IA-97-313, Transcript of 951130 Interview of P Hinman in Crystal River, Florida Re OI Rept 2-94-036.Pp 1-146.W/Certificate of Svc. Title Page Encl.Birth Date & Social Security Number Deleted

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Transcript of 951130 Interview of P Hinman in Crystal River, Florida Re OI Rept 2-94-036.Pp 1-146.W/Certificate of Svc. Title Page Encl.Birth Date & Social Security Number Deleted
ML20248J609
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Site: Crystal River Duke Energy icon.png
Issue date: 11/30/1995
From:
NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI)
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References
FOIA-97-313 2-94-036, 2-94-36, NUDOCS 9711200220
Download: ML20248J609 (147)


Text

Official Transcript of Prbocadings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title:

In the matter of

- Interview of PE, trick Hinman Docket Number: 2 94 036 Location: Crystal River, Florida Date: November 30,1995 Work Order Nc .: NRC-429 Pages 1-145 NEAl.11. GitOSS AND CO., INC.

Court fleporters and Transcribers

)!. h 1323 illiode Island Avenue, N.W.

Wasidngton, D.C. 20005 EXHlBIT /b 2- 9 4 -h 3 6 (202) 234 4433 P.GE / -OFf? PAGE(S) 4 12 971117

,LIAW97-31.< PDR

4 1 1 Hinman we don't represent him individually, but we do l 2 represent'the company and he's asked us to be here with l 3 him.-  :

1 4 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, would_you raise your  !

i

.5 right hand, please, 6 THE WITNESS: (Complies.) l 7 Whereupon, 8 JAMES PATRICX HINMAN, 9 having first been duly sworn by the Investigator, was (

10 examined and testified as follows:

11 MR. WEINBERG: Just for the record, you need to 12- speak up just a little bit.

13 THE WITNESS: Okay.  ;

14 MR. WEINBERG: You have a soft voice. So it 15 will pick up.

16 MR. DOCKERY: That, plus there's a tendency in ,

17 these things, we all do it, sort of shake our heads.

18 THE WITNESS: .Right.

19 MR. DOCKERY: We need a verbalized response.

20 THE WITNESS: Okay.

1 21 DIRECT EXAMINATION 12 2 MR DOCKERY: For the record, would you state f 23 your-full name, please.

24 THE WITNESS: Yes. James Patrick Hinman. t 25 MR DOCKERY: And your date of birth and Social t

5 1 Security number?

2 TlIE WITNESS: It' I Social h 3 Securit) 4 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. liinman, before we went on the 5 record here today Mr. Vorse and I Adentified ourselves to 6 you as investigators with the NRC Office of 7 Investigations. Is that correct?

8 TIIE WITNESS: That's correct.

9 MR. DOCKERY: And we also provided you with a 10 copy of the verbiage contained in Title 18, Section 1001, 11 of the United States Code and explained to you how that 12 statute applied to this proceeding.

13 THE WITNESS: That's correct.

14 MR. DOCKERYr Do you understand hc,.4 it applies?

15 THE '4ITNESS : Yes, I do.

16 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Mr. }{inman, what we're here 17 to discuss today is basically events during late 1993-1994 18 to the extent of your knowledge regarding OP-103B and 19 Curve 8 of that operating procedure.

20 Can you tell me -- Well, first of all, let's get 21 some background on you. Can you explain what your 22 educational experience and your work background is?

23 Tl!E WITNESS: I'm a mechanical engineer, four-24 year degreed mechanical engineer. I have worked for 25 approximately 11 years in the nuclear power industry.

Y /4'h:;7 7C '

i 6

i About six and a half of that have been in the  ;

4 2 instrumentation and controls design side of the house.

i 3 I worked systems I&C, instrumentation and  ;

4 controls, for about a year or so, and then the rersining  ;

5- in the mechanical side of systems engineering. ,

6 MR, DOCKERY: Okay. During late 1993 or 1994 f

7- when you were involved with the issue of curve 8, what was  !

8 your position at that time? [

9 THE WITNESS: I have only been involved as t,he ,

10 mechanical systems engineer for the makeup and -

11 purification system.

12 MR. DOCKERY: Can you take us back in time to  !

13 the beginning in your involvement of issues pertaining to l 14 Curve 87 ,

15 MR. WEINBERG: You might tell him when you ,

16 first --

17 THE WITNESS: Right.

18 MR. WEINBERG: The way the systent engineers 19 work, they sort of have a system. And his system was the 20 makeup tank.

21 So when did you first start on the system?

22 THE WITNESS: The system. I picked up makeup '

- 23L. purification approximately middle of '91, maybe closer to ,

24 '92. And in the beginning there probably wasn't much 25 going on with Curve;8 of OP-103B. ,

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1 I couldn't tell you exactly when things started l 2 happening. But I remember tho big issues that would have  !

3 involved the curve. j 4 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. As early as you can recall {

5 in your involvement, j 6 THE WITNESS: Okay. I want to say probably '92 f i

7 time frame we were making a transition from a sump level '

8 :swapover point to a BWST swapover point. The issue was, 9 for the most part, being handled by our design engineering i

10 group.

11 I would attend meetings. I was kind of new to 12 the issue, so more than anything, I attended the mee".ings '

13 to see what I could learn from past issues that have gone  ;

14 on, which this thing has gone on for a while.

15 - I think probably my first detailed involvement 16 with the curve would have been about the time frame when 17 we were trying to pursue a higher hydrogen concentration 18 in the RCS.

19 And at that time the goal was to have a curve 20 that would protect us-in all scenarios, that would allow 21 us to meet a new INPO recommendation for RCS hydrogen 22 concentrations.

23 I think that was in '93 time frame, best guess.

, 24 ~ MR. DOCKERY: What was that concentration

- 25 figure? ,

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8 l' THE WITNESS: Twenty five cc's per kg. That was i

2 the minimum. ,

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3 MR. DOCKERY: Go on.

4 THE WITNESS: Let's see. There was several 5 attempts -- We had a problem back then trying to be able ,

6 to meet this requirement, this minimum by only .

7 manipulating or making hydrogens' additions from the 8 control room. f"*e**!

9 The problem was if we were normally -- operating 10 at our normal level in the makeup tank, we had a regulator 11 in the supply line of the hydrogen -- in the hydrogen 12 supply lines to the makeup tank that would not allow us to lu vo 13 get the gas we needed-tc in the tank in order to meet the ,

  • Yta.s . .s r 14 25 cc's per kg requirement.

15 Design Engineering did several small MARS. We 16 call them minor modifications. And we were trying to 17 tweak things up to allow us to provide the operators the 18 ability to make a hydrogen addition from the control room.

'19 And we were running into some very complicated problems 20 dealing with Appendix R. And I guess that was the biggest ,

21 hard spot.

22 This plant did a modification several years ago 23 -that took the-closure function off of the valve that  ;

.24 . isolates the outlet of the makeup tank. And that has 25 complicated things drastically for this entire issue.

  • 9 1

1 So it was about that time frame when I started l 2 getting involved in the Curve. During that period we 00 TUC 3 increased the set point ever regulator, we changed out a i Yll*te 4) 4 small check valve to get around -- It had a lot of 5 differential pressure loss in this flow check valve. This ,

6 is all in the supply line, hydrogen supply line.

7 And we also provided a calculation -- Or we 8 digitized the alarm point for the makeup tank curve and 9 level for the operator convenience. And it was the right 10 thing to do, you know.

11 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, was there a different 12 -- a new Curve 8 put in place to accominodate the 25 cc per 13 kilogram hydrogen conce'itration figure?

14 THE WITNESS: To the best of my knowledge, I 15 believe the curve was revised to Rev 5. And again, I'm --

16 To the best of my knowledge, it was revised to take in 17 account a 25 cc per kg.

18 MR. DOCKERY: Do you have any idea when that 19 revision would have occurred?

20 THE WITNESS: I believe it would have occurred 21 around '93, sometime in '93.

22 MR. VORSE: Did you have input into that curve?

23 THE WITNESS: As a system engineer we were not --

24 we are not responsible for these type of calculations or 25 verifying these type of calculations. Most of the

10 1 information in the curve -- in tha calculation was already 2 there. If anything, it was a -- I think a fairly minor 3 revision to that calculation and curve. And I did not 4 perform any type of a verification function.

4 5 MR. VORSE: How did you feel about that curve?

6 THE WITNESS: At that time I guess pretty.much I 7 got my information and understanding from discussions with 8 design people. And I had no problem with the cu:rve.

9 MR. DOCKERY: Who was your main contact in 10 Design Engineering regarding the curve?

11 THE WITNESS: It would have been Ron Claucon.

12 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, specifically, were you 13 -- what were you tasked to do, if that's appropriate, 14 regarding Curve Number 87 15 THE WITNESS: I have never probably had a formal 16 task or item to deal with on curve 8. I was sort cf a 17 middleman. We had design engineers producing the 18 calculations and the curve and operators using these 19 cu rves . And I was maybe an interface. I didn't have to 20 be the only path of communication, but I saw the operators 21 more frequently than the design people would have.

22 But I had no specific design functions to deal

'with the curve.

24 MR. DOCKERY: What operator or-operators brought 25 -- raised the concern regarding the operability or the

t 11 1 validity of Curve 8 and how was that conveyed to you?

2 THE WITNESS: If I recall, in the beginning it {

3 was no more than-a casual conversation, of all the-4 operations personnel there were two that seemed to feel 5 strongly about it. That was Mark' van Sicklen and Bruce 6 Willms. And then also Jackie Stewart and I had had 7 conversations.  ;

8 As I got into this thing and I understood more .

i 9 about the curve and more about what we had assumed in the 10 . development of the curve, I felt like Jackie Stewart and I 11 were on the same plano.- I felt like Mark van Sicklen and

.12 I were getting on the same plane. But Mark -- Corry. i 13 Bruce Willms and I wnre kind of on the same plane. But I 14 never got that way with Mark Van Sicklon. We just --

15 MR. STENGER: We may be getting ahead of 16 ourselves. You're now talking about after SP-630 und the ,

17 Problem Report 149 and corrective actions wet. developed, ,

18 or are you?

19 THE WITNESS: Well, we could have had -- I cannot cas 20 say -- I ncyVT+suld -

i, .s . -s e find out -- I probably could find it in 21 my notes, that we had some conversations before SP-630 22 about the curve.

23 MR. STENGER: Then why don't we ask that 1 24 question.- Were-there' conversations with operators prior- ,

25 to the SP-630 problem --

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l 12 j 1 MR. DOCKERY: Well, I thought that's what we- f 2 were getting to. ,

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3 MR. STENGER: Okay.

4 MR. DOCKERY: I was trying to go through it. l 5 MR. STENGER: Okay.  ;

6 MR. DOCKERY: I didn't put'it in regard to  :

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'7 89-630 or anything else. I just -- When did this first  !

8 come up?  ;

9 MR. WEINBERG: Anyway, the time frame we're-10 talking about -- that he's talking-about now is more in f 11 the May,- June, July of '94 time-frame / Is that right?  !

12 THE WITNESS: Yes. I think so.  !

13 MR. WEINBERG: Okay. You were just saying that l; o.

14 you were not on the same plane with -- j 15 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Mark Van Sicklen and I --

16 Again, these were informal. I'd go to the control room 17: for maybe another issue and these guys would be on shift 18 and we would discuss it. And --

19 MR. DOCKERY: What troubled them? ,

20 THE WIT'TSS : They felt that during normal makeup 21 tank hydrogen additions, that the curve was not responding  ;

22: -- the plant was not responding precisely to the curve.  ;

23 And do;you want to know-what I did with that --

i 24- 'those concerns? t 25 MR. DOCKERY: .

We want to know everything you can j s

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2 T11E WITNESS: Okay. What I did, at that point we 3 had -- As a system engineer I like to be able to validate -

4 something, if you know what I'm talking about. We like to 5 take plant data that we can collect from a computer or 6 whatever, and then lay it on a curve or compare it and say 7 it either is or it is not responding like you would expect 8 it to.

9 That was my intention or my method of trying to 10 prove curve 8 because I knew I wasn't going to be given 11 the time to go through and try to do the calculation on 12 myself .- by myself. It just wasn't my function. But I 13 could surely try to validate it. And that was my goal.

14 At that point we really had no data available to 15 validate the curve. The only real data that you could get 16 from a validation would be to align the system in the 17 alignment and the arrangement that it was -- that the 18 curve was designed for. And we had not had that 19 opportunity.

20 So what I did was took the little bit of 21 information that we had, discussed it with some of our I&C 22 supervision, our -- Steve Kolef f --

23 MR. DOCKERY: I&C is instrumentation --

24 T}lE WITNESS: Instrumentation and conttols.

25 Right. But I discussed it with cystems instrumentation

. . . _. . .. - _ . - . . = _ . - . . .

14 1 and control supervisor, Steve Koleff, and I discussed it 2 with Scott Balliet, who was the design engineer 3 instrumentation and control supervisor, i

4 And trying to understand and saying, you know, l what do you think your opinion is of these slight i

5 j 6 differences. And we all felt very comfortable with 7 saying, that's well within the instrument error that would  ;

sv4,a s s  ;

8 That's be associated with those instrument etr:/.. ths.

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9 every component between the transmitter and the indicator, .

10 computer, or whatever it may be. l 11 So at that point we had nothing to tell us that 12 there was anything wrong with that curve. It appeared fra 13 with the little data we had to responddlike you would 19' pH 14 expect it to. """ d '" ' "

15 MR. DOCKERY: So there is a clear degree of 16 expected error --

17 THE WITNESS: Oh, absolutely.

18 MR. DOCKERY: -- in the instruments that record.

19 THE WITNESS: Absolutely. Which is exactly why ,

20 for a curve like this, if you were to draw the curve, the 21 same curve, neglecting instrument error, you would draw it tur 22 above ---above thia shown in the procedure so that in the Wn t s-t v 23 event you had instrument error-occurring during a LOCA or 24 actually just during an addition, you're covered.

25 MR DOCKERY: You're still conservative.

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15 1- THE WITNECS: You're conservative. Exactly.-

2 It's my opinion, too, that if you were right today with 3 the error taken out of the calculation, put yourself right 4 on the curve and run not the same test, because that was

-5 an invalid test, run it during an outage, that you would 6 not exactly trace that curve. Instrument error wont l i

7 allow it. It's just the way it goes, which is well 4

8 understood in instrumentation and controls. .

i 9 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. At what point are we now in i 10 your -- historically in your attempting to deal with this  !

11 issue?

12 THE WITNESS: Probably just prior to the SP-630 13 procedure and the outage.

14 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. And that was what Mr.

15 Stenger was referring to. Can you relate your knowledge. t 16 of that procedure?

17 THE WITNESS: Okay. Yes, sir. That's a strndard 18 outage procedure that we use to test the full flow 19 function of the check valves in the high pressure 20 injection system. And it just verifies that the check Ane .

21 valves ser open fully and that we get th flow rate through '

y,,,, - e 22 them)% thate we + expect to in an accident.

23 The SP-630, the big issue in that problem report 24 was that Operations suspected lthat we had inadequate net 25 positive nuction heads for our emergency core cooling f

16 1 system pumps. That was the big issue. And that we had a 2 check valve that stuck.

3 Those issues are really not related to the curve.

4 In the process we were in an outage, their problem report 5 was assigned to me. I put together corrective action 6 plans and know f rom that list there was a number of 7 corrective actions that had to be completed before we 8 could feel comfortable about starting up.

9 I told my supervisor I wanted to deal with them.

10 I thought I could handle them. I thought I had as good an 11 understanding as anybody did. And I basically, I think, 12 completed either six out of elaht or seven out of nine 13 corrective actions and felt comfortable with what we had 14 done or what we had found. I was absolutely comfortable nar oc pab 15 wit.A.we-4 anen adequate net positive suction heads and had pi u- v se 16 no problem wit.h the starting up.

17 The operators -- their major concern was that 18 when they perf onned the test, we had a low pressure 19 injection pump in the recirc mode, which would have caused 20 some additional line losses. that they suspected they saw 21 -a- cavitation.

22R * ,, ., e And we were by design, by standard hydraulic 23 calculations very, very far away from any forms of 24 cavitation. It was easily explained that here -- What I 25 'tried to do was say, no, here was your margin, this is how

17 wM Dv Aw t. SN3

  • 1 much NPSH.available -you had--4.w-thw -- with that problem W tu t* 1 e Q., . . n 2 report.

3 I included in the problem report some information 4 that I got a few days later of concern about the curve. I 5 was trying to use the problem report to pass on some 6 details of the function of the makeup tank and curve, 7 including the whole system,while I had a good opportunity 8 to convey that to operators.

9 I don't think people, everybody truly knew how it vQ 10 would respond in this scenario accident, which was similar p+ a.u -v 11 to the SP-630 run. And I took that opportunity to try to 12 say, yeah, this is exactly what you're going to see 13 because physics is going to make it happen this way.

14 The information on the curve in the problem 15 report, I made it part of the problem report because I had 16 received a concern from Mark Van Sicklen that said that p.,o ov 17 the plant did not respond like the curve 3should have. But pu ,u.. -n 18 attached to that concern was a hand-drawn curve of Curve 8 19 and the plant computer data plotted. And that's in that 20 problem report.

21 And it looked very good. I mean, it had a 22 convergence which you would expect, because if you -- the 23 test started nt a lower pressure than the curve and if you 24 did the calculation at a lower pressure than the curve, 25 you would draw a line that would conver; on the -- Okay.

I,

i 18 t 1 Yeah. . Sorry. Thank you.- (Document tendered.)

2. This- was just a little quick -- The curve-you see 3 that respondsLto the OP-103B curve.was the. plant computer.

45.The two red data points there were items -- were data 5 points off of a control room recorder. The recorder is an 6 end du/ ice. It has nothing to do'with the plant computer 7 -alarm and'is nowhere near as accurate as the indications pwI 8 that the controle(will get via the alarm.

P5a*- l.c .

9 The recorder was not included in his concern,3 the Aco" 10 printout. If I had a copy ~of that, I could have, oh, 11 okay, I see your problem. Instead they had recorded the 12 data that I drew below the curve, which looks pretty 13 acce ate. And I said, hey, I think that's within 14 instrument error and I think that's.the standard 15 convergtnce of the curve..

  • 16. MR. WEINBERG: Do you understand that?. In other 17 words,'the pencil line that pretty much_ parallels the '

18 curve is what Pat drew from the REDAS data.

19 MR. RAPP: Okay. Right.

20- MR. WEINBERG: .This line here from one to two is 21' the line that.was recorded in the control room from_the --

22 -you know, the --

23 THE; WITNESS: Recorder.

24 MR. WEINBERG: -- the-recorder that Van Sicklen 25 drew that indicated to him that there was a problem. But-I

i t

19 1 when Pat went back and plotted the REDAS data back in 2 whenever it was, May or June, he showed Van Sicklen that, 3 look, I mean, when you plot it, it pretty much parallels 4 the curvo, so what's the problem. That's pretty accurate.

5 THE WITNESS: And then Mark -- And then this 6 is --

7 MR. WEINBERG: Is that pretty accurate?

8 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Exactly. And then ir .

9 discussion that I actually held over to evening shift to 10 have with the operators about the entire problem report 11 they presented me the concrol room strip chart recorder 12 printout. I had not seen that before. And those are the 13 red points that I plottt_. x 14 Well, I took that and had to deal with it. But 15 again, that's an end device. It's perfuctly acceptable to 16 use that device during normal operations. As you make an 17 add you can watch t 3 recorder, no problem. If you get 18 the alarm, you have to deal with it.

19 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, can we put a date on 20 this?

21 THE WITNESS: That was -- Okay. Approximately --

S P-22 We were out of the outage after 630 g by a matter of maybe a

$34 23 couple of weeks or less. ***'"

24 MR. DOCKERY: So when --

SP~

25 THE WITNESS: Afterj 630 was issued, SP-630 was V,$.2.-15

. . . . . . . - . - - - ~ . - . . . . . ..-- - -- . .-.

9' '

20  ;

1 issued. I -- l 2 M R'.~ V O R S E t- Around June eff'94?

3 --MR iWEINBERG: I think so. Try the beginning of 4--June of '94.-

+

5 MR. DOCKERY: All-right.

6 THE WITNESS - I took the recorder's strip chart 7 and, again, discussed, you know, this withLSteve Koleff 81fand probably Scott Balliet again.- And we wereLall in 9 agreement that this old style mechanical recorder had a-

-10. lot of hysteresis.in it, which is an effect-that tends to 11 hold the change'up. -

And it's typical for these old 12 mechanical style recorders.

13 And again, the recorder is an end device. It's 14 not before the computer or alarm.

15 So I wrote a memo -- speed memo to them stating l

16 that, c 17 MR. WEINBERG:- To who?

18 THE WITNESS:- To Garrett Hebb. At that time I 19 was to respond to Garrett Hebb and Mark Van Sicklen.

j.

/ 20 MR. .DOCKERY: What position was Garrett Hebb in.

.2i at that time?-- ,

22 THE WITNESS: Shift supervisor.

23- MR DOCKERY: Was heLMr. Van Sicklen's 24 l supervisor?

2 57 THE. WITNESS: I believe he was at the time. I i

~

21 1 think it may have been that we were told to communicate to 2 Garrett. That position has changed a time or two, but I 3 .lon't -- I had a specific reason for going to Garrett.

