Concrete coverups and others at nuclear construction site
“It is incredible what that crazy [supervisor] kept talking about. It was impossible to work with him, but he was responsible for building the reactor”, says Polish builder Zbignew Mulczynski, describing his foreman hired by the French construction company Bouygues.
Olkiluoto 3, Finland’s fifth commercial nuclear reactor, is in its sixth year of construction. The facility, which is being built under the supervision of the French company Areva, was supposed to have been churning out electricity for Finns already in 2009. Now cautious estimates are for a startup in late 2012, and even that might prove to be too optimistic.
A number of explanations have been put forward about why the schedule has not held. There were complaints of red tape. Areva was said to have started the construction work without sufficiently detailed blueprints. Subcontracting chains were said to be too complicated, and the job to do reportedly proved to be more challenging than usual.
“Some are saying that the sixth nuclear installation will be ready before the fifth”, says Kyösti Suokas, co-chairman of the Finnish Construction Union.
As a nuclear reactor is involved, safety is the top priority. Areva, and Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which commissioned the construction of the plant, have received numerous warnings from the Radiation and Nuclear Safety Authority (STUK) - the most recent in October 2009.
But what do the workers at Olkiluoto have to say about the quality of the work? After all, they are the ones building it.
Helsingin Sanomat was given access to the interviews of three Polish construction workers who had been at the Olkiluoto 3 building site.
The interviews, which were conducted on behalf of Greenpeace, took place in Poland. Two of the men used their own names, and three remained anonymous.
The men say that the truth is not the only thing that has been covered up in connection with the construction project.
“The inspectors of [the construction company] Bouygues ordered that obvious faults in the structure should be covered up in concrete”, said one of the Poles. “If there were big mistakes, they [the inspectors] noticed them, but these smaller ones were ignored.”
Jouni Silvennoinen, the head of TVO’s Olkiluoto 3 project, hears the claim for the first time. “It sounds like a rather serious charge. The inspections are planned in such a way that the faults would be noticed. The concrete reinforcements are inspected during the reinforcement work, and before the concrete is poured on.”
The Poles say that the welding of the support structure was sometimes left incomplete in the haste. “One truck of concrete came after another, and we poured it, even when the support structure was not ready. The concrete had to be poured because it was waiting”, says builder Andrzej Miciak.
The Poles also said that construction work did not have proper blueprints.
When was the most recent time that STUK has pointed out problems at the construction site, director Petteri Tiippana?
"In October we noted that welding work of the pipelines was not completely under control”, Tiippana says. “There are probably a number of reasons for the problems. First of all, there is very much welding. It is being done by different subcontractors, and there are many requirements in the welding of a nuclear plant which need to be known.”
Are there big differences in quality among the subcontractors?
“We have had to keep some of them under closer scrutiny.”
The Olkiluoto construction site is as colourful as the Moscow Circus. There have been more than 4,000 workers there, from nearly 60 different countries, who were recruited mainly through foreign temp agencies. There have been as many as 1,200 from Poland.
Language barriers are high. The Poles are especially critical of the Portuguese foremen working for the French company Bouygues. The Poles say that they are professionally incompetent, and literally illiterate.
“There was one [mid-ranking] supervisor who didn’t know how to write”, says one of the Poles. “I found that out when one of the men had his coveralls stolen. Usually a supervisor will write a note for the worker to get a new coverall from the supply storage area, but this guy didn’t know how to write one. I watched as he started to write like a first-grader. He looked at the columns and painstakingly placed letters in there.”
The Polish worker said that the supervisor left the office without managing to complete the form.
The Poles have an explanation for why the construction site at Olkiluoto is so dysfunctional. The most competent supervisors and builders from Eastern and Southern Europe do not bother to come all the way to Finland as guest workers. The people who come here are the ones who can’t find work closer to home.
“They [the Portuguese] only speak their own language, and know only the basic facts of their jobs”, says one of the Poles. “It is too big a construction site and too big a mess.”
Is the language barrier a real problem, Petteri Tiippana?
