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EDITORIAL and J0E AND DOE A slight oversight at CY<
Near-accident at Connecticut Yankee, lack of a backup < safety system for 1
years, leaves residents feeling outraged <
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< by MAURA CASEY<
Editorial writer, New London Day <
If there is a Patron Saint of Nuclear Power, he must be especially protec'.ive i
of southeastern Connecticut.<
This area has had more near-misses than a doe during hunting season. And we're not glowing yet, no thanks to Northeast Utilities and the manner in i
which it has managed its four Connecticut nuclear power plants.<
Company officials recently revealed two spectacular instances of sloppiness, lack of adherence to regulations and neglect that could have threatened the safety of those who live around the Connecticut Yankee Nuclear Power Plant in Haddam Neck. Although several months ago NU voluntarily shut down the plant for evaluation and Connecticut Yankee has not reopened, it is in the complex nature of nuclear power that things can go wrong even when a 2
plant is not generating electricity.<
What has thus far distinguished Connecticut Yankee from Millstone Station's three nuclear plants is that it isn't on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's watch list. Connecticut Yankee is also one of the country's i
oldest operating plants, and Northeast Utilities said Wednesday it does not make economic sense to keep the plant open. Recent revelations haven't hel ped.<
Over the Labor Day weekend, a series of errors occurred at Connecticut Yankee that allowed a nitrogen gas bubble to form in the reactor vessel that holds the nuclear core. The nitrogen had forced out 15 percent of the water that cools the core when the presence of the gas was finally detected. If the problem had not been discovered in time, the core could have been damaged and radiation released.
The other problem, just revealed, is that Connecticut Yankee has been operating for years without an emergency-backup safety system. For decades, company executives assured area residents that if some terrible incident caused a loss of water that cools the nuclear core, systems existed to replace the water and prevent a meltdown.<
That was a lie. It was a lie because the safety system was blocked by sludge, mop heads, nuts, bolts, and other assorted junk _ enough to fill five 55-gallon drums all of which would have rendered the system inoperable. The system got clogged for the simplest of reasons. A grate had openings too large to prevent trash from spilling through. The mesh covers a sump from which water would be recirculated in the event of an accident.
In balancing these latest revelations, it is clear that the lack of a backup safety system is by far the more serious of the two. NU must have ignored NRC notifications sent out over a dozen years that large openings in the grates could create major problems. But NU's own experience should have alerted the company that the mesh covering the sump was inadequate.
The area was cleaned in 1975, seven years after the plant opened, and enough junk was removed to fill SIX 55-gallon drums.<
It is illustrative that the capital projects budget for Connecticut 9612130016 961210 PDR ORG NRRA PDR
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@pped from $29.5 m111 h kyggr fgqlQ SQ4 to 1989 to $6.6 million a a
pe early 1990s when top NU management cut the budget, according to a 4etter from the NRC. Even if management cared enough to make sure that t
%mergency core cooling system could function, the budget cuts made it less likely that needed changes would have been made.
In these latest problems are echoes of others that have troubled NU's management of its nuclear plants the lack of adherance to rules, arrogance and the attitude that no accident could happen because the company was simply too good for such an unthinkable thing to occur.<
What is different is the company's reac/-tion, through its new CE6, Bruce Kenyon. Mr. Kenyon met with the NRC at a public meeting to discuss the latest disclosures. He didn't send a lower-level munchkin to take the heat. He went himself. That's good leadership. It sends a message that Mr.
Kenyon is willing to take responsibility for a problem and fix it. The example he sets is exactly what NU needs.
Meantime, NU problems are getting nationwide attention. They were the subject of a lead, front-page story in The Wall Street Journal on Monday, and the target of a front-page, three-part series in The Boston Globe last week.
Members of the Board of Trustees are having doubts that Bernard M.
Fox, NU chairman of the board, is the right man to lead NU, The Wall Street Journal article said.
The board members must be slow learners. It shouldn't take a meltdown for members to begin to reconsider their allegiance to the man who has brought the company to this sorry place in its history.
Y0, DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY (DOE) - THREE STRIKES, YOU'RE OUT!
1 AN OPEN LETTER TO DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY SECRETARY HAZEL R. O' LEARY FROM JOSEH P. CARSON, P.E., WHO HAS " PREVAILED" TWICE IN TWO WHISTLEBLOWER REPRISAL APPEALS TO THE US MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION J
BOARD (MSPB) - WAS ANYTHING DONE7 NO, NOW DOE HAS THREATENED TO REMOVE HIS SECURITY CLEARANCE.*
- (MSPB Docket Nos. SL-1221-94-0179-W-1; AT-1221-95-1197-W-1; and AT-1221-96-0948-W-1. DOE has now paid over $50,000 for Mr.
Carson's attorney fees)
Dear Secretary O' Leary,
)
On January 2,1990, I took an oath of allegiance to the US Government on becoming an employee of the US Department of Energy (DOE). All my actions as a DOE employee are and have been rooted in my desire to faithfully serve with integrity, honoring my oath and with the " Code of Ethics of Government Service" by 1) obeying the law, 2) obeying Agency regulation, 3) telling the truth, and
- 4) doing my job efficiently.
In December 1991, I voiced concerns about wasteful and abusive practices in the use of support service contractors in my program, the Office of Environment, Safety, and Health (EH)
Residents. These individuals were being used for the purposes described in DOE Order 3304.1, " Employment of Experts and Consultants," but in ways that clearly violated the DOE Order.
j When I voiced my concerns, I was unaware that DOE's annual budget for j
support service contractors had risen from 50 million dollars in 1985 to I
almost 800 million dollars in 1991. Unwittingly, I had voiced concerns about something that had become a huge " slush fund" that DOE managers could direct to their close personal friends and previous colleagues.