4 And I think it was copied to Mark -- I think I 5 gave Mark a copy of it. And explained in that letter that 6 there's nothing wrong with using the control room 7 recorder, but you have to give the plant computer and the 8 alarm priority. You have to.

9 And remember, this curve is designed for one 10 point in time. You want to make an addition, you pull out 11 the curve, you make an addition, you don't exceed the 12 curve, you put the curve away. You're done with it. It's 13 done. You don't need it again until you make the next 14 addition.

15 It's not designed to sit on and follow while the 16 plant's operating. That's not the intent of the curve.

17 It's an initial set up, and then you put it away. The 18 recorder works fine for that, also.

19 We had discussions later with the design guys and 20 I said, well, we -- maybe we should provide a more --

21 MR. WEINBERG: Who in design did you discuss it 22 with?

23 THE WITNESS: It would have had to be probably 24 Ron Clauson --

25 MR. WEINBERG: Terry Austin?

l

- ' - ' ~ _ - . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ , _ _ _ _ _ . _ . - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ____ ___

22 1 THE WITNESS: Possibly Terry. But Terry's not 2 instrumentation and control. It would have been more 3 probably Scott -- Yes. Scott Balliet would have been the 4 person.

5 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

6 THE WITNESS: And we said, well, you know, we can 7 give them a much more accurate recorder that has a digital 8 indication -- indicator, if you would like. You know, and 9 that was something that they were looking into and that's 10 something that they may still be planning on doing. I 1? don't know.

12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. This would have been just 13 subsequent to the surveillance procedure?

14 THE WITNESS: Okay. This data came out -- That 15 was another thing. Okay. This was all after the SP-630, 16 which was the first time we had any real plant data to 17 compare to the curve.

18 MR. WEINEERG: And why is that --

19 THE WITNESS: Well, the --

20 MR. WEINBERG: -- from a design technical 21 standpoint?

22 THE WITNESS: Okay. Because of the -- In that 23 SP-630 your system is aligned like it would be in a LOCA.

24 The recirc to the makeup tank is isolated. Letdown to the 25 makeup tank is isolated.

I 23 1 During normal operations you don't isolate recire 2 to the makeup tank, but you can do like they did in their 3 test and divert J etdown to the makeup tank, divert it to 4 another tank, a bleed tank. But you don't isolate recirc.

5 Recirc flow comes in at a higher temperature than 6 letdown. But with the two combined flows, the -- you 7 know, the average temperature is slightly lower and the A ,-en 8 tank stabilizes at some3temperatureg.

psu n -s. - ss 9 But if you take away letdown, the temperature 10 goes up. You now are just adding the hot water. And as 11 soon as the temperature goes up it --

this flow blows 12 through the gas space.

13 We monitor temperature only in a liquid, not the 14 gas space. And as soon as you blow the Potter fluid 15 through the gas space it's going to expand the gas and 16 it's going to drive you off the curve. It's going to 17 happen, you know.

18 MR. WEINBERG: Which doesn't happen in a LOCA.

19 THE WITNESS: Does not happen in a LOCA because 20 you can get an automatic isolation to close the recirc and 21 the letdown. So it's -- The test was not valid. It was 22 not in the proper configurations to do --

23 MR. WEINBERC: When you say the test, you're 24 talking about now the September test.

25 THE WITNESS: Right. Right. Or any other data

24 1 that we have had previous to SP-630. You really couldn't 2 give it a lot of credibility because you're not in the 3 proper system alignment.

4 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, you may have already 5 answered this, but I want to make sure.

6 Was there ever any formal document requesting you 7 to deal with this issue?

8 THE WITNESS: There was a -- At one point we had 9 a handwritten -- There were three questions on a 10 handwritten -- You know, just somebody wrote on a sheet of 11 paper that was -- that made it to me. I don't know -- It 12 wasn't to Pat Hinman. It was some concerns.

13 There were three concerns. They were not really 14 --

Okay. I'll tell you what they were. There was a 15 concern that -- I think they showed this on the simulator, 16 that if you made a big swing like you would in a LOCA, 17 that the makeup tank low level alarm would come in.

18 Well, an OP says you're supposed to maintain the 19 level at certain minimum value and, you know, basically is 20 your guideline.

21 In an accident that OP really doesn't apply.

22 It's the EOP that you have to drive the plant by. I don't 23 think the EOP -- I don't recall if the EOP addressed the 24 same issue. If it did, it should have been something that 25 we would have handled as a procedure revision by the i,

25 1 Operations engineering group.

2 The issue wasn't a big issue. I don't recall 3 exactly -- That was in the time period when we were still 4 trying to get our hands around, you know, the burden, the 5 25 cc's. And it was going to get rolled in.

6 There was another issue that they were concerned 7 about -- and this was Bruce Willms, Mark Van Sicklen --

8 that if we have a fire and a LOCA, you're going to destroy 9 a makeup pump. And the issue -- And that's assuming that 10 in this fire the isolation valve to the makeup tr.nk fails 11 open.

12 And I agreed 100 percent, yes, you will do that.

, j 13 But this plant and any other plant in the United States is 14 not required to assume that a fire occurs with a LOCA, 15 And they have not accepted that to date that I know of.

16 The third issue was the emergency boration 17 concern. We had at the plant, and still do, two methods 18 of performing emergency boration. One is by opening the 19 suction valve from the BWST and just allowing water to 20 flow right from the BWST into the reactor.

21 The other was taking a concentrated boric acid, 22 dumping it into the makeup tank, it mixes it with the 23 water, and it eventually makes it to the core. Either 24 issue is an acceptable method and tech spec approved way 25 to handle emergency boration.

26 TWi 1 Mark brought .Lhat issue up in a meeting where gg g. . .u 2 Ernie Gallion was present. Ernie's a shitt supervisor out 3 here. And Ernie told Mark in that meeting, it's not a 4 concern because there is no -- you know, our tech specs 5 don't say that you have to be emergency borating in one 6 minute or five minutes.

7 It gives you a more -- and I don't remember the 8 exact words. But within some period of time you're 9 supposed to be lined up for emergency boration. And we 10 would be. And we would -- You know, with the stroke of a 11 valve or two you could have used either path readily 12 available, but there would have been a delay with both 13 paths. Totally acceptable at that time.

14 So none of the issues that were written in the 15 hand verbiage -- They weren't makeup tank issues, for one 16 thing. They were other issues. And I don't think we've 17 had to do anything with them.

18 And they were also addressed in some of the minor 19 modifications that were going on. I know -- I can't 20 remember the design engineer that was involved, but it was 21 a person that worked for Scott Balliet. He addresseo some 22 of that in his safety evaluation. Emergency boration was 23 addressed in the safety evaluation.

24 But those are the only issues that I recall 25 written down in any fashion that I got.

27 1 MR. DOCKERY: I think we have come up to the 2 point in ycur involvement with this issue, Curve 8, up to 3 -- you mentioned the events of September 4th and 5th.

4 Does that pretty much cover -- I'm sure there 5 were other events in there, but what I want --

6 MR. WEINBERG: Well, there were meetings in that 7 period. In other words, there are -- Okay, If I remember 8 correctly from the interview that was turned over to you 9 all, you might tell them, there were actually meetings 10 between -- formal meetings between -- not just these 11 informal meetings between --

12 MR. DOCKERY: I'm going to come back to that.

13 Okay.

14 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

15 MR. DOCKERY: Before we get to that I suspect 16 that my colleague, Mr. Rapp, has some technical questions.

17 Correct me if I'm wrong.

18 MR. RAPP: Well, yeah, I have technical 19 questions. But it might be better just to hold those off 20 until we finish the sequence of events.

21 MR. VORSE: Do we need to get into July?

22 MR. RAPP: That's where we aere going, Jim was 23 going.

24 Let me ask this. When about was this meeting 25 with Ernie Gallion where the emergency boration issue was 1

28 1 raised?

2 THE WITNESS: That was -- The main scope of the 3 meeting was to try to address operator burden concerns.

4 So it was absolutely after the point where we were trying 5 to mee 25 cc's per kg. I think it was after SP-630.

6 MR. RAPP: Okay.

7 THE WITNESS: I'm not sure. I think there's 8 probably meeting minutes out on that that would come up 9 with the date. But it was mostly concerning, how are we 10 going to get around these burdens that we've now thrown on 11 the operators to try to meet this 25 cc's per kg goal.

12 MR. RAPP: Well, the only reason I -- There was 13 a July 19th meeting that we want te, get to. I don't know 14 if that was the same meeting.

15 THE WITNESS: Do you guys have -- I apologize for 16 not having more detail. But do you have a list of people

.17 that were at that meeting, by any chance?

18 MR. RAPP: Carl Bergstrom, Bruce Willms --

l 19 1HE WITNESS: Okay. That was --

20 MR. VORSE: That was the August meeting?

21 MR. RAPP: July 19th.

22 MR. WEINBERGe I don't think he was at that 23 meeting.

24 MR. RAPP: Yeah, he was. That's what' Carl said.

25 MR. WEINBERG. Let me get that.

l l

l l

~ _ - - . .. . . .- - - - _ . -. - - .

4 29 1 THE WITNESS: This was in'the control room?

2 MR '. RAPP: No. This was a meeting that Carl 3 Bergstrom set up between you and Bruce Willms and Mark Van 4 S.'.cklen.

5 THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen. Yes.

6 MR. RAPP- And he said that somebody else may

7. have been present, but he wasn't sure.

8 THE WITNESS: Okay. Yeah. That was handled in 9 an office adjacent to the control room.

10 MR. RAPP: Okay.

11 THE WITNESS: Okay. This -- I think the meeting 12 I just spoke about was prior to that, that July meeting.

13 MR. RAPP: Okay. And --

14' MR. WEINBERG: Well, while you're at it, you 15 want to speak to -- I don't know. Do you remember the 16 specific date that you met with these people in the 17 control room?

I 18 THE WITNESS: I believe it's the July 19th l

19 meeting --

20 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

21 THE WITNESS: -- that we were -- that was -- that 22 the intent was-to discuss what they thought about tha 23 response to Problem Report 94-149.

( 24 MR. WEINBErr.: Do you want him to explain his 25 recollection?

t.

9

- - w , _ _ , . . _ y

30 1 MR. RAPP: Just go ahead and finish your 2 narrative then --

3 THE WITNESS: Okay. On that --

4 MR. RAPP: -- on that sequence and we'll get to S that.

6 THE WITNESS: Let's see. I don't know where I 7 was now.

B MR WEINBERG: Well, I guess what they -- Well, 9 maybe what you ought to try to. describe is the number of 10 informal or formal meetings that you had with whoever you 11 had then to address the -- specificall'y the Curve 8 issue 12 that had been raised almost as an as!.de out of the SP-630.

13 THE WITNESS: We nad, oh, I would say -- On a 14 couple of occasions I probably had some information that, 15 after discussing it with various I&C personnel, that I 16 wanted to go up and provide them.

17 I would --

18 MR. WEINBERG: Them being?

19 THE WITNESS: Being Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce 20 Willms. Those were the only two guys that were really 21 asking for anything. Nobody else was concerned.

22 And those were the type of meetings where I 23 would, you know, hope to find them on shift or I knew they 24 were on shift. I'd go to the control room and we had 25 basically discussions while they were monitoring the

l 31 1 board.

2 And I -- At that point I felt comfortable with 3 the curve. I felt like it was responding, at least 4 absolutely reasonable to what you would expect. And my 5 defense of the curve was I f elt like -- and I've said this 6 once before -- that what little changes they could have --

7 We were operating very close to the curve, first of all.

8 And --

9 MR. DOCKERY: Why was that?

10 THE WITNESS: Because that was the only way we 11 could achieve the 25 cc's per kg. What happened, this 12 issue -- And this came clear to me when I took the curve 13 and kind of voided out all the areas of the curve that 14 weren't acceptable, and that would be all this area up 15 here above the high aln:m point, and then everywhere that 16 you couldn't achieve 25 cc's per kg, and you end up with a 17 very small window of something like this.

18 So we were trying to operate the plant in this 19 little window. And it was tough. You know, it was 20 something that required more operator action, which is the 21 burden we were talking about.

22 And that was something that we were trying to 23 decide and determine what would be the best way to achieve 24 it. And the best fix would have been if we could have 25 just raised the set point of the regulator, you can get in

32 1 that window and you can add gas. But Appendix R wouldn't 2 allow us to do that, which it just complicated things 3 very, very greatly and it was taking some time to deal 4 with it.

5 I spoke already about our July meeting.

6 MR, WEINBERG: Well, what do you recall about 7 that?

8 THE WITNESS: Okay. We -- I was -- I had issued 9 the SP-630, the number of corrective actions from SP-630.

10 And I had sent Greg Halnon an E-Mail and said I'd like to 11 discuss this, you know, please have the appropriate people 12 review this thing and I would like to discuss it with them 13 and get some feedback on it.

14 And a meeting was set up on after hours for me, 15 because these gays were -- Mark and Bruce were on a back 16 shift, to meet with them in the control room. And Carl 17 Bergstrom was there.

18 I had hoped that Terry Austin, who had -- he was 19 the design engineer who had supported the effort on NPSH, 20 would have been there. He couldn't be there.

21 Steve Roe was another engineer who had been 22 involved in various aspects and he was supposed to be. He 23 couldn't be there.

24 So I was the only engineer there. Carl, Bruce 25 Willms, and I believe Mark Van Sicklen were the four l

l l

33 l 1 people'there.

2 And I was hoping to discuss the-problem report.

3 And Mark quickly started bringing up issues that I had 4 addressed in the problem report. And I asked -- You know, 5 I said, well -- You know, I gave him my opinion of it and ou rat 4^' W' 6 what I had determined from the hand cales and background gg ,,,,,

7 type calcs that I had done to support that problem report.

8 And I felt like he pretty much just turned me 9 off. He had no intentions to listen to my discussion. He 10 only had the same issues that he had brought up before, 11 which some of them were identified and discussed in the 12 problem report. And there may have been some above and 13 beyond that. But it's something we couldn't have handled 14 in that meeting. This was a much, much bigger picture 15 that was already in writing and already proceeding.

16 And at one point I asked Mark, I said, Mark, did 17 you even read the problem report. I mean, I was 18 frustrated because I had spent a lot of time and I felt 19 like that he hadn't given me the time he was asking for to 20 read the thing.

21 And he claimed that he had. But from my 22 discussions with him, it did not appear that he had.

23 Then they threw the control room recorder curve 24 on me, presented me with that plotted strip chart, what I 25 talked about earlier.

34 1 MR WEINBERG- That's the one that showed --

2 THE WITNESS: The very bad-looking data.

3 MR. VORSE: Weren't they claiming the curve was 4 --

they were going to intersect? Isn't that what they 5 were claiming?

6 MR. DOCKERY: Merging.

7 THE WITNESS: It's right here. Right.

8 MR. DOCKERY: I'm not understanding Lomething 9 here. When is it your understanding the data, this data 10 was collect.ed?

11 THE WITNESS: Those -- Both those curves were 12 collected at the exact same time, the SP-630 procedure.

13 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.

14 MR. WEINBERG: But it was --

15 THE WITNESS: Different --

16 MR. WEINBERG: But it was plotted at some later 17 date from the data.

18 THE WITNESS: Right. The strip chart recorder 19 was continually recording, you know, the system as the 20 plant went on. So was the computer. But --

21 MR. WEINBERG: So the idea of this meeting was 22 not Curve 8, really.

23 THE WITNESS: No. No. Because the problem 24 report was not wrir. ten against Curve 8. It was an NPSH 25 concern and the fact that we had a check valve that did I

. . m __ .- _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ . . _ _ . . . . . _ _ . . . - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - . - - . _ . . _ . _ . _

35 1 _not properly-seat.

2- MR. WEINBERG:- But at some point during the:

3; meeting they brought this data out -- >

<4 T1[E-WITNESS: ~ Right.

Si MR. WEINBERG: --Land raised the issue.

And because I knew the issue was

~

6 THE WITNESS:

-7 going on,_like I say, I felt this'was a good time to 8 provide some detail to how this thing is -- You know, they 9 were concerned that the curve -- when they started SP-630, 10 the makeup level tank dropped very quickly. That's l 11 exactly what it's going to do. It's a much -- at a higher 12 head than the BWST.

13. And until it drops down and equals the head of 14 the BWST'then you utart drawing from the BWST. Then the 15 ' rate of descent'in both tanks is related to the amount of 1G volume it's going to take to drop another foot, which was 17 10,000 ga'.lons per foot in the BWST.

18 So the BWST was going to control the descent once

. 19 you' blew off the steam, the overpressure in the makeup 20 tank. You had two curves here sitting. Your procedure.

21 Your test starts. This curve quickly drops because it's

- 22 .the higher head,.the_-available source.

P 23 .Once the gas pressure expands-into the voided

+

24- area that you've. created by-losing fluid, then they both 125-iccme down together.

I 36 j 1 -MR.- RAPPi' Once you equalize-the pressure and

'2 Jit's just governed by static head.

3: THE WITNESS: - Exactly. Right.- And then -- And-4 of-course, status head, you have to take into account all- ,

5 your.line losses that are going on.

And then that's all 15 considered into the calculation and in the NPSH- -

7 calculations and so forth.

8 But, see, their concern is, well, man, it was 9 going off the scale low. And in my problem report I said, 10 no. In fact, I have a nice -- several curves from a Lotus 11 -- or not Lotus, but Ex-Cel program and I have points on ,

12 here, okay, here's where your BWST started coming into 13 play, and all this really good information I was proud of,

, 14 and it showed that, hey, these curves -- no, it wasn't 15 going to suck the tank dry. This thing was equalizing 16 just like you would expect it-to. You could see the flow 17 picking up from the BWST just like you would expect it to.

l' 18 And none of that information meant a hill of beans to 19' these guys, and it ticked me off.

20 MR. RAPP: To which guys?

21 THE-WITNESS: To Mr. Van Sicklen. I mean, he 22- was the one with all the problems. He--- Every little

- 23 .

problem that we could come'up with I tried -- that he 24 - could come up with.I tried to address.

And he was, hey,-

25' man, look at this tank, it's going off_ scale. You know,

'-.g.b- ---tv -

7 .- _m g g P-.e ar -ew- * * - W '---m -< w w-e*- -b -4 M 7 g g wt

37 1 no, Mark, it's just reaching equilibrium.

2 And that was part of my discussion and I 3 explained this to them in the meeting. I don't know if he 4 understood it or was he even listening to it. But it's 3 physics. And I told him, I said, look, in my opinion, if 6 that curve, if you use it for the single point in time 7 that you're making an addition, you can take it and throw 8 it away. If you have a LOCA, forget about it. Physics 9 isn't going to let anything happen. It's going to drive 10 the system liPe the intention of the curve was.

11 Unde

  • standing that later, yes, there was a small neu 12 error found. I know that perfectly. But at the,I didn't 13 know.

14 MR. DOCKERY: Characterize for me, Mr. Hinman, 15 the tenor or the atmosphere of this meeting. Was it 16 heated?

17 THE WITNESS: Not really. I'm not -- I'm not 18 spun up very easily. I was probably about as spun up as I 19 get, which is -- I've always been told I'm laid back and I 20 need to be more aggressive. Well, I was a little bit 21 aggressive in the meeting, but we weren't yelling. I 22 mean, it wasn't a heated conversation. Carl wouldn't have 23 let that happen.

24 We -- I vent, we discussed it. I was -- I asked 25 him if he had read it, because it didn't seem like he had.

1 l

38 1 And basically'left with a few more items that they_ wanted 2 me-to-look at withL-- lookLinto.

  • 3 MR. WEINBERG: What was the discussion about the 4 data?

5 THE WITNESS: Okay. This was not presented in 6 that meeting because I had not had a copy of the control .

7 room strip chart recorder. I told them I'd have to look 8 into-it. And --

9 MR. WEINBERG: Oh, they gave you the strip chart 10 recorder, and then you said you had to look into it.

11 THE WITNESS: Right. In that meeting. And I wow 12 followed up,a speed memo, which I can -- I have in my pg,m.nr 13 pickup. I brought all my files -- as to why I don't see 14 that to be a major concern.

15 MR. RAPP: My understanding when S -- not SP --

16 when PR-149 was written, was that they had annotated or 17 mentioned in the problem report that -- like, oh, by the 18 way, Curve 8, the plant response did not follow --

19 THE WITNESS: Yes.

20 MR. RAPP: - - Cu rve 8 . But they did-not provide 21- data when they -- when PR-149 first came out.

22- THE WITNESS: No. No. But the data was there 23 .for me'to get.

24 MR. RAPP: But you got it off REDAS.

25 THE WITNESS: Right. W e l l ,-- n o . They --

r - -.n. -

391 1_ MR. RAPP: I'm sorry.

2= THE WITNESS: No. -They did not provide data.

3

- MR. FAPP: -From the plant strip chart recorder 4 4 THE WITNESS: .No. No. That was -- Like-I say, 5 .it came -- Well, the strip chart didn't come until we had

~

6 our discussion. ,

7' MA, RAPP: Right.

8- THE WITNESS: But his concern about the makeup 9 tank seemed to drop really quick came in a separate 10 concern that I scooped up and made part of my problem 11 report.

