ML13004A229
| ML13004A229 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Callaway  |
| Issue date: | 11/08/2010 |
| From: | Lawrence Criscione NRC/RES/DRA |
| To: | John Monninger Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation |
| Shared Package | |
| ML130040225 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA/PA-2012-0259 | |
| Download: ML13004A229 (5) | |
Text
¶ Criscione, Lawrence From:
Criscione, Lawrence Sent:
Monday, November 08, 2010 7:45 AM To:
Monninger, John
Subject:
RE: IN Reactivity Management Thanks John. Based on-our earlier conversation (October 20th) I was considering doing this. I didn't pursue it though because it appeared it would not be necessary: the individual writing the IN was receptive to my input and in collaboration with me he was working to insert my concerns in a manner and wording that is consistent with past NRC communications. Then out of the blue I received an email basically thanking me for my comments and telling me that the IN would be issued without any changes.
I don't know what to think about the email I received on Friday. It appears~to me that when the IN author went to get his branch chief's okay on the document prior to sending it to me, he was told not to make any edits. If this is the case, then I believe I should at least be given an opportunity to discuss the IN with the branch chief before my comments are summarily rejected.
I plan to discuss both the "Non-concurrence process" and the "Differing Professional Opinions" process with Renee Pedersen. However, I think I will be too late. It is my understanding that NRR is going forward with issuing the IN this week. Neither the "Non-concurrence process" nor the DPO process will do me much good once the IN has been issued.
I appreciate your advice and help, V/r, Larry From: Monninger, John Sent: Monday, November 08, 2010 7:24 AM To: Criscione, Lawrence
Subject:
RE: IN Reactivity Management
- Larry, Thanks for the email, and I hope you had a good weekend.
In your email below, you indicate that you want to be on record as disagreeing with the draft IN and expressing your concerns regarding it. Your email is one way to share those concerns. I believe you may want to also consider looking over the non-concurrence process and consider engaging in that process if your concerns are not resolved. Draft NRC MD 10.158 details the non-concurrence process. Here's the link to it:
http://www.internal.nrc.qov/OE/nonconcur/DraftNon-ConcurrencePolicy.pdf John M.
From: Criscione, Lawrence Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 10:14 AM To: Beaulieu, David Cc: Rosenberg, Stacey; Ostendorff, William; Virgilio, Martin; Weber, Michael; Zimmerman, Roy; Leeds, Eric; Monninger, John
Subject:
RE: IN Reactivity Management
[This email is included elsewhere]
From: Criscione, Lawrence Sent: Sunday, November 07, 2010 10:14 AM To: Beaulieu, David Cc: Rosenberg, Stacey; Ostendorff, William; Virgilio, Martin; Weber, Michael; Zimmerman, Roy; Leeds, Eric; Monninger, John
Subject:
RE: IN Reactivity Management
- Dave, On August 13, 2010 Adam Heflin, the Chief Nuclear Officer of Ameren Corporation, came to NRC headquarters for a drop-in visit with Bill Borchardt and Marty Virgilio. The primary topic of discussion for that visit was the "2003 Reactivity Management Event of Inadvertent Passive Shutdown; Exchange Perspectives; Verify they are doing all they can". Mike Weber was also invited to this meeting but was unable to attend.
On September 2, 2010 1 met with Mike Weber to discuss the August 13, 2010 meeting and to inform him of my concerns regarding the Safety Culture at Callaway Plant. As part of this discussion, Mr. Weber encouraged me to continue to attempt to get my concerns addressed and he recommended that I meet with Mr. Virgilio and Mr.
Leeds. I met with Mr. Virgilio on November 3, 2010 and am scheduled to meet with him again in December. I believe my meeting with Eric took place on September 13 but it might have been a later day of that week. During this meeting, Eric assured me I would get a chance to review and comment on an Information Notice that was being drafted concerning, among other incidents, the passive reactor shutdown at Callaway Plant.
On October 15, 2010 you emailed me a draft IN. During a phone conversation, you requested that I provide my inputs to you in person so that you could avoid having to formally reply to them. I reviewed the five page draft IN and had some minor clarifications that I wanted added to the first two pages.
