(11 of 13)
Galatis knew that if such things had happened, they would be reflected in operator's logs filed in Northeast's document room. So, on Oct. 6, he appeared in the room and asked for the appropriate rolls of microfiche. The logs backed up what Reynolds had said: Millstone had moved fuel as soon as 65 hrs. after shutdown--a quarter of the required time. The logs noted the sounding of alarms. Galatis wondered where the resident inspector had been.
The deadline came for Millstone's off-load, but the amendment still had not been granted. Connecticut's Senator Chris Dodd, Representative Sam Gejdenson and a host of local officials were asking about the plant's safety, and Millstone scheduled a public meeting for late October. Senior vice president Don Miller sent a memo to his employees warning them that "experienced antinuclear activists" had "the intention of shutting the station down and eliminating 2,500 jobs." The memo stirred up some of Galatis' colleagues. "You're taking food out of my girl's mouth," one of them told him.
DeBarba assembled a task force to assess what had to be done to get the pool ready for the overdue off-load, but he kept Galatis and Betancourt off the team. The task force came up with six serious problems, most already raised by Galatis. Scrambling to fix the pool in a few weeks, DeBarba hired extra people. The plant shut down, anticipating permission to move fuel.
Galatis and Hadley had been waiting two months for a reply to their petition to deny Northeast's amendment. Finally, on Oct. 26, a letter from William Russell, director of the NRC's Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation, informed them that their petition was "outside of the scope" of the applicable regulatory subchapter. Two weeks later, the NRC granted Northeast's amendment. Millstone started moving fuel the next morning.
Because of Galatis, the plant is still shut down. "What's especially galling," says Hadley, "is that the NRC ignored my client and denied his motion, then validated his concerns after the fact." In late December, Inspector General Norton released his preliminary report. He found that Northeast had conducted improper full-core off-loads for 20 years. Both the NRC's on-site inspectors and headquarters staff, the report said, "were aware" of the practice but somehow "did not realize" that this was a violation. In other words, the NRC's double-barreled oversight system shot blanks from both barrels. Norton blamed bad training and found no evidence of a conspiracy between Northeast and the NRC to violate the license. He is still investigating possible collusion by the NRC after Galatis came forward. What troubled him most, Norton told TIME, is that agency officials all the way up to Russell knew about the off-loads and saw nothing wrong with them. "The agency completely failed," says Norton. "We did shoddy work. And we're concerned that similar lapses might be occurring at other plants around the country."
In a second investigation, the Office of Investigations is looking into Northeast's license violations and the alleged harassment of Galatis and Betancourt. The intense public scrutiny their case has received will, Galatis says, "make it harder for them to sweep this one under the rug."