1

On the last day of the fifth Refuelling Outage at Sizewell B Nuclear Power Station, Kitchen Assistant, Ralph Singleton was controlling the floor of the Sizewell Social Club as if he was being paid to perform.

4

Origins Home AKA The Bass

Now, it obviously doesn't take any kind of genius, and least of all someone, who as a teenager, proudly owned a bright orange T-shirt bearing the words NUCLEAR POWER NO THANKS! to realise there are many, very good reasons to not even consider applying to work as a 'cleaner' in the nuclear business.

However, despite Marj pinning me into making an application, at that early stage, I really didn't feel I needed to worry about the reality of a nuclear job at all. I mean quite apart from my above average ability to avoid any sort of full time work, I had more than a few skeletons in my caravan that I felt certain would enable me to avoid such work with ease.

However until the vetting had been done and these skeletons found and aired, Marjory and the benefits office were unlikely to know that was the case, and in line with my Job Seekers Agreement, I would therefore have to apply for the job or risk loosing my unemployment benefits.

So, the day before the application deadline, as I drank tea and watched a Coal Tit dart too and from bird feeder 2 to bird feeder 3 on my bird feeding station McNuts, I thought seriously, though I was sure, abstractly, about whether there was anything positive about such a job.

5
Maybe

After two cups of strong and bitter Darjeeling and a good deal of starring into space, I was somewhat surprised to find several advantages to nuclear work.

The first was social.

Though for the most part, I'd loved the lazy, soliptic contemplation of living alone in a 28ft static caravan in the middle of nowhere like some kind of holy and profound idiot. If I was being completely honest, the practical and social aspects of a work free paradise at age 26 were beginning to prove trying.

My caravan, or The Bass, as I preferred to call it, didn't have an address. It was a two mile bike ride to the nearest shop, I had no land of my own, my phone only worked if I walked to the cliff edge, and all told, it felt highly likely, that unless I got out a bit more, I was in danger of ending up playing with myself for the next forty years without any hope of new human interaction.

At the very least, a job at Sizewell B would be an opportunity for both local social contact, and a good wedge of cash that would allow a move to somewhere a little more social. After all, 6 weeks of anything couldn't be that bad could it?

Whether it could or not, as I watched 2 female Chaffinches fighting for position with careless disregard for the Coal Tit, I realised I was getting carried away. You see regardless of what I, or Marj wanted, there was at least one particularly ugly skeleton in my past that should have barred my path to nuclear work full stop.

6
Lies


Now don't worry boss, I'm not now, neither have I ever have been a Terrorist of any kind. Indeed, it won't surprise anyone who's worked in, or been a subject of the media, to know that 90% of that article in the Standard was fabricated crap manipulated in a very underhand and suspicious way, or just plain made up on the editors desk. Indeed I've long been looking to get some sort of revenge on the shithead who wrote it - revenge which will be very sweet indeed.

What is true however, is that during the 4 years I spent indulging in direct action to stop various construction projects in the early 1990s, I was arrested 5 times, served with a High Court Injunction, together with a request for £1.4 million in damages, was monitored by private detectives employed by the government, and most pleasingly, successfully sued the police on two separate occasions for wrongful arrest, wrongful imprisonment and malicious prosecution.

The question therefore appeared to simply be, when would Sizewell's vetting procedures uncover this past and throw me right out of contention?

7

Well, initially this seemed to show up straight away - My application to be an Industrial Cleaner drew a complete blank - I didn't even get a 'thanks but no thanks' or a 'we're watching you environmental shitbag, who do you think you are?!?'

Marj wasn't however so easily dissuaded. Indeed, when I told her of this lack of news, she shot me a doubting and certain look and said she was sure they were always short of people for the Outages. Furthermore it was close to compulsory to work at Sizewell if you lived in the area for any period of time - Everyone had done it! And everyone should do it. It was like a kind of right of passage. Failing to qualify simply didn't add up...

Not wishing to get into a discussion about my past misdemeanours, I asked if there were any other good jobs available. Marj said there was a post at the famous Fish and Chip restaurant in Dunwich, but it wouldn't be very well paid - It was either that or I should apply for another post at Sizewell - after all, that was the only place where the good money was to be found in that corner of Suffolk.

Marj showed me the ads for positions as Security Guards and Kitchen Assistants. They were as intense as the cleaning job - 12 hour shifts, 5 days on, 1 day off, £400 take home a week - good hard jobs for good hard working folk.

