ML17101A463
| ML17101A463 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Pilgrim |
| Issue date: | 04/13/2017 |
| From: | NRC Region 1, Neal R. Gross & Co. |
| To: | |
| Burritt A | |
| References | |
| NRC-2998 | |
| Download: ML17101A463 (170) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
2017 Pilgrim Annual Assessment Meeting and 95003 Exit Meeting Docket Number:
50-293 Location:
Plymouth, Massachusetts Date:
Tuesday, March 21, 2017 Work Order No.:
NRC-2998 Pages 1-169 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 ML17101A463
1 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 1
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2 NRC 95003 INSPECTION EXIT MEETING AND 3
ANNUAL ASSESSMENT MEETING FOR 4
PILGRIM NUCLEAR POWER STATION 5
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6 PUBLIC MEETING 7
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8 TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017 9
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10 The Public Meeting met in the Main 11 Auditorium of Plymouth Memorial Hall, 83 Court Street, 12 Plymouth, Massachusetts, Brett Klukan, Facilitator, 13 presiding 14 NRC ATTENDEES:
15 BRETT KLUKAN, Regional Counsel, Region I, 16 Facilitator 17 ARTHUR BURRITT, Chief, Projects Branch 5, Division 18 of Reactor Projects 19 ERIN CARFANG, Senior Resident Inspector, Pilgrim 20 DANIEL DORMAN, Regional Administrator, Region I 21 DONALD JACKSON, Chief, Operations Branch, Division 22 of Reactor Safety 23 RAYMOND LORSON, Director, Division of Reactor Safety 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 ALSO PRESENT:
1 REBECCA CHIN, Co-Chair, Duxbury Nuclear Advisory 2
Committee 3
RORY CLARK, Office of U.S. Senator Edward Markey 4
WILL CROCKER, State Representative, Second 5
Barnstable District 6
JON D'ANGELO, Office of U.S. Senator Elizabeth 7
Warren 8
VINNY DEMACEDO, State Senator, Plymouth and 9
Barnstable District 10 RANDY HUNT, State Representative, Fifth Barnstable 11 District 12 MIKE JACKMAN, Office of Congressman Bill Keating 13 ELIZABETH MAHONY, Massachusetts Attorney General's 14 Office 15 REVEREND JARVIS MCMILLAN, Co-Chair, Social Justice 16 and Outreach Committee, Unitarian Church of 17 Chatham 18 MATT MURATORE, State Representative, First Plymouth 19 District 20 SARAH PEAKE, State Representative, Fourth Barnstable 21 District 22 TIMOTHY WHELAN, State Representative, First 23 Barnstable District 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 T-A-B-L-E O-F C-O-N-T-E-N-T-S 1
Introduction and Opening Remarks 2
Brett Klukan..................
4 3
Plant Performance Discussion 4
Daniel Dorman
................. 12 5
Arthur Burritt................. 14 6
95003 Exit Meeting With Entergy 7
Don Jackson.................. 17 8
Entergy Remarks 9
John Dent
................... 45 10 John McDonald
................. 47 11 Dave Noyes................... 49 12 Bruce Chenard
................. 58 13 Public Q&A Session with NRC........... 68 14 Closing Remarks................
169 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 1
(Time not provided.)
2 MR. KLUKAN: All right. Hello and welcome 3
this evening to the annual Pilgrim Nuclear Power 4
Station Assessment meeting. My name is Brett Klukan.
5 Normally by day I'm the regional counsel for Region I 6
of the U.S. NRC, but tonight I'll be serving as I have 7
done at past meetings as the meeting facilitator.
8 First off, before I get any further into 9
my introduction, I would like to thank the Plymouth 10 Memorial Hall for hosting us this evening. And it's 11 this beautiful venue, so thank you very much to them.
12 The structure for the meeting tonight, as 13 discussed in the meeting summary, will be bifurcated.
14 The first half is going to consist of discussion 15 between the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission and 16 Entergy to discuss the NRC's assessment of safety 17 performance at Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station for 2016.
18 This portion of the meeting will 19 principally include the following: A discussion of 20 NRC oversight over the past year, a discussion of 21 preliminary results of the recent 95003 inspection, 22 then an opportunity for Entergy to respond and to 23 provide its own remarks on its performance over the 24 past year. Then finally some NRC concluding remarks.
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5 Then we'll break for a short intermission, about 10 1
minutes.
2 Then we'll begin with our second half of 3
the meeting, which will principally be an opportunity 4
for members of the public to ask the assembled NRC 5
staff questions and comments regarding the performance 6
of Pilgrim over the past year.
7 With respect to that second half of the 8
meeting, on the registration table just near the doors 9
or the entryway to the building there's a sign-up list 10 for public speakers. When you registered to speak you 11 should have received a ticket, or one half of a 12 ticket, the other half of which we collected in a 13 container, again currently at the registration table.
14 The purpose of that is so that the -- I will then use 15 that ticket or those -- that fishbowl of tickets for 16
-- that's what it is, to pick the speaking order at 17 random.
18 Just so you have an advanced warning, when 19 it is your turn to speak, I will be writing the 20 numbers I pull out of the fishbowl on the board here.
21 And I will also be announcing them just so -- for 22 those of you in the back who can't see.
23 If you'd like to speak this evening and 24 have not already done so, please step outside and add 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 your name to the list prior to the end of 1
intermission. I will be collecting the tickets once 2
intermission -- as intermission is wrapping up and as 3
we move into the second half of the meeting.
4 After intermission once we resume I will 5
not add any more tickets to the container. Those who 6
register late will only have an opportunity to speak 7
if the container has been exhausted and as time 8
otherwise permits.
9 I would like to emphasize at this time 10 that there's no prohibition against trading or 11 donating tickets, however, with that said, both 12 individuals, the transferrer and the transferee, must 13 be present at the time the number as I -- as -- when 14 I call it. So you can't simply just leave your ticket 15 with someone else and then leave the meeting. You 16 both have to be here if you're going to exchange 17 tickets.
18 I would like to ask that we keep the area; 19 essentially there's a little piece of yellow tape up 20 here, beyond that front row clear. If you have 21 something you'd like to hand to the NRC staff, please 22 hand it to me or to Justin (phonetic), who is standing 23 right here.
24 Now for some very basic ground rules.
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7 First off, recognizing that many of you have strongly 1
held opinions about the matters we're going to discuss 2
tonight, I nonetheless ask you, as I do at the outset 3
of every meeting, to please adhere to civil decorum.
4 And you've never failed me regarding this in the past, 5
and for that I -- you have my utmost thanks. So 6
please do not disrupt each other this evening, just as 7
you wouldn't want to be interrupted during your 8
opportunity to speak. Please respect the speaking 9
times of others.
10 We will operate under a three strikes 11 rule. I've never had to use it and I hope not to use 12 it again this evening. But just so you're aware of 13 how I'm going to conduct the meeting, you'll get three 14 strikes. The first two will be verbal warnings and 15 the third you'll be asked to leave the meeting. If 16 you refuse to voluntarily leave at that time, we'll 17 escort you from the room. Again, I've never had to do 18 that. I hope not to do it again tonight, but I want 19 to make you aware of how I plan to conduct the 20 meeting.
21 Threatening gestures or statements under 22 no circumstances will be tolerated and will be cause 23 for immediate objection from the -- or ejection from 24 the meeting. I want to make that very plain. If you 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 feel you've been threatened, please let me know or 1
tell one of the NRC security personnel or the police 2
officers you see positioned around the room.
3 A few minor housekeeping matters: The 4
bathrooms are straight through those back doors on the 5
first level, like beneath the stairs.
6 The exits are through the back. And then 7
again, up the stairs as well. And I think there's a 8
door over here as well for exit.
9 Cameras are of course permitted, but 10 please try not to obstruct the view of others. The 11 same goes for signs that you may have. You can hold 12 them up periodically, but don't hold them up for the 13 entire meeting so the person behind you can't see, you 14 know, a matter of courtesy.
15 And if you'd be so kind to please silence 16 your cell phones at this time.
17 Okay. At this point I'd like to offer any 18 elected officials or official representatives of any 19 elected officials here tonight on their behalf to 20 stand and be recognized.
21 (Pause.)
22 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Justin will bring you 23 the microphone.
24 MS. CHIN: Thank you. Rebecca Chin, Co-25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 Chairman of the Duxbury Nuclear Advisory Committee.
1 MS. PEAKE: Hi, Sarah Peake, state 2
representative, Fourth Barnstable District.
3 MR.
CROCKER:
Will
- Crocker, state 4
representative Second Barnstable District.
5 MR.
HUNT:
Randy
- Hunt, state 6
representative, Fifth Barnstable District.
7 MR. DEMACEDO: Vinny Demacedo, state 8
senator from the Plymouth and Barnstable District.
9 REV. MCMILLAN: Reverend McMillan, Co-10 Chair of the Social Justice Committee of the Unitarian 11 Church in Chatham.
12 MR. MURATORE: Matt Muratore, state rep 13 for the First Plymouth District.
14 MR.
WHELAN:
Tim
- Whelan, state 15 representative for the First Barnstable District.
16 MR. D'ANGELO: Jon D'Angelo, Senator 17 Elizabeth Warren's office.
18 MS. CLARK: Rory Clark, Senator Ed 19 Markey's office.
20 MR.
JACKMAN:
Mike Jackman from 21 Congressman Bill Keating's office.
22 MS. MAHONY: Elizabeth Mahony from the 23 Attorney General's office.
24 MR. KLUKAN: Any other elected official or 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 representative that we missed? I want to make sure 1
you're -- you get an opportunity to be recognized.
2 Again, you will have an opportunity to 3
give prepared remarks at the beginning or the outset 4
of the second half of the meeting, but I would just 5
like to give those elected officials or their 6
representatives an opportunity to be recognized at 7
this time.
8 (No audible response.)
9 MR. KLUKAN: Seeing no others, thank you 10 very much for attending this evening. We appreciate 11 it.
12 Now finally let me introduce the NRC staff 13 you see assembled on the stage, and first I'll begin 14 with Mr. Dan Dorman who's seated in the middle. Mr.
15 Dan Dorman is a regional administrator for Region I.
16 He has been in that position since 2014. Dan has 34 17 years of nuclear experience including nearly 10 years 18 in the U.S. Navy and over 24 years at the NRC. He has 19 served as the deputy office director in both the 20 Nuclear Materials and Operating Reactor Programs in 21 the NRC Headquarter Offices and was a member of the 22 NRC's Near-Term Task Force on Lessons Learned from the 23 Fukushima Accident.
24 Next we have Mr. Ray Lorson. Mr. Ray 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 Lorson is the director for the Division of Reactor 1
Safety in the NRC's Region I Office. He joined the 2
NRC in 1991 as a reactor engineer in Region I. He 3
subsequently was the NRC in 1991 as a reactor engineer 4
in Region I. He subsequently was the resident 5
inspector at Peach Bottom and the Salem Nuclear Power 6
Plants and the senior resident inspector at the 7
Seabrook and Salem Nuclear Power Plants. Prior to 8
joining the NRC Ray served in the United States Navy.
9 Next we have Mr. Don Jackson. Mr. Don 10 Jackson was assigned to his current position as chief, 11 Operations Branch, Region I, Division of Reactor 12 Safety in August of 2011. Previously was the chief, 13 Project Branch 5, Region I, Division of Reactor 14 Projects. Don joined the NRC in 2003 as an operating 15 licensing -- operator licensing examiner. There we 16 go. Prior to joining the NRC Don was an NRC licensing 17 senior operator at both the Calvert Cliffs Nuclear 18 Power Plant and the Salem Nuclear Generating Station.
19 Prior to that Don served -- or spent five years in the 20 Navy's Nuclear Power Program as a submarine officer.
21 Next we have Mr. Art Burritt. Mr. Burritt 22 is a branch chief in Branch 5 for Region I's Division 23 of Reactor Projects. Branch 5 includes oversight of 24 Pilgrim and FitzPatrick Nuclear Generation Station.
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12 Art has 40 years of nuclear experience including 25 1
with the NRC. Prior to joining the NRC he was a 2
licensed senior reactor operator and worked for three 3
nuclear utilities as a plant operator and trainer 4
after serving in the Navy's Nuclear Program.
5 Finally, we have Ms. Erin Carfang. Ms.
6 Carfang is the senior resident inspector at Pilgrim.
7 She's been in that position since 2014. Prior to that 8
she was a resident inspector at Beaver Valley. Prior 9
to joining the NRC she served as a United States 10 officer aboard the USS The Sullivans and the USS 11 Dwight D. Eisenhower.
12 Finally, let me turn it over to Dan 13 Dorman, again Region I's regional administrator for 14 our first portion of the meeting. Thank you very 15 much.
16 MR. DORMAN: Thank you, Brett. And thank 17 you, everyone, for coming out tonight. As Brett has 18 indicated, our purpose here in the first part of the 19 meeting is twofold: First, we'll be sharing our 20 assessment of Pilgrim's performance through the year 21 2016 based on our oversight results. And then 22 secondly, we'll be sharing -- we'll be conducting a 23 public exit meeting of the 95003 inspection.
24 For those of you were here seven weeks ago 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 for our public meeting, that inspection was still in 1
process at that time. Don talked through the 2
perspectives that the team had at that time on the 3
email that was issued in December. Now he is going to 4
be presenting to the licensee, to Entergy the 5
preliminary findings of that inspection. So the two 6
parts are the annual assessment and the inspection 7
results. This part of the meeting will be between us 8
and Entergy. And after Art and Don finish their 9
presentations, we'll turn it over to Entergy for a 10 response.
11 At this point, John, I'd ask you to 12 introduce your team at the table.
13 MR. DENT: Thank you, Mr. Dorman. My name 14 is John Dent. I'm Pilgrim's Site Vice-President.
15 MR. McDONALD: My name is John McDonald.
16 I'm the General Manager of Plant Operations at 17 Pilgrim.
18 MR. ROMEO: My name is Mike Romeo. I'm 19 the Regulatory and Performance Improvement Director.
20 MR. NOYES: Dave Noyes. I'm Director of 21 Recovery at Pilgrim.
22 MR. CHENARD: Bruce Chenard. I'm the 23 Engineer and Director at Pilgrim Station.
24 MR. DORMAN: All right. Thank you. So 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 with those introductions, now I'll turn it to Art 1
Burritt to begin the presentation.
2 MR. BURRITT: Thank you, Dan.
3 Good evening. After a thorough review we 4
have determined that Pilgrim operated safely in 2016.
5 Our assessment of Entergy's performance in 2016 is 6
that Pilgrim remains in column 4 of the action matrix.
7 The issues that led into the graded 8
performance were longstanding weaknesses in 9
implementation of programs for identifying and 10 resolving problems and a safety culture that allowed 11 them to persist. The increased oversight tools made 12 available by column 4
provide the additional 13 monitoring necessary to ensure that safety margins, 14 although degraded, are maintained. To date we have 15 determined that our regulatory actions are adequate to 16 ensure the plant continues to operate safety.
17 Our conclusions regarding Pilgrim's safety 18 are based on a number of criteria contained in our 19 manual chapters. This procedure describes situations 20 where the NRC lacks reasonable assurance licensee can 21 or will conduct its activities to ensure protection of 22 public health and safety.
23 It provides us examples of what acceptable 24 performance looks like. These include multiple 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 escalated violations of the facility license, tech 1
specs or regulations. Multiple safety-significant 2
examples were the facility was determined to be 3
outside of its design-basis or a pattern of failure of 4
management controls to effectively address previous 5
safety-significant findings.
6 We applied these examples to both our 7
baseline and supplemental inspections to date and 8
concluded that Pilgrim has adequate safety margins and 9
has not entered the unacceptable column of the action 10 matrix, otherwise known as column 5. This is because 11 there were no additional escalated enforcement 12 violations in 2016, and to date there is only one 13 potential greater than green or safety-significant 14 issue that is currently being addressed by Don's 95003 15 inspection team.
16 Since entry into column 4 there has not 17 been multiple safety-significant examples where the 18 licensee was determined to be outside of your design-19 basis. There has not been a pattern of failure of 20 licensee management controls to effectively address 21 previous safety-significant findings or to prevent 22 recurrence.
23 Our assessment of performance is based on 24 over 12,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> of inspection activity in 2016.
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16 This is more than twice or double the effort applied 1
to most other plants. This is equivalent to about 2
eight full-time inspectors working at the site over 3
the course of the year on average.
4 These inspections resulted in 23 findings 5
distributed across all areas of safety performance, 6
along with a Severity Level 3 violation for falsified 7
fire watches. However, there is evidence of some 8
improvement this year. This is about a third less of 9
the findings compared to 2015, and in 2016 we 10 conducted more inspections than in 2015.
11 Also, our Phase A and B supplemental 12 inspections in early 2016 verified that significant 13 issues were being adequately addressed, actions were 14 being taken to address the Corrective Action Program 15 weaknesses and that no additional regulatory actions 16 were needed. The Phase C inspection that will be 17 discussed in a minute is still in progress at the end 18 of the year. In 2016 all performance indicators were 19 also green with a fair amount of margin.
20 In addition to completing the 95003 21 inspection and issuing a confirmatory action and 22 issuing a confirmatory action letter, we plan to 23 continue to devote additional inspection resources to 24 the site including a third resident inspector. These 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 additional resources allow us to complete more 1
inspections in targeted areas including problem 2
identification and resolution areas to address 3
previous performance, as well as more in-depth 4
inspections in all areas. It provides more manpower 5
to observe more site activities as they occur, and we 6
use this additional information by each of these 7
activities in our senior management performance 8
assessments that are now being conducted on a 9
quarterly basis.
10 We also continue to engage your staff with 11 more frequent staff visits by our management team. To 12 date these assessments have concluded that our 13 regulatory actions are adequate to continue to monitor 14 plant performance and assure that adequate safety 15 margins are maintained.
16 Now I'd like to turn it over to Don 17 Jackson for a discussion of the 95003 inspection.
18 MR. JACKSON: Thanks, Art. Move to the 19 next slide, please.
20 Okay.
The major purposes of the 21 inspection procedure 95003, specifically the Charlie 22 phase of that, are to provide an independent review 23 and assessment of your actions to identify and correct 24 causal factors related to Pilgrim's performance 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 decline. This includes an independent review of 1
Pilgrim's nuclear safety culture, which the team did 2
conduct and will talk about shortly. Additionally, 3
the process is designed to identify any additional 4
regulatory actions warranted to ensure continued 5
nuclear safety. So those are the major purposes of 6
the inspection.
7 Move onto the next slide. Pilgrim's 8
Recovery Plan was an outfall of your collective 9
evaluation that you conducted 9, 10 months ago, in 10 that time frame. The collective evaluation reviewed 11
-- identified problems going back several years and 12 coupled that with real-time observations and 13 assessment by a group that -- of our staff and some 14 other folks that came into assist in that project.
15 And systematically those were rolled up into issues 16 that were identified as fundamental problem areas and 17 problem areas.
18 The fundamental problem areas are issues 19 that tend to drive the other problems at the station, 20 and then the problem areas were things that really 21 were significant enough that required their own 22 evaluation. So fundamental problem areas received a 23 higher level of causal analysis and the other areas 24 received a lower level of causal analysis.
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19 Fundamental problem areas were identified 1
as the Corrective Action Program implementation, 2
nuclear safety culture at Pilgrim Station, decision 3
making and risk recognition at Pilgrim. And then the 4
problem areas were determined to be equipment 5
reliability, engineering programs, work management, 6
procedure quality, procedure use and adherence and 7
industrial safety.
8 Throughout the completion of that Recovery 9
Plan I know you also took a look at operability 10 determinations and did a causal analysis on that, and 11 then also took a look at the root cause for the SR --
12 Alpha SRV issue that occurred in 2013. So all of 13 those issues were encompassed in what the team looked 14 at.
15 The team independently reviewed these 16 causal factors and the major actions to correct the 17 issues, and ultimately the team agreed with your 18 assessment of your identified problem areas and also 19 with the root and apparent causes that you identified.
20 The level of inspection. I know Art 21 talked about that for his group. My group that did 22 this inspection -- it was greater than 6,000 person 23 hours2.662037e-4 days <br />0.00639 hours <br />3.80291e-5 weeks <br />8.7515e-6 months <br /> of preparation, documentation and also actual 24 conduct of the inspection, which again equates to 3 or 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 4 person years, depending on how you add that up. So 1
it certainly from an agency standpoint is not an 2
insignificant effort.
3 To the next slide. Yes, there we go.
4 Team composition. I mentioned this at the last 5
meeting we were at, but just in case folks want to 6
hear, we had 20 inspectors on the team, not just in 7
Region I. There are four regions in the agency.
8 There are regions in Atlanta, Chicago and the Dallas 9
area. We brought in resources from all of those 10 areas, specifically eight senior resident inspectors, 11 the same level of what Erin does here at Pilgrim, two 12 resident inspectors from again outside power stations, 13 six specialist inspectors. And these are individuals 14 that may have an engineering specialty or an emergency 15 planning specialty, those kind of things. Two branch 16 chiefs. I was one and we actually had -- one of our 17 group leads just happened to be a branch chief. And 18 then two safety culture specialists that are not 19 technical experts on the plant, but they've had 20 specialized training in safety culture.
21 The inspection methods we used were direct 22 observation, interviews, focus group discussions; 23 mainly for the safety culture piece we would pull 24 groups of people together and talk to them in a group 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 setting, records reviews and also plant inspection 1
tours.
2 Next slide. Just to kind of show you 3
where we're at right now in this process. This exit 4
meeting signifies the end of the inspection, as Dan 5
had mentioned. The inspection report will be issued 6
as soon as possible with a goal of 45 days from this 7
exit meeting. The results discussed are considered 8
preliminary until NRC senior management approves the 9
inspection report. And that will be signed out under 10 Mr. Dorman. It is possible that performance 11 deficiencies as discussed may change between now and 12 the end of the inspection, or the end of the period 13 where we issue the report.
