ML19274G071

Transcript of TMI-2 Investigation Interview W/B Mehler

ML19274G071
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	07/05/1979
From:	Mehler B METROPOLITAN EDISON CO.
To:
References
NUDOCS 7908290386
Download: ML19274G071 (22)

Text

_..

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 1

In the Matter of:

2' IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW 3

of Brian Mehler, Shift Supervisor 4

5; 6;

I 7

I 8

Trailer #203 9

NRC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10j Middletown, Pennsylvania 11!'

i 2

(Date of Interview) 13' July 5, 1979 (Date Transcript Typed)

1. 276 15j (Tape Number (s))

16[

}fOf2,fQ.Sb 17 18!

19 20i i

21i I

Mr: Adam Conner, Jersey Central Power & Light 22 Mr. Bruce Center, Seattie Office of Energy, Incorporated Mr. Larry Krips, GPU 24i i

25l 2000 100

[

I CONNER:

1; This is Adam Conner of Jersey Central Power & Light.

We're 2

, about to interview Brian Mehler of the TMI staff.

Also with me is, 3

well, I'll let them introduce themselves.

4 5

CENTER:

Bruce Center from Seattle Office of Energy, Incorporated.

6 7

KRIPS:

Larry Krips also EI working with GPU for Bob Long.

8 ADA.M:

Brian, if you would, would you please tell us when you, what g

10 y ur role is here at the TMI statien and when you came onsite the m rning f March 28.

11 12[

MEHLER:

I arrived onsite around 10 of 6, between quarter of a 10 of 3

14; I

15j I

ADAM:

Tell us what you remember, what you saw when you came into the 16; control room at that time.

18!

MEHLER:

When I came into the control room at that time, there was 19l 20l Jraig Faust, Fred Scheimann, Bill Zewe, Mike Ross and Ken Bryan and g

Ed Fredericks in the control room.

Around the area of the pressurizer i

21l heaters were Scheimann and Faust and Zewe.

Brian and Mike Ross were 22 back away from the panel.

I walked in and I asked them "what do you want me to do," and Mike said "go to Unit 1,"

and Ken said "no, I'll 2d go to Unit 1" because he knows what's going on over there--he was the

.ol 2000 101 i

h

2 1

supervisor of Unit 1 at the time.

So, at that time I looked, you 2t know, I looked at the panel and what I could see is, roughly all the i

3 heaters were on, it looked like pressure.

They couldn't gain any of 4

it, they had roughly 900 pounds in the pressurizer.

0.K., upon looking 5

at the panel I saw that the heaters were on and they were having a 6

hard time keeping pressure, pressure looked roughly 900 pounds.

7 Glanced at the strip chart; at that particular moment all the reactor 8

coolant pumps were already secured, and B steam generator was isolated.

gl Some time after that I backed up to assess the situation, and Kael Gutnne 10 showed up and I told him to go down and check all the pressurizer heaters and make sure the breakers were closed.

Then I went to the computer, punched out the pressures, the temperatures on the code, and the electromatic.

There was roughly 26 difference between the code thermocouples and the electromatic.

At that time I turned around and 14!

instructed Scheimann to close the block valve for the electromatic.

15 On closing the block valve we start to regain pressure.

16l t

17!

ADAM:

Excuse me, Brian, do you have any feeling for why people were 18l i

relunctant to shut that block valve prior to that time?

19!

20 MEHLER:

Prior to that time, they did check the thermocouples.

Down...the 21 valves are common downstream; all the lines come in common, so there 22 was possibly a feedback temperature-wise; it would be very hard to 23 determine whether that wu open.

In other words, you probably would 24 have been reading the same safe temperatures within a couple degrees 25 on the code as on the electromatic until the line cooled down.

2000 102

3 13 ADAM:

But why the reluctance to snut the block valve anyway?

2' MEHLER:

3l I wouldn't know why they wouldn't have.

