99205

I am happy to tell you, and all the honest CWIs out there, that Robert Raymond Ruks is not an AWS CWI, and never was.

Joe Kane

The article says nothing about many of the welds that are unlikely to be inspected and/or repaired becasue they are inaccessible now (as stated in the first newspaper release).

Newport News
ROUGE TECHNICIAN
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.

I do not see anywhere in the story where the guy was a CWI. A welding inspector, yes but not a CWI

I used to work for a Naval nuke contractor.  They had a case of a father and son team who falsified inspection records.  In that case they were second and third shift UT inspectors responsible for inspecting reactor core fuel assemblies.  Their malpractice was lazy malpractice.  They seldom if ever saw rejects because the work was so good.  So they came up with the brilliant idea of submitting the same good UT trace for all units inspected, and they did not test the other units and just goofed off on their shifts.  Well an auditor noticed that the traces were all the same.  Can you imagine the cost to do a recall inspection on a submarine reactor core once it is installed in a sub and deployed?  Those guys went to prison too.  After that they drilled and drilled and drilled the malpractice avoidance training into our heads.  At least an annual reminder training session was required with the reminder warning: 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.