ML19221A412

Forwards Transcripts of Interviews w/TMI-2 Operators at Time of Incident

ML19221A412
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	05/07/1979
From:	Trowbridge G SHAW, PITTMAN, POTTS & TROWBRIDGE
To:	Case E Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
Shared Package
ML19221A406	List: ML19221A405 ML19221A409 ML19221A412
References
TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 7905220459
Download: ML19221A412 (63)

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May 7, 1979 Mr. Edson G. Case Deputy Director, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation U.S.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.

20555

Dear d:

I am enclosing transcripts.of interviews conducted by Metropolitan Edison with the TMI-2 operators on duty at the time of initiation of the TMI-2 accident.

The interviews were con-ducted on March 30, 1979, two days after the ace.:ident.

The transcripts were prepared frem tapes of the interviews and have been reviewed by the interviewees.

The interviewees were first given the opportunity to review the initial transcripts of the tapes and to fill in garbled portions of the tapes and to clean up scme of the language employed.

They wew then offered

~y a final opportunity to review the product.

It is my understanding that this review process did not involve substantive changes in the taped remarks.

Copies of the criginal tapes have been supplied to the NRC investigative team.

Since Geor_e F.

Trewbridge Enclcsures 7905220 459 i R O'2()

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TMI STAFF INTERVIEW Craig Faust 0400 Hrs.

!! arch 30,1979 Conducted By:

R.

Long and D. Reppert LONG:

This is Ecb Long.

It is approxi=stely 0400 hours0.00463 days <br />0.111 hours <br />6.613757e-4 weeks <br />1.522e-4 months <br /> on 30 March '79.

Don Reppert and I are talking with Craig Faust.

We vill ask Craig to identify hi=self and his job function.

FAUST:

I'm Craig Faust.

I'm A Control Room Operator and I was in the Control Room et the ti=e this incident occurred.

LONG:

What we vould like you to do, Craig, is start maybe an hour or so before the turbine trip with what you vere doing, then we continue your recollection of the sequence of events.

FAUST:

0.K.

Ify job function for the night was as a switching and tagging CRO.

Abcut an hour before this happened I thought I =ight take data entries required as far as tech. specs. are concerned - system dailies, and =egawatt readings off the panels.

That's what I was doing.

I was ce=ple ting the dailies up to the point where I was finishing off the shift.

For an hours time, that was about all I can say I was doing.

At the ti=e I wasn't aware of anything unusual.

There was secething that happened later that Ed Frederick, the CRO, told ce happened that I wasn' t aware of - it was a problem with the

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bus voltage - which you vill get frem him.

I found this out way dovu the line.

I saw nothing abnormal in the plant para =eters that I was looking at.

That's really abot: all I could say about it without going into detail; in fact, it's not worth going into. 'The logs would tell what it was shoving.

Ihe next step ca=e when I was walking over to =y desk - =ine faces the control room panel - Ed at this ti=e was standing with his back to =e.

He was turning from he =akeup panel to look at ce and we were shooting the breeze about so=ething when I caught the firs t alar =s co=ing in.

Now when I say, " Caught the first alar:s coming in," I was far enough away that's all I could say.

I pointed and at the sa=e time said, "We' re in trouble; sece thing's going wrong in the plant."

I headed over, and on the way over I saw rad bottom lights ce=e on.

Out of the corner of =y eye I noticed there were alar:s coming up over on the electrical board.

I a ss u=e d, a t th a t =o ce n t, it was a turbine trip followed by a reactor trip, becausa I saw the red bottom lights co=e on.

I was thinking of the s teps required to go into our e=ergency procedure for a reactor trip - which was shutting KUV-376 - that's letdown isola-tion and starting the =akeup pu=p right away.

Then we started to get trend on the pressurizer level to see which way it was going.

At this a

ti=e Ed stepped over and was looking at pressurizer level.

He took a quick icok a t tha t, and I don' t know what else he did a t that point.

I had tried to start th e " A" =s x e up p u=p twice; I went to hold on the firs t ti=e and I believe what I did was let off too soon; there's a few seconds ti=e delay tha t requires you to hold it over.

But I was in a rush to get from there over to f eedwater, because tha t's ano the r p lace that hurts us, hurts us right away if its not checked for proper operation.

162 030

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Page 2.

FAUST: (cent.)

The take up pu=p did not start on the first try.

I stepped right back and grabbed the switch, though as I think you will see in a ce=puter printout sc=ewhere, a trip on a =ake up pu=p is listed as a trip, but 1: never started. And I hi: it again, held it a

.little longer, and I got on a red light; but when I let the switch So, the pu=p went of f, which I didn' t unders tand.

At this ti=e> I saw the_ red light cece on, I was backing off when the pu=p light went to green.

Ed locked over then apparently and saw that the pu=p wasn' t on ye t.

'de reached back and grabbed it and held it, too, while he was monitoring pressurizer level.

It was pretty fast.

At this ti=e, when I saw he grabbed it, and I saw the pu=p did co=e on, I went i==ediataly over and I was checking the steas generator levels ce=ing down, which showed proper direction for going en low level li=its.

I figured we would go on low level limits. Steam pressure, of course, was going up when we were lif ting the reliefs.

It slowed up then.

When steam generator levels were ecming dcun also I 1 coked over and I saw both feedpu=ps off, and I looked down and verified that all three e=ergency feedpumps were on and I looked up and saw that the 11 valves we opened; visual indicaters were dual indication, going frem red to green, and I figured the valves were traveling.

So =y first assu=p tion was levels are going to Icv high limits, and I proceeded over to the turbine panel to finish those

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reactions over there on the initial trip - which were to trip the turbine, verify tripped and place in P.T.L. generator breakers and the field breaker - verify that our Govenor and Throttle valves went shut and the extraction steam isolation shut and the turbine drain valves went open. I verified that; that didn' t take long to do.

I i==ediately s tarted back over to the feedwater station. I didn' t look over at anything else on the turbine panel except to verify that the turbine valves had closed and that the turbine had tripped.

These took place...

LCNG:

Ihese things that you are doing here - these are your nor=al e=ergency procedures?

FAUST:

E=ergency procedures for verifications on the trip and =anual actions.

LONG:

Were you doing this from =e=ory?

FAUST:

Yes.

This was frcs =e=ory at this tine.

I care back over to the feed station...

1CNG:

Le t' =e ask you one o ther ques tion.

You've been through a turbine trip before? This wasn't the first ti=e?

FAUST:

Yes.

I kncv what I'= supposed to be looking 'or, and I was 1 coking for these signs.

There are sc=e o ther things I -.

~-llcw up with; these could have been lef: for later. As f ar as I'= concerned, once the turbine is dcwn I den' t have a scurce of s tes= going cut there - so I'm safe there as far as pulling any=cre heat off or too =uch heat out cf the core.

The reac:Or stnr:s cccling herself, so the i de.1 is jus: to stabill:e out down at saturation for about'547F te=perature.

O.K?

I62 031

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.c Page 3.

FAUST: (cent. )

I cace back over and the first indication tha t seme thing was wrong with feed was the generator levels were 10 inches in both generators -

which indicated to me tha t the generators went d ry.

I looked at header pressure first; I figured if header pressure was down, tha t would be an indication of dry s team generato rs.

Well, header pressure was still up, so I started looking at the feedwater valves, I reached down and grabbed the 11's right off, and went f ull open on the decand signals to the M.

Then I looked at the indication and I saw they were dual indications, but I figured socething else was wrong.

It was about that time that I looked down and I saw two va".ves in our sys tem that were supposed to be open, but were shut.

These are EF-V 12A and 123.

I voiced this at the sa=e ti=e and opened the valves.

Bill Zeve,*

our supervisor, mentioned secething while I was opening the valves, and I just started establishing feedwater to the generators through the energency feedwater valves.

I stayed there for awhile.

I was spending quite a bit of tine now watching steam generator levels and pressure. Steam generator pressure was cycling as if it was coming off a relief instead of going through the turbine bypass valves.

That's the way it was looking at me.

It only' looked like it got to 1100 psi.

Reading specifics on the gauge is hard right now.

I was looking for areas, and watching pressure going up and down, which was still indicating to =e that we didn' t blow the generators dry yet.

I centinued to feed

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the enximum I could to establish a steam generator level - I established first in A; 3 trailed behind.

For the longest ti=e "A" was coming up -

I got up to 25 inches in it and I started backing off on "A"

"3" was lagging behind. Time vise - all I can say is that during the first 10

=inutes of the accident I was actually at the feed station.

Later I looked over, and I saw flev in the reactor coolant pumps had come down - it looked like it had come down about 80I. We had alar:s on all four pu=ps up there - vibration alar:s - which I figured indica-ted that we were going through a pretty good transient here. "aybe they j ust come in and they' re not in time to go over there and try to clear them.

I went over - looked back over the pressure - the level in the "A" steam generator was coming up 0.K. and I noticed we vet 9 having proble=s controlling "3" s team generator.

I shut cf f the 11 3 valve, but my level ended up around 45 inches - I wanted to level out at about 30 inches at this stage of the game - because with feed water flow you want to establish low level limits as icng as we have our feed pu=ps.

They ended up establishing about 100 inches in the "3" genera:or before I finzlly got back over to reshut EF-V-123 to get it to s top co=ing up.

Soon the 113 valve was just leaking by.

The pressure that I was looking at was on the trend recorder more than the header pressure on -he gener-ator - I was watching "A" a t the tire.

We have rao other pressures in there and they were pretty much going line in line - they were prr *.ty

=uch s taying toge the r.

So I was s till wa::hing "A".

A: the tine I didn't think anything was wrcr.g as far as I was conce rred, I was re=cv-ing the heat.

162 032

Page 4.

LO:;G:

At what point - it sounds like socevhere in this ten =inute interval -

did you decide there was something abnor=al?

FAUST:

The RC pu=ps were bothering me.

I didn't understand why I would see a decrease in the flee in the RC p u=ps a t tha t time.

I started thinking -

so=ething passed through =y mind at the ti=e - was it possible that we were possibly getting a steam bubble tu the loops, maybe cutting dovu the flow on us? I don't really even kncv if I... I'm trying to think now if I actually thought that, or if I'= piecing that ints =y =e=ory now, further down the line here.

LONG:

Were you fellows talking to each other or vere you pretty much doing things independently?

FAUST:

I was calling out to Ed, and Ed was right over beside ca.

I don't know where Fred Schie= ann ca=e in.

I looked over and Ed was, I believe, on the =ake up p u=p s. And Fred was on the end of the pressurizer panel, the right pressuri:er heater.

I knew they had proble=s; I heard Ed saying that we had a high level on the pressurizer.

I knew we had started the pc=ps and I knew he was shutting one of them off socevhere along there to try to control pressuri:er level.

I figured we were just ja=m3 ng a lot of water into the pressuri:er.

I was telling him I lost flov' and I was telling ~ him I'reestablishsd generator levels.

I said, "I still had er. ir.ches indicated, but it was possible chat we boiled 7-'.

d ry. " But I was saying that we still had indicatic.ts of pressure in the A.'

generators.

Then I yelled out about the 12's to lim.

I think I said, "We haien' t been feeding.

12 A and B are shut!".And I reopened them.

He was trying' to page and get out and cover behind us to look at the overall plant. The natural thing would be to get ttse open.

Ly the ti=e he looked at it I was opening the= and telling him th.t I was doing it.

REPPERT:

Those valves, they're supposta to be.orsally open.

Ech do they open?

FAUST:

They are electrically operated valves; but there is no function to shut them except by manually going up and operating a switch.

The thing tna I think helped block them out - since the lights were on - the switch controls are by each other.

Here's the panel, here's the lights.

I'm leaning over controlling rao Bailey stations up here, further ep in the panel and there is a tag over one.

I first was looking over there belov me to see if anyone was away, because the next thing ve had was FD 32 and 33 valve that I can bypass, when something is wrong with 12 and 11, and start feeding out that way.

That was my next ga=e plan, but I found the problem right away.

It was just as easy to open it, in fact I would have had to open it.

W' ll I wouldn' t have had to, but, looking at it e

this way, it's one valve compared to two.

We knew we had a problen with the pumps; a=ps seemed to be going.

vasn't really looking at the amps; I looked at the f'av, I saw flow was going down, and I said, '*Ue ' re cavita ting the pu=ps or some thing -

something's going vreng."

Somebody said, "Let's try to keep the pumps on the A beenuse we have spray control there."

We took 3 purp off and flev dropped further than it shoula - in half - and it held there.

Ed was still working on trying to control pressurizer levels.

I finally established "A" steam g serator up around 23 inches in the intet".s that 162 033

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Page 5.

FAUST: (cont.)

this was happening.

I took the 1B and IB pu=p valve and I went back over and was watching the feedwater 1<e-1, but since I was feeding there, went back over and =ade sure. dicc' t miss anything over on the turbine. During this ti=e is where I'm having a hard time rece:-

bering hev I got over there, but I was sort of bouncing to the stations -

if I saw it was 0.K. - I went osar to see if I could t elp out somewhere else.

We had ES actuation, high pressure injection.

We lost the A =akeup pu=p; we los t the B =aketp pu=p, which is normal. We picked up the A and the C on ES field trip of f.

0.K., that was fine and dandy. Once again, we had an ES actuation and all we were thinking was that we had to stop - we were going solid.

I don't think I thought at the time that we had a steas bubble in there, but we knew we had proble=s with the

=akeup pu=p and RC pt=:ps.

Fred was still en pressuri:er te=perature - the pressurizer level con-trols right there. I was going around him listening to what he was saying; and then I took off - I get over there and I ended up taking off the "A" =akeup p u=p.

This was - I don' t kne why - because Ed coved out of the area - right - he was doing something - I wasn' t follcuing exactly what he was doing.at the time.

Pressure cama down and I think, instead, it ca=e back up at that time. And we didn't lose it right in that interim again.

That period of ti=e, I was starting to get fu:ry.

I I's trying to re=e=ber because I ended up temporarily over there stopping one of the =akeup pu=ps, We saw ve were solid.

We figured we had level high and we were holding pressure; we didn't heed that =akeup pu=p shuving water in there on us again just creating more proble=s. At the ti=e that's the way it seemed to us.

As far as I know frem what we see now, this bubble apparently had already transferred. We were hard up in the pressurizer; the bubble was over in the loeps. We were sitting there trying to figure out hcw the heck we were going to cool this thing down - get that thing back - without aggravating our problem.

It was a little bit before this, too, that when I looked at Bill I said,

" pump flow went in half," - when we stopped the first two.

O.K.,

that's where Ed went.

Ed was on the RC pucp: then.

And Bill was there too.

And 3111 said take off the RC pu=ps.

This is before I lef t the feedwater, which I id and established natural circulation - which was still low, down to 25 inches in the steam generator, so I had to start feeding them up.

I was trying to establish 50% in the ' operating range.

That makeup pu=p to =e was way out of line ye t.

I'm getting ahead of the ga=e here.

I was p:abably busy frr a goed half hour on the feedwater flow without noving out of that area.

Others were going in and trying to deter =ine lavels; we ware having a heck of a time trying to deter =ine te=peratures.

We were reading about 550F steam generator te=peratures.

Id was over reading the pri=ary at this time and the big hangup was that Tav was s taying the sa=e.

Tav stayed at 5 70 and wasn' t =oving, and we were looking at Tc's.

Tc's were cooling dcwn.

's 162 034

Page 6.

FAUST: (cont. )

The next step that came in here were the pressures on the stea: gener-ators.

"A" stea: generator was holding up and "B" was coming down.

That got =e into the point where I decided we had a leak. Just prior to this we tried one of the pungs - ve didn' t think we were establishing any cooling.

So we ' re no t getting anything.

So we figured we would try to - this was a li::le hassle - we vere arguing back and forth how to go about starting the pu=p - leaving it on or jus t jogging it.

We had a little bit of a question and ansuer session there. We were s till watching everything, trying to correct, just keep going in the right direction, hopefully, and we tried to start the "A" loop pu=ps.

We vent to start the and they wouldn' t pick up.

We finally got down to the point where we got the 23 reactor codlant pu=p, I belicwe it was, back on.

At this ti=e - this was quite awhile now - I'c having a hard ti=e with ti=es.

We sat for the longest time where ve c2:e a 570 Tav.

Ihe situat.on "as that we were holding pressure and "sre trying to hold pressurizer level low; but it was high.

We had problems verifying, "Are ve actually seeing what we are seeing?" By this ti=e Ken Bryan was in there verifying the cocputer points saying, "That is actually what you see in there." A lot of time was passing during this period.

I think what we reached at this time was - we were just stagnant. We were just sitting there - we figured it was in the loops.

LONG:

This is still prior to the site e=ergency?

FAUST:

Yes.

This is prior to the site emerr _acy.

The thing that I e7rrelate to the site e=ergency happening is when we tried to start that RC pu=p and got one running. What see=s obvious to =e now is that the stea:

generators were cooling down.

I was ste =ing off any hea: I was getting of the sides there.and I was cooling down.

Then we s tarted the RC ett punp which picked up enough that it shoved.

We were also having prob-le=s vi:h the possibility ef going critical again.

Well, this was another thing - we figured we got this thing to jog.

LONG:

What do you =ean proble=s of going critical again?

FAUST:

Well, counts were trend 1=g back up.

We had started e=ergency horating way back - right as soon as we started seeing trouble.

Before the time we started seeing any proble=s that would tell us to start e=ergency borating as far as reactivity was concerned - associated with the NI's

- Bill said, " Start emergency borating get boron going into that thing."

Several times through this we were seeing increasing ounts, and one ti=e, just prior to =oving the pu=p, the counts actually ca=e up to where we were seeing it on the intermediate range again.

Tha t's why I'= saying it see=s ve were heading cri:ical.

They told =e that we 've got to get boren into the core and we started talking about tryin g to ge t a p u=p on.

Trying to =ove some water in:o the core, back to the core to try to get so=e heat out of there.

So that's when we ven: through the pu=ps -

ve weren' t getting any cn - finally we got the 23 p u=p to run.

Christ =as trees, you know? All over the place thers. A site e=ergency was de-clared.

The only indication before that we had any radiation proble= -

hat's not saying we had or

- was tha: :he in te r=ediate le tdown- - the inter =ediate c'losed syste: - vas showing alar =s on the back panel alar =.

The alar = in that syste= ve were attributing probably to a lot of crud which we broke loose.

We =ight have even gotten a leak into the -

this is =y line of thcught - got:en a leak fnto the

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We vanted :he tubes...

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Page 7.

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LONG:

That's not been verified yet?

FAUST:

No, as far as I know, we haven' t verified it yet.

It's something we should look into, I'm sure.

It =ay be one of the proble=s leading to the radiation levels in the Auxiliary Building that we're seeing.

