Volume 3   Issue  36                        November   2004

Safety At Hope Creek question

Delaware Online Jeff Montgomery

November 13, 2004

A New Jersey woman who said she was fired from PSEG last year after continuing to press top managers on nuclear plant safety concerns says the company is risking a catastrophe if they restart the idled Hope Creek reactor along the Delaware River without an extensive safety check and overhaul.

Nancy Kymn Harvin, a communications and organization specialist who filed a "whistle-blower" complaint that is pending before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, said a company focus on "earnings per share" sidetracked reforms launched after a safety crisis and self-imposed shutdown in the mid-1990s.

Harvin said documented problems at Hope Creek earlier this year were neglected, only to become factors in a sudden, costly shutdown on Oct. 10 that remains under investigation." We're going to do everything we can to not allow that unit to restart" until the company addresses chronic maintenance problems that compromise safety, Harvin said. "Workers have said that instead of taking a systematic and systemic view, the modus operandi is to look at finite, discrete problems and fix them as minimally as possible, not to take the broader view and find out what all the ramifications are." Skip Sindoni, a spokesman for PSEG Nuclear, said Harvin's job was eliminated in 2003 during a reorganization of the utility, and said safety would guide the company's decisions about Hope Creek. "Hope Creek won't restart until we're confident that we've made the necessary repairs," Sindoni said.

PSEG Nuclear operates the Hope Creek and twin Salem Units 1 and 2 reactors, which can generate more than 3,300 megawatts and together rank as the nation's second-largest nuclear complex. More than 24,000 people in Delaware live inside the plant's 10-mile-radius emergency planning zone.

Harvin, who joined PSEG in 1998, said she was given a 45-day termination notice in February 2003 and then saw her remaining time with the company abruptly cut short after she continued attempting to relay worker and manager warnings about a dangerous steam valve problem at Hope Creek to the utility's top officers.

" What they were really saying is: You know too much, and you've become a problem to us," said Harvin, who has filed a separate civil whistle-blower lawsuit against the company.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman Neil Sheehan confirmed the agency is investigating Harvin's complaints, but said he was unable to estimate when the commission would issue a ruling.

David Lochbaum, a nuclear safety engineer with the Union of Concerned Scientists, said his organization has been working with Harvin while conducting its own examinations of PSEG's troubles at Hope Creek and Salem. "We've been working with Kymn since September of 2003," Lochbaum said, adding that the NRC usually declines to discuss whistle-blower cases unless the individual already has become a public figure.

The NRC earlier this year issued a rare, pre-emptive order to PSEG nuclear demanding immediate efforts to reform its "safety culture," an action that came about four months after Harvin's whistle-blower action. Harvin said she was told to leave the plant ahead of schedule in March 2003 after drawing attention to a plant director's concerns about a safety problem with a stuck valve that allowed steam to bypass a generating turbine at Hope Creek.

"The operators didn't believe it was safe to resume operations without fixing the bypass valve, yet there's this pressure coming from corporate to start back up as soon as possible," Harvin said. "One of the managers came to me and said 'Kymn, we're dangerous. If the NRC knew what we were doing, they would take the keys away.' "

In another instance, Lochbaum said pressure to maintain production led a plant supervisor to wrestle open a stuck valve without following safety precautions.

"Throwing all caution to the wind, one of the shift supervisors went in and manually used elbow grease to get the thing working, putting himself at great risk and violating all kinds of procedures," Lochbaum said. "Many of the workers were concerned that that sends the wrong message - to keep the plant on line was more important than safety."

Harvin said PSEG needs to shut down all three of its reactors and fix safety problems. She said the company also needs to investigate and repair a crucial cooling water recirculation pump at the core of Hope Creek. NRC and company officials have acknowledged a serious vibration problem in the pump, which, if it failed, would lead to what the NRC considers a "worst case" loss-of-cooling-water accident.

"Certainly our resident inspectors have been made aware of any problems involving testing of the recirculation pump, and we're going to continue to engage them on that issue," said Sheehan. "Starting with the vibration would be stupid," Lochbaum said. "We're not talking about a little bit of shaking. There's a whole lot of shaking going on."

Harvin said she came to PSEG as the company was emerging from a similar safety and maintenance crisis in the mid-1990s. She said the utility was making steady progress until about 2002, when pressure from the nuclear plant's parent company began to increase and tolerance for safety-related delays fell.

Under NRC pressure, PSEG this year hired an outside consultant whose findings tended to back up some of Harvin's complaints. Utilities Service Alliance, found the plants fell short of "competence" in 72 of 90 critical areas reviewed in March 2004.
A report last year noted that Hope Creek inadequately managed 20 of 33 problems that had some connections to reactor management, such as control rod drive and reactor monitoring issues.

"I wouldn't want to go to a hospital, I wouldn't want to put my parents in a nursing home, I wouldn't even want to eat in a restaurant where 72 of 90 critical areas are less than competent," Harvin said. "And yet the Salem and Hope Creek reactors were deemed safe by the NRC and the company to operate with these degraded conditions. I find that preposterous."

Hope Creek was idled on Oct. 10 after a steam line break was later traced to a support bracket that may have been missing or unattached for up to 15 years. PSEG chose to begin an ahead-of-schedule, two- month refueling operation shortly after the shutdown.

Sheehan said the NRC plans to meet in public with PSEG on Dec. 2 to review the company's progress on improving its management of safety issues. Another meeting also is planned to review the results of company and federal investigations into the Oct. 10 steam pipe break.
Meanwhile, there is no court date set for Harvin's New Jersey civil lawsuit. The NRC could take weeks or months to rule on her complaints.

Under federal rules, nuclear utilities or their contractors can face fines and orders to provide back pay and reinstatement to workers if managers are found guilty of retaliatory acts against whistle-blowers.

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