ML19208B148
| ML19208B148 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 07/06/1979 |
| From: | Devine J, Marsh R GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORP., NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 7909190127 | |
| Download: ML19208B148 (14) | |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY CCMMISSION l
d In the Matter of:
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IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW 2:
of Mr. John C. Devine l
Project Engineering Manager, GPU Service Corporation 9
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81 Trailer #203 9l NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10r Middletown, Pennsylvania 11l June 1, 1979 12!
(0 ate or Interview) 13i July 6, 1979 (Date Transcrip: Typea) 299 15I (Tape Numcer(s))
16 175 IS:
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NRC PERSONNEL.
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Mr. Robert Marsh 23l Mi'. Anthony N. Fasano 24!
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MARSH:
The dato is June 1, 1979, my name is Bob Marsh.
I':n an investi-2:
gator of the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission assigned to the Region 3 31 offices in Chicago, Illinois.
This afternoon we are located at the Corporate 4j Headquarters of GPU Service Corporation at 250 Cherry Hill Road, Mountain 5;
Lakes, New Jersey.
At this time we will be conducting an interview of'Mr.
Si John C. Devine, who is a Project Engineering Manager for GPU.
Before we 7;
begin I would like the other people in the room to identify themselves, 8!
spell their last name, and indicate their position.
Tony, if you would gj begin.
10; FASANO:
Anthony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialist, NRC.
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DEVINE:
13 John C. Devine, Project Engineering Manager, GPU Service Corporation.
141 H08ER:
John G. Hober, Manager, Generation Division Support.
16i MARSH:
Thank you.
John, before we begin I gave you a two page meme which you have in front of you which without going into detail basically lays -
g down the purpose of NRC's investigation, the scope of that investigation, 19t and the authority under which it is being conducted.
It also addressas the 40 rights of the person being interviewed and on the second page there ars 2,.1 several questions that I'd like to get your response to at this time.
29 MARSH:
The first question reads do you understand the above, making reference 24!
to the two page document?
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lj DEVINE: Yes I do.
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MARSH:
And the second question reads do we have your permission to tape 41 the interview?
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Sj DEVINE:
You do.
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8l MARSH:
And thirdly, do you want a copy of this tape and the transcript?
91 OEVINE:
Yes, I would.
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MARSH: Alright.
We will provide those to you.
There is a fourth question which is not called specifically on the second page but is addressed in the 13 g
body of the memo which addresses your right if you so desire to have a company representative present and it is my understanding that that is the "9
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17l OEVINE:
He will suffice.
(Laugh) 19i MARSH:
Okay. Okay John before we start we would appreciate it if you c0I would give us a brief resume of your background and experience in the nuclear field and a description of your duties here with GPU.
Following 23l that we would like you in your own words to tall us your recollections 24:l regarding the March 28th incident at TMI and your involvement with that incicent, what your recollections are stating with an, starting with when
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f If you were first notified, at what time, and what the sequence of events were 2
that you were involved in for the first few days.
31 4j DEVINE:
Fine. With respect to your first question my background is as f
follows:
Graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy Class of 1965, entered the U.
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S. Naval Nuclear Program in more or less a standard officer position, went 7l through the Navy nuclear training program for a year and a half, served on 8
the USS Sunfish as in a variety of capacities, joined that ship in con-g, struction so I spent a year and a half with it in the shipyard, went 10 through reactor plant testing, etc.
I left the Navy in 1970 and joined the GPU Service Corporation. With the Service Corporation I've had the following 11l g
positions:
first I served as a Project Engineer on the Forked River Nuclear 13 Station; in that respect I had a number of assignments including following some reactor plant systems and the valves of plant systems, primarily my 15i j b on Forked River was to follow the architect engineering work in progress.
g In about 1972, for about two years, I assumed responsibility for a research and development program related to Forked River involved in assessing the adequacy of the salt water cooling tower for the station, it was involved at the plant but had no direct bearing on nuclear engineering of any sort.
