IR 05000528/1992033
| ML17306B084 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Palo Verde  |
| Issue date: | 10/08/1992 |
| From: | Richards S NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION V) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML17306B083 | List: |
| References | |
| 50-528-92-33, 50-529-92-33, 50-530-92-33, NUDOCS 9211020052 | |
| Download: ML17306B084 (10) | |
Text
U.
S.
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION REGION V
Re ort Nos.
ocket Nos.
50-528/92-33, 50-529/92-33, and 50-530/92-33 50-528, 50-529, and 50-530 N
.
~icensee Arizona Public Service Company P. 0.
Box 53999, Station 9012 Phoenix, AZ 85072-3999
~gill N
d N
I
iggtti Units 1, 2, and
Ins ection
~end cted Ins ectors September 14 through 18, 1992 H.
Wong, Team Leader R. Huey, Enforcement Officer, Region V
L. Coblentz, Region V Inspector B. Rogers, NRR
~Pd N
II. Il g, tii I Reactor Projects Section
roved B
)o-8- t2.
t.
g F
F t ~g Division of Reactor Safety and Projects ns ection Summar
S ecial Ins ection on Se tember 14 throu h 18 1992 Re ort Numbers 50-5
9 -33 50-529 92-33 and 50-530 92-33 An unannounced, special inspection was conducted to gain a sense of the perceptions and attitudes of Palo Verde employees with regard to their ability to raise significant safety issues.
Interviews with over 300 employees were conducted.
92ii020052 500QQ28 DR
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DETAILS l.
Attendees at Exit Meetin rizona Public Service Com an APS W. Conway, Executive 'Vice President J. Levine, Vice President, Nuclear Production E. Simpson, Vice President, Engineering S. Guthrie, Director, equality Assurance and guality Control G. Overbeck, Director, Site Technical Services K. Hamlin, Director, Nuclear Safety R. Stevens, Manager, Nuclear Licensing T. Bradish, Manager, Licensing and Compliance N. Loftin, Secretary of Corporate Counsel J.
Hepner, Senior Attorney P. Caudill, Director, Site Services B. Ballard, Director, Executive Administration K. Davis, Director, Human Resources T. Stewart, Manager, Employee Concerns Program D. Andrews, Manager, Communications W. Montefour, Sr. Coordinator, Management Services P. Horn, Sr. Coordinator, Management Services Site e resentatives
~ J. Draper, Site Representative, Southern California Edison R. Henry, Site Representative, Salt River Project M. Benac, Manager, El Paso Electric Company The exit meeting was held with NRC inspectors on September 18, 1992.
2.
Interview of Palo Verde Em lo ees A.
Back round Pur ose B.
Over the past several years, there have been a number of complaints filed with the Department of Labor (DOL) by Palo Verde employees alleging employment discrimination for having raised safety concerns.
In two of these cases, DOL Administrative Law Judges have ruled that employment discrimination did occur.
Both of these decisions are under appeal to the Secretary of Labor.
The NRC staff decided to conduct a survey of Palo Verde employees using one-on-one interviews to gain a sense of whether a widespread problem exists.
The survey was intended to determine the extent to which a broad spectrum of non-supervisory Palo Verde employees felt free to raise significant safety issues to their supervisors, management, the APS Employee Concerns Program (hotline),
and the NRC.
ethodolo The special inspection was unannounced.
, APS management was not informed that a survey was to take place until.the day that the
initial interviews were conducted, September 14, 1992.
The interviews were conducted by four NRC inspectors (three from the NRC Region V Office and one from the Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation),
beginning early in the afternoon of September 14, 1992.
The intention was to complete the interview process as quickly as possible to maximize the opportunity to obtain fresh, unrehearsed employee responses during the interviews.
The interviews were concluded after three days.
The NRC inspectors selected those individuals to be interviewed using Palo Verde organization charts listing personnel in major organizations performing safety-related work activities.
The inspectors'ethod for selecting those to be interviewed was simply to select every fifth name appearing on the organization charts.
It was anticipated that in using this selection method, some individuals would not be available for interview due to sickness, vacation, or schedule problems, and that others would not be directly involved in safety-related work (clerk or secretary).
The inspectors conducted interviews with as many of those originally selected as possible.
If the original person selected was not available and the NRC inspector considered it necessary to select another individual to provide an adequate sample, an alternate was selected, usually the next person on the organization chart.
Selection of the next person on the chart would continue until an available person was identified.
In a few cases, because some individuals were on shift schedules (such as licensed operators and unit radiation protection technicians),
employees were selected based on being available during the interview period.
On a sampling basis (about one-third of those reported to be unavailable),
the inspectors confirmed the validity of the reasons given for employees being unavailable for interviews.