I would have found 4(

it hard to shut it for any reason either.

You know, nntil I determined 5

that I thought weaping was leaking through.

6 j

ADAM:

The concern is that if that valve shut, you'd have to rely upon 8

your code safeties.

9 MEHLER:

10; No, with that valve shut, all that's left is the spray valve and the code safeties.

You know, if, again, for some reason your 11 12 w uld have pressurized back up and it wouldn't have held, you would have lifted your code safeties, and you would have pressurized the 13 system up to 2500 pounds.

f 15l ADAM:

Is there some doubt in the operator's mind that that valve, the 16j block valve, may not reopen once it's shut.

I 18l MEHLER:

That's a possibility.

19I 20' ADAM:

You think that was part of the reluctance in shutting the.

22 MEHLER:

It's been known to stick shut.

23 24 2Sl l

2,000 103 l

4 1

ADAM:

At this plant?

I 2!

3 MEHLER:

Both plants.

4 5

ADAM:

At both TMI Units?

6.

7 MEHLER:

Yes.

8 ADAM:

I see.

g 10' MEHLER:

11 At that particular time, we started to bring power (unintelli-gible word) you know, we backed off and tried to assess the situation 12 because at this time we were gaining pressure.

It looked like, you 3

,4 know, immediate upon coming in and looking and seeing the pressure, I J.

get...the pressuri.er was solid.

You could that.

So you...right 15 l

away you knew that the bubble was lost in the pressurizer at it was in the hot leg.

From looking at the situation, so right now what you had to do was reestablish the bubble in the pressurizer.

This is two hours into it.

At that time we started to regain pressure, but, uh, you know, we really couldn't determine anything, what was going on, and we were trying to find out, you know, what... at this time, we had no radiation alarms either.

The alarms didn't come in until, roughly, quarter to 7.

So, I'm here roughly 45 minutes and we did start to establish pressure, and we did get it back up.

I think turned, we stopped somewhere 1200, 1400 pounds, (unintelligible word), and the I

2000 104

5 1!

reactor coolant pumps were off.

We were trying to figure out how we 2,

could vent the hot leg so we get..., you know, you assume there was a

(

3i steam bubble in them...so we can get the steam bubble back into pressur-4 izer, which would have required an entry.

We were discussing tl.n,

5 when we started to get the radiation alarms.

We started to get the 6

radiation alarms and that was out of the question of going into the 7

building.

And then, the other talk was, to get it cooled down, get 8

decayed heat and ensure the core was covered.

That would have meant g

dropping pressure.

We did drop pressure at, you know, once, at a 10 quarter to 7, roughly, when the alarms started to come in, I think 11 Jim Silinger and a few other individuals showed up and at that point, 12 I think it was quarter to 7, we declared a site emergency, and roughly i

13 10 or 15 minutes later we went into general.

At that particular time I went away from the panel and started to help back setting up to do 15l the isoplasts and the phone calls and that other... the other notifica-tion.

16:

Also, at one particular... and I have no... I can' t put a time on it, we started to lose sealing steam to the turbine.

At that particular time, that's because we lost the auxiliary boilers in Unit 1, we made the decision to go to the atmospherics and the A steam generator and secure sealing steam and break vacuum.

Timewise, you know, everything fades now, but I do know that that stuff was done, and we went into the site emergency and then, you know, we were into it really deep and we were going out at the atmospheric. And then the State said we couldn't do that, so we had to reestablish seals and 24 reestablish the bypass, the blowdown valves to the condenser.

We were 25l 2000 105 I

h

6 1

doing that, and, uh, well, I really don't have too much more to say 2

other than, you know, they are the main things that happened dur:ng 3

the whole thing that I can remember.

And then, I don't even know when we made the decision, it wasn't until a couple days later, we nade the 5

decision to get the reactor coolant pump going.

6 ADAV-Would that be, you know, when you came on watch, was there a 7

8 general tenden.:y to want to get the reactor coolant pump back on?