14 Next slide. The team found, the team 15 determined that the plant -- as a result of this 16 inspection, the plant is safe to operate and we 17 identified no immediate safety concerns during the 18 three weeks that we were on site. We identified 11 19 violations, findings, what we call performance 20 deficiencies. Ten of those issues that we identified 21 were determined to be of very low safety significance, 22 or in our vernacular green. And we did have one issue 23 that we'll talk about in a minute involving the Alpha 24 emergency diesel generator, which preliminarily has a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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22 significance that's been determined to be greater than 1
green. So that would be white or higher.
2 We did observe improvement in the areas of 3
corrective action and safety culture, although we do 4
have violations documented in both of these areas. In 5
consultation with the resident inspector staff we 6
could compare what we observed with a more historical 7
perspective. So we spent a lot of time talking to 8
Erin and the other resident inspectors. You will need 9
to take a hard look at what this team has concluded 10 and what we document in the report and expand the 11 Recovery Plan to address our results. It's obvious to 12 the team that continued enhanced oversight by the NRC 13 is warranted.
14 Okay. So right now I'm going to go 15 through each of the violations that we identified.
16 For folks that were here several weeks ago this has 17 not changed very much, but I will go into a little bit 18 more detail on each of the issues.
19 So the first violation, and this is the 20 one that has preliminarily been determined to be of 21 greater than green safety significance, which is low 22 to moderate risk significance. So the team identified 23 an apparent violation again of low to moderate safety 24 significance of 10 CFR 50, Appendix B, Criterion 3, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 which is Design Control, associated with your failure 1
to ensure that design changes were subject to design 2
control measures commensurate with those applied to 3
the original design.
4 Specifically, for the Alpha diesel 5
generator you did not identify and mitigate a new 6
failure mechanism of a new component you changed out 7
in the 2000-2002 time frame. And there should have 8
been, as a part of the engineering evaluation 9
recognized -- that the part that you put in was 10 different than the part that came out and that it 11 required further engineering evaluation to determine 12 that there may be a failure mechanism that you had not 13 considered. And it did -- in the August time frame 14 did have a failure that causes the emergency diesel 15 generator to be inoperable.
16 The second violation. Again, this is all 17 under Operations and Engineering Performance 18 Deficiencies. The team identified a Severity Level 4 19 traditional enforcement violation of 10 CFR 50.73, 20 which is Licensee Event Report. That's associated 21 with your failure to submit a licensee event report 22 within 60 days following discovery of an event meeting 23 the reporting criteria. So this was something that 24 was identified by the team at the end of November, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 beginning of the December time frame. It was outside 1
of the 60 days and the team determined that based off 2
of the failure and the time failed for the Alpha 3
diesel generator you owed a report to the NRC to 4
explain what corrective actions that you had taken.
5 Next we had a -- the team identified a 6
non-cited violation, again a
very low safety 7
significance, green, of 10 CFR 50.65(a)(2). And these 8
are the requirements for monitoring the effectiveness 9
of maintenance at nuclear power stations.
10 Specifically, in this case you failed to 11 demonstrate the performance of 18 maintenance rule 12 scoped components. These are components that receive 13 special care under regulation and testing and 14 maintenance. In the 2007 time frame you removed these 15 18 components from the Preventative Maintenance 16 Program. You determined in 2016 that that was an 17 error and you placed them back into the Preventative 18 Maintenance Program.
19 However, to be in compliance with the 20 maintenance
- rule, the (a)(2) portion of the 21 maintenance rule says that you're supposed to have 22 ongoing preventive maintenance. Well, for that period 23 of time you did not. And those should have been 24 brought back into (a)(1) status and treated specially 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 for a period of time until you could prove performance 1
while conducting that preventative maintenance that 2
the components would function.
3 The next, the last one on the slide is the 4
team identified a non-cited violation of very low 5
safety significance, again green, of 10 CFR 50, 6
Appendix B, Criterion 5, which is Instructions, 7
Procedures and Drawings, for failure to follow the 8
operability determination process in accordance with 9
Entergy procedures. And the specific examples that we 10 documented in the report had to do with how you 11 handled the operability determination for the Alpha 12 emergency diesel generator and then the questions that 13 we brought up associated with the Bravo emergency 14 diesel generator. Yes, that was an extended condition 15 in corrective action space, but when that issue was 16 brought up, there was also an operability 17 determination that should have been conducted on that 18 diesel. And we didn't feel that that was at the 19 appropriate level.
20 And there was also an issue with the Bravo 21 RHR heat exchanger that had been leaking for a number 22 of years. Your operability determination deemed that 23 as being operable vice operable non-conforming. It's 24 a difference in how you take actions based off of that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 inoperability determination space.
1 And then finally, in our review of the 2
emergency diesel generator room we found temporary 3
equipment mounted near the diesel that we raised 4
questions about and it should have spawned an 5
operability determination with adequate engineering 6
components to that. Your first maneuver through your 7
process got to a point that it was not sufficient in 8
engineering depth to show that the diesels were 9
operable and you had to go back and take a look at it 10 again. And I think your second review of it was 11 satisfactory to the team.
12 Each of these -- I want to note each of 13 these technical issues that I'm talking about were 14 resolved adequately and shortly after the team 15 identified them. Even in the case of the Alpha diesel 16 generator the Alpha diesel generator was fixed and 17 made operable well before the team showed up on site.
18 So I don't want to leave you with the impression that 19 we don't think you've actually fixed the component.
20 It's clear to us it was fixed, but there were 21 programmatic issues that spawned violations of 22 regulatory requirements.
23 Any questions on that to this point?
24 (No audible response.)
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27 MR. JACKSON: Okay. Next slide. And I 1
got these all racked up under one slide.
2 I got to get a drink here really quick 3
because I'm starting to run out of -- I'll start 4
making a squeaking noise if I don't get some water in 5
there.
6 The first one has to do -- the team 7
identified a non-cited violation of very low safety 8
significance, again green, of 10 CFR 50, Appendix B, 9
Criterion 16, Corrective Action, for your failure to 10 take corrective actions to preclude repetition of a 11 significant condition adverse to quality identified in 12 your root cause evaluation. As a part of your 13 collective evaluation you identified a fundamental 14 problem area associated with the Corrective Action 15 Program.
16 Your corrective actions to preclude 17 repetition are supposed to be stand-alone actions that 18 would preclude repetition or prevent recurrence at 19 issue. We found fault with the depth of the actions 20 that you took. Specifically, you utilized a concept 21 of mentors and SMEs to fix a leadership problem in the 22 Corrective Action Program.
23 The team determined that a part of the 24 process which actually does the work of the corrective 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 action process was kind of left wanting in that 1
process. It did not have the level of coaching and 2
mentoring that other parts of the corrective action 3
process had. We came to the conclusion that just 4
those actions being done would not cause 5
sustainability for the improvements that you were 6
making in the corrective action process. So I do want 7
to hold that thought for a minute, because I do have 8
an overall thought of all of these bullets.
9 The second violation is associated with 10 the safety culture fundamental problem area. The NRC 11 team identified -- actually this is a finding of very 12 low safety significance. It was not a direct 13 violation of a regulatory requirement. There was a 14 finding of very low safety significance, green, 15 because you did not adequately implement a corrective 16 action to preclude repetition of the root cause of the 17 issue associated with the safety culture.
18 So your safety culture -- I actually have 19 the root cause written on another slide here. But you 20 took actions to improve the leadership at the site, 21 and you did that by generating Performance Improvement 22 Plans for each one of your supervisors and above up to 23 and including your level at site VP.
24 We found fault with a number of the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 implementation actions associated with those 1
Performance Improvement Plans. Specifically, there --
2 safety culture generally takes three to five, maybe 3
even more years than that to fix. The targeted 4
Performance Improvement Plans were very short order on 5
the term of 30 to 90 days. And again, most of those 6
were closed out by the time that we got on site and we 7
didn't feel that those had enough run time to be able 8
to be effective.
9 And the team also did note, since it 10 involved such a large number of supervisors, the 11 acuity of getting all those actions done with all the 12 supervisors, there were a lot of misses in that.
13 There were some supervisors that didn't know they were 14 on Performance Improvement Plans. There were other 15 supervisors that clerically the wrong name was on the 16 Performance Improvement Plan.
17 So the overall implementation of that 18 product, although we think if implemented properly 19 would certainly gain some traction in that area -- and 20 I know you've taken some actions to reassess and 21 reevaluate and make happen the targeted Performance 22 Improvement Plans successfully, but at the time the 23 team reviewed it they did not -- had very good 24 implementation.
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30 The third one here has to do with the 1
safety relief valve root cause. Again, part of our 2
inspection went back to look at the supplemental 3
inspection associated with the 2013 failure of the 4
Alpha safety relief valve in the plant. And I knew 5
you took a number of runs at what the root cause. Our 6
inspector went through each of your methodologies of 7
trying to determine the root cause of that specific 8
problem, and in each of the cases one of the areas 9
that we actually thought was the root cause was 10 discounted. And specifically that's in the area of 11 shift manager rigor of the operability determination 12 process.
13 So what that basically means is -- and we 14 interviewed the shift manager. The shift manager had 15 a product in front of him that he did not review in 16 detail and approved as being the problem with the 17 safety relief valve and ultimately it was not the 18 problem for the safety relief valve. We believe that 19 had the shift manager reviewed the documentation that 20 he had in front of him and/or caused his shift to add 21 more documentation to really get to the correct 22 answer, it's his accountability to cause the processes 23 to get to the point where it actually fixes the safety 24 relief valve for good. In this case it went a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 different direction and you fixed a different part of 1
the safety relief valve, and we find that is being in 2
violation.
3 Next one is one I know we had mentioned 4
several times before. The team identified a -- flip 5
pages. On August 22nd, 2016 NRC inspectors identified 6
a number of drywell -- this is the primary containment 7
at the plant -- drywell locations where non-seismic 8
equipment was either in contact or in close proximity 9
to the drywell liner. These problems could cause 10 drywell damage during a design-basis seismic event.
11 There were several areas that could not be inspected 12 due to elevated radiation levels normal after a plant 13 shutdown.
14 You wrote four condition reports to 15 address these at a later point in time. When the team 16 came in -- one of the members on the team actually 17 happened to be the one that did that review back in 18 August, and we noted that those four condition reports 19 had been closed out with no actions taken. And being 20 that they were closed out with no actions taken, 21 that's a violation of regulatory requirements. And 22 again, you have to fix that.
23 You wrote new corrective actions. Those 24 are something we will certainly be following up with 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 the next time you have access to the drywell, which 1
will likely be your upcoming outage.
2 The next one has to do with the team 3
identified a non-cited violation of very low safety 4
significance of 10 CFR 50, Appendix B, Criterion 16, 5
Corrective Action, associated with your failure to 6
take timely corrective action for a previously 7
identified condition adverse to quality.
8 Specifically, over a number of years you 9
failed to adequately resolve gasket leakage coming 10 from the Bravo R -- residual heat removal heat 11 exchanger which resulted in continued degradation and 12 leakage from that heat exchanger.
13 We do know that it was not such leakage 14 that it would cause a radiation concern or a 15 operability concern. It was not at that level of 16 leakage. However, this component is a component that 17 is not expected to leak in the location that it's at.
18 And over those number of years the engineering code 19 and the actions you took to temporarily fix the 20 leakage by injecting sealant into it, that's 21 considered in our process as a temporary repair. You 22 consider those permanent repairs. And they didn't 23 permanently repair because it did continue to leak.
24 So we expected that over the course of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 utilizing the Corrective Action Program that would 1
cause that problem to get permanently fixed, and it 2
did not. So that's a violation of the Corrective 3
Action Program.
4 A couple more here and then we'll have 5
some dialogue.
6 So the team identified again a non-cited 7
violation of very low safety significance, green, of 8
10 CFR 50, Appendix B, Criterion 16, again Corrective 9
Action, because you failed to implement adequate 10 corrective actions to address a procedure quality 11 issue that was identified during your apparent cause 12 evaluation associated with your Recovery Plan.
13 Specifically, the apparent cause 14 identified a wide range or a broader range of 15 procedures that had procedure quality issues.
16 However, when you went to take the corrective actions, 17 you limited that scope of what you were going to work 18 on based off of the risk associated with those 19 procedures not being of high quality.
20 There's a couple angles to that. One is 21 the cause does not match what you did, okay, or what 22 you planned to do. But there's another piece of that 23 that many of these procedures are tech spec-required 24 procedures and under Regulating Guide 1.33 you are 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 expected to maintain procedures. So there's not an 1
avenue to restrict what you're going to fix in those 2
procedures just based off of risk and then not do the 3
other piece of it.
4 So that was a -- that's kind of a dual 5
thing there. You didn't match what you did in your 6
own corrective actions, but there is a regulatory 7
piece that when you identify a problem with a 8
procedure, you're compelled to fix it.
9 And then finally, at least on this slide 10 finally, the inspectors identified a finding of very 11 low safety significance associated with your failure 12 to appropriately -- to provide appropriate corrective 13 actions to preclude repetition.
14 Specifically, there was a scram that 15 occurred in September of 2016 that was as a result of 16 a feedwater regulating valve failure. Ultimately 17 there was a cause for that, a mechanical cause of some 18 work that was done on that feedwater regulating valve 19 in the past. That was again repaired before you 20 restarted the unit.
21 When you did your root cause associated 22 with that, it identified an issue with the work 23 planning process where some individuals were not 24 knowledgeable of some components of the work planning 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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35 process. And it appeared in the root cause there was 1
a knowledge issue. You took actions to change a 2
procedure.
3 We're still taking a look at one aspect of 4
that, but again it comes down to the corrective action 5
system matching what you said the cause was with what 6
you actually did to go fix it. And as it sits right 7
now you had a knowledge issue and you fixed a 8
procedure issue. So it still sits right now as a 9
corrective action violation.
10 So the one thing -- part of the reason I 11 racked it up on one slide like this is these are all 12 corrective action system performance deficiencies. So 13 the one question I do have before we continue with 14 this is why was the team able to identify so many 15 performance deficiencies associated with your 16 corrective action program including actions that were 17 designed to improve your Corrective Action Program?
18 So you ultimately had a corrective action in here that 19 was designed to fix the -- or to improve your 20 Corrective Action Program and that was identified by 21 the team as having a problem.
22 So again, this is a fairly high percentage 23 of the things we found, 7 out of 11 issues related 24 directly to your Corrective Action Program, which was 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 one of your fundamental problem areas. And I wondered 1
if you had some insight and maybe some actions that 2
you've taken on that.
3 PARTICIPANT: Mr. Jackson, the analysis 4
was very thorough. We engaged some of the industry's 5
top performers in conducting those causal analyses.
6 Within that, those very complex analyses, we have an 7
opportunity to go back and take a look at that and 8
figure out exactly what the reason for those 9
shortfalls are.
10 What we've done is we've immediately 11 applied the lessons learned of those specific 12 shortfalls with our dedicated cause analysts to make 13 sure for ongoing causal analyses we understand what 14 kind of mechanistic issues occurred as a result of 15 that, but we need to do some additional review to 16 determine how we received those high number of misses.
17 PARTICIPANT: And to further just kind of 18 amplify that, we're doing that in a very formal 19 structured way so that we get to the right place in 20 terms of taking the right and appropriate corrective 21 actions to address those very gaps.
22 MR. JACKSON: Anything further on that?
23 (No audible response.)
24 MR. JACKSON: Okay. Go to the next slide.
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37 Okay. The team agrees with Entergy's root cause for 1
safety culture. Your root cause identified Pilgrim 2
leaders not holding themselves and subordinates 3
accountable to high performance standards.
4 The NRC independent safety culture 5
assessment determined that the station has made some 6
improvements with respect to safety culture behaviors, 7
however the team did note some differences between the 8
results of our focus group discussions and field 9
observations.
10 And it's interesting, it may be due in 11 part due to a frame of reference issue, because one of 12 the aspects of safety culture is conducting 13 benchmarking and looking out beyond your site 14 boundaries and see what other fleets or your own fleet 15 are doing as the industry moves forward. It appears 16 that not a lot of that has been occurring. Pilgrim 17 only completed 11 formal benchmarking activities since 18 2013 and a number of planned activities were canceled.
19 So there was an indication to the team 20 that there had been incremental improvements, though 21 when you talk to your staff, they were -- it seemed to 22 them like these were huge improvements: the way the 23 leadership now communicated about safety, some of the 24 meetings that you were having on how you conducted 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 work, your work management process. People saw that 1
as being large improvements, however, the team looked 2
at it as those appeared to be smaller incremental 3
improvements. And I think we think the -- partially 4
the reason for that is if they had a concept or a 5
frame of reference that's beyond the Pilgrim 6
boundaries, they would be able to place that in better 7
context. So that was on idea that -- or one result 8
that the independent safety culture review came up 9
with.
10 And I guess we do come up with the fact 11 that there's still much room for improvement in the 12 area of safety culture. One thing that we did 13 identify is I mentioned earlier you did nine causal 14 evaluations associated with your evaluation of the 15 collective evaluation and then you had two more after 16 that. So there was 11 root and apparent causes that 17 were conducted. Ten of the eleven indicated some form 18 of leadership or management shortfalls. So like the 19 one that I wrote up on the screen, many of them look 20 a lot like that.
21 So the team found that in many areas 22 you've utilized -- you've brought the outside to you.
23 You've brought in a cadre of mentors and subject 24 matter experts in certain areas to come in and bring 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 a refreshing or an expert implementation in a number 1
of your different processes. We believe that method 2
is a way to get to an end point with that. It will 3
improve. And it apparently -- we have seen improved 4
performance. However, we do believe that this method 5
is in need of further evaluation for expansion into 6
other problem areas.
7 I know you've had issues here recently and 8
operations issues, which I'll talk about in a second, 9
and issues in security. It would appear that the 10 focus right now, at least in your evaluation after 11 this inspection is complete -- you would need to 12 clearly capture and use the mentor and SME feedback 13 and determine if that -- at any given time is that 14 tool the right tool to be using -- used in a given 15 performance area at the site and is it appropriate to 16 either expand or contract as time goes on?
17 And that is going to be key, utilizing the 18 subject matter expert feedback and mentor feedback 19 coupled with your own assessments, and frankly, as we 20 move forward, our enhanced oversight to determine if 21 that needs any check and adjust as time goes on.
22 So I guess the one question we would have 23 is if it takes three to five years or so to move 24 safety culture and you're utilizing these subject 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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40 matter experts as a method to improve overall site 1
leadership in that area -- we did notice in your 2
Recovery Plan that there are plans in there that as 3
you do effectiveness reviews you would demobilize 4
mentors and subject matter experts in -- frankly in 5
the fairly near term as you go forward if those 6
individuals assessments are satisfactory. Is that 7
something that as a result of the discussions we've 8
that this inspection -- is that something that's being 9
looked at a rethink?
10 Because again, safety culture was one of 11 the leadership areas. It takes a period of time to 12 impact that. It would seem to be longer than the 13 period of time it looked like you were going to 14 potentially demobilize some of these subject matter 15 experts and mentors.
16 PARTICIPANT: It is an area that's under 17 review. It's also caused us to go back and look at 18 the specific attributes of those effectiveness reviews 19 and make sure that we convince ourselves and are able 20 to display that we've got sustainability captured in 21 those as well.
22 MR. JACKSON: Okay. Next slide. We had 23 some observations in the area of licensed operator 24 standards. It's interesting, because the -- I just 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 observed a couple weeks ago your initial licensed 1
operator class. They were very well trained. They 2
performed very well in the simulator and in the plant 3
doing the evolutions as a part of their licensed 4
operator exam and they performed well on the written 5
exam. So your Training Department was able to very 6
clearly move these people over 18 months to be 7
competent operators.
8 We also see the same thing in the re-9 qualification arena of your current licensed 10 operators. So we believe there's a demonstrated 11 ability to safely operate and respond to off-normal 12 and emergency situations.
13 But what we did see was some things that 14 were a little more esoteric. What we're used to 15 seeing at column 1-type performers is a leadership 16 role amongst operations where they cause -- if another 17 organization is faltering, they utilize their 18 leadership to cause that organization to come into 19 alignment.
20 And we noted issues that needed further 21 improvement in the area of operability determinations 22 as we discussed with the violation. Compliance with 23 technical specification and reportability 24 requirements. There were some reportability issues 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 that we discussed. And there's an issue with 1
benchmarking as far as reaching out again outside the 2
confines of Pilgrim. And then holding all station 3
groups accountable.
4 And we did notice -- again at column 1 5
plans we noticed some things like some operators 6
leaning on the bench boards. We noted some alarm 7
control-type things that would not have met Entergy 8
standards. And then frankly, we were in doing an 9
observation and we heard a loud noise in the back of 10 the control room and we could say whether it was a 11 loud conversation or whether we heard laughter or 12 whatever. Typically we don't hear that in level 1 or 13 column 1-type control rooms.
14 So I know one of the conversations that we 15 previously had is -- and I want to lead with this, is 16 it is my belief that your shift managers, your cadre 17 of your senior leaders on site that are the senior 18 licensed operators frankly got you into column 4 and 19 that they are going to be the group that's going to 20 get you out of column 4.
21 And it was not my sense when we were on 22 site that they think that way, that they hold the 23 accountability that they own the rest of these 24 processes that have kind of gone awry and have led to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 a need for a significant improvement at Pilgrim. And 1
we did not notice that level of ownership in the 2
Operations Department. And you can see that in the 3
conduct of control room activities. So we can talk 4
about that more in a second, but I wanted to end with 5
that as far as the licensed operator standards piece 6
of this.