12 MR. RAPP: Okay.

13 THE WITNESS: .And it's attached to that problem 14 report.

15 MR. RAPP: Okay. I just wanted to understand 16 how the problem got worked into the problem report.

4 17 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, are.you aware that

- 18 around about July -- the same time period as the July 19th 19 meeting, perhaps the 20th, 21st, or 22nd,.some data was 20 collected during a routine evolution at the direction of 21 Mr. Bergstrom.

22 THE WITNESS:- Okay.

23 MR'. DOCKERY: I believe it was collected by Mr.

24. Willms.. Does thattring a bell with you?.

25- THE WITNESS: I do not recall ever being 1

?

s . w-, -- , - y

40 1 presented any data like that. I have heard about it since 2 then, but I-do not recall anything either, hey, how about 3 ~ looking at this, or formal, in any way getting any 4 information.

4 5 I cannot be certain that Bruce didn't say what 6 he's saying. But I do not recall it. And if I had been 7 on my toes and I had received that information, I would 8 have said, it doesn't -- it's not any good, guys, it's not 9 data in the right configuration that we can use.

10 You know, it's -- But I don't -- No, I do not 11 recall.

12 MR DOCKERY: Can you r= call an August 5th 13 meeting? I'm worried here because we just discussed the 14 July 19th. There may have been elements of the July 19th 15 memo -- or meeting that actually occurred in August.

16 THE WITNESS: I don't think so. But here's 17 the --

18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. They're distinctly separate 19 meetings and --

20 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Yeah.

21 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.

22 MR WEINBERG: Different people at the meetings.

23 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.

24 THE WITNESS: Yeah. This meeting --

25 MR. WEINBERG: I'm showing him his September

- . . . . . . . . . - . . ~ - - . . ~ . - . _ - - - _

b 41 i I? 2nd, 1994, memo, which we've heard so much about. That memo references the~ August.5th meeting. I just thought 3 -I'd show him that.

4 THE WITNESS: ~ Yeah. The main objective of this 4

5- meeting --

6 MR.- WBINBERG: Of the August 5th meeting?

7 THE WITNESS: Of the August 5th meeting was to 8 address any concerns. _But it was mostly to address the operator burden, because -- Concerns with the swapover

'9 10 pcdnt , concerns that -- with the makeup tank level, those 11 were issues that we would not have been able to do N 12 anyth1y we We egenac.

could Hunse

-- You know, was wc youw could an,x xerhave* BY pn.stw M'c*"'

listened ng,-- pse ,wte-v 13 'to more of their concerns-again, I guess. Anyone in this 14- meeting could have brought up these issues.

t 15 But the intent of this meeting was to discuss, 16 okay, we have to be at 25.cc's per kg, right, Chemistry, I 17 mean, this -- you know, this doesn't seem to be something 18 that we really should be killing ourselves to try to --

19 No. -They felt like we had to be there. Okay.

20 Operators were there. There was only one 21 operator there and it wasn't Mark or Bruce. To say, okay 22 -- It was a brainstorm. It was a brainstorm. What can we 23 do-to try to make it better.

24 And based'on that meeting and then a lot of 25 additional work following, we decided, look, these are our

+

42 ;j

_1 bestioptions if'you're going to' meet _-- make.25 cc's per _

2 kg' .

3 MR. WEINBERG: Just for-the record, who was at 4- that meeting in August 5th, ' 947 5 THE WIINESS: From Operations or --

6 MR. WEINBERG: No. From anywhere. I mean, 7 you've got a list of the~--

8 THE WI'INESS: Right.

'9- MR. WEINBERG:_ -- of the departments. But who 10: were the= people there?

Chemistry was Jerry Paine.

11 .THE WITNESS: Okay.

L _ 12 Operations -- I--don't know why I have a hard time 13 rememba. ring his name. Bobby Pate was from Operations.

14 SNES was --

15 MR. WEINBERG: What's that?

16 THE hITNESS: That's the design engineering 11 group. That-was -- It was -- It would be -- I think Scott 18 Balliet'was there. I think --

19 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, let me see if I can 20 help you'.

21 THE WITNESS: Okay.

22 .'MR. DOCKERY: I'm looking at an E-Mail, or

- 23 whatever. It's an-E-Mail. Let me show this to you. It's 24 titled to_be'from.you to -- in this particular-instance to But it's regarding an' August 5th meeting.

25 Jones.

^

l

- M. 3, . , t ..-,w , =w+ r. e - w a a, m ,e a

- w y,- , ,,y, mw v.-, e- --T - - -

43 1 Look at that and see if th'at jogs your memory.

O THE WITNESS: (Examines document.) Yeah. Scott 3 Balliet, Brian Murtaw, David Czufin, Dave Jones, Jerry 4 Paine. I don't think Jim Terry was at the meeting. Phil 5 Saltsman was there. I think he was assuming my duties.

6 Ralph Robinson, another design engineer, I'm certain he 7- was there. Steve Roe, systems engineer, I believe he was 8 there.

9 And it says, " Makeup tank hydrogen overpressure 10 meeting will be held," again, this was overpressure, 25 11 cc's per kg. Discussion, recent modifications, as left 12 MAR functional test. These are all details that are 13 spelled out in this letter.

14 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. We don't need to read it in 15 the record. I just wanted to -- We have it as a document.

16 MR. WEINBERG: Can I have a copy -- Can I make a 17 copy of that before I leave? That's the memo we were 18 looking for yesterday.

19 THE WITNESS: I had to send that E-Mail a cauple 20 of times on a different network to design guys down in St.

21 Petersburg, and then I sent it to our people on site here.

22 MR. VORSE: Pat, did you call this meeting then?

23 THE WITNESS: Yes. I believe -- Yes, I did.

24 MR. WEINBERG: But --

25 MR. DOCKERY: I wasn't hiding that. I just came

44 11 -- I.just found that last night.

MR. WEINBERG:- Oh, no, no. This is helpful' 12-3 because, among other things, it does indicate in this memo 4 that-of the action items that are to be discussed, which 5 you had started reading, it also includes Curve 8 and how 6 it applies to the LOCA analysis.

7 THE WITNESS: Right..

8 MR. WEINBERG: So that was this Curve 8 issue.

9 7EE WITNESS: Yeah. And see, I was hoping Mark 10 . would be there and he could have brought his. concerns up 11 with_ design and systems people present. He wasn't there.

12 It's difficult to schedule meetings with 13 Operations because they are on so many different shifts.

14 And, you know, some of these things we got to get done.

15 We -- Come on, we got to move on it.

16 And if those people aren't here and if it's going 17 to take two weeks to get them here, we've got-to move on.

18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. But we should note, thcugh, 19 that I don't see that1 Mark Van Sicklen was --

20 THE WITNESS: No. But Mark -- I wouldn't 21 normally send it -- See, these guys have an E-Mail, but 22 they.may not'-- they don't do like Dave Jones does every

23. day and'go inland get these E-Mails and then decide who 24 from his department would be sent.

25 I know I considered --

w < w w.

45 1 MR. WEILBdFG: 00 you didn't just send this to 2 Dave Jones, right?

3 THE WITNE!.S: O't, no. Everybody -- This is cc'd 4 tu all these people. But Dave Jones, I specifically sent 5 it to him so that he would provide the people from 6 sperations who were most knowledgeable about the issue to 7 come to the meeting.

8 MR. DOCKERY: That was your assumption that that 9 would be done.

10 THE WITNESS: Right.

11 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.

12 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.

13 MR. WEINBERG: And why him?

14 THE WITNESS: Becaum he's their -- He's the 15 boss.

16 MR. WEIMBERG: Supervisor?

17 THE WI1 NESS: Right.

18 MR. WEINB3RG: Okay.

19 MR. RAPP: Let me understand this. You just 20 sent it to Dave Jones and he picked a person to send. You 21 don't know for a fact that Mark Van Sicklen was not 22 available.

23 THE WITNESS: No, I do not know. I don't --

No.

24 1 don't.

25 MR. RAPP: Oke

l 46 1 THE WITNESS: Right. You know, I would have 2 like to have had five or six of the guys there. But they 3 can't empty the control room to come to a meeting.

4 No. I asked Dave, hey, Dave -- Dave was aware of 5 what was going on. I'm sure he was aware of Mark Van 6 Sicklen's concerns. And basically, please send the 7 people. And I think be prepared to discuss -- No. I 8 guess I didn't ask.

9 But in any case, yeah, Dave Jones would have been 10 the person who would say, okay, from my department we want 11 to send these people.

12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. So that meeting occurred.

13 Is there anything else in --

14 MR. WEINBERG: Did you all talk about Curve 8 at 15 the meeting, as it indicated here?

16 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I'm sure we did. I don't 17 remember a lot of discussion about an error because at the 18 time we did not feel -- I mean, we could not put our 19 finger on an error. That's not saying that we weren't 20 going to look at things again, because it was already 21 information that -- already corrective action to do thtt.

22 But it was something that the design guys had to 23 get off in a corner and do. You know, it wasn't something 24 that we could discuss or evaluate or resolve in a meeting.

25 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. That brings up two I

i F

47 1 observations. First of all, could you -- was it difficult 2 to deal with because you had insufficient data?

3 THE WITNESS: No. Because it was complex.  ;

4 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. And up to the point of ,

.5 this --

f 6 THE WITNESS: And I'm not talking about just f i

7 Curve 8. I'm talking about the entire issue. And my 8 corrective action -- I think it was number eight in PR t 9 149 -- was to -- Okay. I could not identify the bases'for [

10 the five-foot awarover. ,

11 So I wanted that to be identified. I wanted i 12 transition time, valve swapping, you know, manipulations i

- 13 to be included. I wanted vortexing to be included. -All 14 these things that you would want to account for. And I 15 wanted the makeup tank to be-all a part of it. We do it 16 all together and see where we end up. Maybe we would find 17 something that there was an error on the makeup tank. I u.suo 18 don't know. We may have-not, w o. o . .s r 19 But at least it would have been-a part of this P

20 analysis and it would have been another opportunity to 21 look into it and umybe put our finger on a problem that we L 22 didn't even know existed.

. 21 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.- As you were considering all l 24 these issues were you soliciting input from design 25_ engineering and were they rasponding?

l_

a

?

.}

. _ . , . . _ _ . _ , . _ , _ , . . . . - ~ . . . . . , _ , _ , . _ , . . . - . , , - . - . - . . . - . . . . , _ _ . , , - - ...--

48 1 Tile WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Now, I was wor).ing 2 wi*.h Ron Claucon, who was in St. Petersburg, and we had 3 many, many conversations on the phone. I think by that 4 time Matt Adams was -- who was the contractor who was 5 going to do, I believe it's corrective action eight to 6 evaluate the swapover point and so forth, he was gearing 7 up to do that analysis and I had a lot of conversations 8 with Matt.

9 So he knew of the concerns of the makeup tank.

10 lie knew my feeling of the makeup tank, that, hey, Matt, it 11 looks pretty accurate, but we need to'make it a part of 12 this evaluation. It can't be left out. It's a big 13 factor.

14 See, design had a model, had, oh, severn1 months 15 carlier completed a model of 110I . Best tool we had on 16 site. Much better than the simulator. And my opinion 17 was, hey, man, we've run data through this model and it 18 looks like, you know, we've validated it and it operates 19 -- it's accurate. Let's make it a part of -- Let's put 20 the makeup tank in the model and run the whole thing and 21 see where we end up. You know, let's look at it as a 22 whole. You can't do this part and then expect this to --

23 You know, you've got to connect them.

24 And that was the intent. And that's where Matt 25 Adams was going with it.

49 1 MR. DOCKERY: Matt Adams?

2 THE WITNESS: Matt Adams. He's still here.

3 He's a contractor. He's not in that group. He had to 4 turn that project over to someone else.

5 MR DOCKERY: What was his function at that 6 time?

7 THE WITNESS: He -- Design engineer, St. Pete 8 organization.

9 MR. RAPP: Has that modeling been done to date 10 yet?

11 THE WITNESS: To my knowledge, some of it has.

12 I don't know that it's been totally completed yet. I'm 13 not certain they haven't taken a different avenue. You 14 know, they may have decided to do it differently.

15 But I believe -- Well, I know a lot of -- I have 16 not really been involved in this issue since I've been out 17 of the group, other than, hey, how's it going. You know, 18 but my understanding is, yeah, they were going to use the 19 model. I think probably that they've already made some 20 runs, 21 I don't know

  • they're totally finished with it.

22 It's such a big and complex issue, 23 MR. WEINBERG: Do you know or believe that the 24 design folks that you were dealing with were looking --

25 actually looking at the accuracy of the curve?

l 50 l 1 THE WITNESS: I know in the past that we 2 compared data, like I had fax'd data to Ron Clauson to 3 say, hey, wny don't you throw that in the curve and see 4 how it responds.

5 And then he had done that. And I think -- I'm 6 trying to remember what -- For the most part, he thought 7 it was fairly accurate. There was no formal calculation n issued. This was strictly just validation. I'm trying to 9 think what would have been going on.

10 ht that point there was probably no -- Well, Ron 11 Clauson has been looking into that curve for a long time.

12 And, poor fellow, I felt bad because I had called him so 13 many times and' asked questions. And he would look into 14 things and he'd get back to me. It was an ongoing 15 process.

16 MR. VORSE: Let me ask you this, Mr. Hinman.

1 *,' Did Mr. Clauson during your conversaticna with him ever 18 express reservations about Curve 8 and the f act that he 19 aad to do this 25 cc's and, by God, that was just the way 20 it; was going to have to be?

21 THE WITNESS: Well, I think he was probably --

22 he probably felt the same way I did about this 25 cc's per 23 kg. And that was it's causing a lot of problems for us, 24 yet we really -- you can't see the benefit.

25 But Ron's the kind of guy -- he's an easygoing

51 1 guy. He takes what he's got to do and runs with it. He 2 wasn't trying to avoid anything. He wasn't trying to say, 3 no, we have to do it, or anything to that effect.

4 MR. VORSE: Did he ever express to you the fact 5 that it was a mandate from upper management to maintain 6 the 25 cc's and, although he didn't necessarily like it, 7 that was just the way it was going to be? Did he ever 8 tell you that, express that?

9 THE WITNESS: I knew he -- We were all aware of 10 that. I mean, we were all told that we want to be there.

11 And so we were all trying to get there. And Ron was 12 absolutely aware of that. I'm sure he was.

13 M R . D O CI'.E R Y : Mr. Hinman, how was that 25 cc per 14 kilogram mandate conveyed to you?

15 THE WITNESS: Well, initially it was an INPO --

16 I think it was an INPO recommendation. And we said, 17 well --

18 MR. DOCKERY: Who -- No. I want to know who --

19 THE WITNESS: Okay. Who. Okay.

20 MR. DOCKERY: -- and how did you come to know 21 that this 25 cc figure must be met?

22 THE WITNESS: Through probably m/ chain of 23 command getting the word from Mr. Beard that this is 24 something that he wanted this plant to do.

25 MR. DOCKERY: Was this conveyed in writing, to

52 l

1 your knowledge?

2 THE WITNESS: I think the only thing I -- that 3 we had in writing was the INPO evaluation or their 4 recommendation for it. I don't recall any thing saying, 5 you know, from Pat Beard, we want to be here.

6 Dut I do recall while we were trying to get there 7 and we were doing these small MARS and tweaking things

,a 8 trying to get 3that little window, that in the 8:00 o' clock yw n....wr 9 meetings in the morning when that plant was not at 25 cc's 10 or better, we heard about it. And it was Pat Beard who'd 11 say, why are we not at 25 cc's per kg. And we could --

12 All we could say is, we're working on it.

13 And, you know, one shift of operations could keep 14 it there because they didn't mind doing the burden, the 15 operator burden to get there. Other shifts said, I'm not 16 messing with it.

17 That's the opinion I had. That was the feeling 18 that I had. So it would go below. And, bam, we'd be hit, 19 why aren't we there. So we'd scramble, okay, come on, 20 let's pick up the pace a little, you know.

21 And sometimes this occurred after we had already 22 done a minor modification that didn't quite get us there.

23 And we were taking all the slack out of things trying to 24 provide us a means of being there from the control room.

25 And we were running out of slack.

l I

i 53 1 We had a set of laws that we had to live with-and i

2 we were trying to do the best we could to get us there  !

3 and, of course, not violate any Appendix R or curve, or i 4 -whatever, e frements had.

1 5 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. . We've got -- In going .

i 6 through our chronological history here we may have gotten [

7 a little sidetracked.  !

8 Directing you back to the August the 5th meeting,  !

i 9 was that a pretty congenial atmosphere?

10 THE WITNESS: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That was a great 11 discussion, I felt. It was obvious that all we could do  !

12 was do some brainstorming and that design guys had to take 13 the issues and run with them.  ;

i 14 Dut, yeah, that was a good meeting.  ;

15 -MR. STENGER: Have you in the chronology -- You 16 -were going to say something about Matt Adams. I don't i

17 know if you got to complete your thought on that or not.

18 .THE-WITNESS: Only that, you know, I had dealt i 19 -with Matt on the model because I had provided some-20 information from HPI to them on the model. And Matt was 21 coming up to speed. *

22. And I was real confident with Matt's ability.  ;

23 And I-felt good about he being the.one that was going to 24' handle this. I don't know'.--

25 MR. STENGER: This being?

3 i

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. . _ _ , . - . . _ . _ _. . _ , _ _ . . _,_.2,.__,._....,

l l

54 1 THE WITNESS: The big corrective action out of 2 PR-94-149, which was going to look at swapover point, 3 vortexing, you know, all these things, that I was 4 surprised to find that -- You know, I only had a certain 5 amount of time that I could deal with the issues. It 6 wasn't a swapover point issue from the problem report.

7 Dut in my dealings with it I picked up tt the 8 number. I knew the number. And I couldn't find the bases 9 for it. And I didn't like that. You know, and I know --

10 I said, I know it's there. But I couldn't find it. And 11 I --

12 MR. STENGER: What was that number?

Fir 13 THE WITNESS: And I asked design people to

- 5)*r.

,,s.

14 help me and no one could put their hands on it. I said, 15 well, I'm just going to make it part of the corrective 16 action. Let's find it and spell it out so we can find it 17 the next time.

18 But --

19 MR. DOCKERY: Pat, who was your supervisor 20 during this period?

21 THE WITNESS: David Crufin. Up until near the 22 -- when the test occurred Dave was -- in fact, when the 23 test occurred, he was, I think, gone or in the process of 24 Iinishing up his turnover to a temporary supervisor that I 25 had for a while.

I i

55 1 MR. DOCKERY: But --

2 MR. WEINBERG: And who was that?

3 THE WITNESS: Jim Lane. Jim Lane was the acting 4 supervisor between Dave C:ufin and Mike Donovan, who is 5 the current supervisor.

6 MR. WEINBERG: That's because Pat switched jobs.

7 THE WITNESS: Right. Dave went to the.

8 mechanical maintenance shop as the shop nanager. I trent 9 to the mechanical maintenance shop as the shop engineer.

10 MR. WEINBERG: But then you were in systems, who 11 was your supervisor?

12 THE WITNESS: Well, Dave was up until --

13 MR. WEINBERG: Jerry Campbell.

14 THE WITNESS: Well, now, Jerry Campbell is my 15 manager.

16 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

17 MR DOCKERY: Yeah. I'm interested in his 18 direct supervisor .

19 MR. WEINBERG: Oxay, 20 THE WITNESS: Yeah. It was -- Dave through most 21 of this makeup tank was my supervisor.

22 MR. DOCKERY: Were you in -- receiving some kind 23 of instruction f rom him regarding it or was it pretty much 24 your ball?

25 THE WITNESS: I tried to keep Dave up on the 1

. . . _ _ _ _ _ . _ . _ . _ _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ . . . _ . .m_.. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _

56 l r

1 issue because, you know, I was accountable to him for a 2 long list of items that I had due dates for. And --

3 MR. DOCKERY: Was there a due date on -- at any 4 point on the 25 cc, Curve 8, MUT, this whole issue?  !

i 5 THE WITNESS: Let me see now. There were  ;

i 6 probably many due dates. There were due dates for all the 7 minor MARS or minor modifications. There were -- i Would it be fair to say they were i 8 MR. DOCKERY:

9 - sort of bench marks that you were expect-d to reach at a 10 certain time? t i

11 THE WITNESS: Well, actually, most of those 12 actions weren't mine. They were design functions. But -

13 like I say I was not responsible for the modifications.

f 14 It's not in my job function. I was not responsible for 15 the calculations. Those were design issues that were 16 ongoing while I was trying to handle my normal system ,

17 duties.

18 But they had many, many dates. You know, any

, 19 item we pick out, you know, our modification or whatever, 20- it has a due date. The problem report had due dates for 21- those remaining actions. And they have been tumped up a 22 number of times.

23 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Have we completed 24 everything that needs to be said about the August the 5th 25 meeting?

.- .._,m,. _.- . _ _ _ . , _ . - - _ . , . . , _ . . _ _ _ . . . - . - - . .__._,.._...____;.__.-.c_____-._..

57 1 MR. WEINBERG: Are there any memos or notes with 2 regard to that meeting. Are there any memos regarding 3 that meeting?

