Former employees detail alleged safety violations at NUMEC's plants

"That is insane," said Earle Hightower, a former Atomic Energy Commission assistant director of safeguards and security, when told about the employee who licked uranium wafers.

Hightower said the dangers of uranium were well-documented at the time, and the AEC called for rigorous safety measures.

"They just didn't convey it down the line apparently," he said. "They had a lot of safety measures. In places like Los Alamos (N.M.), the safety measures were extreme. In places like NUMEC, it wasn't enforced. They were on the outer fringes of the program."

Hightower added, "A lot of time the small contractors would resist putting in any safety measures because they were expensive."

Walker spent 26 years at NUMEC and with the plants' subsequent owners, Atlantic Richfield and Babcock & Wilcox.

It was the only job Walker held. He joined NUMEC immediately after high school and stayed there. Now, Walker said he realizes he put his life in jeopardy.

While at NUMEC in the 1960s, Walker once was splashed in the face with hydrofluoric acid and uranium. He also was exposed to radioactive materials, and the levels in his body were so high he was removed from the plant and got a job transporting the materials instead. He never could go back into the plant to work because of the high level of radioactive material he was exposed to.

"The last time I was overexposed was the reason I started to drive a truck," he said. "I wasn't allowed back into the plant."

Walker took a job at NUMEC'S Tru-Flat building and hauled nuclear materials. Walker now attributes his renal disease, - he is awaiting his second kidney transplant - to the years spent at NUMEC.

"My transplant doctor told me usually, when you lose your kidneys like I did, you have sugar diabetes, high blood pressure. I had no sugar diabetes, no high blood pressure," Walker said. "There are 15 in my family, and no one had kidney disease. He thinks (my kidneys) were overexposed."

Bob France began working at NUMEC in 1968. He handled radioactive clothing in the laundry with his bare hands, loaded nuclear fuel rods with his bare hands and was exposed to high levels of radiation. In one accident, France was automatically closed into a room with a plutonium leak.

France is convinced his countless health problems were caused by NUMEC.

"My esophagus is gone. (The) trap in my stomach is gone," he said. "My prostate is swelled up, and they can't figure out why. They took nine biopsies of my prostate. My spleen was all swelled up."

Trusting the company

Walker, France and other former NUMEC and/or B&W workers - Bill Milks, Harold Quepec and Al Serwinski - acknowledge they were ignorant of the hazards posed by nuclear technology when they started working for the company.

In the 1950s, Serwinski served on a U.S. battleship that carried nuclear warheads but he, too, knew little about what handling nuclear material meant.

"I may have been more aware of the radioactivity because of the battleship I was on, but I was never educated to the fact of what that stuff would do," said Serwinski, 65, of Kiski.

But Serwinski got wiser the longer he worked at NUMEC and, when he became a supervisor, he began checking his clothing and car for radioactive material.

"After I went on salary, I had access to the counters," he said. "I don't know how many sets of (car) floor mats I put in my car. Every few weeks, I would take my floor mat out, check it, throw it away and go get a new one."

Quepec, too, had no idea what "that stuff" could do and admitted he was certainly naive about the material he was handling and its effects.

When he was young and working at NUMEC, Quepec said he heard that when people had cancer, they were treated with radiation. So he believed if he was exposed to a lot of radiation at NUMEC, he could likely avoid getting cancer.

"I didn't think anything of radiation," Quepec said. "I thought the radiation would just clean out everything. That's what I thought."

Walker remembers another occasion he was exposed.

"My hands were high one time," he said. "I was on the morning shift and it took them eight hours to get my hands clean. They scrubbed my hands for six or seven hours to get my count down."

These men inherently trusted the company.

"There was a camaraderie with all those guys and you felt whatever they said was OK," Milks said. "They said, 'Go in and do the the job.' That was it. Six or seven guys worked in there with no respirators and street shoes."

There was one main reason why all these men went looking for employment at NUMEC, often starting for as little as $1.50 per hour in the early 1960s. They needed the money.

In the 1950s, the Alle-Kiski Valley was a depressed area. Unemployment was high and these men needed jobs.

And when NUMEC opened in Apollo in 1957, it was a godsend.

"There was no other work," Walker said.

"I had a wife and three children," Serwinski said. "A steady loaf of bread was better than none."

Quepec, too, went to NUMEC because he had to.

"It was hard to find a job at that time," he said. "I was getting laid off all the time. It wasn't much money, but it was steady."

When Quepec started in 1961, his salary was $1.50 per hour, when he quit 10 years later, he was earning $3.38 an hour.

France has no illusions as to why he was hired to handle radioactive material. He is illiterate and readily admits he was hired because he would not question what was asked of him.

"I wasn't supposed to know what was going on," he said. "They just said, 'Do this, do that and that.'"

When he worked in the laundry, he made $3.95 an hour. "I thought it was a lot of money," France said.

The accidents

A day at work for France in 1973, loading plutonium rods for nuclear submarines and reactors, ended with him lying on a granite slab.

"I was in this little room. I'd open the vault, take these rods out, take them out of their container, put them on a little tray that had these V-shaped holders and then lay my hand on the monitor and push (the rods) in," France said.

He wore silk gloves so the rods wouldn't be contaminated, he said. Just white gloves made of silk.

"I got into the fifth batch of rods and I got one and put it in there and just touched it and it went "Wrrrrrnnnnnnnn. It went off the scale."

The alarm went off and the door locked," he continued.

"How am I supposed to get out the door• So I stuck (the rod) back in the holder. I thought while I am here I better get the rest of them. Three more. Then it made me mad 'cause I couldn't get out."

Milks remembers the incident.

"They had masks, rubber suits to rescue him," Milks said. "He was in there with nothing on."

France's ordeal had just begun.

He was taken from the plant and given a body count of radioactivity at a hospital in Pittsburgh.

"A big marble table makes you feel like you're lying on a sarcophagus made out of granite. That gives you a good feeling," France said. "They give you a hot shower, get you all warmed up and then lay you on that cold piece of granite. They put a cloth under you so you don't get too cold."

"You're laying there shaking and they're saying 'Hold still, you're going to be here for three hours,'" he said. "This thing goes over you. It starts at your feet as it comes up your body and it takes three hours. It sees inside you. I asked the girl and she said, 'You're hot. You're probably not going to be working at the plutonium site no more.'"

France was transferred to another building at NUMEC's Parks site.

And, then, very matter-of-factly, he remembers another incident: "It wasn't 'til later that I got hot uranium waste sprayed over me, mid-chest and up. I wasn't allowed in the hot area because (my exposure) was so high from high-enriched uranium."

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