Alcohol was the culprit at Sequoyah in Tennessee and at Browns Ferry in Alabama. Failure in a “for-cause chemical test” was cited at the Harris nuclear power plant in North Carolina. The incident at Vermont Yankee did not indicate whether drugs or alcohol were involved, but indicated that the test was “for-cause,” which usually indicates that an employee’s impairment was apparent, and resulted in a Fitness for Duty screening.

Even the biggest apologists for nuclear power will have trouble wishing this one away.

The Norristown, Pennsylvania, Times-Herald reported yesterday:

An operator in the reactor control room of Exelon Nuclear’s Limerick Generating Station was found to be under the influence of alcohol in July, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

The operator, Roger T. Devlin, had his license revoked at Exelon’s request and he has not challenged the accusation, according to the NRC.

The incident occurred on July 14 and was discovered as the result of a random test as part of NRC’s “fitness for duty” requirements.

Here’s a link:
http://www.timesherald.com/article/20120926/NEWS01/120929674/nrc-limerick-nuclear-plant-operator-found-under-influence-of-alcohol

(Just a note on the above illustration: It’s from a gallery of Power Plant Trading Cards at:
http://www.industcards.com/
. I don’t make this stuff up, I just make fun of it.)

Some items from this week’s NRC Event Reports page:

1. On Tuesday afternoon, during an inspection of one of the diesel generators for Unit 1 of the Prairie Island nuclear power plant in Minnesota ”a small candle sized flame was identified at the exhaust manifold” of Diesel Generator 1. As per procedure, the fire in Generator 1 required the reactor to enter a Limiting Condition for Operations while technicians determine whether the fire resulted from a common cause failure that would also affect Generator 2. Apparently, that was a valid concern. “At 0312 CDT, the Shift Manager reported a small candle sized fire on the exhaust manifold for D2.” Both generators were then declared inoperable.

With both diesel generators out of service, Reactor 1 entered a Technical Specification shutdown. As of this morning’s Reactor Status Report, Unit 1 is now at 0 per cent output while Prairie Island’s operators try to figure out why both of its diesel generators caught fire. I have another question: With both generators literally on fire, why wasn’t the reactor scrammed (shut down immediately), rather than ramped down in a process that can take up to 36 hours?

2. As a counter-example, operators at the Point Beach nuclear power plant in Wisconson scrammed the Unit 1 reactor on Tuesday night in anticipation of a turbine trip after “noticing the turbine governor valves closing in response to an Electro-Hydraulic Control System signal.” Point Beach Unit 1 is apparently ramping back up this morning, as it is listed at 28 per cent output on this morning’s Reactor Status Report.

3. Thursday afternoon, Reactor 2 at the Sequoyah nuclear power plant in Tennessee experienced an automatic shutdown following a failure of one Reactor Coolant Pump. The unit is at 0 per cent output this morning, and investigation of the cause of the reactor pump failure is ongoing.

4. And the Waterford nuclear power plant in Louisiana reported that a licensed employee supervisor had a confirmed positive test for alcohol during a random Fitness for Duty screening this week. The supervisor will no longer be allowed to wander unescorted around the nuclear facility, staggering and shouting bizarre orders in a slurred voice….

Some incidents from this week’s NRC Event Reports page:

1. Unit 2 at the Arkansas Nuclear power plant shut down automatically from 100 per cent power Wednesday morning. The shutdown resulted from increased pressure in the Reactor Coolant System. According to this morning’s Reactor Status Report, the unit is back up to 31 per cent output.

2. The River Bend nuclear power plant in Louisiana sent a follow up report to the NRC this week, updating a December 2011 report concerning tritium in onsite test wells that exceeded EPA Safe Drinking Water standards. In the December incident, River Bend found tritium levels of 48,000 picocuries per liter, well over the EPA standard of 20,000 picocuries. The new results were staggering:

“On August 7, 2012, one of the six new groundwater monitoring wells installed near the monitoring well which yielded the positive results on December 20, 2011, produced a groundwater sample containing 432,733 picocuries per liter of tritium.”