We're having proble=s with letdeus - we =ay have a leak. We think 8

we re solidified; I think we're solidifying a lot of crud that build up into the letdown coolers. With all the boron that we got in there now we just =ay not be seeing the leak through it.

I think that =1ght be a possibility that that =ight be the source, because that was one of the first ones we got.

Like I said, when we started that other pu=p, that's when, or shortly thereaf ter, I started seeing 3 steam generator pressure dropping of f.

That's when brian Mehler had co=e in and we were starting to talk about the possibility of having a leak in the steam generator.

Ihe level was ce=ing up, the pressure was going down.

It sure looiad like it to me.

We went into an isolation procedure to try to wrap up the "3" steam generater. After we got this isolated, we received a latch on that generator, which...

LONG:

At anytire during this sequence did you or anybody else check the e=ergency procedures, the written procedures? You use those as a guide; obviously you started out on the job from =emory - which you needed to do.

FAUST:

Ken 3ryan broke out the emergency procedures and we were going over them, going from one thing we thought was a casualty procedure - into dual things - to where it f-hard to ofee-.ocether things.

But we started into a steam line rupture, for which we tcck the i= mediate s teps on that

. s_ ;

and isolated the steam generator. Tha next thing was sa=ples to try to deter =ine for sure that it was the generator.

You know they were in the process of doing that - once again there is ti=e passing here.

At this time we were also into a site e=ergency.

RIPPERT:

What triggered the decision to declare a site emergency?

FAUST:

We were seeing increasing reactor and auxiliary building levels so we passed the word to evacuate. As seen as we had the alar s, we had the auxiliary building evacuated.

Bill Zewe passed the word to declare a site e=ergency, I believe.

I could be wrccg on.that - j ust which one he was passing at the time.

I guess it was about 1-1/2 to 2 '. rs into it that this came about. From there Ed and I, Fred and 3111 were still trying to control the plant and, by this ti=c, people were coming in and we were trying to look back, and you couldn' t see through the control roem anymore.

There were people all over the place back there carrying the e=ergency procedures - as far as a site emergency - and =aking it out into a general e=ergency.

It becace a general e=ergency soon af ter that.

I wasn' t paying attention, as far as that goes.

I was really watching the plant.

LONG:

Were you giving directions to the auxiliary operators during this period?

162 036

7 Page 8.

FAUST:

The auxiliary operators help from in.the control room and Bill was directing them for the most part as to what we needed and what va vanted done at the ti=e.

I don't think I gave any orders to anybody te do anything as far as' the Auxiliary Operators were concerned. We we.e wrapped up just watching the plant.

LONG:

Was anybody in the control room acting as the leader or =aking tae basic decisions?

FAUST:

Bill was the overall decision maker. We were trying to discuss our proble=s as fast as we could - to decide which way looked right to go.

And Bill was =aking the...

LONG:

This is Bill... ?

FAUST:

This is Bill Zeve.

He asked the control room about the probic=s vc were having. He ran doan into the turbine building where we were also having proble=s with vacuum at this ti=e. Unit I, of course, lost s team supply from us.

They were trying to get their boilers on; they were having trouble with the boilers.

They had them both on at one ti=e; then I heard the word pass that they lost a boiler.

Then they lost both boilers, I believe. Later on, they reestablished one to where they could keep their own vacuum over there; but we were still supply-inh aur own vacuum at the ti=e.

But we were getting to the point where we weren't going to be supplying our own vacuum because we shut our B generator off.

When I isolated the "3" generator, pressure in the "B" generator stayed fairly constant, but level came up.

Level was in-

)

creasing in the "B" generator and we figured it was the leak.

"A" generator was cooling down yet;. it was really getting ridiculous, I was getting down to around 200 lbs in the "A" generator and we weren' t seeing any response.

By that ti=e we ob-usly theorized we had s team where we didn't want it.

Je were just trying not to aggravate things, and hold what we had until we could get so=e decisions to follow in the right direction.

LONG:

You already identified so=e; but were there things that didn' t f unc tion properly that you re= ember in particular?

FAUST:

I'm =issing something. We were shif ting cire water pu=ps because we also had a very high level in the hotvell, with an out of site high.

We still had vacuum to it.

LONG:

Can you identify ti=ewise... ?

FAUST:

That's what I'm trying to get back on.

7 of our problems was our concern about du= ping steam into the hoewell and losing it.

And we had one condensate pu=p on at this time.

Whenever the boos ter pu=ps tripped, I was told later that they were first on the feedpumps, then the condensate pu=p went.

My first i=pression was we had a total loss of flow frem the valves in polishers sla==ing shut.

At that time I thought that was where our proble: started from - that is, we couldn't get an electrien1 bypass.

I went back and tried to cpen the CO-12V bypassing around the condensate polishers and couldn' t get it opened.

What I wanted to do was try to reestablish the boos ter pump and I don't know if we would have gone. to the f eedpump, but we were thinking along the lines of the feedpurp because we also had a problem 162 037

e Page 9.

FAUST: (cont. )

with a jack en S.e iaeur sp not working.

If anything, we vanced to get flov

.t ircing..ek ;o the hotvells through it.

This was j ust a little oc off to the side that we were involved in.

Anyway ve were invc e-partially off to the aide, getting reject valves open her-ese of had been throttled earlier. Automatic valves downstream et these had been throttled.

If we had problems with it, that is, if a reject valve opened, we ended up losing pu=ps.

And we had to drop sucti:n pressure to pu=p it of course. We didn't want that.

But nov ve vanced it to reject - we got to throttle - we have got to get it open.

I was O.K.

I was involved.

I called one of the operators and told them what I wanted to get done; I told them I wanted to get the reject valve open.

He was in the control room at the time, and I was sort of talking to his out of the side of =y head, telling him what I vanced. He vent to open up the reject valve going out to the condensate storage tanks to try to get level devn in the hoeve 11.

We knew we vanced the steam oft the A generator.

We knew we were losing seals because we were losing gland sealing steam. We started figuring that we either control the steam generators or they're going to blev their reliefs. So we shut off two of our cire water pu=ps no, we shut off 4 of our cire water punps on the cooling tevers. What this buys us is it shif ts logic over so we can control our at=ospheric

(

}

du=ps from our Bailey stations which vete controlling the turbine bypass

~'

valve. We shif t over to these so we can control of f them as far as releasing - venting off steam from the generator.

The "A" generator at this ti=e was still going up to where it looked like it was going te

.lif t reliefs. We said, "We got to get the pressure down or we're just going to s tart blowing reliefs." We vent that way - we got a call saying se=ething like, " Don' t put anything out," or, "We don' t want to that," or something like that fro = somebody outside - so=ebody who see

=ust have been having a little pcVer sving or something, because we were pu= ping it bach into the condensor no natter what.

LCNG:

Do you kncu who that came frem?

FAUST:

No, all I know is that Bill said, " Step going to the atmospheric; put it ta:k into the hotwell.

So we finally reestablished level in the hoewell and went back to what we were doing.

Our problems were looking better then.

We started worrying about flooding out the hotvell and start losing that.

We had s everal ES actuations en beilding pressure during this ti=e, and I was going from where I was over to the nakeup pumps to help out ever there, because-I'm thinking of why I was over there - but I was over there helping.

I was starting and s tepping

=akeup pu=ps as they were ecming on from the building actuation.

Wha t.

I'm saying is the reason why we were doing this was that building pressure was going up siev and ue were anticipating that we're going to get it cight abou_ new.

We knew why it was going up was because we ended up controlling pressure in the system by blowing the electrocatic relief, I62 033

g Page 10.

FAUST: (cont. )

~

which goes to the RC drain tank.

We knew we had ruptured the disc in there and we knew we were putting a lot of water into the buildings.

Pressure change in the building was very gradual.

Before anything happened here we had put on reactor building emergency cooling for 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br /> to start cooling the building.

LONG:

Yeah.

FAUST:

I stopped the "A" - This is where I'm having a hard ti=e - well, I know I ended stopping the "A" dakeup pu=p and so=etime passed while it was aff. We had already gotten building isolation and we were reestablishing things we needed f rom that bypassing the building pressure -cause we actually have. the capacity to bypass it where you can operate co=ponents as you need them.

When you no longer see you need so=ething you can taka it of f and put it back on the reestablish control. Pressurizer level was still high and pressure was what we were trying to control. We were trying to establish a level in the pressuri:er. We had heaters on at the time.

We lost them except for breakers that had been trippiag down probably due to all the heat in the control building area.

We tried to restart "A" =ake up p u=p be-cause I wanted to get seals back to nor=al as well as because I was 1

peg 3 ng out the seals.

LONG:

Uh. Huh.

A 1

FAUST:

And I didn't see them ce=e back' down of f and one of my concerns was damage to the 'RC pu=p seals, so I was trying to get the injection flow path nor=al by reestablishing at least an "A" pu=p and going through the 32 to control it.

I went to start the "A" =akeup p u=p and it wouldn't start for

=e.

It came on and tripped off again. You know it was showing =e I was having proble=s with ' t so instead of retrying to start it again I just pulled the lock and I picked up the "3" =akeup pt=p got that established and took the "C" off, I lost the "C" and nor=al af ter stop with the EWST lined up to it just in case we needed it.

I had been involved, Ed was behind, or Key 3ryan was behind the panel and I had been involved in establishing seal injection, proper seal injection flow rates first all 4, and then I'm not quite sure why the decision ca=e out but by this time Bill and a bunch of them were back there talking you know this was no longer a fantastically rushed situation. We were trying to =aintain what we han and correct the problem to get the bubble which we now knew we had, back into the pressurizer so they had =e secure the 16 "3" and 16 "D" valves and establish 250 GPM through 16 "A" and "C" each off respective pu=ps.

~he 3 pu=p in this case, the 3 Makeup pu=p and the C =akeup punp 0.K.

and we kept going that way and what we were doing was trying to press the syste= cp to where we could get the bubble out of the loops and get it back over and we couldn' t seem to get pressure up.

It was as if the pressuri er was solid so all we knew, all we were looking at what was looking apparent to us a t that ti=e at least tha t 's the infor=ation I was getting back.

What I was deta- ' # g is we were coming in cur injectien lines instead of going into the core possibly or getting =uch into the core or otherwise it was actually foing up through into the pressurizer and just going du= ping out our elector-

=atic relief and we were putting it into the building and I was 162 039

e Page 11.

FAUST: (cont. )

watching SWST level, initially it had ce=e dcun from 55, and then it went down like 50, and a lot of water and we're not doing anything here, so we knew we were apparently getting so=e cooling by just getting water in there at least it was going in and we were getting something from it but we were also putting a lot of it back into the building and kept up that way till we s tarted talking.

Ed Fredericks said let's try and get pressure down and get the core flood tanks to du=p'in.

Of course, by this ti=e we knew we were holding all right. Righer up authorities were back in the room talking about this and as Ed was trying to say let's go this way and get pressure down, we can have those core flood tanks du=p in there and hopefully, quench the bubble, and reestablish the bubble back into the pressur-izer.

So we vent pressure of f and bring the pressure devn to where we could get it into the core.

We had to go down to at least around 600 lbs. to where we start putting the core flood tanks into the core.

New core flood tanks floated on the core, ah, I'm not trying to be funny about it, but ah it was a little tense in there.

Things weren' t going quite the way we wanted it to go at ti=es.

0.K. we had already had the problem with starting the nakeup pu p during this ti=e right and we were into an ES as well, and then we asked about site e=ergency.

So, we actually ended up staying this way.

I was relieved about 9 hrs.

later into this thing right as I was getting ready to be relieved.

I was talking to my relief in fact I had been relieved =c=entarily because Tav or T hot started. coming down and we ended up with was we figured were getting sece water in there.

It's finally going into it.

-)

The plant starting.<shif ting and we thought we were going to get the bubble back in the pressuri er cause we had gotten the level in there, and it looked like we were starting to get some heat out of the heaters in pressurizer where it =ight get the bubble back over, but it was rather shortlived in that all we ended up doing was reactuating the building isolation area because the te=perature came down.

Of course we got flashing and went right out the drain tank probably into the building and we saw a 27 psi spike building pressure and it ca=e i==ediately back down.

O.K., we picked up everything, everything else see=ed to steady back out where it was again it see=ed everything went where it was and we figured at this ti=e we got our, we overroad the system again, in other words, bypassed it, bypassed ES, and stabilized out where we were again.

Building spray pu=ps of course picked up and we took them off. My reasoning behind that is we didn't have a high building pressure any= ore and why start washing everything down in there with sodiu= hydroxide, so that's about it.

Up to that point that's about where I finally got relieved.

RI? PERT:

About what ti=e was that?

FAUST:

This vas, le t's see, 4 o' clock when it star ed, this was about 3 o' clock in the afterncen.

RI?? ERT:

Other than the auxiliary operators did you have any co==unications frc=

outside the control roc =?

FAUST:

No.

162 040

- ~.

~ - - - -

-~

~

Page 12.

REPPERT:

You didn't think so.

FAUST:

We had, as far as co==unications flowing in and out of the control room no, we had all the people we needed in there, then more, to handle that.

I was concerned with the plant from almost the be-ginning of it.

That's where I was working.

REP?ERT:

0.K., you've covered d Afferent kinds of things.

LONG:

Yes, you did.

RIPPERT:

Do you have any questions now?

FAUST:

No, I don't think so.

REPPERT:

Yeah, but each ti=e we t t something new added...

LONG:

Teah.

FAUST:

You're hearing like I said what other people are seeing, but I.'s trying to keep in ah, I'm trying to keep it in at least a sequence that it had happened to me.

I'm hoping I'm not leaving anything out.

It is fu::y on just when I was doing the further I got away from the initial part of the accident.

)

LONG:

Then ti=e cpread out.

REPPERT:

Well, we'll let you get back to your job and I appreciate very much the opportunity to talk and I think we're probably going to try to talk with you fellows as a group, we =ay do that.

FAUST:

It =ay help because sometimes we each, we tried that the other night and it helped put things in their order some core than just one guy trying to fumble around and trying to re= ember what the other guy was doing or where he was at the time and why he was there.

LONG:

Right.

FAUST:

Seceti=es ha can say something that will snap it back for you a little bit better.

RE? PERT:

Yeah, well we =ight want to.do that.

Soceilme.

O.K.,

this ends our interview with Craig Faust.

Thank you Craig.

/

d 162 041 b

O

e

/,

TMI STAFF INTERVIEW Fred Schei= ann 0230 Ers.

March 30, 1979 Conducted 3y:

R. Lcng and D. Peppert LONG:

This 13 3cb Long talking.

Don Reppert and I are going to int trview Fred Schei= ann.

It is 0230 hours0.00266 days <br />0.0639 hours <br />3.80291e-4 weeks <br />8.7515e-5 months <br /> on March 30, 1979.

Fred would you give us yce2 na=e and job function?

SCHEIMINN:

My na=e is Fred Schei= ann.

I'm Shif t Fore =an over in Unit 2 for A Shif t.

LONG:

Were you on duty the =orning of the incident?

SCHEIMANJ:

Yeah, I was on duty the 11 to 7 Shif t.

LONG:

I guess what we'd like you to do, Fred, is tell us where you ware from like an hour before the event, and then go into a description of your actions.

SCHEIMANN:

0.K.

Approxi=ately an hour before the turbine tripped and the reactor trip took place, I was over in the Auxiliary Building =aking a tour of the plant, looking for any abnor=al leakage or any proble=s with the equip-

=ent over there.

Approxi=ately 10-15 minutes prior to the trip I reported back up to the control reem to take a look at plant conditions and deter-

=ine whe ther anything was abnor=al at that time.

I could not see anything wrong.

-~

About 5 =inutes prior to the trip I had been called devn to the polisher.

My operator down there was having difficulty transferring resin from one condencate polisher to the receiving tank.

I Fot up en top of the pipes where the sight glass was for checking the resin and all of a sudden I started hearing loud thunderous noises like a couple of freight trains.

I ju= ped down of f the pipe and I heard the words, " turbine trip, reactor trip," and at tha t ti=e I we n t as rapidly as pessible up to the centrol rocm.

LCNG:

The announce=ent was turbine trip and reactor trip?

SCEEIMANN:

Turbine trip, and a couple of seconds later, reactor trip, came over the page system.

LCNG:

Um Huh.

SCRIIMANN:

On getting up to the control roo=, I ju= ped over to the pressure centrol sy s te=s f o r the p ri=a ry p lan t and I noticed we had full Engineered Safety injection, as required by the circu=s tances.

I es tablished =yself to take care of pressurizer level, pressure centrcl and pri=ary plant.

We had noticed that pressurizer level and syste= pressure were restered 0.K. as we would expect with rvo =akeup pu=ps and the Righ Pressure In-jection valves, MU-V16's opan.

Once the syste= pressure was up where it should be nd pressurizer level was shewing signs of being where it s ho uld b e, we teck eff one of the Makeup p u=ps and s tarted shutting down en the MU-V16 's.

I noticed pressurizer level was starting ec go higher and v stablished =axi=u:

62 042

32, SCHEIMANN: (con t. )

letdown; it didn' t appear like it was doing us any good. Then within about a half hour to 45 =inutes the pressurizer level was up to the top, at which ti=e we wer2 again watching our =akeup tank; we were also watching all our other tanks to see where we were getting the water from - besides the Boren Water Supply Tank.

We couldn' t find any other water source cc=ing in and we continued =axi=u letdown. Finally levels started to show signs of recovery cocing back en scale - and it stayed high for the re=ainder of time I was up on shif t.

We did notice at one ti=e that we were starting to lose pressure, so we =anually rein-itiated high pressure injection.

LONG:

Is this so=e length of ti=e?

SCHII}90RI:

Yeah.

It was scce length of ti=e later we started losing pressure again.

But then we reestablished high pressure injection again and, af ter that point for several periods of time, we were running at least one string of high pressure pu=ps with injection going through two of the MU-V16 vrlves.

The pressurizer level still stayed high; it was visible though for =ost of the ti=e and pressure gradually s tabilized out.

So me ti=e later it was decided to start trying to cool down, and we started ce=ing down.

LCNG:

Did you get any feel for the ti=e interval?

SCHEIMANN:

Everything was happening so wierd; I rAink it was probably late '=orning

)

or early =orning, we started cooling dcun as soon as we noticed we were having all kinds of radiatica alar =s and everything. And we were told, go ahead and cool it down.

And while we were cooling down we were having dif ficulties with pressure hanging up - it didn' t want to go devn like it should have.

We tried spraying dcwn sc=e more.

