The Nation - News from Jan. 27, 1989

The troubled Peach Bottom nuclear plant in Delta, Pa., will use everything from less comfortable chairs to a new shift rotation to prevent a recurrence of control room operators sleeping on duty, officials said. About 60 reporters were handed hard hats, goggles and tiny radiation monitors as Philadelphia Electric Co., operator of the dormant plant on the Susquehanna River, conducted its first media tour of the facility. The utility is trying to convince the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that things have changed since the NRC ordered the two Peach Bottom reactors shut down in March, 1987, because of widespread sleeping and horseplay on the job by control room workers. The problems resulted in a $1.25-million fine, largest in NRC history. Operator negligence was so pervasive that the commission also levied fines ranging from $500 to $1,000 against 33 current and former workers for “sleeping and-or inattention to duty.”