ML19318A544

Transcript of Lieutenant Governor Ww Scranton 790328,10 Pm Press Confefence Re Incident at TMI-2

ML19318A544
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	03/28/1979
From:	Critchlow P, Friess B, Gallina C, Higgins J, Scranton W ENERGY, DEPT. OF, NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I), PENNSYLVANIA, COMMONWEALTH OF
To:
References
TASK-TF, TASK-TMR 323-D79, NUDOCS 8006230334
Download: ML19318A544 (10)

Text

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+III CDf!h:0R'S PRESS OFTICE

• FOR LCEDIATE RELTASL CONTACT: Paul Critchlow 79 Press Secretary (717) 783-1116 TRANSCRIPTION

.s PRESS CONTERENCE ITEUTENANT C0VERNOR WILLIAM W. SCRANTON. 3d, e

s INCIDENT AT THREE-MILE ISLAND MARCH 28, 1979 10 p.m.

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FOLLOWING IS LT.COV. SCRAhTON'S OPENING STATEMENT:

C00D EVENING. WE HAVE JUST, CONCLUDED A MEETING WITH THESE THREE CENTLEMEN WHO HAVE BEEN FOR THE MOST PART 03 THE SITE SINCE A AT THE CONCLUSION OF THE MEETING, AND I WON'T CIVE 10:00 THIS MORNINC.

YOU ALL THE DETAILS BECAUSE I WILL ALLOW YOU AN OPPORTUNITY TO Q AT_THE. CONCLUSION THEM ON SOME OF THE MORE TECHNICAL ASPECTS OF IT.

THAT THERE IS OF THE MEETING I REPORTED TO THE C0VERNOR THE FOLLOWING:

CURRENTLY NO RADI0 ACTIVE LEAKAGE TROM THE PRIMARY BUILDING OR T o

ITSELF, THAT THERE IS, RADI0 ACTIVE MATERIAL CURRENTLY IN THE AUXILIARY BUILDINC. THAT THAT IS BEING VENTILATED AND THAT DUE TO THAT VEhiILAT THEnE IS SOME DISPERSION INTO THE ATMOSPHEREi THERE HAVE NOT BEE THERE ARE HICH BUT HAVE TAKIN SAMPLES, Ahi CRITICAL LEVEL FOLTJ OTTSITE.

NOT TET CRITICAL LEVELS FOUND ON SITE. I THINK THAT IS A P,RETTY BRIEF INCAPSULATION OF THE CURRENT SITUATION.

THESE CENTLDiEN HAVE BEEN ON SITE PRACTICALLY ALL THE DAY AND I THINK THEY CAN ANSVER SOME OF THE QUESTIONS THAT YOU MAY HAVE POSED EARLIER TODAY THAT THE ANSWERS MAY HAVE BEEN A LITTLE BIT SKETCHY ON.

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Answering questions with Lt. Cosernor Scranton are Bob Friess. Department of Energy, Emergency Response Team. Brook Haven. Long Island Charles Callina, investigator from NRC, Region I. King of Prussia James Higgins reactor inspector, Region I, King of Prussia y

You say there is no radioactive leakage governor, but then you say there is?

JENSEN:

No radioactive leakJge from the primary building where the actual reactor LT. COV is from the auxiliary building there is. -

. r, JENSEN:

What is that building?

The auxiliary beilding is a part of the secondary system...why don't you LT. COV come up and explain it to them.

The auxiliary building is a part of the plant which houses many of the HICCINS:

auxiliary systems of the plant To(XQ3033f 5 #

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DVORCHAK What is the source of that radiation, is it the?

HIGGINS.

OK, I can give you a brief scenario of where the source of the radiation, came free. Initially, in when the incident first occurred this marningg there was a turbine trip and a reactor trip which caused 8some' pressurelents...

transients in the primary system. As a result of these pressure trans a release valve lifted which relieved a fairly large amount of sater and steam to the inside of the rea'ctor containment building. That water was then automatically pumped out via automatic pumps to various other sumps in the auxiliary building area. This is the way the system is

- designed to work. There was apparently some additional activity in,the water, other than you would normally find in there as a result of this incident and therefore the auxiliary building has arv, earlier this

. C morning it still has a large amount of fairly highly contaminated water which is releasing some gases and causing some radioactivity.

