my name is tom carpenter. i'm the executive director of hanford challenge. our mission is the safe and effective cleanup of the hanford site. for both present and future generations. we work with insiders, we hope they don't become whistle-blowers, unless they need to tell the truth. but we don't want employees to become whistle-blowers. these folks didn't want to become whistle-blowers. they simply were doing their jobs. and that's the case for most people out there and then suddenly they're finding themselves on the wrong side of their company. we'd like to change that culture so that concerns are welcomed. addressed. and we move on and we have a better plant because of that. it's the third anniversary of the fukushima accident today. and i think it's fitting and appropriate that we're here talking about protecting nuclear whistle-blowers, and talking about nuclear safety. at the fukushima plant, engineers there wanted to build and recommended the building of a higher tsunami wall. to protect the plant against that event. and they also recommended that the

my name is tom carpenter. i'm the executive director of hanford challenge.our mission is the safe and effective cleanup of the hanford site. for both present and future generations. we work with insiders, we hope they don't become whistle-blowers, unless they need to tell the truth. but we don't want employees to become whistle-blowers. these folks didn't want to become whistle-blowers. they simply were doing their jobs. and that's the case for most people out there and then suddenly they're finding themselves on the wrong side of their company. we'd like to change that culture so that concerns are welcomed. addressed. and we move on and we have a better plant because of that. it's the third anniversary of the fukushima accident today. and i think it's fitting and appropriate that we're here talking about protecting nuclear whistle-blowers, and talking about nuclear safety. at the fukushima plant, engineers there wanted to build and recommended the building of a higher tsunami wall. to protect the plant against that event. and they also recommended that the

and tom carpenter is the executive director of the advocacy group hanford challenge. mr.carpenter has decades of experience in policy oversight of the nuclear field and whistle-blower advocacy. he helped establish and is a member of the hanford concerns council. let me turn it over to senator johnson, if you would like to say a few words, and then we would love to ask each of you to give a brief statement and then we'll have some questions. >> okay, thank you. well certainly, madam chair i certainly appreciate your efforts, trying to get to the bottom of what this government needs to do, what the u.s. has to do in terms of cleaning up these nuclear sites. i'm relatively new to the issue. and so i really don't come to this issue with any biases or any assumptions. i think my assumption would be that nobody at the table here companies, not the current government employees, caused the problem. that was done decades ago and it is a huge problem. it's an incredibly complex problem. i'm not an engineer. i'm not a nuclear engineer. my guess is because of the complexity, because