7 So in
- summary, we did note some 8
improvements, and again we were able to work with the 9
resident staff and really be able to put those 10 improvements in context.
11 Your plant staff is competent. Okay? And 12 that's not just -- that's beyond the control room.
13 Your plant staff is competent in station operation.
14 We did note some incremental improvements as the team 15 conducted their business. And there's still a 16 significant amount of improvement needed to exit the 17 column 4 performance.
18 Additionally, a strong focus by you will 19 be needed to further drive performance at the site to 20 improve. Further improvement plans as you go through 21 and generate a revision to your Recovery Plan, that 22 will be -- that will form the basis I know of -- when 23 we put together the confirmatory action letter and 24 it's signed out by Mr. Dorman, that will be a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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44 fundamental piece of that that we get to the same 1
place with what that plan looks like. And again, 2
there will be continued enhanced NRC oversight as we 3
go forward to make sure that those improvements are 4
driving you to a higher level of performance.
5 MR. DORMAN: Thanks, Don. Let me just add 6
a piece of perspective to that. Don talked about the 7
makeup of his team. He had senior resident inspectors 8
and resident inspectors from roughly one out of every 9
five nuclear power plants in the country.
10 The team observed in their discussions 11 with your staff that your staff recognizes improvement 12 that has been made at the station in the past year, 13 but I would emphasize that these inspectors who work 14 at other nuclear power plants every day saw a gap 15 between where you are and what they see every day. So 16 when Don talks about getting out and benchmarking, I 17 think it will be helpful for your staff to see how 18 those standards are applied in other locations.
19 We will be looking for a revised Recovery 20 Plan from you that will address the findings that Don 21 has laid out here. As Don indicated, from that we 22 will issue a confirmatory action letter. I would like 23 to get that out by the end of the spring, so we will 24 look for your revised Recovery Plan in a time frame to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 support that.
1 In the meantime, our enhanced oversight 2
will include, as Art indicated, maintaining a third 3
resident at the site for the foreseeable future. We 4
will be doing some enhanced oversight during the 5
upcoming outage focused on the maintenance activities 6
and the work management practices to make sure that 7
the work that is needed to be done to continue to 8
maintain safe operation of this station will be done.
9 With that, let me turn it to you to 10 provide your response and remarks.
11 MR. DENT: Thank you, Mr. Dorman. First 12 of all, thank you very much for the opportunity to 13 present this evening. We do appreciate it. And as 14 far as the inspection is concerned, on behalf of this 15 station I'll tell you we're completely aligned with 16 the outcome of the inspection and we take full 17 ownership of the results of the inspection.
18 And I think, Mr. Jackson, what we're going 19 to talk about, we're not going to -- I wasn't planning 20 on going necessarily point by point of the comments 21 that you made, but the perspective of the team is 22 very, very valued and we've taken a lot of action 23 already based on the team's input. And I think you're 24 going to hear a lot of the points you brought up 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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46 touched on as we go through this.
1 So with that said, what we'd like to 2
cover, with your concurrence of course, is a review of 3
three of our site focus areas and the relationship 4
between the fundamental problems that you talked about 5
and the problem areas. And these are the fundamental 6
problems and problem areas that we determined as a 7
result of our diagnostic assessment of our performance 8
early in 2016.
9 Before getting into the focus areas 10 though, I just wanted to state that first of all we 11 appreciate and very much agree with the NRC's 12 conclusion that Pilgrim is safe to operate. And 13 frankly, if I felt we weren't safe to operate, we 14 wouldn't be operating. And that sentiment is aligned 15 all the way through the Entergy organization. And I 16 think that's been demonstrated in the not too distant 17 past here within the Entergy fleet.
18 So that conclusion, frankly, is a result 19 of the 600-plus women and men that make up the Pilgrim 20 team that dedicate themselves day in, day out to the 21 protection of the health and safety of the public. So 22 all of us from me through the whole organization have 23 very much a vested interest in the safe operation of 24 the plant for a variety of reasons.
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47 So that said, the three areas we'd like to 1
discuss, again with your concurrence, are around safe 2
operations, nuclear safety culture and finally 3
equipment reliability. So if there are no objections?
4 (No audible response.)
5 MR. DENT: Okay. Turn it over to John 6
McDonald.
7 MR. McDONALD: Thank you, John. An 8
important facet of our improving safety culture is the 9
incorporation of risk management into all aspects of 10 daily operation. Our decision making is based upon 11 consequence and not probability.
Therefore, 12 regardless of the probability of occurrence, if the 13 outcome or consequence is unacceptable to our plant or 14 our team, then we will not tolerate the risk.
15 Our primary focus is risk elimination.
16 This team has consistently demonstrated a conservative 17 bias to maneuver or shut down the plant in response to 18 equipment performance or in order to eliminate the 19 potential risk of a severe winter storm.
20 Additionally, our extended condition in 21 corrective maintenance during our maneuvers and plant 22 shutdown has improved our plant equipment performance 23 as well as safety.
24 Our operating crews have consistently 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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48 maneuvered the plant with precision during plant power 1
maneuvers. And additionally, as stated, the crews 2
have responded with precision as well as proficiency 3
in response to plant transients. Notwithstanding we 4
concur that increased operations leadership is 5
essential to our improvement and the shift manager key 6
-- is key to driving peer behaviors as well as plant 7
performance.
8 We've developed an Operational Excellence 9
Plan with a significant focus on developing shift 10 managers and station leaders. This plan includes 11 recognized industry mentors for each shift manager as 12 well as an aggressive benchmark plan such that each 13 shift manager will visit an industry top performer to 14 see personally best practices and to internalize a 15 vision of excellence or what good looks like.
16 Any questions?
17 (No audible response.)
18 MR. DENT: No? Okay. Thank you.
19 MR. McDONALD: I'd like to turn the 20 presentation over to Dave Noyes, the recovery manager, 21 to discuss nuclear safety culture.
22 MR. NOYES: Diagnostic analysis recognized 23 nuclear safety culture as a key driver of the plant 24 decline beginning in 2011. We made a significant 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 leadership changes in the 2013 and early 2014 time 1
frame. Those have been supported by more recent 2
training for all personnel and the positive influence 3
of industry expertise within the last year.
4 We do see some progress in our cultural 5
improvement through improved leadership, but we 6
understand that sustained culture change takes time 7
and continued enforcement.
8 Current workforce at Pilgrim has 9
demonstrated ownership and aligned around the concept 10 of finishing strong in the last two-and-a-half years 11 of operation. We are as a team using communication 12 effectively to explain the basis for our decisions and 13 promote alignment.
14 Through the 95003 process we've learned 15 the need to individualize those Performance 16 Improvement Plans and also to extend them to a 17 duration that will ensure sustainability, and we've 18 begun to make those changes already.
19 PARTICIPANT: Is that -- how are you 20 extending that beyond the leadership? I think the 21 leadership is a critical part of it, but is that then 22 expected to trickle down into the organization, or how 23 are you engaging the organization to penetrate those 24 culture improvements deeper into the organization?
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50 MR. NOYES: Well, they're done through the 1
leadership, through the one on one, through trickle-2 down methodology, but then in specific areas like risk 3
and decision making and Corrective Action Program 4
implementation we're using mentors to physically 5
target and provide feedback in the field, in our work 6
control meetings, in places where those decisions get 7
made.
8 MR. LORSON: Mr. Dent, you mentioned that 9
you were aligned with the team's findings. We 10 understand that Entergy went through quite a
11 significant effort to do the apparent cause 12 evaluations to determine your fundamental problem 13 areas and to take corrective actions. Were you 14 surprised by the number and the types of findings that 15 the team identified?
16 MR. DENT: Well, I'll tell you, Mr.
17 Lorson; I was going to mention this in my closing 18 remarks, the team that came in was a very, very high-19 powered team. The NRC team I'm talking about. Very, 20 very experienced, very wide breadth of experience.
21 And I don't know if "surprise" is the right word, but 22 value-added across the board in terms of the insights 23 and perspective that they found.
24 So I was disappointed. I thought that --
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51 and I still think to this day we were very 1
comprehensive in our assessment and obviously we could 2
have done better.
3 MR.
LORSON:
Given that you were 4
disappointed with the team findings, I think just a 5
minute ago Mr. Noyes indicated that you were going to 6
go back and further review and revise your corrective 7
action documents to address the team findings. Why 8
would we be confident that your second effort to 9
address the team findings and to prevent recurrence of 10 some of the problems we've seen in the past will be 11 successful?
12 PARTICIPANT: Well, first of all, the 13 NRC's going to have a review of the document before it 14 goes into the confirmatory action letter, so I 15 wouldn't be the least bit surprised if we get some 16 significant feedback one way or another on that. And 17 I think the key piece of this is really having robust 18 effectiveness reviews in place.
19 In the viewpoint of us -- from our 20 perspective with the effectiveness review is it isn't 21 an effectiveness review to say that this is done, 22 we've completed it and check the box. It's about 23 checking and adjusting as we go forward.
24 MR. LORSON: Is there anything you plan to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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52 do differently going forward as you revise your 1
Corrective Action Program?
2 PARTICIPANT: So what we'll do is use more 3
diverse teams as part of the analysis, but I think 4
maybe a contributor to the gaps that we saw in the 5
causal analysis was the non-traditional approach to 6
subject matter experts, which was different than 7
analysts were used to in their evaluation of this type 8
of issue at other stations. So I think the key is 9
going to be able to get additional diversity, both 10 plant knowledge and independent cause evaluator 11 expertise engaged in that revised analysis.
12 MR. LORSON: Okay. Thank you.
13 MR. NOYES: Okay. For the last two 14 bullets there, training to improve performance and 15 shaping leader behaviors, I'd like to start by saying 16 the site strategically uses training to improve 17 performance.
18 We take learnings from many different 19 sources and utilize a rigorous process to analyze, 20 design and deliver effective training.
The 21 opportunities we get are given to us via many 22 different avenues. One, the NRC inspection that we 23 just went through, senior resident and resident 24 inspector question, external and internal experts, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 focused observations, day to day work activities that 1
discover gaps or better ways of doing business.
2 We take those, we enter them into a 3
rigorous process that they get evaluated and drive 4
future performance, some of which we were just talking 5
about and how it was our causal evaluations going to 6
be different. We've taken information from the team 7
and we're starting to work through corrections to the 8
analysts to make sure that they do it correctly and we 9
review it and approve it with the right rigor.
10 We've taken several of those findings or 11 some of those issues that were brought to us to 12 completion already and started dealing with the SME 13 feedback and mentoring that you discussed. And we've 14 taken and started to drive the way we utilize those in 15 different areas differently.
16 Actions that we took early in the 95003 17 process strengthened our condition report screening 18 and prioritization and that's been recognized by us in 19 our performance improvement measures.
20 We've recognized our benchmarking external 21 to Entergy could have been better. We had a lot of 22 experts come into the site, and based on the findings 23 and the information that you've provided to us, we've 24 already started taking actions to increase our 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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54 benchmarking. I've currently just went to the Salem 1
Power Plant in New Jersey to benchmark safety culture 2
and safety culture monitoring last week -- two weeks 3
ago and found some things that the communication 4
specialist and I went to at that site to watch how 5
they did business and taking some of those back, 6
putting it in a formal report, putting actions in 7
place that will change our behaviors at our site.
8 So we've taken your insights and started running with 9
those.
10 There's many more planned. We are going 11 to benchmark ourselves against the industry in shaping 12 leader behaviors. And we have our shift managers that 13 you described earlier on a benchmarking process where 14 we're going to have two done before the outage and 15 more coming right after our upcoming outage.
16 And I believe the security SME support and 17 the operator SME support is another example of our 18 learning from the things that we've been given over 19 this past journey, I guess. And that's all I had for 20 those two. I'll turn it over to Bruce Chenard.
21 PARTICIPANT: Yes, just really quick, do 22 you -- while we were on site for the three weeks, we 23 did not see a corporate presence there. And some of 24 our team that were involved in the Arkansas Nuclear 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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55 One 95003 saw that as a bit strange because they saw 1
a lot of corporate Entergy fleet people there involved 2
with the inspection. Do you get what you think is 3
your right amount of support from your fleet as far as 4
because
- again, that's another source of 5
benchmarking. You're not alone. You're part of a 6
fleet.
7 PARTICIPANT: Yes, I do. The Corrective 8
Action Program corporate functional area manager has 9
been at our site. I can't say continuously, but a 10 very high rate of return. We've had communication 11 with licensing and other groups. I know operations 12 has gone down to Grand Gulf and other places. And the 13 CFAMs (phonetic) have come back to us to evaluate how 14 we compared to those. So I believe the corporation 15 and the corporate functional area managers are engaged 16 in providing information and what good looks like from 17 their perspective to us also.
18 PARTICIPANT: Yes, one of the things I 19 know was a bit of a head scratcher to us is we did 20 notice that you had -- I can't remember the acronym, 21 but it's NIOS. Is it the nuclear oversight --
22 PARTICIPANT: Independent Oversight.
23 PARTICIPANT: Right. I know they had some 24 observations in your work management area that were 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 risen to one level and then I guess not enough 1
occurred to fix it and it got risen to another level.
2 And I know I'm familiar from my past, but the team was 3
struck by that, that they're not used to seeing your 4
own internal QA organization have to go through 5
several iterations to tell you that you need to 6
improve in a certain area. And I guess it -- that's 7
another avenue of even internal benchmarking that 8
appeared to not be effective in the area of work 9
management. Is there any response to that?
10 PARTICIPANT: Yes, I agree. Actually work 11 management is an entire across-the-site team, however, 12 it falls under my purview. We have been working very 13 hard at developing consistent work management 14 performance. Work management, equipment reliability 15 and safety go hand in hand.
16 PARTICIPANT: Yes, I'm not as concerned 17 about the what you did --
18 PARTICIPANT: So with --
19 PARTICIPANT: -- but listening to an 20 internal organization --
21 (Simultaneous speaking.)
22 PARTICIPANT: With respect to NIOS, we had 23 a lowest level of awareness, which is an elevation.
24 The actions were not adequate to sustain performance.
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57 So the next step is escalation. I don't want to 1
answer on behalf of our independent oversight, but 2
we're very close to resolving those issues at this 3
time and would be within the end of this month or next 4
month for resolution.
5 PARTICIPANT: Thank you.
6 PARTICIPANT: Maybe just to follow on to 7
Don's question, is there some learning that you take 8
from this experience where maybe you weren't as 9
attuned to the NIOS findings as maybe you should have 10 been? Is there something you can do differently going 11 forward so that for future findings you're taking the 12 right actions?
13 PARTICIPANT: Yes, there are always 14 learnings, absolutely. Our response initially was 15 driven by developing measurements to ensure we were 16 improving as opposed to really ensuring our behaviors 17 improved. That's critical. It's a complex process of 18 coming from an activity and planning to predictable 19 and timely completion. And everyone needs to be 20 involved. And we need to ensure our behaviors from 21 cradle to grave are consistent week after week after 22 week. And that's where we needed to change most 23 significantly.
24 PARTICIPANT: Okay.
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58 PARTICIPANT: That answer your question?
1 PARTICIPANT: Yes, it did. Thank you.
2 PARTICIPANT: Yes, thanks.
3 MR. CHENARD: All right. For equipment 4
reliability key drivers in equipment reliability are 5
risk recognition and decision making, which we just 6
previously talked about, John did, the corrective 7
action process which Dave just talked about. And then 8
we have the refueling outage which is coming up, 9
making sure we have the right scope in there and we 10 fix the right equipment. We have our work management 11 process and we have engineering programs. Okay? We 12 at Pilgrim are dedicated to make sure that we achieve 13 excellence in equipment reliability going forward.
14 As far as the refueling outage we worked 15 with the fleet, Entergy fleet, we worked with industry 16 experts when we identified the scope for the refueling 17 outage to make sure that we had the right scope so 18 that we can ensure that we'd run safely for the 19 remainder of plant life.
20 That scope was challenged, like I said, 21 not only from our fleet, but industry people and -- to 22 get that alignment. We also have the resources 23 necessary from the Entergy fleet to ensure that we can 24 accomplish that refueling outage.
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59 For work management our focus has been and 1
always is fixing the right equipment at the right 2
time. So we're working on being proficient in our 3
implementation of our work management process. Our 4
process is sound. We have struggled with our 5
implementation of that process and we're working again 6
to increase our proficiency and to make sure that 7
we're more predictable at the execution week to do 8
work. We have struggled in our implementation in the 9
past as identified by the NIOS finding in the 10 escalation, and we're continuing to develop and work 11 at improving that process.
12 Lastly is the engineering programs. We 13 did significant deep dives in each one of our 14 engineering programs to ensure that we -- each of our 15 programs was sound. And from that we identified 16 improvement areas. And we developed action plans, and 17 we're in the process of completing those action plans.
18 Some are done and others are still in progress. And 19 we have schedules to complete all of them.
20 It's important to understand that Entergy 21 has provided us the resources necessary for Pilgrim 22 Station to run reliably through the end of plant life 23 with safety first.
24 Any questions? Yes?
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60 PARTICIPANT: It would be fair to say that 1
equipment performance at Pilgrim has been challenging 2
if you look at the recent history --
3 MR. CHENARD: Yes.
4 PARTICIPANT: -- and number of events, 5
plant shutdowns and so on and --
6 MR. CHENARD: Absolutely.
7 PARTICIPANT: -- so forth. You discussed 8
some changes to engineering programs that you're 9
looking at.
10 MR. CHENARD: Yes, sir.
11 MR. KLUKAN: You talked about schedules 12 for completion. Can you be a little bit more specific 13 and talk about some specific example of a program 14 improvement that you've identified that's going to 15 allow you to do things differently to give us better 16 confidence that equipment performance will improve in 17 the future?
18 MR. CHENARD: Yes, so in the area of 19 maintenance rule, which is a regulation that we go 20 follow, we identified as part of our assessment there 21 that for some of our non-critical equipment that we 22 weren't always coming to cause when we had failures.
23 In our action plans we're fixing the conditions and 24 then restoring it back into service.
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61 When we have critical equipment fail, our 1
process drives us to a causal analysis. So we found 2
a gap in the way we were implementing the maintenance 3
rule. And we've subsequently closed that gap so that 4
when we have a maintenance rule functional failure, we 5
always determine cause. And then from there we create 6
actions of event recurrence. So just that one little 7
thing allows us to prevent future failures in some of 8
the areas that we've had repeat failures in the past.
9 PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.
10 PARTICIPANT: I'm done.
11 PARTICIPANT: Okay.
12 PARTICIPANT: Hey, yes, just to backtrack 13 a little bit, I was a little slow on the draw with the 14 nuclear independent oversight perspective. John's 15 response notwithstanding; I'll be very blunt and 16 direct, we -- when we -- when the issue was elevated, 17 we were too narrowly focused on correcting the issue.
18 What we should have done is you get -- you receive an 19 elevation from nuclear independent oversight. That's 20 not the end of the world. That's what nuclear 21 independent oversight is there for. You enter the 22 issue into the Corrective Action Program. You develop 23 an action plan and you implement the plan.
24 What we failed to do, two things: One is 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 the actions were too narrowly focused. And two, back 1
to your point earlier, Mr. Jackson, as far as the 2
fleet is concerned, it's a two-way street with the 3
fleet. We had the opportunity to leverage the fleet 4
into the review of our plan to help us make sure that 5
the plan was wide enough and broad enough to correct 6
the performance problems we were having.
7 So once it was escalated -- unfortunately 8
it had to be escalated. Issues should never be 9
escalated. Once it was, that is what we did. So just 10 to give you my perspective of your question. Does 11 that make sense?
12 PARTICIPANT: Yes, it does.
13 PARTICIPANT: Okay.
14 PARTICIPANT: Okay. If I could just to 15 wrap up here, just to reiterate what we just covered, 16 what we attempted to cover was our site focus areas 17 and that relationship between the site focus areas and 18 the fundamental problems and problem areas that were 19 identified during our comprehensive assessment and 20 diagnostic of our performance. That's important 21 because those site focus areas are what we focused the 22 whole site on from an alignment perspective. That's 23 why I bring that up.
24 And we did feel; and I mentioned this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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63 earlier, we were very comprehensive. We did a lot of 1
work to get to the core and to the root of the 2
problems. Clearly with the NRC team coming in here, 3
the NRC team; I'll put it in a positive, provided some 4
really, really good insight and perspective. And you 5
mentioned earlier the -- a couple times the 6
adjustments to the Recovery Plan. That's in progress.
7 We're talking that insight, we're taking the feedback, 8
we're taking the results of the findings and 9
violations and reforming the Recovery Plan based on 10 that input.
11 In fact, we have taken a number of 12 actions. Right now one of the bigger ones you 13 mentioned, Mr. Jackson, around ops performance.
14 Clearly, you tie ops performance and ops leadership of 15 the station. And to answer your question, no, we 16 didn't paint the picture with the shift managers that 17 you're what got us to column 4 and you're what's going 18 to get us out of column 4. So it's that -- having 19 that picture of excellence with the shift manager.
20 So you kind of couple that with the 21 benchmarking. And it all goes hand in hand. It 22 really does. So we're taking aggressive actions.
23 We've already seen a significant step change in 24 performance. The shift managers are grabbing hold of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 it and really taking ownership of the feedback.
1 So now to be clear, from our perspective 2
we were not satisfied with our performance. We don't 3
feel like we're -- we need to be. We have no 4
illusions that we've arrived or -- but I will tell you 5
that we've been working aggressively on improvement 6
for performance for some time now. If you go back to 7
mid-2013 time frame, objectively, subjectively there's 8
substantial evidence that the performance improvement 9
is steady and sustainable.
