ML19208B157
| ML19208B157 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 07/06/1979 |
| From: | Chisholm R, Marsh R GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORP., NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 7909190151 | |
| Download: ML19208B157 (16) | |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA P
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l
N In the Matter of:
2:
IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW t
3:
of 4
Richard Chisholm Senior Electrical Engineer S i 7?
Si Trailer #203 9i NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10!
Middletown, Pennsylvania 11!
June 1, 1979 12!
(Oate or Interview) 13i Julv 6. 1979 (Date Transcrip: Typea) 295 15i (Tape Nu=cer(s))
16; 17; 18i 19i 20!
21.
NRC PERSCNNEL:
22:
Robert Marsh, Investigator 231 Anthony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialist 24 38b338 25!
99091901 9 T
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l'i MARSH:
The date is June 1, 1979 and the time is 11:34 a.m.
This is 2'
j Bob Marsh I am an Investigator with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3t assigned to Region III, Chicago, Illinois.
We are this morning at 4!
Corporate Headquarters, GPU Service located at 260 Cherry Hill Road in Si Mountain Lake, New Jersey. At this time we are getting together to 6i interview Mr. Richard Chisholm who is a Senior Electrical Engineer with 7
GPU.
Prior to starting here I would like to go arcund the table once O
and have each individual identify himself, spell his last name and 9!
indicate his position.
10!
l 11 FASANO:
Anthony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialist, NRC out of Region I.
12!
13 CHISHOLM: Richcrd Chisholm, Senior Electrical Engineer, GPU Service 14 Corporation.
15i ISI HOVER:
J. D. Hover, Manager, Generation Division Support.
17!
1SI MARSH:
Mr. Chisholm, before we turn the tape on, we briefly discussed 19!
this two page memo which you have in front of you and without going 20!
into great detail I'd like to indicate at this time, and that memo 21:
addresses the purpose of NRC's investigation, the scoce of that in-22l vestigation and the authority under which it is conducted on the second 23i page are a series of questions which I like to review at this time and I
24l 25l 385333
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make them a matter of record on the tape as well as on the document 2
itself." First question reads:
Do you understand the above? Making 31 reference to the two page memo.
i 4!
c CHISHOLM: Yes, I do.
Si i
MARSH:
And the second question, states that, do we have your permission 8
to tape the interview?
9f l
101 CHISHOLM:
Yes.
11}
12 MARSH: And, thirdly, do you want a copy of the tape or transcript?
13i 14 CHISHOLM:
No.
... yes we do.
15i 16i MARSH:
Okay, I will provide a copy of the tape in a day or so here.
17!
18l MARSH:
There is a fourth question which is although not specifically 191 called out is covered within the body of the letter and that indicates 20' the reight of the person being interviewed to have present a company 21!
representative and its my understanding that this is Mr. Hover's position 22!
in the room at this time.
23 24i 25j S85340 9
3 1:
CHRISHOL4: Yes.
2!
t 31 MARSH:
Okay.
4:
e MARSH:
Mr. Chisholm, to begin with if you would, could you give us a brief resume of your background, your experience within the nuclear 7t j
industry, and a description of your duties with GPU and following that O!
could you describe your involvement with the events at TMI of March 9!
28th starting with your first notification of that, and following 10' l
through with your actions of your approximate first three days?
11!
i 12 CHISHOLM: Okay.
I've been employed by GPU for almost nine years and 13f.
my duties during that period were... I've been in the electrical 14:
engineering department as the Senior person responsible for instrumen-15; tation and control. During that period I've worked on both nuclear and 16' nonnuclear plants, I guess probably the majority of the time... perhaps 17!
two thirds of my activities have been on... concerned with design of 18!
nuclear plants, Forked River, both units of Three Mile Island, some Ib work at Oyster Creek, and this has been in the area of instrumentation 20' and control of the plants.
Prior to that, I worked for five years... I 21!
was involved with the Navy Nuclear Program instrumentation and control.
22i I worked for the Chris Ray Corporation, The Electronics Division, in i
231 design of instrumentation and controls for Navy nuclear reactors.
2b, That's the summary of my activities in the nuclear industry.
As far as 25!
