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During the spring outage, a valve was accidentally left open, spilling 12,000 gal. of reactor-coolant water--a blunder that further shook Galatis' faith. He began to see problems almost everywhere he looked and proposed the creation of a global-issues task force to find out whether Millstone was safe enough to go back online. His bosses agreed. But when the head of the task force left for a golf vacation a few weeks before the plant was scheduled to start up, Galatis says, he knew it wasn't a serious effort. So he made a call to Ernest Hadley, the lawyer who had defended whistle blower Blanch against Northeast two years before.
AN EMPLOYMENT AND WRONGFUL-termination lawyer, Hadley has made a career of representing whistle blowers, many of them from Millstone. For 10 years he has also worked with Stephen Comley and We the People. Comley, a Massachusetts nursing-home operator, is a classic New England character, solid and brusque. He founded We the People in 1986 when he realized the evacuation plans for Seabrook Station, a plant 12 miles from his nursing home, included doses of iodine for those too old and frail to evacuate.
"Some of us were expendable," says Comley. "That got me going." For years he was known for publicity stunts--hiring planes to trail banners above the U.S. Capitol--and emotional outbursts at the press conferences of politicians. The NRC barred him from its public meetings until a judge ordered the ban lifted. But Comley's game evolved: instead of demanding that plants be shut down, he began insisting they be run safely. He teamed up with the sharp-witted Hadley to aid and abet whistle blowers and sank his life savings into We the People before taking a dime in donations. Comley, says the NRC's Norton, "has been useful in bringing important issues to our attention. Steve can be a very intense guy. I don't think it's good for his health. But people who seem--not fanatical, but overly intense--help democracy work."
IN APRIL 1994, TWO YEARS AFTER HE DIScovered the problems with Millstone's cooling system, Galatis reported the matter to the NRC. He spoke to a "senior allegations coordinator," waited months, then refiled his charges in a letter describing 16 problems, including the cooling system, the pipes that couldn't withstand seismic shock, the corporate culture. "At Northeast, people are the biggest safety problem," Galatis says. "Not the guys in the engine room. The guys who drive the boat."
Galatis told DeBarba and Kacich that he was going to the NRC. He continued to experience what he calls "subtle forms of harassment, retaliation and intimidation." His performance evaluation was downgraded, his personnel file forwarded to Northeast's lawyers. DeBarba "offered" to move him out of the nuclear group. He would walk into a meeting, and the room would go suddenly silent. DeBarba says he is unaware of any such harassment.