4 THE WITNESS: Thero were -- Other than the 5 letter, the --

6 MR. WEINBERG: You mean this thing here? That 7 preceded the meeting?

8 THE WITNESS: Well, this would be -- This would 9 have e'en a summary of --

10 MR. DOCKERY: Tr.e September 2nd --

11 MR. WEINBERG: Becaese I have Sast put in front 12 of you the September 2nd letter, 13 THE WITNESS: Right.

14 MR. WEINBERG: Was that sort of a summary of 15 what happened in the August 5th meeting?

16 THE WITNESS: Yeah. That -- Anything we may 17 have gleaned differently -- These were the issues that we 18 were looking at into the meeting. And I would say --

19 There were no meeting minutes. I would have liked to have 20 taken them myself, but it's hard to get involved in the 21 discussion und take notes.

22 But there were no meeting minutes. This was 23 probably the best summary from the meeting.

24 MR. DOCKERY: And that's what I'm leading up to, 25 was the September 2nd, 1994, memorandum. And my quertion

}l I

58 1 is, is there anything of significance that you recall that 2 occurred between August 5 and the date of this memorandum, 3 September 2's 4 MR. WEINBERG: Did you have a meeting with Van 5 Sicklen and or Willms after August 5, but before the 6 September 2nd memo to discuss where you were at on some of 7 these issues?

8 THE WITNESS: I -- My best thoughts were we 9 probably had some discussions, but there were no formal 10 meetings.

11 MR. DUCKERY: So there's nothing that really 12 stands out in your mind?

13 THE WITNESS: Not that I can recall, no.

14 MR. VORSE: Did you go and -- Did you have a 15 draft copy of that or have that in your hand and then go 16 meet with Van Sicklen and someone else and say, hey, you 17 know, we're fixing to -- Did you have an informal meeting 18 with them?

19 THE WITNESS: No. I don't recall having an 20 informal meeting, no.

21 MR. RAPP: Did this September 2nd memo really 22 address the concerns that Mark Van Sicklen had?

23 THE WITNESS: No, it didn't. It really was --

24 It was an issue of operator burden. We had a concern 25 about burden, no doubt.

i 1,

59 l 1 MR. RAPPr But I mean about Curve 8 and the ,

2 plant response and that issue that led up to the 4th and 3 Sth.  !

4 THE WITNESS: No, it did not. And at the date 5 this was issued no one in engineering was probably real  !

6. confident that we had an error. [

7 You know, I used an example before. We were put 8 on the spot for a mechanic at a garage where you drove  ;

9 your car up to a parage and say, this thir 's missing like.

10 mad, it's running real bad . He-jumps in it and he drives 11 it:down the road and it runs perfect. He says, well, I 12 don't know what you're problem is, but we'll hang onto it 13 for a while, maybe it will show up again.

14 We were in that position. Okay. We know you 15 have a concern, but we can't put our finger in any error >

16 or any problem. And what we're seeing doesn't support 17 your concern, you know, what data we had available. But 18 we will -- We'll throw the curve out again in another 19 evaluation and maybe we'll come up with something. And i 20 maybe we won't.

21 MR. RAPP: Go ahead.

22 MR, DOCKERY: Well, I was just going to say 23 -before.se get into the September 2 memo, we've been at 24 .this about an hour now, this seems like-a good place to t

'25 take a short break.

T

. . . _ . . . _ _ _ . _ . . . . . _.2.... .,.__._.......,...._L._.... _ m,... . , , , , _ , . _ . . . , . . , _ _ . , . . _ . . . , . . , _ . . . - . .___..__.._.6.__.,,,_

l 60 l 1 Anybody -- We'll go off the record.

2 (Whereupon, a recess was taken at 10:15 a.m., l 3 after which'the proceedings resume at 10:30 a.m. as 4 follows:)

5 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go-back on the record.

-l 6 And, Mr. Hinman, I need to remind you that you 7 continuo to be under oath here.

8 THE WITNESS: Okay. l

9. MR. DOCKERY: I think -- Was there something 10 more we wanted to discuss regarding this -- l 11 MR. WEINBERG: Well, if I could just put this on 12 the record real quickly. l 13 MR. DOCKERY: Pine.

14 MR. WEINBERG: And earlier you had mentioned -- i 15 or you had provided a copy of a curve called makeup tank -

16 overpressure curve to everybody. And it -- On the curve 17 you had plotted between points one and two a solid black 18 line that approached the curve on the acceptable side.

19 And then you had another plot of three points where you .

-20 had a mark REDAS.

21 Were those the two curves that you charted from l 22 the strip recorder and from the REDAS data from the -

23 SP-630?

24 THE WITNESS: Yes. The REDAS data I had already 25 plotted prior to the issuance of PR-94-149. The straight i

,-.a.,.,,,-m,_.,~u -.-,~ -., - . . - , . - . - , , - , .

l 61 1 line, which is only two points -- I only plotted two l

2 points. The dark line came off of the recorder, strip 3 chart recorder that I was presented by the operators the 4 day we vera going to discuss PR-94-149.

5 MR. WEINBERG: At the July 19th meeting.

6 THE WITNESS: Yes.

7 MR. WEINBERG: And when they provided you that 8 data, then you went back and plotted it?

< 9 THE WITNESS: Yes. Right.

10 MR. WEINDERG: Okay. And then following you 11 going back and plotting it and finding a line that pretty 12 much approached the curve, what did you do to respond to 13 Mr. Van Sicklen's concerns?

14 THE WITNESS: I produced a speed memo to Mark 15 and Garrett Hobb that explained why this occurred.

16 Aad do you want me to go over that discussion 17 again?

18 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah. Why don't you just say ,

19 that quickly.

20 THE WITNESS: The recorder -- If the control 21 board recorder is an end device, it's beyond the 22 instrument string. In other words, it's -- Before the 23 recorder is where we tap off to provide data to the 24 computer, which produces REDAS.

25 The recorder is probably -- is the most l

t i

62 1 inaccurate device in the entire string -- two strings of 2 instrumentation for makeup tank level or pressure 3 monitoring.

4 The recorder functions fine in a normal-plant i

. c 5 operating semi-steady state condition. But because of.the 6 style of the recorder, it being an old mechanical type, it 7 had what we call hysteresis on this big change. It tended' 8 to hold up and not show a true indication of what was 9 really going on.

10- And in my speed memo I spelled that out and I 11 told them that I felt there was no problem with using the 12 recorder or adds, the gas additions to the tank, but the 13 computer point and the alarm are - no doubt take 14 precedence over the recorder. They are the accurate r

15 inst rumentation. ,

t 16 And if you were making an addition watching the 17 recorder and you got the alarm, you should just take 18 action.

19 MR. WEINBERG: And once you sent them the speed -

20 memo,- did you-get any response back from van Sicklen or ,

21 - Willms as ' to what they thought about your analysis?

22 THE WITNESS: Yes. Later on they felt that, 123 well, we want a better recorder. You know, we need - we 24- like.to use that recorder. It's convenient. And the

-25 discussions within design, which we had started, then-we k

r v# -- . . , , , , - , , , _ , _ . . . , , , . , . . , , , . _ , , . . _ , , _ . , , . , , _ _ , _ _ _

t 63 1 can provide a better recorder. You know, we could provide 2 a digital recorder that would give you a true digitized 3 figure that wouldn't have this type of mechanical 4 hysteresis.

5 And to my knowledge, it's something that still --

6 it may -- it's going to happen. I don't know the --

7 MR. WEINBERG: One more thing and then I'll shut 8 up.

9 Was there any suggestion following the issuance 10 of this speed memo -- and you'll get us a copy of it --

11 from Mr. Van Sicklen or from Mr. Willms or from anyone 12 else in operations that they were, you know, upset or 13 irritated with your response concerning just the validity 14 of the Curve 8 issue?

15 THE WITNESS: I think they still had their 16 concerns about Curve 8.

17 MR. WEINBERG: And how did they express those to 18 you? I'm talking about after you sent them the speed 19 memo.

20 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't --

It was the same 21 -- You know, it was probably the same type of information 22 that they were discussing prior to, was that it did not 23 appear that the curve responded exactly like it should.

24 The main thing out of the recorder issue, once it 25 became evident to me that was the concern, and he

64 1 identified it in his concern write-up, was then their 2 concern, well, we need a better recorder. And I don't 3 disagree with that, because it's on the control board and 4 you would like it, you know. Although I could easily .

5 provide the argument, which I did in my letter, that 6 recorder is used for, again, a one-point-in-time set-up of 7 hydrogen in the tank.

8 If you make the addition, you can verify it on 9 computer points, call up the computer points, you can 10 verify the recorder, if you would like. Your alarm's not 11 in. "ou're in good shape. The recorder now is not a 12 critical device.

13 MR. WEINBERG: Did they ever indicate to you 14 that they believed that th!.9 was an emergency situation 15 that needed more immediate attention than you were giving 16 it?

17 THE WITNESS: They probably felt like everything 18 they were talking about was --

19 MR. WEINBERG: No. Did they express that? Did 20 they say, this is an emergency, or anything like that?

21 THE WITNESS: No. I don't -- No, not that I can 22 reca_1.

23 MR. STENGER: Let me ask a specific --

l l 24 THE WITNESS: I think they would --

l 25 MR. STENGER: Go ahead. Finish.

l ,

I l

l l

,_, , - , . - - , , .. .L_

65 1 THE WITNESS: I think they would have liked 2 everything to have happened the next day. But it's not 3 the way it works.

4 MR. WEINBERG: That's the way I am.

5 THE WITNESS: Right.

6 MR. STENGER: On "his chart on this heavier line 7 you have a one and a two ere.

8 Were you pro' ad two data points? Is that what 9 that indicates?

10 THE WITNESS: I just pulled jus t two data points 11 off of the strip chart which shows the actual level and 12 pressure changes. I didn't plot a curve because you could 13 see where it was going. Two data points made it 14 obviously, okay, yeah, I agree the recorder did not 25 accurately respond to the plant during that SP-630 big 16 plant swing.

17 But, yeah, where was plenty of data points. In 18 fact, there was an infinite amount that you could poll 19 right off the strip chart. And I have a copy of that.

20 That *ou could plot more of a smooth curve, you know --

21 MR. STENGER: I wanted to ask you, also, 22 concerning that Curve 8, there seems to be some points 23 plotted on the upward portion of this curve here.

l 24 Are thob points REDAS data or what do those l

25 poir.ts relate to?

l l

e,,e --

l ll 66 1 THE WITNESS: These are the -- This is recent.

2 When we discussed -- When I had discussions a few days 3 ago, I was going to -- I recall the first, the 4th test 4 -- the first test -- I recall --

5 MR. DOCKERY: And you're referring to the 6 September 4th --

7 THE WITNESS: Yes.

8 MR. DOCKERY: -- 1994, evolution or test.

9 THE WITNESS: Okay. The September 4th 10 evolution. You know, it was just more information for me 11 to look at. And I recall plotting these points. I did 12 this recently, though.

13 MR. RAPP: Okay. All I want to clarify is these 14 pr.ints that are plotted here have no relationship to the 15 REDAS data or the level --

16 THE WITNESS: That's correct.

17 MR. WEINBERG: Well, what he's trying to explain 18 is that --

19 MR. RAPP: That's fine.

20 MR. WEINBERG: -- he's sort of written on his 21 own document after the fact, he recalled, but hasn't found 22 it, that -- and you'll get into this, that back in 23 sometime after the problem report on the September 5th 24 evolution, that he went back and looked at the REDAS data 25 for that week and found the 4th evolution, and that he had I

l 67  !

1 done some sort of plotting of the 4th back then. i l

2 And what he was trying to-do here is recreate 3 from going back'a year later from the REDAS data what that  ;

4 plot would-have looked like. And he just -- He didn't get  ;

done with it, i S-6 MR. RAPP: All right.

7 MR. WEINBERG: But it doesn't have anything to  !

8 would with the document. .

4 9 hR. STENGER: I'll ask one more question. Most 10 of the data here on this curve is below 55 inches.  :

11 THE WITNESS: Right.

12 MR. STENGER: Is there any particular f 13 ' significance to that since that's below the low level  ;

14 limit of the maket.p tank?

15 THE WITNESS: We were in an outage. We -- In an

  1. AD 16 outage we--- I think we Aave the entire core'off loaded, 94.....,

17 allthefuel,gug,,o(_thevessels.

. 18 MR. STENGER: Right.

19 THE WITNESS: You have to deal with your 20 inventory._ We had most of the BWST into our transfer we<<

- 21 canaly and, yeptoge*19 flooded up for refueling.

.22 This just happened to be where the makeup tank 23 was-being operated. But-it was --

24  ;MR. STENGER: Jutd in terms of the pressure  ;

25 temperature response of the tank, would it be any 1 2

E

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68 1 different once you get below 55 inches than it is above?

2 THE WITNESS: In the outage, yeah, we would have 3 had a cooler tank. But as far as the response goes, 4 temperature, I believe, in that ideal gas law was factored 5 out because it didn't -- does not change during the drain-1 6 down. You isolate the tank and it drains. I l

7 So it should have renponded like the curve would 8 any time you did a drain-down.

9 MR. DOCKERY: Have we covered that?

10 MR. RAPP: Wait. Let me go back and clarify 11 something.

12 You said the plant responded as it should have 13 dur'ng any drain-down. What do you mean by a drain-down?

14 You mean the normal bleed operation or --

15 THE WITNESS: I mean -- In this case I mean a 16 drain -- a big level change in the makeup tank. SP-630 17 was performed with the reactor head off. And during this

/M 18 full flow HPI test -- By drain-down I meant drop and make fu 19 the tank level, n -2 *

  • f' 20 MR. RAPP: As in ES actuation.

21 THE WITNESS: Yes. Close -- It wasn't a 22 complete ES actuation, but --

23 MR. RAPP: I understand. But it's approximate 24 as closely to it.

l 25 THE WITNESS: Exactly. Right.

I l

..___...__.__.__.s i

i 69 1 MR. RAPP: One other thing-to clarify. You said 2 that the test was conducted with the core off-loaded.

3 THE u!PNESS: I'm trying to recall exactly where 4 we are when we performed SP-630. I believe we-have the-5 core off-loaded, the head ( off. It's a no-mode test.

F,, . . . "

4 6 Yeah. I'm almost certain it's either mode five or no-mode ,

i 7 test. So all we do is just flow a bunch of water to the 8 reactor _ vessel.

9 And again, all the test is trying to prove is ,

i 10 that we can get 500 gpm -- we can get the flow rates 11 through the check valves that we are designed to have.

12 I believe -- And I could look at the procedure.

13 I think it's done in a no-mode configuration where we 14 - would have had the core off-loaded.

'15 MR. RAPP: Well, it has to be done with the head  ;

16 off, otherwise there's no place for the water to go. r 17 THE WITNESS: Right. Right.

18 MR. RAPP: Okay.

19 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. The next issue I'd like to 20 move on to_is a September 2, 1994, interoffice 21 correspondence. The subject is makeup tank hydrogen .

22 overpressure. It's addressed to B.J. Hickle, signed by 23 J.P. Hinman and also by J.W. Campbell.

24 Mr. Hinman, as succinctly as you can, could yuu ,

25 tell us what----Well, first of all, let me establish, did ,

L

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. _ _ _- _ _ - _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ . _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ . _ _ . . . _ . . _ ._._.___.__m._

l 70 ,

1 you write this or author this memo?  !

t 2 THE WITNESS: Yes,-1 did.

3 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Can you relate to us as l 4

4 succinctly as possible what you were attempting to convey 5 by this memorandum?

6 THE WITNESS: The purpose of this letter was to 7 address the operator burden and what we were going to do (

And the intention of the

~

8 to meet our 25'cc per kg goal. i 9 letter was not to evaluate makeup tank five-foot swapover 10~ or any of these issues. Those issues were in the problem 11 report as a separate corrective action'. And that was a 12 . design engineering task. This was strictly, what are we i 13' going to do now to get to our 25 cc per kg and remove the- '

14 operator burden-and the means.

15 MR DOCKERY: Is it fair to say that this memo 16 waJ not intended to be a final statement on the issue?

i.

, 17 MR. WEINBERG: On the Curve 8 issue you mean?

18 MR. DOCKERY: On the Curve 8. Well --

19 MR. RAPP: This memo wasn't meant to address the 1 20 DCurve 8 issue.

21 THE WITNESS: That's right. That's true. And '

22: it was not the final -- I saw in the NRC. report where it  !

23 had indicated that Engineering would -- I guess we wanted 24 ?it-to be closed, tne issue to be closed. And I can show 25 you-that in the report, ,

, +

i 71 1 But it did address that specific letter and it ,

i 2 caid that it appeared Engineering wanted the issue closed.

3 And that was not at all the case. And the reason I can i

4 say that is because this problem report 5 MR. WEINBERG: Which problem report are we 6 talking about?

7 THE WITNESS: 94-149, which was, okay, 8 corrective action eight. And I'll just rea*. it.

9 "Provides a technical baseu." This was -- Let me back up 10 a little.

11 This was the corrective action plan I had put 12 together for the problem report. The first seven items I 13 felt like we had to address prior to start-up. And then 14 the two items, eight and nine, the last two corrective 15 actions, were big tasks that design engineers would take rf 16 and run a to ground.

p, ,, .w s r 17 Item eight was, "Provides a technical bases for 18 the BWST swapover point considering NPSH requirements, 19 vortexing, and makeup tank level, and overpressure per 20 P-103B, Curve 8."

21 And then Dave Czufin had written in, " Including 22 transition time." This is the time it takes to swap it 23 over.

24 At this point -- And at this point we still were 25 not aware that we had an error in the curve. Nothing i

1

?

I 72 i

i stood out and-said, yeah,-there's a problem. But this  ;

2 evaluation was goingLto look at the entire system and in j 3 discussions with Matt Adams we were going to, once again, 4 look at makeup tank. And we may have run across something l

5 and we may not have.

6 That's why I put below -- And I -- " Engineering  ;

7 believes this curve is actually..." --

8 MR. WEINBERG: Well, then now you're referring  ;

9 tt your memn, right?

10 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry. Right, Now I'm 11 referring back to the September 2nd memo. When I said, 12 " Engineering believes this. curve is accurate and 13 reasonably conservative," still, we had nnt put our hands 14 on an error. As far as we knew it was accurate.

15 The conservative statement, I felt we've got -

l 16 the curve is shif ted for instrument error. So in reality 17 if you exceed it, it doesn't matter. You're still covered ouvo srosz 18 by the instrument error and sisibFe curve above.

  • y is.se se 19 And in the back of my-mind I knew that we 20 throttled HPI flows prior to reaching Anr doing the swap-21 over, which buys us more margin in the makeup tank versus 22' BWST. I

, 23 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, did I just understand 24 ;you to say that evenLif_you exceeded _the curve, you_were still in a safe mode?

L .i l

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73 1 THE WITNESS: If you put yourself on the curve 2 and an accident -- Let's say you were operating right on 3 this curve and you had the accident. And you drew a line

. 4 similar to what their test proved. And all that line was 5 the results of was instrument area? Sure. You haven't 6 put your plant -- You didn't do anything. Your plant tooK 7 you there.

8 But that's exactly why the invisible curve, which 9 you don't see up here, is not the one that you see. It's 10 shifted conservatively downward to take care of the 11 inst rument error that can and probably will occur in this 12 big swing in the plant.

13 It's really, in my opinion, not logical to think 14 that you have -- You have two strings of instruments, a

>u_

15 level string and a gas string. And each one of these 16 strings have various components. Each one of these 17 components is going to act a little differently. And over 18 time they will drift or they'll -- temperature effects, 19 whatever, can af.fect the way these things indicate,

g. 20 Well, the only w&y we can deal with that is to 21 assume that worst case error could be and then shift the 22 curve down where it's conservatively, so if we set 23 ourselvis up, that one point in time where we come up, 24 make an addition, set ourselves up on the curve, then put 25 it away, the plant's still in a safe configuration if we

?

l

74 1 have a LOCA.

2 So, yeah. I think today if you set yourself 3 right on the curve, it's very possible that the data you 4 would draw could be above the curve. But the curve is 5 used for one point in time to set up addition of the 6 makeup tank with gas.

7 MR. RAPP: And are you aware or do you know of 8 any type or channels -- statistical allowance calculation 9 that's been made for these instrumentation strengths?

10 THE WITNESS: I am aware of the type of 11 calculation that they do. And I believe they probably 12 used -- I did not do the calculation. And I think Ron 13 Clauson could talk in detail about it.

14 They used an approved method. It's called SRSS. ,,

15 MR. RAPP: Square root from the squares.

16 THE WITNESS: Right. And where you take each 17 component error and you factor in alt -- If you used every 18 -- maximum of every error and you just added it up, you'd 19 be at -

you couldn't ope ate. So you have to give 20 yourself a little break. And the SRSS is an acceptable 21 method. And I'm certain that that's --

22 MR. RAPP: Okay.

23 THE WITNESS: -- the method they used.

24 MR. RATP: How -- Okay. You've talked 25 considerably much about instrumentation error and visible I

75 1 curve and all that.

2 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

3 MR. RAPP: How much margin is -- for ,

4 instrumentation error is built into this curve?

5 MR. WEINBERG If you know.

6 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I want to say -- Can I tell 7 you what I think it is, I mean, the best guess?

