The Story Of How I, Tom McMahon, Set The All-Time Record For The Quickest Disqualification Of A Nuclear Reactor Operator In The Entire History Of The United States Navy

You don't set out to do something like that. I mean, Ralph Branca didn't mean to throw Bobby Thomson the pitch that became The Shot Heard 'Round The World back in 1951. And Chicago Cubs fan Steve Bartman didn't mean to screw up the Cubs chances a couple of years ago. But I'm stalling. Best get started telling the story . . .

The Launch Of The First Atomic-Powered Submarine, The USS Nautilus, In 1954

Funny thing: The day this picture was snapped was the day I was born. Probably quite appropriate for a Tom McMahon ("Atomic Man" - get it? ). Anyway, an achievement like the Nautilus doesn't happen out of thin air. There's a lot of planning involved. And testing out of the new technology. Like the nuclear reactor, for instance. So before they built the Nautilus, they built a working test reactor to make sure the whole thing would work. But where?

National Reactor Testing Station

Idaho, of course. Just west of Idaho Falls. A whole lotta nothing out there. Not too far from where Evel Knievel tried to jump the Snake River Canyon in his rocket motorcycle. Right down the road from Mud Lake, Idaho, for those of you who remember the old Jonathon Brandmeier song. The National Reactor Testing Station was an area bigger than the state of Rhode Island. But believe me Rhode Island, you have nothing to be worried about.

NRTS Area

Because the NRTS was so big and so remote, they made all of us take the NRTS-provided buses to the site -- a distance of about 50 miles. A couple of times my bus was stopped by Basque shepherders taking their huge flock across the highway. Shepherds and cutting-edge nuclear technology, all in one free bus trip.

The SIW Reactor, One Of Many At The NRTS

The S1W prototype they built for the Nautilus was just one of many reactors at the site. Probably the most infamous of the NRTS reactors was the SL-1, which blew up on January 3, 1961. A non-nuclear explosion, to be sure, but they had to bury the three guys killed in lead caskets, such was the radioactivity. Poor fellows. A couple of my instructors had worked on the cleanup of that mess. Since I was here in 1974, the SL-1 was old news by then, and we watched a couple of the newsreel-type black-and-white documentaries that were made in its aftermath. On the film badges we wore to measure the amount of radiation we had received every month there was a tiny metal canister, the purpose of which was to measure the amount of radiation our dead bodies would have received in the event of another SL-1 type accident. Just in case, you understand.

Inside The S1W Reactor Building

Here are some pictures of the S1W reactor. If I had taken these when I was there, I would have gone to jail. These? Found them on the web. 

Anyway, to get there you had to go through a couple of other Navy schools first. I went through elecronics technician school, and then a 6-month course in Nuclear Power near San Francisco. That was the theoretical stuff. Idaho was the hands-on phase of the training, also a 6-month course.

My class started in April 1974, just about the time Hank Aaron was breaking Babe Ruth's all-time home run record. 12 hours a day, plus 3 hours worth of bus rides a day. 15 hours a day. Get home, a bite to eat, head hits pillow, alarm rings, get up, do it again. That was the schedule, until you got qualified. Once you got qualified, it was only 8 hours a day, plus the 3 hour bus ride. Piece of cake.

To get qualified you had to demonstrate you knew all the systems, inside and out. The instructors would have you draw out entire system diagrams out on the blackboard from memory, then yell at you if you forgot any detail or drew something wrong. You had to stand watch, monitoring the various systems of the plant. It was long, tedious, demanding, stressful work, 15 hours a day. But by the end of July I finally got myself qualified as a genuine US Navy Nuclear Reactor operator. Some of the longest 4 months of my life.

When you got qualified, you changed your badge color from pink to green, and you handed out cigars to everybody to celebrate your accomplishment. Real ones, not bubble gum ones or candy ones like you have to do these days. On my first work day after getting qualified, that's how I spent my first 4 hours, passing out cigars. The second 4 hours I was scheduled to be on watch for the first time by myself as a fully qualified Nuclear Reactor Operator.

Nuclear Submarine Maneuvering Room

This is what the room looked like, more or less. I was in the middle. The watch started off smoothly enough. Then we ran a drill, some lube oil fire or something like that. Well, one thing lead to another and things got out of hand and all of a sudden the reactor shut down -- "scrammed", as they called it, and all heck broke loose.

The Reactor Control Panel

This was the reactor control panel I was in charge of. Man, did all these lights and dials go nuts or what! Unfortunately, in the excitement I forgot to turn off a couple of pumps that I was supposed to. That's what I got disqualified for, even though the reactor scram itself wasn't my fault. So at 1 hour and 45 minutes into my first watch, I was disqualified and relieved of my watch. The All-Time Navy Record.

I took me about a week to get myself re-qualified. I had to study over what I did wrong, demonstrate my knowledge to the Plant Manager, and say a few Nuclear Hail Marys in penance.

