Idaho Falls Page 17
What conclusions did the investigative committee draw from the short report? The members left no written record of their reactions to or thoughts on Miazga's investigation. But it's possible that they were simply fishing, casting nets to explore every possibility. At the time, they were only two weeks into their investigation; the technical team had yet to figure out how the reactor exploded, and the committee had just heard a lot of testimony that painted a picture of a reactor beset by mechanical problems and hands-off management. There were too many unknowns and too many suspects.
When the members of the investigation committee returned to Washington, DC, at the end of January 1961, a month-long silence followed. C. Wayne Bills, the head of the technical team probing the SL-1 explosion, says committee members were tight-lipped about what they were thinking, even after they learned that the explosion had occurred when Jack Byrnes was grasping the control rod.
“As far as I know, the investigating committee really shut up,” he says. “There wasn't much that leaked out under the tent. And there was Nelson and his sidekick, the guy who did most of the investigations for him. I think they found there was some kind of hanky-panky going on, but I didn't know even which way it was. I think that was probably substantiated a little bit by some of the people in the cadre. I don't know that they [the commission] had any details, but I think it was more than rumor.”
It was the persistence of rumors about “hanky-panky” that prompted Miazga to conduct a second round of interviews. In the summer of 1962—more than a year after the deaths—the AEC investigator was again dispatched to Idaho Falls to probe a little more deeply into the human dynamics at play between the men who had been working on the reactor when it exploded.
The report Miazga produced on July 25, 1962, implies ever so subtly that he was asking around about the rumor that Judy Legg and Jack Byrnes might have had some sort of relationship. In one paragraph, Miazga wrote about his interview with Sergeant Gordon Stolla, a chief operator at SL-1. Stolla recalled that Judy had been a stenographer at the Testing Station when she met Dick Legg. Obviously responding to a question posed by Miazga, Stolla's statement is paraphrased in the report as follows: “He said Miss Cole was respected by her fellow employees and he does not believe that any incidents took place which might cause friction among [SL-1] personnel.”
Miazga's use of Judy's maiden name may or may not be significant; it may imply that Judy was unmarried when the rumored liaison occurred. That sentence is the only reference in Miazga's two reports and in thousands of pages of documents about SL-1 that mentions Judy or possibly hints at a love triangle among the men and one of their wives. But the absence of official confirmation of the love triangle doesn't mean that others weren't convinced of its existence. When interviewed for a 1981 documentary about the SL-1 incident, Charles Luke, a senior scientist at the Testing Station, was asked about the possibility that the explosion was the result of a sexual tryst. Staring into the lens of the camera with a wry expression, Luke delivered a brief, inconclusive take on the love-triangle theory, but it was pointed all the same. “Direct evidence? No. Hearsay? Yes,” he said slowly and deliberately.
Another part of Miazga's second report was inspired by a tip about the bachelor party in May 1960 where, intoxicated with sex and alcohol, Jack Byrnes and Dick Legg ended the night swinging at each other. Somehow, word of the tawdry boys' night out had filtered to an army captain, and he had passed on the information to the AEC's investigation unit, which in turn notified the investigation panel. Miazga, from the kind of questions he asked, was undoubtedly instructed to probe the possibility that Byrnes and Legg held lingering grudges from their confrontation at the party.
Miazga's second report, like the first, was not released publicly or given to the victims' families. Obtained all these years later through the Freedom of Information Act, it bears the commonplace title “SL-1 Incident (Supplemental Report).” But there's nothing commonplace about it. It's the only evidence of what investigators meant when they issued their final statement two months later, suggesting that the nuclear catastrophe was the result of “malperformance.” Miazga's twenty-four-page report is written in the same style as the first: plodding and with no direct quotes from interviewees. His questioning seems to meander, and the report gives no sense of how hard he may have pushed the people he interviewed. But the report holds a reader's interest because of what it reveals—and what it doesn't; what it suggests—and what it doesn't; and what the commission ultimately knew—and what it didn't. If there were a treasure map for the mysterious saga of SL-1, Miazga's report would mark the spot. It may be the wellspring of all the rumors and speculation that have made the SL-1 explosion such a perplexing mystery.
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It is quite possible that the details in Miazga's report of the liquor-sodden bachelor party were the genesis of the love-triangle rumor. Participants recounted the night for the investigator: Jack Byrnes inviting Mitzi, the prostitute, to an after-hours party; Byrnes's indiscretion with the “woman of easy virtue,” as Miazga put it; and the drunken confrontation between Byrnes and Legg soon after. What the participants described wasn't love. But the whole sorry affair had three actors in it—the elements of a triangle. Perhaps over the years, as the details of the report leaked and then traveled from person to person, the sex and violence at the bachelor party morphed into something grander.
