ML061770566
| ML061770566 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem, Hope Creek  |
| Issue date: | 10/24/2003 |
| From: | NRC/OI |
| To: | |
| References | |
| 1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194 | |
| Download: ML061770566 (2) | |
Text
.1-2003-051f, Interview Date: October 24, 03 Position/Locatio Number of years:
Special Duties he Never saw an issue where he questions the company's attitude toward nuclear safety.
Mentioned having been through numerous downpowers, startups and never had an issue.
Industrial safety has improved with the management expectation and emphasis that they remain safe. He noted that they are having more reportable incidents and does not know what to attribute that to in light of the added emphasis on safety.
Production over safety? No issues regarding nuclear safety, pointed out that with reactor trips, management has always backed their decision to bring the unit offline. Offered 11/11102 example of problem with feed pump trip. Once recognized (no overhead alarms) they recommended, with CRS, to trip the reactor. Management complimented them that day on their handling of situation. Had another example of similar reinforcement by management.
Concern regarding anything not being addressed that would affect the safe operation of the unit? Offered that hin s that need to be fixed, for example control room indicators, seem never to get fixed.
oes not know what goes on behind.the scenes, but the attempts to try to fix it are there. Seems that one thing after the other adjusts the priority-of-the.issues 7 --
written-pri6rt-th-t-These-ar-issues in SAP.H-se-th-bllecusedlby-this-as the "rut"H.
of this is how things are, it's accepted and there is complacency. Sometimes things are fixed in an outage, sometimes not. He offered an example of being off-shift on the WIN team and tracking control room indicators. After a while he asked "What's the point" because it seemed the resources and/or time were not put into addressing the issues. In the control room for Unit 1 (Unit 2 in outage-not sure) estimated 5-7 blocked or partially blocked overheads. Not aware of inoperable control inputs, these are temperature, pressure. The voltage regulator for main generator on Unit 1 has a problem. The alarm is currently cleared due to colder weather, but they know the regulator is bad.
described the process for handliand poritizing notifications.
rites notifications all the time as part of being and noted that he only writes up what e has to because it costs money to address issues. He believes some people write notifications on because they believe something is a problem, but he does not always agree it's the same level of problem. He does not believe he was retaliated against for having done so and had no knowledge that others were retaliated against for raised issues. He has heard rumors about supervisors being "calibrated" for issues with management, but had no specific information. He repeated his belief that nuclear safety issues are addressed by management.
He noted that the notification system is vague and does not work the way it should. Priorities cause them to address other issues. There is no consistency with supervisors because they always rotate out.
discussed the changes he has seen in the control room staff in the deregulated environment. He sees a swing in emphasis on production. However, the line is drawn regarding reactor safety, but there is a fine line drawn between acceptable risk and what is not.
Information in this record was deleted 1/11/ -7
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I in accordance with the Freedom of Informatiol Act, exemptions "*"
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-. He believes the company compares itself to what other stations do in risk tolerance. He thought any given day it can be different from another and offered an example as occurring the week of October 13, 2003, with the stuck feed reg valve. The CR staff that turned over to his shift was more adamant about the need to shut down than his shift was. He attributed it to stuck packing that happened from time to time. Unfortunately, it.ended up that the valve was stuck. He believes it was handled conservatively by the AOM in his setting of the percent of generator levels (instead of 63% he went to 60%), while they did their troubleshooting. He pointed out the most conservative method would have been to shut down. He described the turnover at 25% as a business decision because engineering wanted to check something else. They turned over at 25% power and then the decision was made that they needed to shutdown. There were comments made by others regarding the smoothness of the shutdown under these circumstances. He attributed that to the extra people they had on for the outage.
This discussion of the extra manning led to a concern he has about the company's push to streamline the shift from a five man crew to four. He and the union do not want this to happen and he addressed it through the union with the Safety Committee. There is no violation of the contract or any written agreements, but they believe it is going to cause a problem. He sees manning get abused constantly. It seems that the company is slipping away from their restart training-having a backup operator and second opinion-and this issue is attributed to money in that there would be one less guy to pay and the overtime issue. He gave examples of the July 2003 dual unit trip/partial loss of power as causing him concern with needing a backup operator on. At that time, everyone was busy with five guys on and it was not pleasant. He has heard
___thatit is proposed that theyareallowed -to leave-one -operatoralone for-up to forty.minutes_= -
Never had a problem with management as far as operating the reactor or safety of the public; there is nothing blatant or indirect, and he has never seen a problem with how management deals with the people who raise those concerns.