“This matter [complaints about the Portuguese supervisors and the language barrier] came out in the report in the autumn of 2008", Tiippana says. “It is clearly a challenge to get messages through to the employees and from the employees to the supervisors. It came out that because of the language barrier, some workers were not able to communicate their security concerns directly to their supervisor, for instance.”
TVO project director Silvennoinen admits that “things like this have been said”, but he feels that the claims are exaggerated.
“An employer would have no motivation to hire someone who does not understand what he is supposed to do”, Silvennoinen says. “A requirement for all supervisors at the construction site is that they speak English.”
So are the Poles lying when they talk about Portuguese supervisors who lack the needed language skills?
“If someone says that, I have no reason to doubt it”, Silvennoinen says. “Then there has had to be some other way [than a common language] to deal with the matter.”
Initially Olkiluoto 3 was supposed to cost about EUR 3 billion. Now estimates are that because of the confusion, the final price will rise to at least EUR 4.5 billion, and probably more. One expense that needs to be factored into the cost is that TVO is losing out on at least three years of nuclear electricity production, from 2009 to 2012. Who will bear the consequences for the delay, TVO or Areva?
"We have a difference of opinion on that with Areva, and it is currently in arbitration. The contract was for a fixed price, and we’re sticking to it”, Silvennoinen says.
Many builders also say that they have suffered financially. In September 2008 the Poles threatened the Irish company Rimec with a strike. In the middle of the Olkiluoto project, the company moved its papers to Cyprus.
Rimec had allegedly withheld more than a third of the pay of its employees, but had not explained where the money was going. There were also problems with holiday pay, health insurance, and health care. According to Kyösti Suokas of the Finnish Construction Union, the Poles would have wanted to get rid of Rimec. The strike was called off when a settlement was reached.
The Poles were still not satisfied. They said that Rimec charged EUR 24 hours for each hour that the workers under its employment worked, and paid them only EUR 8 an hour.
“We have not had any more problems with Rimec”, Suokas says. “We went through the pay sheets of all 800 Rimec employees.”
They were said to correspond to Finnish minimum wage requirements.
However, that is the best that Suokas can say about the building site. “There would be much that needs fixing. There’s constant confusion when thousands of employees come through foreign agencies. For instance, one subcontractor once failed to pay wages.”
Already by virtue of his position, Suokas is angered at the small proportion of Finns among the builders in Olkiluoto.
“Olkiluoto has been a complete disappointment for us. There have been fewer than 100 Finnish builders there. It is the view of our experts that huge amounts of cheap labour have been brought here from abroad to work inefficiently”, Suokas says.
The setbacks have not been met with despair from TVO, which is already planning its next nuclear reactor, Olkiluoto 4. Of course, the setbacks have come as a surprise to TVO as well, but much has been learned during the past six years.
“Discussing isolated events in the media might give the wrong impression about the building site”, TVO’s Silvennoinen says.
What kinds of isolated events? In October 2009 STUK noted that rules had not been followed in the welding of pipes in the cooling system, and in supervision. In May 2009 it demanded that the welding of the main cooling pipes be stopped and that a report be given of faults that were found. In July 2008 STUK noted that there were problems in the design of the plant’s automation. In 2007 the main circulation tubes had to be recast. In 2006 STUK found that porous concrete had been used for casting the base of the reactor building. In addition, STUK has called for further clarifications of the lack of drawings and the language barriers.
“The different groups initially had far too rosy a picture that this would be easy”, says Tiippana of STUK.
And who might these naive groups be?
“The suppliers, the client in Finland, and the public at large.”
TVO’s Jouni Silvennoinen does not feel that the people at TVO have been naive.
“I do not believe that on our side anyone would have imagined that this would be an easy project. We have many people who have had experiences in the construction of earlier reactors.”
What about the Polish builders? What kind of a taste did they get about the Olkiluoto construction site?
“I am happy that I left. I am at home now and I am working peacefully”, said Zbigniew Mulczynski in the interview.
“I would never go back there for any price. Really. Money is not the most important thing. The stress there was unbelievable.”
