ML061770166
| ML061770166 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem, Hope Creek  |
| Issue date: | 01/16/2004 |
| From: | NRC/OI |
| To: | |
| References | |
| 1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194, NRC-1295 | |
| Download: ML061770166 (140) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Interview Docket Number: 1-2003-051 F
. Lo cation
- 0 Location:
Salem, New Jersey Date: Friday, January 16, 2004 Work Order No.: NRC-1295 Pages 1-138 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers i323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 L in this record was deleted (202) 234-4433 /
.,iaccordance with the Freedom of Information Act, exemptions 5-_
F.OIA.., ,, - . / ..-
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 +++ ++
4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 ----------------------------x 7 IN THE MATTER OF:
8 INTERVIEW OF: Docket No. 1-2003-051F 9
10 (CLOSED) 11 ----------------------------x 12 Friday, January 16, 2004 13 14 PSEG Nuclear 15 Training Center 16 Salem, NJ 17 18 The above-entitled interview we Ls conducted 19 at 12:45 p.m.
20 21 BEFORE:
22 Special Agent EILEEN NEFF 23 Senior Project Engineer SCOTT BARBER 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
2 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (12:45 p.m.)
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Today's date is 4 January the 16th, 2004, the time is approximately 5 12:45 p.m. Speaking is Special Agent Eileen Neff, 6 U.S. NRC Region 1, Office of Investigations. Also 7 present for this interview is Senior Project Engineer 8 Scott Barber with the Division of Reactor Projects, 9 also with Region 1. This interview will take place 10 with spelled?
11 12 13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Thank you.
14 And the subject of the interview is the safety 15 conscious work environment at Hope Creek you 16 experienced being here at Hope Creek. Okay. The 17 location of the interview is at PSEG Nuclear Training 18 Center in Salem, New Jersey.
19 At this point, what I'd like to do is 20 place you under oath. If you'd raise your right hand.
21 Do you swear that the testimony that 22 you're about to provide is the truth, the whole truth 23 and nothing but the truth, so help you God?
- I do.
24 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And for the NEAL R. GROSS )/j i COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 17.1 RHRCFp ISI Atf AVF MW 7~-
3 1 record, your identification, date of birth, social 2 security.
3 4
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And your home 6 address?
0 m lmlmamm, 9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Thank you. And I I0 told you before we went on the record that you're not 11 being approached as the subject of any investigation 12 or any potential wrongdoing. We're talking to you for 13 your assessment of the work environment. And as part 14 of that in trying to define it, I was talking to you 15 about how that would include -- our discussion would 16 include employees' ability, including your own and 17 management, ability to raise concerns, the nature of 18 the concerns that you've witnessed being raised, how 19 they were handled up the chain of command, what the 20 response is and people's comfort level with raising, 21 we'll say specifically, safety concerns. Part of that 22 might be industrial safety concerns, and part of it 23 would be nuclear safety concerns, and the focus here 24 would be the health and safety of the public, nuclear 25 safety..
NEAL R. GROSS 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
4 1 In addition to that, we're also looking at 2 decision making and what goes into the decision making 3 on the site. Is it conservative, is it appropriate, 4 are you comfortable with what you've been 5 participating in? In that, the environment -- I'll go 6 pretty broad at first. Let me ask if you think -- do 7 you see any strengths to the environment that you're 8 working within. You know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Let 9 me back up just a little bit, I'm sorry, because what 10 I did was I skipped ahead to -- I didn't include your 11 experience here. Your education experience, please.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 -PMIAL AGENT NEFF: So when did you leave 24 the !and when did you start with 25 in COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS uPVIC ICI AknMfl Dý' WA K~~IU
5 1 ._. - Z) and then I went to work for*
July 2 *_for approximately a year starting in 3 of that- year, 4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And what position was 5 that?
6 7
8 9
10 NEFF: Okay.
11 SPECIAL AGENT 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 SPECIAL-AGENT NEFF:' Hope Creek side?
21 .. Hope Creek side.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
23 And then I went into 24 (Tand I was in the Hope Creek System 25 lo. So that would NEAL R. GROS S J W'.Ur I REPRTRS AND TRANSCRIBERS
"'"1 OwJnr= M AI~Jf AVR-. N.W.
6 1 -- and then it was -- trying to think of the year I 2 started -- It was toward the end of, 3 let's see, I guess it would have been -- yes, I 4 started w 6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: ( )through now?
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
10 11 aim- Correct..
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And what was your 13 position inthen?
14 15 16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: When was 17 that, i 18 No -- yes, yes. I'm 19 trying to remember the dates here.
20 21 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Pretty good on the 23 dates.
24 . Yes. There's a lot of 25 dates. (II NEAL R. GROSS 7 C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
- 11. RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
7 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: February 1, '99, 2 okay. And you were then, what, sometime in 4A:
SSPECIAL AGENT NEFF:. Okay.
6 4 I I 7
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Okay. Who 9 have been your shift supervisors? I know there are 10 OSs or Shift Managers, it's a little different title.
ii -Yes. They just went to 12 a Shift-Manager title, I'm not sure when. It's been 13 recent. Up until recently my -- when I started in
- it was *-and I just 14 15 transitioned to -- now, that wason on 16 just transitioned tE.- Aft 17 So for overQ I .,. and then from 18 19 (phonetic).
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
21 And right now it' 22 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: About a week ago or 24 so?
25 A week ago we did a crew NEAL R. GROSS {4 I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
/ II reorganization, changed the crew complements around.
.2 So right now I remained onharlie shif nd
ý3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. All right.
" :5
.;:Thank you. I bypassed around and was asking you about 6
your,: ipressions of the work environment on site, and 7 basically what I'd like to ask you in that time frame 8 then .lt's look at the recent past, since you got to 9 Have you noted in the work 10 environment any particular strengths or any particular weaknesses?
- ... .. Relative to?
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The safety conscious work environment and relative to kind of -- along the.
Is lines of what I was describing in terms of people's 16i ability to raise concerns and how those concerns are responded to.
Right.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF.-. And what you see as
'20 a comfort level. And that would include you K :23 personally, your subordinates as well as your own management chain.
Right. I can only speak
[~ij25
- 24 for Hope Creek but I've always felt I've never had an issue with personally raising NEAL R. GROSS a safety concern or COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
9 1 never felt that any one of my crew had an issue with 2 doing something like that. We've talked about being 3 forthcoming with things like that. If you had a 4 question or you had a concern to, like the union guys 5 for example, to raise to management or even myself 6 just to raise it for my supervision. I've never had 7 a real concern about that; always felt pretty free to 8 do that.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You personally?
10 Yes. Yes.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about on the 12 part of- others? Are you aware of any hesitation on 13 the part of others to raise a concern?
14 Not really, not really.
15 I don't know of any individuals myself that had issues 16 or concerns like that. I really don't.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When you say you 18 talked with your crew about that, when was that?
19 Well, we would -- one of 20 the things that we do is we have our shift turnover 21 for coming on at nights or coming on in the morning, 22 and we always start off our shift meeting with a 23 safety message and the OS usually leads that. We're 24 open for discussion about that, and he sometimes 25 elaborates on it or we'll do it CRSs, you know, just NEAL R. GROSS .'
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.%Ir- AAM 1^ .1.
10 1 to -- if he's not there, if he's at a morning meeting 2 or something like that, but that always starts off the 3 turnover meetings at the beginning of the day, always.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that comes up as 5 a matter of a routine type of discussion?
6 " Yes, it does. Yes, it 7 does.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Aren' t those 9 messages more industrial safety oriented?
10 Some are. Yes, they are 11 industrial safety oriented, and I know we have them 12 every day. I know there have been some nuclear 13 relatedas well, but, correct, they are industrial 14 safety related as well.
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Can you think of any 17 that have been nuclear safety?
1Off. the top of my head I 19 can't, not really. The industrial does weigh more 20 heavily.
21 SPECIAL AGENT"NEFF: In what areas do you 22 see that?'
23 There's a lot of talk 24 about personal safety. Hand injuries, talk about 25 things like that. We talk about electrical safety a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
11 1 lot, especially with switching activities, cold 2 weather, just those types of things.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
4 Ladders, you know, just 5 things come to mind, ladder safety, making sure that 6 -- you know, fall protection, that type of stuff.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Has anyone on your 8 crew ever made you aware that they had a fear of 9 raising a concern, fear -- this would be at your 10 subordinate level -- a basic fear of retaliation or 11 any adverse action might be taken against them for 12 having raised a particular concern?
13 Absolutely not.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. That's not 15 been your experience.
16
.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about to your 18 knowledge in terms of "your peers at the level?
19 -J No, none at all.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And what about 21 in your management chain at your OS/AOM in that area?
22 No. I've never felt that 23 that was an issue or nobody's ever conveyed that to 24 me, and I've always felt, like I said, free with any 25 of the OS staff that I could freely speak about that.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS V -L 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
12 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How about 2 the follow up to whatever issue you were raising? Do 3 you have a perception that there was reasonable follow 4 up or at least consideration of whatever the issue was 5 before you got an answer? I think a lot of people may 6 say, "Yes, I feel okay about raising an issue," but 7 they have varying degrees of confidence on what will 8 be done about that.
9 9-2 Right. Well, I think as 10 an organization we've gotten better with that through 11 the years. I mean I don't know if you're familiar 12 with our daily turnover sheet but we have an entire 13 section on that devoted to safety concerns, and the 14 problem is identified, there's an owner, there's a due 15 date associated with the item, notification numbers 16 associated with it, which is what we use to identify 17 the problems. That information is on that section of 18 the sheet and what we're doing is like compensatory 19 measures as well till we come to some type of final 20 resolution on certain issues.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Would it be 22 fair to characterize those issues as issues identified 23 by an individual kind of their own? In other words, 24 maybe there's some discussion but they have a concern 25 about something either they see as an indication or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
13 1 something in the plant, the way something's working?
2 I mean isn't that the way those kinds of things come 3 up?
4 That's correct.. For 5 example, our diesel generators. We have CO leaks or 6 have had CO leaks in the past and there have been some 7 concerns and issues associated with those problems, 8 and we've addressed those. Engineering's gotten 9 involved, Maintenance has gotten involved, and we have 10 gotten those leaks repaired, and every time we do a 11 diesel run, a normal monthly surveillance run, for 12 example, we'll have Loss Prevention right there 13 monitoring the atmosphere, the breathable atmosphere 14 in the room. And one of the things on another --
15 along the same lines is we'll -- we try and minimize 16 the amount of people in the diesel room on an engine 17 start because unless someone really has to be in there 18 like an engineer to monitor something on initial start 19 that's the type of stuff we cover in pre-job briefs, 20 you know, minimize the people in the room because it 21 is a potentially dangerous time when you're starting 22 a diesel engine.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
24 But the big thing is, and 25 we've gotten a lot better at it, our pre-job briefs NEAL R. GROSS I ,
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14 1 are a lot more thorough and a lot more encompassing 2 from all aspects, not only machine operation but as 3 far as personal safety, lessons learned, OE, talk 4 about communications, things like that, termination 5 points. I mean that is like -- that's what our briefs 6 are all about today.
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
8 They've evolved. They've 9 evolved.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: A lot better since 11 when? What time frame are you comparing it to?
12 7Well, I mean like when I 13 first was an We always did pre-job briefs, but 14 it seems like in the industry there's been, and at 15 Hope Creek, there's been more of an emphasis in the 16 past several years of more thorough pre-job briefs, 17 what needs to be a part of those briefs. And I mean 18 we have gotten better in terms of -- OE was always 19 something that wasn't always discussed but now it's 20 always discussed, making sure we have all the other 21 departments engaged, like I&C will be there for a 22 diesel brief because of instrumentation that they may 23 have to install. We'll have Loss Prevention there for 24 the CO issues, that type of thing.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Let's stay NEAL R. GROSS A rnI IRT RFPnPTFRTR Amn TRANC.rRIRFRS C-"
15 1 with the diesel for just a minute. You talked about 2 carbon monoxide leaks. How did all of this first come 3 about in your recollection?
4 -j Well, I know that -- are 5 you looking specifics?
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yes, kind of 7 a sequence. Do you remember was there one diesel, one 8 in particular or has it always been a problem? I mean 9 has it been an issue for 20 years or is it a recent 10 issue?
11 -I- Yes. I don't know that 12 it's always been a problem but there was, and I don't 13 remember the diesel, the particular diesel, but it 14 seemed to be more of an issue than others with regard 15 to, I guess, atmosphere. You know, you walk in a 16 diesel room and with CO in the air your eyes may burn 17 a little bit, but I mean one diesel was really 18 starting to show more signs of that. And one, I 19 think, I'm trying to remember, during the one run 20 there was some guys actually, I think, may have gotten 21 a little sick. I'm not sure of the details because I 22 wasn't there, but there were some concerns associated 23 with that. And that actually was a big -- that was a 24 big deal in our plant because especially from the 25 equipment operator ranks they raised some safety NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
16 1 issues associated with that particular diesel, and 2 then from there it just -- the CO issue spread to all 3 the diesels and the sensitivity became a heightened --
4 more of an awareness. We were just more sensitive to 5 it.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Would you 7 say that management at the Station reacted promptly to 8 address the concern? I mean was it one of these 9 things where they realized and acknowledged they had 10 a problem and then within a short period of time took 11 some action to shut the diesel down and get into 12 repair activity to fix it or was there some period of 13 time when there was some compensatory measures taken?
14 Do you have a recollection?
15
- What I'm recalling is 16 that while there were compensatory measures taken, as 17 far as repairs, I know things were included, were 18 looked to be handled, placed in the work week 19 schedule. I know that there were those types of 20 things in place, but I don't remember the exact 21 details. As far as them being timely, I think so.
22 It's all relative.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
24 .:ýI think that management 25 did address them and put compensatory measures in NEAL R. GROSS v r.01 IPT RPlrPTF:R ANfl TRANR.RIRPRF .
17 1 place to ensure the safety of the people.
. 2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you 3 recall what the comp measures were at all?
4 Well, I know that 5 well, C02 monitoring for one thing and -- it's been a 6 while and I really don't remember the details.
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. All 8 right. That's fine.
9 1- I really don't.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: From the operators' 11 standpoint, were they -- what did you hear from them?
12 Were they satisfied with the way the issues were 13 handled there?
14
- Well, the equipment 15 operators I know was a pretty emotional -- and I don't 16 know if that's the best way to describe it. I don't 17 think initially that they felt that. I don't think
- 18. that they felt that. They still had concerns about 19 being in the room when machines were run for 20 surveillances. That's what I'm remembering. But the 21 incidents that I'm referring to happened on different 22 shifts and I wasn't personally involved in those 23 surveillance runs, and they were on surveillance runs.
24 That's why I really don't have any details on them.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
NEAL R. GROSS J C.--
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18 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
2 How about any other - - is there any other issues that 3 stand out one way or the other as far as maybe you did 4 have more involvement or have more knowledge of?
s -7 Yes. I know -- I can
- 6. give you a specific, a recent one, and this is just 7 indicative of what we've been doing recently. I mean 8 we have been fixing a lot of things recently. I mean 9 that - - safety is like the number one priority at the 10 Plant. I believe that. If I didn't believe it, I 11 wouldn't say it.
12 Perfect example, we had a -- we were doing 13 some switching in the yard and it was a one to three 14 breaker. There was a Section 1 disconnect that there 15 was some issues with as far as being able to operate 16 it. It was tough to operate, and it had been 17 historically been harder to operate than the other 18 yard disconnects. And I think on the last time that 19 we switched, which was several weeks ago for some 20 (inaudible) associated with debt, the yard -- one 21 operator.actually started to operate that -- open that 22 disconnect and actually had to call on the other guy, 23 the operator, who was there to take over because he 24 physically couldn't continue, and it was in the middle I4----
25 of, from what I understand, drawing the arc as they NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
19 1 were opening it up. So that obviously got a lot of 2 attention.
