ML19199A330

Transcript of 790411 Press Conference in Middletown,Pa Re Accident at Facility.Pp 1-23

ML19199A330
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	04/11/1979
From:	Harold Denton Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
To:
References
REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 7904130366
Download: ML19199A330 (23)

Text

{{#Wiki_filter:. I Eith ] yL / -l f m y.. e ij r %t i I UNITED STATES OF MiERICA JR3:jrbl I; I i; I i: UUCLEAR REGULIsTORY COMMISSION i d ;i 2 'I l'sli \\\\ 5.: PRESS CONFERENCE

i 6,;

il ON u 7 ll I! THREE MILE ISLMD 8r l, '. 9 ;! 11 il Middletown, Pennsylvania 10 tit i! April 1.1, 1979 11il 2:30 p.m. 12 Pages 1 - 23 13 I; 14 I h 15 i 16. '. 'I 17 !,i l 18 I l 19 [ 20 i' h 13 ~ AG1 21 [; 22 79041a0566 i s 23 Y v 24 'i

3 1 jrbl 2 l l \\ l I i RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED 4/11/79 l l 2 P ROCEEDINCS li 3[ MR. FOUCHARD: Thincp have chango since about a I 4} week ago, and we thought we would come down here and give you, 5 'l the situation here today; this very well may be the last i 6 scheduled briefing. i 7' We are going to begin to wind down our activities 8,l here in the press center; and to try to keep you informed we k 9 will probably try to keep the trailer out there for a while. 10, But Earold wanted to come down this afternoon and i-Il !! tell you about the current situation, and a little bit about 12 where we go from here. E.mb 13 So, Harold? q; :3 % -;cg I 'S 9 Id DR. DENTON: There have been no dramatic develop-

u. c.,

DCs Il I

rfers. 8nc. ' ,..M 3 i RECTED 4/11/79 Tl jrb2 NSCRIPT UNCO of the phg RAW TRA cool-down d ultimate lockt Ih With regard ' preferred plan' to solid I; so-called ide system being steam generator s the 2 vess 3 h the better, making ation inside the the h and atural circu modify the B-stea better f rding n re to steam d water, and af oThe plans prently-ina tive sently a c 'l 5; res so t this is the p l

gers, crator loop and hebt exchan 6

en mps l the B-steam g 7t-{ gen stalling some pusteam generato:, l } in the onment. by g 8ll through to the en ' bc v En-]J 9!j leakage t out mediate loop f C, j loop, will not ge ort of an int r 2 I k s This is condenser modi 2 r: IO .;t C;. 1 also h j 11 ll and the o long-term p an ta high erator } steam gen a s. J a 6 12 I There is instal L. l loops, and heat excha () 13 il und pump nd steam generator a 600-po P l wo l u l ide /3 I4 - (Qh) 15l system, perhaps steam generator S a

h..

fu:)' loakage from the r a lon -term prog i 9 16 i any 5 p.A uld be I ctor. wo Lhib.3 rea this 17 jl But 18l,! rm program. w ich wo ld u short-te system n of the And this is wer tempera a ures. 19 ;; 13mbO !) lo n core ^ to he 70 h} ctor do tus wn of f Tae present sta 1though h rea the 21 ij sure; li unds pres 22 'j - 1,000 po f; 4 Tl 3rb3 O I RAW TRANSCRIFT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 2 residual heat removal system, is being modified now to reduce l 3, the possibility of leaks in the sy stem in case they were i I 4 called upon; and to make maintenance easier. 5 Another system that's b eing installed in the R11R is engineered to minimize 6 :; system on a priority basis -- whic 1 i 7 leakage and minic.ize need for mainbencnce -- and a pit is being dug adjacent to one of the b aildings and heat exchangers 8 i 9,, and pumps will be brought in on a sled to provide an l' 10 ! additional backup system to this RhR system. 11 And the plans are to construct over a period of 12 several months a more permanent system of heat exchanger 13 pumps, deionizers, so the contaminnted water inside the 14 reactor containment could be brougtit out through this new l 15 / structure, and new chemical processing unit; and this unit l 16 y would be the one ultimately relied upon to ecol down water il 17 [! inside the containment, and to remove the fission products li 18 1 that are still in the water at that time. I 19 ll There's a difference in short-term and long-term i l ] operations; but all of the systems I just mentioned - the 20 - 21 l! RHR, the sled, and the new unit, are backup systems; they are l 1'fiC/?2 emergency backup systems to the preferred shutdown system I i 23 h I described using the steam generator. !i 24. With regard to release rates of iodine and noble .~ <rM Rascrrres if*c. I I C9 ? 3[Q)[/7h Q 9

