ML061810054
| ML061810054 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem, Hope Creek  |
| Issue date: | 02/27/2004 |
| From: | NRC/OI |
| To: | |
| References | |
| 1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194, NRC-1364 | |
| Download: ML061810054 (177) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I
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Title:
Interview of 4~
Docket Number:
Location:
1-2003-051 F Salem, New Jersey Friday, February 27, 2004 Date:
/
Work Order No.:
NRC-1364 Pages 1-175§ NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 Information in this record was deleted W
g(202) 234-4433 in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, exemptions
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FOIA-
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OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS INTERVIEW x
IN THE MATTER OF:
INTERVIEW OF (CLOSED)
Docket No.
1-2003-051F
x Friday, February 27, 2004 Resident's Office Salem -
Hope Creek Station The above-entitled interview was conducted at 9:36 a.m.
BEFORE:
EILEEN NEFF, Special Agent SCOTT BARBER, Senior Project Engineer NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2
9:36 a.m.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Today's date is 4
February 27, 2004.
The time is approximately 9:36 5
a.m.
Speaking is Special Agent Eileen Neff, U.S. NRC, 6
Region 1, Office of Investigations.
Also present from 7
Region 1, Division of Reactor Projects is Senior 8
Project Engineer, Scott Barber.
9 What follows is an interview of 10
- ---\\
That is spelled 11 1
ýwho is currently employed by PS&G 12 Nuclear as a---a t Hope Creek.
13 The subject of the interview concerns the 14 safety conscious work environment at Salem and Hope 15 Creek and has been advised that he's 16 being advised as a witness in this matter and there is 17 no potential violation associated with a
safety 18 conscious work environment.
19 The interview, as agreed, is being tape 20 recorded and will be taken under oath.
The location 21 of the interview is the Resident's
- Office, NRC 22 Resident's Office at Salem and Hope Creek.
23 At this point what I'd like to do is place 24 you under oath, okay?
25 Would you raise your right hand, please.;)
NEAL R.GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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Do you swear that the testimony you're about to 2
provide is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but 3
the truth so help you God?
4 I do.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Some identifying 6
information, please, date of birth, Social Security 7
Number?
I8 My 9
date of birth is That would be My 10 Social Security Number i 11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Home
- address, 12 please?
13 r
14 15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And a summary of your 16 education, please?
17 jWJ Currently I'm employed at 18 Hope Creek as a I qualified 19 there in 19 I think it was I received my 20 license.
Before that I was at for about 21nd before that I have a
degree in 22 23 Institute.k Prior to that 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What years was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 11 12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: /
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r SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The degree year then was?
a SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And when you were at what position?
r 11 7171711 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MR.
BARBER:
is that rig So you worked at ht?
- Yes, years to the day.
MR.
BARBER:
- Okay,
- and then you came to..t
ý--11 1-
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aim IAf MR.
BARBER:
And did you go right into license class?
I think I licensed.
it was.
MR.
BARBER:
But I mean did you go right NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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into license class or did you work in the station at all?
I worked in the station for approximately six months to satisfy the time at the station.
N a boiling water reactor, very similar to Hope Creek.
I went into a fast track class in January, a 7-month --
MR.
BARBER:
You said you were an at CThat's right.
MR.
BARBER:
Were you licensed there too?
Certified.
MR.
BARBER:
Certified.
Company certified.
You'll see no examination at your office.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
When you came to Hope Creek initially in what were your job assignments then?
f Basically just to satisfy my time on station.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
STA type duties?
Some procedure reviews, some 50.59
- reviews, taking care of mostly administrative type backlog issues.
I did a 3-week review of design basis documentation when Operations NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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loaned me to Engineering for a period of three weeks to maybe two months, something like that, I think it was.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
And then I think my license came through in The examination was end o.-
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
- Okay, and did that position change at all or were you still on-shift?
No.
I'm not off-shift as of January of this year.
I reported to a work week assignment, day shift.
MR.
BARBER:
Were you a.....
all the way through just recently, in the control room the whole time or did you have any other intervening assignments?
'( Yes, yes.
And I don't remember the exact dates, Our last cycle, let me think, it would have been I went to work in help planning the outage.
MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
-Which was in April of MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
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ý And then I worked that 2
until the outage and then somewhere around June time 3
frame of last year, came back to my shift, ultimately 4
the same shift I was assigned with.
5 MR.
BARBER:
That's pretty typical though 6
isn't it, that kind of assignment?
7
- Yes, a five or six month 8
rotation, occasionally off shift to do some sort of 9
outage support or scheduling of planning support for 10 an indeterminate amount of time, as assigned, and then 11 back.
I was off long enough to lose my proficiency.
12 I needed to regain that by standing a set of MER 13 (Phonetic) watches before I regained license duty.
14 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
Very good, thanks.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And in your 16 management chain then, let's go from 1999 to date, 17 when you were on shift, who were you working, assigned 18 with, supervisory-wise?
19
,I reported to 20 fa fi'rst.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
As an 22 N
"Yes.
And then to he 23 transitioned off and into a day shift, he became the 24
- \\
- Iand then I 25 went oh, I
took a day shift job for about six NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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months to do workweek planning and scheduling.
But five or six months into it a
resigned from the company and went His slot needed to be filled.
I volunteered and was assigned a bravo shift which is WIN_**i-S,*P*Phonetic)
I reported for --
I'm guessing here --
maybe four or five months where he went to the Training Center and then (Phonetic).
I worked for L'(Phonetic) for several months until as stricken with' So he came off of shift and the'n'i
ý stepped in and I've worked fo for about three years.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So the bulk of your experience on shift as a would be with
- n The bulk of it, yes.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And right now, who is in your reporting --
7 (Inaudible )
(Phonetic).
I report to him.
He'I th fI J
-SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
I think what we'll do is let me ask you about this.
In your personal experience, we'll ask in terms of raising NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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concerns, if you had a concern whether it was nuclear safety or industrial safety or radiological safety, in terms of raising concerns and how the concerns are addressed on site, in terms of let's say from 1999 forward or well, you're on site in 1997-1998, let's look at the whole experience, okay?
How does it work on site?
Do you see the raising of concerns and handling of concerns having any particular strengths or particular weaknesses?
How would you rate that?
' I would say it's
- neutral, depending on the concern.
Some are addressed expeditiously and some are not.
I can't think o fa specific example on the other side.
The ones that come to my attention I am licensed and obligated to take those actions, but I do take that very seriously, are mostly processed or machine RE, those sort of issues.
People-wise, sometimes they're not taken quite as seriously.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Processed machinery, you mean equipment failure?
Hardware.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Things are not working the way they should?
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-W f
Yes.
And/or procedural 2
deficiencies or performance procedural deficiencies.
3 It wasn't performed quite the way the procedure 4
intended or as written.
Those are handled usually 5
fairly actually fairly is probably not the word.
6
- Well, I don't think they're handled that 7
well.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Equipment performance 9
deficiencies?
10 I
believe equipment 11 performance issues I think are handled very well and 12 expeditiously as best as we can within running a 13 business.
Not everything is going to be worked all 14 the time and not everything will get fixed today.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And has that been 16 your experience throughout since you've been on site?
17 J
Yes, for the most part.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay, and the kind of 19 concerns that aren't handled, you wouldn't rate as 20 well, what kind of concerns fall into that category?
21 The subtler ones, the 22 human performance ones, the ones that are --
things 23 along the lines like well, if I need to get this job 24 done which is always the priority, I have to do these 25 things that may not be in full compliance with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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sequencing of steps or something like that.
Although 2
it will meet the intent, will not be done precisely in 3
accordance with the steps of a procedure.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay, and --
5
- J1E And that is acceptable and 6
allowed.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You're not in 8
violation of something, is that what you're saying?
9 Correct.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's not quite in 11 accordance with the steps of the procedure.
12 Right.
13' SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Now wouldn't 14 something like that be done in can you think of an 15 example why something would be out of sequence?
16 I
can't think of a
17 specific one right off the top of my head, but it 18 would be something in the effect of fixing a boiler 19 house fan or a
- cooling, an ECCS cooling water 20 function.
Now it's a plant-type issue that would --
21 something along the lines that we can't get it out of 22 service without doing step two before step one because 23 of this concern.
And that is somewhat typical and 24 that would be acceptable.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Something that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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presents a safety issue or just an out of procedure?
2
.."Yes, in my experience, as 3
I look at that for that very question you're asking is 4
is does it make a difference, does it make a nuclear 5
safety difference?
No.
Then let's go ahead and do it 6
the way you proposed, due to 401.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
Now --
8 MR.
BARBER:
Is that a situation where, 9
for example, it sounds like what you're describing is 10 there's a system procedure that provides a sequence of 11 doing something?
12 Yes.
13 MR.
BARBER:
And the work group is going 14 to do whatever it is they're doing in accordance with 15 the system procedure.
Could they in turn, though, 16 could they go out with the help of planning and what 17 have you in the work week process just instead of 18 working within the bounds of the system procedure, 19 actually write their own little mini procedure as part 20 of their work construction that would align the system 21 and be allowed to do that with having the proper 22 reviews and saying okay, we're going to do it like 23 this, have the proper reviews up front or is that just 24 not the way you process the work?
25 The process is so NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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It truly is handcuffing.
Some of the issues just certainly have nothing to do without a doubt have nothing to do with a nuclear safety concern.
They are so under --
they are so on the bottom of that.
Do they have an overall impact on what is the message that's being sent?
Well, this particular feed pump lube oil system procedure which has no nuclear concern whatsoever, yes, we can work around this one, but on this diesel or RHR procedure, that would be out of bounds, without a doubt, out of bounds.
It would be unacceptable.
MR.
BARBER: Doesn't your procedure --
you have a procedure that governs procedural adherence, right?
Yes.
MR.
BARBER:
And don't you have different categories and with the perception that I would have would be that your safety-related procedures are procedures more for scoring points systems would have more structure and more rigid controls, whereas when you get to balance a plant, if you're working like you said a feed pump lube oil system, you have more latitude.
It will say maybe you can do these steps out of sequence or things like that.
Do you have that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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flexibility inherently or is it more restrictive?
2 It is inherently --
3 MR.
BARBER:
In other words, and I don't 4
remember what the categorization is, but there's like 5
different categorizations of procedure adherence and 6
procedure implementation, one is step by step, others 7
can have flexibility.
And the presumption is the 8
farther you get away from nuclear safety and more 9
feasibility you have inherently in the way the 10 procedure could be implemented?
11 Yes.
That's true and 12 there is and some of them are misqualified into 13 different categories.
14 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
15
/-Some of them are just 16 plain much more restrictive than they need to be or 17 could be to meet expeditious real business needs.
18 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
19 I
use the term 20 expeditious, certainly not an emergency, certainly not 21 a -- and again, certainly not a nuclear safety issue.
22 MR.
BARBER:
Or production issue?
23 More of a production 24 issue.
More of a business need issue.
We're asking 25 you to use this procedure or use this mindset here and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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use this one over here and could that line get blurry?
2 That's why I'm here.
It can get blurry and you're 3
asking the individuals to use the two different 4
standards.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Are these concerns 6
that you've had personally or are these concerns that 7
are raised to you to handle?
8 Yes.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
When you're talking 10 about messages that are sent, are they joint?
11 They're raised for me to 12 handle.
I will have an operator in the field trying 13 to do something with a generator support system, like 14 a diesel or an RHR or an ECCS system.
Well, I need to 15 open this valve and do this sequence first versus that 16 one.
And we'll look at what the category of the 17 procedure is and maybe perhaps find that well, you 18 know what, we have to stop here and do the on-the-spot 19 change and do all of the reviews and it is so 20 encumbering that it would lead to say --
- well, you 21 know what, we can wiggle through this wicket as 22 opposed to bringing everything to a stop and taking it 23 through a very encumbering process.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Wiggle through the 25 wicket, meaning change the order and supply, a little NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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different procedure than would normally what was 2
written?
3 Yes.
Using solid judgment 4
and deciding that it could be done better, but if 4 *k, rz 5
in the instance of like a LciLLBL water cooling or a 6
generator oil system, it not going in service means an 7
outage extends and the pressure here is get it done.
8 MR.
BARBER:
Could one argue that by doing 9
that you're kind of perpetuating the --
10 Absolutely.
11 MR.
BARBER:
Maybe poor planning of the 12 job or what have you.
You could argue that a proper 13 planning of the job would have anticipated the need to 14 do this.
15 Absolutely.
16 MR. BARBER:
The on-the-spot change should 17 have been done ahead of the actual implementation of 18 the work week?
19
(! Or the on-the-spot change 20 should have happened 18 months ago in a previous 21 cycle.
- Yes, the perpetuation continues.
It's an 22 overall environment that with a wink and a smile, this 23 is okay to do that.
24 MR.
BARBER:
If that occurs and there's a 25 problem, let's say that there's something that's done NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
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out of sequence and it's kind of -- okay, we're going 2
to do it this way because we think it's safe and we 3
don't have a problem and it will facilitate getting 4
whatever the device is repaired or returned to 5
- service, and there's a problem with that, who is 6
culpable for the problem?
Are you as the supervisor 7
or is the worker, both culpable?
8 Yes.
Yes.
There's a 9
negative impact and we are both culpable.
10 MR.
BARBER:
Has that ever happened to 11 you, have you ever had a situation like that where you 12 made a judgment and there was something --
13 No, not from me 14 specifically, no.
Perhaps I've been lucky.
Or maybe 15 I've been lucky, maybe I had the right answer.
16 MR.
BARBER:
Is this something the 17 environment kind of puts you into?
Is this --
are you 18 kind of -- and I don't want to use the Word "framed" -
19
- it's really the framework andatheenvironment, the 20 way the work is processed at the station, it just 21 results in this happening?
22 When I came here from 23 I mean performance-wise, 24 yes, a station --
this is five years, years ago 25 couldn't hold a candle to coming down here to Hope NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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Creek and Salem.
I left them just a couple of years 2
after being on the watch list, so I knew what that 3
meant.
4 But the standard of procedural compliance 5
there was -- there were no questions asked.
It can't 6
be done as written, stop and do an on-the-spot change, 7
but the on-the-spot change process was not as 8
encumbering.
It meant that because there was enough 9
people on shift to do the
- reviews, take their 10 production hat off and put a 50.59 hat on and say this 11 lube oil system over here, this balance of plant 12 standby auxiliary system, whatever it might be.
It 13 might be building drains, has no effect on the final 14 safety analysis and the sequence of these steps are an 15 all net gain positive, zero negative.
It just makes 16 sense.
Perform it.
We do the step sequence, we 17 resequence the steps with lineouts and pen and ink and 18 put it into a bin and the process would then make that 19 on-the-spot change become permanent, down the road as 20 procedure writers could work through their backlog.
21
- Here, it's it is just a nightmare.
It 22 brings everything to a stop for hours and hours and 23 hours2.662037e-4 days <br />0.00639 hours <br />3.80291e-5 weeks <br />8.7515e-6 months <br /> and hours.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Why is that?
One 25 part you're talking about is because it's so NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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complicated to get the on-the-spot change effected.
2 And the other issue you mentioned is there weren't 3
enough people at Are they just 4
understaffed in order to be able to cover the kinds of 5
things they run into during a typical day?
With the 6
people that are on shift who could effect the changes 7
and stop the holdups?
8
- Here, as a first line 9
supervisor, the emphasis is on getting that system in 10 service versus the procedure isn't right.
I can't 11 perform it.
And if that's my reason for saying I 12 can't do this, the environment is why didn't you see 13 that beforehand?
Why didn't you see that in your walk 14 down?
Okay, that's a performance issue and yes, I can 15
-- but maybe I didn't have that as an on-shift worker 16 to walk down and see beforehand and now I'm stuck in 17 the production squeeze.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The emphasis being on 19 production?
20 The emphasis on yes, 21 system restoration and retests and unit back on the 22 line.
23 MR.
BARBER:
In many cases, we're only 24 talking about on-line maintenance, right?
25 W*n outage and on-line.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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MR.
BARBER:
- Okay, do you have any 2
pressure when you're doing it on-line?
3 0
. Typically, on-line for the 4
most part are recurring type system operating 5
procedures, things that are tests, things that are 6
swapping this system for that system.
So they have 7
been through many, many iterations and have had 8
opportunities to catch things out of sequence issue or 9
things like that.
So those changes can be feed back 10 into a system.
You can say you know what, I tried to 11 do this procedure seven years ago and this procedure 12 change went through to make it better and they're 13 always getting scrubbed because they come up, like 14 surveillance tests, you're doing almost the same one 15 every month, some with less frequency, but during the 16 outage it's more times than not when those sort of 17 issues come up.
18 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
19 And most of them are, like 20 I say, like in the turbine building and the balance of 21 plan arena, that puts you in a tight bind for getting 22 it done and I might have been the person that had to 23 walk it down.
It just didn't happen.
The opportunity 24 and the time to be here did not occur.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you're saying the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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procedural compliance that's gotten around with a wink 2
and a smile 3
X Yes, so to speak.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Hasn't been of the -
5 to the level where it's affected nuclear safety?
6
- JTo the best of my judgment 7
and I don't say that as a disclaimer for my actions, 8
to allow such a thing to occur, but to the best of my 9
judgment and knowledge there hasn't been any of those 10 issues that have had to come up with reactivity 11 systems, ECOS systems or ECCS support systems.
12 I have, on occasion, had to stop things 13 and say no, but you get into that environment where at 14 one time with a subordinate, this is okay out here on 15 this oil system out here in a balance of plant space 16 and now he wants to say can. I do this with this diesel 17 fuel oil storage tank pump? Well, no, absolutely not.
18 It can't be.
19 So in effect I fostered him to ask that 20 question by - -
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Right.
22 By allowing it to occur 23 out here in a balance of plant space and then I have 24 to say no, that's simply out of bounds.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are your peers in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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same position that you're in?
Do you have these 2
discussions with them?
3 Ys 4
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
They feel the same 5
way that if it's seen as okay for the balance of the 6
- plant, are they kind of having to defend it when 7
you're not affecting balance of plant, when you're 8
into more safety functions?
9 I don't think I quite 10 understood that.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are your peers in the 12 same position you're in, the other #
Do they see 13 it the way you're saying it, that we've got this 14 attitude toward it for the balance of the plant, 15 because of the emphasis on production and this ability 16 to get around the procedural compliance, are they 17 having to safeguard against that attitude bleeding 18 over into the safety functions?
19 I think yes.
I think each 20 of us in our positions have to continuously try to 21 guard against the blurriness of where does it become 22 a nuclear safety concern?
Where does production press 23-up against it?
But my job, as I see it, and I always 24 use the analogy of the 747 pilot that the plane just 25 plain cannot take off until every checklist is
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until the plane is absolutely safe to take off, but 2
yet, the captain of that 747 has somebody standing 3
over him that says your bonus is counting on the on-4 time arrival of that plane.
5 It's the same way here.
It's very similar 6
here.
My bonus counts on being an on-time outage 7
execution, but I can't certainly start the reactor up 8
as an obligation of my license until all of the safety 9
systems are absolutely ready and in standby, to the 10 best of my knowledge.
11 And so all my peers are defending the same 12 sort of walking that same sort of line of 13 production up against our license and nuclear safety.
14 But I think the production pressure is tight.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You feel it?
16
- Yes, I do, in general.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
In what other ways is 18 your performance appraisal or your compensation tied 19 to production, if any?
20
.you mean generation output 21 is clearly a business goal which most units are in an 22 outage, they start up, they come to 100 percent and 23 that's the best they can do.
So any day of the 24 outage, an hour in the outage will clearly affect my 25 compensation, based on generator output alone.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TPANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
24 1
Any day in the outage is, in my position, 2
a business issue, not necessarily a nuclear safety 3
issue, but any day of the outage is free for me in 4
compensation.
That's time away from my family and 5
that'Is a business gripe that I 'm sure in the NRC there 6
are times that you work more than you would like and 7
you' d pref er to. spend time with your f amily, but when 8
it goes into an outage into the seventh or eighth week 9
and your family is home saying when is this going to 10 be over, and you know it's going to be, how close 7-11 how much closer does that production pressure come 12 closer and closer to the blurring of the safety issue 13 line, both nuclear safety and personal safety?
14 It directly affects my compensation.
I 15 look at it this way.
I'm compensated, this is me 16 personally, my compensation is a set amount, there's 17 a small bonus based on generator output, but it's the 18 set amount versus the time I'm away from my wife and 19 children, the less time I'm away from them, it's 20 almost like a pay raise, I'Im sorry, yes, that'Is right.
21 The more time I'm with them is clearly a compensation 22 issue and if the outage is going on and on and on and 23 on, the production pressure for me to be here, versus 24 be home gets higher and higher and higher.
25 In my case, and my case being a3 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
25 1<
and in the control room, it's I
2 clearly have more job security, so to speak, and I 3
clearly have a better idea of where the line is 4
absolutely black on a nuclear safety concern, on a 5
radiological safety concern.
It's very clear with me.
6 But how far out is the defense is on that or a better 7
personal judgment and integrity and how much closer 8
does production come up against that or up against 9
that blurriness or even up near the black and white 10 line of what I deem as nuclear safe or radiologically 11 safe.
I can't say that for every first line 12 supervisor that's out there.
13 Do they have the same level of security 14 and the same feeling of security that they could bring 15 up a concern?
If I feel this way at times that I 16 cannot bring up issues in the say the fortieth day of 17 an outage, being pressed to come in on a weekend with 18 zero compensation offered, and I can't say hey wait, 19 that's Mother's Day or that's my anniversary, which is 20 clearly the environment that I work in.
