DANA POINT ---- At a special meeting Thursday night the public will get its first chance to see the results of a safety culture study recently performed at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

Southern California Edison commissioned the report at the urging of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a way of determining whether employees are getting too sloppy when it comes to following the strict safety tenants at the seaside plant, which sits 18 miles north of Oceanside.

The NRC oversees maintenance and operation of all nuclear reactors in the United States.

About 18 months ago, the agency publicly took Edison to task for repeatedly failing to properly diagnose and fix minor problems at San Onofre. Those problems ranged from inserting spent uranium fuel in the wrong storage location to failing to properly tighten bolts that connect backup generators to batteries.

Though regulators have insisted from the beginning that the plant is being operated safely, they have warned Edison, the plant's majority owner, that it needs to do a better job of making sure its employees do the little things so that larger, more severe, problems do not manifest.

Edison has not yet released a copy of the study to the public. In a interview with the North County Times editorial board on Wednesday, senior resident inspector Gregory Warnick said he had read and advance copy of the report.

"What's in there is very consistent with what the NRC has been saying, and that's that we're identifying a lot of low-level issues, but enough of them that we see a trend that needs to be corrected," Warnick said.

He and other NRC officials said the agency plans to temporarily add a third on-site inspector at the plant and also conduct another special inspection on Nov. 16 to check on Edison's progress.

Tonight's meeting, which starts at 6:30 p.m., is scheduled for the Doubletree Guest Suites hotel at 34402 Pacific Coast Highway in Dana Point.

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