l7'hp%7ggnpp, L ; il]y ]

h (il]l a g [ [ 5 %)af d :vMA, 9 1 e u "d dd U 'u bb 334 i i RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 i i l 2 ll during the past 24 hours, i Today, for the first time, the armed aircraft 0 j1 i was r.ot able to identify xenon-133 in the plume. No doubt d I: 5f there's still some being released, but the monitors inside b The 5 6l the building indicate very low lem ls are going out. 7 plant thinks it may have found the 1 caky diaphragm valve 8 and is attempting to repair that. Also operations that disturb the various fluid levels in variot,s tanks are being minimized, 9'l 10 ' I looked at the TLD retdings for April 9th; that was the day on which there was a release from the plar ', that II the release rate from the plant was going up rather than 12 13 going down during the night. 14 For that period on the 9th, all but three of the dosimeter stations showed radiatibn levels at background; 15 16 backgrcund being 1/100 or 2/100 o 0 a millirem an hour. 1bove background level. All 17 h Tr.rae stations showed d 18 three of these were in an easterly direction from the plant. They - all three -- showed.03 millirem per hour, or 19 ! 0 ~a per hourly basis. ' 20 f approximately twice background on ( 21 ! Iodine releases from the plant are continuing as I l about their priod rates, about a tenth of 22 0, of yesterday at 13~1Gb 23 'l curie. a 1 24 !; Today the filters are being changed in the n t 6 1 jrbl l I RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 I l 1 2 the structure going up on the roof of the auxiliary building, 3j which is a backup filter system thht will filter further 4 releases from all the vent air, al l the ventilation systems i 5 in the plant. So once the auxiliary s stem filters are changed 6 i 1 7 today, then I expect the iodine releases to decrease 8 marginally. 9 The total exposure to the individuals offsite 3 10 ' in our estimate continues to be less than 100 mr for the ) 11 maximum exposure. Coming up to about yesterday on man / rem 12 we calculated abcut 2,500 man / rem total exposure during the EndT1 !3 course of the accident. L Fis u 15 16 17 [ 18 19 ', l 20 h f 21 22 t 13 ~ 1..Gb i n!, hk inc. i i l i D p. h:- *, _, * ' pY

n t

l'] M 7 wel 1 DDWQ h y '* w s"c.' l 'N 0 u '44 L j l RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 There was a shipment of wlaste from the plant to a 2 6 3 :. low-level burial ground in South Carolina that was rejected by l J 4 the State of South Carolina, apparently because it containcd 5 products that were generated in Unit 2. So the truck was 6 turned around, and the shipment has been brought back and is now on the islana. 7 8 Finally, we were informed today that in i 9 il checking the va ve alignment status,in Unit 1 on March 27 they Il l to d' discovered that a valve in a system that sui tied steam to onc 11 of the auxiliary fee /. water pumps was in a closed position, 12 in violau on of our test spec requirements on Unit 1. The valve of course was rc pened, but prior to that time they were 13 i l 14 at temperatures for wh:.ch the system was not designed. I 15!! That covers the items I wanted to cover, and I'll i. d 16 take questions now. l = it 17 i QUESTION: Mr. Denton, the NRC today advised i Ig operators of all light-water reactors that certain corrections 19 ;, had to be made on a priority basis, in part based on what's il 20 j' been learned here. I 21 I w nder, specifically what was that ancmaly here 22 D that's been extrapolated to Westinghouse reactors that is t! I? '3'! behind that directive? 4 9 - 4 pyt i