When we couldn' t get anything out of spray down we tried the electrc=atic relief, and that see=ed tc bring pressure dcwn some; but we still couldn't get dcun to below about 900 to 950 lbs. We s tepped the ecclant pu=ps when we started seeing pressure was down. We were getting abnor=al readings on our current indicators so ve shut the pu=ps down.

This was later in the

=o rning. We centinued to try cooling down so we could get en the decay heat removal syste=.

LCNG:

When you say later in the =orning, you =ean like... ?

SCHEIMANN:

More like probably noen or so, 11 or noen.

LONG:

0.K.

SCHEDulai:

'Cause I'd been here fren 11 p.=.

the fellowing night.

I think I finally lef t around 6:30 that next evening, and it was a very rough ti=e.

LONG:

Can you back up a little bit and describe the events leading to the initiation of the site emergency?

SCHErdANN:

0.K.

I'= trying to figure wha t a rcugh ti:e for that would be.

probably the e=ergency itself was declared 6: 30, quarter to seven.

LCNO:

0.K.

Can you continue frc= that peint?

162 043

D 4

SCHEIMANN:

0.K.

The reason it was declared then was that was when we were first seeing signs of our radiatien =enitors going off in = ore than one building. Up until that ~ ti=e, fro = the ti=e of the trip, we had had no signs of any radiation proble=s.

Once the two =enitors came in we declared a site e=crgency and we started getting all the other alar =s frc= the RMS.

RI? PERT:

Who =ade that decision?

SCHEIMANN:

Ihe shif t supervisor, Bill Zeve, called the e=ergency.

LONG:

When we were talking to Ed (Frederick), he described the ce==unication

= ode in the control recs, frc= the turbine trip up to this point, as being kind of " tea = dacision."

SCEEIMANN:

Thae's affir=ative.

LONG:

Could you cc==ent on the co==unicatien that was going en?

SCHEIMANN:

Cc==unicaricus vent on, I'm proud to say, "very geod."

At tha ti=e of the proble=s I had =yself en the pressurizer centrol syste=s.

Ed, if I can re=e=ber correctly was over en the =akeup syste= and high pressure injection syste=.

Craig was over en the feedvater associated syste=s and the supervisor was keeping an overall vacch on all that were down there.

I thought th a t, fc.r the conditions we were in at that time, we had good ec==unications and I felt that we handled it fairly well.

LONG:

Do you re=e=ber any particular trouble areas where you had to =ake decisiens and who was taking the lead in =aking decisicas?

SCHEIMANN:

Overall the cecisions were =ade by the shif t supe rvisor, Bill Zeve.

There were a couple of times when I told the operator to cutback en

=ake up.

I thought pressuri:er level was getting too,high and I directed his to increase leedcun flew, things such as that.

I would say it was pretty much a joint effort as far as =aking decisions en what actiens were taken at the time.

LONG:

Did you make any reco==endations at any point?

SC2EIF. ANN:

I'm sure I mus t have.

As to exactly what ones they were I really can';

re=e=ber that well; at the time everything was happening so fast for a while there.

LONG:

t' Sat other kinds of things

...?

RE??ERT:

We talked a few =inutes earlier about the site e=ergency. Do you re-me=ber what the source of the radiation readings were?

SCHEIMANN:

Ihere was a high alar =, I belicve it was EPR 219 and I believe it Vas also rue separate areas of alar:s frc= E?R 219.

LCNG:

0.K.

What part of the ARM =enito rs ? The centain=ent building?

SCHEIMANN:

Yes tha t was in also.

But what I'm trying to say is as f ar as I re-se=ber the first ene that get in was sesewhere in the vicinity cf (Radia tien Panel) 487.

Then af ter that, de were getting ene af ter ancther ec=ing in, 162 044

7s LCNG:

At what point, Fred, did you decide that you had scoething other than a nor=al kind of turbine, reactor trip sequence?

SCHE!MANN:

I would say that the point where I was concerned was probably at the point where ve were starting to get the radiatica =enitors.

Up until then it looked to =e like we were still pretty =uch in centrol of things.

And then just before the alar =s was when we started seeing that the pressurizer level was going out high on us.

That is the peint where I was concerned that it was = ore than an ordi:1ry trip that we had seen in the past.

LCNG:

So that was like 6:307 SCHEIMANN:

Yeah about 6 :30.

Even though it did take us a longer t ne than nor=al to establish everything under a centrolled evolution, I wasn't really too concerned that there was a =ajor proble=, until after that time.

LCNG:

Eave you been in the control rocs before or during a reactor trip?

SCHEIMANN:

Yes, I have.

I've been in for =any trips as well as for one trip that had occurred that wasn' t scheduled.

LONG:

Did you use any procedures?

SCHEIMANN:

Tes sir.

As soon as we got over the initial action on the trip itself, we pulled out our emergency procedure books and we vent through the turbine trip, reactor trip - and, let =e see, what was the other one we locked at? The loss of cc. '. ant and loss of pressure procedure - we were looking at that one.

LCNG:

So how did you use those?

SCHEIMANN:

' Jell we tried to direct it - cnce we had our initial actions taken care of - we got out the book to =ake sure that we didn' t =iss anything -

and also to see that we were going en properly for the following events.

LONG:

You stayed on that day until what tice?

SCHEIMANN:

I stayed on that day ;ill about 6:30 that evening.

LONG:

Then when did you come back?

SCHEIMANN:

I came back in tenight.

LCNG:

0.K.,

tonigh t.

SCHE!MANN:

Tes.

I had a slight =isunderstanding about when I was due in and I was told to ce=e in tonight.

LONG:

There were various cc:=unications of f site, were you involved in any of these?

SCHEIMANN:

No sir, I wasn't.

I was involved in trying te keep the plant in as safe a cenditien as I pessibly could.

162 045

{

LONC:

How about your auxiliary operators, were they sending information to you or volunteering information - how were you verking on tha t?

SCEII" ANN:

As seen as we were starting to have proble=s, unless the word came out en the page system, our operators vould feed back whatever infor-

=ation they could ge t to us at the ti=e.

Thty did this unt31 such a time as we were unable to staff the auxiliary building and fuel hand-ling building areas - we had to pull pecple out of there.

Then as far as the turbine plant and such, as long as s had pecple out in the area ve were getting feedback as to what conditions were - such as when the turbine stopped rolling.

LONG:

As you look back in retrospect, do you see any actions that you took that you =ight have done differently if...?

SCHIIMANN:

No sir, the way I look at it I don't feel that ! vould have dene dif ferently under the circu= stances we had.

I followed what =y indica-tion said, what I thought I needed to do as a judge =ent, and I think if I ha 1 that sa=e situatica over again I veuld probably carry en pretty much ne sa=e way I did.

LONG:

0.K.

Could you ce==ent on any kind. of equip =ent =alfunctions? What were the things that probably should have functioned and didn' t?

SCEZIMANN:

Well 1: see=s to ce that our whole problem started out when the polisher outlet valves had gone closed on us and CCV-12, which is the pelisher

,)

b yp as s, didn' t cece open. As a result we tripped a condensate pu=p, i

then the feedpu=p ven; and then the condensate booster pu=p.

About that time the turbine tripped, then the reactor tripped.

I don' t believe that the by-pass valve operator behaved as it was supposed to.

Once I left that area I went directly up to the control roca to try to estab-lish wha: vas going en.

And it seemed to =e ve had two e=argency feed-pu=p discharge valves that hadn' t been cpened. And that delayed our time for feeding steam generators.

But other than that I would say the eq uip ment, as far as the ES acuatica vent as it was supposed to.

The diesels started as they were supposed to, and I felt that we really didn' t have any =ajor probles as far as core cooling.

LCNG:

Ecv about your various alar =s and indicators? Were there any cf these that you...?

SCRIIMAbat:

Well, we were suspicicus for quite a while about the pressurizer level.

I referred to earlier that, when we s tepped the injection going into the pri=ary sys tem, the pressuri:er level still was going up and up and up and it had actually gene to the point where it was of f scale. We seriously had doubts as to whether that was accurate or not.

We had ins tru=entation pecple check the reading by going to the cc=puter and it appeared i: vas as it should have been, :he unce=pensated level.

Se ence we es:ablished level indicatien en the censole we verified :ha:

versus what cur uncc=censa:ed en the cecputer was and we figured : hat we were pretty close to being where it should have been.

So evidently we really didn' t have a problem with the pressurizer level.

As far as any c:her indica tion we saw we were getting back che=istry reports that were saying that cur prinary was dcun 7CO, and 4C0 pp=

boren which see=ed awfull strange to re frc= the fac: : hat we were chugging in va:er tha: vas 2270 pp: cr greater.

i62 046

=

I U,

SCHIIMANN:

(cont.)

The only thing that we could have figured was that =aybe we were flashing a little bit in our letdown line where they threv the sa=ple off, and that could have accounted for why we ve ren' t seeing what we were expecting to see.

I think there was another thing there that didn' t look right to us - the concentration.

'Cause we had sent quite a bit frem the BWST right into the pri=ary plant and concentratica hould have been =uch higher.

Another thing that had us wondering was our system pressure.

When we were trying to cece down we could only come down so far and pressure would stop cc=ing down.

It would just sit there and hold...

LONG:

What was the pressure?

SCHED'_ ANN:

That was approxi=ately 950 to 1000 PSI in the pri=ary and it see=ed like it just came devn that far and stopped.

We did have seme difficulty with stea= generator pressures.

Ihey.

didn' t seem to be responding the way they should.

They should have been cowing devn in a nice smooth decrease and I didn' t really see what the problem was there, when the other operators had men-tiened it.

We had indications that the "3" generator evidently had a leak in it, probably a pri=ary to secondary and, when we bottled it up, the pressure just held there in the generator.

LONG:

Do you know the circu= stances or roughly the time you noticed that?

j SCHIIMANN:

I'm trying to think where ve were and what we saw for different reaccions; but following up that steam generator, we thought it had taken and cured one problem for us.

I'm trying to re=e=ber what the problem was - I think it had to do with building pressure -

building pressure was going up on us and we betrled up the steam generator and it sleved its increase.

So we thcught =aybe ve had a steam generator problem from that.

But later en, I would say

= ore like 8 o'cicek in the corning, 8 or 8:30, one of the people came up cad said sc=ething about clesing the isolation valve for the electre=atic relief because ve suspected that =igne possibly be leaking. Upen closing the electrc=atic relief isolation valve building pressure actually turned and started decreasing.

So at that point we knew for sure we had a problem as f ar as a rupture in the RC drain tank, as well as a leak in the relief there. And by closing that we =anaged to turn building pressure around and come deva.

LONG:

All right. Was there any equip =ent that you needed that wasn' t available or any kind of prcblem that you recall?

SCHIIM. Alm:

To =y knowledge everything that we needed started when it was required to start.

The enly equipment we were required to have actually did start, and to =y knculedge I can't think of anything that didn' t s tart.

162 047

,' LONO:

I think we've about covered things.

Don, did you have any

...?

REPPERT:

There's just one question I have. You nentioned primary to secondary relief. How did you deter =ine or what was the assess-

=ent that lead you to think you had a leak?

SCHED'. ANN:

At one time we were lower in pressure in the secondary side of the generator than the primary systen pressure was and we were seeing an increase in steam generator level - a very gradual slow increase, but we were seeing an increase - and we had that generator bottled up as far as feeding steam to it.

That's the point at which we thought we might have had a primary to secondary leak.

REPPERT:

Did they see any radiation. level increase in the...?

SCEEDUWN:

VA 748 did go off in alar =; that's our off gas monitor from the condensor.

That did alarm.

That was another indication that we possibly had that problem.

REPPERT:

0.K.

This is the end of the interview with Fred Schei= ann.

cr en 162 048

TMI STAFF INTERVIEW Bill Zewe 0623 Hrs. March 30,1979 Cenducted By:

R. Long and D. Reppert LONG:

Bill, could you identify yourself and your job function?

ZEWE:

I'm Bill Zewe and I'm Station Shift Supervisor.

LONG:

And you were the Shift Supervisor during the turbine trip the other morning?

ZEWE:

Yes, I was.

I was in the Unit 2 C 7 trol Room in my office at the rear of the Centrol Room at the time of the trip.

LONG:

Could you back up about an hour or so before the trip and identify what you were doing and then just go on from there? To the best of your recollection, describe the events.

ZEWE:

The plant was cperating normally about 98% power and everything was operating quite normally. We were at a normal electrical line-up, normal primary line-up, normal secondary line-up. The only problem that we had in the plant at the time was that we had been trying to transfer for several hours the resin beds in No. 7 polisher to the receiving tank down at the condensate polisher skid and we had an operator there that was working on trying to free up the k

resin clog in the line, and with moderate success up to this point.

I was in my office, I just finished reviewing some papers and I was just about to leave to go out to see how the operator was doing. The last time I looked at my watch just before the trip it was almost exactly 4:00.

I was just about to gather up my papers and leave whenever I heard the alarms out in the Control Room, Icoked out the window which I do for every alarm and I noticed that we had every alarm, just about every alarm, on panel 15 which was it monitors most of the ICS parimeters for feed water limited by reactor, reactor limited by feedwater, BTU limits, etc.

Most of these were lit, you know, and I jumped up and I could see that both the Control Room operators were up at the panel, cne was by the primary panel and the other was over by feedwater. As soon as I seen that, I jumped up and just as I got through the door, I looked and I seen that we had a turbine trip and I took about another step or so and got up to about the first few desks there and then the reactor tripped. So I just yelled out to carry out actions for a reactor trip and I went over to the page to announce to the plant that we had a turbine trip and a reactor trip.

It was my shift foreman who was at the polishers at the time so that he could come back into the Control Room and that the other operators could take action cn the trip.

So as soon as I anncunced that, I went right over to the panel there and I told the operator to verify the turbine trip and to verify the emergency feed and then I went over to the primary panel and the operator there was 1 coking at pressuri:er level and primary pressure and I said well let's start the A makeup pump and then catch the shrink frca the pressuri:er level. So the pressurizer level was heading dcwn so we put en the A makeup pump and cpened up the one high pressure injectica valve to 16 B to try to catch the shrink en a normal trip and up to this point, I didn't knew at this point that we had an abnormal ccndition at all because it just looked like a normal trip cn Icss of feed.

The turbine tripped because we 162 049 b

lost the feed pumps and the reactor tripped on high pressure and then pres-sure turned right away after the trip. You put on the makeup pump to get the pressure from shrinking too low.

LONG:

You've been on shift before when there had been a turbine reactor trip?

ZEWE:

Ch, yes.

I have had a couple of them before. So then we started to recover pressurizer level, it got down to somewhere under 150 inches and then it started to recover. Just abo 2t this time, which was just about a minute into it, the opera *.or was having trouble with the emergency feed and he yelled down that the emergency feed valves, the EFV-12's which isolate the automatic valves were shut and I said, "What do you mean they're shut?" and he said, "They ' re shut. " So, he grabbed them just as I got there to open them up right away so that we could establish some feed. Then it was just a few seconds that the primary pressure went down further and then we hit the point of high pressure injection.

This, too, I didn't think was too unusual because putting on the emergency feed at the plant that was already cooling when it's certain no colder water is generated and push pressure a little lower.

So, then at this point, the pressuri:er level was still ecming up and we had pressure leveled off at somewhere around 1100 or 1200 psi and had pressurizer level coming up and had control of it, then I wanted to bypass ES so that we secure the makeup pump and shut the high pressure in-jection valves after we verified that everything had lit off for the high pressure injection. The other operator was still trying to get the emergency feed levels up around 30 inches.

REPPERT:

You're still talking about minutes now?

. 2 EWE:

Yes, we're five minutes into it maybe. The time span here I really can't pin down to fractions in minutes or anything like that.

REPPERT:

But it still would have been in the first ten minutes?

ZEWE:

Yes. And then while he was trying to do that, establish the feed, there at the steam generators, I wanted to be sure that the steam generator didn't go dry. The steam generators as I recall never got less than ten inches the whole time and I was watching. My shift foremcn was up in the Control Room so that it was the fcur of us standing there after abcut a minute.

I told him to get the pressuri er level and to handle the primary side for the make-up system there with my one Control Room operator and =y other Control Room operator was handling the feedwater.

An aux operator called after we re-started one condensate pump and said we had a real bad leak, on the suction side of the COP 2A.

We had no condensate pu=p running, no booster pump run-ning and no feed pump running. The hot well level was going high.

I also called over to the shift supervisor from Unit 1 and he was in the Control Room at this time then too and I instructed the couple of NRC engineers that had been in Unit 1 that ran over to help out to start to call some people to get some help. To call the unit superintendent, the unit superintendent technical support, af shift foreman was saying the pressuri er level was still coming up.

So, I said try to go to max letdown to try to let down to hold the pressuri:er level and then we thought the pressurizer level in-struments were failing to we checked all three pressuri:er levels.

He had prior to that anyway and they read all pretty closely the same and then we checked the computer, compensated cceputer level, and then we checked the inverse of the DP en the ecmputer, too.

I sent an operator dcwn to the aux-s 162 050

_3 iliary building to check that out too and the h'. -ell was out of sight high and the operator had called about the Icak on COP-2A, It looked like Fred was h 1 ding the level at about 390 or so.

Holding it the pressure was still fairly steady.

I felt that the pressure was low because we had had problems with the pressuri:er heater breakers in the M-20 area there where the relief valves are on.

Once it gets real hot and humid there that we have had a problem with. tripping our breakerr. We 've had a limited pres-suri:er heater capacity before. The operator yelled, that he couldn't get the valves shut and there was wucer everywhere.

So, I rushed down there since we had so many people up there.

So, I went down there and I still didn't know yet why we had lost feed for sure.

When I'm down the leak at the valve is right beside the condensate polishers and I 1.ooked and all the polishers were isolated. Just before we left the Control Room, the operator had started the condensate pu=p, but we didn't have any suction pressure to the booster pump to try and get it going because I want to try to reject the hot well so that we didn't flood over and lose backing to the backing pumps from a high hot well level.

So, when I got down and seen that polishers were isolated, I thought that was probably what caused the loss of feed was that somehow the polishers had isolated themselves and had isolated the suction to the booster pumps and also isolated the discharger to the condensate pumps and that's why the line blew.

But I don't know that for sure at this point so that I wanted to try to open up the bypass around the polishcrs so that we could reject the hot well down. So then I was down there for several minutes and then we finally got COV-12 partially opened to where we could open it from the Control Room. We had tried earlier to open it from the Control Room i but the motor wouldn't drive it open.

So then I ran back up to the Control Room and George Kunder was there at this time looking at the pressurizer level with Fred Scheimann and Ken Bryan.

LONG:

About what time would have that been?

EWE

I'd say 20 minutes maybe, a half hour at the most. George would probably recall when he got there but I really wasn't paying much attention to the time when I got up there.

