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PUBLIC CITIZEN'S CRITICAL MASS ENERGY PROJECT
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:      Contact:    Dave Lochbaum   (202) 332-0900
Wednesday, September 9, 1998                Ann Harris          (423)
376-4851

        Nuclear Whistleblower Receives Death Threats on the Job,
              Scare Tactics Escalate with "Bomb" on Truck
                     NRC Fails to Protect Whistleblower

In the past two weeks, a nuclear worker at the Tennessee Valley Authority's
Watts Bar Nuclear Plant has received life threatening written messages at
work
and at his family's home. Today the attempted intimidation escalated when
the
worker discovered an unusual package with protruding wires in the back of
his
pickup truck after shopping at a local store. The bomb squad was called in
and
is now investigating.

Two of the threats were received at Curtis Overall's desk at the Watts Bar
plant. Other threats were left on his vehicle's windshield while parked in
his
home driveway and at a nearby shopping center. One of the messages contained
a
single word - "Silkwood" - in reference to the nuclear worker allegedly
killed
in November 1974 after raising safety concerns at a nuclear facility in
Oklahoma. Overall's car has also been followed and forced off the road.

This is not the first time Overall, a 17-year TVA employee, has been
harassed
for raising safety concerns. In April 1995, he reported problems with the
Watts
Bar ice condenser containment design to TVA management and received threats
on
the work site. TVA responded by reassigning and later firing Overall.
Overall
raised the safety problems to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. After
filing a
complaint against TVA for job discrimination, Overall was reinstated in his
job
in April 1998 by a federal judge.

In January 1998, UCS raised the safety issues identified by Overall during
the
restart proceedings for the DC Cook plant in Michigan. NRC inspectors
examined
the ice condenser at the Cook plant and documented 29 violations of federal
safety regulations. The Cook plant has been shut down for all of 1998 as it
makes extensive repairs to its ice condenser.

"The NRC is ignoring an Administrative Law Judge's ruling that TVA violated
federal regulations by firing Overall. This is the chilling effect in its
most
insidious and deadly form and the NRC waits by the phone for TVA to call and
promise to do better next time," said Ann Harris, director of We The People
of
Tennessee and spokesperson for the National Nuclear Safety Network.

The NRC, tasked with enforcing federal regulations intended to protect
nuclear
workers, did not contact Overall for more than week after being informed of
the
threats. NRC inspectors have spoken to Overall by phone, but have not yet
met
with him about the series of threats.

"The NRC is tele-regulating," said David Lochbaum, Nuclear Safety Engineer
for
the Union of Concerned Scientists. "Instead of sending inspectors to the
Watts
Bar site to determine if federal regulations protecting nuclear workers are
being violated, the NRC is content with merely monitoring the situation from
Atlanta. They know that 'Silkwood' was not a movie recommendation. The NRC
must
take immediate action to ensure that Overall receives the full protection he
is
afforded by federal regulations."


Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project
215 Penn Ave., SE
Washington DC 20003
cmep@citizen.org
Ph: 202 546-4996            F: 202 547-7392
http://www.citizen.org/cmep
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CMEP
215 Pennsylvania Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20003-1155
Phone: 202-546-4996
Fax:      202-547-7392
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