ML19305A527
| ML19305A527 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crane  |
| Issue date: | 03/30/1979 |
| From: | Faust C, Gingrich J METROPOLITAN EDISON CO. |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 7908300101 | |
| Download: ML19305A527 (34) | |
Text
.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I.
I I
- In the Matter of:
2!
IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEW 3,
of Mr. Craig Faust, Control and Operator Miss Juanita Gingrich, Auxiliary Operator h,
6i 7'
81 Trailer #203 9l NDC Investigation Site TMI Nuclear Power Plant 10!
Middletown, Pennsylvania 11!
March 30, 1979 12!
(0 ate of Interview) 13l June 28, 1979 (Date Transcript fypea) 14l 145 15 (Tape Numoer(s))
~
16l 17; IS[
19j 20,i (O,
21 j
NRC PERSONNEL:
h Mr. Bob Marsh 23!
Mr. Don Reperd l
r 24i f
25l 1
l E57 081 I
1 LONG:
It's 400 hours0.00463 days <br />0.111 hours <br />6.613757e-4 weeks <br />1.522e-4 months <br />, approximately, on March 30, Don Repherd and I 2
are talking with Craig Faust and I'll ask Craig to identify himself 3
and his job functions so that the secretary recognizes his voice.
4 Craig.
5 6
FAUST:
My name is Craig Faust and I'm a control and operator, in the 7
control room at the time of this incident when it occurred.
8 g
LONG:
Okay, what we'd like you to do Craig, is kinda just start maybe 10 an hour or so before the turbine trip, what you were doing, what you, 11 and then move into your recollection of the sequence of events.
12 FAUST:
Okay, my function, my job function for the night was switching 13 tagging CR0 and about an hour before this happened why I go and I take 14 data that's required as far as Tech Specs are concerned, shifting 15 dailys and megawatt hour readings off the panels.
Now, that's what I 16 17{
was doing, I was completing, I was finishing up getting to the point where I was bringing.hift and dailys up to the point where I was g
going to be finishing them up towards the end of the shift an for an g
hours time that's about all I can say I was doing.....
21 FAUST:
Did you do anything unusual?
23 FAUST:
At the time no, I wasn't aware of anything unusual.
It was e I
something happened later that Ed Frederick the other CR0 told me 25l l
f~
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happened that I wasn't aware of and it was a problem with the bus 2'
voltage and, you know, you'll get from him and I found this out way 3
down the line and I saw nothing abnormal, you know, the plant primarys 4
that I was looking at at the time.
That's about really about all you 5l can say about it, I could go into detail on different facts, it's not 6
worth going into it.....
7 8
LONG:
No...
9 10 FAUST:
You could look over the logs to tell what I was doing.
11.
LONG:
Sure, that's fine.
p 13 FAUST:
14, So, the next step came around 4:00 when I was walking over to 15 my desk and mine faces the control room panel, Ed at this time was 16l standing with his back he was turning from the makeup panel over to 1
k at me when we were shooting the breeze about something when I 17 caught the first alarms coming in, now when I say caught the first alarms I was far enough away that all I could say, I pointed and at g
the same time said we're in trouble, somethings gone wrong with the O
plant and headed over, on the way over I saw the rod bottom lights come on and I saw out the corner of my eye the alarms coming up over on the electrical board where, to me I assumed at that moment it was a turbine trip followed by a reactor trip cause I saw the rod bottom lights come on.
My next steps were to go into our emergency procedure i
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for a reactor trip, Okay, which was shutting MUB-3376 that's letdown 2j isolation and start another the makeup pump right away and start and l
3' then get a trend on the pressurizer level to see which way it's going 4
which at this time Ed had step over and was right, you know, looking 5
at pressurizer level getting a quick look at that and I don't know 6
what else he did at that point, from that point but I had tried to 7
start the, e makeup pump twice before, you know, I had went to hold on 8
the switch the first time and I believe what I did was I left off to g
soon, there's a time delay of a second that you have to hold it over 10 and I was in a rush to get from there get over to feedwater because 11 that's another place that hurts us and it hurts us right away if it's y
not acting properly.
I took, you know this is time, I'm sure time was 13 m ving faster then I was thinking but it seemed like it took an awful 14 1 ng time, I went right back and grabbed the switch so, but you can see as I think you'll see in the computer printout somewhere a trip on 15 the makeup pump it is listed as a trip but it never started and I hit 16 it again I held it a little longer and I got a red light, but when I p
let the switch go the pump went off which I didn't understand and at 18 this time I had, I saw the red light come on I was backing off heading g
over and Ed looked over then apparently and saw that the pump wasn't 21l on yet and he reached out, grabbed it and held it too while he was monitoring pressurizer level.
This was pretty fast in there.
This 22 time that I saw him, when he didn't grab it and I saw that the pump I
did come on and I went immediately over and I was catchinc steam 24l generator levels coming down which for the situation when I was watching i
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the steam generator bubbles come down I figured we've gone on low 2
level limits, Okay, header pressure of course was going up and we were 3
lefting the refliefs.
Let me slow up here a little.
Steam generator 4-levels were coming down, I saw that, I looked over and I saw both feed 5
pumps off and I looked down immediately and my front panel in front of 6
it is where all of our emergency feed pumps are.
