ML19274G069
| ML19274G069 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 05/31/1979 |
| From: | Beck B METROPOLITAN EDISON CO. |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7908290379 | |
| Download: ML19274G069 (11) | |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA i
j NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION In the Matter of:
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IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW 3
of Barbara J. Beck l
Environmental Scientist, Level 2 4
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Trailer #203 9f NRC Investigation Site l
TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10 Middletown, Pennsylvania 11l May 31, 1979 12:
I (Date of Interview)
IT July 5, 1979 (Date Transcript Typea) 14!
289 15; j
(Tape Numoer(s))
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NRC PERSONNEL:
22l Bob Marsh 23; Thomas H. Essig Anthony N. Fasano 24l Rudolph R. Lefin (Met-Ed) 2sl 2000 072 i
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l MAMSH:
The date is May 31, 1979, the time is 11:10 a.m., my name is Bob 2
Marsh and I'm an investigator with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3
assigned to the Region III, Chicago, Illinois office.
This morning we are i
4 at the facilities of Metropolitan Edison located at 2800 Pottsville Pike in 5
Reading, Pennsylvania for the purpose or conducting interviews of specific 6l Metropolitan Edison personnel.
We at this time have with us Miss Barbara 7
J. Beck who is classified at an Environmental Scientist at Level 2.
We g
have other peop e in the room and as we've done with the previous tape's I'd g'
like to go around the table and have each individual identify himself, 10:
spell his last name and list his position.
Miss Beck if we could we'd g
start with you again.
12 BECK:
My name is Barbara J. Beck, I'm an Environmental Scientist, Level 2.
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I LEFIN:
Rudolph R. Lefin, Supervisor on Mechanical and System Engi.eering.
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ESSIG:
Thomas H. Essig, Chief of Environmental and Special Projects 17l l
Section, NRC, Region III.
18l 191 FASANC:
Anothony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialists, NRC out of Region I.
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21 MARSH:
I thank you, Miss Beck before we started we discussed briefly this 22 two page memo which I in the front of me and I just want to go over a 23 copuple of points before we begin.
Essentially in a brief manner this memo 24 covers the purpose, the scope and the authority for NRC's inved tbDio i
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2 and goes into some detail regarding the rights of the person being inter-1; i
2, viewed.
On the second page there appear three questions which I'd like to I
3 review with you at this time and just make them a matter of record.
On the 4
tape as well as the written document, The first question reads, do you 5
understand the above, makirig reference to the two page document.
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BECK:
Yes I do.
8 MARSH:
g And secondly the question, the second question states, do we have 10, y ur permission to tape this interview?
11 BECK:
Yes you do.
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MARSH:
And thirdly would you like a copy of this tape and/or transcript?
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BECK:
Yes I would.
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MARSH:
That will be provided within a day or two as far as the tape, as 18j soon as we could get back to TMI and I have access to my duplicating i
equipment.
I'll also provide you with a copy of the transcript, that may take some while, we have quite a backlog.
2000 074 22 BECK:
Okay.
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MARSH:
There is a fourth question contained in the body of the letter and I
2t not called out specifically and that addresses your right to have a company f
3l representative present and if I understand your earlier comments, this is 4l the capacity that Mr. Lefin is in and this time.
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BECK:
That's correct.
7 MARSH:
Okay, to begin with Miss Beck, if we might could you give us a 8
g' brief synopsis of your education, your work experience within the nuclear 10 field and y ur duties with Metropolitan Edison?
11l BECK:
2 In April 1976 I was employed as -in Environmental Scientist, excuse me as an Engineering Assistant by Met Ed.
Brior to that I was not employed 3
j I been seeking employement since previous June, having graduated from Union College in Schenectady, New York, June 75.
I graduated with a Bachelor of 15; Science in biology.
Since I started my employment with Met Ed, I progressed from Engineering Assistant 1 through Engineering Assistant 2 then to Environ-mental Scientist 2 in September of 78.
My primary responsibilities have 18i r
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been in the nonradiological environmental monitoring areas.
Since the accident I've been very involved in the Radiological environmental monitoring program and it's,... the intensified progran as a result of the accidect.