10 And I
think with the NRC team's 11 perspective when we leverage the Operations 12 Department, we'll take the angle and trajectory of 13 improvement and greatly increase it. I feel very 14 confident that that's what we're on the eve of in 15 addition to the other feedback.
16 We intend; and I know we've kind of 17 alluded to this, but we intend -- and our viewpoint 18 is, as Victor McCree mentioned to me when he was on 19 site visiting, the viewpoint of the station is to run 20 through the tape on June 1st, 2019 from a performance 21 perspective. So we intend to continue to drive to --
22 we're not looking for regulatory compliance. What 23 we're looking for is industry excellence. And that's 24 our target and that's what we've been driving to.
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65 And I'll tell you, we've been getting from 1
the onset, from 2013, tremendous support from the 2
fleet, tremendous support from the Entergy Corporation 3
all the way up to the CEO of the business. And I 4
think our outage -- if you look at our outage budget, 5
the capital budget and the improvements we're making 6
this outage, it doesn't -- it's not indicative of a 7
plant that's shutting down in two years.
8 So I do feel strongly and our actions do 9
demonstrate our commitment and recognizing that we do 10 have work to do.
11 So with that said, any other questions 12 we'll be glad to try to answer.
13 PARTICIPANT: Any other questions?
14 PARTICIPANT: John, one of the key aspects 15 that cuts across all these different areas you 16 discussed is accountability at the site. And the site 17 has frankly struggled to make the staff and management 18 team accountable to make sure that the -- your staff 19 does what they say they're going to do at a real basic 20 level. How do you guys plan to address that?
21 PARTICIPANT: Yes, I think -- thank you 22 for that question. I think that the centerpiece of 23 where we're going with this; we hadn't talked about it 24 in the actions in terms of work management, is really 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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66 making work management the centerpiece of driving 1
accountability, because that's an all-in, as we 2
mentioned a, quote, "team sport," as well as CAP.
3 If you look at CAP, we've been driving 4
accountability in the Corrective Action Program and 5
we're seeing performance improvement. But that 6
broader work management process where the entire 7
station plays into that is really the centerpiece of 8
where we're looking to -- we got that feedback 9
resoundingly from the team. We implemented an 10 accountability model several years ago. We've been 11 leveraging that. I think we took that to a certain 12 point and it's kind of levelized out here. So we need 13 to refresh things to continue to drive accountability.
14 Does that answer your question?
15 PARTICIPANT: It does. Thank you.
16 PARTICIPANT: Okay. Thank you.
17 MR. KLUKAN: Okay, thank you, everyone.
18 Welcome back. Just a few comments before we begin 19 with the second half of the meeting. First of all, I 20 apologize regarding the snacks. I should have said to 21 the best of my knowledge and belief there were snacks 22 for sale, but apparently there weren't when I said 23 there were. So sorry about that.
24 As I noted, as part of my introductory 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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67 remarks, the speaking order will be determined by the 1
numbers I pull from this container. The intent of 2
which is that the speaker order be at random. When 3
your number is called, please queue up to the aisle 4
microphone you will see in the middle between the two 5
sections of chairs. If you cannot, for whatever 6
reason, come to the aisle microphone. A microphone 7
will be brought to you.
8 As we are recording this meeting for the 9
purposes of creating a transcript, I would ask you, 10 politely ask you that you please state and potentially 11 spell your name if you so desire, before you begin 12 with your remarks, just so it makes it easier for the 13 transcriptionist later on.
14 As I mentioned earlier, again, I just want 15 to remind you there's no prohibition against trading 16 or donating tickets. However, both individuals, the 17 person donating the ticket and the person receiving it 18 must be present at the time when the number is called.
19 You can't leave your ticket with someone else and then 20 leave the meeting.
21 In an effort to give as many people as 22 possible an opportunity to speak this evening, please 23 limit yourself to three minutes when speaking.
24 Positioned at the edge of the stage you see here is a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 clock that will count down the three minutes for each 1
speaker. At the three minute mark I will politely ask 2
you to conclude. You will also hear a buzzing a noise 3
or beep, whatever you want to call it.
4 We have over 60 people signed up to speak 5
this evening. What that means is this. It's unlikely 6
that we will be able to get to all of them by the 7
established meeting end time at 9:15. Know that, 8
however, the NRC staff will remain after the meeting 9
and have individual discussions out in the hallway by 10 the entrance.
11 Before we begin with public speakers, I 12 would like to give elected officials an opportunity to 13 give prepared remarks. Note that I not hold elected 14 officials to the three minute time limit.
15 So I would like to begin first with Mr.
16 D'Angelo who is a representative of United States 17 Senator Elizabeth Warren's office. So if you would, 18 please queue to the microphone. Thank you.
19 MR. D'ANGELO: Hi. Jon D'Angelo, Senator 20 Elizabeth Warren's Southeastern Mass.
Regional 21 Director. And I'm just going to read a prepared 22 statement on behalf of the Senator.
23 Senator Warren remains deeply concerned by 24 Entergy's public safety record at the Pilgrim Nuclear 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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69 Power Station. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must 1
listen to the voices of the residents of Southeastern 2
Massachusetts, hear their concerns, and hold Entergy 3
accountable by insisting they fully comply with 4
critical safety standards. Entergy's repeated failure 5
to adequately address equipment problems has placed 6
Pilgrim in a Category 4, one step away from an ordered 7
shut down. It's clear the company is focusing on 8
their efforts on profit over safety and Pilgrim must 9
not be allowed to stagger and stumble towards a 2019 10 shut down.
11 (Applause.)
12 The risks are far too high. And the NRC 13 must demand that Entergy ensure the safe operation of 14 Pilgrim or step in to shut the plant down. Thank you.
15 (Applause.)
16 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next we 17 have Ms. Rory Clark, who is the representative for 18 Senator Ed Markey.
19 MS. CLARK: Hi, there. My name is Rory 20 Clark. I am Regional Director for Senator Ed Markey 21 for the 4th and 9th Congressional Districts. And I've 22 brought along with me a statement that the Senator 23 wanted me to read this evening.
24 When the NRC unintentionally released its 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 preliminary inspection report for Pilgrim Nuclear 1
Plant, the public finally learned that there was a 2
safety culture problem that "a bunch of talking 3
probably won't fix." Yet, Entergy has continued with 4
its empty promises.
5 When violations of safety rules were 6
discovered, Entergy would put employees on a 90-day 7
improvement plan consisting of three 30-minute minutes 8
with their bosses.
9 Now as the NRC prepares its final report, 10 it wants to reassure the public that these robust 11 conversations which will now occur for longer than 90 12 days will be enough to fix pervasive safety problems 13 at Pilgrim. Those include safety culture problems 14 such as supervisors on targeted improvement plans, not 15 knowing that they were on those plans, as well as 16 technical issues such as leaks in reactors, steam 17 isolation valves which prevent radioactive release 18 into the environment. But even as the NRC 19 acknowledges that Entergy does not yet have an 20 appropriate plan of action to ensure that identified 21 safety issues will not happen again.
22 Massachusetts residents, especially those 23 residing near Pilgrim, deserve to know that Entergy 24 and the NRC have plans in place that will ensure 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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71 public safety and reverse course for one of the most 1
troubled nuclear power plants in the country.
2 Until Entergy shows it has a detailed plan 3
of action, the public will lack that assurance. I 4
urge Entergy to support its hard-working staff with 5
the resources necessary to run this plant safely.
6 Entergy's initial steps towards safety are still 7
overwhelmingly insufficient to guarantee the safety of 8
our residents. Thank you.
9 (Applause.)
10 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next we 11 have Mr. Michael Jackman of Congressman Bill Keating's 12 office.
13 MR. JACKMAN: Thank you. I have a 14 statement from the Congressman. Thank you for the 15 opportunity to address you at tonight's annual 16 assessment meeting. Once again, it is encouraging to 17 see the community represented here tonight to 18 demonstrate their concerns regarding the safe 19 management and oversight of Pilgrim Nuclear Power 20 Station.
21 Unfortunately, the House voting schedule 22 prevents me from being here in person, but I wanted to 23 restate my opinion that the NRC must place the station 24 under the most rigorous scrutiny in order to improve 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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72 the safety culture at the plant. In addition, Entergy 1
must be required to operationalize adequate corrective 2
action programs to maximize the safety of residents of 3
Plymouth and surrounding communities.
4 At yesterday's government-to-government 5
presentation, NRC staff rightly called into question 6
Entergy's commitment to safety culture. As a licensed 7
operator, Entergy must prove itself worthy of the 8
trust of the Federal Government and the people it 9
serves and it needs to do this every day, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a 10 day, 7 days a week. It can only do this by having in 11 place a safety conscious work environment where every 12 employee is invested in the safe operation of the 13 plant and feels like his or her work has the ultimate 14 goal of preserving the safety of the public, not the 15 bottom line of Entergy's shareholders.
16 The finding of this annual assessment 17 letter which keeps Pilgrim in Column 4 due to long-18 standing issues of low to moderate safety significance 19 indicate that the commitment to safety has not been 20 met by Entergy management.
21 I call upon the NRC to maintain its level 22 of oversight at PNPS and target its assessments of the 23 plant to improved safety procedures and protocols.
24 Entergy must be held accountable for the deficiencies 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 identified in this assessment and the other on-going 1
inspections and corrective action must be taken. The 2
safety of the people of Massachusetts depends on it.
3 Thank you.
4 (Applause.)
5 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Now we will hear 6
from State Senator Vinnie Demacedo.
7 MR. DEMACEDO: Thank you and thank you for 8
the opportunity to say a few words. I didn't know 9
what to expect in regards to when Entergy was put in 10 this 95003 column. It was certainly my hope at the 11 time when this happened that the NRC was as you 12 shared, was going to spend 12,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> and we knew 13 that Entergy was obviously in a position to take this 14 very seriously and we heard some estimates of $40 15 million in expense to meet the standards. And I had 16 certainly had hoped that at this particular juncture, 17 what we would have found was you know what, you were 18 in Category 4, great job. You put everything together 19 and now you've moved out of Category 4. Or you would 20 have come back and said, you know with all due 21 respect, we are in Category 5 and we're closing down.
22 (Applause.)
23 However, what we're hearing today and what 24 I've heard today and I was trying to listen very 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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74 carefully, adequate. We've heard adequate, your 1
concerns about a safety culture. And that certainly 2
doesn't give one an incredible amount of confidence in 3
that this adequate moving forward. And so maybe I had 4
a misunderstanding of what this category again -- as 5
we all know, I'm not a nuclear engineer and I don't do 6
what you do. And we have to rely on you, the experts.
7 And I appreciate the 12,000 hours0 days <br />0 hours <br />0 weeks <br />0 months <br /> of time that you 8
spent looking at this.
9 With that being said, I have been spending 10 a great deal of time on this whole concept of 11 decommissioning and what's going to happen when this 12 plant closes. We have a significant amount of spent 13 fuel rods that are going to have to be moved to dry 14 cask storage.
15 (Applause.)
16 And it's always been my desire that that 17 would happen very quickly. At one meeting we were at 18 and it wasn't the last one, but I think it was the one 19 before, you had shared with us that Entergy was in a 20 position with the decommissioning fund to do what they 21 call prompt decommissioning. And because we also know 22 that because of the NRC rules, they could have gone 23 into safe store for 60 years. That is, just to make 24 it clear, the community does not want that.
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75 (Applause.)
1 And we know that there is now some 2
interest in the company AREVA and NorthStar with this 3
joint venture. What kind of confidence can we have 4
that this company, obviously it's going to be a 5
transfer of license, what type of confidence can we 6
have that the money is adequate to do what we hope to 7
do and I hope you're going to say that if this venture 8
is successful and it moves forward that they will, in 9
fact, do prompt decommissioning and so that plant 10 won't stay in safe store and just moth balled. But 11 that it will be done in a way that is just not 12 adequate, but industry excellence I think is what I'm 13 hoping for.
14 (Applause.)
15 So to that extent I really -- and we've 16 had this conversation, but I really would like to hear 17 from you and to the public a confidence. Because as 18 you
- know, the legislature just created the 19 Decommissioning Commission. I know that sounds crazy, 20 but -- and the Governor just put $120,000, 21 21 stakeholders from every aspect of government in 22 different areas and we want to make sure that this is 23 done to the highest level of competence and moves 24 forward in a safe and efficient and hopefully a speedy 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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76 manner to get what I've -- and I've shared this 1
before, to get that property back to virgin soil and 2
hopefully back on the tax rolls for the Town of 3
Plymouth and the surrounding region.
4 So I hope that you can at least respond to 5
-- you shared my concern and also respond to the fact 6
in regards to this decommissioning and how quickly can 7
this happen and are you supportive and do you foresee 8
prompt decommissioning as opposed to safe store if 9
this new venture is successful?
10 (Applause.)
11 PARTICIPANT: Thank you, Senator. Let me 12 start with the adequate piece. It was mentioned in 13 the conversation earlier, the resident inspectors from 14 one out of five other plants in the country, Don 15 canvassed his team before they left the site on the 16 question of safe operation going forward. And the 17 team had the view and I value the experience that they 18 brought to that in assessing that. Our management 19 team in the region looked at this. We looked at the 20
-- if you look at -- I think Art mentioned in his 21 presentation the performance indicators for the 22 station were all green with margin throughout 2016.
23 What some of those indicators are measuring is the 24 reliability and availability of things like the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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77 emergency A/C power supplies, the heat removal 1
systems, the residual heat removal systems. So those 2
-- reliability of those systems throughout 2016 3
support that conclusion of safety.
4 So adequate is a term that's in our 5
authorizing legislation. The Commission defines what 6
adequate is by its regulations and by its oversight 7
process. Adequate for nuclear is a high standard.
8 It's not what the word commonly means to us. So I 9
would offer that the station has demonstrated 10 reliability. Don's licensing experts have observed 11 the ability of those operators to put the plant in a 12 safe condition when something happens that warrants 13 it. Those all contribute to that conclusion.
14 Let me go briefly to the decommissioning 15 aspect. And I would emphasize that the conversation 16 that we've just had about improving the culture at the 17 station matters whether they operate or they're 18 decommissioning. The Commission's Safety Policy 19 statement is addressed to not just operating reactors, 20 but to everything that we license, so that improvement 21 needs to happen regardless of whether the station 22 continues to operate or not.
23 As to the question of the prompt 24 decommissioning, I think that's going to be and we'll 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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78 follow what happens with Entergy's conversations with 1
NorthStar. They're a little bit further advanced on 2
that with Vermont Yankee. They actually have a 3
license transfer proposal. We have a say in that.
4 We'll look at the technical qualifications of the 5
company to do the work and we'll look at the financial 6
qualifications of the company under the terms of the 7
deal to accomplish that work and bring the 8
decommissioning through to license termination is the 9
end of that process for us. And license termination, 10 we'll be doing independent oversight of their site 11 surveys that verify that they have cleaned up all the 12 radioactive material on the site.
13 So the question of the prompt piece, I 14 think the business model for AREVA NorthStar is to do 15 it promptly. Their business model is that they can do 16 it within the available decommissioning trust funds.
17 They can do it in a way that meets the requirements, 18 and they want to get it done and move on. So that's 19 a -- so I think that there's a likelihood that if that 20 process is followed, you will have a license holder at 21 that point who will be motivated to do a prompt 22 decommissioning. But ultimately, when that happens, 23 they will provide post-shut down decommissioning 24 activities report to the Commission and that will lay 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 out what their plan is.
1 MR. DEMACEDO: And again, forgive me for 2
my ignorance, but again, prompt -- so this company 3
couldn't come here and then decide to do safe store.
4 So if this does happen, the goal would definitely be 5
the prompt decommissioning.
6 Again, just transferring the license, 7
there are people that are concerned that you just 8
transfer the license, Entergy goes and has their other 9
fleet that they're concerned about. That's just 10 something that just we would like some assurance in 11 regards to the NRC that if you are allowed for this to 12 happen, one would hope that the goal would be that 13 prompt decommissioning.
14 And again, for those who don't know prompt 15 decommissioning, it would start the process right 16 away. Obviously, spent fuel rods, they've got a five-17 year life cycle, the ones that have just been taken 18 out to cool down before they're moved to dry cask 19 storage. But in fact, that would be the process and 20 it would happen in an expedited manner.
21 Please forgive me for going past the three 22 minutes, my apologies. But I just think this is such 23 an important issue because it's something that we've 24 heard and I've heard from my community that when this 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 plant closes, we don't want to be in a situation that 1
-- we understand it happens and we know the NRC allows 2
this as a function, but I want to make it as clear as 3
possible, everything that you can do, we do not want 4
to see that happen in this community for safe store 5
for 60 years. We really do want to see this concept 6
of prompt decommissioning and move forward.
7 (Applause.)
8 So to that extent I thank you for your 9
time and I'm hopeful that that is, in fact, what 10 happens provided that you and your expertise feel 11 confident that this entity and again, I don't know 12 much about this entity, that they are at that 13 excellent standard that you feel confident they will 14 do this in a safe and effective manner and hopefully 15 get us back on track to deal with this. So thank you 16 so much and I appreciate your time. Thank you very 17 much.
18 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you, Senator.
19 (Applause.)
20 MR. KLUKAN: And again, there is no time 21 limit on elected officials. That is not an 22 encouragement to test that, but next up we have a 23 joint statement by State Representative Peake and 24 Hunt. I'm not sure which of you would like to give 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 this statement or both of you, whatever you would 1
like, really.
2 MS. PEAKE: Hello, good evening. I'm 3
Representative Sarah Peake. I'm joined up here by 4
Representative Dylan Fernandez, Representative Randy 5
Hunt, and Senator Julian Cyr. And this statement was 6
also jointly crafted with Representatives Crocker, 7
Vieira, and Whelan as well, so the entire Cape 8
delegation.
9 I want to begin by thanking you very much 10 for the presentation you gave us yesterday at the 11 government-to-government meeting that you had the 12 courtesy of extending to us. We wish that we could 13 say that based on your presentation we feel comforted 14 and confident that the ongoing operation of the 15 Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station will be flawless and 16 uninterrupted. Unfortunately, we came away from that 17 meeting with as many or more concerns than we had 18 prior to the meeting.
19 Most alarming were the NRC findings around 20 safety culture. To quote from your PowerPoint 21 presentation "Pilgrim leaders have not held themselves 22 and their subordinates accountable to high standards 23 of performance." It is no wonder that Pilgrim Nuclear 24 Power Station remains at a Category 4 level.
25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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82 As you described it, management's response 1
to improving the safety culture was underwhelming. At 2
best, they displayed incompetence, having no idea how 3
to change their corporate culture for the better. At 4
worst, they were just extending, and I use the 5
metaphor here, their middle finger to you, the NRC, to 6
the surrounding Plymouth community, and to all who are 7
potentially affected by their poor operating 8
standards.
9 (Applause.)
10 That includes our constituents and most 11 residents of Massachusetts. Let's remember, this is 12 a critique of safety culture at a nuclear power plant.
13 Their attitude and response would be alarming in any 14 factory or manufacturing setting, but here the 15 consequences of this culture continuing are far more 16 dire.
17 Because of our concerns based on past 18 performance and our on-going concerns stemming from 19 your report, we ask that the Pilgrim nuclear power 20 plant not be refueled this spring.
21 (Applause.)
22 Let me finish. And that the orderly shut 23 down of this plant begin immediately. As part of that 24 shut down process, we ask that the Town of Plymouth be 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 made whole and that Entergy's agreement with them for 1
pilot payments be honored. The town's finances should 2
not be further jeopardized because Entergy's seemingly 3
inability to correct safety and the safety culture at 4
the plant.
5 Also, of critical importance is the 6
establishment or continuation of a robust program 7
benefitting the non-management workers who will be 8
displaced during and after the shut down.
9 (Applause.)
10 We understand that ISO New England has 11 contracted with Entergy to supply power into 2019 and 12 that there is a penalty clause in that contract. We 13 pledge and we will work with the Baker administration, 14 ISO New England, and Entergy to lift the yoke of any 15 proposed penalty.
16 (Applause.)
17 18 We further ask that the NRC continue to 19 have inspectors present at the plant both while it's 20 operational and after it ceases produces energy. The 21 lax safety culture has a half life just as the spent 22 fuel does. It will continue to be critically 23 important that plant operations are monitored and all 24 involved in the operation and shut own are held to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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84 the highest safety standards.
1 I want to thank you for your time and now 2
I want to give my colleagues who are standing here 3
with me their opportunity at the microphone as well.
4 Thank you.
5 (Applause.)
6 MR. HUNT: I'm Representative Randy Hunt 7
from the 5th Barnstable District which includes 8
constituents in the Town of Plymouth.
9 My take on our statement is simply this.
10 It is a vote of no confidence in the leadership team 11 at Pilgrim Nuclear Station and by extension to the 12 corporation of Entergy.
13 (Applause.)
14 Like Senator Demacedo, I'm not a nuclear 15 engineer, but I was an auditor for many years. And I 16 have a very sensitive BS meter. And tonight, it went 17 off several times. So this has been a recurring issue 18 for years that the correction plans that have been put 19 in place as stated by Mr. Jackson did not actually fix 20 the problem and that the fix to the fix to the problem 21 did not fix the fix to the problem. That, I believe, 22 is an accurate portrayal of what was said here which 23 means that it's struggling.
24 So I will leave you with this one 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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85 question. I hope that the leadership of the plant and 1
Entergy would be able to answer this. What motivation 2
is there for continuous improvement with a looming 3
shutdown in 2019?
4 (Applause.)