Math’s not my strong suit, but isn’t that twenty times the EPA standard?

3. Yesterday morning, a non-licensed employee supervisor at the Quad Cities nuclear power plant in Illinois tested positive for alcohol in a Fitness for Duty test. This was a followup test after a previous incident involving that supervisor. The supervisor’s unescorted access to the facility has been terminated.

-Two nights ago, my boss was in town and took me and the other foreign teachers out to dinner at a Chinese porridge house that specialized in delicacies of the northern regions of the country. The waitresses wore filly aprons and plaid kerchiefs on their heads. We ordered a chicken porridge so that everyone would be comfortable, but I really wanted to try to the snake meat porridge. My boss told me that it tastes like chicken, but doesn’t everyone say that? I have to know for sure!

The other things we ordered:

Banana flavored “Indian bread” which was similar to naan, but not really the same thing. The banana was really delicious.

Frog and vegetable stir fry! The frogs were small and whole, a little chewy, a little bony, and very much like…I hate to say it…chicken.

Bao (stuffed and steamed dough balls or rolls) filled with lotus seed paste. These bao were made in a pig-shaped mold and complete with little black eyes and pink bows.

The restaurant also served fried duck tongue. I WILL come back to try it, along with the snake porridge.

-We’ve had some very stormy weather lately. It’s rains cats and dogs on a daily basis and lightning and thunder often accompany it. One morning last week, The sky actually got darker instead of lighter as the morning progressed. By 8AM, the sky was as black as night. The buildings lit up, the lamps in the school went on. It was insane. Shortly after, lightning struck down in the middle of the courtyard of the school!! TWICE!!! That’s roughly two hundred feet from my desk!!! The second strike was purple. I was very impressed.

-On Thursday, we had a fire drill in the kindergarten. The teachers were instructed to usher the kids downstairs into the courtyard to watch a fire demonstration conducted by one of the school bus drivers. The driver threw a bunch of leaves and sticks into barrels, poured gasoline all over them, and then ignited them. Turns out he had no idea what he was doing and lit his hair on fire. TWICE. His downfall was that he tried to light the torch on fire over the barrel full of highly flammable substances, but didn’t anticipate the enormity of the flame that would follow. The whole school was laughing at him. I think the kids thought it was a game. Needless to say, the driver wasn’t at all amused by his huge loss of face…and hair. I was irritated by a teacher who was directing her students to pose one at a time in the foreground of the flaming barrels with one hand making a peace sign and the other holding a washcloth to the face. Besides watching the driver make a fool out of himself during a fire-safety demonstration, I enjoyed the opportunity to use a fire extinguisher to put the fires out. I saluted the little Katie in me who was always tempted to take the fire extinguisher out of the case in the cafeteria of my elementary school. I was too afraid of getting in trouble to grab it, but man did I want to.

-Yesterday, one of the Chinese English teachers got drunk at work. It was an accident, of course. One of the parents of her students gave her a bottle of some spirit that is supposed to be good for women’s health. The teacher had been feeling ill and looking a little pale, and the gift was a nice gesture. The teacher rarely drinks, but she felt obligated to enjoy some of it in front of the parent, so she took a shot. After that she was cowering in the corner and complaining of dizziness. She started glowing bright red and the whole shebang.

-I’m finally getting used to seeing kids peeing (and pooping) in public. Right in front of the school is a popular spot. On several occasions, I’ve seen a mom pick up her child from school and drop his pants as soon as they get through the gate so that he can relieve himself. I saw a lady holding her toddler over a trashcan while he pooped in the Guangzhou metro station last month.

2. Yesterday, the Fort Calhoun nuclear power plant in Nebraska reported to the NRC that some of the elements of the reactor’s support system had failed a seismic qualification test. The parts, called snubbers, are designed to “allow thermal motion but restrain seismic motion.” According to the Event Report: “The snubbers were removed from the piping system and tested to determine their performance and if they would have moved to allow thermal growth. Six snubbers failed the test and were either in a locked condition or their movement was dimensionally small relative to the required movement.” Fort Calhoun’s sole reactor has been shut down since last April.