REPORTER:

Arepeopleteholiveintheareasa'e?

r-HICGINS:

As far as the locality around the plant. There are no excessive radiatiod levels beyond the site boundaries. The latest, samples have been taken are continuing to be taken by Met Ed, the NRC and your group the DOE group and those are all showing fairly low levels, that is to present j

no major hazard to any people off site. There are some fairly high i

levels on site. These levels are being handled and the plant is con-tinuing to address the situation.

REPORTER:

Could you t' ell us what the levels are?

RIGGINS:

Dr. Gallina could speak as far as the specific radiation levels and those types of things and I can answer some systems questions and those types of...

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f DVORCHAK:

I was just going to follow that up - the radiation is from the water itself...

i That is correct.

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DVORCHAK:

Is it being ventilated purposely or...

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EIGGINS:

I would like to let Dr. Callina talk about the rediscion levels.

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CALLINA:

The water that is currently now in the auxiliary building backed up through some of the floor drains. These buildings have to be ventilated because j

people have to work in there to perform various operations so the building is being ventilated through special filters. The filters are taking care i

j of most of the radioactivity but some radioactivity is being detected i

at the outlet of the auxiliary building. Again, this activity is remaining 2

more or'less, at this point, on site.

They are monitoring it.

We see j

burps' occasionally coming out, of pockets of air as it is being'* filtered out.

But on site is where most of it is sesying at this point.0ff site doses 4

now are uniformly less than 1 ar per hour.

l WIGGINS:

Could you explain to us about the buildias being ventilated - is the water being drained out? Whai exactly is happening?

i CALLINA:

They have supply air to these buildings to ventilate them. If block it ou; not only does it get rather stagnant and stale but the activ'ity levels coming off from the water that is there evaporating become quite high. So they have to keep-ventilating the building through a filter so that it l

brings the activity within the building. lower. Most of the activity is filtered and some small amount of activity is then released to the atmosphere outside the ';uilding.

i WIGGINS:

The water is being evaporated?

CALLINA:

At present the activity is coming from the water that is now evaporating.

l They are now....

REPORTER:

Ventilation lowers the activity in the building?

I CALLINA:

In the building.

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3 How long would it take for that activity to pubside or disappear?

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LIVInC00D:

Met Ed at this time, is perfrenfng yarieud That is a variable question.

operations to get this water pumped to solid storage tayks ano then thl' CALLINA:

evaporation problem of course, goes away.

Is there any permanent damage to the facility?

REPORTER:

I don't think you could say t!. ore is any permanent damage would you CALLI %As Jim?

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,I There were some equipment failures and there was some damage of a As f ar as permanent sort because of 611 the transient that occurred today.

HIGGINS:

damage, nothing that can't be repaired with normal maintenance.

Can you tell us how this happened to the best of your knowledge or what TERRICK:

Met Ed people have told you, hre this occurred?

HICCINS:

The initial, initiati g sequence.

FERRICK:

Yes.

They were having some problems initially this morning in their condensate polishers which are filters which take the water which is pumped from HICCINS:

the condenser through the condensate pumps back into the steam generators.

This is on the secondary or the clean side of the plant that is the non-There were some problems, because of these problems radioactive side.

they resulted in condensate pumps trips, condensate booster pump trips, These are three pumps that pump in series to and main feed pump trips.

from the condenser back to their steam generators to be take the water When these pumps tripped again heated, and produce steam for the turbine.

that resulted in the turbine trip which, cause the turbine can no longer As a result be run without feed water supplied to the steam generators.

of that, that resulted with the reactor still at full power You are taking the load off the plant, the and the turbine tripped.

reactor is designed to be automatic power is what we call runback that ran back a certain amount and then with this happening, because you are no longer taking steam off, the pressure the pressure tends to se As a result of the pressure increase, it appears that there was a up.

Than, the pressure started to decrease and we had a reactor trip.

release valve open and then the pressure started to decrease, and appare:.tly a lot of this right new is supposition and there will be a full investigation of it done where charts and logs and this type of thing vill be thoroughly. reviewed. During the day today, we were primarily following the status of the ongoing efforts to get the situation to a stable condition.

What is the status right now within the reac' tor, the container TERRICK:

The reactor containment itself, which is the done that'you see, is now RICGINS:

at a slightly negative pressure

.02 psig when we left the site.

TERRICK What does that mean to a, normal person?

That means that it is less chan atmosphere. The pressure inside the-HICCINS:

rea: tor is less than atmosphere so that any leakage will be into the reactor, not going out of it.

.o You were about to describe a problem with.the rolesse valve.

MARNER:

It appears that the release valve which did lif t at the initiation of H7CCINS:

this entire sequence then stuck open which allowed the primary pressure to decrease considerably.