s. u a_

94 DR. DENTON: Westinghouse informed all of its r,.w n ammas.,,<. H l 1 D D.O %,

n.,. m m,-

I O. S 4 h r? li n f, g h gi.Ud p .Di ',, j tj 8 i I W O'L L gy1 de wel 2 I ' u u ua ll RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCO}tRECTED - 4/11/79 1 l coincidence required for initiatic of safety systems opera-2 1 1 3' tions in their plants, coincident signals requiring both pressurizer pressure and low levels that they are recommending 4 9 5 to all their plant operators to initiate the emergency core l I cooling system on pressurizer pressure alone, because of r 6 I 7 the concern that the level indicator may be susceptible to a some of the same problems that occurred here. i. Also we've found that the auxiliary feed pumps at 9,j 0 10 ; some Combustion plants did not start automatically oli bis 11 type of transient, so a neeting is going on in Washington 12 today with Westinghouse and CE, and I would cxpect a bulletin 13 to go out from Washington covering for their plants the same 14 type of comments that were discovered with B&W. 15 QUESTION: Could you briefly relate that scenario 16, as was developed here? I 17 DR. DENTON: One of the problems that was developed 18 here was with the performance of the pressurizer level instru-3 I 19 1; mentation during this transf^wi, and Westinghouse, through a \\ l\\ I 20 ; telegram, indicated the '- 9'

actors may be susceptible to 1

level ;per f ormance.1-21 the same erratic presst - 't 22 ! There were a number of thisigs that went wrong in 23 this accident, and I tiaked off be ore about six items. One i, i 24 li was sort of design related, the pressurizer level instrumenta- .a,.w.-rs n.::erm. inc. !! i I 9 wel 3 b Il RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 ll i t l l 2h operators not to depend upon pressurizer level instrumentation d i 3 {n but to initiate action on pressuri$er pressure alone. l 4 I QUESTION: How is the Westinghouse setup different l l l 5 from the pressurizer gauges in BcW ; plants? l 6 DR. DENTON: I'll not gd into detail on the I i 71 differences. This is the subject of the meeting in Washington l i I 8 today. 1 9 QUESTION: I mean is there a problem with B&W l 10 plants that -- in other words, it this directive has gone out I I '! to Westinghouse plants, how many reactors have to be modified, 12 andhowdangerousadefectisthisN 13 DR. DENTON: Well, I'm not as informed about 1 I4 h; the Westinghouse and CE problems, dxcept through phone calls f I 15 back to Washington. They're meeting today with Westinghouse i 16 and CE, so all I can really report is that I know that I l 17 l there've bcon telegrams to Westinghouse plants from Westing-18 hou1e that in the event of low pre surizer indications of a l 19 1 pressure which would initiate the emergency core cooling 20 l system if you had coincident low pressurizer levels, the I a 21 i operator is to initiate manually and not to rely on the signal. i 22 ', That's only one of the six factors that go into l j, 23 the accident here, but it's an imp rtant piece. 24 'l QUESTION: You said apparently the trucks that were An-FMua1 Resornts. Inc. b, I i i i wel 4 l 10 I i 1 i RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 I i 2 materials. Were they carrying fissionable materials from i l i 3' Unit 2 or Unit l? I l 4l DR. DENTON: They were carrying materials from ~ 5 Unic 1. They're called evaporator :bottotas, it's sludge from l 6 the bottoms of the evaporators, after they evaporate the l t I I water off. The composition of the! material carried to South 7 f l' 8 Carolina meets all the federal standarde for shipping of the l 9 materials and is, in fact, a typical sort of material that's I i 10 ' been shipped out all along, 11 We have concluded that hey probably had some 12 water from Unit 2 go over into Unit 1, that evaporated and i 13 l got into this, and the radioisotopbs that are in that are the f I 14 same that have gone out from Unit 1 previously. 15 16 I l 17 18 l 19 + i I 20 ;f I 21, 22 l I i 22 13 170 S

• 4 J.ce Fr.wal p ecorrers. loc. '

