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TMI's owner is now paying attention
The company that operates the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant said it has investigated five incidents of inattentive employees in the past two years, including two reports in December.
Posted on Thu, Jan. 19, 2006
MIDDLETOWN, Pa. - The company that operates the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant said it has investigated five incidents of inattentive employees in the past two years, including two reports in December.
AmerGen Energy Co. said it has hired an outside company to investigate a report last month that involved a shift manager. The company also will look into how common inattentiveness is at the plant.
Plant employees are not allowed to be inattentive, an industry term that can mean sleeping. The reports also involved security guards not responding promptly to employees waiting to enter the plant.
In each case, the employee in question was disciplined by AmerGen, company spokesman Ralph DeSantis said. None of the incidents affected the operation of the plant, he said.
Eric Epstein, chairman of watchdog Three Mile Island Alert, blamed the incidents on understaffing at the plant and called for an independent investigator to look into TMI's operations.
TMI, about 10 miles southeast of Harrisburg, was the site of the nation's worst nuclear accident when a partial meltdown occurred in 1979.
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