The Nuclear Regulatory Commission raises concern of a “chilled work environment” at two departments at Holtec’s Palisades Nuclear Plant that needs to be addressed promptly, the agency said Tuesday.
According to NRC’s regulations, a chilled work environment refers to a workplace culture where staffers feel suppressed or discouraged to raise nuclear safety or regulatory concerns due to fear of retaliation. NRC said in a press release that Holtec’s Supply Chain and Quality Assurance departments are experiencing these conditions.
Though NRC concluded that these identified issues do not raise to a level of any violations of NRC requirements, the agency said it expects Holtec to address them. NRC has already discussed the results of the inspections with Holtec Senior Vice President and Chief Nuclear Officer Fadi Dayi and his staff, according to the letter.
Holtec’s spokesperson Patrick O’Brien told Exchange Monitor Thursday that the company takes the issues identified by NRC seriously and is taking immediate action to address them.
“A strong safety-conscious work environment is fundamental to our culture,” O’Brien said. “Speaking up and raising concerns are essential to nuclear safety, and leaders at every level have a responsibility to support that environment and ensure concerns are appropriately evaluated and addressed.”
NRC expects Holtec will share the results with its employees and take immediate steps to reassure staffers. Holtec will also perform an independent analysis, file a corrective action plan within 30 days of the letter and implement it. NRC will review Holtec’s plan and supervise the company’s response.
“The inspection team substantiated the presence of a chilled work environment within the supply chain and quality assurance departments at Palisades,” NRC staff said in the Oct. 13 letter.
NRC staff continued, “This reluctance was driven largely by a perceived fear of retaliation, including the possibility of termination. The current environment has also negatively affected, for these two departments, the use of established processes for raising safety issues, such as the corrective action program (CAP) and the employee concerns program (ECP).”
NRC staff also said that managers at multiple levels seemingly were not always receptive to employees’ safety concerns, based on information they found during its inspection that was conducted from July to September.
Don’t Waste Michigan’s executive director Kevin Kamps said these issues NRC are problematic and puts the Palisades restart in jeopardy. Kamps questioned how NRC could be confident that these issues would not affect Palisades when quality assurance and supply chain management directly safety functions at the plant.
“The QA [Quality Assurance] department reports directly to the plant manager about safety-critical issues, and its employees are feeling pressured not to do so,” Kamps said in Thursday’s emailed statement.
Kamps continued, “At the same time many would-be control room operators have failed their licensing certification exams, NRC quickly rubber stamps a risky retrieval scheme for the unprecedented tipped highly radioactive fuel assembly stuck in the reactor core, and lingering safety concerns, as with the severely degraded steam generator tubes, a perfect storm appears to be gathering.”
Staffers at Palisades told NRC staff the biggest challenge affecting their work environment was “work planning, coordination, and communication,” according to the letter.
“Schedule planning and adherence have not completely transitioned from the project-based system used during decommissioning and early in the restart to an operating plant system,” NRC staff said. “This has resulted in unpredictable schedule changes and, in some cases, inadequate organizational support for work activities as scheduled.”
Despite these concerns, NRC staff said it still has confidence in the recommissioning of the Palisades plant, saying these isolated work environment issues will not affect Holtec’s restart efforts. Palisades, located in Covert Township, Mich., is a single pressurized water reactor plant that could generate 805 megawatts of electricity.
