ML19208B161
| ML19208B161 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 07/06/1979 |
| From: | Capodanno G, Marsh B GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORP., NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 7909190158 | |
| Download: ML19208B161 (19) | |
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UNITED.5TATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I
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In the Matter of:
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IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW qi 31 of Gary R. Capodanno Section Manager 44 Mechanical Design GPU Si
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Trailer #203 9!
NRC Investigation Site TMI No..: lear Power Plant 10i Middletown, Pennsylvania 11!
June 1, 1979 12!
(uate of interview) 131 July 6, 1979 (Date Transcript Typeo) 14!
296 15l (iape Numcer(s))
16i 17l ISi 19i 20!
21l NRC PERSONNEL:
22' Bob Marsh Anthony N. Fasano 23i J. G. Hover (GPU) 24h 2Si O t'i g)
("o 7 9 09190 / Eh
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y MARSH: The date is June 1, 1979, the time is 12:03 PH and this is Bob 2
Marsh.
I'm an Investigator with the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1
31 assigned to the Region III Office in Chicagc, Illinois.
This afternoon we i
41 are located at the Corporate Offices of the GPU Service Corporation, located i
Sj at 260 Cherry Hill Road in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey.
At this time we i
6l will be conducting an interview of Mr. Gary R. Capodanno who is a Section 7
Manager, Mechanical Design.
Prior to st::rting I'd like to go around the 8,
table having each individual identify himself, spell his last name and indicate his position. Tony if you would start.
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10i FASANO: Anthony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialist, NRC.
CAPODANNO:
Gary Capodanno, Section Manager, Mechanical Design, GPU.
141 HOVER:
J. G. Hover, Manager, Generation Division Support.
161 MARSH:
I thank you.
Mr. Capodanno before we began we had a few words 17l concerning this two page memo you have in front of you and without going into detail I'll just indicate that that memo indicates the purpose of NRC's investigation, the scope of it, and the authority under which it's i
being conducted.
It also addresses the rights of the person being inter-21{
viewed and on the second page there are listed three questions that I would 22l like to get your response to at this time.
First question reads, do you 23 understand the above making reference to the two page memo?
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2 Ilj CAPODANNO:
Yes.
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MARSH:
The second question reads, do we have your permission to tape this 4
interview?
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Gj CAPODANNO: Yes.
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MARSH:
8 And thirdly, do you want a copy of this tape?
91 10l CAPODANNO: Yes.
.uj MARSH:
Okay fine. There is a fourth question that is not called out on g
the second page but is covered in the body regarding your right if you so 141 desire to have a company representative present and it's my understanding that that is Mr. Hover's capacity kindly in this interview.
16:
Il CAPODANNO:
Yes, that's correct.
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i 18i MARSH:
Okay. Mr. Capodanno to begin with if you would could you give us a brief resume of your background, your experience in the nuclear field and a description of your d'.cies with GPU and then following that in your own i
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words could you describe to us your association with the incident at Three Mile Island on March 28 staring with how you first received notification and going through the approximate first three day period.
What the sequence 24 of your involvement was.
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1 CAPODANNO: Okay.
Do you want to go back to day one as far as my experience 2j goes?
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4 MARSH:
Just a brief resume to get an idea of what your experience in the Si nuclear field has been.
i 61 7j CAPODANNO:
Okay.
I initially started with the Consolidated Edison Company 8
it was my first job out of college.
Projects that I was involved in there g
covered some work on the Indian Point Station and some work on the new unit 101 that they were anticipating buying at that time which was gonna be a BWR plant.
In both instances I was involved with some Systems work.
The
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iemainder of my work at Con Ed was on Fossile Plant Systems and I was with
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that company about 2 years a little less.
Second assignment work that I 14l had was with Foster Wheeler Company which had no involvement in the nuclear industry at that time.
I was with them about 2 years.
Following that I was with Burns and Roe for a period of 7 years working on totally nuclear projects.
First as a Systems Design Engineer and subsequently as a Group 17!
Supervisor with Systems Design Engineers on Forked River and Three Mile 18f Island Nuclear Stations. After I left Burns and Roe I was at a ESASCO for 19i a brief period, 3 months again non nuclear work and then came to GPU Service in August of last year and my present position is Section Manager for 21!
Systems Design.
My functions at GPU are Systems Engineering Design.
The 22j group that I had is responsible for either design work which is fairly new 231 i
with GPU for systems in all their plants or modifications to systems in all 24j their plants as well as review engineer, engineer review activity for 251 1
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projects that GPU had going with other architect engineering companies.
2j That basically is what I've been doing since I been here.
As far as the 3
accident goes, on the morning of March 28 I think approximately 9:30 in the 4
morning, I think is when we first got the word that something had happened.
Sj A member of our staff, Mr. Jim Moore, who is another Section Manager in 6
Mechanical Components Area came by and gave us a brief description of what 7
he then understood to be the occurrence and we had a meeting that morning I
g with Mr. Moore, myself, George Lehmann, Bob Keaton, Duke Wilson was there g
for a time, my boss, Don Krumburger, this was sometime after 9:30 in the 10l m rning.
The purpose of that meeting was to review what we then knew about what had occurred, to make some assignments of people to send to the site i
12 and assignments of activities in the home office.
What we then understood was there was some question about activity release, keeping in mind that we didn't really know the severity of the accident at the time, we were looking 15; at problems of effects on in containment equipment as far as I was concerned and se 16i ndary plant equipment as a result of the accident.
I'm making some investigation as to what happened into the secondary plant side, caused the plant to trip, we understood it then to be a loss of instrument air.
My people, George Lehmann was to be involved in that, and another one of my individuals, Julian Labromavitch was also to go to the site that day with Mr. Moore and Lehmann to investigate what happened in terms of the steam 22:
generator. We had some word that there may have been some damage to the 22t t
Labromavitch had been working prior to that as an Engineer associated with the steam generator so he had some knowledge of that, we 24j also felt that based on his previous work experiences expressing that he 25i c?
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!lj might be of some value.
The other people involved in the meeting we worked 2j with there that morning were to begin make assignments, Mr. Broton who was I.
3j gonna be involved in some computerized retrain analysis, data collection.
4f Rich Lense I believe was also assigned to go to the site at.that same Sj meeting to collect data.
So we had aries of collecting data, analyzing the i
6j effects of the accident on primary, secondary plant systems, other people 7
were involved and I really forgotten who we had selected that day to look I
gj at the effects of the activity releases, to find out just what they were.
gl I believe Ed Wallace in Licensing was also had made that assignment or was 10 given that assignment I should say.
That took us through fair part of the Ig morning.
My rest of my day was basically spent getting those people assigned, describing to them what happened, arranging for them to go to the site.
A little later in that day Mike Marel who subsequently went to the site the 14 f 11 wing day had been at a conference in one of the local motels and I had gotten a hold of him, got him back to this office because there was a g
decision made that he would act as the interface in this office with the 17 people that we were sending to the site to coordinate information, to try to pull together a picture of what was occurred.
That's pretty much what took up the first day.
The remainder of the day I didn't involved in doing anything specific it was a matter of trying to keep informed of the informa-tion that was sketchy coming in and somewhat confused.
And we made no t
21l additional work assignments beyond that, the ?eople that we sent to the site were on their way they hadn't arrived and I hadn't heard back from them.
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i MARSH:
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Before we go into a second day Tony why don't you approach your g!
questions on the first statement to him at one at a time.
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FASANO: All right.
You mentioned some information on activity release 5
early in the morning, could you go a little bit further into that, into 6i what detail you had and what was your involvement?
7 CAPODANNO: Not that much really.
Th'e information that we had was simply g;
g that there had been some kind of a release and in the meeting that we had 10f it started about 9:30 or so, we were trying to make work assignments and g
stuff who would do what.
It was really a question of to determine what was j
the release, what was the offsite dose and the analysis of the investigation of that was gonna be done by Ed Wallace as I recall, he's the Licensing Manager.
We, myself, people in my group did nothing beyond. We didn't try ana y e any g r mn any ca cu a ns to make any detemhadons in 15 that. We simply had been told that something was happening was part of that morning meeting. We selected somebody to investigate it further.
18t FASANO:
As far as the, apparently you got Mr. Marel to be the interface for information.
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CAPODANNO:
That was the plan on the first day yeh.
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FASANO:
And you were then informed by Mr. Marel of the status.
To what 24l extent was information coming in?
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CAPODANNO: What happened as I recall was that we got Mike back from that 2
meeting that was out of the building, he was in for a time, again I would i
3l say there was a problem with information, we didn't really know what was 4l going on and he was told that he was gonna have to hang around the office S;i and find out what was going on.
He subsequently, 'as I recall later in the l
Si day ended up in one of the conference rooms on the second floor herewith.
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I think probably Wilson and Keaton and some other people getting some information.
But there was no real coordination effort going on that time 8
gj because of the general confusion about exactly what was happening.
So 10l during that first day he had that assignment but he didn't really get involved in specifically getting information from the people that we had sent to the site and try to interface any activities between site people and home office people.
14l 15l FASANO:
Let's see, how long have you been with GPU?
16i CAPODANNO:
Since August of last year.
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ISI FASANO:
Since August of last year.
I guess then this is not a fair ques-tion.
I was going to ask if you had any other experience of communication with the site and is there is it a general difficulty or just because of 211 this particular situation?
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CAPODANNO:
I think it was a matter of magnitude.
Normally, either with 2 41 this plant or the other plants that I've been involved with theres been no 25i n
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great communications problem.
There a sizeable organization between service 1
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corporation and operating counties.
So under normal circumstances it was i
3l really a question of finding out who you should talk to and then you had 4l really no problem getting a hold of that individual and getting an answer.
t 5l In a case of the accident it was I don't really know a kind of communications 6j network that was needed just didn't exist.
The normal telephone routes 7
were overloaded, and it was very difficult getting informatior, back and forth.
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10l FASANO:
And you had no I guess there was no specific line that could be kept open?
12 CAPODANNO: What we ended up, no there was no predesignated hot line if she will, we ended up during the early days of selectina a phone or several phones we kept those lines open. Of course people were moving onsite and 15!
16:l trailers were getting set up and so on so that those lines kept changing.
We kept lines open but there was a difficulty as I understand from the people onsite who were primarily working out of the Observation Center at 18; that time to get back to this office.
There's obviously an abundance of phones here if you could get the call through but between trying to locate 20j people onsite and the availability of communications equipment to them 21!
onsite I think that's were the big breakdown occurred.
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l FASANO:
You were relying on the people you had dispatched from this office 24l l
I assume?
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CAPODANNO:
Personnally from my work I was.
But there's other people 2
involved here, Wilson, Keatca and so on that were direct communication with 3l other people at site.
The idea was that we normally provide an engineering 4
support service and it's easier to deal with our engineer who knows how we 5
work here and what he was supposed to be doing onsite.
That's not to say 61 that we didn't talk to other people in the past or subsequent to March 28 i
7l but the initial plan of not knowing what the exact situation was and we're 8
really not having a good feel for how bad things awfully turned out to be.
,9 I personnally did not engage in any direct communication with people onsite.
10f I was waiting to get the word from those that were in direct communication d
with the normal site personnel.
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FASANO:
g So the three areas that you might of been involved were the specific 14!
cause, activity you mentioned someone else had taken over...
15' CAPODANNO:
16
... What were assigned to look at what in the secondary plant had specifically caused the trip. What the effects of the trip and the f
releases were on equipment and systems within containment anct then the secondary plant.
, 91 a.
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- 21l, FASANO:
On the effects of equipment, what kind of information co you have to even evaluate or did you have sufficient information to evaluate?
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CAPODANNO:
On that first day not really, we didn't really have a good 24!
handle on.
I believe that Jim Moore told us that there was an estimate of 25!
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10 1l something like 30,000 gallons of water that were released inside containment.
h At that time we didn't know that there'd even been a release into the Aux Building and they didn't have a good handle on what the impact on the containment atmosphere was didn't know about the Aux Building condition 4
Sj initially and had no information to lead _me to conclude that there had been 1
anything impacted in this in the Turbine. Hall at all other than whatever 6i initially caused the reported loss of instrument air, the plant trip.
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FASANO: The effects then were basically the fact due to being underwater, g
say in the Reactor Building...
10 lif CAPODANNO: Weil I think the initial plan was that if we were ever able to get enough information that we could say things like well let's supposition, 13 j
let's say that there had been a trip, the trip might of resulted in loss of feedwater or cooling water to some component that would be something that we'd investigate, to see if there had been equipment damaged. You know initially the way that we got the accident was, it wasn't as bad as I said 17 it turned out to be and we didn't realize of the morning of the first day 18!
that we were looking at such a serious situation.
The thing was more geared toward some problem with activity release, cleanup and we thought 40l that there would be a major problem in certain areas possibly with equipment 211 damage either inside containment or outside of containment.
And that as a 22l Systems Guide I was primarily what I was supposed to be looking at, what 23l i
happened to the systems, what potentially could of happened to equipment.
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FASANO:
Okay.
As far as your steam generator I guess would be the same 1
2 type of evaluation.
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CAPODANNO:
Yeh, the reason that Julian Labromavitch went down on the steam 5
generators, he used to be in the Components Group and had done a lot of 6
work on it prior to his reassignment to my group and as I said his background h
with Electric Boat was as a stressing also was felt that he'd be a good guy g
to send down as far as assessing steam generator damage.
