ML19220A818

Transcript of 790404 Closed Meeting in Washington,Dc. Pp 1-12

ML19220A818
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	04/04/1979
From:	Ahearne J, Bradford P, Gilinsky V, Hendrie J, Kennedy R NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
To:
References
NUDOCS 7904250002
Download: ML19220A818 (14)

Text

{{#Wiki_filter:' . ~ ~ ~. _ 9 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN ThlE MATTER OF: METROPOLITAN EDISON CO. OPERATICNAL THREE F T ISLRTd CLOSED MEETING ~ pthee. Washington, D. C. Date - April 4, 1979 Pages 1 - 12 w.chen : (~ C2) 37.rCO ~ ACE -FEDERAL REPORTERS,INC. offici.11Reconers '7C-062 790425Occ> m Ner.3 ceci,ci stree, Wcshingten. C.C. 2CCO 1 NATIONWIDE COVERAGE CAlLY

BACKGROUND INFORMATION As the Three Mile Island situation developed beginning on Wednesday, March 28, the Commissioners met to discuss the nature of the event and scheduled a staff ~ riefing held on March 29 at 9:50 a.m. The emergency o nature of this situation at Three Mile Island led the Commission to go into " continuous" session for the duration of the event beginning on the morning of March 30. This meant that whenever a quorum was present, it was part of the continuous session. Because of the nature of these sessions, particularly on Friday, March 30, Saturday, March 31, and Sunday, April 1, most of the Commission meetings were held outside the Chairman's Conference Room which is equipped with magnetic tape recorders. Part of Saturday's and Sunday's meetings, for axample, were at the Incident Response Center at Bethesda. The nature of these meetings was informal and often interrupted. Commissioners and staff members came and went as conditions arose. During many of the sessions, multiple conference telephone calls and twoway telephone calls were made and received that were difficult to record and to transcribe. These continuous meetings were for the most part recorded by.several portable tape recorders using mini cassettes and regular cassettes. Nonetheless, in the fast moving events connected with this incident, there may have been times when Commissioners discussed matters which were not recorded. The transcripts of the tapes of these continuous sessions, particularly where the meetings were held outside the regular meeting room, are a composite of several tapes. For all of the reasons above, these tran-scripts do not represent formal or official Commission statements on the matters discussed therein, nor have they been reviewed or edited by the Commission. 70 GG3

i i T~ l R3880 I UNITED STA*ES OF AMERICA i 2 NUCLEAR FIGULATORY COMM'SSION t 3 t i 1 i l CLOSED MEETING l I 4 f 5i OPERATIONAL - THREE MILE ISLAND } i 1 l 1 6 i Chairman's Conference Rocm 7 1717 E Street, N. W. i Washington, D. C. l 8l Wednesday, 4 April 1979 9 6:0S p.m. i i I i 10 ; I PRESENT: i II ! DF. JCSEPE M. EINDRIE, Chairman l 12 l VIC*OR GILINSKY, Com4ssioner 13 RICHARD T. RENNEDY, Commissioner i i 14 ! I PETER A. BRADFORD, C M ssioner i 15 JOHN F. AEEARNI, Cemrdssicner 16 ! !l ALSO ??ISENT: S. Chilk, L. Bickwit, L.

Slaggie,

3. Mcosker, J. S tephens,

II D. Eassell, G. Mazuzan, J. Kelley, and R. Fine. I8 19 ' \\ 20 21 '4 er,ANSCRIpc WAS PREPARED FRCM A TAPE RECCFSING. ) 4 -l (mn i 23 d 24 'I, t67 _06w4 _arte 2 eOCrT*rs, IriC.. 's _,.1 1

CR 3880 1 6 Yeeting l /4/79 1 i I 1 l'; IN MIxz 7ROCEEDINGS Jheeac.y all i e 2'i (6:05 c.m.) I 3 COMMISSICNER A'" UNE: I ought to point cut dat t i 1 4 the Admiral also infor:ted ne that any service that we want of i I 5l anybody in the Navy should go to the Ad 'ral -- l l 6'i (Laughter.) i I 7 I COMMISSIONER AEEARNE: Even the Chief of Naval { i l i a'1 Oc. erations. i i, NRMJli HENDRII: Co you want a carrier? 9 CCMMISSICNER KENNEDY: Let's not knock it. You I 10 will recall that the Admiral's pregram works. l' 11 l CHAIRMAN mIDRII: But I got that straightened I i 12, out, and the six health physics tyr.es are on their way. Thev. i 13 need them new. t 1.s ! One of de things which Earcld was concerned about 15 last night -- I talked to him late. He'd "ust cone back from J i 16 a neeting with the GPU, B&W, de industrf group dcwn there, 17 and he was concerned about the =anagement organication again. 18 < There is a verf strong industrf group dcwn dere. t 19 You knew, you couldn' t hire that kind of talent and put it in 20 one place. 3&W is new up t= speed in churning cut de - = - = " = ' ~ at de industry groups are cuttine. to.cieces i. us t 9.1