S85341
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specifically being involved in the use at Three Mile, I was first...I 2}'
guess I heard about it sometime that morning just from various conver-3!
sations, informal conversations with people in the office, although I 4:
Paally didn't know too much what was going on.
I was called in by...
c.
d I guess it was Dick Wilson called me over to the conference room where there was a discussion in progress and it was probably about 10:30 that
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'l morning.
And, I was asked certain questions about the instrumentation i
t 8!
systems and some of the controls with reference to what was going on.
QI Specifically, there was some discussion about containment isolation and 10l what signals initiated that, whether or not there was facility in the 11!
control room for manual initiation of it and certain related things.
12f During... that was the initial thing... there were various other 13!
things that came up during the day.
I was in and out of it, and I was 14 probably involved till that evening sometime, perhaps 6:00 p.m. I don't
'153 have the exact time.
Its' difficult to try to differentiate between 16i what happened that day and what happened... what I found out on proceeding 17!
days. But, certain things I do remember, having to look into the reactor 18f building sump pump controls, what it was that might have isolated that 191 or what would happen after the containment isolation signal was reset 20f and that sort of thing. I think I also did a little bit of investigation 21:
of the emergency feedwater logic.
I was jus
- in general,... I didn't 22
... I was not in touch directly with anybody in the plant, I was kind 231 24l 25i 383342 s
[
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of responding to the requests on a second hand basis from people who 2l j
were talking to the plant, trying to get some information on some 31 pieces... that was... king of general like activities during the day.
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l FASANO:
So you notified more or less indirect' on the 28th sometime 6i in the morning...
71 i
0 CHRISHO W:
Yes.
9:
10l FASANO:
In the instrumentation and control area the main concern was containment isolation, what was the concern there?
12 l
131 CHRISHO B: Well, the first... I quess the first question when I first 14:
got involved there seemed to be some concern over whether or not we had 15; containment isolation because there was some evidence at the time of 16; radioactivity.
You know, people were wearing respirators in the control 17f room and so forth, I guess people at that time didn't really realize 18f how the radioactivity got out.
So, the first question that I was asked 19!
was,... they were trying to find out from the plant whether or not the 20!
containment was isolated.
The communications were very bad. They 21!
couldn't get people on the phones, so they were asking me well what if, 22j I quess I was asked in the context of could the plant manually isolata i
23) containment.
What did they have to do that? And, what is the risk 24j facility in the control room just by pushing a couple of buttons? I 25!
S85343
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didn't know at the time whether or not we had gotten the containment 2!
j isolation signal or not.
That was... I really didn't have a very good 3t knowledge that day of what was going on,.I was just responding to kind 4:
j of isolated questions. -
5 6i FASANO:
Then, you didn't-have pressure, reactor building pressure, b
7l knowledge of the risks,... this would,be early in the morning I assume.
0l 9I CHRISHOLM: Well, it was probably late in the morning, it was probably 10i 10:30 or 11:00.
I know it was before lunch because I stayed there 11!
during lunch period, but I was in the room during that time.
Sometime i
12 during the day, I think it was perhaps later we fcund out that there 13!
was a pressure spike in the containment...
14i l
15i FASANO:
First day?
16i i
17l CHISHOLM:
I think it may not have been the first day.
It was sometime 18i later than that, I know that I didn't know that you know, when I was 191 responding to these initial questions about containment isolation.
I 20j did not know that a pressure spike had existed at that time.
I don't 21!
kriow whether it was later that day or pernaps the next day that that 22l point came up that there was a pressure spike.
i 23i 241 25l 985344 i
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FASANO: Again, starting in the morning of the first day, your information 2
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was... you didn't have a reactor building pressure at that time.
You
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did not know of any increase in pressure...
4i 5!
CHISHOLM:
No, no I didn't.
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7t j
FASANO:
In the actuation.
St i
O~f CHISHOLM:
No, no I did not.
10f 1 11 FASANO:
So, your advice was based on the design criteria?
12:
l 13t CHISHOLM: Well, the advice was based on the... if the isolation had 14:
not taken place, and they wanted to isolate the containment, they could 15; do it from the control room, the other people that were involved in the 16i discussion weren't sure of that, I provided that information that there 17]
was some control switches in the control room to do that.
181 19!
FASANO:
So manual isolation was possible?
20l 21l CHISHOLM:
Manual isolation was possible.
l 22l 22f FASANO:
How about the resetting? You mention a concern of possible 24l effect upon reset.
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883345 5
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CHISHOLM: Well I remeber saying, I think what happened later in the 2j day was that there was some discussions about the reactor building, 3}
reactor building sump pumps, and the logic of those things... somebody 4f
... and I was at my desk at the time, I wasn't here... somebody came Sj up and asked me that and va dug out the drawings and I looked at the Gi logic for the valves and the pumps to see what isolated those in what 7f it took to isolate those pumps and I think I was specifically asked. the 8l question if they were isolated by the reactor building isolation, would 91 they restart if that isolation were reset.
The answer to that was 10)
"yes, that they would." Then the level switches would take over again, lli and the pump would restart and the valve would open.
12l 131 FASANO:
So then the operator would have to manually isolate?
14; 15:
CHISHOLM:
The operator would either have to manually isolate by reactor 16; building isolation or he would have to manually stop the pump and close 1
the valve on an individual basis.
18!
19, FASANO:
Your involvement then following this advice, into the afternoon 209
... can you recall what further involvament... did you get involved 21i with any of the thermocouple readings or the increases in temperature 2
devices?
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25i S853 %
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1 CHISHOLM:
Not that day, later on I did.
But I know I got involved in 2i i
a lot of things after that, but... the fact... that day I tried to 3l remember what time I left here, I don't think it was too late it was_a 4(
little afterward, but I wasn't here a long time because I went up and I think I asked somebody if there was anything else I could do, and I was 61 advised you know... no... I don't think my... my impression that I-i 71 l
have right now is at the end of that day, that I just really didn't I
8; have any awareness at all of just what happened, it was just very at "i
vague.
I think everyone at that point was thinking in terms of like 10f sort of a short term problem then, that it really didn't have to be, it 11!
wasn't until the next day that things began to clarify a little bit.
12k 13!
FASANO:
Then what time did you leave about?"
Six or so?
14; 15i CHISHOLM:
I think it was about that time.
16i 17!
FASANO:
About six?
18!
19!
CHISHOLM:
Yeah, something like that.
20!
21!
FASANO:
Well then could you give us some idea of your involvement 22!
following on the next two days?
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25i i
S85347
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CHISHOLM: Yeah, well that's... on that... on that following Thursday 2
j and Friday and following that we were sort of working around the clock 31 there.ir awhile, and its pretty hard to... I hadn't expected to have 4i to talk about anything after the 28th, so I've been thinking about the c>
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last day or so just what I did on the 28th.
Chronologically...
Si 7
FASANO:
Excuse me, in particular, did you get involved in any of the i
radiation monitors or the radiation indications or any of the emergency k
plan program, or instrumentation, I think this would be the more pertinent i
10 of the following two days as far as our investigation is concerned.
11!
12 CHISHOLM:
Yeah, I think, yeah... I was involved in a couple of things 131 first of all I was trying to get some verification on the incore therma-141 couples as to what their validity might be, you knew, after the incident.
15:
And, I think this was probably on Saturday because I remember tt I 16!
had a hard time raising somebody. I don't know, I was calling up police 17!
departments and getting peoples home phone numbers and so forth to try 18r and get somebody to call the plant to give them information, specifically 19!
I remember on the incare thermal couples.
The manufacturer to get his 20t opinion on how valid the readings were getting and so forth.
21!
22l FASANO:
Excuse me, who was the manufacturer?
23:
24i 25i 385348
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CHISHOLM:
I know they're in Stamford, Connecticut, I can't remember 2!
the name of tN. tampany right now.
31 4l FASANO:
Is this the thermacouples?
Si
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0 CHISHOLM:
Yeah, I could take that out, but I don' t...
7 O!
FASANO: Would it be Rosemont?
9!
10 CHISHOLM:
No, it wasn't Rosemont, no.
11l i
N FASANO: Okay.
13 14!
CHISHOLM:
I was also in touch with Victoreen Instrument Company who 15!
made the radiation monitoring equipment at the plant and that over a 16!
couple of days trying to get information from them.
A lot of the 17l instruments were off scale. We were trying to find out what we could l$!
do to perhaps recalibrate them or somehow to get them back so that we 1Ni could get some useful information from them.
