- Dr. Kymn Harvin's pulse raced as she slipped a tape
recorder
under a file folder on her office desk.
-
- In the corridor next to her office she could hear the
footsteps of Larry Wagner, a director at Salem's nuclear power plant, as
he walked toward her.
-
- Moments before he walked in, Harvin hit the record button
on the hidden device.
-
- "What did you mean yesterday when you said this
place is 'dangerous?'" Harvin asked after Wagner sat down in front
of her desk. "Is it the decision-making ... like muddled?"
-
- Wagner had spoken to her about company officers nearly
deciding to restart an offline reactor without repairing a malfunctioning
bypass valve.
-
- "Yes, I meant it from a nuclear-safety
standpoint,"
Wagner replied. "When I say dangerous, we almost talked ourselves
on Monday of just starting right back and not going into the bypass
valve."
-
- Wagner said he was shocked company officers would even
consider such an action.
-
- "If we had done that ... that would have been
grounds
for taking the keys away," he said. "That would be grounds for
'You guys aren't safe.'"
-
- Moments after Wagner left her office, Harvin began
trembling.
Tears rolled down her cheeks.
-
- "I felt awful, feeling I was betraying someone I
cared about, someone who was confiding in me," she said.
-
- ***
-
- The taped conversation took place March 20, 2003. Eight
days later, Harvin left Public Service Enterprise Group, the Newark-based
company that owns the Salem County nuclear plant.
-
- The plant in Lower Alloways Creek Township is the
second-largest
in the country. Two reactors are located on the plant's Salem facility;
another is located on the adjacent Hope Creek facility.
-
- About 1,800 employees work on the 292-acre site. The
plant provides electricity for about 60 percent of PSEG's 2 million
customers.
-
- Harvin, who has a Ph.D. in organizational development,
had worked for AT&T and Pennsylvania's government and was running her
own consulting firm when she came to work for PSEG in 1998.
-
- The 48-year-old Watchung resident was given the role
of manager of development, quality and culture transformation at the Salem
nuclear plant. Harvin said employee morale was low because of harsh working
conditions and the perception that upper management did not value
workers.
-
- Harvin coached Salem plant executives on leadership and
worked to improve communication and accountability throughout the site.
She said the resulting boost in employee morale helped generate millions
of dollars in cost savings and revenue.
-
- But things unraveled after she stood up for a group of
employees concerned about an improper repair action taken by an operations
manager in late 2002 at the Salem plant.
-
- Harvin said there was a growing perception that senior
leadership valued production over safety and would go to dangerous lengths
to keep the plant running. Over the next several months, she frequently
urged senior leaders to address employee safety concerns.
-
- Harvin was given her 45-day termination notice Feb. 26,
2003. The notice said her position was eliminated in a force
reduction.
-
- She consulted an attorney, who advised her that it was
legal in New Jersey to tape conversations without another party's
consent.
-
- At first, she wasn't sure about secretly taping
conversations
with colleagues, especially those she respected.
-
- It took a conversation with Wagner on March 19, 2003,
to convince Harvin that someone had to gather evidence about the plant's
safety practices.
-
- The facility's Hope Creek reactor had been offline. When
Wagner complained to Harvin about the company officers' push to bring the
reactor online prematurely, she decided to get his comments on tape.
-
- Harvin taped Wagner on March 20, 2003, and went on to
record conversations with other colleagues.
-
- The recordings are now evidence in a whistleblower
lawsuit
she filed against PSEG in September 2003. Harvin has alleged that PSEG
retaliated against her for raising safety concerns.
-
- Harvin said she felt less guilty about a tape she made
directly after Wagner's.
-
- After her conversation with him March 20, Harvin walked
into the office of her direct superior, then-PSEG Chief Nuclear Officer
Harry Keiser.
-
- She had butted heads with Keiser over safety issues and
was convinced that he had betrayed both her and the site. But Harvin also
wanted a final chance to relay Wagner's concerns to him.
-
- "The message that's being sent, whether intended
or not, is that production and getting the Hope Creek unit back online
is more important than nuclear safety," Harvin told her boss that
day.
-
- "Yeah, I appreciate that feedback," Keiser
replied. "I don't believe it, but I appreciate it, right?"
-
- "So when the guys with the licenses say that they
are being pressured to start the unit back up and don't believe it is safe,
I owe you that feedback," Harvin said. "The word that got spoken
to me this morning is 'dangerous.'"
-
- "It's a bunch of (expletive)," Keiser said.
"I mean, you've got an operator who doesn't know (expletive) ...
saying
he's being pushed, right? And he's not putting out the effort to begin
with."
-
- The next day, PSEG informed Harvin that her termination
date had been moved up to March 28, 2003.
-
- The message stung, but it made her even more determined
to gather as much evidence as possible before her final day as an
employee.
-
- On March 27, 2003, Harvin taped a heated, tearful
conversation
with then-PSEG Vice President Timothy O'Connor, a colleague she
respected.
-
- "Are they after me?" Harvin asked
O'Connor.
-
- "They are after you and they are after others,"
he replied. "And it is only a matter of time and I will be in the
same position."
-
- PSEG officials said O'Connor left voluntarily after
Harvin's
termination; O'Connor could not be reached for comment.
-
- ***
-
- Harvin said she made no more recordings after she left
PSEG, but won't comment on the number of tapes in existence.
-
- In her civil lawsuit, Harvin contends that she was fired
because of her refusal to keep silent on issues of industrial and nuclear
safety. Such expression is protected under the state's Conscientious
Employee
Protection Act.
-
- Harvin said she contacted PSEG Chairman of the Board
Jim Ferland to request an independent investigation into the Salem
facility's
safety and her termination.
-
- But she felt the result was a whitewash. That convinced
her to approach the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission in September
2003 and to file her own lawsuit against the company that month.
-
- NRC officials said Harvin's testimony helped launch
recent
investigations into general working conditions at the plant. The commission
also is investigating Harvin's specific allegations that she was retaliated
against for raising safety concerns.
-
- Since her dismissal, the PSEG plant has drawn criticism,
citations and calls for corrective action from federal regulators and
independent
consultants on issues ranging from faulty equipment to workers being
reluctant
to report maintenance problems.
-
- Federal investigators are looking into an Oct. 10 steam
leak that prompted the shutdown of the Hope Creek reactor. The reactor
has remained idle since then for repairs and refueling.
-
- Hope Creek suffered other mishaps after the leak. A Freon
leak Oct. 28 temporarily restricted access to the building's second floor.
On Nov. 3, a worker was hospitalized after fracturing his fingers and
suffering
slight radiation contamination.
-
- PSEG spokesman Skip Sindoni said Harvin's termination
had nothing to do with retaliation.
-
- "Her position was eliminated in a company
reorganization,"
Sindoni said.
-
- Calls to Keiser, who is no longer with the company, and
Wagner, who is now manager of plant support at the Salem facility, were
not returned.
-
- Harvin returned to consulting after leaving the company,
and is in the process of writing a book about leadership. She wants to
return to the nuclear industry but believes she has been
blacklisted.
-
- And she continues to pay an emotional price for speaking
out.
-
- Harvin said former co-workers phone and e-mail her,
fearful
that they have been caught on tape.
-
- When she plays the tapes she took so much trouble to
conceal, she can't help breaking into tears.
-
- "I thought I might be a doctor or a senator when
I grew up," Harvin said.
-
- "I never thought I'd be a
whistleblower."
-
- http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com
- /news/cumberland/112104NCRITIC_N20.cfm
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