I noticed before I went down that the drain tank had a high temperature and :ero pressure. The running pump had a very low discharge pressure means that we had ruptured the RC drain tank.

So, before I had left to go down to get that polisher job, I had asked Ken Bryan, the other shift supervisor, to check the discharge temperatures on the relief valves but they didn't look abnormally high since the electromatic had lifted.

It was about 228 or 230 degrees and they had been running about 170 or 180 so I figured it was still warm from when it lifted because it didn't indicate that it was still open which we found out later that it was passing by, but at this time I did not know. George and I and Ken along with the Control Room operators, were trying to figure out why we couldn't get the level back down.

It just didn't make sense and then the R3 pressure was ccming up and we were up to just about 2 pounds at this time and I figured that was itom the RC drain tank. At this point the only radiation monitors that we had ab-normally high were the intermediate letdown menitors which have a very low set point, and they are very susceptible to background and they are right by the RB sump itself.

We figured that the water from the drain tank was going into the sump because we did get the running alarm en the computer and we had the primary cperator check the reactor building sump level and it was high.

It was at six feet which is the maximum reading so we had him put the i62 051

s e -

sump pumps in "off" so that they wouldn't automatically transfer water to the reactor building sump to the misc waste holdup tank that was done like 45 minutes after the trip. So that is just some of the side things tha?

was happening also.

LONG:

Somewhere in there you must have decided that this was an unusual circum-stance. You know when you began to get that feeling that hey this is not...

ZEWE:

As soon, well before, I left the Control Room whenever the pressuri:er levels still came up and came up to like 395 and then we got it down to about 390 and it was just waivering around there. Something was wrong.

I couldn't put my finger on it and Ken was there, the other shift supervisor, and we just couldn't come up with why so that's why I checked all the other instruments and then was when I not only informed George Kunder and Joe Logan and everybody that we had a trip, but to ask them to come on in that I needed some more eyes either it was something I was missing or so unusual that I couldn't put it together. So then George and them were there and then we kept going over in our minds, you know, what it was.

So we said well we have to leave the pressurizer levels actually high but how else can we get water into it.

It took us a good while to look over things and get everything else to say we don't it doesn't seem true.

So, then we initiated high pressure injection and stopped the letdown.

Because we said that maybe we're actually down and it is just a fake pressurizer level high.

Then we and then. couple of our people showed up about this time and another shift supervisor. The discharge temperatures of the relief valves, RCRV2 was still high than the other ones. So we went and shut RCV2 to block valve for the

(.

electromatic and the pressure in the building took a market drop down. Just k

prior to that we had a pressure differential between the B steam generator and the A steam generator which was about 250 to 300 pounds.

I thought that maybe somehow we had a leak off one of the steam generators that was pres-suri:ing the building.

So we went and isolated the B steam generator and as soon as we did that the RB pressure stopped going up and took a slight downward trend.

I thought maybe we had founc the source of pressure in the building but whenever we shut RCV2, pressure came down very markedly.

It took a rather large drop.

So, we were sure that the electromatic had been leaking by and that was what caused us to depressuri:e at that point.

Some-where around here we still had reactor coolant pumps running and the RC temperature was beginning to come up and then we were looking at the tempera-ture pressure curves from the coolant pumps and we started to get abnormal fluxuation in our flow instruments from the reactor coolant pu=ps.

So, I decided to stop two reactor coolant punps at this time. We were about, I think it was somewhere around 540 degrees average temperature at this point.

We secured two of the coolant pumps and then the flow came down to about 50%

and stayed like that for I'm not sure for how long but a couple of minutes anyway and then the flow started to fluctuate some more.

Then we secured all the coolant pu=ps and then we kept on feeding with the high pressure in-jection pumps at this point. We kept on going without the coolant pumps and then I had the operator raise the steam generator level toward 50% and I thought, well, we probably don't have a problem with B, the level in B was still up somewhat yet.

But since we isolated RCV2 and the pressure dropped down markedly, then we went later on and fed up the B steam generator, too.

In the A we had to raise level to about 50% to increase natural circulatien. We had quite a hard time trying to hold the level in the steam generators using the emergency feed because the EF-V11's valve didn't really 162 052

~

respond to holding 21 feet or 50% on the operating range and we were re-sorting to taking more manual controls to do this and also even the EFV 11 valves, the throttle valves for the leveler, were leaking by and causing the level to go higher, so we ended up throttling on the header isolation valves, the EFV5A, B valve.

30 then we were like this for awhile just feeding up trying to ge: natural circulation going.

LONG:

So, you were trying to get natural circulation?

ZEWE:

Right.

Before we actually went into this before, we tripped the pump, Mike Ross, he is the Supervisor of Operations from Uniti, showed up because we had called him earlier and shortly thereafter Joe Logan came in too, the unit superintendent. Then we were still evaluating it and then we ended up to where we went to feed the B steam generator, after I had had it isolated, and sncrtly thereafter we tried to start the r,eactor coolant pump again and tried to get some circulation because the temperature, the T hotlegs were nov trying to start the reactor coolant pu=p to see if we could get some circula.

tion and we tried to start one pump, the breaker closed, but the pump was only goiag 100 amps and we weren't really sure that the pump was running.

So, we tried the second reactor coolant pump in the A loop this time and it started but it t. Iso dropped off to 100 amps and it wasn't pumping anything.

So, we just weat ahead and secured it after that. Then...

LONG:

About what time was tha'.!

Do you know?

ZEWE:

No.

This was like, you know, quarter after six or six thirty because it was after we started to fill the B OTSG and we jogged the pump and we began to

()

get all the radiaticnal alarms in the auxiliary building and the E HB build-fins. This we declared a site emergency, it was about ten of seven there in chat neighborhood.

I declared a site emergency because the radiation levels were going up, and it was getting worse and we really didn't know at that time exactly where the activity was :oming from and then we had a report that the aux building drains were backing up and that the water in the drains were the source of the radiation going out the station vent. All our radiation monitors in the building showed this.

Also, once I fed that B steam generator, we had our off gas monitor come up in a very high range indicating that we now had a primary and secondary leak in the B steam generator.

So, we isolated the B steam generator again.

We went on like this for awhile..

LONG:

It was your decision to initiate the site energency?

ENE:

Yes, George Kunder was there too, and Joe Logan was there, Ross was there, and it was a collective decision, you know, to go ahead and declare the site emergency.

So, I announced that and that was the exact time. We went to carry out the procedures, you know, of the site emergency and make the notification to the evacuation and everything. Then shortly after that Gary

.tdller showed up, the Generation manager here at the site, and he took charge as the emergency director from Joe Logan and. George Kunder who had been there earlier.

Then we just then tried to evaluate the situation and see where we were and then we hadn't determined about this point that we had transferred the bubble into the loops trom the pressuri:er. We then tried to ccme up with ways to try to transfer the bubble back to the pressurizer, and we started to get problems and lose scoe of the pressuri:er heaters because they were shorting out.

We were spraying down to try to reduce seme of the pressure by 162 053

_e-using the electromatic valves straight to the building and watching the building pressure.

We had tried first to press up and to compress the steam

'~

bubble without much success the first time and then we went back and then tried to depressuri:e it and try to float the core flood tanks en the system.

And te keep the high pressure injection flow but at a reduced rate while trying to reduce pressure by way of venting to the building.

We then were venting by the spray valve. We had it open. We had the electromatic open and we had the pressuri:er vent open trying to get pressure down so that we could dump the core flood tanks and then reduce the pressure and hopefully get down to the neighborhood of 300 pounds to put on the decay heat removal. We were unsuccessful in trying to come down so then we finally later on in the afterncen then we came up and closed the electromatic and the vent and then pressed up to try to compress the bubble again from the hot legs.

Compress it into the reactor coolant pern to get circulation.

It was j ust about that point that I left that night LONG:

About what time was that?

ZEWE:

I left about 6:00 or 6:30 that night, I guess it was.

We were just about

-o1.id in the pressurizer when I left and I was in the Computer Room iocking at the level.

We had the high pressure injection pumps on just coupressing up the system.

LCNG:

You indicated that several things as you talked didn't work properly. Any of the eouipment you can think of?

ZEWE:

Well, the only ones that I can remember that were either malfunctioning or

~

weren't right were the polishers did isolate themselves and we found out 1ater that we had excessive amount of water in the air system which would have caused the polishers to isolate themselves. The EFV 12's, A and B, of course, were shut and they should have been open.

REPPERT:

Have you any idea how they got tc be closed?

ZEWE:

Well, my idea is that the last surveillance that was done on the emergency feed pumps, and I am not sure when it was done, but I think it was done within a week of the p cblem that we had Wednesday.

It was done on the emergency feed system which requires you to have the valves shut for the particular surveillance test.

It is just my guess that it was shut since then and we jurt failed to notice it.

I'm not sure just when the test was exactly because I just followed mainly the surveillance that are due and upcoming rather than those that had been completed but if I recall that was to be done not too many days prior to it.

But I am not sure of the exact date, but I feel that maybe then was when it was shut and it was never reopened and nobody noticed it for some reason.

That is just my guess at this point.

LCNG:

Did you use any procedures anywhere?

EWE

Yes, as soon as we had the trip we pulled out the emergency procedures to follow the reactor trips and the turbine trip and siso the high pressure in-jection and we followed those and then we also pulled out the site emergency whenever we declared the site em rgency, etc.

162 09

--mem me

-e.w-

But at the onset of it, it was just an unusual trip after the first two minutes.

As far as the radiation levels or anything else goes, we eally had no problem declaring a site. emergency or anything else until about quarter to seven, whenever we got the water into the auxiliary building.

That is still in =y mind, I don't know why or how we got so much water that was standing in the aux building floor or because the su=ps backed up.

Everyone thought at the time that it was the reactor building sump pumps overflowed into the aux building.

But that isn't true because we had that off, and the Control Room operator wh, reported to me that the aux operator said that it was high so I said, "have Terry Dougherty shut off the pumps so that we don't flood out the aux building". He related that to Terry and Terry got back to us that it war shut and then he had walked around the building for quite some time after that and after the pumps had been secured and the floor drains weren't coming up.

Right now I still haven't found a very good explanation for how we got so much of that high contamina-ted react;.- coolant into the aux building which resulted in the problem with respirators thr.t we are new wearing.

It was mainly caused from the water from the auxiliary building, either a relief in the makeup system which did not go to the reactor coolant bleed tank must have lifted blowing water onto the floor.

It wouldn't have taken much to overflow the sump tank because the su=p tank wasn't very far from overflowing when we came on shi ft.

We were just waiting for the evaporator to give the one process some more water.

But it wouldn't have taken a great deal to do that but it wasn't from the reactor building su=p.

We didn't really have any indication of any of the other tanks like the bleed tanks or anything else overflowing, so I feel it must have come somewhere frem the letdown makeup system either a

(

relief in the letdown system or a relief downstream in the makeup purg some-where that was putting water into the aux building sump.

LONG:

When you began to see the high radiation levels just before 0700, what kind of procedures happens to initiate samplings? Is that part of the pl:n out of your hands, in terms of environmental sampling or in-plant radiation

=enitoring, are there some special things that happen there?

IEWE:

Well, once we recogni:ed the magnitude of the radiation level that we were starting to see, I announced to all the stations that I was declaring a site emergency in Unit 2 and then once we do that we sound the alarm for the site emergency. That keys all the personnel to proceed to the emergency control station for either to be deconned or to be used to help to rectify the situation. At that point, then it strictly followed the site emergency plans themselves and I, as shift supervisor, am the emergency director until I am relieved by a senio c member and they were already there at that point. We had already had three or four emergency directors there that took charge so really they were there before that point.

I just had the responsibility then of the plant operations and as directed by the supervisor of operations who was Mike Ross. Gary Miller was there in about five or ten minutes of the site emergency and he declared that he was the emergency director and that Mike Ross was responsible for the plant operations and Joe Logan and George Kunder and Mike were the input contacts for his functions as the emergency director and everything from there on in was pretty much as autc=atic as we had trained for, cantacting the agencies, etc. and getting the repair parties available for any work, the on-site team and the off-site team, etc. to monitor the relief and to feed back the levels to make a further determinatien.

s 162 055

_s.

LONG:

How about the inter-action that went on in the Control Room between you and the CRC ind the shift foreman, the auxiliary operators? How would you...

EEWE:

In this point in time, you mean? After the site emergency was declared?

LONGI No.

Back towards the.. back at the beginning? How woulc you characterize their actions and the co=muncation that went on?

ZEWE:

Well, we talked between ourselves and tried to resolve the problem or try to figure out what the problems that we had and we listened to each others ideas and then we tried to plan accordingly to try to systematica'ly try to find out exactly from the indications that we hao where the problem was and what to do about it.

We just used the auxiliary operators strictly to look at this, isolate this and go do that. We were just trying to evaluate the situation and try to look at every aspect.

It was hard to cetermine what the best more should be made next.

REPPERT.

When the general emergency was declared, Bill, what...?

.'.E hE :

The general emergency was declared about a half hour later. About twenty after seven.

REPPERT:

Based on what kind of radiation leve'.s?

ZEWE:

That was strictly when Gary Miller called it.

I heard it as they announced it, but frankl at that point, I was busy 'oing other things for Mike Ross

(.

under his dire, tion and I really didn't get back at what point in tho general tmergency are we at.

But as far as I know, at that point we did not meet the specified criteria for the general. emergency that I knew of for at that point in time.

I think we went to it early but just in a safe direction that we still didn't have control of the situation as far as the possible releases to the public.oes. We went one step further in tt e planning.

LONG:

You may have made some reccmmendations to Hike Ros.s or any of the other fellows that came :n.

Did that happe:, and how did they respond?

~ EWE:

Well, George and Mike and Brian Mehler and Ken Bryan, were most helpful in trying to assess the situation and we were all pretty much just working as a team trying to advise each other and just more brain power, if you will, and more eyes to look at more things and try to come up with something more to go on.

Something more pcsitive.

It wasn't a case of one person only listen-ing to one person, we were listening... The two control room operators had some pretty good ideas that we tried also and then Mike had some good ide as.

So, we just listened to everyone and then just based on the informa-tion and the suggestf.ons and then just tried to do the best that we could.

It's always the sa=e case really because certainly don't ignore any sugges-tien that could be good and they are pretty highly trained people and their words all had a lot to say.

'^vc-Let me make sure I understood that you are the ene wh ked the 35W people to notify the other station people that you needed help.

Is that right?

'EhE:

Exactly.

LCNG:

So it was your decision to get out to George.

3 162 056

~

ZEhE:

Right.

Plus I called the Unit I shift foreman and told him to call scme other people.

'Ihey are the actual ones that called Miller and Mike Ross, and then the guys from Unit 2 who were calling Logan and George Kunder, etc.

George is really the best bet that I used first because he only lives about two miles from here, probably a mile and a half maybe, so George was here in the matter of about fifteen or twenty minutes at the most.

LONG:

Then the notifications to the state agencies, Gary Miller took care of this?

ZEWE:

Right. That is all made from the engineers that come up to the Control Room on the site emergency or general emergency they are assigned certain duties. They notified the agencies then.

I had nothing to do whatsoever with any of that.

LONG:

You clearly have a pretty complete picture, more so than any of the others?

ZEWE:

We did have one other failure come to think of it, too, that I failed to

=ention.

We did have a problem starting the A makeup pump one time. When-ever we were going back on high pressure injection mode, we did have a problem once in getting the A makeup pu.:p to start, so we just went to the B and C makeup pump then.

That was the only other failure that we had besides the other ones that I mentioned so far.

We also tried to reduce the R3 temperature prior to this.

We had went to emergency river water booster pumps to try to cool the reactor building and to fast speed on all our fans.

We tried to cool the atmosphere.

LONG:

Anything else that you can think of what would help fit the puzzle together?'

ZEWE:

Not really.

END OF INTERVIEW WITH BILL ZEWE.

l.o ri h'

g().f y:

(A<is 4 /?rc c'u-l 162 057

e i

e TMI STAFF DTIERVIEW Dale Lauder =ilch 0315 Hrs.

March 30, 1979 Conducted By:

R. Long and D.

Reppert LONG:

This is Bob Long.

Don Reppert and I are interviewing Dale Lauder =ilch.

It's 0315 hours0.00365 days <br />0.0875 hours <br />5.208333e-4 weeks <br />1.198575e-4 months <br /> on the 30th of March, 1979. Dale, could you just tell us your na=e again so the secretary will know your voice, and your position?

LAUDERMILCH: Dale Laudermilch and I'm an aux. operator "B".

LONG:

And, you were on shift the morning of the trip?

LAUDERMILCH: Yeah.

LONG:

Ok.

Can you tell us what you were doing, like an hour before the trip occurred, and give us your reco11c :tions of the events during the trip and following the trir?

LAUDERBELCH: For one hour prior, I believe I was involved with the hydrogen supply.

I was lining up hydrogen for the =ain generator on Unit 2.

We had so=e proble=s with lires and so forth and a m=all leak out there.

So I had just gotten finished with putting hydrogen in the generator

(

and I was just...

LONG:

This is the electrical generator then, right?

~;

LAUDERFELCH: Yeah.

I was just walking in the door and I heard the safeties go so I made it over to Unit 2 control room as fast as I could.

From there I vent into the control room and just waited to be dispatched on jobs.

I did a nu=ber of things and I'm not real sure of the order I did them.

But the first thing I did was - Don Miller had called or come back up to the control room.

I think he had called the control room and stated he had a leak on the section of the A booster pu=p.

So Terry Daugherty and =yself ran down to the A booster pu=p and when we got tae:, there was a leak, I'd say =aybe two feet downstream of the section valve of the A booster pu=p.

So we started to help out, but they started calling =e on the page; so Terry went and answered the page and he was dispatched on a job from there.

I can't re=e=ber what he was doing, but Don and myself saw an engineer that had been standing by, and we asked hi= for his help.

So the three of us got the valve shut.

And, I think I reported back,up to the control roc =.

162 058

_.-==

LONG:

Vas that uithin a few =inutes of this event? Do you have a feel for the ti=e?

LAUDERMILCH: A few =inutes - I'= going to say that's within 45 minutes of =e hearing the safeties

'Cause when I went back to the control roo= initial.ly after hearing the safeties I took the outside route and I went out around; cause you know I had out buildings and I just =ade a quick tour outside and ca=e back in the west side of the turbine b1dg. and ca=e through.

I noticed the gland exhausters were blowing stea=.

RI? PERT:

I was just going to ask you, when you were ce=ing back did you notice anything unusual?

LAUDERFELCH: The only thing was that the gland exhausters were blowing stea=.

I looked at it on the way by and =ade a judg=ent that that was not a very critical thing to be worrying about right now; and I should get to the control roo= as soon as I could, so I went up to the control roo= and then I was dispatched down on the booster pe=p job with Don.