3. And the Kewaunee nuclear power plant in Wisconsin reported that a licensed operator failed a random Fitness of Duty screening yesterday evening. The operator tested positive for alcohol, and the individual’s access to the plant has been suspended.

I got my first taste of gin from my dad’s best friend and my adopted mammy, Mary. She drank either Woody’s or gin and slim when I was growing up. I remember thinking it was much nicer than beer and but not as nice as Woody’s.

Fast forward a few years and I’m being plied with drinks by over enthusiastic waiters and bar tenders at work events (I used to think they were on commission but then I realised that it’s customary to tip the bartender a dollar per drink, even if you’re at a catered event with an open bar — OOPS!). After five or six gin and tonics and nothing to line my stomach but teeny, tiny, posh food, I get a little tipsy. I know, hard to imagine, but I’d start to feel the effects in my just-a-touch-clumsy hands and I’d know that I was standing on the doorstep of ‘Disgraceland’ and dignity was just about to leave the building. At this point, it became a game of dodging the waiters, colleagues and PR people who would inevitably ask, “Hey, what are you drinking, let’s get another and talk about things with big words and even longer sentences!”

I decided that I needed to drink something nasty. Something that I could just about choke down, if you gave me an hour to do it. I needed something that would keep my drinking hand occupied but my handshake nice and manly and firm. (After all, nothing worse than when you get to the stage that screams, “HANDSHAKE! WHY CAN’T I JUST TOUCH YOU INSTEAD?”) I arrived upon my friend, Gin.

It’s kind of like going from friends, to friends with benefits, I imagine. It’s like seeing someone you’ve known for ages COMPLETELY NAKED. It’s like “Shit, I know all of this existed this entire time, but FUCK, I’M BLIND.”

That is what drinking gin straight it like.

So for a few months, I choked on. I drank my gin straight, each sip singeing away my tastebuds. A waiter or bartender would ask what I was drinking and I’d smile weakly and say, “Gin please, no ice.”

“Just gin?”

“Just gin.”

“Woaah! Alright, coming up.”

Even the people in charge of the gin knew this was stupid. Still, anytime after that, I’d be able to wave my clear liquid at them and say, “No thanks, still working on this.” I’d usually go back for another one later in the night, or if someone from the industry caught me unawares and asked me to talk to them about things with long names and even longer email addresses.

The thing is though, the drinking gin straight thing put hairs on my chest. Suddenly, I was able to drink my gin and not want to kill myself. Suddenly, I was looking forward to my gin, no ice, no tonic, no happiness. I started to notice that it didn’t *just* taste like nail polish remover, white spirits, paint thinner and death, it also kind of tasted pretty. Sort of like flowers and nice things. Girly things.

I won’t go as far as to say I’m a gin connoisseur, far from it. I basically know that Beefeater’s tastes like trash, Gordon’s and Cork Dry are pretty much average and Bombay Sapphire is the bomb. Now, a real gin expert might come along and tell me that Beefeater’s is the Moet of gin and I should be ashamed of myself for drinking Bombay but that’s what I know.

What I also know is that gin and tonics are kind of an old ladies drink. When I got really into them at home, people would squeal, “Gin and tonic!? AAAH, it’s like you’re my MOTHER!” “What are you, 90?! Pop a hip getting off the train, did you??” I embraced this. Sure, it might be an old lady drink, but you know what, old ladies are dignified! They don’t drink ‘Fat Frogs’ and Blue WKD! They drink GIN. A real drink. For GROWNUPS. And besides, what else was I supposed to do when the pub only had nasty gin that, honestly, even I couldn’t drink straight?

Then I moved to Canada. My first time ordering a drink here, I ordered a gin and tonic. The barman said, “Sure!” and my boyfriend said, “ALRIGHT! Panty Removers!!” Uhm, what?