Gummed Reinforcements, aka PPT-14

After that, I still had 2 months to go in Idaho. They had a number of "Proficiency Phase Tasks", or "PPT's", for us to do. I got assigned PPT-14 a lot, which was putting these gummed reinforcements onto the ripped pages of the reactor manuals. And I got pretty darn good at it, if I do say so myself.

Comments

[Wayne Carlson]

OMG its funny how the brain works, i remember being a seapup and always having the instructors betting the outcome of some 'oolie' with 'coke and nuts'? i bet they sold more coconuts at the local grocery stores than in hawaii because every newbie thought it would be funny to use a real coconut.

[Richard Wurtz]

I was in class 6304 at MIT (Mare Island Tech) Back then we went from sub school to a boat (mainly diesels) to get our dolphins then to nuke school. After two weeks at Mare Island Uncle Hymie authorized sub pay for all students with dolphins. That was great what with the EM Club so close to our barracks.
At S1W I watched as they installed a new ladder from LLER to ULER. I was the first guy to use it and the sharp edge of the square rungs welded to the uprights ripped on your little fingers as you went down the ladder. I took a file and rounded off the sharp edges. That fixed the problem. As the years went by and I met guys that went to S1W I often asked about the ladder. They all said it was still there. While qualifying they accidently gave me the qual test for the port steam dump (Westinghouse guys ran the port dump). I passed it anyway. Felt good about that. It was ironic that on a nuclear power plant the starbord dump steam driven feed pump had to be started by using a crow bar to lift the throttle block to admit steam. After spinning up the built-in control oil pump took over.
Guys used to climb up to the overhead catwalks to take naps. There was a 100 pound air connection by the stbd dump. We would aim the outlet nipple up, fill it with small nuts and bolts, crank open the ball valve and try to hit the guy sleeping. We would have nuts and bolts bouncing down all over the place, like a pin ball machine. One of the qual oolies was how many gallons of water was in the air when the spray pond was in operation. You had to show the math. Another one was how to siphon the sea tank dry. The max siphon height is 32 feet and the sea tank was deeper than that. And lastly, how many PSI were the S1W building walls designed to take.
There was a sea story that a couple of sailors took a swim in the expended fuel rod tank. Afterward they got scared and turned themselves for monitoring. They were OK but the CO, Capt Kaufman (Yogi Bear), assigned them to drink a case of beer a day and no food or any thing else except water for a week. They had to bring their crap in plastic bags for monitoring. Of course it was all for their stupidity as nothing was wrong with them. So you could imagine how they felt with their crap in platic bags in a lunch bucket what with all the secretaries and good looking chicks on the busses.
Captain Kaufman later was CO of the Will Rodgers. He and his son published two great submarine books with lots of pictures of boats and their bases, Charleston, Holy Loch, Rota, La Madellena, Pearl, all of them I guess. In one picture of Holy Loch I saw the actual house where I attended a party. Man, what crazy memories.

[Richard Crainium (EO, EOOW, EWS)]

Class 7707, then to USS Tecumseh - SSBN-628. Returned as an instructor in 1980 to S1W and became the Crew A Training EOOW responsible mostly for the new Watch Officer Students. Wingnut was still there in all of his glory, what an A!@#$%^&ss.

I qualified allot of people and my "cruncher" (who knows what this is?) skills were honed very finely, my signiture and initials will never be the same after putting a million miles on my signing hand.

Had the great fortune to have an EOOW on his FEW during a loss of feed drill (stbd floor turbine feed pump failure), say to me, "its only a drill". Well, some of you will appreciate what happened next. "7 MC announcement, I have the watch, Throttleman, Shut the throttles, Reactor Operator shut the Main Steam Stops, Electrical Operator, shift the EP to an NSPLU. Plant in a stable condtion, next steps were, I picked up the young ensigns books, qual card, etc, opended the manuvering door to the waterbrake, threw all of his books and paper over the top of the water brake to the floor (approximately 40' drop) and asked if the ensign would like to leave on his own or be next to take a flight. All of this while the CO of the base and wingnut waited in the rear of manuvering (by the desk in the corner, next to the plant greaseboard).

Other than the CO saying to me, "he deserved it" I never heard a word again, and my ensigns on Crew A worked harder than ever....

Ahhhhh, nothing a +4 or +8 cant resolve...

[HEIDIWolfe35]

Buildings are not very cheap and not everyone can buy it. However, credit loans was invented to aid people in such cases.

[WallerKATHARINE20]

I guess that to get the mortgage loans from banks you should present a good motivation. Nevertheless, once I've got a collateral loan, because I was willing to buy a car.

[lacton]

Anyone ever do the "endless firehose drill" on the EOOW trainees? We would call away a fire in the water brake, routing one of the hoses through maneuvering. Upon exiting, we'd screw the ends of the hose together, make a couple of right turns and head back into the engineroom and on into maneuvering once again, seeing how long it took the EOOW to figure out it was all a game. What would really piss him off is after telling us to get out, we'd reverse directions and do laps again, saying we had to back out.