Junk NRC and Watts Bar's Safety Culture?

***You get how pathetic the NRC is? It took a employee talking to allegations...to make the residents go looking for safety culture at Watts Bar. It makes you wonder how structurally preventing the residents from seeing the real plant condition at any plan. Now the residents are implicated. SO why couldn't the residents pick this up on their own during normal inspection routines?

You get in these NRC inspection, the NRC never goes to the employees asking them when trust issues and safety discussion, how did this mistrust exceed the safety of the plant? Actual conditions...    

This looks like the typical extremist southern utility ideology of total dominance and absolute submission by their employees. We are the total gods of our sites, we can lie and cheat to meet our ideological-business agenda of the organization. We totally define truth at our sites independent of our nation's culture of truthfulness and transparency.

The fallacy of the worth of third party safety experts in the industry can clearly be seen in Watts Bar. These experts are just PR arm of the executives. You get it, it's better the third party doing the lying and deceiving than the NRC who catches Watts Bar doing the same. Third party investigators always craft their reports to those that pays them. I would rather the NRC pay for these investigations.

Again, the NRC doesn't enforce truth telling and document inaccuracies and falsification. They think lying and deception aren't safety related.   

Watts bar interfered with the ability of the NRC to oversee the site by lying and deception, this in itself should have been a shutdown issue at both sites for a year. It is the only way to keep the system straight, prevent anyone else from pulling a Watts Bar on the NRC. Shut them down for a years and fired anyone who has a association with intimidating the staff. I doubt this is limited to the TVA or Watts Bar. It is all over the place.  

What everyone is afraid of, is doing a survey on Watts Bar employees asking them how effective is the NRC's oversight of Watts Bar?

Big picture: The NRC is down two commissioner. If indicates our political system is failing the nuclear industry. The silence of the commissioners is the largest symptom of the disease, it has nothing to with the condition of the industry being in calm waters with nothing to talk about.  

Both Watts Bar plant are shutdown now. One being in outage and the other shutdown on a collapse of the huge main condenser. I have talked to experts over this. The collapse of the main condenser is unprecedented in the industry. It a shocking indicator with how poorly build Watts Bar 2 is.

Report: TVA meddled in third-party reviews on Watts Bar Nuclear Plant

"Mistrust permeates the organization," says reviewing consulting firm. CEO says that's the old TVA.

A firm that investigated TVA’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant has alleged TVA edited third-party reports on the plant's work environment.

TVA's Office of the Inspector General enlisted NTD Consulting Group to review TVA's history of nuclear safety culture issues and the company's response to a "Chilled Work Environment" letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March 2016.

The letter was written after a series of allegations reported to the NRC and to TVA's Employee Concerns Program indicating employees were afraid that raising safety concerns would result in harassment, intimidation or retaliation by management.

The NTD group released the final draft of its report April 19, which contains the results of TVA's most recent NRC inspection.

The inspection report said TVA lacked clear, objective criteria for evaluating how nuclear standards are met. The report called into question the independence of previous reviewing teams that sometimes included TVA personnel, and said the company was not "appropriately self-critical" in looking at the work culture.

TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said he could not answer whether TVA had a hand in third-party reports, because that information came from employee interviews with TVA's Inspector General, and those are not shared with other company staff.

"I can't answer what consultants were told what or what was told to anybody else," Johnson said.

Johnson also disputed NTD's report, which included information from previous interviews with TVA's Office of the Inspector General.

"The report doesn't represent the current state of affairs at Watts Bar or at TVA," Johnson said. "The NRC told us last March we had a chilled work environment at Watts Bar and we have never contested that fact. We don't contest it, and we've been working hard for the past year to fix it."

The Inspector General did gather the interviews after a confidential informant first reported the chilled work environment in 2015, about a year before the NRC's letter. Upon reviewing the interviews, the NTD group alleged TVA leadership was "in denial" of events that were precursors to the NRC's letter.

"They were clear, covering a period of years," the NTD report said. "It appears there were attempts to downplay the precursors and failures to implement appropriate (corrective actions)."

TVA had hands in investigations?

According to NTD, one of the Watts Bar senior leaders told TVA's Office of the Inspector General they "heavily managed the results" of root-cause analysis reports on Watts Bar's work culture.