9 MEHLER:

10, I could never determine, when I came on watch, when I got there, why they knocked off the reactor coolant pump.

You know, because when I got there we were at 900 pounds of pressure, and to me they could have still been running, you know, I could never determine why.

Except they said they wanted to go in natural circulation.

l Because B steam generator, they assumec tube rupture in it.

Which, 15i you know, this was after the fact.

I couldn' t evaluate them on it, 16,!

i you know.

My main concern when I walked in there was low pressure, a 17l l

solid pressurizer, and I assumed steam bubbles in the hot leg; I 18!

wanted tc reestablish pressure and get the steam bubble in the pressurizer I

where I knew it should be, and then go about my business to 2:,tablish 201 a flow in the...

21l 22 ADAM:

The first thing you wanted to do was to get normal pressure 23 control back in the plant; once you had that you thought you could restart the pumps?

25

{

7 1

MEHLER; Uhhuh.

2 3

ADAH:

But it was... was that clear to most people in the control room 4j that there was... that the reactor coolant system was steam bound?

5 MEHLER:

Oh, definitely.

It was clear to everyone that the bubbles 6

7 were in the hot leg.

You know, how much in the hot leg, I couldn't tell.

8 Normally hot legs take the pressurizer when you go down from...If g

you're sitting at 100 inches when you depressurize they'll take you up to about 385.

So it's a large volume of water.

But the pressurizer 10 was solid, and there's only one way that could have happened:

steam bubbles popping in the hot leg.

13 ADAM:

What was the high pressure injection doing during this time?

15(

MEHLER:

That was secured when I got there.

16j i

17 ADAM:

How about the next 2 hours2.314815e-5 days <br />5.555556e-4 hours <br />3.306878e-6 weeks <br />7.61e-7 months <br />; how were you using high pressure injection?

19l 20 MEHLER:

We weren't, really.

High pressure, well, I shouldn't make that statement.

The makeup pump was brought in, one of them, that was 22 for seals on the pumps and all that.

We tried...we were in the progress where we tried to open to bleed the water off the pressurizer to get 24 the bubble back in, and at that point sometimes we'd have to open up a 25 l

2000 107

8 lf 16 B, the feedwater ring.

That was, you know, I'm only hit and missing I

2' on that, because I wasn't involved in that too much.

I was more or 3

less out of it...you know, the first hour we didn't do that.

The 4

first hour that I was in, or roughly 45 minutes, the main thing was 5

getting the pressurizer covered, and then finding out, you know, to 6

get the steam bubble back in the pressurizer.

Then we went into the 7

site emergency.

I more or less got away from the panel, cecause there 8

was enough supervision up at the panel without me getting mixed up in g

it, too, with another idea.

At that particular time we already had 10 ne Shift Supervisor which on duty, that had the duty when it happened, 11 plus the Unit 1 Ops Supervisor.

We didn't need another supervisor 12, there trying to call the shots.

So I backed off and tried to help 13 wherever I could, to correlate, you know, anything else that was going on in the plant.

By that time, the control room, you know, by 7:00 it was a m dhouse.

There must have been 30 people in there.

15 I

16l ADAM:

Did that make it hard to work in the control room?

l 18!

i MEHLER:

Well, it made it rough becausa everybody wanted to come up to 191 l

see what was going on and getting in everybody's way; they had no 20f l

i business up there.

After a while you just had to tell them to get out 23.1 of there.

That's about all I really remember, and I was there for 17 hours1.967593e-4 days <br />0.00472 hours <br />2.810847e-5 weeks <br />6.4685e-6 months <br />.

23 24l 1

25J l

2000 108

9 1

ACAM:

You said that the steam generator B sas isolated.

What does 2

that r.cmally mean?

3 4

MEHLER:

0.K., what they did is, they made the assumption because the 5l offgas acnitor 743, which is off your vacuum pump, went into alarm,

' hat's indicative of tube rupture, steam generator tube rupture and 6

7 they made the decision that it was a B, to keep from releasing to g

the atmosphere they secured feedwater flow to 8 steam generator and gl boiled it dry.

So in other words, it was just existing.

There was no l

10l cooling or anything, it was boiling dry, and we were only doing our i

cooling on A.

Well alright, we can go to something else Ok.

The 11 ther thing we were trying to do.

You know, we wanted to, after we 12l finally could get pressure to go back up, then we wanted to two only 13 way we could do that was what we came with, float the core flood tanks n

e sys em, and that was to reduce pressure.

The other thing...

15 16:

we were making preparation, you know, once we got down the pressure enough, was to put the decay heat removal system on.

This all materialized g

f in the beginning before we went into all these radiation alarms.

Once 18l they came in, it was virtually impossible to go that route anymore 19l because, you know, the activity would have been... would have made the in the auxiliary building.

Prior part of that, you know, once we had it established, it was go down, drop the core flood tanks in the core, then be sure it was covered, then get decay heat removal as quick as possible.

24 2p 2000 109 I

10 li ADAM:

You have only feeling for why the radioactive water got out of 2

the containment?

Have you seen any reports on that?

l 3'

4.

MEHLER:

You want me to give my opinion?

5 ADAM:

Or opinions.

I don't think anybody knows exactly how it happened?

6 7

MEHLER:

You don't put sump pumps in a reactor building and pump water 8

g' out at normal level.

10 Ig ADAM:

Now that was secured after about a half an hour, wasn't it?

12 MEHLER:

Well, that's what they tell you.

I don't know either way.

g I've heard two stories.

Normally, if you look at the reactor building g

sump, it is a split sump:

a dry sump and a wet sump.

The way it's 15 16:

designed it's a wet sump; pumps start automatically'on level, pump the l

17I water, to whatever lineup you have which it could go to the auxiliary I

sump, it could also go to the miscellaneous waste holdup tank, 18l which is your normal flow path.

Ok.

Just off the...

Then you have 19!

the dry sump.

In other words, if you have a lot of water, it would 20\\

l flow over to the dry sump, and that's where you take your suction on 21l long-term cooldown, you know, in a small break LOCA.

22 23 ADAM:

Containment spray pumps would take the suction out?

24 25 2000 110

11 1

MEHLER:

By the decay heat removal system.

Okay.

That, I was told, 2

that those pumps were turned off at the panel downstairs.

I think by, 3'

Bill, that morning.

Sators they even evacuated the area.

I talked to 4

Greg Hitz; Greg Hitz showed up, I would say roughly around 1:00 in the 5

afternoon and he was over in Unit 1.

He came over, and he made an 6

entry with Scott air pack ar.d mask into the auxiliary building to 7

check out what was going ca because we were getting all this activity.

8 He tells me he secured the pumps.

Now at that particular tirre, -the g'

pumps could have no way been pumping, because they were under water, and also at this particular tirne we were having a lot...we were flipping 10{

11; switchgear because of shorts and all.

So all I can, you know, this is 12 strictly an assumption, I assumed the rtactor cuilding sump pumps were g

not turned off, they just kept pumping, peaping to whatever tank they were linad up to, the auxiliary building sump, or miscellaneous waste holdup tank, until the point that the sumps overf' owed out of the 1.5 auxiliary floor. At some point they probably gent under water, shorted 16 out, and tripped the breakars. Greg says he 6id find the switches ta 17 i

the off position, but you know, tnat's hearsay.

i 18' 19

)

ADAM:

Well, we hue, you kacw, the alarm summary, a computer printouk, 20f there's a notation where the pumps were, I believe it was trirped, at 21 4:38.

Now, what does that mean the computer had printed that on the'

/

alarm summary?

24 2000 111 2s i

i

12 1!

MEHLER: That says they ran and shut off.

2, f

3' ADAM:

Shut off.

We interpreted that to mean that they were secured 4

at that time, because it fit into about the right time that Bill Zewe 5

says he ordered them shut down, and, uh...

6 7

MEHLER:

Like,.you know, you can talk to Greg, and he tells me he shut 1

8l

,it down and that was in the afternoon.

You know, a lot of things were 9

going on.

He had a Scott air pack on too, and he and might have not 10, seen what he was looking at.

The other thing, I don't, well I do, I i

11:

' don't remember when they got the first four pounds ES signal.

I don't 12, really remember that.

I 13 14l A_ DAM: About 5 hours5.787037e-5 days <br />0.00139 hours <br />8.267196e-6 weeks <br />1.9025e-6 months <br /> into the accident.

I 15; 16l MEHLER:

Was it 5?

I know at 2:00 we got the boom.

I seen that I was I

17 sitti.ng in'the cffice when that happened.

That's when the spray pumps 18, came on.

At... hat's how I knew we went over 4 pounds, the spray o

1g pumps were running.

I said that can't be possible.

They can't be 20j running, and all we did, you know, we secured them, we looked at the

-21 charts, yuu know, you could see a line straight up, about 32 pounds, 22l then straight down, I said "who's dicking with the transmitter?"

You 73 know.

But, uh,'t'e only other explanation I could say that water was s

74 forced out of the.auilding, is the valves were left open and just the s

2p pressure of tha building forced it out, you know, just a level, the l

amount of water in the building.

qq l

su

-- e I

I I

13 1

1 ADAM:

The auxiliary building sump tanks are higher than the reactor 2

building sump?

3' 4

MEHLcR:

Reactor building sump itself is at the bottom of the 372 eleva-5 tion, the bottom of the reactor building is 382.6, o.k.?

And the 6

auxiliary building sump floor is 281 elevation.

The sump is some 7

5 feet deeper.

8 g'

ADAM:

Possibly could have ceen a siphon.

10 MEHLER:

Could very well have been.

What's closed going to stop them.

11 You had enough leveli You know, I don't know.

I just...

13 ADAM:

No one else does either, that's why we're...

l 15j MEHLER:

I don't knuw.

I wish I did.

But that's where, that's how 16 the auxiliary building got all crapped up like it did.

None of that stuff materialized until about quarter to 7 when all the alarms started to go off; in other words, so that means the water was down there at 19l some time, probably still as part gas and all, drying out until some time later.

So it could have happened initially in the beginning...

22 ADAM:

How about the fact that the seal water pumps were tripped?

You had yourself a switchgear that was tripping.

We understand that off 24;,

of one of the motor control center, you had your seal water pumps for 25

'000 113 7

your radwaste transfer pumps...

I i

t

14 lt MEHLER:

Yeah.

2 3

ADAM:

Now if that system were to shut down, would that have caused I

4 leakage of the tanks back to the pump seals?

5 MEHLER:

I would say that would be sufficient leakage, that it was the 6l 7

type of seal... the basic reason for the seal is itself is like a, to g

keep, uh, the activity from leaking out.

That's why you put a seal there.

If it's sealed off to its designad, you know, more or less g

10 without the seal water, minimize leakage just like a regular packing f and...

You know, I wouldn't thing...the volume of water we had 11 laying on that floor down there could have never came from the seal 12, 13 pumps.

14 ADAM:

What about the RR pumps? They apparently came on and did.

Two 15 facts that they told me.

I've heard that there was normally quite a bit of leakage coming out of the auxiliary building, to start off 7

with, but that the RR pumps were noted for having fairly high seal 18 leakage.

19l 20' MEHLER:

Definitely they do, but the RR's regular river water.

22 ADAM:

Right.

24l 25 i

i 2000 114 i

15 l

1!

MEHLER:

That wouldn't have gave your activity.

I 2'

f 3

ADAM:

Well, it maybe contributed to the volume...

