owner, acknowledges the industry can be rough for women. The company 
has five women divers among its 250 employees. Mr. Pellini says he 
had not heard about Ms. Richter's experiences. "We want to make sure 
we are treating everyone equally," says Mr. Pellini, who himself 
started diving in 1981.

Daniel Vollrath, who is 25, joined Underwater Construction last year 
after five years with the U.S. Coast Guard. He chose inland diving 
over offshore diving because it means less time away from home. More 
important, he likes the weightless feeling of hovering in a reactor 
pool, tethered by a "lifeline" of cords providing air, 
communications, and radiation readings. It is, he says, "the closest 
thing to being an astronaut."

Sandy Perle
Senior Vice President, Technical Operations
Global Dosimetry Solutions, Inc.
2652 McGaw Avenue
Irvine, CA 92614 

Tel: (949) 296-2306 / (888) 437-1714  Extension 2306
Fax:(949) 296-1144

E-Mail: sperle at dosimetry.com
E-Mail: sandyfl at cox.net 

Global Dosimetry Website: http://www.dosimetry.com/ 
Personal Website: http://sandy-travels.com/