Glowboy

In nuclear plants, robots toil for hours at a time in highly radioactive areas in place of hundreds of employees, called jumpers or glowboys, who worked in short relays so as to minimize their exposure.

Across the United States, thousands of employees function daily in and around nuclear reactors. An estimated 5,000 unskilled workers are hired by the industry each year as 'jumpers' or 'glowboys' to repair steam-turbine generators.

A key question to this study is whether the temporary employees are getting assigned the dirty work. It has been alleged that temps are used as glowboys or radiation sponges.