ABSTRACT
In early March of 1996, Time presented a cover story (Pooley, 1996) about harassment and intimidation of employees who brought safety concerns to management at Millstone Nuclear Power Station. The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) was receiving approximately 50 allegations per year from Millstone, among the highest at any nuclear power station (NRC, 1996), All three units at Millstone were at that time on the NRC “Watch List” of plants deemed to need more regulatory attention, due to a combination of operational deficiencies, weaknesses in documentation of the design basis/licensing basis, lack of demonstrated improvements, and employee allegations.1 Each of the three units had been shut down by utility management to deal with particular problems. In June, the NRC placed all three units into Category 3 of the Watch List, which meant that the units
could not be restarted without an affirmative vote of the NRC Commissioners establishing that substantial progress had been made to correct the issues.