5 MR. FERNANDEZ: I want to thank you for 6
being here tonight. I want to thank everyone for 7
coming out on this really critical issue. And I'll 8
make my remarks brief. But I'm just deeply concerned 9
about the safety issues with this plant. It's 10 operating at a level 4, one step away from shutdown at 11 a level 5. And it has spent more time operating at a 12 level 4 in the past 5 years than at any other level.
13 And Entergy, who owns this plant, also has 14 two other plants also operating as I'm aware at a 15 level 4. And those are the three plants in the U.S.
16 operating at the least safe level before being shut 17 down.
18 (Applause.)
19 And I just think there's a pattern here 20 that needs to be looked at. And at some point 21 persistently operating at level 4 should lead to 22 operating at a level 5.
23 (Applause.)
24 And so I just want -- I just think we 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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86 should take a look at the broader picture here and not 1
just on Pilgrim, but at Entergy as a whole when it 2
comes to closing this plant in a timely, early, and 3
safe manner. Thank you.
4 (Applause.)
5 MR. CYR: Thank you. I'm State Senator 6
Julian Cyr. I represent the Cape and Islands 7
District. This is Provincetown to Mashpee, Nantucket, 8
Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands, otherwise 9
known as the folks who don't have an evacuation plan.
10 And I thank you folks for your time this evening. And 11 I really thank and appreciate the really strong 12 statement you're hearing from the delegation that 13 represents so many people about in the unified front 14 about our concerns, significant concerns and demand 15 that this plant be shut down, not refueled, and be 16 shut down immediately.
17 I also want to thank so many of you who 18 have come here tonight in large numbers to make your 19 voices heard. Your tireless dedication to safety and 20 the health of our coastal community remains vital and 21 unfortunately necessary. As a state senator for the 22 Cape, Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket, I represent and 23 physically live in communities that have no evacuation 24 in the event of an incident at Pilgrim.
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87 Pilgrim is a corroding facility, operated 1
by a utility who was found by you, the NRC, to not 2
have held themselves accountable to high standards of 3
performance when it coms to operating the plant 4
safely. Your words, not ours. To say that I'm deeply 5
troubled is an understatement.
6 Now I want to be clear that the root cause 7
of the problem with Pilgrim lies with the leadership 8
team and with the corporation itself and not with the 9
hard-working employees of the plant.
10 (Applause.)
11 It is the leadership in this corporation 12 that has put their jobs in jeopardy. It is the 13 corporation and their leadership that has also put the 14 lives of their employees and the lives of more than 15 half the Commonwealth of three million people at risk 16 and in jeopardy.
17 Therefore, it is in the best interest of 18 public safety that I and we unequivocally call for 19 Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station to be shut down 20 immediately. That means now. That means today. That 21 means no refueling.
22 (Applause.)
23 Unfortunately, the Commonwealth of 24 Massachusetts has limited powers over this facility.
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88 And the vast majority of that regulatory authority and 1
that responsibility lies with you, the NRC.
2 However, I will do everything in my power 3
to incentivize Entergy to close this plant immediately 4
before 2019. Entergy is motivated solely by their 5
financial bottom line.
6 Therefore, I have filed legislation to add 7
oversight costs to Entergy during the decommissioning 8
process and have filed a bill that will assess Entergy 9
costs of maintaining spent fuel rods in wet storage 10 until they are moved in dry storage. Unlike Entergy, 11 my motivation and our motivation is to protect public 12 safety, to prevent immense harm to the people, to our 13 environment, to our Commonwealth.
14 Growing up on Cape Cod, I've often looked 15 up to the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy as a hero and 16 I'm sure that many of us here did growing up and 17 living in coastal Massachusetts. And I really wonder 18 what Senator Kennedy would say tonight? I do feel 19 quite certain that he would have a lot to say about 20 Pilgrim and the regulatory role and responsibility of 21 the NRC.
22 And I recall at a hearing before the 23 Senate Armed Services Committee in 2005, former 24 Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was testifying and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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89 all he was doing was essentially all he could to avoid 1
blame and responsibility for his failures in managing 2
the Iraq War. And at one point in that testimony, 3
Senator Kennedy asked him, "Sir, in baseball it's 4
three strikes and you're out. What is it for the 5
Secretary of Defense?"
6 So I ask all of you here before the NRC, 7
in baseball it's three strikes out. What is it for 8
Entergy and Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station?
9 Thank you for your time and please, we 10 need this plant closed immediately, not refueled.
11 Thank you.
12 (Applause.)
13 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. I don't 14 know if we caught, just for the sake of the 15 transcript, the third representative to speak was Mr.
16 Fernandez.
17 I wasn't sure, sir, if you said your name.
18 I just wanted to make sure your remarks were credited 19 to you on the transcript.
20 Last, we have Mr. Ken Tavares, who is the 21 chair of the Board of Selectmen for Plymouth.
22 MR. TAVARES: Good evening. To start off 23 with, I am actually facing the wrong way. I would 24 rather be turned around and speaking to the folks that 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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90 are in the back, but I do want to say a couple of 1
things to you first. Thank you for being here and 2
thank you for keeping a commitment that you made to my 3
community back at the beginning of the year that you 4
would meet with us every other month -- I mean every 5
other week, and take on any questions that we have.
6 You've kept that promise and I am most appreciative of 7
that connection with the NRC.
8 Along with being here as the chairman of 9
the board, Selectman Joyce, Selectman Mahoney is here 10 and yesterday in Boston for that over two hour meeting 11 at the State House, Selectman Provenzano and myself 12 had the opportunity to listen to your briefing ahead 13 of time. And it was enlightening. I do not want to 14 repeat the remarks that I made to you yesterday 15 regarding leadership. I think the position of my 16 board was very, very clear that we think there is a 17 deficiency and that that absolutely needs very, very 18 special attention.
19 But now if I could turn around with this 20 microphone which I can't, I want to speak to the 21 representatives of Entergy that are here this evening.
22 Take a look at me. Take a look at Representative 23 Muratore who served on the board and the other 24 Selectmen that at here, not just looking into our 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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91 eyes, but the eyes of our community. We represent 1
over 60,000 people and we have been trying for a long 2
time to sit down with the corporate leadership of this 3
country -- I mean of this company. I'm not sure we'd 4
get the country leaders right now.
5 But it is extremely important that the 6
Entergy representatives here take back a message the 7
Town of Plymouth wants to meet you at the table, no 8
matter whether this plant closes in 2019 or earlier, 9
we are going to be left here. And we have been asking 10 important questions that will help determine our 11 economic and social life. And so far we don't get any 12 answers.
13 It's time to stop. It's time to look at 14 us. It's time to invite us into your board room and 15 into your offices and talk. I know we have a State 16 Commission coming that will take care of a great deal 17 of the other matters concerning safety and the 18 disposal of fuel, but there are other issues that are 19 impacting this region and I am not comfortable this 20 evening that anyone from the corporate headquarters is 21 listening to us.
22 So I have the microphone right now. Call 23 us. I'll be happy to give you my number, Entergy, 24 because we do want to open up those lines of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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92 communication. Thank you.
1 (Applause.)
2 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. So that 3
exhausts the list of individuals who are elected 4
officials or representatives of elected who I know 5
wished to give prepared remarks.
6 I just wanted to check before we move on 7
to the public portion if there were any others, 8
elected officials or representatives thereof, in the 9
audience who would like to give a prepared statement 10 at this time. Going once, twice, all right.
11 We'll now open it up to the public portion 12 of the meeting. I'm going to write a series of 13 numbers on the board. First up is number 28 who is 14 Susan Carpenter. Susan Carpenter. Is Susan Carpenter 15 here? Okay.
16 So after her will be followed by number 17 48, which is Henrietta Cosentino and then number 6 --
18 this is where I end up failing all of you. Jameal 19 (phonetic) Graham. So again, I'm going to write these 20 on the board so you see them. But I just wanted to 21 get the first three going. So whenever you are ready, 22 Ms. Carpenter, feel free to begin.
23 MS. CARPENTER: I wrote this two years ago 24 and nothing has changed since then. So I want to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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93 submit this s my written testimony.
1 Pilgrim, An Allegory. Poised on the shore 2
of Cape Cod Bay a sleeping dragon, it bides its time 3
while people turn their heads away, denying its 4
presence. But it is old, this dragon, old and 5
vulnerable.
6 It will be safe they said in 1972. It 7
will rest for 40 years. After 40 years they said it 8
will rest still for 20 years more.
9 Fukushima, its twin, slept for 40 years.
10 In February of 2011, they said it will sleep for 20 11 years more. But the dragon was awakened within the 12 first month of his 10 year slumber, awakened by the 13 thrust of the earth and the salty waters of the sea.
14 Its fiery breath blew forth devastation.
15 The people had said this dragon is good.
16 It gives us money, builds our libraries, brings us 17 jobs and prosperity we would not otherwise have.
18 Now the libraries stand empty. The fields 19 lie fallow. The houses empty. Livestock perished in 20 the barns built for safe refuge.
21 We sold our souls, the people said. What 22 was once our prosperity has become our ruin.
23 Homeless they crouch in towns and villages 24 not their own, waiting to return to a life now lost to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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94 them.
1 Our dragon slumbers but for how long, we 2
ask. We saw him stir when the snows came. Then 3
resume his sleep for now. This body slowly decaying, 4
scorched by his own fires within. Unaware of the 5
sea's slow rising, the increasingly violent storms 6
unaware of his vulnerability from above or from his 7
own digested waste lying in a spent fuel pool 8
overstuffed with lethal leavings, capable of erupting 9
any time.
10 As they told the people of Fukushima, days 11 before their dragon awoke, he will sleep, they tell 12 us. He will sleep.
13 Thank you.
14 (Applause.)
15 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Again, next up is 16 Ms. Henrietta Cosentino. Is she with us this evening?
17 Okay, great.
18 MS. COSENTINO: I'm Henrietta Cosentino.
19 I'm a resident of Plymouth and this is my second time 20 in the last two months of being in front of the NRC.
21 This is the first time I've heard Entergy.
22 I want to say that I am appalled. I am 23 simply appalled. For an hour we heard basically -- I 24 have another word, but I'll use the word gobbledygook.
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95 Bureaucratic gobbledygook.
1 It is very clear to most of the people in 2
the room, those who do not depend on Entergy for 3
their living, that the NRC and Entergy together care 4
more about the welfare of the nuclear industry and 5
Entergy than they care about the safety and welfare of 6
all of us and of our land, our lives, and our land.
7 (Applause.)
8 And this is not just a matter of Plymouth 9
or even a matter of just Plymouth and the Cape and 10 Islands, but for the entire eastern seaboard. The 11 risk of a meltdown, the risk of anything even half as 12 bad as Fukushima or Chernobyl is unacceptable. It's 13 appalling.
14 If I were a student and I got grade D for 15 two or three years in a row, do you think I'd advance 16 anywhere? I'd flunk out. Well, Category 4 is 17 essentially a grade D. It does not justify keeping 18 this plant open.
19 I think there's something gravely wrong 20 with the criteria by which you measure risk. Let's 21 see on the one hand, there's $3.5 million that Entergy 22
-- that poor Entergy had to spend $3.5 million to get 23 the NRC to come and do its inspection. On the other 24 hand you have what, 50 -- I don't know how many 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 millions of people live up and down the eastern 1
seaboard. It's a lot. This is not an acceptable 2
risk. It's outrageous.
3 (Applause.)
4 Nothing we heard tonight gave us anything 5
but less confidence. You should be ashamed, frankly.
6 (Applause.)
7 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. So next 8
up is number 6, Jameal Graham 9
MS. GRAHAM: Hello again. This is Jameal 10 Graham, thank you. I would like to again thank you 11 and thank everybody for coming and it's clear that the 12 Commonwealth is doing our very best to educate 13 ourselves to be responsibly socially and addressing an 14 issue that affects not just the health and well-being 15 of people here in Plymouth, but of the entirety of the 16 eastern seaboard.
17 As we all know, radioactivity is an equal 18 opportunity killer. It kills everything, right? So 19 the radioactivity of nuclear proliferation from the 20 mining of uranium to the dropping of the bombs is 21 radioactive contamination on Planet Earth.
22 And we deal with that on a very high level 23 in a commercial radioactive nuclear fissioning 24 reactor, nuclear fissioning. That is what nuclear 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 commercial power plants are. A commercial nuclear 1
power plant is nuclear fissioning, correct? Okay.
2 So this is not Mrs. Smith's baking. We're 3
not concerned about too many chocolate chips or not 4
enough butter. We are talking about nuclear 5
fissioning. That in and of itself on a good day is 6
extremely hazardous to the health and well-being of 7
every person that works in that plant every day. And 8
if we bothered to do any studies, we could surely show 9
the effect of health and well-being on the people in 10 that plant, but we don't do those studies.
11 So I want to take this to the next step 12 which is the importance of addressing the refueling 13 because of all this bureaucratic song and dance and 14 Entergy disappearing from the stage, right, yeah, Mr.
15 Entergy, okay.
16 So refueling has been granted and you give 17 us 45 days which is in May and we are all aware that 18 you have decided that it's safe to refuel this nuclear 19 hazard on our eastern seaboard in April. I would like 20 to ask you plainly what kind of nuclear fuel rods 21 exist now of the 2800 in the Pilgrim nuclear power 22 plant?
23 There are over 1,000 nuclear fuel rods 24 already in Pilgrim nuclear power plant over the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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98 capacity of its original site tank. Correct. That is 1
true. Over 1,000. There are 2800 and tell me people 2
over here, there were -- the plant was designed for 3
800, correct? Eight hundred eight. There are 2800 4
now. So can you please tell us what kind of fuel rods 5
you're intending to put into nuclear power plant 6
Pilgrim in April before the next song and dance of 7
bureaucracy's schedule to take place?
8 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
9 (Applause.)
10 MS. GRAHAM: I would like an answer.
11 PARTICIPANT: So it's correct to say that 12 there are more fuel assemblies in the pool than what 13 the pool was originally designed for. The pool design 14 was modified several decades ago to accommodate 15 additional fuel assemblies by putting borated panels 16 in the pool that absorbs the neutron flux and ensures 17 that it will stay sub-critical and that the heat will 18 be effectively removed. So it's not accurate to say 19 that it currently holds more fuel assemblies than it 20 is currently designed for.
21 As far as -- I'm not sure what the point 22 of your question of what kind of fuel. In the normal 23 refueling, a fuel assembly in the reactor operates for 24 three operating cycles in the reactor. So on a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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99 refueling outage, the company will remove one third of 1
the fuel that was operating during the past year and 2
a half, two years, and that fuel will be removed to 3
the spent fuel pool. And those number of assemblies 4
will be replaced with new fuel assemblies to support 5
the upcoming operation. I think that's what will 6
happen in the outage, but I'm not sure exactly what 7
you meant by what kind of fuel.
8 Brett?
9 MR. KLUKAN: All right, next up we have 10 number 4, Mr. Keith Maxwell. He will then be followed 11 by number 9 which is Ms. Marie Meyer-Barton.
12 MR. MAXWELL: Hey, good evening, everyone.
13 My name is Keith Maxwell. I'd like to speak and 14 address tonight the bond and stockholders of the 15 Entergy Corporation, the taxpayers, and general 16 population. The bottom theme of my comment here 17 tonight is something that everybody can agree that 18 they are concerned with and that's money. The old 19 George Washington's dollar.
20 And what I just passed out to the NRC 21 members and the vice president, John Dent of Entergy 22 is that a recent New York Times article has stated 23 that the Japanese Government and utility are now found 24 negligent in the nuclear disaster. Courts in Japan 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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100 have now financially placed the liability at some 1
estimates a trillion dollars on both the Government of 2
Japan and the utility, wiping out all shareholder and 3
bondholder equity due to negligence regardless of any 4
liability protections.
5 So in the ultimate nuclear disaster, if 6
there's negligence involved, the Price-Anderson Act is 7
void. Any legal shields between Entergy Louisiana, 8
Entergy Jackson, Entergy Plymouth are removed and all 9
the stock and bondholder equity of Entergy in any 10 nuclear accident would be eliminated.
11 In addition, it is my opinion that 12 potentially a trillion dollar taxpayer liability would 13 be incurred. That would impact all the residents of 14 Plymouth, Southeastern Massachusetts to Washington, 15 D.C.
16 Now as of March 15th this year, the U.S.
17 Federal Government's borrowing authority holiday has 18 run out. Under the Trump administration, it is 19 doubtful or debatable as to what kind of debt ceiling 20 extension there will be. So it's very plausible that 21 the borrowing authority to cover such a trillion 22 dollar liability may not exist.
23 If they do decide to extend the debt 24 ceiling liability, the trillion dollars they need for 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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101 that nuclear weapons program in DoD may be impacted, 1
and our national security and defense will be 2
impacted.
3 Now Entergy's corporate quality control 4
program is at Jackson, Mississippi. It's a corporate 5
program. Quality control and assurance is corporate.
6 It applies to Pilgrim. The 95003 inspection and team 7
is limited to the Pilgrim license LSC and Plymouth.
8 It has not adequately gone and addressed the corporate 9
root causes, driving the failures of Pilgrim Station.
10 The delegation from the Massachusetts 11 Legislature and Senate hit the nail right on the head.
12 Entergy Corporation is a business. I'm speaking to 13 the executives of Entergy Corporation.
Your 14 responsibility is to protect the stock and bondholders 15 of the corporation, the corporation's equity. Your 16 responsibility is to negotiate with the State of 17 Massachusetts, secure the financial guarantees and 18 money that makes it equitable for you to make a 19 profit, make some money, and apply conservative 20 decision making to limit the outstanding risk on the 21 corporation.
22 The liability of the Price-Anderson Act 23 has not been adjusted for risk or inflation in 20 or 24 30 years. The premiums paid by the corporation do not 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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102 cover the risk. So from a business, financial, 1
corporate point of view, Entergy and the State of 2
Massachusetts has every opportunity and from the 3
corporate stockholder and bondholder should be 4
compensated to shut Pilgrim down early, eliminate the 5
corporate and bondholder risk to stockholders and they 6
should be compensated equitably. Entergy shareholders 7
and bondholders should be paid for coming in 8
Massachusetts and supplying power all these years and 9
now where they're losing money. They are a 10 corporation. The bottom line is to make money. If 11 you pay them, they'll do whatever you want. Thank you 12 very much.
13 (Applause.)
14 MR. KLUKAN: Okay, next up we have number 15 9 who is again Ms. Marie Meyer-Barton.
16 MS. TURCO: Hi, Marie gave me her number.
17 I'm Diane Turco with Cape Downwinders.
18 MR. KLUKAN: Hi, is Marie here?
19 MS. TURCO: Yes. She is here.
20 MR. KLUKAN: Okay, great. This is a new 21 role. We want to make sure we're doing it right.
22 MS. TURCO: How would you know it's her 23 anyway?
24 MR. KLUKAN: I appreciate that.
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103 MS.
TURCO:
Repetitive, degrading, 1
adequate are not words that should be paired with 2
nuclear reactor. Correct? What do you think?
3 (Applause.)
4 What do you think? What do you think?
5 What do you think?
6 (Applause.)
7 Adequate is not something that we should 8
be hearing and it is not acceptable. In fact, Mr.
9 Dent said, if unacceptable, we will not tolerate the 10 risk. And he's not satisfied with the performance.
11 Well, the same with us. We don't accept this risk and 12 we won't tolerate it. Why do they have more power 13 than the public? They're the ones that are putting us 14 at risk. And you're letting them do that.
15 Your goal was to arrest declining 16 performance, but in 2013 Pilgrim was identified as one 17 of the nine worst operating reactors, correct? In 18 2014, you come in, violations of federal safety 19 regulations and Pilgrim is now one of the five worst 20 operating reactors. Correct?
21 2015, you come in again, more federal 22 safety violations and Pilgrim is now rated one of the 23 three worst rated reactors in the country. Is that 24 correct?
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104 PARTICIPANT: Yes.
1 MS. TURCO: And they're all owned by?
2 PARTICIPANT: Entergy.
3 MS. TURCO: Entergy. Okay? You come in 4
to arrest declining performance and we're standing 5
here two years later, going on the third year that 6
Pilgrim is going to be still one step from federally-7 mandated shutdown.
8 What we're seeing is ongoing federal 9
violations of safety. There were 18 failures. We 10 didn't mention that today. But there were 18 failures 11 of problems at Entergy just this past year.
12 April 11th NRC report, violations of NRC 13 federal safety regulations. May 20th NRC report, 14 violations of federal safety regulations. November 15 14th NRC report, federal safety violations. Ongoing 16 and ongoing. What is it going to take for the NRC to 17 shut down Pilgrim, an accident?
18 Now we come up to the email and thank you, 19 Mr. Jackson for the email. That was really good. And 20 we are going to trust this email and in here you 21 talked about how poor the safety culture was at 22 Pilgrim. All right?
23 The second thing is thank you for the next 24 report. Our Valentine's Day report, I just want to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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105 finish one up. This is what they said. Okay, this is 1
just February 14, 2017. "Entergy did not adequately 2
implement the process of planning, controlling, and 3
executing work activities such that nuclear safety is 4
the overriding priority."
5 Your job is to shut Pilgrim because you 6
have identified that nuclear safety is not a priority 7
at Entergy.
8 (Applause.)
9 It seems like you have a symbiotic 10 relationship with Entergy. You charge them $3.2 11 million for the assessment and they're saving tens of 12 millions of dollars of not doing the fixes that they 13 should be doing because you're giving them the 14 oversight. You're saving them money, so shut it down.
15 Will you shut it down?
16 (Applause.)
17 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Okay, 18 next up will be --
19 MS. TURCO: Will you answer my question, 20 please? If nuclear safety is not a priority, will you 21 shut down Pilgrim? You've identified that.
22 PARTICIPANT: We have laid out the 23 analysis that we did, the conclusion that we reached 24 that we have not have sufficient significant issues 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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106 that result in the shutdown.
1 All of the issues that you just waved at 2
me, all of the issues that you just pointed out from 3
our inspection reports in 2016 are all issues that 4
were designated as green or very low safety 5
significance. All of those issues added up have no 6
safety significance to the overall performance of the 7
station.
8 The issues that arose in 2013 that started 9
us down this path were a set of unplanned scrams of 10 the plant that were frankly in and of themselves of 11 relatively low safety significance, but were a 12 statistical significant deviation from industry norms 13 that caused us to increase our oversight.
14 The safety relief valve issue in January 15 of 2015 was the issue that then put them into column 16
- 4. And it's that -- you talked about repetitive 17 degraded cornerstone is not something you want to hear 18 about in a nuclear power plant and neither do I.
19 MS. TURCO: Right, right.
20 PARTICIPANT:
But it is in the 21 Commission's oversight process, it is that step in the 22 process where we embark on the process that Don has 23 been doing to have an independent diagnosis of what 24 are the degradations in the programs at the station 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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107 that have allowed them to come to this point. And a 1
piece of that, a piece of the charter of Don's team 2
was to ask the question should they be in column 5.
3 Don's team was an exceptional team of 4
people with a lot of experience who spent a lot of 5
time in other nuclear power plants and they saw that 6
there is still work to do at Pilgrim to have sustained 7
performance improvement which is that's what we have 8
to see before they would move out of column 4 to the 9
left. But they also concluded that based on all of 10 their experience and everything they've seen at other 11 nuclear power plants, including a lot of those folks 12 have a lot of Navy experience, too, that the 13 reliability of the equipment, the proficiency of the 14 operators, and the lack of a pattern of significant 15 issues and that's the key in that column 5, could they 16 conclude that they have confidence that this plant 17 will be operated safely.
18 MS. TURCO: Systemic mismanagement and on-19 going violations more than -- what's that word you 20 use? More than minor in this latest, right, Erin?
21 More than minor in this latest report in 2017. We're 22 still hearing it. It needs to be stopped.
23 So my question is what is it going to take 24 for you to close Pilgrim, an accident?
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108 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
1 (Applause.)
2 Okay, next up we have number 33 who is Mr.
3 James Garb, G-A-R-B. All right, great. He will be 4
followed by Ms. Judy Barclay, number 37. And then Ms.
5 Diane Turco, which is number 22. So you can trade 6
with someone else. So Mr. Garb, please feel free to 7
go ahead.
8 MR. GARB: Good evening. My name is James 9
Garb. I live in Yarmouth across the bay. I'm a 10 physician and I specialize in occupational and 11 environmental health. I spent most of my career 12 working with healthcare organizations on their safety 13 problems and I know a good safety culture when I see 14 it. And I know a bad safety culture when I see it.
15 And what we have at Pilgrim is a bad safety culture.
16 Mr. Jackson identified that in his email.
17 We heard it tonight. And anyone who's been following 18 what's been going on at Pilgrim knows that. And what 19 we heard tonight from the people from Pilgrim gave me 20 no confidence in their ability to turn that around.
21 And Mr. Jackson told us it takes three to five years 22 to turn a safety program, a safety culture around.
23 Pilgrim is only going to be operating for two years 24 and so it's physically impossible that they're going 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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109 to make things better in that time.
1 I think it's disingenuous of the Pilgrim 2
managers to blame the shift managers for this problem.
3 It's not a shift manager problem. It's the CEO of 4
Entergy problem. It's the senior management of 5
Entergy problem.
6 (Applause.)
7 Entergy only operates ten nuclear plants 8
in the country and 30 percent of them are in column 4.
9 No other operator has a plant in column 4. The 10 chances of that happening just by chance are one in a 11 million. It's a corporate culture problem at Entergy.
12 I'll tell you in the healthcare industry 13 if the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of 14 Healthcare Organizations came into a hospital and 15 found a fraction of what your team found at Pilgrim, 16 they would pull that hospital's license in a 17 heartbeat.
18 (Applause.)
19 Let me just share with you all what a good 20 corporate safety culture looks like. A few years ago, 21 I had the opportunity to hear the CEO of Georgia 22 Pacific speak at a safety conference. Briefly, 23 Georgia Pacific is a big, multi-national corporation 24 that does a lot of hazardous work, lumber industry, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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110 logging, making chemicals, making fertilizers, a lot 1
of room for things to go wrong.
2 They have an accident rate that's as close 3
to zero as you can get. And the CEO got up there and 4
he said this and I'll never forget it. He said, "At 5
Georgia Pacific, safety is our most important value.
6 It's more important than quality. It's more than 7
important than profit." And that's what the 8
population of Southeast Massachusetts deserves from 9
the nuclear power plant here in town and we should 10 accept nothing less. And the NRC should accept 11 nothing less.
12 (Applause.)
13 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next up we have 14 number 37 which is Ms. Judy Barclay. Ms. Judy 15 Barclay.
16 MS. BARCLAY: Good evening. I'm in the 17 minority here tonight because I don't want to see the 18 plant shut down until 2019. I'm a Plymouth resident 19 for 35 years. I've also been an employee at Entergy 20 for 27 years. I'm not part of management. I'm part 21 of the working class people that take our job 22 seriously. We look at safety as our number one 23 priority. Every meeting we go to, the first thing we 24 talk about is safety. Every job we approach, the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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111 first thing we do is talk about what issues could 1
cause an unsafe act.
2 I understand as a nuclear employee that my 3
job is to do my job safely so that I leave my job 4
every day the same way I came in on that morning. The 5
Nuclear Regulatory Commission came in and under a 6
microscope looked at all of our flaws. How many of us 7
could take that kind of scrutiny and still not come up 8
with a little flaw that we didn't self-identify? I 9
don't think there's any of us that could.
10 I do know that the leadership of our plant 11 is dedicated every day to making sure that it's run 12 safely, that it trains its people to run everything 13 that they do on a daily basis as safely as they can, 14 efficiently, effectively, and proficiently.
15 We take pride in what we do. We don't go 16 to work every day trying to make an accident happen.
17 I live in Plymouth. I don't want that. I understand 18 the concerns of everybody here. I hear you. But that 19 doesn't mean that your viewpoint is the only viewpoint 20 of people who live in Plymouth.
21 Regardless of the fact that I work there, 22 I live here, and I've been here for 35 years. I don't 23 want any of us to have to be part of a Chernobyl or a 24 Fukushima. And I don't believe that anybody that I 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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112 work with would ever want that either.
1 We take great pride in our plant and what 2
we do every day, and we hope that the Nuclear 3
Regulatory Commission will continue to help us make 4
sure that we continue our improvement to be the best 5
plant that we can be until the end of 2019.
6 I thank you for the opportunity to speak 7
in a positive manner. Good evening.
8 (Applause.)
9 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. All right, next 10 up is ticket 22 which is Ms. Diane Turco.
11 MS. TURCO: Thank you. Did somebody else 12 want to go first? Okay. I just wanted to ask a 13 question because I have a letter from Governor Baker 14 and it was written in 2015. And it said that he's 15 expecting that Entergy be in compliance with all the 16 rules and regulations of the Nuclear Regulatory 17 Commission.
18 Can you say that Entergy, given all these 19 violations of federal safety standards is in 20 compliance with NRC regulations?
21 PARTICIPANT: Not completely. The 22 findings indicate that.
23 MS. TURCO: Right, right.
24 PARTICIPANT:
And that's why we do 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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113 inspection. There are a huge amount of regulations, 1
requirements, some of them get into the fundamental 2
design of the equipment. Others are reporting 3
requirements, administrative programs and processes.
4 And so when we look at any particular finding, we look 5
at the significance of it, whether we need to take any 6
additional regulatory action other than identifying it 7
in an inspection report to the licensee and verifying 8
that they go back and fix it.
9 MS. TURCO: Okay, so you have not been 10 able to comply with our Governor's request for 11 compliance with all the rules and regulations of the 12 NRC.
13 Another thing I did ask -- I was wondering 14 because of all that's going on is what is the criteria 15 for the NRC to close a poor-performing reactor? And 16 this is the response I got. "If it were an immediate 17 safety concern, the NRC would require shutdown."
18 Well, that's pretty obvious that would happen. But 19 this continues "But because every situation is 20 different, it's not possible to give a one size fits 21 all answer."
22 By reporting on on-going safety violations 23 and allowing Entergy to operate Pilgrim as a 24 repetitively degrading
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114 consecutive year, the failings of the NRC is also 1
being exposed. You haven't closed a nuclear reactor 2
in a poor-performing category in 30 years as I 3
understand. What gives us confidence that you would 4
really ever close Pilgrim?
5 PARTICIPANT: Actually, Fort Calhoun in 6
Nebraska was closed from 2011 to 2015 because of a 7
pattern, or one of the criteria that Art talked about 8
before was a pattern of a loss of confidence in the 9
ability of the facility to operate within its design 10 basis.
11 MS. TURCO: I'm saying closed for good.
12 So that's 1 in 30 years that you closed short term.
13 But we know Pilgrim can't be fixed. They're closing 14 in two years. They're not going to put any money into 15 that reactor, so that puts us all at increased risk.
16 So what kind of confidence will we have that you would 17 really consider and close Pilgrim?
18 PARTICIPANT: Over my career, 26 years 19 now at the NRC, I've been involved with a number of 20 reactors. Maine Yankee was one. Yankee Rowe was 21 another one where the reactor ended up in a long-term 22 shutdown because of performance conditions. The 23 Agency typically at that point doesn't revoke a 24 license. We go in and we examine the plant closely 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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115 and we identify the issues and the equipment that have 1
to be fixed before we would allow a restart of that 2
facility.
3 MS. TURCO: Right, right.
4 PARTICIPANT: And in those cases, that 5
list got to a point where the board of directors of 6
those companies said we're not going to make that 7
investment in the station.
8 MS. TURCO: Okay, but that was after it 9
was shut down. And that happened to Pilgrim in the 10
'80s when I was working on this, too.
11 What you're saying is there's really no 12 criteria for you to shut Pilgrim as a poor-performing 13 reactor. It's not going to happen. It hasn't 14 happened in 30 years. That's what I'm asking for, 15 give us some confidence that you really would do that.
16 I'm not hearing it.
17 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next up, we have 18 number 5 who is Paul Jean. I think I got that name 19 right. Paul Jean. And that will be followed by 20 ticket number 23 who is Joanne Corrigan. So whenever 21 you're ready.
22 MR. JEAN: I'm Paul Jean. I'm the vice 23 chairman of the Board of the Plymouth Philharmonic, so 24 I'm not here to speak to safety issues. As a 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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116 representative of an orchestra, I'm just here to speak 1
to the fact that Entergy has been a good community 2
partner for the Plymouth Phil. for the past three or 3
four years. Over that period of time, Entergy has 4
contributed approximately $75,000 in funding to the 5
Phil. That's allowed us to put on our musical 6
performances and it's also allowed us to continue our 7
programming in the Plymouth Public Schools. So from 8
our perspective, they've been just a good community 9
partner, but again, we don't take any position on the 10 safety issues. Thank you.
11 (Applause.)
12 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next up is number 13 23, Ms. Joanne Corrigan. She will be followed by 14 ticket number 11 which is Layton Price.
15 MS. CORRIGAN: Yes, I'm just disturbed by 16 the amount of time that the NRC has given Pilgrim for 17 the CAP, the corrective action plan, and it just seems 18 to me, this is a 44-year-old plant. There must be a 19 safety procedure protocol somewhere in place at the 20 other places that everybody has to follow to a certain 21 extent per that particular plant.
22 How has it taken these years to get a 23 safety protocol that's acceptable and correct and 24 taken us out of 4?
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117 Now you said we're going to get out of 4, 1
the people that put us into 4 are going to get us out 2
of 4. Hopefully, they don't put us into 5 with the 3
reaction blowing up over there. Hopefully, they can 4
get us into 3, but I don't think they can and nothing 5
you have said instills any confidence in any of you to 6
the people that really thing there's a severe problem 7
at the plant. And you just aren't going to close it 8
down. It's all about the money and we understand 9
that.
10 (Applause.)
11 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. So again next up 12 is number 11, Layton Price.
13 MR. PRICE: Good evening. My name is 14 Layton Price and I'm a resident of Plymouth. My wife 15 and I were married in Plymouth in 1959. For decades 16 we came to Plymouth for vacations. In 2001, we 17 retired to a family home on one of the beautiful ponds 18 in Plymouth.
19 Each year we receive a calendar that 20 Entergy sponsors. It contains some wonderful 21 historical photographs, as well as evacuation 22 instructions to follow in the event that the Pilgrim 23 plant has a significant failure or accident. What 24 other business or industry is potentially so dangerous 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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118 to the public that it requires evacuation plans for 1
all of Plymouth plus much of the surrounding area?
2 The highways and roads people are supposed 3
to use for evacuating various sub-areas are much the 4
same as they were 50 years ago. But today, tens of 5
thousands more people live in Plymouth and the 6
surrounding areas and the traffic on these highways is 7
many times greater. In other words, this alone makes 8
the danger to the public greater.
9 In the event of a nuclear emergency, 10 people will hurry to get onto the main highways and 11 roads. Traffic will become congested. People will 12 get anxious and some will panic. Cars will run out of 13 gas. Accidents will occur. Traffic will get backed 14 up for miles and evacuation will soon become a virtual 15 impossibility.
16 Now that the NRC itself ranks Plymouth as 17 one of the least safe nuclear plants in the country, 18 it should be perfectly obvious to anyone here and 19 especially to our state and local legislators that the 20 risks to the public safety are enormous.
21 The NRC is gambling that the aged and 22 deteriorating Pilgrim plant won't have a significant 23 failure or accident. Likewise, state officials are 24 charged with protecting the public safety are gambling 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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119 that Pilgrim won't have a serious problem. In other 1
words, both the NRC and the public officials are 2
gambling with everything we own, with our health, and 3
with our ability to even live in Plymouth. Pilgrim 4
plant safety is an NRC responsibility, but public 5
safety is largely a state and local government 6
responsibility.
7 Given the dismal equipment safety and 8
maintenance record of Pilgrim, our public officials 9
have a moral obligation to protect everyone put at 10 risk by this failing nuclear plant. Neither the NRC 11 nor the state and local officials seems to fully 12 appreciate the gravity of this responsibility.
13 Instead, they appear to be passing responsibility 14 around like a hot potato, hoping that nothing will 15 happen.
16 It should be clear to everyone that the 17 public safety of many tens of thousands of people is 18 at risk. It is not sufficient to keep patching up 19 Pilgrim and hoping for the best.
20 MR. KLUKAN: After Number 14, we have 21 Number 13, which is Pine Dubois (phonetic), and then 22 Number 7, which is Charlie McDonald (phonetic), and 23 then Number 12, which is Dorothy Price (phonetic).
24 Did we get that, everyone?
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120 So again, Lucy Mitchell (phonetic) will be 1
followed by Pine Dubois, followed by Charlie McDonald, 2
followed by Dorothy Price. Okay. Whenever you're 3
ready.
4 MS. DICKENSON: Okay. Thank you, Lucy, 5
for giving me your ticket. My name is Elaine 6
Dickinson. I'm with Cape Downwinders, and all I have 7
heard here tonight gives me the impression that 8
Entergy is running a nuclear kindergarten at Pilgrim.
9 Learn as you go. Failure doesn't mean 10 that the student will flunk out. It's kindergarten, 11 after all.
12 We, the people, pay your salaries with our 13 tax dollars, yet you do not work for us. You work for 14 the nuclear industry.
15 Your mandate, which is on your website, 16 and was on the corner of every slide up there tonight, 17 uphold public safety by protecting the public and the 18 environment. This mandate seems to mean nothing to 19 you.
20 You protect the profits of the 21 corporation, not public safety. It is a crime. I 22 think others here tonight would like to join me in 23 firing you all.
24 MS. DUBOIS: Good evening. She just 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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121 really means do your job. You know? That's the theme 1
of our country these days, I think.
2 I wrote, I made up a nice little poster 3
for the NRC tonight. It's called failing to plan is 4
planning to fail.
5 And I guess the, and I'm going to give you 6
each one of these for your office. I, my message 7
tonight really is that I think that what's going on is 8
a violation of the public trust. You know?
9 The public entered the nuclear age with a 10 really different idea of it. You know? And in the 11
'70s and in the early '80s, we were guaranteed that 12 all that waste fuel, whatever that was, would be 13 addressed by the Department of Energy and, you know, 14 buried in some safe place for the next million years.
15 And in 1998, we realized we were wrong.
16 And DOE realized they were wrong. In 1999, 2000, 17 Pilgrim was sold to Entergy.
18 Didn't have a great time starting up. By 19 2011, it was failing. In 2012, you re-licensed them 20 without evaluating the environmental consequences, 21 without assuring that the EPA had a current NPDES 22 permit that would protect the water resources of Cape 23 Cod Bay.
24 You said, oh, no, we'll get around to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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122 that. And you haven't. It's still 22 years expired.
1 One of the oldest expired licenses in the country. It 2
should not be operating.
3 And then what do you do? You modify the, 4
how you deal with the spent fuel. You just said, we, 5
oh, we modified the pool by using these Boraflex 6
panels.
7 Well, what did we learn last year? We 8
learned that the Boraflex was slipping off the panels 9
and you had to make it wider. So you had to modify 10 that again.
11 And then you modified everything else and 12 went, oh, dry cask storage. But you put it next to 13 the ocean. You put it next to the ocean.
14 Why? Because you think water cools it 15 really great. Well, guess what? Our fish and 16 livelihoods and environment and everything we love is 17 in the ocean, except for our kids and the houses that 18 we live in and what not. But you know, those are at 19 risk.
20 The tritium, that wasn't supposed to be in 21 the ground, but it's in the ground where? Going into 22 the ocean.
23 That's another modification of everything 24 that you told us you were taking care of. You're not 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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123 taking care of it.
1 And although I have to say, I have the 2
utmost respect for how many boxes you have figured out 3
how to, you know, fill up. You haven't gotten out of 4
the box.
5 The box is the environment. It's the 6
context that we all live in. And you need to jump in 7
our box and then figure out if you're doing the right 8
thing.
9 Shut it down, do not refuel it, pay Holtec 10 to send it to Arkansas. They need it down there. We 11 don't.
12 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Okay.
13 Next up, we'll have Mr. Charlie McDonald. Okay. He 14 will be followed by Ms. Dorothy Price, who will then 15 be followed by Ms. Mary Conathan (phonetic), which is 16 Number 24. Ms. Mary Conathan. Okay. All right.
17 Whenever you are ready.
18 MR. McDONALD: I am ready. Good evening, 19 and thanks for the opportunity to speak. I'm Charlie 20 McDonald. Can you hear me?
21 I'm a resident of Plymouth, and an 22 employee of Pilgrim. I'm the training manager at the 23 station for the last three years.
24 And I don't know if I can do much better 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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124 than my coworker, Judy, on talking about the pride 1
that the workforce has and our commitment to safety, 2
but I'm going to try.
3 I just want to go over, I've been in this 4
business since 1978, and each and every one of the 5
power plants I've been at, I've seen a progressive 6
focus on safety in all those years.
7 I started out before, Three Mile Island, 8
and all the lessons learned, and I can tell you when 9
I came here three years ago, I had choices.
10 And when I was interviewed, I also was 11 interviewing the management team that interviewed me 12 to get a sense of their level of commitment to safety, 13 because at that point, the station had been in decline 14 and there was a recovery plan in place.
15 So I made a conscious decision to come 16 here based on what I saw from the leadership team, and 17 I can tell each and every one of you that there is a 18 strong commitment on a daily basis to safety at the 19 Pilgrim station.
20 And I can also assure you that for the 21 next two and a half years, until the plant shuts down 22 in 2019, that we have a continued focus on safety.
23 We talk about the outage a lot here 24 tonight, and I can tell you, one example of that is 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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125 the millions of dollars that we're investing in the 1
station to ensure that we can safely operate for the 2
next two and a half years until June of 2019 when the 3
plant shuts down.
4 So from a
safety perspective, I'm 5
confident, everyone at the station is fully committed 6
to nuclear safety at the highest standards.
7 We're a learning organization. We're 8
taking the feedback from the, Don's team, and acting 9
on that. And making our improvement plans that much 10 more robust and better.
11 I want to, and again, acknowledge the team 12 on the, the team, the work they did. As Judy said, 13 there was a fine microscope that the team used to 14 review our performance in accordance with their 15 inspection procedures.
16 It was thorough. It was robust. And it 17 came to the conclusions that we agree with, and we're 18 focused on responding to the team and their comments.
19 And again, focused on safety, safety, 20 safety. So the other thing I want to comment on, 21 because I've heard a lot of politicians and everyone 22 roll up here, that was a, the impression was that 23 everyone in this room was really to shut down the 24 station.
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126 But I just want to, I don't know many of 1
you are left, but just kind of raise your hand to the 2
folks that are in this community and work at the 3
station that have a different point of view.
4 And I'm one of those. As a citizen and a 5
resident here in the Plymouth area, and also as a 6
worker at the station. So, I appreciate the 7
opportunity to speak, and you all have a good night.
8 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Okay.
9 Next up is Number 12, Dorothy Price.
10 FEMALE 1: We're trading.
11 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Thank you very much 12 for letting me know. And then Number 24, Mary 13 Conathan. Just, I just need to, I just wanted to make 14 sure you're in the room, just so I, all right. Okay.
15 And then, just to let you know you're up, 16 and then that, she will be followed by Number 25, 17 Jolene Dolabani (phonetic). Okay?
18 MS. DOLABANI: Well, that's me.
19 MR. KLUKAN: Oh.
20 MS. DOLABANI: So I will trade that with 21 someone if someone else would like to speak.
22 MR. KLUKAN: Well, we'll figure it out at 23 the time.
24 MS. DOLABANI: We'll figure it out.
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127 MR. KLUKAN: But, all right. As long as 1
there are two people, all right.
2 MS. DOLABANI: All right.
3 MR. KLUKAN: But please, go.
4 MS. DOLABANI: Okay.
5 MR. KLUKAN: Sorry.
6 MS. DOLABANI: Thank you. My name is 7
Jolene Dolabani, and I'm a relatively new resident to 8
Plymouth, and I love being here.
9 It was my intention just to come to this 10 meeting and listen with great interest about what was 11 being said, but after I sat here for a while, I kind 12 of felt compelled to speak.
13 I appreciate how the NRC can take pretty 14 complicated information, and especially Mr. Jackson, 15 who I thought was extremely plain spoken in his 16 evaluation of some of the problems at Pilgrim, but 17 because he was so plain spoken and it was so easy to 18 understand, it just struck me that the six problem 19 areas that you described, describe problems that were 20 so pervasive and systemic that whatever confidence I 21 might've had in the beginning of this meeting has 22 severely eroded.
23 I feel that, I mean, I didn't know that 24 600 people worked at Pilgrim. That's a lot of people.
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128 And I'm sure, you know, in their heart of hearts, it 1
is your very, very best intention to rise up and make 2
the improvements that have been indicated.
3 But even with the best of intentions, I 4
don't know if that much distance can be covered in the 5
two years that you have left.
6 And I will also say, as a small business 7
owner, if I had that many strikes against me, nobody 8
would bring in mentors to kind of help me out. I 9
would basically, in the business world, be kicked to 10 the curb and I would be shut down.
11 So I just think, you know, some of these 12 standards should be applied all the way across the 13 board. Thank you very much.
14 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Okay, 15 next up we have got Number 24. I heard we had a trade 16 happening. Okay.
17 MS. WILLIAMSON: Hi, my name is Arlene 18 Williamson (phonetic). I live in Mashpee. And I 19 just, the one thing that blows my mind the most here 20 is this plant has been in Category 4, in Column 4, and 21 you know, pretty close to shut down, has a really bad 22 track record.
23 It's continued to go down, down, down.
24 And the NRC, I mean, you just allow someone to refuel 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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129 a plant when they're in bad shape like that?
1 I mean, don't you have any standards like 2
you'd have to get a better grade to get a reward? I 3
mean, how in God's name can you allow a plant that we 4
have no confidence in, Entergy's not going to put any 5
money into this plant. Come on.
6 They're hoping on a, you know, a wish and 7
a prayer that this place is going to chug along for 8
two more years and they're going to get this money's 9
worth out of it.
10 I mean, and you just say, go ahead, 11 refuel. You're still in shit shape, but go ahead and 12 refuel. You know?
13 I mean, it's, to me, I don't allow, I 14 mean, you don't have any like rules or regulations 15 like you have to, you have to improve before we'll let 16 you do this?
17 And when I heard that you guys were 18 allowing them to refuel and they weren't coming out of 19 Category 4, Column 4, and they weren't into 3 to get 20 that reward to do that, I just blew my mind. And I 21 mean, how can you do that?
22 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
23 MALE 1: Because I think it's important to 24 understand the process. Column 4, when a plant gets 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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130 into Column 4, that happens over a period of time.
1 They don't just fall off a cliff and end 2
up in Column 4. It's going to take time for them to 3
recover from that.
4 Typical period of time for a plant that 5
gets into Column 4, we've had, we've had I think 10 of 6
these over the 17 years of the program, typical time 7
that it takes for a plant to recover from Column 4 is 8
three to four years.
9 Pilgrim has been, Pilgrim has been in 10 Column 4 for about a year and a half. And as I said 11 earlier, whether they shut down now or shut down two 12 years from now, I want them to improve.
13 Because whether they're operating or in 14 the decommissioning process, I need to see those 15 improvements.
16 So that is, you know, that doesn't, so the 17 need to improve is regardless of whether they shut 18 down now or two years from now.
19 As far as, as far as allowing refueling.
20 Their license allows them to refuel. I don't give 21 them permission every two years to refuel. Their 22 license allows them to refuel.
23 The criteria to prevent refueling would be 24 the same criteria that I would apply to the Column 5 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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131 decision.
1 So it, so it is, so it is entirely 2
consistent with the program that, they're not the 3
first plant in Column 4 to refuel.
4 That is, the overarching conclusion of the 5
his team and of the agency is that the plant is safe 6
to operate, and that's what allows them to refuel. So 7
let me just --
8 (Off microphone comments) 9 MALE 1: The NRC does have the option to 10 suspend, modify, or revoke the license. That would be 11 that Column 5 decision, so --
12 MS. WILLIAMSON: So when you say it takes 13 a long time for them to slip into that Category 4, 14 it's going to take a long time to, you know --
15 MALE 1: Yes.
16 (Off microphone comments) 17 MALE 1: So I think one of Don's slides 18 talked, some signs of improvement that the team saw.
19 I would also note that what got them here was the 20 frequency, initially, was the frequency of the scrams 21 that were occurring back in 2013.
22 In the last two years, they have had one 23 scram, and that is very consistent with industry 24 performance.
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132 The industry, over the past year with 100 1
reactors, roughly, had 53 scrams. So that's roughly 2
one every two years per reactor.
3 That's, Pilgrim is at industry norm over 4
the last two years, relative to that. We talked about 5
the performance indicators for the mitigating systems.
6 The most important safety systems, the 7
reliability and the availability of those systems has 8
been consistently good over the past year.
9 So we have these findings, we have these 10 violations of procedural issues and so on. But there 11 are signs of improvement.
12 I don't want to leave you with the sense 13 that Pilgrim has not improved at all. What I want to 14 tell you is they still got work to do to get back to 15 being a normal level of oversight.
16 (Off microphone comments) 17 MR. KLUKAN: She, all right. She had 18 about half of her time left. So technically she's 19 still within her time.
20 So I'm going to let her like ask that last 21 question, and then we're going to go on. The next 22 number I think is Number 25.
23 MALE 1: Let me, let me just clarify the 24 question, if I could. So the question was if they 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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133 refuel and then shortly after they start up from 1
refueling, they scram, then what was the question?
2 (Off microphone comments) 3 MALE 1: Yes. Yes. So let me clarify a 4
little bit about, a scram is bad. Actually a scram is 5
the plant, generally, is the plant responding as 6
designed to go into a safe condition based on 7
something that happened.
8 So really what we would look at is, what's 9
that something that
- happened, and what's the 10 significance of that and how does that feed into our 11 Column 5 criteria? So that's how we would look at 12 that. Thank you.
13 MR. KLUKAN: All right, thank you. So 14 next up is Number 25, Ms. Dolabani, who --
15 MS. DOLABANI: That was me, and I will 16 offer my time to whoever.
17 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. All right. Thank you 18 very much. Okay. She, or he, excuse me, I apologize, 19 will be followed by Number 36, which is Bob Rio 20 (phonetic), and then Number 27, Elaine Dickinson, and 21 then Number 19, John D'Archangelo (phonetic).
22 So again, Number 36, Bob Rio, 27, Elaine 23 Dickenson, and then Number 19, John D'Archangelo. And 24 I apologize if I'm mispronouncing any of your names.
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134 So, please.
1 MR. BARTON: Yes. My name's Don Barton 2
(phonetic), and I'm from Mashpee.
3 (Off microphone comments) 4 MR. BARTON: Yes. My name's Don Barton.
5 I'm from Mashpee. I just have a few words I want to 6
express today.
7 Obviously, the last few years, Pilgrim has 8
descended into a litany of failure. And the fact that 9
you express today that there's been some improvement, 10 you would expect that with the onslaught of your 11 assets onsite, watching every move.
12 You would expect to see some measure of 13 improvement. If, in fact, you were providing much of 14 the oversight and leadership while you were there with 15 this intensive review.
16 But aside from the issues of consistent, 17 irredeemable failure, there's another aspect I wanted 18 to share with you tonight, and that concerns on 19 another whole dimension, the cyber security issues at 20 Pilgrim.
21 Nuclear plants have become targets for 22 cyber warfare around the globe. The Deputy General, 23 Secretary General of the UN warned in December that 24 the nightmare scenario of radioactive material being 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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135 released from nuclear power stations using a cyber 1
attack is being attempted by terrorist groups.
2 This is just another consideration in the 3
whole scheme of things. Russia is accused of hacking 4
a nuclear plant in Ukraine.
5 The Korea hydro nuclear plant in South 6
Korea was attacked and computer systems breached. The 7
government blamed North Korea, and Kim Jong-Un for the 8
attack.
9 Recently ISIS terrorists killed at the 10 Belgium airport were plotting an attack on a nearby 11 nuclear plant.
12 But can we be assured that Pilgrim, which 13 has the radioactive equivalent of dozens of atomic 14 bombs onsite, not be a victim of cyber hacking that 15 could release all of this destructive power?
16 The answer is definitively, no, as Pilgrim 17 is not in compliance with cyber security requirements.
18 This is some history.
19 In 2009, Pilgrim submitted a schedule for 20 meeting a required, eight required milestones related 21 to bolstering cyber security.
22 Here we are eight years later and still 23 they are not in compliance. Pilgrim did not complete, 24 did complete seven of eight milestones in December 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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136 2012, five years ago.
1 The first seven milestones were generic, 2
preparatory steps that were supposed to lead to step 3
8, which is the actual implementation. Never 4
happened. Step 8, full implementation of the cyber 5
security plan, missed its original deadline December 6
2014.
7 For ISMIS, Entergy stated that the scope 8
of implementation required more resources. Then a new 9
deadline was established and extended to June 30, 10 2016. Missed again.
11 NRC stated that the second miss was 12 reasonable, given the complexity of the remaining 13 work.
14 Now, a new deadline has been given by the 15 NRC for December 15, 2017. Pilgrim spokesman, Patrick 16 O'Brien said on behalf of Entergy that this third 17 delay will ensure compliance.
18 I am sure Entergy will redouble their 19 efforts with closure looming in 2019. In the future, 20 I submit that the NRC should not set any compliance 21 deadlines for only another miss.
22 Instead, let's depict reality and use 23 language like, when you are ready or whenever, to 24 salvage your remaining credibility.
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137 So I want to know, if they miss again on 1
December 15, 2017, are you, what happens? Is there 2
any penalty or does it just go away into the abyss and 3
it's just extended again?
4 This is what is so frustrating to the 5
people here tonight. Nothing gets done. Thank you.
6 MALE 2: My particular division in Region 7
I, we supervise the inspectors that do go out and 8
verify compliance with our cyber requirements.
9 The milestones, 1 through 7, that you 10 described, first of all, let me say that we do take 11 cyber security very important, and we believe that the 12 site is safe from a cyber-type attack.
13 And when you look at the milestones 1 14 through 7, those were controls that were designed to 15 ensure protection of the most critical systems at the 16 station.
17 The milestone 8 full implementation 18 schedule that you discussed are for protection of 19 systems that weren't covered by the milestones 1 20 through 7 implementation process.
21 So we believe that there are adequate 22 controls in this point in time to ensure that the 23 station is safe from a cyber attack. We are --
24 MR. BARTON: You didn't implement the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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138 plan.
1 MALE 2: That's not true. The milestones 2
1 through 7 have been completed, and best information 3
I have is that Pilgrim's on track to complete full 4
implementation through milestone 8 by December of the 5
end of this year, and we will conduct a follow-up 6
inspection following the completion of their milestone 7
8 completion status to confirm that the activities 8
they've undertaken have been done to a high level on 9
integrity. So, thank you.
10 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next up is Number 11 36, Mr. Bob Rio. He will be followed by Number 27, 12 Elaine Dickenson, and then Number 19, John 13 D'Archangelo.
14 MR. RIO: Okay. Thank you very much. My 15 name is Bob Rio. I am senior vice president at 16 Associated Industries of Massachusetts, which is a 17 trade association.
18 It's been around 100 years. Certainly 19 nuclear safety is not my expertise, so I'm going to 20 leave that to your experts and all the discussions 21 that have gone along.
22 What I want to really talk about is the 23 nuclear plant's contribution to really the energy, the 24 energy role in Massachusetts.
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139 You know, we have the highest electricity 1
rates in the country right now, Massachusetts does.
2 And certainly that is hurting a lot people in the 3
western part of the state, particularly in the 4
southeastern part of the state where electric rates 5
really are driving businesses out.
6 There is an over-reliance now on natural 7
gas. Over 60 percent of our power now is coming from 8
natural gas, and I think everybody knows it's 9
incredibly difficult to site natural gas lines and 10 other storage to service those power plants.
11 All the new plants, and certainly the 12 plant that will pick up the slack when Pilgrim 13 retires, ultimately, will be natural gas.
14 Pilgrim is a base load power plant, which 15 really serves us daily and reliably. In fact, 16 intermittent resources like solar and wind would not 17 exist except for plants like nuclear power plants that 18 really serve as the backup, as we saw a couple days 19 ago when we had that, all that snow.
20 Certainly solar was not working without 21 the natural gas and the nuclear. We would've been in 22 a lot of trouble that day.
23 Clean, no carbon. It will be replaced by 24 natural gas. In fact, we're so starved for natural 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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140 gas right now that many of the power plants are 1
actually operating dual fuel and oil, and our carbon 2
emissions last year have actually gone up because 3
we're actually using more oil in Massachusetts than we 4
ever have because of the lack of natural gas.
5 And certainly without building a natural 6
gas infrastructure, which is very difficult to build, 7
we're going to be burning more oil, and if carbon or 8
global warming is really a concern, then non-carbon 9
sources like nuclear, like wind, like solar, like 10 hydro, really need to be continued here for the, for 11 the near future.
12 So in the end, you know, you've heard 13 about the people, 600 paying jobs and all that, and 14 I'll leave that to the employees of that plant to 15 really explain that, but we would support that the NRC 16 continue monitoring the plant, but at the same time, 17 if it's safe, we urge this plant to be, remain open 18 until, what's the final, June 1, 2019. Thank you.
19 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Next up is Number 20 27, Elaine Dickenson.
21 MS. DICKENSON: I gave my ticket to Sheila 22 Parks.
23 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. She 24 will be followed by Number 19, John D'Archangelo, and 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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141 then Number 15, Mr. Steven Seymour (phonetic).
1 MS. PARKS: My name is Dr. Sheila Parks 2
and I'm not a medical doctor. I talked with you a 3
month ago and I said that I was a former college 4
professor. I taught teachers and people wanting to be 5
teachers.
And I like the other man who 6
talked. I want everybody to see the sign that I have.
7 And I also want to thank you for extending the time.
8 I drove down from Boston to speak to you 9
because we're at ground zero too. You don't have to 10 be at the Cape to be at ground zero.
11 Diane (phonetic) and Elaine, Diane and 12 Susan (phonetic) came to Boston several years ago to 13 tell us that we were there too. So we're here in this 14 fight too.
15 So I'm going to try, I know about 16 preemption. I've been reading about it for several 17 years now since my friend and colleague, Mary Lambert 18 (phonetic), mentioned it to me.
19 But I am going to exercise my first 20 amendment rights tonight and talk about cancer and 21 leukemia.
22 Last month when I was here, I asked you, 23 what were you going to tell our children. Tonight, 24 I'm going to ask you the same thing.
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142 What is everybody in this room going to 1
tell our children? That children die of cancer 20 2
times more and are more susceptible to leukemia and 3
other cancers than adults, 20 times more?
4 That women are more susceptible to 5
carcinogenic effects of nuclear plants, two times more 6
than men?
7 And that little girls are more susceptible 8
to the carcinogenic effects than little boys, two 9
times more? Who is going to tell that to our 10 children?
11 You need to go home tonight and tell that 12 to every child in the world, that they're going to die 13 and you all know because you all live here that there 14 are clusters of cancer here in, on the Cape that are 15 the highest rate of Massachusetts.
16 Well, they don't come from anything except 17 Pilgrim. And I'm sure if anybody ever did a study of 18 the workers in the plant, they would have the highest 19 cancer rate too.
20 So in 2014, Dr. Ian Fairlie from United 21 Kingdom put out a research study, which you didn't 22 know about, Jackson, Mr. Jackson, when I asked you 23 about it last week, but I'm in my, the process of 24 sending all of you, Entergy and the NRC, all the 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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143 research that's been done on this stuff.
1 So anyhow, kids who live near nuclear 2
power plants have more leukemias than kids who don't 3
live near them. That's statistically significant.
4 Children ask the world of us. We're 5
giving them leukemia and cancer. Pine talked about 6
the ocean. It's filled with all the stuff that gives 7
you cancer.
8 So I wanted to say, I can't keep quiet.
9 Remember that meeting for the women's day? I can't 10 keep quiet about nuclear power. I can't keep quiet 11 about nuclear power. And none of the other people in 12 this room can either. Thank God, there are all of us 13 saying, we can't keep quiet about nuclear power.
14 Helen Caldicott, who is the most 15 preeminent physician in the world, who has worked 16 about nuclear power and nuclear weapons for at least 17 43 years, in July 7, 2013, I read you already her 18 statistics of what she said.
19 We've got to stop it. We're giving, I 20 want to know who is, that's my question to you, who is 21 going to tell our children?
22 The children of everybody in this room.
23 The children of this country. The children everywhere 24 there are nuclear power plants, that they are dying of 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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144 cancer from the nuclear power plants, from the minute 1
they were built.
2 Doesn't matter if they're old and 3
crotchety. From the day they were built. There is no 4
safe dose of radiation ever, ever, ever, and that has 5
been put out by one of the most, I have the paper 6
here, so I'm going to tell you, by one of the most 7
scientific journals in the country. Thank you.
8 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
9 (Off microphone comments) 10 MR. KLUKAN: I was, I was worried there 11 for a minute. Okay. Thank you. All right. Next up 12 is Number 19, Mr. John D'Archangelo.
13 He will be followed by Number 15, Steven 14 Seymour, and then Number 41, Margaret Ryce-Moir 15 (phonetic). I apologize. But Number, again, Number 16 41, Margaret Ryce, M-O-I-R. Anyway, so please, Mr.
17 D'Archangelo.
18 MR.
D'ARCHANGELO:
Hi, I'm John 19
Dearchangelo. I am a,
I don't live around here on the 20 Cape. I'm actually from Reading, closer to Boston.
21 And I just wanted to say that I am 22 disgusted, and I'm disgusted with the NRC and I'm 23 disgusted in Entergy Corporation, and I think you're 24 all a bunch of pigs. And we need to shut Pilgrim 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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145 Nuclear Power Plant as soon as possible.
1 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much. Next 2
up, we have Number 15, Steven Seymour. He will be 3
followed by, again, Ms. Ryce, and then Number 2, Mr.
4 John Nicholls (phonetic). Okay. So again, Mr.
5 Seymour, please.
6 MR. SEYMOUR: Yes. I haven't come to one 7
of the hearings for the NRC before. I'm a civil 8
engineer from Cape Cod out in Barnstable.
9 And it's, I'm glad I came tonight. I was, 10 it actually raised my level of concern about the 11 issue. I thought I might hear something a little bit 12 more upbeat.
13 I know in the field that I worked in with 14 sewage treatment plants, we had projections of what 15 the useful life of the plant was, and what the useful 16 life of the concrete was, and what the useful life of 17 the mechanical was, and that's how we did present 18 worse, the figure if you were going to build the 19 thing.
20 I don't know if the industry or the, all 21 governmental oversight has looked in, at that level of 22 what is the useful life of some of these plants.
23 It sounds like some of the equipment that, 24 tonight, a couple pieces of equipment, they couldn't 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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146 replace them with the part that was made originally, 1
and then they had to put something else in.
2 And it seemed like they didn't look at how 3
that would impact the whole system, and that was one 4
of the, couple of the things that they were looked at.
5 And I could see where that could happen.
6 And I, on Cape Cod, we have evacuation 7
signs by Route 6 when you, if you actually get to 8
Route 6, which you know where to go that it's going to 9
say evacuation ways from Route 6, my understanding is 10 that in the event of a nuclear, if there was a nuclear 11 problem, that they would actually close the bridge 12 down.
13 You just stay there, you know, and see 14 what happens. And then my question, the other 15 question I had, and the gentleman brought it up about 16 financially, is if there was a nuclear accident like 17 that, who would be financially responsible to make 18 people haul?
19 And if there were injuries to that, would 20 there be criminal responsibility of people that, 21 people such as in your position or positions of 22 authority as to whether they let something go or not?
23 And that's my questions. Thanks.
24 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you very much.
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147 MR. SEYMOUR: Actually, is this working?
1 There we go.
2 MR. KLUKAN: No, no.
3 MR. SEYMOUR: Now I'm on.
4 MR. KLUKAN: Maybe the counsel does or 5
something.
6 MR. SEYMOUR: What, I'm sorry, what was 7
that?
8 MR. KLUKAN: You want me to answer 9
questions?
10 MR. SEYMOUR: Yes. I don't know.
11 MR. KLUKAN: So, normally during these 12 meetings, I don't, I don't do that.
13 MR. SEYMOUR: Okay.
14 MR. KLUKAN: I'd be happy to take your 15 questions back to the Office of General Counsel. The 16 reason why is I don't like mixing my two roles.
17 It's not because I don't want to answer 18 your questions, and I'll be happy to talk to you after 19 the meeting, but during the meeting, I try to stick in 20 a facilitator role.
21 It makes life easier. Just stick with 22 only one hat for the meeting. But again, if you stick 23 around afterwards, I'll be happy to talk to you about 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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148 MR. SEYMOUR: Okay.
1 MR. KLUKAN: -- what I'm allowed to as 2
regional counsel.