That would be 21 an acceptable answer.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
23 If I can't do that, how 24 could I expect a first line maintenance supervisor who 25 may be riding, for business reasons, may be riding a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
26 1
certain employment line.
Maybe he has some 2
availability issues, personal issues. Maybe he hasn't 3
been the best employee and he's out there putting 4
together the high pressure coolant injection pump and 5
he's under a production pressure similar to the one I 6
am. Would he be as strong willed to say no, this is 7
the line and you're up against it?
Or is he apt to 8
wink, smile and say we got to get this together?
9 That's the gist, that's essentially the gist of why I 10 come over here because I don't know that everybody at 11 this station has that same, at least in my opinion, 12 the same stability and security that I can speak out 13 against a nuclear radiological or personal safety 14 issue that my other colleagues could.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
In the face of 16 production pressures?
17 Yes.
18 MR. BARBER:
Let's talk about the HPSI 19 analogy for a minute.
20 For a record, I don't know 21 of any problems there, but I'm using the analogy.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But what I understand 23 is you question whether somebody would, given the 24 environment that you're in?
25 Ys NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
27 1
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You don't know of any 2
time that that happened?
3 Of course not.
I do not.
4 MR.
BARBER:
That wasn't where I was 5
going.
What I wanted to ask you about is you meant 6
that person that made the supervisor -- decides to 7
maybe step out of sequence in work instructions to 8
more quickly repair or put the pump back together.
9 They still ar responsible for the operation of the 10 pump once it goes back into service, so if something 11 is not done properly, the presumption is that it will 12 show up in the post-maintenance testing and 13 surveillance testing?
14 Absolutely.
15 MR.
BARBER:
So if they take a shortcut, 16 it's going to come back to them.
17 It should.
18 MR.
BARBER:
- Hey, you did this and you 19 didn't follow the procedure, you didn't do this right, 20 you didn't do that right.
And as a result, the pump 21 is put through PMT and it's failed.
You know?
22 You' re
- right and 23 performance of that post job test should pass or fail 24 and it might not get through the wicket that if it 25 fails, what I'm saying is if I'm under undue personal NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
28 1
employment pressure and an employee is that can't --
2 that the demand is so high on production and get the 3
job done, and then I have to face a look at a 4
condition of a component or look at the condition of 5
the oil or look at the sequence of events of how it 6
gets
- tested, I
would say that person would be 7
sufficiently challenged to not speak up and not get 8
the job done exactly as written.
9 MR.
BARBER:
Have you ever felt that's 10 happened with any safety-related equipment or anything 11 on that order?
12 I mean there have been 13 challenges by --
one of the -- as her management will 14 talk about and say we've done diesel surveillances and 15 self-contained breathing apparatus, especially in the 16 room of a running engine with an airpack on because it 17 needs to be inspected and that's been well documented 18 and publicized, based on instead of entering the 19 outage LCO and making the repairs on the engine, we 20 would test it and test it and test it, rather than fix 21 it.
And that example, that again just sends out the 22 message about the environment.
It's not that 23 specific.
24 To me, the specific issue --
I drive a 25 diesel car and I
have a
garage.
I take the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11.
12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 29 precautions to open up the door and stuff, but I don't go to my car in an air pack to drive it out.
I don't believe that those individuals were in any danger of asphyxiation from carbon monoxide whatsoever, but we sent a message, we sent the message to everybody that we're going to run this test this way versus fix it.
And that's been a well publicized and documented event.
We have started a plant up with --
or we've ended outages, control rod drive mechanisms.
We've gone and done this with windows of outages where we say we're going to do this number of control rod drives.
And then close up the window without completing them all.
Two or three outages ago, we essentially de-scoped from the outage, control rod drives.
Now do the control rod drives then pass their scram surveillance, the timing surveillance?
Yes, they do.
They past the post-work test.
Do they go in fast enough?
Yes, they do.
They pass the scram time surveillance?
Do they move?
Yes, they do.
Do they satisfy all the IST and post-work tests?
Yes.
MR.
BARBER:
Do they stick?
Absolutely, yes, they do.
They stick.
Is that acceptable?
- Well, yes, it's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
30 1
okay.
A business decision was made in the scope of 2
the outage to end that window before all the rods were 3
complete.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Which outage are you 5
talking about here?
6 That would be two outages 7
ago, last outage after receiving significant feedback 8
from the industry and maybe you folks as well, that 9
all mech. schedules would be changed.
All available 10 resources would be put towards that.
Two outages ago 11 12 MR.
BARBER:
So you're talking about the 13 fall of 2001?
14 JilTwo outages ago, I think 15 it was 16 MR.
BARBER:
You said spring 2003 was the 17 last you were coming out of, so. I'm just going back 18 18 months.
19
- Yes, I think it was.
I 20 think it was the September time frame and the one 21 before that was similar.
Hope Creek has a --
in that 22 particular issue, Hope Creek has a complicated Hitachi 23 or Toshiba refueling machine that sits underneath the 24 vessel that changes out mechs.
We're one of two 25 stations in the country that have it and people that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
31 1
change out control rod drives for a living come from 2
one station to another and when they get here they do 3
not have the same skill set to change out because of 4
this machine that's underneath there.
It's supposed 5
to be a Cadillac.
It's supposed to be a remote 6
operated set up that was worked from a control room 7
that is remote.
8 So we ask people who work on these 9
stations at Fitzpatrick and Nine Mile and Oyster Creek 10 to come here with a different installation and we 11 always have run up against that.
And the machine is 12 in the dry well, so it's not something that can be 13 maintained on-line and tested and stuff until you're 14 into the refueling outage.
15 And we have never budgeted the money to 16 take out, modify or just cut it out and let the 17 refueling people come and do this for a living, bring 18 their tools and do the job as necessary.
19 Consequently, when we schedule the outage up to a 20 certain time of day, there's this many mechs. to do 21 let's say 20 and we say the window will be 10 days or 22 typically we've tried to make it even smaller, 8 days 23 of this and we schedule and say well, because these 24 people who come from another place from Framatome or 25 G.E. under-vessel workers, we can change out a mech.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
32 1
in a half hour.
So we schedule it as such until they 2
get here and realize that they're dealing with this 3
Toshiba machine and it takes eight hours to get one.
4 You get three or four done, three or four 5
mechs.
done in five or six days and eventually the 6
window for that starts to close and you don't do the 7
other 15, the rest of them.
And before you know that, 8
you have a significant population that do indeed 9
stick.
10 MR.
BARBER:
Is there any acknowledgement 11 of that as a station problem?
12 There currently is.
13 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
14 There currently is.
15 MR.
BARBER:
So what's being done to 16 address it?
17 What is actually being 18 done, the last outage, the recent one, the commitment 19 was and I don't remember the specific number, but all 20 the ones that were committed to were performed and it 21 was tedious, arduous to do because the cheating 22 (Phonetic) machine challenge still
- exists, but it 23 appeared to me that for that issue religion had been 24 discovered.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And this time frame NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
33 1
was for what, for that outage, spring 2003?
2 That's right, spring 2003, 3
April-ish, 2003.
We did them all.
We did them all.
4 All that were scoped in, but the deficiency is that 5
there's 185 of.them and we have not capped out with 6
the industry pace of doing the numbers that are 7
usually done 25 and 30 every outage.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So last outage you 9
did all that you had scheduled.
Was it maybe 20 or 10 so?
1i m
I think so.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But not as many as 13 you think needed to be done?
14
- jWell, as many as --
that 15 characterizes it about right.
Not as many as I think 16 needed to be done, but as many as we committed to do 17 and as many as were
- feasible, given very rigid 18 business constraints.
19 In the past, it would be within all those 20 same very real business constraints because there are 21 only so many of these things existing without spending 22 extraordinary amounts of money to expedite and that 23 sort of thing.
24 So there's only so many that could be 25 done, but in previous outages you would plan to do 20 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
34 1
and you might get 8 and say that's enough, let's get 2
out of this, close up that outage.
And move on.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What made it 4
different for spring 2003?
You used the word 5
"religion" --
6 U
1 We had a --
I can't point 7
specifically to it, but my guess is that it was an 8
outside stakeholder influence, either
- INPO, the 9
Nuclear Review Board looking at the number of 10 notifications that are written.
These are control 11 rods that are exercised every week.
So looking at the 12 number, seeing the trend and saying what is your past 13 practice?
That past practice has to change.
You need 14 a commitment.
If you say you're going to do 20, do 20 15 because you'll never get out of this predicament with 16 that sticking and they do.
It's known.
It's 17 understood and allowed.
This is during the start up.
18 They were always meeting their surveillance 19 requirement, as you mentioned, like the HPSI example.
20 Doesn't mean it's post-maintenance tests.
They were 21 always meeting that.
There was never any challenge to 22 that.
But were they allowing the unit to be started 23 up?
24 So maybe it was --
I suspected it was an 25 outside stakeholder, but it might have also been there NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
35 1
was a forced outage shortly following that outage, the 2
outage where we de-scoped a bunch.
There was a forced 3
outage following a
scram and we had outside 4
stakeholders watch the subsequent start up and there 5
was many, many control rods that stick.
And maybe we 6
decided that it's in our best business interests that 7
if we want to start the plan up expeditiously, get 8
back to a business goal, generator on line.
These 9
control rods need to be maintained.
I'm not exactly 10 sure, but I know that we've definitely changed that 11 mindset for that particular component.
12 MR.
BARBER:
Have you ever had a problem 13 where you had a control rod stick and it wouldn't move 14 at all, even when you jacked up the dry water pressure 15 on it?
16
! Oh, several years ago.
17 Six years ago.
There was one actually bowed, had a 18 bubble and it was -- actually, just as we were trying 19 to take it out, it was in.
We were trying to take it 20 out.
It got to a point where it jammed.
The control 21 rod was successfully inserted and disarmed and tagged.
22 It actually had a bubble on the side of it.
23 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
24 Upon post inspection.
So 25 I don't think it was a mech. issue.
It was actually NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
36 The mech.
itself 1
2 3
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 an immovable or bad rod itself.
performed.
MR.
BARBER:
But you could --
how high can you go like up to 400 or --
Five hundred DP, five hundred pounds.
MR.
BARBER:
Do you run out of range on your meter?
Isn't there like a little meter and I thought it topped out at 400 pounds.
You can go up to whatever the actual indication?
Yes.
MR.
BARBER:
It's normally plus 260?
Yes.
Two hundred sixty pounds greater than reactor pressure.
MR.
BARBER:
So you can go up in 50 pound increments or something like that?
Yes, another 250 pounds.
Not looking at the figures right now, it's roughly 500 pounds.
MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
W--IAnd that was consistent with where I came from.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I'm sorry, excuse me.
Let me just flip this because we're going to lose it in a minute.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
37 1
[End Tape 1, Side A; Begin Tape 1, Side 2
B.]
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay, we're on side 4
B.
It's approximately 10:24 a.m.
5 MR.
BARBER:
We were just talking about 6
the sticking control rods.
So they met their 8
surveillance requirements,
- movable, provable scram 9
times, but the decision --
10 MR.
BARBER:
How do you know if a rod is 11 sticking?
How do you know it's going to meet the 12 scram time testing?
13 Do you make a presumption back to the last 14 surveillance, successful surveillance test and say oh 15
- well, the last one was successful, so therefore we 16 think we're okay?
17 They're exercised once a 18 week, every week.
19 MR.
BARBER:
- Okay, so you're saying 20 because it's capable of being exercised, even if it 21
- sticks, it's trippable?
Have you ever gotten in a
22 situation where you felt it wouldn't be trippable?
23 No, I never have.
24 MR.
BARBER:
What about the one that had 25 the bow on it?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
38 1
actually had a bubble.
2 MR.
BARBER:
A bubble.
3 A bubble on the face plate 4
and it was discovered on the way out and was able to 5
be put back in.
6 MR.
BARBER:
How was that characterized?
7 How was that left from a tech spec standpoint?
8 It was inserted, it was disabled, but was 9
it considered untrippable, do you recall?
10
-1 No, I don't believe it was 11 considered untrippable.
It was put full in.
12 MR.
BARBER:
It was, though, right?
If it 13 had somehow got past wherever that high spot was?
14 J.
Oh yeah, it may have then 15 been considered immovable and untrippable which would 16 have resulted in the control rod being inop.
and we 17 would had had to do other things like shut the unit 18 down.
19 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
Did those kinds of 20 things ever come up in discussions, like after the 21 fact when you, re sitting there, maybe go in the outage 22 and you go in and look and you find this and then you 23 start thinking of the implications of that.
If we had 24 somehow gotten this out a little bit farther, you 25
- know, maybe it would have hit a high spot and we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
39 1
wouldn't have been able to get it inserted past a 2
certain point.
3 Does that --
4 As I recall, I was on 5
shift when we found it.
I was under instruction --
I 6
shouldn't have had the soda.
I'm belching.
I was on-7 shift that day.
It was immediately put in and not 8
messed with any more.
Not moved.
There was no 9
discussion on raising its drive flow to push it past 10 because of the way it exhibited the sticking.
It was 11 stopping in between read switch which left it blank.
12 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
13 So not knowing where it 14 was, as I recall, the decision making was or it was 15 moved past that between spot, it went --
we took it 16 back in.
17 MR.
BARBER:
So did that create problems 18 for reactor engineering?
1911100w-It turns out it was the 20 center rod.
21 MR.
BARBER:
Oh.
22 We cut the cycle a little 23 lower, but it was-symmetrical.
It was by happenstance 24 it would be the center rod.
25 MR.
BARBER:
So you didn't have to insert NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
40 1
the symmetric control rod?
2 Would we have?
I think 3
so.
I think so, we would have if needed.
4 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
All right.
Has there 5
been anything else like that that you've been involved 6
with, for example, there was a situation back in March 7
regarding the number two (Inaudible) bypass 8
(Inaudible).
Are you familiar with that?
9 I'm familiar with that.
10 MR.
BARBER:
Were you involved with that 11 at all?
12 No.
No.
I came in in the 13 aftermath.
14 MR. BARBER:
In what aftermath, the week 15 after all the repair --
16
'-*That was just prior to our 17 outage, so I was in the outage planning.
Then during 18 that week the issue was to --
let me make sure I have 19 the calendar right.
Roughly around that time we were 20 thinking of getting to the point of where we were 21 going to have a forced outage and when that Sunday 22 night, St. Patrick's Day it was, and the control room 23 staff was trying to do an infrequently performed test 24 revolution and it dfdn't go right.
I wasn't there.
25 It's well publicized and documented.
The perception NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
41 1
of the environment at the working level was the crew 2
and individuals, personalities, personnel,
- people, 3
they took a beating for it.
4 MR.
BARBER:
Inappropriately or 5
appropriately?
6 I would characterize it as 7
inappropriately, although I think that the people that 8
were trying to handle it at the time were trying to do 9
the right thing, but you can just but help everybody 10 knows everybody.
Everybody knows who's there and the 11 fall out is you have this feeling of these people 12 basically in some sort of purgatory for their failure, 13 whereas I'm a control room operator.
If my plant 14 management puts me in a box where they're asking me to 15 basically take manual control here and manual control 16 there, the I don't want to be there.
But if it's 17 where I have to be, that's one thing.
But eventually 18 you've got to say here's that black and white line 19 that I was trying to describe that you're asking me to 20 control too many things over what could be in a
21 preferred automatic mode.
I would have to say that 22 that would have to come to a stop.
23 MR.
BARBER:
Than what?
Wasn't the 24 problem, the nature of the problem such that the valve 25 was mechanically bound.
You were kind of stuck.
You NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
42 1
had to --
even if you wanted to do the conservative 2
thing and take the unit off line to find out why it 3
was stuck, you had to take the unit off.
You had to 4
start at some high power level and basically get the 5
unit shut down and get the cold shutdown.
6 Yes.
7 MR.
BARBER:
So you have to somehow 8
transition.
So how do you do it?
9
'At that time though it 10 wasn't understood that the valve was mechanically 11 stuck and in hindsight found that it was absolutely 12 fouled, but during that time, I mean subsequent to 13 that event we did shut down and then came business 14 pressure to go ahead and start back up without even 15 going into it, without even going into the valve 16 chest.
17 MR.
BARBER:
Where did you hear that from?
18 From it would be 19 hearsay, that it bubbled around, that PS&G power, so 20 what do you mean you're going to shut down and you're 21 going to stay shut down for this long?
The valve is 22 closed.
23 MR.
-BARBER:
PS&G
- power, what's the 24 relationship that you are describing here?
25 16-1,i6 We're nuclear.
We're a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
43 1
piece of power.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Off-site though?
3 4
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Off-site influence on 5
that business?
6
,Wel!- I'm not privy to 7
some of the closed door sessions, but the rumors that 8
abounded that come around that are general consensus 9
on the street were operations said we are going to 10 shut down and we are going to get in there and look at 11 this.
I need to know why this valve is not behaving 12 the way it is.
Why this reactor pressure control 13 system will not behave.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
15 And that was (Inaudible) 16 that my RP m[ade and he received 17 pushback.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
This would bem 20 Yes.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And what kind of 22 pushback?
23 That pump is closed.
24 Problem is done.
Let's start back up.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
How do you know that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
45 1
outage group, the people that are leading that --
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Were?
3 May have come from his 4
immediate report which would have been then --
I'm 5
trying to remember the time frame.
Oh, that may have 6
been fro
/ (Phonetic).
It may have been 7
fro
.It may have been from even higher 8
than that.
I wouldn't know.
I just don't.
He didn't 9
characterize it.
He said "at the time".
10 As I recall the events, he comes out once 11 a week to training, when we're in training.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
13 He tries to characterize 14 the issue and frame the issue and he characterized the 15 issue as even --
- well, how do I say this?
He was 16 basically having to somewhat apologize to all of the 17 operating shifts to say that this event was 18 characterized as in some people's mind in error as a 19 failure to scram event.
And he.a's qharacterizing it 20 as no, it was a poor planning and poor IPTE management 21 event.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
That caused the 23 excursion, that aspect of it?
24Yes.
We basically asked 25 operators to get into too many manual things when we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.,
A A
- 2.
had pushback?
2 He said so in like a crew 3
roll out that he was trying to champion that change 4
and mindset, that he had to somewhat do a little bit 5
of a --
some politically unfavorable decision making 6
and make that stand.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
While the valve in 8
that time frame the valve was closed and he wanted to 9
shut down to see what was the problem with the valve, 10 in that immediate time frame the decision making was 11 he said we have to shut down and he had to champion 12 that in a politically incorrect way.
13 I think he suffered for 14 it.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Let' s talk about that 16 a
little bit further though.
In terms of the 17 resistance he was getting, where was that coming from?
18 I know you said PS&G Power.
Was there anybody on site 19 that was with him, not with him or supporting him in 20 some way?
21 That I don't know.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What did he indicate?
23 Was he a one man fight here against everybody up from 24 him?
25 Yes, probably the central NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
46 1
should not have set them up into that spot.
2 MR.
BARBER:
Was acknowledging that kind 3
of a management failure?
4
ý Yes.
5 MR.
BARBER:
By putting the operators in 6
that position?
7
- Yes, he was.
And he 8
further acknowledged that part of thereasons that it 9
may have gotten to the point that certain the 10 personalities involved and there are people involved, 11 people we all know that they may have seen that they 12 are being unduly held to their performance or their 13 performance being unduly held to a much higher level 14 of scrutiny was based on some political mistakes that 15 were made.
They were off-going shift.
He did not 16 notify his next direct report because he was trying to 17 convince the rest of the organization that we're going 18 to shut down.
19 So the event, the on-shift event did not 20 get rolled to his next direct report.
I may be wrong, 21 but he was not in the station.
22 MR.
BARBER:
Are you talking about 23 24 Ys. nd id not tell 25 his next person or maybe did tell and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
47 1
didn't tell 0-7 I didn't know exactly, but 2
paraphrased all of this in that training session 3
saying that because I did not follow through and make 4
sure the entire organization knew about this 5
performance event, the performance event became bigger 6
than it probably ever needed to be in terms of 7
politics.
8 So now the -- and I can see how this would 9
occur.
When a VP is getting ready to sign off on a 10 plant start up and suddenly he hears about a crew 11 performance event at a table where he's essentially 12 affirming the start up and then basically continues, 1-3 sort of a persecution of shift.
Even when the shift 14 was somewhat we call it being iced, being isolated and 15 trying to do the right things by them and asking them 16 the questions about their decision making and that 17 sort of thing, it's sort of like they became the 18 political ping pong ball between 19 feelings being hurt by not being told about it.
That 20 was the feeling of us in on shift in that envelope of 21 people.
They are people's
- feelings, basically, 22 people's feelings and that to me is that gray area.
23 We're talking about people's feelings of 24 how far out do they want to go when production issues 25 or what not are pressing up against the black line of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
48 1
nuclear safety.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Is it your 3
understanding or did you become aware at any point 4
that the people who were tasked with that, IPTE, at 5
any point in time wanted to say hey look, this is 6
poorly planned.
This --
we need additional people.
7 We need something else to make this successful? Did 8
it get to the point that that was recognized going 9
into it?
1.0 11 That's not MY 11 understanding of that at all.
My feeling is is that 12 the environment we work is was that of can do. We can 13 do it.
We can do it.
We can survive.
We can do it.
