ML19208B117
| ML19208B117 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 07/06/1979 |
| From: | Fasano A, Johari Moore GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORP., NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 7909190071 | |
| Download: ML19208B117 (19) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION t
E In the Matter of:
IE THI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW i
31 of Mr. James P. Moore, GPU 4,'
l 5:
6f 7j 8!
i Trailer #203 9i NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10!
Middletown, Pennsylvania 11:
June 11,1979 12!
(Date of Interview) 1 July 6, 1979 14!
(0 ate Transcript-Typec) t
- 306 ISf (Tape Numoer(s))
16i 17l 1Si 19i 20i 21l NRC PERSONNEL:
22l Mr. Anthony Fasano Mr. Mark E. Resner 23j LS D ' i-24.
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CNit 7909190 0 7/
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1:
RESNER:
James P. Moore, Jr., Mr. Moore is employed with the GPU 2l service corporation as a mechanical enginee.ing manager, the present 3
time is 10:33 a.m. Eastern daylight time, today's date is June 11, 4{
1979.
This interview is being conducted in room 203 of the GPU facility 5
for which the mailing address is 250, Cherry Hill Road, Parsippany, 6l New Jersey 07054, individuals present for this interview representing 7f the NRC are Mr. Anthony Fasano, Mr. Fasano is an Inspection specialist I
gj employed with Region I of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, g
presently speaking and moderating this interview is Mark E. Resner, I 10l am an investigator with the office of Inspector and Auditor, HQ of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, also present is Mr. Alan S.
y Brown, Mr. Brown is a Supervisor for Generation Administration with
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the GPU Service Corporation and he is acting as a representive for Mr.
j James Moore.
Prior to taping this interview Mr. Moore m s given a two page can
- c. exp a ns e pu p se e scope and the aut.5orny 15 with which the Nuclear Regulatory Commission conducts this investiga-tion, in addition it apprised Mr. Moore that he is entitled to a representative of his choice to be present curing the interview and 18!
also in no way is he compelled to talk with us, should he not want to.
On the second page of this document Mr. Moore has answered threa questions which I will state, question 1, do you understand the above?
g Mr. Moore has checked yes.
Is that correct Mr. Moore?
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23i MOORE:
That's correct.
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i RESNER: Question 2, do we have your permission to tape this interview?
1 2{
Mr. Moore has checked yes, is that correct Mr. Moore?
l 31, MOORE:
That is correct.
4l 5;
6.
RESNER:
Question 3, do you want a copy of the tape? Mr. tore has i
7 checked no, indicating that he does not desire a copy of the tape, is that correct Mr. Moore?
g 9!
MOORE: That's correct.
,0 11!
RESNER: At this time Mr. Fasano has some questions that he would like
,y) to ask you.
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14!
FASANO:
Jim, we'd like you to describe in your own words your knowledge of the events of March 28, 1979 and in particular your notification 17:j and subsequent involvement with the events on that day.
18!
MOORE:
Well I came into the office March 28, normal time and fairly early that morning I was called to a meeting where I learned about the i
fact that there had been difficulties experienced at Three Mile Two.
21:
The main concern as I recall at that time was for some of the comoonents 22!
I in the primary system and so we designated several indivduals to go to 23!
the site almost immediately, the selection of these individuals was 24{
primarly based on the ability to take a look at the steam generator, 25i O
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i lj for that reason Julien Abromovitch was designated to go along with me 2
for that purpose, the reports were still coming in as to what was 3
happening out at the site, we had a second meeting a little bit later 4l that morning, we still didn't reflect any...the degree of trouble that Si it eventually turned out to be.
Subsequent to the second meeting I i
6i went home, gathered other personal effects to going out to the site, we arrived at the north gate about 2:00 in the afternoon, of course I 8!
was barricaded so I went on up to the information center to see what, gj the facilities were up there, of course that was where everybody 10; congregated. As soon as I made access to a telephone I called back to
,y the office here at Mount Lakes, reported to Ofck Wilson and Bob 12!
Arnold, to let them know that I was on site or the vicinity of the 13{
site and relay the message from them to whoever was in charge of Met y
Ed or Jack Herbein if he did come in to call Bob Arnold back here at n
a es, can reca exacdy de Mme M not to long aRer I 15 g
was there that some other people starting coming in from Mount Lakes, g'
basically Gary Broden, Julien Abremovitch, Rich Lense, time escapes me
,l a bit here, but sometime in the evening Rich Lense went on site and obtained the alarm summary printout for the first few minutes in the
, 91 A
event and he spent the evening analyzing the information we could read
,0 from the list.