All three emergency 7
feed pumps were on and I looked up and saw that the 11 valves we have 8
visual indicators now of valve travel was duel indication gone from 9
red to green I figured the valves were trave' ling so my first assumption 10 was levels are going lower than one and I proceeded over to the turbine 11 panels finished up with reactions over there on an initial trip which 12 were to trip the turbine, trip che generator breakers and the field 13 breaker, verify that the, our action valves were shut, the turbine 141 steam, the turbine drain valves are open, we verified that it didn't take long to do and I immediately started back over to the feedwater 15 station, Okay, I didn't look at anything else over on the turbine 16 panel except to verify that the turbine valves had tripped, the turbine 17 had tripped.
These took place.
8l 19 LONG:
These things you're doing done here these are your normal EP...
O 21 LONG:
Emergency procedures?
23 FAUST:
Emergency procedures verification on the trip.
25 t
l 857 085 i
5 1!
LONG:
Are you doing this from memory or?
l 2l l
31 CAUST:
Yes.
4 5
LONG:
At that point?
6 7
FAUST:
This is from memory at this time.
Okay, I came back over to 8
the feed station...
9 LONG:
Let me ask you one other question because I'd rather interrupt 10 11 you now then later.
You've been through a turbine trip before?
12 FAUST:
Oh yeah.
13 14 LONG:
Yeah, Okay it wasn't the first time?
15 16' FAUST:
I know what I was suppose to be looking for and I was looking g
f r those signs there's some other things I was to follow up with yet 18 19l in the, that these could've been left for later ano my, as far as I'm 1
i concerned once the turbine's down and off I don't have s..rce of steam 20 going out there, so I'm safe there as far as pulling any more heat off i
2 11 of, to much heat out of the core off the reactor and subcooling ourself, our idea, right, is to stablize out down at saturation for about 547 temperature.
Okay, I come back over, the first indications that somethings wrong with feed was the generator levels were at 10 inches 25l I
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in both generators which to me I assumed the generators went dry, Okay 2-but, the thing that, you know, I looked at header pressure first I 3
figured header pressure down.
That'll be an indication of it.
4 Header pressure was still up so I said, not totally dry yet so I 5
started looking at the feedwater I reached down and grabbed the elevens 61 right off without even, you know, I looked at the indication and I saw 7
they were red and open but I figured somethings wrong and grabbed the 8
manual, the baily stations on EFP11 A and B and I went to full open on g
them although they're indicating open and it was about that time that 10 I lo ked down and I saw two valves in our system that were suppose to 11 be open were shut these were EFP11 A and B and I voiced this at the 12 same time Bill Ogler, he came into the control room he was in there 13 already so was Bill Zewe, our supervisor, and he mentioned something about it, while I was opening the valves and to start establishing 14 feedwa :r fl w through the emergency feed valve inte the generators, 15 Okay, I stayed there for a while I was spending quite a bit of O me 16 now watching steam generator levels, watching my pressure.
The pressure g
was cycling, it was cycling as if it were coming off the reliefs g
instead of going through turbine bypass valves, that's the way it was g
looking at me it only looked like it got to 1100 psi.
Reading specifics on the gauges is hard right now.
I was looking, I'm looking for areas I
and watching pressurizer, pressure going up and down which was still 22' indicating to me that to
..e we didn't blow the generators dry yet, so I continue to feed max as I could on it to get, establish a steam generator level which I established first in the "B", "A" trailed 251 i
c57 087 f
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behind.
For the Ica 'st time "B" was coming up I got up to 25 inches 2
on it I started b:. ding off on B and A was lagging behind.
Timewise 3
all I can say, is during this whole thing it's been about I'd say 4
further, duioig tnefirst, what, first ten minutes of the accident this 5
whole thing I was actually at the feed station now.
I looked over and 6
I saw flow on the reactor coolant pumps they came down some, they 7
came down and then it looked like it was about, it came down about 80%
8 it 1: 3k like to me we still had all four pumps, we had alarms on all g
the rumps up there vibration alarms, you know, which I figured we were 10 getting a lot of, we were going through a pretty good transient here, 11 why maybe there'd they just came in and they're not in we didn't have 12.
time to go over there and try to clear them. Right at the moment?
13 FAUST:
I looked back over, pressure, I got level in the A steam 14 generator coming up now, Okay, and it's, it was B, I was having problems 15 c ntrolling it and I shut off the 118 valve but yet my level ended up 16 around 40 inches which I want to level out around 25 at this stage of g
the game because my feedwater flow you want to establish low level limits as long as we have our feed pumps that's where we're moving g
heat.
I ended up establishing about 100 inches in B generator before I finally had to bend over and to do that I had to shut, reshut the EFP 128 to get it to stop coming up so I assumed the llA or the 118 valve was just leaking by, pushing by.
Pressure, I was looking at the trend recorder more than anything on header pressure on the generator so I was watching the A at the time and we have two other pressure l
C57 088 I
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1 recorders in there and they were pretty much going line and line; 2
there were staying together but I was still watching A.
At the time I 3
didn't think anything was wrong as far as that was concerned, you 4
know, as we were moving the heat.
5 6
LONG:
At one point it sounds like somewhere in that 10 minute interval 7
you decided that this was not a normal or not?
Is it in that first......
8 g
FAUST:
Well the RC pumps were what were bothering me, I didn't under-10 stand why I would see a decrease in the flow in the RC pumps at the 11 time, you know, I started thinking, sometning passed through my mind 12 at the time that possibly it's just that we're getting steam bubble 13 possibly in the loop, maybe it's cutting down on the flow, you knce, I 14, didn't, I don't even know if I really, I'm trying to think now if I i
15!
actually thought that or if I'm piecing that into memory now, sort of down the line here.
16 17l LONG:
18 Were you fellas talking to each other or were you pretty...
l 19l l
FAUST:
Yeah.