I got some procedures 20i from them which I was passing along to the plant.
I know there were 2b dozens of different things that came up.
I can't sort of put my fingers 22l on them individually right now.
23 2 41 25i 885349
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FASANO:
Let's go back a little bit.
In the emergency feedwater logic, 2l l
when did you get involved in that discussion and for what purpose?
31 41 CHISHOLM: Well, I guess... I don't remember exactly when it was.
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Whether it was probably Thursday or Friday I guess, I don't know, c
Gi somebody came to ;te and we~ had a discussion with some people about when 7'!
you got actuation of the feedwater emergency feedwater pumps and what 8
valves came open automatically and so forth.
I guess people were just k.
trying to confirm at that time the fact that it was possible to have 10I those valves closed and that they wouldn't automat cally open.
I was i
11 just confirming some of the logic.
i 12l 13l FASANO: Would you have
~3s to the survelliance procedures in that 14 particular case, or would you just be looking at the particular valve 15 or valves and how they are actuated?
16!
17!
CHISHOLM:
No, I didn't have any access to surveillance procedures.
I IS!
was just looking at the elementary diagrams and the logic diagrams to 19!
see what happened under various conditions.
20!
21l FASANO:
I guess this would just be the opening of the eleven valves 22!
automatically and the closure and isolation of the twelve valves right?
231 I mean that's pretty much what those the valves of concern?
24l 25i S%350
13 v
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CHISHOLM:
Yeah, I don't remember the numbers, but like the ones...the 2:
j discharge... spe:ifically I was looking for discharge vaic;. on the 3t l
auxfeed water pumps.
4l n
FASANO:
Do you know if... do you have any details or detailed knowledge
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6i as to the extent of closure normally, that you expect on your automatic 7!
operated valve, your automatically operative control valve which would 8!
be the eleven valves, which would get your signal at about thirty oi
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inches on your oncethrough steam generator and then would start to 10 open."
llj 12 CHISHOLM:
Do you mean the valves that would initiate a...
131 14i FASANO: That would open on the level signal from the steam generators.
15l Do you knew any details on the valve itself or just the electrical 16 aspects of it?
17!
18i CHISHOLM:
No, I'm not really familiar with those specific valves.
19i 20f FASANO:
Okay... do you have any questions?
2 11 22!
MARSH:
I have none.
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23i 2 41 25i 360351
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l FASANO: Okay, at this time maybe if you would like to give us an 2'
opinion as to how we could possibly better handle a situation like 3l this, if there's any things that you have observed in experiencing the 4j March 28th event, we would like you to give them to us and to whoever l
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listens to this recording.
Si 71 l
CHISHOLM: Yes, I would say certainly... automatic, complete automatic 0
actuation of the emergent y feedwater system, and,... I think there are 9f a number of others that the general things that have been put out and 10l some of the documents that are being backfitted now in the plants.
11!
Other than those, I don't think I have any specific...
12!
i 131 FASANO: You worked on navy plants you say?
14i 15' CHISHOLM:
Yes.
16i 17l FASANO: What do you think of positive indication of valves, and is 18i this an...
19!
20I CHISHOL4:
Okay, you mean...
21l 22 FASANO:
Electromatic valve in this case apparently had an electric 231 signal, which said that you had power going through the solenoid.
24j 25j 0
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t 15 i
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CHISHOLM: Well certainly if there is anyway to get a positive indication 2:
i of that valve position you ought to have it.
And, I think if that 3;
j can't be done, I think that some other differential meant ought to be 4!
l put in... it gives the operator a better indication that he's got flow Si through that line.
I guess the other thing that I ought to mention is Si that... I also think it would be very valuable and I think its being 7l l
done on later plants is that there's a regulatory guide 1.47 which is 8!
inoperable status indication in the control room, for valves and other alt devices that, if they are put in an inoperable condition, it would give
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10l an alarm to an operator.
That certainly would help."
i nj FASANO:
Okay.
u\\
14' MARSH:
I appreciate that then, we're going to call this, bring it to a E
close, time being 11:56 and reading 371 on the meter.
We want Mr.
16I Chisholm, to say thank you for your time and your comments.
17!
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