At some point we went out to, had some dinner and came 21!
back and we felt we had had a need for additional data and we were 22!
i attempting to make arrangements to get the information off of the 2 31 reactimeter log, recogni:ing that some of us are gonna have to get some sleep, I stayed on with the understanding that if this information did come available I would contact the other people back at the motel.
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It turned out the information did not beccme available during the gj night, so I guess it was about 7, 7:30 in the morning the other people t
3; came back to the information center, the other people being from Mount 4i Lakes, I went to the Motel and checked in, I got about, as I recall t
l about 4 hours4.62963e-5 days <br />0.00111 hours <br />6.613757e-6 weeks <br />1.522e-6 months <br /> sleep, came back to the site at which time GPU people 5
Si had convened...were involved in a meeting at the processing center 7!
adjacent to Unit 1.
The meeting was already in progress when I got i
gj there, the basic plans were being laided at that time, were conduct g
interviews of the operators is the...I guess it was the operators that 10 were reporting in to go on shift...
11i 12{
FASANO:
Take your time.
l 13l MOORE:
Right it would be the operators, I'm pretty sure it was the g
operators that reported in to go on shift, which would have been the ones that were on duty at the time the incident happended, so these interviews were to be conducted about 2300.
Left the island, after having dinner we met with Dick Wilson and numerous other people at the Sheraton Hotel, we further planned the interviews of that evening, 9
went back out to the site, arrived there I guess about 2200, a little later than that, I was in the process, along with the other pecole, getting set to interview the operators when a call came frcr the Control Rocm that I should go up there to assist Bill Lowe with analyzing 2 31 24!
hydrogen in the primary system.
Thinking back. there are a couple of things I missed covering the evening of the 2Sth and on into the early k
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5 1.j hours of the 29th, I did have discussions with George Kunder from the 2j Met Ed operating staff for Unit 2, along with a couple other individuals.
3j They were giving us the run down of the events as they saw them during 4t the day.
Around midnight there was a debriefing of 2 of the operators 5
who had been on shift during the incident, I sat in on those debriefings 6
so they were a joint, one debriefing with both operators.
Had one, I 7
guess it was a 60 minute tape, we taped what we could of the debriefing, 8{
subsequently turned all this information over to the GPU people involved gj collecting them.
Back to the late hours of the 29th, when I went up 101 to the control room Bill Lowe...a consultant for GPU was in the process y
of trying to determine if the fact we had hydrogen in the primary y
system.
At some point in this discussion it occurred to me that it 13 should possible to calculate the size of the bubble, if there was one, g
so using the basic logs of physics, proceeded to, derive the...there are just so ways that you do this and I asked Jim Floyd from Met Ed Operating staff if we could get some data necessary to make the calcula-gj tion and he obtained data from some source, I'a not sure where, for about... it's about 1300 on the 29th.
This was the first data point that we calculated, relative to the size of the hydrogen bubble, the time on that was approximately 0300, the time of the calculation about e.0 !
l 0300 on the 30th.
We then proceeded to obtain more data, I believe it 21!
was about 6, 0600 on the 30th was the next data point.
About 0800 somewhere on that time frame on the 30th, I left the site, went back 2 31 to the motel and returned to the site about 1200, we spent the rest of 24j that day analyzing the size of the hydrogen bubble and trying to come i
25i up with means for getting rid of it from the system.
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l 3l There was indication that the bubble was disappearing, credit that to 2j the removal of the...by the makeup tank, we were anxious to, I was 3l anxious to get it out of the system as rapidly as possible and attempting to get permission to vent the pressurizer into containment and get rid 4:
3 of as much hydrogen as we could by that, in other words successful in 6
getting approval of that till I believe it was the following day, it 7l was at least a day or so later as I recall it was finally, we started 1
g venting by then, except for little summarizes on the collection of...two g
or three days there.
10l FASANO:
Okay, why don't we go back and maybe pick up some points starting back on the 28th, your initial first notification was, you I
say early in the morning, 8:00, 9:00?
131 141 ORE:
Unfortunately... I wasn't anticipating this interview, I came 15:
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out there, left all my notes out there.
I have notes for all the 17' meetings with dates and times and I can't, thinking back I can't put a real time on it.
19i 20; i
FASANO:
Do you have any comments...the thing is that all notes, if 21l you have notes on the event and things that you have that may give value in reviewing the event to make sure you don't lose these.