20, 21 LONG:
...much doing things independently?
23 FAUST:
I was telling, I was calling out to Ed and Ed was right over beside me, no Ed, In fact Ed, somewhere, I don't know whether Fred I
f r
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Scheimann came in here at this point.
Right.
All of a sudden I 2
looked over and Ed was I believe over on makeup pumps and Fred was on 3
the, glued into the pressurizer panel, pressurizer heater and spray 41 control and they were, you know, I knew they had problems.
Ed was 5
talking saying we have a high level on the pressurizer.
We had been, 6
and then we started the pumps so and I knew we, he was shutting it off 7
right, he shut one of them off somewhere along there to try to control 8
pressurizer level, we figured we were just jamming a lot of water in g
the pressurizer.
10 LONG:
Yep.
11 12 FAUST:
13 I was telling them I lost flow, you know, I was telling them I reestablished generator levels, I said I still have 10 inches indicated, g
but it's possible that we boiled dry because my header, somewhere 15 along the line, so I didn't know if they were catching this, all the g
way but I was saying we still have indication, we still have pressure g
in the generators, you know, I yelled out about the 12's to them I said, we have, I think I said, we haven't been feeding 12A and B are g
shut, something along those lines and reopened them and at the same time Bill was screaming at me, not screaming, we were trying, he was trying to page and get out and cover behind us and look at the overall plant and you know, he just I think it was just, the natural thing would be to get them open and he just yelled we have them open, the time was already, by the time I looked at it I was,pening them and telling them what I found.
C57 090 I
I 10 1:
LONG:
Are those valves...they're supposed to be normally opened?
2 3
FAUST:
Electrically operated valves, but there's no function to shut 4
them except man going up it operating the switch, you know, so the 5
thing that I think helped lock one of them out was the lights fpr 6l tje,. the switch controls for them are above each other, the upper 7
one, and I'm leaning over to use the panel here's the lights right, 8
and I'm leaning over controlling, two Bailey Stations up there further g
upon the panel, when I look down there's a tag over the one, you know, 10 when I first was looking over the, below me to see if anything was 11 array because the next thing we have 32 EFP, 32 and 33 valves that I 12 can bypass around the 12 and 11, somethings wrong there, it started 13 feeding that way, you know that was my next game plan but I found the 141 pr blem right away it was just as easy to open that.
In fact I would 15 have had to open that, I wouldn't have had to, but I opened it anyway, that's one valve compared to two.
Okay, I used, we knew we had a 16 17 pr blem with the pumps, amps seemed to be going, I wasn't really looking at the amps I looked at the flow I saw flow was down and we yg said we're cavitating. The pumps or something, you know, somthings 7g g ing wr ng r maybe if we get some of the pumps off so we said let's 20 try to keep the pumps on in the A loop because we have spray control there.
We took the 8 pump, blew the pumps off, the flow dropped further then it should've, it dropped in half, you know, it held there 3
and now once again we were into a problem there. We were still trying 25 to control, in fact we were still working on pressurizer level, you l
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know, and I finally established A steam generator up around 20 to 30 2!
inches in this interim that this was happening, Okay, I took the A or l
3 the B pump, I took the 18 and the 2B pump off and went back over and I 4
was watching the feedwater a little bit since I was feeding there, I 5
went back over and just made sure I didn't miss anything over in the 6
turbine just looking that way.
During this time I ended, now this is 7
where I'm having a hard time remembering how I got over there, but I 8
was, you know, I was sort of bouncing in the stations as I'saw it was 9
ok here, I went over to see if I could help out somewhere else.
We 10 had ES actuation high pressure injection, Okay, we lost the A reactor 11 coolant or A makeup pump, I should say we lost the B makeup pump which 12 is normal, we pick up the A and the C on the ES field trip off, that 13 was fine and dandy, once again we had an ES actuation where all the, 14 you know, the way our thinking was that we had this thought we were g ing solid. We didn't at the time we didn't really, you know, I'm 15 16 saying, this is why I don't think I didn't thought at the time that I 17 had, we had the steam bubble in there but we knew we had problems with 18j the makeup or RC pumps, Okay.
Fred was still on pressurizer temperature gf right in that area.
In fact, Fred I don't think moved, for the next 8 hours9.259259e-5 days <br />0.00222 hours <br />1.322751e-5 weeks <br />3.044e-6 months <br /> he was on pressurizer level controls right there, so I was going 20 around him listening to what he was saying and I took off I get over there and I ended up taking off the A makeup pump somewhere, this was down the line because Ed went somewhere, Ed moved out of the area, right, and he was doing something that we had to get done and I wasn't following exactly where he was going at the time so, pressure came i
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down to give us that and I think it came back up, at that time and we 2-didn't loose it right in that interim again, that period of time.
In 3
other words it's starting to get fuzzy.
I'm trying to, feel for what, 4
because I ended up over there, I ended up stopping one of the makeup 5
pumps, temporarily, right, we saw we were solid, we figured we definitely, 6
we had pressure, we had lev.el high and we were holding pressure we 7
didn't need that makeup pump shoving water in on us again just creating 8
more of a problem at the time, it seemed to us.
As far as I know, 9
from what we see now, you know, later on, this bubble apparently 10 already transfered, we were hard up in the pressurizer and the bubble 11 was over in the loops, so we were sitting there trying to figure out 12 how the heck we were going to cool this thing down and get that thing 13 back without aggravating our problem.
It was a little bit before this 14, to when, Bill and I looked over pump flow went in half when we stopped 15 the first two, Okay, that's where Ed went, "PPPT".