When I went back up, the next job I re=e=her is Craig said he was having trouble with hotwell level; so he sent =e down to throttle a little bit on COV60-four turns-because they had it throttled. That's a downstrea=

isolation of the =nin rej ect valve.

~

C- 'T REPPERT:

Ok.

LAUDER 3ELCH: So I went down and throttled open on the condensate reject valve and watched the hotvell level.

Hotwell level was high and was ce=pletely out of the sight glass.

I ca=e back to the page and told the= - well -

I went back upstairs as a =atter of fact and told the=

that.

They sent =e back down to keep an eye on it and Ed told =e go down and open it = ore or till we get level.

This was really confusing at this point because Terry was down there, Don was down there and Bill Zewe had cc=e down.

They vere trying to work on the polisher bypass valve and the polisher bypass valve was =issing the handwheel - the =anual handwheel - ok? When I was sent back down to try to maintain hot low level, I re=e=ber Ed saying, "Open it up all the way and =ainta'.n when I get hotwell level down; close her back down and try to maintain her manually". Well, I did and in the course of that, I noticed Juanita and Earold Farst were over at the 3 feedpe=p jacking it by hand.

So when I cmre back in, Dennie, Bill Zeve and Terry Daugherty were up on top of the ventilation deck by COV 12 trying to get it open.

Apparently they had found the handwheel or sc=ething up there and got it on and they were trying to open it.

Sill was called back to the page. There was a frantic call and 4

162 059

and I was down at the page and Craig or Bill was on.

f' Bill Zeve was still up at COV 12 helping out.

The guys yelled down at =e to have hi= knock off the condensate pu=p.

So I was calling to have them knock off the condensate pu=p.

But that never ca=e about; they never knocked it off.

And in that interi=, Zewe had co=e down and he was talking to Craig, 'cause Craig had a question for hi= about opening up the turbine bypass valve.

LONG:

Ok.

LAUDERMILCH: So they were having trouble getting COV 12 open.

They cranked it and I was their ce==unication on the ground

'cause I wanted to hang by the phone anyhow.

Ed said stay by the phone 'cause if I need that reject line shut, I want you to shut it.

LONG:

Can you back up just a little bit?

LAUDERFELCH: Well, we were back on COV 12; they were having trouble getting it open.

I was their ce==unication on the ground and I called twice and told the= to try COV 12 up in the control roo=.

It wouldn't open and I told Terry and Donnie to keep cranking.

I was going to go up and trip and reset the ther=als on the breaker for COV 12 to see if that would help us get it open. And I told Terry that if he hears a call for =e about hotwell level, he would

)

have to ce=e down and take over there.

So, I went up and reset the breaker and I think, by the ti=e I got back down, they had gotten COV 12 open.

I don't know whether it was =y resetting the breaker or whether they had just gotten it off the seat far enough at that time to get it open.

I re=e=ber Donnie said that the polishers had gone to pot - that the pneu=atic valves had shut -

that is the outlet valves on the polishers had...

I think it was on the "A" vessel or nu=ber 8 vessel the one furtherest west.

We had a leak there. Anyhow, we got COV 12 open and I was ce=ing back down. Terry said that they're having a proble= with cire water fic=es supposedly overficwing.

He said, "Do you want to take care of that?", and he would watch the hotwell level.

I said, "Ck".

I had a radio with =e.

I ran upstairs and I ran over to the coagulator building 'cause that was the shortest distance to the cire water hours; and I called the guards and told the= to meet =e at the gate over there.

I got out there before they did and I waited for the=.

They ca=e and' I had the= stand by while I went over and checked the fle=e level. The fle=e level was =aybe two inches frc= overflowing.

It hadn' t yet overflowed.

I called Ed on the page and told hi= about it and he said, " Hang on".

Then he got back to =e and he said, "Ck, let's secure =akeup".

So I secured =akeup to the fle=e and...

I62 060

,o.

s RIppEKI:

And who was that you vere talking to?

LAUDERMILCH: That was Ed Fredericks.

I secured =akeup.

After I secured it I yelled over the page_that the =akeup was secured in the flu =e.

On the way out the door, I heard Ed acknowledge that he got the =ess-age.

I ran back over and the guards lec =e back in.

I'= thinking I went directly downstairs to see if there was anything else I could do.

I went down and I was with Harold Farse and Juanita Gingrich down at the feedpu=p and I was keeping =y eye on hot well level.

The one thing that still sticke in =y mind which I don't understand is that the hot well level all the ti=e that I watched it, was high.

It was out of the sight glass and it was crystel clear.

So=eti=e in that intert= when I ca=e back I had looked at the water in the sight glass and it was cloudy, very cloudy, almost a rust or a =uddy color.

I thought it could =ean a couple of things; either they drev vater out of the storage tank that was sitting in there for a long ti=e or I speculated about the possibility of a cire rater tube rupturing in the =ain condensor. That was =y concern...I told Terry about it.

He didn't say =uch.

3111 Zeve had ce=e down later and I told hi=, " Bill, the water's =uddy."

He acknowledged it, but he didn' t say =uch about it.

I'= trying to think exactly when that was.

It =ight have even been before I secured the =akeup to the cire water, because Bill was still down there on the phone. I can't re=e=ber if Bill ca=e down a second ti=e of if it was when I came back in fro = cire water.

But I re=e=-

ber telling Bill when he was downstairs.

)

LONG:

This is like an hour, maybe two hours, after the trip?

LAUDERMILCH: We're talking about -- I'= going to say -- an hour and a half or so.

Those sequences of events, they really vent fast.

LONG:

I'= sure they did.

LAUDERMILCH: And I can re=e=ber being downstairs when those guys were up on that COV job.

I can re=e=ber so=e horrendous water ha==er down there.

I don't know where it was coming from -- I'= gue ssing the condensate syste= -- but I don' t know.

LCNG:

Did you hear it or see it?

LAUDERMILCH: I heard it.

LONG:

Heard it?

LAUDERMILCH: Yeah.

LONG:

You didn't see any pipes =ove?

LAUDERMILCH: No,Jbut I re=e=ber Donnie saying that he was down at the polisher and co=ing around the polisher panel when the whole thing happened, I think, or shortly therea fter.

He said the water ha==er down there at that ti=e was really horrendous, that the suction to the booster pu=p line had =oved a good two, =aybe even three feet hori-rentally from the ha==er.

I'= sure that's what broke or caused the leak after the suction valve in the bocster pe=p.

After I got 162 061

done there, ve were all downstairs...we better back up here a minute 'cause there were ti=es I ran up to the control room and back instead of calling on the phone for co==unicatton and stuff.

In that time period that I was upstairs, Terry Daugherty had been sent to the pri=ary side; I can't re=e=ber what he was checking over there; I can't re=e=ber.

LONG:

Sent to the Aux. Bldg?

LAUDERMILCH: Yeah. To the aux b1dg.

He was over there taking care of so=ething in the aux. b1dg.

I was in the control roce and I was waiting to be dispatched down on another job. This was one.of the othe'r jobs that I talked about earlier, and I re= ember...I think it was Ed Frederick said, "Look at this alarm over here."

It was a fire alarm in the reactor b1dg, OK7 And there was another fire alare lit and that was the control b1dg. area.

That alarm ce=es in every ti=e we trip.

Every ti=e the safeties blev, it's hot downstairs.

But I re=e=oer seeing the reactor b1dg. alarm and they showed real concern about...they didn't understand that.

I re= ember Bill looking at the reactor b1dg. fire alarm. Bill vent over and looked at the pressure indicator for the reactor b1dg. and he said, " Pressure's gone up in the reactor building."

Then shortly thereafter, Terry Daugherty, who was in the aux bidg.,

had called Ed Frederick on the phone. When Ed got off the phone he said, "The reactor b1dg. st=p level was pegged high and both su=p pu=ps were running." I =ade a statement to Ed then.

I said, "Ed, both pu=ps are running; we had a fair a=ount of water in the miscellaneous tank all v2ek."

And I said, "You know, if you got that much water, you're going to be pu= ping."

I said, "I don't know where exactly that tank overflows to, but I kncv its vented to the vent header."

I said, "If you don't knock of f those pe=ps, there's a possibility that we could be putting water into that vent header."

'Cause I had just worked pri=ary side a couple of nights before that, I re=e=ber the high levels in the tank and stuff.

So he said, " Yeah, you're right," and he told Bill about it.

This was all in a matter of seconds and Bill said, " Knock the su=p pe=ps off."

He called Terry right back and Terry knocked the reactor b1dg. su=p pu=ps right off.

LONG:

OK.

~

LAUDERMILCH: So anyhow, after -I was back down in the turbine b1dg. base =ent, we were all around there and Terry had been trying to =aintain hotwell level.

I went over to Terry and Terry was looking at the auto =atic reject valve and it was shut all the ti=e -- not taking it all the ti=e fro = the water ha==ering, 'cause the airline to it was severed.

I re=e=ber saying, "Did you isolate the air to it?"

He said, "Well, no, the airline's severed."

I hadn't seen it, so they called.

Instru=ent guys doun and I saw the instru=ent guys start to tear it down and try to get it open. Well, I i=agine they did get it open, but all that time we-veren't apparently doing a heck of a lot of good throttling the downstrea= isolation.

At the ti=e I assuned that with the hotwell level situation chat that reject valve is going to be cpened and I just never checked it out.

Apparently they got to werk on that, so Dennie Miller and =yself 162 062

e said, "Well, we're going to go back upstairs.

I went back up, etopped by the lunch roe = and grabbed a sandwich.

On the way back up we got to the turbine deck and Steve Mull was isolating the =ain strer= to the =oisture separator reheaters. Donnie said, "I'= going to help him, OK?" I said, "All right.

I'm going to grab =y sandwich and I'm going to go in the control roo= and see if there's anything else they need =e for."

So I went in the con-trol room.

Shortly thereafter, Ed Frederick ca=e up to =e and he said, "We need breakers for CTV 1A and 13 core flood valves closed."

-% told =e what breaker cabinet they were on and hc says, "We need them fast."

I ran down there; I thought I had the keys with =e, but I didn't.

They're locked valve keys but those locks aren't that strong to begin with, so I just ripped the locks off them. I got the breakers closed and I yelled to Ed over the phone that the breakers were closed and again he acknow-ledged.

LCNG:

OK.

LAUDERMILCH: Then he called =e up and told =e to stay on the pri=ary side,

'cause Terry in the =eanti=e was back on the secondary; so I stayed down on the pri=ary side and Terry called =e up and said they were trying to =aintain inter =ediate close te=peratures.

He said, " Throttle on the nuclear river? Fifty-four valves which is a nor=al thing -- that's where we throttle for te=per-ature not inter =ediate close...I went down the hallway and I -

looked at those and I re=e=ber there was =aybe an 8 to 10 degree difference in the coolers.

They were running a little het -- one was like a 110 and the other =ight have been close to 100 -- a 10 degree difference.

So I went downstairs and throttled down on those. I ca=e bark up and after a dhile Icheck:d those and they started to come down too =uch.

So I thought that we're genna get too cold now, so I went back downstairs and I reopened on the inte==ediate close.

I stayed pri=ary side and, after the last adjust =ent I had =ade, I'm gonna guess that 15 =inutes passed

~

or so.

Then Ed Frederick called and gave =e a lineup he wanted me to verify for boric acid injection from the boric acid =ix tank. And I can re=e=ber the valve nu=bers, I don't know if those are i=portant or not but ah I'm pretty sure I can re=e=ber...

REPPERT:

They might be.

~

LAUDERFELCH: CAV129, and 130 which are the tank outlets and both suction and discharge valves and pu=ps I checked.

CAV138 and 140 I believe they were boric acid injection valves that ti=e, I think it goes MUV127 -- I believe its injection in the =akeup tank.

I went upstairs and I was checking the lineup on that.

I just got the lineup done and as I was walking away frca the tank, I heard the pt=ps start and I hadn't checked MJV127.

I heard Terry Daugherty call on the page and say, " Hey, you know MUV127 is open."

So apparently they had dispatched hi= to help =e with the lineup.

W":en I ca=e doenstairs I made sure.

" Terry," I said, "Tou got that valve?" He said, " Yeah."

And he said, "I told Ed."

So I said, "OK, I won't call him back then, cause he's'pu= ping."

I 4

162 063

e

=

said, "He should know whether he's getting water or not."

Donnie Miller was there also.

He had co=e over and we heard a fire alar =. We called Ed and we said, "Where is it?" He said, " Aux. Building 228."

So all three of us took of f and we vent upstairs and checked all the filters to the fan units. We checked the whole floor out.

We checked the back in around the tendon access gallery between the reactor building and the aux.

b1dg.

That was pretty var = back in there and you could s= ell like steam fro = thu reliefs, so we figured that's probably the problem.

I'd say there was a good 20 degrees difference between the aux, b1dg. side, and the other door, when you actually got into that area.

Then we ca=e back downstairs and I was with Terry then.

Donnie had checked the other part of the floor and I guess he had left and we vent downstairs...

LCNG:

This was still before the site e=ergency was declared?

,LAUDERMILCH:

Oh, yeah.

LCNG:

A long tb=e, a short ti=e? We ' re j us t trying to fix the ti=e when the fire alar = tripped.

LAUDERMILCH:

I'= going to say about a half an hour before the site e=ergency was declared -- at least a half an hour, =aybe = ore.

I re=em-ber when I was upstairs before I got called for that lineup, _I tried to follow that inter =ediste close and stuff and when I checked that inter =ediate close te=perature there, I vent back to the one RPS cabinet that we check on our readings. There's a gauge there for reactor b1dg. pressure and I checked that and I re=e=ber about 2 and a half pounds o'n that.

So I knew there definitely was a proble= in the reactor building; 'cause I don't thiak I've ever really even seen it up close to a pound -- =aybe

.8 or.9 is about the highest I've seen it and it nor= ally is running like between.5 and O.

So I knew there had to be so=e problem there.

LONG:

Did you co==ent on that or convey that to the control roo=7 LAUDERMILCH:

No.

'Cause I knew they had indication up in the control roo= and they had looked at it.

I did want to stay off the page as much' as I could.

LONG:

I forgot to ask you a question earlier; let =e ask you one thing, have you been on shift when there had been turbine-reactor trips be fore?

LAUDERHILCH: Yeah.

LONG:

CK., Good.

You knew the normal routine.

LAUDEEMILCH: Yeah, I knew the things you vorry about.

I was here when ve had a trip frc= 75 or 807, power when we were doing our pcuer trips.

LONG:

Ccod.

LAUDERNTLCH:

I'= trying to think of the other ones'I was here for, bur I've 162 064-

been here for a couple.

I know shaking and a lot of noise goes on and chat kind of thing, and I know, especially when I ca=e f

in fre= the outside, the thing I was concerned about is -- one of the first things-they want to do when they trip is to estab-

~

11sh feedvater heating.

I figured so=ebody would be on that, so I ca=e through by the 213 stage heaters. There vasn't anybody there and, I don't know, for se=e reason things just didn't soudd right to =e.

I don't knov if it was a lot of noise or what it was.

There wasn't anybody there.

I figured I'm not going to go up there and just take it on =y own to cut it in.

I knew that was one of the things they were going to ask us to do if it was a nor=al sequence of events. Then I went fro = there right up to the control room.

I'= trying to think of se=e of the other things I looked at.

When I was down at the radvaste penel, I re=e=ber looking at the vent header pressure and that was 2'5 to 3 pounds; there wasn't anything out of the ordinary there.

I re=e=ber the miscellaneous vaste holdup tank hadn't been flooded.

I re=e=ber looking at the level because Terry had knocked those pe=ps off earlier. With everything goin' on I wanted to look at R3 b1dg.

pressure.

I re=e=ber they had proble=s with the RC drain tank, because when I was in the control roe = earlier I re=e=ber the=

saying, " Hey, we don' t have any level in the RC drain tank."

You know we lost all our water.

So when I was in the control roe =, as soon as we started seeing building pressure going up and stuff, I knew things weren't nor=al.

I knew we had a proble=

somewhere -- they were talking about...They said, "It can't be a pri=ary leak because we're not having...I rece=ber, I think

[

it was Bill, I'm not sure, but so=ebody said, "We don't have a LOCA 'cause we have our water inventory," or so=ething to that effect.

But the building pressure was going up so I knew there was so=ething wrong.

When I got to the radraste panel I figured I'= going to try and think about things that can affect the outside.

One of the first things I thought about was the vaste gas syste=.

So I vent end looked at that.

I don't re=e=ber what was in the tanks, but I was concerned about the vent header, and the vent header looked good.

So...

LONC:

Who was giving you =ost of your directions? Was it = ore than one person in the control roo=? You =entioned Ed Fredericks a ~

nu=be r o f ti=e s.

Did you get it principally from Ed or... ?

LAUDERFILCH: Well, pri=ary side was mostly Id; initial hoi lov level instruc-tions were fro = Craig Faust, and then Bill Ccwe had ce=e down in the base =ent when we were trying to get the bypass valve open so he was there helping us out there on the direction...

LONG:

Where were you when the site e=ergency was declared?

LAUDERMILCH:

I can't re=e=ber, but I can re=e=ber -- this is an i=portant..'

LCNO:

Just try to get the sequence...

162 06e3 s---

T

_~

LAUDERMILCH: I re=e=ber being in the auxiliary b1dg with Terry. This was after we lined up the boron injection path and all that.

~e vent back down to the radwaste panel and Ed called Terry and said that they were having a proble= that they were getting de=in water inj ection into the pri=ary syste=.

Try to think of anything we could think of where we =ight be g atting stes=

and water fro =,

So Terry and I sat there and thought about it.

We had the printout and we vere looking at it.

Adss Piller had called and asked about checking the de=in water to the =akeup pu=p and another de=in water valve.

I can't re=e=ber what the valve was, but it was three valves to the =akeup pu=p and one other valve -- I can' t re=e=ber what that valve was at this ti=e.

So we were getting ready to check that, and in the =eanti=c, Terry was working on the print.

I had outbuildings tour earlier in the evening and I had secured de=in water to the sodic= thio-sulfate tank.

I knew that was initially a tank installed for pri=ary purposes, but I didn't know what the piping layout was now.

I knew we had de=in water in there, so I called Ed back and I said, "Ed, I don't know how it ties in or anything," I said, "but could that sodiu= thoisulfate be har=ing it?" And he said, "No, there's no piping hook up in the pri=ary syste=."

We had used that to store caustic in for the polishers.

I think we had a bad batch of caustic or so=ething that we used that was in the sodiu= hydroxide tank, and we had transferred it over to that tank. We used it for Neutralizing secondary side neut, tank.

