ROUGE TECHNICIAN
Newport News
June 2009

NDT Inspector fakes report on nuclear submarine welds

Thousands of welds on US Navy nuclear submarines may need to be retested after an NDT Inspector was caught last month, signing off joints that he had not inspected.

A fellow inspector reported that the
technician has been initialling welds as OK, without actually bothering to
carry out any of the required MPI and DPI tests.

When questionedby his supervisor
the inspector admitted to falsifying
three weld inspections during his current shift

The nuclear submarine New Mexico, one of the
vessels supposedly inspected by the rouge technician. (Northrop Grumman)

The rouge inspector, who was subsequently fired by his employer Northrop Grumman had been working at the Newport News naval shipyard in Virginia. The shipyards welding database revealed that the inspector had worked at the yard for almost 4 years in which time he had either MPI or DPI tested more than 10,000 structural welding joints on at least eight submarines and an aircraft carrier.

Of the welds tested around 1,000 were either critical to the integrity of the submarines hull or involved other critical parts. The aircraft carrier and one nuclear submarine are already in service, whilst the the other six submarines are in various stages of construction. It is likely that much of the inspectors work, particularly on critical welds
will have to re inspected, although many of the welds are now unlikely to be accessible. Around 100 NDT inspectors work in the NDT department at the Newport News shipyard.