It is much harder to explain the presence—if barely perceptible—of Judy Legg in that same report. Something clearly prompted Miazga to question those who knew Jack about Judy. Years later, Miazga allegedly told at least one person, a Salt Lake City–based documentary maker, that there was some substance to the love-triangle rumor. But he didn't say what it was, and he may have been posturing. He may have conveyed sensitive information to his superiors verbally, leaving it out of the report. Or he may have known nothing at all about an extramarital relationship and was just poking around when he asked Stolla about Judy. Government records repositories contain no other memos or reports from Miazga that mention, even indirectly, a love affair in general or Judy Legg in particular. Leo Miazga died years ago and, according to a nephew who helped clean out the investigator's home after his death, no notes, letters, or documents were found that mentioned the reactor accident.
If Miazga's reports failed to shed light on the love-triangle rumors, they did provide fodder for those who suspected that a roiled heart, not a stable mind, was holding the SL-1's central control rod the night of the explosion. Remove any trace of indiscretion and there remains the possibility of suicide. And if the AEC investigators were looking for signs that psychological forces were at play, forces that would drive a man to such an extreme, Miazga's report gave them plenty. Interviews with more than a dozen reactor supervisors, coworkers, and neighbors painted a picture of two young men who seemed to be spinning out of control in the months leading up to the disaster.
The confirmed romp with Mitzi and other rumors about his love life may have said something about Byrnes's elastic take on his marriage vows. But of greater significance was the fight that ended the bachelor party: it gave a glimpse into the edgy interior worlds of Byrnes and Legg. Miazga's interviews with coworkers painted a picture of two impetuous hotheads who brought their anger to work. A string of supervisors described Byrnes as a lit firecracker, a guy with an internal rage that manifested in a flushed face, a fierce twitch in one eye, and airborne tools. He would arrive at work morose about personal problems or resentful that he hadn't been promoted to chief operator. Byrnes, witnesses said, made it clear he hated taking orders, disliked having to kowtow to military authority. He was argumentative with bosses, truculent even. He was a problem on the job, wanting to do things his way, even if he didn't have the experience to know what the right way was. He had an agenda, a schedule for advancement in the nuclear industry, and he made it no secret that it wasn't going as planned. Byrnes dreamed of getting out of the service, becoming a nuclear operator and eventually a supervisor at a nuclear pla
nt then in the early stages of planning in upstate New York. If he couldn't prove himself at a small test outfit like SL-1, that dream could quickly disintegrate.
Legg didn't fare much better in most of the supervisors' descriptions. He too had a temper that he found hard to keep under control; his startling challenge to fight a superior officer during a Christmas party was clear evidence of that. Some also cited a lax work ethic. Legg avoided performing required building checks, he had slept in his car while on shift, and he covered for a buddy who left the reactor to go to town. At least one manager believed that Legg carried around a “little man's” chip on his shoulder. Like Byrnes, Legg was pugnacious and chafed at military authority. He didn't think twice about using reactor equipment as props for his pranks and practical jokes, and he found the SL-1 reactor silo a ready ring for his impromptu wrestling matches with coworkers. To make matters worse, Legg arrived at work on January 3 with his future uncertain. He was scheduled to meet with his boss the next day—the one he had challenged to a fight—to learn if he was to be demoted or even transferred out of the reactor program altogether. It was a stressful situation for a man whose child was soon due.
Those interviewed were divided on whether the two men arrived on their dying day holding a grudge over the alcohol-fueled fight six months earlier. Some said they didn't think so. The two men's moods and spells appeared as shallow and fleeting as the creeks that ran in the desert during the spring. Others thought both men quite capable of harboring hard feelings. Legg had a talent for goading people. Byrnes had a penchant for acting out. But neither had ever talked publicly about what had led to the fight, and people couldn't remember if they had worked together after that night in May 1960. Miazga could not find consensus among the interviewees about the impact the fight might have had on the working relationship between the men on the night of the explosion.
However, there was unanimous agreement among the supervisors that both men knew they should never pull a control rod out too quickly or too far. It was common knowledge, the supervisors said, drilled into each and every trainee. But would the young men have known the consequences of breaking the rules? The supervisors said they weren't sure. Even they expressed amazement at the cataclysmic damage inside the silo after the central rod was pulled out too far. Most thought it would have created nothing more than an intense radiation field as neutrons in the core went crazy. Others thought a sudden rod withdrawal would take the reactor critical, destroying the reactor core. Most assumed the sudden increase in heated water would be vented through the system's cooling pipes. But an explosion like the one at SL-1? It seemed unlikely that the young, relatively inexperienced Byrnes and Legg would have foreseen the consequences of a pulled rod, especially since the severity of the explosion was attributed to the void in the reactor core created when the water level was dropped for maintenance two weeks earlier. But one man interviewed, a civilian worker and Jack's best friend, recalled a discussion the two had had back in the summer of 1960. They were talking over coffee about what they would do if they were manning an SL-1–type reactor up in the Arctic and the Russians attacked over the polar cap. Byrnes told his buddy he would destroy the reactor by pulling the central control rod.