3 And this past weekend the Plant went 4 through a major evolution to prepare that. It was 5 prior to going back and just going back to normal line 6 without repairing that, putting the -- you know, 7 realigning all of our buses, taking out a certain 8 section of the switchyard, 500 KV switchyard, which 9 went over to the -- impacted 13.8 yard. It was huge, 10 and we got fixed. And the only thing I'll say about 11 that, you know, that showed'a lot of people a lot of 12 things, I think. You know, it showed me a lot.
13 Now, back in December --
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Specifically, what?
7C.
15 -7 Well, the fact that we 16 would -- we actually had to come down like 60 percent 17 to do that, and, like I said, it was a big evolution 18 in terms of not settling for equipment that was 19 substandard, making sure we're going out to the fix, 20 that type of thing. I mean it's obvious to me that 21 with these forced outages especially that we've had, 22 the amount of things that we've gone out to repair 23 during the forced outage is really upper management 24 saying, "Hey, let's get this stuff fixed. We're not 25 going to settle for this stuff anymore." And I mean NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS KIM AIrC
- ~f &I 1A nf 6.u
20 1 rather than just turning the outage around and take 2 care of the problem that put us there, we're fixing 3 other things too: Going down in cold shutdown, going 4 under drywell, fixing things.
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is this is 6 a change or has it always been like this?
7 . 1Well, I don't want to say 8 it's always been like this. I mean when there are 9 forced outages, what can be fixed and what's 10 practical, but I think there's more of an emphasis on 11 that, I want to say, within the past six months than 12 I've ever seen, I've ever seen.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is there 14 something that instigate that?
/
15 (LM2 No. I think that we've 16 just evolved that way, but it's not just all that. I 17 mean we have a new and 18 he really is -- he drives that stuff from what I've 19 seen so far.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right, but he hasn't 21 been here six months, though, right? ,
22 No, he hasn't. He's been 23 I guess two, three months. But even beforeb came 24 on we were starting to move that way.
25 SPECIALAGENT NEFF: What do you attribute NEAL R. GROSS// C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
21 1 that to?
2 I think it's just the 3 fact that people are becoming more safety conscious 4 and the operators are not settling for taking 5 equipment back from Maintenance that isn't right or 6 isn't ready to go or it's not fixed. I mean we've 7 done that in the past, we've settled for that type of 8 stuff, and the operators aren't settling for it 9 anymore. I mean notifications are coming left and i0 right on things that are substandard.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I'm just noting some 12 of the words that you're using. It's "recently," "a 13 lot of repairs," "anymore," and "people aren't 14 settling for something like that."
.15 I Right.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If they settled for 17 that before, why are they no longer settling for that?
18 Why would you run the power plant so very differently 19 at this point in time?
20 It's not that we run the 21 power plant differently. A lot of -- I'm not real 22 good with words, and a lot of this stuff is 23 subjective, but what I'm trying to convey is that it's 24 been -- it hasn't been an overnight thing, and it's 25 been a gradual transition. We've evolved into that NEAL R. GROSS 1) /' 7" COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
22 1 type of environment. We've gotten more safety 2 conscious aware, and, like I say, guys just aren't 3 putting up with things anymore.
4 I can say this, when I saw the biggest 5 change, and I guess it was about, I'm sure you know 6 about it, I'm sure -- I don't know if it was two years 7 ago, whatever, we had a building operator that was 8 seriously hurt because he was trying to perform a PM 9 on some service for the (inaudible) case out at our 10 service intake structure, and he was out there by 11 himself and he got conked on the head. So I mean that 12 really was the turning point.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: For the added 14 emphasis on safety?
15 L Yes. And that's when the 16 operators put their foot down and said pretty much, 17 "We're not" -- I'm just trying to convey an idea here 18 but, "We're not going to put up with this stuff 19 anymore." And since that time it has just become more 20 and more of a safety conscious work place.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But that's an 22 incident that happened two years ago. So at that 23 point the focus becomes more so on industrial safety.
24 __ " ""'Right.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But what you're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS nft MUrMe- IC11 AKIlM AMC KI MA
23 1 pointing to are changes that you've noted in the past 2 six months.
3 C* Right. Right. I mean we 4 -- after that incident we moved gradually toward a 5 more -- toward a safety work place mindset type thing, 6 but what I've just seen is just like it's -- like I 7 said, it wasn't an overnight thing, it's just 8 something that's continuing to grow and evolve.
9 That's the best way I can explain it to you.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The senior management 11 changeout in the past, well, March, April, all the way 12 throughout September, I believe, this past year in 13 2003, do you see that having any effect on the changes 14 on site?
15 C- Yes, I do. I do. You 16 know, I mean I can't tell you that I always felt that 17 going back to when I started four years ago that -- I 18 mean production has always -- production is part of 19 our business, right? I mean we're in business to make 20 power, and it's -- didn't always felt that safety took 21 a precedence over production early on. Now, when I 22 say that, I mean I always felt that I could raise 23 safety concerns, things like that, but just based on 24 the way that the whole organization worked that wasn't 25 always apparent.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
24 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. I have to ask 2 you, what exhibited that to you?
3 J Well, I'm just saying 4 that the work groups were just jampacked with work, 5 they just seemed like they were almost impossible at 6 times to execute, not only the surveillances but the 7 corrective maintenance stuff that would come up. As 8 a trying to execute the work 9 weeks, I mean it was -- it just seemed at some points 10 that it was just so much, you know?
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And now you went all 12 the way back to '99, I think, but --
13 Well, 2000.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- are you looking at 15 2000 with your ~experience?
16 Right.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So back in that time 18 frame? And how has that changed in terms of the work 19 weeks?
20 Well, the work weeks are 21 still packed, but the message we're getting now is 22 that, "Hey, if something's not right, if you can't do 23 a procedure as written, you stop, you've got to get 24 the procedure fixed on a spot change, whatever, or you 25 don't continue until it's right." And we do, we stop, NEAL R. GROSS 4) / C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
25 1 and equipment operators stop. And we take care of 2 procedure changes to continue on or whatever it takes.
3 If something's not safe, we stop.
4 Now, that's not to say that I'm using this 5 six-month reference. This is what I'm remembering 6 most because it's recent, but I mean the message since 7 ad that accident has 8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Two years ago.
9 *Two years ago, has been 10 that, but it's just grown stronger and stronger. It's 11 become more but it --
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is it a difference 13 between where you see the message was there but it 14 wasn't practiced or is it a difference in the buildup?
15 Because what I'm noting here is what you said recently 16 about the KV switchyard issue, 'the recent Ky issue.
17 What you pointed out, and I thought it was kind of 18 significant, is that it impressed you because you went 19 to 60 percent power.
20 -; Well, no, no. I mean --
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is there something 22 unusual about that?
23 .* No, no, there wasn't.
24 I'm just -- no, that is not the point I'm trying to 25 convey.
NEAL R. GROSS "rr% lOT 1 D07"*DT{OCD Ahlk TDAKI1(_IIOr'D1 C
26 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Okay.
2 -719 What I'm just saying it 3 was a lot for the organization, not just talking about 4 the 60 percent, but we even -- there's a lot of 5 evolutions to a lot of things that had to happen to 6 put the Plant into lineup to support that repair. And 7 it was the right thing to do because it was a safety 8 issue but we did that. I mean we were transferring 1E 9 buses and non-1E buses to their alternate in-feed for 10 power and there's always risk associated with bus 11 transfers. I mean if something went wrong, we could 12 drop a bus and lose the vital loads on that bus, but 13 I mean that's the extent -- I mean that's where 14 management was willing to go to address this safety 15 concern.
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How long had 17 that existed prior to that? I mean you kind of -- you 18 intimated that it had been a problem for a while, but 19 I mean how long was that?
20 ?C-* Yes. I mean not like it 21 was the last time it was operated. I mean it had 22 always been a more difficult disconnect to operate.
23 And I can say this about it: In December -- you know, 24 we've had a number of forced outages here. In 25 December, we had another and there was a notification NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
27 1 written on that disconnect at that time, okay, and it 2 wasn't handled at that time, but my understanding of 3 the reason it wasn't was because it was not really 4 brought to management's attention the way that it 5 should have been. Apparently, the groups that look at 6 these notifications or the screening that was done 7 just didn't bring the urgency of it to light.
8 But I have to tell you when the last one 9 was written following the difficulty we had operating 10 the disconnect, I mean that was it, we fixed it. But 11 1 mean like (phonetic) just came out this 12 past week of training and was talking about that and 13 he said, "I have to tell you, Management, we were not 14 aware of the significance and we're not sure how that 15 fell through he crack," I'm paraphrasing, "how that 16 December notification did not get elevated to the 17 point that it did this time." But if it had been, it 18 would have been addressed the same way.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in the 20 past where you were indicating that you didn't always 21 get the message that it was safety over production, it 22 was vice-versa, and you mentioned the work week 23 management on that.
2 .7 K_ .Well, not vice-versa. We 25 always got the message but sometimes you say one thing NEAL R. GROSS MI IPT P;=PPT;FP ANf TPAN.RrJCRIFR:
28 1 and it just seems that -- and I'm not talking like 2 there were any. specific incidents where things 3 happened, I'm just talking in general, the feeling I 4 had, the perception I had was that we -- production 5 was, even though we talked safety we talked a good 6 talk but maybe we didn't walk the walk, and there was 7 always so much emphasis on production. I just don't 8 feel that way any more, that's just the feeling I 9 have.
10 I can't give you any specifics, any 11 details, but it's just that having been 12 W .nd worked the work weeks, knowing what the work 13 weeks are like, what it takes to get them done, 14 knowing that safety is our number one priority, still 15 getting that message, it just didn't seem. like that 16 things were being addressed or fixed to fix things on 17 a permanent basis. You may fix something but it was 18 like it might show up later, like a month or two later 19 because it wasn't adequately addressed in the repair, 20 that type of stuff. Now, I mean the root causes that 21 the organization's doing to make sure that, hey, we 22 fix something this time, it's not going to happen 23 again. We've had inadequate -- it just didn't seem 24 like things were fully baked as far as bringing these 25 to a final --
NEAL R. GROSS
29 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Fix it right?
2 Right, fix it right. Now 3 we're doing that.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where was the 5 breakdown? I mean where does that go to? If it 6 wasn't getting done before, what's changed?
7 I don't know.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is it better 9 maintenance? Is it better scheduling? Is it more 10 resources?
ii Well, the work recently 12 has gotten more sophisticated as far as scheduling, I 13 mean as coordination of activities. We did have some 14 bad maintenance practices in the past, and I can't 15 speak on those details. I just know that from things 16 that had been reworked that there were some issues 17 with maintenance, and there have been attention to 18 detail issues, human performance issues that have 19 occurred, but I think we're working smarter and we're 20 working more focused and we're -- the message that 21 everybody is getting is production is important, it's 22 one piece, but it's not at the expense of safety.
23 That's what I'm getting.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's what you're 25 getting since when?
NEAL R. GROSS 7/7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
30 1 1 Like I said, the emphasis 2 -- I've seen it since 7got injured and I've seen 3 it grow since that time to the point where it is now.
4 I mean that's the message that everybody's hearing.
5 I mean if somebody in the organization thinks that --
6 I mean if it's not obvious that everybody in the 7 organization -- that we're fixing things -- I mean 8 that we're not fixing things, that's wrong, because 9 we're -- you should look at our track record. I mean 10 we're just -- we're fixing stuff and we're fixing it 11 right.
12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Going back, 13 oh, I don't know, a year or so, have you ever been 14 involved in situations where maybe there was some 15 repair that was needed or some position you had to 16 move the Plant to effect a repair, have you ever felt 17 like, gee, we really need to do this or we're not 18 dealing with this issue very well? Have you ever been 19 like frustrated or disappointed with what kind of 20 support you've gotten on more of the significant 21 issues that have come up?
22 I cannot think of any 23 specifics, nothing that really stands out.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You're kind 25 of hinging everything on like something that happened NEAL R. GROSS ,'(' ,
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS " "
31 1 two years ago, and you talk about things being 2 evolutionary, but, sure, along the way there's been 3 various situations that have come up that may be more 4 significant than others that maybe you're involved 5 with or you seen the decision making, you have 6 questions about it. Anything come to mind in that 7 regard where it either went really well or it didn't 8 go well? I mean you've given us examples in the last 9 month or two things that went fairly well. How about 10 things that just didn't really happen the way you 11 thought they should have?
12 72Like I said, I -can't 13 think of any specifics going back that far that really 14 stand out that would make that much of an impression 15 on me that think that maybe we shouldn't be doing 16 this. I just can't --
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Well, 18 let me ask you about a couple of things.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let me just ask--
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in terms 22 of - - from what you observed, you questioned if the 23 emphasis was coming from the production side. In 24 terms of operability decisions or procedural 25 compliance, do you recall anything along those lines?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
32 1 Not with regard to 2 operability, no, and procedural issues. I can't think 3 of any specifics. I can tell you -- I mean the thing 4 that comes to light with regard to maintenance issues, 5 things like that, would be diesel type things that we 6 talked about. I can think of one going back a little 7 ways, going back probably to last February, okay, that 8 we were doing a diesel run and I guess we were in a --
9 we had actually gone into a diesel outage and there 10 was a -- we didn't get it returned and the diesel back II within the window that we wanted and actually went 12 into the 72-hour shutdown action.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is this 2003 or --
14 3? This is 2003. And I 15 can't remember if it was some type of jacket water 16 leak or not, scme type of leak, and we had problems 17 with that leak repair. And, you know, I remember 18 hearing from a couple of the equipment operators said, 19 "Hey, you know, we should end up just shutting this 20 thing down and taking the Plant down." But we ended 21 up going with a CROD, inoperable but degraded type 22 evaluation on the thing. I mean my perception is 23 this: You've got your workers, your union guys, 24 you've got your first-line supervisors, and you've got 25 management, and NEAL R. GROSS , ( 7 1*_
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
33 1 and it's very easy for union guys or for union 2 people to say, "Hey, you know, all this isn't right.
3 Do this, do that," without any thought to the way it 4 impacts other things. And I mean you have to get 5 Engineering involved, you have to get the Maintenance 6 groups involved, I&C, and you have to talk about it, 7 figure out, hey, can we remain operable, can we make 8 a case for this thing being inoperable but degraded 9 without just going -- sure, you might hear some guys 10 saying, "I wish they'd shut this thing down." Based 11 on what?
12 Okay, I understand we have an issue here, 13 right, but you also have some risk with putting a 14 plant through shutdown evolution as well. I mean 15 that's -- shutdowns and startups aren't things that 16 are practiced regularly except for seems like recently 17 and there's risks there. So you're going places you 18 don't -- you really may not be proficient at. Now, we 19 have training before these evolutions every time we do 20 them when they're planned, but to just -- I think it's 21 wrong for guys to -- and guys get emotional about 22 things but to just come out and make statements off 23 the cuff that, "Hey, we just need to shut this thing 24 down and that's it," there's just more to it than 25 that. There' s other things to run, other things to consider.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS Prnr VVY4 M~ Wdn AV/P N IN!
34 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about for you 2 personally? Have you ever been involved -- I'll put 3 it this way, have you ever heard of a call made where 4 it was -- the piece of equipment in question, as you 5 said, can you make it operable but degraded as opposed 6 to declaring it inoperable? Have you ever been 7 involved in a situation like that where you thought 8 that that was really -- there was too much risk, that 9 you were just not comfortable with the call?