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think this is something that (unintelligible).
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l RESNER:
Jim could you provide us with a copy or, either the original 1.
gi notes.
l 31 MOORE:
The origint: notes were turned over to Bob Long, GPU, I have a 5
copies of those that I retained for my.own reference, the original 5;
ones I invested in GPU at this time.
l 7l gj RESNER: Would it be possible for us to get a copy of your copy?
9i MOORE:
Yes I have them (unintelligible).
10l i
11!
RESNER: Alright thank you.
y 13l FASANO:
g So fairly in the morning these two meetings and the second mee ng, a a
me yu nw a
ere was a general emagency 15 or even a site emergency, early in the morning?
17' MOORE:
Reflecting back on it...I can't recall.
g 191 FASANO:
You did find out when you got, arrived at the site.
21; MOORE:
When I arrived at the site I, well prior to arriving at the site I listened to the radio on the way out obviously, to see what was 23' on the news and by the time I arrived out, prior to my arrival out there I wasn't at all suprised at all to find the north gate blockade.
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8 lj FASANO:
Okay, because you say you got to the site and they had it all 2
blockaded, if you hadn't know it was a emergency, you might of known I
3!
by then.
Your main assigi.ement then was initially to get involved with the steam generator, any other equipment can you recall and dia 3;
you have any other information from these two earlier meetings at GPU?
Si f
MOORE: We weren't given a specific assignment at the time we left.
8j It was basically trying to come up with a group of people with the g
capability of looking into certain items and people were selected on 10i that basis, the general directions were to get to the site, report back in when you arrived there and by that time we also had more f
information with which to approach the problem.
Initial purpose was h
to get people to the site as quickly as possible and try to get people there that would be needed once we did get on top of the problem.
15; FASANO:
Well during the fist day that you were there on the evening right on till the next morning, I guess, ah at least initially when you got there, did you have more information or sufficient information 181 to start making some analysis and providing operations with some
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A guidance or what was the status of your knowledge, say up to about 6:00, I guess when Kunder came.
I'm saying, I don't think we have a time there but...
22; 2l MOORE:
I didn't have, we didn't have information to really start the 2 41 proceeding with any analysis until Rich Lense had obtained, gone out c.
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to the Island and brougn:. the data back.
No way we could tie up the 2j people in the Control Room to ask them for information, they were tied l
3j up with there duties at that time.
4:
5l FASANO:
So for the first day as far as decisions or suggestions, you 6
and the group were on standby, not really making direct decisions or 7l direct suggestions, is that...what I understand.
i 8!
gj MOORE:
That's correct, that's correct.
10I FASANO:
Basically it's because, as my understanding again fu...the 11:
quality of the information or the quanity...available to you?
131 MOORE: Well I guess it was, thert:
- very little available on which 1+,,
pl we could analy::e what had happened, what the conditions were.
16:
RESNER:
Did you feel that the quality, availability of this information was limited, did you feel the quality of the information that you received was good?
20l MOORE: Well I guess, we didn't, when I was dispatched to go out 21; there, it was not to provide operational support to the people in the i
22l Control Room as far as making them, helping them make operating type 231 decisions.
It was a, make sure we had people out there that could 241 acess the state of the plant, that's sort of data we had available 25!
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10 llj also, I did not look on my initial, reporting out there as being one gj where I would be advising the aperator at the plant.
I 31 4
FASANO:
Back to the steam generator, this was one of the key things 5-we mentioned, did you do any further review of the steam generator, 6i why was it a problem?
71 l
gj MOORE: Well the initial report was a loss of feedwater so we were i
gl concerned about this loss of feedwater transient on the steam generators.
10l It was basically that the knowledge that there had been this loss of y{
feedwater raised the concern about the steam generator.
Never did do any analysis on the system generator I got out there.
Got involved g
with the hydrogen of the primary system, once I did get into the plant and start working on the problem itself.
.t4, 15:
FASANO:
16l When you were informed of the problem with the steam generator 17:
and the feedwater, was there any mention of the emergency feedwater and it's status, the first day?
181 191 MOORE:
I don't recall just exactly what information I did have when I left the office here, I do know that it did come up, once I did get to l
the site, talking to people out there in the information center.
22!.
23l FASANO:
Subsequently did you do any analysis on the steam generator 24l at all?
25:
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li MOORE:
No.
2:
3!
FASANO:
Even to this day?
4l 3
MOORE:
Right to this day.
I've been involved in operational support 6l since that.