Ed was on the RC i
16 pumps then, and Bill was too and Bill said, "Take off the, I'm getting 17 ut of sequence here, Bill said, "take off the RC pumps", this is before I left the feedwater, which I did and established natural 73 circulation, which I was still low in the, I was down at 25 inches in yg 20 the steam generators so I had to start feeding them up, so I was trying to establish 50% in the operating range.
I was, you know, that g
makeup pump for me was way down the line yet and I'm getting ahead of the game here so I was probably for a good half hour on the feedwater g
flow not moving out of that area, telling them what and where my 5
1 vels were going and I was establishing level and we were trying to C57 093
13 1l determine, we had a heck of a time trying to determine temperatures to 2
see if we were establishing, I was watching steam generator downcomer 3
temperature and the, you know, it was reading about I was reading 4
around 5, 550 steam generator downcomer temperatures and Ed was over 5-reading the primary at this time, you know, the big hangup was that 6
the Tav was staying the same.
That was at 570 and it wasn't moving 7
and we were looking at Tc's, the Tc's were cooling down, coming down 8
in on us, it was really starting to look screwier than sin to us.
9 Then we knew we were, the next step that came in here were the pressures 10 on the steam generators.
The A steam generator was holding up, the B 11 was coming down.
It's got me into the point where I think we have a 12.
leak Okay, just prior to this we tried going on the pump again, we 13 couldn't figure, we didn't think we were establishing any cooling, we 14 said we're not getting anything so we figured to try to, you know, i
15j this was a little hassle, we were arguing back and forth on just how I
16' to go about starting the pump and leaving it on or just jogging it and 17 there was a little bit of a question and answer session there while we're st'ill watching everything trying to correct just keen going into 18(
i the right direction, hopefully, when we started, we tried to start the yg 20l A pumps we make a decision to try to start A loop pumps, okay, we went to start on them and they wouldn't pick up.
We finally got down to 2
the point where the, we got the 2B reactor coolant pump, I believe it g
Was, back on, okay, it was at this time this is quite a while now, I'm going to have a hard time with the times, we sat for the longest time where we were at 570 on Tav the situation we were having holding i
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pressure and holding, we were trying to hold the pressurizer level 1
2-there, but the level was high, we were having problems verifying, are 3
we acutally seeing what we're seeing, we were over on the, that was 4
where to go and by this time Ken Bryan was in there verifying the 5
computer point saying "that's acutally what you' re seeing there"...
6 7
LONG:
Yeah.
8 g
FAUST:
....a lot of time was passing during this period, but I think 10 when we reached'at that time we were sort of, we were just stagnet we 1 11 were sitting there whatever we were bpo;omg pff we figured it was in i
f 12 the loops.....
13 LONG:
This is still prior to the site emergency?
14 FAUST: Craig:
Yeah, this is prior to the site emergency.
The thing 15i i
16l that I recall late in the site emergency happening is when we tried to 17 start that, RC pump when we got one running, now it seems obvious to yg me now, is the pressure, the steam generators were cooling down and I was steaming off whatever heat I was getting out off the sides there yg and I w s cooling down and then we, we tried to, ;:s started the RC 20
' pump, picked up enough that it shoved, we were also having problems 3
with it... going critical again so this was another thing we figured, g
get this thing to jog.
23 24-25 C57 095
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LONG: What do you mean problems going critical again?
I 2
3 FAUST: Well, Okay, counts were turning back up.
4 5
'0NG: Were you concerned about that?
6 7
FAUST:
Yeah, we had started, we started emergency borating way back, 8
you know, when we, as soon as the, we started seeing trouble like g
this, you know, emergency boration, as far as they acutally do that we 10 hadn't at the time seen any problems that would tell us to start 11 emergency borating as far as the reactivity was concerned associated 12 with the NIs okay, so we, you know, Bill said, " start emergency borate 13 and get the boron going into that thing".
Several times through this 14 we were seeing increasing counts and the one time just prior to the 15l shift moving the pump the counts actually would come up to where we were seeing them on the intermediate range again, that's why I'm saying we were heading critical, it seems to me...which told me we've 7
got to get boron into the Core and we started ' talking about it, getting a pump, trying to get a pump on it try to move some water into there, g
into the core, back in the core get some heat out of there.
So that's 20' when we went through the pumps, we weren't getting any on finally we got the 2B pump to run, Christmas trees, you know, all over the place there, the site emergency was declared and the only indication before that, that we had of any radiation problems, you know, that's, not I
saying we had one but it was at the intermediate letdown, the inter-251 I
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yl mediate code system was showing alarms on the back panel line, which is c nfined to that system which we were attributing that just to the, 2
3l probably a lot of crud we broke loose we might've even gotten a leak into the, you know, this is my line of thought got a leak into the 4
letd wn lers through one ot the tubes so.
5l 6
I LONG:
That's not been verified?
7 Si FAUST:
No.
As far as I know because we haven't, as far as verifica-9{
tion on it goes we haven't verified it yet.
It's something we should 10 look into yet, I'm sure, but we haven't had any, oh how can I say that, the blasted alarms are pegged out it might be one of the problems 12!'
with the radiation level in the Auxiliary Building possibly that we 13 are seeing.
As far as tank level, you know, it should be an obvious 14!
in leakage to it during the time.
Right now we're dom far enough in t
15!
pressure, no we're not, we have the problem with letdown and we may 16!
i have a leak in and we just not, we think we were, solidified, I think 17!
l we're solidifying, 'where a lot of crud is built up into the letdown 18!
coolers with all the boron we have is there now, that we just might 19l not seeing the leak through it.
