Hacked: Miami Herald archive on FPL Nuclear at Turkey Point... by gimleteye

On January 4, 2010 The Miami Herald published an article by John Dorschner, "Court records reveal trouble at Turkey Point" but you won't find it in the Herald online archive. Type, "FPL" or "Turkey Point" there, and you will find many articles on Turkey Point. Somehow, that one disappeared. The question arises, why was the article removed and yet an FPL response to the article remains? Perhaps it is a deliberate decision by a pro-nuclear Herald worker, like the FPL employee who drilled a 1/8th inch hole in a steam pipe at the nuclear facility. Or a favor. Or an innocent mistake. The article was retrieved from another search engine. Click 'read more' for what you won't find in the Herald archive unless an executive at the Herald says, "Put it back."

Court records reveal trouble at Turkey Point
Miami Herald, The (FL) - Monday, January 4, 2010
Author: JOHN DORSCHNER, dorschner@MiamiHerald.com
When Coleen Ware walked into Turkey Point, she was shocked to see that the indicators showing control rod positions looked like something out of an early '70s sci-fi movie.

On special assignment from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations to teach managers of the South Dade plant about safety, she was surprised by the aged indicators, which show the position of the rods in the reactor core -- a central measure about how the core is functioning.

''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. . . . Well, that's not OK in a nuclear plant because you have to have reliable, you know, verification of where those rods are positioned. . . . That's a lesson from Three Mile Island,'' the worst nuclear disaster in American history.

In the hush-hush nuclear world, such insider details rarely, if ever, become public, but now a lawsuit has made public 2,000 pages of testimony that offer a fascinating window into the experiences, thoughts and frustrations of Turkey Point executives, employees and contract workers that reveal myriad problems.

Florida Power & Light, which operates the plant, says it's safe and all its actions are done according to federal regulation. ''Turkey Point has been operating for more than 30 years and has a very good safety record,'' says FPL spokesman Michael Waldron. All the control-rod indicators have now been ''updated or replaced and have extremely high reliability.''

NRC spokesman Joey Ledford spokesman said the NRC was aware of control rod position indication problems and FPL has upgraded them in Reactor Unit 4 and plans to upgrade them in Unit 3 next year, complying with all regulatory requirements.

Waldron emphasized that the transcripts from 17 people were made in 2008 by an investigator of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as part of a dispute between FPL and David Hoffman, its former senior licensed operator who quit abruptly, writing a late-night resignation letter saying he couldn't follow executives' demands that he do something he believed was extremely dangerous.

FPL is now suing Hoffman, seeking the return of a $50,000 bonus, and Hoffman is counter-suing. Hoffman also filed a complaint with the NRC, saying FPL had discriminated against him because he had raised concerns about safety.

After an investigation, the NRC reported it ''did not substantiate'' Hoffman's accusations. The federal regulatory authority also sided with the utility in several other issues that Hoffman had raised.

Some critics believe NRC strongly favors utilities. Vice President Joe Biden said in a 2007 interview, when he was a Delaware senator, that he had no confidence in the NRC. ''It's like getting homed -- coming into the small town and playing a basketball championship with the local refs.''

Hoffman started at Turkey Point in 1998, working his way up to become the senior operator, responsible for the plant's safe operation of the plant. In early 2008, he was earning $139,776 a year in base pay and was set to receive a $30,000 bonus in March.

Many of those who gave depositions spoke highly of him.

Tallman Whitler, an analyst brought in to improve the management system: ''Hoffman caught my eye because he had a commanding respect of the people that worked for him.''

Maria Lacal, another former operations manager: ''Dave is a very capable individual, extremely sharp, very knowledgeable, very dedicated to his job. . . . he needed to mature a little bit here and there.''

James Molden, a former operations manager, said Hoffman was ''very, very knowledgeable.'' Top executives ''were frustrated with Dave. . . . Dave would point out a lot of things that he was frustrated with. . . . There were never, you know, what I'll call happy moments. It was constantly 'This is what I need . . . and this is what I'm not getting.' ''

Michael Pearce, an FPL executive still with the utility, had a more negative view: ''David sometimes shoots from the hip, and his mouth will start before his brain engages.''

