ML20149M208

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Forwards Hartford Courant Article Published on 961020 Re Problems at Millstone.R Nader Will Be in Waterford 961029
ML20149M208
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Site: Millstone, Waterford  Dominion icon.png
Issue date: 10/22/1996
From: Blanch P
AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED
To: Martin T
NRC
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NUDOCS 9612130103
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From: PAUL M. BLANCH <PMBLANCH91x.netcom.com>

To:- TIM MARTIN <TTM9nrc. gov >

Date: 10/22/96 11:48am

Subject:

SUNDAY COURANT PAGE 1 HEADLINE j

" Overwhelmed and Frustrated at the NRC" This is the article that has stired up so much garbage lately. The NRC has j confirmed that I am the " happy camper" Kelly was discussing. This- transcript was " leaked" to the press almost 2 weeks ago. Much more to follow.

l I have been also asked to inform you that Ralph Nader will be in Waterford l next Tuesday October 29, 1996. He will be speaking at Pleasure Beach at 1:30 l PM and then at the Waterford HS at 4 PM.

l THE HARTFORD COURANT Copyright (c) 1996, The Hartford Courant Company DATE: Sunday, October 20, 1996

! EDITION: STATEWIDE SECTION: MAIN PAGE: Al SOURCE: MIKE nMcINTIRE4 and MICHAEL nREMEZe; Courant Staff Writers  ;

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l OVERWHELMED AND FRUSTRATED AT THE NRC l MANY NUCLEAR REGULATORS DEFEND THEIR OVERSIGHT, SAY MILLSTONE PROBLEMS MISUNDERSTOOD Federal regulators have done a good job policing nuclear power plants, not every safety problem is a big deal, and whistle-blowers can be a real pain in the neck.

Those unvarnished opinions from some employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Cossaission -- found in transcripts of interviews for an internal NRC investigation into what went wrong with the oversight and operation of Connecticut's nuclear plants -- are in many ways at odds with the humbled, reform-minded tone set by the NRC's new leadership.

Take the blunt observations of Gene Kelly, for example:

I I don't want to hear this rubbish about coziness (with the nuclear l industry), and I don't want to hear this rubbish about being unresponsive to 9612130103 961210 PDR ORG NRRA

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whistle-blowers, Kelly, the NRC official who was in charge of inspections at Northeast Utilities' Millstone plant in the early 1990s, told  !

interviewers.

The fact is, the regulator has to be reasonable. We have to make l decisions on what we know and on fact, and it has to be reasonable and it has to make sense. And it doesn't make sense to say, ' Gee, I'm not sure all the motor-operated valves out there work; everybody shut down until we figure it ,

out.' That's a nonsensical, unreasonable, totally untenable approach. )

l As for a prominent whistle-blower at NU, he is selfishly motivated,' l Kelly said, adding: I think he's trying to make political hay, trying to get his name in lights again.

A final report on the investigation's findings is expected to be released within days. Copies of some of the transcripts were obtained recently by The Courant.

The interviews, some taken under oath, are being combed by NRC cTficials for clues as to how the agency, and NU, handled employee allegations at the nuclear plants, which are shut down because of extensive management and safety-related problems.

At a public hearing in August, the NRC revealed that it had already reached a preliminary conclusion that the agency had not acted quickly enough on allegations and failed to protect whistle-blowers.

While agreeing that serious problems exist, some of those interviewed expressed deep frustration at how their roles in events at Millstone have been perceived. The interviews show that despite the critical findings of numerous official inquiries over the past year, many regulators personally believe problems within the agency and at NU have been overblown or

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misunderstood. 1 They also show that NRC staff members feel overworked and, in some cases, unqualified to police what one called the soft, mushy' areas of employee i relations and corporate culture at nuclear utilities.

These guys are speaking for a lot of people in the agency, said an NRC inspector, who spent four years at Millstone and did not want to be identified. Our managers are under a lot of pressure, and these kinds of statements can boomerang back at you.

But it's closer to how many folks around here really feel.

Allegations avalanche David Vito was slowly disappearing under a mountain of complaints.

Appointed in 1993 to be the senior NRC official handling hundreds of

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whistle-blower allegations at NU and other plants in the Northeast, Vito soon l found that he would be a one-man operation. He complained and was given a clerk three days a week. l But even'today, Vito told NRC interviewers, he still is reduced to

pushing paper rather than reviewing the technical merits of allegations.

