Updated 2/1
(fixed up better)
(fixed up better)
05000397
My early problem (VY) was picking an issue I though would motivate the officials I was communicating to. We were amidst a blizzard of big problems. I had to pick two or three problems I thought would stick. I worried if I pick my biggest concern, the suits would easily shoot it down and I would have no credibility. So I picked three issues out of hundreds or thousands.
1) If we had a big fire at Vermont and had to shutdown and cool the plant down remotely...we were required to prove we had a workable system for this. This came fro the Browns Ferry fire and TMI accident. The system was never even tested for the life of the plant. This system was unworkable at the plant. It still is unworkable. I call this a show system for public consumption never designed to work. It was a paper Mache safety system. In paper only
2) We are required to have two operable fuel pool pumps at the plant. One is operating and the other was in standby. This is the one that captured the imagination of Vermont and Gov Kunin. One pump was damaged with a shorting motor. We were required to shutdown the plant in a month if they couldn't fix the broken pump. We were out a year and the pumps was still broken. We operated another year with NRC permission. It bother all the employees we were openly violating the NRC rules and it was acceptable to the NRC. This particularly perturbed Vermont. We always knew Vermont was a paper tiger at the plant. The Vermont nuclear engineer couldn't even come on to the site without permission and scheduled visit. We always scoffed on how stupid Vermont was?
This concern were designed for this. VY was supposed to keep the state up to date with all safety components that had problems and off normal conditions. Vermont thought they violated this voluntary agreement. Vermont Yankee and Vermont then wrote up a memoranda of understanding with interaction of each other. Vermont never had to play the "mother may I" game ever again. You get it, the issue was always about a greater policy issue.
3) Fix and understand our massive fuel failure problem.
It is a horrible situation to be in, when all the organizations around you are brain dead. Your group, the state and Feds, the news organization itself...it is a horrific situation to be in. Washington state has a much higher nuclear related economic percentage than Vermont. So the head winds are much more severe than my situation. Many more jobs are on the line.
People think reporters and the media are liberal leaning. The retail, local business establish and corporations are the guys who pays the freight mostly with the new media. These guys are predominantly teabagger republicans. They think we are all mushrooms. Insiders know it is just the opposite the news media is liberalism. It comes to the point when you see all your issues(nuclear power)in your letters as being expressed through individual and corporate lens. They will put their own spin for their own reason on your issues. The media is hyper circulation sensitive. The news media is particular afraid of expensive legal suits. The pro nuclear forces have a huge infrastructure. So these forces can create a expensive legal suit independent of the facts for a struggling newspaper. The newspaper people are basically ignorant about nuclear plant issues, so they can't understand the risk of publishing your concern. Their ignorance translates they fear a legal risk...so they won't publish your issues.
These corporate structures like a nuclear plant are wizards at not putting on paper the shortcuts and risk they take for profits...their vulnerabilities. They got a pretty big infrastructure for that. I'd get pretty frustrated over the newspaper idiots. These reporter idiots would whisper in my ears translated into, we would never trust you,(they thought I was a idiot)you got to steal documents from the plant order for us to publish your issue. That is when I start spiting and screaming into their faces. I'd tell them with my intelligence, I am the guy who forces the plant bureaucracy to write the documents you want me later to steal. My fundament job here with you reporters is to force my organization and the feds...to cause the bureaucracy to document the known secrets, risk and vulnerabilities they are all afraid to put in paperwork. You just got to get over it, everyone hates you. This really is a deep corporatized system at all levels. It's the 1 percenters against everyone else. What you are doing is uses power and influence on your own accord. On a fundamental psychological level with the bottom-mid level people like reporters and outside people...your are upsetting the corporatized apple cart. Everyone realizes(outside your plant) in their own endeavors, a whistleblower could justly and unjustly disconnect them and their family from their income stream by expressing a secret truth everyone already knows. The good life could be over. You make everyone nervous by using power for your own reason. So there might be a façade people who shallowly admire whistleblowers and truth tellers...but in 99% of their minds everyone hates you. Believe me, just by getting these truths out to the all, whether successful or a grand failure... your life, what is in your head, will never be the same again. There is no going back. Most people get use to or are content with just being rock no boat.