LIVING00D:

Where is that release valve?

MICCINS:

Inside the reactor container.

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That released to whit?'

HIGGINS:

It released to a reactor drain tank, as it is called at three-a mile-island and because of, and this is again a supposition. f 8

.et but it appears that the valve did stick open and blev dod an, excessive, 4

amount of steam to the reactor coolant drain tank which then has, a rupture disk on it, which is designed to rupture if the reactor coolant drain tank has more steam than it can hold. So it did rupture and that is where all the acitivy and all the water in the reactor originated which was then pumped out of the reactor building into the auxiliary building.

.r LENTZ:

Right now you are venting the auxiliary building. When did that start? -

-'l HIGGINS:

That has essentially been going on all day, am I correct?

J CALLINA:

Right, more or less, r

Lc;TZ:

We were told at 10 of 1 this morning that some radiation in the atmosphere...

HIGGINS:

Let me make a comment on that, there was earlier this morning some venting being done from the steam generator $ as a result of this incident it turns out that there appears to be some contamination on the secondary side of the plant. That is in the steam generator.

REPORTER:

How did that occur?

HIGGINS:

I will get to that. There appear to be some primary to secondary leakage although tl at is'not confirmed at the present time. There' appears to be some leakage which would be in the tubes of the steam generators on the secondary side That was primarily in the B steam generator which was isolated very early in the incident end is still isolated.

LENTZ:

We were told that there was leakage this morning and we were told that tl.e leakage started again at 11 a.m. and stopped at 1 p.m.

Tou era saying

, that all today there has been...

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HIGGINS:

There are various types of leakages and depending on what terms you give it it could be confusing. Sometimes you talk about ventilating, venting, and various different things. The steam generators themselves have what we call an atmospheric dump to it which allows you to reduce the pressursi in the steam generator and get rid of ensrgy from the steam generator and since t'sose are connected' to the primary thereby get rid of energy in the primary and cool the plant down, and take it to a safer situation.

Initially, this morning, that is the course of action that Met Ed was taking. That is they were lifing these atmospheric dumps 1r venging the steam generators and thereby because there was some activity in the secondary as a result of these leaks, that activity wasn't ulcased or vented off to the site where the atmospheric dumps do release to

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and that could be blown hither and yon by the wind.

LENTZ:

That was what was going on between 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.?

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HIGGINS:

That was happening in the morning time frame. I den't have the exact hours CALLINA:

It appears that the, main source of the radiation at this t % is the auxiliary building".~ Now some activity may have gotten out when they were venting the steam generatorn, but it appears,at this time that the main I

.g source of the. radioactivity that we are seeing now on site, and some off site, did come from the ventilation of the auxiliary building.

LENTZ:

That ventilation has been going on since...

CALLINA:

Well, it has been intermittent. They had it off for some time today but then the activity' levels inside the plant, started to get rather high.

LENTZ:

--difference between ventilation and venting?

GALLINA:

The venting is a deliberate venting of steam out through the plant vents.

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. ventilating ~is just supplying the normal amount of air to the (CAI'. LINA CONTINUED) building.

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33 LENT:s Like opening up th4 doors?

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ilding.

.Well, it is a good analogy, but you are supplying air to the bu The air that you are removing from the building passes through ' filters GALLINA:

and then out to the atmosphere.

So it has a lesser amount of radioactivity in it?

LENTZ:

.t that is the purpose of the filter -- is to keep the radioactivity 5

CALLINA:

Right, i

down.

the radioact'ivity that is coming out of the auxiliary bcilding has Luan coming out inteymittently through the day, has that been kicked

Now, LENTZ:

up by the wind inaudible

. 1 We have kad's team here since early this af ternoon. Vs had two teams FRIESS:

We also have a helicopter that was out in the field using vehicles.

flown up from Andrews Airforce Base with sophisticated monitoring equipment.

It made a run at 4:00 and an additional run at 7:00 and at those times there was a plume and they did see small levels of radioactivity following out to about 16 miles from the plant and right now the aircraft is up again making another run to see whether we are seeing decreased levels.

Now, when y'ou say small levels, we were told that it was like 7 mrs at the LINTZ:

When you say small levels, what are you talking about?

plant gate.

These are very conservative numbers, but the numbers that we are seeing yRIESS:

is at about 7' miles out at about er per hour, and about 16 miles out, about a tenth or two-tenths of a ar per hour. Those numbers are probably high by about maybe 50%.