21; 22 MARSH:
Okay thank you, one area I'd like to go into a little bit more 23 deeply, I think maybe Mr. Essig would be interested also, is what courses 24 have you had regarding Health Physics or Radiation Safety?)000 0 7 5 i
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1, BECK:
The only course that I've had is the 3 hour3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br /> training course that Met 2'
Ed provides in order to gain access to the station.
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MARSH:
Fine.
At this T.ime I'll turn the questioning over to Mr. Essig.
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ESSIG:
Barbara, what we'd like to do today is... my main area of involve-7 ment is, is the area of radiation safety, the irplant Health Physics, the g
offsite measurements that were made, the Radwaste refeases and so on.
Tony g;
Fasano sitting next to me is primarily interested i.1 things from an opera-f 10' tions standpoint and he's looking at about the first sixteen haurs following 11:
the event and I'm looking at the first 3 days from a rsdiological standpoint.
l 12 I'll pr bably have the bulk of the questions for you but Tony may also S
have some.
What I'd like to do is to,... well firs t coming back your 13 background, just very briefly you indicated that you had had the 3 hour3.472222e-5 days <br />8.333333e-4 hours <br />4.960317e-6 weeks <br />1.1415e-6 months <br /> 15 training course which gets you onto the Island from,... the training 6l course from the company.
Did you have any, as part of your Bachelors Program, uid you have any courses at all in, either Rad Protection or Radiochemistry or anything of that sort?
180 191 i
BECK:
No I did not.
20 21f ESSIG:
Okay, what we would like to do is to have you as best you can either recall or you made any notes as far as your involvement, in the first three days following the event of March 28.
In other words we'd like you to, as best you can, give us a chronology of when you were first notified i
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that something happened at TMI Unit 2, what you were called upon to do, any 2
support, direct support that you were called upon to give the plant personnel, 3
that type thing.
With that I'll turn it over to you and let you speak.
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BECK:
I came to work about 7:15, Wednesday morning, Wednesday the 28th and 61 I noticed that the managers were talking, and I thought, I got the inclina-7 tion that something had happended down at TMI.
I was busy performing my 8
normal duties and sort of ig'nored it, forgot about it, as more people came in towards 8:00.
And it was sometime be' tween 10:00 and 11:00 that my g
10 m nager Mr. Dick Klingaman called a meeting here in this building and 7g explained to us what had happened as well as he knew it and soon as he y
finished talking the first thing I asked was I have consultants who normally 13l perf rm n nradi 1 gical environmental studies in the vicinity of TMI, fish studies, other environmental nonradiological environmental studies was do I call the men off the river?
And the reply was yes I do and then I left the 15; 16:l meeting and got in touch with my consultant and by that time they did have y
two boats with about 5 people out in the field and they had to send out a chase boat to pull in all the biologists.
That's pretty much all that I did that Wednesday morning which was related to the accident.
I think pretty much in that afternoon we were all waiting to here more news.
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21j myself did some of my normal work because there wasn't anything else related to the accident that I could do. On Thursday, I was busy calling up contacts, looking for a couple things.
We were trying to find sources of respirators for the site.
I wasn't ordering any, equipment, I was just 24 finding out who had supplies of things that we could use if we needed them.
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lf I also did some work in looking for some shielding.
Finding out who had 2
some certain types of shielding that we thought we might need.
And I was 3l looking for consulting laboratories who might have facilities to do, or 4
mobil counting labs where they could run analyses for us.
I pretty much 5
spent the entire day Thursday doing that.
On Friday it was requested that i
6l I take over the radiological environmental monitoring program which had 7
been intensified by Mr. Michael Buring the first day of the accident.
On Friday we started getting in some of the first results from samples which 8
g had been picked up from the field the day before and I started cataloging, 10 1 gging in all the results.
Basically I've been doing that ever since.
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ESSIG:
Do you recall the time that you received the first result from your contractor on Friday?
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BECK:
No I do not.
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I ESSIG:
Was it in the morning or the afternoon, do your recall?
18j BECK:
I believe it was in the afternoon.
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20i ESSIG:
The afternoon.
Had you had any involvement with the radiological 21;l environmental monitoring program part of that time?
23 BECK:
I was aware of the program.
My section works very closely together 241 and other people in the section had been running the program.
25l I was aware 2000 078 t
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lj we did have a radiological program.
We had two labs which ran our anaylses 2{
for us.
