the first timer Decon experience (Westinghouse, Duke Energy)

Mar 7 (edited) • The Lounge

I work at the Brunswick plant, 7 days a week, 12 hour shifts, so I'll touch on the major points.

After accepting the offer letter, a week or so later I received multiple emails with the same message containing my report date to King's Mountain in NC, where their training center is.

At King's, it was a full week of a large amount of computer based training, along with a few actual classroom trainings. A few people seemed to have trouble completing the computer trainings, but most finished quickly. During this time, they're also working on the final steps of your background check so they can issue you a Duke security badge to gain access to Brunswick. Once you've completed all training and you finally obtain your badge, you have to report to Brunswick early the next morning, a 5 hour drive.

The first day at the actual plant, you'll first report to a separate education center and go through some onboarding, before heading off to the actual plant with your fellow new arrivals. The education center assigned a veteran worker who's worked at Brunswick before to serve as a guide for me and the others to escort us to parking, and the various admin buildings we needed to go to for further plant checking in.

Eventually I reported to the RP/Decon building nicknamed the 'Spa' and checked in at the front desk. There's various departments for decon's and RP's to actually work in, and the front desk assigned me to the Drywell dept. There are other departments such as refuel, general purpose (BOB?), reactor.

Everyday I arrive by 6am to the Drywell briefing room for a morning safety brief and general info brief with my fellow Drywell decons and RP's, and afterwards head to our break room. If you're not working, you will generally always be expected to be in the break room and be available.

I usually head to breakfast after the morning brief. From what the veteran workers here tell me, Brunswick's cafeteria is actually considered to be the best of all the Duke Energy plants in the area (which are Brunswick, McGuire, Catawba, and Oconee). It serves typical breakfast food like scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, biscuits & gravy, hashbrowns. The default meal costs 8 bucks and change, but you can ask for extra eggs or whatever for increased cost. Lunch always has burgers and fries available, along with a rotating menu of healthier food such as grilled chicken with various vegetables.

My actual decon work is taking out the trash and mopping the floor of the namesake Drywell area, in a reactor building. You're exposed to more radiation in this dept than the other depts. This is done 3 times a day. You do need to be in decent physical shape, the Drywell is very warm, you WILL be drenched in sweat because you'll be wearing layers of protective gear, and the trashbags can be very heavy. Mopping is mopping. Not glamorous work, but we all knew Decon is a nuclear janitor going into this. Other than janitor work 3 times a day, you may be pulled on random errands. For example, I helped unload cargo from a semi truck this week. Otherwise, you are sitting in the break room and available for anything your leadership needs doing. Its here that you can take the opportunity to socialize with your fellow decons and RP's of your department, along with those of other depts. Take advantage of this to learn from their experience.

As mentioned, I work 7 days a week. Some other people in other depts are forced to only work 6 days, but in mine I'm able to work 7. You are assigned the same day off, every week, but in my case I am not forced to take it. Shifts are 12 hours, 6am to 6pm if day shift, vice versa for nights. I'm days.

From speaking with multiple senior RP's and decons here, Duke is considered to be quite good to work for. A few senior RP's in particular have emphasized to me that Duke is the best when it comes to career progression and gaining legitimate, solid experience in the industry. If you want to quickly progress, you should aim for Duke plants. They do concede that they pay lower than other places, but they are more reliable with providing work.

Pay is good, as I hoped. After tax, with my schedule, I earn around $2400 a week. Also, for my first paycheck, they did add $680 to it for travel pay, as I came from Florida. I always keep in mind that this is the lowest paying radiation job at the lowest paying company (Duke), and look forward to progressing my career.

Originally I was only scheduled to work Brunswick and McGuire. Last week, I sent an email to my recruiter and instantly received a reply from them (surprising) giving me Oconee as well. So if you take a look at the photo I attached, I'll be working all Spring outages except the light green time period. A decent amount of work that I'm glad to have received, and I look forward to seeing what McGuire and Oconee are like.

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