I think that possibly that might be 20!
j the source of these, that was one of the first ones we got for leak.
21l Like I said when we started that other pump that's when very shortly 22 thereafter I started seeing 8 steam generator pressure dropping off, 23l that's when I saw the one going on and I said, by this time, who was 24l it, Brian Mailer was in, and we were starting to talk about we might 25!
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have a leak in the B steam generator, so our level was coming up, Pressure was going down it sure looked like it to me we went into an 2
is lation procedure and kind of wrapping up the B steam generator.
3 Which after we got thia isolated we got a, received a latch on that g nerator and now we just go along those right lines with it.
5 6
LONG:
At any time during this sequence did you or anybody else check the emergency procedures, the written procedures? Did you use those as a guide? You obviously started out doing the job from memory which you needed to do.
11!
l FAUST:
Ken Bryan aroke out the emergency procedures and we were going 12!
j over them and we were going from one thing we thought was a casuality.
Ran out of tape on Side 1.
14!
15 LONG:
Continuing from the other side.
I 17 FAUST:
As I was saying we were going from one casuality proced'ure, in 18f other words, we were getting into duel things to where it's hard to i
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piece together which one you are going to fcllow.
20 21; LONG:
Yeah.
20 23 FAUST:
But we started into a steam line rupture in which we took the 24 immediate steps on that as it was and isolated steam generator, the 25 l
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next thing was samples we tried to determine for sure that that was it 7
that was the generator which you know they were in the process of 2
doing at once again there's time passing here as you're sitting.
Of 3
course, right now at this time, right, we were also in a site emergency 4
and, not that site emergency but the increasing reactor building level g
would be indications of small break, LOCA right which is eventually what we had.
Bill pass the word to evacuate, you know, as soon as we 7
had the alarm for this we had the Auxiliary Building evacuated and passing the word I believe it was a site emergency, I could be wrong on that on just which one he was passing at that time...
11:
LONG:
Yeah.
12; i
13l FAUST:
And this, I don't know, this was, I guess it was about an hour 14l an a half two hours into it and just it came about.
From there Ed and 15l l
I and Fred then went on to still trying to control the plant, by this 16i l
time people were coming in and looked back and I couldn't see through 17l1 the control room anymore, there were people all over the place back 181 l
there ' carrying out the emergency procedures as far as the site emergency 19i l
and they got into a general emergency, you know, I'm sure it, they got 20 into a general emergency very soon after that I wasn't paying attention 21 as far as that goes, I was really watching on the plant.
22 23 LONG: Were you giving directions to the Auxiliary Operators during 24 this period?
25 i
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19 FAUST:
The Auxiliary Operators, some of them came into the control y
room at the time and Dole was directing them for the most part as to 2
what we needed what we wanted done at the time, so I don't think I 3
gave any words to anybody I didn't do anything as far as the auxiliary perator cause I wrapped up just from watching the plant.
5 6{
LONG:
Was anybody in the control room acting as the leader, making 7
basic decisions or was it primarily a team?
9 FAUST:
Well, Bill was the overall decision maker we were trying to discuss our problems as fast as we could decide what way looked right 11l l
to go at which way it w s right to go and you know, Bill was making, 12!
he says, "Okay, this is where we're going."
13 14!
I LONG:
This is Bill Shineman?
15j l
16i l
FAUST:
No, his name is Bill Zewe.
17l 18t j
LONG:
Bill Zewe?
19i 20' FAUST:
Right, He left the control room for problems that we were 21, having where he ran down to the, into contain building, the turbine 22 building because we were also having problems with vacuum at this time 23 in Unit 1.
Unit 1 of course lost steam from us aux steam supply from 24i i
us and they were trying to get there boilers on and they were having 25j S57 100 i
aJ 20 i
trouble with the boilers and they had them both on at one time and I heard the word a passed they lost a boiler and then they lost both boilers I believe.
A little later on the reestablished one to where 3
they could keep their vacuum over there, but we were still supplying our own vacuum at the time, Okay, but we were getting down to the point where we weren't going to be supplying our own vacuum because we shut the B generator off and we isolated the B generator, pressure in the B generator stayed fairly constant but level came up.
Level was increasing in the B generator and we figured it was the leak.
"A" generator was cooling down yet, you know, it was really getting ridiculous, I was getting down to around 200 pounds in the A generator and we weren't seeing any blasted cooling being pulled out of the system, by 12 that time we obvious figured had steam where we didn't want it and we 13 were just trying not to aggravate things and hold what we had till we 14!
could get some right decisions, you know, follow up some more keep 15i them going in the right direction hopefully.
16i 17!
l LONG:
You already identified some, but was there things that didn't 18I function properly in that you remember in particular...?
19 20) i FAUST:
Okay, I'm missing an area that I was working in here where we 21{
were shifting circ water pumps because ce also had a problem with very 22 high level in the hot well it went out of tight high we still had 23 vacuum.
l 24l 25j C57 101 l
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21 LONG:
y Yes, can you identify time wise when it happendedi 2l I
FAUST:
It was about...trying to get back on.
One of our problems was 3
4j we were concerned about dumping steam into the hot well and losing it and we had one condensate pu.:p on at this time whenever the booster 5
l Gi pumps tripped, you know, I was told later that they were on first the
[
feed pumps and then the condensate pump went.