25 'I 't i i 11 jrbi i 1 RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 2 QUESTION: Ha s any preliminary sample of the l' 'I 3.' primary coolant been performed? h I haver. ' t, eard back any results l h 4 i DR. DENTON: l 1 5 from the analysis. l i 6' The direct radiation 1 vels -- they were taken on { 7 the sample before it was shipped L were like 17r an hour, l whereas the first sampic that was shipped of f measured the 3 i i .i 9 s a.ne way, ran 1,000r an hour. I f i 10 ' So it indicates that -- the fact that we've added 11 new water to the system that di3utes the radioactivity; I and the noble gasses in the water have been decaying off with - 12 ( f 13 j their halflife of five days or so for certain xenon; one of l l c j the radiciodine isotopes has a 20-hour halflife, and it's 14 l 15 down quite a bit. The other isotope of iodine has an eight-l 16 day halflife. So there's been a arge change in the direct i 17, radiation level of the sample, apparently, in the water. 18 QUESTION: What can you infer about core damage I I 19 1 from that? t i i 20 DR. DENTON: Well, we can't infer much about the I 21 radiation level itself. But what we are hoping to find when I i we get the sample back, is what -- does it have traces of i 22 g! I l i j uranium in it? Are they volatilc ' fission products only, or 23 l ,,v - 4 m 4 30 they the less volatile fission products? 2a, are Frmi a.xnm. iac. l 25 ; so from analysis of the elements in the water, you i t i 12 53jrb2 { l l l l I) RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 E. i 2 can infer the extent of damage in khe core. l 3 And we have one -- the other use we make of the i ! i 1 4 I data is in designing the backup systems tha t I described; i 5 you need a bases for the radioactipity in the water, so you i can design instruments and seals th withstand that level of f 6 i { 7, radiation. t t Bl QUESTION: Are you confirming Unit 2 and Unit 1 a l 9! water were mixed? ( l l 10 ' DR. DENTON: It is my understanding from a meeting f 11 I this morning that it was likely that some small amounts of I 12 Unit 2 water did get into the Unit!1 systems at the time, but 13 not a lot. i 14 And in fact, since the [sotopes are about the 15 ; same, you can't physically tell whether they did or not. i i 16 : QUESTION: The Company has said there is evidence l 17 i of either a valve malfunction or a: seam leakage that i IB occurred on Sunday or Monday; do y6u know anything about that?, I i 19 ! i DR. DENTON: I don't have the details. I' 20 1 QUESTION: Yes, sir. I 21 l j, QUESTION: What is your earliest estimate now as 11 j. 22 t to when you can go to solid secondary side steam generator; i 23 and once you do that, what's your estimate as to how many l 1r m~ 24 :! i days it would be to achieve cold shutdown? .a.rr.ve anerms. u,c. l' 25 ll DR. DENTON: Once the d6 gassing or pressure is t I 1' T3jrb3 13 f I I RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 2 lowered, we think we can ge t down to -- is completed -- we 3' intend to take a primary coolant sample, pressurized; in Il sample that would s'till have the dissolved 4 other words, a i l gasses in it, and see how ef fective the degassing period has 5 I 6~ been. l t I 7 If it shows that the levels of dissolved gasses i 8 are as 'ow as we hope they arc, then we can move rather l 9 promptly to the next phase of the cool-down. u d 10 If it shows that there s still a lot of dissolved t 11 I gasses and the partial pressure of the gasses is still high, 12 we would probably continue to deg s further. guess my own estimate is, I would hope that we 13 1 i 14 could bring the bulk core temperabtres down within i bri' g the bulk core temperatures 15 approximately a wock from now, n i 16 i down to a level of approximately koiling. I I QUESTION: With the rad,iation levels at 3 millirems 17 "! I per hour that you quoted before, a'nd background level radiation 18 i 19 near 100 millirems, average, before anything like this 20 ! happened, that goes out to over 300 times the usual -- somewher 21 l around 300 times the usual radiation. h, 22 l{ I was wondering why in'the world would you bring 23 l the pregnant women and preschoolers back into a situation t h 24 d like this? 13~173 AcwJerier,t Rextrert. loc. DR. DENTON: Well, you have to distinguish between 25 h I 14 l 3 rb4 3 i I RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 2 the instantaneous peak radiation level under a plume, as it is - 2! passing by, and the integrated exposure at any one plot on I s 4 - the ground over a 24-hour period. ~ \\ 5 QUESTION: Is this a plume, then? Or was it an t } 6 offsite monitor? l 7 DR. DENTON: Well, on the day of April 9th, there 8 j was a reported reading as the plume swept over the " trailer i city" or 3 to 4 mr an hour for an open window monitor. 