Seeing no reason, or way not to apply for both, I filled out the forms, handed them to Marj in person, so she could be sure I wasn't lying about applying and waited.

8
Dear Paul


Around 3 weeks later I was invited for an interview for a job as a Kitchen Assistant.

Now frankly, this made no sense at all, I mean surely the kitchens were just as inside the fence as any other area of the station and therefore just as much a security risk as wandering around with a bin bag and a broom. However, whether it made sense or not, the longer the idea of working at Sizewell rumbled on, the more it began to appeal to me.

You see, I'm a curious bird and it struck me it could certainly be a very interesting experience to get inside a nuclear power station for a few weeks to see what the hell went on in there - It certainly beat serving up Fish and Chips to kids and old folks for 8 hours a day on Dunwich beach - And it could even prove educational..

The more I thought about it, the better it looked - Indeed, I got so into the idea, I began to feel annoyed that my past indiscretions on construction sites might get in the way of a successful application.

All told, I decided if I was to have any chance of getting the job, it was high time I got myself properly organised and tried a little harder to get something going on. And what better way to start that process than to take a close look at what was to eventually become my new employer.

9
The Suffolk Coast


I'd first noticed the rather gloomy presence of the 2 nuclear reactors at Sizewell Beach on the otherwise wild and bleak Suffolk coastline, the day I bought The Bass. Then, helped by the dramatic grey thunder skies, the distant complex looked frightening, but remote and distant, and since then, though I'd often noticed it hovering in the background when I birdwatched the RSPB's flagship Minsmere bird reserve, I'd not wasted any serious amount of time thinking about what went on there.

So, as I wandered towards the power stations, with the prospect of getting a job inside one of them beginning to feel like some kind of vague possibility, I set about catching up.

It didn't take much thought before my mind was flooded with questions:

Could their really nuclear explosions going on within 100 yards of picnicking tourists, singing Skylarks and nesting Kittiwake? Indeed if nuclear stations were so harmful, how come Sizewell sat right next door to the best bird reserve in the UK? Perhaps the whole nuclear thing didn't exist at all and was indeed some kind of elaborate con aimed at maintaining threat and power?!..
If they were real though, was it possible in a world governed by chance, that such a facility to ever be completely safe? I mean how could it be? Especially when a new breed of mass destruction terrorists had learnt to use planes as missiles??

10
A View

So, once up alongside the humming hulks, I checked my map and looked for quick answers.

From what I could make out, Sizewell A was the block of concrete on the far left. It resembled a bad piece of Young British Art, a stank multi storey car park and the South Bank Centre compressed into a block of ten storey dullness - It was like some kind of huge and horribly dull memorial to a long lost war, or a dead philanthropist.

Hiding such an ugly monstrosity, especially in countryside famed for it's natural beauty should have been impossible, but the superstructure of A, was almost invisible next to it's younger and more handsome brother Sizewell B.

In almost direct architectural contrast, B Station appeared to be comprised of a huge blue and white complex of buildings that together constituted a massive monument to clean modernity and new technology. They were like a huge humming montage of St Paul's Cathedral, a massive white golf ball and an inside out swimming pool.

11
Your mission, should you choose to accept.


Rather than providing any hard or fast answers, this up close viewing, provoked a chain reaction of new and more immediate questions, the most important of which concerned that joy bundle of a word with which we are all now more than familiar with: SECURITY.

You see, when I'd set out, I'd not expected to be able to get that close to the reactors at all, especially given it was less than 6 months since September 11th and the Sizewell complex was situated less than 80 miles north east of London - one of the capitals and main financial & power centres of the 'Axis of Good'. Indeed the absolute minimum I'd expected to find on site, was a heavily guarded fence to cordon the whole beach on the seaward side of the power stations from public access altogether - A fence that would be guarded by a small troop of nasty looking guards, minding one or two batteries of big guns for use on unwanted intruders.

But there was nothing at all except a rather weak looking fence…..

Realising the guards must be camouflaged as fence posts, gorse bushes or sand dunes, I got up right close to the fence and behaved as suspiciously as I thought would attract attention, without looking too lethal and deserving of any kind of heavy violence.

Still nothing….

Now, for someone who lived in a paper thin walled aluminium caravan less than 10 miles away this was troubling. I knew form my own practical experience that an unguarded 2 skin perimeter fence, running parallel to a public footpath, wasn't a serious obstacle to anyone with a political point, let alone a gang of serious young Arabs dressed in eternity suits, heaven bent on dirty bomb martyrdom.