In all cases, the NRC inspectors were the ones who actually selected those Palo Verde employees to be interviewed.
No input was requested or received from the licensee in selecting employees to be interviewed.
There was no indication that APS attempted to bias the sampling process, either by limiting those to be interviewed or by providing instructions to those interviewed.
With the exception of the first day, those Palo Verde employees selected by the NRC inspectors to be interviewed were identified to licensee personnel at approximately noon, the day before the interview.
This minimized the potential impact of the. interviews on normal plant activities, while at the same time not allowing a long period of time for employees to consider the interviews.
In the entrance meeting for the inspection on September 14, 1992, APS managers were told by the NRC team leader that Palo Verde managers and supervisors should not inform their workers of the purpose of the NRC interviews, nor attempt to gain insights into the interview details by discussing the interviews with those who had
.been'nterviewe c'
C.
Conduct of Interviews Two questions were used to determine employee perceptions as to their freedom to raise safety issues:
1.
Briefly describe what you would do if you identified a plant safety issue which you considered to be significant, and 2.
Do you feel free to take a significant safety issue of which you are aware to your supervisor, higher levels of your management, the APS Employee Concerns Program (hotline), or the NRC?
Those who did not feel free to raise a significant safety issue were asked for a brief explanation.
Each interviewee was asked the same two questions.
At the beginning of each interview, the NRC inspector asked whether the interviewee had been told the purpose of the interviews or had been given any guidance on how to answer any of the inspector's questions.
They were also told that neither their names nor other identifying information would be discussed with APS management or put into a report.
Further, at the end of the interview, they were asked not to discuss the details of the interviews with their peers or management until the interview process was completed.
D.
Interview Results The NRC survey plan called for four NRC inspectors to interview about 10'f the non-supervisory employees (200-250),
including contractors, site and corporate office personnel, and some workers
'on the backshift work schedule.
The four NRC inspectors conducted 314 such interviews.
These interviews were conducted from September 14 to 16, 1992.
Interviews were concluded on the afternoon of September 16 due to an article appearing in a local newspaper and to other media interest in the NRC survey which began to appear on the afternoon of September 16.
The rationale for ending the survey process was that the media articles and general knowledge at the site of the survey process could potentially influence future interviews.
The organizational distribution of the 314 employees interviewed by the NRC inspectors is presented below-Unit Organizations (including Operations, Radiation Protection, Maintenance, Chemistry, Work Control, and guality Control):
Unit 1 - 33 employees, Unit 2 30 employees, and Unit 3 - 30 employees (total of 93 unit organization personnel)
Site Naintenance E Hodifications
~l'
Plant Support (Operations Standards, Fire Protection, and Outages)
Site Services
{Security, Emergency Planning, and Material Control) - 17 Training
Radiation Protection (Outage Planning; Technical Services, and Support Services) - ll Chemistry RMS/Technical Services - 3 Nuclear Engineering - 33 Procurement Engineering and Projects
Site Technical Support - 32 Nuclear Fuel Management - 9 Nuclear Safety and Licensing
guality Assurance
Total 314 employees Few interviewees claimed to know the purpose of the interviews.
A few stated that the reason for the'nterview was due to the high number of allegations at Palo Verde.
In all cases, the interviewees stated that they had not been coached on how to answer the inspectors'uestions.
A summary of the results of the 314 Palo Verde employees interviewed is presented below:
288 employees (approximately 92X of those inter viewed) felt free to raise significant safety issues to their supervisor, higher levels of APS management, the APS Employee Concerns Program, and the NRC.
20 employees (approximately 6X) felt they could go to their immediate supervisor with safety concerns, but were reluctant to go beyond their direct supervision (to higher levels of APS management, the APS Employee Concerns Program (hotline), or the NRC) in raising safety issues.
6 employees (approximately 2X) felt reluctant to raise safety issues to their immediate foreman or supervisor, or abov Of the 26 employees having some reservations, 5 (less than 2X) said that they had bad experiences (for example, not receiving a
. promotion)
because they raised safety issues.
These experiences had occurred in 1991 and 1992.
The NRC is evaluating each of these five cases to determine whether further action can or should be taken.
Those who felt reluctant to raise safety issues to some level of supervision or management or to the NRC were not uniformly spread across all APS organizations.
There appeared to be some organizations which had a higher proportion.of those interviewed who felt reluctant.
The sur'vey, however, did not identify a consistent set of reasons for those individuals who felt free to raise significant safety issues to their immediate supervisors, but felt some reluctance to raise such issues above their supervisors.
3.
~Ei N
An exit meeting was held on September 18, 1992, with licensee management and the NRC inspectors, during which the observations in this report were generally discussed.