8 MR. RLPP: Sure.

9 THE WITNESS: And then again, somebody like Ron 10 Clauson would have that specific value. But I think it 21 was the neighborhood of probably two pounds, maybe -- I'll L2 say that's the neighborhood.

13 I know I've seen the numbers. I feel confident I 14 have, but I don't recall them.

15 MR. RAPP: So there's a basis then to make this 16 thing congeal or come together. There's an invisible 17 curve that's actually the true one that's two pounds above 18 this curve.

19 THE WITNESS: Taking two pounds as my best 20 guess. -

21 MR. RAPP: Right.

22 THE WITNESS: Right.

23 MR. RAPP: Taking two pounds as your best guess.

24 THE WITNESS: Right.

25 MR. RAPP: I think it's 2.2 pounds is the actual l

l

I 76 1 value.

2 THE WITNESS: Okay. Yeah. That sounds 3 familiar.

4 MR. RAPP: Okay.

5 THE WITNESS: Exactly. And really, there's no 6 other way to deal with that error, in my knowledge, other 7 than to shifc the curve.

8 MR. RAPP: Oh, no. That's exactly the way you 9 deal with it --

10 THE WITNESS: Okay.

11 MR. RAPP: -- is to shift the curve down and 12 compensate for it.

13 THE WITNESS: Okay.

14 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. We're at the point where 15 the September 2, 1994, memorandum by Mr. Hinman has been 16 iuaued.

17 Before we get into the whatever occurred 18 subsequent to that, I think now would be the appropriate 19 time if -- Curt, if you have technical questions up to 20 this point, I think now we should ask them. Because once 21 we finish with that, I think I can wrap this up pretty 22 quickly.

23 MR. WEINBERG: There's one line in here. When 24 you say in here, *During this analysis makeup tank 25 overpressure per Curve 8 will be evaluated," and that's

77 1 this BWST swapover point analysis --

2 THE WITNESS: And that's this curve calculation.

3 MR. RAPP: Right. Did -- What were you trying

=

4 to convey by that sentence as to whether or not 5 engineering would continue to look at the curve 8 issue?

6 THE WITNESS: I was trying to make the point 7 that we were comfortable where we are, but this issue is 8 not over. It's spelled out in our problem report and 9 we're going to look at it again.

10 MR. DOCKERY: That will be one of the things I 11 want to get into, dealing more with perhaps the human 12 issues involved here.

13 MR. RAPP: Okay. All right. Let me go back 14 here. Okay. There's been a lot of discussion here about 15 increasing to 25 cc's per kg. knd you said you came into 16 this -- you became the system engineer, what, sometime in 17 '91, '92, something like that?

18 THE WITNESS: Yes. I think it was in '91, 19 MR. RAPP: Okay. Were you involved in any 20 meetings, preliminary meetings about this 25 cc's per kg 21 and whether or not it was necessary to do it or the 22 implementation of it?

23 THE WITNESS: Yes, I was. He had discussions in 24 meetings. I think probably two or three with chemistry 25 people. And our question was -- along with OPS, why do we

18 1 have to do this, we ;an't detect oxygen. And Chemistry 2 agreed with this. And they also agreed to look into it. -3 3 The response we got was by -- there was a .

4 concern, and I believe it initiated from a B&W study, that 5 in the core barrel region area where you had nucleate 6 boiling occurring, that if you were less than 25 cc's per 7 kg, that you could have oxygen come out of solution and 8 cause some erosion. But you can't detect -- You couldn't 9 monitor that. You can't sample from the core barrel 10 region.

11 And the only way to assure yoursclf that that's 12 not occurring is to put -- is to suppress it. Put a 13 higher concentration in there. Then that concern was 14 covered.

15 I am not convinced that B&W, or whoever, could 16 truly say it was happening. But it was to the best of 17 their ability. And it was -- you know.

18 And so, you know, when you get an answer like i

19 that, well, I can't -- I cannot dispute it. I can't say 20 it's not happening. We can't test for, we can't sample.

21 So, you know, you kind of have to live with it.

22 MR. RAPP: Which valve was this now?

23 THE WITNESS: Valve?

24 MR. RAPP: I'm sorry. You said there was 25 something -- You said there was corrosion with a valve --

l 79 1< THE WITNESS: Oh, no. Core barrel.

2 MR. RAPP: Core barrel?

3 THE WITNESS: In the core itself --

4 MR. RAPP: Okay.

5 THE WITNESS: -- where the water right adjacent 6 -- and this is my best understanding, the water right 7 adjacent to the fuel, and in the core barrel region area 8 where the nucleate boiling and the reaction was taking 9 place, that this reaction was causing oxygen to come out 10 o f. solution.

11 It was that tiny bit of oxygen that you know is 12 in there is showing up in this area --

13 MR. RAPP: Okay.

14 THE WITNESS: -- during normal plant operation.

15 MR. RAPP: So it's corrosion with the core 16 barrel next to the fuel pump.V$ pfM94*'o 17 THE WITNESS: Right.

18 MR. RAPP: All right.

19 THE WITNESS: And then as soon as it leaves --

20 As soon as this water leaves the vessel, the ov.ygen is re-21 absorbed and you cannot detect it. You know, that was the 22 explanation that we got from Chemistry's evaluation of the 23 reason for 25 cc's.

24 MR. RAPP: Okay. In the course of these 25 meetings -- Or, well, let me put it this way.

i 80 1 Who was present at this meetings? Was it more of f 2 a working level meeting or was it a meeting of the 3 decision-making process?

4 THE WITNESS: It was probably more of a working 5 level meeting, 6 MR. RAPP: What do yvu --

7 THE WITNESS: Not higher than the supervisor, 8 you know, status. And again, these meetings were, 4,ou 9 know, discussionc, let's get together and discuss it.

10 And then we have -- we would have actions.

11 Chemistry had an action to say, okay, yeah, we'll look 12 into it deeper, see if it's really a valid concern for 13 Florida Power.

14 We had -- I don't recall having any really high 15 level meetings, you know.

16 MR. RAPP: Okay. Which supervisory person would 17 have been at this meeting?

18 Let me put it this way. Would David C:ufin have 19 attended this meeting?

20 THE WITNESS: Possibly not. I really can't --

I 21 know we had conversations. I think we had some semi-22 informal meetings.

23 I cannot recall -- If I think about it -- Well, I 24 cannot recall who was there and who wcsn't there. But --

25 MR. RAPP: I know it's baen quite some time. I

81 1 understand. I'm just trying to kind of figure out who the 2 players are and what level of management is involved here.

3 MR. WEINBERG: Or what departments would it be?

4 THE WITNESS: It would have been probably mostly 5 Chemistry and Engineering. Pe knew operators -- we knew 6 their opinion. We had a similar opinion, you know, of the 7 25 cc's, 8 So it was our job to get with Chemistry and say, 9 prove it.

10 MR. RAPP: Did you ever go back to David Czufin 11 or any other supervisory or management level individual 12 and say, this is crazy, Chemistry doesn't see a problem, 13 we're pushing the design boundaries of the system, as you 14 said earlier, we're having to take all the slack out of it 15 to meet this thing, this is crazy, why are we continuing 16 to do this to ourselves?

17 1HE WITNESS: Yeah. We had discussions. I'm 18 sure Scott Balliet was probably one that -- because he 19 felt the same way, you know. I think --

20 MR. RAPP: And Scott Balliet worked for?

21 THE WITNESS: He was the I,C design supervisor.

22 MR. RAPP: INC. Okay.

23 THE WITNESS: I think -- I don't remember 24 specifically if -- I think Dave agreed with us, but he 25 also could not dispute Chemistry's theory, B&W's theory of

82 1 oxygen in the core barrel region. I mean, we just -- We 2 can't deal with it. You know, we had no defense to say, 3 no, we can't -- we're not going to do that.

4 We were asking them, you know, they were the 5 chemists, can't you come up with something that will give 6 us some leeway. And I don't know that they ever did. I 7 know they looked into that beyond my time. But I don't 8 know where that's at.

9 MR. VORSE: Did any of the chemistry people tell 10 you what was driving them to insist on this 25 cc's?

11 THE WITNESS: It was the INP'O good operating 12 practice recommendation. And it was something they also 13 probably have a hard time disputing.

14 I mean, these are physicists and Ph.D type people 15 that are coming up with this information, to the best of 16 my knowledge --

17 MR. WEINBERG: And you're talking about from 18 INPO.

19 THE WITNESS: From INPO or B&W, wherever the 20 document originated. And now you're asking us to tell 21 tnem they're wrong. And I don't know --

22 MR. RAPP: Do you know what time frame the B&W 23 spec, chemistry spec came out?

24 THE WITNESS: I really don't know. It seems 25 like INPO would have probably followed that fairly I.

_____._m__ ___ __m._ __

~_ _. _ _. . _ . __ . . _ . __.___ _ _ . .. ._ . . _ . . _ . - _.

L 03 1 quickly. And that would have been '93 time' frame, I 2- believe.

3 I think since then that we have been able to, 4 say, maybe confront the issue a little better. I don't 5 'know where we stand on that.

6 MR. RAPP: - Whenever you-raised this-issue to 7 David _Czufin or other: members of the plant, saying, you 8 know, this is -- we've got to find something different to 9 do, what would be their response?

10 THE WITNESS: Probably at the time we were 11 waiting for a Chemistry response. And the response was 12 probably Chemistry needs to address it. You know, the 13 system engineers don't. I mean, it's not our job.

14 If the decision is made we're going to do it and <

15 if it's our system that's going to be affected, then we 16 want to be involved.

-17 But Dave's response would have probably been, 18 -they need to do their job and tell us and give us like a 19 --

It's coming back to me. I think he caid, they need to 20 give us evidence why we have to do this.

21 MR. RAPP: _They being?

22 THE WITNESS: Chemistry. They were the ones 23 that wanted-it. They were the ones-that were probably 24' given the directive from, I-believe, Mr. Beard.

25 So -- And we had some problems and we wanted to

84 1 know, you know, give us some more input.

2 MR. VORSE: When you mentioned Dave, would you 3 give us -- for the record, give us his last name again.

4 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Dave Czufin.

5 MR. RAPP: What would lead you to believe that 6 this directive was coming from Mr. Beard?

7 THE WITNESS: Well, later on -- I think probably 8 the discussions with Chemistry saying that .'t was a -- I 9 think the term used was a Pat Beard edict.

10 And then we all knew that it was something that 11 he wanted us to accomplish. And I think we all felt we But it wasn't going to be easy. You know, 12 could do it.

13 we found out more how easy it wasn't going to be as the 14 furcher we got into it. But --

15 MR. VORSE: Did anyone ever express a -- during 16 any of these meetings express a desire to meet with Mr.

17 Beard and maybe try to get him to change his mind because 18 you just didn't think it was that easy?

19 THE WITNESS: I think the opinion that 20 Engineering had was ce could probably get there. And like 21 all these --

22 MR. WEINBERG: You mean solve the problem.

23 THE WITNESS: Yeah. We can resolve this issue.

24 We can get there. It's going to take some work. A.)d they 25 were willing, I think, to give us whatever we needed to

i-85 1 do. That was probably our opinion the whole while.

2 MR. VORSE: Who is they?

3 THE WITNESS: Pat Beard or upper management, 4 whoever. Pat Beard, probably. In fact, I think probably S we had discussions, why aren't we there. He would ask, 6 why aren't we there. Well, you know, we found this other 7 -- a check valve and the line was L asing a lot of DP. We 8 got to get it out and put a very light cracking pressure 9 check valve so we don't lose the pressure.

10 'ou know, these little issues we just kind of 11 danced through trying to get -- Well, all the while we 12 thought we could get there or we wouldn't have been doing 13 it.

14 And he was -- You know, I think he was willing to 15 let us pursue it so we could get there. It just -- It got 16 harder and harder. And we were still pursuing it 17 September 2nd. We were trying to get there. And I'm not 18 sure that we can't get there today. I don't know the 19 status of it.

20 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go off the record for just a 21 second.

22 (Whereupon, a brief recess was taken, after which 23 the following proceedings were had:)

24 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, we're back on the 25 record aftar making a minor technical adjustment here.

86 1 And I need to remind you that you continue to 2 testify under oath here.

3 THE WITNESS: Okay. Yes, sir.

4 MR. RAPP: Okay. Well, you were back to 5 discussing the --

6 THE WITNESS: Yeau.

7 MR. RAPP: -- issues surrounding coming to this 8 25 cc's per kg.

9 THE WITNESS: Right. I believe -- I think that 10 we never thought we could not get there. We were learning 11 more and more about the system and things it was going to 12 take to get there, 13 So maybe that was why we didn't -- You know, when 14 you go and you tell a vice president that we can't do it, 15 you got to provide him some justification. And then we 16 probably didn't have it at the cime.

17 Yet, there was nothing wrong with us asking the 18 experts, Chemistry, to explain why we have to be there, do 19 we want to spend this much money to get there. And --

20 MR. RAPP: The only answer that you're aware of, 21 though, that Chemistry gave you was that it was Mr.

22 Beard's desire.

23 THE WITNESS: It was an edict from Mr. Beard.

24 And the fact that there was -- appears to be a concern 25 with oxygen in and around the core barrel.

87 1 I think the concern would -- It would tend to 2 show up over a long period of time where you would see 3 some corrosion. And it might prevent you from doing a 4 life extension. It was that far out.

5 And Mr. Beard was -- you know, he wanted to see 6 the plant have a life extension. So that may have been 7 part of his input, too.

8 I'm not a chemist and I --

9 J MR. RA'P: No. I'm not trying to ask you to 10 analyze --

11 THE WITNESS: Right.

12 MR. RAPP: -- the chemical -- or the chemistry 13 dynamics at play here. I'm just trying to figure out 14 what's the driving factors behind this.

15 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

16 MR. RAPP: Did you ever express to a senior 17 manager, Mr. Hickle, Mr. Boldt, or Mr. Beard, concerns 18 that the system design was being pushed by this 25 cc's 19 per kg, or do you know if that was ever expressed?

20 THE WITNESS: I don't personally think that I 21 did. If it was, it would have probably come out of the 22 design side since those were the guys who were really 23 dealing with all the mod. - 4tions and so forth.

24 And when I said earlier that the system was being 25 pushed, remember, anything below the curve is acceptable.

l I

BB 1

And all we were doing is taking up slack in order to allow 2 us to operate below the curve-into that window where we 3 were, you know, headed for.

4 I didn't -- I don't recall sitting down with, you 5 know, Mr. Beard or Greg or Bruce or anybody.

6 MR. RAPP: Did anybody from --

7 THE WITNESS: Well, now, we may have -- I'm 8 sorry.

9 MR. RAPP: Go ahead. Go ahead.

10 THE WITNESS: I think Greg -- I think -- I'm 11 trying to remember where -- See, he wa's my manager for a 12 while. Greg Halnon was my manager. Then there was Jim 13 Terry.

14 I don't recall how much Greg's involvement was.

15 I think I do recall having conversations with probably Jim 16 Terry because he, you know, agaii., was looking for some 17 results. And he was probably aware that we weren't real 18 sure that we needed to be doing what we were doing. But 19 he was probably also aware that Chemistry had put an 20 argument up that we really can't dispute.

21 But whether or not they -- You know, they 22 probably just, you know, can you get there. Well, yeah, I 23 think -- we're trying. We think we can get there. Let's 24 proceed, you know.

25 But I wouldn't have gone above my manager. That

t P

89

.1 -would have been either Greg Halnon or Jim Terry. Those .-,

2 were theftwo managers that I had, I think, while I was in

-3 systems for makeup purification. .

4 MR..RAPP: One of the things that's come 5 consistently during these discussions here is that there's 6 a what we refer to as an open door policy.

7 Do you feel that you could have taken this above 8 your supervisor?

9' THE WITNESS: Oh, yeah, Yeah. I mean, I --

10 MR. RAPP: This was just your personal decision 11 to keep it, so to speak, in-house rather than go forward 12 with it?

13 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Becauce, you know, if you 14 take something above your supervisor -- Say you try to --

15 If I had tried to convince him that this wasn't the right 16 thing to do and I had real reason and he wouldn't listen 17 to me, yeah, I'd have gone above him. But I didn't have 18 that information.

19 And:that would have been the same with Jim Terry 20 or Greg, or whoever. If I had tried--- If I -- You know, 21 you've got to remember, I'm an engineer and we're kind of 22 -- we try to be black and white for the best part, right.

23 And either we can do it or we can't.

24 Well,-I couldn't say we can't. So, by golly, we 25 were going to try to do it.

-.- - ..... - - - -, .. - . . . ~ . -.--..- - . . - . -

90

.1 MR._RAPP: Were you'getting any_ feedback.from. ,

l2_ the design 1 side of things saying, this is next_to j 3- -impossible, we're going.to have to do all kinds of'majorL 4 ' modifications or we're going to have to really do some-5' fancy footwork to get this thing to work?

6 THE WITNESS: Not really because the minor MARS 7 that were being done, like the regulator set point e adjustments and so forth, we were thinking we'd be there, 9 you know.

  • 101 They had the same feeling we did, I think, that, 11 you know, we're chasing a non-problem. But I think they 12 were-in the same boat we were. They had no -- We had no 13 experience or education to combat the issue at hand or to 14 -- you know, the oxygen coming out in the core barrel, 15- We all kind of accepted that. Well, if you say 16 it's happening, I guess I have to believe it. It's beyond 17 our capabilities at CR-3, I think, to do something like 18 that.

19, MR. WEINBERG: Did the fact that it was an INPO 20 recommendation and derived from the 3&W study, did that 21 contribute to a certain extent in your willingness without

-22 further proof-to accept the directive and to try to 23 achieve it?

24 - THE WITNESS: Sure. Yeah, it did because B&W e

L25' designed the unit 1and INPO-recommendations are somothing 4

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I 91 l' we always try-to deal with.-

We try to -- try to. conform.

2- with their good practice 7ecommendations.

3 MR. RAPP: Did you -- Did Engineering -- I'm t 4 sorry. NotLEngineering, d

5- Did Chemistry ever discuss or did you ever have ,

15 discussions with Chemistry as to the basis where B&W got 7 the numbers from?

8 THE WITNESS: Yes, we did. Not into a lot of 9 detail, only what I've already told you. I'm not -- Right 10 now I-have not-seen the B&W analysis that provided, you 11 know, the details that Chemistry has.-

12 And some-of this occurred towards the end of my 13 period and probably on afterwards. We -- I think in part -

14 -- I wish I had maybe, but in che systems group we are 15 like everybody out here. We've got enough to do and 16 sometimes you have to rely on other groups to do their 17 part of thel job. And that was definitely their correct - -

18 their action. And Engineering basically had to live with

= 19 it.

20 I mean, we can -- We could have gone into the 21- chemistry end-of it, too, but they were probably better 22- qualified than us, because I'm not a chemical-engineer.

23-- M R =. - R A P P : -Okay. Then I'll move-into a

' 24 different area then. Curve 8. The curve that you 25, provided to Operations, was that an operational curve or

~

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. - . - - . ~ . - ~ . _ . , - - . - - . . . . . - . - - _ . - - .

5 92

1 ;an engineering curve or a design curve. .

2 MR, STENGER: Pat -- I don't know that Pat ~

provided any curve.

4-- MR. WEINBERG: You mean -- That's the curve on

6 MR. RAPP: OP-103B, Curve 8. That curve..

-7 MR. WEINBERG: You mean that the company 8 provided. >

9 MR. RAPP: The company. That was provided to 10 Operations. Yes. Was that an operating curve or a design 11 curve?

, .12 MR. WEINBERG: You mean what he be?'.eved back 13 when he provided it?

.=

14 THE WITNESS: Well, I didn't -- Again, this was 15 generated by design engineering. And --

16 MR. RAPP: I understand. Okay. Let me go at it 17 this way then,

, 18 THE WITNESS: Okay.

19 -MR. RAPP: Does this curve have in it the 20 conditions for normal plant operations?

21 THE-WITNESS: This curve is the law. I mean, it 122 is how you shall operate your plant.

I 23 MR. RAPP: Okay. Let me explain _it. differently.

, 24 Is the-calculation for-tbis curve based on conditions 25 found during normal plant operations?

, ,_ _ _ _ - . _ . - - _ , . , ~ _.

93

-1 : THE WITJESS: The calculations of this' curve --

2 The intent of this curve is to protect high pressure 3 injection pumps in'a LOCA. And proviaed -- And as long as 4 - you operate on or below the curve,.then you're 5 accomplishing thac. i 6 MR. RAPP: Okay; So this curve then being. based ,

7 on a LOCA accident sequence, it has worst-case flow rates i 8 and worst case instrumentation error and worst case

.9  ; differential pressures and basically it looks at what is 10 the design limits of the plant.

11 TME WITNESS: Exactly. Line losses. Maximum 12- flows that you can get out of H -- you know, out of ECCS 13 pumps.

14 MR. RAPP: Was that ever represented to the 15 operators when Revision 5 to Curve 8 was provided to them?

36 THE WITNESS: You mean did they know -- Are you 17 asking did they know they had to operate to the curve 18 or --

19 MR. RAPP: No. What I'm asking is, did they 20 know that that curve did not represent normal plant 21 operation?

22- THE WITNESS: Did they know the curve did not --

23: MR. WEINBERG: You mean.if it was based on an 24 analysis of a LOCA as opposed to --

25 MR. RAPP: As opposed.to normal plant i

94 1 _' operations.