One of my consultants who is the same consu'tantwho did the fish 3
studies for us collected samples for the REMP radiological environmental 4
monitoring program.
Besides that as far as actually looking at results I 5
was not involved.
I was aware of when we had noncompliances and they'd l
Gi ften come to me ar.d say can you tell me what the river conditions were on 7
that day? Was the river high, low, any explanation for why we had a noncom-pliance.~
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ESSIG:
10 The people,... you indicated your contractors or consultants were doing monitoring work on the 28th, that morning, you indicated there were two boats out on the river with a total of 5 people.
13 BECK:
5 or 6 people, yes.
15 ESSIG:
Where abouts on the river where they, you indicated there had to be a chase boat deployed to get to the Island.
18l BECK:
Well they keep tnere boats in Goldsboro Marina which is across the 19!
river from Three "ile Island.
We had boats out doing one fish study, a trap net study which nets are actually set along the west shore of TMI and the people physically have to climb out of the boats get on the Island outside the security fence but to secure there nets.
That was one program 23 which was being performed that morning.
Another one is a survey where we 24 go around and interview any fisherman we find to find out what there doing 25!
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with there catch, and that boat was also out in that vicinity.
That boat 2,
travels all over the resevoir and I do not know that morning how far he'd 31 gotten in his circuit.
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ESSIG:
Do you know at about approximately how long it took to... actually 6!
for the chase boat to run down the other two boats and get them off the 7
PiV8P?
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BECK:
It was,... the chase boat probably went out within half an hour of g
10l my call to the laboratory, the name of the consultant is Ichtyological 1
11 Associates Incoporated, I would imagine it took about another half hour to 12 get,... to get across the river and contact the other people, for them all.
to get back in.
I believe they were all by about 12:30.
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ESSIG:
15 Are you familiar with the York Haven Liquid Monitor?
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BECK:
Yes I am.
There is a composite.
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ESSIG:
The monitoring station I guess, is at the York Haven Fire Plant or 19!
Damm?
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21' BECK:
Yes we have composite sampler down at York Haven Generating Station.
It's just one of several we have going down stream at various intakes.
Ot's part of the REMP program.
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ESSIG:
There was an instruction given on the morning of the 28th to to 2
turn on the York Haven Monitor, do you know what that would have specifically 3'
intailed?
4 BECK:
To the best of my knowledge it was probably already running, so I 5
6 d n't quite understand why an instruction was given to turn it on.
It 7
continually composites small abquots of river water down there.
8 ESSIG:
g You know if there are any additional,... that is perhaps non-10 awuatio,... maybe a radiation survey meter or some other type of monitoring instrumentation at that same location that might get turned on, that might be related to that possibly.
I 131 BECK:
To the best of my knowledge there isn't anything else down there.
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15 ESSIG:
Okay, Friday when you were reviewing the data from the radiological 16,:
environmental monitoring program, were these data being made available to i
17l the site at about the same time they were made available to you or were you 18!
digesting the data first, compiling it and then making available to site,
... how did the data actually flow?
21l BECK:
On Friday, on Friday I'm not sure if the sice was contacted with any 22 of the results we'd seen, I believe all the results we got in on Friday 23 were basically less t.an MDL values that we haven't seen anything.
The 24l
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normal turn around time for samples varies on whether it was a water sample, 25l 2000 081 i
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an air sample, TLD reading, really we didn'+. get in very much information 2
oq Friday.
Wee did not collect anything until Thursday.
The labs just 3
did'nt have time to turn around many results that quickly.
By the weekend, 41 by Sunday, the reporting was more formalized and I started issuing daily Sj updates to running tables on all the results and I have been on a daily l
basis since then.
About a month ago we stopped doing it on the weekends.
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But by Sunday we were issuing daily reports which were being sent dcwn to the site.
8 9l ESSIG:
10 Okay, I believe that's probably all the questions that I, that I y
have, unless either of you gentlemen have any questions?
12 MARSH:
No.
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FASAN0:
No none.
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BECK:
Okay.
l 18i ESSIG:
This is a short and sweet one here.
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MARSH:
Okay, we'd like to say thank you, we appreciate your time, the time 21 now being 11:28, we'll terminate the tape and also regcongizing your probably 22 still quite busy.
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BECK:
Yes.
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ESSIG:
Thanks again.
4 Sl BECK:
Your welcome.
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