ML19249B078
| ML19249B078 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 07/31/1979 |
| From: | Donaldson D, Essig T, Marsh R NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I), NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7908290568 | |
| Download: ML19249B078 (28) | |
Text
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA l
l NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 1.
In the Matter of:
2!
IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW I
31 of Richard ',l. Dubiel l
Supervisor 41 Radiation Protection, t'uclear
)
Si 6j 7j i
8!
l Trailer #203 91 NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10l Middletown, Pennsylvania lli April 24, 1979 12!
(Date of Interview) 13j July 31, 1979 s
u* d (Date Transcript Typec) l 69 15)
(Tape Number (s))
16 17!
t 13i
, c. :
i h
20 21i j
NRC PERSONNEL:
22!
Sob f*arsh j
Thona.s Essig l
23:
Dale Donaldson k
892, J64
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1!
MARSH:
The time is 5:17, we will be resuming the interview of Mr. Richard 2!
W. Dubiel.
3:
4 ESSIG:
I just want to come back to a couple of points just to clarify gl something as I was taking a couple of notes as I was going.
Dick, as you i
6 said earlier, let's see, at about, oh, 6:40 the winds, you said, were like 7
260 to 270 degrees and doesn't your wind direction indicator.
that indicates the directioi from which the wind is coming.
gg i
9l 10j DUBIEL:
Yes, that's correct.
I had.
lli ESSIG:
What you mean to say is, it was from 90?
13 DUBIEL:
It was from 90, yes that's correct.
15i ESSIG:
The wind was blowing toward.
17!
DUBIEL:
Yes, that's correct.
19!
ESSIG:
Okay, I just wanted to clarify that.
And, then secondly, do i
you,..
I didn't get the approximate time that the, that you said the 21!
l technician's name, Ed Higgenrider, you think it was him, was the one who 22l went over to Goldsboro to start up the survey over there the last time I 23l had was about, oh, between 0720 and 0725 you were surveying around the 24 island at GE-9 and GE-8.
Some time after that that I would like to if you 25 recall about when that sequence was.
l l
892 065
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DUBIEL:
I don't recall specific 'ime, I'm estimating that it was somewhere 2
in the 7:35, 7:40 range, that he was in the helicopter and it was moving i
3l off site.
4j ESSIG:
Okay.
~
5 6i DUBIEL:
Okay, at some point, and I'm having a real difficult time, I've 7
g never been able to realy pinpoint the time, the State did call back, I believe that George Kunder received ~that call and I recall at one point, g
may e w r
ree m nu es a Rer George had been ta N ng to W, George 10
,1l!
called me and said that he had Tom Gerusky on the phone and would I speak with him and give him the information that I had at that point.
I remember talking to Tom and indicating that we had done monitor readings that were
,31 in general emergency state, I knew that we greater than 8 R, I don't recall exactly how high we were.
I recall giving Tom the initial on-site readings and indicating that we had people moving off-site to do monitoring off-site.
We then established, and I may,.. there's a gap there, I don't recall if we broke communications at that time and then reestablished them 18!
shortly after or whether at that time we established direct communi-19!
cations.
I believe the first call from the State, we did break the communi-2 01 cation and at some point., some 15, 20 minutes later, I recall having the 21, State again on the phone in the shift supervisor's office, again talking to 22 Tom Gerusky and when I concluded my conversation, we agreed to leave the 23 line open and that I would leave the phone down right next to some of our 24 other phone talkers.
That if he should need to raise us, he would just 25i i
892 966 I
3 1.
holler and someone would hear and he I believe had it on an intercom, or 2.
box in his office.
l 3l 4
MARSH:
Excuse me, do you know his location, was he talking from his 5
ffice, or from the command center?
6 DUBIEL:
I believe he was talking to us from his office.
I don't know that 7
to be a fact, but that's my opinion.
8l 91 1
MARSH:
Have you spoken with him since?
0;;
l 11j DUBIEL:
I've spoken with him, but I've never asked him exactly where they I
were talking to us from.
At that point, my major concern was to start 13l getting as much information as possible from on-site and off-site readings.
i 14!
]
The on-site team started pulling air samples, charcoal filters, continuing to do dose rate surveys at areas along the fence.
I did direct them to try to use the plume to line themselves up downwind and to stay in constant i
17!
I communication and continue to feed back any indications that they had.
The 18l off-site team, we started receiving information somewhere around 3:00 or 19i i
slightly before 8:00, I remember thoughts of the crew, th3 off-site team 201 21l actually out running the plume and being over there and back, expecting to see anything.
We began directing them to a few sampling points.
At this 22!
t point, I really do not have a real good handle on when things were happening.
23I I think by reviewing the off-site team records and you'de be better able to 24l j
pinpoint times.
At some point in time, between 8 and 9 o' clock is a guess 2Si 892 967 i
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{
4 i
yj of mine, they did see a positive reading on a SAM-2, or let me clarify 2
that, a charcoal cartridge that had been used to sample air and then counted n a SAM-2, which is a dual channel analyzer, using a sodium iodide crystal, 3
they received it or got a positive indication indicating concentrations of 4
Sj appr xim tely 10 to the minus 8th microcuries per cc.
I immediately used the open line to the State and talked to Margaret Reiley.
I had very 6
little thought that that was a real number.
We were not seeing iodine on site, we were not seeing dose rates neither on site nor in Goldsboro that would back up a number of a concentration of that level.
Also, at about 91 that time, almost coincident with tnat, the value being relayed to us, we noticed the wind shift.
I think that's my reasoning for tying it to about 4.,
9:00, I think for a couple of days we saw the wind shift at about 9 a.m.
12!
l So niy immediate concer' was that we oucht to verify that number and that 131 14l-any radiciodine that might be there would now be t'owing bacK across the river and almost blowing right back on top of us which, from a public 15j standpoint, was a big benefit, a big plus.
16i 17l MARSH: Dick, at this point, what was the status of HPR 219?
181 19!
DUBIEL:
I don't recall the exact level but it was considerable higher than 20 the 8 R/ hour possibly as high as a thousand R/ hour.
21, 22!
l 00NALDSON:
This is riot HPR-214, HPR-219.
23l i
24i 892 968 2s!
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5 r
l DUBIEL:
Oh, excuse me, I'm sorry.
HPR-219 the... HPR 219 I'm really 1!
2 unable to give you a specific answer on that.
I do recall that at a point 3
somewhere on that morning the levels were up to full scale on gas and close g
to full scale on iodines and I don't recall if they were up at that time.
4 I feel that they were, but I don't remember.
~
~
i 6i DONALDSON:
7 During this period, from the time the general emergency was declared until 0900, did anyone use the readings on HPR-219 to project any 8
i off-site whole body or thyroid doses?
1 9l 10 I
i OUBIEL:
Yes, the projections were made by the people in the Unit 2 contro:
11!
room, they.
well,.. for off-site doses based on the 219 monitor and the 12!
dome monitor in the reactor building, HPR 214, the dome monitor itself was the overwhelming source for both gases and iodine, based on the ability to 1x project the one thing that did give me a lot of problems with it though was that those projections are based on a LOCA with an extremely high reactor building pressure, atmospheric pressure.
And we didn't have that building p' essure, so I felt that if anything, those levels would be,.
. projections 18t would be extremely high.
Very conservative.
19i 20!
l DGNALDSON:
The initial projections that were made, were they made using 21; the standard procedure listed in, I quess it's 1670.5?
23l DUBIEL:
Well..
24j 25l 892 ]69 f
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6 DONALDSON:
Or, did you use the backup procedures to be applied when 1
m nitors are full scale?
2 I
3i 4l DUBIEL:
The original projections were, first of all, it's 1670.4 is the 5l pr cedure and the projections were used that.
the method used was from 6
the calculational methods for if your recall, Dale, in the beginning of the procedure where we actually used monitor data rather than assuming a
/
articular accident, one thing that was quite evident was we really didn't 8
know which category we could put the particular situation into.
We didn't g
know that we had a LOCA, we knew pretty well much that we did not have a I
LOCA.
lll i
12!
DONALDSON:
Do you recall what the results of that calculation revealed?
14!
DUBIEL:
The projections,.
I do not recall the projections specifically, la, they were significantly high numbers for some reason a couple of rem type numbers stick in my mind for the iodines.
And some number of millirem and 17!
the gases, I recall that the gas number didn't give me a big concern because 18,i l
it allowed sufficient amount of time to verify the number.
We esentially 19!
had many, many hours until we reached the 5 rem criteria.
So we had a 20!
j chance to verify and to get scme off site numbers to back un our projections.
21l The iodine levels did not.
They indicated several rem / hour type numbers at the time.
I don't recall the exact numbers Dale.
23 24l l
25!
892 070 I
I 7
s 1l You mentioned that, that the calculations were carried out in the MARSH:
control room.
By whom?
2,I 3
DUBIEL:
They were carried out specifically be Howard Crawford and Mike 4l gj Benson.
They may have had additional personnel assisting, but they were the two main people.
6i 7
MARSH:
Anproximately what time were these calcultions complete?
8,l 9!
10l DUBIEL:
These calculations were complete somewhere in the shortly after I
7:30.
11!
12 MARSH:
Were the results of these calculations brought to you for your i
13j review.
14!
P 15-DUBIEL:
The results were.
the indications were given to me and also I recall presenting them to the State officials.
I believe Margaret Reiley 17!
at that timi rather than Tom Gerusky, I think Margaret was in and we were 181 communicating.
I think the major point at the time was that we were having 19l a hard time establishing our basis for the projections because we,..
prior 20 to the projections being made, we had people at the fence post, meaning on-21 site at the perimeter and they were not detecting anything of significance.
22f And we felt that with the projections, they would definitely be seeing a 23 significant gamma dose rate, and therefore we were very hesitant to believe 24' that the projections were acurate.
Also the projections that we were using 25l i
892 pl 6
8 11 were based primarily on the LOCA conditions assuming a 55 pound containment 2
atmosphere, which we did not have and believe that the projections assumed i
3l
.2% per day leakage from the containment, which is design values from the i
4{
F5AR.
5 DONALDSON:
61 Then, in discussions with State, it was mutually agreed that the calculational numbers for projected dose were in all probability 7
incorrect?
8 9
DUBIEL:
I can't specifically say that it was a mutually agreed thing, I don't recall we came to a sound conclusion amongst both the State and myself I can recall that I gave my interpretation and that I was not willing to recommend that protective action be taken.
And that the State, I do recall agreement from Margarget Reiley.
I don't,.. I think I'm that 14; if, to that degree, yes, we did agree.
15; 16i DONALDSON:
You did agree, what?
i 17!
18j DUBIEL:
Yes, that protective action at that time was not warrented.
And 19i that since we had the people off site that we should use the off site 20l readings to back up projections, to try to better define a source term 21{
before it.
also that we did not have an immediate hazard, that the off 22 site readings were in the on site readings were sufficiently low to warrent 23, j
waiting till we got off site values.
24j i
25i 892 972 a
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llj DUBIEL:
At approximately 9:00, the one indicated iodide level was relayed 2
to us and at the time, my first thought was that, I recall lcoking at the i
3l fact that between the time the guy, drew the sample, and the time he relayed I
the number through, which is a matter of a few minutes to count it, it 5}
l ked like the wind had made it shift just about at that time.
I was a relatively rapid shift of wind, covered.only a few minutes before it had
.el stablized blowing toward approxmately 80-90 degrees.
I immediately relayed the information to Margaret Reiley, and we agreed that we ought to get a g
quick analysis on a jelly detector with multi channel analyzer.
My capa-9[
l bilities on site for that were not at all available.
None of my equipment 10t I
was available due to it being in plant and the background levels in the 11!
plant that made it prohibitive.
12!
13{
DONALDSON:
Dick, just to put things in perspective, you stated and let the 14!
-8 apparent positive iodine sample, indicated levels of approximately lx10 microcuries per cc.
Could you give us a feel for the amount of time that 16, that level would have to persist in the envir-onment, before a lower limit 171 protective action quide would be exceeded?
i 181 191 DUBIEL:
I don't recall of making the calculation in terms of hours, but i
20; rather I looked at the graph in our procedure and noted that it was, a 21l couple of orders of magnitude below the levels were we would have to start 22 worring in terms of hours before we would reach the evacuation criteria of j
the Protective Action Guides.
I'm just right now, running through my mind 24!
l very quickly, I would estimate that we were probably in the 100 hour0.00116 days <br />0.0278 hours <br />1.653439e-4 weeks <br />3.805e-5 months <br /> type 25i I
892 J73 i
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10 range before we would reach any levels that would require protective action.
1l 2!
DONALDSON:
Was this evaluation also discussed with i.he State?
3 41
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DUBIEL:
The evaluation was not discussed with the State, however, the level was and it was also confirmed in my conversation with Margaret Reiley 6
that a tem to the minus 8th level did allow for adequate time to confirm.
the reading.
We made arrangements at that time.
I knew that we had.a g
l helicopter ready to bring the technician back to the east shore where we 9l could get him into a vehicle and allow him to go around the.
through the off site monitoring from a car, a Met-Ed vehicle.
Therefore, the helicopter llj would be available for me to get the charcoal cartridge up to the State.
I 12; I
asked Margaret Reiley if she had the capability to analyze it.
She confirmed 13j that she did and we agreed that a relatively close landing point for the helicopter would be Holy Spirit Hospital, right across the river from 15:
Harrisburg, where I also knew there to be a helicopter pad.
So we immediately 16i directed the helicopter pilot to take the charcoal cartridge and fly to the 171 i
Holy Spirit Hospital.
He confirmed he knew where the Holy Spirit Hospital 18; And that he was to go to the helicopter pad and wait for personnel was.
19!
from the State, BRH (Bureau of Radiological Health) to arrive and take the 20; charcoal cartridge-from him.
22I l
DONALDSON:
Now there is a point of confusion that I wish you would clear 23l for me.
Was this sample actually counted by Holy Spirit Hospital or was 24 Holy Spirit Hospital merely a drop off point.
25 t
i L,
892 974.
(
11 i
!lj DUBIEL:
Holy Spirit Hospital was merely a drop off point.
I 2!
DONALDSON:
Who did count the cartridge?
3 4l DU8IEL:
5 The State Bureau of Radiological Health picked up the cartridge fr m the helicopter pilot, transported it back to their' laboratories in 6l Harrisburg and counted it there.
It was some period of time later, a 7
couple of hours, that I had it confirmed to me that this cartridge did in g
gj fact not show any iodine.
However, subsquent to that we were... we had our personnel on the east shore along 441 and directing them to various off-site monitoring points, doing both dose rate surveys and air sampling using i
the same technique--using a charcoal cartridge and counting on SAM-2.
The 12l levels on-site started to come on scale for dose rates shortly..
sometime 14!
- prior to 9 o' clock and then after 9 o' clock when the wind shifted.
At that time the ECS was putting well in place, Tom Mulleavy had come in and taken over control of the ECS and control of the off site monitoring teams, the on and off site monitoring teams.
17l 18j DONALDSON:
Now where was Mr. Muleavy located?
19f 20-i DUBIEL:
Tom Muleavy initially entered the plant and went directly to the 21l l
Unit 1 Health Physics Laboratory, which was set up to be our Emergency 22l Control Station and he took over responsibility of directing the off site 23l l
teams.
From that point on, he essentially determined where individuals 24j would be sent to monitor and kept communications with them and we monitored 25 I
892 975 i
I
12 If those commu-nications and noted dose rates as they were radioed back in.
2 We had a radio monitor in the Unit 2 control room so we could intercept the 3
messages and have a pretty good handle immediately on what types of levels 4
were being seen 5
6l ESSIG:
Excuse me, this is an important point.
You said tnat Muleavy was I
7 pretty much in charge in the ECS directing off-site surveys.
Do you remember what time that was approximately?
g 9l 10l wu esdmate Gat R war, somewhere after 8:00 prior to 8:30.
11:
ESSIG:
Okay, so 8 to 8:30 somewhere in that.
12l 13l DONALDSON:
14:
Just to clarify further on that point.
From other records that we have, the ECS was relocated to the Unit 2 control room at approximately 0800.
Does that seem to fit?
16i 17; DUBIEL:
No, that indicates to me that Tom was in earlier than 0800.
Tom ISI Muleavy was in charge of the ECS prior to its being located to the Unit 2 19i control room.
20!
l 2 12 f
DONALDSON:
That would have had to been some time between 0730 and 0800.
22 l
1 23l DUBIEL:
It would have been if the other records were correct.
Let me 24 maybe give a clue that we could follow up to find the exact time.
The i
25j 892 076 b
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13 1!
reason for the ECS being relocated was tied to the shift in wind.
And as 2
the wind shifted and came back across the intake structures, we started 31 pulling activity back into the units and the Unit 1 intake structure was i
4j hit very rapidly as the wind shifted, the reason for them relocating was i
S that the background levels in the Unit 1 HP lab went up significantly and 6
they were worried about airborne activity levels in the ECS, so they immediately made preparations to relocate to the Unit 2 control room.
8 DONALDSON:
Now, clarify another point for me.
I was under the impression g
f that that the ventilation for the HP laboratory area was able to be on ig recirc, similar to the control room which is one of the reasons why the ECS has been designated to be in that location, is that correct?
131 DUBIEL:
That is correct and in retrospect, I feel that the relocation of 14!
to the Unit 2 control room may not have been warranted, but unfortunately, the gases that did migrate into the lab, caused increased background levels lo,.;
of the various monitors and also grab samples started showing particulate 17j levels.
It took us quite some time before we had the ability, and I should 18!
say the time, to take the samples and analyse them to see what type of particulate we were seeing.
Once we had that time, we were able to show that it was very short lived, approximately 15 minute half lived particulates, 21 leading me to believe that it was Rubidium-88 and that the relocation which 22.
-9 was really based on the fact that we were seeing about 3 x 10 type activity 23 I
which is weil below the MPC for Rubidium-88 but not knowing specifically 24 what isotope, the action they took was taken based on what they were able 25l to determine at the time.
892 077
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14 1.
DONALDSON:
Let me clarify this a little further if I can.
The Unit 1 2
health physics checkpoint where the ECS is located is normally recirculated 3l air.
Is that correct? The reason it is selected to be there is because 4
its ventilation is not directly from the outside?
si l
DUBIEL:
That's incorrect.
During normal ccnditions, it is ventilated 6i through the normal control tower ventilation. system.
It has the capability 8
f g ing on recirc through it's own filtration system.
9 1gj DONALDSON:
And how would this recirc be initiated?
11l DUBIEL:
I don't believe I can answer that question, Dale, I'm just drawing a blank.
13l I don't know that there's an automatic recirc, although it might l
very well come off of a high alarm on RMA-1.
14' 15 1
DONALDSON:
Now, at the time the levels began to increase, and you'de 16 mentioned particulate activity that was determined to be Rubidium 88, were 17!
there corresponding increases in other areas of the plant, namely the Unit 18; 1 or Unit 2 control room?
19!
20t DUBIEL:
Yes, there were first of all, let me just clarify, we did not at 21!
that time determine it was Rubidium 88, and I don't believe that we ever 22l did at any point in time, specifically identify that those samples were 23 l
Rubidium-SS.
We did then start seeing Unit 1 control room, at some point 2M l
in time after the ECS noted the increases in activity.
The Unit 1 control 25i room confirmed to us that they also were seeing activity increases.
i
)
o,c
{
f 17 l{
like to say thank you now for your time and your recall.
And we'll get 2
together at a later date.
Anybody else have anything else? Okay, I'll 3
terminate the tape then, at this time, being 5:49, April 24, the reading on the meter is 496.
4 5
61 892 979 7
8 9l 10!
I 11; 12l t
13l 14:
r 15i 16i 17!
i 18l 191 20 21 22!
23 i
241 i
25i i
f
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16 lj 2 control room.
At some point durir.g that warning, I don't recall exactly 2{
when, but one of the technicians set up for a sampler and we took periodic i
3 air samples.
We did see that activity levels build up.
We got,.
there's 4j primarily particulate activity and it was for several hours that we continued c;!
to periodically go in and out of masks, particularly respirators due to the d[
periodic increases in activ ty in the room.
It wasn't until sometime later i
.p in the afternoon, I believe, that I personally had the presense of mind to do something as simple as take an air sample and count it, and then count 8
it several more times over a half and hour, 45 minute period to watch the g
decay on it.
When we did get around to doing that, we saw the activity decay off, quite rapidly.
I also don't recall whether we ever hit a high lli alarm on a Unit 2 control room monitor.
12l l
13 MARSH:
Okay, before the break point, the time is 5:47, at 478 or the 14' meter, we're going to shut these down and change tapes.
16 MARSH:
Okay, the time is 5:48 now, we're set to resume.
18; DONALDSON:
No, I'd say we'll reconvene because Mr. Dubiel has an engagement 19' and will have to leave.
20!
21l MARSH:
Okay, during the change of tapes, it was indicated that due to t
22!
l "rior obligations here, Mr. Dubiel, we're going to have to terminate at 23l this time and we'll reconvene at some later date.
So in the interest of 24j expediting Mr. Dubiel's departure, we' re to wrap this thing up.
We'd just 25 892 180 i
15 l
1l DONALDSON:
Let me ask you now, normally wouldn't the Unit 1 control room be on recirculation?
2f, 3!,
DUBIEL:
Upon receiving a high alarm on RMA-1 which monitors control room 4;
Sj atmosphere, the system would automatically go into recirc.
I 6i DONALDSON:
Is that in fact what happened?
7 8
DUBIEL:
I believe it is, I have no reason to doubt that it did not work.
i 9!
i 10l DONALDSON:
Okay, now take me t.o the Unit 2 control room.
Was there any 11!
I activity increase noted in there?
12j t
13!
DUBIEL:
At the time we're talking about, there was none.
At some point in 14i time later during the day, and I'm just estimating that it was maybe 10 or 11 o' clock, we also saw the same situation; increased activity in the Unit 2 Control room.
This, I felt was due entirely to the extremely stagnant 17!
weather conditiens that existed that day.
That we were drawing air in 18:
through the service building, oh, excuse me,.
. air intake tunnels for each 19i l
unit and also that we were seeing air being pulled into the turbine halls 20l l
in both units through the normal turbine building ventilation systems and 21l that the air coming into ne turbine buildings, was migrating through doors 22 l
as they were opened and things of that nature, personnel past from one area 23j to another and air flow was coming into some of these areas and causing 24f increased activity.
We set up starting to monitor air activity in the Unit 25; 1
892 081 I
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