But your questions isn't 2 .MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

3 whether or not they were told that they weren't supposed 4 to -- that it didn't' apply to the normal operation of the 5 _ plant. Thuc isn't what'the question --

6 MR. DOCKERY: -No. No. That's not the question.

, 7 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.

8 THE WITNESS: Sorry.

9 MR. RAPP: Okay. See if we cPn get there one 10~ -more time.

11 THE WITNESS: I think I know where you're coming 12 from, but --

13 MR. RAPP: Okay. Here's the thing. The 14 operators get a curve and they-say, oh, this is what we're 15 supposed to operate by.

16 Okay. Did they understand that this curve, the 17 data that went in this curve, the calculation that went

.18 into this curve did not use normal operating plant data?

19 THE WITNESS: They should have known that 20 because what.other function would ic serve. I mean, you

-21 don't'operatedownhereinftnowaloperation. You have a 22 55.to 86 inches, I think, normal band. And~so why would 23 you be concerned with what was going on down here if it 24 . was. strictly,-_you know, normal operating conditions.

~25 In other words, this -- Like I said earlier, I I

b e

1 95 1_:thinkLthey should have known that this curve was used to set the_ system up, _ set the gas -- add gas to the makeup

^

2 -

3 tank'during~ normal operating-conditions. Once that's done 4 and you put the curve away and you're set-for anything, 5- including a full blown large break LOCA.

6 MR. RAPP: Okay.

7 THE WITNESS: That would be my -- .

-8 MR. RAPPr All right. If you used this curve to 4

9 ' set the pressure, okay, and you put the curve away --

j- 10 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

f-11 MR. RAPP: -- would it be unreasonable for the

.2

' operators to expect that as they changed makeup tank

!; , . 13 level, that they would still be kept in a safe-operating 14 range on Curve 8?

15 THE WITNESS: I think discussions with Mark and 16 them, and Bruce -- Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce Willms were 17 leading to that, that they -- which is part of the reason 18- I tried to put so many words in PR-94-149, that in an 19 accident condition you're going to see a huge change in 20 the makeup tank. You're going to go below 55 inches,

-21 You're going to go out of the normal operating realm.

22' MR. RAPP: I think that was pretty well 23 understood by the operators. I think they understood very 24 well that :the _ makeup tank level would drop substantially.

2 5 -- THE WITNESS: Okay.

w m y wmm yy ,-

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96 1 MR. RAPP: The point I'm getting at here is --

2 THE WITNESS: Did they expect it to operate --

3 MR. RAPP: Exactly, 4 THE WITNESS: -- exactly during normal 5 operation.

6 MR. RAPP: During normal operations. Is that --

7 THE WITNESS: I --

8 MR. RAPP: Would that have been unreasonable for 9 them to have expected that the plant response would have 10 matched this curve?

11 THE WITNESS: I think they felt that ic should 12 have. And I tried to explain to them why it wouldn't.

13 And the best explanation I could give you, and I said it 14 earlier, would be -- and I explained this to them, if you 15 set yourself right on the curve, then all you have to do 16 is have a slight deviation or hysteresis affect, or 17 whatever, in your inLtrumentation, if you had a level 18 decrease that could carry a digit or two -- this was a 19 ligital type instrument string, that could take it a digit 20 or two over the curve, bam, there's the alarm.

21 And that had happened. We had had discussions 22 with -- I had discussions with Bruce Willms. He said, 23 well, we made an addition and we lowered the tank a little 24 and the curve -- and the alarm came in. He said, but 25 after a minute or so it cleared. Whatever the upset was

97

' 14 it absorbed-itself.

4 2 And, c yeah, I think they expected -.that- the curv 3

-gg A8ur to 3- -- that you should put:yourself g on the curve and you-4 should be able-to draw -- trace the line back and forth, As you move n n t. eve u S --y = ca.1 el .a t,;.;h gup and down.

6 And I don't know that they ever understood. I-7 tried to explain as things progressed that, no, that's not 8 exactly what's going to happen.

9 You know, one of the arguments I had was, you may 10 have a tank imperfection. Who says the tank's perfectly 11 -- it'st a perfect cylinder. If you'have some -- You know 12 what-I'm saying.

13- To the extent of their knowledge, I -- The o

14 biggest thing I felt like that they didn't understand was 15 the SP-630 test where the curve went -- where the tank 16 went down quickly. They questioned it in their problem 17 report. And I said, no, that's how it's going to respond, 18 you know.

19 - But, yeah. I think they thought that it should 20 operate exactly per the_ curve. And I was trying to 21: provide them information to why it would not act exactly 22 to the curve.

23 MR.: RAPP: The-discussions that have taken place 24- before have said that the operators were led to believe 25 that if they put pressure on the curve, that --

at all

J 6

98 1 operating levels of-the makeup tank, that they would be:

2' within the safe boundaries of-pressure, that they.would 3' stayLwithin the acceptable range _of_the curve.

4 And what you're saying is that's not true.

5 THE WITNESS: No. No. What I'm saying is if 6 they use'the curve to make an addition to the makeup tank 7 and they're not -- they're in the acceptable region,_then 8 anything.that may occur, a LOCA, any plant swing that may 9 occur would not put them in an unsafe configuration 10 because they'd use the curve initially to set up the 11 plant.-

12 And -- Let me see'how --

- 13 MR. RAPP: Well, you just said a second ago that

- 14 this curve -- the basis for this curve, though, was worst 15 break -- worst case.large break LOCA analysis.

16 THE WITNESS: That's correct.

17 MR. RAPP: Maximum flow rate, maximum DP, et 18 cetera.

-19 THE WITNESS: Right.

20 MR.-RAPP: I'm still having a tough time of 21 trying'to assimilate how an operator is_ supposed to apply 22 -what essentially is a design curve --

23 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

24~ . MR._RAPP: -- to the normal day-to-day operation 25 .of-the plant.- I don't see how an operator---would be

,-r [e . e y+ L >=m -

. - -. - .. --- - . .- -. . - . . . . - . . . . - . . . . . -. - . ~ ~ , . - . _ -

99 1 expected to understand that this is a design curve, folks, 2 and the plant isn't going to follow this day to day. lit 4 3 may follow it during a major accident, but it won't_. follow  :

4 it day _to day.

5 Operators aren't going to understand that.

6 MR.-WEINBERG: Why does he have to understand 7 it? Shouldn't he just stay on the other side of the 8 curve?

9 I mean,.if they tell you.to stay on the other 10 side of the curve, why do you have to understand?

11 MR. RAPP: The operators need tc understand it, 12 the difference, so that they understand what the plant 13 response is and how that differs from the curve.

-14 Obviously that wasn't communicated either through 15 the training organization or in some way when this curve 16 was passed along to them. And that would have alleviated 17 a great deal of the problems if they had understood up 18 front that this curve will not follow the day-to-day-plant 19 operations.

20 Or it really would have alleviated the problem-if 21 you had given him a curve _that said, yeah, this will 22 follow your day-to-day plant operations and here's your 23 little window you can stay.in up here. But this is what's 24- going _to happen' day to day.

25 THE WITNESS: 2The -- As.far as the operator's 9.

I

, . _ . ~ . ., . , __ , _ . . . _ _ ._ .- . _ . . , _ , . . _..m , . - ,__ ~ - - , ,, .

100 i

i recponsibility to the curve, was did he have the curve out 2 when he was making the hydrogen addition. And he did not 3 exceed the curve -- Or he lef t -- He isolated the hydrogen 4 rupply while he was still in accordance with the curve and 5 then what happened after that may not -- You know, what 6 the curve would have done in a LOCA, they may not have 7 understood that well.

8 And part of that I tried to cover in PR-94-149.

? And I also tried to cover with them, you know, with the 10 small changes they were seeing, that, I'm sorry that we 11 cannot provide you a curve that would respond exactly to 12 the plant. And the reason we can't is because I can't 13 tell you that all the instrument error is going to remain 14 constant through the --

15 MR. RAPP: All operating ranges.

16 THE WITNESS: Right. So, yes, there is a 17 possibility that you could operate it on plant -- on the 18 curve, you could have a upset in the plant, trip or 19 something, and you may have drawn a line different, 20 slightly of f the curve, but you did your job because you 21 set the plant up for the curve and you are covered. You 22 are protected. And --

23 MR. RAPP: As I understand the operations end of 24 things, what the operators were looking at, you have to go 25 back and look at their operating procedures. OP-402 for

i l

101 1 hydrogen add says, "Put pressure not to exceed the limit o

2 given by Curve 8."

3 THE WITNESS: Okay.

4 MR. RAPP: Okay. Fine. You go to the next s

5 section down there and it says system bleeds. And it says 6 basically, divert letdown to the bleed hold-up tank until 7 you get -- reach the desired level.

8 There's nothing in that section that says, oh, by 9 the way, keep pressure within the limits of curve 8, it 10 may go - ' ; may exceed Curve 8.

11 So the operators who are working these 12 procedures, well, here's a sect. ion that tells me to do 13 this and I do it, and here's a section down here that 14 tells me to do this and I do it. But all of a sudden now 15 I'm outside my allowable limits because I'm following 16 normal operational procedure. What's going on here, that 17 should be happening.

18 THE WITNESS: Right.

19 MR. RAPP: You also look at the alarm response 20 procedure. The alarm response procedure says, and my 21 understanding is this is like a level three alarm, it's 22 way down the tier on importance, the alarm response 23 procedure says, get pressure back in limit by venting the 24 makeup tank.

25 There's no time frame requiremcnt. There's no

102 1 immediate action statement on there.

2 THP WITNESS: Uh-huh.

3 MR. RAPP: So the operators at this point are 4 now in a situation where they're having to fight the plant 5 response versus what's being given to them as the expected 6 -- or what they understand to be the expected plant 7 response.

8 THE WITNESS: I agree with what you're saying.

9 I think that it woulu have been real nice to -- You know, 10 we were all educated in this evolution. Not the test, per 11 se. But everything, all the details that we've been 12 involved with over this issue we've all learned a lot 13 about plant response.

14 And it would have been -- either if occurred at 15 simulator training that, hey, if you set yourself up and 16 all of a sudden you had an upset, that you could get the 17 alarm. But understand that you were safe. And if your 18 alarm didn't clear, well, it would make sense that you 19 would -- You still had another procedure that said don't 20 allow the alarm to stay in, take actions to correct it.

21 i'#11, all you may be tracking for is instrument 22 error and you're putting yourself a little more 23 conservative. But you still had an alarm to deal witn and 24 you -- But, yeah, I can't say -- I mean, it was evident 25 from them running the test and then submitting tne data in l

t f

103 1 a problem report, it was obvious that it appeared that  !

2 they didn't think they were doing anything wrong, vith the j 3 exception of they had an annunciator response. And that's

- 4' -- I-think it's pretty clear.

5- But, yeah, I-don't know that'they or if  :

6 Engineering -- I don't know if we would -- I don't have j 7 -that many curves out-there that would fall in this -

8- type; category, but, you know, specific training on 9 curve functions- is probably r.ot something that we would r

10 normally --

11 MR. RAPP: That's something we'll picbably look 12 into later on, ,

THE-WITNESS: Okay.

+

It MR. RAPP: Let me ask a hypothetical question

- 15 here, Let's say that the plant's operating along here 16- normally, 86 inches and the appropriate overpressure, 17 which is what, 40 some pounds, 40 -- 38 pounds, something {

18 like that. Anyway, the appropriate overptwssure.

' 19 And letdown. isolates. They get a valve failure.

20- Letdown isolates.- The makeup tank goes down to 55 inches.

21 Now,'what you've done--- What's. happened at that 22 point is that you've essentially'done what Dave Fields _did -;

23 on the Sth, right'?

24 THE WITNESS:- - Uh-huh.

I^

25 MR. RAPP: The pressure is on the curve. You've

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l 104 1 isolated the letdown. It bleeds down. And now you're 2 over the curve.

3 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

4 MR. RAPP: All right. And wherever they wound 5 up. I think they were like two and a half or three pounds 6 over. Is that --

7 THE WITNESS: Okay.

8 MR. RAPP: Does that sound reasonable? Does 9 that sound about right? That's my recollection.

10 THE WITNESS: It's in there.

11 MR. STENGER: 1.7.

12 THE WITNESS: It's 1.7.

13 MR. RAPP: 1.7. Okay. 1.7. Now, a LOCA 14 occurs.

15 THE WITNESS: Right.

16 MR. RAPP: Are you going to gas bind the pumps?

17 THE h'TNESS: No.

18 MR. RAPP: No.

19 THE WITNESS: No. Because now, when their test 20 was run or evolution was run, there was an error in the 21 curve and it was a 1.7-pound error, I believe. I don't 22 know the latest number of --

23 MR. RAPP: What I'm talking about, though, is on 24 the 4th and the 5th.

25 THE WITNESS: Okay, I

105 1 MR. RAPP: The way the curve was on the 4th and 2 the 5th, not the way it is now.

3 THE WITNESS: Okay. If, like you said, they 4 used the curve, they set tnemselves up, and then you had 5 this LOCA and -- or you dii a feed and bleed, you did a 6 bleed that allowed you to come over the curve and then you 7 had the LOCA, I would say, no, you were not going to or 8 destroy a pump because -those conservatisms, that f*nh.n>

9 instrument error, that -- what got you there, that got you 10 on the wrong side of the curve, that caused it to go to 11 the wrong side of the curve are covered.

12 And that was the feeling that Engineering had, 13 whatever happens between -- You know, it's the starting 14 point. It's the starting point that, it's the initial 15 plant set-up that --

16 MR. RAPP: That's important. That's the base 17 point, is where you put it initially.

18 THE WITNESS: Right.

19 MR. RAPP: Not where it ends up finally.

20 MR. WEINBERG Okay. Well, let's --

21 MR. RAPP: Is that what you're saying?

22 THE WITNESS: Yes.

23 MR RAPP: Okay. Let -- I m a little bit -- Go 24 ahead.

25 MR. WEINBERG: Was there something you wanted to

i i

t 106 ,

1 sh/? I i

2 THE WITNESS: No. Go ahead. I 3- MR. RAPP Okay. I'm a little bit confused 4 here. We've asked at least three other people about this, 5 that if you were .1 pounds over the curve, then you were .

6 in violation of some design basis limit. l r

7 THE WITNESS: Well, if you --

-8 MR. RAPP: Do you agree with that statement? At 9 any point, at any point if you had put pressure on the a

10 curve and all of a sudden the level dropped down and you 11 were .1 pounds over the curve, you were in violation of a .

12 design basis limit. The plant was outside its design 13- analysis.

14 Do you agree with that stateinent?

15 THE WITNESS: What I -- I don't know that I 16 agree with that statement. I think -- Can I tell you what 17 I think the action would be?

l 18 MR. RAPP: Sure.

19 THE WITNESS: I-think that if you were in that 20 condition, that by procedure alone you should take an  ;

21 - action to put yourself within the -- back into the .

22 acceptable region of the curve. ,

23 But do I think because you started out correctly 9

24 and for whatever reason the plant upset took you to the 25 wrong side, do I believn ycu were in danger of dentroying e

?

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  • 101 1 a makeup pump? Back then I did not, no.

2 Tne only reason I said back then was because we 3 found an error. I don't know exactly how all the error 4 factored into where we were back then.. But, .no. Back 5 then, no. You set the plant up. It drifted down, or ]

6 whatever, whatever caused the level to decrease, you're on i 7 the other side of the -- wrong sids of the curve, y our 8 pumps were still protected because it was a -- their rus wmn  ;

9 initial issue that you were dealing with, it was -exset-up, pe4 10 n t* s' you know, put the curve away, you're in good shape I 11 wherever you are.

12 As far as how it plays into design bases, I don't

,, .13 - know. But by operating procedure if something like that [

14 happened, you're told to by procedure clear the alarm, you i

15 know, take action to clear the alarm.

i 16 MR. STENGER: Pat, just so e record is clear,

-17 if you go into the unacceptable range and you get an alarm 18 in, are you saying that you're safe to stay in that .

19 condition or do you take action?

  • 20 THE WITNESS: What I'm saying is -- Okay. Can 21 we -- What I'm saying is if you did your initial set-up 22 per the -curve, that instrument error could have caused 23 this reading above the curve to occur, and that, yes, you 24 are in a safe configuration because instrument error was 25 . factored in. *

+

1 i

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l 108 1 MR. WEINBERG: But from an operations side 2 you're supposed to take action and correct it.

3 THE WITNESS: Right. The procedures tell them 4 to do that. If you have an alarm an annunciator response 5 procedure tells you to take action to clear it. I don't 6 -- Did that explain --

7 MR WEINBERG: Well, so your question is, did 8 you have an opinion as to whether, you know, we were going 9 to lose a pump in that condition. And your answer is, no, 10 I don't think we would for the reasons that I thought the 11 curve was conservative and there was this margin built in.

12 But then there's this other issue which is the operator 13 issue as to which -- you know, which people aren't 14 supposed to intentionally put something in alarm and leave 15 it there.

16 THE WITNESS: Well, yeah. I mean, I esked them 17 --

In fact, I asked them at one time, well, when you see 18 these --

19 MR. VORSE: Wito's them, please? I'm sorry.

20 THE WITNESS: Probably Bruce Willms. What is 21 your response if you get that extra digit or whatever that 22 brings the alarm in, I said, what do you do to resolve it.

23 He said, well, we just have to clear it, we have to vent 24 the tan't to get back on the right side of the curve.

25 MR. WEINBERG: So there wat no doubt in his mind

109 1 what you were supposed to do if you were in an alarm 2 situation.

3 THE WITNESS: No. I didn't -- No. Mot at that 4 time. I didn't see where he had a problem with -- The 5 annunciator response procedure is pretty clear.

6 MR. RAPP: Let me ask this. Are you aware of 7 how the makeup tank is vented from an operational 8 standpoint?

9 THE WITNESS: I believe it's a -- I can't 10 remember if the valve is controlled from the control room 11 or if it's a manual vent that has to take place at the 12 hydrogen addition portion of that system. I think the 13 valve is 143.

14 MR. RAPP: Okay. The way it's been explained to 15 us is that there is an isolation valve due to Appendix R 16 concerne, 17 THE WITNESS: Yes. Okay.

18 MR. RAPP: And you have to go down and manually 19 open that icolation valve before you can open the vent.

20 THE WITNESS: Okay.

21 MR. RAPP: That isolation valve, correct me if 22 I'm wrong, or maybe you may not know, is in a contaminated 23 area, so you have to dress up to access it.

24 THE WT* NESS: I thought the isolation valve was 25 in the makeup tank valve alley, which is not contaminated.

110 1 I may be wrong, but I have walked to this area where the 2 supply lines are a number of times. It's a radiation 3 drea, like --

4 MR. RAPP: Well --

5 THE WITNESS: And see, this, what you're getting 6 at, that was part of their burden, you know.

7 MR. RAPP: Maybe my point's convoluted here, t 8 The point is that if I get this alarm come in and I'm 9 supposed to go vent the makeup tank and I've got to send 10 an operator into a contaminated area to open the isolation 11 valve to -- so 1 can vent the tank and he's got to dress 12 out, I'm looking at probably at 1 cast 20 minutes to get 13 down there.

14 So the immediacy of venting this tank doesn't 15 compare with the actions, the operational action that has 16 to take place in order to meet that immediacy.

17 THE WITNESS: I don't know enough about the IL procedure for venting.

19 MR. RAPP: So for ?.n operator to get the alarm 20 in they've got to at least wait 20 minutes so they can get 21 somebody down to the isolation valve to open it.

22 - So I mean, I --

23 THE WITNESS: Maybe you should talk to Bruce 24 about -- Bru:e Hickle about that, t

25 MR. RAPP Yeah.

111 1 THE WITNESS: Decause I'm not sure that what you 2 just explained is accurate.

3 MR. RAPP: Okay.

4 THE WITNESS: I think there's something else.

5 MR. RAPP: Okay.

6 (Whereupon, the proceedings resume on tape number 7 two as follows:)

8 MR. DOCKERY: We're back on now, and Mr. Hinman, 9 I remind you that you continue to be under oath here.

10 THE WITNESS: Okay. If I can -- What you have 11 described is definitely part of the operator burden and it 12 was part of their concern.

13 I think if you looked at where we were today, and 14 I cannot give you the details. If you would speak with 15 some of the design people who have addressed these issues 16 it may clear it up, because they could tell you how we've 17 dealt with it. I think now they show an imaginary curve 18 in a band and all this sort of thing.

19 MR. RAPP On that area here. You said earlier 20 that some standard hydraulic calculations that show you 21 had adequate net positive soction head following SP-630.

22 THE WITNESS: Okay.

23 MR. RAPP: Did you do those calculations?

24 THE WITNEES: What I did was -- there is ars 09$~.

25 calculation-thers existing, and just because I wanted to

% _A V'so=*s rn-

_ - _ _ . _ ._.- _ _ _ _ - _ _ ~ _ _ _ _ - _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ ,

I 112 k cm * " co w* * '

1 I-did a back of the envelope, g I come to an independeng, f ts's= ss 2 have those in my file, where I went through and took pipe .

