The Defect by Jeff Bailey is Based on True Events

MH-1A, Gatun Lake

I have a lot of fun with my story lines. I base all of my stories on real events in the history of nuclear technologies. The Defect is based on real events at Watts Bar NPS and Three Mile Island NPS. At WattsBar, a gunman, wearing a hooded coat, fired several shots at a security guard. He missed the guard but managed to hit the guard’s truck. News articles says that the gunman escaped in a boat. When I worked at the MH-1A Army NPS on Lake Gatun in the Panama Canal Zone, we had tell local fishermen that they weren’t allowed to fish inside the marked area on several occasions.

Three Mile Island, NPS

At Three Mile Island, the reactor eventually melted down from a loss of reactor coolant. Two things contributed to the loss of coolant: a defect air solenoid valve and operator error. Compare the news release in The Defect with the Wikipedia page.

These things can and do happen. Because I was in the industry for so long, I know that they happen more frequently than the average person realizes. That’s what makes these stories interesting for me. I wrote several of the operating and power plant scenes in The Defect from my own experiences as an operator, especially in the control room. I don’t have documentation to support the stories, so all I can do is claim that they are fiction.

In my current project, I’m a Marine, the story takes place at the weapons maintenance at Fort Sill, OK. As a nuclear weapons maintenance technician, I was stationed at the maintenance facility at Ft. Sill. I went in and out of the Ft. Sill back gate on many occasions. My friends and I spent many days of relaxed recreation on Lake Lawtonka. The main character, I’m a Marine is a personification of my oldest granddaughter, Corporal Kalli Bailey, who is a Marine Corp. Aviation Firefighter.

Lake Lawtonka

Cassie.

The Chilcoat Project is based on an actual theft of nuclear weapons secrets (obsolete and inconsequential secrets) from a national research facility in New Mexico by a Chinese exchange researcher using the onsite email system. I also used my seventeen years as a researcher scientist at a national laboratory as story fodder in the laboratory descriptions and scenes.

Wine Country takes place in Pacific Northwest Wine Country. I live in the middle of that wine country. The Hanford Nuclear Reservation and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory are two of largest employers in the area. My second granddaughter, who is a medical technician, was the inspiration for the character, Abby. Yes, we avid NCIS fans. The story is based on a real news account of ‘The Radioactive Boyscout’ who lived in Michigan. He accumulated so much radioactive material from legal, but minuscule, sources that the government had to condemn his family’s home and make it a Super Fund clean-up site. Blend the stories together, move them to the Pacific Northwest, add a measure of fiction and I have, what I feel, is good story.