14 We can pull it off, as opposed to a hold on here.
15 We're talking about keeping the unit at pressure 16 because a boiler won' t - -
and that'Is what it came down 17 to.
We didn't want to uncontrollably cool down 18 because the reactor would be handling what we 19 sometimes call hotel or steam loads, lower priority 20 steam loads, the steam jet ejector and that sort of 21 thing.
We didn't want to uncontrollably cool down 22 carrying those loads.
So the decision was to try to 23 stay in some sort of hot standby mode because the 24 boiler does not carry those steam loads like it should 25 or was originally designed. A long standing equipment NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVrf N W
49 1
challenge.
And the boiler doesn't carry it because of 2
some de-reg EPA issue.
I'm not --
I don't operate the 3
little boiler, so I don't really know all the details, 4
but it had been de-rated and unable to --
5 MR.
BARBER:
Are you talking about the 6
aux. port?
7 J-An auxiliary boiler.
8 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
9 Supplying steam and seal 10 loads.
So you get put in that little predicament of 11 well, shucks, it can't rely on a boiler to do it so we 12 have to rely on the nuclear reactor to do it and 13 thereby we don't want to shut down and allow the 14 vessel to cool down too fast and all of this is 15 because a boiler which is probably on almost every 16 factory station all around our region Dupont has them, 17 they're all over the place.
And we can't rely on it 18 to do something for our plant.
It's just another 19 example of how we get in those predicaments.
20 MR. BARBER:
When you mention there's some 21 EPA type issue, is it strictly that or is there some 22 sort of equipment performance problem also that goes 23 along with EPA issue?
24 Yes, the boilers overall 25 are somewhat ignored in general.
All they normally NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
50 1
provide is building heating steam like any other high 2
school or large college campus.
But when they're 3
needed nuclear-wise is during start ups and shut downs 4
and they are not sized with ample capacity to answer 5
that call in any reliable fashion.
6 And they've been somewhat
- ignored, 7
maintenance wise and the -- I'm not quite exactly sure 8
when it occurred, but during an inspection the EPA 9
said this is the limit that these boilers can go to 10 unless you get additional equipment, scrubbers and 11 that sort of thing.
The company chose to live with 12 the derate (Inaudible) and leave them as is.
13 MR.
BARBER:
When you do a start up today, 14 do they have the ability to provide the steam 15 generator ejectors, the steam seals and all of the 16 hotel loads?
17 18 MR.
BARBER:
(Inaudible) 19 Specifically, I don't 20 know.
21 MR.
BARBER:
But you don't think they do?
22
.I would say if we had to 23 do the start up today, I'd have to be looking at them 24 very carefully.
25 MR.
BARBER:
How many are there, one or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
51 1
two?
2 There are three, but that 3
is like a critical piece for a successful start up, 4
that they are up, ready and answer to ready all of the 5
demands.
6 MR.
BARBER:
So if they were functional 7
and capable of providing those types of loads, this 8
could have been a non-event.
It could have been let's 9
shift the air ejectors, let's shift the steam seals 10 over, run mechanical vacuum pumps, whatever and just 11 take the unit off?
12 W
W
- Yes, and that's been 13 characterized and publicized, but yes.
It might have 14 been your agency that brought that to the company's 15 attention.
16 MR.
BARBER:
So is there any move afoot to 17 try and address the'aux. boilers?
1i8 Not that I'm aware of.
19 No.
I don't know.
There might be.
20 Had I not been involved in this control 21 rod, I happened to be involved in the last outage as 22 a vessel team lead, I probably would not have known 23 about the commitment to do all that were scoped.
Do 24 you know what I'm saying?
I would not have been aware 25 of the delta had I not been that closely involved.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRAN3CRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
52 1
There was a conversation I had at one 2
point in the outage where we were really, really 3
- stalling, the Toshiba machine was really, really 4
hurting and we're doing one back in 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> because 5
it keeps tripping or breaking or something like that.
6 And I'd ask, I think it was 18 upper (Phonetic) scope, 7
and I'm not quite sure, so we were like at number 3 of 8
18 and I was saying to one of the outage managers I 9
see we're at something like 4 of 18, when is this 10 number 18 going to change because I almost expected it 11 to occur, that we would start unscoping and taking 12 them out.
That's when he said no, no, we will do them 13 all, as long as it takes.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Who was that?
15 This is the last outage.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Who was that?
17 That was I
M 18 And he says we will do them all and we'll take as long 19 as it takes.
And had I not been involved, had I not 20 been there at that particular --
I probably would not 21 have known that the commitment and effort or the as I 22 describe found religion for this particular item, that 23 it even exists.
24 So I'm saying that because I probably, if 25 there is a commitment on the boilers, I do not know of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
53 1
it.
2 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
3 There might be.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Did they get the 18 5
done in the plan duration or was it 6
The duration extended 7
significantly.
It did.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
For that particular 9
reason or for other reasons?
In order to get it done?
10 I'm sorry?
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The duration was 12 extended, but why?
Was it because you had to get the 13 18 rods?
14 It took longer.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Was it for that job, 16 that particular job?
17 Yes.
Yes 18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
19 MR.
BARBER:
Question on support for the 20 machine itself.
If this is an acknowledged 21 reliability problem, then why isn't the station going 22 to Toshiba to demand a fuel rep be set and start 23 working on the machine and basically get the machine 24 in a pristine condition either prior to the outage or 25 during the outage?
You said it's inside the dry well, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
54 1
2 3
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 so you really can't do much.
Right.
MR.
BARBER:
But basically, once the dry well is open to get that individual in there and get the machine That does get done.
We do bring a person in and they put it through its paces and inevitably, it's a complicated robot with many, many over torque switches, very, very sensitive to alignment issues and you're trying to use a robot with video cameras in another control room to line up a machine that manual under vessel jobs, essentially you're trying to fit a 14 piece of pipe into another 14 foot piece of pipe into another 14 foot piece of pipe with very tight tolerances.
We're trying to do it with a machine with electric servo (Phonetic) motors and what not from a remote control station.
We bring the --
the -- as Toshiba only has three.
It's my understanding, three of these in the world here and two in Taiwan.
So this expert or at least the English speaking expert that knows it, he comes here every outage and he tries to put it through its paces to make sure it's all ready to go and before the mech.
window occurs, but inevitably it was not done as the decision, if someone asked me to make the decision, I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
55 1
said here's the saws all (Phonetic).
2 MR. BARBER:
Does he stay for the duration 3
of the outage?
4 He stays for the duration 5
of the window.
6 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
7 He's the hands on operator 8
that's looking at the cameras and trying to -- he's on 9
a headset with the two people who are underneath the 10 vessel.
11 MR.
BARBER:
What's his take on the 12 performance of the machine?
13 I don't know.
I really 14 don't.
15 MR.
BARBER:
Have you ever sat down and 16 talked to him?
17 N. o, not I've sat down 18 next to him and watch what he's doing on the 19 television screen, but I'm not going to interfere with 20 what he's trying to do with two people in the dose 21 field.
The under vessel experts, a craft that come 22 from here to there to there to there, they will all 23 tell us get it out, get it out, pay the money to get 24 it out.
They have --
this is their sentiments.
25 They have another job at Oyster Creek or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
Inln A AA'
,g~r~
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-n~
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56 1
Nine Mile and they get stuck here for two weeks or for 2
four or five weeks when they should be out of here in 3
two weeks to go take on the other work.
But they're 4
essentially stuck behind that machine.
It's not 5
something they work with.
It's not something they 6
usually have.
They have a different (Inaudible),
a 7
lot of details that I'm not completely privy to.
They 8
hate coming here and they will tell you that.
The way 9
Hope Creek is set up for that machine, locks our 10 hands.
12 And if it were not so nuclear and somebody 12 said here's the clout, phere' s the magic wand, 13 I would have said here's the saws all (Phonetic) boys.
14 Before you come out of there, you cut that out.
And 15 next outage we'll deal with how a new one will go in 16 because it costs us every single time, every single 17 time.
And feedback after feedback that I've provided 18 in post-outage has captured that.
19 It's merely a production issue.
It's a
20 business issue.
It's an outage duration issue.
The 21 guys that are going in there, they put them in and 22 change them out.
That's how it's looked at.
What's 23 not looked at is we're only going to do five because 24 we're locked behind this machine.
We tried to do 20, 25 but we're only going to do 5 and that had gone on for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
57 1
several cycles up until the last one.
2 So we're stuck with those control rods 3
until eventually we catch up.
I believe next outage 4
we're going to do more than we ever have and I was 5
telling the fellow that's planning the outage as I'm 6
not doing that piece by saying you need to be 7
religious about not allowing outage group people to 8
tell you, come on, you can do up mech. in four hours, 9
come on, you can do a mech.
in three hours, and keep 10 squeezing that down.
They will press you to do so and 11 you need to tell them that they'll take as long as it 12 takes and be religious about the number that you stick 13 to as far as pace because they will challenge you to 14 give me a time that I like to hear.
15 MR.
BARBER:
Is there a potential safety 16 consequence that would come out of doing fewer mechs.
17 than you know doing 5 instead of 20?
I mean we know 18 about the rods sticking.
Is there something else?
Is 19 there a problem with making a rod untrippable or 20 making it more unlikely to be trippable or 21 unscrammable or --
22 You asked it with 23 sufficiently enough words, sufficiently, potentially, 24 maybe, possibly, yes, there is.
No doubt about it.
25 Like you said before, in your example, HPSI, does the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
58 1
post-work test catch it?
- Yes, it will.
If we're 2
maintaining the scram time surveillance, we're 3
maintaining the scram time surveillance and making 4
sure that we stroke and exercise them fully, as often 5
as required.
6 Is there a potential?
Well, there always 7
is, right?
Is it as small as we can make it?
Maybe 8
not as small as possible, but given the business needs 9
and the decision making process that goes into it, and 10 given the specification it's within the requirements.
21 It meets the license, so to speak.
Is it as best as 12 it could be or should be?
I don't know.
Potentially.
13 Maybe.
I don't know.
14 MR.
BARBER:
Let me ask you about a few 15 other incidents that have happened.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I don't want to go on 17 to something new.
I just want to go back a little bit 18 before we go ahead.
19 MR.
BARBER:
Sure.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
When we talked about 21 the situation from the power excursion event back in 22 March, and you had indicate as of the mind 23 that he was going to be shutting down to check out the 24 stuck valve.
25 Yes.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
59 1
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And he addressed the 2
crew later on.
3
- Yes, I diverted there.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
A bit of that was 5
having to apologize -- he was apologizing and calling 6
the event not a failure to scram, but a poor planning 7
for the IPT.
He was more or less supporting the crew 8
that was on.
9
- Yes, there was some damage 10 control that goes on between -- there's a lot of team 11 interplay between the different shift teams and then 12 you have four other teams saying what did they do 13 wrong and there are personalities and people's 14 feelings.
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What kind of a crew -
16
- was it your crew in particular that he addressed?
17 Did he address each and every crew with this?
18 I was still training with 19 my particular crew.
I was in the but it 20 was the alpha, my alpha shift crew.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
In the outage?
22
- Yes, and several other 23 support people that go to get their recurring training 24 at the same time.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
60 1
It's routine.
One day a 2
week, basically around lunch time, he comes out and he 3
goes about an hour and a half, roll out about 4
challenges and issues, both people and mechanical.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And how did he 6
address the aspect of it after the IPT had been 7
performed and he wanted to shut down, tell me what you 8
recall about what he said there?
9 Like I say, he -- what he 10 was trying to do a bit of political damage control 11 overall to say it is normal for us when we have a 12 performance issue, a human performance issue to set 13 the crew aside, look at remediation aspects, look at 14 the whole thing from beginning to end.
Where were 15 they set up to fail?
How did we not provide adequate 16 briefing or adequate job scope for the evolution?
And 17 he characterized it as, in essence, that overall the 18 organization let those individuals down, basically, 19 kind of let them think that this particular place to 20 be is okay.
It's evaluated.
We're okay with it, 21 let's proceed, that sort of mindset.
And that was 22 probably should have never been the case.
23 The environment 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Are you saying he was 25 taking the blame for that himself?
Was it at the m
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODF IMI Amn A\\x m vw
61 1
level that the failure --
2
-ir Oh no.
He was mostly 3
saying it was station-wide.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The station?
5 jprYes, yes.
The people who 6
wanted to see the repair, which would have been him 7
and his peers and others around, support people.
If 8
I had been asked to look in on that IPP, I probably 9
would have had a little piece of it too.
Might have 10 been a small piece, maybe not the big picture, I am 11 not sure.
He was trying to characterize it in that 12 their performance was not as bad as everybody is 13 saying it is and probably they're all saying it is 14 because of the political reporting relationship that 15 happened during that particular week.
16 as off doing damage control as far as 17 let's fix this valve, let's go after this and get this 18 outage issue and not doing the reporting up on the 19 human performance piece and essentially my assessment 20 is that higher tiers of management say oh wait a 21 minute, we didn't know about this performance piece.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Because they got it 23 quite a bit after the fact?
24 Their feelings were hurt.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
They reacted, what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
62 1
you're thinking is they reacted -- the operators there 2
had an undue reaction because it was a delayed 3
reaction?
4 m
That's my feeling.
I 5
think the individuals involved, I think that handled 6
a little better and a little smoother, it could have 7
been more positively dispositioned than over 8
reactingly negative.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Now what about the 10 aspect where is discussing the shutdown in 11 this time frame and what he was up against?
What do 12 you recall about that?
13 M in That there were some 14 people in the central outage group and management that 15 thought it would be okay to go ahead and start back 16 up.
The mouths closed.
Let's go ahead and do it.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Did he elaborate on 18 that in terms of people he had discussions with or 19 conversations?
20 He didn't.
The way he 21 characterized it what he was trying to tell us was 22 I
did not follow up on my piece of notifying 23 management of the performance issue because I was busy 24 with the central outage group convincing them that 25 they needed to open up this chest and look at it.
And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
63 1
if it involved taking the unit down to cold shutdown, 2
we will do so.
So he implied that he had to champion 3
that.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
With the potential 5
outage?
6 E
And overall plant 7
management.
But he didn't say that.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Was it senior 9
management or somebody else?
10 I don' t even know what 11 that line is any more.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Beyond him --
I'll 13 tell you how I'm looking at it and you see if this is 14 where it is.
He'si the was off-site at the 15 time.
is not in the picture in this particular 16 time frame.
The next level then would be th!s 17
£ which would be-i 18 Oh, I forgot about him.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So then above --
and 20 he's considered senior management as is r of 21 NSo I'm trying to understand 22 when was busy arguing or discussing how this 23 was going to be addressed, who was he dealing with?
24 It was probably as you 25 described, nd those that support having NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
64 1
to go into the outage.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But that's an 3
assumption on your part.
He didn't state who he was 4
dealing with?
5
- , He did not.
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And then the central 7
outage group at that time, who is that?
8 I don't recall.
They come 9
from all different places, volunteer and come to Hope 10 Creek and set up shop.
11 MR.
BARBER:
Is that ad hoc group or is 12 that part of the organization?
13 Originally, it appeared to 14 me to be somewhat ad hoc, but now more and more 15 Hope Creek has recently had several forced outages, so 16 I've become familiar with some of those people and 17 know them from previous ones.
So maybe it had always 18 been there and I just hadn't had to open it up that 19 much.
I don't know the answer to your question of 20 what it was back then.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Did say 22 anything further about did you get any further 23 information from him regarding his feelings at that 24 particular time with what he was up against?
You had 25 mentioned before something about a time frame and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
65 1
apparently that comes into play and he was taking some 2
time to discuss the shutdown as opposed to reporting 3
the power excursion event.
4 What was your understanding of how long 5
the discussions went on?
Did he give you any 6
indicators of that?
7 No, he didn't.
8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What about any other 9
feelings?
He's tying it to A didn't get done because 10 I was busy over here, but --
ii
- As I recall, the excursion 12 was Sunday night, Monday morning and that operator 13 system was off-going.
They come back Thursday or 14 Friday, I cannot recall exactly the schedule, but he 15 was getting the ball moving towards shutting the plant 16 down and it wasn't until Thursday or Friday that 17 senior level management knew that there was an 18 operations performance issue.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
From the prior Sunday 20 night?
21 i.*oYes.
That was a thin 22 rumor.
didn't say that.
That --
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
"That" is when they 24 got the specific knowledge?
25 It was that week's rumor NEAL R. GROSS
-1ýný=00Akn~
TDAlJ~r'P1RFpR~
66 1
going around the station.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Do you recall any 3
other comments that he had about --
at the point in 4
time where he was addressing wanting to shut down and 5
what he was dealing with there, do you recall anything 6
else he said about that?
7 Nothing more than what 8
I've described.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
We're good for a 10 little bit on here.
11 MR.
BARBER:
I just wanted to ask you 12 about a couple of other issues.
One was there was a 13 problem with elevated off gas flow.
Are you familiar 1-4 with that?
15
- Yes, somewhat familiar 16 with it.
17 MR.
BARBER:
Where it actually went above 18 the limit.
There was a 75 SCFM limit that was put in 19 procedure and it said do not exceed 75 SCFM, but it 20 didn't there wasn't an action to take.
It just 21 said don't do it.
22 4Y
- Yes, and it's in like a 23 note.
It's not like an action step.
It's sort of in 24 an obscure little place that says to not go there.
25 MR.
BARBER:
Were you involved with any of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VI'VA PWCnfl: 1Q AN~r) bAII KI %A/
67 1
the interplay on what happened with that?
2' No, I wasn't.
3 MR.
BARBER:
Do you have any thoughts on 4
it?
I mean what would you do if an operator brought 5
you that?
If they came up to you and said hey, it 6
says don't exceed 75 or 78 SCFM or we'll shut the unit 7
down or let's take --
8 I have to default and go 9
to --
because it did not say anything.
It just said 10 don't do this.
So I didn't know what remediates that 11 issue because it didn't say anything.
It didn't say 12 and you need to do this.
13 MR.
BARBER:
- Well, isn't part of the 14 problem with these --
where you have elevated flows
-5 you-have in-leakage somewhere?
Isn't what you're 16 trying to do is try to identify the location and 17 correct it?
18 Yes.
There are procedures 19 to do that, to go about sniffing and finding condenser 20 and leakage and how does it get in there, is it power 21 related?
Is it other systems related?
It can become 22 an Easter egg hunt going out and checking for the last 23 thing that you did maintenance on, finding a drain 24 valve open or that sort of thing.
25 MR.
BARBER:
Were you on shift when the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
68 1
leakage was trending upwards?
2 No 3
MR.
BARBER:
Not at all?
4 5
MR.
BARBER:
Did this take place over a 6
very short period of time or was it over a protracted 7
period of time?
8 That particular I
9 wasn't on shift.
I don't have a
whole lot of 10 knowledge on the off gas issue.
It's normally 24 to 11 36 and if it's not, I'm alarmed.
When it goes in 12 service, the instrumentation does occasionally spike 13 and stay high and it will come back to something 14 that's normal, down to the 20s and 30s again.
15 MR.
BARBER:
One thing that strikes me 16 like with this issue and other issues that we've heard 17 about is that the station sees them coming, but for 18 whatever reason doesn't react to them.
I mean you 19 have, like you said, a range.
It's some value.
And 20 you go outside the range and it's solely increasing 21 and it's like something has to happen.
A limit has to 22 be exceeded and it's like there's no thought process 23 that says we've got all these operators here.
We've 24 got AOMs.
We've got shift managers.
We've got CRSs.
25 We've got NEOs.
They're all out there monitoring NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS jj)'
W('nC 101 AMMf A1VC 10 %At
69 1
equipment and they find something and for whatever 2
- reason, nothing gets done about it, whether it's 3
reported up through the chain or what have you and a 4
limit is exceeded.
5 Then all of a sudden it's this crisis 6
whereas had something been done earlier on as the 7
thing was trending in an adverse direction, whether 8
it's up or down or whatever it is, there's no attempt 9
to try and address it.
10 What's your reaction to something like 11 that?
Do you think that's the case?
12 I don't think it's always 13 the case.
I think there are some issues that may be 14 don't get quite the right characterization or 15 screening level that says this is imperative to do.
16 And others that we over react and perturb our planning 17 efforts or per turn schedule efforts.
It takes a 18 while to get to a place where you want to start 19 working something and sometimes we plain over react as 20 opposed to allowing the process and using the process 21 to implement the change.
It's a tough seed to kind of 22 navigate.
At times we over react and sometimes we 23 don't.
24 That particular one, I can't speak to it 25 that well.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
70 1
MR. BARBER:
Have you ever been involved 2
with something like that where you've seen an 3
indication and it looks like it's going awry and it's 4
just okay, let's watch it for a while and see what it 5
does.
Now you're watching it and it's continuing to 6
head in an adverse direction. Maybe not quickly, but 7
it's heading that way. And then --
8 1 can give you an example 9
of one that occurred, but it'Is not quite characterized 10 as you said, but it was a vibration probe on the main 11 turbine had shaken loose.
The indication in the 12 control room was we were over the trip set point or 13 not the trip set point, but action level or tripping 14 the turbine.
It had come up so fast and we were able 15 to be --
the alarm setting is here and here's the trip 16 setting and it occurred so very quickly that in our 17 assessment because it turns out that my particular 18 shift had been there for previous vibration issues and 19 our assessment was there's no way it can go from-this 20 many mils (Phonetic) to 20 without blades already 21 flying through the building.
It's just got so much 22 inertia, the machine is so very big and heavy, it just 23 cannot move that quick, period. And if it did, it is 24 already broken.