7!
FASANO:
This is the what, the recoup, operational support?
8j 9!
10; MOORE:
At the present time, I worked at two weeks on and two weeks ff ut at Three Mile supervising the technical support people from 11!
i 12j GPU at the site, providing operational support to Metropolitan Edison.
S 13 performing in that role several weeks now...
141 FASANO:
15i Did you get involved at all with the concern over the reactor 16i coolant drain pump and it's operations or the electromatic relief valve? Did you have information the first day on these events?
18!
MOORE:
g It's been so long now it's hard for me to remember what, just when I obtained alot of this information.
21!
FASANO:
Do you recall when you became knowledgable with this kind of I
information, the first break in the morning or was it later on?
231 24 25!
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lj MOORE:
I can't recall, if I had my notes here.
2!
3j FASANO:
If you can't recall, you can't recall, I'll mention some 4;
things that may jog your memory and that's about all we can do here I 5l guess. We'll begin on to the, you mentioned that :.u got involved i
6i with the hydrogen.
How did you know it was hydrogen at that time, 7{
that was on the 29th?
8!
t MOORE:
That was 2300 hours0.0266 days <br />0.639 hours <br />0.0038 weeks <br />8.7515e-4 months <br /> on the 29th, I'm trying to recall, at some gg 10 p int in time I became aware of this pressure spike in the building g
and I have a, as I recall from my notes, that I don't have here, that was on the, it was dated the 30th but I know when I went up to the 13 Control Room, about 2300 there was a concern about, noncondensables, and as I recall, we were concerned about hydrogen?
15:
FASANO:
2300 on what day?
16 17!
MOCRE:
On the 29th.
18i 191 FASANO:
So as far as you remember, your first indication of a spike and that it might be hydrogen was somewhere on the 29th i
22!
MOORE:
The 29th or the 30th, you know the late hours, the last hour 23l or so on the 29th or sometime into the early hours on the 30th.
241 2si
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FASANO:
Did you actually see the spike on the chart, was that in the 2:
Control Room at the time?
l 3
4 MOORE:
At some point in time I did see the chart, as to whether I saw Si that and when I first learned of it or not I can't say, as I recall, 6
somebody told me about it and subsequent to that, I believe that I saw 7
the chart after that, I know I did see the chart at some point in time.
g 9I FASANO:
10J And just from the chart you wouldn't know wnat caused it.
11:
g MOORE:
Those...the only one's I can think of that could cause it, is h
some sort of a hydrogen burn.
There were two instruments there, it could of been just one instrument, I might of suspected some sort of g
noise, but there were two instruments.
16i FASANO:
You mean the narrow range and the wide range?
i 18i MOORE:
Yes.
19i 20:
FASANO:
Have you looked at the reactor pressure vessel, reactor 21:
pressure, do you recall looking at that, (unintelligible)?
22; i
23f MOORE:
I don't recall at this point.
24i 25i Y3>
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1l FASANO:
So as far as you were concerned it was a real blip but it 2j was, you didn't know if it somewhere between the 29 and the 30.
Mark 3
do you have any questions?
4!
- 5; RESNER:
No Tony not at this time.
6f 7j FASANO:
Jim at-this time would you like to give any of your opinions 8j n what you've learned that others may benifit from what you learned',
g, going through, living through part of this event, that may be helpful 10t to other utilities, the NRC, whoever and also GPU?
11!
g MOORE:
I think the majority of the things that come to my mind, I've looked at all the modifications that are being made, supposed to be made at Three Mile 1, technical upgrading, upgrading of the plant itself.
Looks to me like basic problems pretty well addressed by 16i.
modifications, the type proposed for these types of plants.
I guess the one area that I feel we have a need to have a mechanism for obtaining 1,/
data from the Unit withey$ having to tie up operational people to get
,8!
1 it... in other words, som mechanism by which we could obtain data from the Unit in a very quick turnaround when something like this happens.
I think that's major improvements that need to be made.
I understand c
that they have had these sort of things like, well just under considera-ti w, we are actually working on them for some period of time.
I think that we possibly put to much, take to much credit for alarms and i
24i this sort of thing. My philosphy on annunciator windows would be that 2Si k>
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li these are fine for normal operating conditions or if something fails 2
and we got an alarm that's going off an an infrequent basis, or the 3l means of alerting the operator to some conditions of the plant. But 4
the types and numbers of alarms these operators were receiving throughout Si this incident, I don't think that they were a good source of informa-6i tion for an operator presented with something more basic than alarms y
or sort of thing.