It is important here to clarify what exactly my concerns are. In February 2007 I was concerned that data I had uncovered indicated the reactor at Callaway Plant had been inadvertently allowed to passively shut down on October 21, 2003 and that, since this incident was never documented in the site's corrective action program, the lessons to be learned from this incident were never captured. In March 2007, when I first brought the incident to the NRC, my concern was that the October 21, 2003 passive reactor shutdown had been intentionally not documented in 2003 and was being purposefully ignored in 2007. In August 2007 my concern was that the NRC had not adequately investigated the incident. In February 2009 my concern was that the licensed operators at Callaway Plant had intentionally misled the investigators from the Office of Investigation during their 2008 sworn testimonies. After reading your draft IN on October 15, 2010 my concern is that bureaucratic processes at the NRC prevent us from transparently stating errors committed by licensees. An example of this is your wording from the IN of: "control room operators did not effectively control reactivity to maintain the reactor in the desired condition during low-power operations by properly anticipating, controlling, and responding to changing plant parameters." Although this statement is accurate regarding the October 21, 2003 passive reactor shutdown at Callaway Plant, it is a "non-transparent" statement since it also applies to events ranging from merely going out of band on average coolant temperature (as happened to me on the USS GEORGIA in 1996) to causing a prompt criticality accident that spreads radioactivity over a significant portion of Europe (as happened at the Chernobyl #4 reactor in 1986). The NRC using broad "non-transparent" statements like this may satisfy legal counsel, but they do not allow operators working at the licensees to understand the incident being documented in the IN. These operators need to be understand that the reactor was allowed to passively shut down and that, as long as active means of controlling reactivity are available, that is unacceptable.
I met with you on October 19, 2010 to discuss my suggested changes to the draft IN. I left that meeting with the impression that no changes would be made to the IN. As a result I sought advice from Commissioner Ostendorff, John Monninger, Eric Leads and Roy Zimmerman (all of whom are aware of my concerns regarding the safety culture at Callaway Plant) on how to proceed.
I met with Mr. Monninger on the morning of October 20, 2010. He suggested that the best course of action would be for me to meet with you and your branch chief to discuss my concerns regarding the wording in the IN. I left that meeting and proceeded to your cubicle to arrange a time when I could sit down to discuss the draft IN with
you and your branch chief. During our discussion, it was decided that many of my suggested changes to the IN could be incorporated and that we would wait until a second draft was finished before discussing the IN at a higher level than just ourselves. I met with you several other times that week and the following two weeks to discuss wording in the IN. At all these meetings, you informed me that you would be incorporating my suggestions into the IN.
On October 23, 2010 1 met with Eric Leeds and Roy Zimmerman to discuss my concerns regarding the IN. At this meeting I informed Mr. Leeds and Mr. Zimmerman that it appeared my suggestions would be incorporated into the IN and that I would follow up with them if that did not occur.
On Friday, November 5, 20101 received the email below from you. I understand this email to indicate that you do not intend to incorporate any of my suggested comments and that the draft IN you sent me on October 15, 2010 is to be the final draft. Please let me know as soon as possible if my understanding is accurate. I would like to meet with you and your branch chief regarding the draft IN prior to the NRC issuing it.
At this point, I have two chief concerns: one regarding Ameren and one regarding the NRC. I express these concerns in the paragraphs below not for your benefit, but for the benefit of those copied on this email. I would like to be on record as disagreeing with the draft IN and expressing my concerns regarding it.
Concerning Ameren, I am concerned about their honesty. Our regulations rely to a large extent on the honesty of the licensees. We expect the licensees to honestly and accurately report events and to not intentionally mislead NRC investigators. On April 1, 2008 Ameren personnel intentionally misled investigators from the Office of Investigations concerning the October 21, 2003 passive reactor shutdown. Specifically, the Shift Manager from Ameren claimed that he deliberately allowed the reactor to passively shut down and he intentionally relied on an informal estimate of Xenon-135 levels to ensure the reactor would remain subcritical while his crew spent nearly two hours performing ancillary tasks. I personally do not believe the Shift Manager's claims, but if we (the NRC) believe him, we need to address the fact that the reactor shutdown procedure at Callaway Plant inherently assumes that reactivity will be actively controlled and that to deliberately allow passive phenomena to shut down the reactor and maintain it subcritical is not in accordance with Callaway's operating procedures. My concern with Ameren is that they refused to address the abnormalities of this shutdown. After knowing about the atypical nature of the October 21, 2003 shutdown for nearly four years (since Feb 2007), Ameren still has not honestly acknowledged what occurred that day. Ameren cannot be trusted to provide honest and complete information to the NRC in the future when the upper levels of the utility still refuses to acknowledge events of the past.