25 MR. BARBER:
Okay.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 71 And so it had moved that quick.
It wasn't a built in.
We were able to see it.
Here's the alarm and we watched it and like the very next --
it's a digital grid so it updates, and so it updates in so many seconds.
So one update is at the alarm set point and the next update is at the trip set point with nothing else going on in the rest of the train, no other vibe probes and we're validating the instrumentation and then do not take the action because of the other over riding other instrumentation saying the machine is either in pieces already or it's a bad probe.
It turned out it was loose.
MR.
BARBER:
If it was in pieces you'd also see it in the other --
SThat's exactly what I'm saying.
I would have seen sympathetic vibes on other pieces.
There's vibration --
Oak Creek has vibration probes everywhere, not like other stations.
MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
And so we didn't see those sympathetic vibes in another place and6 ad his hand on the key lock switch.
It was we were that close and he saidthat's the scram set point and you get pumped up.
So I didn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
72 1
want to say anything for -- because I didn't want him 2
getting any more jumpy and we were watching the 3
indication and the other reactor operator said 4
'*there's still no other vibes on any of the 5
other bearings.
He and I, the guy watching the vibes, 6
he and I had both been in a similar vibration region 7
where there was really a vibration as we moved through 8
a certain loading time on the generator and we knew 9
that it just could not have done it that sudden 10 because we had seen as it builds and it takes time if 11 it's real and he says,*
there's still no other 12 updates, they're all steady and all I did was -- the 13 man who had his hand on the switch was --
moved my 14 hand oh so suddenly like one more second and then it's 15 update 4
mils (Phonetic) and then it basically 16 steadied out or the probe seeded again or something.
17 We get people out there in the field, careful approach 18 to the spinning machine as usual and sure enough 19 there's the probe dangling in its place.
There was a 20 spare one.
We hook up and the machine is actually all 21 normal without any excursion.
22 MR.
BARBER:
That sounds like a success 23 story.
24
- Yes, I tell that story 25 because it was we were ready.
We were ready.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
73 1
Without hesitation, the only hesitation was a
2 validation hesitation.
3 MR.
BARBER:
That's reasonable, right?
4 kTo me, it was at the time.
5 Two other points going up as well, end of story, no 6
doubt about it.
We were going to do what. I believe is 7
the absolute right thing to do.
That particular 8
evening it didn't line up that way and I'll tell you 9
my heart was bumping, not just because I'm thinking 10 I'm going to go ahead and take the scram, but several 11 hundred thousands of tons of spinning machinery that 12 may be flying all over the building.
It wasn't at all 13 under pressure like oh my gosh, I have to remove the 14 unit from service.
It wasn't that at all.
It was --
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You were afraid of 16 what you might be dealing with?
17
- Yes, yes.
People out 18 there.
The station has a history of Salem turbine 19 pieces being found in the parking lot.
That's before 20 I got here, but that's the lore you hear and I was 21 actually pumping.
I can't think of any other times 22 that we trended to that point.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
We're just about to 24 run out.
I think why don't we just cut this one off 25 right here.
It's 11:09 a.m.
NEAL R. GROSS
-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
74 1
[End of Tape 1, Side B; Begin Tape 2, Side 2
A.]
3 MR.
BARBER:
We were talking about 4
examples where you saw something trend upward and we 5
were kind of close enough in that discussion.
Let me 6
move on to a couple of other things.
7 One of the things that the station has 8
just gone through as far as from a period of time is 9
economic deregulation of the industry.
When you first 10 got licensed here, you were operating in a regulated i1 environment.
You had like a public utility commission 12 that you went to for rate cases and it was a different 13 type of environment.
14 And now it's more competitive, more 15 streamlined, more cost conscious, more production 16 oriented, all those things.
17 What have you noticed at your level in 18 your various positions organizationally as you've 19 transitioned from the regulated environment to the 20 deregulated environment?
21 W
In that
- myself, my 22 colleagues and peers at my level that the pressure of 23 production versus overall compensation and I'm not 24 talking about the dollars of my salary.
I'm talking 25 about the --
like I mentioned before the time away NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
75 1
from home.
If we're in a forced outage for the right 2
reasons, but yet I'm away from home all the time and 3
not being amply compensated for it in comp. time or in 4
a fair dollars and cents salary, the overall pressure 5
is let's get the unit back on the line versus doing 6
the right thing.
And that I --
I say all that in it 7
just continues to move closer and closer across what 8
is a very blurry here's nuclear
- safety, here's 9
production and the line continues to get blurrier and 10 blurrier with that pressure.
11 MR.
BARBER:
Now you kind of subscribe to 12 the -- one of your points was that you're not getting 13 compensated through comp.
time or maybe through 14 salary.
If you were getting compensated through comp.
15 time or salary would that make the line less blurrier?
16 I would say it would 17 because some decisions, if we're going to make 18 decisions for business sense, then let's make them all 19 for that same reason and there are many, many times as 20 an individual that I'm simply here for no reason, 21 essentially just being mistreated as an employee.
Is 22 that a nuclear safety concern?
No, not exactly.
But 23 if the pain will stop when the unit is on line, in 24 other words my being here in an uncompensated state, 25 either salaried or comp. days, if that pain will stop NEAL R. GROSS r.1 IRT RPOPRRTERR AND TRANSCRIBERS
76 1
being on line, what is my motivation? At least in my 2
mind the motivation is handle this issue and get the 3
station back on line and that makes it very, very 4
difficult to press up against that, doing the right 5
thing.
6 There's examples where we've started up 7
like we were talking about rods before, where we start 8
up the reactor without after a scram, without 9
exercising all control rods.
Make the pain of being 10 in an outage stop because there's no relief from the 11 pain. I can' t come home to my wif e and say honey, I 'm 12 sorry I've been working all these hours, here's 13 something to set aside what do you say next week we go 14 to Bermuda, whatever the reason is, either cash or in 15 time off.
It's make the pain going away by getting 16 the unit on line and that pressure is very real. It's 17 very real.
18 MR. BARBER:
When you first started you 19 were in a situation where you were getting compensate 20 din some way for way, were you not?
21 Ntfor me specifically.
22 1 was hired post that time, but I certainly didn't 23 think it would be this bad.
In a nutshell, if I 24 worked here or worked at Susquehanna or Oyster Creek 25 or anywhere else, my annual salary would probably be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
77 1
roughly the same,
- about, give or take a couple of 2
dollars.
3 So it's not about how much I get paid over 4
365 days as much as it is about the peaks and valleys 5
that occur in between and the work environment.
Not 6
nuclear safety, but the work environment is such that 7
you find out things that you have to come in over the 8
weekend at the last minute.
9 MR.
BARBER:
How do you find that out?
I 10 mean does somebody pick up the phone and call you and 11 say hey can you come in?
12 That's part of it.
13 MR.
BARBER:
Are you allowed to say why?
14 No.
It's that's simply 15 unacceptable.
The work environment is that that is 16 unacceptable and then people, my peers at my level 17 commonly reflect and joke about that.
18 MR.
BARBER:
Do you ever have a situation 19 where you just don't answer the phone?
20 A
Yes, you hide behind it.
21 You let the answering machine do it.
You play these 22 little games that say I don't want to be there for 23 them because they abuse me.
It's a big negative and 24 if I'm able to sustain that, or if I'm able to perhaps 25 because of my situation or maybe my character or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
78 1
strength, maybe I'm not.
Maybe there are areas where 2
I'm not and I just don't know it.
I can't possibly 3
know everything that I'm understanding or not knowing, 4
but I would see where it would be --
in my particular 5
case, I'm rated relatively high among my peers, but I 6
can see where there are some that are not.
And when 7
they have pressure from home and their family and they 8
continuously are pressed to either be here and it's 9
never directly.
It's never my boss looking at me 10 knowing that he's into me, that he says this is what 11 you need to do for me.
It's never quite that way.
12 It's like a little yellow stickie or an e-mail.
These 13 are just business relationships that if I could be 14 treated better and it's just as it's really so 15 discomforting and disgruntling.
16 MR.
BARBER:
Is it a situation where if 17 they need support for some activity, it's we need X 18 number of SROs, is it we just go out to the pool that 19 are out there and we'll get them or is the situation 20 where we have an issue at the plant, let's call 21 everybody at the SRO level that's not working and drag 22 them in?
23 It's both.
It's both.
24 There are some that are very discrete, but there are 25 others that you just say why, after the fact that I've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
79 1
been here for 55 hours6.365741e-4 days <br />0.0153 hours <br />9.093915e-5 weeks <br />2.09275e-5 months <br /> this week, do they need me this 2
weekend to address this very minor issue, that it's 3
needed for me.
It's like an unlimited pool and no one 4
is ever picking up the check for it.
5 MR.
BARBER:
There's got to be an impact.
6 You're talking about the work environment and we're 7
here to talk about safety conscious work environment.
8
.j:
That's exactly why I'm 9
here, absolutely.
10 MR.
BARBER:
That sounds like there's an 11 impact.
12
_That's what I'm Saying.
13 MR.
BARBER:
You kind of walk this fine 14 line about saying what the impact is, but it doesn't 15 sound like it's a positive impact.
16 That's exactly why I'm 17 here.
It presses up against it and maybe at times I 18 may or may not be aware of it.
And I
have a
19 superintendent that is probably here every week for 55 20 to 60 hours6.944444e-4 days <br />0.0167 hours <br />9.920635e-5 weeks <br />2.283e-5 months <br />.
Now maybe that's normal in the agency or 21 the region.
It might be.
It might be your work 22 environment as well.
It might be what everybody works 23 to make the kind of money that they make.
But these 24 are the people who are making the nuclear safety 25 decisions.
NEAL R. GROSS rtni" I113T A--:n-**'r r'd' r."
80 1
Now is it in compliance with the procedure 2
that says I'll get my manager's concurrence, the 3
nuclear admin.
procedure that has the overtime 4
restrictions?
- Yes, he's in compliance.
But he's 5
doing it every week out to the very limit.
And so is 6
his colleague and so is the other superintendent.
7 So they naturally then expect the same of 8
their subordinates and I have at times, the March 9
power excursion issue, I was prepping the refuel 10 outage at --
because the refuel outage is about a
11 month away and I can take some of those peaks.
I can 12 take those hey, we're in crunch time, the outage needs 13 to be mopped up.
I can take those for four or five 14
- weeks, who can't.
15 I'm trying not to appear to be the 16 business whiner here, but when it goes on and on, when 17 it's always a 60 hour6.944444e-4 days <br />0.0167 hours <br />9.920635e-5 weeks <br />2.283e-5 months <br /> week, you start to --
and you 18 want the pain to stop, you might be apt to --
you 19
- know, I can wiggle through this wicket this way.
I 20 can wink and smile at that and what I say and again, 21 it's not a nuclear safety concern, but if I work for 22 a company and its environment treats people in such a 23 way that they can't look them in the eye and treat 24 them with respect and dignity, treat the people that 25 they work with side by side, close with respect and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
81 1
- dignity, how can I
expect those people to treat 2
processes, procedures, safety rules, nuclear reactor 3
safety, radiological, how can I expect them to treat 4
those processes with any more integrity than they are 5
treated as an individual.
6 I think that line gets very, very wiggling 7
and blurred.
I truly do.
I can't speak of a specific 8
- case, but the pressure is surely there, without a 9
doubt.
The work week duration at every nuclear 10
- utility, I'm sure it has its peaks and its
- valleys, 11 but here it is persistent and never ending.
12 I'm a professional.
I've got no problem 13 with being a professional.
I've got no problem with 14 stepping it up at the times that I need it and coming 15 in for this weekend or that weekend, but not every 16 other one and not every week should I be here for 55 17 plus.
I may appear to be venting here.
18 (Laughter.)
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's entirely 20 relevant.
What you're saying is entirely relevant.
21 It paints a picture where there would be some concern.
22 You're saying this is being dealt with across the 23 board.
It's not just you who is handled this way.
24 It's the way management deals with employees.
25 How about in terms of an impact on having NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
82 1
experienced operators going to SRO training?
Do 2
people 3
That's unheard of.
It's 4
- at Hope Creek, not a chance.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So they have to bring 6
them in from outside?
7 Yes.
They see the abuse.
8 They see my misery.
I don't see it happening.
At 9
- Salem, it was similar up until recently when 10 essentially they had to give the farm away to get four 11 or five people to step in and take the upgrade, in 12 other words offer them more money.
13
- Again, in an annual world, I'm satisfied 14 with my salary.
If it were all about salary, I'd be 15 at Limerick tomorrow or I'd be back toi or 16 wherever.
I was looking for a job when I found this 17 one.
It doesn't bother me having to make change, 18 although some it does and that's why those are 19 personal issues, but the way that your weekends are 20 almost like they're the companies to give and take 21 away.
It's aý philosophy.
You'll leave when the 22 job is done.
So you're apt to want to make the job 23 done.
24 MR.
BARBER:
What would happen to someone 25 who for instance was never available by phone.
It NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
83 1
just is a matter of course when the weekends came, 2
they just made it a habit of going to their family's 3
house or physically going out of the area?
4 3
That would be negative 5
impact.
There would be consequences.
I took negative 6
impact for(-
7 I had 8
and I had a negative consequence on my 9
annual review.
10 MR.
BARBER:
What did it say?
11
- Well, the --
it didn't 12 really say anything along those lines.
Performance in 13 the Hope Creek operations department isn't measured by 14 performance.
It's measured by a popularity contest.
15 And that's fine with me and you bring some of the 16 performance issues up and they load on when they have 17 this little ranking and rating scheme and when you 18 know the rules, you know how to play and you play it 19 well and that's fine.
20 I happened to play it somewhat well, but 21 I did have a that year which caused me to 22 miss the and another day later I came back too 23 soon and I missed that day, coupled with a cough 24 earlier in the year.
I had 25 and instead of getting what across the board was a 4 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
84 1
to 2
Availability was verbally cited to me as my 3
challenging issue.
Message, no is not an answer.
Not 4
being here is not an acceptable answer.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
6 related?
These were all
.)
related 7
unavailability?
8
-'Yes.,
Coupled with that 9
was a training performance issue.
In all fairness to 10 the company I'll acknowledge that.
I/Iissed6.
I Xai1ed e
11 a job performance measure in my requal.
And thatfcost '?:
12 my license bonusfor the period of time that I was not 13 qualified and an additional probably 1 percent.
The 14 two reasons cited when I challenged my superintendent 15 that this was unacceptable, what I said though is I
16 had a rock solid year as far as performance with the 17 exception of the training issue which I remediated 18 within a week, within four days I turned around and 19 did --
I'm starting to dound really aggressive.
20 MR.
BARBER:
No, no.
It may be relevant.
21 It may be part of the environment.... *,
22 l
my exam on 23 Thursday.
I was supposed to go out in
- December, 24 Christmas holidays and I originally asked for a
25 vacation during the Christmas holidays and the January NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANMr.RIRFRR
85 1
previous, I put it in 12 months in advance and it had 2
been turned down late in the year.
So I needed to 3
take vacation in order to burn it so I was choosing to 4
take it in the three weeks of December before 5
Christmas.
- Well, sure enough, the last week in 6
November I /failed the requal.
So I canceled my 7
vacation so that I could become&requalified/7 ualified 8
four days -1later, where some people wait until the 9
training cycle comes around.
I did that so that I 10 could stand the watch during Christmas Day because 11 somebody else was taking vacation, the vacation that 12 I couldn't get earlier.
And I did all those things.
13 So when I asked my superintendent, how 14 come this is so low, I had a pretty rock solid year 15 except for that December failure.
- Well, your 16 unavailability was also cited and as a reason and 17 that's going to cost you.
And how can that be right 18 for three basically misses.
One being a
19 a second being a fallout from that-10il 20 and the other one, okay I missed a day because I had -
21 I came into the station, realized I had a fever, 22 called in from the gate and said I'm going back home 23 and it cost me.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Three different days?
25 I'm fairly certain it did NEAL R. GROSS CO[RT RFPORTFRq ANn TPAMKQrPI=DQ
86 1
come down to three.
Three is what puts you on the 2
Valentine's list which is our policy.
Three absences 3
puts you on the Valentine's list at which times you're 4
sort of on a probation.
5 MR.
BARBER:
Isn't awo 6
isn't that somehow like fall in an area where it's 7
I didn't question it at 8
the time.
Okay, fine, I'm on the Valentine's list.
9
-Three months later, I find out I had a raise that was 10
/(ubstandard/
But it sends the message.
It definitely 11 sends the message and what's fascinating and the data 12 will support this, look at bargaining unit illnesses.
13 They are per the contract.
In other words, they take 14 the time off they're allotted.
You look at white 15
- shirts, massed (Phonetic) employees in my job and 16 you'll see that wow, we're all very, very healthy.
We 17 hardly ever miss a day of work.
But one of my peers 18 or superintendents, to be out sick is
-- it.'s almost 19 unheard of.
They'll come in coughing, fever, that 20 sort of thing because of the demands.
It's all very 21 negative.
It's all very negative.
22 That's like I said, as an industry, if we 23 don't want to treat the people that are doing it with 24 a certain amount of respect and integrity, how do we 25 expect them to treat procedures, processes, safety NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
87 1
policies with respect and dignity?
2 MR.
BARBER:
Have you tried to raise any 3
of this with management like outside --
4 RIMM, W, No, no, no, no, no.
I 5
don't trust it, honestly.
If you're talking about --
6 MR. BARBER:
This is in the realm of maybe 7
not nuclear
- safety, but it is the environment, 8
certainly the work environment.
9 Yes.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What about the issue 11 that has anybody, you or another person come close to 12 raising that issue with management in terms of where 13 you see that pushing people that hard will blur the 14 line.
If you want to stop the pain, you just want to 15 get the work done and over with, is that something 16 that would be ever considered to be raised to 17 management?
18
'Not by me anyway.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Are you aware that
- 20.
anybody else approached that?
21
'To.
22 MR.
BARBER:
Do you guys ever talk 23 informally amongst yourselves where you talk about 24 these kinds of issues and just how things --
25 Among my peers, yes, to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
88 1
pass the time.
It's a little bitch session, so to 2
speak.
You're just like griping.
3 What business does not have that?
I try 4
to say that's a business issue.
- Well, yeah, who 5
doesn't want more money and less time?
Who doesn't?
6 But here, it appears to me that it is so prevalent and 7
so excessive that when --
I'll back up.
I read the 8
- paper, I saw the letter a month ago.
At first, I
9 thought oh boy, reorg. cost something.
10 There's the price we have to pay.
11 I also know you don't print these things.
12 If this doesn't come out in two weeks and you folks 13 don't say oh, here's a letter in like two weeks time 14 and something had to be on-going.
So I start to think 15 about that myself.
I started to internalize it and I 16 said you know what, because at first I said no one --
17 there's no nuclear safety concerns there.
I'm a 18
, There are none.
Because the 19 NRC had a couple of belly achers -come to them because 20 they lost their job or their buddy lost their job, 21 that was my first take'on it.
And then I started to 22 think about it, what does it look like?
It looks like 23 control rods being descoped.
It looks like starting 24 up the plant without having pressure control valves 25 working the way they want.
It looks like that.
I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTFRP AMn T 1Qf'01DCoC
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 89 started to think about that and I started to say it looks like not being able to get days off that you would like to have or that you think you earned.
It looks like that.
Like I said, if you're not going to treat them that way, why would you expect them to treat your policies, procedures and nuclear safety any differently?
I couldn't imagine why.
Specifically, and I said this t I
said specifically can I
tell you if there's a
deficiency out there, a standard?
I can't.
I can just tell you that the pressure on the overall working environment is high production and painful.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Are you aware of any other instances akin to the bypass valve incident that we discussed where operations management was under pressure from either senior management or PS&G Power regarding operational decisions?
Am I aware of or having lived?
I'm aware of rumors, gossip.
Back --
I don't remember the specific start up, the specific start up, we have a ramp (Phonetic) bypass valves.
One of them is moving, fluttering when it should be stable.
And it's not exactly changing reactor pressure, but it's not exactly the way it should be and they should be somewhat steady.
Most of the industry has them rock NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
90 1
solid.
2 The control room shift said this does not 3
look right.
We don't like this.
We do not want to 4
move on.
We're at the point where it's the 5
generator is rolling.
There are people in the switch 6
yard ready to put the unit on line and shift said we 7
do not feel this is the right thing to do, the 8
operating shift, the reactor operators, the control 9
room supervisor and the shift manager.
The then 0
id go forward and do 11 it.
12
- Now, knowing what I know about pressure 13 control systems and knowing what I
know about the 14 bypass valves and knowing what I
know about the 15 system, impact?
- Well, it probably, was just a plain 16 business decision, can we live with that the way it 17 is?
And will it stop doing that when the turbine is 18 on-line.
- Maybe, I don't know.
But that's an example 19 of one and it's my understanding that that is 20 investigated, discussed and documented by other
- 21.
individuals and other places.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Time frame for that?
23 I think it was coming out 24 of that forced outage that we had been talking about 25 during the --
I think it was coming out of that one, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS Atfn TPACrI.=PIP
91 1
March.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
In the March time 3
frame?
4 I believe.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
eing 6
part of Iperations management what about other 7
examples involving senior management or PS&G Power?
8 Had you ever heard of anything like that, before or 9
after the bypass 10 im WNothing specifically that 11 would say contradictory to policy, but contradictory 12 being treated like a human being.
The example I would 13 give you is I'm VWI 14
-with the authority to shut the station down 15 and take actions as I need to in accordance to the 16 procedures.
17 If it's today at 11 o'clock and my boss, 18 my superintendent, my second, the very next person in 19 my chain of command have stepped out to go to a 20 meeting, and it's me and two other individuals there, 21 the big one happens, the sun, the moon and the stars 22 and everything are aligned and this is the accident 23 condition that we all train about and at that time one 24 of my reactor operators just plain drops over dead, 25 God forbid, and there it is, I am set with one other NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
92 1
individual and the two of us combined, two human 2
beings have the entire asset in the palm of our hands 3
to decide what we're going to do.
4 Now do I think that the plant is going to 5
shut down and ECCF is going to inject and that there 6
will not be a nuclear safety concern?
Absolutely.
I 7
believe that it will all be successful.
But let's say 8
for whatever reason I do what they do at Three Mile 9
Island and stop a pump when it should have been 10 running, whatever, and here's a corporate asset that 11 just for whatever reason is now in the headlines and 12 huge business impact, huge.
With those and orphans, 13 shareholder price, just dropped.
But yet, I have one 14 interaction withN
- One, only one, and 15 that's an e-mail following the power excursion that 16 says draft a letter that tells me how bad you want to
- 17.
keep your job.
That just says to me from the delta 18 between here's the person who in the palm of their 19 hand has the corporate asset and here's this that 20 thinks he can manage by an edict in an e-mail, that 21 just is what is that in terms of respect for the 22 person that's holding your asset, your corporate asset 23 right there?
It just says no engagement, no 24 alignment.
I don't know what he stands for and I only 25 have one data point, only one and that was in the fall NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSMRIRFRR
93 1
out of that event of the power excursion in March.
2 Because of these performance issues I need all senior 3
reactor operators and all reactor operators to 4
document what and these are all the management 5
speaking --
what changes in behavior and performance 6
are you going to do to ensure that this event doesn't 7
happen?
But just in a letter tell me how much you 8
want to keep your job?
That really was the pressure, 9
the perceived perception as I see it is reality.
10 MR.
BARBER:
Was there backlash from the 11 operators because of that?
12 Oh no, we in line 13 complied.
You mean 14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You wrote the letter?
15
- Oh
- yes, I wrote a nice, 16 flowery letter saying I will gladly fall on my sword 17 for everything you could possibly find fault with me 18 in every way.
The union did not they did not 19 provide any such --
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Were they asked to?
21
'Yes.
Actually, they were 22 directed to.
They weren't asked.
I was probably 23 asked.
The message probably said please provide this.
24 The message received was you have no other choice.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But the same message NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 94 went to the union and the union declined to respond?
MR.
BARBER:
Do you know if there was any repercussions or ramifications of that, of the union's blanket refusal to respond to it?
No.
MR. BARBER:
So really what you're talking about is the NCOs were silent on the response and all the
- r:
Right.
MR.
BARBER:
Basically, at one level said no way.
SROs all responded You betcha.
Absolutely.
The prevalent attitude is it is such the hypocracy is just incredible.
Today is Friday.
The example I will give you we're having a forced outage this weekend, for whatever the issue is, whatever the technical reason it.
Maybe it's not even a forced
- outage, it's just that we have to take a system out.
Our management, my ops management will say okay, we need to get some manning in order.
Let's look at our roster.
Out comes a roster, okay.
We can have
-some in on Saturday.
We can have come in on Friday night and
- okay, come in on Saturday.
It is not it just isn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
95 1
Saturday, we're going to have this outage, we need 2
some manning, will you be able to assist us?
It's 3
more like here's the yellow stickie, you need to let 4
me know if you can't come in Saturday.
The message is 5
the same and again, I'm a professional and I know I 6
need to pitch in and help out where it's needed, but 7
it's in the delivery.
8 So as an example, he looks at the roster 9
list and he goes to the IBEW list and it's as by 10 seniority and there's a compensation in there as well, 11 an hourly wage and he says to operator XYZ,
- hey, I
12 need to man for this outage, are you available and can 13 you come in?
14 In other words, do you want to come in for 15 the money?
Do you want to give up time from your 16 family or the time not here to come in?
He might say, 17 nope, no thank you, I'll decline.
Okay, he declines 18 and he moves on down the list and picks the person who 19 eventually and the list is done by --
20 MR.
BARBER:
Seniority?
21 Not by seniority but by 22 hours2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br />.
In other words, the people who work the most 23 are at the bottom of the list, so the people who work 24 less, equitable distribution is the key.
25 MR.
BARBER:
Okay, okay.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANC.qRIRFP.
1 He might say no and he 2
moves on down the list and he gets another person to 3
say no. And the conclusion that's drawn from hearing 4
nos until he gets to the person who says yes, is you 5
know what, operation 1, 2 and 3, they did not want to 6
sacrifice time from family to come in and collect the 7
king's money. They just chose not to take the money.
8 They would prefer to do other things.
That's just a 9
straight forward decision.
I'll pass on it.
He asks 10 me or another massed (Phonetic) associate, we need 11 your help this Saturday and I say no, essentially he's 12 asked me the same question he asked him, but the 13 conclusion he asks me is oh, not a team player. And 14 I'll pay. My perception is I will pay for that. And is I will --
it will show up in a negative review as not 16 being available for the needs of the station.
17 MR. BARBER: Are these the kind of things 18 that you expect to share maybe next week when you have 19 that discussion?
20 Yes.
21 MR. B3ARBER:
Is this the kind of thing 22 that you think you'll get, you'll be able to bring up?
23
- Actually, I'm still 24 undecided on that to be honest with you.
In all 25 honesty, I don't know.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
97 1
2 3
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 ii 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
I don't know the environment there and I don't know how you'd possibly loosen me up enough to talk this much.
(Laughter.)
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I still have to get to one thing I have.
I don't know if we have a direct answer to this.
What I'm looking for is that incident regarding the bypass valve, is that unique in your mind?
Had you ever had associated with that there was pressure from PS&G Power on the station to make an operational decision in one direction against where ops management would have put the unit?
I'm certain there are other times.
I just may not be aware of them.
Besides the overall environment of let's get on-line, no.
I can't think of another --
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You talk a lot about the production part, where it comes from --
I can't think of another specific time where SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
On an operational decision, was there input that was looked at by ops management as wrong or inappropriate or something they had to argue with?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
98 1
- Like I mentioned, 2
descoping control, you mean as far as from outside of 3
the fence?
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Right.
5 1I can't think of another 6
time.
Inside the fence like outage management as far 7
as like saying we're not going to exercise all these 8
control
- rods, we're only going to exercise a
9 population, this is in a forced outage system.
We're 10 only going to exercise a population because it takes 11 time, that does occur.
That occurs.
12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But nothing else 13 along the lines of this incident in March?
14 No.
And maybe it's just 15 because I'm unaware of them.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I wanted to also ask 17 you before we were talking about your concern, your 18 specific concern regarding the way you were treated as 19 a massed (Phonetic) associate on site and you see that 20 as potentially having on the safety conscious work 21 environment, and you said you would not raise that 22 concern and you looked like that's just not going to 23 happen.
24 Why wouldn't you raise a concern like 25 that?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
99 1
I can't say no the 2
opportunity to come in and help the team.
3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Team player?
4 MW Yes, not a team player, 5
squeaky wheel, nope, we've got to handle him again.
6 It's the same sort of feedback that if I had given a 7
subordinate would be deemed as unacceptable.
When a 8
subordinate comes to me and says hey, I want to go do 9
they don't usually say "I want to go do this job 10 and this is the problem."
What they usually say is 11
- hey, I can't do this job this way because I need a 12 ladder and a safety guide to help me.
If I get him 13 kind of like these, in any body language whatsoever 14 that says oh, gosh, you're bringing me your problems, 15 that's absolutely unacceptable and I try to make sure 16 that that never comes out, that it always comes out 17 like excellent catch.
We can work that.
We can do 18 that.
Let's see what we can find out to fix that.
19 It's almost the same over riding 20 environment, don't bring me your problems.
You're a 21 massed (Phonetic) associate, handle it.
That's my 22 perception.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You want to be seen 24 as a team player, so you don't pay for it down the 25 line?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
100 1
d~~IIS~~
Absolutely, absolutely.
2 It is just that I'm sure I'm not alone.
It's just 3
that much pressure.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Let's hold right 5
there.
I'll take a quick break.
It's 11:46.
6 (Off the record.)
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay, we're back on 8
the record. It's approximately 1:07 p.m. Pretty much 9
where we left off, just before we broke for lunch was 10 you were summarizing some of your points about 11 management interactions and their approach and how you 12 would or wouldn't approach them with concerns.
You 13 basically were talking team player and if you're not 14 seen as a team player, then you might feel that down 15 the line.
16 And you put it in pretty concrete terms in 17 terms of pay raises and bonuses and so forth.
And 18 then we had asked you at that point to --
I think in 19 terms of technical incidents, we pretty much are done, 20 but we wanted to hear a little more from you. You had 21 a couple more issues I think you wanted to raise.
22 Y1es.
Even as recent as 23 the last (Inaudible) outage, there's the four source 24 strength detectors at this station.
Some stations 25 have the entire start up range, start up source and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
101 1
intermediate.
Therefore, the license allows us to 2
start up with one of them, inoperable.
And we had one 3
that was indeed some times inoperable.
The period in 4
the year which integrates the rate, would occasionally 5
spike and come into an alarm.
And due to the low 6
population of counts, it's just noise alone could do 7
that in the low end when you're in the 10 to 15 8
counts.
So if you've got 20, just the rate itself 9
would bring an alarm.
10
- Well, ou ant management, (I believe it 11 was said we won't start up the plant with 12 any inoperable SR.
We will not do that.
That's our 13 stand.
That's our --
we will not be pushed back from 14 there.
Well, this delta XRM was not going to be fixed 15 either.
So --
and it would only do this on occasion 16 from noise, either in the building, noise in the 17 circuit, that sort of thing and in essence, the SRM 18 remained inoperable until we basically put down on 19 paper that it was operable, but degraded which is by 20 procedure is what we allow.
21 And I struggled with that when at times 22 one of the first things that some people actually 23 proposed to do was to disable a period alarm.
At Hope 24 Creek, with all of its digital technology as being 25 somewhat newer than most, does not have all four NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
102 1
instruments period in the front.
2 The four instruments,
- alpha, bravo, 3
- charlie, delta, delta happened to be the culprit.
4 Alpha and bravo, period, is in the front panel in 5
front of the control room operator. Delta is not.
So 6
someone had in their mind that why we do not use that 7
indication, because it's not readily readable, it's 8
something in the back panel you would see.
9 Let's disable the alarm. And that way the 10 SRM would remain operable, but since you don't see the 11 indication, there might not --
maybe there's no use 12 for it and we'll live without the alarm.
13 This is the sort of questions that you 14 have to defend because management politically wants to 15 make the stand that we're not going to start up 16 without an SRM, but we will do it if it's degraded.
17 In other words, here, provide this piece of paper so 18 that we can get out of the outage and approve it and 19 then again, get out of the outage means the pain 20 stops, the time you're here, the time you're away from 21 home.
22
'And those sort of issues that come up, 23 that's kind of how they're presented.
And I pushed 24 back and I said wait a minute, that simply is not 25 allowed.
The source range monitor is an instrument NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
103 1
all itself and both those functions, counting rates 2
and counting period are required for operability.
3 I questioned the colleague of mine who was 4
tasked with --
he and I were to review this and I said 5
that is so far out of bounds.
Where is this coming 6
from?
He says well, it's coming from,
,sked us 7
to look at it. JT~~L ILJ He was our 8
m INs the time and I think he was provided 9
that from somewhere else, hey, can we do this?
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
From what level was 11 the suggestion coming?
Was it from management or from 12 operator level?
13 I think it was from outage 14 group management.
We have to start the plant up, but 15 we're not going to do it with this constraint.
And 16 the constraint was unjustified.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Do you know whose 18 idea it was?
19 No, not specifically.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But you think it was 21 funneled over to*
and it was sent to two 22
- CRSs, you and --
23
- Yes, myself and ann) 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Who was the; 25NON NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
104 1
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
To go ahead and look 2
at it?
3 To look at this.
Can we 4
do that?
Can we do that?
I don't know if it was 5
asked that way or hey, we could do this and still 6
maintain the instrument operable and satisfy this 7
politically correct management stand as opposed to a 8
maybe slightly challenged stand was would be because 9
it is allowable to have one and start up the station 10 with three out of four.
11 Okay, then step up to the plate and take 12 that as accountability. I am authorizing the start up 13 of this station with one, because I'm not going to fix 14 it.
I'm not going to take the time to fix it.
It was 15 never fixed. All of what was changed was some paper 16 put into a process.
And it was in service and it 17 worked fine, but the point being that it's sort of a 18 masquerade in that we can now say and advertise that 19 we haven't started up the plant since I got here with 20 an inoperable SRM. We have with a degraded one. And 21 1 said, I have serious problems with saying well, it'Is 22 to me it's either operable or it's inoperable.
23 Well, Hope Creek, and so does Salem, inoperable, but 24 degraded condition.
25 And I struggle with someone being able to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 105 stand up in sort of a political correct way and say we won't start up the plant with an inoperable SRM, but we'll say we will start up the plant with a degraded SRM.
In other words, step in and say you know what, we will and it will be my decision to start up the plant with an inoperable SRM and we will proceed and I will be accountable for that decision.
MR.
BARBER:
But you would be allowed to do that by tech specs.
/
Absolutely.
It is allowed.
And is it the best way?
No.
Is this SRM A
going to be corrected in the next outage?
Yes.
It's in scope to be done.
MR.
BARBER:
What's going to be done to it?
LIt will be pulled out and we're also bringing in a vendor that's going to do some electronic noise surveys.
I believe it's building noise that comes from the drawer and end, coax. cable type induced noise.
MR.
BARBER:
(Inaudible)
MR.
BARBER:
It is.
Yes.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
106 1
MR.
BARBER:
(Inaudible)
__2 It continued.
They 3
watched it.
It's been known, this particular SRM is 4
a known one.
5 MR.
BARBER:
Has there been any attempt to 6
try and correlate the spikes when the spikes occur 7
with other in-plant changes whether it be process 8
changes or sump pump starts?
9 Sump pumps, yes.
10 MR.
BARBER:
Has there been?
Where you 11 actually sit down with either an alarm printer and 12 just go through all the --
13 W,? That's been done.
14 MR.
BARBER:
And there's nothing that's 15i correlated?
16 Nothing that is 17 MR.
BARBER:
Definitive.
18 Yes.
You know, the source 19 range monitors, they can see almost anything in the 20 way of electronic noise in the building if they're not 21 shielded 100 percent perfect.
They can almost see any 22 control signal if they're in the vicinity of it.
And 23 so we're going to try to find that the next outage.
24 In fact, those preps are on-going to get someone in --
25 when are they coming?
It's in the very near future, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
107 1
four or five weeks away.
2 MR. BARBER:
Okay.
3 Not waiting until the 4
outage to bring a vendor in and I don't know exactly 5
what they have. I'm not an INC circuits expert. But 6
I'm sure it's some sort of meter that will be able to 7
tell stray signals and they'll probably run it along 8
the entire cable, cable tray, etcetera and into the 9
drawer, trying to find where that is.
10 So that' s on-going. The hypocracy that I 11 struggle with is let's not make this facetious stand 12 when, in fact, you're not going to fix what is 13 sometimes not working quite right. And that's just an 14 example of the press of that slight pressure, you 15 know. After you review this and get this paper in --
16
[End Tape 2, Side A; Begin Tape 2, Side B.)
17 MR. BARBER:
Is it possible that the 18 reason that management said what they said is that 19 they really want more of an effort to fix it? Is that 20 a possibility, that you had a new manager on site.
21 He's disappointed in the performance he has to run and 22 really in saying what he said his intention wasn't to 23 point at something three years from now as part of his 24 track record.
His intention was to say, tell the 25 station he wants it fixed and to tell engineering to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
108 1
get on the horn and we'll get to work maintenance or 2
an INC, go out and work this and fix it.
Is it 3
possible that that was the intention?
Or do you think 4
it was nothing more than what you're suggesting?
5 I
It's possible.
Yes, it's 6
possible.
That does not appear to me to be the --
I 7
mean, no.
I would think that if you wanted to get it 8
fixed you'd want to get it fix.
I've been in rooms 9
numbers of times where we sit in conferences and 10 listen to equipment challenges come up and there's 11 that one lonely sole person in the corner of the room 12 that will say something like well, why don't we just 13 fix it?
And everybody goes, yeah, why don't we just 14 fix it?
Why don't we just fix it?
In this case, you 15 can't get at it.
16 MR.
BARBER:
This isn't the first time 17 it's come up?
18No No 19 MR. BARBER:
Maybe the first time for this 20 plant manager, but previous plant managers and ops 21 managers and AOMs and OSs and CRSs have seen. this 22 before?
23 IsYes.
Oh yeah.
It's not 24 spiking now, make it operable.
25 MR.
BARBER:
And how should he do it? How NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
109 1
should the effort be portrayed to actually get the 2
organization to want to repair it as opposed to 3
dismiss it?
4
- Well, I would -- you're 5
asking me how should I tell a manager to project that 6
from a solid business sense or maybe from a solid 7
integrity sense.
Step up and say this particular 8
start up is going to go on with that one inop.
I'm 9
not going to go try and find somebody to wiggle and 10 document and find me some warm, fuzzy place so that I 11 can start the unit up.
Stand up and say in this case 12 it's not what I want.
13 I would prefer them all to be perfect, but 14 in this case, since it involves opening up the vessel 15 to change and replace or extensive trouble shooting 16 with the noise finder or the circuit finder, we're not 17 going to proceed that way, one way or another.
Either 18 say we're going to start up at 3 out of 4 and be 19 accountable for doing so, but let's not push it down 20 to a lower level and say I need you people to find me 21 a way to start up by saying they're all four are good.
22 That's how I perceive it.
23 MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
24 That was just a month ago.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So on the prior NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
110 1
startups with this inoperable, was it deemed operable?
2 No, we'd keep it 3
inoperable and start up the plant.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
But it was still s
termed inoperable?
6 Yes 7
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So prior to this last 8
one that involvedý
, was it done the way --
9 It was always operable, 10 but degraded.
Ii SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Always operable, but 12 degraded?
13 Yes.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So where you object 15 to this one is that the stand was taken we're not 16 going to go forward with an inoperable SRM, but then 17 you had to maneuver to call it operable?
18 Yes, exactly.
Exactly.
19 No physical maintenance was done.
The condition still 20 exists.
21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So the only 22 difference was in that they were not going to start it 23 up with it inop., but nothing changed in terms of the 24 pieces of equipment status?
25 4
So then in the aggregate, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
ill 1
let's say now one does break, one absolutely does 2
- break, we could then say okay, well, as a business 3
decision, I'll back away from my previous stand and we 4
will start up with three out of four.
In the 5
- meantime, one of those three is the one that is the 6
degraded condition.
It's operable, but degraded.
And 7
I just I think that's
-- to me that just smells and 8
stinks of let's make this stand because it looks good 9
and I would contend that if the other one did indeed 10 break, that given our management structure, we would 11 proceed.
We would proceed with the plant start.
12 MR.
BARBER:
Were you actually in that 13 circumstance or something very similar to that in 14 September, in light of the hurricane?
You had the D 15 that was spiking and the charlie or both spiking, 6 of 16 8 IRMs were operable, 2 were inop. and I don't know 12 17 or 16 inputs, LPR inputs weren't working properly for 18 the APRMs?
19 You've reviewed the 20 numbers.
I don't recall specifically, but that seems 21 to be about right.
22 MR.
BARBER:
There were five control rods 23 having excessive rod speeds?
24 Five?
There might have 25 been.
I recall there being three or four.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
112 1
MR.
BARBER:
The point I'm trying to make 2
is you don't need to know all of the numbers.
It's 3
just 4
W,\\
Yes, I recall that.
5 MR.
BARBER:
the impact.
Because it's 6
not like okay, it's this problem and this problem by 7
- itself, it's this problem, that problem, that problem, 8
fast control rods, you know, a series of other minor 9
deficiencies in the balance of the plant that have the 10 potential impact you don't even control the start.
11 Right.
On the aggregate, 12 they all add up to a lot.
13 MR.
BARBER:
Right.
14 The fast control rods, 15 definitely, definitely a result of the sins of the 16 past that I described as far as not maintaining max in 17 a steady, repetitive, predictive maintenance schedule.
18 The Toshiba machine not being taken out.
The decision 19 not being made to spend the money and modify the 20 plant.
For that maintenance item, that's what it is.
21 It's used once every 18 months to change out the drive 22 mechs.
23 And the decision to not do that has 24 continued to haunt and haunt and haunt.
And I would 25 suspect after this next outage because of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
113 1
religion, I'm making these mechs change out and we see 2
what it really takes in the scheme of time for the 3
outage.
That Toshiba machine will probably be cut out 4
before they close the door.
Someone will decide 5
that's enough.
I've had enough.
6 MR.
BARBER:
You're in a position to 7
provide some type of replacement at the time or do you 8
want to like go into the next outage and have the --
9 be part of the upfront mod?
10 That's a
business 11 decision, isn't it?
12 MR.
BARBER:
If you were the decision 13 maker, what would you do?
14 I said that before.
If I
15 were the decision maker, I would have sent with those 16 under vessel guys their last time jump in.
Here's 17 three Saws All.