a' like gced regula:crs cught tc.

a

,1, Ocwn here at.me other corner of de.--

down f cm 24 those two is the cperating crganiza icn at de plant, and a: .NTras R ecornet, Inc.,i j 25 de interse * - ='1 cf this tc nake in go was pec: Ee-' 70--065

1-2 jwb i 3 l .l I I 1l Deca =c. with his lieutenants Scb Arno_ld. and Jack __Herbein, and they I 2i fuse -- you knew, it was too small and an intersect too in ter i l I of the resourca w '"e strength, thev' re just too weak an l 3 i t 4 Intersecticn. i I L cl So I called the GPU Chaar=an or the Scard this i I t 6l =orning and told his he had to put that configuration in a -- j i l 7l strengthen it, and what I recc== ended to him was that he call I 3 up Bill Lee and ask Lee to cece dcwn and sit in, in effect, 1 t I 9 as Her=an's Operations Ceputy to run the things that have to 10 be done at the plant and get the arrangements, cecause, you 11 ! knew, Lee is a guy wnc w _,_, picx t.,.at up anc. Just c. rive it. 12 ! So that went into place at about ncen, and Lee is 13 i there, and Byron Lee is en his way, and the organi:ation has i i 14 l shaken down very rapidly. 15 There is new -- Lee is now formally Deca =p's 16 deputy with streng authority, and if there's any suggestion !I t1 that it's not =cvine well, why I'll take fure.er steps there. 1 18, Bob Arnold, who had been the clant su=.er, is a M.et 19 1 Ed guy; he seem pretty gced as the nc=inal operations a: =anager, but Fred Stern, Conhus-icns VLee President for doing 4 21 l things in ene hell of a hurry, is che task force nanager a: his elbcw,.sc that'11 cc. i' There are abet: 250 indus ci :1 es down _here en u. m a! that air base, and the M_e: Id pecple are scr: cf new e=tedied wua a.xmn. o c.., -c J a netwerk of strong people who will nake in cc. "l,in:0 70 OGG

1-3 jwb 4 l i i i I l t 1 There is a plant ncdifications group working - t t I 2 the working group fo-the plant, Burns and Rcwe, and MacMillan, 4 3 and the industry pecpie critiquing; there's a plant ncdifica-l i 4! tions ccchine under a Surns and Rcwe guy; Westinghouse is i l, I i 5l cutting together a spare residual heat renoval system and i i I 6 we'll cart it up to.the site and crank it in. l 1 1 7' Ed Sterns has get, and cersonally, the Con Ed guv. S; doing the Dresden decantamination has got the waste i i 9 handl'ng crcur :n hand; and so on. 10 ! Sc,overall, Harold, this afterncon and this evening, 11 is very nuch encouraged abput that whole picture, and if it needs 1 12 i any=cre bccting, why I'll bcot it. u I l 13 So that at least is highly on the f avorably side. 14 I'm concerned 'from the briefing today, the i i 15 ' fact that we felt we had to go public -- I think we had to. I i t 16, It was the first detailed layinc cut of what we think il t 17 ! happened, and in spite of the fact that I said, you knew, i 18 ' inevitably further information will change sc=e of this, that I 19 : will all be ignored, '.aut it was a pretty good rundown, and we i 20 identified what we believe, have reasonable confidence, are 21 ll the principal centributcrs to the difficulty. 22'l And as I lock e 14st, you knew,.3-1/2, or 4, i s

i 25 'i c

4-1/4 cut of 6 attach Oc the actions taken by the cperaters. I iI Il i. COMMISSIONFR GILINSKY: Ic you have -hat 1;.s t? Marat 4ecorTer1. tric. J ,un a(w, IC i 2s 25 Se :ause I -J. ink that naybe cught Oc -- appear.