Apparently while Irish people see gin as the drink of the terminally ill and basically dead, across Canada, it is the drink of the promiscuous and stupidly slutty. Men in bars ply women with gin and tonic so they can take them home, sex them up, and then never call them. It’s basically those fancy umbrella drinks without the fancy umbrellas, finesse, or coin that you’d have to drop to get a girl all “Sure, you can put it anywhere you want!”

Now, I am a faithful SPOKEN FOR woman, but if someone wants to send me drinks all night, I am not above smiling, accepting and then making a break for it when the bar tender informs me he’s coming this way. This has been done before. My friend and I racked up a €160 tab (and this included sending some drinks back!) and then ran for it when the bar tender told us ‘our friends’ would be joining us in thirty minutes when they got off work. This story is not as money-grubbing-shameless as it sounds. It is pretty shameless, but not MONEY-GRUBBING shameless. It is also a story for another day.

Bye bye blog! See you next week. :)

From the weekends submissions to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission:

Last Thursday, a contract supervisor at the Farley nuclear plant in Alabama allowed an obviously impaired employee to go home and sleep it off rather than having the employee undergo a for-cause Fitness for Duty screening. Both employees “had their unescorted access to the protected area terminated.” The Event Report does not indicate that any additional disciplinary action is forthcoming.

A contractor working as an employee supervisor at the Surry nuclear power plant in Virginia tested positive for alcohol yesterday afternoon, according to an NRC Event Report. The contractor had his badge pulled and his access to the site was terminated.

There are some non-standard elements to this Fitness for Duty report. Usually, these reports indicate that the individual involved had failed either a random or scheduled drug or alcohol screening, and that a followup test will be conductecd.

The way this report was written seems to indicate that the individual was either visibly impaired or smelled strongly of alcohol. The immediate termination of site access suggests that the incident was severe enough that the individual refused testing and tendered his resignation.

The report also indicates that the employee had reported for work but had not entered the plant’s protected area. This also suggests that he was obviously impaired at check-in.

Some years ago the company developed an all in one answer to the growing problem of drugs in the workplace, a subject that I have spoken on before. This programme uses the acronym SMAART © (Substance Misuse Awareness And Recognition Training) and I’d like to think that it is the only programme you need to answer the vexed question of what to do about a drug and alcohol policy, or a particularly difficult employee with drug or alcohol issues, but don’t know what to do about it.

SMAART© is split into three parts that can be used altogether as one holistic response to the problem, or broken down into it’s component parts and used in a bespoke fashion to suit your company’s specific situation.

• Business SMAART ©
• Concentrates on the needs to be addressed by management, unaware that they may have a problem
• Business SMAART provides a series of short workplace seminars aimed at senior and middle management providing an overview of the problem – a sort of ‘State of the Nation’ address.
• The seminars will also discuss such issues as how to deal with disruptive employees that may be under the influence, provides the right guidance on written D&A policies from the beginning to the end, including the provision of appropriate counselling and traditional drug and alcohol testing.
• Workplace SMAART©
• The programme concentrates on the subject of workplace impairment and would be delivered to workplace supervisors and managers with a responsibility for personnel
• Workplace SMAART identifies the problems surrounding impairment to work and develops a method of non-invasive Workplace Impairment Testing (WIT©) to identify employees who are unfit to work.
• W.I.T can be developed as an intermediate process before the need to go to the invasive process of saliva, urine, blood or hair testing.
• Observation SMAART©
• The implementation of a drug and alcohol policy will of course require an understanding of what to look for in the first place, so using a recognised and scientific approach to drug recognition techniques, a series of seminars will show the signs and symptoms of drug use and abuse.
• These seminars can be delivered to all employees, or just those managers and staff supervisors that need the appropriate knowledge. If they are trained as W.I.T. Practitioners, then this training in Drug Recognition is included in that training

We like to think that this SMAART programme is a one stop shop with an ability to provide you with all you need to make your company compliant.

So, consider getting SMAART with your company and call or email to arrange a consultation     08450 522 985.

admin@blueknightlearning.com

We drank WAY too much Champagne last night and had not nearly enough Chicken to counteract.