9 l, ,0 ' I believe the closed monitor reading at the same 11 time was about a quarter of an mr an hour. 12 But that's when you are under the plume that I 13 moves by. l So what -- the way you have te look at it is to 14 l' 15 look at all the dosimeters which are in permanent stations i 16 around the site, and these are taken and counted every 24 17 hours. I 18 y And that's the group oy dosimeters I reported on, i 19 1 that all but three out of the group of 47 showed no levels i 20 ii above background; and the three that did show levels above i 21 background were only.03 mr r.n hour. I so the total maximun exposure above background 22 23 }i that anyone would have gotten from being at one of the !i ~ 24 stations on April 9, was .3 of a millirem. 13I7 df wr,-n.. neocr ws. Inc..N 25 QUESTION: Oh, it's.03? 15 T3jrb5 l s RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 1 l 1 DR. DENTON: Well, that's the difference between 2 d 2 the instantaneous peak that we quoted, and that you just I d 4 I mentioned, as the plume moves over, and if the plume stayed 5 in one spot, it would come out like you say. But the plume meanders around, so what you really 6, -l i have to look at is the dosimeters'every 24 hours. adT3 7 L Fls 8l I i i i 9-i 10 ' i h ) 11 i l t 12 f 13 i I 14 i i 15 ) 16 ll i 17 l 18 i I 20 21 I i i 4 kayi ] A f'> 22. 24 ;i ,\\Cf 8P tral Recof f res. Inc., 25 ! i fis-jrb wel 1 y 16 p .i.. li RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 0 2 !; QUESTION: Before this accident was reported, the I: I 2 'l. chances of the accident were very slight, li p' 4 :i Based on all the informahion you have 'now, what i I are the chances of another accident like this occurring in 5 {i i 6 other power plants around the United States? 9 1 DR. DENTON: I think the chances of another 7l accident like t ris are very remote.! We fix the plants for the I ai 4 t le kinds oC problems that have occurred. 9! O I 10 '; If you look back, you'll! find that the plants have i 11 ! for about 425 reactor years without ever experiencing gone l I 12 i fuel damage. This is the first accident in which f uel damage I i i 13 has occurred, f l t There have been other occasions in plants where 14 g i 15 wc've made changes after learning -- for example, after the .i is ' fire in Browns Ferry we made necessary corrections to prevent .i 17 'l fires so that this type of accident is very unlikely to happen 'i ll 18 1 again. 19 What we'll have to do is see what lessons you can i-20 learn from this and apply them to future plants, and that's .I 21 something that's going to take me awhile after we get back from i 22. here and sit down and find out what sort of changes we want 13 jf7b 23 ' to make in the future. 24 QUESTION: What will happen now to that shipment ,,.F +, e. Re. ace rers.1"c. 25 that was turned back and is now at'Three Mile Island? 17 wel 2 'n l i o 4/11/79 j [. RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED li DR. DENTON: It's sitting now on the island, and 2 (l I think the individuals and groups involved are trying to i .E work out arrangements with South Carolina. N U There is one other burial ground that's available 3 6 in Nevada that -- j l i 'l' 7l QUESTION: How are those negotiations going? I: DR. DENTON: They're going on right now. g! 9 yl! QUESTION: Mr. Denton, you said essentially that l that waste was from TMI-1. Does that mean that there are a 10 - 1 i 11 j continually -- that wastes are produced even though it's shut r i u, down, or why are they moving it no ? 13 '. DR. DENTON: Well, waste from Unit 1, there's been I 9 14 'I}:this kind of low-level waste ever since Unit 1 has been 13 operating, and it will probably go'to Barnwcll. It's low-level { i 16 ] waste, not high-level waste of the type that goes to federal 1 17 L depositories to be -- ?! 