10 No. No. Because when we 11 call something operable but degraded, I mean there is 12 a significant amount of work that supports that 13 determination. I mean these CRODs'are -- I mean it's 14 got our input, it's got Engineering's input, and it's 15 not something that's taken lightly. I mean there's a 16 lot that goes into that before we make that call.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. So you 18 personally haven't experienced anything that really 19 tested your comfort level with what the call was going 20 to be.
21 Right.. Right.
22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: That jacket 23 water leak you described, were you actually on shift 24 when --
25 "MON, was the -- we've had a NEAL R.-ROSS/ 7c.
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS tra Pwnnf ImI Aun AVh: NuW
35 1 number of jacket water leaks. I was the(
I2 was in the field when we 3 were running it and we just released tags, we ran for 4 a maintenance run to see what it was going to do after 5 the repairs had been made.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: This was the 7 first maintenance run?
8 Yes. That's what I'm 9 remembering.
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
11 And it was not repaired, 12 so we shut it down, tightened it again, and --
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What were 14 your thoughts? Let's just stop at that point, okay?
15 You acknowledged it wasn't repaired. What was the 16 leakage like? I mean was it more or less the same?
17 I think it was at least 18 the same. It may have been a little more. I honestly 19 don't remember, it's been a year.
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But not 21 fixed.
22 But not fixed. I mean 23 that was at the end of the day shift and actually the 24 end of my work week, and I left thinking that I was 25 probably going to get a call, we would probably have NEAL R. GROSS /* (I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
36 1 to shut down because we would not be able to repair 2 the leak. And I think the LCU ran out some time late 3 in the morning --
4 (END TAPE 1, SIDE A) 5 (BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE B) 6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The time is 7 approximately 1:37 p.m. Thank you.
8 C- - Yes. What ended up 9 happening in that case was I mean Engineering was 10 working on it the entire time and one of the engineers 11 had actually contacted -- I guess got hold of another 12 plant or the vendor, I don't know, it was on the west 13 coast somewhere, and had gotten some feedback on I 14 guess it was the 0-ring seal or whatever that -- some 15 type of shaft seal that the way it was supposed to be 16 installed and what it looked like was -- I don't think 17 our Maintenance guys were installing it the correct 18 way. So, like I said, just remembering, just trying 19 to remember what we were doing there. And with that 20 bit of information they reinstalled a new 0-ring or 21 shaft seal and I believe, and I'm not certain, I think 22 it was still operable/degraded because there was still 23 some leakage but it was well within the design 24 requirements of the system, makeup capacity of the 25 system. So I personally didn't have a real concern at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
37 1 that point.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
3 How about a ny other type of issues that stand out in 4 your mind? You talked about -- I think one of the 5 very first technical issues we talked about was a 6 carbon mono:xide leak on a diesel. We talked about it 7 being fixed and was that done in a forced outage, do 8 you remembe:r, or was that something that was --
- -...... I know we had fixed those 10 things onli ne.
11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
12 I mean we may have worked 13 on one of those machines during a forced outage but we 14 did that stuff online.
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. How 16 about--
17 SI mean you talk about 18 things that frustrate me and frustrate operators. I 19 mean there are things out there that are issues, and 20 I'll give.you a couple of examples. This is the best 21 I can come up with. We have an EHC filtering system 22 for our EHC off our main turbine, okay?
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
24 And I think it's been an 25 issue throughout the industry. We are constantly NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS / "
38 1 replacing our filters, our select filters and our fine 2 filters in that system it seems like at a, I want to 3 say, at a frequency that is just not -- should not be.
4 It's a burden in the organization to tag it, to get 5 that portion of that system drained, to replace the 6 filters and get the samples and it's been a problem 7 for, I want to say, a couple of years within 8 Engineering. But it's only been within the past six 9 months that it seems like that we're really changing 10 these things out more than it needs to be. And I know 11 Engineering's been looking at it, it's high on our 12 list of priorities, and we just have not come up with 13 any answers and Engineering has not come up with any 14 answers as to what needs to be done with this problem.
15 It's not that isn't being attacked but it's 16 frustrating.
17 I can tell you one other example that I -7 18 can cite that's very frustrating for 19 is our aux boiler systems. We have had numerous trips 20 with our aux boilers, which obviously is a bad thing 21 to happen when it's cold out, and aux boilers are 22 things that you need when you shut down. And the 23 reliability of our aux boilers has been substandard.
24 Another organization has looked at it but that problem 25 has not been addressed. That has not been addressed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
39 1 adequately.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is that 3 attributed to something in particular?
4 Well, I don't --
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean the 6 trips. I mean if you were to kind of look at a 7 listing of different trips, are they all on about the 8 same kind of problems?
9 It seems that way. I 10 think a couple years ago they were derated and I think 11 there might be some issues associated with that, but 12 the equipment is -- you know, it's one of those 13 systems where it's not in-plant equipment, 'it's in the 14 'boiler house out there and it doesn't get the 15 attention that it needs to get. And I mean we react 16 every time if there's problems with it, and I know 17 there has been some efforts made in the organization 18 to address that, but they're not where they need to 19 be, they're not where they need to be. And I don't 20 know what it's going to take to get them there.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Does that 22 have a system engineer dedicated to it?
23 You know, I don't think 24 so. I don',t think so. We used to have -- going back
- -25 towhn9MW0....M NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
40 1 frame, we used to have dedicated system engineers and 2 we had system engineers for all those systems, and now 3 we don't have that. We went through a major 4 reorganization in Engineering, I was part of that, and 5 a big piece of that was a lot of - - prior to that all 6 the engineers were dedicated to each station and after 7 that they came up with an engineering organization 8 where engineers were working at both stations and Hope.
9 Creek guys over at Salem and Salem vice-versa and that 10 just wasn't working, and it took them a couple years 11 to figure that out, and I think recently they're going 12 back to that type of alignment. But I mean I don't 13 know how you can expect a guy at Hope Creek to work 14 over at Salem when he probably never set foot in the 1s place and handle a control system or something like 16 that. That organization is -- I think they're still 17 finding their way.' I mean there's a lot of people 18 that work hard down there, but I don't know if they!'re 19 understaffed or what but they struggle, they struggle, 20 but they work hard.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Let 22 me ask you about a couple specific technical issues.
23 Back in March of 2003 there was a forced outage. I 24 think it may have been to repair some of the diesel 25 leaks and maybe (inaudible) or something else, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
41 1 there were some problems coming out of the outage, and 2 you may or may not have been involved in that. One 3 was it had to do with a turbine bypass valve.
4 5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
6 8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Can you kind 9 of recount what happened and what you thought of that?
10 Why don't you talk about technically what happened and 11 then your impressions afterwards?
12 'WWell, let's see, I think 13 we had come down to somewhere between four and eight 14 percent power, and --
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Come down or 16 come up? Were you starting up or --
17 Well, those were the 18 numbers. We started up and we put the turbine online 19 and then one bypass valve didn't go closed.
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
21 So that happened like on 22 a Friday.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you 24 happen to recollect which bypass valve it was?
25 11/ I want to say -- you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
42 1 know, I don't. It may have been Number 1. I can't 2 remember.
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. You 4 don't remember. Okay. -7 5 .So that was a Friday 6 night, it was our first night, Friday night, on a 7 weekend night shift, and so the plan was to come back 8 down and fix that bypass valve. So we went to 9 training on that. Saturday night and there were some 10 issues with the training. It was a last minute thing 11 that was thrown together. They tried to put together 12 a good plan, but we precty much had to write a new 13 section of a procedure to handle that evolution. And 14 I remember going through that in the simulator. When 15 we left there I was very uncomfortable with it, and I 16 even stated that during that training period during 17 that night. Because it just wasn't clear how we were 18 going to achieve this even though we had this 19 procedure because, like I said, it was new, 'it hadn't 20 been performed before, the whole evolution was being 21 handled as an IPTE, infrequently performed test and 22 evolution, and when we left we thought we had a good 23 plan but there were some concerns going through it.
24 It just didn't seem like --
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What was the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
43 1 gist of the plan? I mean what was -- were you still 2 at like--
3 l No, we were at power.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Like 15 5 percent or so? When did the bypass valve -- you were 6 putting the turbine on or were you still at like four 7 or five percent?
8 No. Well, when we put 9 the turbine on it was probably about 15 percent, 10 somewhere around there.
11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Fifteen.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So it sat there from 13 Friday to Saturday at about 15?
14 Yes.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then you went 16 into the IPTE training?
17
- iRight.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was in that? Who 19 was present for that?
20 21 22 we had -- who else?
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Who was the 24 RO?
25 7- The RO was not present at NEAL R. GROSS d'Pni lOT ODCPIDT1=P Zhn~ TTýAM -IIPFP.q
44 1 that training. The RO was a training instructor who 2 was standing in. The RO was a guy who wa s working 3 overtime Sunday night and he was not at that training.
4 I'm trying to think of who else was there?
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is there 6 some reason why that occurred like that? I mean 7 normally if you're doing some sort of brief or 8 training, you'd normally want to have all the 9 principals there.
o_--- - ]
10 Yes, you do. Yes, you 11 do. I don't remember what specifically happened 12 there. I really don't. I don't know why -- there was 13 anothe there but I can't remember who it was. I 14 don't remember.,
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I have a list. What 17 shift would this be?
AThat was on echo shift.
18 19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: (phonetic) is 20 an right?. STA -
21 2flh~iil~fwas--
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: (phonetic)?
23 24 in"J*u ,, / "but he was not there 25 because he had been pulled off shift for outage NEAL R. GROSS f- 11 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4-E-'1 Iflfl
.l . A
.11- A51r tIf f *S.A1 7c
45 1 preparation. L 7 i SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This was echo shift? I 2
3 SPfEClfI AEcho I shift.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: M IN 5 tpnonetic) ?
6 was not there that 7 night.
'-a 8 SPECIAL .. AGENT NEFF:
9 (phonetic)?
10 I don' t
- I 11 k jllp thi :w'as in there that night.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You know -- oh, I 13 see, on a different --
C. 14
'I d
_J I don't thinksW" wa, Sfh...._
15 there that night.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- he's on a 17 different shift right now. n 18 19 oh, it was 20 So what we had was we had l 21 22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was he 23 normally on the shift or was he -- because we have 24 something that's fairly recent and people may have 25 moved (1 NEAL R. GROSS 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS / .-
46 1 )44"M Well, 2 . both went to the -I ._probably halfway 3 through the year.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
- Sol, es, iwas in 5
6 there. He was the -- he was on-,
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
8 9
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
11 So you had those two guys 12 on opposite sides of the horseshoe and --
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was the stand-in 14 for training, the 15 jF(phonetic).
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
17 ~And, you 18 know, so we had two ROs, two NCOs, 19 who he was more or less handling the administrative 20 stuff in the back and he wasn't involved in the 21 command and control. Andjf wab in there, and that 22 was pretty much it for control room complement from 23 what I remember.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who developed that 25 plan? O('1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 70C-
47 1 I think 2 (phonetic) had a lot of input into it, but I don't 3 know if was the sole person. But it was SORC'd, 4 it was SORC'd I think Sunday. I mean the Plant was 5 stable sitting there with a bypass valve, the one 6 bypass open, that was not an issue.
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Let's not 8 get too far ahead. I want to stay with where we were 9 on Saturday on a little bit. Okay. You said~w~nay 10 have been involved with putting it together. What's 11 the normal is there a procedural requirement that 12 talks about who should be there either at the training 13 evolution or the briefing, and does it talk about the 14 authors and having an involvement with that?
15 i Well, I got to tell you, 16 I'm sure there is but I wasn't involved with that end 17 of it, and I really don't -- I can't comment on that.
18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, how 19 about your feelings when you were going through it?
20 I mean you said you had some questions about what was 21 being done or the way it was formatted. What were 22 your concerns with the --
23 I've got to tell you, 24 you're putting me in a tough position here because I'm 25 trying to remember. It was very detailed and very NEAL R. GROSS A L 7Q-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
48 1 complex --
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
3 W -- and that detail 4 escapes me at this point. There was ways in which we 5 were -- the Plant was critical and we were -- we had 6 to come down on the bypass valves to get down to a 7 certain pressure. I think we had started like at 920 8 and we had to get down to like somewhere down below 9 700 pounds.
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So you were trying to move reactor pressure from 920 psig to 700.
- 12 Q With bypass valves while 13 we're critical.
14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: While you' re 15 critical.
16 Yes..
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Had that 18 never been done before?
19 j* I don't think so, not at 20 Hope Creek, as far as I know.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Well, 22 what would you typically do? I mean if you were just 23 doing a routine shutdown or a shutdown for a forced 24 outage or if you had the luxury of time and there was 25 no equipment malfunctions, how would you shut the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
49 1 Plant down?
2 We'd be at pressure.
3 We'd be at pressure, and then we'd cool down the 4 bypass valves. But we'd be so critical the Plant 5 would already be shut down.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: When in the 7 process do you screen the reactor?
8 **When we come down we take 9 the turbine offline at about 15 percent, 20 to 15 10 percent.
11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
12 And then we would--
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you 14 scramble or do you drive the control rods in?
15 No, we don't do a soft 16 shutdown.
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. So --
18 And then we would 19 depressurize. But, see, now we depressurize -- we're 20 coming down in pressure on bypass valves while we're 21 critical.
22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
23 2-y? And that was the 24 new piece tliat was put together.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. All NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
~7 (I-
50 1 right. So that was the part that was different.
2 Yes.
3 '791R. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You're 4 making reactivity adjustments potentially used on 5 bypass valves.
- -- *-T*_iCorrect.
6 7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
8 Correct.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
10 .. And then there was some 11 vague guidance in the new procedure that talked about 12 how we were going to manipulate the bypass valves to 13 do that. And pressure shut would be the normal way we 14 would do that. Their option was to use the manual 15 bypass valve jack --
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
17 E 3-- which was more -- if 18 you're going to use the manual bypass valve jack, then 19 it's a manual operation and you have to stop when you 20 want to stop. If you are doing it with pressure set, 21 you would take your pressure set point down to a 22 certain point, the reactor pressure would get down to 23 that point, and then it would stop automatically, 24 okay? So the procedure gave us the option to use 25 both.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
51 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Either or?
2 Either or but it also --
3 I'm trying to remember. There was -- we were to 4 maintain our pressure set point above a certain -- at 5 a certain value above what the pressure was. I really 6 -- without looking at it again, I don't remember more 7 than that.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was it 9 something like where you were -- if you used a jack, 10 you had to follow a down pressure set or something 11 like that?
12 - You follow the down 13 pressure set, right. Right.
14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. So if 15 you were using the jack and pressure, say, just throw 16 a number out, say 850, then you might put pressure set 17 at 860 or 870 or some -- it's not --
18 .I think it was either set 19 --
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- real far 21 above it.
22 : - - like 50 pounds above 23 or something like that. That might have been it.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
25 ABut we didn't really -
NEAL R. GROSS A ,
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52 1 I don't remember, I don't remember practicing that a 2 whole lot. I think we got some practice at it, but 3 there were questions about that aspect of the 4 evolution that -- I mean there was a lot of 5 frustration in that training -- in those couple hours 6 that Saturday night.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Among the crew that 8 was practicing that?
9 -2 Yes. Yes.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was it expressed to 11 anybody?
12 7 L--'- , I expressed it. I 13 expressed it to my7 and the 14 crew in front of everybody, and then we worked through 15 some things. Like you said, I'm 30,000-foot view here 16 because I can't remember the details. We worked 17 through some things and we did some things with the 18 procedure and we felt that we were in a place that was 19 okay or comfortable to actually perform this thing.
20 And as it turns out after the fact, 20/20 hindsight, 21 there were Some things -that we -- it wasn't fully 22 baked, it wasn't a fully baked plan.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you say you 24 expressed it to( that you had concerns and 25 then you worked through it. And you said we got to a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
53 1 point where we were comfortable.
