Need help with a research paper.

[Sturgn686]

Hello to all.  I'm currently taking a business ethics course and have two papers to write on the topic of my choice. One of the topics I chose was to compare the ethical climate of the nuclear industry before and after TMI. I was hoping to get some ideas for resources to turn to on the subject from the people on this web site. This is only a six page paper so I don't have to go too crazy but I could definitely use some ideas to get me started in the right direction. Thanks in advance. Rich-Wells, ME.

[Fermi2]

I don't think the Ethical climate changed at all. TMI didn't happen due to lack of ethics.

Mike

[alphadude]

true nuff.  business will do business is still applied. some morals have creeped into the ethics issue but only because its good business.

[Rad Sponge]

I agree, a better angle would be to investigate management style changes that have occurred since TMI.

The biggest systematic change was the creation of the "advisement/semi-regulalatory" body INPO and many standardizations of Human Performance issues (HU tools).

Ethics, however, were not the issue.

[Already Gone]

I don't see why TMI is the focal point of your study.  It's not as though ethics were a factor in the TMI accident.  It's not as though ethics in the nuclear industry changed at that point.
If one were to identify a major change in the ethical environment, it would more likely coincide with the deregulation of the electric industry than with the TMI accident.

[Fermi2]

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

[atomicarcheologist]

Well stated, Broadzilla.  Sturgn 686, it should appear that getting six pages form this topic will enable you to get a reporters position with the NY Times.

[Fermi2]

Thank you sir!.

LOL by the way, he'll have the same credibility as a Times reporter too!

Mike

[Already Gone]

Mike,
It's not that I disagree with you.  But two or three examples of using good judgement and being responsible do not tell the whole story.  So two or three plants made some good decisions despite being deregulated.  That doesn't mean that the industry is the same as it was before deregulation.  Regardless of the technology, these places are still being run by humans.  There is simply no infallible sect of the human race.  Where the values change, so too will the ethics.  But there are two words that illustrate my point so well that I'm just going to wrap this up with them

DAVIS BESSE

[HydroDave63]

or

MILLSTONE REFUELING

[Fermi2]

Davis Besse wasn't deregulated at the time the decisions were made concerning her sad spiral into nuclear infamy.

I know you weren't disagreeing with me. I was only speaking from my personal experience, I know there are horror stories, but I doubt being deregulated has anything to do with them. Bad decision makers and poor managers are timeless commodities regardless of era

By the way, I went from regulated, to deregulated, to so protected no one would know how to even go about cracking the boundary!

Mike

[Roll Tide]

The ethics problems that I have seen at NPPs are not typically made by VPs and Shift Managers.

On another thread (Navy: getting in forum) the advice was given that you should falsify your past in order to get a security clearance. That is an ethical lapse, even if it is never discovered by the NRC or the New York Times.

The only times I have seen higher management acting in a way that could be considered unethical was for the benefit of an employee / group of employees. When a guy is injured, and they have a maintenance worker bring him in each day to sign his time sheet so he can still be paid, it is an ethical lapse. "But the union agreed with the action!" Still not ethical to lie about it and sign your name to it.

If you want to see ethical changes before and after TMI, you will find it in construction instead of OPS. TVA made a big push to self-identify any problems, and there were people who came forward at Sequoyah, Bellefonte, and especially Watts Bar. This was a change in the ethical climate fostered from above. It resulted in repairs to improper construction that would have probably never been detected.

BZ is right, this is a totally different category than regulated or deregulated.

Hope this gets you started, since I used to know a couple of guys on the Sturge.

[Sturgn686]

Thanks for all of the input so far and definitely keep it coming. One of the "ethical" considerations I was thinking of is the way that GPU handled the public relations end of things. Did they, in anyone's opinion, hold back information that may have been critical to public safety, as some people out there believe? Were they trying to save face at expense of public safety? Personally, I wasn't there and I don't know what or who to beleive. I know that there are at least a couple of you out there who were  in the business at the time who could enlighten me so please do so.

[SloGlo]

re: tmi mess, instead of attempting to figure out the management p.r. stance 3 decades after the fact, it may be more interesting to see what the perception today is of the news reporting of the incident.  for instance, it is well known what the dose rates were at the fence, in the plume, in the river flowing past however most people at that time were ready to take flight and alot of press was given to farmers who stated the "fact" that their cattle were all facing away from the plant the entire time which is against the cattle's instincts of facing into the wind.  this type of reporting is still remembered and referenced in populace's recollections.  was the population adequately informed as to the facts at the time or did the ethics of the news reporting business become compromised in atomic hysteria?

[Sturgn686]

I see your point. I may shift my focus. Input on this would be greatly appreciated from anyone else. Thanks.

[Roll Tide]

Emergency Declarations and Protective Actions Recommendations by the utility are very sensitive. But evacuate / shelter decisions are only recommendations; the state and local governments may decide to be more conservative.

I remember one really bad day at a former plant, when I was operating a unit during a transient. As we were moving through a fast load reduction, suddenly the opposite unit operator boomed out, "HP just called up and reported local steam line Rad readings "A" steam line is reading higher than "B" and "C". Later on we found out the exact readings were all under 10 MICRO-rem/hr! I believe that the differences were due to background radiation, though they could have found some residual zoomies left over from primary to secondary leaks in previous decades.

Getting information that you don't understand is not helpful. In an emergency, it can even cause people to make the wrong decision. 10 mile CR (evacuating everyone within 10 miles) of a nuclear plant will cause deaths; don't you remember the Houston evacuations? There will be accidents, and part of that is due to panic from ignorance.

The news media was a hindrance at TMI; I say that as a viewer at the time, not a participant. But even though I was in school at the time, I knew that the farmer explaining to the reporter how you could smell the radiation in the air ("it is a pungent odor") was not scientifically valid.

Bottom line, the state should have done a better job informing the public.