But would either man have actually done it, actually yanked up on that critical control rod? Miazga asked those he interviewed. One sergeant said Byrnes just might have if goaded by Legg. On that January night, Legg could have pushed Byrnes too hard—made some crack—and in retaliation, Jack may have pulled the central rod in order to foul up the shift's work and make Legg look bad. Another sergeant said Byrnes was an inquisitive kid and might have yanked up the rod just to see what would happen, never imagining the consequences. The wife of another sergeant at the reactor thought that young Jack Byrnes was an impulsive guy: he drove too fast, lived too hard, did things without thinking. She thought it was possible that he pulled the rod on a whim. But she also speculated that, given his personal problems, he could have done it deliberately to take his own life. She didn't think Legg would have done so. He was cocky and conceited, and she said people like that would never do something that would harm themselves or lead to self-destruction.
Taken in its totality, Miazga's second report seemed a damning indictment of Jack Byrnes and, to a lesser degree, Dick Legg. But nothing about the whole sorry saga of SL-1 would prove simple and clear-cut, and Miazga's report was no different. Some of those interviewed said they had seen other, less volatile sides of the two men. In those accounts, the two didn't seem to be anything but what they were: two guys in their early and mid-twenties with a lot of testosterone, ambitions that exceeded their experience, and a zest for fun, whether it was pranks or skiing or going out drinking with the boys.
Jack Byrnes's best friend in Idaho, Robert Young, said he'd been camping, hunting, and skiing with Jack and had never witnessed the kind of temper described by reactor supervisors. He said Jack was a great guy to hang out with. Although Brynes sometimes expressed frustration with Arlene, he appeared to love his wife and his little boy. Young said Byrnes did dance with unaccompanied women when he went to clubs without Judy. But he said Byrnes, to his knowledge, didn't have a liaison with any of them—for the most prosaic of reasons: “The level of army pay does not permit any high living or extramarital affairs,” Miazga paraphrased Young as saying.
The same supervisors who damned Byrnes's unmilitary-like attitude conceded that he possessed above-average intelligence and seemed sincerely interested in mastering the operation of the reactor and getting ahead in the industry. He did good work on the things he was qualified to do; he just had to be left alone to do it his way. The same woman who said Byrnes was reckless also said he was charming and had always treated her politely. One sergeant mentioned Byrnes appearing to be under intense pressure on the last day of his life, but another said he spoke to Byrnes on shift change and he seemed fine. Miazga discovered Byrnes had taken out a life insurance policy on himself. But as it turned out, the purchase had been made six months before the accident, and the insurance agent had been forced to pay Byrnes a couple of visits before the soldier agreed to sign on. And the payout was a paltry $2,240, double if Jack died accidentally. The premium was $5 a month.
The same sort of conflicting character evidence clouded the investigation of Dick Legg. Like Byrnes, he sometimes had an attitude at work, superiors said. Furthermore, he obviously had exercised poor judgment in covering for his friend who wanted to take the day off, as well as in some of the pranks he pulled. But otherwise, they said, Legg seemed competent. One supervisor, in fact, said Legg had a reputation for pushing his crew to do the work right and on time. As for Legg's personal life, Homer Clary, the part-time worker at the Texaco station, said he had had dinner with Dick and Judy during the Christmas holidays and they seemed happy. He and Dick chatted about archery. Legg struck Clary as a good guy. Another supervisor said that on the day of the explosion, Legg didn't seem troubled and didn't mention his meeting the next day with the sergeant he'd challenged to fight. In fact, they chatted a bit about Judy and how she was thrilled to be having the couple's first child in the coming month. Miazga's report did not mention Dick and Judy's private affairs. He either found nothing worth reporting or he conveyed sensitive information verbally to superiors, leaving it out of the report.
What did the investigation committee make of Miazga's second round of questioning? Were Byrnes and Legg loose cannons? Or were they simply high-spirited enlisted men with typical problems? Committee members left no written records of their deliberations. But by the time they received Miazga's final report, they had the autopsy findings as well as the conclusions from the technical committee. They believed the major findings in both: the reactor exploded because a crewman had withdrawn the central control rod too far, and Jack Byrnes was on the central control rod when the reactor blew. If technical problems such as a sticking control rod or the loss of boron in the core were ruled out, only a narrow number of possible scenarios were left.
O
ne: It was simply an accident. Maybe Jack Byrnes was daydreaming on the reactor top or preoccupied with his troubles, and he simply raised the rod without thinking. Byrnes had often seen control rods pulled out a couple feet when the reactor was up and running. Maybe he acted on that memory rather than his bosses' warnings about raising the central rod too high when the reactor was shut down. The only drawback to that explanation? Byrnes had to raise the rod only a quarter of an inch for Dick Legg to remove the C-clamp.
Two: Dick Legg really did playfully grab Jack Byrnes at the wrong time. Jack would have been in a vulnerable position as Legg crouched down to remove the C-clamp. And everyone knew Dick liked a good goose. It was still a remote possibility, even though the technical team hadn't been able to get volunteers to jump high enough and withdraw the central control too far with their mock goosing.
Three: Dick Legg said something that infuriated Jack Byrnes. Legg may have known that Byrnes had left his wife and might have overheard the emotional phone call between Jack and Arlene earlier that evening. Perhaps he said something malicious, connecting the breakup with Jack's indiscretion with Mitzi. He could even have made a crack about Jack's performance during that indiscretion. Legg could be quick with his tongue, but would he have been that cruel?