So, anyhow, v2 were there figuring it out and, then Ada= had told s

i us about these other valves to check. We were getting ready to go and we walked over to the hole in the floor there, in the first floor of the Auxiliary b1dg., where you can look down in the basement. Terry said, " Hey, we're getting water out of the floor drains." We i==ediately ca=e back and told the=, "The aux.

b1dg. su=p is overflowing; we don't know where we're getting the water fre=."

Terry got off the phone and started trying to mark the se=p level. We concentrated our efforts then on where all this water was ce=ing fie=, because we knew there was a radiation proble=,

The HF techs had been around and they told us it was SR in the 305' Makeup valve alley; it was 10R inside the door where you go into the =akeup tank.

I saw one of the guys earlier and he said they had gocten water in the EPR 227, the rad =enitor for the reactor b1dg., and the water was hot.

So we knew there was a definite radittien proble=.

LONG:

This was still before the site e=ergency?

LAUDER.HILCH:

Right. We knew there was a proble= and we were concerned about the water ec=ing up, because we thought, " Man, oh, =an, we are really going to be crapped up around here with this" So we were sitting there trying to figure out where in the devil is this water ceming fro =.

In the =eanti=e, Mike Janouski, the rad che= tech, ca=e running down the hall and he just said, "Get the hell out!" Apparently, we had airborne readings or so=ething, but he was running down the hall and said, "Get your stuff and get out."

Terry shut off -- I think, I'= sure the Aux. b1dg.

su=ps were either of f of he shut the= off - and he secured things there.

He checked the reactor bidg p.u=ps and I re=e=ber seeing i62 066

e

~

,~

those were still off.

The su=p pu=ps frc= the reactor b1dg.

(~

vere off the whole ti=e since ve had gone back on...

We left and went over to Unit 1 HP, We called the Unit 2 Control Room and told them we had been s. cuated out of the auxiliary b1dg.

and we were over there. Terry said, "Well, heck, we =ight as vall go back over to Unit 2, because we're sure there's still a lot of stuff going. on over there; we'd better get back over there and see if we can help out on anything." That's what we did. We ca=e around to upstairs there, and then he said, "Well, did you get ch.:ked out real vell, frisked and everything?" I said, "No."

So ve vent downstairs, and Terry was relatively clean.

My shoes and pants and shirt were crapped up 'cause when we vent to the fire alarm upstairs I took off running and took a flop on the floor.

I got crapped up.up there. The EP techs had been taking sa=ples in the unit 2 HP area and they said, "Look we got to get respirators on herc. We don't have ti=e to =ess around with your clothing.

Get them off and get into paper coveralls and get out."

They were putting on respirators.

I took =y.

clothing off and gave =y valuables to Terry.

He vent up and I got changed and went upstairs. By that ti=e -- so=ewhere in between there -- I'm sure the site emergency had been declared.

As a =atter of fact, I'm sure it had.

It had to be right after we were evacuated out of the auxiliary b1dg. 'cause I rece=ber people over there gathering at the Unit 1 HP area.

It =ight have been the ti=e between when we were there and valking around to the Unit 2 HP area that they announced it.

Then ve vent upstairs and we stayed upstairs.

I'm trying to think what I,

)

did after that.

RE? PERI:

Do you re=e=her how long you stayed that day?

LAUDERMILCH: I think it was pretty close 'til noon ti=e 'til we got out of here, and it was a little after one till we got...

REFFERT:

Checked out?

LAUDERMILCH: Checked out over at the 500KV sub, off the island.

Other than that I don't know...that's a lot of stuff, I guess...

RE??ERT:

Yes, it is, there's a lot of stuff and a lot of things that other people haven't co==ented on; that's why we vanced to get individual perspective.

LAUDERMILCH: Yeah.

REPPERT:

When ve try to put it all together, it =ay really help sort out things.

LAUDERMILCH: Are ve going to get together as a group and discuss this or...

LCNG:

Eventually, yes.

LAUDERMILCH: Yeah, I.=ean that might help =e re=e=ber so=e = ore.

t 162 067

+-

e TMI STAFF INIERVIEW Ed Frederick 0124 Hrs.

March 30, 1979 Conducted By:

R. Long and D. Reppert LCNG:

This is Bob Long talking. It is 0124 hours0.00144 days <br />0.0344 hours <br />2.050265e-4 weeks <br />4.7182e-5 months <br />, 30 March 79.

Don Reppert and I are interviewing Ed Frederick; Ed would you state your na=e and job function?

FRIDERICK: Ed Frederick, Control Roam Operator.

LONG:

And you were on duty the night this event started?

FREDERICK:

Yes, Sir.

LONG:

Can you begin by telling us where you were fro =, say, an hour before the event? Then just go ahead and start describing your i=pressions.

FRIDERICK: I spen-all =y ti=e in the control roe = at the panel.

LONG:

Right.

FREDERICK: During the hour before, I was just doing the nor=al checks that we do on our shift -- just =enitoring =etsrs.

I spent so=e ti=e at the cc=puter.

LONG:

An hour before, were things essentially nor=al?

FREDERICK:

Nor=al, yes.

The only abnor=al thing I can consider -- so=ething that hasn't happened in the past few days, or that I would consider unex-plained to this point - -was the alar =s I received on tha 2A Auxiliary transfor=er voltage drop. We were reading alar = responses and trying to figure out what was giving us that alar = so=eti=e before all this occurred. Whether that's related or not, I can't tell you.

But that's what we were doing at the ti=e.

It-wasn't an intense research effort; it was just another alar =.

LONG:

Surely.

FREDERICK: And we were wondering what was causing it.

W seren't seeing any effects in the plant.

It looked to us to be a spurious alar =.

LONG:

The alar = vas voltage low?

FRIDERICK:

It uas the 2A Auxiliary voltage trans for=er loss, I believe. As a matter of fact, the alar = response is still sitting up there open.

I saw it a few =inutes ago. We were reading the sy=pec=s just try-

<ng to figure out what was giving us the alar =,

So we ff.gured it was spurious.

Now that I think back to what ve saw,

-- the initial alar =s as this thing started to happen -- that =ay be significant that is, the only thing that effects the condensate pe=p is an electrical fault. There are no other auto trips.

~_0NG:

Can you recall the sequence of events ?

few =inutes before everything happened there were two of FREDERICK: All right; a us in there.

Nor= ally, che other guy is Craig, he was at the ce=puter censole taking readings.

was sitting in a chair at the dia= cad 162 068 e-

_ 1 l.

. FREDERICK:

panel, which is in the center of the center console which erntrols the rods.

I don't know how fa=<. liar you guys are with this stuff.

I was at the diamond rod control panel.

At the ti=e, I was facing the cakup system, which is on the left -- panel 3.

What we have been doing for the past several weeks is constantly changing our =akeup tank inventory to ce=pensate for leakage that we had through the relief valves on the pressurizer. We had to keep swapping water back and forth to =aintain rod position.

It beca=e a routine operation,

=onitoring the =akeup system levels and things -- swapping (=u=bling) water. That's where I was at the time.

And so when the initial alar s occurred, I saw Craig's reaction first because he was off to =y left. I could see him out the corner of =y eye.

The first thing he said was, "something's happening." Then he pointed at the panel, and then I started reading the alarms.

I can tell you when I saw him in the next couple minutes, but I cannot tell you what he did.

I saw lots of alar =s, and I know where to look and I started reading a few that 1 felt were i=portant. The first ones I read were " Condensate Pu=p Trip," " Turbine Trip."

Then Ilooked at the ICS panel; I saw alarms flashing so I started monitoring the ICS.

I didn't read the alar =s, 'cause I know they're L=portant.

I looked at the ICS control modules 'cause I wanted to verify that we were progressing through a turbine runback. At that time, Bill Zeve, shift supervisor, vss to =y left, behind me, and he said, "We j ust lost the reactor," which means we changed then to a reactor trip.

Up to this point we were in a routine e=ergency pro-cedure. We were reacting to a loss of turbine and a loss of the C),

reactor.

LONG:

Have you been through these before? You have had this occur when you have been on shift?

FREDERICK:

(Nodded yes) Nothing at this point was abnor=al. We were questioning

-- I guess it was on my mind what caused it.

It wasn't i=portant at the ti=e to figure out what caused it.

We had to react to what was happening.

So I went to the =akeup system, because the next thing you have to do is preserve the pressurizer level; all right now, Craig had already closed MUV-376 which is the letdown isolation valve.

He told me that, so I knew it was shut.

So=ewhere between the ti=e I read the ICS alar =s, I looked at the ICS alar =s and realized we were in a reactor trip.

I put the pressurizer spray valves in auta=atic and I turned all the heaters in automatic.

Previously they were in =anual, as I was saying, with this water inventory control, we were spraying the pressurizer manually and I knew that we had discussed this before; and we said if we had a trip we have to put them in auto =atic <--adi-ately, so the system vill respond the way it is supposed to.

So I did that and I'm sure that wasn't very long.

Fred Schie= ann, Shift Fore =an, went to the pressurizer instru=entation and started =onitoring.

It's i=portant to have so=eone call out the pressure.

Is it going down or is it going up? And I believe he was locked in on pressure and te=perature.

This pressure was going down and the pressuriser level was going devn.

He was saying that.

The e=crgency procedure says startup the =akeup pu=p; Craig, I believe, tried to star: "A" =akeup pu=p.

It didn't start.

I think he tried 162 069

_2

. FRIDERICK:

several times. And when he couldn't start it, he saw =e ce=ing -- he was still there -- I reached over and hit it and started it.

Inat was probably several atte= pts to start it, I only tried once and it went.

He i==ediately went then to the secondary panel while I was on the pri=ary and he went to the feed station which is what you have to have; you have to have so=ebody at each panel. This is the way we drilled it anyway. You have to have somebody on pressurizer, somebody on =ake-up and feedvater, and somebody watching the whole thing.

Zeve, I believe, was standing back watching the whole thing.

So, the next thing I re=e=ber clearly is that I had the A and 3 =akeup pt=ps running. Pressurizer level was coming down rapidly enough that I opened MU-V-16, A or B, I think it =ight have been B.

They're =anual drive valves for high pressure injection. And I opened it u,

o get

= ore water into the pri=ary sys:e= or I thought we would have gone past it.

It see=ed like al=ost right away pressurizer level was up.

I never saw it changing; I looked over at the pressuriser level again, after not having seen it for a couple seconds and it was at 380 inches.

The pressurizer was almost full, which was unbelievable to =e at the time.

It was too fast.

LONG:

Uh-huh.

FRIDERICK:

So, I backed off. That is the first screwy thing that happened. The pressurizer went full and we believed it was full.

It =ust have been full of water, but the next confusing thing was the system wasn't reacting as if it was solid. We weren't seeing pressure spikes, se I don't know if anyone concluded that there was steam building so=eplace s

else.

It was happening so fast, but we knew that we weren't solid.

And at that ti=e Craig was so=ewhers there. While all this was going on Craig said, "We're not feeding, we're not feeding the generators,"

and this is how it had bcen now for several minutes. There had been no feed to the steam generators.

He had already, at that ti=e, taken

=anual control at the e=ergency feed panels and he was leaning on the

=anual open controls. You know they already indicated open; he was trying to open them =anually because he didn't know why we weren't getting feed.

His reaction was, "Something was wrong."

He said that the pu=ps were running -- all three pu=ps were running -- the e=ergency feedpu=ps. But we don't have any flow. And "it's either going down" or "it is down."

Somebody said, "What are these going shut," or so=e-thing like, "Why are these shut."

And it was the EFV-12 A and B.

They are manually operated valves. They were shut.

They're isolation valves for the OTSG's.

And I can't say we saw normal evolution; I think that we should have seen rapid cooling.

But we didn't.

LONG:

Those valves that you said you found shut, are they cor= ally open?

FRIDERICK: They are; they were covered by caution tags, I believe.

RI??IRT:

Ch-huh.

FRIDERICK: There was a caution tag on FWV-16B that says it is shut because the operator's bad on it.

The control for FWV-163 is located on the panel directly above EFV-12 A and B, and that cautien tag was partially covering the valves and was probably why he needed to see a readout.

Of course, he didn't have to look for it.

He should have asst =ed that 162 CL70

3-v FREDERICK: they were open. And that =ay be why we didn't know they were shut earlier in the shift. We just started scanning the panel and stuff

-- you don't notice things -- I guess we didn't notice that. We

=ust have started feeding the generator, 'cause we heard it on the vibration and loose parts =enitor.

You can hear the water expanding and pe= ping through the steam generator from the upper tube sheet

.=onitor.

So we knew that water was going in but I guess it didn't have any -ffect for awhile, because the steam generator level was s, low.

If you want to know what ti=e to say they were e=pty, there is no way to tell now.

You can go back to the instru=ents somehow and find out.

That must have caused the shift in the bubble, and all the screwy stuff we were seeing.

We have to go back to where I was trying to control pressurizer level.

OK, I had 16 A or B, one of them, and I was trying to bring up pres-surizer icvel, ES actuation occurred. I =ay have only been controlling a few seconds, I don't know. I did begin to see an increase in pressurizer le. vel. That was caused by =e before the ES, now, the shifting bubble, caused by no emergency feed and ES, probably would cause an abnor= ally rapid rise in pressurizer level. Now I didn't recognize that at the ti=e.

Ok, where do I go from here?

LONG:

Were you felloc essentially =aking the decisions on what to do your-selves? Or was the shift supervisor giving you guidance?

FREDERICK: Not until this =ccent, where ES occurred and the problem with the e=ergency feed. We vere carrying out e=ergency procedures. We were checking and double checking each other on =aking sure each step we

~

could re-e-her was taken. There was so=eone in the Control roem --

so=ebody ca=e in -- but I don't knew who it was, and I told them to get the procedure out and read it, =ake sure that we had done every-thing.

I knew later on, Ken Bryan was there -- shift supervisor of Unit I.

He got there pretty quick. And he went behind us and =ade sure we had done everything.

That was several minutes later.

Up until thac =c=ent, we were doing everything by ce=ory.

Like I say, it was a routine reaction to the turbine-reactor trip. ES and e=er-gency feed are what changed everything; then we started talking to each other about, "something's wrong -- where are we over here?"--Bill Zeve, =yself and Craig, and Fred.

It was all goofed up.

LONG:

OK, at that point, which was what, =aybe ten =inutes after the trip?

FRIDERICK: I don't have any idea, people asked =e how long things have taken, and I have said a minute to three minutes, and found out it was only a few seconds. There was only a few times I looked at the clock in the whole five to six hours that I was there.

LONO:

Easically, then, you did have somebody within a very short ti=e lock-ing at the e=ergency procedure. Were they talking out loud to you, saying, "Did you do this?"

FREDERICK:

No, it was a licensed person; it =ight have been Ken 3ryan, or 3111 Zewe doing it.

The Scok was right there on the desk and there was no reason for them to check with =c.

He was still behind =e hi=self.

LCNO:

He was following behind and seeing that.... ?

162 07i

4_

FREDERICK: I know there was a =anual reactor trip report -- that's one of the parts of the procedure.

I had verified the trip when Bill Zeve said over my shoulder, "We lost the reactor."

I went over the rods, the intermediate range level and the dia=ond control panel.

By those indications I knew the reactor tripped.

I didn't take the ti=e to

=anually trip. I had verified that each individual rod was on the bottom.

LONG:

When you got to the point where you d9.cided you had some unusual things happening, how basically did you proceed fre= there? You said you started to have discussions. Did you try then to get any additional input?

FREDERICK: We were afraid about going solid in the pressurizer -- and seeing high pressure spikes.

I believe we took =anual control of the ES to prevent going solid. We had to establish pressuri:cr level.

That's one of the things that we wanted to do.

But that was one road we started going down, and we decided it wasn't working. We increased letdown, and we verified the path fre= the bleedtank. We thought =aybe our letdown passage was blocked; that's why we filled up so fast. We tried several things to try to establish pressurizer level.

Then an instru=ent fore =an showed up, Doug Weaver. I don't know how long that was.

We said, "We don't believe the pressuriser level instru=ent, it says we're solid, but we're not reacting that way, it must be wrong."

He did whatever he does to check it and asked us so=e questions abcut how did it go up, did it peg out, did it go up fast or slew? Then he went to the co=puter and verified so=e other things, and he said, e

"That's your level."

(

LONG:

How about towards quarter to seven or so when Gary Miller declared a site t.mergency: Can you give me se=e background as to what led to that?

FRIDERICK: All this ti=e now we had no radiation =enitors. And we had things that were abnor=al, the pressure was going down, the pressurizer level was up, and the Th was high.

So we began to worry about.the reactor cool-ant pu=ps, because the pressure was getting to the point where we weren't allowec to run them.

LONG:

Right.

FRIDERICK: We looked at an operating curve. Actually we secured two pc=ps because we thought we were below the net positive suction into the pu=ps.

And then we had so=ebody read the curve; then we verified that we were actually getting very close to turning off the other two.

At the time we turned them o ff, they weren't pu= ping what they should have anyway, because we had two pu=ps running and only showing sixty percent fl ow.

We should have had 80-90-100 percent flow in one loop.

Because we secured the RC pu=ps in the other loop, flow should have been 100%.

But it wasn't.

So it seemed like we were losing flow to the pe=ps.

So we turned them off.

Now, so=ewhere along the line, I don't know hou =uch ti=e lapsed, we tried to start the pe=ps again, because we were at the position then we weren't having any natural circulation flow.

Without the reactor coolaat pu=ps going, (===bling) s team generator level and e=ergency feed going in we shculd have been able to establish cooling. We should have seen the Th at least on scale, 162 072

v 5-

.. FREDERICK: or Te change. We should have seen something changing in te=perature.

We had nothing that showed us we had natural circulation flow to the generators.

So we wanted to start A-pu=p.

And I think va intended to start RC 1A pe=p or it indicated A -- start -- a red light. But the a=ps moved and ca=e back down near to zero. What I saw was the a=ps vent up, the red light ca=c on but I never saw any flow indication or nor=al a=perage. We had a =an verify the a=ps at the local panel.

He went down and looked at the a=p =eter on the local station thinking

=aybe our a=p=eter was screwed up.

This was when we started to =is-trust the instruments. And, there were no a=ps showing.

It was just a little bit off the peg, but there var hardly anything there.

So we figured it =ust not be right and we turned it off.

'Cause when we actually did jog that pe=p, it didn't =ove, it didn't =ove the water.

We knew afterwards, because we got a lot of radiation =onitors.

Now, why. turning on the pu=p gave us all those radiation levels, I don't know.

I was reading radiation levels in the aux building.

So=ething happened there that I don't understand.-

LONG:

The first radiation levels you saw were in the aux building?

FREDERICK: In the aux building.