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FASANO:
10f Did he feed back any information as to his conclusions to damage gj or?
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CAPODANNO:
No.
Not the first day and he ultimately ended up working in 13 the Control Room onsite and doing some analytical work onsite and I see g
nothing that every indicated he actually got into doing any kind of analysis on the steam generator itself.
Once he got.there the situation was such, he ended up doing other things.
ISr FASANO:
Has there ever been a conclusion drawn as to the effect on the steam generators to this date?
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- 22l, CAPODANNO:
I can't say it was certain, you know.
I wasn't involved in it i
and neither was Julian so as far as my group or my people we didn't do it, 23!
whether or not some other group has I'm not certain.
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FASANO:
As far as the second and third day, did you get involved at all 1
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with activity releases or instrumentation or systems with respect to ways i
3) of releasing activity?
l 41 5;
cap 0DANNO: Well on the second day I wasn't even in the office.
There was 6
someting going on another project and again not knowing how bad things were I was out of the office taking care of that.
On that day Mike Marel and g
Rick McGaughy were in my group were sent to the site.
I came back to the g
office on that Thursday evening late about 8:30 or so and there was nothing g ing n here so really things didn't start hopping at least for me until 101 h
Friday morning.
I came in at the normal type about 8 o' clock 8:15 I'd say y
and then by a little after 9 things really started to break loose.
We were ge ng a caHs from ne she to look at tWgs lhe decay heat 13 system, pumps, supply data on the pumps and relief valves, the system arrangements.
That was a very long day, I think we were here till son.3. thing g
like 2:30 in the morning following up from 8 o' clock one morning till 2:30 in the morning the next day.
During the course of that Friday, we looked at quite a number of things. There was i11 kinds of requests from the 181 site, to supply data on say relief valves, electromatic relief valve to look at systems, possibly failures in various systems, how we'd get around 20j them.
I believe that same day we started looking at connection of the 21!
recombiner, possibly means to inert containment, scme investigations on 22!
using the spent fuel, system components trying to cross type on the decay heat and special cooling system for cleanup both the activity and water.
24l So it was really tnat Friday that we started going at it.
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If FASANO:
So directly, so direct involvement as far as emergency plan or the 2!
paths of release of activity, you didn't get involved in that?
I 31 CAPODANNO:
No I never did.
And all the questions were addressed as far as Si analysis of systems and component failures, Gl 7
FASANO: As you got your information on the first day, was this then did gj you report this to Mr. Wilson or Mr. Krumburger or would you run your own g{
more or less making your own decisions?
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CAPODANNO:
Actually it was going the other way around.
Information was y
coming to me and there wasn't that much on that Wednesday.
I didn't get any direct information from site to report to anybody else, it was all coming to me from Wilson, Keaton, Krumburger.
15 FASANO:
Do you have any other questions?
171 MARSH:
I have no questions.
181 19\\
FASANO: Well just take maybe a few minutes now if you'd like, it's up to 20t you if you'd like to give any suggestions as from your observations and 211 experience in this event what you might consider things that might be helped in the future to maybe better cope with similar situations.
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CAPODANNO:
I think tnere's several things that cid come to mind.
One of l
the problems and I'm sure is that everybody is addressing is an engineering 2!
I organization or a support organization to an operating company from this 31 4f office, number one we needed better communications which I think is obvious.
The ability to get information back and forth readily is something that I 5
i 6l just think... vital. The second thing is the availability of the informa-7 tion in this office.
We had a fair amount of drawings on mag cards of the 8.
specs and all, however, I would think that a much more comprehensive set of files on any plant that you have might be available to the central engineer-g 10 ing pe ple.
Secondly, there are some things that are in forms of list, f
information on equipment location that from my experience with A/E even we g
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,,j made a lot of lists of various things like valves, equipment and so on.
But there was additional lists that I think perhaps with the benefit of hindsigh would also be well to generate or amend existing lists for example, we went through finding in subsequent days after finally finding locations of inst rentations specifically.
If you look at a typically instrument 17l list produced by Burns and Roe I'm not sure by other A/E's, they'll be 4
reviewed for approximate locations by when I came questions with flooding, how soon is something gonna go under water, that required some detail checking. We came to questions even later on, weeks after that about 21!
ultimate means to measure water level in containment.
And we looked at things like measuring lines going through electrical penetrations, again it 22!
was a surge list, where was this stuff exactly located and which ones can you pick.