***I am going to tell what is going to haunt you for the rest of your lives being a ex whistleblower. I don't think you can ever undo being a whistleblower, the mental disease is irreversible. Going into this thing you think its the 1%ers or corporatist. It is the elites selfishness and narrow-mindedness. Post whistleblower, you are going to know its the multitudes who knew what was going on and didn't have the fortitude to act on what they knew. It was your blood brothers and sisters buddies who you worked with for years and decades who are the root culprits. You will see this same theme being played out for the rest of your life. You will be among the few who see the magnitude of our problem. You will be fighting losing battles for the rest of your life. It is the multitudes whose souls that are spoiled. God or the universe has chosen you to fight losing battles for the rest of your life. If you are carefully self reflecting on your life's history, you will see your soul as spoiled as any of your brothers and sister in the multitudes. Maybe even much more worst. It huge income stream at VY I was worst. One day I just woke up. Your first cry to outsiders for help was when the train jumped the tracts permanently. I can not overstate this....it is a massively transformative point in your life. Nobody will understand you for the rest of your life. Everyone is going to hate you for the rest of your life because you are unnerve everyone's so called stability. From now on, when the multitude see you, your will become a mirror. You will remind people they lead their lives on leash and they are enslaved. You will always carry a wisp freedom most people don't have...they will be jealous of it and it will always unnerve their slavish existence. Everybody will deeply and psychologically always hate you for the rest of your life. You will be forever reflecting back to the multitudes the world woes.
The God that I know is perfect and ever loving.
The body and soul who houses me is weak and insecure.
The problem with new whistleblowers is they can't imagine how future events will psychologically affect them. So after years of the system ignoring them, they realized the power they really got. It goes to their heads. I have to the power to change any event I want. This stuff is terrifically addicting.
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- These events are traumatizing the whole staff.
- When I was a active anonymous whistleblower at VY, they affectionately called me the anonymous alligator. We all had a wicked sense of humor. They would talk about me right in front of me. They didn't know who I was.
- We had in plant newspaper...the plant of the day. Everyone, even when plant management was around, would kid the "plan of the day" is junk. If we what to really want to find out what's going on at the site, we'd read the Brattleboro Reformer. The newspaper is more up to date and accurate than plant communication and the plan of the day.
- Everyone at the plant was excessively talking about the whistleblower especially in the highly technical cohesive jobs. The site becomes consumed by the speculation if issues were being driven by the whistleblower. I got blamed for a lot things I didn't do and they all missed the big things I was involved in. I even had to admit I was becoming a distraction to safe plant operation.
- If there is a wiff of knowing who the whistleblowers are... other employees will go the whistleblower hoping he will fix their problem. I had security guard come to me with their problems. Upper management put me under special watch by the security guards, they figured out I was the whistleblower. I reformed the security department over these secrets. Got a expensive main security gate house replaced and they brought a knew security vendor to come in a run the plant over our secrets.
- Lets say a middle manager is angling for the job his boss has. He'd come to me with dirty linen on the boss hoping I could take him out. I took out a few executives this way. A middle manage would have a grudge on his boss, he'd come to me with dirty linen hoping to settle scores.
- I had a scandalous issue with a operation big wig. Had him dead to rights. This guy railed about the enemy whistleblower. I knew his family and kids. I had his career in my hands. I withheld my fire on him. It is my big regret at the plant. I should have immediately called a news conference.
- You get it. I eventually filed six whistleblower lawsuits. In the pretrial hearings, they disputed all the prior issues I was involved in. We was looking to gain my credibility. I wish I could get a do over. They either said they never got my message or the issues was created by somebody else. Where is you proof? You got to find a way document everything with court level quality.
Our cell phones and modern internet connections...our new interconnectedness....goggle, yahoo, blogging and cell phone pictures ...I don't have that in 1992. These miracles with new technologies confer a lot of power to the whistleblower in you know how to leverage it.
- "Energy Northwest officials have signed non-disclosure agreements and are ethically and legally bound to uphold them, said Energy Northwest spokesman John Dobken."
January 29, 2016 7:23 PM
Energy Northwest board hires independent investigator
Unsigned letter says unsatisfactory performance of Richland nuclear plant being hidden Energy Northwest official says letter’s allegations lack context Executive board says results of independent investigation will be made public
By Annette Cary
The Energy Northwest executive board is hiring an outside attorney to investigate allegations in unsigned letters sent in the past few weeks to some board members. The letters allege information about sub-par performance of the nuclear power plant near Richland is being hidden from Energy Northwest governing boards, employees and theThis is from one scared employee trying to encapsulate the feeling of his buddy employees. He know all the other employees are too terrified with losing their jobs.
public. Although unsigned, the letters say they are from a group of unnamed Energy Northwest employees. “The executive board takes this matter very seriously,” said Sid Morrison, executive board chairman, in a letter sent to employees Thursday.
Operations at the Columbia Generating Station compare poorly to many of the other 98 commercial nuclear power plants in the nation, the letters allege, based on rankings prepared by the nonprofit Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, or INPO.Energy Northwest is a public agency, but it does not release INPO ratings. It says that all nuclear plants agree that INPO measures are proprietary to ensure the free flow of information among the owners of the reactors.
Energy Northwest officials have signed non-disclosure agreements and are ethically and legally bound to uphold them, said Energy Northwest spokesman John Dobken.We have seen a steady decline of the index with a return to low levels.Unsigned letterThe first letter, which is not dated, reminds board members that Energy Northwest was rated as one of two nuclear plants in the nation in greatest need of operational and human performance improvement in 2010.
