Disir
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- Sep 30, 2011
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The head of nuclear safety for the cleanup of the former nuclear weapons site at Hanford, Wash., was fired Tuesday after allegations she made over several years that the construction project was ignoring serious safety problems.
Donna Busche, an employee of San Francisco-based URS Corp., said executives at the company told her she was being fired for unprofessional conduct before she was escorted out of the companys offices at the site in central Washington.
The company denied that her dismissal was punitive or connected to her criticism of the project.
Busche is at least the third senior project official at Hanford who has been fired or who left under duress after raising concerns about safety at the massive $13.4-billion construction project, which has been stalled for more than a year over concerns about its basic design.
The Energy Departments overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by, Busche said in an interview Tuesday.
The Energy Department's inspector general, as well as other federal investigators, has faulted the Energy Departments management of the project and raised a broad range of safety concerns.
Busche, a nuclear engineer and health physicist who directed a staff of 140 engineers, scientists and technicians, had repeatedly raised concerns over a lack of safety in the design of a waste treatment plant during her five years at the project.
Official who raised safety concerns at Hanford nuclear site is fired - latimes.com
They deny this is this reason, of course.
Donna Busche, an employee of San Francisco-based URS Corp., said executives at the company told her she was being fired for unprofessional conduct before she was escorted out of the companys offices at the site in central Washington.
The company denied that her dismissal was punitive or connected to her criticism of the project.
Busche is at least the third senior project official at Hanford who has been fired or who left under duress after raising concerns about safety at the massive $13.4-billion construction project, which has been stalled for more than a year over concerns about its basic design.
The Energy Departments overall safety culture is broken and all they are doing now is sitting idly by, Busche said in an interview Tuesday.
The Energy Department's inspector general, as well as other federal investigators, has faulted the Energy Departments management of the project and raised a broad range of safety concerns.
Busche, a nuclear engineer and health physicist who directed a staff of 140 engineers, scientists and technicians, had repeatedly raised concerns over a lack of safety in the design of a waste treatment plant during her five years at the project.
Official who raised safety concerns at Hanford nuclear site is fired - latimes.com
They deny this is this reason, of course.