8 FASANO:
g; In your experience with, have you actually looked at other 10 control rooms and made any comparisons to come up with comparisor.+, if you like, with your own design compared to say the way it is at other
]
plants. Well in your experience, basically your main... mechanical 13 engineering and you experience with nuclear power plants, how does it select your basis for your comments here?
15:
MOORE:
I've been involved with power plants, oack, we worked on the Pathfinder power plant, and Lacrosse power plant from the design i
standpoint.
I did serve in a start up and test role, for the Pathfinder 18l plant for about 2 years however, I've never been involved in actual operation plants, so I really didn't judge one Control Room versus another from my own personal experience as far as interface for actual operator for that control room, however I do know that... operating 22l' experience I did have was on board fossile fuels on Navy surface 23 i
ships.
The're far less things to look at than you got on a nuclear 24j power plant.
If you were there, you'd have to, you'd get into some b
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sort of a casualty, you have to make sure there is a few basic things 2
for the operator to look at, and that's all he's gonne have a chance l
to look at.
Peripheral tt;ings are not gonna mean very much to him, be 3
4; more of a hindrance than anything else as far as I could see, so that gj I think it's the indicators, and that sort of thing, that he's normally gl working with that have gotta carry the message, alarms, alarm lights, 7
and horns and things going off are not gonna tell him very much.
81 FASANO:
That human engineering might be called for in the Control g
10l Room to a degree, is t.1at what I'm gathering?
11:
MOORE: Well I'm not, I think we have the, there may be some additional g
indicators required, I guess the thing I'm getting at is that I hate to see us try to fix this problem by any more alarms.
13; FASANO:
Oh, okay.
17!
MOORE:
I think that, when I get in my car and the buzzer starts going 18!
off because I left the key in or, I did something wrong that hurts me enough.
To an operator to have alarms continuously blaring when he's 40t trying to make decisions...
22!
FASANO:
I guess they have more of a ring and then they have to go, push a botton and still have to go and icok another panel.
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MOORE:
lj Right, I'm not sure of the exact setup on that Unit, I think, 2j I guess what I feel is you need some real basic instrumentation and 3
possibly the best thing to do is just deactivate alarms, I don't know, 4j at least the majority of them, once you got into casualty, maybe just 5l save a few of the vital ones, you can't help but pay atte.ntion to 6;
those.
7!
i FASAN0:
Mark would you like Jim to go over his experience?
81 Si RESNER:
10f Right, we negleted to get the...at the outset of the interview, 11:
m if you would, would you please give us a brief synopsis of your g
educational and job experience related to the Nuclear Industry?
l 13; 1*[.
MOORE:
I started ah, Bachelor Degree in Marine Engineering, State University, New York, College, I spent two years engineering department, I started
, employeed by Alice Chalmers, a 6,
short period of time before active duty in the Navy and then subse-quently returned to Alice Chalmers and their graduate training program, 18{
worked in a number of their power equipment divisions, steam turbines, pumps, also the Nuclear Power department, which was located in Greendale Wisconsin at that time. Went to...took a permanent assignment in the Nuclear Power Department as a Systems Engineer and worked on the, at 22{
that Pathfinder nuclear power plant, would of been frcm about 1959, 23!
January 59, then for a year and a half, two years, actually went out 24!
to the Pathfinder site and worked as a site representative in the 1
I 18
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lj Engineering Department, part of the startup and test program out 2
there.
Subsequently came back to Greendale office, continuing to work 3j on the Pathfinder finder plant which was, still had the chief startup 4;
at the time I left the site. Was then transferred to the Maryland, Sj Bethesda office of Alice Chalmers and worked there on the Lacrosse 6
reactor, coolant systems area, until I left Alice Chalmers at the end 7) of 1968 when Lacrosse was going into operation.
That's the time I I
gj joined GPU which, Nuclear Pcwer activities group at that time and I gj subsequently served in the role of a fluid systems engineer and mechanical 10, engineering manager since that time.
In addition to this I did complete 11l entire curiculium for masters degree in Nuclear Engineering at Catholic 12f University, employed, and lived in Maryland.
Everything except...I 13l took the comprensive exam, e everything except the thesis, that's g
ab'out that time I came up here so I never did finish the thesis, so 15!
that pretty well summarizes.
16; RESNER:
17l Thank you Jim, no additional comments from... gentlemen.
At present this concludes interview with Mr. Moore and the time now 11:14 ig7
- a. m.
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