When I have to go to a training session or go on vacation or respond to I an audit, the rest of the work doesn't get done, Vito said. The inflow l

[of allegations) doesn't get 3rocessed as quickly as it should. And we need l somebody that can keep everytiing moving along as it comes in the door.'

The inability to handle the flood of whistle-blower complaints has meant that-some are kicked back to NU to investigate -- a practice that is strongly criticized by whistle-blowers and is the subject of an investigation by the NRC's inspector general.

l Vito defended it and rejected the suggestion that allegations were blindly l sent back to NU.

It's not true, in my opinion, and I sit through every meeting where a l decision is made to refer an allegation, he said. We refer more l allegations [back] to Millstone than any other site. In my opinion, that is because we get more allegations from Millstone than any other site.'

NRC regional division director Richard Cooper agreed that we made a conscious decision to refer complaints back to NU because of the sheer j volume and extent of these allegations.

l He also said the agency's insistence on treating all complaints as equally l important, even though most have little impact on safety, inevitably means i action is delayed on the few significant ones that end up being ,

l substantiated. "

Cooper also took issue with the claim by some whistle-blowers that the agency blindly refers allegations back to NU.

l I absolutely believe that that's an inappropriate characterization,' he told interviewers. We take the allegation for what it is on the face value.

We discuss its safety significance, and we discuss whether or not it meets the criteria for referral. We don't look behind it for motive '

Guy P. Caputo, a former Secret Service agent who heads the NRC's office of investigations, said in his interview that it is often difficult to judge the veracity of whistle-blower complaints. As an example, he referred to a

, tendency by the federal Labor Department, which also investigates nuclear employees' claims of harassment, to reach different decisions about the same complaint at different levels within the department.

It points to the fact that these are not typically clear-cut cases of whether or not discrimination occurred, Caputo said. People can look at

( the same set of facts and come up with a different conclusion.

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4 A rosy picture l NRC Chairwoman Shirley Jackson calls it a wake-up call for the agency:

l the NRC's failure, for 20 years, to realize that Millstone I was violating

. its operating license by overloading its spent-fuel pool.

! The-issue made the cover of Time magazine this year and has been used by Jackson as an example of how the NRC must not shy away from enforcing its .

regulations. But Cooper, whose office was intimately involved in the agency's i
belated response to the spent-fuel problem late last year, disagreed with an j NRC interviewer's suggestion that the NRC dragged its feet.

l First of all, Cooper said, I don't believe that we shy away from enforcing our regulations, ever. And that kind of statement, I think, has no truth to it. That has no bearing on how we operate in the agency.'

Later, pressed on why it took over a year to resolve the original i whistle-blower complaint about the spent-fuel matter, Cooper conceded that l it's possible that we could have been more timely.

Kelly, in a telephone interview, expanded upon his own statements.

A 14-year NRC veteran who is a section chief in the NRC's Northeast region, Kelly said he saw NU management's inability to relate to its l employees as the most significant cause of the spent-fuel problems, and 4

others, at Millstone. Mechanical or procedural problems that may have been i

present for years were exploited by certain employees who became disenchanted

or believed they were wronged, he said.

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'A lot of complaints were coming from just a few people, Kelly said.

! They may have been walking around, for years, feeling fine. But if things

go to hell, you start to lay off people, cut costs, that sort of thing, '

people suddenly start talking in ways you never heard them talk before.

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And what may have been a happy camper in 1990 may have become disgruntled by 1993.

That, he said, helps explain why an inquiry into NU's handling of whistle-blower complaints that he headed in 1990 failed to turn up the extensive problems that several subsequent investigations found. The Kelly team's review was later criticized as an overly rosy portrait of conditions at Millstone.

It's not rosy. It was what it was, Kelly told NRC interviewers. I think we had the guts to tell the facts as we saw them. We saw no pattern to i suggest a larger prevailing climate where concerns couldn't be brought i forward.

j Kelly said he believes NU today is not as bad a place as has been i portrayed by industry critics and the news media.

It is incongruous to paint a picture of a company where the managenent J

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is oppressive, people are persecuted and everying is going wrong -- that's not true,' he said. I for one, personally, would not sit here and conclude 4

that all is still not well at Millstone.

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ENHANCER: poot i SEND: YES i Paul M. Blanch

! Energy Consultant l 135 Hyde Rd.

West Hartford CT 06117 Voice 860-236-0326

Fax 860-232-9350 1

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