18 'f QUESTION: But Unit 1 has been down since February, i 19 right? Or March? J i 20 :. DR. DENTON: Even so, certain amounts of radio-l 1 n activity is in the water and the processing or treatment i 21 i 6. I, 22 ; system is running all the timo to take it out. OUESTION: These auxiliary feed pumps, the subject 23 of the discussion in Washington, could you just clarify how 2.t ., u.x ne. n. 4 n. 4 m,, s > - ee a.. 25 that relates to what happened here? 18 wel 3 I! t i RAN TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 f 2 '[ DR. DENTON: Well, number one, one of the causes of P. 2 d the accident was the fact that the auxiliary feed pumps were I: 4 I valved out of service so they couldn't operate when called i i 5e upon. 4 e i 6 What I mentioned with regard to Combustion Engineer-l! 1 7 ing plants was that the design on some of their plants is l 8 such that these pumps won't s tart automatically and have to -l' i 9,I be manually initiated, and -- l 10 QUESTION: So in other words there's two problems: I 11 l One is the emergency core cooling system doesn't start up, and l 12, the other is these fccd pumps, or feedwater pumps, don't -- l l 13, DR. DENTON: But they're: in different types of l' la l: plants. Whereas in the Combustion plants they don't require i 15 coincident pressurizer pressure and: levels, and they did find 16 CE plants that don't start feed pumps automatically. 17 QUESTION: The waste that was s hipped to South l! 18 ':l Carolina, was that above normal levels that el i i 19 DR. DENTON: No, it met all federal standards. I i ll 2C undersrand it was turned because the Governor of South Carolina l 21 ] has decided that waste from here shouldn' t be accepted in i 22 his State. 'l 23.. QUESTION: To what extent would this cause a 24 problem when the time comes for trucking out the waste from ...re..r., sie.2e rrers i nc. ' 25 ' unit number 2? 13 178 19 v 1 4 li hli li 'l0 1 RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCOPJ:ECTED - 4/11/79 1 2 DR. DENTON: Well, if it is not acccpted in South p 2 Carolina it would require that the waste be shipped a much 'i i: .s ' longer distance than to Barnwell, South Carolina, h 5 '- i o .I 6o I 7 ;l i ) 8! I I i 9.. ii .4li 10 " i ll l 11 i.! l 12 13 i! l li. -i s 14,; i 15 i 1 n 16 " i l 1 17, i Il l 18 " l .i 19 ' 20 !l-21 s. 22 1 23 13' ~ 173 24 .. p.F er x.si Q '* *ac f f f f l In( 25 : I 20 ll! TSjrbl RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 1g I: 2 l, QUESTION: How would that aggravate your schedule? r 3, DR. DENTON: I don't think that this has been il II looked into enough to determine the effect on schedule. 4 : 5 QUESTION: You said that the B&W plant for I ll 6,i cooling reactors down is the best;alternctive? Is that the il I 7 decision that has been made? 1 1 8p DR. DENTON: No, that's -- I hope to make that l d 0 decision Friday, when the Staff has completed its evaluation. 9 I I 10 QUESTION: If you make.that decision, does this l l 11 l still hold true that you would bring the thing down to boiling I I 12 temperature or thereabouts in a week? I DR. DENTON: Yuh, assubing that our sample of 13 l l \\ the primary coolant indicates that the degassing operation la i 15 '- really has been effective; that i's, if we find a sample that o i i 16 ) indicates we need to degass the cbolant for a longer period 17!; of time, we would continue that kperation. l i 18 h QUESTION: You are talking subsequent samples, not ij I lt 19 l the one that was taken? i 20 !. DR. DENTON: No, the one that was taken was an i' 21, easier sampic to take, and it was not a pressurized sample; d )! that were dissolved in it were released befort 22, so the gasses 23, the sample was taken. 2d QUESTION: ~ So you are. talking about a subse quent ,3._., ...,.. s e....,4 9.xr e.. ane., l' 25 ' sample? 'i 21 ]b' .5 jrb2 e l. 4/11/79 1: RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED j, 2i DR. DENTON: Yes. I might mention that in taking that sample, the I h Il . personnel exposures were quite low, on the order of 20 to 4 5 {l 30 millirem per hour, as a result cxf a lot of proplanning, I I l' 6 and as a result of a lower coolan level; so we didn't have 7y to use " Herman" to take that sampl;e. 8 ll QUESTION: Ilow will the subsequent taking of f 9 'j samples differ? You say it is con} plicated? When do you l 10 j expect that to happen? F 11 ! DR. DENTON: It would be af ter we've completed l i 12 - degassing at the 300 psi level. l QUES 2 ION: This shipment that was rejected in 13 }'! i e 14 :! South Carolina, is that the same one that was turned back