3 MR. SEYMOUR: Okay.
4 MR. KLUKAN: I don't make the policies.
5 Anyway --
6 MR. SEYMOUR: That's okay. And the other 7
question about, is there a thought of what's the 8
useful life of the plants are?
9 MALE 1: Yes, so I'm actually going to go 10 against my counsel's advice and touch the first one 11 briefly. Maybe it's the third rail. I don't know.
12 There, somebody else referred to it 13 earlier, there's a Price-Anderson Act that provides 14 insurance coverage that the utility pays into.
15 That, frankly, is at a level that, when 16 you look at the cost impacts of the Fukushima 17 accident, the Price-Anderson coverage would not be 18 sufficient, and then there's a point where the federal 19 government steps in, to the broader question of 20 culpability after the fact.
21 Yes, I think, ultimately, I'm not going to 22 speculate on that. Ultimately, the courts would 23 decide that.
24 We have had a case in Ohio, about 15 years 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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149 ago, where there was corrosion in the head of a 1
reactor vessel, and there was found to be a, through 2
the courts, some criminal culpability of negligence by 3
engineer there.
4 That's one that didn't even get to an 5
accident. So I think it's plausible to consider that 6
there, that the courts would look dimly on that.
7 And as the other gentleman gave us the New 8
York Times article that's recently been the finding in 9
Japan.
10 As far as the useful life, that is, 11 obviously, a consideration that goes into the design 12 of the plant from the, from the structures that house 13 the plant to the structures that, the piping systems 14 that the fluid systems go
- through, there's 15 consideration.
16 If it's fatigue cycles through the life, 17 all of the those things factor into the design. When 18 the plant come to the 40 year point, the license 19 renewal is focused on the aging management.
20 So it's focused on identification and 21 replacement of things that are coming to the end of 22 their useful life.
23 So yes, it's included in the original 24 consideration of the design, and it specifically is 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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150 the focus of the effort when we look at renewing a 1
license beyond the original 40 years.
2 MR. SEYMOUR: Thank you.
3 MALE 1: Thanks.
4 MR. KLUKAN: All right. So I feel, I feel 5
like I can add something to that, just very quickly.
6 So just, I don't, I don't think everyone, this may not 7
be common knowledge, but as you know, we have 8
deliberate misconduct rules under each part of our 9
regulations.
10 Part 50.5 is the one that applies to 11 reactors. That is the most commonly cited. I 12 shouldn't say most commonly cited, but in terms of 13 reactors, that's the one you're going to see.
14 Every time our Office of Investigation 15 makes a deliberate finding, that case file is 16 forwarded to the US Attorney's office, or the 17 Department of Justice, to see whether they want to 18 pursue it criminally.
19 And then if they, if they decline, then 20 we'll pursue it civilly. So we do work hand-in-hand 21 with the Department of Justice for all our deliberate, 22 our willful misconduct findings.
23 Those are turned over to the Department of 24 Justice for review and consideration before we move 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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151 forward with our own enforcement actions.
1 MALE 1: You were asking about NRC staff 2
3 MR. KLUKAN: Oh.
4 MALE 1: Brett's referring to the Office 5
of Investigations. We also have an Office of 6
Inspector General that is also, they're charged with 7
investigating potential wrongdoing by us. So they 8
have a similar coordination function when they have an 9
investigation finding.
10 MR. KLUKAN: Yes, that's a whole different 11 can of worms. But we do, every time you make an 12 allegation, and this, I can personally say this.
13 Every time you make an allegation of 14 abuse, fraud abuse, misconduct, wrongdoing by an NRC 15 staff member, I forward it onto the Office of 16 Inspector General.
17 MR. SEYMOUR: Okay.
18 MR. KLUKAN: So, anyway --
19 MR. SEYMOUR: Thank you. And I just 20 wanted to say that I am more concerned tonight than I 21 was before.
22 MALE 1: Okay.
23 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
24 MALE 1: Thanks.
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152 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So next up, we have 1
Number 41. Oh, you're already here.
2 MS. RYCE-MOIR: Hello.
3 MR. KLUKAN: All right. And then you will 4
be followed by Number 2, John Nicholls. John Nicholls 5
still in the audience?
6 All right, great. And then Number 1, 7
Sheila Parks. Okay, so please. Whenever you're 8
ready.
9 MS. RYCE-MOIR: So the Pilgrim Nuclear 10 Power Station is safe. Like cigarette smoking is good 11 for your health, like thalidomide was good for 12 pregnant women, like syphilis injections inserted into 13 healthy black men were good for them, like the toxic 14 debris ingested into their lungs by first responders 15 at the World Trade Center wasn't a health risk.
16 Sure, we citizens of the Commonwealth 17 believe you when you reassure us about the safety of 18 the ailing toxic waste dump called Pilgrim.
19 Why should we not believe you? Look, I'm 20 sure you're pleasant people. You have pleasant 21 families. You donate to Toys For Tots.
22 You even set up open meetings for the 23 people to be able to speak when you're forced to by 24 errant emails.
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153 So here's the problem. You really haven't 1
listened. It's all a sham. A carefully orchestrated 2
manipulation of the truth. It happens a lot these 3
days.
4 Despite the magnitude of profound and 5
brilliantly articulated objections about the safety of 6
Pilgrim by all Massachusetts legislators, thousands of 7
residents, top-notch scientists, and even former NRC 8
regulators, you continue to tell us it's safe.
9 It's safe like driving your car into 10 oncoming traffic is safe. We'd have to be crazy to 11 listen to your excuses.
12 You are cowards, and the gentlemen from 13 the corporation, cowards. Nothing but cowards.
14 Worse, you're cowards who are playing Russian Roulette 15 with our lives and the lives of our children and our 16 grandchildren.
17 NRC's magical thinking may kill us. It 18 may do so slowly as the multiple problems that plague 19 the plant remain unresolved.
20 Or it may do so in an instant, should the 21 water rise and the wind blow in any particular weather 22 event, like we saw in Fukushima.
23 Maintaining the Pilgrim Nuclear Power 24 Plant is nothing short of complete and total 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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154 abdication of federal responsibility for our health 1
and safety.
2 And it is shameful. It is shameful. And 3
I think that your charade is equally as shameful. Let 4
me conclude by suggesting that the relationship 5
between the Entergy Corporation and the NRC is far 6
more intimate and cozy than that of both entities with 7
us, the public. Accident?
8 Why bother with the travesty of increased 9
supervision, the confirmatory letter you've talked 10 about is already in the mail.
11 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Okay. Next up we 12 have Number 2, John Nicholls.
13 MR. NICHOLLS: John Nicholls. The word 14 safe is being used as a public relations device in 15 order the calm the public.
16 There's no content behind it. Since, even 17 if people sincerely believe it's safe, it's only a 18 forecast, and forecasts are inaccurate, and there is 19 some chance of a nuclear accident there.
20 There were 99 nuclear accidents worldwide, 21 1955 to 2013, 47 of them were in the US, 33 meltdowns 22 in the US, according to Wikipedia, which has a long 23 list of nuclear disasters.
24 And you did not convince the Cape 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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155 delegation of legislators, all of whom call for 1
immediate shut down and call for transfer of fuel rods 2
into dry casks, nor did you, nor did you convince 3
Elizabeth Warren, who called for a shut down unless 4
Pilgrim can be renovated.
5 And my question to you is if a whole lot 6
of legislators, not only Cape legislators, but some 7
Boston legislators too, and the Cape, and the Attorney 8
General of Massachusetts, and the Governor, and the 9
federal legislative congressional delegation 10 consisting of nine representatives and two senators, 11 would sign a letter to the NRC demanding immediate 12 shutdown, would you, or would the NRC respond to all 13 the points made in that letter and make those points 14 public? Thank you.
15 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you.
16 MALE 1: So if the commission received 17 such a letter, I am confident that they would respond 18 in public to any points addressed in such a letter.
19 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. Next up we have Sheila 20 Parks.
21 (Off microphone comments) 22 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Before you begin, 23 so this, the numbers on the board were at that point 24 in the evening where we have to start wrapping things 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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156 up. So we are going to end --
1 (Off microphone comments) 2 MR. GARLEY: Hello, I'm John Garley 3
(phonetic). I'm from Hingham. I'd like to ask how 4
many people feel safer as a result of the talk?
5 Seriously. Is that true? Then you work for Entergy.
6 (Off microphone comments) 7 MR. GARLEY: All right. I just want to 8
read something in case any of you people have 9
forgotten this.
10 We hold these truths to be self-evident 11 that all men are created equal, and that all, they are 12 endowed with their creator with certain unalienable 13 rights that among these are life, liberty, and the 14 pursuit of happiness.
15 That to secure these rights, governments 16 are instituted among men and women, deriving their 17 just powers from the consent of the governed that 18 whenever any form of government becomes destructive to 19 these ends, that it is the right of the people to 20 alter and to abolish it, and to institute a new 21 government weighing its foundations on such principles 22 and organizing its powers in such form as to them to 23 shall be seem likely to affect their safety and 24 happiness.
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157 Prudence, indeed, will dictate that 1
governments long established should not be changed for 2
light and transient causes.
3 In according to all experience has shown 4
that mankind are more disposed to suffer while evils 5
are sufferable and will right themselves by abolishing 6
the forms of which we are, they're accustomed.
7 But when train, long train of abuses and 8
usurpations pursuing invariably the same object 9
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute 10 despotism.
11 It is their right and their duty to throw 12 off such government and to provide the guards for new 13 future security.
14 I throw you off. You really suck. I 15 can't believe there's, what, 55 million people in 16 immediate threat, and you're saying, oh, just refuel.
17 That is like, insane. And that you sit 18 there and look at that, you have to be sociopathic.
19 I honestly believe that.
20 I, it's just insanity, what's going on 21 here. And just, and you go and your security culture, 22 you know, this is a whole new millennium.
23 Someone talk about cyber stuff, and I'm 24 still stuck with 9/11 with flying a plane into it.
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158 Answer my question.
1 Is it safer to fly a plane into a spent 2
fuel pool or into a dry cask? Which is the safest?
3 All right?
4 It's not that funny. You know, I think 5
you should sit there like that, you know, making the 6
money and dismissing, I mean, it's just, I just, I 7
don't have words.
8 That's why I had to read this. But I 9
thought you made a Freudian slip here in your header.
10 It's the Pilgrim Annual Assessment Meeting and IP, 11 whatever.
12 The public exit meeting? What does, 13 right? Can you see your header? The public exit, is 14 we like to leave.
15 I encourage every American in here, you 16 guys are working for us, right? Come on, you're here 17 for the safety of the people.
18 It's our country. Are we going to throw 19 this shit off? I mean, really name some truth. There 20 are good American citizens working, they're not 21 getting paid for it, coming up with real stuff, and 22 nothing's happening.
23 We've heard it repeatedly, repeatedly, 24 repeatedly. Nothing is happening. You're protecting 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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159 the corporations, you're protecting the money, and 1
you're not protecting the health and wealth and safety 2
of the commons, which is us. You fucking get that?
3 Thank you.
4 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. All right. Next 5
up is Number 51, Heidi Mayo (phonetic).
6 MS. MAYO: I'm Heidi Mayo. I live in 7
Plymouth. I used to live in Duxbury. I used to be 8
able to see the plant from my living room.
9 I've been living underneath of them, 10 literally the shadow of the plant since it was built.
11 I don't have a thyroid anymore because in the late 12
'70s or early '80s, I believe there was Iodine 131 13 that the plant let go of and I ate a hot mussel.
14 And so I don't have a thyroid anymore, so 15 I just thought I'd bring up the cancer thing. One 16 thing I would really like to do is to thank the 17 workers at this plant, this failing plant.
18 This plant that is decrepit, that is, the 19 cement can't even last that long, and I have to thank 20 these workers for being the thing that stands between 21 us and a Fukushima-type accident.
22 And you guys should be ashamed of 23 yourselves. Just close it. Close it before you ruin 24 everybody's lives. Thank you.
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160 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Thank you. Okay.
1 Next up is Jim Parameter (phonetic), Number 17. Is 2
Jim --
3 MALE 3: He left.
4 MR. KLUKAN: All right, Jim has left.
5 Okay. So next up we will have Number 43, Joanne Coil 6
(phonetic). Joanne Coil, Number 43?
7 Okay. All right. Let me pull two new 8
names. And then these will be the final, if they're 9
in the room. So Number 40.
10 FEMALE 2: No, Joanne's given me her --
11 MR. KLUKAN: Oh, Joanne was here?
12 FEMALE 2: Yes. Is it, yes. She is here.
13 Yes, she's right there. Does anybody who hasn't 14 spoken want to --
15 MR. KLUKAN: Okay. So --
16 FEMALE 2: Okay.
17 MR. KLUKAN: So Joanne, or, please.
18 FEMALE 2: Okay. I just want to go back 19 to that email, which was really the unvarnished truth, 20 and we really felt that you understood the situation 21 that was going on at Pilgrim because of what you said 22 in that email.
23 I just want to ask, you did say earlier 24 that a safety culture would take three to five years 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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161 to really turn around? Is that true?
1 MALE 1: That's the standard --
2 FEMALE 2: Okay.
3 MALE 1: -- if you read books, yes.
4 FEMALE 2: Okay. So if I can go to your 5
email, it said that on the site vice president tried 6
to backtrack on a statement, but that you believed 7
what the senior managers said was genuine thought.
8 So I'm going to take this email as your 9
genuine thought, because you did that to somebody who 10 was backtracking, and we're going to believe this 11 email.
12 In the email you said, there was failure 13 that would not prevent reoccurrence. That there's a 14 lot of positive energy, but on one seems to know what 15 to do with it to improve performance leading to 16 procedural noncompliances, poor performance, poor 17 engineering practices, and equipment reliability 18 problems.
19 You also said too that overall we are 20 beginning to see a picture where the people seem to be 21 willing and happy and excited about change, so that's 22 to the workers.
23 But actions seem to be marginalized during 24 implementation. Some of this marginalization seems to 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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162 be due to not understanding what the end state should 1
look like.
2 And frankly, some of it seems to be due to 3
lack of resources across many groups. We've talked 4
about that.
5 Entergy's not putting money into the dying 6
reactor. You also ended saying we are observing 7
current indications of a safety culture problem that 8
a bunch of talking probably won't fix.
9 We take that as your genuine thought. You 10 have already said that the safety culture can't be 11 fixed.
12 MALE 1: No, I didn't say, no, I didn't 13 say that.
14 FEMALE 2: You also, probably won't be 15 fixed. Probably won't --
16 MALE 1: By something. Right?
17 FEMALE 2: Probably won't be fixed.
18 MALE 1: Read that whole, read that whole 19 sentence. Please.
20 FEMALE 2: We are observing current 21 indications of a safety culture problem that a bunch 22 of talking probably won't fix.
23 MALE 1: Exactly.
24 FEMALE 2: Period.
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163 MALE 1: So you mentioned that is the 1
unvarnished truth. I certainly would stand behind 2
that that point in time, one week into the inspection, 3
that was the unvarnished truth.
4 I can also tell you when, the results that 5
I presented tonight are the truth. When the report 6
comes out within 45 days of this meeting, that will be 7
the truth to the best, if I put my name on it and I 8
sign it, it's the truth. Okay?
9 I am an honest individual. It is to the 10 best of my ability, it will be the truth that the team 11 knew at that, when we completed the inspection. Now 12 13 FEMALE 2: Okay. So, what I'm, yes, what 14 I'm, yes --
15 MALE 1: That piece you talked, the piece 16 you talked about, the safety culture --
17 FEMALE 2: Yes.
18 MALE 1: -- I still stand behind that.
19 The licensee has, we wrote a finding against, or a 20 finding against that.
21 They have to go back and take further 22 corrective actions to fix what the team found, and 23 we're going to get a chance to take a look at what 24 corrective actions they come up with.
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164 FEMALE 2: Okay. So they close it in two 1
years, but you've already indicated that improving the 2
safety culture would take three to five years. So the 3
math doesn't seem to match.
4 MALE 1: Getting to a place where safety 5
culture would be considered the norm in the industry 6
takes that long. They are currently improving it.
7 FEMALE 2: Okay. But you said it takes 8
three to five years, so the math doesn't really match.
9 And so that's the big concern is we, as citizens in 10 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and actually 11 everywhere, have a right to safety. It's Article 1 in 12 our --
13 MALE 1: Yes.
14 FEMALE 2: -- state constitution. And we 15 demand that safety. And you aren't providing it.
16 From what we're reading in the reports, the ongoing 17 systemic mis-management, the ongoing reoccurring 18 violations of federal safety standards are still 19 happening today. And it needs to stop and Pilgrim 20 needs to be shut down.
21 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. Okay. It is now 22 9:45. As always, I would like to thank you for the 23 respect you've shown at each other.
24 I realize that you, many of you have 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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165 divergent views on the issues we've discussed tonight, 1
but for the most part, you were very civil to each 2
other and for that you have my utmost thanks.
3 There are feedback forms out on the 4
registration table. I personally value your input 5
into how we can make these better in terms of 6
logistics.
7 So please, please fill out those forms if 8
you have thoughts or ideas for how to make this 9
better. And with that, I'll turn it over to Dan to 10 close out the evening.
11 MS. LOGAN: I'm sorry. I am sorry, but if 12 you would run this meeting properly and not let people 13 go over their time and had people on deck sooner, more 14 of us could've spoken.
15 You didn't do a good job with the meeting.
16 So now you want to cut those of us that have been here 17 all night to go home. It's wrong.
18 (Off microphone comments) 19 MR. KLUKAN: Okay.
20 MS. LOGAN: Okay.
21 MR. KLUKAN: You know what? The meeting's 22 officially over, but if you want to, we'll stay here 23 and speak.
24 I will just say this, and I'm not trying 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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166 to defend myself. I spend a lot of time trying to 1
figure this out and working with my other facilitators 2
at Headquarters to figure out how to run these 3
meetings.
4 And I apologize that I wasn't as efficient 5
as I could've been, but I want you to know that I do 6
my best to be fair to you.
7 (Off microphone comments) 8 MS. LOGAN: Sorry, it just wasn't good 9
enough.
10 MR. KLUKAN: You know what? If you, if 11 you don't believe I was good enough or you think there 12 are ways I could improve this, then please fill out 13 the feedback form so that we can document that and 14 take it back to Headquarters.
15 MS. LOGAN: Okay.
16 MR. KLUKAN: But please --
17 MS. LOGAN: My name is Jane Logan 18 (phonetic). I'm an insurance broker and I live on 19 Cape Cod. I'm one mile from the Sagamore Bridge.
20 And before I start, let me, let me speak 21 to the rabid capitalist that was in the audience 22 waving the dollar bill.
23 They didn't share their profits with the 24 people, and we shouldn't cover their losses. That's 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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167 socialized, you know, privatize the profit and 1
socialize the loss.
2 But in addition to that comment, if you 3
listen to the insurance companies that cover Cape Cod 4
with the national flood insurance plan, you would 5
think at any given moment, Plymouth, Cape Cod and the 6
island is going to be wiped off the face of the 7
planet.
8 We live in this big scary place where 9
they're charging everyone higher rates for insurance 10 and where they have, everyone has high wind 11 deductibles, but it's okay to have this old, decrepit 12 power plant on the coast who, not only doesn't have a 13 good risk management plan, they falsified records.
14 Tell me exactly what you have to do in the 15 nuclear community to qualify to be shut down.
16 Falsifying records doesn't cut it? Because it cuts it 17 with me.
18 So in addition to everyone in this area 19 that lives near the power plant and no one's house 20 insurance or property insurance covers nuclear 21 holocaust.
22 So everyone's property is going to be 23 destroyed. Donald Trump's not going to bail us out 24 because Massachusetts didn't vote for him. Okay?
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168 So we're all left with our property 1
destroyed, no insurance coverage. Right? Right?
2 That's what's going to happen. Okay.
3 So you take it from there, and then all of 4
a sudden, you know, the stockholders leave and they're 5
just fine, and we're all left behind with, you know, 6
the Cape in a wreck.
7 Everything's in a wreck. And they want us 8
to bail them out? I mean, really? And not only is it 9
the poor people around the plant, we have PAVE PAWS 10 here. We have Otis Air Force Base here.
11 You know what's going to happen to the 12 security of the east coast if those two facilities 13 can't operate?
14 Does anyone think outside the little box 15 of their own little world and connect the dots? No.
16 I mean, I went to a sub shop in downtown Plymouth one 17 day and there was three security guards from the 18 nuclear power plant there in their uniforms.
19 And I'm thinking, oh, maybe someone should 20 just kidnap them and cause a problem with the power 21 plant. Okay?
22 Things happen. People underestimate how 23 often bad things happen. And when you combine the 24 nuclear power plant with the absolute lack of concern 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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169 for security of this, that this power plant has shown 1
for years and years and years, it's absolutely 2
unacceptable.
3 So I'm hoping that the federal regulators, 4
keeping, if they don't even care about us or, you 5
know, we're just collateral damage.
6 Oh, well. Maybe they'll do the right 7
thing for the wrong reason, and that's to protect PAVE 8
PAWS and Otis Air Force Base and Boston.
9 MR. KLUKAN: Okay.
10 MALE 1: We're done.
11 MR. KLUKAN: Thank you. We are now 12 closing down the meeting. I would ask if you believe 13 that this is a, have comments about how this meeting 14 should be conducted, especially in terms of the number 15 of people who get to speak, I would ask you, write to 16 our commissioners.
17 Their addresses, their email addresses, 18 write to them. I don't have the authority to do that.
19 If you want to make it go that long or to stay until 20 we, until everyone gets to speak, write and tell our 21 commissioners that. Let them hear.
22 (Off microphone comments) 23 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter went 24 off the record.)
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