4l 5

5 MEHLER:

Oh, it would have, yeah, we could have had the activity in 5

the auxiliary sump, and they in turn could have filled up the auxiliary 7

sump and flowed it out on the floor.

No doubt in my mind that contri-8 buted, that was one of our major sources of leakage in the building g

because the fact of the RR pumps, but activity-wise, that's nothing.

10 Just was a means of spreading it.

11 ADAM:

12 Back after we had to turn off the atmospheric dump valves, did 13 we have vacuum at that time, when we had to turn those things off, or did we dump it straight to the hot vault is we were trying to establish g

the vacuum back in the...

15 i

16I MEHLER:

We were losing vacuum, because we lost the seals, no steam.

g 0.K., at that particular time the vacuum pumps would have been drawing g

l cold air across the hot seal, and you ic,e ruin seal.

191 20 ADAM:

Right.

22 MEHLER:

The decision had to be made whether you want to ruin the seal on the turbine or break vacuum, it could go out the roof.

At that time we had no activity that we could assume was going to go out the j

2000 '15 I

16 1.

roof, because B steam generator was already isolated.

That was the 2

route you should have gone.

Now, vacuum would have decreased down to 3

a point where you would have gone out the roof anyhow, over a period 4l of time.

I 5

6 ADAM:

Doe; your... so at that point in time, the alarm printer said 7

you tripped, or something, the condenser vacuum pumps went off.

8 Something tripped them off...about the same time.

9 10 MEHLER:

Yeah...

i 11l ADAM:

12

...that they were starting to dump the (unintelligible word).

I 13l 14f MEHLER:

Yeah, we probably knocked them off and broke vacuum.

I 15j

^ ^ "

16!

17f I

MEHLER:

Well, I know we did.

18j i

19h3 ADAM:

0.K., the problem I've got is that everybody seems to indicate that we stcpped the atmospheric dump by 12:30.

But the printer doesn't 21 1

show the condenser vacuum pumps coming on until, gosh, maybe about 22 5:00 that afternoon.

I'm trying to establish whether you folks were just dumping...to the condenser at that time...

25!

2000 116 t

17 If MEHLER:

No...

6 2

3 ADAM:

...or whether you really had vacuum when you...

4 5

MEHLER:

We did not go back to the condenser until we had vacuum 6

reestablished.

We had roughly, I'm trying to think of the number we 7

had.. 12 inches of vacuum seems to be sticking in my head when I told 8

them to reestablish steam dump for the condenser.

And time when we...

9 ADAM:

I understand.

10 11' MEHLER:

...put the seals back in?

I lost track of that.

12 13 ADAM:

Is is just a matter of putting the seals back in, or do you actually have to put your vacuum pumps on start...

15 16 MEHLER:

You put your seals on, and then you start your vacuum pumps, g

I and you draw all the air off.

We were, if you're looking at the chart 18{

in there, which is available, you can see...

19!

i 20{

ADAM:

We've looked this morning.

It's going through...

22 MEHLER:

Ok., you car, see what time it was.

You can see the vacuum coming down, and then you'd probably see when we started putting the s+eam in.

As you put the steam in, you'll increase your rate of 2000 117 i

i

18 1

vacuum.

I think 12 inches.

I think I told Lynn wright, when we hit l

2!

12, put her back on because they're bitching about it going the roof.

3 You know, if you told me it was 1:00 or 5:00, I wouldn't argue that.

'4 5

ADAM:

Can you tell.anything about the H&V system?

6 MEHLER:

... the which?

7 8

ADAM:

g

...H&V systems in the various buildings when you came on and then when the alarms came on?

10 11 MEHLER:

Oh, you're talking heating and ventilation.

O k.

No.

g 13 g:

I think the question we have is...

I 15i MEHLER:

...when did we secure?

6 17 ADAM:

...on the drawings it appeared that once your radiation monitors 18!

l came on...