3 lengths and elbows and so forth just to see did I come up 4 with the same values that they did in the formal 5 calculation; and I did. And they were very consistent j 6 with what we had done and issued, Design Engineering did. .

7 Terry Austin, who-is a design engineer, also did 8 a similar thing. You know, this was, hey, we have NPSH 9 -concern where we can -- we can do-this, we can check it.

10 He did a similar thing, looked at the calc and we both 11 -felt very comfortable that those calculations were i 12 adequate for NPSH.

13 MR. RAPPt Do you know what those calculation ,

14 numbers are, or do you have the calculation?

y-cr ve 15 THE WITNESS: Can I giveg you later --

lW.s..ns

'8 16 MR. RAPP: Later.

17 THE WITNESS: That's later, that's_ fine.

18 MR. RAPP: One other thing, too, here, you said 19 that the recire flow was isolated -- ,

20 THE WITNESS: In a LOCA?-

21 MR. RAPP: -- in a LOCA situation and that's 22 what was mainly one of the factors-in the divergence from 23 normal operating response.

24 THE WITNESS: And this is something.that we 25 learned. You know, hey, it does affect it, you know_

--,-,,wvv+e,w,,n.-=w- mv,y ,ve,w,1,r,ww,-,-.-1-+ ++ ,,=s

113 1 But, yes, that id correct.

2 MR. RAPP: Okay. How much recirc flow is there?

3 THE tvITNESS: It's approximately 100 gpm.

4 MR. RAPP: And where is it? Is there a separace 5 recire pump or does it come off the discharge of the 6 makeup pump?

7 THE WITNE3S: Discharge. It's minimum recirc i

8 for the makeup pumps.

9 In a HPI you want all the flow to the core, so to oarv e 10 you isolate the recire. It ckroa automatically.

pps ns -fr 11 MR. RAPP: Do you know wha' -- what I'm trying 12 to get at is how much pump heat is being added? I mean, 13 how hot is this water that's going back into the gas phase 14 and how much of an effect does this recirc water have on 15 hydrogen overpressure?

16 MR. WEINBERG: In the normal caeration?

17 MR. RAPP: Normal operation. Say that, you 18 know, if letdown is isolated, the configuration they have 19 of the 4th and 5th, how much effect would that have on it?

20 THE WITNESS: It's fairly -- fairly minor, but ru f 21 --

,y,.,r these were the curves that were plotted after their, N 22 let's just -- this REDAS data in the Ex-Cel, the top curve 23 is the temperature effect.

4es 24 So, all we . knew- is yes, there was a temperature pu e ste h 25 increase. That indicator is in the water space. And all

. . _ ._ _ __ _ .- _ _ _ . ._ _ _ . _ _ ..__ _ _ .___ _ .__ _ ._...~_ _ . _ . _

114 1 we know is that, okay,ifthewaterspaceheatedup7endstjTg..,  !

b TVA  :

2 thenggas space heated up, probably more, probably -- I pd os u.y 3 don't know, probably similar response. But we know that l 4

4 the gas in the tank would have expanded if you increased i 5 the temperature, which would tend to drive you away from l 6 the curve.

7 MR. RAPP: Tend to flatten out the pressure l 8 response.-

9 THE WITNESS: Well, it would, you know, you heat 10- the gas up and it's going to act like there's more --

11 MR. RAPP: Decrease -- tend to flatten it out.

12 Tend to not make it as severe --

13 THE WITNESS: Yes, right.

14 MR. STENGER: Pat, you might want to explain 15 what you've just given --

16 THE WITNESS: Okay. This is -- this is the 17 evolution'9/4/94, I may have the other here. Operator S 4" 18 evolution 9/4/ 1994, and I think you have 9/A'/ 199A' 1 -

pre neto-1 '

19 9/5/ 1994 that shows, yes, you had a tank temperature 20 - increase, which-pretty much proves that'the alignment that '

21 the plant was in during-the evolution affected the results 22 of the test. That was my conclusion.

23 MR. STENGER . Like to have a copy of that.  ;

-24 MR.-RAPP:- Okay.

25 -MR~. WEINBERG - When did you do that?- You were

t 115 i I working on this right-after the --  ;

2 THE WITNESS: Yeah,.this was -- you know,.after j 3 the draft came out, the problem report came out of the j 4 error in the curve I wanted to go in and look at mainly &

4 .=  ;

. 5 temperature, you know, because I couldn't believe -- I 6 thought that was kind of a massive error. It really  ;

7 surprised me and I wanted to see, well, maybe there were 8' other things that affected it. And that's what I saw, the

  • 9 temperature.

10- And_then I was kind-of upset, I felt like, whoa, ,

11 Sne need f.a -- beforn we give this test a lot of 12 credibility we need to address these things because it 13 ipf,g',tends to not make it as credible, you know. You 14 have an' uncontrolled evolution there that --

1 15 MR. RAPP: You had other factors that played into 16- it too?

17 '

THE WITNESS: Exactly, that made the data look 3 lb vorse.

  • 19 MR . :RAPP - Right. That's all I have. ,.

20 MR DOCKERY: Jim?

i 121 'MR. VORSE: Are you going'to get into the 22 discovery of' the _- _or the reporting of the_ September 4th, 23 are you going to-getLinto that?

i.

24 MR. STENGER: 'I'll let you --

25
MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Basically _what I'd like to f

l.

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116  ;

ll do is sort of sum up, ask a few summary questions. And 3

-2 this is more.along the lines of-human issues because I ,

3 think there was a human component involved here.- ,

4 Mr. Hinman, did any of the Operations shift j 5 supervisors or management ever come to you and state they 6 were concerned about the -- about Curve 87  ;

7 THE WITNESS: I may have had a brief 8 conversation with Dave Fields. I don't know for sure.

9 What I. recall mainly was the only people in Ops that had 10 the concern were Bruce Willms and Mark Van Sicklen, Jackie i

11 Stewart'somewhat. .i 12 MR. DOCKERY:- Okay. We've interviewed 13 extensively people in Operations and I would say to a man t 14 they're in agreement that none of them knew that Curve I

-15 Number 8 was a design basis curve. That they seemed to r 16 voice an expectation that were it a design basis curve it f

17 would have been marked as such. ,

18 At the time you were involved with analyzing 19 -Curve Number 8 did you know it to be a design basis curve?

20 THE WITNESS: I think I felt it was because it l

21 was based,on plant-response and design and the whole 22 function of it was to protect high pressure injection-23- pumps. A high pressure injection pump.:-

24 So, but I' don't know whether I called it a design 25 basis-curve or what, lL don't know that'that mattered, L

l ,

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h 117 j 1 whether it was an operating curve or a design basis. It f 2 was one and tre same to me because I felt like it was j 3 there for a specific reason, which was -- l 4 MR. DOCKERY: This is significant because all of f 1

5 the teerators we interviewed and including their l 1

6 supervisors said that had they known it was a design hasis 7 curve there were certain actions that they never would 8 have taken. Their assumption was it's been variously .j 9 called an operating curve or an administrative curve. ,

t 10 Therefore, it's very significant to them. And very 11 significant to what they would or would not have done 12 regarding that curve, 13 Do you have any feeling for that?

14 THE WITNESS: I probably don't understand the 15 significance that they would inherently have that, you 16 know -- I probably not being an operator don't totally 17 understand their' concern with the two, whether it's l

18 operating or design --

19 MR. DOCKERY: Well --

20 MR.-STENGER: What's your understanding?

21' THE-WITNESS: My understanding? -

22 MR. STENGER: Yeah.

12 3 - THE WITNESS: Whether:it was a design basis or l

24 'an operating?

25 MR. STENGER: If there was significance to

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118 1 whether it was an operating curve, a design curve, an 2 administrative limit, whatever.

3 THE WITNESS: I felt like it was -- it was -- it i

4 is a curve, it is the law, it is how you operate the 5 plant. If you violate it or get above it you have a i 6 procedure that tells you how to handle it. And that's as 7 far as I went with it. ,

-8 I don't know that I did any kind of a mental l 9 evaluation there would be any difference between a design 10 basis or an operating curve.  ;

'll MR. DOCKERY: Have you ever dealt with similar ,

12 documentation that was clearly merked design basis?

z 13 THE WITNESS: I'm not aware. That's something I

14 again Design Engineering might have a better feel for. I 15 don't know that we're required to stamp design basis --

16 MR. DOCKERY: Have you ever encountered that 17 situation where you have a document where it says design 18 basis?

19 THE WITNESS: Well, decign babis documents, [

20 which are verbiage.

21 MR. DOCKERY: That's what I mean.

22- THE WITNESS: Yeah, oh yeah, but I'm not

23. tamiliar.with.that as being something that_we may do to a 24 curve.. 7cdon't really'know.

25- MR. DOCKERY:; Okay. The memorandum that you

._. .,_ _ a... ._,--.__,,m.c._,.._,,.,._.-.,_.w.,~..-ra.-_.,,___,__,_...,.,,-,,.,._.,_..__r., ..,,y .__..m.

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i 119 1 generated dated September 2nd, 1994. Between September  !

2 the:2nd, 1994, and the events that we have all come to j know took place on September the 4th and September the 3-4 Sth, 1994, that being the evolution or test, what have 5 - you.

f; 6 Did you have any further discussion with anybody 7 in Operations regarding your memorandum between the date  :

8 it was_ issued and September 5th, to your recollection? j

9 THE WITNESS: No, none. In fact, I don't think f

10 I had any-discussion until the problem report was issued 11 on the 7th, I believe. I 12 I think -- I believe the 2nd was a Friday and i

13. then the weekend. '

14 MR. DOCKERY: The second would have, I believe, i

15 been a -- '

16 MR. VORSE: Friday was -- r 17 MR. DOCKERY: At least a Wednesday or Thursday.

L 18 MR. VORSE: The 2nd was a Friday, 19 MR. WEINBERG: Labor Day was Monday.

20 MR. DOCKERY: The 5th. I'm sorry. That's 21 right. t l 22 THE WITNESS: The 5th was Labor Day, right. _

So,  !

, - 3 23 I-think.probably the Wednesday, the 7th was the first time

[ 24' this letter would --

25- MR._DOCKERY: Did you_ work-Labor Day weekend?  !

b

!?  !

L l

. . . _ - , .._..:..-........_.__..-.___.,_ _ _._____.__a__,-... . . - . . . ~ -

120 1 THE WITNESS: I don't think so.  !

2 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Does this plant operate at 6

3 25 cc's per kilogram of hydrogen today?

4 THE WITNESS: To my' knowledge it does not. ,

5 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know what level it operates I L

6 at? I 7 THE WITNESS: No, I don't. l S. MR. DOCKERY: And you've been out of that, so 9 that's improper to expect you to know. l t

10 THE WITNESS: Yes. 1 6

11 MR. DOCKERY: Did you at som'e point come to know l 12 that there were problems, perceived problems with the 13 assumptions, tne assumptions used in the calculation for j 14 Curve Number 87  !

15 THE WITNESS: I recall -- 1 don't recall the  :

16 time frame, but I recall -- I think for quite a while that .

17- there have been assumptions challenged to Design 18 Engineering about the calculation. -

19 MR. DOCKERY: And that was well after the fact 20 'of.your September 2 memo?

21 THE WITNESS: I think probably before and after, 22 but'there's been several revisions to the calculation too.

23- I, again, I wasn't -- None of those actions-would 24 have been something I would have had to address. So.

25- -MR. DOCKERY: Is'it fair to say that-as of- ,

E

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121 1 September 2nd, 1994, you were not aware of any error in 2 the curve?

3 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir, it is.

4 MR. DOCKERY: Did you get the impression that 5 somehow the Operations people felt you were responsible 6 for this herping on this 25 cc per kilogram hydrogen 7 cequirement?

A THE WITNESS: I felt quite confident that I--I 9 probably told these guys that I didn't -- I didn't care 10 for it too much myself. But it wasn't something that I 11 could make go away by myself. I mean, we had discussions 12 in Design, discussions with Chemistry --

13 MR. DOCKERY: Let me ask that question a better 14 way because I didn't ask it well.

15 THE WITNESS: Okay.

16 MR. DOCKERY: Was there ever a conversation that 17 you had where somebody from Operations indicated that it was Engineering that was levying this requirement? This, 18 19 what they felt to be an unreasonable requirement?

20 THE WITNESS: I think they probably thought --

I 21 don't recall. But I know I had discussions with Mark Van 22 Sicklen and Bruce Willms that we didn't like it any more 23 than they did except we were told to do it.

24 MR. DOCKERY: I'm going to make a statement to 25 you and it's based on our interviews of people in the

f l

l 122 ,

1 operating area. And that was after receiving your 2;' memorandum they felt.like that -- I'm referring to i 3 September 2, 1994, memorandum -- they felt like their -- f i

4 they were being ignored. That their concerns over Curve  ;

5 8, that this memorandum signified the end of any  ;

i G consideration absent their coming up with additional data j 7 to prove their point.

t 8 Now, having made that statement, if you'll accept i 9 that on faith that that's the way the operations felt.

10 Was that ever conveyed to you? ,

11 THE WITNESS: No.

12 MR. DOCKERY: Was --

13 THE WITNESS: Because if it was I would have  !

e 14 said, whoa, wait, guys,-did you read the entire first 15 paragraph. And then I would have pulled out this problem 16 report and said, did you read corrective number eight, 17 that was due September 30th at that time. And if they  ;

18 didn't believe that I would have said, talk to a design 19 engineer who's gearing up to do this. No, I --

20 MR. RAPP: Let me interject something at this 21 point,  ;

22 What the operators told us the way this memo was

. 23; presented to them.was it was brought up to the control /

24 ' room when they assumed the shift, like on a 3rd or .

25 something like that, midnight of the 3rd -- I mean, excuse s

-i 5

. _ . . . . . . _ _ . . . . . . _ . , _ . . _ , _ . _ . , _ _ . _ . . . _ . , . . a., _ _ . . - , _ _ m_

l 123 1 me, midnight of the 2nd, okay, which would have been the 2 3rd, Brought th.is thing up and said, hey, Engineering 3 wrote this letter, they're going to close your issue out 4 unless you've got some more f.nformatior' to give them.

5 Thut's the way it was conveyed to them -- or 6 that's the way they say it was conveyed to them, 7 MR. STENGER: Can you tell us who presented that 8 to them and conveyed that to them?

9 MR, RAPP: Carl Bergstrom was the individual 10 identified as presented that memorandum to them.

11 MR. DOCKERY: The only thing we can ask Mr.

12 Hinman about that is do you have any knowledge of how 13 operations was provided this memo?

14 THE WITNESS: No, I don't.

15 MR. WEINBERG: And that wasn't the intent, by 16 the way, to close it out.

17 THE WITNESS: No, it was not.

18 MR. DOCKERY: We have had -- also had testimony 19 from various people in Operations that they felt that 20 Engi1eering -- now, let me preface this by saying I don't 21 recall you ever being named by name. Tnis was a generic 22 -- my recollection is it was a generic appearance to 23 Operations that Engineering is not being responsive to our 24 needs on this issue.

25 Was that ever conveyed by anybody to you?

124 1 THE WITNESS: I think it probably was. And my 2 response would have been that this is a very complex issue 3 and there are some big issues going on and we're trying to 4 deal with them, that they were not my actions, they were 5 Design engineers' actions. And it doesn't happen 6 overnight.

7 I know this thing is -- I mean, you can look at 8 the history and see how much work had been going on for 9 this issue. And it's broad and it's complex. And I would 10 have liked to have seen Design side make things happen 11 quicker, but I cannot say that the way it happened was 12 right or wrong. I know there's -- there is a lot of time 13 goes into this sort of stuff. There's verifications and 14 this stuff takes time. And they had other priorities as 15 well.

16 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Was, i.1 your opinion, since 17 you were something of an interface between Operations and 18 Design Engineering, if that's a correct --

19 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I think that's --

20 MR. DOCKERY: Was Design Engineering being 21 adequately responsive on this issue?

22 MR WEINBERG: On the whole makeup tank issue or 23 just the validity of the Curve 8 issue?

24 MR. DOCKERY: I don't know how to --

25 MR WEINBERG: I don't either.

125 1 MR DOCKERY: But this was the man who was the 2 interface and it's a general question about responses.

3 MR. WEINBERG: All right.

4 THE WITNESS: In my opinion, I would have liked 5 to have seen Design made this maybe more of a priority. I 6 would like, you know, hey, it was my problem too, I wanted 7 to see it resolved.

8 MR. DOCKERY: That's a fair answer to me.

9 Did -- What I'm trying to get at, Pat, is 10 there's a people component here and that people component 11 has to do with frictions that may have existed between two 12 disc iplines. Engineering versus Operations. Did that 13 exist?

c~ w 14 THE WITNESS: Of course I can3 speak for my own ya n-se **

15 self. I had probably some friction with Mark because --

16 MR. VORSE: Identify Mark, please.

17 THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen. And it was --

18 oh, absolutely. Not fussing or fighting, just trying to 19 communicate. I had a difficult time trying to communicate 20 with Mark because a lot of times I didn't feel like he was 21 listening. He wouldn't listen to what I had to say, he 22 only wanted me to hear what he had to say.

23 And I'll tell you what I --

I even spoke with a 24 management person in Operations -- and I can give you that 25 name.

l l

126 1 MR. DOCKERY: Please do.

2 THE WITNESS: Mr. Gary Becker. He is -- I don't 3 know exactly his position now. And I told Gary, I said, ,

4 Gary, I am having a difficult time communicating with 5 Mark.

6 MR. DOCKERY: At what point did that 7 conversation take place?

8 THE WITTESS: This was well before this letter.

9 It was probably efter the 630, after the outage of SP-630, 10 And Gary's exact words, if I recall right, were he is 11 difficult to deal with. And he asked'me if I knew his 12 nicknsme. And i said no. He said, his nickname -- and 13 this wan Operations from what I understand -- was Mark Van 14 Psycho. And I'm telling you this because that's what he 15 told me.

16 So, I was not the only one having trouble 17 communicating with Mark. I had also spoke with other buo t1 ws 0 18 engineers,- -Dut y0ch,--I- had a hard time communicating with Ve n u na 19 Mr. Van Sicklen.

20 MR. DOCKSRY: Follow me on this if you will. I 21 have looked at this way -- this thing every way I can 22 regarding Mr. Van Sicklen and others in Operations and 23 tried to come up with some idea of what agenda could they 24 have had that drove them so hard. There was no financial 25 incentive to making this point. There was no -- that I

i 127 1 can see professional --

2 THE WITNESS: Enhancement type of --

3 MR. DOCKERY: Exactly.

4 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh. Right.

5 MR. DOCKERY: Can you enlighten me? Do you have 6 any idea what it was?

7 MR. WEINBERG: You mean why they would have done 8 these evolucions on the 4th and 5th?

9 MR. DOCKERY: Not necessarily that. Why -- What 10 -- What was compelling, particularly --

11 MR. WEINBERG: Why was it such a big deal.

12 MR. DOCKERY: What was compelling him to such an 13 extent to pursue this issue?

14 THE WITNESS: I guess -- I think maybe this 15 first paragraph. They misinterpreted me or -- well, the 16 fact -- okay, thir,, the fact that it was going on for so 17 long. The fact that it was complex.

18 I don't know. I don't know what -- other than 19 those, I don't know. I don't think -- Mark and I were 20 never friends or enemies. No one in Operations, did I 21 have -- Mark, B ruce , these guys were all people that I 22 could communicate with. And 4-didW L"-- I don't think I V" ts -so st 23 drove them to that point, you know.

24 I don't know. I don't know. I think they did 25 something they thought that was acceptable. It's obvious.

128 1 And none of us realized it until afterwards. But, no, I 2 don't know why.

3 MR. DOCKERY: In your opinion, one cf the 4 driving factors here is undoubtedly this 25 cc's per 5 kilogram requirement or as you stated, edict.

6 If Engineering wasn't getting the blame, I didn't 7 ask you about Chemistry, but who in your opinion was being 8 bla.ned for that figure?

9 THE WITNESS: Who was the driving force, or --

10 MR. DOCKERY: Who was perceived at creating this 11 problem? You said you had a prob 1.em with it. Obviously 12 Operations had a problem with it. Was it being blamed on 13 the plant manager? I think everybody had this feeling 14 that whoever's responsible for this is being totally 15 intransigent, that they won't hear our protestations.

16 MR. WEINBERG: Did they feel like that? Is that 17 how people were talking in your unit?

18 THE WITNESS: I think everybody felt that it was 19 something that Mr. Beard wanted. That we were going to do 20 our darnedest to get us there. But we probably didn't do 21 an adequate job of giving him details on what -- how 22 difficult it was. But at the same time we thought we 23 could get there. So -- but no doubt people knew that Mr.

24 Beard wanted it. And, by golly, we were trying to do what 25 he wanted.

I

r 129 1 MR. DOCKERY: Now, I'll ask you to think a~out 2 this, another general observation. You used the term --

3 and you may have been quoting somebody else, but you felt 4 like the 25 cc's_per kilogram was an edict.

5 THE WITNESS: Right.

6 MR. DOCKERY: Did that edict ccme with an ,

7 explanation?

Now, you provided, I think, what you understood

[ 8 9 to be an explanation and hat was plant life extension.

