Asbestos and Mesothelioma at TVA Shawnee Power Plant in Paducah, KY

In this episode, Paul Kelley from Satterley & Kelley explains how asbestos was used at TVA Shawnee Power Plant in Paducah, Kentucky, including in boilers, turbines, gaskets, piping, insulation, and powerhouse equipment. He discusses how construction workers, maintenance crews, millwrights, boilermakers, and other contractors may have been exposed and why people diagnosed with mesothelioma should quickly evaluate their legal options.

John Maher: Hi, I’m John Maher, and I’m here today with Paul Kelley. Paul is a partner with the Kentucky Personal Injury Law Firm, Satterley and Kelley, which has over 45 years of collective experience in litigating mesothelioma and asbestos claims. Today we’re talking about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure at the TVA Shawnee Power Plant in Paducah, Kentucky. Welcome, Paul.

Paul Kelley: Hey, John. How are you doing today?

John: I’m doing well. How are you?

Paul: Doing great. Thank you.

TVA Shawnee Power Plant and Its Purpose

John: Paul, tell us a little bit about the TVA Shawnee power plant and what the facility did.

Paul: So the Tennessee Valley Authority was a creature of the federal government, I think in the early 1930s. And we had, of course, a significant need for power in this country. And lots of times, some of our smaller, more rural communities had difficulty in getting all the power they needed. And so the TVA in this region and other kind of collectives like this popped up all over the place, but the TVA is one of the more significant ones.

And in the 1950s, it constructed this particular powerhouse, what we called either the Shawnee steam plant or the Shawnee fossil plant. At its core, it’s a powerhouse. And we’ve talked about powerhouses before, and its purpose was to create electricity for residents in the area. And that electricity was created.

This is a very simplistic description of it, but you’ve got a boiler that’s heated up, that creates steam. And the steam goes to the turbine and then the turbine to the generator. And the generator is what creates the electricity that turns on power in people’s homes and businesses.

And so this particular plant, I think they started construction in 1951. It had four units. And what we mean by a unit is a boiler, a turbine, and a generator, and then all of the accompanying equipment. And I believe that the first unit came on in 1953, and then there were three other units that all popped up between 54 and 56. And I believe that the Shawnee steam plant is still in operation today.

Asbestos in Boilers, Turbines, and Powerhouse Piping

John: So how is this company related to asbestos and mesothelioma claims?

Paul: Well, like all powerhouses, it was constructed with a lot of asbestos materials, both within the physical structure of the powerhouse and also a lot of the equipment that was used. The most significant would be the boilers and the turbines. These boilers and turbines, they generated an unbelievable and amazing amount of heat. And that heat needed to be retained for various reasons. It also needed to protect the integrity of the vessels and the materials that these boilers and turbines were made of and also utilized for protection so that people wouldn’t burn themselves on these materials.

All of the piping that’s connected with these boilers and turbines, they’re all insulated with asbestos. And these aren’t little plumbing pipes that you see underneath your sink at your house. These are substantial, very large diameter pipes, and they run miles all throughout these power plants. And just within each unit, there’s hundreds or thousands of feet of piping and materials that are connecting all the various pieces of equipment and then running throughout the facility.

And then you move on to the next unit and the next unit and the next unit. And so essentially you get a powerhouse that has boilers that are eight, 10, 12 stories tall. You have turbines that are 100 feet long, and then you’ve got miles and miles of piping.

The piping was connected with gaskets. Gaskets frequently contain asbestos. The vessels, tanks, things that held things that held hot water or hot chemical processes. Frequently, those would be insulated with asbestos. Sometimes the walls of the facility would be made of something called Transite. And so this particular plant, again, built in the 1950s, no different than any other powerhouse in America, or coal fired powerhouse in America, it was built with a lot of asbestos, and that asbestos was present in that facility for decades associated with the piping and all of this equipment that we’ve discussed.

How Shawnee Power Plant Workers Were Exposed to Asbestos

John: So how and when were the employees and other people who worked at the Shawnee Power Plant exposed to this asbestos?

Paul: So most people…well, a lot of people, were exposed during the construction phase. It takes hundreds of people to build a powerhouse, probably thousands of people. We actually have books. One of the cool things about an entity like the TVA is there are public books that you can actually go to a library if you’re a nerd and go look at the history of how that building is constructed. And so, we have some of those books, and I mean, it identifies insulators, electricians, carpenters, pipe fitters, millwright, sheet metal workers, wide variety of skilled trade that constructed each unit of the powerhouse.

And so insulators, and unfortunately, many of those folks were exposed to the pipe insulation, the refractory material on the boilers, the turbine insulation, pipe fitters exposed to gaskets. And so just during the initial construction phase, there would be a lot of people that were exposed during those processes.

Then you’ve got renovations that occurred. I mean, the most significant renovations were when they added additional units. So the first unit comes on, then they add more.