Members of management told investigators they had directed some findings be left out of reports because they were worried Watts Bar’s second reactor would not get licensed if there were a problem with the nuclear  

Members of management told investigators they directed findings be left out of reports for fear Watts Bar’s second reactor would not get licensed if there were a nuclear safety culture problem.

TVA spokesman Jim Hopson leads a media tour of the new Unit 2 turbine floor Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. Watts Bar Unit 2 already has provided consumers with more than 500 million kilowatt/hours of carbon-free energy during testing. It joins six other operating TVA nuclear units to supply more than one third of the region's generating capacity, meeting the electric needs of more than 4.5 million homes.(Photo: Paul Efird)

Story Highlights

CEO: Inspector General interviews don't represent "current state of affairs."

Employees told reviewers they felt safer bringing up nuclear safety issues than non-nuclear safety issues to supervisors.

Watts Bar senior leaders reportedly told Inspector General they "heavily managed the results" of reports on work culture.

Latest NRC inspection shows some improvement but still more work to do. 
A firm that investigated TVA’s Watts Bar Nuclear Plant has alleged TVA edited third-party reports on the plant's work environment.

TVA's Office of the Inspector General enlisted NTD Consulting Group to review TVA's history of nuclear safety culture issues and the company's response to a "Chilled Work Environment" letter from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in March 2016.

The letter was written after a series of allegations reported to the NRC and to TVA's Employee Concerns Program indicating employees were afraid that raising safety concerns would result in harassment, intimidation or retaliation by management.

The NTD group released the final draft of its report April 19, which contains the results of TVA's most recent NRC inspection.

The inspection report said TVA lacked clear, objective criteria for evaluating how nuclear standards are met. The report called into question the independence of previous reviewing teams that sometimes included TVA personnel, and said the company was not "appropriately self-critical" in looking at the work culture.

TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson said he could not answer whether TVA had a hand in third-party reports, because that information came from employee interviews with TVA's Inspector General, and those are not shared with other company staff.

"I can't answer what consultants were told what or what was told to anybody else," Johnson said.

Johnson also disputed NTD's report, which included information from previous interviews with TVA's Office of the Inspector General.

"The report doesn't represent the current state of affairs at Watts Bar or at TVA," Johnson said. "The NRC told us last March we had a chilled work environment at Watts Bar and we have never contested that fact. We don't contest it, and we've been working hard for the past year to fix it."

The Inspector General did gather the interviews after a confidential informant first reported the chilled work environment in 2015, about a year before the NRC's letter. Upon reviewing the interviews, the NTD group alleged TVA leadership was "in denial" of events that were precursors to the NRC's letter.

"They were clear, covering a period of years," the NTD report said. "It appears there were attempts to downplay the precursors and failures to implement appropriate (corrective actions)."

TVA had hands in investigations?

According to NTD, one of the Watts Bar senior leaders told TVA's Office of the Inspector General they "heavily managed the results" of root-cause analysis reports on Watts Bar's work culture.

Members of management told investigators they had directed some findings be left out of reports because they were worried Watts Bar’s second reactor would not get licensed if there were a problem with the nuclear safety culture.

They also said they were worried the reports would reflect poorly on senior management.

The confidential informant's 2015 tip on the plant's work environment also triggered an internal investigation by TVA's Employee Concerns Program. The ECP hired two consultants - one used to be a manager at TVA - to perform the investigation.

The consultants were told what they could include and must exclude in their reports. One of the consultants who performed the ECP review told the Inspector General he believed he was not invited back for a second debrief because Watts Bar senior management did not like what he wrote.

Once the consultants finished their report, they said TVA's ECP personnel edited it to remove any mention of the term "chilled work environment" and replaced it with the term "degraded work environment," a non-regulatory phrase that was reportedly never used by TVA or the NRC before.

The new phrase appeared in subsequent TVA reports at least 28 times.

The NTD group said the use of the term was an "unfortunate choice" that may have given an inaccurate picture of Watts Bar's work culture. Joey Ledford, an NRC spokesman, said that though the NRC does not recognize the term "degraded work environment," he does not believe its use impacted their investigations.

Johnson said TVA avoided using the term “chilled work environment” until it received the letter in 2016 because TVA views it as a regulatory conclusion that only the NRC could declare.

"We would talk about degradation or a degraded environment, which I think is common in the industry," Johnson said.

