IR 05000344/1988021
| ML20154L800 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Trojan File:Portland General Electric icon.png |
| Issue date: | 05/13/1988 |
| From: | Rebecca Barr, Mendonca M, Suh G NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION V) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20154L795 | List: |
| References | |
| 50-344-88-21-MM, NUDOCS 8806010068 | |
| Download: ML20154L800 (6) | |
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U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
REGION V
Report No.
50-344/88-21 Docket No.
50-344-License No.
NPF-1 Licensee:
Portland General Electric Company-121 S. W. Salmon Street-Portland, Oregon 97204 Facility Harr.e: Trojan Nuclear Plant Meeting at:
Portland General Electric Company Headquarters, Portland, Oregon
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Mec'.ing Conducted:
April 22, 1988 d
Y' F N Inspectors:
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b R. C. Barr, Senior Resident Inspsctor Date Signed m.% % M g,'
sn > /rr G. Y. Suh, Resident Inspector "
Date Signed b' ~
W'J /O
Approved by:
M. M. Mendonca, Ch ef Date Signed ____
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Reactor Projects Section 1 meeting Summary:
Meeting on April 22, 198_8 (Meeting Report No. 50-344/88-21)
Scope:
Ma..a;;eraent meeting to review the Systematic Assessment of Licensee
Performar.se (SALP) results for the period from November 1,1986 through November 30, 1987, and to discuss two recently developed issues on containment isolation ve.1ves.
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m DETAILS 1.
Meeting Attendees l
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Licensee Attendees W.' J. Lindblad, Pres ident D
W. Coc': field, Vice President, Nuclear C. A. Olmstead, Trojan Plant General Manager C. P. Yundt, General Manager, Technical Functions L. W. Erickson, Manager, Nuclear Quality Assurance D. W. Swan, Manager, Technical Services J. W. Lentsch, Manager, Personnel Protection A. N. Roller, Manager, Nuclear Plant Engineering T. D. 'dalt, Manager, Nuclear Safety and Regulation G. JA. Zimmerman, Nuclear Safety and Regulation J. H. Culp, Manager, Nuclear Security b.
NRC Attendees J. B. Martin, Regional Administrator
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D. F. Kirsch, Director, Reactor Safety and Projects G. V. Knighton, Director, Project Directorate 5, NRR A. Johnson, Enforcement Of0'cer
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G. Cook, Public Affairs Of ficer H. M. Hendonca, Chief, Reactor Projects Section 1 R. C. E 2rr,. Senior Resident Inspector T. L. Chan, Project Manager, NRR T. Foley, Performance Evaluation Branch, NRR G. Y. Suh, Resident Inspector i
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Gregon Department of Energy W. Dixon, Administrator, Nuclear Safety M. W. Alsworth, Manager, Reactor Safety H. Moomey, Tro,ier Resident Inspector A number of other licensee managers and supervisors were also in t
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attendance, as well as two representatives from the Bonneville Power l
Administration.
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Meeting Summary
The meeting convened at approximately 8:00 a.m. on April 22, 1988, at the l
Portland office of the Portland General Electric Company.
The purpose of l
the meeting was to review the results of the NRC Systematic Assessment of l
Licensee Performance (SALP) from November 1, 1986, through November 30, 1987, and to' discuss two recently developed issues.
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SALP Results A summary of the NRC's assessment of the licensee's performance was presented.
Licensee performance was found to be acceptable and directed toward safe facility operation.
The SALP Board recognized that a number of improvement programs have been initiated and noted an apparent change in the att,itude of plant staff which placed mo"e emphasis on improved performance and on self-critical evaluation of identified problems.
However, the SALP Board also concluded that continued management attention was needed to assure effective improvements in identified problem areas such as procedural compliance and proceeding with evolutions in the face of uncertainty.
A discussion of specific functional areas followed.
For each area, Mr.
Mendonca provided a brief summary of the results documented in SALP Report No. 50-344/87-41.
In the area of Operations, Mr. Martin expressed the view that performance was better now than four or five years ago, primarily for routine evolutions.
Control room discipline in particular appeared to have improved.
However, events such as the failures of the safety injection accumulator fill line raised concerns on performance in unusual situations.
Mr. Mertin concluded that the basic instinct of the operations staff should be to stop and assess unusual characteristics and that this instinct should be instilled into the organization Mr. Cockfield acknowledged that performance in the operations area still needed improvement, and that the operations staf f clearly understands management expectations.
In the Radiological Controls area, Mr. Martin referred to the radiological events of the 1987 refueling outage which indicated a lack of preparation and initially, a poor understanding of the potential magnitude of the problem.
Once the potential seriousness of the problem was recognized, licensee management dealt with the issues in a vigorous manner.
It was noted that preparations for the 1988 refueling outage appeared to be better than for the previous outage.
The licensee agreed that the radiation protection staff was better prepared for the current outage.
The licensee noted that approximately two shif ts had been lost during preparations for reactor vessel head lifting because the radiation protection staff acted in a conservative
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manner to stop an evolution.
In the Maintenance area, Mr. Kirsch noted that although the Procedural Improvement Program was a positive step, the program appeared to be progressing slow?v; and that improvements will be seen when enhanced procedures are prsvided and implemented by the plant staff.
