The Ethical Dilemma With The Davids-Beckham Power Plant

The ethical dilemma with the Davids-Beckham power plant is arising after the plant has undergone an outage. During outages, power plants power down in order to perform routine maintenance and inspections along with replacing spent fuel rods if necessary.1 As a nuclear engineer working for the plant, I am under the impression that the outage went well and am even planning to go on a family vacation. However, I realize there were some issues with the outage after talking to a colleague who was tasked with directing the cleanup of boron on the vessel head. He was not able to completely finish his job due to some unforeseen difficulties and the plant’s overall desire to complete the outage as quickly as possible. As a result, I am ethically …show more content…
In this scenario, there are many stakeholders. First and foremost, the biggest stakeholder is probably the investors and owners of the Davids-Beckham power plant. If the plant needs to shut down again, they will lose several million dollars. However, the public also has a vested interest in this as well. If there ends up being a problem and the reactor cannot be adequately controlled, either by a leak from boric acid corrosion or cracks that hurt the performance of the control rods, then the public will demonize the power plant for putting them in danger. This public outcry could affect the NRC as well, which is also a stakeholder in this as they require inspections to be done. All of the workers and engineers for the power plant are stakeholders in this scenario as well. If another outage occurs, this will affect their work schedules. You’re colleague is a stakeholder in this, as he will look bad if you report that the vessel head was not properly cleared and inspected. Finally, you are a stakeholder in this, as you would have to report to your boss or …show more content…
The third course of action, where my colleague and I work together to develop a proposal to present to our boss or supervisor, is the best course of action to take because it demonstrates our integrity, willingness to work at problems and as a team, our concern for following regulations and safety. These are all qualities that are typically demonstrated in exceptional employees. This should be adequate to keep my colleague out of trouble. One of the biggest problems with this course of action is if our boss or supervisor refuses to fix the problem because it will cost some money. In this scenario, my colleague and I could possibly bypass management and go straight to the NRC, reporting to them the problem at hand. This course of action ultimately ensures the problem gets fixed, while maintaining public safety and minimizing loss of money overall. My colleague and I maintain our integrity and keep the public safe and the image of nuclear power in a positive