2 )-Comfortable is a relative 3 term. I mean we felt that we would not have had an 4 issue accomplishing completing the evolution safely.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did that include you 6 personally? Are you speaking as a team or were you 7 personally satisfied with it?
8 Well, I can't speak for 9 anybody else.- I felt more satisfied than I did when 10 I voiced the concerns I had had. I felt that we were 11 okay to go. I didn't feel great, I felt okay.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What would have made 13 you feel great?
14 I don't know. I don't 15 know.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you recall where 17 your discomfort was with --
18 It was very complex, it 19 was getting into the details of it, and I don't recall 20 those details. I'd have to read through everything 21 again.
22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Without 23 necessarily going into the details because you may not 24 remember them that well, but what you probably do 25 remember is how you felt at the time and maybe a NEAL R. GROSS ri .
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
54 1 little bit about why you had some angst. It sounds 2 like you did have some issues with the procedure and 3 you expressed them and then there was some resolution 4 of some sort to try and address where your concerns 5 were. Were you the only one that had concerns? Was 6 there any -- didfiui say, "Yes, I mean you're right.
7 This doesn't look right," or did any of the ROs, 8 whether it wa s.. .. IU did any of 9 those guys say, "Well, gee, this doesn't -- we're 10 having trouble controlling," or was there a lot of 11 back and forth?
12 -All I can tell you there 13 was a lot of discussion amongst the crew about how we 14 were going to do it, and that's all I can really say 15 about it.
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What was the 17 spirit of the discussion? 'Was it, "Yes, let's try and 18 work our way through this. Let's try and get 19 something to work," or was it, "God, this is really 20 bad. We can't believe we got this." What was --
21jJ No. No. We tried to 22 work through it. We actually had to be back -- see, 23 we were due -- we were in for night shift that night, 24 Saturday night, and the crew that was on day shift was 25 actually staying over or there had been some other NEAL R. GROSS Cnl IDT DCInDTC0Q AkIr TPAMIr0t 0rDI
55 1 people brought into relieve that crew until we got 2 back. We had to be back by like 11 or 12 midnight.
3 So there was a certain amount of time pressure to come 4 up with this plan to achieve this thing on Sunday nigh 5 t.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So you were 7 on nights, so you were on basically from seven p.m.
8 Saturday night to seven a.m.
9 SxtS**ix..six.
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I'm sorry, 11 six to six.
12 Right.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean the 14 shift is seven to seven but you were there early for 15 turnover, right?
16 9 Correct.
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
- Right.
19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So you're 20 on, say, six to six. Okay. So you're out there five, 21 six hours, something. like that, or four or five hours 22 working through the procedure.
23 J-N. hIW1 Right.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you ever 25 like in the process say, you know, we're doing NEAL R. GROSS { 7,,-
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56 1 something that should have already been done? Like 2 what you're describing is more along the lines of 3 validating the procedure, not practicing but --
4 See, that's the thing.
5 It wasn't a procedure validation and it should have 6 been. We were still hashing things out at that point 7 and that's the best way I can put it without, like I 8 said, remembering all the details. And that's an 9 honest answer. We were still hashing things out, 10 weren't exactly sure at points during that training 11 which way we were going to go. We were looking at 12 several options, and it was not a validation, was not 13 a validation of a procedure, and that's what it should 14 have been.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where was the time 16 pressure coming from?
17 j Well, we had to get back 18 to relieve the shift.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You explained there 20 was a shift relief, right.
21 And the plan was to -- I 22 mean was to get us in there and practice this thing 23 Saturday so we could take the shift the rest of the 24 night and then it could be SORC'd or approved on 25 Sunday day so it could be performed Sunday night.
f NEAL R. GROSS /
t~r, grr*,rr~~rrp KIn g tM t-bi -
57 1 That was the plan. So the time pressure that I know 2 that we felt was that we had to get through this so we 3 can get back to relieve the other crew at midnight.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Would you be the same 5 crew that was performing it on Sunday night then?
6 - _ Correct. Right. We were 7 to perform it.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you ever 9 make any kind of statements or do you recall any 10 statements that were something along the lines as, 11 "We're doing a validation and we really need to 12 practice this more. Why don't we tell SORC or 13 management that we need more time, we need to go 14 through this? And instead of trying to SORC it on 15 Sunday day, why don't they just SORC it on Monday and 16 we'll take -- we'll come back in if we have to on 17 Sunday night and go through this again and make sure 18 that we're really training on the procedure and not 19 validating it." Was there any discussion like that?
20 Do you recall anything like that?
21 There really wasn't a 22 discussion like that.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: It didn't 24 even enter your mind or/ mind? Did anybody 25 voice that? H /
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
58 SI shouldn't say that 2 there wasn't any discussion on that. I don't remember 3 personally being involved in any discussion like that.
4 There may have been by people on day shift on Sunday.
5 As far as the operators went, there was really no 6 discussion about the fact that we were not going to do 7 it on Sunday night.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: No discussion that 9 you were not going to do it.
10 V0 That we were not going to 11 be doing it.
-12 .SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The question comes in 13 here too, where's jsit on this? Is he in 14 agreement with the crew that you could have been more 15 satisfied with the plan that you had? Was he in 16 agreement with you?
17 At that time? At that 18 time? Well, he knew -- I mean I was pretty vocal 19 about it, and I mean my exact words at one point I 20 said -- I stopped and I said, "Look," I said, "if we 21 can't figure out what we're going to do," because we 22 had been talking about a lot of different things and 23 I was getting confused and it was not clear to me, and 24 I said, "Look," I said, "if we can't come to some type 25 of resolution on which way we're going to do this, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
59 1 can find yourself another to perform this 2 evolution."I I mean it got to that point, and then we 3 worked through it. I mean that's a picture of what 4 happened that night.
5 And with regard to the- RO not being there, 6 okay, should have been there, all right, but my 7 impression of what happened that night as far as the 8 people who were there, we had the guy who was going to
.9 be on local control, the guy who was going to be 10 pressure control, and the guy who was going to be the 11 reactor operator was going to be inserting rods and 12 doing -those types of -- a piece of evolution that 13 didn't require the coordination that was required 14 between local control and pressure control'. Whenever 15 we move rods to get to a certain point, that was a 16 dedicated thing, nothing else was -going on at that 17 time. That's not to say that he shouldn't have been 18 there, but I think that's what happened as far as not 19 having' the RSO guy. And, you know, we did a 20 reactivity brief and all those types of things before 21 when we came in for the evolution, but that would be 22 my only recollection of why he wasn't there.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But in terms of where 24 you stood was that what you were originally working 25 with you were dissatisfied to the point where you were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
-' 1 1a191- , A
.I M I* - klI %At
60 1 suggesting they replace you as pon shift.
2 Well, I mean I made an 3 emotional statement. I said --
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Sounds like it got 5 pretty --
6 Well, it did. And I told 7 him, I said -- I mean I felt this about it, I said, 8 "Unless we can come to some type of consensus as to 9 what we're doing, we're talking a lot of different 10 things here, you can find someone else to take the 11 watch tomorrow night," because I --
12 .. SPECIAL. AGENT.NEFF.: .Who did.you say that 13 to?
14 I said it in the presence 15 of the entire crew, but it was directed to MY 16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
17 Right.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What's his response 19 on that?
20 110/ Well, he didn't really 21 come back with anything. I mean he took a step back 22 and thought about it and we continued to work on it, 23 to work on the plan.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you got to a 25 point where you were, as you described it, more NEAL R. GROSS /
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61 1 satisfied.
2 iQ More satisfied, right.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Satisfied enough to 4 --
-
- Satisfied, in mymind, at 6 that time, that we would -- there would really be no 7 doubt that we'd have a successful evolution.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: There's something 9 that I guess I'm not understanding.
10 .3 The thing is is that I 11 can't convey -- where the gap here is the details, and 12.. I'm-not -- I can't.--- like I said, it was very 13 complex.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right.
15 I11I~g2I--R..-
cannot recall the 16 details of this1 and that's I think where we're having 17 a disconnect here.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Understood. I wasn't 19 even actually going there. What I'm looking at is I 20 think you described it is that the Plant was stable, 21 around 15 percent or so at this point.
22 _ Yes, right.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So where is it -- why 24 is it that the move had to be made on Sunday? If
'25 everything's stable and there's no --
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1Right 2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- rush to do 3 anything, why would it be get it done by Saturday 4 midnight so that you can come in here and perform this 5 on Sunday night?
6 -Yu know, I don't have 7 real answer for you for that, and I don't know that it 8 needed to be performed Sunday night. I don't know.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did 10 think it needed to be performed on Sunday night?
I can't speak for-12 -All -I know is that it was a priority with( to 13 make sure that we had something to go back with before 14 our time was up, at least something that was -- that 15 looked like it would work and that the crew was 16 satisfied with. That's what I'm remembering. He 17 didn't drive it down our throats, it was just -- I 18 mean iwas under pressure too. I mean we're all 19 feeling like we've got to -- we're here to train on 20 this and we are expected to perform this tomorrow 21 night. *and we need to be ready to split the 22 organization off. That's what we were feeling.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You had to come up 24 with something that would work.
25 Correct.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS A,.V nItr^nr 1e AKSfl A%1 I i. M
63 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did anybody 2 ever offer -- I mean as you described it, there was 3 time pressure. You walk around here and you see all 4 these different human error traps for human 5 performance issues, and that's one of them. Time 6 pressure is always mentioned.
7 Righigt.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did anybody 9 offer that and say, "Hey, look, we're falling into a 10 trap here. We need to examine why we have this time 11 pressure and if it's reasonable or not, and do we have 12 other- options. Is there some way we can buy time?
13 How do we buy time in this process or how do we get 14 what we need so we feel comfortable, totally 15 comfortable with the evolution and we don't feel like 16 there's a rush to judgment or a rush to try and get 17 this done and we just don't feel like we've adequately 18 aired out all our issues and concerns?"
19 --7 Well, you're right, there 20 was a lot of that stuff around here, and I mean we 21 covered all that stuff in our brief. That Saturday 22 night when we were in the simulator I mean we were 23 just intent, focused on the evolution at hand. I mean 24 we talked about making sure we had the proper peer 25 checks, proper communication between the pressure NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TPANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
64 1 control operator and local control operator during 2 these bypass valve manipulations.
3 So that's what I'm saying, I mean 4 organizationally after this event I mean that had a 5 big impact on our Department, obviously, in the way we 6 do business, and that's why when I sit back six 7 months, six, eight months, whatever, back to the 8 spring, that's when I'm seeing a big change, you know 9 what I mean, in just the way we conduct business. I 10 don't think that that type of thing would happen again 11 where we had a plan that wasn't, for lack of a better 12 term, fully baked. I don't think it would go off the 13 way that it did. I think that those questions would 14 be raised and basically, "Hey, we're not going to do 15 anything here until this thing is right with everybody 16 and there's no question in anybody's mind that this is 17 going to be successful." And I don't think that --
18 you know, and having said that, I don't think that 19 anybody didn't think that we weren't going to be 20 successful back then. I mean we felt coming out of 21 that thing and coming in Sunday night that we were 22 going to be successful. I mean when you look at what 23 happened there I mean there are some issues that --
24 there are some things that you also need to realize we 25 had a plan. When we were bringing pressure down with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
65 1 the bypass valves when this event happened we had a 2 malfunction at the same time, and that had a big part 3 in it to why things happened. There were things that 4 -- it was a combination of things.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But why would you be 6 in that position then where you say it wouldn't happen 7 now but it would happen then. Now the difference 8 would be that people would speak out about it and 9 raise the concern about not finding yourselves in that 10 position.
11 - Well, because it
- " 12 --- happened............
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because of the 14 incident.
15 Because it happened.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You have an example 17 to point to is what you're looking at.
18 Ys 19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How about 20 MIN*in that time frame, did you become aware that 21 he ever expressed to anyone that he had no control 22 over that evolution?
23 WN -No.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did he seem --
25 oh, you're talking about
/I NEAL R. GROSS ( "
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
66 1 that night?
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.
3 / I want to make sure I 4 understand your question. Could you ask me again?
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Going into that from 6 that Saturday into --
7 .JGoing into it.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Going into it did he 9 ever express that he had no control over that 10 particular evolution, that IPTE?
11 -jGoinginto it. No. No.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Coming out of it?
13 A lot of people were 14 second guessing themselves coming out of it.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And what about during 16 the incident?
17 The first bypass valve 18 problem we had we stopped. We talked about it and we 19 got a consensus among the crew that we were okay to 20 continue. When it happened the second time, when we 21' had the second occurrence and I -- obviously, we had 22 second thoughts at that point as to where we were 23 going to go. So we stopped cold boil and got some 24 other guidance.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: That was on NEAL R. GROSS " --
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67 1 Sunday, right?
2 nThat was on Sunday night, 3 yes.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
5 But I --
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did he -- go ahead, 7 you finish.
8 But I got to tell you, 9 after the second time we stopped and we just weren't 10 going to continue because we didn't know -- we needed 11 something else at that point, and --
12 SR., PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Would it be 13 fair to say you felt uncomfortable where the Plant was 14 at that moment?
15 Not at that moment. I 16 mean the transient that happened happened and it was 17 over.
18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
19 II~JIt was so quick.. And we 20 were watching power. I don't know how much you know 21 about the actual details of the event but we were --
22 we stabilized the Plant, we stabilized the Plant, and 23 we're trained to either stabilize the Plant or take 24 the Plant out, and if the Plant gets away from us, 25 then we take it out. And there's a lot of discussion NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VATI PHr~n; mi1 Awn A\/r: mw
68 1 about -- there's a lot of -- in hindsight, the best 2 thing to do would have been to take the Plant out, in 3 hindsight.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Why do you 5 say that, because it sounds like you felt differently 6 about that at the time. Sounded like you felt 7 comfortable with where things were.
8 -'7/ ý-- C Well, it happened so fast 9 and we were reacting to what we saw. Now, we're in 10 mode 2 now. Our mode switches start off on standby, 11 so our (inaudible) are reduced. So now they're at 15 12 percent as opposed to a higher value where we would be 13 in run, okay?
14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Right.
15 " .So we were like at seven 16 percent power and we had the incident with the bypass 17 valve, so pretty much the bypass valves open up, a 18 couple bypass valves, and they start steaming off your 19 level. We lost like I don't know it was eight to ten 20 inches, and the guy in local control or our feedwater, 21 which is automatic, sees that reduction level and we 22 have equipment problems with sticking startup valves.
23 A startup valve pops open and feeds all this cold 24 water in. So now power's coming up and it's happening 25 fast and then we see power coming up, secure that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
69 1 valve, that startup valve's not feeding anymore, power 2 comes up and settles back down. It had gotten up to 3 about 13 point something, so we were watching it and 4 the plan was to take it out at 14 percent. I mean if 5 it got up to 15, the Plant would have went out on its 6 own, that was the scram set point. But we never 7 reached 14 percent and, like I said, it was over as 8 soon as it started. It was very dynamic, it was fast 9 and the Plant was stable and it was over.
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: That 14 11 percent number, was that something that you had 12 discussed during the -- was it part of the procedure 13 or was that discussed during training or was it 14 actually an on-the-spot decision?
15 .. No, it was an on-the-spot 16 decision. That was not -- and that was one of the 17 places we fell down. In our pre-job brief we didn't 18 discuss a value with scram set point set down where we 19 should have taken it out, and maybe at that point we 20 would have done something -- we may have said at 13 21 percent during the brief, but when it happened the 22 number was 14 and that's what we were going with. But 23 it's -- I mean it could have happened so fast that we 24 wouldn't have had time to react anyway.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4021 DWrr IC MA IA%I/ IMAI
70 1 any repercussions because of the event itself.
