Junk Plant Columbia Cover-Up: No Head at the Top of the Organization

You catch the whistleblower(s)forced Entergy Northeast to admit to a decline in plant performance and the NRC made no mention of a decline in their 2015 assessment. Gets you wondering about the worth of the NRC???

"There has been a decline in performance at Energy Northwest’s nuclear power plant near Richland, the Columbia Generating Station, but issues are being addressed, Shapiro said."

There is nothing worst for plant employees to see a drastic decline in plant safety and performance and then the NRC still giving the plant a grade "A plus"? 

SUBJECT: ANNUAL ASSESSMENT LETTER FOR COLUMBIA GENERATING STATION (REPORT 05000397/2015006)

Dear Mr. Reddemann:

On February 16, 2016, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) completed its end-of cycle performance review of Columbia Generating Station. The NRC reviewed the most recent quarterly performance indicators (PIs) in addition to inspection results and enforcement actions from January 1, 2015 through December 31, 2015. This letter informs you of the NRC’s assessment of your facility during this period and its plans for future inspections at your facility.

The NRC determined that overall, Columbia Generating Station operated in a manner that preserved public health and safety and met all cornerstone objectives. The NRC determined the performance at Columbia Generating Station during the most recent quarter was within the Licensee Response Column (Column 1) of the NRC’s Reactor Oversight Process (ROP) Action Matrix because all inspection findings had very low (i.e., green) safety significance, and all PIs indicated that your performance was within the nominal, expected range (i.e., green).
Therefore, the NRC plans to conduct ROP baseline inspections at your facility

05000397 

Here is the problem. The organization is too bureaucratized. It basically a private company owned by the state and the feds.  

WIKI: Energy Northwest (formerly Washington Public Power Supply System) is a United States public power joint operating agency formed by State law in 1957 to produce at-cost power for Northwest utilities. Headquartered in Richland, Washington, the WPPSS became commonly known as "Whoops"^[1] due to over-commitment to nuclear power in the 1970s which brought about financial collapse and the second largest municipal bond default^[2] in U.S. history. WPPSS was renamed Energy Northwest in November 1998. Agency membership includes 28 public power utilities, including 23 of the State’s 24 public utility districts.

Energy Northwest is governed by two boards: an executive board and a board of directors. The executive board has 11 members: five representatives from the board of directors, three gubernatorial appointees and three public representatives selected by the board of directors. The board of directors includes a representative from each member utility.

Investigation: Energy Northwest communication changes needed

March 23, 2016

By Annette Cary 

acary@tricityherald.com

The preliminary results of an independent investigation of Energy Northwest found mostly issues with communication, according to a report to the Energy Northwest executive board in Pasco on Wednesday.

The Pillsbury law firm of Washington, D.C., was hired to investigate allegations made in an anonymous letter sent to members of Energy Northwest government boards in January. The letter said it was from a group of Energy Northwest employees.

They alleged that information about sub-par performance of the nuclear plant near Richland, the Columbia Generating Station, was being withheld from government boards, employees and the public.

A second phase of the investigation is planned, but preliminary results on the first phase showed that some mid-course corrections are likely, said Sid Morrison, executive board chairman.

“We found overall that senior plant management have been transparent in communication of data,” said attorney Daryl Shapiro.

Here is plant management giving the executive board plausible deniability.

But investigators recommended that data be aligned to make it less confusing when it is communicated. The executive board also needs to make clear what information it expects to hear from the Energy Northwest management team and how soon it wants the information.

We found no indication the sole focus of the team was on generation, not to say that was not considered.

There has been a decline in performance at Energy Northwest’s nuclear power plant near Richland, the Columbia Generating Station, but issues are being addressed, Shapiro said.

Some issues were influenced by the last refueling outage, which was longer than expected, reducing production and exposing outage workers to more radiation than anticipated for the shorter schedule. The plant also operated at reduced power for several weeks after the outage as a stuck valve was repaired.

Although the investigators were not charged with looking at whether the plant was operating safely, they came across nothing that made them question that, said attorney Jeffrey Merrifield, a former commissioner of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Investigators interviewed about 40 people and reviewed hundreds of documents.

They found a mix of too much data communicated in some cases and some communication that was too little or too late.

Performance data needs to be simplified and aligned when it is presented to prevent confusion from different measurements used for different purposes, investigators recommended.

Information released on performance, including from the NRC and the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, uses different thresholds and that could be interpreted as misleading, investigators found.

There was no rigging of safety data, but confusing data was released, Shapiro said.

We need everyone to feel able to speak up.

Is there incentives on not resetting safe operation clock? Generally executives and employees today get a big bonus for not having a lost time accident. So this is a big deal with indications of widespread culture of fudging data to make more money.  

Management did not immediately tell the board or employees that a subcontractor employee had been injured in a fall and required treatment at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle. The safe operations clock was not correctly reset after the accident.

This is the problem with definitions of words. So the corporate lawyer found clear and convincing evidence senior plant management did not "keep the plant operating at at all cost. But are they excessively focused on capacity factor, such it is destroying the safety culture and they are increasingly taking chances.

I predict with this half-ass report the employees will increasing complain to the NRC. 

I remember in my days at Vermont Yankee when I made a complaint to the Vermont governor in 1992. It got a lot of play. The senior residence came up to me saying I detected the decline of the plant before the NRC could see it. They thanked me for my efforts. But my employee evaluations payed a terrible price and it led to me getting fired. 

It sounds to me like me a "rules war" has begun between the employees and plant and corporate executives. It very debilitating for the organization. Everyone for many years keeps tract of intentional rules based falsification issues. Some (both rank and file and executives) keep a black book on these intentional federal rules violations and falsifications. This is a natural product of these extraordinary complex machines and federal laws and rules based organizations. Many employees would squirrel away documents proving law breaking for future grudges and weapons against bosses. A very troubled plant's employees would spend tremendous amounts of energy throwing career ending falsification bombs at each other. Its intentional mutual assured destruction.

You get it, if you have wide spread intentional falsification issues, then you automatically got powerful mafia style executives and employees "enforcers" whose job is to keep the secrets from getting outside. This phenomena is all around the industry, some better, some worst.

Can you even imagine being NRC inspector in the middle of a nuclear plant rules wars?                        

The investigation did not find evidence to support an allegation that management was focused on keeping the plant operating at all costs, including during the valve repair. The letter tied pinhole leaks in fuel to unwanted material that got into the reactor core during the valve repair because the plant was not taken offline,

The decision to make the repair with the plant operating at reduced capacity was made with an appropriate focus on safety, and workers were kept informed, Shapiro said. Workers were invited to bring up concerns and ideas, which were addressed.

The valve repair was not necessarily the cause of the pinhole leaks, Merrifield said. A variety of outage activities could have contributed to the issue.

The second phase of the investigation will focus on the overarching issue that workers would send an anonymous letter because they said they were fearful of retaliation, said Skip Orser, chairman of a board committee formed to consider the allegations.

“We need everyone to feel able to speak up,” Morrison said.

Shapiro said that workers who were interviewed were open, cooperative and conversational.

Read more here: http://www.tri-cityherald.com/news/local/hanford/article67934357.html#storylink=cpy