Bring all the parts out when you come 18 out.
That's metaphorically speaking.
I would demand 19 that engineering provide me a way to get to that 20 point, you know.
What can be retired in place, as is?
21 Is really is nothing more than a maintenance tool.
If 22 there are some under vessel considerations for what is 23 under there, but other stations have vendors bring 24 that stuff in and do it with their tools and what not.
25 In some respects it's not much unlike my bringing a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
114 1
tool cart in there.
2 It's a little more extravagant, but what 3
I'm saying is it's a maintenance tool.
I would demand 4
of them to say that's it, you get this to a point 5
where I can call it retired in place.
We'll work for 6
18 months on what's going to go in its place.
7 That is seriously impacting, it seriously 8
impacts outage duration.
It seriously impacts on-line 9
reactivity risks.
10 MR.
BARBER:
How many people are aware of 11 that as an issue the way you are?
12
- g.
Probably --
in my last 13 outage feedback, I highlighted as a major paragraph to 14 my
- chain, so it would be r*m 15 (Phonetic), just about everybody that's in the outage, 16 you
- know, that's involved in it.
Because we 17 recognized we're watching it.
We see --
12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> go 18 by and you don't have one mech. changeout.
Everybody 19 knows it.
Everybody knows what the issue is.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
How many days did 21 that add to-the outage from where you were planned to 22 where you ended up?
23 E
1
- Well, outage days are 24 fuzzy.
You know once a major job slips for whatever 25 reason, that becomes an umbrella for entire other jobs NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
115 1
to kind of huddle under.
That's characteristically 2
speaking.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's a
3 reason to extend here than other things slide in?
4
- Well, not slide in.
How 5
do I --
how can I characterize it?
The whole outage 6
is like some very large multi-discipline, many, many 7
people try to get a lot of things done.
But let's say 8
as example the turbine job, it becomes public that the 9
turbine job is a week behind,
- well, it's funny.
10 People do the amount of work that is necessary for the 11 job to get done in the time that is allotted.
And 12 suddenly another next window will grow out to meet the 13 end of that other window.
14 It's just a
what is that?
The 15 Parkinson's rules that say you never have enough room 16 in your house.
There's always too much furniture even 17 if you moved in there without a pot or a chair.
You 18 fill it eventually and then you want a bigger place.
19 The job will take the amount of time allotted.
If 20 there's a major issue that pushes out, so does
- 21.
everything else and sometimes in an outage the mech.
22 window hides underneath something else, hides behind 23 a who knows, something that's going on up above, 24 internal vessel inspections and those sort of things 25 that may be lagging for some reason.
Or the turbine NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
116 1
being up there, being critical path.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So you just don't 3
know how long it took to actually do the 18 mechs. and 4
what amount of time was attributed to that?
5 Back then, actually, I
6 don't have the exact dates, but I would say it was 7
three or four days.
It pushed long enough that its 8
window was exceeded in that Hope Creek has never 9
performed control rod exchanges at the top and mechs 10 from underneath at the same time.
That's always been 11 a clear delineation between the windows.
And the 12 reason for that is if you do, you run the chance that 13 in a self-verification check, I can be down below 14 pulling the flange off, while somebody above is at the 15 same place, pulling the control rod out.
The result 16 is a hole in the vessel.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
18 That can't be stopped 19 until the one person puts the one thing down, the 20 other person puts the thing up.
We have never done 21 that.
This last outage to meet that window, to meet 22 the commitment to change all, we did that.
23 Now --
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
How was that 25 coordinated?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
117 11 1
- /What'Is that?
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
How was that 3
coordinated?
4 In the middle of the 5
outage, that decision was made to do so at the point 6
of contact to do so, within a week, develop an 7
infrequently performed test, revolution to incorporate 8
that the guidelines for operations to drain the vessel 9
and those operations with potential to drain the 10 vessel and a series of checks and independent checks 11 and other stations do do this.
I'm just saying it's 12 a delta between us and past practice and today.
13 Other stations use a set of rigorous 14 checks and independently verify that they're on the 15 right control rod before it comes out and that 16 underneath it's the same rigor as applied that they're 17 on the right flange before it comes down.
Then 18 there's other checks that go on as well.
19 The people that do it for a living say 20 physically, it's
- very, very difficult to lift a
21 control rod up out of its hole when it has that whole 22 head of water holding it in place.
It's similar to 23 trying to pull the rubber tub plunger out of your --
24 out of the bottom of your bathtub when the tub is 25 full, it's difficult.
It's very similar there in that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS S01 01-In E
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they can't necessarily move it.
2 And the people underneath, when they start 3
to back off the flange, they do it systematically such 4
that the flange is always in place and all they really 5
have to do is tighten it up if they get excessive 6
water and they measure that and they do it for a 7
living, so they know what kind of water flow says 8
we're on the wrong place or we are in the right place.
9 It can be --
it can go from trickles to what seems 10 like steady to what you and I would say oh, my gosh, 11 that's not right and they finish the job.
Because 12 they know the amount they believe is too much.
But 13 it's essentially, it puts a hole roughly that big in 14 the bottom.
15 So we decided that we would let the 16 windows overlap for the first time ever to do the 17 number of mechs that we said we. would do.
We believe 18 that we looked at all the risk and we believe we took 19 into consideration the rest of the industry practices 20 as far as verifying and double check, but it's a
21 delta.
It's definitely a difference between this one 22 and the previous one.
And again, because the Toshiba 23 machine and the lack of wanting to spend the money on 24 either getting it out or getting something new or 25 allowing it to be changed.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
119 1
What's another question you had there on 2
that?
3 oh, you asked me how many people know.
4 It's widely known.
It's widely known to bring it on 5
as far as--
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The Saws Alls?
7 I el that'Is that would 8
be my fix if I were empowered because I would say --
9 because see, then you're forced.
You're absolutely 10 forced.
When you get out in there and you say okay, 11 now bring mue the expertise to do what I need, come the 12 next time.-
Because what we will end up doing is 13 running this next outage with that machine, the 14 installed machine and all of its problems.
oh yeah, 15 we'll have a contingency plan to bring in the vendor 16 and all that.
But it involves under the vessel --
it 17 involves people going into a very cramped space, a 18 very dif ficult space to get to to begin with and it'Is 19 very arduous.
It takes time.
And again, there will 20 be pressure to get it done.
21 I would be so delighted if it would just 22 come out and then say we'll figure it out. We have 18 23 months and a definite commitment to change it. And to 24 mean that as the only way we'll ever get off that 25 rate, the rate of being able to stay up with control NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
120 1
rod maintenance, that issue.
2 Oh, we were talking SRMs and you were 3
talking aggregate about September outage.
There was 4
many, there were three or four --
I didn't remember 5
five, but if you say so, I won't disagree.
It was 6
more than one.
Control rods that were mostly too 7
fast.
In other words, they're sloppy.
Their rings 8
need to be replaced or not working as they should.
9 There's this book I call inoperable --
operable, but 10 degraded.
11 There's a number of --
the book is this 12 big and it's filled with deficiencies that we've done, 13 we've looked at and we've occasionally even looked at 14 the overall aggregate of all of those things together 15 and how they combine together and how much margin are 16 they looking at.
17 I think we're trying to keep that in the 18 forefront that that is a list that is too big.
They 19 were trying to work that down, but some of them --
20 they're bothersome like control rods that don't move 21 like they should.
22 Excuse me.
23 (Pause.)
24 What subject did I start with?
I don't 25 want to repeat myself.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
121 1
MR.
BARBER:
Was there anything else on 2
your list that you wanted to go over?
I think you 3
said 4
Coming out of the bypass 5
valve event in the power excursion that occurred 6
- there, the widespread thinking was that the shift 7
should not have been controlling pressure with the 8
bypass valve jack which essentially is in the HC 9
control system that allows reactor pressure to bleed 10 to the condenser.
11 Consequently, they came out with a
12 temporary standing order or a procedure change in a
13 standing order that says use of the bypass valve jack 14 is not authorized.
And the reasons for that are it's 15 essentially manually controlling PV pressure and then 16 the subsequent controlling of reactivity that occurs 17 with that that's widely understood and by licensed 18 operators far and wide in the boiling water reactor 19 world.
20 So in so doing, they're currently and I 21 would want to look at the procedure to be sure, but as 22 it stands
- now, in a
start up from an ambient 23 condition, there is because our EHC system, it 24
- controls, bottoms out at 150 pounds.
That's where 25 automatic takes over.
There's no way of controlling NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
122 1
it between zero and 150.
2 Our procedure says start up the reactor, 3
start up the plant.
Pressurize, close the vents and 4
when you get a positive indication of pressure and 5
that is about it.
It doesn't --
the next time it 6
mentions pressure, actually there are two other places 7
it mentions it.
Continue heat up at a rate of no 8
greater than 90 degrees an hour and that 150 pounds to 9
ensure the bypass valves open and control the PV 10 pressure.
11 In essence, there's no other place in the 12 procedures that say control reactor pressure this way 13 while you're doing start up.
And there's no way that 14 says to or what to use.
So the bypass valve, the jack 15 which was the way that was done before was a knowledge 16 base or skill based --
17 MR.
BARBER:
Method?
18 Method of controlling our 19 PV pressure.
It's not in the procedure.
You just 20 knew that you need to balance heat loads versus 21 critical heat.
And you did that by using the bypass 22 jack.
A throttle-able valve designed and installed 23 for that.
That tool or that method was eliminated out 24 of the fallout of the power excursion in March.
So 25 now there is no way.
There's no prescribed way.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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There never actually was but one of the ways is gone 2
or at least one of the knowledge base and skills ways 3
was removed.
It was just not authorized.
4 So consequently in September, we're asking 5
the station, the operators to start up the plant and 6
they have to pause the start up while reactor pressure 7
is about 130 pounds after a forced outage.
Moderator 8
continues to warm up because of decay heat during a 9
short forced outage and while they pause on drawing 10 control
- rods, while they
- pause, the moderator 11 continues to heat up and the reactor goes critical, 12 primarily because there's no way of controlling 13 pressure between zero and 150.
14 MR.
BARBER:
Why again did they pause?
15 They paused because RCSI 16 was not in standby.
RCSI needs to be in standby and 17 operable by 150.
It was 130 and still not yet there.
18 RPV pressure is about 130 pounds.
19 RCSI was not quite --
there was steam 20 inlet pressure indicator.
The valves --
the bypass 21 valves around the isolation valve was open, so it's 22 pressing up all that pipe through a smaller bypass 23 valve and a steam inlet pressure just did not come on 24 scale.
It was just taking longer than expected.
25 Decay heat continues to warm up the plant, during the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
124 1
start up, Phonetic) being withdrawn.
We get 2
critical somewhere in the 110 pound range, roughly.
3 The procedure that says establish a 90 degree an hour 4
heat uprate by withdrawing control rods, 90 degrees an 5
hour correlates to a certain psig per hour, based on 6
the steam table.
And it says by withdrawing control 7
rods.
Nowhere does it say and use the bypass valve or 8
a steam load or something to maintain pressure below 9
150 because you don't have FCSI (Phonetic) in.
10 So the start up was paused while the steam 11 lines over here for --
I point over here because 12 that's the way it is in the control room.
As I use my 13 hand to point over somewhere.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Thank you.
15 k The start up is paused 16 while the RCSI (Phonetic) steam lines are being 17 pressurized, and again, we're in the intermediate 18 range, so we're opening steam line loads to do RCSI.
19 So that will also depress pressure and it also has an 20 inherent reactivity effect which will cause you to get 21 more neutron flux.
It's perfectly well understood 22 that in any boiler that when you're starting up and 23 that happens.
Because RCSI was not yet ready and we 24 got to 135 pounds, we stopped withdrawing control 25 rods.
Decay heat continued to warm up the moderator NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
1 2
4 5
6 7
8 9
10 ii 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 125 up to 132,
- 133, another pound or two.
But bulk cooling temperature slightly higher.
That suppresses neutron flux and we range back down on the IRMs.
Th is our September subcriticality event.
The gist of it all, the fall out of it all is we look at it and we say well, you know what?
If they had RCSI (Phonetic) ready, they wouldn't have found themselves in this spot.
But yeah, they would.
But you can pause a start up for any reason whatsoever for any reason I would want to stop it.
What do I do then if I stop it?
And that was the end of some of the fall out that occurred in September.
MR.
BARBER:
What was the heat up rate at the time when that was paused?
p Just prior to being in stop, about 60 an hour, for about an hour.
Maybe an hour and a half or so.
And then when it stopped, or when control rod withdrawal, it was directed to be stopped.
Stop withdrawing control rods, continue to monitor the core.
MR.
BARBER:
What would happen if you were allowed to open a turbine bypass valve up a small amount?
happened?
- Yes, what would have A
small amount would have been as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLANIJ AV/=
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126 1
significant as opening the RCSI bypass valve or more.
2 Or how about a steam line drain or an MOV?
No one 3
knows.
No one has any idea what would be the effect, 4
especially upon range 7 or 8 of the IRMs.
5 MR.
BARBER:
It might slow the heat up 6
rate, but wouldn't it allow more control?
7 Yes.
So it would have 8
slowed the heat up rate.
9 MR.
BARBER:
But you couldn't pull rods to 10 compensate and actually probably put yourself on some 11 sort of stable period?
12 Yes.
It was a relatively 13 stable, positive period coming up.
But if we open up 14 the bypass, use the jack because Ks automatically use 15 150, put a steam load on the core in a controlled way, 16 would be using the installed design system for it, now 17 you draw off and then you make up for it with -- and 18 that's the standard of starting up of BWR.
The jack 19 was unauthorized.
The jack was 20 MR.
BARBER:
By the procedure change?
21 By the NAG (Phonetic) 22 order.
23 The NAG (Phonetic) order that was in the book.
24 MR.
BARBER:
Why couldn't you have written 25 an on-the-spot change to kind of override the NAG NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VLIAI= 101 AKIfl A%/=
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(Phonetic) order?
2 You're right.
Maybe an 3
on-the-spot change while you sit here with the reactor 4
at criticality.
5 MR.
BARBER:
- Well, maybe that's not 6
desirable, but the thing is, it's still going to be 7
that way, right?
88 What's that?
9 MR. BARBER:
So you know that this problem 10 happened, but the procedure is still written.
11
- The procedure has been 12 changed to address a subsequent subcriticality, not at 13 all to address a pressure control mode.
14 MR.
BARBER:
How was it changed?
15 The procedure is changed 16 and now addresses, you know what?
You might have a 17 reason, any reason to stop the start up.
You and I 18 could sit and think of a dozen.
For whatever reason, 19 the plant is not ready for this next step in the start 20 up because you didn't get people out there in time.
21 The valves are not open.
The piping is not warm, 22 whatever the reason might be.
And you have to pause 23 the start up and when you do, if it is during a forced 24 outage, shortly after a forced outage, decay heat will 25 warm up a little more than it does with a new core and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS Af~' l t-r M
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128 1
it will cause the moderator to get warmer and it will 2
cause neutron flux to go down.
So we were subcritical 3
based on that.
- Balanced, yes, but subcritical in 4
ranging down.
5 So from there, we paused.
Once RCSI 6
(Phonetic), the steam inlet pressure came up, RCSI is 7
now in standby.
We can continue up with our PV 8
pressure.
If we had a complete pause of many --
and 9
I say many, I mean like a 10-minute little breakout 10 session with the operators that are there, recognizing 11 that the reactor had gone subcritical and that the 12 next rod withdrawal would be a recriticality, log it 13 as such and take all the required readings and we'll 14 take all the required precautions beforehand.
All the 15 prerequisites, precautions for withdrawing a
16 criticality will be performed prior. Brief the entire 17 control
- room, shift
- manager, ops manager present, 18 senior reactor engineer present.
Concurrence is felt 19 for all around the room.
Hope Creek Control Room, is 20 it an inner or outer horseshoe?
So the people who are 21 working RCSI are over on the other side.
They're 22 doing something.
They don't really know what I'm --
23 what the they should, but you can sometimes get 24 little islands of knowledge.
25 So I brought all that together, brought NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
129 1
all that together and briefed that.
Everybody 2
recognized that found this very next notch that we 3
will get back on a positive period and will be pulling 4
to re-achieve criticality.
And then after that, we 5
went about doing that.
Inserted the SRMs so that the 6
core was monitored, the IRMs were on range, the SRMs 7
were on range and the last few minute checks that were 8
in the 1O to make sure that we didn't miss any 9
prerequisites or precautions and notched the rod out 10 one notch and we're critical at a positive period and 11 continued on with the start up that day.
12 But the gist of it, the emphasis on the 13 post fact-finding was on the -- you went subcritical.
14 You wouldn't have because you should have had RCSI 15 going.
In essence, I can find a dozen reasons to 16 pause the start up and in this case a lack of a 17 pressure control device.
18 In other words, we start the reactor up 19 from zero to 150 pounds.
We're going to add all these 20 BTUs to the water and we have no way of letting it 21 out.
That's our --
taking away that turbine bypass 22 valve jack.
And it was done as part of fall out from 23 what I was describing before.
24 MR.
BARBER:
Is there no note of caution 25 in the procedure that allows you to establish a steam NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
130 1
load?
Isn't there something in there prior to --
in 2
the steps that -- prior to getting to 150 pounds, as 3
I was reading through the steps, isn't there a note in 4
there that says you can do this?
5 That says you can do what?
6 Open the jack?
7 MR.
BARBER:
Or put a steam load up?
8
- ff No, not specifically.
9 Sure, when it says put other components and warm up 10 the RCSI line, warm up HPSI, those things are on-11
- going, but that's not going to be any steam load.
12 Place the -- you might call it a reboiler.
We call it 13 the steam seal evaporator.
Place it in service.
14 There's a steam load, but it's not a pressure control 15 load.
It's a load.
It's not something that is an 16 automatic, controlling our PV pressure or something 17 that is on manual that's controlling our PV pressure.
18 It's just a steam load that's static.
19 The removal of the jack essentially and it 20 being fallout of a highly political power -- what was 21 the word you used earlier, power excursion, and the 22 reactions that came out of that basically paced it 23 into a
tighter corner and essentially caused a
24 subcriticality.
25 There are those that would sayii NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., NW.
131 1
you're out of your mind.
It was because you didn't 2
have RCSI ready.
Okay, fine.
I didn't.
You got me.
3 But I can stop the start up for any reason.
At any 4
- reason, I should be able to say and for any reason, 5
the period is a little less than I would desire.
I 6
would instruct them and demand that he insert the rod 7
one notch and do so.
And it would not be with 8
specific reactor engineering guidance that says this 9
rod goes to here and then --
starts here goes to here 10 and then you can put it back in.
The procedure won't 11 say that.
12 We're saying, now we're saying that it 13 does or that it will.
And that you can't stop a start 14 up for any reason.
This is some of the fallout that's 15 coming out of this.
16 You can't pause and go subcritical.
We're 17 changing the start up procedure that says so.
18 MR.
BARBER:
When did all this happen 19 again?
20 September.
21 MR.
BARBER:
In September.
22 Yes.
23 MR.
BARBER:
Do you think there's ever 24 going to be a time when that's going to be allowed 25 where you can, in fact, use the jack?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
132 1Yes.
That's being 2
revisited.
3 MR. 13ARBER:
Okay.
4 That'Is being revisited and 5
additionally, there's it just so happens that our 6
RHC system is older than most and a digital one is on 7
order to in during the next outage and it will start 8
taking over automatic control at lower pressure.
I 9
think it's 100 pounds.
It's not zero to 100, so I 10 don't know how we'll control it from zero to 100, by 11 procedure anyway without using something like a manual 12 jack or manual MOV or a manual steam line load to the 13 condenser.
14 This issue, you must have sensed by now 15 it's a personal one to me. I was in the control room 16 that day and I directed that we stop withdrawing 17 control rods.
That direction was repeated back and 18 complied with and continued to monitor the core with 19 no other duties to do and he continued to monitor the 20 core and he continued to range the instruments 21 appropriately to keep them on range and keep the core 22 monitored and controlled. He was always standing by 23 to insert a last rod to its previous target, or more, 24 if necessary.
And if need be, take the subsequent 25 action of locking the mode switch and shutdown.
We NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.9 RH(~npF M5I A~inJ AvJF N w
133 1
never felt that that was ever even, that we were even 2
in margin space of that.
We weren't even --
I mean it 3
just never was being felt that that was a challenge.
4 Nothing was out of control.
Things were delayed, but 5
never out of control.
6 So is there a personal issue? Yes, I take 7
it a bit personal that I didn't have RCSI ready to go.
8 I took that.
I took that delta that I needed to get 9
better at making sure that thing happens.
The thing 10 was this wasn't my first start up.
This is about my 11 ninth and this has happened before.
RCSI is isolated 12 in the past when we went to put steam through it and 13 I directed that we put control rods in because the hat 14 up rate from the forced outage was still going up and 15 we briefed that this could happen during this last 16 start up in training and every --
all the focus of the 17 station has been on the fact that the control room 18 supervisors' command and control issue did not have 19 RCSI ready to go when it should have been.
- Okay, I
20
- agree, I agree.
But none has been on the fact that 21 the control room supervisor does not have the ability 22 to control RPV pressure when he starts up the reactor 23 between 0 and 150 pounds.
24 There were two outages, actually, I think 25 it was October.
When is Columbus Day?
There were two NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS I~V nD' UflflZ IQI AKfl AX/F KIVU
134 1
outages in October.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Around the 10th.