Who the fuck do I think I am, staying out til 1am on a school work night?!

In a recent conversation, I was reminded of an incident that I attended while still in ‘the job’. If I my memory serves me well, it was the weekend of the Grand Prix at Silverstone. I can’t remember the year, other than the fact that it wasn’t raining for a change.

I was sent to the scene of a road accident with my colleague just outside Silverstone village. This was of course before they built the dual carriageway and before some guy called ‘Bernie’ remarked that the British Grand Prix was nothing more than a village fete!

But I digress, having made our way through the maze of stationary traffic we arrived at what we would call a minor ‘damage only’ collision. Car 1 pulls out of junction, into path of car 2 and a collision occurs, as the report would read. Having spoken to both parties, we required a breath test from both drivers. The driver who caused the collision was fine and provided a negative breath test, but unfortunately the other driver provided a positive breath test. This was about 9 am in the morning and he was twice the legal limit. Needless to say he was taken to the police station where he provided another positive sample, and where he stayed until he was sober.

When he was asked how much he had had to drink he replied to the effect that he had been camping at Silverstone, ready for the GP. His family and friends had a barbeque on the previous night and everyone had been drinking all day and most of the night. He finished drinking around 4am before going to bed. He got up about 7.30/8am to find a store to get some supplies and feeling ‘fine’ he jumped in his car to forage for his bread and milk. The result of his actions meant that he missed the Grand Prix, lost his his driving licence, was given a heavy fine and a 12 month disqualification, and his £200 ticket for the race.

Why am I telling you all this. Well, the moral of this story is if you go out on ‘the razz’ the night before and have a skinfull, just because you feel fine the next morning, does not mean to say that you are fit to drive. Remember that the body disposes of alcohol at a rate of 15% or 1 unit per hour, thats half a pint of beer or a small glass of wine, or if you want to be scientific about it, 10 millilitres of pure alcohol. So the guy that I arrested having been drinking all day and not finishing till 4am, would never be under the limit by 8am. And it would be foolish for anyone to think that they would be capable of operating a motor vehicle safely after that short space of time.

Imagine then that this guy went to work in this state. What would you think? What if he worked in a safety critical organisation, or drove a fork lift truck for example. What would you think? If he ‘barfed’ all over your desk, what would you think? What if you had to increase your workload to cover for him while he sobered up. What would you think?

All I ask you to do is take responsibility for yourself and if you are working or intend to drive the following day think about how much you drink the night before, because the morning after the night before might just be an unexpected nightmare.

There is nothing worse than a fall-down drunk stripper.

At most jobs, you aren’t allowed to drink while you’re on the clock.  Hell, at my day job, I could very well be terminated if someone smelled tequila on my breath from the margarita I had with my gigantic burrito at lunch.  But stripping is another animal.  You can drink on the job if you choose.  Your customers can buy you drinks.  In a lot of clubs, this is actually encouraged, and I can understand why.  You, as a hot and sexy girl, are encouraging the customers to spend more money in the club.  An $8 beer counts.

Now, there’s usually a limit.  A lot of girls will be cut off by management after a particularly bad night.  I know a couple of girls at my club who either aren’t allowed to drink or have a 3 drink maximum per shift because they were out of control at some point.

I personally don’t often drink at work.  It doesn’t make me a better dancer, and the lower my inhibitions are, the more likely I am to push past boundaries and limits I have set for myself.  This goes for my everyday life as well as stripping.  I like to be very aware of my surroundings, particularly when I’m mostly naked in front of a room of sometimes rowdy and grabby men.  The bouncers are there to protect us, but they can’t always see everything.

However, if I have a full stomach, and a customer offers to buy me a drink, occasionally I’ll have a drink.  Or a shot of whiskey for the both of us.  To see if they can really hang.  You can tell a lot about a person by whether or not they can shoot whiskey, but that’s another blog for another day.  Personally, I would rather a customer tip well on stage or buy a private dance than buy me a drink.

