In a previous post, I related a story from my own past about nuclear power. Many years ago, in a family conversation, I said "I am sure that engineers can design a safe nuclear power reactor. The problem is that we have to depend on the nuclear industry to be ten times as honest and competent as it has ever been to make it safe to use nuclear power." In many of my blog posts, I have mentioned the problems that government regulatory agencies have had regulating the nuclear power industry in their respective countries. I have also mentioned many instances of incompetence and deliberate breaking of rules and regulation on the part of nuclear power plant operators. Today I am going to cover another two recent incidents involving the nuclear industry that support my concerns.
Bechtel National and URS Energy Construction are two nuclear contracting firms working on a plan for a radioactive waste treatment plant at Hanford for the U. S. Department of Energy. A URS whistleblower named Donna Busche was fired when she raised concerns about the safety of the design the contractors were working on. The DoE has requested that the two companies provide over forty five hundred documents relating to the firing of Busche. Bechtel and URS have refused to provide the requested documents. The companies claimed that the documents are protected under attorney-client or attorney work-product privileges. URS also decided on their own that some of the requested documents were not relevant to the DoE investigation. The contracts that were signed for the eleven billion dollar project clearly state that the contractors are legally bound to turn over any requested documents relating to the project, including attorney privilege documents, upon request. With respect to the current dispute, lawyers for the contractors claim that the documents clause of the contract is too broad and is unenforceable. Both contractors claim that they value a "culture of safety" but don't seem to want to explain why they fired someone who was raising safety concerns.
Tetra Tech (TT) is a nuclear contractor for the U.S. Navy. TT has been awarded over three hundred million dollars worth of contracts for radioactive waste cleanup for the Navy. TT is currently working on cleaning up radioactively contaminated soil at the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in San Francisco. Hunters Point is a eight hundred and sixty six acre piece of prime waterfront property. It is being developed for urban housing, retail and recreation uses and is one of the biggest such developments in the U.S. Hunters Point is a superfund cleanup site with petroleum fuels, pesticides, volatile organic compounds and radiological materials from a nuclear laboratory and from decontamination of Naval ships. A report last April found that TT had falsified soil sample reports. Samples that were supposed to come from underneath a radiological laboratory were actually taken from other locations that had already been tested and were found to be free of radioactive contamination.
Here we have three major U.S. nuclear contractors who are either refusing to release requested documents or falsifying test samples for contamination. I wish that I could say that these are exceptional stories but, unfortunately, they are not rare. We cannot afford to risk the dangers of nuclear power with such behavior in the nuclear industry.
Artist's concept of development at Hunters Point in San Francisco:
