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The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has ordered Enercon Services to reinstate a fired engineer, concluding that the company retaliated against him for reporting an unsafe condition at the Wolf Creek nuclear plant in Kansas.

The civil and structural engineer, whom OSHA did not name, objected to the way a trench for new security-fence cabling would be constructed over buried plant service-water piping last January. According to an OSHA release issued Monday, the trench required backfilling to meet soil coverage requirements for the pipes. Company management wanted the trench backfilled with concrete before the arrival of inspectors from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, according to OSHA. But the engineer who reported the soil concerns refused to draft an engineering justification for the concrete use and was fired a few days later.

The OSHA decision requires Enercon to reinstate the engineer and to pay $261,153 in back pay and damages, plus attorney fees. The agency also found that the company violated the whistle-blower provisions of the Energy Reorganization Act.

In a release, the man's lawyers noted that an NRC report dated May 3 found that Enercon and the plant did not complete required documentation before permitting the excavation near the piping.