My first impression was we had a total loss of flow from the polishers slamming shut, the g
valves on the polisher going shut and at that tirn I thought that's g
where it came, what our problems half had started from and that we couldn't get a bypass, the manual by..., well an electrical bypass, 11l i
I went back and tried to open the 128, the CLV 128 was just bypassing 12{
t around the condensate polishers couldn't get it open, well what we 13l l
wanted to do is try to reestablish the booster pump and, I don't know 14!
if we would have went with the feed pump, but we're thinking along the 15l l
line with the feed pump because we also had a problem with a jack on 16!
the feed pump not working and anything we wanted to get flow recircing 17 back to the hot well through it, you know, this was just little irivia 181 l
topic on the side that we were involved in.
Anyway, we were involved 191 partially a little off to the side getting reject valves open because 20 they had been throttled earlier, a valve downstream of these automatic 21; valves had been throttled to limit the amount of water that would 22 reject because we had problems on it if a reject valve opened we ended 23 up losing pumps and we had a dropping suction pressure due to pumping...but 24l now we wanted to reject and we the trottled we've got to get it open, 25!
r i
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l 22 you know, I was Okay...I gave, I was involved, I don't know who he was 7
2l with which one of us he was* listening to at the same time, but I was 3.
calling, I think it was, I don't know which one he Terry, Don Miller wasn't it I got a hold of one of the operators and I told him who I g{
wanted to get, you know, I told him I wanted to get the reject valve pen, he was in the control room at the time, and I was sort of talking 6
to him out of the side of my head telling him what I wanted he was he 7
was answering and said yes.
He went to open up on the reject valve going out to the storage tank, the condensate storage tanks and try to 9l get level down in the hot well but like I say I was losing vacuum, l
Okay, now we knew we wanted to steam off the A generator, we knew we lil I
were losing seals probably because we were losing plant sealing steam 12!
I so we started figuring well, the atmospheric dump are tge the next, 13l l
you know, thing we either control it, or they're going to lift on 14) there own, they're going to go up and blow there reliefs.
So we had, 15; we shut off two of our circ water pumps, no, we shut off four of our 16i j
circ water pumps out in the cooling towers, okay, what this buys us is 17{1 it shifts logic over so' that we can control our atomspheric dumps from 181 l
our bailey stations which were controlling the turbine bypass valves 19f shifts over to these so we can control off them as far as releasing, 20 you know, they're venting off steam from the generator.
The A generator 21 at this time was still going up where it was looking like it was going 22 to lift reliefs to me any second you know, we had to get the pressure 23 down and start blowing reliefs. We went that way and we got a call 24 saying, I didn't get full word of it and something like " don't put 25j i
C57 103 i
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yl anything out, we don't want to see that", or something like that from 2l somebody outside, somebody who must've been having a little power or f
swing or something because he wanted to know if we were pumping it 3
back into the condenser no matter what.
4 l
5 LONG: You don't have, you don't know who that came from?
6 7l FAUST:
No, all I know is I got Bill said stop, stop going to the 8
atmospheric put it back into the hot well, so we finally reestablished g
level in the hot well it was like we were doing our problems were looking better then I was starting to worry about flooding out the hot 1 11 well because losing that we had several ES's, ES acuations on building 12l t
pressure during this time and I was going, where I was over at the makeup pumps to help out over there because, while I can't think of 14 i
why I was over there but I was helping I was str.rting and stopping 15i makeup pumps as we were, they were coming on from the building actuation 16!
I'm saying the actuation, the reason we were doing this was building 17 I
pressure was going up slow we were anticipating, you know, we're going 18 to get it right about now and we knew why it was building up was 19l because we, we obviously, we end up controlling pressure, the pressure i
20 in the system by blowing electropneumatic relief, okay, which goes to 21 the RC drain tank.
We knew we had ruptured the disc in there and we 22 knew we were pumping a lot of water into the building through it, 23 okay, the pressure control pressure rise in the building was very 24 gradual and we got before anything happened here we had put it on l
l P$7 104 l
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?
24 f
y Reactor Building Emergency Cooling the two RR pumps to, you know, just 2
start cooling the building you know just to get ahead of the game there.
I stopped the A, boy, I'm having a hard time.
I know, I ended 3
4l up stopping A makeup pump okay, and sometime passed while it was off and I went back over.
We had the sealer we were supplying seals we 5
had already gotten building isolation and we were reestablishing 6:
things we needed from that.
Bypassing building pressure, after they 7
actuate you have the capacity to bypass it where you can operate g
components as you need them. When you know longer see you need something g
you take it off and you put it back on and reestablish control.
I Pressurizer level was still high, and pressure is what we were trying 11!
to control and we were trying to get a level and we were trying to establish a level in the pressurizer heat, you know, the heat, all the heaters on we never lost them except for breakers that have been tripping down probably due to all the heat in the control building 15i area.
I tried to restart A makeup pumo because I wanted to get seals 16i back to nor:r,al as well as, because I was pegging out the seals and I
~
didn't see them come back down or up.
One of my concerns was I didn't 18{
l want to damage those RC pumps seals now, I was trying to get injection' 191 flow path normal by reestablishing at least an A pump and going through 20!
i the 32 to control it.
I went to start the A makeup and it would start 213 for me. It came on and tripped >ff again showing me that I was having 22 problems with it so I was to restart in en it again and I just pulled 23 the lock and I picked up B makeup pump got that established and took 24 the C off.
I could see normal active shock with BWST lined up to it 25l i
i 857 106-i
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{
25 just in case we needed it.
