Word: northeasterly
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Millstone scandal began when Galatis blew the whistle on Northeast's 20-year habit of breaking safety rules during routine refueling operations at Millstone 1--moving all of the radioactive fuel rods into the plant's spent-fuel storage pool even though the pool, crowded with thousands of old fuel rods, was licensed to handle the full core only on an emergency basis. To save precious off-line minutes, Northeast would start moving the fuel so quickly after shutdown that the heat melted a worker's protective boots...
...country will soon allow price competition among rival energy providers, with customers free to choose the utility that offers the lowest rates. To prepare for this era of rate slashing, which could begin in New England next year, utilities have been laying off workers and trimming maintenance costs. But Northeast's troubles illustrate the long-term price of such short-term savings: after reporting a $76.4 million loss for the fourth quarter of 1996, the utility barely broke even for the year, reporting net income of $1.8 million, down from $282.4 million in 1995. With Northeast stock trading at about...
...transform Northeast's "culture, values, processes and standards--and get the plants safely back online," Kenyon says, he has brought in new managers from leading utilities around the country. He hired a former Northeast whistle blower named Paul Blanch to work on a revamped employee-concerns program, created a dedicated "recovery team" for each plant and asked the demoralized and skeptical Millstone rank and file to help him weed out problem managers. (Both an NRC Special Project Office and an "independent corrective-action-verification team" of industry consultants will oversee the work; plant restart will require a commission vote.) This...
...that distinction in Jackson, the NRC head who has spent the past year conducting a painful public examination of her agency. At a forum in August near the Millstone site, she recited the chief complaints against the NRC--among them, that the agency let safety problems go uncorrected, gave Northeast the names of confidential whistle blowers and "failed to act in a timely and responsible way on serious and meritorious allegations...There is truth in all those charges," she confessed...
...Millstone happen--are gone. The regional administrator for New England has been demoted, and all of the Millstone resident inspectors have been reassigned. Yet some of Jackson's critics remain unimpressed. Chief among them is Galatis, a tenacious and deeply religious man who spent three years trying to get Northeast and the NRC to abide by NRC rules. To force the issue he had to go public, filing a petition that asked the NRC to suspend Millstone's license...