You have testified i
to Congress on several occasions about the " lack of discipline" you found as Secretary in the DOE's use of support service contractors.
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sal for my voicTng c g g m our and a half years.
In aged in an eansing" campaign against me or over
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ng it, I have incurred costs of over $30,000, have spent over 3000 rg of personal time, and have possibly ruined my 20 year career in nuclear power.
However, Secretary O' Leary, the cost of DOE's whistleblower reprisal campaign against me has quite plausibly been much higher to other DOE and DOE contractor employees who have or will pay with their lives in resulting additional workplace fatalities.
As you know, DOE is self-regulating in nuclear safety and worker safety.
Neither the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) nor the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has jurisdiction in DOE l
facilities.
I'm one of DOE's few field-based
" independent" internal nuclear and worker safety assessors, assigned to the DOE's Office of Environment, Safety, and Health (EH).
I'm the last line of defense in DOE for worker, facility, and public safety, no one in DOE looks over my shoulder.
As an essential part of the whistleblower reprisal campaign against me, management officials in the Office of Assistant Secretary of Environment, Safety, and Health suppressed knowledge from DOE line management of numerous valid and significant safety deficiencies that I had independently identified and documented.
This was done in order to justify the fraudulent " unacceptable" performance rating I received from those officials.
How can DOE line management be responsible for safety when knowledge of independently identified safety deficiencies is withheld from it?
i I consider the actions of the EH officials involved to be treacherous.
They betrayed their oaths of allegiance and advanced their whistleblower reprisal campaign against me by allowing DOE facilities, DOE workers, and the public near DOE sites to remain at increased risk.
I was present in November 1993 when you pledged "zero to'erance for whistleblower reprisal in DOE."
It's nice rhetoric, 1
Secretary O' Leary, but my reality is that DOE still has "zero tolerance for whi stleblowers. " The most dismal thing about this situation is the counsel of despair I would offer, based on my experietce and that of many other DOE whistleblowers, to any colleague in DOE who was considering voicing a reasonably evidenced concern "look the other way, if you can live with yoursel f. "
It is that dismal in DOE, Secretary O' Leary, your rhetoric and good intentions notwithstanding.
It has to change.
I have three reports to make:
- 1) to my fellow citizens of this great country, 2) to my professional community of professional engineers, and 3) to my faith community.
Citizens - there is a cancer present in our increasingly technological society.
Individuals who have direct responsibilities for our health and safety are too often justifiably afraid of whistleblower reprisal to voice concerns about safety deficiencies in their workplaces - be it food processing plants, water treatment plants, airline maintenance, health care, highway inspection, nuclear power plants, etc.
There is frequently a legitimate tension between safety and efficiency in our society's workplaces, but it's illegitimate to attempt to resolve this tension by silencing those who raise legitimate safety concerns. The plight of Americans who have lost their livelihoods by placing allegiance to the common good above personal consideration should shame all of us.
It is that bad, America.
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UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION onal Engineers (P.Edsd44.cggdigspf our State licenses, we are
% {d1%re of the public in the performance of their profe he " Code of Ethics for Engineers" which states as its first tal canon, " Engineers shall hold paramount the safety, health, and w
Adherence to the Code of Ethics of Engineers is also a requirement for membership in the major Engineering Technical Societies. We must do a better job of protecting our Code of Ethics by collectively acting to protect our colleagues who risk their livelihoods by adhering to our Code of Ethics. What's a Code of Ethics worth if the people who have pledged allegiance to it will not actively support j
those who risk much to adhere to it?
Christians who have careers in a profession - we, as other professionals, spend the best hours of the best days of our lives either preparing for or pursuing our careers in our chosen profession. Too often, too much we have abnegated our call to be
" salt, light, and leaven" in our professions.
==
Conclusion:==
DOE's current estimate of the cost to remediate its sites is about 180 billion dollars. What are the implications of my story on this staggering cost? I think there are several:
o Whistleblower reprisal in DOE is alive and well and distorts everything DOE does. Workers are afraid to voic; safety concerns for fear of reprisal (I i
couldn't have found so many obvious saiety deficiencies in DOE otherwise; many fellow workers have confirmed this).
"A stitch in time saves nine," so to speak, and now DOE has to deal with situations that are much worse, technically, than would have existed had there not been such a fear of reprisal for voicing recognized safety concerns.
o DOE has made many people very rich, frequently as a direct result of flagrant violations of safety rules - greed by managers was the root cause of fear of reprisal in the workers. Now the same managers and companies, in many cases, expect another
" windfall" for correcting the situations they created - almost literally like
" paying the killer to find the body."
l Secretary O' Leary, you made a public ccamitment to change DOE's repressive culture and protect DOE's ethical employees in Povember 1993. My situation offers you and DOE an opportunity of cleanse
.tself of a repressive and coercive culture that is an insult to every taxpayer and every ethical DOE employee. Here are DOE's options in my case:
1 Publicly admit fault in my case, agree that a number of my safety finding were suppressed within EH, and agree to make fair restitution for the costs I have or can reasonably expect to incur for my loyal and efficient service in DOE, or 2
Be publicly found at fault, compounded by DOE's continuing campaign of reprisal against me.
It's past time for you and this Agency to step up to the plate about this matter, Secretary O' Leary.
Sincerely, Joseph Carson, P.E.
EH Resident, Oak Ridge internet: <JoeandD0E@aol.com>; fax (423) 966-1675 World Wide Web:
<http://www.whistleblower.org/ gap >
Paul M. Blanch Energy Consultant 135 Hyde Rd.