Musing on what this meant, I walked the length of the fence, found the Sizewell T tea shop in the rather unfeasible tourists car park, ordered an Earl Grey and set about thinking through and around this rather troubling situation.

Around half an hour later, as I starred out at the white dome of Sizewell B as if it might dissolve, it suddenly occurred to me that contrary to Marjs suggestion that journalism didn't really exist in Suffolk, a serious and important journalistic challenge was in fact, unfolding right in front of me.

TERRORIST IN
NUCLEAR POWER
PLANT SHOCK!
Our man reports from inside Sizewell B

By complete accident and most bizarrely at the Job Centres behest, I'd stumbled upon a journalistic gem of a story right in my own backyard. It was the security scandal of the decade!!

All I had to do was get a job, get a security pass and I was made!!

With this wholesome purpose coursing my veins like heroin, I finished my tea, walked leisurely back home and set about training myself for the interview.

12
Interview practice at The Bass March 2002


So what would the panel of a nuclear powered interview want to hear?

It certainly wouldn't just be -
OK Paul, tell us a bit about yourself
Have you done any kitchen work before?
or
So what do you think YOU could bring to the job?

No, despite the seemingly lax outer security, things were certain to be very different when you were after your own security pass. At the very least there'd be a security questionnaire and a guard on the door who'd want to check bags and shoes for bombs. I'd then most likely have to undergo the toughest verbal examination since I'd been arrested in Wolverhampton, with confidential MOD contracts in my pockets. And if I got through that deal with a range of difficult questions about my mid-range criminal record, and requests as to why - being a former radical greenie - they should let me within in a square mile of Sizewell B for any other reason than as a human experiment into the effects of radiation poisoning.

To stand any chance of progressing, I'd have to be sharp and diligent and make sure I gave nothing away. I'd need to persuade them, I'd been young and misguided when young, since when I'd changed into a rounded human being, who believed environmentalists to be a dangerous threat to democracy and progress, and nuclear power to be the REAL solution to global warming and a good and safe wonder of the modern world!

13
If you consider things from another point of view

Regardless of spending 2 full days sternly lecturing the birds and the cheeky fat squirrel on McNuts about my suitability for the job, when I arrived at Leiston Job Centre to complete the interview, I was scared. Indeed, as I sat waiting to be seen, I felt it most likely I'd walked into a big and stupidly obvious trap. Perhaps I was paranoid, but I felt certain that within minutes of entering the room, I'd be lying prostrate on the floor with 4 ballaclavered nuclear police sitting heavily on my kidneys demanding to know who the fuck I was working for and what the hell I thought I was at?!?

I mean surely there was no way I could get away with an infiltration that was so obvious as this, especially when I was barely trying, and was looking and smelling like a fermented hippy??

14
ACTION

23 nervous minutes after pressing record on my minidisc and concealing it in my bag, Ruth, a portly warm woman with dark brown short, straight hair, a laboured walk and a certain aloofness, showed me into the stale box room upstairs. Ruth introduced Eleanor Davies and my interview began.

Eleanor, thin and greying around 40 with a complexion that suggested she spent too much time indoors, and a lot of her nuclear money on fags, nodded dryly, coughed professionally and started by suggesting a Refuelling Outage was like a car MOT. The one ahead was the fifth and after having previous time management problems, there was a new regime in operation that was guaranteed to complete the job in 30 days - Basically, it had to be done by then, or else it would run into the bank holiday, the Queens Golden Jubilee and the 2002 football World Cup.

Eleanor assured me the kitchen job would be an especially tough proposition. Around 1500 contractors were expected on the Sizewell site. At lunchtime we could expect to be serving anything up to, or over, 300 of them, breakfast the same, teatime probably around 100.

To accommodate such numbers, the kitchen would have to run 24 hours and we'd be split into 2, 12 hour shifts running from 7am to 7pm and 7pm to 7am. We'd work 5 out of every 6 days and the work would be monotonous and hard but basically easy to do - mostly food prep and lots of cleaning and washing up.

Eleanor and Ruth ran over the dates, detailed the format and purpose of the training week and suggested, if I didn't mind the long hours, the only catch with the whole affair could be the strict drink and drugs rules - Basically, anyone could be tested for both at random - If you were caught with a positive, you'd be sacked immediately.

When the talking was all done, Eleanor asked me if I had any questions.

