ML19242D885
| ML19242D885 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 05/09/1979 |
| From: | Womack E BABCOCK & WILCOX CO. |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7908280720 | |
| Download: ML19242D885 (19) | |
Text
,11 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY CCMMISSION i
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In the Matter of:
2:
IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW 3
of fir. E. Allen Womack Manager Plant Design S
Si si 71 81 Trailer #203 91 NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10l Middletown, Pennsylvania 11!
May 9, 1979 12 (Date of interview) 13l June 28, 1979 (Date Transcript iypea) 14) 188 15!
(Tape Numcer(s))
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IT ISi 19' l
20-1 I
21-l NRC PERSCNNEL.
l 22l l
I Mr. James S. Creswell 23 Mr. Owen C. Shackleton 24 25; I
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i 1l SHACKLETON:
This is an interview of Mr. E. Allen, Womack.
Mr. Womack 2
is presently the Manager Plant Design, Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear l
31 Power Generation Division in Lynchburgh, Virginia.
This time of this 4
interview is 9:50 a.m.,
Eastern Daylight Time, May 9, 1979.
The place i
5l of the interview is in an office of Babcock and Wilcox Facility for I
6l their Nuclear Power Generation Division in Lynchburgh, Virginia.
7l Present to conduct this interview from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory gl Commission is Mr. James S. Creswell.
Mr. Creswell is a Reactor Inspector gj presently assigned to Region III.
My name is Owen C Shackleton.
I'm 10j an investigator presently assigned to Region V.
Just prior to beginning i
11j this interview on tape, I presented to Mr. Womack a two page document g
from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission which outlines the scope 13 and purpose of this investigation.
It identifies the authority by g
which the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission is conducting this investi-g; gation and advises Mr. Womack of his rights to refuse to be interviewed and to refuse to submit any form of a statement.
It also identifies to Mr. Womack that he has the right to have present someone of his
,7 choice.
Mr. Womack has present for this interview Mr. Byron D Nelson.
Mr. Nelson is the Assistant Council for Babcock and Wilcox for their Nuclear Power Generation Division in Lynchburgh, Virginia.
On this l
two page document on the second page are listed three questions all of 21l which M-Womack answered in the affirmative.
At this time to make it 22j l
a matter of record, I'm going to repeat these questions and ask Mr.
2 31 Womack to please respond orally.
Mr. Womack did you understand the 24!
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text of the two page document that I am discussing?
682 061
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lj WOMACK:
Yr<
l 2l 3f SHACKLETON:
And do we of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have
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4 your permission to tape this interview?
5 6l WOMACK:
Yes.
l 7
SHACKLETON:
Would you like a copy of the tape?
8 i
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WOMACK:
Yes.
10 11!
SHACKLETON:
Alright sir, we will provide that to you or sent it to you by mail to your facility here where you are employed.
And now Mr.
]
Womack for the benefit of the many people who will be listening to 15j y ur testimony as you attempt to help us here to recnnstruct what transpired from the beginning of the incident on March 28, 1979 at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Station operated by Metropolitan 17l Edison, would you please give us your background regarding your 18; education und work experience in the Nuclear field?
19l 20!
WOMACK:
21l Alright Mr. Shackleton, I was educated in physics at the 1
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the highest degree I hold is a 22!
i Doctor of Philosophy which I received in 1969.
My experience in the 2 31, nuclear field began with the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1968 from 1968 until 1975 I was employed in a division of Reactor Develop-25j l
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ment and Technology and in various capacities.
In 1975 I joined the 2:
Babcock and Wilcox Company.
From 1975 until 1978 I was employed in 3!
association with the International Program Support of the 8&W company.
t 4l In August of 1978 I became a Manager of Plant Design coming from the r
5l position of Program Manager for Amuillheim Kerlig Plant in West Germany.
Gi Since August of 1978 I have been Manager of Plant Design.
7 8j SHACKLETON:
Thank you very much sir and now I'll turn the interview gj over to Mr. Creswell.
10' 11l CRESWELL:
Mr. Womack who do you report to in the Nuclear Power Genera-I q
tion Division Organization?
13l 14!
WOMACK:
I report to Dr. Donald Roy who's Manager of Engineering-.
15; Cr.ESWELL:
Okay.
As Manager of Plant Design what are your responsi-16, 1
bilities in the Nuclear Power Generation Division?
IS; WOMACK:
7g The Plant Design section of the Engineering Department incompasses c0; groups which have responsibility for Reactor System and NSS Analyses.
We have a unit which does emergency cooling system ar,alyses and a unit which does safety analyses a unit which does what we call contrnl analyses and a unit which does analyses of the macnanical response of the reactor systems in addition two other units are part of the section this units have respectively the integration responsibility for the plant design for the B&W domestic NSS and for international projects.
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CRE5WELL:
I see.
Mr. Womack as part of your responsibilities would 2'
you make decisions related to safety related problems that are identified 3l at your facilities in regard as to whether they should.. changes 4l should be implemented in other plants?
Si i
Gi WCMACK:
Yes or the members of my staff would.
7l l
8j CRESWELL:
Would the ultimate decision be yours?
9i 10 WOMACK:
Not in every case but I would frequently contribute to the i
11l ultimate decisien.
I 12!
CRE5WELL:
Okay.
I'd like if we could to go back to the time of March 13 14:
28, 1979, and if you could relate to us when you first found out about 15 the event that had occurred at Three Mile Island Unit 2?
16, WOMACK:
17j I was first notified that an incident had occurred at TMI 2 shortly before 8:00 a.m. when I arrived in the office on the 28th of 7g March.
191 20!
I CRESWELL.
Who did you hear about the event from?
21; 22f WOMACK:
Dr. Roy came to my office and gave me the information.
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If CRESWELL:
Did Dr. Roy indicate where he had obtained the information?
I 2:
3 WOMACK:
My recollection is that he mentioned that Bill Spangler had 4l passed it to him.
5!
61 CRESWELL:
Did Dr. Roy elaborate on the status cf the plant as he 7
understood it at that time?
8 WOMACK:
Yes, he gave me certain information, I believe that he charac-g 10l terized that he thought this had been a loss of feedwater event and 11 that the only thing right at that moment that I recall that appeared 12 to be particularly unusual with respect to this event was an indicated t
13 high r diation reading in the upper portion of the containment reactor building.
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WOMACK:
Well either one of two things eitner that there had been some release of radioactivity within the building or that a particular instrument might be reading incorrectly.
i 21l CRESWELL:
So at that time as far as radiation levels were concerned 22j
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your information was based on one instrument?
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WOMACK:
Based on indirect knowledge one instrument is..of what I 2,
understood to be one instrument, yes.
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CRESWELL:
Okay.
Upon receiving this information what discisions did l
Si you..did you make?
6!
7 WOMACK:
Well I was asked by Dr. Roy to establish responsibility, to g
followup this incident, to make those analyses which might be necessary g
to help the licensee, help Met Ed recover in the longer term since..from 10f the event and reestablish reliable safe operation at TMI 2 as promptly l
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as possible.
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CRESWELL:
Was there any discussion of..between you and Dr. Roy of 13 providing recommendations to the plant in a short..in the short term?
g 15, WOMACK:
It certair.ly wasn't an immediate..it certainly wasn't my 16 17;,
immediate thought at that point in time and for most of the morning 9
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thought was to gather those kinds of data which we ' Knew we would need to assist Met Ed in a recovery operation, in particular data which uC, l
might be related to the exposure of the components to thermal, out of 21; l
the ordinary thermo conditions.
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i 23f CRESWELL:
But the subject of providing recommendation to the plant at 2 46 that point in time wasn't discussed?
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WOMACK:
My recollection was that we certainly were not in the immediate 2f mode of trying to provide recommendations to Met Ed.
The onsite 31 operators were handling the event to our knowledge, and indeed were.
4l Sl CRESWELL:
Okay, it's my understanding at this point that Dr. Roy gave I
6i you respansibility for the data collection, analysis.
7 8
WOMACK:
Right, he ask me...he ask me to take..he ask me actually to gj delegate that responsibility and when he did call in other people and 10 made the various assignments.
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CRESWELL:
How did you go about impiementing that responsibility?
I 13l 14j WCMACK:
Well one of the things we did was recognize that we would 15; dditional detailed information t followup the engineering need 16 ev luation of the event and we asked immediately we selected three 77; people whom I believe you've interview to make a trip to the site near Harrisburg and those three people were Mr. Robert Winks and Mr. Joe g
Kelly and Mr. R. C. Twilley.
We did make transportation arrsngements g
f r them to go to Harrisburg to collect information.
0l 21l CRESWELL:
Did you communicate any of the information that you were i
giving to anyone higher in the organization say than Dr. Roy in..in 23!
the Management structure?
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WOMACK:
I did not directly at that point in time we then wished as B
f the morning developed we all wanted know more about what was happening 2
3l at TMI and our source of information is usually as it was in this case 4i through our Nuclear Service Department later in the morning we asked.
.we 5
joined Mr. Spangler of Nuclear Service in a general meeting and which l
6i involved a number of us and I believe did involve well among others 7{
Mr. Davis, the Senior Manager of the Division at that..on that day g
and we received a report of information from Mr. Sprangler.
9l 10j CRESWELL:
So your source of information concerning site conditions i
11l basically came from Mr. Spangler?
t 12l 13]
WOMACK:
Mr. Spangler, yes.
14' CRESWELL:
And that was..was that true throughout the day of March 15, 28, 1979?
g 17; WCMACK:
Generally yes, Mr. Spangler communicated througnout the day with.
the in..with Pennsylvania.
I did have one additional conver-g, sation following our morning meeting, Mr. Jim Floyd who is a memoer of the operating staff at Met Ed was here for simulator requalification 21;,
and I talked briefly with him he indicated to me that he had been in 22' touch with someone at the site and passed on additional information 23!
that there had been delay in the auxiliary feedwater initiation or thought that there had been delay and this is second hand information r n ')
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of course and we used that information in an attempt to get started on 2j simulating the transient that might have occurred at TMI 2.
N, 4;
CRESWELL:
Okay, what sort of information..what was the nature of 5[
discussion with Mr. Floyd beyond say the delay of the emergency feedwaters l
61 is that a fair characterization of what he would relate to you?
7l g
WCMACK:
That's my recollection that..I don't recall, you know, gj extensively what else we might've discussed I think we probably discussed..you 10f know.
how mignt've that happened and that kind of thing.
i 11l CRESWELL:
Did you discuss with Mr. Floyd what activities..what the 12 13 nature of the activities that B&W would be engaged in at that point?
14!
WOMACK:
I think that I mentioned to Mr. Floyd that we would be trying 154 16; simulate the event, probably did, but what he had passed on to us t
g would be helpful and I believe in fact that later on in the morning he..as he was at the simulator he was a part of our efforts to do g
some simulation.
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CRESWELL:
Ouring the day of March 28, 1979, did you personnally 22,j contact any officers of Metropolitan Edison Company or their parent company and GPU?
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lf WOMACK:
No.
To the best of my recollection I did not.
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3l CRESWELL:
Okay, are yoir aware of any s r 5 conversations that did take 4;
place?
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6l WOMACK:
I believe that conversations... conversation did take place 7
during the course of the day between Mr. Denton and Mr. Arnold.
8 CRESWELL:
Okay.
Do you know anything of the nature of that conversa-gj l
10l tion?
lli WCMACK:
g The only thing that I know directly..well it's all indirect f c urse.
the indirect knowledge that I have of that conversation 3
was that in the middle of the afternoon Mr. Denton did pass on a 9
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15 not..had not been established or was not being maintained at at least 400 gallons a minute that we'd die.
18!
CRESWELL:
Was someone responsible to you for yourself the one that 19t determined the quanity of flow that was necessary?
21i WOMACK:
Yes.
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23l CRESWELL:
Who would that've been?
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WOMACK:
That was my manager of ECCS and he simply recommended the..that 2!
we make sure that high pressure injection flow was being maintained 31 and he gave me a quantitative recommendation which I asked him to 4[
check before we passed on and he did check that and we passed it on.
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61 CRESWELL:
Your manager of ECS...ECCS is who?
7l I
8!
WOMACK:
Burt Dunn.
91 CRESWELL:
Burt Dunn.
Are you aware of how Mr. Dunn arrived at that 10 11l particular flow value?
12 WOMACK:
Yes, I believe he arrived at by looking at the...at the 13i expected decay level at that time.
15l 16; CRESWELL:
Okay.
Were any other recommendations made to officials of Metropolitan Edison Company or its parent company that you're aware 18:
191 WOMACK:
Well late during the day we discussed and recommended the 40 initiation of operation of one of the reactor coolant pumps in orcer 21!
to establish.. to reestablish force flow.
That was..I don't remember 22!
the exact time but it was very light in the day, 6 or 5:30 or 6 24i i
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CRESWELL:
Going back earlier in the morning we may have already i
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discussed this it's my understanding there's a meeting conducted i
3l around 10:00 in the morning in one of the training rooms.
1 4i, 5l WOMACK:
Yes.
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7j CRESWELL:
Did you attend that meeting?
I al, gj WOMACK:
Yes that was the meeting with the..iq which Mr. Spangler 10 gave us the information again.
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CRESWELL:
Okay and it's also my understanding that during'the course f that meeting the decision was made to send the three individuals we 13 discussed earlier to the..to the site.
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WOMACK:
Yes I would say the dicision was confirmed because we had already made a decision to send the..those three individuals earlier and arrange transportation earlier.
We just confirmed the..that these people should preceed and I think the final decision was made at 19; that point as to who the third individual would be, Mr. Twilley.
,c0 21i CRESWELL:
How was the decision made to send these three individuals?
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Sy that I mean these individuals appear to have certain areas of 23l expertise.
culd you describe to me why these three individuals were 24i selected?
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If WOMACK:
Well I can describe to you in particular how the two individuals 2l who are part of the plant design section were selected.
Mr. Winks is 3l especially knowledgeable of plant performance.. excuse me..and he is 4!
a control analyist and especially qualified in collection of data and Sj the analysis of..and the analyses of plant transients and it was l
6l recognized that he would need assistance and I made the decision to 7{
send with him Mr. Kelly who has a broad knowledge of plant systems g
generally in having participated in startup programs of other plants.
9l 101 CRESWELL:
Um Um.
Did you personnally give these gentlemen instructions 1
11l before they lef t?
l 12l WOMACK:
13 Yes, I ask them to go as quickly as they could, gather information 14, and telecopy it back t.o us so that we could begin..begin evaluations.
15; CRESWELL:
16 Could you recollect when you first received telecopied data of any nature from the site and what the nature of the material was?
7 18:
WOMACK:
It was the next day, it was the 29th I believe these gentlemen g
didn't really get to the site until the 29th and we began to receive I
telecopy plots of temperature pressure in the reactor coolant system.
21; I
22l CRESWELL:
Would you characterize the information that you had the 23l first day as..as being minimal of nature or was it sufficient enough to become.
.begin some sort of analyses that would either be hand 25l bd2 Ob
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1l typed calculations, computer typed calculations.
You already mentioned l
2l that there was some work done on the simulator.
I 3l 4
WOMACK:
Yeah, I think I would certainly say that we went ahead and 3l did some work based on the feeling that we had had a delayed feedwater 6i event and we used the simulator because it was immediately and readily 7
available to us rather than other design codes which would have taken I
gj a bit longer to set up.
9l CRESWELL:
Then perhaps it required more input data.
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11!
WOMACK:
Oh absolutely, yes.
12 I
13l CRESWELL:
g Were there any model changes made on the simulator that AY 15 16!
WOMACK:
I can't really say for sure, I doubt it, in the sense of 17:!
model changes as we would understand model changes the way the set of equations which the simulator solves certainly changes appropriate to assumption had to be made to delay feedwater for example which would not be the normal mode of response.
22l CRESWELL:
Were you at anytime in the simulator room observing?
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WOMACK:
I don't believe that on the 28th I was.
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31 CRESWELL:
Did you receive any information from anyone as to how the l
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simulator was performing in mock modeling tc.is particular event?
5l Si WOMACK:
Yes it was relayed back to me that...that the simulator 7
had...was running and they were running various cases and they were 1
8 seeing e us things and more or less as we expected.
91 10 CRESWELL:
Do..Do you think that the simulation was successful or 11[
unsuccessful?
12 13 WOMACK: Well, that's... success in terms of being able to say that, 14, y u knew, we ran..we ran simulation of certain..of what we knew at 15 that particular point in time the simulation ran and produced results 16; f m re or less in accord with our...with our expectations that was successful.
I would say at that point in time we did not have sufficient 17 7g information to sucessfully simulate what had actually had happened and g
was happening at TMI 2 and that did not come until later when we g
fouled up with the information that we had to get on the 29th from Mr.
g Winks and Mr. Kelly.
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Okay, that is from retrospect?.
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Yes, from retrospect.
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3i CRESWELL:
...that you would evaluate that? At that point in time was i
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any data or any information that was obtained from the simulator runs SI used as a based for making recommendations?
7 WOMACK:
I don't believe so, no, my recollection is that it was not.
8!
CRESWELL:
You had mention that there had been a certain recommendation gj 10 made to Mr. Arnold regarding high pressure injection flow.
Upon what i
11l inf rmation was that..that recommendation made other than I believe i
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y u stated that decay heat in the core.
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,Al WOMACK:
Right.
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WOMACK:
Well I think that they also had indirect information of high readings in the reactor hot leg thermocouples and we were concerned that adequate cooling be maintained.
21!
CRESWELL:
22;j Was it assumed to your knowledge that the 4..400 gpm high pressure injection flow would all be directed through the core area?
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If WOMACK:
No, I'm sure that it was assumed that there could be some 2j deversion of this flow and some factor or conservatism and was added i
3f that is our standard practice.
4!
5 CRESWELL:
What would be the path of deversion regarding the..the 6l layout of the reactor coolant system?
7l WOMACK:
Well when we performed ECCS analysis we typically take the 8
g assumption that a break might have occurred in one of the paths for 10j high pressure injection flow.
There's one in each cold leg and so we i
11j assumed that some of the high pressure injection flow might have been.
12
.might be deverted out the break and we have instructions regarding balancing those flows to assure that that deversion of flow out the break is not..does not deprive the core of necessary cooling.
e 15 CRE5WELL:
You assume then for the purpose of the 400 gpm figure that there was a break?
i 18:
WCMACK:
No, I'm just..I'm just telling you generically how we do ECCS analysis and with respect to the assumption of 400 gpm figure I don't know much conservatism specifically was added, I'm just telling 21j you generally that we do add conservatism in the chance that there is I
some deversion.
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CRESWELL:
I quess what I'm trying to get to though is was there any 1l 2!
discussion of flow pass which could bypass the core area?
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WOMACK:
No.
Not with me and I don't believe it was..or if it was i
5l really being considered at that point in time.
Si 7j CRESWELL:
At this point in time did you and your personnel believe
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8l that the hot leg temperatures were within some band of accuracy telling g,
you that there was a bubble in that area of the reactor coolant system?
i 10I WOMACK:
Well yes during the early te mid afternocn we became aware at 11 I
yy that time it was...at least the indirect information we were getting was indicating that.
13 14' 15t yu r n ua s respons W e to you make recom m ca-tions that a reactor coolant pump be started?
17!
WCMACK:
(es we did.
19' CRESWELL.
Did you or any of response.. people responsible to you c0 provide to either your people at the site, that's B&W people at the site or to the licensee a correlation between reactor coolant pump I
currents and possible conditions in the reactor coolant system?
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If WOMACK:
Yes I believe late in the day when we were communicating l
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particularly communicating these recommendations we did...I wouldn't i
31 so much call it a correlation but we did pass along tne information as 1
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to what current which you might expect to see if the pump were not 5'
pumping... if the pump were unloaded there were significant voids in 61 the pump bowl.
7 g
CRESWELL:
Were there any other things to be considered as a function 9
of pump current other than just the condition of voids in the area of 10l the impeller or void or voiding in the area of the impeller?
11l h
WOMACK:
At that point in time my recollection is that there were not.
13 CRESWELL:
Okay.
Owen, at this point I'd like to turn it over to you 14 15!
see if you have questions.
16:
SHACKLETON:
Thank you, no, at this inasmuch as Mr. Wcmack did not go to Three Mile Island, I don't have any..any questions.
Mr. Womack
, 81 would you have any further comments that you would like to make at g
20 21!
WOMACK-22,;
No, I don't think so, thank you very much.
23!
SHACKLETON:
We thank you very much in behalf of the Commission for 24 your time and we'll end this interview at this time.
The time is now 25; 10:20 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time, May 9, 1979.
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