The Navy Nuke checkout process

Image of Qualification Card

We all remember the checkout process as we went through the nuclear pipeline. The idea was as you picked up more plant knowledge you would acquire enough signatures on your qualification card to allow you qualify your watch station.

A qualified watch stander would ask you bunch of questions about the subject you were trying to get the signed off. A question or two might be relevant while the others could be classified as useless.

After enough questions you would be asked something which you did not know the answer to.  This resulted in a look-up meaning you would find out the answer and get back to the person who gave you a look-up. After providing your response and a few more iterations with look-ups to additional items (if you didn’t get tossed out) you left with the “John Hancock” on your qualification card and headed for the next checkout.

The entire point of training is to prepare you to do your job which is being a qualified watch-stander prepared to keep the plant in a safe condition during normal operation and in the event of any possible casualties.  Keeping this goal in mind might there be a better a way to prepare someone to do that?  

The checkout proves you can look-up answers to questions you did not remember at the time of your checkout but why not just give the information I needed for a watch-stander to do his/her job.

Any nuke will tell you there is not any lack of things you need to keep mind in order to qualify and stand the watch on your own.

Photo courtesy of flickr.com 

“I Had it, You Got It”

   

Duty section  watchstanders logs

 Any nuke will tell you how we were trained to relieve a watch. For starters, like you learned in nuke school you let the oncoming watch stander know what is going on with the plant and what he will need to do during his watch before signing over the logs to your relief. Then there are watch section turnovers which occur once you arrive at the fleet. In my time, the simplest turnover I have heard included the six words, “I had it, you got it”. 

     I remember one instance during deployment when the watch stander scheduled to relieve me at 8:00 A.M. arrived in no condition to relieve the watch due to his clear inebriation. I am a firm believer of looking out for your buddies but, on the other hand, you are now day after duty and you would like some liberty.

     On another occasion I went aft to relive the SRO who. To my surprise, I came across a set of logs lying on the deck after I opened the watertight door giving me access to the engine room. Surely these were the shutdown rover logs. To my shock these were the SRO logs and I happened to be a long way from the maneuvering area.  I arrived at the horseshoe with trepidation as to what I would find; fortunately the plant seemed stable even though the pressurizer light happened to be on as if the pressurizer heater button needed for some attention. 

     I remember another instance where I had been summoned to relieve the watch. As I walked through berthing I noticed a set of signed logs lying on the lump of blankets under which some unidentified crew member slept peacefully. Was this person signed into the watch? I have learned during my time as a nuke on occasions you should not ask questions you do not want the answers to. In any case, I figured the guy on watch who I needed to relieve would want to get to the rack so I did not gave the question another thought.

     What are your stories?  - What are some of the most interesting “turnovers” you conducted in your time as a nuke?

Written nuclear qualification exams, a question of Integrity

Student cheating on test

I remember the moment as if it had occurred yesterday.  I had entered Nuclear Field A school as an ET after completing Boot Camp in May of 1995 and as we were about be processed EMC Paul Spracklin (at the time) addressed our group and the question he recommended we ask ourselves as we embarked on our training to become nukes was, “What are you going to do when no one I looking?”

                

           This quote came to mind when I read the Navy had discovered a cheating ring aboard one of its submarines, resulting in the firing of its commanding officer.

            

          A former officer wrote in a book published last year his superiors urged him to accept an answer key to pass a nuclear qualification exam. He said crew members received answers by email, and the submarines leadership ignored him when he complained about cheating.

        

       Chief Sparklin’s statement did not mean a lot to me at the time but during my career as a nuke I recalled instances where you had to make a call of doing the “right” thing with no one in khakis breathing down your neck making sure you did. 

                

       I remember an issue with an out of specification on our Power Plant Indicator (PPI’s) which if the Engineering Duty Officer had been notified RC division would be tasked to troubleshoot on the last night of liberty before a long underway. What call did I make? What do you think I did?

      

        In the case of the U.S.S. Memphis, the largest surprise is large numbers of the khaki’s involved in such a massive deviation of the integrity EMC Spracklin spoke to us on that morning in May 1995. On my boat I would have found it difficult to believe such deception would be pervasive at such high level. The officers and chiefs in our engineering department followed our Reactor Plant Manuals even when what they said made absolutely no sense. Did they not think someone would find out sooner or later? Then again I left the nuclear Navy in 2000. Could the nuclear Navy have changed so much since I left?  

Now the question I’d like to close with is,” How is the nuclear navy going to reestablish its integrity with everyone is looking? Hint: there is no answer key on this test.