Mr. Olmstead responded that management expectations to stop and fix an inadequate procedure had been clearly communicated as evidenced by the large number of procedure deviations that have been processed.
Mr.
Olmstead indicated that improvements in procedures and in the maintenance
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area were identified as two of the six highest management priorities this year.
i In the Fire Protection area, the licensee was strongly encouraged to increase management attention and to evaluate its efforts in improving performance. Mr. Martin expressed the sense that improven, ant was not proceeding in this area as it is in other areas.
The licensee stated that improvement was needed in its fire protection program. Progress has been slow but recently a new organization-had been implemented.
l In the Security area, Mr. Cockfield acknowledged that licensee efforts
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need to be improved. The Security Task Force has been rearganized in order to better support the improvement initiatives within Security. The licensee recognized the importance of the efforts and connitted to work (>
in this area.
l-In the Quality Programs area, Mr. Mendonca noted that the licensee's quality assurance organization needed to assume a more active role in plant activities, and that significant management changes in the QA department had occurred during the assessment period. Mr. Martin stated l
that the biggest problem at Trojan historically was in identifying i
problems and taking corrective actions.
Further, it was noted that one measure of quality related effectiveness was the prior involvement by offsite and onsite conunittees, Performance Monitoring / Events Assessment, and QA in problems %at the NRC identifies or that are self-revealing.
V The licensee agreed that clearly a number of improaments need to be made I-in this area. A management meeting with the NRC on quality assurance was being planned. Quality Assurance plans to stress more performance orierted audits and surveillances.
In the last few months, the Plant Review Board was involved in a self-assessment to improve its effectiveness. The Trojan Nuclear Operations Board plans to be more involved in quality assurance activities. Mr. Lindblad commented that he viewed the management change in the QA department as a positive step to improve performance.
In addition, Mr. Lindblad noted that there were not many projects in the country where the plant manager was formerly the QA manager, and that fact ceranted the organization and was indicative of PGE's commitment to QA.
Mr. Martin noted that a period of QA management stability appeared to be needed, and that one potential problem with reorganization, in addressing identified problems, was a decrease in accountability.
In the Engineering area, Mr. Martin stated that a considerable amount of inspection affort has been spent over the last two years evaluating how engineering work is done at nuclear plant utilities. The results clearly showed areas for improvement, and a number of discussions have been held on this subject. A year ago, the problein still needed to be addressed; for example, initial licensee efforts exhibited shortcomings regarding the feedwatar restraint and pipe support issues in the 1987 refueling outage.
G-Martin noted that recent pioblems such as the pressure transmittec issue was a well thought-out and thorough example of
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engineering work.
Improvement efforts in this area still have a. number
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.of-years to go; however, Trojan has made significant improvements in this area.
Mr. Martin discussed the results of Trojan plant acceu computer printouts, which indicated that top line management spent more time in.
the plant than first line supervisors. Mr. Martin noted that there appeared.to be a close correspondence between plants which are performing well and how often the top 12 managers get out in the plant.
Mr. Olmstead stated that plant managers were participating in the Trojan Excellence Program which discussed the concept of regular managemer.t inspection of the facility.
Mr. Martin indicated that effort should be spent on addressing problems and to assure management expectations are clearly comunicated to all levels in the organization.
The licensee was viewed as currently a
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year-te-18 months into an improving performance trend.
Given that an organization can absorb only so much change in a unit of time, sustained management attention was needed to further improve performance.
Recent Issues Mr. Mendonca discussed two recent inspection findings.
The first dealt with an inadequate safety evaluation which led to four containment isolation valves on two feedwater drain lines being left in the open position from August, 1987 until identification of the event in March, 1988. The second dealt with failure to perform timely inservice testing of containment isolation valves in the chilled water system and the adequacy of licensec corrective actions in response to previous test performance of these valves.
Detailed discussion of these issues are to be presented in Inspection Report 50-344/88-13.
On the feedwater drain line valves, the safety evaluation failed to recognize that the valves affected technical specifications for containment isolation valves and containment integrity. The engineering work performed for the safety evaluation, however, was relatively sound.
In addition, discussions indicated that the involved people took responsibility and acknowledged the error. Mr. Kirsch commented that it was of concern that the approval and review process for the safety evaluation failed to identify the error.
Mr. Martin stated that given the multiple opportunities for discovery of
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the event, one might conclude that the many involved people were unclear as to their responsibilities, or as to an understanding of what their signature in the review process represents.
Mr. Cockfield stated that the particular valves in question may not have significant safety implications; however, the licensae was taking the event very seriously. Mr. Olmstead noted that PM/EA was conducting an event evaluation.
On the chilled water system valves, Mr. Martin expressed the view that the event indicated a lack of und3rstanding of the purpose of the
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inservice testing program, i.e., the spirit of testing is to recognize emerging problems.
Instead, in this case the test data was treated on a seemingly routine basis.
This problem was similar to the feedwater
. erosion / corrosion issue of the 1987 refueling outage, where the licensee ultimately addressed the problem in a sound and thorough manner, but prior to that there were indicators of problems that were not recognized and addressed.
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Mr. Cockfield responded that the licensee has experienced a numoer of problems in the surveillance area and was evaluating the program as a t.hol a.
One recent step was the reorganization of the plant engineering aepartment to have a branch manager in charge of a surveillance and testing group.
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The meeting adjourned at approximately 10:15 a.m.
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