I had been involved, Ed was behind, Ken y
2l Brian was behind the panel and I had been involved in establishing seal injection proper seal injection flow rates first all four then 3
I'm not sure why this decision came came out but by this time Bill had l
andabunchofthemwerebacktheretaikingandthiswasnolongera 5
"O 6l have and correct the problem to get the bubble which now we knew we had we're over,there back into the pressurizer so they had me secure the 16B shut the 16B and the 160 valves and establish 250 gpm through 16A and C off respective pumps the B pump in this case the B makeup pump and the C makeup pump, okay, and we kept going that way we knew what we were doing we were trying to press tne system out to where we i
could get the bubble out of the loops and get it back over and we 13l couldn't seem to get pressure up it was if the pressurizer was solid 141 se all we knew all we were looking at what was looking apparent to us at that time at least thats the information I was getting back what I ISi j
was determining as we were coming in our injection line instead of 17!
going into the core possibly or getting much into the core or otherwise 18t we would've actually gone up through, into the pressurizer and just 191 going, dumping out our atmospheric relief, we were putting it into the 20l building and I was watching BWST level there and initially it comes 21l down 55 and then it went down to 50 and our water and we're not doing 22l anything here and we knew we were getting, we probably were getting 1
23!
l some cooling by just getting water in there at least it was going in.
2 41 l
We were getting something from it, but we were also in wasting putting 25I f
i, 857 106 i
f 4
[
26 I
i 7j a lot of it back into the building and kept up that way till we at i
2f least started talking Ed Fredericks said, you know, "lets try and get 3{
pressure down to get the core flood tanks to get in, by this time we i
knew we were holding where we were at everybody was big, bigger higher 4
a thorities were back in the room talking about this, Ed was trying 5
, lets go this way and then we get pressure down we can have those 6
core food tanks dumped in there and hopefulTy quench the bubble and 7
reestablished the bubble back into the pressurizer so we worked that 8
pressure off to bring the pressure down to where we could get into the g
core which we had to go down M at least around 600 pounds to where we started putting the core flood tanks into the core.
Got it down it's where flood tanks floated on the core.
I'm trying not to be funny about it but it was a little tense in there things weren't going quite i
all the way we wanted them to go at times.
We had already had the 14I problem starting the makeup pump curing this time, right, and we were 15i into an ES as well and stuff and anytime during that site emergency so 16i we ended up actually staying this, staying this way, you know, I was 17 relieved about 9 hours1.041667e-4 days <br />0.0025 hours <br />1.488095e-5 weeks <br />3.4245e-6 months <br /> later into this thing, right as I was getting 18{
l ready be relieved I was talking to my relief, in fact before I got 19l relief momentarily because Tav or T hot started coming down and we 201 ended up with, we figured we're getting some water in there, we're 21 finally going in and, you know, all of sudden the plant started to i
22 shift again on us and we're getting ready to, we thought we were going 23l to get the bubble back in the pressurizer cause we had gotten the i
24 level somewhat of a level in there and we were able to get look like 25i A
(
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857 104 i
27 i
g we were starting to get some heat out of the heaters in the pressurizer
[
where we might just get the bubble back over but it was rather short lived and then all we ended up doing was reactuating the building isolation again because when the temperature came down of course we g t the flashing and went right out the drain tank probably into the 5
6-pressure and it came immediately back down, okay, we picked up everything and everything else seemed steady back out where it was again, it seemed, you know, everything went where it was we figured at this time we got our we overrode the system again and really bypassed it, bypassed ES, we stablized out where we were again, the building spray 11l l
pumps of course picked up and we took them off.
My reasoning behind 12!
[
that is we didn't have a high building pressure anymore and why start 13l l
washing everything down in there with sodium hydroxide so that's 141 about, you know, up to that point 'that's about where I finally got 15i relieved.
16i 17 i
LONG:
ALout what time was that?
18{
l 19 FAUST:
This is 4:00 when it started.
This was around 3:00, in the 20 afternoon.
21l l
22' LONG:
Other than the Auxiliary operator, did you have any communication from the people outside the control room?
i 24 l
25; 857 108 1
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18 FAUST:
No. I don't think so.
We had, as far as the communications flowing in and out of the control, No, like I said we had all the people we needed in there, and more, to handle that.
I was concerned with the plant primarily almost from the beginning of it, that is where T was working.
I 61 LONG:
Okay, you, can't you cover different kinds of things?
7 8
FAUST:
Yes.
9 10 l
LONG:
Do you have any questions for him? With each time we get ll!
something new added.
12l 13 i
FAUST:
You're hearing like you said, but other people are seeing that 14!
I'm trying to keep in, I'm trying to keep it in at least a sequence 15i that it had happened to me.
I'm hoping I'm not leaving anything out, 161 it is fuzzy on just when I was doing, the further I got away from the 17 initial part of the accident and moving around.
18l i
191 LONG:
And time spread out.
20 21 FAUST:
Yeah.
I 22 23 LONG: Well, we'll let you get back to your job and we appreciate it 24 very much the opportunity to talk.
I thing we probably have time to 25l talk with you fellas as a group, we may do that.
t C
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29 FAUST:
7 It might help because sometimes we each, we tried that the 2l ther night and it helped put things in there orders somewhat.
Then just one guy trying to fumble around and remember what the other 3
guy was doing or where he was at the time and why he was there.
4 S metimes he can say something that'll, snaps it back for you a little 5
.I bit better.
el 7
LONG:
Well we may want to do that, sometin.e.
Okay, this ends our 8
interview with Craig Faust.
Thank you Craig.
10 LONG:
This is Bob Long, we're interviewing Juanita Gingrich, it's 11' about 0508, on the 30th of March.