1-4 jwb 5 l I l I l i 1l CHAIRMAN EENDRII: Yes. I tried to write dat dcwn. i 1 I 2: c.retty carefully, Vic. Why don't v.ou run -- 3 COMMISSICNZR.E NNIDY: Yo u ' ve go t it in that package t 4 that study gave you, didn't you? Did he give you j 1 i 5 that - 6l COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: No. i 7l COMMISSIONER KZNNEDY: No? You gave it back to i a: him. l is the things wrong 9 CEAI.~C9.N EENDRII: It's that i 10 in fact, you might want to run a copy of the whole thing. I i 11 I was trv.ine. to keen. a fairly careful note, because there 1 I 12 i wasn't a briefinc. =ac.er en the table. 13 I New the thing that conce;ns ne about --.v. o u knew r t, 14 I dare say~right new, en the radio and television and the 15 ' newspapers are screaming, "NRC accuses plant operator of Octal 16 foulup." l-i o 17 1 And, you kncw, I'n willing := let the chips fall 18 where the chips have to fall, but what I'= worried abcut is i 19 I destroying an effective working relationship between the N2C .s q 20 team and the cperating staff dcwn there. 21 If Sc I -- i==ed'='a'v. we came cc: cf the meetine_, I i lo w.. _ _i m A e a.:r+ _= c a_.:. C.w.u,_,_ _3_ia_... w4

• a

._. c_ _i _- mC.s, c ww. .. i _m l 1 VCu knCw, I saw no way to avcid -he adverse effects,.m 23 t d C asstIS '."d* " hat we wa".ted to wCrk -- 00 Cake that thing Fs trai ae:ctrers. Inc. l Q'{ - - {} g ^5 ' work dcwn at the site. . I, !a

F 6 4 F i, f 1 Then I called down to the site to caution cur team 2 Ethat when all of this hits the fan, e v e r v. t o d v. from the clant 3 super and the 3&W and everybcdy else, down to the icwest 4 grade operator and maintenance man at the place is likely 5 ! to be hostile, and watch cut not to exacerbate what are i l 6 l clearly going to a difficult conditions, and try to maintain 7 l things. I t, g l ~Earold will be trying to maintain at least a =cdes: I l 9 separation, in the sense, and I've enceuraged the thought that 10! the site team is interested in, you knew, in getting the plant, 1

having the plant situation well under control, and that this 33 L il P

12' autoesy material is going on an here, to try to at least I secarate them cerscnally if not organizationally a little bit. ,.3 ;l l ,, l' CCMMISSIONER GILILH: Is this -- I assume the .4 chronology is sc=ething that they went over with the people up i .:. s at the site? 16 ; CHAIRMAN EENDRIE: They sent down the chronology 7*t i and the things wrong sheet, you-knew, rapid-axec it dcwn. But 13 l l the pecple in the trailers dcwn at the plant are wc -4ad *cu .l.o., i igetting the waste-gas tank pump back, and whether the pump will 20 l t ' keep running, and what to do when the lavel instruments cuit, an: a lot of other things, and they regard this -- cuite properly, frem their standpcin: -- as a 10: cf mickey mouse, which they i haven't get time to spend any sericus -- pay any sericus ll attention 00, and I think that's gced, you knew. Let them dc -/.3 iL 70 CGS n 4

.-o Jwo 7 ,I 1 I I the 4cb dev. have to do. If dey have to stop and criticue f 2' chronologies, and so on, why -- maybe in a ccuple of weeks; t 3: not this Wednesday afterncen. i i 4 New with regard to where we 3o from here, de 5i main thrust at the =ccent is: Whac do we do when the level I I I 6 instruments go out, assuming that they =r ? 7 And where should we go with regard to cooling down, i 8 knccking sc=e of the pressure off, go to RER, stay where we i 9' are, go to some other mode, what? 10 Let me just outline for veu what the current t 11 l thought is, understanding that it's still got a lot of 12 i critiquing and shaking down to do. 13 The. feeling is that I4 ! (Phone rings. ) 1 IS CHAIRMAN EINDRII: O h, b o v..

ces semebcdy want to 16 see what dat's to do with?