Concerning the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, I am concern that we are not able to effectively deal with licensees who are dishonest. We do not have the agility to creatively address with licensees instances when we recognize that we have been lied to but cannot prove it. Those of you copied on this email who have actually operated a reactor plant know that a NRC licensed Senior Reactor Operator (who was also a "navy nuke") would never intentionally allow a large commercial reactor to passively shut down when the control rods were capable of being inserted. Although we cannot prove it, we know we were lied to. And there are things we can do about it.
One of those things is to TRANSPARENTLY write an Information Notice that addresses the utility's claim that they intentionally allowed the reactor to passively shut down. Writing an IN which hides the facts in non-transparent wording is what cowardly bureaucrats do, not vigilant regulators.
The first lecture I received at navy nuclear power school in October 1993 was on the importance of honesty in nuclear power. Nuclear operators are entrusted with a potentially dangerous technology and must at all times default conservatively. Relying on an informal estimation of Xenon-135 levels to maintain a reactor subcritical is not conservative. Nuclear operators must always report mistakes so that lessons can be learned. The procedural guidance given to the operators at Callaway Plant in 2003 set them up for failure. I have never faulted them for unknowingly allowing their reactor to passively shut down. My criticism is that the highly atypical shutdown was never reported and analyzed in 2003. I have been pursuing this issue since accidently coming across it in 2007 because, as a "navy nuke", I have a difficult time walking away from a safety concern I feel ownership of. There are people in the NRC who believe I am merely trying to use NRC processes to settle old scores. Although it is true that my history at Ameren has given me the determination to overcome the bureaucratic obstacles that have been in my path, I am have nuclear safety concerns regarding the regulation of the licensee of a large commercial
reactor plant and am pursuing these concerns because I believe that until Ameren is willing to acknowledge past mistakes we (the public and the NRC) cannot trust them to be honest in the future. Our regulations assume honesty and we cannot accept dishonest individuals being in charge of a nuclear facility we regulate. I am willing to take these safety concerns to Office Directors and Commissioners if necessary, but the base issue - a passive reactor shutdown that never resulted in an inadvertent return to criticality - does not warrant their attention. I would prefer to resolve my concerns regarding the draft IN with you and your branch chief.
I will be out of the office until around noon on November 15, 2010. If you wish to speak with me before then, please do not leave me messages on my office phone. Please contact me either via my NRC email account, my personal email, or my personal cell phone.
Thank you for the time you have so far taken to write the IN and to listen to my inputs and concerns.
V/r, Larry Criscione From: Beaulieu, David Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 5:27 PM To: Criscione, Lawrence Cc: Rosenberg, Stacey
Subject:
IN Reactivity Management
- Larry,
[This email is included elsewhere]
DAVID BEAULIEU PROJECT MANAGER, NRR/DPR/PGCB (bowl yer) 301 415 3243 I 012H17 I David.Beaulieu@nrc.gov U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
From: Beaulieu, David Sent: Friday, November 05, 2010 5:27 PM To: Criscione, Lawrence Cc: Rosenberg, Stacey
Subject:
IN Reactivity Management
- Larry, I carefully reviewed each of your suggested changes as well as all of the supporting information you provided. The purpose of an IN is to inform other licensees of an event to allow them to take corrective actions. I found none of your suggested changes provided information that would change the actual corrective actions taken by other licensees. Therefore, I did not change the IN. My Branch Chief also reviewed your suggested changes and agrees with my determination. Thank you for your comments.
DAVID BEAULIEU PROJECT MANAGER, NRR/DPR/PGCB (bowl-yer) 301-415-3243 I 012H17 I David.Beaulieu@.nrc.gov 1
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission