Date: May 27, 2025
Port City Daily reported on TELG client Kathy Adams' lawsuit against her former employer, Duke Energy, and how it relates to recent federal cuts to nuclear energy regulations. Ms. Adams alleged that Duke Energy retaliated against her after she raised safety concerns regarding the company's North Carolina nuclear facilities. Ms. Adams, represented by TELG principal Adam Carter, was a quality assurance supervisor for the company.
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Duke Energy whistleblowers raise nuclear safety concerns amid federal oversight rollbacks
BRUNSWICK COUNTY — A nuclear safety official is alleging Duke Energy retaliated against her for raising safety concerns at North Carolina nuclear energy facilities, including Brunswick Nuclear Plant. This comes as a Duke-funded lobby group pushes to rollback federal nuclear safety oversight.
Kathy Adams worked for Duke Energy for 42 years without disciplinary or performance issues. She was promoted to supervisor of quality assurance for Duke’s North Carolina nuclear facilities in 2017.
Adams filed a 2020 complaint to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration alleging Duke retaliated against her for raising safety concerns related to Brunswick Nuclear Plant quality control official Mike Gore. Adams claims numerous quality control inspectors made complaints against Gore for discouraging them from writing quality condition reports during plants’ scheduled shutdowns.
Inspectors write quality condition reports to identify nuclear facility deficiencies, initial actions to address issues, and assess potential impacts on plant operations. During scheduled refueling outages, staff and contractors often evaluate needed repairs and perform maintenance work that cannot be done when the plant is operational.
“These reports are crucial tools of nuclear safety,” Employment Law Group spokesperson Laurence Hooper told Port City Daily Thursday. “[Quality condition reports] provide a forum and a process for inspectors to flag important problems without fear of retaliation. They also create a paper trail by which Duke can be held accountable, and they can reveal broader patterns within and across facilities. Discouraging inspectors from filing these reports is tantamount to telling them not to do their job.”
Employment Law Group is representing Adams in the ongoing case, which is scheduled for an Office of Administrative Law Judges hearing at the end of the year. The OALJ is the forum for labor-related administrative disputes; Adams is requesting a judge award punitive damages, reinstatement, and attorney’s fees.
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“We can’t characterize evidence beyond the public record, but we’re confident that Duke’s unjust treatment of Kathy was a broad-based systemic failure that happened in plain view of people who could have stopped it,” Hooper wrote in an email to PCD. “As with all such failures — and their solutions — it starts with tone at the top.”