ilo 17 The =ai d ag is that we 've prchably got a f air 18 ' a=ount of hyd:cgen in solution, chac cne of the places the l 19 4 bubble went was not to the centainment or de letdown tanks, i 1 20 ~ but just into tne water, and I dink dat's right. 21 1 The excerience at other plants suggests that in 22 j will take several days of full lendcwn ficw, wh.ch dey've new l a 4, estac1'snec, := cecas anc ce: _ne cr.ma - wa ter cre :v wel,. 7g. C70-a. ..nyc cgen. i

ree c:

.w.m, n ew m. n ne., '5 Wha: they're '.ccking f:rward := :.s a :.atural

1-7.jwb S i, i I e I circulation =cde. There are sort of two long-tern nodes that t 1 2l are available. One is to go dcwn on RER, but that dces involver i t 3i bringing the primary water cut of the containment, through .t the heat exchangers, thrcuch the RER cu=os, and shcocine it.ack I l I 5; in, and people.are scratching their heads and saying, " Gee, l 6! wouldn't it be nice to keec that hot water, radioactive hot t 7; water, in the containment?" i 8 They can do that. You knew, we're that way new, l i 9, but ac_ain c.ecple don't want to rely for, vou know, a verv. long-- 10, ters c=.eration, en kee=ine this recirc cu=c runninc., j us t i t i ~ 11 i because you can lose it and it takes a lot of electricity, so i 4 I ) 12. ._ you., ose outsu,e pcwer, c::-site pcwer, 2 t,_, _, drop cut en 13 i vou. i I i 1.1, Sc they're 1ccking at natural convection ecoling, i 15 and they believe with a degassed pri f water -- because if 16 v.ou've got gas bubbles in it, why thev'll kill the -- you

I 17 )

knew, kill de thermal bucyancy effect; for de degassed 18

e. rd " - v., for which dey figure dey need, ch,

" ee to five 19 days in the present =cde; and that with -- ccme liquid sclid ~0 in the crimarv. system, keep it at a, maybe dcwn a little from 21 where it is in pressure, but no: tec different, and abcut che sa=e temperature, 250 cr sc=ething lne chat, cc.prevife a a i

]

gced difference off the secondary side; and run che exchanger 70-071 i 24 l fill the steam generater un lignid all -he way. .e.:mi =.conm. inc..j 25 'i And they've get Larrf Serande (phene c) in there .t 1 .i i

1-3 jwo s .I i 4 s I i 1l in the Ediri' ks building nei, whi:h is a goed thing, and they're, c 1 2! calculating natural circulation, including taking into accoun: i 2' the damaged core condition. t i 1 They think the first cut at it is that if they had al -i l1 both steam generators it would be a breece, and it's pretty 5: 0: 6! clear they're going to be ckay with one, you knew, a few days i 7i cut, because the after-heat has come down. i l i a' New that would offer, then -- 9 COMMISSIONER KINNEDY: In a few more days, it'll 10, be dcwn even further. 11. CEAIRMAN EENDRII: Yes. I 12, So that would offer, after, oh, three, four, five i 13 l days of degassing operation in the present mcde of ecoling, t la ' going over to a long-term natural circulation capability 15, which wculd not bring primary water outside the containment. 16 ] And'the RER could then be on standby against that. 1" 17 And of course then the other option of course is is eider scener or late to ccme en to the RER system, which dey i r 19 1 are doubling up and it will ec forwardr gettine. ready with 20 coverage en the pits and the rest of it. 21 The ne:ct -- one of the nex: things dat I have

I-;

encouraged them te do, and da: I encourage ahcu cnce a fay

= please de as scen as dey ' re reascnably able, is :: pung l

24 these waste gas tanks back in:c -he centainment.