In about 1974 or perhaps 1975 I don't recall, I was assigned as Project Manager for the Oyster Creek radwaste modification project, wnich was a project involved in adding offgas and liquid and solid radwaste treatment 4
facilities to the existing Oyster Creek Station in southern New Jersey.
I completed that job I think about 1977 at which time I was assigned my present capacity as Engineering Manager for the Forked River Nuclear Station, f
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lf and again on the Forked River Station I've been responsible for primarily 2j managing their architect engineering effort.
I've held that capacity until 3
the TMI incident.
I guess from that point you wanted me to go into my 4j recollections of the incident?
i Si 6i MARSH:
Yes, if you would.
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DEVINE: Okay.
I had no direct involvement in the TMI incident for its 8
gj first two days other than that I was present in the office and I generally 10 was aware of...ah...that there had been an incident.
My first knowledge of gj the incident occurred at about noon on the 28th when I came back to the h
office for lunch during a break from a seminar.
It was not until Friday
,3' following the incident, I guess that would have been the 30th, that I
\\y became directly involved in any way.
At that point the seriousness of the situation was becoming apparent...I...the first technical matter that was raised to me as an urgent matter that had required my involvement was that the question of the gas which had been identified in the primary coolant 171 9'
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morning of the 20th, GPU Management requested that a number of technical people inmiediately get together in attempt to analyze that situation here in Mountain Lakes.
I don't recall exactly who the request came from, I 21!
more or less believe it was Don Prunberger.
I believe Dick Wilson was already at the site at that time.
I normally report to Dick Wilson so I would take orders from him if he were here.
Ah, as I say I believe at 2 41 Don's request a number of us assembled in conference room 201 anc began to cW s
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brainstorm the question of the gas in the primary coolant.
I recall also l
2j now as I talk about it that Bob. Keaten was very much involved in organizing 3
that effort. As far as my part was concerned I think some of the other 4i people there, you know, I had no previous involvement in any time in my Si work with GPU on the Three Mile Station.
I wasn't familiar with the systems, i
6i I didn't know the plant very well, and we had ah...I would say a somewhat sketchy perception of the situation at the island.
However, to the best of gj their knowledge Bob Keaten and Don Prunberger outlined to us the situation gj at the plant and charged us with looking at some way to ah... degas the 10f primary system. We spent most of that day looking at alternatives and g
evaluating them and troubleshooting them and trying to formulate them and i
12, then via telephone talking back to the site addressing the question.
I 13 think it probably was during that day that we began to come to the con-g clusion that operating the plant to primary system in a normal degas mode, i.e., circulating water througn the pressurizer and spraying, was probably 15 the most...the safest and most reasonable though ah..all be it tedious approach towards degassing the primary system.
Later in that day we also 18:.
- -ecognized here the need to provide some kind of a full time technical supcort to the folks out at the site.
Sometime around 4: 00 or 5:00 in the 19!
afternoon we arranged ourselves into a rotating watch section which could provide that support.
I stayed here until about midnight that night working on a variety of technical questions and some administrative questions too.
As I recall I spent a fair amount of time trying to line up people to go 23l out to the site the next day and arraying ligistics and that sort of 241 thing.
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We set up direct phone line communication with the people at the I
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site in Bob Keaten's office and responded to a number of specific qu 2 ',
that they. raised about various systems.
I think at that time we spent a 3i good part of that evening as I recall trying to identify the best path to 4
vent the pressurizer in the degas mode and we came up with the.
..I believe it was valve RC37 or 137 which is a one and a half inch li Si i
eemed 6;
to be the most controllable gas venting path.
I don't recall at the moment 7l any specific technical problems that we worked on that evening but I know g;
there were several others.
I came back into the office at about 7:30 or 8:00 the next morning and continued to do the same kind of work we g
e 101 the night before.
Sometime during that morning Dick Wilson, my boss called 37l to request that I come out to the island along with several other ce ople.
I got in touch with Gib Stout, who works for me and he agreed g
and we also arranged for three Jersey Central employees to come a 13 We g t ourselves together and left from here and got out to the site sometim 14l 15!
ab ut 4:00 that afternoon.
