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Galatis then flipped through a safety report in which Northeast was required to demonstrate to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that the plant's network of cooling systems would function even if the most important one failed. Instead, the company had analyzed the loss of a far less critical system. The report was worthless, the NRC hadn't noticed, and the consequences could be dire. If Millstone lost its primary cooling system while the full core was in the pool, Galatis told Betancourt, the backup systems might not handle the heat. "The pool could boil," he said. "We'd better report this to the NRC now."
Betancourt saw that Galatis was right. "But you do that," he said, "and you're dogmeat."
Galatis knew what he meant. Once a leading nuclear utility, Northeast had earned a reputation as a rogue--cutting corners and, according to critics, harassing and firing employees who raised safety concerns. But if Galatis wanted to take on the issue, Betancourt told him, "I'll back you."
So began a three-year battle in which Galatis tried to fix what he considered an obvious safety problem at Millstone 1. For 18 months his supervisors denied the problem existed and refused to report it to the NRC, the federal agency charged with ensuring the safety of America's 110 commercial reactors. Northeast brought in outside consultants to prove Galatis wrong, but they ended up agreeing with him. Finally, he took the case to the NRC himself, only to discover that officials there had known about the procedure for a decade without moving to stop it. The NRC says the practice is common, and safe--if a plant's cooling system is designed to handle the heat load. But Millstone's wasn't. And when Galatis learned that plants in Delaware, Nebraska and New Jersey had similar fuel-pool troubles, he realized the NRC was sitting on a nationwide problem.
Ten years after the disastrous uncontained meltdown at Chernobyl, 17 years after the partial meltdown at Three Mile Island, most Americans probably give only passing thought to the issue of nuclear safety. But the story of George Galatis and Millstone suggests that the NRC itself may be giving only passing thought to the issue--that it may be more concerned with propping up an embattled, economically straitened industry than with ensuring public safety. When a nuclear plant violates safety standards and the federal watchdog turns a blind eye, the question arises, How safe are America's nuclear plants?
THOUGH THE NRC'S MISSION STATEMENT promises full accountability--"nuclear regulation is the public's business," it says--the agency's top officials at first refused to be interviewed by TIME. After repeated requests, Chairwoman Shirley Ann Jackson, a physics professor who was appointed by President Clinton last summer, finally agreed to talk. But the veteran official in charge of the agency's day-to-day operations, executive director James M. Taylor, would provide only written answers to TIME's faxed questions.
"The responsibility for safety rests with the industry," Jackson told TIME. "Like any other regulatory body, NRC is essentially an auditing agency." Jackson argued that her agency is tough--"When we catch problems, it never makes the papers"--but added that with 3,000 employees and just four inspectors for every three plants, "we have to focus on the issues with the greatest safety significance. We can miss things."