=

h 15 at the borders of Virginia? -- that truckload of nuclear i! 16 chemicals? 17 ' DR. DENTON: I don't know for sure. I haven't 18 heard about the other incident. -li t 19 QUESTION: Would you go over again, I guess it l' 2 0 was the Licensee Event Report to your office yesterday or 21,, today -- I didn't understand? 13 2J33. n 22 DR. DENTON: It was a report to us today from 23 GPU, a Licensee Event Report, that says that they found on 4 74 March 27 that a valve to a steam line that is essential to .., a c o.,i inc. 25 the operation of one of the auxiliary feed pumps in Unit 1 22 .5jrb3 h F L l l-RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/'i9 f 2 U was in the closed position at a time in their startup process 2 at Unit 1 when the license requires it to be open. 4 OUESTION: Does that mean Unit 1 was being 5,; started up? u l 6 DR. DENTON: Well, Unit 1 was in a hot standby e I 7 condition, where they have to have -- where the coolant 1 l 8j temperatures were ho t; it doesn' t mean that they were actually 9I pulling the control rod at the tiine. It means that plant W conditions were hot. l i i 11 [ QUESTION: This is one ' CME three auxiliary fecdwater e' l i 12 ; pumps? l 13 DR. DENTON: It's either three or two; I'm not t i 14 sure. They did have other auxiliary feed pumps that are i 15 driven clectrically, as opposed to steam turbine. i 16 OUESTION: How did Unit 2 waste get into Unit I? 17' DR. DENTON: I don't know for sure how the i i 16 connection -- how Unit 2 water got into Unit 1; but it's no I i 19 doubt that in connection with the accident in Unit 2, some of I 2 C' the water in Unit 2 got into systems or sumps in the Unit 1 21 building; and therefore were mixed with some of the Unit 1 22 water; and this is evaporated and ended up in sludge. 23 QUESTICN: The othe r samplc you are going to tThe, i 24 ~ that will be the determining samp;e; is that going to be taken .. e e er L4;xetta. i nc. 25

• from the narrow plumbing or from a different area?

Is that 13 102 T5 23 jrb4 1 RAW TRANSCRIPT - UNCORRECTED - 4/11/79 e 2, why it is complicated? 2 DR. DENTON: The complication is you must take it 4l under pressure, as opposed to taking it conventionally; the ll 3 type of sample that was taken earlier did not have to be at 'l t. reactor pressure in the cannister pn which you take the 6 Il f 7 ", sample. i i take a p'essurized san le we 8l So in order to r s li 9i have to use a more complicated kind of cannister and sampling I + d 4 10 ' procedure, so it is celivered to the laboratory with the gasses i 11 in there that were actually in the water when it's in the 12 j. reactor vessel. II l 13 :i QUESTION: Might I ask again, if Unit 1 werc back u" in operation today, would you have, problems approving that? 15 DR. DENPON: Yes, I wodld.

6 (Whereupon, at 2

56 p.m.,

the press bringing 17-was concluded.) IS ' e e 19 i 20 'i 21 ' i 73 i t 13 103 a

a. $ o e3 4 d,1cF'er t. IMC.

b ,}}