FERRICK:

How about on site. Do you have any idea what the er per hour are averaging l

peak period in the day?

k This varitd The highest sp?t we have seen on site was at the north gate.

GALLINA:

almost from minute to minute from however you wanted to go out there.

It was as high as 70 nr per hour as low as less than 1 er per hour.

REPORTERS:

70?

70 right on site. This was on site. It depended on the plume and where GALLINA:

you were, you could walk maybe 100 yards away from the north gate and get down to practically less than 1 mr per hour.

LENTZ.

What is it acrmally on the plant sitet a

GALLINA:

It should be normally less than one er per hour.

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Wh'en was the 70 nr recorded and was the company aware of it?

WARNER:

l I am sure they were aware.of it.

I am not sure of the exact time. It was CALLINA:

That is.

some time during the afternoon, maybe roughly around 2:00.

just a guess though. It was some time in the afternoon. They rent back like five minutes later and it was back down to 50, they wedt back five minutes later, and'it was down to 20 and then it went almost down to

-levels, and then it was up again. It depends on the air conditions at the time.

. g, When the company vented that steam generator today, were they aware, LIVINCOOD:

were the officials of the company at that, time that they were releasing radioactive steas?

CALLINA:-

Some of *hese actions are automatic. When you have a turbine trip you have soi a lot of steam you have to get rid of and the atmospheric steam dumps open a;tomatically. Normally, the secondary side is clean so there is no problem. The miwor leakage that they had apperts to be I would minimal and not a major contribution to the off site activity.

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(CALLINA CONTINUED) say that they were aware of it after the fact in analyzing the secondary water and finding traces of contamination in the water you could say at that time they knew that when they did vent steam they did vent some minor amounts of radioactivity.

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.o DVORCHAK:.

Was any of this caused by human error?.

CALLINA:

No.

At this point in time, we have been investigating it most of the day, of course, we haven't gotten into a detailed investigation because we are still getting'the plant into a stable condition, but there has been absolutely indication of human error at this point.

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!I reports that the radiation is eminating from the reactor itself.

STAROSIN:

that in the primary building there is a lethal doseage of radiation.

CALLINA:

Well, in the containment building which is now bottled up and secure we can get high radiation readings at the building itself, this is normal..

Quite a bit of primary coolant was dumped into the containment buildingi,

To categorize it as lethal I think would be a severe oversight. It would be lethal if you stayed there long enough. But again this is all inside containment an.] as Jim pointed out, at negative pressure, so any leakage is in not out.

STAROBIN:

How the reactor itself?

HICGINS:

There are no plans right now for personnel to enter the reactor building in the near' future.

REPORTERS:

Several days or.*..

s HIGGINSr That is correct.

STAROBIN:

Do you have any indication that there is any abrasion of the reactor itself, that there was a break, that had been' suggested at an earlier briefing, that part of the cladding was injured?

LIVINGDOD:

Fudl element rupture.

CALLINA:

Well no, we have some indications on the basis of water chemistry, that there was some damage to the fuel, but it is only an indication at this time and it doesn't appear to be severe. As you may know, reactors can operate quite normally with a certain percentage of what we call failed fuel.

It doesn't appear that we have exceeded any of these levels, except we do know that there is more " failed fuel" at this point than there was before the trip. But nothing definitive at this point until we do some further analysis of water chemistry.

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STAROBIN:

What we are trying to ascertain is that thera is no danger comi ; from &

very radioactive load in the reactor itself?

s GALLINA:

No, the reactor is stable. Theru is no problem with that. They are now bringing it down to a cold shutdown condition which is what we are monitoring at this time. The reactor itself is in no danger of going critical or any problems.. It is in a safe condition. It is mechanical y sound.

As was mentioned earlier, we have five us actuallyjseven of us were on the site by 10:00 this morning. There will be 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> round-the-clock coverage in both control rooms by the NRC. We have reactor inspectors, health physicists and another investigator on the site right now so we are monitoring every step of*the operation not only here,

,L but we have a 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> open line to our Philadelphia office and concurrently an open line to Washington DC, where we have our reactor people there on the phone with us constantly. So everything is being monitored by the NRC and to this point we found no mechanical damage se all. The reactor is stable. There is no problem with containment. Again, we are just looking at now, the contamination hazard in the auxiliary building and on site.

DVORCHAK:

Was the core damaged?

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No, as I just said there appears to be no significant core damage.

CALLL1's Did Met Ed have to activate the emergency core cooling systeg?