When I got to the site I spent the rest of that evening basica'ly getting oriented with, under Dick Wilson's direction g
in the operational and technical support group that was then forming i j
n the 18i she.
R dat Mme we were k L.. con and narboad rotation, 50 wam sections.
I joined up with Gary Broughton working for him in his...he was the group leader of one of the technical support sections.We set up an
%yl organization which could do a number of things including providing han hand technical support to the control room with...we had some of o ur engineers in the control room working with the control room people helping them up various procedures and tests and observing plant conditions and ng plant configuration and that kind of thing.
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Secondly we set up a group of I
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people, mainly personnel from other companies, in teams to help write 1
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procedures because we felt at that point that we had to.be as methodical as l-3; possible in controlling plant evolutions and we wanted a detailed approved 4l procedure to change plant configurations, to move radioactive fluids, etc.
5l And I spent a lot of time those first couple of days organizing and working i
Gi with those procedure groups. My recollection is a little fuzzy right now 71 as far as specific technical problems that we worked on those first few gl days.
The one that I eemember most clearly as a pressing and urgent problem g,
was the concern about the waste gas decay tanks.
The waste gas decay tanks 10j had a...were essentially at full pressure.
The full pressure as I recall g
was about 80 psig, were known to contain or presumed to contain a very high 5
3 amount of radioactivity; 10 10 curies was an estimate based on the measured act.'vity or measured radiation field outside their cubicle and other 14j estimates of what went into those tanks.
There really was no more room to 15, put any waste gas and we proceeded to develop procedures and piping systems, 6
temporary piping systems to first sample the waste gas decay tanks and g
secondly,... once sampled to route the gas decay tanks contents, gaseous 73 contents back into the containment building atmospnere.
That consumed gj several days of pretty much full time effort.
In that respect I enlisted the aid of Mr. James 0. Henrie with whom I'd been associated in my offgas c.0 project on Oyster Creek because he was knowledgeable and experienced in handling detonable mixtures mainly hydrogen, he works with Atomics Interna-I tional.
He in fact came out from Washington state and assisted us in that 23{
effort during those few days.
He was also helpful in another task that I was working on during the same period which was setting up and testing and 25i p
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then putting into operation the recombiner.
We actually set up two recombiners l
2l and operated one.
I don't know how much further you would like me to go as 3}
far as sequence, I think that covers certainly the first week.
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Si MARSH:
Tony, do you have questions?
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FASANO:
Yeah. The first day you weren't involved at all, that's what I 8
understood, you knew that there was something happening at TMI 2 but as far g
as getting involved in any way or any capacity you were not.
Is that correct?
10i 11.
DEVINE:
That is correct.
I was not directly involved.
As I say I came g
ack from a seminar at lunch time, t.5ere was a group assembled in tMs 13 g;
office in fact in this conference room looking at system diagrams trying to understand what was going on.
That group included my boss, Dick Wilson.
g He asked me to stand by and I did not go back to my seminar that afternoon
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but apparently communications were not the best and although I was standing by he never really asked me to get involved in anything and I didn't parti-cipate in any decision making or evaluation or anything during that day.
20 FASANO:
So for the first day that was your...
22l DEVINE:
Other than trying to stay interested in what was going on.
I came 23!
back, I had a soft ball practice that night, and came back afterwards about 24) 3:00 and stopped in at Bob Marlen's office and chatted a bit and got an 25l uS
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update on what was going on but again it was an information exchange and 2:
not really in participation in the action.
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FASANO: When did you know there was a general emergency at the site?
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DEVINE:
I would say that afternoon and I can't tell you exactly why.
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honestly don't remember anybody telling me that but at some point in discussions g;
it became apparent.
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i 10' FASANO:
Okay.
I had one question really.
You mentioned the recombiner l
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and the handling of hydrogen, do you recall requesting or who might have h,
requested an analysis of the reactor building air contents?
l 131 14l OEVINE:
The reactor building air? The gas content in the reactor building?
Id n t recall a request for a sample of the gas in the reactor building.