• /(j -{}*/2 9eOOrttf1, Inc.,

-eff* *f 36 25. We've cc we tanks abcut 50,000 cubic fee a: t I

1-9 jwb 10 l l + l i 1: semething like 80 or 90 pou.ds per square inch sitting cut I i i 2i there in the au: ciliary building, and it's just fine as icng as I i i 3-the gas stays in the tanks. But if semebody opens a valve 4, or sc=e fcol thine., whv. that's a big chunk of stuff. i i 5: And I'm not going to be -- you knew, I'm not going I. 6 to go " Whew' " until that's all back in the containment and i I i 7 ! those tanks are dcwn to a 1cw enough pressure so you wouldn't i, a hardly get anything out of them. i 9, The activity is decavinc.- but it's still c.et a long i 2 I l i 10 way to go before it comes dcwn. Ihey say -Jie hcokup is about i. 11 ! readv,, but -- and they might have s+ted it by now -- but l 12 i tne cr-m er:crt has been gos.ng 1.nto cettinc -- to shakinc l r 13 i dcwn the analysis and get & g ready for pessible natural l f 14 ' circulation =cde, and some of these other things, and what to i 15, do about the level - hcw to run when the levels go cut. 1 1 16 t CC50i!SSIONZR 3 RAD' 0RD : Has Earcid solved the 5 il 17 ' crchlem that war concernine. dis morninc. of centinc. ceccle M 18 i to work on what was needed for standby, aneng other things. i l W 19 CHAIRMA2I EE!IDRIZ : Cn all the right s incs? r 20 COMMISSICNZ3.3RAEFORD: Yes. 21 CHAIDIAN EZ2TDRIZ: That was the management problem, i 22 >I de fact tha: this '.;.:tle grcu o f -- the s e thre e Me Id, or i 22 ] GPU guys were the intersection Of enc =cus forces and were i 2d ', incapable of nanaging and transmi::ing the stuff effectively. ,m., a.comn. i nc. - 25 CCW' <'"NIR 3RADFORD : But having scived in On r um. iU y(n.e

1 _0 ,wc 1 I I 1 i i t 1l =aeer, de right -' ng: nc'.: nra undcr.:ay? l I I I CHAIRMAN EINDRII: I dink so. When I talked to 2l i Earold tn s arterncen ne was really -- l i i t i 4 CCMMISSIONZR 3RADFORD: He's clearly much happier i l i 1 S! about it. I I i

1. eeling rather elated about 6,

CHAIRMAN HENDRIT-I 7 the way things had developed, and having kncwn Mr. William I t, I 3! Lee for a long time, all I can say is there's a lot of dust i 9 flyine dcwn chere around Three Mile Island new. H 10 He will ccme dcwn frc= Duke with a working force I 11 l cf staff aides, GPU may never recever. 12 i Anyway, so we want to get those waste gas tanks i 13 l e== tied back i-+e "e centainment so :there isn' t that caca-i 14 bility for release. 15 i They tell me that cach tank -- there are two -- 16 ' would be worth about.6 percen hydrogen in de containment. H 17 ; The recc=biner's been running. We've already -- we've ccme 18 dcwn just belcw 2 percent, judged by the recc=biner tempera-i 19 ; ture conditicns and so on<- so that vou could dump both > dust r 20 abruptly and still no t go fl=->',' a ' e containment, cut ene i 21, would want c do dat with, you knew,

---

'ad ficw so that i

22,; vcu didn't do anythine_ ahru=_ :1v..

I 23 l And one of de things dey've been waiting :

ge: t 24 l in place is -hey've had flame arresters flown devn, and

n a.com,. ine..,

e5 ' Ecc- 's got two in eaci- -=-"-- '. e, cecause na: cas 2s accut, 6 I '/C 074 a 'I

12 1-11 jwb I i. i [ l 1 ( l 1l what, 50, 60 percent hydnogen in the waste gas tanks. 1 2l Okav, that's the size of it. i i 2' COMMISSIONER SPADFORD: Let's see, 50 or 60 percen: 1 I 4, hydrogen - I I 5l CEAIRMAN EINDRII: "56' is the number that sticks I I t 6l in ny nind, but there have been a lot of nunbers. l l 7 CO N SSIONER 3RADFORD: I've learned just enough I s! about orfgen and hydroc.en to be dangerous in the last week, j I 9l but hc.w nuch -- 1 10 ! CHAIRMAN EENDRII: You knew the question to ask. but how nuch orfgen is I1 COMMISSIONER 3RADFORD: 12 in there with it? 13. CEAIRMAN EENDRII: Sv George, another couple of t 1 14 ; incidents and we'll have you ready for a PE license in 15 l nuclear engineering, Peter. i i 16 There isn't any. 17 l COMMISSICNER 3RADFORD: Ah. i la, (Laughter.) COMMISSICNER AEIAPlIE: You can tell bv the grin. 19 I (Whereupen, at 6:25 p.n., the neeting was adicurned.) 20 91 - ~ $. m 3 s .i l 3, l 9 =.xn.n.mc.j -2. ,e : j 6. l,}}