LIVINC000:

That is 'they are used'*

A lot of the systems' on site are dual useage.

HICCINS:

Some for emergency core cooling and for normal plant operation.

of the pumps are used for normal makeup and injection concurrently, for emergency core cooling.

they can be used if you have an accident, The situation that classically presents the need for emergency core cooling is a pipe rupture where the system is depressurized and you have to inject water with these emergency pumps into the plant.

That situation did not occur. The pumps, the same pumps were being' used in a normal mode, to inject water and to bleed water off from the plant system and that has been.done throughout the day. They a..

LIVINC000:

Is that a captive system?

Yes, by captive. I assume you mean closed?

HICCINS:

LIVINC00D:

Yes.

REPORTER:

I assume that coolant is radioactive?

HICCINS:

Yes, primary coolant is radioactive.

How would-you dissipate this when the time comes?

REPORTER:

The primary co'clant is normally recycled anu it is maintained radioactive HICCINS:

but it is periodically cleaned up with filters and resins and then reused.

Did I understand you to suggest a couple of minutes ago that when the WARNER:

company had vented radioactive steam during the day it is unlikely that they reslized that it was radioactive.

CALLINA:

That is not really what I said. I said some of the operations are automatic. Atmospheric steam dumpt those valves that we call them, function automatically, normally there is no radioactivity or minimal radioactivity in secondary coolants. That steam is basically cold I am going back and analyzing the secondary coolant at this steam.

time -- they found minor traces of radioactivity which means there is

.some minor leakage in the secondary side. In effect, looking back and realizing that they had ver..ed to atmosphere some minor activity did become released when they used their atmospheric steam dumps.

Again I have to say it is minor activity.

How long do you expect to need to ventilate the auxiliary building?

LENTI:

. 'GALLfMA:.

At this point, it would depend on the operations being conducted'to get this water into some kind of confined tanks. We have found that the activity is dropped significantly since it was first identified this morning and to take a guess, it would just be a guess and I would rather not.

LENTZ:

Are you talking about weeks, hours,

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GALLINA:

No, within a day they should have the water...

LENTZ:

How much water is there?

GALLINA:

We have no estimate at this time. It is a substantial amount of water but I couldn't give you a gallon figure.

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any of the people working there injured that y,ou know of ?

REPORTER:

CALI.INA:

There were no injuries no.

FERRICK:

, Mow about contamination?

CALLLNA:

There was some minor contamination that we *.ould expect and protect against.. in other words, people going in to cover up the water or e*

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i I(CAL 2A CONTINUED) to m ess the situation, took proper precautions, anti-contamination clothing ana things like that and when they came out their outer c% thing wa-contaminated, but that is what we protect against.

- REFORTER:

bald'you give us an' agenda of what is happening now, what vi"11 happen,in the next 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />, few days, week, whatever?

Well, at tiresent, as best as I can tell you at this point - Met Ed and CAL!.INA:

NRC, of yourse, watching every step of it, will be bringing the reactor down to cold shutdown. Concurrently with this, they will be getting this watn out of the auxiliary building as expeditiously as possible. That may take about a day. The reactor should be in cold shutdrw wf tbih e

'i day also.

-LENT :

How long do you expect it to be down?

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CALLINA:

That would be'hard to day. That would depend on contamination 1evels, etc., that we find af ter the...

REPORTER:

What else has to be done, as part of the agenda?

CALLINA:

Well, as f ar as. operating the plant goes, I really can't speak in detail.

I can say that the NRC will make a <!etailed investigation and until that investigation is complete, the plant probably will not be able to come back to power again.

REPORTER:

A week, two'veeks, three weeks?

CALLINA:

That depends,' you have got a lot of computer printouts to look at, we have a lot of interviews to do with operating personnel, aslot of charts to analyte, th's investigation itself will be done as expeditiously as possible but it would be hard to say how long it would take.

LENTZ:

Will it effect inaudible CALLINA:

It should not.

Let me int,,rrupt here for a second. These, some of these gentlemen LT. CCV:

• haven't had anything to est all day and we are expedted at the Governor's home for a briefing there. I want to say that. from the standpoint of what we are doing civil defense wise and otherwise, we do not expect I

I there to be any kind of necessity for evacuation, but we are keeping all of the counties locally on alert until such time as we are satisfied that there is no more danger of radioactivity leaking and that there is a cold shutdown at the reactor. The Governor has canenlled his trip to sostern Pennsylvania to be on hand to stand by' in case anything should arise. But, I think you all see that there has been considerable attentien given and it will continue to be so monitoring of radiation.leve)s and we will continue to supply you periodically with updates.