Exposure During Construction of Additional Units

John: So for those first four or five years, after it was constructed, you’re talking about constantly building a new unit. And so there’s always this constant construction going on for those first number of years.

Paul: Absolutely. And so what’s happening during the construction of units two, three, and four is they’re operating unit one. I mean, as soon as unit one was ready to go, it’s in operation. And while I’m confident that there was an effort to keep people from, who didn’t need to be involved in the construction, to keep them from having daily interaction with the construction of units two, three, and four, I mean, it’s happening. I mean, these units are not miles away from each other. They’re all pretty well bang, bang, bang, altogether.

So people who were involved in the construction of those subsequent units, they were certainly exposed to the new asbestos that was installed. People who were operating the existing units were also potentially exposed. They would have to walk into those areas for some reason. Sometimes it was hard to just contain the dust, so those folks would be exposed.

Certainly maintenance activities after all of the units come online, those people would be exposed. You’d have outside contractors that would come in. We represent a lot of millwrights. Millwrights had expertise in equipment repair. And one of the types of equipment that millwrights worked on were the turbines. And the turbines, again, they were covered in asbestos. It would either be asbestos blankets that could be removed fairly easily and put back on. So you take that blanket and you repair it and you put it back on when you’re done.

Sometimes it was something called block insulation that was applied to the turbine, and then they put muds and chicken wire and things that kept it there. That stuff, when that happened, it was a lot harder to remove and you really couldn’t put the same materials back on because it was effectively destroyed. And so all of that stuff, I mean, when you’re getting into the internal components of the turbine, you have to take everything off.

All the piping, there’s something that was called the crossover pipe. Again, it was a very significant diameter of pipe. I’m not the expert on it, so I won’t say how big it is, but I mean, you could put your arms around it. I mean, it would be so significant. That pipe was insulated with asbestos. And in order to access the pipe, in order to remove the pipe from the turbine so they could work on the turbine, they had to take all that insulation off.

Like anything, your car, your lawnmower, any type of equipment, a turbine is the same. Things wear out. Things have to be replaced from time to time. And so they would frequently have what we call overhauls where they would completely overhaul the turbine. And that usually happened over two to four years, maybe five years, depending on its use.

And so that’s when all the mill rights would come in and they’d tear it down. And so these turbines were not manufactured by TVA, they were manufactured by other companies that specialized in the design and construction of turbines, and they designed and constructed those turbines with requiring asbestos containing materials. And they required the piping that was connected to the turbines. And the piping connected the turbine to the boiler that we’ve discussed earlier. So a lot of the mill rights would be exposed in that way.

You also have electricians that work on these turbines. The electricians are not waiting for the mill rights to be done. They’re all working together and they would have a variety of crafts that would come in and try to do as much as they can. Sometimes they do them during shutdowns when the whole plant’s not in operation, but a powerhouse is not the kind of place where they just stop generating power. So you can shut down one or two units, but you would never shut down the entire facility because the residents of McCracken County and the surrounding areas, they needed power.

The same concept applied or situation applied with the boilers. The boilers every so often had to be essentially overhauled. And so boilermakers would come in and sometimes with other crafts and they would tear the boilers down, not the physical steel, but all the things that were inside the boilers. And there were tubes and piping that was insulated. There was the refractory, the fire brick material that was insulated. And so every so often, those crafts would come in and tear down and rebuild. And then of course, what came off had to come back on.

And at some point, probably starting in the mid 70s into the early 80s, at some point, the new [insulation] wasn’t asbestos anymore, and that’s good, but it took a long time for that to happen. So when somebody came in and did an overhaul in the 50s, 60s, early 70s, if it was asbestos that was on there, they were replacing it with new asbestos materials.

And so, over the years, we’ve pursued claims against the insulating companies that came in and installed new asbestos onto the piping and the boilers and the turbines associated with all that equipment. Frequently, there were other piping that was located in the facility that didn’t come off so often. So that stuff was dealt with on a more intermittent basis. So plant maintenance people may come into contact with it, outside contractors may come into contact with it. If there was a big problem with pipes that were way up in the rafters or off in the side of the facility, and so we would see outside millwrights, outside pipe fitters, outside insulators, they would come in and potentially be exposed to those kinds of materials, but it’s an ongoing process for many years.

And those powerhouses, they have to continue generating electricity and they couldn’t afford to come in and, “Well, let’s just scrap this boiler and this turbine and we’re going to start brand new.” That didn’t happen for many years. So they’re just refurbishing the old and then installing new asbestos for many years.

And then eventually asbestos became less prevalent. Manufacturers weren’t making asbestos thermal insulation anymore. And so then they would utilize different materials, but that was a 30 year process before that happened and you can still find asbestos in places like that even today.

