Ensuring the right of professional dissent: A review of a proposed new NRC policy

There have been many allegation that the professional judgments of engineering employees of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) have been peremptorily overridden by management on nontechnical grounds [1]. Furthermore, it has been claimed that, particularly when they pressed their concerns (usually safety related) beyond their immediate supervisors, the engineers involved were subjected to various forms of harassment, including “lateral” transfers to other divisions of NRC.