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FERRICE:

~ Whatever happened allegedly happened at around 4 a.m.

Number two, the st' ate civil defense officials,were not informed until about 7 a.m.

l I have two C.s W1.?s, what happened at 4 a'm. and number two when was the NRC in. armed of what happened?

The initial event occurr'ed at 4 a.m. where I described the $1fficulties HICCINS:

with the condensate polishing unit, the trip of the pumps the reactor tripped, the turbine trip. That all occurred around 4 a.m. initially.

4 FERRICK:

When you say around, I don't want to be too' precise, but was it before 4 or...

EIGGINS:

4 a.m. is a good time.

The NRC to my knowledge, we were...

GALLT'-1 At approximately 7:15 ve receive'd the first call. 7:15, 7:30 in that area.

j FERRICK:

They said earlier today that there was no information flowing to offsite

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officials until 6:50 or 7:00 because the people onsite didn't realize l

apparently that there was radioactive leakage. Has that been verified yet?

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HIdOINS:

No that bas not been verified.

TERRICK:

Do you have any answers as to why there was a nearly three hour delay',

between '.he time the event happened and the time outside of ficials vergs informed of it.

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CA; LINA:

No, but we will be getting those answers believe me.

FERRICK:

Is that normal?

HICOINS:

CALLINA:

It cepends on tha =agnitude. Some problems did Typically plants have in their eachnical specifications, requirements to notily the NRC for various types of incidents. Typically, the more serious ones, we require 24 hour2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> notification, tne other ones 30 day notification. Most plants provide with continuing,and very prompt information, three-mile-island included, whenever a continuing problem exists. They may only be requied by federal regulations to notify ut within 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />.

But typically, they notify us as soon as they have a feel themselves for what is happening and then they will call us.

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FERRICK:

Was what happened today serious. When it happened around 4 was that a serious problem in the world of nuclear reactors.

HICOINS:

I find it difficult to pu't qutlifiers like that on...

REPORTER:

How close to a catastrophe was it?

HIGGINS:

It was not close to a catastrophe.

LIVINC003:

With the information you have at this point do you feel that Met Ed officials acted responsible throughout the day.

CALLINA:

Yes. At this point in time we are interested in the reactor, the syste=,

and the safety of the people. We have not gone in and investigattd how they behaved and whether they did everything properly, why we had this delay in notification. How'ver, I can say now, based on what I have obser,ed during the day, Met Ed did act very responsibly, very cooly calmly, anJ showed the benefit of the experience they had. There was no panic, no excitement, they did their jobs, and from what we can see tolay they did it well.

l REPORTER:

Were there any surprised for you?

CALLIXA:

I wouldn't say there vera any surprised no.

REPORTER:

Did the

ork?

GALLINA; Yes, it slid REPORTER:

What happens if the doesn't cool off or theoretic' ally if it wouldn't cool off and how do you go about cooling?

CALLINA:

There are many systems on that. We supply emergency cooling to the reactor and we are using some of those today as I described,in various modes... many backups 'and some of those backups weren't even used today.

REPORTER:

What would happen if the core did not cool off.

GAILINA: '

That is not the situation we have here and I prefer not to hypothesize for vn't we don't really have.

a REPORTER:

Do you know of any prior problem in this unit tat existed before today that might have anticipated the' events that happened _?

CALLINA:

No.

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s.

The spokesman from NRC, King of Prussia told me that the leak in the

- CZAR::IAK steam generator had existed before today and allowed some con'taminatior3 in the secondary system. Is that true?

s CALLINA:

- That is possible yes. There is always some minor leakage, but we haven't 4'

looked into that yet,.,

CZARNIAK:

Would that have agravated that situation?

t CALLINA:

It could have yes.

DVORCHEK:

If this is not a catastrophe, what is the magnitude of this!

REPORTER:

Compared to other accidents?.

We CALLINA:

To qualify if that way it depends on how you want to look at it.

have a serious contamination problem onsite. We do have containment bottled up with several gallons of primary water in it. We do have primary water in the auxiliary building. You might say from the breadth of the accident it is one of the more serious, not from the depth.

In other word,s nothing critical failed, but it is going to be a dirt /

problem and something that will need some time to clean up.

The extent of the problem I would say makes it serious, not the depth of the 0

problem.

~

s CRITCHLCW Thank you very afuch, my office will be open to the last deadline if there are any last minute problems we will let you know.

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