Ware, the outside consultant, praised Hoffman for ''coaching his shift managers to be more demanding with regard to equipment doing what it's designed to do, as opposed to various work-arounds, Rube Goldberg type methods for keeping the plant on line.''

Ware was dismayed at FPL's stance. ''Stuff wasn't getting fixed. . . . The message that came out of the leadership team was that there's nothing really wrong here. I mean it was just such a ridiculous message. . . . Everything comes down to dollars.''

In his deposition, Bill Jefferson, then the top executive at Turkey Point, said: ''I want to hear everything that's wrong with that power plant, and I want to fix everything that's wrong with the power plant.''

Still many employees were concerned that FPL was putting profits ahead of safety.

THE BOTTOM LINE

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.''

Upset by what they viewed as a lack of company support for safe operations, Molden and Mike Navin quit as operations managers. ''I left there because I didn't see the level of commitment to run the plant towards excellence, and Dave and I were of very like-minded,'' Navin recalled.

Waldron, the FPL spokesman, says, ''there is absolutely no scenario where we would put profits before safety.'' The utility invested $250 million to improve the plant from the beginning of 2008 through 2009, and Turkey Point is in compliance with all NRC requirements.

In late 2007, before this push began, FPL brought in Mike Kiley, a nuclear manager in New Hampshire, as general manager. In his deposition, Kiley said he had been ordered to deal with 1,700 items on the backlog list for repair. (Waldron says that the backlog is now down to 400 items, and only seven of them are considered essential for being fixed.)

At the time, Kiley said he quickly decided Hoffman ''was very resistant to the need for the department to change.''

William Hettel, a one-time operations manager: ''They did not look upon Dave favorably. I think Dave knew . . . things that needed to be done. He just felt we couldn't progress as fast'' as the top managers wanted.

''I think Dave's perspective was 'I need more operators and I can't push them any more because I can't afford to lose any more. . . . It was felt Dave did not have the right standards to drive the organization,'' said Hettel.

Tracy Davis, Hoffman's administrative assistant, recalled a time when Kiley criticized operators' work ethic. ''Wait a minute, Mike,'' she told him. ''These guys are tired. You try working six 12s, and you're on meds, and your one day off you have to stay up because you can't come back down.' ''

'MEDS' OR 'MIDS'?

Bernd Wollschlaeger, a North Miami Beach physician and addiction specialist, says ''the meds in question are probably amphetamines'' and would be ''very dangerous'' if used by operators of equipment. FPL's Waldron suggests the transcript may have a typographic error and Davis said ''mids.'' He says FPL has many programs in place to catch drug abusers.

Still, many employees complained they felt overworked. In one e-mail, shift supervisor Tim Jones erupted when asked to write a report in two days: ''I cannot possibly complete these actions . . . I have worked 16 straight hours and am scheduled to work 12 hours on one of my four days off as it is prior to annual requal next week. I still have evals to write for my shift, which I planned on completing on my own time off.''

In 2008, the head of the NRC, Dale Klein, complained that Turkey Point was seriously understaffed, with exhausted operators often working 72 hours or more a week.

Waldron says the utility always abides by NRC work guidelines and that by hiring additional operators, they now average less than 45 hours a week. NRC spokesman Ledford says the plant has added 20 operators in the past 12 months, which ''has substantially reduced the overtime hours.'' More operators are in training.

On Dec. 17, 2007, Kiley held his first big meeting with managers at a nearby country club. ''I put on one slide that said: 'Are you fully committed to improving the department's performance? Yes or no.' ''

Kiley went around the room, asking each manager. Each said yes, until he came to Paul Reimers, a veteran manager famous outside the plant for being a participant on the Wife Swap show. A show promo said the Reimers ''run their family of five children with military like precision.''

Kiley remembered Reimers saying, ''No, I'm not committed to improving the department's performance.''