3 There was the hurricane.
4 The salt-induced outage.
5 MR.
BARBER:
That was in September, 6
actually.
7 Okay, and then we roll in, 8
we go on-line for a week and EHC leaks and causes us 9
to scram the unit manually.
That EHC leak was known 10 and identified and I wasn't aware of this because I 11 didn't I was on the first outage startup and then 12 went on days off, came back and the unit is off line 13 and I
had asked the I
had heard through the 14 grapevine that we knew about the EHC leak.
So when I 15 came in for
- turnover, I
asked the off-going 16 superintendent wasn't this EHC leak identified last 17 week?
It was only the week before.
And the answer 18 was huh?
What?
I'm not quite sure.
I said well, did 19 we start the plant up with a known EHC leak?
I didn't 20 know about it when I had to do the first plant start 21 up, but the EHC leak was there and existing.
I said 22 when I found out, now I'm angry.
I'm angry because 23 first of all I'm in a bit of a box because of the 24 subcriticality issue happens with the first startup.
25 So I'm a bit ticked off that I'm being pressed on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 135 that.
And then I come to find out that essentially I started up the plant with an EHC system that's not completely reliable that has a known leak.
So I said did I hear somebody say earlier that we knew about this leak?
- Well, that's unknown.
We're not quite sure.
And I ask again later, but it's in the middle of the turnover.
I said is it true?
He says well,
- yes, we did know about it.
We had --
it was being looked at and deemed okay and good enough to start the plant up.
And I
have no idea who makes those decisions in our organization, who is the person that says, stamps their name and affirms that okay, I have the EHC leak and you know what, what's the risk, what's the business issue, what's the nuclear safety issue, but we'll live with it.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You don't know who that was in this instance?
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Who was the turnover manager for you?
Who was the shift manager?
That would be my SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
That's who you were having this conversation with?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS ANti TRAM.qr.PI*P*P-
1 4 1
- Yes, he was there.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
He confirmed that the 3
leak was known, but it was deemed okay?
4 Yes.
5 MR.
BARBER:
Is it possible that the 6
reason that the leak was deemed okay is that whoever 7
looked at it didn't have the system configured 8
properly?
9f "Yes, 4he turbine may have 10 been tripped or not tripped.
Yes, it is.
It is.
But 11 was it looked at --
12 MR.
BARBER:
Maybe they said EHC is 13 running, so that's all we need.
We see no leakage.
14 Absolutely, it is 15 possible.
16 MR.
BARBER:
Not knowing that the turbine 17 had to be reset, so you'd have pressure at the 18 location where this valve was.
19 Yes --
20 MR.
BARBER:
And you actually could see 21 what the magnitude of the leak was.
22 You're absolutely right.
23 Is it also possible that the central outage group and 24 managers that are aware of an EHC leak ask those very 25 questions?
Yes, that's also possible.
In essence, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND YRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N W
137 1
one week later, we scrammed for a known reason.
2 MR.
BARBER:
Is there an accountability 3
problem?
4 1would say yes.
5 MR.
BARBER:
Where is it?
Is it within 6
outage group or is it with ops or engineering, 7
maintenance, where is it?
Or all of the above?
8 Good questions.
Excellent 9
questions because essentially, I mean I will tell you 10 that that day that I was asking those questions and I 11 would admit on my own faults being a human being, that 12 I was somewhat belligerent to the fact that that was 13 the case because of the previous week, the goings on 14 during the --
my start up.
15 I'm a human being.
I try not to be 16 defensive.
I own the fact that RCSI wasn't the way it 17 was, but the subcriticality issue blew into something 18 in my opinion was a controlled documented and directed 19 evolution.
20 I may be told otherwise at some point and 21 that's fine.
But that day when I was asking those 22 questions, I
said you know
- what, because 23 scrammed the units two days before.
I said
, who 24 directed that the unit be scrammed when you found out 25 that you couldn't get EHC fluid in the reservoir fast NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 138 enough?
He goes I did.
I said good.
That's good, because everybody knows who's accountable when this has to happen.
Who is accountable when we directed the plant be started up last week?
Who is it?
Oh, I
don't know, it's everybody.
There's a list about six signatures where you affirm that you're ready.
It's by committee.
There's no single point --
MR.
BARBER:
Isn't there a start up review where you sit down and have SORC (Phonetic) or something like that where there's actually an affirmation in front of a group of people and it's readiness for restart?
Did they ask the questions, is EHC in the configuration that we want to see if it does or does not have the leak?
I don't know.
I know I don't start the plant up without the plant manager's permission.
MR.
BARBER:
Wouldn't that be in the SORC (Phonetic) minutes though if
- they did ask that question or would it not?
W I can't say.
I don't attend those.
MR.
BARBER:
Okay.
On any routine or regular NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
139 1
basis, but I will eventually because I'm now more day 2
shift and I'll become more privy to those.
When I'm 3
on shift, I come, I do my 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br />.
I try to --
it's 4
more point of contact versus strategic thinking and 5
yeah, the accountability issue, who does that?
Who 6
decides those things? Who decides that we're going to 7
start up without a pressure control mode?
Who decides 8
that we should sync the generator even though the 9
bypass valve is fluctuating?
There needs to be and 10 maybe there was, maybe that' s w hye sno t
11 work here any more.
I don't know.
12 That's what the rumor is that change has 13 happened for the better and it doesn't matter to me.
14 But there definitely is, even on the risk assessment 15 during an outage the 0-rim (Phonetic) on-line outage 16 risk assessment management tool, well, that page is 17 put and it's reviewed that we're all agreeing because 18 all the ECSSs (Phonetic), there's nine signatures on 19 there, nine people signing.
It's like accountability 20 by dilution in committee as opposed to -- and when you 21 have these committees, aren't you exposing yourself to 22 some sort of group think of whatever the culture might 23 be, some sort of group think mentality?
- Yes, we 24 should start the plant up.
Next thing you know you've 25 got this person saying yeah, yeah, yeah, we should.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 140 And you've got this whole group think.
There's not a whole lot of provocative outliers that are willing to say no, that's wrong.
That's not what we're here for.
I think it's a cultural issue.
That kind of goes back to the one I've been saying before.
The person that says no, that weekend is not working for me, if I
can't have the integrity to my wife and daughter, why should I have it here at work?
That's --
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It seems like it would go more to the group think explanation that you're offering because you couldn't have beenJ That's right.
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
He was gone at that point in time.
So you take him out of it and if that's if somebody would have pointed to, that wouldn't be a possibility would it?
I read your letter and I srwhatesponse is.
I'm fixing the problems.
I've done my reorg.
We're on our way.
We're on our way.
It's fixed.
(Laughter.)
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I just have to note that these are examples that you're offering that occurs September, October of 2003.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
141 1
- You're right.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So you're just saying 3
there's no one place to say who made the decision and 4
why?
5 The accountability, I had 6
another accountability issue --
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Example?
8 A question and I can't 9
think of what it was off the top of my head that 10 basically says where does that come from?
i1 And it works both ways.
It
- works, it 12 absolutely works both ways in not only just for 13 safety, but also for business reasons.
I have no 14 problem with somebody saying okay, I've heard your 15 facts on the safety issue.
I've heard your facts on 16 the business issue and now it is my decision to do 17 this.
I may not always like it and I may disagree and 18 I've given you some examples that I might disagree 19 with, but there are some that I don't have any problem 20 with as long as somebody will stand up in front of me 21 and say that was my call.
That was my call and I 22 decided and maybe it was wrong in this case.
Maybe I 23 shouldn't have asked you to do that.
I was wrong.
24 And I'll learn from that.
25 But step up and say I decide, I direct NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
142 1
that you sync the generator that day.
2 (Pause.)
3 The EHC leak came to mind.
I mentioned 4
not exercising all control rods during a forced 5
outage.
Where did that decision come from?
And it 6
comes into the control room from my shift manager and 7
to the reactor operators and it comes with sort of 8
like a stamp of management's approval, so you're like 9
wow, we should exercise, but there's no need to and --
10 MR.
BARBER:
Is there a procedure that 11 tells you something to the contrary?
Or is the 12 procedure silent?
13 It's nebulous.
It's a
14 judgment with words like "should."
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What would be the 16 reason to skip that?
17 AI It takes time.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Schedule pressure.
- 19.
_ Yes.
Business needs.
20
[END TAPE 2, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 3, SIDE 21 A.]
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
We're starting Side 23 A.
It's approximately 2:04 p.m.
24 And going back to the 25 example I used where I said the only example, I am NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
143 1
sitting with the core asset and yet I don't know who 2
the person is who is accountable for those sort of 3
decisions, what they're about, what their vision, what 4
their strategy is, what their idea of conservative 5
decision making, of business strategy, where do I want 6
the business to go?
And that's a huge gap.
7 My superintendents, I
mentioned, their 8
working hours, undoubtedly, plus they're here for 9
meetings every week.
Every Thursday night and only 10 until recently did I start hearing what they're 11 talking about.
Only just today.
They met last night 12 and I got to hear a little bit of a roll out on what 13 they're talking about.
It just leaves an individual 14 just in the dark.
15 MR.
BARBER:
What were they talking about?
16 Recent corrective action 17 resolutions, nothing of any significance, more minor 18 this person is going to take the package to go to 19 There was some recent downsizing going on, 20 some procedure changes.
21 Oh, and the 22 (Phonetic) gave a control room supervisor roll out 23 Tuesday evening and he wanted to hear our feedback.
24 My boss wanted, actuall sked my boss to find 25 out what the feedback was from the guys.
And that NEAL R. GROSS
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144 1
took up most of the meeting.
2 MR.
BARBER:
What was the roll out on?
3 What was the issue?
4
- roll out?
5 MR.
BARBER:
- Yes, roll out.
6 He's new.
So it was his 7
first meeting with body contingent of SROs.
He has 8
met weekly and more often daily with the 9
superintendents since he got here.
Tuesday was his 10 first group meeting with those people who hold the 11 asset in their hands.
To me, that's a gap.
12 MR.
BARBER:
Was he just was it just 13 kind of a hey, get to know you meeting?
14 No, it was a lecture.
It 15 was a lecture.
16 MR.
BARBER:
About what?
17 1 would characterize it as 18 a mild, gentler beating meeting, you guys need to do 19 this better, you guys need to do this smarter.
You 20 guys aren't doing this and you need to.
These are my 21 expectations.
22 I have had them before.
I'll give him a 23 chance and see how it goes.
My overall leaving from 24 it was see how it goes.
I'll try harder.
I'll try 25 smarter.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 145 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
He gave you what he's expecting from you.
Did he give you anything what to expect from him?
You asked the question and this is the very question I gave my boss today.
I said what I heard at Tuesday night's meeting was what I need to do, what I need to do better, how I need to better talk with people.
That when a subordinate brings up an issue, safety conscious work environment, I need to hear it, I need to listen to it.
My body language can't turn that person off.
I can't go huh, don't bring me your problems with my body.
And I understand all of those things.
But did he say if I
hear that, what would he do for it?
No.
No.
And I mentioned it to my boss and it was a here's the ops.
- manager, here is
- you, j
J(Phonetic) and here is me and here's basical is saying all the things he needs me to do down here.
He is not saying anything about what we're going to do between here.
It was a glaring, in my opinion, way to kick off the relationship.
It was -- so the overall flavor was it was another beating.
(Laughter.)
And I told that to my boss.
I said that's what he gave up.
Now I don't think he wanted to.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
146 1
HIe's a good speaker.
He talked about, very, very 2
small minority of the time talked about you know what, 3
it can't always be about losing.
In other words, the 4
job is hard.
We have a hard job. It's tough.
And it 5
will always be hard.
But it can always be harder, so 6
let's try to get to where it's just hard.
And stay 7
away from it being harder.
8 And that was about as much as he talked 9
out about as far as you know what, you've got to 10 occasionally let people win. Occasionally, you've got 11 to say that's it.
That is exactly what I needed.
You 12 did exactly what I needed.
And throw him the victory.
13 And let him know.
That's, to me, what works.
That's 14 my management style. That's what works for me.
I'm 15 not saying I puff smoke and then play rah, rah for 16 everybody that works for me, but when I catch them 17 doing
- good, I
let them
- know, let them
- know, 18 absolutely, that is exactly what I need to see.
19 And then when I catch them doing bad, I
20 say that does not meet my standard or my expectation, 21 but it has to be at least fair.
You have to recognize 22 it.
And he touched on that ever so slightly and I was 23 for a moment there I was charged.
I was like come 24 on baby, go there, go there with your spiel, you'll 25 hook me.
And then it went back to as supervisors, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
147 1
you're the first guys out there, you're my eyes, 2
you're my ears.
I need you to be engaged with the 3
people down there.
And that was the gist of that roll 4
out.
5 That was the I've been here 40 6
That was the ithird control room superviso.
7 (Inaudible) that I've ever been to.
It was the>Khhird`/
8 like allSRC) control room supervisor-wise7.
The fact 9
that it was offered at 4:30 on a Tuesday afternoon 10 which meant most of us couldn't be here until 6:30 11 when we would rather be somewhere else was another 12 piece of feedback that I provided hen he asked.
13 Asking questions at 6:10 in the evening 14 from a bunch of people that have been there since 6 15 o'clock in the morning, are there any questions?
You 16 guys got anything for me is apt to be met with nothing 17 but silence.
Everybody -- you're looking around the 18 room of 30 people and it's just like asking the 19 instructor, excuse me, Professor Smith, but weren't 20 you going to give us a quiz today?
No one is going to 21 ask that question and no one is going to ask any 22 questions.
It was a perfect closure, you know?
I 23 gave them my spiel and they had nothing for me.
- Good, 24 good, that's a good delivery.
25 MR. BARBER:
If there's no questions, then NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
148 1
I guess we can go to lunch.
If there's no questions, 2
I guess we can all head home.
3
.Yes, yes.
That's too bad.
4 I'm hoping for better and I'm hoping that what I told 5
my boss this morning that it gets to him.
I'm hoping 6
it does.
7 I said to this morning, I said, 8
I hope it does.
I hope he hears that because I am 9
tired.
I am tired of being treated like a chair.
I'm 10 tired of being treated like carpet and being walked 11 on.
I'm just fed up with it.
I said you don't need 12 to --
what I said before, I'm going back over it 13 again.
You don't need to kiss me and hug me, just 14 occasional water and sunshine and that will be great.
15 And as leaders, we hire so many technocrats instead of 16 people that know people, that wander through, not just 17 their subordinates, but the net layer down and say 18 hey, are you doing anything this afternoon?
What do 19 you say we go out and have a bite to eat down in the 20 cafeteria?
Not necessarily to smoodge me by buying my 21 lunch, but hey plop down here next to me, tell me what 22 you're thinking.
Instead we have formalized programs 23 like brown bag lunches that when you're selected, it's 24 like oh gosh, what is this.
It needs to be more 25 casual.
It needs to be more sincere.
It looks NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
149 1
propped up.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
What was, in your 3
informal discussions with your peers after that SRO 4
meeting, what was 5
Mixed.
6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Some negative, some 7
positive?
8 Yes, yes.
I left overall 9
neutral.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Doesn't sound like 11 it.
12 No, I mean--
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Sounds like you took 14 a beating.
15 1,In fairness to him it was 16 the first cut and hopefully there will be another one 17 and there will be an opportunity he'll take from that, 18 maybe if I hold these at 3 o'clock in the afternoon, 19 I won't be able to get everybody, the night shift will 20 miss out, but smaller, more frequent would probably 21 work and maybe he'll go there.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
That or hold one time 23 and one later on.
24 l-.
Yes.
Am I holding my 25 breath for that to happen?
No.
I'm not.
I've seen NEAL R. GROSS
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them come and go.
I never expected that I'd be here 2
five years and I'd see three or four ops managers and 3
several CNOs and a couple of VPs.
I never knew 4
- You mentioned him earlier.
Yeah, okay, 5
he's somebody that does something, somewhere.
- Again,
.6 I'm just a I
just a guy with 7
the asset in the palm of his hand, but I don't know 8
what as ever about and 9
To me, that's a serious gap.
I don't think I need to 10 know what thad for breakfast every day, 11 but to me, there definitely should be more interface 12 between the VP of Ops, whatever the other position is 13 now and anybody that has Ops in their names, I should 14 occasionally maybe know.
And they should probably 15 know me by name.
I mean they should know the 16 caretakers of their asset, at least by name.
That's 17 what I think.
I may be wrong.
18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's your opinion.
19 That's what we're looking for.
20 Do you have anything else on that subject?
21 MR.
BARBER:
No.
22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
We'll go off the 23 record so there's no blank space.
24 (Off the record.)
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
We're back on after NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
151 1
a brief break.
It's approximately 2:15.
2 Many other stations, 3
actually our station is going to take out the head 4
spray piping.
This is the piping that comes in the 5
top of the head, RHR.
It goes up there and cools down 6
the head and effectively cools the upper portions of 7
the vessel and allows for maintenance for taking the 8
next step and the whole job is to get all of that out 9
of the way and get into the vessel for refueling.
10 We're going to take that out and we're going to take 11 it out because it's the pipe is difficult to made 12 up, it's not quite aligned right and it takes 13 significant effort to install it and then there's two 14 valves that then need to be tested, both for leakage 15 and for IST requirements and they have to be wired in 16 place and all those things that need to be done.
So 17 it's going to come out.
It was supposed to come out 18 last outage, but because of that removal, I was tasked 19 with figuring out how can we cool the upper regions of 20 the vessel and I needed to talk with other units and 21 benchmark how they do it.
22 And there are other stations, the way they 23 do it is basically fill up the -vessel all the way, 24 shortly after they get the MSIVs closed, fill it all 25 the way up and all the way up into the head and then NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
152 1
let down.
The water temperature at that time is like 2
150 degrees or so and the head flange temperature is 3
somewhere in the neighborhood of 400.
It stays 4
significantly hot.
It's a big chunk of steel.
5 So I had some concerns that I wasn't quite 6
sure we were analyzed to take 140 degree water from 7
the bulk coolant, raise that water level up, all the 8
way up there and put it on top of the very large piece 9
of 400 degree steel.
So I talked to -ARM 10 He is the. M-And I sa..what, 11 do you think?
I mean is that something that is okay?
12 Other stations are doing it and he said I'm not quite 13 sure.
I'll have to look into it.
And he does and he 14 says you know what?
I think it's okay.
I looked into 15 the pressure and temperature curves that we have in 16 our design from the manufacturer.
Hope Creek's vessel 17 was designed and manufactured by Hitachi, so some of 18 the documentation-is in a foreign, Far Asian language 19 and most of it has been translated because most of it 20 is built to a General Electric spec which is standard.
21 So he had to do some looking and searching and stuff 22 and he says I've looked at them and he says, guess 23 what, it's not really defined.
I don't really think 24 we should proceed this way.
And I said okay, 25 that's good.
Is there another option?
He said well, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIRFR.S-
153 1
we can, but: we don't have the skill set to do that 2
here.
Our metallurgical engineers, that would exceed 3
their expertise.
However, because I've been dealing 4
with the power uprate issue, I know of a few and I 5
won't remember their names, but GE was one of them.
6 And there were a lot of other engineering job shop or 7
contracting company that had the expertise to provide 8
us with adequate documentation, save the stresses, in 9
so doing such an evolution would not impose any 10 excessive duty or fatigue on the vessel.
11 And he said, he was more --
had more than 12 reasonable confidence that that would be able to be 13 provided.
So I said okay, where do we go from here?
14 He said really, it shouldn't be an issue at all.
I'll 15 just get the work order approved, get the check cut 16 and they'll probably give us a report back in maybe a 17 week or two.
This was something like two months 18 before the outage.
Well, the flood up and cool down 19 aspect, our strategy, that was hardly basically rolled 20 into the schedule and hid already trimmed off 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> 21 of critical path time in the schedule.
So since I'm 22 already committed to this strategy as part of the 23 schedule,-
calls me the next day and says that 24 project or that money for this evaluation, $24,500, 25 was not in his engineering manager's budget.
I just NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
1 2
3 4
5 6
7 8
9 10 Ii 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 154 basically hit him up with it two weeks earlier.
I said really? I'm not familiar with projects.
I don't buy/sell contracts.
I don't do it, so I'm'not that familiar.
I said what do you have to do next?
He says well, I was hoping or at least my manager tells me that you might be able to squeeze the Ops Manager or the Outage Manager for the contract for that money and if they could part with that, they'll deliver it.
I've already sent them the data.
They have done the work.
It can be faxed to me once they have their money, almost, it was essentially the gist of it.
Well *okay, let me see what I can do.
So I mention it to Mimi is I'm not sure if he's '
rJ
-a2 He's basically the.....
IF and I mention it t, *
. who was the
. nd then it goes to who is th and then to the Hope Creek outage manager and (Phonetic) who was an l'm trying to search for this money.
The next day, maybe it was a weekend in between, we're starting to get into the last four weeks.
Then you also change the procedure to do this.
The shutdown procedure, I have the change ready, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
155 1
I need the documentation.
And
.i s convinced 2
that, we're both convinced that we're not going to 3
break the vessel, but we would like to have the 4
calculation, be able to pull off the shelf and say you 5
know what, you're right, but we also looked at it.
6 Here is the documentation.
And we both want that.
7 got a call and he told me, he says, 8
I don't know what to make of this.
I'm going 9
to forward you this voice mail.
And the voice mail 10 basically, it's I'm not going to remember who it 11 was.
I wish I had a better memory, whether it was 12 I don't recall.
