DANA POINT ---- Though top officials from Southern California Edison reported progress in fixing a less-than-meticulous work culture at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, regulators said they plan to add another inspector at the plant and conduct another inspection the week of Nov. 16.

Ross Ridenoure, chief nuclear officer for Edison, told three members of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a public meeting Thursday near Doheney Beach that management has made significant progress in getting workers and managers to follow every detail of running the plant, but that work is not finished.

"We understand that more improvements are needed," Ridenoure said.

Many people at the meeting, from regulators to employees, said that the key unresolved issue at San Onofre is a fear of retaliation against workers who report problems.

Rick Busnardo, who said he managed a maintenance department at the plant, stood during the public speaker portion of the meeting and told the NRC, "We have people in the plant that are afraid to raise concerns for fear of retaliation, and that scares me a little bit."

After the meeting, Ridenoure said he took exception with Busnardo's statement and that a recent independent assessment of the plant's safety culture found Edison managers were clearly communicating to front-line employees and managers that retaliation will not be tolerated. Ridenoure added that Busnardo was one of the employees singled out during the ongoing improvement exercises at San Onofre.

"He is unhappy with some of the performance standards that have been put in place," Ridenoure said. "But I feel good that he's not afraid to come here tonight and voice his concerns."

Members of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff who attended Thursday's meeting seemed generally irritated that Edison has not made more progress in resolving its worker culture issues.

Chuck Casto, the commission's deputy regional administrator, noted that many of the same worker issues were mentioned at a preliminary public meeting one year ago. Though he said the slow pace of change at San Onofre has given the agency cause for concern, Casto added that problems have remained "organizational."

"They have not manifested themselves into safety issues," Casto said.

More than one year ago, regulators took Edison, the plant's majority owner and operator, to task for failing to identify and resolve minor problems at San Onofre. The problems ranged from a failure to detect that backup batteries were not connected correctly to misplacing a uranium-filled fuel assembly inside one of the plant's fuel-storage pools.

At Thursday's meeting, Edison presented the results of an independent study of San Onofre's worker-safety culture. Ridenoure and other Edison top managers said that the study found that the plant as a whole has made strides in reducing the number of worker injuries at San Onofre and that workers are doing a better job following specific work plans, something not always done in the past.

Ridenoure said that the biggest change made so far has been in getting managers and other supervisors out of their offices to directly observe their employees doing their jobs.

"You get what you inspect, not what you expect," Ridenoure said, adding that in the last month managers have performed 7,800 observations in the field.

While inspections have increased, Edison officials said, the plant's workers have not yet been able to catch up with a huge backlog in "corrective actions" needed to fix specific problems that have been found. The number was once at 4,700 and is now down to only 67, Ridenoure said.

"We expect that number to be zero," he said.

Contact staff writer Paul Sisson at 760-901-4087.