Legal Steps After a Mesothelioma Diagnosis

John: So if you worked at the TVA Shawnee power plant in Paducah, and whether you were an employee or whether or not you were one of these contractors that came in and changed out the insulation on the turbines and things like that, now you have mesothelioma, what should you do? What are your next steps?

So from a legal standpoint, I think the hardest part is trying to figure out what to do, who can be held responsible for causing this cancer. Of course, people have a very significant disease that they have to deal with. Mesothelioma is a terminal cancer, and people are frequently in shock, as you would expect, when they’re diagnosed with this kind of cancer. And so everybody needs to work with their family and their medical team to determine the best course of treatment. And there’s a lot of stuff that’s a lot of treatments available today that wasn’t available 20 years ago, and that’s a good thing. But from a legal standpoint, we don’t have a lot of time in Kentucky to pursue a case. We only have a year from the date that we know or should know we have an injury, and know or should know what the cause of that injury is.

Frequently, we know it’s asbestos that caused it, but sometimes people don’t know where they were exposed or how they were exposed. And lots of times it’s hard to figure out who exposed you. And that’s where experienced lawyers come into play because we’ve, for example, have had the opportunity to litigate a number of cases out of that plant. And we, as I told you, I’ve literally had the book as to how that plant was constructed, who constructed it, when, at least during the initial construction, when things happen and there have been – I’m probably not exaggerating – there’s probably been hundreds of depositions that have occurred just from people who worked at that plant.

And so, it’s a good thing to be able to get with someone, get with an attorney who has had experience with it, but at the end of the day, you need to get with somebody that you feel most comfortable with, someone who is going to not just work for you, work hard for you, and somebody who doesn’t have to recreate the wheel every time and learn from scratch.

And that’s important because time is of an essence. And it’s not just important because of the statute of limitations, which is not great in Kentucky, but it’s important because the medical and scientific information available is that most people pass away within 6 months to 18 months of diagnosis of mesothelioma.

Fortunately, we’re seeing people live longer and longer, and that’s what we want, and that’s great, but we don’t know what’s going to happen with any particular client that comes our way. And so our goal is to figure out your exposure, figure out who we can sue, whether it’s the manufacturers of the turbines, or whether it’s an engineer, whether it’s a supplier, whether it’s an insulation company. So we have to figure those things out.

And it gets complicated, John, because unfortunately, a lot of companies are gone. Bankruptcies have been a big problem with companies that manufacture and sold asbestos, and so those things have to be figured out, and then a plan needs to be developed. Then we want to file your case, and we want to get it on file as quickly as possible.

And then when the case is filed, we want to be able to take our client’s deposition. A deposition can be a very frightening experience for a lot of people, but it’s a necessary part of what we do. And unfortunately, because the prognosis for most people with mesothelioma is not very good, we want to make sure that we can get all of the evidence into some form as to how you were exposed. The best source of how you were exposed is from you. I mean, we can get information from coworkers and other sources, but you are the best person to tell me, judge, jury, the lawyers for the defendants, how this happened to you, how you were exposed, how this cancer has affected you and your family.

And the longer that people wait to even decide whether they want to pursue something legally, sometimes it’s too late. And again, that doesn’t necessarily mean that there is no case, but it does have an impact, not just on the case, but it has an impact on the mental and emotional state of people with this cancer.

People want to be able to tell their story. They want to be able to tell how this cancer has impacted their life. They want to know that their family is going to be okay. And lots of times when the case doesn’t get far enough along before they get sick, before they pass away, before they can really meaningfully participate, then a lot of people are deeply impacted by not knowing that their spouse, their child are going to be taken care of.

So we want the best of both worlds for everybody. We want your medical care to be the best you can get, whether it’s here in Kentucky, outside Kentucky, we want what you and your family think is best, and we want the best possible medical outcome. And I always tell everybody to just fight, just keep hanging on. And you just never know what medical advancements are going to occur six months, a year, two years from now, that may really impact you.

But while you’re doing that, we also want for you to give yourself the best possible chance to have a successful outcome so that you and your family can have some meaningful compensation to assist you in this just horrifically difficult time in your life, and this horrifically difficult time for your family, even moving forward.

And we just can’t wait. And so my advice is, cancer comes, you get diagnosed, you might hear about us through this or some other way. You might read about mesothelioma, you might get a lot of information. You need to act. You should act and you should get with doctors and lawyers and advocates that you feel the very, very best about, because we’re going to spend a lot of time together and we want you to feel completely comfortable with us. We want you to feel completely comfortable with the process because more than likely it’s something that you’ve never been through before, and it’s difficult.

John: All right, well, that’s really great information, Paul. Thanks again for speaking with me today.

Paul: Thank you, John.

John: And for more information about mesothelioma and asbestos exposure, you can visit the law firm of Satterley and Kelley at satterleylaw.com or call 855-385-9532.