Three former Tennessee Valley Authority nuclear oversight managers who were removed from their posts after alerting the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to repeated safety concerns and violations are now suing the utility in federal court.
Melody Babb, Deanna Fultz and Mark Richerson filed suit against TVA late last week in U.S. District Court. They contend they were ousted from their posts in 2019 and targeted for public humiliation in retaliation for their whistleblowing to the NRC and the TVA Office of Inspector General about safety concerns and intimidation of whistleblowers at TVA’s three nuclear power plants.
“Instead of solving the (safety and intimidation) issues, the focus became stopping the identification of them by the (oversight managers) and attacking the messenger,” attorneys Doug Hamill and Billie Garde wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit says TVA not only removed the trio from their positions but also disbanded an independent whistleblowing program known as the Employee Concerns Program and “handpicked” overseers of a new program specifically designed to squelch dissent and intimidate would-be whistleblowers.
Under the old program, employees could go to the independent nuclear safety oversight managers with concerns about nuclear and radiological safety violations, and oversight managers would maintain the employees’ anonymity and launch their own investigation.
Under the new program, records from both a TVA Power Point presentation and the NRC show TVA’s...
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