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g FASANO:
Was there one done do you know?
I mean they wanted the recombiner, i
I just wondered...
18i 191
,g; oEvINE:
Well we had a...there is a hydrogen analyzer so we had a measure-ment of hydrogen and it was in fact increasing.
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FASANO:
Okay.
So you had an on line...
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DEVINE:
We had an on line hydrogen measurement. We did not take a gas 2j sample that I recall and analyze it.
As a matter of fact, I'm sorry, I'm 3
gonna correct myself on that.
There was a lot of question during that 4;
period of time as to what instrumentation we could rely on and what we 5l couldn't rely on and I remember...I don't remember the details but I remember l
some uncertainty as to whether or not we had a hydrogen problem.
We all 6
y presumed we had a hydrogen generation problem, we didn't know the extent.
l Si As I recall we took...we did take a gas sample in the containment building g
which confirmed the presence of hydrogen.
I believe the level was something 10 like...something over 2 percent and I think increased the urgency of our efforts to get a recombiner system going.
I don't recall exactly when that was.
131 FASANO:
The date you don't recall.
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DEVINE:
No, I really don't.
Honestly that first week at the site most of g
us worked nearly around the clock several days and it all kind of runs 9
181 19i FASANO:
You were involved in the starting and use of the recombiner?
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DEVINE:
Indirectly.
I was involved in the...I was not physically present at the installation...I was involved in reviewing the location, the harcware 231 configuration, the shielding configuration, etc., in a technical capacity.
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FASANO:
lj Can you recall when the installed recombiner and the second re-2 combiner.. I think you had two, '1gnt?
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4; DEVINE:
Yes.
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6l FASANO:
began operation and actually started to take the air from containment 7!
and cycle it and recombine?
81 OEVINE:
I'm sure it's been logg d.
I would guess that it was about one g;
10 week after the incident.
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FASANO:
Okay.
So this would be well into April.
13l OEVINE:
Yes.
It wa certainly into April because April 1st was my first full day down there and I would say it was the better part of a week after that.
It took a while...took quite a while to set it up and once we got the first recombiner set up then we had an internal discussion as to whether or not we should wait for the second recombiner to be set up because we knew that once the first one was put into operation the radiation fields around it would be very high and it would burn out people to install the second one, we felt we wanted to have two installed.
So once we had the first one in place we then waited another day or two as I recall to get the second one on line and then we had further discussions as to whether or not 231 we wanted to put then, both on line or just put the first on line and we 241 decided to do the latter, and all that consumed again at least a week.
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lj FASANO:
Was there any concern about negative pressure on the reactor 2
building itself?
3l 4l DEVINE:
As far as operation of the recemoiner or just...
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FASANO:
Just generally.
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DEVINE: Oh, just generally.
Okay, yes.
First of all it...rather than 8
being a concern I think we were all dalighted to see that we had naturally g
achieved a negative pressure, a slight negative pressure in the containment 10l
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building because it assures an in leakage rather than cut leakage.
Secondly I
we were concerned somewhat about excessive negative pressure.
As a matter y
of fact I think I relayed that question...went back through the Mountain Lakes technical support office to ask the question what was the design basis.
I guess we asked two questions.
What was the design basis and what was the engineer's best judgement as far as negative pressure the reactor 161 building could sustain.
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The answers that came back were that it could sustain...it was designed to sustain something like...I believe it is 3 psi negative pressure and that the critical design point was basically the juncture of the lining into the liner and with the concreta and with that number we all felt fairly comfortable.
We coulcn't conceive of it getting 21; lower than tr.e 22!
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FASANO:
Okay.
I have no further questions.
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MARSH: The only thing that I would offer... If you've got comments you i
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feel you would like to make some recommendations we'll turn the microphone 3
over to you at this time for any suggestions or comments that you would 4j like to make.
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Gj DEVINE:
No, at the moment I really can't think of anything specific.
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i gj MARSH:
The time being 3:31 with 3:57 on the meter we will then proceed to g
terminate the tape, but just a word of thanks for your time and your comments.
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