LONG:

But this occurred after you tried...

TREDERICK: We were feeding the stea= generator and jogging the reactor coolant pe=ps, those were the things that we were doing. That's when we got the alarns.

(

LONG:

Who =ade the decision to declare the site e=ergency?

FREDERICK: Bill Zeve and =yself.

LONG:

Bill is the shift supervisor?

FREDERICK: Yes, he's =y shift supervisor.

I didn't actually initiate a site e=ergency.

I said to Bill, "We have those radiation alar =s, we should call Unit I and tell the= to secure -- that we had a release.

He agreed. And at the tL=e he wasn't thinking site e=ergency. We had a local ecergency. We were deciding whether or not to have a site e=ergency. But then we ca=e to the point where we =ade the decision, "Ok, this is a site e=ergency".

And I called Unit I and told the=

had a release, that was the action I took as far as initiating a we site e=ergency. Then I went back to the panel, I was concerned with the release to the river during site e=crgency. That was one thing, I don't know why, I was keyed up, but that was important.

So then I verified that they stopped the release, it was only seconds later.

I saw the light drop, we have an indication on that release valve. And I waited for it to go shut.

REFFERI:

They were =aking river release?

FREDERICK:

Yes.

162 073 m-e=e-mu eess.+

• ' RIPPERT:

The alar =s you saw in the Aux Bldg., were they area alarms, air moniters, or liquid =enitors?

FREDERICK: Liquid Monitors.

Yes, that's what didn't =ake any sense.

The first ones that we saw were inter =ediate closed. Then the other ones, they're all in a group there, and we cau them all lighting up.

You know, there's decay heat flow, letdown, they're all on the same panel.

I didn't look at the area Loalters; it was the liquid monitors that suprised =e.

LONG:

For the site e=ergency, you then have additional procedures that you follow?

FRIDERICK: My job is to continue operating the plant. Fred Schie= ann, myself, and Craig, were involved with still working on the plant. The only thing that shifted is priorities to establish an emergency plan.

And, I don't know what happened there.

LONG:

Ok, your job doesn't cover those things.

Generally, we've been talking about the sequence of events.

One other thing that we vanced to include was the flow of instructions.

I've asked you abt-~ decisiene.

Hes abcut :ur

..,...1 e,e.* fen.

.ke,,,

uke u.*

instructions? Don Miller said he got most of his instructions from the CRO's.

Were you interacting with auxiliary operators?

FRIDERICK: Most of the orders that vent out of the control room were from me.

They cay not have originated with ce.

One thing I knew is we always

(

discuss things before we give them.

We, Bill and Craig and =yself, and later on Ken Bryan and Mike Ross, when they showed up, were talking about things before we were doing them.

As reports came in, at least two of us would analyze them before we took any action.

The operators that were calling in were generally calling =e or Craig.

If I sent socebody ou a job, I re=e=ber specifically telling them, if they could, come to the control roca and =ake a report.

If not, they were supposed to call.

LCNG:

Generally, were people responding?

FRIDERICK: Yes, we had excellent response on things that we needed i==ediately.

LONG:

Did they volunteer infor=ation to you?

FRIDERICK:

Yes, some of the infor=ation that we got fro = the Aux Building ca:e from Terry Daugherty, for exa=ple, when he spotted a high se=p level in the reactor building. Very early, he reported that RM-14 near the fuel handling b1dg. access to Unit I wa: in alar =. That's a very low range instru=ent.

And, it had an audible alarm on it.

He

=ade a ga==a survey with an E520 and got IMR and its less than

.1'R, less than.1 = rem.

And, he reported all that.

We saw no explained reason for radiation there, but he verified : hat it was very, very lov, without taking any action on it.

So reports like that were ccming in frequently.

RE??ERI:

When s'td he report, if you re=e=ber this, the level in the reactor building su=p.

Do you recall that?

162 074 r--

FREDERICK: We were pretty far, about 45 minutes to an hour into it.

I had given him a series of jobs, one where he went by the panel.

I don't re=e=ber what he was assigned to be doing at the ti=e.

LONG:

Ti=ewise this was between four a.m. and seven, so it was well before the...

FREDERICK: This was about 45 =inutes to an hour into it, so=ething like that.

Ee hai already been working on the secondary side.

Craig was in charge of the secondary plant. There was shouting back and forth.

I re=e=ber they were shouting, but I don't re=e=ber what they were shouting.

LONG:

Did you at anyti=e =ake recc==endations to supervisors? It so unds to me like you fellows were doing this pretty well as a team, discussing it with each other and feeding back, But do you re=e=ber

=aking any recc==endations of things that you felt should be done?

FREDERICK: Yes, there were specifics, a reco==endation to bypass the ES.

It's tough to reme=ber.

I rece=ber talking to Mike Ross about several ideas, but he went,in the back room at that point. There were lots of people there.

I talked to John Flint about a couple of ideas of stuff, but I'd have to reme=ber all the details of where we were in order to tell you where I wanted to go.

LONG:

But, do you have any co==unications outside the control room other than with your auxiliary operators? As CRO, you don't get involved

(

vith ce==unications off site? For exa=ple, who called Gary Miller?

Is that so=ething you did or - somebody called him at 6:30 in the

=cening, I think that's what we heard?

FRIDERICK: I had no idea how long it was. before people started arriving.

People that were off site started arriving in the control roo= and I wasn't aware of when they were arriving.

I know that so=e of the first people that arrived 'were Ken 3ryan and Mike Ross, George Kunder I think was called al=ost right away, but original notifications must have started with Bill and Mike Ross.

LONG:

Mike Ross was on Unit I?

FREDERICK: I don't kncv where he ca=e from.

I think he was in Unit I some-where. And, I re=e=ber the conversation on the phone, Bill was talking, he paged him, and he said he wanted him to co=e over and help with a few ideas. This was after the ES, after the full pressurizer and stuff itke that where we had a few =inutes to think. We wanted another =an, and as =any ideas as we could get.

So Mike ca=e over.

LCNG:

How long did you continue to work that =crning? You didn't go after your nor=al shift?

FRIDERICK:

No.

162 075 N

LONG:

Hov long did you stay?

FRDERICK: About 1600, I don't know.

LONG:

L'ere you relieved in the control room before that?

FREDERICK: W en we had enough people, we put a CR0 on each panel.

There was a =an on makeup system, and there was a =an on feedvater station, a man on electrical and a man on the back panel. There were actually 2 or 3 =en, there was actually a fore =an on the radiation panel all by himself. As each person ca=e in we, assigned them to a different panel.

I stayed at the =akeup system and Craig, and I and Fred Schie= ann, still stayed at the =akeup system.

LONG:

k'ho was =aking those assign =ents?

FREDERICK: The guys come in and they know what to do.

One guy would stay on feed. Adam Miller vent to the radiation =cnitor; I don't know whether so=eone told him to or not.

I asked Hugh to can the back panels.

So he was doing that.

I don't know when he arrived, but with the back panels you vaste alot of ti=e walking around to try to do something.

I wanted him to stay by the ES actuation panel (panel 15).

FI? PERI:

I would like to know if you recall when the general e=ergency was declared? And what was that based on?

I FREDERICK: I don't know, I don't even know who did it.

I didn't even know at first we had one.

RE? PERT:

Yes, that's what I was trying to get at.

I think it was based on the radiation =enitor, but I'm not sure.

FFIDERICK: Adam Miller was co==unicating along the radiation infor=ation as far as I knov, if that happened before he got there, I don't know.

Once people started coming, that took those responsibilities and we just kept working the plant.

LONG:

khen did you come back on shift? You vent ho=e at four o' clock or so.

FFIDERICI: And ca=e back in at eleven.

LONG:

At eleven, so you were on all last night.

Did you have extra people la t night as well?

F?IDERICK: Yes.

LCNG:

Ok.

FROERICK: S ere were extra people there today.

LCNO:

So you verked as a team through last night trying to...?

162 076

O FFIDERICK: Last night there were fresh CRO's on the panels.

They had just been there a few hours.

So I tried to head up the radiation proble=s we were having in the aux, building. As far as I could tell, people were going in-and coming out crapped up.

But, we needed some infor=ation on whether there was really water in the aux. building basement. We suspected that.

There was a question as to why the activity was as high as it was in the aux. building.

Where was the water ce=ing fre=? And, so=ewhere back there vs lost power to 232A and 242A electrical MCCs.

Up until that ti=e, no one had noticed that de=in water seal pu=ps were powered fro =

those panels.

I had sealing water to all of the radvaste punps that we have. Which meant that any pu=p that was lined up for recire or lined up to provide transfer had water leading out the seals.

So I recce= ended to Bill that we go in and verify what's happening or try to start it to eli=inate that possibility.

So Don Miller and I planned to go out through the auxiliary building to do several jobs, one was to energize those pe=ps and the boric acid pu=ps, and the decay heat pt_p su=p pu=ps, decay heat pit su=p pu=ps, and a fcv other pu=ps that we felt vere going to be vital - the neutralizing tank pu=ps, the aux building su=p tank pu=ps.

We figured we had a ILnited a=ount of time in there, Let's do the =ost i=portant stuff and not fool with the bus, Once we had the bus re-energized, we planned to go to the radvaste panel, start the seal v.ater and then exit the building. We quick checked our dosi=eters, and if we vere less than one R, we were going to go in the base =ent to see what the water situation vas...

In other words, run down the steps, see the water, where it was ce=ing frem, what was the condition on the decay heat pu=ps, was it flooding or what? We did that, we vent in - I went to 232A he vent to 242A to find the =ain breaker trip. We vent to the radvaste panels. While he was starting the seal water syste= I was to vent so=e of the gauges that were down there and verify the vaste gas ce= pressor was running.

So we left i==ediately.

And, we got to the HP area and I read =y dosimeter and it hardly read at all.

All this ti=e I had a teletector with =e and I had not monitored anything over 2 R, which was surprising.

LONG:

Yes, Don (Miller) =entioned that; it sounds like the same entry.

FREDERICK: I was surprised at this point, I was afraid our instruments were reading wrong.

So I read =y lov ' range desi=eter.

It was hardly showing anything on that. And, neither was he.

And, the teletector I had verified 1-2 R range was near the PEG and the 0-50 R range was down around 2.

So it had to be pretty sure ve weren't seeing any.

And, I said that's "let's take a look".

I extended the teletector down the hole and there was nothing there, and I left hi= on the open platfor= where he could see =e and gave hi= the teletector, and I vent down, and I think he extended it down to me, where I was.

There was water on the flo or.

Down at the botte=

of the steps, so=ebody had unrolled plastic down the RE, big sheets of plastic.

Sc=e of the water was under the plastic.

So I don't 162 077

10 -

• /

know when it was done, it =ight have been done the day before.

Because the water that was on the floor was coming out of the reactor building e=ergency cooling pu=p seals - water pu=p seals. The water laying on the floor vas river water. And I looked in the south decay heat pit, it was dry, I looked in the north one and it had a couple inches of water.

I could see that vater was ce=ing directly fre= the RR pe=ps and running down the hole.

The rest of the floor was da=p, sweating, and this was all surprising.

And, we left - we got up and I read =y dosi=eter again, and it still showed hardly any trace. When ve vent up, two guys, Terry and Steve, were waiting to undress us, I reported to the control roe =

and talked to Zeve, and he couldn't understand where the radiation vent.

I think that's when they decided that it must be ce=ing out of the =akeup tank vent, the puffs were decaying off, and we were going in at the wrong times.

So alot of what we were seeing in the aux building, all those high radiation levels was pretty confusing.

Why was everything still pegged up high if we were that low?

That's as far as I got in the investigation; I got tied up in other jobs.

LONG:

Ok, well that could be helpful to have that infor=ation - again in trying to fit it all together.

FREDERICK: Yes, we were happy after that entry - ve got alot of infor=ation.

LONG:

Ok, can you think of anything else that has occurred that you ought to try to report?

I'm sure that there are other questions which vill develop as we talk with others.

FRIDIRICK:

I'd like to see a group discussion =yself.

LONG:

Yes, we hope at this puint, getting everyone's i=pression by themselves =ay turn up sc=e details. A group discussion would also help.

FREDERICK: I would like to =ake a suggestion, you know? If there is anybody who is going to suggest a change in things in the future so so=ething like this could be better understood or more easily followed, or more easy to reconstruct, which is pretty i=portant to us even during what was happening - if we could have a tape recorder or videotape in the control roo=, even little tape recorders like these, that we could pull out of a desk drawer, turn it on and sit it on the desk -

they could hear and we could then reconstruct the sequence.

Even a-hour into the event we could say listen to a ti=e ten =inutes ago and we 2ould retrace it, and find out and we vouldn't have to re=e=be. this stuff.

LONG:

Yes, that would be so=ething that would be fairly easy to do.

FREDERICK: Maybe they could rig it up so that it would aute=atically start, but =aybe that's toe expensive, I don't know.

Maybe they j us could put it there where we could hit the button. We =ay not re=e=ber it for a couple minutes, but it's better than nothing.

Eecause even 162 078

-u-ga8

-?

the following day, Bubba Marshall tried to interviev =e, and I was supposed to try to reme=ber all this and at the time, I was still working and there were alot of things going on.

And, we can't take the time to stop.

If your asking for recc=endations, I would like to recom=end that.

E G OF INTER E 4 WITH ED FREDERICK y

a.~.~

=< A J i

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n e

v OGO e

g, 162 079

TMI STAFF INTERVL%f

.~

3 Den Miller 0100 Hrs.

Ma,th 30, 1979 e

~

Conducted By:

R. Long and D. Repper t

LONG:

This Bob Long talking. Don Reppert and I are going to interview Don Miller. Don, would you give us your na=e and job function?

It is 0100 hours0.00116 days <br />0.0278 hours <br />1.653439e-4 weeks <br />3.805e-5 months <br /> on March 30, 1979.

MILLER:

My na=e is Don Miller, I'm an Auxiliary Operator-A at iMI Unit II.

LONG:

Can you describe your location before and during the event, beginning about 1 hour1.157407e-5 days <br />2.777778e-4 hours <br />1.653439e-6 weeks <br />3.805e-7 months <br /> before.

MILLER:

3eginning about 1 hour1.157407e-5 days <br />2.777778e-4 hours <br />1.653439e-6 weeks <br />3.805e-7 months <br /> before the event, I was working on the condensate polishing system, transferring resins fre= Vessel #7 to the receiving tank to be regenerated. The resins were clogged in that line for approxi=ately 11 hours1.273148e-4 days <br />0.00306 hours <br />1.818783e-5 weeks <br />4.1855e-6 months <br /> and we were working on unclogging them.

It was a process of shooting it with air and water to try to push it through.

I was on that at least an hour before the trip.

At the ti=e of the trip, =yself, =y shift fore =an, Fred Schie= ann, and Harold Farst, another auxiliary operator-A were standing there discussing the proble=s we were having with this.

The first thing...

we heard se=ething that sounded like a pe=p stop.

I'u sitting at a desk now.

Because the scenario report said that the condensate pu=p stopped and thinking back over it I can believe that is what I heard now.

We ca=e down a ladder from where I was, and went around to look -

(~

at the condensate pelishing par.el and I lost all flow...all condensate flow through the polisher. Well, then they announced the turbine trip, and directly after that the reactor tripped.

So the first thing I did was go ahead and shutdown five of those polisher units.

Nor=al procedure is when we trip the turbine, or trip the reactor, we're going to lose feed pe=ps and booster pe=ps. JSo under nor=al situations of coming right back up we only use two polishers, and that's the position I had to be into, and that's the position that I went to.

When I went to the panels, I noticed that =y outlet valves.on the polisher vessels had failed shut.

So I just isolated the other five, left the two lines open, and was ready to go.

Then I decided to go up to C

the control room to see if there was anything else, and/or what was going to be co=ing on next.

While =aking c. last double-check, as I started to.

go between condensate 2A booster pu=p and the panel, the line there shook about two and one-half to three feet. Then I turned around and went back around ~;ehind the panel and up the steps to the control room.

When I got up to the control roo=, they said, "Is the polisher lined up and ready to go?" and I said, "It's lined up the way it should be in this situation." They said, "CK", and we stood there a few =inutes.

Ihen they sent =e down to check, and double-check just to make sure everything was all right.

So I went back down and discovered a valve leaking, the suction valve t o the Tw4 boos ter pu=p.

I called the control room and told them the situation, took the chain lock of f; actually, I broke it off. Then, I started closing the suction valve and a few =inutes later I got sone help frc= two other ope rators to get it shut.

So we isolated that pu=p and they knew of that preble=, We went back upstairs, and they said we still didn't have any condensate flow.

And I said, "3y7 ass around the polishe rs because 162 080

. ~

that thing had failed shut."

Nobody knew for sure.

So they hit the button, so=ebody up there said that they had hit the button, and it didn't go open.

Then they sent us down there to check it =anually.

When we got down there, the handuheel was missing, but we did get it open =anually.

The hand wheel vasn't on but it was laying there and we were able to get it on and get it open.

Then after that sequence of events, I went back upstairs, and it was jus a

=atter of running here and there for odd j obs.

I got sent to the pri=ary side to check the pressuriser level.

The reading I got was 300 inches in the pressurizer whi.an I read on the indication down in the =akeup valve alley.

The rest of it was, I don't know how far into it, or hov =uch ci=e lag we're talking about or hov =uch ti=e was involved in this; I don't have any idea.

LONG:

Uh-huh.

MILLER:

And then, from then on, it was just double-check other things.

LONG:

Did you have any procedt=e, a checklist, or anything or do you just know these things that you should do?

MILLER:

Certain things, fre= operating the syste=s, you know have to be done. For an e=ergency situation like that, a checklist would be just in the road as far as you know.

It's great when you're finished.

Maybe you could look at it and say, "Well, I didn't get this", but I don't see where you have the'

(~

tL=e, you know, to use it right at that ti=e.

And you wouldn't be able to carry it with you all the ti=e.

LONG:

At the ti=e you didn't assu=e you had an emergency.

Right ?

MILLIR:

Well, I knew we had an emergency, but not in the sense that we have the e=ergency proble=s that we do now.

I never drea=ed of anything like that.

LCNG:

You assened you had a trip?

MILLIR:

Right, and I just vent back to nor=al situations when the turbine trips.

LONG:

In the past, have you been on shift when the turbine tripped?

NILLIR:

Yes.

LCNG:

And you followed the sa=e steps basically?

MTLLIR:

Yes.

I haven't always been at the polisher, but that's one of the syste=s that I supposedly know a little =cre about than a lot of other people because I spent a lot of ti=e there when they were getting it squared away in the first place.

But anytime we come back up or go down we always take these polishers eff in order, and they always need 2 on unless your going to shutdcwn co=)letely because you still need the two cn until youb co=-

pletely down.