2 In terms of?
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did anything 4 happen to anybody in the aftermath of the event?
5 . -h, f yes. We got taken 6 off of shift and our quals were delimited, and we were 7 out at the training center for a month getting a retrained.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The whole creww 10 11 Yes. We lost our quals.
12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. So
- 13. you lost your qualifications. Was that a temporary --
.14Y 15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was this 16 something that* happened, I don't want to say 17 routinely, but if there was a circumstance that was 18 somewhat similar as far as the significance, was this 19 like a standard thing that would happen? I mean there 20 wasn't anything unique about your crew or your shift.
21 Like some other shift, if they had been involved, the 22 same thing would have happened to them?
23 As far as losing their 24 quals?
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Right.
NEAL R. GROSS
- r COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1 2)1pwrn= Q a~Kinl AXI= 01 1A
71 1 3. Oh, yes.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
3 Yes. Yes.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We were talking about 5 before and during the incident you said a lot of 6 people had second guessed it afterwards. Did at any 7 point in time you hear .Iindicate that he 8 had lost control of the evolution?
9 i During?
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At any point in time, 11 before, during or afterwards?
12 . .I,had control. Command 13 and control function, the is 14 in control, and the OS has the 'oversight, and yet he 15 is ultimately responsible. I didn't feel that we had 16 lost control but it was moving fast, but it was not 17 unmanageable from my perspective. I mean we were 18 ranging up on our M switches, we were in the 19 intermediate range, but the ranges were peer checked 20 and one at a time and we did several manipulations but 21 it was not multiple type things, peer checks not 22 happening, that was never the case, that was never the 23 case. And like I said, power peaked and it came down 24 and it was over.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You said it happened NEAL R. GROSS t COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
72 1 quickly.
2 :7it happened quickly.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But I understand 4 you're the command and control, but did you ever hear 5 'indicate that he had lost control of the 6 evolution at any point, before, in the planning 7 stages, during or after?
8 Well, not in the planning 9 stages, and I didn't hear anything during that, but 10 when we're sitting out here having time to think about 11 things he felt that he was not where he needed to be 12 iri.th;h cbhtr0l room-as far as he-was d6wn oh the floor 13 and he felt that after we had some discussion about it 14 that he should have been back and that he got too 15 sucked up into it and that that contributed to the 16 event. But -I don't -- that's what I heard h )
]
17 allude to. That's not -- I don't know that --
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That he got too close 19 to it?
20 ... .M II_Yes.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: While you were going 22 through it. He was at the operator level?
23 ** lHe was down with the 24 operators, I was behind the operators and he was down 25 there also.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 12.1 RHOnF. ISI AND AVF N W
73 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Why did he 2 say that?
3 I guess he said that 4 there was too much conversation going on or he could 5 not hear the communications down on the floor because 6 I was down on the floor with the operators and he 7 couldn't -- and that's why he said he was down there, 8 I don't know.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I'm not sure 10 I understood that.
11 ,-aw Well, see --
.12 SR. PROJECT-ENGINEER BARBER: I'm just 13 trying to understand what the point is. Is it that 14 you all were communicating and he just couldn't follow 15 it so he moved down so he could hear it or is it --
16 That's what he said.
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And that tended to 19 work against him. He figured that out in hindsight
- 20. you're saying?
21 In hindsight, yes. That 22 was his -- that's what his -- that's what he came to 23 a conclusion on.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So if that statement 25 is attributed to him, you think that's what that's NEAL R. GROSS /i 7.
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
74 1 about, it was afterward, the statement of, "I had no 2 control over the evolution."
3 .7No, no. He never said, 4 "I had no control over the evolution."
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
6 I saying that he felt 7 that it contributed to what happened, the fact that he 8 was down on the floor.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: His physical 10 placement.
11His physical placement, 12 yes.----He never said that he lost control; no.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
15 So let's --
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did he --
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I'm sorry, 18 go ahead.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Were you going to go 20 to a different incident?
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No, I'm 22 staying with it, I just want to move ahead to a little 23 bit more on the training.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
NEAL R. GROSS .,
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS .
1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
75 1 So you were taken off shift and put in some sort of 2 remedial program, is that correct?
3 Right. And we weren't 4 taken off shift until -- we got off Monday morning and 5 it was St. Patrick's Day. We got off Monday morning 6 and we were supposed to go take the shift again 7 Thursday days.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
9 I got a call Wednesday 10 night that we had been taken off shift, so this -- it wasn't an immediate thing. It was something we found 12 out prior to taking the watch the next day.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, I mean 14 that's kind of in the eyes of the beholder, right? I 15 mean you were taken off shift prior to your return to 16 your normal schedule shift duties. And so from an 17 outsider's perspective that's what an outsider would 18 see. Whether it was actually done Sunday night right 19 after this occurred or Wednesday just prior to you 20 returning to shift, from an outsider's perspective it 21 all looks the same because your next scheduled return 22 to shift on this day and you were taken off shift 23 prior to your return to shift.
24 Well, most of us were.
25 The reactor operator was not.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE. N W
76 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And why 2 wasn't he taken off?.
3
- Well, he was taken off 4 shift, but he was not taken off at the same time we 5 were. I guess it was an oversight. He came out with 6 us to the training center about a week later, several 7 days later.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
9 :JAnd he was in remediation 10 with the rest of us.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you say who that S1-2 was?
13 -*-*" '**(phonetic) 14 He was the gentleman who was in helping us out on 15 Sunday night.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What was 18 your -- let's talk maybe a little bit about your first 19 day in the training, first day or two. You're there 20 on Thursday or Friday, you guys are probably talking 21 amongst yourselves. What was the discussion like at 22 that point as far as what would. you have done 23 differently, what could you have done differently?
24 Was there something -- did everybody kind of 25 acknowledge, "Yes, we screwed this up, we deserve to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVF. N W
77 1 get retrained," or was it, "We were just really put in 2 a bad situation," and you felt like victims, you felt 3 like, "Oh, we're just victims of circumstance." What 4 was the sense at that time?
5 )*When we were out here?
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yes, 7 initially. Right in the first -- either the first 8 couple hours, first day, first two days.
9 'Well, I have to admit it 10 was hard to accept. I mean we felt leaving Monday 11 morning that we did a good job and that -- I can't 12 speak for I don"'t think, w felt that way, 13 but I was kind of surprised to get the call Wednesday 14 night that I'd been removed from the watch list. I 15 mean just --
16 (END TAPE 1, SIDE B) 17 (BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE A) 18 -- don't think any of us 19 felt that we did not do a good job.
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
21 I don't even think, 22 -- from what I understand, did not feel that 23 way.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did he ever 25 share with you why he felt that way? I mean you said NEAL R. GROSS / '-
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 41311 our~rna ic's k, i- . .
78 1 he thought that but did you ever ask him why did he 2 feel that way or did anybody say that and get an 3 explanation?
4 I guess because we didn't 5 -- when we did stop the first time and even though we 6 discussed it I thought we understood what was 7 happening that we should have got some more input from 8 outside the organization before we continued at that 9 point..
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Now, was he 11 involved with that first discussion?
12- JIIIflYes.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So when you 14 say that he said that, does he include himself in the 15 "we?"
16 1Ys 17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean as 18 far as the culpability, is he saying, "Yes, I mean I'm 19 part of the crew. I'm there, I should have done this, 20 I should have done that."
21 : Yes.
22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean it's 23 not like, "The three of you didn't let me know."
24 _No no, no, no. He was 25 accountable. He was accountable.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORrERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 11)'4 0W*rjrt JC, AM In *14l1 Al,
79 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
2 Yes, it was never an 3 issue. Accountability was never an issue.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
5 So you guys are feeling kind of -- well, you feel like 6 you handled the Plant fairly well it sounds like.
7 We felt that we did our 8 job and we felt that we responded the way we were 9 trained. That's honestly what we felt.
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. So 11 now let's fast forward to Thursday. Thursday you're 12 out in training, you guys are here, you're discussing 13 the issue, probably sharing thoughts, ideas, whatever.
14 Was there any discussion along the lines as, "We 15 really don't understand why we're here, we felt like 16 we did the right thing"?
17 Oh, absolutely.
18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is this a 19 scapegoating situation?
20 . I don't want to say 21 scapegoat. I mean we were all -- like I said, we felt 22 we had responded the way we were trained and we did a 23 good job, and we did not -- it took a couple days, a 24 week before we came to terms with the fact that the 25 operator philosophy is that we should have scrammed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
80 1 the Plant. I mean that's what we were told we should 2 have done.
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But yet no 4 one -- that never came up anywhere during the 5 validation or training or -- it sounded like up until 6 the moment the event occurred that had never been 7 discussed, at least I never heard you mention it. Was 8 there any discussion in the training validation that 9 there was a need to havea scram?
10 C Eva"". X-" I can't -- I don't 11 remember any specific discussion about that only 12 because we were focused on trying to come up with a 13 workable procedure for that plant. I mean we're 14 trying to scram in certain situations.
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Right.
16 And I mean this event
- 17. could have taken on a couple of different looks. I 18 mean, like I said, power came up fast, we monitored it 19 and were ready to take action and it turned. It could 20 have come up so fast that it took us up before we even 21 had a chance to do anything. But, no, I mean we were 22 ready to scram but we did not -- at the time, we 23 didn't feel that we needed to and we stabilized. I 24 don't --
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What I'm NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIRFRS
81 1 trying to get a sense of -- I'm trying to get a sense 2 of if you felt like that you were in some way dealt 3 with maybe a little bit unfairly because you guys --
4 you were put in a situation where normally you would 5 have to go through a training evolution to train on 6 the procedure, not to validate the procedure, and 7 because you weren't given the opportunity to, quote, 8 "train on the final procedure," --
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- a lot of 11 these questions that might have come up didn't come up 12 because in fact you were validating, you were actually 13 rewriting the procedure as you were going.
14 Yes. Well, we did feel 15 that way. I mean that was part of our discussion.
16 There was a lot of discussion about what happened that 17 night of training during that time we were out here, 18 there was a lot of discussion about that. And -- yes, 19 yes. I mean -- but I don't want to say we were -- it-20 was just -- you know, I mean we have a lot of pride as 21 I mean we have a tough job and we do our 22 best, and we just could not -- it was hard to really 23 understand why we were delimited in our quals and --
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you feel 25 set up?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
82 1 I don't want to say set 2 up. I don't want to say set up, because I was --
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who made the decision 4 to do that?
5 9To do the Plant?
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To delimit you in 7 your qualifications.
8 I believe it was -- it 9 could have been our , ,I-10 .. at that time or it could have been 11 discussions that the two of them had, I don't know.
i2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So betwee l~(phonetic) ?
13
_ - -- VjjYes. Yes. Somewhere at 14 15 that level. Or it may have even been higher than 16 that, I don't know. I don't know if it wa 17 9 (phonetic) or it may have even beenf 18 I don't know. I don't know where that came 19 from. But I don't want to come off -- believe me, I 20 don't want to come off sounding like I'm griping 21 because that's not what I'm about and that's not what 22 I'm trying to portray here. I'm just trying to answer 23 your questions.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
25 But I mean, yes, it's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
83 1 natural. We were out here and we felt that we had 2 operated the way we were trained, and we just had a 3 hard time understanding why we were delimited.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I'm sure if 5 we had asked questions in a different time frame, if 6 it had been like that Thursday or Friday, you might 7 feel totally different than the way you're describing 8 it now because it's (inaudible). And I guess one of 9 the things we're trying to understand in the process 10 is if there's pressures and where the pressures are 11 and where they're coming from.
12 Cup-$-A- MRight.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And, you 14 know, we talked -- Eileen had mentioned some time 15 pressures and we kind of talked about the sequencing 16 and whether there was an option to put things off.
17 C-.. Right. Well, I mean I is have -- I've got to be honest, you always feel --
19 there's always -- you always feel pressure to, like 20 especially in this case, to -- you know, the 21 organization is coming together to try and work this 22 plant and you want to support the Plant and do what 23 you can do to make it successful, and there was time 24 pressure to get back to the Plant that night, and 25 there was time pressure to come up with a good plan NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AIJD TRANSCRIBERS
84 1 within a certain amount of time, and the organization 2 had decided that it was going to be done on Sunday 3 night. And I don't know how all that was planned out 4 or how that all came into play, but I mean that was 5 the -- I don't know that -- I can't speak for who was 6 making those decisions or what they were thinking but 7 maybe in their mind they felt that, "Okay, we're 8 stable now with this bypass valve, but maybe being 9 here isn't a desirable condition for an extended 10 period of time." I'm sure that played into it. So I 11 don't know what else went into those discussions at 12 that level.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Were your interactions limited to§ - --
- 14 15 Yes.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And from your 17 understanding, he wanted to move forward from Saturday 18 night to get you to be able to perform this on Sunday.
19 Yes.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That was where he 21 wanted to go.
22 Yes. Yes. And I'm sure 23 is feeling the same type of thing, that this 24 thing was scheduled to go off Sunday night and we 25 needed to do what we could do to support it.
NEAL R. GROSS ,l' 1 / K COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
85 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Let me kind
( 2 of follow up on what you just said about scheduled to 3 come off. You know, one of the things that we've 4 heard a lot about is competitive pressure with the 5 evolutionary change of the industry and increased cost 6 competition. Nuclear, to be viable, has to -- we have 7 to challenge old paradigms and we have to forge ahead 8 and keep asking why, why, and maybe there's been a 9 little bit of a shift in why something's safe to why 10 can't we do something? Is it your sense that there 11 was some pressure in this instance that may have come 12 from that side of things, that it was a competitive 13 pressure to get the Plant back up sooner, generations 14 15 16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- we're 17 losing an extra day of generation?
18 '7 - _ No, no. I can honestly 19 tell you it was not that. That was -- I believe that.
20 I believe that it was not a turn the Plant around and 21 get it back up and produce power. I think it was more 22 or less driven by the fact that, okay, this is where 23 we're are, we're stable, but it's not a place that we 24 want to be for an extended period of time. And there 25 are -- like I said, I don't know what those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
86 1 discussions were, but you're at risk too. If you're 2 in a configuration that you would not normally be in 3 and had never been before. So I believe that the best 4 intention was to try and perform an evolution that was 5 going to allow us to correct the problem and put us in 6 a more reliable configuration or condition. I believe 7 that's what it was based on. I don't think it had 8 anything to do with production, absolutely none.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Have you --
10 maybe not in this instance but in other instances have ii you felt any, what you would call, unnecessary or 12 unusual production pressures where you felt like, 13 okay, there's always going to be some amount of 14 pressure, as you describe it, to keep the Plant up, 15 keep the Plant online, to run the unit as a business, 16 but have you ever been exposed to a situation where 17 you felt like this is crossing the line, this pressure 18 is really unnecessary, we're pushing too hard?
19 _ _f .... I I felt that, I mean I 20 would certainly convey that. In the past, I mean, 21 like I said, just going back to the normal work week 22 activities, production is a huge -- I mean there's a 23 lot to do day in, day out. I don't know if a lot of 24 people realize what it takes to run one of these units 25 on a daily basis. And when I say pressure, let me NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4n- M,f un-M- -. Atl
.1 %
A~II .. IIIf
87 1 speak from a personal standpoint, I don't know if S.2 you've ever seen work control in a power plant but 3 basically work control is one guy, you switch off, one 4 week you had the control room, one week you had work 5 control. And that one individual is responsible for 6 everything that happens in that power plant as far as 7 processing the work, everything comes through him.