Tom Ephard is with me and we'll ask Juanita to identify herself and state her position.
14!
Gingrich:
My name is Juanita Gingrich and I'm an Aux Operator in Unit 15i 2.
16i i
17l l
Long:
And Juanita you were on shift at the time of the....
IS{
19i l
GINGRICH:
Yes.
20' 21, LONG:
... initiating, could you just describe for us roughly what you 22 were doing saying beginning like an hour before the event and kind of 23 go over ah where you were?
24 25l i
857 110
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30 GINGRICH:
7 About an hour before, they had me down adding hydroden to i
2l the generator as I guess you already know that it was bad leaking and i
3l had to add it at least once a shift so I was down there doing that, i
After I did that I went up and I was going to the control room around 5 of 4 I guess and then I heard the turbine tripping and then I went 5
into the control room, just stood around to see what they needed 6
people to do and they sent me down to the feed pumps they were having 7
trouble with the turning gears so they sent me down I was suppose to check the turning gears to see if they took over when they tripped off and on and I went down and the A feed pump and the 8 and as we traced I
it down the turning gear didn't seem to be working so I called the 11!
I control room and then they told me they were going to try and start 12l l
them from up there so we could get the turning g-ar to take over and 13l j
the A started turning gear and the 8 didn't.
So a,en they had me 141 manually turning the turning gear which I had to keep turning continuously 15i so that was most of the time I had to turn it every two minutes I had 17{
to give it a half a turn.
In between I got a chance to go up and l
check the vacuum pumps, I looked them over and checked their temperatures 181 l
and their oil and water levels and everything and they seemed to be 19 baring steady nothing irregular on those, and I guess it was around 20-ten of seven I heard an alarm going off here it was the atmospheric 21 i
monitors that are set up by the vacuum pumps and I saw they go off 221 and right after that they made the announcement about the radiation 23 and then I was just there till I think about 8:00 turning feed pump 24 and that was about it.
25 i I
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657 ill i
31 LONG:
Okay, and you had one very specific...
21 1
6 GINGRICH:
Yeah.
3 4i LONG:
... job when you stayed with it.
Si GINGRICH:
Cause I had to keep doing that, to keep the shaft from warping.
9l i
LONG:
And then what happened with the site evacuation? What did you 10 do?
lli l
12!
l GINGRICH:
Well I just stayed there because I thought, you know, I 13l should and then one of the other guys came by and told me just to keep i
doing that, so I stayed down there turning it till I got relief around 15i 8:00.
Oh, that's right, one other guy came over and he was turning it 16i for a while and then I went over to the seal oil and turned the seal 17!
oil off and the temperatures were real low on that so I throttled down, 18j on the discharges, of the coolers and then L got temperatures to go up 19l
~
they were like down in the 70's and they should be in the 100's around 20' 100 and they got the temperatures to go up into those and about 98 was 21; i
the last time I got a change to look at it and then. went back over 22 and was with feed pump the rest of the time.
23 24 25' i
I C57 112 i
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32 LONG:
So and then did you go home then or you went off shift....
2 GINGRICH:
Yeah.
4f L NG:
. shortly after 8:00?
m s
6 GINGRICH:
Yeah, around 8:00 they came and relieved us and then they 7
^ '*" * ""
8 they sent us up to Unit 1 control room and they let us leave and that was, I quess around 10:00 in that area they let us leave.
10l 4
11!
LONG:
How about last night? Were you own shift again last night?
12{
f 13 GINGRICH:
Yeah, I was on shift last night, but they had me out, it i
14i l
wasn't inside the plant, last night I was like chauffeur and gopher, I 15i was taking things back and forth from the observation center here to the PC and taking people back and forth so I wasn't really involved in 17) anything.
18!
19!
i LONG:
When they got the alarm in the exhaust was....
20 21' GINGRICH:
Well the monitor is right in front of the, I could see the 22 vacuum pump it's there at tne atmosphere alarm.
23 24 25' B57 113 l
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33 g
LONG:
It didn't require an evacuation of the turbine building?
l 2
GINGRICH:
Yeah, It was shortly after that they gave the evacuation, I 3
was getting ready to go call the control room about it whenevar they i
gave the evacuation, but then after that they told me I should stay g
down there you know to do that.
7 LONG:
Have you been on shift when there has been a turbine reactor trip before?
10 GINGRICH:
Yeah, you get lots of experience over there in Unit 2, 11; l
yeah.
12' 13 LONG:
And so at what point did you begin to feel this was not typical?
14l t
15l GINGRICH: Well, it wasn't until I heard that alarm going off oser 16!
there that I realized something else was going wrong because I didn't 17l l
see any other indications.
18l 19i i
LONG: Were, did you get, who gave you your instructions to stay?
20j i
21l GINGRICH:
They announced that about evacuating and I stayed there a 22 few minutes longer then they called me over the page but I couldn't go 23 to the page so one of the operators that was doing other things around 24 there, Donny Miller, he came by and said that I should just stay down 25!
there and keep doing it.'
i C57 114 i
34 1l LONG:
Okay, okay, who's, just who sent you to that particular task?
I l
I" I "*
O9'" Y' 3
4 LONG:
Yeah, originially.
g 61 GINGRICH:
I think it was Ed Fredericks, I believe so.
7 8
i LONG:
Then that was just from previous knowledge?
l 8
10l l
GINGRICH:
Yeah, that was one of the things you always have to do 11' everytime the turbine trips cause they never got it fixed.
13 LONG:
Okay, I don't...
(TAPE RUNS OUT) 15i 16!
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