191 i

20 MEHLER:

...it trips them...

22 ADAM:

...it should trip them and shut the damper...

I 24 25 l

2000 118 1

9

19 1,

MEHLER:

Right.

2 3

ADAM:

We had one log entry that showed that both the refueling building 4

and the auxiiicry building fans were reestablished by 9:00.

5 MEHLER:

9:00, yeah, they were reestablished.

6 7

ADAM:

Is that a procedure that you just do that with a hand switch or 8

do you manually have to some how override within the...

g 10I MEHLER:

.,y If you walk back there you'd see we have to the on position.

I didn't know it was that way until I walked around the panel.

12 1 13 ADAM:

All right.

I 15j 16l MEHLER:

... pistol grips, like that, that kept them running.

Because j

i that whole... if you know, well, you know, switching them off.

When 17!

18l you leave go you've got another contact; that's one that would open it j

l to defeat it.

If you don't have that contact you have it this way you've got to stop.

I 21l ADAM:

Do you recall what the radiation level in the control room?

23 MEHLER:

No.

I just know we put respirators on.

24 2s' 2000 '19

20 1

ADAM:

Is that just a precaution, or was there actually some activity 2,

in there?

3 4!

MEHLER:

There was airborne.

5 6

ADAM:

There was?

7 MEHLER:

Yes.

We wouldn't have put them on otherwise.

You know, 8

g because it's a hazard to operate that way.

It made rough communica-tion and all that.

10l And they did evacuate the emergency group for the y

radiation team.

They did evacuate our control room, I think twice.

I They went to Unit 1 once, and if I'm not mistaken we also went over to the Observation Center and then came back on.

Timewise, I have no idea anymore.

I 15i j

ADAM:

What was your role during the emergency plan execution.

16!

17 MEHLER:

Well, when we first declared it, Bubba Marshall and myself, 18{

19l we knew where all the prints were, we grabbed the tables and brought them up, set it up, started to establish the full communications and I set an A0 down at the table with a phone until people went down to the HP and established communication on that.

I was trying to get the 22 communications all established; in the mean time, Mr. Seelinger came 23 in and he had Dick Bencil and I think Ron Ward started making offsite 24 calls to the people.

About that time, the place got flooded wit 20;0 g

3 2s I

i l

l

.I

.4 21 11 engineers and they started to do the X/Q's and the radiation teams l

2 were dispatched, etc., and I kind of wondered, you know, and then 3

helped, and then I moved in to help establish the vacuum again, and 4j anywhere else I could assist throughout the plant.

5 6

ADAM:

What was the mood in the control room during most of the morning?

7' 8

MEHLER:

In all truthfulness, other than a lot of people, the mood wasn't bad.

I personally think that it was very controlled.

I think, g

10 y u know, once we realized what we had, that we did have an emergency 11 and that we did have releases going, we handled it very competently.

12 You know, and the people were notified, and there was no panic, and everybody cooperated to the fullest.

You know, I mean, all the way 13 down the line, you know.

The problem is, no one knew how to stop it g

i 5l (nervous laughter).

You know, it wasn't like going over and turning 16!

ff the fan or stopping a pump.

It was there and snere was nothing you could do except carry out your immediate reactions and let the g

I public know and do wnat we could.

That was done immediately.

The 181 public was notified, well, I shouldn't say the public-people on that 19l l

list--were notified within 5 minutes of when that first alarm came in.

201 What they did after that, I don't know.

In the control room, like I said, the attitude was really good, you know, you could see the people getting it down.

One of the major problems that I can see is too much...

24 25 l

22 1.

MEHLER:

The biggest problem I found during the whole evolution is the 2;

amount of offsite phone calls

...try to explain repeatedly to the 3

people something over and over again.

It was impossible to...

4 5

6 7

8 9

10 11 1 28 13 14!

i 15l i

161 17{:

2000 '22 181 l

191 20 21 22 23 24 25 i

i l

I