The vacuu=s broken, so I just left two of them lined up nor= ally.

LCNG:

Con, frc= the control roe = standpoint, did you feel like the instructions you were getting there were =aking sense?

162 081

p

. i MILLER:

Knowing the situation, what they were going through up there and the infor-nation they were asking for, I think definitely the questions they were asking =ade sense. The other thing was we ran around and checked that pressurirer level.

For so=c reasen they didn't think the one they had was right and we double checked it with the local indi cator. Actually, I believe everything they did was valid, as far as you know, what they sent us out to check.

LCNG:

th-hun.

MILLIR:

The thing is I was involved =ostly on the secondary side of the plant.

And what was going on in the pri=ary side of the plant, I really had no idea.

LONG:

Who were you getting the instructions fro =?

MILLIR:

The trip to the pri=ary side to check that level came frc= the shift super-visor, and =ost of =y other stuff ca=e fre= the two control roc = operators.

LONG:

You don't have anybody under you, I guess.

FELLIR:

No.

LCNG:

None thte your responsible for? One of the questions that Dick (Wilson) suggested is, "Was there hardware needed, but not available?" One piece of hardware needed was the wheel that you found.

.12R:

The handwheel was laying over there.

Yea, it shouldn't have been off.

It's an, electrically operated valve.

It vouldn't open anyway. You know some-ti=es we would run into a probic= with that type of valve.

If you don't have an equaliring pressure across the valve you have to break it off the seat before the electrical operator vould take over.

I don't know if there is any way of correcting that problen.

LCNG:

How long did you stay on? Did you stay over that corning?

MILLER:

Yes, I was on the island, I would say, at least 'til 11 o' clock.

LONG:

Were you working, or did you just go to a holding area?

MILLER:

I'd say we actually worked 'til 9 o' clock. When the site e=ergency was declared, it was accusily 7 o' clock. We went to our nor=al ECS area. And then they'd just take an operator as they needed. For the first couple hours we were used pretty =uch because we had a good idea of where we were.

LONG:

Uh-huh.

MILLER:

Then after that, you know, they just kept assigning jobs. Then thev just started taking the people that were just coming in and giving the guys that were there all r.ight the benefit of the break.

LnNG:

So after the e=ergency procedure, and I'= not too familiar with it, you were sent to the control point?

MILLER:

Right.

LONG:

And then fro = the re you were assigned taske "ntil abeut 9 o' clock.

162 082

HILLIR:

Uh-huh.

_ SNG:

And then you started the process of checking out fre= the Island?

MILLER:

No, until 9 o' clock we were used basically fre= ICS all the tL:e.

They were always taking operators. But the last two hours I was still there available, but I just wasn't us'ed for anything fre= say 9 o' clock 'til 11 o' clock.

LONG:

Uh-huh.

MILLIR:

And then fre= 11:00 (a.=.) till 1: > (p.=.) was the ti=e I actually started getting processed. They =ade radiation checks, they =onitored the cars over at the 500 kV substation, and everything, and until we were finally cleared to go hc=e, it was 1:30.

LONG:

CK, then when did you co=c back en?

MILLIR:

11:00 that night.

LONG:

At what point did you personally bece=e aware that there might be radiation hazards?

MILLIR:

When they gave the site e=ergency. When eney announced the site e=ergency was the first indication I had of anything like that.

NG:

What ti=e was that?

MILLIR:

I think it was 6:40, se=ewhere around 7:00, give or take 15-20 =inutes se=ewhere.

LCNG:

Did you get any infor=ation at that point? Other than the alar = did any-body...?

MILLIR:

Well, they gave the alar =.

LCNG:

Did they give you so=e explanation about what...?

MILLIR:

Well, this is che first site e=ergency that I have been it ;1ved in except tests.

The thing 1 got out of it right away was that they declared a site e=ergency; the alar = vas sounded and they said evacuate the auxiliary building.

So right away I figured there was so=e type of airborne radiation in the aux building, cause that's usually why and the only reason why.

LCNG:

And you were in the turbine building at that time?

MILLIR:

I was in the turbine building.

LONG:

OK.

You didn't get an explanation of the situation, at least at that point?

M LIR:

Not at that point.

LCNG:

Fre= fou knowledge of the polishers did ycu =ake any reco=randations to anybcdy about things they ought to try to do or were you pretty =uch...?

62 083 MILLIE' You =ean at the time or over the past couple days?

3 LONG:,'

Over the past co uple days.

" ILLER:

Not in the last couple days or months even. A lot of things see=ed to be squared away. The only thing I found out was that I was definitely =is-infor=ed on the outlet valves of the vessels themselves. There's an over-ride on them that should leave them in the open position and I thcught this would pr. ent them from closing. Well, it will prevent them fres closing electrically, but not eith a loss of air.

FREDERICK:

Want me to standby?

LONG:

Yes, just for a few =inutes. We'll be with pu in just a =o=ent.

MILLER:

So, I don't have enough engineering knowledge to know exactly what should be done - if they should be =ade failed open, or failed as is, or whatever.

Just thinking about it =yself, I could see that I'd like to see those valves fail as is. in the future that way, with the loss of a pu=p or even the situation where I believe they gor - that's so=ething I missed.

Sc=e-where in the course of the night, in til that havoc, or running around doing different jobs, I =et a guy at the instrument air co= pressor and the receiving tanks. We drained water aut of one of the tanks, in particular about 7 minutes.

So se=ehow or another there was water in the air syste=s, too.

That's what caused those valves to fal_ shut.

But I'm pretty sure that happened after the trip, just going from the ce=puter reports and thinking back now at what I actually heard.

If those valves had failed as is, I don't think we would have got in quite the problem we did. The one that was shut, because it was not in service, would ha"- stayed that way and the other seven would have stayed in service the way they were and we still would have gotten watz: flow through with the one condensate pu=p

~

and the two booster pu=ps that were still running.

LONG:

What have you been doing in the last two nights? This is the...

MILLIR:

Well, last night.

REFFIRT:

The second night, I guess.

MILLIR:

1 hat was all right. That was the night it happened, and last night, it would have been - Wednesday =orning is when it happened. Thursday =orning i

was last night, this is Friday =orning, I do know where I'= at.

Last night when we came in, we care in the north gate. We didn't know what to expect-l anyway.

So they sent us to the Observation Center and there we got on coveralls and got an iden. Well, they just got us together and got us clearance to get on the Island to our respective control roc =s.

Up there we were told that we would wear respirators everywhere but in the control building and i the control room. We just did little odd jobs he:e and there. And we picked up all the Sen**

• 2 packs laying around that werc contaminated os. not and brought them out to whe re they could all get new air bottles on the=.

And then one o5 the Aux operators, Terry Daugherty, went in the pri=ary side. For approxi=ately 15 =inutes he was in and out.

In there we vere wearing double rubber suits and Sccet air packs and everything. With three Aux-A operators, we had to =ake four trips.

I was the fortunate ene, I vent the last two times.

For sc=e reasca or another the radiation levels teally i62 084

fell off from the ti=e the guy in the =1ddle vent in until the ti=e I went in.

The guy that vent in first, well they clat= dis dosi=atry read 350 to 400 =res for the fiiteen minutes he was in there. The secend guys read about 500 =res.

In the two trips I =ade I got 90 =res.

So radiation levels censiderably fell off.

But basically that's what we did all last night.

LCNG:

When you say you vent into the pri=ary side, was that in to the Aux building?

MILLER:

Yea, the Auxiliary building.

RI??ERI:

That would be a good thing to clarify.

MILLER:

Se, they don't think we were in there (contain=e nt).

LCNG:

When we get this transcribed, you can look at it and see if there is any-thing that you want to change.

Can you think of anything else, Don (Reppert)?

RI? PERT:

You =entioned earlier, whet you started to describe what happened that you noticed a pipe =ove two or three feet.

Do you have any idea why?

MILLER:

The only thing I can see is -

REPPERT:

IJ it like a water ha=er or -

MILLER:

That's what I thoroughly belk ve.

LONG:

What size pipe are you talking about?

MILLER:

24-inch dia=eter. That's why I politely turned around and walked behind it.

It's a condensate suction line.

I've seen it =ove a little bit before, you known in startup it expands and contracts, but nothing like that.

LCNG:

And this was a sudden =ove?

MILLER:

Uh-huh. All of it was going at one ti=e-But I wasn't going to stay around to vacch either.

LONG:

That might be i=portant. We'll try to put it together, the fact that you saw that could be i=portant.

MILLER:

I would guess that it was within the first 5 to 10 =inutes of the trip that that actually happened.

LCNG:

CK good, that helps too to have it placed in time.

MILLIR:

Cause I hadn't gotten away fren the panel yet.

You knew, I was still chacking the ' stuff there.

EI??ERT:

If you den't think of anything else?

s#.k, W~.,P o Cr m aR m W WI d 3Cu m = R.

s.;

v 7ce 162 Ob e

~

TMI STAFF INT 2RVIEW

}

IN/ g

~'

Steve Mull 0600 Ers.

March 30, 1979 N\\

\\

' taA Cenducted By:

R. Long and D. Reppert LONC:

We will ask Steve to identify himself and tell us his position.

MULL:

My name is Steve Mull and I am an Auxiliary Operator 3.

LONC:

Steve, were you en shift the =orning of the event?

MULL:

Yes, I was werking out at the industrial waste treatment.

LONC:

Ceuld you start with about an hour or so before the turbina trip and describe what you were doing and what you did as a result of the trip?

MULL:

Yes, the nor:al functions are dumping bags of che=1cals and things like that into different tanks mainly.

About the tice'when the relief lifted, I was takinE readings out there and I rece=ber that I could hear it.

It was very loud.

I walked out front and I came back in and finished up with the readings. Dale Iauder-(

llch had paged ::e and told ne to come in; they needed some help.

I went to Cate 7, which is adjacent to the turbine building, and I couldn't Zet in there because I didn't have a badge; so the security guard drove me up to the processing center and I went threugh Unit 1 into the building, up to the Centrol Rcom and waited for assignment thete.

I guess the first thing they had ze do was go cut and check to see if the turbine was still turning.

I went out there, found that it was and ca=e back in.

About fifteen minutes later they wanted me to go out and wait until it stopped, to put it on a turning gear if it didn't go on autecatically.

It did go en autematically.

After that I went back in.

There were so many odd jobs; 3111 ZEWI, at one time, instructed =e to go cut and shut the second stage reheat valves on the coisture separator reheaters.

I went out and did these and some other thing; I can't remember what I did.

I as trying to remember.

I think I went with Terry and ton Miller scuewhere but it was just to check something and then I came back.

It wes in the Auxiliary Building; I came cut because they ceuld handle it themselves and I went back upstairs.

I think that was abcut it.

LCNC:

Did you notice anything unusual where you were? Ycu indicated hearing the ncise. Anything else during the ti=e that you vere ecving ar:und?

MrLL:

Ycu mean thrcugh the paint or in the industrial waste?

162 086

LONC:

After the eve'nt, when you started to move towards the Control Room.

Did you hear any scunds or notice anything unusual because sere of those things =ay fit in somewhere and help clarify the picture?

MULL:

Not really, because like I said, I went right through the building and that s=all hallway where you ce=e through.

I don't know; I can't rttember anything that would be abnor=al.

LONG:

Have you been in the plant when there has been a turbine and reactor trip betore?

MULL:

Yes.

I k,ov what else I did. We have pressure indication on the discharge valves of the polisher beds. Eubba S=1th told v.e to go down and decrease pressure. While I was down there, I noticed that the suction on the C booster pu=p was leaking pretty bad.

Terry Daugherty and some of the other guys were running around the area right then and they said that they had told the=.

[ Assure the: =eans Control Soon operators...Ey Editor)

LONG:

Where were you vben the site Erergency was declared? What did you do under those circumstances?

(-

M1L:

'w'h a t time was that?

LONC:

Around 7:00.

MULL:

I was in the Control Roo=.

LONO:

Leaving the Control P.co= for a short time and geing back?

MULL:

Yes.

Eecause I felt that it was the best place to be if they needed to check something quickly.

LONC:

When did you beco=e aware that this was something more than the routine turbine reactor trip? Have you been through other turbine reactor trips when things go smoothly?

MULL:

When Dale Laudermilch called and let me know that there was a problem in there that they coul'd use sore help.

I guess the reliefs left about 4 and about 25 after maybe 4:30 it was when I had started to come in.

I had gotten in at quarter of (five) or somewhere around then.

LONG:

Mcv long did you stay on shift that night? Did you stay working?

MULL:

Yes.

I think it was 1:00. 1:00 or 1:30.

The other guys were writing devn all their ti=e.

162 087 e-

J p

9

^

_0NC:

Through' noon'tice?

MJLL:

Yes.

LONC:

Did you re=enber anything at all that was unusual?

MULL:

By then all the other shifts had core in and things that had to be done were more or less designated to them.

They were giving us a break.

LONC:

Did you verk last night.

Obviously you verked that night.

MULL:

We worked until 9:30 yesterday.

LONG:

Don, do you have any other questions?

RE? PERT:

No.

LCNG:

You were getting most of your directions from the CRO.

Anybody in particular?

MULL:

I would say Craig Faust was telling =e most of the things to do.

LONG:

And you don' t have anybody that you would have been co=municating with?

(

You don't have a communication link with somebody el'se?

MULL:

What do you =ean?

LONG:

Anybody working for you?

MULL:

No.

LONG:

Well, Okay that's all we need.

END OF INTERVIEW WIG STEVE MULL 162 088

)g.Sh.~$

}'W

~

THI STAFF INTERVIEW Juanita Gincrich 0500 Hrs. March 30, 1979 Conducted By:

R. Long and D. Reppert LONG:

This is Bob Long, Don Reppert and I are interviewing Juanita Gingrich.

It's about 0508 hrs. on the 30th of March, 1979. We'll ask Juanita to identify herself and state her position.

GINGRICH:

My na=e's Juanita Gingrich and I'= an auxiliary operator in Unit 2.

LCNG:

And, Juanita, you were on shift at the ti=e o f the... ?

GINGRICH:

Yes.

LCNG:

Could you just describe for us roughly what you were doing, say, beginning an hour before the event and kind of go into where you were?

GINGRICH: About an hour before, they had =e down adding hydrogen to the generator. As I guess you already know, it had been leaking and we had to fill it at least once a shift; so I was down there doing that. After I did that I went i,

up and I was going to the control roo= around 5 =inutes of 4, I guess.

Then I heard the turbine trip.

I went in the control roo= and just stood around and waited to see what they needed people to do and they sent =e down to the feedpe=ps.

They had been having trouble with the turning gears.

So they sent =e down; I was suppose to check the turning gears and see if they took over when they tripped off the line.

I went down and the "A" feed-pe=p and the "B" feedpu=p were down, the turning gear didn't seem to be working, so I called the control roo=

and they they told =e they were going to try to start the= fro = up there to see if they could get the turning gear to take over.

The "A" started turning gear and the "B" didn't.

So they had =e manually turning the turning gear - which is like I had to keep turning it continuously -

that's where I was =ost of the ti=e.

I had to turn it every two =inutes a half a turn; in between I got a chance to go up and check the vacuc= pe=ps.

I looked the=

over and checked their te=peratures and their oil and water levels and everything and they see=ed to be going steady and nothing irregular on those.

I guess it was around 10 of 7, I heard an alar = going off.

It was the at=o-spheric =enitors that sit up by the vacuu= pe=ps. I went over and saw they were CN.

Then, right af ter that they gave the announce=ent about radiation.

I was just there

'til I think about S o' clock turning the "3" pc:p, and that was about it.

162 089

LONG:

Ok, you had one very specfic job?

GINGRICH: Yeah.

LONG:

And stayed with it?

CD'GRICH: I had to keep doing thce to keep the shaft fra: va rping.

LONG:

And then what happened when the site evacuation was given. What did you do then?

GINGRICH: Well, I just stayed there cause I had thought I should, and then one of the other guys ca=e by and told =e just to keep doing that.

So I stayed down there, turning it till I got relieved, about 8 o' clock. Oh vait, that's right, one other guy came over and he was turning it for a while and then I vent over to the seal oil coolers and the te=peratures were real lov on that.

So I just throttled down on the discharges of the coelers and I got te=peratures to go up.

They were down in the 70's and they should be in the 100's and I got the te=pera-tures to go up to about 98 the last ti=e I got a chance to look at it.

Then I went back over to the feedpu=p, the rest of the ti=e.

LONG:

Did you go hc=e then when you vent off shift?

(

GINGRICH: Yeah.

LONG:

Shortly after 87 GINGRICH: Yeah about 8 o' clock they ca=e and relieved us and they sent us all over to the control room and then to Af2 central. Then they sent us up to Unit 1 control roo=,

and then they let us leave. That was I guess around 10 o' clock.

LONG:

Mcv about last night, were you on shift again last night?

GINGRICH: Yeah, I was on shift again last night but they had ce out, I wasn't inside the plant la.st night, I was like a chauffer and gopher.

But I was taking things back and forth fre= the observation center here to the PC and taking people back and forth and so I didn't really get involved here.

LONG:

Ok.

RI??IRT:

When they got the alar =, in the...?

GINGRICH-Well, the =enico 's right in front o f the C Va c uu= p e=p.

162 090

a

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RE??ERI:

That didn't require an evacuation of the turbine b1dg.

GINGRICH: Yeah.

Shortly after that they save the evacuation and yeu know I was getting ready to call the control room about it when they gave the evacuation.

RE? PERI:

I see.

GINGRICH:

And, then after that they told =e I should stay down there.

LONG:

Have you been on shift when there had been a turbine /

reactor trip before?

GINGRICH: Yeah. We had lots of experience over there in Unit 2.

LONG:

At what point did you begin to feel as though this was not typical?

GINGRICH: Well, it wasn't until I heard that alarm going off osar there that I realized so=ething else was going wrong, because I didn't have any other indications.

LONG:

Who gave you your instructions, to stay?

GINGRICH: Let's see, they announced about evacuating and I stayed there a few =inutes longer, then they called =e over I

the page; but I couldn't go to the page so one of the operators that was doing other things around there, Doiny Hiller, ca=e by and said that I should just stay down there and keep doing that.

LONG:

Who sent you to that particular task.

GINGRICH:

Oh, originally?

LONG:

Yeah, originally.

GINGRICH:

I think it was Ed Frederick.

Yeah, I believe so.

LONG:

And then that was just one that had to be taken care of?

GINGRICH: Yeah, that was one that you always have to do everyti=e the turbine trips, cause they never got it fixed yet.

LONG:

Ok, Don, do you have any other... ?

RE??ERT:

No.

END OF INTERVIEW i62 091