But back to the topic at hang:

No one likes a fall-down drunk stripper.

Last night, a really talented dancer who can do amazing things with her ass and pretty impressive pole tricks was off her face.  It started so slowly that I didn’t even really see it happening.  I was sitting at a table with a couple and their single friend.  The single friend was looking concerned about his hat.  Earlier, this girl, K, had come by, sat on his lap, put his ball cap on her head and walked off.  He told me he’d tried to get it back a few minutes ago, but that she was kind of drunk and wouldn’t give it back to him.  The girl in the group asked me if I could possibly go get it for him.

“Huh uh,” I said with my eyes big, shaking my head.  “She’s been drinking, and she’s feisty right now.  I would like to keep all of my hair in my head tonight, thanks.”

Later on, I saw K in the dressing room, leg around another stripper, dry-humping her into the lockers.

Out on the floor, she was stumbling around, being held up by other girls and customers.  At one point she had lifted a female customer off of her feet.  As I was taking someone back for a private dance, she stood at the top of the stairs where you come out of the pit, looked at me very seriously and said, “Fuck you, fuck you, fuck.YOU.”  She was looking at me.  I was perplexed.  I had never really interacted with K before aside from, “Excuse me, gorgeous” as I slipped past her in a crowded dressing room.

I couldn’t believe none of the managers or bouncers had seen any of this.  Our little interaction actually really threw me off of my game.  I couldn’t get out of my head, trying to figure out what deep subconscious problem she must have with me that made her look at me and talk to me with so much venom.

When I was in the locker room later to freshen up, and she was in there with a few other girls.  She was in the middle of a drunken diatribe that went like this:

“I’m little, but I’m fucking sexy.  My pussy smells so good, you don’t even know.  Look at my titties, they look so good.  If ANYONE in here says ANYTHING to management, I will fucking [pounds fist on counter].  I will fucking beat your ass!  I fucking hate white people!!!!”

A black dancer had to remind her that she was white at that point.  Another girl was telling her to grab her stuff, get it together, and get the hell out of there before she got caught being ridiculous and telling us to ignore her.  They looked embarrassed, but I’m not sure why.  Maybe they were embarrassed for her.

I snuck past her, trying to get out of there before little pale fists started flying.  I try to stay out of the drama and the rumors and the high school aspect of the job.

It’s just not cute when you are that drunk.  I’ve found that most customers don’t like trying to interact with girls who are slurring their words and stumbling.  And you know?  It’s dangerous.  You’re up high on a stage, you’re wearing 5″ heels, you’re on a pole, you can fucking hurt yourself or someone else.

When I went back in there later, she was passed out on the floor in her street clothes.  Her boyfriend was on his way to come get her, I guess.

Good news, though.  The customer did eventually get his hat back.

~A~

Let’s see how long I can last before deleting it….

On a side note–why are these lyrics so bad? Basically it’s like the guy is singing “Feelings! Stuff that I feel! I feel something for you! I feel so much I’m singing about it! In a song! That you are listening to! Can you feel what I’m singing! Stuff! Yay!”

I may write some songs for these guys.

How To Get Drunk…

This is for all of you people who are simply just bored to death with the conventional way of drinking alcohol…

Impress friends… Be the talk of the town… Destroy your vagina?

The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given his job back as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos, which fired him for being intoxicated at work.

The firing was excessive because even though Cayo was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody, Fernando Calle, one of the justices, said on Wednesday.

Calle said the court would not revise its decision, despite complaints from the government.

“It’s not a good idea to relax rules at workplaces,” said Labor Minister Jorge Villasante.

Celso Becerra, the administrative chief of Chorrillos, a suburb of Lima, denounced the ruling.

“We’ve fired four workers for showing up drunk, and two of them were drivers,” he said. “How can we allow a drunk to work who might run somebody over?”

This is what the fuck I’m talking about!! Peru allows their citizens to live with more freedom than America. Do you know why? COMPULSORY ELECTIONS, people. We, too, can live the dream. All we need to do is force EVERYONE to vote.