Going Nuclear Shoot
By Elizabeth Kanter, Associate Producer
A nuclear power plant is probably one of the most secure facilities in our country, and probably one of the most challenging places to film. Security is tighter than tight: machine guns, razor wire, and security cameras prevail. Health precautions and radiation monitoring are intense — a rigorous training program and tons of gadgets and checkpoints at nearly every turn assure safety. Rules and regulations are followed to a T. All this means that getting into and out of the plant, not to mention into and out of the radiological control zone, is no small task – even for daily workers.
But it’s a whole different story when a five-person film crew steps foot on the premises with 20-30 cases of gear, an assortment of film and still cameras and audio gear, not to mention a host who would gladly climb the tallest thing on the horizon. Every day for three weeks, we all signed in, got verified, and received a visitor’s pass. Cameraphones were left at the front desk — which meant that outside communication was virtually impossible. Anything “unusual” brought in and out of the facility (which was pretty much all of our gear) was itemized in advance and inspected by security. After picking up our radiation monitors, we could finally enter the rad zone and hopefully soon begin filming!
While on the premises, we always had to be in eyeshot of one of the amazing PPL Susquehanna public relations team (Joe Scopelliti & Nancy Bishop, without whom we could have never made this show – thanks guys!). There was usually only one of them and there were five of us — so if nature called, everyone went along for the journey. If that wasn’t bad enough, the bathrooms were outside of the radiation zone, meaning we all had to walk down several flights of stairs and go through a few sets of radiation detectors before we could hit the head. If anyone set off a radiation alarm on the way out, we were delayed even more. It wasn’t just what left your body that caused a big inconvenience for everyone, it was also what you put in….. Anything edible or potable (even just water) was not allowed in the radiation area, where we spent most of our time filming. These precautions are taken so that people don’t inadvertently ingest radioactive material. So we all tried to get used to mild dehydration and hunger pangs. Unfortunately, I was the member of the team with the smallest bladder!
To maximize maintenance and upgrade time during the plant’s outage, two 12-hr crews worked around the clock. But there was only one film crew! While we often live off caffeine, we do need sleep every few days….So producer Paul Sauer did an amazing job coordinating with both the day and the night teams to estimate when the various stages of work (lifts, etc.) were occurring. Every once in awhile they got way ahead of themselves or things got delayed. Since we kept the bulk of our film gear inside the plant right next to the area where the turbine was being swapped out, we usually had no problems catching all the right moments. But there were definitely close calls along the way, like the time when we were in position and rolling just as a major lift began.
We were knee deep in the shoot when we finally got permission for Riley, our cameraman Bryan Harvey, and Ron Remsky from PPL Safety Operation to climb to the top of one of the cooling towers. This was great news — and probably unprecedented access that was being granted to National Geographic. But filming outside meant that a ton of our gear had to pass out through radiation detection (assuring we weren’t tracking anything radioactive into a clean area) and then come back in again. When I say “ton of gear” what I really mean is — nearly every microphone, receiver, battery, videotape, filter, camera, lens, tripod, and roll of gaffers tape that we brought with us — not to mention all the appropriate climbing and safety gear! Just to get outside the building took almost three hours, and to get back in took another hour! We had to time it just right and cross our fingers that we wouldn’t miss any major action inside the plant. And of course weather was another factor out of our control. Sound tech Juan Rodriguez and I even did a little dance to bring out the sun! Maybe salsa wasn’t exactly the right choice, but it seemed to do the trick well enough. The skies weren’t totally blue, but at least the rain stopped enough for the guys to head to the top of the tower. Not only is Riley like a kid in a candy story when he’s climbing, but we also had an awesome bird’s eye view and a great day of filming!
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