10 But at the time the edict came down was that explanation ~

11 given? ;4 12 MR. WEINBERG: Or any other explanation like -- 2 13 MR. DOCKERY: Sure, any explanation.

14 MR. WEINBERG: -- INF3 and --

15 ME DOCKERY: Well --

16 THE WITNF.SS: Well --

17 M2. RAPP: Technical explanation.

18 MR. DOCKERY: That's -- Because INPO wants it 19 doesn't, to me, constitute an explanation of why 20 technically it's importait --

21 THE WITNESS: Well, tnat's right, but, I mehn, 22 if INPO wants it, from what I understand at least 23 somebody's got to take a pretty hard look at it. And if 24 INPO says we want it because among other things B & W has

=

25 done a study and indicates it's a potential problem, I ,

I

l 130 1 mean, that's a further thing to do. So, I mean -- is that 2 -- I mean, are those caveats in there or, I mean, whether 3 all that was explained to him?

4 MR. DOCKERY: Well, let's hear what the 5 explanation that Mr. Hinman knows to have been given was.

6 THE WITNESS: I don't -- I don't remember if the 7 explanation of life extension was a part of that. I do 8 remember that no doubt it was a big factor that INPO 9 wanted and that --

e 10 MR. DOCKERY: Was that a component of any 11 explanation, if one were given?

12 THE WITNESS: Well, y?ah, the explanation came B 13 out, sure, why, why do you want it.

14 MR. DCCKERY: It's my understanding this was a 1 15 verbal, too.

16 THE WITNESS: Well, it may have been verbal on 17 my part, but it was an evaluation that they dig deep into 18 it effort on Chemistry's part. And then they were 19 providing us the input as to why. And the input was 20 something that we could not dispute. I could not tell you 21 this was -- waan't happening or was happening.

22 MR. DOCKERY: Pat, speaking for yourself 23 personally. If a more in-depth explanation had been made 24 available to you personally, would it have been easier for 25 you to deal with?

l l

131 1 THE WITNESS: Except trying to get to 25 cc's 2 per kg?

3 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, that's -- the explanation of 4 why 25 cc's per kg was critical or expected, demanded, 5 whatever.

6 THE WITNESS: Well, if it had been spelled out 7 to the T I probably would have accepted it. You know, if 8 I totally understood, if I k2.?w there was a document in 9 evidence of this condition, it would have been easier to 10 accept but it wotidn't have made it any easier to address.

11 I don't know if thct answers your question.

12 MR. DOCKERl: Well, we just -- we have so much 13 testimony from more or less the rank and file on this 14 that, gee, this 25 cc's per kilogram edict was making our 15 life miserable.

16 THE WITNESS: Yes.

17 MR. DOCKERY: And I'm just trying to get to the 18 point. Nobody seems to -- nobody has told us that they 19 had a real clear understanding of why 25 cc's was a good 20 thing other than INPO wanted it. And, therefore, Mr.

21 Beard wanted it.

22 THE WITNESS: Well, I think everybody was in the 23 same -- If anybody knew any of the details, they ran to 24 the same conclusion or dead end that I did, that.I 15 couldn't challenge it. You know, okay, you're telling me

132 1 B&W, or whoever did the initial study, is telling me 2 this is occurring, but I can't prove that it's not.

. You know -- I -- Chemistry can't do it because 4 they can't sample it. Engineering can't do it because ,

5 we're not reactor physicists and we're not chemists.

6 MR. DOCKERY: But if I say to yc u, Pat, it will t 7 in all likelihood extend the life of this plant, 8 THE WITNESS: Okay.

9 MR. DOCKERY: Does that make it easier for you 10 to stomach?

11 THE WITNESS: I thi.nk I probably wouldn't have 12 -- okay. If I --

13 MR. DOCKERY: Or we believe it will extend the 14 life of this plant. I believe. I'm the man in charge.

15 THE WITNESS: Sure, I think it would have made 16 it a little easier for me to handle because I would like 17 to see che plant have a life extension.

18 But that came out. I just, you know, I don't 19 recall exactly when. <

20 MR. DOCKERY: I don't have anything else.

21 MR. VORSE: So, my understanding is you just --

22 no ont in Engineering protested this and said, hey, we 23 need to have a meeting with somebody and discuss this 24 thing because it's just causing us a lot of problems.

25 Do you know of anyone that tried to go up the

I 132 1 B&W, or whoever did the initial study, is telling me 2 this is occurring, but I can't prove that it's not.

3 Y0u know -- I -- Chemistry can't do it because 4 they can't sample it. Engineering can't do it because 5 we're not reactor physicists and we're not chemists.

6 MR. DOCKERY: But if I say to you, Pat, it will 7 in all likelihood extend the life of this plant.

8 THE WITNESS: Okay.

9 MR. DOCKERY: Does that make it easier for you 10 to stomach?

11 THE WITNESS: I think I probably wouldn't have 12 --

okay. If I --

13 MR. DOCKERY: Or we believe it will extend the 14 life of this plant. I believe. I'm the man in charge.

15 THE WITNESS: Sure, I think it would have made 16 it a little easier for me to handle because I would like 17 to see the plant have a life extensio .

18 But that came out. I just, you know, I don't 19 recall exactly when.

20 MR. DOCKERY: I don't have anything else.

21 MR. VORSE: So, my understanding is you just --

22 no one in Engineering protested this and said, hey, we 23 need to have a meeting with scmebody and discuss this (

24 thing because it's just causing us a lot of problems.

t' 25 Do you know of anyone that tried to go up the

1 I

1 133 1 chain of command to get this issue, discuss with Mr. Beard 2 of anyone else about the problems it was causing?

3 THE WITNESS- No, I'm not aware of it. We had 4 discussions at the working level and Chemistry had the 5 task and the understanding how we didn't like it, but I am 6 not aware, possibly on the Chemistry side, that -- I'm 7 not aware of anyone in Engineering taking it to Mr.

8 Beard's level.

9 I don't know. It probably would have happened on 10 the Chemistry side. Tney may be able to --

11 MR. VORSE: Okay. We'll switch gears.

12 THE WITNESS: Okay.

13 MR. VORSE: You were involved in the disclosure 14 of the second evolution that was conducted on the 4th of 15 September of 19 4?

16 THE WITNESS: Yes.

17 MR. VOkSE: Would you discuss your involvement 18 in that, please.

19 THE WITNESS: The year or so period that passed, 20 I was at laast once, maybe twict asked to be available for 21 come discussions into what had gone on. Well, let me 22 start further than that.

23 MR. WEINBERG: Are you asking him to first tell 24 you how he figured out there was a September 4th 25 evolution? Is that what you're asking?

r .

134 1 MR. VORSE: I don't really know everything about 2 it, but we can start with --

3 THE WITNESS: Discovery?

4 MR. VORSE: -- the discovery and then when you 5 came forward, when you and Mr. Czufin came forward and 6 disclosed that information. So, when you discovered it 7 and when you disclosed it.

8 THE WITNESS: Okay. The discovery was 9 accidental. The problem report was dated, I think, the 10 7th and I probably, you know, looking for other 11 information to see why the plant responded the way it did, 12 I didn't find any information in REDAS on the 7th, so I 13 just said, okay, I'll collect a week's worth of data. And 14 this is the curve that I got.

15 MR. VORSE: And for the record, we'd like a copy 16 of that.

17 THE WITNESS: Okay.

18 MR. WEINBERG: We'll make it at lunch time.

19 MR. VORSE: Okay.

20 THE WITNESS: We had discussions about the 21 second test. I think in the engineering mind and mode, I

= - p,#

22 looked at thedata--therewasmoredata[p.Therewasmore 3.s..-t<

23 information for me to look at, whether or not it told us 24 anything.

25 It was not a significant thing at the time. If

135 1 I'd of seen six or eight p. lots I don't think it would have 2 mattered whether I saw one or si:,( or eight because I felt 3 like -- at the tima all I felt was, okay, they violated a 4 response procedure and they shouldn't have and they're 5 going to get their hands slapped and then go on about our  ;-

6 business. That's about all the inference I put on either ,

7 one.

8 MR. WEINBERG: What did the REDAS show for the 9 4th and 5th?

10 THE WITNESS: Well, this is the REDAS data.

11 MR, WEINBERG: And it showed that there was a 12 similar drop in the water on both the 4th and the 5th?

13 THE WITNESS: Yeah, see, this is makeup tank 14 level here, the response. And this is not an abnormal --

1: Here's your -- Sorry. This is your normal additional 16 that you see, these small -- small deviations are changes.

17 This was not a normal routine plant operation.

18 MR. WEINBERG: The large downward spike.

19 THE WITNESS: Right. Okay. These two just, you 20 know, boom. Obviously that's where they performed their 21 test, that's where they got the data they did.

22 MR. WEINBERG: And when you saw that did you 23 tell -- did you speak with Mr. Saltsman about, you know, 24 your understanding that there had been obviously more than 25 one evolution?

- - - - - - _ - _ - _ _ _ --~ _-- - - - - -

136 Yeah. In fact 1 THE WITNESS:

2 MR. VORSE: When was that?

3 THE WITNESS: That was -- I think it was the I don't 4 very week that the problem report was written.

remember if we got a bootleg copy, but, you know, we heard 5

6 about it, rather quickly because our supervisor would have (vse two w ' *

  • 6And I had a copy of it or I was aware 7 had to accept ig.

pH-n-n-u 8 of it. And Phil probably-wsca't pn n~ns -- I had all these 9

computer points memorized, because I had looked at so much 10 data and done so many comparisons. I think I even had 11 them in a little sticky right by my computer.

12 And I went in and I papped it in, did the little And 13 -- pulled the data and did the Ex-Cel plotting of it.

3esAuse 14 I think Phil may have been there -or--w !,Ws. u pr e e were right in the So we were workingf Mn-ae*R)all day for 15 middle of turnover. y And yeah, we 16 several days prior to and after this, 17 discussed it.

MR. WEINBERG:

And did you plot the data off of 18 19 REDAS for the 4th and 5th?

THE WITNESS: Yes. This is the REDA3 level for 20 This is the REDAS temperature, 21 the 4th and the 5th.

That's the data points.

22 pressure and level for the 4th.

23 I think -- and this is the 5th.

And did you plot the REDAS data 24 MR. WEINBERG:

2S against the curve?

137 1 THE WITNESS: Yes, I did.

2 MR. WEINBERG: And, for the 4th?

3 THE WITNESS: Almost certain I did.

4 MR. WEINBERG: And they had already done it for 5 the 5th?

6 THE WITNESS: Right.

7 MR. WEINBERG: And when you plotted it for t'-

8 4th did it -- was it on the unauthot d side of the line?

9 THE WITNESS: Yes.

10 MR. DOCKERY: To what extent?

11 THE WITNESS: What I recall, and I don't know 12 what has changed or what -- I forgot. I recall plotting 13 the data from the 4th and at that time it appeared to me 14 that they submitted the worst of the two curves. And I 15 probably - I felt, like, well, dadgummit, they're making 16 this out to look worse than it was. I was a little upset BE'*""

e p#

17 shortly after that everybody was giving it so much (wr 4 a DMA) 18 credibility. But I tried to replot that datagrecently and pW n-u-1s 19 it didn't appear that way.

> y ,4e 4 , y n A c t 20 -

I was so

, ,,,, c So I don' t know if I did some* hing Win-s. 4s 21 much 3 into the details M ee.

I think I saw something that yN n-w s @ "-*****

22 was obvious to me there that is not obvious to me as of a 23 few days ago. I might could dig into it and try to 24 reproduce it. But -- And I had plans on doing that, but 25 I was called out of town for several days and I just

138 1 haven't had time. But no, I could not reproduce what I 2 felt about the 4th test that I felt back then.

3 But I didn't make any big deal. I think Phil and 4 I had discussions, I may have talked to Jim Lane about it, 5 and it didn't matter anyway. The problem report was 6 written, it was going to be evaluated. And regardless of 7 what I felt, the person responsible for the problem report 8 was going to have to find our what occurred, whac are the 9 corrections.

10 MR. WEINBERG: You mean when you tried to 11 reproduce it recently it appeared to b'e about the same?

12 THE WITNE3S: It appeared different from wh I 13 remember.

14 MR. WEINBERG: It was on the unauthorized side 15 but more so than you had remembered it?

36 THE WITNESS: It cppears to -- yes, yes. It was 17 -- It was definitely -- it responded a similar fashien as 18 the 5th did.

19 What I recall, I seem to recall is that it did 20 not have this little blip in it, which I don't understand 21 to date. It was more of a smooth transition. But I did 22 not see that when I tried to plot it recently. This 23 bothered me. I don't know why. You shift this point to 24 the curve, okay, then it would make sense. But, I don't 25 know what happened here, but it didn't --

139 1 MR. STENGER: Do you have any idea why they 2 would have run two evolutions?

3 THE WITNESS: I think they were probably trying 4 to get the beat data they could to present. That's my 5 best guess.

6 MR. VORSE: Okay. So you discussed your 7 findings with Mr. Phil Salteman?

8 THE WITNESS: Yes. And then -- Let's see, and ,

9 then I thirik Phil and I both agreed, you know, it's not a 10 Eignificant 1s000. AE far as we knew if it was relevant

.nJ l 11 it would come out. -And any investigation that may go

! yw 12 on -- '*"**"

13 MR. WEINBERG: You're talking about the 4th now?

14 THE WITNESS: Yes. Right. And --

15 MR. RAPP: Let me interject. At this point are 16 you -- is there an active investigation going on by FPC?

17 THE WITNESS: At that point there would just be 18 the investigation for the problem report. I don't -- you 19 know -- at that --

20 MR. RAPP: Okay.

21 THE WITNESS: We didn't know what, where we were 22 going or where anybody would go with this --

23 MR. RAPP: You're talking about a resolution of 24 the problem report rather than some sort of investigations i 25 to operator conduct?

140 1 THE WITNESS: Right. Yeah, and then later on we 2 of course knew there was some investigation going on and I 3 imagine we still felt if it's significant, if it makes a 4 difference it'll ccme out.

5 And it was just my opinion that it didn't add to, 6 it didn't matter. You know. Whether you violate a 7 procedure once or 50 times you got to tell them don't do 8 that, and then that's the end of it.

9 Then -- So all the period went, you know, this 10 year or so went by and I kept my file handy and I was 11 expecting to be interviewed. And I came to the 12 conclusion, well, 1 guess they've come to their own 13 conclusions without any input from us. And, hey, if 14 that's the way they want to do it, that's management's 15 prerogative.

16 So, and then when I read the NRC report, I got a 17 copy, no one sent it to me --

18 MR. VORSE: Inspection report.

19 THE WITNESS: Inspection report, yes. I think 20 Phil had one in his office and I made a copy of it. And I 21 took it home and I read it, no Thursday, Wednesday night, 22 whatever. Ar.d it scared me. I thought, this is way, way 23 more serious than I ever thought that this would come to.

24 And I saw in the, you know, various, you know, 25 withholding information. And I've got that here that,

141 1 thought, well, you know, I was bothered by the fact that 2 all this went on and there was no evidence, no nothing 3 related to the second test. And I was nervous. I was 4 uneasy about it, because I knew about it.

5 And Dave Czufin, who was the Shop manager where I 6 work -- I don't work for Dave now, but he is the manager 7 and also the most familiar person with what was going

~

8 on -- I asked him if he would look at it and give me his 9 opinion.

10 So, I think Dave took it home like on a Thursday 11 night. And then Friday morning I asked him if he had a l

12 chance to look at it. And he said he did. Arc I think he 13 made it even more clear to me that we cannot, you know,

(; gaare>*ve) 14 this has to come out. And I totally agreed.p If you want

/J *2 *

  • 4 C 15 I'll go to Mr. Hickle right now and I1 tell him what 1 16 know. And he said no, T

17 b And he was doing that for a reason, 18 '*hich I appreciated. He was trying to protect me from 19 being the rat, or whatever.

geesusc 20 And partly,3 Phil Saltsman had had a conversation gyg ybirs=As-13 21 awhile 3much earlier with, a casual conversation with Mr.

y4~ /t-M m e 22 Hickle. And he, I think, felt like that conversation 23 wouldn't go anywhere with his name. And it was strictly a 24 conversation that they shouldn't have done that, you know.

25 Well, it was out all over. And Phil Saltsman,

/

M'?

j7;-

C

142 1 you, you're caught, you know, you and Mr. Hickle go out You know, he got a very bad 2 and have a beer and do this.

3 name with Operations and I don't think he deserved it.

comes to this 4 He's an STA, he's very knowledgeable when it And it was something he was aware of 5 type of operations.

6 and he thought he ought to discuso with Mr. Hickle.

I think, 7

And it started dawning on all of us, 8 what maybe the significance --

MR. WEINBERG:

You're talking about when he had 9

'94?

10 his-discussion with Hickle back in September of Right. Right.

THE WITNESS: This was --

11 12 Well, I think Dave knew of that discussion and he You know, he would let it come 13 was trying to protect me.

And I appreciated 11 out but not have a name tied to it.

that. But I told Dave I was supposed to meet with a bunch 15 16 of. people from Design the next day to review the history f

17 of this thing and I said, do you want me to bring it up And he said, no, 18 tomorrow at our meeting.

And I didn't have a problem 19 20 with that.

The next week I was in a week of training in 21 And he asked me to give 22 Tampa and Mr. Hickle called me.

And I told him -- you know, at 23 him what I knew about it.

24 that -- I told him I thought I could produce a curve that And I was quite confident that two 25 showed the two tests.

bTl .)

j

- .- . . . . _ - .. -- .-. - - . - , - - . . ~ . .- - -.

143 And that's about all there was to it-

~

1 tests happened. . .

2 MR. RAFP:. Who is Jim Lane?

~3 .THE WITNESS: ~ Jim Lane was= acting supervisor from when-Dave Czufin moved to Maintenance.

~

4

? MR. DOCKERY: How do you spell that name?

6 THE WITNESS: L-A-N-E.

7- MR. DOCKERY: Okay.

8 MR. RAPP: What -- You said you brought this up 9 to Jim Lane,-the fact'that there were two tests?

10 THE WI1 NESS: Yes. I think in a -- I think 11 probably what we talked about was how we felt like there 12 was a lot of credibility given to this test, and I didn't 13 like that. The fact that two tests came up. I don't 14 remember the details of the conversation with Jim.

15 _ Jim was not really -- he had~not been involved in 16 the issue to any detail. And this was all probably kind i 17 of Greek to him- . But whoever, you know, Jim -- noneLof us 10 had a compelling feeling to go run to anybody. If it 19 happened today I would have called Dave Fields. But I, 20 you know, it just didn't occur to me. I would say, hey, _

21 Dave, make sure that you tell them this. But it did not 4 22 -occur to me to do that.

23- MR.'DOCKERY: Is there anything else?

24 :THE WITNESS: -No.

' 25 PGt. DOCKERY: Mr. Hinman, we appreciate your e a.-+ -- - > , , ~ - . . . - - . - - - - - - - - - _ _ - - - - - - - - - - - ~ >we~-

144 1 testimony here today. And for the sake of affording you 2 the opportunity to state anything you want to state, is 3 there anything you'd like to add, is there any questions 4 that you anticipated we would ask that we have not asked?

5 THE WITNESS: No , I think you've covered it 6 pretty well.

7 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Before we go off the record 8 I'd like to point out to you that as Mr. Weinberg said, 9 the attorneys present here today represent Florida Power 10 Company, not necessarily your interests.

11 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.

12 MR. DOCKERY: And I want to make sure you 13 understand that you have the right to meet with us 14 privately outside their presence if you wish to do so.

15 THE WITNESS: Okay.

16 MR. DOCKERY: Sandy, vould you like to make your 17 usual comment about review of transcript?

18 MR. WEINBERG: Well, you just made it.

19 You'll have an opportunity to review and sign 20 your transcript.

21 THE WITNESS: Okay.

22 MR. DOCKERY: And we will afford you that 23 opportunity.

24 Mr. Stenger, anything you'd like to add?

25 MR. STENGER: No. -

2.45 1 MR. DOCKERY: In that case', we'll go off the 2 record, 3 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at 4 12:21 v' clock p.m.)

5 -----

6 7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

hY 1 C2RTIFICATE 2 This is to certify that the attached proceedings 3 before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 4 the matter of:

5 Name of Proceeding: Interview of Patrick Hinman 6 Docket Number (s): 2-94-036 7 Place of Proceeding: Cryst.a1 River, Florida 8

9 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 10 transcript thereof for the file of the United States 11 Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter *-

12 reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the 13 court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true 14 and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.

15 16 AMS/ A . l @//

17 # . May 18 Official Reporter 19 Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.

20 21 22 23 24 25 I

\Y l

1 CERTIFICATE 2 This is to certify that the attached proceed 1:.gs 3 before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 4 the matter of:

5 Name of Proceeding: Interview of Patrick Hinman 6 Docket Number (s): 2-94-036 7 Place of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida 8

9 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 10 transcript thereof for the file of the United States s

11 Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter -

12 reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the 13 court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true 14 and accurate record of the foregoing priceedings, 15 /

16 AML4/ s49 '

+4 2 i 17 # Peggy S. May 18 Official Reporter 19 Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.

20 21 22 23 24 25

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