NYT 4/11/00: Wald on PG&E/Diablo Canyon

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

New York Times
April 11, 2000

 Questioning Whistle-Blower's `Delusions'

 By MATTHEW L. WALD

  WASHINGTON, April 10 -- The Department of Labor has  concluded that
the Pacific Gas and Electric Company maneuvered to have psychiatrists
find "paranoid delusions" in a veteran manager because he complained
publicly about safety problems and management inaction at the Diablo
Canyon nuclear power plant. 

 But the Nuclear Regulatory Commission says there is no evidence of
any retaliation against the manager, Neil J. Aiken, who was a shift
foreman from 1983 until he received the diagnosis in 1998, and the
commission does not believe that the incident or the Department of
Labor report, which Mr. Aiken's lawyer recently provided to a
reporter, will make others reluctant to come forward with safety
issues they observe on the job. 

 The utility company says it had only public safety in mind when it
sent Mr. Aiken, now 54, to psychiatrists for an evaluation. It later
fired him, although his lawyer and company officials differ on the
circumstances. 

 Four operators and managers at the plant said in separate interviews
that they believed that Mr. Aiken was mentally sound and was fired
because he embarrassed executives. Two said they had been trained by
the utility to spot mental instability. 

 For years, Mr. Aiken complained about problems at Diablo, near San
Luis Obispo, Calif., where he had worked since before the plant was
completed. In April 1998, he went to a shareholders meeting and
distributed a paper detailing his criticism. 

 Soon after, the utility sent him to two psychiatrists, under a
program that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission requires it to
maintain. One described Mr. Aiken, who went into the nuclear industry
after learning electronics in the Marine Corps, as suffering from a
"delusional disorder, persecutory type." The psychiatrists declared
Mr. Aiken a threat to security, and the company revoked his security
clearance. Late last year, it fired him. 

 But a report issued in November by the Labor Department, which
enforces laws against harassing whistle-blowers, suggested that the
real problem was that Mr. Aiken had publicly embarrassed his
superiors. Notes by one psychiatrist, the Labor Department report
said, show that the doctor's conversations with utility executives
before he did his work were "more about how to remove Mr. Aiken from
his position than to make a fair, unbiased evaluation of Mr. Aiken's
mental state." 

 A Labor Department investigator, acknowledging his own lack of
training in psychology, said in the report that the diagnosis of a
delusional disorder "appears unreasoned considering the fact that the
evaluators never considered that other employees had complained about
the same problem, there existed a culture where employees were
reluctant to voice safety complaints, and the evaluators never checked
to see if his thoughts were delusional." 

 A critical point of contention was the safety of the new circuit
breakers the company installed because the old ones allowed electrical
arcs. The new ones did not, but several operators said they created
other problems because they did not fit in easily with the old
equipment. 

 The report found that company managers told the psychiatrists that
Mr. Aiken was unable to accept that "numerous investigations" had
rejected his position on circuit breakers, but that when the company
gave this information to its psychiatrists, the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission was still investigating the devices. 

 The commission disputed this but said its report was secret. 

 "The N.R.C. advertises that you don't have to be afraid of
retaliation," Mr. Aiken said in a telephone interview. "But the fact
is that no one can stop the corporation from doing what they want to
do to you." 

 The chief nuclear officer of Pacific Gas and Electric, Gregory
Rueger, said the company's need to protect public safety conflicted
with its need to avoid the appearance of retaliation, but that the
former was more important. 

 "There are times you deal with Neil that he's a very reasonable
individual," Mr. Rueger said in a telephone interview. But at other
times Mr. Aiken would change the details of his complaint, Mr. Rueger
said. He added that employees still filed safety complaints. 

 Mr. Aiken, unemployed, recently reached a settlement with the company
that included early retirement. As a result, the utility's appeal of
the Labor Department report will not be heard, leaving the differences
between the two agencies unresolved. 

 "We would not be properly husbanding the taxpayers' money if we spent
additional resources investigating," said Gary F. Sanborn, an
enforcement officer for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. 

 The commission said Mr. Aiken had made 50 complaints to the agency,
of which about 18 were well founded, a higher batting average,
officials said, than that of most complainants. The agency cited
Pacific Gas and Electric for 2 low-level violations and told the
company to fix 16 other problems. 

 Forty of Mr. Aiken's co-workers took the unusual step of petitioning
the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for his reinstatement.
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