I was at a deregulated plant. It wasn't any different than before deregulation so far as morality and ethics. The attitude to do the right thing by nuclear safety was strong before we deregulated and it was just as strong when I left in early 2005. If anything the economic implications of keeping the plant online or starting up with a known problem are worse than when you just do the right thing to begin with, and most Upper Level Managers and VPs at nuke sites understand that fact of life very well at least at the sites I've worked at and those I've benchmarked or peer visited.
Sometimes what appears to be questionable is really someone doing the best he or she could with the best information they had or could get within a reasonable time frame.
An example, I hear my old plant, Fermi2 is down right now shortly after starting up from a refueling outage. They'll have to pop the lid because they have a leaker. I've heard from a reliable source they had a leaker just prior to their refueling shutdown. They couldn't find it during the outage so they got together as a management team and took into consideration that they had a good chance they unloaded the leaker. (Note if you can't find it the leak probably wasn't a big one at that time.) They elected to start up and yes economics were part of the decision, we are after all a money making industry. I know the managers there and trust me, the last thing discussed was economics. I'll say that without having to have been in the room, I was once part of that team and I know the people involved. They did the best with the info they had and could reasonably get.
When it became obvious the leaker was still there they could very well have elected to stay at power. Instead they met again and elected to shut down, again the reasons were partly economic in that if the leaker got worse in say 4 weeks to the point it required a shutdown it would have been in a summertime and would have cost a LOT more money than a shutdown now. Also taken into consideration were the items that need to be taken in order to suppress a leaker in a BWR. It can be done safely but puts the core in a somewhat cocked lineup. Also running with a leaker has obvious radiological implications during your next Refueling. Fermi takes great pride, and rightfully so in keeping dose rates lower than just about any reactor in the country. They elected to shutdown and are probably kicking themselves now, but given the info they had during the Refueling Outage they really had no other good choice but to start up.
Another example, at the plant I'm working at right now found some debris on their lower core plate some of which was ridiculously small. To get it out would require extensive planning and would extend the outage, something which has direct economic implications to the managers at the plant because outage bonuses depend on outage duration. When they were discussing the matter I never heard anyone from the VP down even mention bonuses, all they cared about was potential impact on fuel and safety. They correctly decided to take the extra outage time, a decision which I'm very happy was made.
I know someone will pipe in WELL back in the old days we'd have still operated in situations like that, and yes I'll concur they did. Does it make the decisions made back then unethical? No it does not, because the standards were different, like many standards they evolved to what we have today. I have no doubt in 25 years some of the decisions we tout today as being the best we knew how to make will be viewed as barbaric. I will concede some of the standards are economic but I will refute that by saying over the last 10 years especially Nuclear management has just plain gotten better and more sophisticated. You will always have the production uber alles guys, some are just wired that way, I'l gleefully admit I like to see things happen but that's because I'm thrilled in being able to operate the machine. I like testing items, clearances and the like. I like it when things go as scheduled, not because I think schedule rules over safety but because when the schedule rolls smoothly it means a lot of good people followed good practices in order to get me a good schedule. Sometimes what we view as schedule pressure is simply the product of people wanting us to follow what we agreed to follow (using good judgement of course). I find nothing unethical about it.
I remember talking with a fellow SM from Diablo Canyon, a very smart fellow with the initials DP. Diablo Canyon is on a 5 minutes adherance to the schedule, in other words you don't do items outsidse of 5 minutes early and they don't finish more than 5 minutes late. At first I thought WOW there is schedule pressure but it's not. It's the end product of works groups, ops, and scheduling taking ownership to ensure what they schedule is correct. If items are more than 5 minutes off something is either wrong with the planning or the schedule or the performance. In any case they get to the bottom of it. When I left Fermi I know they were working to a ten minute standard, the place I work at now has no real standard as tight as other plants, but with hard work we'll get there. I know this last section rambled a bit, but I'm pointing out that as standards change what we view as ethical or right changes. During my early days I gleefully manipulated the schedule based on my knowledge ans was rewarded for it. M1Ark can attest to that. But as I grew older I took a longer view and saw what this does to other organizations and if I caught a guy doing today what I did in say 1996 I'd have a nice dad to lad with him.
Mike
