To Reporter John Dorschner: FINALLY Some Hard-Hitting Reporting on Turkey Point! By Geniusofdespair

The great investigative reporter, John Dorschner, was reduced to writing fluff pieces about FP&L. It was so bad I blogged about it in October '08, and I wrote to him asking him something like, "Are you on FP&L's public relations staff?" John is a veteran reporter at the Miami Herald for almost 40 years, I remember reading many of his articles in the defunct Tropic Magazine that the Miami Herald once published.

So you can imagine my surprise when I read two hard-hitting articles, "Court Records Reveal trouble at Turkey Point" and "In midst of blackout a drama unfolded in control room," by him today on Turkey Point's Nuclear Power Plant. These articles should scare Miami Dade residents who rely on FP&L to safely operate the nuclear power plant. Dorschner writes "Court records reveal workers angry at poor mainenance, overwork and greedy Execs...". The articles say profit is king at FP&L, ahead of safety, and Management pretty much sucks when employees want to voice concerns. Some gems from the articles:


FROM "In midst of blackout a drama unfolded in control room":

In depositions filed in a court case, Turkey Point employees gave a detailed account of the day's tumultuous events.``I was walking down the hall and the light flickered and I saw everybody running,'' recalled FPL analyst Tallman Whitler, ``and I knew that couldn't be good.''

Regarding a 12 hour start-up wanted by Management:
About 8:30 that night, Hoffman left the plant. He later testified that, as senior licensed operator, he was responsible for the safety of the plant. If something went wrong with the start-up, he was the one responsible. He called two former bosses on the drive home and asked what they thought of the situation. In depositions, both managers said Hoffman had been right and FPL executives wrong about the timetable.

FROM "Court Records Reveal trouble at Turkey Point":

Shift manager Randy Flynn: ``Sometimes I think that the money was more important to the company than the people and resources. Yes I did.''

Whitler said many employees were fed up with the system. There were ``attrition rates of 30 percent a year. . . . There's a lot of brain drain walking out of the plant getting replaced by people with virtually no experience.''

Molden, the former operations manager, was continually concerned about the control rod indicators, which kept malfunctioning. He called several FPL executives, saying, ``We shouldn't be operating our plant at this standard.''

It is hard to take these quotes out of context...you have to read the articles. But one more:

``There are the old gauges . . . where . . . a needle that goes around and around,'' Ware testified, saying they were ``not very reliable.'' When operators looked at the indicators daily, ``they'd be stuck.

``So over the years, they developed the habit of pinging them to get them to move. . ." .