8 I&C, Mechanical Maintenance, Engineering, everything 9 comes through one guy. And there's a lot of 10 activities that are scheduled and there's a lot of ii emerging items that come up and that go through one 12 guy, and it's a lot. And then on top of all the 13 scheduled work you've got pre-job briefs that you have 14 to handle. Now that we have more operators qualified 15 we're getting some extra help because we've got an 16 extra SRO on shift to lighten that burden, but it was 17 not like that, it was not like that in my first couple 18 years on shift. So I mean the pressure was -- it was 19 a lot of pressure to make sure you maintained the 20 schedule. But I mean if there was ever an issue with 21 safety or personal safety, that would -- production 22 would not, at least within the past couple years since 23 L ]incident, would not have caused us to continue 24 to just move on in the face of unsafe conditions, 25 industrial or nuclear.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIRFRS
88 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You don't feel that.
2 .Well, you always feel --
3 I still feel production, we all feel production. I 4 mean it's -- you know, when you turn over to another 5 shift there's still that unspoken thing there that you 6 want to look good for what you turned over, did you 7 guys get the work done today, how's it going to impact 8 us tonight? I mean everybody wants to pull their load 9 or their share. It's there but it's not to the point 10 where it's going to impact safety. It's not, it's 11 not, and I might have had a little bit of a hard time 12 saying that three or four years ago, but I mean 13 there's always pressure there to meet the schedule, 14 there always is. But we're told, I mean 0 has told 15 us, he said, and he reinforces this constantly, he 16 comes out here every time we have training, "Yes, 17 we're a power plant, we're a nuclear power plant and 18 we're in the business of making electricity. It's a 19 business." But he said at the same time that there's 20 not -- he said, "That is a distant second to safety."
21 He said, "If we cannot complete our work safely and 22 without incident, it's just not -- it's a distant 23 second. It's just not where we're at today."
24 I mean I've seen in a big shift since I've 25 been on shift. I mean I think we're headed in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVF NW
89 1 right direction, I really do. I think our work force 2 mentality, especially within is that way.
3 Our work management's getting better as far as 4 scheduling activities to make the work weeks go more 5 smoothly. We're getting more support from the rest of 6 the organization. I mean Operations has the best --
7 I think the best concept, the best mind set with 8 regard to. that out there, and it's filtering out to 9 the rest of the organization as they deal with us and 10 as they get the word from their managers and as our 11 Ops managers put that word out'. But I feel better 12 today than I've felt at any tirmein career, 13 honestly.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
15 There's still issues out 16 there. I mean there's always going to be issues and 17 conflict.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're seeing it as 19 three to four years ago was -- if you were going to 20 chart it, that would have been its lowest point, three 21 to four years ago?
22 L* Well, since I've been in 23 ~my lowest point since I've been in 24 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. When you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
90 1 started.
2 When I started.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Back when you 4 started.
5 So I only have that to 6 gauge it, but I think that -- like I said, I just 7 think we've evolved to the point where we're working 8 to where we need to be safety-wise and --
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You see it more or 10 less coming together --
1I do. I do.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- in a positive way.
13 I do. And there's a lot 14 of -- and it's not -- I mean I've been through a lot 15 I mean with this incident in March. I mean that was 16 extremely painful from not only experiencing it 17 firsthand but also the remediation process, not a 18 pleasant experience. And. just from what I've 19 experience personally and where I've seen us come and 20 see a shift in the things we're trying to do, 21 especially with our preparation and our briefs and 22 getting more manned up on shift and the safety 23 approach we're taking, I see it as a marked 24 improvement. I think it's going to -- it seems to me 25 like it's going to continue that way. It's not -- I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
91 1 mean it's a culture thing, it's culture, and culture 2 doesn't change overnight, but I can honestly say that 3 I'm seeing that type -- moving in that type of 4 direction.
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I need to 6 ask a couple more questions. I hate to keep coming 7 back to the event but I want to ask --
8 2 ? WNo, that's fine.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- you some 10 things around that, some other points. There was --
11 and you may not have any awareness of either one of 12 these two things, but I want to find out. Supposedly 13 on Monday there was -- maybe it was Monday or maybe it 14 was actually before you got on, the timing is a little 15 confused, but there was a discussion -- when the 16 turbine bypass valve was originally found to be stuck 17 or determined to be stuck, there was a discussion on 18 the part of senior managers about what to do about it, 19 and it was supposedly between 20 may have been there, maybe even 21 IN may have been a couple other people.
22 1ay or may not have been there. There 23 was a mix of different folks and the focus of the 24 discussion is what to do about the problem, what is 25 the problem, what's the nature of the problem, is the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
92 1 turbine bypass valve in fact stuck, is it an anomaly, 2 is it in fact we think -- it looks like it's partially 3 open but maybe it's not. Did you ever hear anything 4 about a big debate about what to do with the Plant, 5 where to move the Plant in response to that, the 6 original event that led into --
7 No. No. Because, like 8 I said, it happened Friday night and then I'm trying 9 to remember what part of Friday night is when we 10 synced the turbine. I guess somewhere 11, midnight 11 time frame thereabouts from what I'm remembering.
12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
13 And then the rest of the 14 night we were -- pretty much we weren't going to do 15 anything else, we were stabilized. And, apparently, 16 those discussions went on Saturday day --
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
18 . . . -- and the decision was 19 made to come up with a plan. We were sleeping during 20 those hours.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you get 22 23 And I got a call,I 24 took the call I guess in the afternoon while I was 25 still sleeping that I needed to report to the training NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORIERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
93 1 center instead of going right to the Plant.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I see. So 3 when you saw your relief that night was it the same 4 person that was on days or was there an intervening 5 shift?
6 I think there was an 7 intervening shift because it would have been too long 8 for -- yes 9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
10 Because it was just too long a period of time?
11 Yes.
12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there 13 any -- do you recollect any discussion about being 14 some big debate about where to move the Plant, whether 15 to take the unit off line or how to do that? Was that 16 discussed? I mean other than the fact you knew you 17 had to go into training, was there any mention of 18 that, either that day or at some future time?
19 -a- :/ You mean when I came back 20 from training that night?
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Right.
22 Right.
23 No, not really, because 24 the guys who we ended up relieving that night knew as 25 much as we did from the standpoint that we're going to NEAL R. GROSS ( -t "7c COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
94 1 be going after this thing Sunday night --
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
3 -- as far as, you know --
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. So 5 you don't have much knowledge about what might have 6 been said during the day and whether --
7 I/No, but, obviously there 8 was a lot of -- the procedure was developed during 9 Saturday day --
10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
11 -- with the intent --
12 see, my whole impression of the way the thing went 13 down was engaged the people on Saturday, put the plan 14 together, procedure, whatever needed to be done, train 15 on it Saturday night, final approvals, SORC on Sunday 16 day, implementation on Sunday night.
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
18 M-4-101%, And that's the way it 19 went down.
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
21 All right. So did you later find out anything more 22 about any of the lead-in discussions? I mean it 23 sounds like you didn't know at the time but was there 24 anything after the fact where you were saying, "Oh, 25 yes, there was a big debate about what to do with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS P WnnRI IqlIN AA%/=l M~ NIAI
95 1 Plant." Did that come up at all?
2 MNot about what to do with 3 Plant, no, not that I was aware of. I think as far as 4 the crew status after that, that that was probably the 5 case.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
7 .... *[It
, was at a higher level.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. All 9 right.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In terms of the 11 disciplinary actions you're talking about?
12 Yes.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in terms 15 of throughout any of the incidents that were tied into 16 that, I guess it's the 15th, 16th, 17th, in that time 17 frame? Are you aware of any challenges by senior 18 management on Ops management and the direction they 19 planned to go?
20 *From the time we got off 21 Monday morning until --
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF.: Throughout, from when 23 it started.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: She's 25 talking about -- Eileen's talking about the 15th would NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
96 1 have been Saturday, I think. March 15 would have been 2 Saturday.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Sunday would 5 have been the 16th, and then the 17th, as you said, 6 was St. Patrick's Day, it would have been the Monday.
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: By that 8 Monday you were off then for a few days until 9 Wednesday?
10 (-"We got off Monday 11 morning. We were supposed to come back in Thursday 12 dayS.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But in that time 14 period were you aware of any challenges by senior 15 management or challenges between them and Ops 16 management in terms of the direction that the Plant 17 would be going? Did they challenge questions?
18 SDuring that time, no. My 19 understanding is the way that this came down was that 20 I guess it was Tuesday, could have been Wednesday, 21 there was some type of SORC or management meeting and 22 'ýddressed the issue and apparently was 23 not aware of what had happened, and I guess 24 questioned it. And that's when it -- I guess the 25 discussion was made about our qualifications and what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRI3ERS
97 1 actually happened that weekend. My impression was 2 that I guess upper management did not fully -- I don't 3 want to say weren't fully aware but did not understand 4 what exactly had happened that weekend. Actually, I 5 don't think 0 as aware of it at all. So I don't 6 think there was any type of discussions up until that 7 point.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. What about 9 decisions being made by Operations in terms of 10 starting up or shutting down to effect this valve 11 repair? Are you aware of any discussion or debate 12 between senior management and Ops management on where 13 they would go with that?
14 When the valve was still 15 open -- you mean before we shut down. I don't know of 16 any discussions that went on, I really don't. I don't 17 know. I don't know. I had heard that -- just going 18 off second hand, I thought I heard something to the 19 effect that maybe we were going to try and do 20 something online as opposed to shutting down, see if 21 we could effect-repairs that way.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where was that coming 23 from?
24 You know, I don't recall.
25 I just -- in discussions with people at the Plant --
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
98 1 I really don't remember. I don't know if I had heard 2 from a represented employee or a mast associate, I 3 really don't remember. But I mean it wasn't -- it was 4 just -- it was probably a mast associate.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because the 6 discussion would have been about considering whether 7 the repair could have been done online as opposed to 8 shutting down.
9 ** Well, I think they were 10 exercising other options, just --
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Considering 12 everything?
13 [J Right. Right. I mean 14 that's all I know about it.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who would be a mast 16 associate in a position to discuss that, though?
17 J Well, when you say in a 18 position to discuss it, I mean peers, my peers. I 19 probably heard that from one of my --
20 ,4And I really don't -- honestly don't recall who 21 it was or what the details were. And there was no 22 discussion that I had with the individual, I just 23 remember hearing that.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It was somebody who P%
25 was involved in the-- I i~v /
1*-
NEAL R. GROSS COURT R--PORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
99 1
......... No .
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- ongoing decisions 3 in that time frame?
4 ..... W I don't think so, no.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you're getting 6 something from somebody --
7 Second hand.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- second hand from 9 somebody who got it second hand?
10 ii SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's what you're 12 saying?
13 Right. I mean it could 14 have even been someone from Engineering who -- like I 15 said, I don't remember. I could have been someone who 16 was involved from the Engineering standpoint that they 17 were looking at options and maybe it could have been 18 a shift engineer. I really don't remember. I don't 19 think that information was anything that was something 20 that had to be safeguarded or anything like that, just 21 discussions, general discussion.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you have anything 23 more on that?
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No. I want 25 to just back up to the diesel problem, you mentioned NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4'ý~ flIAflr ý 1-l --W -1 . i
100 1 the jacket water. I want to ask a couple more follow-2 up questions on that. You said you were thept 3
4 ,..
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: --
6 7 t Right.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Help me 9 understand what your limitations are as far as when 10 you do that. Can you authorize work?
11 M M e.
.12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Does that 13 have to be run through the control room or can you do 14 it and then just like inform after the fact? How does 15 that work?
16 /Oh, no. No. I had to --
17 everything that* goes on I- brief the control room.
18 They know everything that come through Work Control.
19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do they have 20 to sign it or can you sign and that's sufficient?
21 9 I sign it but what 22 happens is I mean I will have briefed them on what's 23 happening or what we're going to do prior to doing it, 24 because obviously they are more in tune with what's 25 going on in the Plant operationally. I'm managing NEAL R. GROSS (
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101 1 work. And if they have any issues in a case like 2 that, then they would tell me and we would not deliver 3 or hold off.
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So what's 5 the sequence? Somebody comes through -- let's say 6 that there's a corrective maintenance item, let's use 7 I&C because you're real familiar with it. Some 8 instrument somewhere, let's say parts of it in the 9 control room, parts of it in the field, somebody comes 10 into you and says, "Hey, I want to work on this. It's 11 in the work week schedule. I want to do this. It 12 affects something that may be addressed by tech 13 specs."
14 15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Kind of just 16 in very brief summary form discuss how the sequence of 17 events would go to release the work and who has to be 18 involved at various stages.
19 * )Well, what would happen 20 is they would -- right, they would come through Work 21 Control first, and it depends, it-would depend on how 22 busy I was in Work Control. Ultimately, it's always 23 going to end up in the control room.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
25 I mean if I have time, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
102 1 and often I do, I'll look at the work and then I'll go 2 in there with the guy and I'll brief the control room 3 crew - -
4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
5 -- or at a minimum CRS --
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
7 11 -- and let him know 8 what's going to be -- what activities are going to be 9 taking place, how that would impact him tech spec-wise 10 and we'll have a discussion. And if it's something 11 that is no impact, then he'll okay the guy to do the 12 work. The ultimate approval goes through him. I can 13 -- I mean I approve tags, I sign work on, but the work 14 that I sign on still have to finally be approved by 15 the Control Room Supervisor. :And like I said, I'll do 16 that when I'm not tied up with other things. If a guy 17 comes in and needs to perform corrective maintenance 18 on whether it be tech spec or non-tech spec equipment, 19 I mean I may just tell him to go right on in the 20 control room and talk to the CRS directly.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Whose 22 job is it or who is supposed to -- responsibility is 23 it to enter the information in the tech spec action 24 statement log?
25 The CRSI ,
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103 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
-'. 2 A&VOW CRS .
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I mean do you have 4 any other responsibility other than to brief them? If 5 something does affect the tech spec component and 6 you're the is that your 7 limitations of your responsibility or do you -- is it 8 also your responsibility for you to enter the 9 information in the log and be fully aware and 10 cognizant of the nature of the work?
11 ** Well, as an example, if 12 a couple containment isolation valves are tagged for 13 -- like motor-operated containment isolation valves 14 are tagged for limited torque PMs or thermal overload 15 type work, right --
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
17 -- you know, they'll be 18 tagged, Maintenance will do their work and then we 19 have to retest those components. So I mean that work 20 comesrthrough mjso I know before I let those guys go 21 stroke those valves that I need to ensure that my 22 inboard or whatever the situation may be, outboard 23 containing the isolation valve is closed prior to 24 stroking these valves so that I have isolation.
25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: In doing NEAL R. GROSS , .
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-1 m 1 -r . ,. 1 - .tW%
104 1 that, in understanding the tech specs, do you have any 2 responsibility to evaluate conditions you find as 3 operability issues or potential operability issues?
4 Oh, sure, sure. I mean 5 I know the work that's coming through.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
7 The CRS may not know the 8 work. I'm responsible as he is 9 to ensure that we have compliance with tech specs.
10 But I mean I'll talk to him about that.
11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
12 J '.1mean it's -- he is 13 responsible to make sure the LCO gets implemented and 14 the times are tracked and he has a complete 15 understanding of where he's at relative to the tech 16 specs, but I have to communicate that to him in cases 17 like the retest of the containment isolation valves.
- 18. SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
19 Now, if you have normal 20 NRC surveillances that come in, typically what we did 21 is we'll look at tech specs out at Work Control first 22 and then we'll write it down on the sheets that the C 23 techs use and then they'll bring that information into 24 the control room and it will be looked at a second 25 time.
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105
- 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. All
-S 2 right. Now, with that background, let me go back over 3 the dieE3el generator issue with the jacket water inner 4 cooler leak. You said you were inrork Controlthat 5 week, iJ E I understood you correctly.