Not quite sure of my luck and still a little nervous, I confidently assured Eleanor and Ruth, that none of what they'd said sounded like a problem. I told them I liked an occasional drink, but I'd never touched drugs, and could and would be happy to avoid both completely no problem at all! Anyway there surely wouldn't be time for drinking, or for that matter anything else after a gruelling 12 hour shift would there?!

We all laughed like old friends and after small talk, Eleanor said they'd let me know.

15
Cracking!


As I meandered back Basswards through the maze of lanes and bridleways of rural Suffolk, I reviewed the increasingly bizarre journalism/employment situation in my head, and decided that, taken all round, I was most definitely onto something.

Indeed, unless the solitude was getting to me and I was imagining everything, I'd just made what appeared to be a creditable attempt to penetrate the top level security of Sizewell B at the most delicate of times, whilst simultaneously looking and feeling like a ridiculous loner hippy from the woods.

For a brief moment, the day felt perfect - The sun was out, the gorse was in brilliant yellow flower, the birds were giving it some serious spring singing, and I was about to get a well paid job in the dark heart of the nuclear dream..

I felt victorious and great - In complete control and very, very important.

16
UP!


Then like a magic trick that goes wrong, everything changed. Indeed, by the time I arrived back home, my optimism and sense of achievement had morphed into another bad case of the fear - Suddenly, the whole thing felt like a farce, an imaginary step too far - a complete waste of time and a stupidly impossible mission.

You see the truth was that despite my best efforts, I'd never had one piece of my writing published in any sort of serious magazine, let alone completed anything close to a full journalistic investigation as ridiculous as penetrating a nuclear power station to find security flaws. Worse than this, I had no current media contacts or contracts. I wasn't even a properly trained or half decent writer for Christs sake, let alone a combat journalist, trained and ready for action on a journalistic and physical mission that would make the very best sweat bullets.

This professional fear was made worse by my realisation that for the previous 4 months, the most exciting events in my life had been things like the discovery of Snow Buntings on the shore, or a Ferruginous Duck on the scrapes. Advanced birdwatching was hardly good mental and physical preparation for 12 hour shifts in a nuclear dungeon was it? Yet, all of a sudden, I felt I was qualified to work in one of the most technologically abstract places in the country in order to report on its failings as if I was a noted and experienced professional at the peak of my powers.

Feeling too weak, strange and nervous to stay alone and rotate the moral, political and personal implications of such thoughts around my head like bad washing, I headed to London to mull the situation over in company.

17
Shit!

Two hours later, as my train chugged towards the big city, I felt a lot better. Indeed one of the theories I'd agreed to during my winter of solitude, recuperation and contemplation was that distance and space definitely helped one to deal with difficult situations - As long as you kept yourself distracted and didn't think too much.

Noticing my old friend, The Evening Standard on the seat opposite, I set about proving this theory further - I mean there could surely be very little more distant from my possible role in the realities of the nuclear Suffolk Coast than Londons evening newspaper could there??

18
The Evening Standard Page 16

19

20

7 Days Later

So that was apparently that?!

Unless the Standard was making things up again, and the letter dated April 1st was some kind of strange nuclear humour - Despite 5 arrests, countless environmental misdemeanours, and no permanent address - I was in! - I'd succeeded!! - I had a job, all be it a kitchen job, at Britain's newest Nuclear Power Station when it was in apparent danger of a meltdown....

The only question left was did I have the balls to go through with it??

Well, though, I had more reservations than a busy hotel in summer, scaring myself with new and stupid adventures was one of my main passions in life. Indeed one thing I'd discovered to be unquestionably true during those long winter months of solitude and contemplation, was I was a complete expert on making my own life unnecessarily hard.

Taking such a job was however a whole new level of stupidity, which could result in problems of either a nuclear or other kind - But even if some kind of a disaster was possible, it still wasn't likely, and one certainly couldn't go through life on What ifs?

Anyway, If one of my nearest neighbours was about to blow up, it was surely far better to be working in it and therefore die quickly, rather than to hear a distant, muffled bang, followed by the sight of the dome gently glowing like a nasty corrupt tulip as it puffed out a nasty cloud of viscous shit towards my general direction.

The bottom line was that regardless of anything else, I was done with solitude. I needed something to do and some people to see. Add onto this, the investigative quest, and there was no debate left to have. It might be a ridiculous mission too far, but unless I got there to find the whole thing was an elaborate April fool, I decided I was going to take the job, get the story, meet some people and see what happened next…

What did I have to loose??

NEXT CHAPTERS