"Our focus is on meeting the requirements of the NRC, which is the exclusive regulator of commercial civilian nuclear plants."

TVA spokesman Jim Hopson said the NRC has not turned up any specific instances of retaliation, and contends whether it happened was never the issue.

"Perception equals reality in this case," Hopson said. "If there is even a perception people can't raise concerns or use their voices, then things can go off the rails. It's a culture that over time would have allowed something unsafe to happen, and that's why we take this so seriously."

'Mistrust permeates'

The plant has had a history of these perceptions.

In 2016, Watts Bar led the nation in allegations submitted to the NRC, indicating employees did not feel comfortable raising concerns internally.

Several employees reportedly told NRC reviewers in 2016 that they felt safer bringing up nuclear safety issues than non-nuclear safety issues to their supervisors.

In interviews with TVA's Inspector General, employees said they did not trust Watts Bar's Employee Concerns Program because they believed it was not independent from the nuclear plant. The Office of the Inspector General validated the employees' concerns about the ECP when another survey revealed 50 percent of Watts Bar's ECP personnel did not feel comfortable going forward with the safety concerns employees told them.

"Mistrust permeates the organization, yet in leadership's mind the challenge is contained to operations and represents a miscommunication problem rather than a need for management to regain trust and credibility," NTD's report said.

In 2009, the NRC ordered TVA to make changes after two investigations revealed a maintenance mechanic at Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant in Alabama was demoted for raising a safety concern.

That same year, Synergy Consulting Services completed a survey report indicating instances of mistrust and intimidation existed at Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. A second report in 2011 said the behaviors were continuing. Subsequent reports by Synergy and other groups highlighted "significant weaknesses" in Watts Bar's safety culture.

NTD's review of TVA's Inspector General interviews pointed to several instances of employee intimidation that occurred in the years leading up to the NRC's chilled work environment letter:

According to NTD's report, a manager told the Inspector General that a senior leader called him into his office after workplace survey results came out one year and instructed him to discipline employees for their answers;

A maintenance employee told reviewers he lived in constant fear he'd lose his job because plant leadership routinely threatened to fire the entire staff and bring in a contractor;

Another employee said that during a refueling outage, one manager would come into the shop, sit down and glare at employees without speaking to them. He later told employees his intention was to get them to "the breaking point" so he could get the most out of them;

A senior reactor operator said he was "relieved from watch" for raising a safety concern to his supervisor. The NTD group believed the operator's concern was valid, but TVA reviewers did not corroborate it.

Other workers refused to speak to reviewers or flipped their badges over their shoulders so they could not be identified for retaliation.

"TVA failed to look for, and in turn deal with harassing, intimidating, retaliatory or discriminatory behaviors of the senior leadership that were common knowledge among personnel in operations and other departments," the NTD said, adding that precursors to the NRC's letter were not "subtle," as the ECP has previously stated.

TVA CEO questions validity

Johnson raised concerns about the validity of the NTD group's report in a response letter, arguing the report’s authors reviewed the information secondhand and didn’t observe the demeanor or credibility of the employees interviewed. TVA's Inspector General office is independent of the company itself, so Johnson did not witness the interviews firsthand either.

"We don't know who said what in what interview to whom. We are not privy to that information," Johnson said in an interview after the NTD report was released.

TVA President and CEO Bill Johnson pauses in front of the cooling towers before announcing the new Unit 2 reactor has entered commercial operation Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, at the Watts Bar Nuclear Plant. "Watts Bar Unit 2 is a key part of our commitment to produce cleaner energy without sacrificing the reliability and low cost that draws both industry and residents to our area," said Johnson. (Photo: Paul Efird)

In his response to NTD, he wrote that he questioned the credibility of the interviews because the investigators were armed and credentialed and interviewed some employees more than once. He also alleged investigators may have used tactics designed to pressure or intimidate interviewees.

After the report was published, he added that during the time frame in which the interviews were likely given, TVA was trying to complete the second Watts Bar reactor.

"This was a stressful environment," he said. "People were tired. There was a lot of work going on and to put it in succinct terms, I think we stressed the workforce a little too much."

Corrective actions taken

Johnson said that since the NRC's letter, TVA has replaced the management team at Watts Bar and is working to regain employees' trust.

NTD reported that TVA hired a specialist after it received the NRC's chilled work environment letter to ensure senior leadership at Watts Bar would "own the situation."