But -in 13
- essence, it
- was, or the feeling thati 14
- had, the perception that U portrayed to me, 15 hearsay, so to speak was thati i
_do we really need 16 this?
Is this what we really need?
Other stations 17 are doing this.
Do we really need to spend this 18
$24,000 for this evaluation? Other stations are doing 19 this.
Why can't you guys just figure out a way that 20 it's okay and can be done?
21 (1gave me the voice mail and I
22 listened to it and I said, ithat disturbs me 23 that you're getting that sort of pushback on what is 24
$24,000 versus 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> of critical path activity?
25 Critical path activity is in the neighborhood of what, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS ANf TRAM!C-IDM*
156 1
$25,000 an hour.
I'm going to get $16,000 back, 2
hopefully, if this works.
I don't see why they're 3
balking with spending this money. I
,says I know, 4
it's not a lot of money, but I spend that much 5
company-wide to GE and those sort of places.
I said 6
- well, that just --
that disturbs me too that they 7
would balk on providing that, spending that money.
8 Let me see what I can do.
Now eventually, I go back 9
and I talk to and I say for us to proceed 10 with this, we've got to 11 are you sure we've got to have this?
- Yes, I'm 12 convinced.
In fact, the design basis documents that 13 are out there, they clearly don't support the way we 14 do it even now, before we do this vessel flood out.
15 We need to proceed with that.
We need to have the 16 money that will buy this thing.
17 He said if I spend this money, you're 18 going to assure me that we'll get those 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br />.
And 19 I said well, he goes hold on.
Then he plays a 20 voice mail that is voice sayin g
21 as we go for this money, I want those hours noted in 22 the schedule.
In other words, on that particular day, 23 critical path, whatever it might have been, let's say 24 28 days, he wanted to see 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> drop off of 28 and 25 be 27.
Well, the 28 days had already incorporated the NEAL R. GROSS tnlI IPT RFPfPRTPRR ANf TRAN.RrRIRFR5q
157 1
existing --
the --
2 MR.
BARBER:
Benefit?
3 Yes 4
SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The cool down by the 5
speed up?
6 Y
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So they're looking 8
for 9
a double benefit.
10 And the projected savings.
11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
He didn't know that 12 though.
13 No, he didn't.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So it wasn' t possible 15 for you to do that?
16_
Right.
And I said1 17 it's already incorporated.
You're not getting an 18 additional 1-6.
This is the best I can do and 16 is 19 the long shot.
I'm hoping --
I'd call it a win at 20 eight.
In fact, I'd call it a win with one, based on 21 the equation costing $25K and I get one hour back.
22 All right, well, you come through with me 23 on this.
Okay.
24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Come through?
Where 25 is the agreement at this point?
You have to be at 28 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
158 1
or less?
2
,II'm sorry, no basically, 3
I need to get the head cooled down in less than --
I 4
was supposed to reap the savings by six hours.
That's 5
what I kind of committed to.
I said I think I can 6
commit to six hours savings over last year's outage.
7 All right, well, where do we go from here?
8 Again, I'm not familiar with projects or going after 9
money.
So then I talk to (Phonetic) who 10 was at the time the purse string goalie for the 11 station.
If you're going to spend project money, it 12 needs to go through him and this money exceeded some 13 milestone that needs the ultimate stamp of approval of 14 a committee and that's after they see a display of 15 slides and projections and all these things.
16 I called him an ays yeah,Mw",has 17 been talking to me about that, but I don't see it 18 going forward whatsoever.
I said W this makes 19 sense.
First of all, I've got to have it and it makes 20 solid business sense.
If they give it to me, that's 21 what we need in the back of -our pockets to proceed 22 with the procedure change and implement this.
23 He says well, it's not in the budget.
If 24 you needed to have it, you needed to have it months 25 and months before.
I said you're right, I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
159 1
should have, but this is unacceptable.
He said well, 2
why do you think that?
I said the process is just to 3
cumbersome.
He said the process is that way because 4
we would have people spending this kind of money 5
everywhere.
And I said let me tell you how it 6
works where I work.
I work in the control room.
And 7
I walk down to a diesel and find an oil leak and I can 8
go through $25,000 in a heartbeat with no problem at 9
all by word alone.
I want that diesel fixed.
And 10 fixed now.
And I'll go through $25K in labor alone on I1 a Sunday afternoon without winking an eye.
When do I 12 need to present this case to that board?
- Well, I
13 think we can get you in, how about next Wednesday?
So 14 I show up at a conference room and go through the 10 15 minute discussion and we would write the check the 16 next day.
it was really just that simple.
Here's 17 what I want to do, this is the stumbling block we're 18 up again, I need the eval.
19 The whole essence of my discussion with 20 was got negative not negative --
the 21 feedback that Aý received, he and I would somewhat 22 categorize that or at that time, categorize that as an 23 undue press, an undue pressure for not doing the right 24 thing.
25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Was that the pushback KBCAI r2
160 1
you talked about in the first voice mail that he 2
received?
3 Yes.
4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You couldn't recall 5
if that was.
or..
6 M
I don't remember ex&ctly.
7 He forwarded it to me and at the time I did not have 8
a phone number with voice mail.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
These are the 10 management individuals involved with it at that point 11 because when you went to,.e-had M--P 12 on voice mail?
13 Yes.
14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So it's between the 15 two of them?
16 Yes.
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
The whole time?
18 Yes, either one of them 19 not basically wanting to free up the money from 20 somewhere.
Essentially, they were like saying come 21 on, the gist of what I heard fro' voice mail 22 was this is the sort of tone, this isn't going 23 to'stop us from going ahead with -this, is it? You're 24 going to be able to take care of this, right?
That 25 was the kind of gist that the perception that I heard, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTFRS ANfl TPANqCPtIRnP
161 1
the sort of press to resolve the issue.
2 And again, when I go back over what did I 3
originally read when I read the paper?
I read there 4
are a couple of people that wereo victims.
5 They're upset.
They went to the NRC.
I started to 6
think about what does it look like? What does it look 7
like when you --
I don't know.
It just is the wrong 8
message and it's being sent to an engineer, trying to 9
do what's right, trying to do the best thing because 10 he's been tasked by ops.
to provide a different 11 strategy that long-term, the head spray is coming out 12 this outage and there will never be another way to 13 cool it without that system and he's trying to get 14 that done right and he's trying to get it done the 15 right way and he's getting the little press like we 16 don't really need that, do we?
Other stations are 17 using it.
Why can't we just get the one that Hatch 18 has or maybe it wasn't Hatch.
Maybe it was' 19 Susquehanna.
It might have been
- Limerick, but 20 somebody said something along those lines and 21 has to defend.
This is a Hitachi vessel.
It's 22 different.
It's a different plant.
It's a different 23 place.
And that was the sort of --
just that little 24 itty bitty shove like you're not going to ask me to 25 spend more money, are you, so that we can do the right NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANqr.P1RFRq
162 I
thing?
That's just an example.
2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So they put him in a 3
position to argue that?
4 Yes, yes.
And that was 5
the way'*
1(Phonetic) explains it.
It's 6
sort of what the process is suppose to do.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Justify?
8 No problem there.
The 9
business demands that we not spend money all over the 10
- place, but let's not try to strong arm the 11 engineering, sort of a roll over integrity issue.
12 That's just how I felt it was --
not --
I'm thinking 13 not the word overt, not directly, just a subtle --
14 this isn't going to stop us, is it?
15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Who ended up paying 16 for that?
17
/ Projects.
I presented it 18 to them (Inaudible)
Team and the money came from 19 somewhere.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You're not sure?
21 And the product was 22 provided.
23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Did operations have 24 to support it?
Did the outage group support it?
Or 25 they got paid for it when the eval. got done?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
163 1
Yes.
It didn't work.
The 2
implementation, we had a forced outage just prior and 3
that forced outage was during that time about six 4
weeks prior to the outage I was to go to the simulator 5
and train the team that was to do the shutdown and how 6
it would work, what the methodology would do, answer 7
all their questions.
We had a forced outage to. find 8
a --
we had a chill water leak in the dry well that no 9
one could figure out that was chill water.
They 10 thought it was a recirc. pump seal.
So we shut down 11 for that, a chosen planned outage.
And that chewed up 12 10 days or so and I didn't go to the training center 13 and didn't train the on-coming shift.
The first time 14 they saw the new procedure was the day of 15 implementation.
16 And so instead of filling the vessel at a 17 rate that would get water up into the head, they 18 filled it at such a slow rate, essentially, they 19 filled it at the same rate as they did the outage 20 before, so the benefit was not achieved at all.
And 21 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You didn't get the 23 six hours?
24 Nope.
Nope.
I think I 25 would though.
And and I are still working on NEAL R. GROSS
- l IPT PPPrlPT;=PQ Akfl TPAMICrDIDMo
164 1
it.
We think there's some other things that we can do 2
that will do it.
But it just -- actually, did get an 3
hour and a half.
It was an hour and a half better.
4 So I'd like to get more.
But that wasn't just a 5
business issue, it was also safety.
There were people 6
that were trying to get down there on top of the 7
vessel head to take it apart and it's 400 degrees.
So 8
I want to get it to temperature that is something that 9
they could at least get near to do things like take 10 the insulation off so it would cool down.
It's just 11 the gist of my discussing that point was that subtle 12 pushback.*
13 SPECIAL AGENT'NEFF:
On engineering?
14 Yes, yes.
That's really 15 about all~ that I have to say.
If you have any other 16 questions for me --
17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Let me just think one 18 second.
We'll go off the record, 2:32 p.m.
19 (Off the record.)
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's about 2:34 p.m.
21 When you were talking about the pushback that came out 22 over the to the
- engineer, to 23 regarding the flood up plan and the evaluation that 24 you wanted, you talked about yourself going to, 25 to have to -- you went there in response to the voice NEAL R. GROSS COURT R-PORTFRR ANn TRANqCRIRFRR
165 1
mail that you listened to, it sounded like?
How did 2
you enter discussions with him about?
3 It may have been a little 4
- before, a little
- after, in the neighborhood.
It 5
wasn't necessarily in response to -- no, it was not in 14 6
response to 7telling me that.
The first 7
discussion I had was let me back up.
Maybe it 8
wasn't.
I went to
-says well, if we can't, 9
we can't.
If we can, we'll try to free up some money.
10 I remember meeting with him.
The discussion I had 11 wit hand he showed me the voice mail was just 12 prior tomy presentation to this ORB, I don't remember 13 what it's called, sort of review board.
And I don't even know what they stand 15 for.
They're the people that hold the purse strings.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
So had you already 17 approached them to get on the schedule to make your 18 presentation when you talked with 19 Yes.
20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
And the concern from 21 him, it seemed like, the way you summarized it was 22 more about the time that you were going to be able to 23 give them and there was this misconception on~I 24 part that you were going to knock some time 25 off the 28 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
166 Uo voice mail was like 2
sayin*
if we spend this money I want to be 3
counting on seeing the number of hours taken off the 4
schedule of critical path.
5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
- Okay, he didn't 6
realize that had been factored in up front.
7
- Yes, that that would 8
result in double dip.
9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Did you see it as a 10 push back to you from Were you getting 11 pushed back yourself?
12 Si Specifically, no, I
13 didn't, but I worked for efore and when I first 14 came on board, so my relationship with him was one 15 that I was always kind of on guard for that.
16 MR.
BARBER:
Wasn't this part of a mod?
17 No.
18 MR.
BARBER:
It wasn't.
How do you do it 19 without doing a mod?
You're cutting out the head 20 spray?
f%
21 i
"M-7 That's part of a mod, yes,
-22 that's on-going.
23 MR.
BARBER:
Right.
I mean it had a 24 function, right?
25 Head spray?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
167 1
MR.
BARBER:
Yes.
2 71 Yes.
3 MR.
BARBER:
I mean it had a designated 4
function.
It was probably an FSAR to say this was the 5
function of the head spray system?
6 Yes.
And that is being 7
removed as part of a modification.
8 MR.
BARBER:
And so the presumption would 9
be that whatever the alternate method was to provide 10 a function would have had some sort of review to make 11 sure it was safe and adequate to do, right?
12 Yes.
13 MR.
BARBER:
And when this, when you're 14 describing this analysis, would have been part of 15 that?
16
- 0No, because the RHR, the 17 head spray, mobile DCP, when it was~being pulled out 18 of most stations and Susquehanna isn't one of them, 19 they still use it, when they were being pulled out 20 because of all of those overriding reasons I
21 mentioned, testing, bid up, having to remove the 22 piping because in order to get to the head you need to 23 get the piping out of the way.
It's another critical 24 path step that needs to get out of the way.
25 So when this was being formulated to NEAL R. GROSS
168 1
remove it at that time, most plant outages were into 2
the --
still into the 35 and 45 days cooling the upper 3
regions of the head to get to the next step to get to 4
there, was never really on critical path.
There were 5
all sorts of other balance of plans, shut down 6
activities.
7 MR.
BARBER:
So it happened inherently is 8
what you're saying?
9 Yes, the head cooled down 10 and the ambient is on its own.
Hope Creek several, 11 several years ago like 8 or 9 years ago, used head 12 spray and they were --
someone did rot realize how 13 much water they were spraying on to metal at first and 14 went too overly aggressive with the throttle valve and 15 put a bunch of water on the top right off the bat and 16 it also turns out that the nozzle at this station is 17 offset, significantly enough that all the water goes 18 to one place, not one place, but half of it over to 19 the other side.
20 And so the TEs that are up there, around 21 the flange, they reacted significantly like I've seen 22 it in step fashion, from 400 something degrees to 140 23 almost instantly.
That's a
stress that is 24 significant.
It was looked at at the time it was done 25 and deemed to be not necessarily of any significant NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
169 1
duty in a cyclic fatigue situation.
That was years 2
ago.
So head spray was essentially kind of like well, 3
we don't ever like to use it.
And then NGE came out 4
saying when you take this stagnant piece of pipe that 5
has been sitting there with water in it and rusting 6
chips and everything else and you turn around and put 7
it on top of your driers and separators that have been 8
sitting there with steam flowing this way and now you 9
basically turn around and wash all that stuff, you're 10 washing everything down on top of your fuel.
We would 11 prefer you not to use it if you're not going to use it 12 that often.
Or if you do, think of ways of flushing 13 and filling and venting the lines.
14 So for those reasons we had essentially 15 not used head spray with any outage in the last 16 several years.
And the DCP for its
- removal, in fact, 17 cites one of the facts is cooling down the head is not 18 critical
- path, so this system is not giving us 19 anything for its buck.
Let's get it out.
If 20 had his way, it would probably be modified, maintained 21 and probably start being used again to do the function 22 that we're asking this other way to do.
23 Essentially the way -- you can't fill up 24 to the flange until you close the MSIVs.
You can't 25 close the MSIVs until you got pressure pretty much NEAL R. GROSS',",
170 1
down to about zero-ish.
In any event, you can't do 2
any of that. until you get below 82 pounds.
The RHR 3
shut down cooling interlock, because if you do you'll 4
have an isolation.
All of these things kind of need 5
to come together, so roughly at about 150-200 degrees 6
is when it closes the MSIVs and somewhere between 200 7
and 150 because you're going to continue to cool down 8
through RHR, we're going to take that 150 to 200 9
degree water from all the way down above the fuel to 10 the very top of the flange and get that water to go up II and touch that flange and cool it off.
And that's the 12 gist of it.
Get it up into the head and let it back 13 down to the flange and take the head off.
14 That's the way it's done at Peach Bottom 15 and at Hatch.
And also we haven't been doing it.
We 16 haven't used head spray.
So my task was find a way to 17 cool the head.
Two outages ago we had the best cool 18 down ever.
We aggressively got to mode 4 and we're 19 all set for them to start unbolting, but they 20 physically cannot get down in the hole because the 21 metal is too hot.
My task was to talking with the 22 vendors, hey, this is not a problem when we go to XYZ 23 plant, what can you do for us?
I said okay, let me 24 think about this.
How wouldlI do it?
How can I do 25 it? What will I do?
What I essentially need to do is NEAL R. GROSS mi n-U nrnimrrn 1~.-~
171 1
I need to get that water and its heat removal 2
capability and get up on that hot steel and do its job 3
and that was it.
4 MR.
BARBER:
I think I understand what 5
you're describing.
My comment and question is 6
actually leading to a different point.
If management 7
didn't support the money, funding the money for the 8
modification, then why didn't you just say okay, fine, 9
I'll put the hours back in and we can wait for it to 10 cool to ambient?
11 That's essentially whire 12 I was headed, but it won't go.
It won't go without 13 it.
14 MR. BARBER:
If you don't want to fund it, is that's no problem, we'll just go back to the old way 16 of doing things except not because of where we're at 17 in the outage and we're not in a 35 to 45-day outage, 18 we're in a 28, 22, 15
- oops, somewhere in a very 19 short outage duration, historically speaking.
20 Most plants are trying to 21 get into unbolting and into the 18 and 19 hours2.199074e-4 days <br />0.00528 hours <br />3.141534e-5 weeks <br />7.2295e-6 months <br /> these 22 day as opposed to 72, 80 which is where it was five, 23 six years ago, somewhere way ahead of others, but RHR 24 DCP or the head spray DCP that means we haven't used 25 head spray for years here at Hope Creek, so no one NEAL R. GROSS rni IRT PrPCPTFPR Amn T#APA IrPCZ
172 1
ever thought that the DCP needs to bring in a method 2
of how to do it.
The DCP itself basically dismisses 3
the need to do the function.
It's not needed.
We 4
don't need to cool the head.
It's definitely not an 5
ECCS function.
It's just a maintenance function.
6 Let's use it to do that.
So it doesn't even address 7
how are you going to fulfill that function now.
8 MR.
BARBER:
Did you bring it up to-9 or to anyone else, just to say I don't have a dog in 10 this fight, if you don't want to do this, that,'s fine.
11 We'll go back to the old way of doing it and we can 12 sit here and wait.
Was there a realization of what 13 the impact was?
14 I
/I was assigned by them to 15 do it.
16 MR.
BARBER:
To come up with a way of 17 doing it?
18 Yes.
19 MR.
BARBER:
You were marching to the 20 expectation?
- 21.
Yes.
22 MR.
BARBER:
This was your (Inaudible) and 23 you had to be successful?
24 IYes.
And I think I was.
25 I just got to the point where I needed the money to do NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
173 1
it.
And I had a point there and I can't remember it.
2 You would think that the DCP for its removal would 3
have -- what's the alternate way to do this method.
4 You would think that it would be there and it's not 5
and it probably won't be.
6 And it wasn't because back -- this DCP has 7
been sitting on a shelf just waiting for us to 8
basically write a check for somebody to do the work.
9 And it's been sitting on a shelf for probably years 10 from when the time outages were so much longer and the 11 method just wasn'tneeded.
And it's going to come out 12 in this outage, at least that's what they say.
13 MR.-BARBER:
Okay.
14 1_
I think that's all I 15 really have.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
17 Wait, you were asking me 18 a question, did I get to it?
No, I didn't.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
When we were talking 20 about the pushback?
21Yes 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
I think you pretty 23 much answered it.
I guess what I was looking at in 24 looking at that whole incident you sai 25 as getting this unreasonable pushback, but you didn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
174 name yourself necessarily in there.
2 Like I said, my testimony 3
is somewhat hearsay in that.
Oh yeah, because I 4
perceived that as a different relationship with/§i 5
in that having worked for him in the past, I kind of 6
developed a rapport that it wasn't going to happen.
7 The pushback was essentially I'm holding you to what 8
you say you can do.
I thought it was going to be 9
reasonable to deliver it.
10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
11 My pushback out to him was 12 I need the eval.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
You need the money.
14
-And then he played the 15 voice mail from hich at that level I can see the 16 need for saying hey, all right, justify this business 17 expense.
I'll spend it.
I'll approve it.
But you 18 need to come through for me here and basically puts in 19 that message was telling me to come through for 20 him.
The pressure really occurred with the voice mail 1
21 and I wish I could remember specifically who it
- was, 22 that was with and even says --
was 23 verbalizing and saying this really makes me feel 24 uncomfortable.
That's just not right.
This is a slam 25 dunik, no brainer, spend the money, reap the benefit, NEAL R. GROSS CNtJT RFPCOPTFPR AWf TIAM(Qtr'PnP*=¢P
175 1
but it should be done.
So even from a business 2
perspective, it's just the way he characterized, come 3
on, the vessel is not going to break, You're 4
not going to get in the way of this, are you?
That 5
was the kind of characterization of it, of the 6
environment at the time.
That's really all I have.
7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
I have a 8
couple of questions in closing for you.
Have I or any 9
other NRC representative offered you any promises of 10 reward or threatened you in any manner in exchange for 11 your information today?
12 That's a negative.
13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And have you appeared 14 here freely and voluntarily?
15 Yes.
16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
Okay.
17
.* Well, not freely.
I'm the 18 salary right now.
19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:
It's approximately 20 2:47 p.m. and what we'll do is close and I thank you 21 for the large amount of time that you gave us today.
22 Thank you.
23 You're welcome.
24 (Whereupon, at 2:47 p.m.,
the interview 25 was concluded.)
NEAL R. GROSS rraII)T PCT;=Pcq Amn TPA1FJqrP1P9IPIP
4 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 and 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 acc-rilate record of the foregoing proceedings as recorded on tape(s) provided by the NRC.
/K Francesca Zook Official Transcriber Neal R; Gross & Co.,
Inc.
HPAI 0
fftDflQa