- ~Yes.
6 7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And the leak 8 was dis' covered, what, Sunday or Monday or something 9 like th at, and then there was some repair activity 10 that toc)k place during the week and a retest and --
1i 017 I think -
.12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What was 13 your invol vement with that as far as from an 14 operability standpoint? Were you the one going into 15 the control room saying, "This is potentially an 16 operability issue"? How did that --
17 Well, what it was was --
18 from what I'm remembering is we didn't identify and 19 shut it down., We were in an outage and it was worked 20 and then it was problems coming out of the outage 21 with it. So I had the tag, the initial tag release 22 for the maintenance run and we ran it. I was out in 23 the field with my equipment operator, there was a 24 couple guys out there, and actually there were a lot X; 25 of people out there, there was Engineering, and that's NEAL R. GROSS / . '
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS lq'*)") DL.q~r"i 10I &kl% AM* k1 1A8
106 1 when we found it.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
3 Ii-, *-.....--/ So we-- Engineering 4 wanted to -- you know, we shut it down and tagged it 5 and that was my extent of it.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you get 7 involved with any kind of additional assessment of the 8 leak? I mean I think you noted you said that you saw 9 it beforehand and it was leaking a certain amount and 10 then you thought, well, it's about the same or maybe 11 a little bit worse, but, certainly, it didn't stop.
-. 12 j. Well, I saw it when we 13 returned it to service on a maintenance run.
14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
15 2And therI retagged it 16 and then my shift was done 17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did you in 18 your own mind say, oh, it's still in Op?
19 Lru -Oh, yes. Oh, yes. We 20 didn't have to put it operable.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Was 22 there any discussion on the part of the Engineering or 23 anybody else saying, "Well, we think we were too 24 strict with our first call. Maybe we were too 25 stringent." Did you get involved with any discussions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
107 1 like that?
2 C7 No. It remained 3 inoperable. There was no question. Because coming 4 out of an outage until it -- the way it typically 5 would happen is that we have a maintenance outage on 6 a diesel, we'll do a maintenance run and do our 7 retesting on that maintenance run. And then we still 8 won't declare it operable. We may declare it 9 available for (inaudible) purposes, but we have to run 10 a surveillance test after that maintenance run and all 11 the retests are done SAT to make sure it passes the
.12.. surveillance test. Then we'll declare it operable.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. And 14 you said you were off shift? Were you like going out 15 of the sequence then, so you weren't involved with it 16 from then on?
17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
18 19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
20 21 Okay.
22 ' ) But when I left we were 23 in the LCO. I think we were in a 12-hour shutdown.
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.
25 After 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> we'd have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 11)' W~r~ I M AIfrAIIC hi %A#
108 1 to shut down.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. I've 3 got a couple more things I wanted to ask about.
4 A NSure.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you need a break, 6
L 7 -.- NO, no, I'm fine.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Hope Creek 10 was given a power uprate over the --
11 Yes.
12 .. SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- last year 13 or two or something like that? And you were licensed 14 to create a thermal power change from, what, 3293 15 megawatts thermal --
16 17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- 3339. Were you 18 ever involved with a situation where there was a 19 question about what to do when there was a loss of 20 inputs for specific computer monitoring for the -- I 21 think cross flow and maybe --
- Sure.
22 23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- some 24 other inputs that helped you -- allowed you to go to 25 that new higher power level? Do you recall anything NEAL R. GROSS i .
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109 1 of that nature?
2 ] Yes. Yes, I do. Yes, I 3 remember one time we lost our link between our 4 processor computer which monitors thermal limits and 5 provides input from all our heat balance stuff into 6 our (inaudible) computer system.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you recall when 8 that was?
9 It had to be, gosh, I 10 guess a year and a half, maybe two years ago. It 12 could have been up to two years ago. And so I mean
- 12. the.things that were lost were -- we even had loss of 13 rod position indication with some of our rods. But we 14 -- and I'm trying, to remember, I think cross flow was 15 out. I was in a bad situation because I was thee) 16 and I remember the RO was actually got pretty 17 excitable and he said, "I have indications of multiple 18 rods drifting," and that's a tough report to take.
19 And he was pretty excited and I remember saying, 20 "Understand indications of multiple rod drifts." We 21 looked at alternate indications, APRMsi hard wires, 22 which were fine. Turbine first stage pressure, 23 everything was stable and we did not take them all 24 into shutdown because it wasn't warranted, but I mean 25 we verified that we were stabled and then after some NEAL R. GROSS H COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4'2) OUf 0C A IC1I - tP S -I%-'
110 1 discussion we back powered down about a percent or 2 back down to the -- I can't remember if it was we came 3 down to 99 or 98. I don't remember the exact details 4 of it but I've been going through it before.
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
6 And we have some pretty 7 good guidance now that we didn't have back then in our 8 alarm responses for that type of situation.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Now you say 10 you back powered down 98 or 99. Was that in that 11 event and was there any other events where the actions 12 were different or was it that's just the action you 13 took?
14 rWitirtJ Well, let me say this:
15 I think my recommendation was, based on what I got 16 frosty operators was to back the power down.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was the 18 who was giving you that reading?
19 oh, gosh, it was 20 a while ago.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Want me to get my 22 list out? What shift would that be?
23 *T*Well, he was filling in.
24 It was echo shift but he was he was filling 25 in. It wasn't a normal member of the shift?
NEAL R. GROSS ." i/ /
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS n4 a,, ..
^M1 01 -I, .~-e'r% .....-
i1l 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
2No 3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 9 4 (phonetic)?
5 6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We've got tw ~ /
7
- i Right. So this is what 8 we had, we had an initial situation where I got 9 multiple;inputs from operators feeling that we should 10 back power down, and we didn't do that initially, we 11 didn't do that, and that caused some consternation.
12 ---We looked and evaluated and I actually felt that it 13 would be conservative to do that.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where was the 15 consternation when you didn't initially down power?
16 owl With the operators, with 17 the NCOs. And I had talked to -and told 18 him that I wanted to back power down just to be on the 19 conservative side, and he said, "Well, we're going to 20 hold off on that." And there was some discussion.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How did you feel 22 about that?
23 wanted to back it down, 24 I wanted to back it down. But then we had some 25 discussion as opposed to just jumping into it and not NEAL R. GROSS (4f COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
112 1 taking a look at things. Like I said, we looked at 2 other indications, looked at APRMs, we looked at first 3 stage pressure, and because it wasn't done initially 4 guys had some issues with it. I mean it was -- they 5 wanted us to come down and I was with them, and then 6 we talked about it, I talked about it with* and 7 we brought inj (Phonetic) and talked 8 about it a little bit and decided that it wasn't 9 something that we had to do right away.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you agree with 11 that?
...... .. ... .. 1 2 After we looked at our 13 other indications, I felt that we were okay with that.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So after you had the 15 discussion with and 16 And
- we talked 17 about it, right.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But apparently it 19 still left some consternation you were calling it?
20 $9 Well, yes. I knowj*
21 wrote a notification on it, and I remember him writing 22 it. I don't know exactly what it was about other than 23 the fact that -- I don't know what the detail in it 24 other than the fact that I guess he expressed the fact K-. 25 that he felt that we should have came back down power NEAL R. GROSS [ - L)
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113 1 a little bit.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You had indicated 3 something changed in the procedures there. What was 4 it that changed?
5 . Yes. I mean if you look 6 at our procedures now, I don't know if it was as a 7 result of that incident or not because this happened 8 a couple times, not just one time. We have additional 9 guidance that we get from Engineering to a situation 10 like that. And it's in our alarm response, and we 11 have additional guidance in, I want to say, 106, which 12 is our power operation procedures.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How would it be 14 handled? What does it call for now? Do you power 15 down or do you rely on the other partners?
16 It's lengthy. I think we 17 have an hour before we need to do anything, but don't 18 quote me on that. I mean that's where I'm going off 19 the top of my head. I'd have to look -- that's not an 20 immediate action type of thing, so that's not 21 committed to memory. But I believe there's some time 22 we have to evaluate things before we do anything with 23 power. Because you have to understand too that, sure, 24 you may come down a percent or two but you're moving 25 the Plant at the same time. There is potential issues NEAL R. GROSS ...
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114 1 associated with moving the Plant even though that may 2 sound like a minor adjustment, and it is.
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Weren't you 4 in fact coming up at the time, coming up in power when 5 this happened?
6 .... _) No. We were -- to the 7 best of my recollection, we were stable at 100 8 percent. There may have been a different time, 9 because like I said, I know that this has happened a 10 couple of times at least.
11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. I
..12 -mean how hard an evolution is it to lower power by 13 one?
14 i- Oh, it's very easy, it's 15 very easy, but what you're doing is -- what we'll 16 typically do in that case is just back on a research 17 low.
18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
19 jJ And it's nothing more 20 than tapping a button.
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
~But --
22 23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Let me ask 24 you a question about how you felt at the time. You 25 sounded like the operators had an opinion, they were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4121)- C3UrMCI~ C' A&IM - 60"
115 1 sharing it with you, they felt like it's conservative, 2 let's just back power down a percent or two. Sounded 3 like your initial thought was, yes, that sounds 4 conservative, let's do that, and then there was --
5 jWell, this is -- if I had 6 gone off iahat,)-- based on e 'I1original report, 7 we would have scrammed the Plant, and that wasn't the 8 right thing to do.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
10 I mean :j was very 1.1 excitable and I remember -- I distinctly remember 12 going out onto the-floor-and saying, "Stop a minute, 13 see what we've got," because there weren't any alarms 14 going off or anything like that. Everything appeared 15 to be stable so we looked at our data and basically we 16 were stable. But what I recall about that incident 17 with*,)was that he had crossed the line in his mind 18 where he was -- you know, this is what was happening 19 and even though he knew we were stable and we weren't 20 really having a problem with rods drifting in, that he 21 was going to stay on this line.
22 I mean I even heard a statement to the 23 effect that, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Just wanted 24 for the record that we made the recommendation that we 25 should back power down." And I mean I didn't come NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS K
- 11. RHflfl 1q1 Ain Mir NI 1A1
116 1 right out and say, "Hey, yes, we need to back power 2 down." My initial thing was assess it and I did 3 assess it, and, like I said, I don't remember the 4 details of what was up with cross flow other than the 5 fact that we had lost a link between our PPC and our 6 (inaudible) and I felt it would have been conservative 7 to come down a percent. And after talking to those 8 guys that would not have hurt us, that would not have 9 hurt us.
10 And I turned around and I told* after 11 I talked to the guys that -- because he wasn't in 12 there initially, he was back-in the office back there, 13 and he said, "Hold off on that. Hold off on that."
14 And then there was some discussion there and he got 15 involved, and then the decision was made not to 16 do that initially, not to comedown, back it off right 17 away. And I want to say that that was probably the 18 first time that happened since our cross flow 19 installation, and so it was a place none of us had 20 ever been before, and I'm sure that added to whyl r 21 was feeling the way he did. But I mean wasn't the 22 only -- there was another operator and I don't 23 remember his name or who it was that also was in 24 alignment with ras far as backing power down a 25 percent or two.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
117 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: It sounds 2 like you indicated that his initial report was maybe 3 exaggerated, but I mean he was giving what he saw, it 4 was unfiltered.
5 Yes.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: He'd give 7 you the unfiltered.--
8 71 Sure.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: --
10 unadulterated, this is what I have. He had -- like you said, he had some rod positioning indications or 12- loss and,.-
13 (END TAPE 2, SIDE A) 14 (BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE B) 15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- p.m.,
16 approximately. You described that you kind of prudely 17 evaluated and said, "Okay, let's look at APRMs for 18 multiple indications, we're still at full power, close 19 to full power, look at turbine first stage pressure' 20 you're still at full power.
21 77Right.
22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You said, 23 "Okay, well, these indications are inconsistent with 24 rods drifting or there's just --
25 Yes. The communication NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
118 1 link had gone down is what it was.
2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
3 Right. But, in turn, you say, well, okay. Well, not 4 withstanding that, at some point there was some 5 acknowledgement that, yes, there was some loss of 6 indication --
7 ,Right.
8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- and maybe 9 some uneasy feeling about staying at right way where 10 you were, a discussion between the ROs and yourself 11 and then you're thinking, yes, maybe it's good to do 12 that. Did you feel --
13 i Well, this is where I was 14 coming from, okay? I mean we didn't do anything to 15 change power, we were riding on happy at 100 percent.
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
17 And there was no 18 evolutions going on at the time and it was a computer 19 communication issue. Now, we didn't know that 20 initially, okay, but I mean after we assessed it, and 21 there was still data available on our plant process 22 computer, it wasn't that we had lost it all but there 23 was still certain things like first stage pressure was 24 there and the hard wires are totally independent like 25 our APRM indications and we were going off that. But NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODF ISI A Ar/
\/f KIIAI
119 1 based on that and it was just an indication thing, a 2 computer thing, there was no -- and this is the thing 3 tha talked about, what has changed, nothing has 4 changed. We had a problem with a link between our two 5 computers here and we still have turbine first stage 6 pressure, we still have APRMs and I mean not to say 7 that we weren't going to reduce power at some point 8 but it's not something we needed to do right away. We 9 needed to understand what's going on before we do 10 that. That's where he was coming from.
11 And then, you know, after those
- 12. - discussions, I was okay with it, I was okay with it.
13 I was. I was. But at the same time, initially, when (s 14 things are happening, it's happening fast and you're 15 getting these kind of reports, and you get a guy who's 16 very excitable, it would have been no harm in backing 17 power down a percent. But we were okay to stay where 18 we were at also.
19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And 21 response to that was hold off. You're saying it 22 didn't mean he wasn't going to consider at another 23 point --
24 441Naw Oh, absolutely.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- he just didn't NEAL R. GROSS ,;.
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120 1 want to do it at that point in time.
2 Oh, yes. He never said, 3 "We're not going to do it," he just said, "Just hold 4 off for a minute." And I think that was the right 5 thing to do.
6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.
7 Let me back up to one other issue, it's a new issue, 8 we haven't talked about it yet. There was a report 9 that we have received regarding some problems with 10 off-gas, off-gas system and having a high flow 11 condition.
12..e .
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Were you 14 involved with that at all?
15 No, that one I wasn't.
16 I know what that's about, though. I don't know 17 whether it would be -- my understanding was that our 18 procedure has a limit of 75 SCFM gas flow, and we
.19 typically exceed that when we're going initial vacuum 20 on a condenser, and that is actually an expected 21 condition but it was not in our procedure. Our 22 procedure basically says, or said, that we cannot --
23 we're not supposed-to operate above 75 SCFM. And our 24 operators took the hard line on that and said -- and 25 just to give a history on that, a lot had come down NEAL R. GROSS / )/"
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f, kiJ-, 4 -Ja
121 1 recently prior to that about procedural compliance and 2 making sure we follow procedures to the letter and 3 obviously we did not meet that stuff in that procedure 4 that allowed us to continue.
5 And that caused a problem because theory 6 on one hand the Union's perception is that 7 management's telling us to follow procedures. Well, 8 we can't follow the procedure as written and now 9 they're saying, well, just -- we're not going to 10 comply with that step, so to speak. Not in those 11 words, but, okay, we're going to evaluate this and see 12 if this is an expected condition even though the 13 procedure says this. Then maybe we need to get the 14 procedure changed to reflect the fact that this is 15 expected under these conditions. So I guess to make 16 a long story short, we didn't -- we continued 17 operation above 75 SCFM for a period of time, and I 18 guess a number of notifications came out about that 19 from the board operators.
20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Isn't that 21 kind of a double standard, though?
22 -- - 9 Sure, it is.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean in 24 one respect management pushes, "Follow the procedure, S25 follow the procedure," but yet there's a procedure NEAL R. GROSS CCURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
122 1 that may affect generation --
2 uSure.
