Nuclear security

Whistleblowers and the NRC: Do as I say, not as I don’t

Workers at nuclear power plants form the front line of nuclear safety: They are the ones most likely to detect safety problems when they arise. For example, it was nuclear power plant workers who reported that reactors were being operated with broken and impaired safety equipment at the Salem and Hope Creek nuclear plants in New Jersey in 2004. And it was plant workers who alerted officials in 2013 to a security manager who permitted unqualified individuals to hold security positions at the Palisades, Michigan, nuclear power plant. And it was plant workers who discovered extensive corrosion of the reactor vessel head at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in 2002, in which a small amount of cooling water that had been leaking from the reactor vessel over an extended period of time had corroded away nearly six inches of the metal vessel, leaving only a quarter-inch-thick layer. Had that thin layer been breached, the rapid loss of cooling water through the opening could have caused an accident worse than Three Mile Island.