Kiley said, ''OK. Well, you can leave.'' Reimers left. He was not allowed to return to the plant for three days.

During a break, Hoffman was upset when shift managers told him they realized that from then on they wouldn't dare reveal concerns Kiley didn't want to hear. ''That bothered me excessively.''

Davis, the administrative assistant: ''The first break, Dave immediately went to Mike and tried to explain . . . Paul's personality.'' He was the type who wouldn't automatically say yes. ''Dave fought to get Paul back the next day.''

Whitler said Hoffman was so upset that Whitler tried to calm him down. ''I didn't want him fired because he was like the bastion of sanity.''

THE BIG CHILL

Still, Hoffman complained to FPL human resources and, in a highly unusual event for a senior operator, he filed a confidential complaint with the NRC about the chilling effect the Reimers incident had on people who might want to talk about safety issues.

In his deposition, Kiley expressed regret. He said Reimers later told him he was already working far too much overtime. ''In reflecting back on it now, you know, . . . I could have probably handled that situation a little better.''

The NRC investigated and concluded Hoffman's fear ''was not substantiated. Although a few individuals expressed some discomfort with respect to their interactions with certain senior plant mangers, interview results indicated'' they still felt they could reveal safety problems ''without fear of retaliation.''

Still, the NRC report noted that FPL ''has acknowledged the need to improve communications to foster enhanced employee trust in FPL senior management.''

After the Reimers incident, executives further distanced themselves from Hoffman. ''Dave was not involved in some really important key decisions that were being made . . . specifically the rod positioning indications, and I thought that was unusual that the senior license holder was not involved,'' said Ware, the outside consultant.

A crew was working on the control-rod gauges around the clock ''and Dave Hoffman was excluded completely. . . . Mike Kiley did not consider Dave to be part of the team and that they were looking to replace him,'' said Ware.

Said Hoffman: ''I had been viewed as an impediment to the progress that they were trying to make at the plant.''

When Hoffman returned from Christmas vacation, he was told to spend at least two days a week in a training center, separated from the control room by two sets of razor wire and no-man's-land spaces. His supporters viewed this treatment as a period of exile. ''He's outside . . . out of mind,'' said Whitler.

Meanwhile, Paul Infanger, a nuclear engineer, had been assigned to do another evaluation of the Employee Concerns Program, which was supposedly designed to allow workers to talk about plant problems, anonymously if they chose.

LACK OF TRUST

For years, the NRC had been concerned about whether Turkey Point employees felt free to come forward with safety concerns without suffering repercussions. Whitler, the FPL analyst, said several earlier employee surveys showed ''they don't trust management. . . . They didn't think management respected employees. They didn't think they were fixing the plant.''

Infanger said his team found that ECM ''was not being thought of as an effective tool.'' Among the 200 workers who answered his survey, he found ''there was a very, very strong feeling that management retaliated [against] people who raised concerns.''

In March 2008, Vice President Jefferson ''got openly irate'' when he saw the survey, Infanger recalled. ''He was upset with all the weaknesses that made management look bad.''

A few days later, Infanger was fired. Court documents don't indicate why. Infanger didn't respond to a phone call. FPL's Waldron says only that ''all issues'' with Infanger's leaving the company ''have been resolved.''

In August, FPL replaced Jefferson with Kiley, who now is the top boss at Turkey Point.

The NRC reports it continues to closely monitor FPL's Employee Concerns Program. At a meeting two months ago with NRC officials, FPL reported employee attitudes are still a problem, partly because ''certain management actions have negatively impacted employee trust and resulted in a perception that production often takes precedence over safety.''

The October FPL report also said, ''Employees perceive that management has created an urgency to implement change and react immediately to issues without considering resources and work environment impact.'' FPL said it was taking strong corrective actions through mid-summer 2010 to improve employees' attitudes.
Page: G14
Provided By: The McClatchy Company
Index Terms: Institute of Nuclear Power Operations; Florida Power & Light; Nuclear Regulatory Commission