Friends in High Places: The Bechtel Story : The Most Secret Corporation and How It Engineered the Wo by Laton Mccartney (readict .txt) 📗

In a memo to Bechtel officials, Davis tried to put the best face on Walker’s findings, asserting that they did “not quite substantiate Steve Hanauer’s stated opinion with respect to ‘a major nuclear disaster.’ “

Nonetheless, Davis could not conceal his unease. “I found it far from reassuring and indeed it is most disturbing,” he wrote, referring to 200

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Walker’s report. “I am concerned that some incident other may arise

out of this situation which might have international and repercussions. It doesn’t sound good. “7

As Davis and his colleagues in San Francisco would soon discover, Bechtel’s nuclear problems weren’t restricted to India. Even as Walker was inspecting the Tarapur plant, another Bechtel nuclear official had learned from an executive at Chicago’s Commonwealth Edison that Dresden I, the prototype nuclear plant built by Bechtel and General Electric in 1959, was experiencing the same kind of problems as Tarapur. 8 Already, the utility had spent $700,000 to commission a study on how to clean up Dresden l’s radioactive wastes and was estimating that the costs of an actual clean up would run as high as $30 million.

Without such a cleanup, Dresden I would not meet AEC standards.

Even with it, Dresden I might have to be retired far earlier than had been expected. By far the worst news, though, was contained in a memo from a Bechtel executive who, noting the problems with Tarapur and Dresden I, predicted that the same fate would probably befall “all BWR [boiling-water reactors] which went into operation before

‘the lowest practicable release’ designs were required.” In short, the entire generation of BWR plants Bechtel and GE had begun building during the late 1950s were not-if the Dresden and Tarapur situations were any indications-in compliance with minimum AEC safety requirements.

The alleged construction defects in Bechtel-built nuclear plants were also a source of concern for a number of Bechtel employees, few of whom fared well for complaining.

A case in point was that of E. Earl Kent, a senior qualitycontrol engineer, who in 1982 was told that he had to take an oral welding test after he complained-first to his Bechtel superiors, later to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission-that Bechtel was using substandard building materials and faulty welding techniques in the Midland, Michigan, and San Onofre, California, nuclear power plants. Kent, a master welder who had passed previous written welding tests with flying colors, was told he had failed the oral exam-itself a highly unusual procedure in the construction industry-and was subsequently discharged. He later filed suit against Bechtel, but after nearly four years was forced to drop the litigation because he hadn’t the funding to pay legal and court costs.

Bechtel also allegedly moved to silence Richard Parks, a senior start-up engineer involved in the Three Mile Island cleanup operation. After Parks and several of his colleagues claimed that the salvage operation was fraught with safety violations and excessive waste, they were, or so they claimed, harassed and in Parks’s case, stripped of his responsibilities and ultimately fired. Parks later filed a fifty-six-page affidavit detailing his charges, claiming that after his discharge, his apartment was broken into and his papers rifled. Though nothing was taken during the alleged breakin, Parks was suffi-201

FRIENDS IN HIGH PLACES

W hile Bechtel was sorting out what to do about Tarapur and Dresden, it was also