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- and the 4 guidance isn't prescriptive, so you say, "Okay, well, 5 we'll just evaluate it."
6 u r Sure.
7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: It's kind of 8 a stalling tactic, a delaying tactic.
9 1 Well, that's -- you're 10 right, you're right, it is a double standard, and I 11 mean we're making this push to follow our procedures 12 and make sure we .have procedure compliance, and 13 there's a lot of things out there, there's probably 14 more things out there that we don't know about yet 15 that we're going to come across and it's going to be 16 the same type of situation, and we're going to have to 17 address them as they come up. But, you're right, the 18 guys' whole point was, "Hey, you're telling us to do 19 this, this is where we're at, and now you're telling 20 us not to comply with a procedural step."
21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Could you 22 see how someone might take that as a production over 23 safety issue?
24' Well, the only thing I 25 would say to that is that I think, and like I said, I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
J fle .........
123 1 wasn't the shift it was on, difficult position to be
.°.
2 in. I understand -- I mean if you look at it cut and 3 dry, you're right, it's contradictory. However, those 4 conditions are expected for -- that type of off-gas 5 flow was expected for those conditions. That was not 6 an abnormal situation, and you cannot -- it's very 7 difficult to write a procedure for every single 8 situation that's going to come down the line. So I 9 mean I can understand with the knowledge that, hey, 10 this is not an abnormal condition and, yes, our 11 procedure says this. The flexibility isn't put in the 12 procedure, there's not a note that basically saying 13 under these conditions it's acceptable, but I think 14 what happened out of that was they didn't want to spot 15 change. Said pretty much to that effect.
16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, you 17 can make a procedure change to allow you to do 18 something. The question becomes whether it's the 19 right thing to do or not.
20 Right. And I'm not 21 arguing that point. I'm not justifying what was done 22 but I'm just trying to explain my understanding of 23 what happened that day. I mean it's a big deal to --
24 and I'm not talking about production, I'm just talking
.,- 25 it is a big deal to take the instruments into shut NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON. D.C. 20005-3701 ,...
124 1 down as far as impact to the organization and being 2 online, producing power, that type of thing. And when 3 you know that you're going to be there or that that is 4 just because your procedure doesn't reflect that, it's 5 not like you were in a situation where, okay, I've got 6 this procedural restriction that I'm supposed to 7 operate by and the condition I'm in is not an expected 8 condition.
9 Having said that, it's not all right to 10 say, "Hey, follow your procedures to the letter and 11 when you reach this value continue to operate." It's 12 not all right to say that. And I'll be perfectly 13 honest, I don't know that I would have done anything 14 different than the shift that was on, I don't know 15 that. It's easier to sit back and say, "Yes, okay, it 16 says this, shut the Plant down." If you've got a 17 problem and you're not supposed to be there, that's 18 one thing, shut it down, but if you've seen this 19 condition 100 times before and you know that that 20 condenser is full of air, you're sucking on that thing 21 and you know you're going to pull in excess of that 22 type of off-gas flow.
23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Right.
24 - You know, it's like, 25 okay, is there non-thinking compliance? I mean is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
Iv w.. . . . .
125 1 that what we want to be, just take that to shutdown 2 because --
3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No. You 4 want an intelligently comply with the procedures. You 5 described this as if the Plant was starting up. Would 6 the circumstances be different if the Plant was 7 operating at full power and this happened?
8 ______________._[ But, see, that's what I'm 9 saying. That's what I'm saying. If it was not an 10 expected condition and on full power operation, my 11 off-gas flow is about 75, then you need to shut down 12 or whatever the actions are.
13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: There 14 weren't any actions. That's the dilemma, there were 15 no recommended actions other than do not, do not 16 operate above 75 SCFM.
17 Okay. Well --
18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: There's no 19 -- that's my point, what do you do? What should the 20 --
21 . Well, do not operate 22 means you take the Plant offline. That's what you 23 would do, right? I mean you have the off-gas --
24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Or reduce 25 power or do something to try and get yourself under NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
126 1 75. Maybe the answer is take -- lower power from 100 2 to 50. But isn't there some interim measure, 3 somewhere between the two extremes?
4 Well, actually, we do 5 have an abnormal for, I guess, a condenser vacuum, I 6 believe, and there are some supplemental steps in that 7 abnormal, the right things to do in those type of 8 circumstances.
9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It seems like you can 11 see -- just looking at this situation, you can see 12 both sides, in a way, where you can -- the operator 13 impressions on this might be right in that they're 14 saying, "We did the wrong thing because we didn't 15 comply." Are you aware of any other situations where 16 they might have gotten that message that we're not 17 going to comply because it would involve going 18 offline?
- 19. Who are you talking 20 about, management or union or -- I'm not sure I'm 21 following 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Well, any other 23 situations that might have sent one of these mixed --
24 you know, it's a message that's saying -- where you 4.
25 can see some justification for it, "Okay, I understand NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
127 1 why you're upset, there's a procedure, but we didn't 2 follow it in this incident." Not that you were on 3 shift or anything but are you aware of any other 4 situations what would be similar to this, that type of 5 decision making?
6 There was a recent 7 situation that talked about feed pump operations at 8 one of our feed pumps, and I don't remember the 9 numbers but it said if you got up to a certain limit 10 on your vibrations and I think it was for actual 11 displacement or actual radial vibration or whatever, 12 that I think you needed to take the feed pump out.
13 And I wasn't on, the feed pump didn't come out and 14 those values were reached, and I think there was a 15 team audit to raise the alarm set point above those 16 values. I don't know the details, I just know that 17 there was a situation where we approached or reached 18 a limit on vibrations associated with the feed pump, 19 and the feed pump, I believe, needed to come out and 20 it didn't come out right away. And I don't know 21 anything other than that.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you know who was 23 on for that, what shift?
24 Yes. You would -- and 25 that's probably the same individual who was on with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ) ,
1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
128 1 the off-gas. You want to talk to._- ry 2 confident, level-heade . and 3 he can give you more detail than I ever could about it 4 because he lived it and it was fairly recently.
5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, we've 6 gone over a lot of events and a lot of issues and 7 we've probably spanned a large period of time, from 8 very recently to maybe back a year or so, maybe even 9 back prior to that. But thinking back and you kind of 10 mentioned earlier that maybe when you first got 11 licensed things were maybe not as good as they are 12 today. *Have -you noticed any .general trends or 13 anything that in hindsight and reflecting on what was 14 discussed that may have indicated or provided any 15 insight as to why things are so much better now than 16 they were, say, six month ago or a year ago, two years 17 ago, three years ago? Is there something unique or 18 something different about conditions today?
19 71 Well, I know that there 20 was a big emphasis on upgrading the quality of pre-job 21 briefs. I mean that was a big --
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Starting when?
23 I want to say going back 24 to last summer.
4'-~.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Summer of 2003.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
129 1 Three, yes. That's what 2 I'm remembering.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Anything else?
4 -. That was a big one. And 5 also about doing a better job on post-job briefs.
6 Now, we still lack there, we're working on that, 7 that's not an easy thing to -- we're getting better 8 there but we're not where we need to be. And that 9 will help us, obviously, when we've got to do a job 10 the next time. I know we've had post-job briefs in 11 the past, a lot of them informal, where the feedback
- 12. may not have been captured- and help us out the next 13 time, but that's one thing we're working on.
14 Just our overall emphasis on safety. I 15 mean we've got now -- we've got a guy named.
16 who was an and he has been taken off 17 shift and his whole purpose in life is safety and he 18 is our !".he's on our 19 l;and I mean that's what he does. And I mean 20 I think management felt that strong enough about it to 21 the point where we needed to have a dedicated resource 22 for that. I mean Jgets paid a pretty decent 23 salary, like we all do, and that's what he does.
24 We do have on each shift individual guys, Cý 25 shift representatives, safety reps, that attend NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
130 1 meetings occasionally or get feedback e-mail, and they 2 actually discuss that stuff with the crews on shift.
3 And also just what I've seen with(wjt *in the 4 past couple months with his not willing to settle for 5 substandard equipment and wanted to make repairs, go 6 the extra mile, if you will, to fix problems for good.
7 And - -
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I don't mean to 9 interrupt you --
10 That's all right.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you want to
... .12 finish that? ..
13
- Well, I just wanted to I.
14 say that I know one of big things is he's pretty 15 grounded as far as the rigor in which we're doing our 16 corrective actions now, like the root causes type 17 stuff, making sure that we fix it right. I mean 18 that's what I've seen. I've seen that. And 1 as 19 only been there a couple months but I've just seen us 20 working toward that even before that, but with4*
21 it's just -- it's almost like a step change more so 22 than before.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you pointed that 24 a couple times in terms of you've seen the Plant 25 working toward this what you see as a positive work NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
131 1 environment.
2 _i33 Right.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What I'd like to ask, 4 and I hope I don't lose you here because it's going to 5 be a multiple point, stick with me on the question.
- Sure.
6 7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We've talked about a 8 couple incidents where you decide -- you were 9 describing it as to be on the conservative side in 10 terms of the power parameters that you did or didn't 11 have back in that incident involvingr 3J and 12 we talked about the off-gas situation where you had a 13 procedure that says one thing but were not necessarily 14 going to follow it. And then that feed pump, that
.15 recent feed pump issue.
16 You did say, and you pointed out, these 17 are situations that are thrown up to us as look what 18 we've done here.
19 JRight.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This is evidence of 21 non-conservative decision making. The situation 22 recently with the KV switchyard and the multiple 23 repairs that were done you're showing as evidence of 24 a better mentality toward fixing things right and 25 getting on it more quickly.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
132 1
- 1T Right.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you have any 3 evidence of that in the recent past? Do you have any 4 other incidents where you could say the decision could 5 have been more conservative than what you expected?
6 Do you have any other incidents where there was 7 evidence of that before the switchyard fix?
8 A . ." You mean things similar 9 to things just like the switchyard?
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right, but prior to 11 the switchyard. Can you think of anything that 12 happened in the recent past?.
13 There's so many things 14 that happened on -- it's just all -- I think --
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Just so there's no 16 dead air, I'll go off the record briefly, okay? It's 17 3:24.
18 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off 19 the record at 3:24 p.m. and went back on 20 the record at 3:25 p.m.)
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Back on. It's about 22 3:25 p.m.
23 I Yes, we had our refueling 24 outage this past spring, and we had issues with 25 drywell floor drain leakage turning up, and we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS rJ 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
133 1 actually made a decision to come down right before the 2 forced outage to fix that problem. Now, we have 3 procedural guidance on when to take action but we've 4 been conservative in doing those, taking the actions 5 like in this case to come down.
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was that in that 7 March time frame?
8 Yes. It was before the 9 forced outage. I mean that was one example. I know 10 that in recent forced outages, especially the December 11 one, that we have, like I said earlier, gone into the 12 drywel]. and done much more work than we normally would 13 have done.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: December 2003 this 15 happened.
16 Two thousand three, 17 right. I think that's probably about it for now.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's what comes to 19 mind?
20 Yes. And not that there 21 aren't more things but I mean it's just -- and like I 22 said, it's just apparent to me, it's obvious to me 23 that we're trying real hard as an organization to 24 effect a positive change here and to make a difference
-' 25 and fix things and to create a more safety conscious NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS -,
1323 RHODE ISLAND AVF. N W
134 1 environment. And I don't know how else to convey that 2 to you, I live it every day. And there may be more 3 examples here but I just can't recall any at this 4 time, but it's just a feeling I get. And I see 5 things, give you some examples, but a lot of things 6 that we're talking about with regard to this loss of 7 this computer indication, this link, I mean I think 8 that was like two years ago in the -- we've come a 9 long way since then. I haven't been briefed by 10 anybody. I mean I haven't -- my management doesn't 11 even know that I'm here today other than the fact that 12 1.. -questioned them about what was happening. And I 13 mean that's just the way I feel.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're getting your 15 honest assessment.
16 Yes.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's what we're 18 asking for and that's the expectation under oath.
19 A Right. And I'm giving 20 you everything to the best of my recollection. A lot 21 of these -- the details of a lot of this stuff are 22 fuzzy to me because it's been a year or more or close 23 to a year. What I've seen is with regard to -- and 24 like I said, I was in the union before, and for the 25 most part I mean we have a pretty good rapport with NEAL R. GROSS .
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHcflF IRI ANR A*\/ N!%At
135 1 our union people. I get along great with my equipment 2 operators and board operators and you have to have 3 that, but when you have a union there's always a line 4 there and there's always going to be conflict, and I 5 think a lot of times if you haven't been on both sides 6 of the fence, and I have, you don't appreciate what's 7 happening on one side or you may not fully understand 8 what's happening on the other side, and you may make 9 comments that aren't totally founded or based in the 10 knowledge of what's going on. I mean I know -- I il don't know what goes on at *evel or
.12level, and I know I have opinions of things 13 that maybe they're not justified because I don't know 14 the full story. But just the two sides of the fence 15 that I've been on and seeing some of the things I've 16 seen, I think a lot of the comments are, in part, 17 justified, but a lot of them are made out of 18 frustration and --
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: From the union.
20 Yes. And may not have 21 the full picture or be totally grounded in fact. But 22 I think if you talk to the union guys, if you talk to 23 every union individual, Operations-wise, and you ask 24 them where they think relative to safety today as to 25 where we were six months ago or a year ago, I think NEAL R. GROSS .
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
136 1 they're going to pretty much convey to you the same 2 thing, maybe with one or two exceptions.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You think they have 4 a general comfort level with that or at least the 5 concerns would be less so today than they would have 6 been maybe a year ago?
7 I think so, and I think 8 every one to a man feels that they can bring safety 9 issues up and I think they feel empowered to raise 10 those type of issues. I really do. I really do.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Without concern for 12 any type of adverse action?
13 Absolutely. Absolutely.
14 Actually, what they'll do, especially with regard to 15 safety, is when notifications comes in I mean they'll 16 get screened by SROs and we have ability to decode 17 them with safety coding that alerts other 18 organizations down here at the island and they even 19 have been trained on how to code those notifications.
20 And I mean that stuff all gets a lot of attention 21 these days.
- 22. SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is that something 23 new, this coding?
24 I think within the past 25 six to eight months I want to say, yes. I mean it may NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
137 1 have been there in the past but not widely as known.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Emphasized?
3 Emphasized, yes. And 4 people may not have been aware of the fact it was out 5 there before where now we've had training on it. We 6 all know how to do that. So that's just my general 7 impression.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.
9 I don't know. That's me.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you want to add 11 anything else?
- 12. No, I don't think so.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I'll wrap it up with 14 a few closing questions then. What about you, Scott?
15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I'm good.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Have I or any 17 other NRC representative offered you any promises of 18 reward or threatened you in any manner in exchange for 19 your information today?
20 No.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have you appeared 22 freely and voluntarily?
23 Yes.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. We've pretty 25 much covered and you have nothing else to add to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
I -N, 138 1 record?
2 Nothing else.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Then at this 4 point we'll go off the record. I have to thank you 5 for a significant amount of your time today. Thank 6 you.
7 i.'jGood. You're welcome.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. We went off 9 the record at approximately 3:31, 3:30 p.m. Right now 10 it's about 3:35 and I just wanted to catch that 11 oversight.
12 (Whereupon, at 3:25 p.m., the Interviewof 13
- j was concluded.)
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
rXVA ~Y~A.AA'.1aIww1rI(TnlM n r, )nnr VM74 -
CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
Name of Proceeding: Interview of Docket Number: 1-2003-051F Location: Salem, NJ were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings as recorded on tape(s) provided by the NRC.
Mia Tharg Official Transcriber Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrmross.com