It was a blustery, overcast day on the shores of Lake Ontario, and I could see the smokestacks of Nine Mile 1 and 2 nuclear plants rising next to the chop of gray water a few hundred feet away. The Constellation-owned energy plants are two of the oldest nuclear facilities in the United States: Nine Mile 1 was commissioned in 1974, and Unit 2 was commissioned in 1987.
Old nuclear plants like the twin Nine Mile facility need to store their spent nuclear fuel, and spent nuclear fuel requires careful storage. And storage, quite simply, was the reason for my visit.
The “cooling ponds” for spent nuclear fuel at the two facilities were nearing capacity. And while fuel from across the United States had been destined for the would-be Yucca Mountain site in Nevada since its pre-planning stages in the 1980s, discontinuation of construction at the complex in 2010 meant that owners like Constellation would have to find alternate—and temporary— homes for spent nuclear fuel.
In step Ironworkers Local 60, NAES Power Contractors and Transnuclear, Inc., to provide a storage solution to the spent fuel piling up inside the nuclear complex: 40 concrete horizontal storage modules for partially cooled fuel rods already slumbering in the cooling tanks.
Gary Robb, business manager for Local 60, Syracuse, N.Y., apologized for the winter weather in October and told me that an extra coat should be waiting for me in the Transnuclear trailer on the other side of the parking lot.
“We would’ve been done before the end of September—two months before schedule—if there hadn’t been any delays,” he said. Which meant the weather would not have been quite so cold.
“Two months before schedule” puts the success of the Nine Mile project in stark perspective. That’s simply how good the ironworkers are. But the story of the Nine Mile’s 40 horizontal storage units—or mausoleum-like “casks” as they are called in the nuclear industry—doesn’t rest solely in the weathered, calloused hands of proud union ironworkers, but in the trust and innovation of long-time union partner, Issaquah, Wash.-based NAES Power Contractors and Transnuclear, Inc., for their commitment to new ideas, safe nuclear waste storage solutions and of course, strictly union labor from America’s proud building trades—most notably, the ironworkers of Local 60.
For years, Constellation Energy knew they would have to find a storage facility for their mounting volume of spent fuel. Nuclear plants have to store all their own nuclear waste in large “cooling ponds” before transferring fuel to a new facility. Cooling ponds are limited in their volume, and over time, the oldest rods are removed and stored in large casks, making way for newer, hotter fuel in the large on-site pools.
“On-site storage is an option that’s been around for a while,” said Jake Hardy, Senior Vice President & Chief Commercial Officer at NAES, who oversaw labor unions at Nine Mile during the seven-month project.
But when Jake, NAES, and Transnuclear tackled Constellation’s storage issue, they decided to push the envelope with an untried approach: on-site fabrication and construction.
“Up until now, most prestress and precast concrete casts came from Virginia, Maryland and Delaware—and they were all nonunion fabricators,” Jake said. “We told Constellation that we could handle the fabrication on-site, use union labor and bid competitively.”
Managers at Constellation thought Jake’s proposal was intriguing, if untested.
The extra work would be a boon for Local 60. “In terms of man hours, precast would be 50 hours a week for about 2 months, or 2,000 man hours,” Gary explained. “That’s great for overtime and our local trust funds.”
But granting the boon to the men and women of Local 60 required some legwork on the part of NAES and some fancy salesmanship from Jake Hardy. “Injury liability, efficiency and cost were our biggest competitors in the eyes of the owner,” Jake said. In short, on-site fabrication and increased man hours left Constellation exposed to a greater probability of injury liability if contractors and ironworkers didn’t follow safety protocols to precision.
Transnuclear had similar reservations. “We’d never fabricated on-site before. We had always built at a precaster and then assembled on-site later, so obviously we weren’t sure how the process would work,” said Sue Buyaskas, a nuclear engineer at Areva, Transnuclear’s parent company.
Uncertainty over procedure and fabrication weren’t the only questions Constellation had for NAES. There was also the nonunion/union decision regarding fabrication and lingering questions about price and value. To Constellation, strictly union fabrication seemed like a “bust in the cost” for the project. It would be up to Local 60 to dispel the rehashed myth that union labor is “expensive” and illustrate the true value and lasting quality of union work.
The value is here, but “we had to figure out a way to beat non-union price,” Jake said.
Gary believed the best solution to bid for such a lucrative job was evident: Local 60 upped its apprenticeship to journeyman ratio from four to one to one to one to lower costs and successfully captured the entire project.
“Once we actually started working, Constellation saw the union commitment to safety and procedure, so we got the go-ahead to fabricate all the casks right here on site,” Jake said. “The price was right, and we were thrilled with the work—we were all really happy with the quality of the crew productivity and efficiency.”
Gary chimed in: “We didn’t see so much as a stubbed toe.”
With Constellation’s blessing, ironworkers, NAES and Transunion produced a win-win-win-win scenario at Nine Mile.
Super Training, Superior Learning Opportunity
Leon McDougall, one of Local 60’s Apprenticeship Training Instructors, is a 33-year veteran of the Iron Workers Union. “After you’ve been doing the job as long as I have, safety becomes second nature,” he told me inside the Local 60 gang’s on-site trailer.
Leon rattled off descriptions of apprentices and journeymen on the job: “Our average age was 28, we had 15 ironworkers on-site during peak constructions. We have about seven now,” Leon paused and began again. “I’m a master rigger. We rig and lift every single day on this site, so I had to train four journeymen to handle heavy lifts as well.”
If anything, the Nine Mile job presented a formidable challenge—but Leon and Local 60 exploited the job’s difficulty and turned barriers into valuable learning experiences. “Signaling and communicating with the crane operator aren’t difficult. It’s the precision,” Leon explained.
One veteran master rigger went in, and four young ones—with long careers ahead of them—came out.
But, of course, apprentices at Nine Mile came away with quite a bit more than rigging experience.
“We used 375 tons of steel and 3,200 cubic yards of concrete building these forty casks,” said Jake Hardy.
The sheer volume of steel and concrete is hard to believe, even as I walked between rows of hulking casks. Yet over to the side, next to the ironworker gang’s trailer, lay the perhaps visually underwhelming but creative underpinning of the entire job, the spark that captured the owner’s imagination: Jake’s precast templates.
“We basically fabricated a template for the rebar cages and stacked everything up,” Jake explained. “Once they lifted everything up, they were ready for another pour. Efficiency went through the roof.”
And, fabricating on-site added more than 2,000 hours—exactly what Gary had hoped for—to an 18,000 man-hour job. “We’re bringing this fabrication work in-house and showing utilities like Constellation that we can do the job safely and efficiently,” said Gary. To boot, Local 60 crossed the finish line with half a dozen tried and tested apprentices.
No doubt ,NAES, Transnuclear and Constellation will call Local 60 back for work on 40 more casks, scheduled for completion in 2014.
“Hopefully other locals with nuclear plants in their jurisdiction will take advantage of this new model. It’s simply a win-win for everyone involved,” Gary said.
With mounting nuclear fuel storage needs on the horizon and 4 – 6 new reactors scheduled to go online in the United States by 2020, on-site storage casks are sure to be in high demand across the country. NAES and ironworkers will be ready and willing to provide solutions for the jobs ahead.