Its INPO index rating improved as a new leadership team, headed by Mark Reddemann, was put to work. However, the improvement was not sustained, the letter said.“We have seen a steady decline of the index with a return to low levels,” the letter said, adding that the plant has ranked in the bottom 25 of the nation’s 99 operating commercial reactors since the end of July.That coincides with the conclusion of a refueling outage that was planned to be longer than usual. Energy Northwest’s intent was to improve productivity long-term, but the longer outage would reduce productivity short-term.However, the outage had unanticipated consequences. It lasted longer than planned, and the plant was operated at reduced power for several weeks after the outage as a stuck valve was repaired. Index points also were lost because of worker exposure to radiation.By September, the plant’s INPO rating had dropped to the 85th worst in the nation, the letter said.
Three months later, employees were told it then was ranked among the bottom 25 plants because of two pinhole fuel leaks discovered in the fall, according to the letter.The letter accuses management of keeping the plant online at all costs, pointing to the decision to continue operating at 65 percent power during the valve repair. Unwanted material that got into the reactor core during the valve repair may have been responsible for the pinhole leaks.Letter alleges $35,000 Nuclear Regulatory Commission fine stemmed from two guards taking nude photos while on duty.The letter also addressed the $35,000 fine Energy Northwest paid the Nuclear Regulatory commission, which was unrelated to the outage. The fine was paid after two security officers were found to be inattentive at their posts. The letter said the guards were taking nude photos while on duty.It also alleged that a security officer was playing a geocaching game on duty. Gamers were invited to attempt to enter a controlled area for the nuclear plant via an online game app.In another incident, a contractor employee fell from a ladder at the Energy Northwest Industrial Development Complex, suffering multiple broken bones and requiring a stay at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle.
Energy Northwest had been touting a safety record of millions of hours without a lost-time accident. It then switched to touting millions of hours without a lost-time accident at Columbia Generating Station, missing an opportunity to let the organization learn from the accident, the letter said.The second, brief letter said that no improvements had been made.The message from management is that the INPO index score does not matter because the plant is producing so much electricity, the letter said. However, the letter alleged that all but seven commercial nuclear plants are better producers based on how close they come to producing at their full capacity.The outage gained us 30 more megawatts, which means Columbia’s cost of power is now even lower.John Dobken, Energy Northwest spokesmanThe performance data included in the letter does not provide full context, Dobken said. The nuclear industry uses hundreds of measures, from maintenance backlogs to collective radiation exposure to generation targets, he said.The outage gained the plant 30 more megawatts of generation capacity, which lowers the cost of power production, Dobken said. In December the plant, operating at 100 percent capacity, produced more power than any other month in its 31-year history.Before the refueling outage, the Columbia Generating Station had generated power for 683 straight days, a goal that only about 5 percent of nuclear plants achieve. “It speaks volumes to equipment reliability,” Dobken said.After the outage, the plant has operated continuously for more than 200 days. The industry-recognized milestone for continuous operation after an outage is 150 days, he said.
In addition, the plant set a new safety record for an outage with no recordable injuries by Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.The collective radiation dose to workers during the outage was higher than anticipated, however, after checks of piping led to a decision to remove some contaminated pipes. The collective dose to workers was still well below federal safety limits, according to Energy Northwest.
The plant is meeting all Nuclear Regulatory Commission performance goals, and overall has no significant performance issues from the NRC’s perspective, said Victor Dricks, NRC spokesman. It is among 92 of 99 plants that receive the lowest level of inspection because it has no significant performance issues.The plant rolled out a performance improvement plan in 2011.“Resident inspectors have seen improvement in the areas of human performance, work planning and risk management,” Dricks said.
However, the plant’s corrective action program continues to have room for improvement and is a focus of the NRC, he said.We unanimously decided to hire an outside attorney who will independently investigate the charges.Sid Morrison, Energy Northwest executive board chairmanThe board discussed the letters this week in a closed session in Lacey. The senior leadership team of Energy Northwest had a chance to discuss the issues with the board, then the board met without them in the room, according to the letter sent to employees.A unanimous decision was made to hire an attorney to investigate and to publicly share the results of the investigation, the letter said.“We intend to accomplish these actions in a reasonably timely manner, balancing a proper sense of urgency that recognizes the seriousness of the concerns, with our commitment to ensure a full and thorough review of all the issues,” the letter said.
The process the board will follow underscores Energy Northwest’s commitment to give employees the right to bring forward concerns with confidence their concerns will be addressed, the letter said.The decision to hire an attorney to investigate should not be seen as validation of the issues raised in the letters, but the issues should be taken seriously, Dobken said.Chuck Johnson, representing Oregon and Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, attended the Lacey meeting and said he was encouraged that the board took the letter as seriously as it did.“I hope they will hire someone who truly is independent, who is grounded in nuclear power knowledge,” he said.