So I think that there's a lot of information that from a normal 25i design stancpoint is that it doesn't seem much benefit in collection it but vl t
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If after this accident I don't think to get more definitive information on 2j equipment locations, be it the instrumentation or pumps, valves that you i
3 have a good handle on where all these things are, what their power sources 41 are, what their operating modas are in a more concise form.
Some of the 5'
things that we looked at concerned containment isolation valves. We were 6i looking at some of the larger valves, and saying that you know what radia-7 tion level could we expect this equipment crap out, where is it located.
81 It was available in terms of going from say valve lists and then finding a gj penetration drawing and matching that valve to the penetration and then 10 p ssibly looking at a general arrangement in a pipe drawing.
Some of the tasks that we did during the course of the accident were to collect that
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information in a more useful fnrm, that stuff is not in the daily reduction f ma 's perf rmance.
So what I'm saying is that kind of stuff we went 13 j
back and looked at it and so we did and tried to make that a little more standarc list that you do as a general rule that can be elpful.
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FASANO:
The transducers in particular, let's say for the reactor coolant pressure, their location.
tiow acout the location of the tap off on the vessel itself or the pipes?
20f cap 0DANNO: Well you know you get into other things like I'c.,on the activi-ties that we're looking into of course it's just relocating instrumentation, 22!
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raising it so it won't flood out, we were frustrated by the inability to vent or at least have the capability to vent remotely.
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FASANO: Vent what?
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i 31 CAPODANNO: The reactor vessel itseTf, or to ent the cancy canes, vent the 4
steen generatcrs.
It's all there but it was all startup ven's that somebody Sj
'had tc get to manual, that's things that we are considering.
But those i
6l abilities, it was very frustrating when you look at 1 diagrax under those 7
situations and you see the valves in there but you can't ru.1 it you can't i
3l operate, you can't get to it.
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10j FASANO: On the, you mentfor.ed the candy canes, they seem to be hign point 11 of taat particular design, ao you have,any comments on that?
w CAP 00 ANNO:
g Well you know considering that we had gas trapped in there, some of us thought that it would be a good idea to be able to vent th:t
,g remotely, other people weren'y quite so sure.
I though that it would be a y
good idea, you knowing the venting is on the piping now it's really 6 question of just making it a remote operator.
Some of the information I'd
. 181 say also in the NSSS equipmint should of been more readily a sailable and I
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dor't mean that it wasn't nere but I can pick up the Bel'Stean Generttor 191 "9 '
- 20' we were concerned abcut.
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We. sere looking at hooking up alternate instrumen-22{
tation for the steam generator le/el instrument, it was difficult to find 23l out just what the internals of that looked like. We had the steam generator paneal and we had a set of low bac4 drawings from B&W, Lyrchburg.
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under normal circumstances you wouldn't thInk 'of it but now that ki,d of 2S;t b
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detail was harded to come by, just where are the level taps, where are some 2
of the openings in tne shroud and we started looking at making level measure-1 3j ments and flooding steam generators.
If we found a person that was really 4!
faniliar with the intarnals of the thing, it was great but you knew I'm 5
generally familiar with in-depth familiar with the internals of that steam 6l generator. And those of us in that situation had some difficulty even 7;
though we had the documentation it wasn't as easy to find the information 8!
9f 10l FASANO: You finally have evaluated most of this iaformation I mean finally have gotten access and have it available?
9 12i CAPODANNO:
L wa've collected it, the information both here and sent it to the site.
I'll say we found it.
The stuff that we ffnally needed and 13; got largely was found somewnere either nere or some of it onsite.
I think 163 what needs to be,done in the long run is to come back and think through all the informatf oa that you nceu ard out together a very comprehensive file.
I think the, I'm familiar with the Burns and Ras drawing list and the 18t instrument list including...
Had no trouble with that and the people that uked and I explained it to who didn't have mucn difficult and I think that kind of a list is pretty easy to follow.
You found your way through.
Some of the NSSS data that we were looking for was harder to find because 22!
of the way it was filed ir, this office.
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1 FASANO:
How about photographs of installed equipment?
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l 3j CAPODANNO:
I think that would be excellent, somebody here suggested tha 4j the some tapes and photographs would be made of the plant, all parts.
I Sj think that's an excellent idea.
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FASANO:
I have no further questions.
i 8l MARSH:
Nor I so the time being 12:30 PM reading '439 on the meter we'll g
terminate the interview with just a word of thanks for coming in, appreciate 101 your comments.
12 73l CAP 00 ANNO:
Thank you.
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MARSH:
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Recognizing your still steady pretty busy.
16; CAPODANNO:
Yeh.
17l 18(
MARSH:
Okay, so at 12:31 we'll terminate the tape.
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