{"id":4954,"date":"2013-07-29T06:23:19","date_gmt":"2013-07-29T10:23:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/?p=4954"},"modified":"2013-07-29T06:27:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-29T10:27:01","slug":"nuke-supervisor-arrested-for-falsifying-safety-records-at-indian-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/2013\/07\/nuke-supervisor-arrested-for-falsifying-safety-records-at-indian-point.html","title":{"rendered":"Nuke supervisor arrested for falsifying safety records at Indian Point"},"content":{"rendered":"

\r\nA single person risked 50 million lives at Indian Point,\r\n24 miles north of New York City.\r\nAnd it’s Entergy again, the company that couldn’t keep the power on\r\nduring the Super Bowl, that\r\n\r\ncan’t keep Pilgrim 1 running in\r\na Massachusetts snowstorm, or summer heat, or the spring, either<\/a>,\r\nthat\r\n\r\nstill has Arkansas Nuclear 1 down since a fatal accident in March<\/a>.\r\nMeanwhile, how many fatal solar accidents have you heard of?\r\n

\r\nLucas W Hixson wrote for Enformable Nuclear News,\r\n\r\nIndian Point supervisor arrested for deliberately falsifying critical safety records<\/a>,\r\n

\r\n

\r\n\r\n<\/a>\r\nEntergy announced on Tuesday that a former supervisor, who worked at\r\nthe Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City for\r\ntwenty-nine years, had been arrested for deliberately falsifying\r\ncritical safety records and lying to federal regulators last year.\r\nThe utility said that Daniel Wilson, age 57, who was in charge of\r\nensuring compliance in critical safety areas, falsified tests and\r\nrecords related to the quality of fuel in back-up tanks for the\r\nemergency diesel generators installed at the nuclear power plant\r\nwhich are necessary to prevent core damage in the event of a loss of\r\npower. Federal charges have been brought against the former employee\r\nby the U.S. Attorney’s Office, who was released on bail and could be\r\nsentenced up to 7 years in prison.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nThe\r\n\r\nstory says<\/a>\r\nco-workers caught him (good for them):\r\n

\r\n

\r\nA few weeks later, in January and February of 2012, Wilson was\r\nquestioned by other Indian Point employees while conducting a\r\nself-assessment in preparation for an NRC inspection. During the\r\ninspection preparations, workers had noted that no condition reports\r\nhad been created after three tests had shown non-compliance and no\r\nadditional steps had been taken to correct the problem. After the\r\nfindings, Wilson logged into the company database under another\r\nemployee’s name and fabricated test data for resample tests which\r\nwere never actually taken. On February 6th<\/sup><\/small>,\r\nthe defendant filed\r\nthree falsified test results in the official plant record database\r\nwhich had purportedly been sampled within two weeks of the three\r\nsamples which had been found in excess of federal regulations.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nBut the point remains: a single person at a nuclear plant can\r\nrisk the lives of 50 million people.\r\nWhat was his excuse?\r\n

\r\n

\r\nWhat actually happened at Indian Point was that for a matter of\r\nmonths, the nuclear power plant continued to operate in a condition\r\nwhere its diesel generators were not in technical compliance with\r\nNRC standards. Had the NRC known about the lack of compliance, the\r\nnuclear power station would have been forced to shut down due to the\r\nemergency diesel generators being inoperable until it was able to\r\nprove compliance, which would also incur operating expenses in\r\nexcess of a million dollars per day — hence why Wilson told\r\nregulators that he had done what he felt was necessary to prevent\r\nIndian Point from shutting down. According to regulations, the\r\nNuclear Regulatory Commission could fine the licensee $140,000 per\r\nday that the nuclear power plant operated while not in compliance\r\nwith safety regulations (which according to the complaint Indian\r\nPoint did for months without resolution), but no such penalty has\r\nbeen imposed by federal regulators at this time.\r\n<\/p>\r\n<\/blockquote>\r\n

\r\nHe wanted to save a few million dollars for his employer.\r\nAt the risk of 50 million lives.\r\n

\r\nIronically, Indian Point 2 was down 14 and 15 February 2013 anyway:\r\n

\r\n\r\n\"Indian<\/a>\r\n

\r\nNow that we have better ways to make electricity (solar and wind),\r\nwhy are we still operating these risky nuclear ventures?\r\nAnd why are we building more at Plant Vogtle on the Savannah River?\r\n

\r\n -jsq\r\n<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A single person risked 50 million lives at Indian Point, 24 miles north of New York City. And it’s Entergy again, the company that couldn’t keep the power on during the Super Bowl, that can’t keep Pilgrim 1 running in a Massachusetts snowstorm, or summer heat, or the spring, either, that still has Arkansas Nuclear […]","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[70,20,104,73],"tags":[663,8728,6414,8702,8710,12,2791,8737,8731],"class_list":["post-4954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics","category-law","category-nuclear","category-safety","tag-entergy","tag-ethics","tag-indian-point","tag-lake","tag-law","tag-lowndes-area-knowledge-exchange","tag-new-york-city","tag-nuclear","tag-safety"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p585fK-1hU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4954"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4955,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4954\/revisions\/4955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.l-a-k-e.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}