What a Shift Technical Advisor Does

As a Shift Technical Advisor at RFETS, I was in charge of Building 707 safety of operations during my shift which usually lasted 12 hrs, for 7 years. I was part of a team of 6 Nuclear Safety experts that were trained in all areas of safety to help the building function safely. I was expected to notice trends of practices that were going wrong as well as walk the floor and be involved at the worker level. When workers had a problem, they came to us and we reviewed their process, stopped it , if necessary, revised the operating procedures, and got their task restarted again safely. We stopped a lot Union hassles before they became a problem. We were involved in all areas of the process and advised top management directly, as to the safety of building operations. We were expected to oversee any test of the facility that could affect safety in case something went wrong during the test. During most of these tests, nothing untoward happened, but when it did, we made the proper notifications and made recommendations as to how to bring the facility equipment or operation back on line safely. A shift technical advisor was trained in root cause analysis so he or she could get to the bottom line quickly. In simple terms, we were the safety know-it-alls at RFETS. We were First Responders to any spill and were trained as Hazardous Material Technicians. We were always asked to reword the operational procedures so the procedures would pass all the safety rules and regulations that RFETS was under at the time. We advised operations managers as to who to bring in to correctly solve their problems, whether it be a Nuclear Safety Engineer, Radiological Safety Engineer, or an Industrial Hygienist. We held and refereed the meetings between the different groups, such that management’s needs were met. We oversaw all fact-finding missions in Building 707. Although we had a safety bias, we reported to, and got paid by the building manager. In that light, we were expected to keep the building flowing as smoothly as possible. We were constantly under the scrutiny of upper management and as such we walked a fine line. When any new piece of equipment was put on line, we had the job of making sure it was safe to operate, that all the operational procedures were correct for the operation that was going on, and the people who were going to operate the machine were properly trained and documented.. We were mainly floor people with an ear to the ground watching, waiting , and trending so that operations did not stop for any unknown cause. We were expected to oversee any maintenance of building safety equipment and be at all pre-evolution meetings held on the maintenance of vital safety gear daily, and shiftly if those operations changed from shift to shift. We always had direct contact by radio to the Building Manager anytime day or night, as RFETS was 3 shift a day, 7 day a week operation and we were always on shift. If an STA wasn’t on shift, the building could operate, even at 0100 on Sunday morning. There was no work-around for us. We were a requirement for building operation. We toured the facility often and were constantly reminding people about the different OSHA rules and regulations that applied to their operation from our knowledge of the different CFR’s. We were constantly auditing the building and operator equipment for any sign of wear and noting when it had last been serviced, so we could cross-reference the data. We had regular daily meetings with upper management about the state of the building and the safety of its operations. We were trained to be up to date on air and water emissions standards, as well as the Life Safety Code, OSHA (24 & 40 hr), DOT (2-4hr), Radiological, Nuclear and Criticality Safety regulations. Although we were AGCIH qualified, we attended the same schools as Industrial Hygienists. We were SCBA, RCRA, CERCLA & CPR qualified. We had to know how to respond to any emergency the building could have and direct it to safe conclusion. In that light, we knew the Criticality Safety Operating Limits for each glove box in the facility. The MSDS manuals were kept within 5 feet of us. We monitored all changes to all building manuals and distributed notices of the changes, as well as trained others on those changes and what the changes meant to the building. Building 707 had 3 – 4” thick binders of MSDS’s. We worked with the training managers to make sure that everyone was trained to do the job they were doing and had the proper certificate to back it up. Before each pre-evolution brief we went to, we audited the training manual for who was and wasn’t qualified to do the various jobs that were being done that day by the building workers. We were not only Waste generators, but we had to qualified as RCRA Waste Generator Trainers, to make sure we knew the difference between one type of waste and another, as well as the requirements for packing and storing that waste. We were expected to audit drum storage and flammable storage on each shift. We had to know the threshold limits of the chemicals that might be used in a building operation, the NIOSH gear required to respond to any emergency, and the North American Emergency Response Guidebook was kept in our desk, for easy access. There were 6 of us on the team for our building , all engineers with a specialty, mine was electrical and I know the NEC well. We had to become general engineers, knowing enough about all disciplines to ask intelligent questions, in order to protect the building from an engineering standpoint. We were always reviewing drawing and procedures before they became operational, such that building did not have any false starts.
The Shift Technical Advisor position was a DOE mandated position, so the operating contractor had no choice in the matter of safety. The STA’s were literally written into the contracts between DOE and the various contractors. STA’s were not only required at RFETS, but at Nuclear Power Plants as well.

RFETS

RFETS (Rocky Flats Environmental Technology Site) was a DOE (Department of Energy) nuclear materials refining plant . We took classified nuclear materials from the DOE reactors at other plants and molded them into classified shapes. We always refined the materials to have the properties we wanted through chemical reactions .In that light RFETS was a chemical etching/ dipping plant, using highly reactive chemicals to achieve a desired result on the metals we wanted to refine. We took impure nuclear metals and refined them to a high quality of purity. We were one of the very few Beryllium Refining Plants in the world and I was on the team that made that process safe. RFETS used and stored major amounts of more than 15,000 highly reactive chemicals and metals, most of the time in artificial environments to ensure stability of the materials, consistent with the shelf life. RFETS was a nuclear metals foundry and a major machining plant capable of tolerances in the range of 1/10,000,000 of an inch. Most of the processes were in nitrogen/ argon glove boxes and had to be temperature and humidity controlled. Each process had to be separately vented and some processes were scrubbed and cooled before they could be vented. We lived and practiced time, distance and shielding at RFETS. Radiological / Chemical/ Environmental/ Human Worker Safety was / is a primary concern at RFETS. At the height of the cold war, RFETS employed about 10-12,000 workers, ½ of whom were engineers. It was a great place to work as long as you kept your wits about you. The pay was equivalent to the risk of working there. Many of the workers carried lung burdens of a radiological sort from previous fires at the plant. I was lucky enough not to be one of them as the fires were in the late 50’s and 60’s at the plant. Thank goodness we learned from those mistakes.