Word: plante
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Northeast that because "certain of your activities may have been conducted in violation of license requirements," the NRC was considering penalties. In an extraordinary move, Russell demanded a complete review of every system at Millstone 1, with the results "submitted under oath," to prove that every part of the plant is safe--the global examination Galatis asked for two years ago. The results, Russell wrote, "will be used to decide whether or not the license of Millstone Unit 1 should be suspended, modified or revoked...
...fired off a frank piece of E-mail warning his colleagues that "the acceptance criteria are changing. Being outside the proper regulatory framework, even if technically justifiable, will be met with resistance by the NRC. Expect no regulatory relief." DeBarba put 100 engineers on a global evaluation of the plant, and they turned up more than 5,000 "items" to be addressed before the plant could go back online. The company announced a reorganization of its nuclear division in which DeBarba and Miller were both promoted. Miller, who told TIME that "complacency" was to blame for the utility's troubles...
Galatis then flipped through a safety report in which Northeast was required to demonstrate to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the plant's network of cooling systems would function even if the most important one failed. Instead, the company had analyzed the loss of a far less critical system. The report was worthless, the NRC hadn't noticed, and the consequences could be dire. If Millstone lost its primary cooling system while the full core was in the pool, Galatis told Betancourt, the backup systems might not handle the heat. "The pool could boil," he said. "We'd better report...
...prove Galatis wrong, but they ended up agreeing with him. Finally, he took the case to the NRC himself, only to discover that officials there had known about the procedure for a decade without moving to stop it. The NRC says the practice is common, and safe--if a plant's cooling system is designed to handle the heat load. But Millstone's wasn't. And when Galatis learned that plants in Delaware, Nebraska and New Jersey had similar fuel-pool troubles, he realized the NRC was sitting on a nationwide problem...
...issue of nuclear safety. But the story of George Galatis and Millstone suggests that the NRC itself may be giving only passing thought to the issue--that it may be more concerned with propping up an embattled, economically straitened industry than with ensuring public safety. When a nuclear plant violates safety standards and the federal watchdog turns a blind eye, the question arises, How safe are America's nuclear plants...