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Deposition of General Public Utils by Hm Dieckamp on 791003 in Middletown,Pa.Pp 1-84
	ML19322C244
Person / Time
Site:	Crane
Issue date:	10/03/1979
From:	Dieckamp H; GENERAL PUBLIC UTILITIES CORP.
To:	;
References
	TASK-TF, TASK-TMR NUDOCS 8001160684
	Download: ML19322C244 (85)
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.e2 er -- -v.4% ..,4 V,V..%v l DEPOSITION 0#: HER,una M. DIEC:c.vP i i I i 1 (( Piece - MIDDLETOW, PA-Dcte - hECNESDAY, CC~CSER 3, 1979 Pcges 1 - 3' I l I i ) i 'I' i. i 3 I ' 'L' ;W N z ,~ ....chen.: (00210474700 ACE - TEDERAL REPORTL% CiC. [ ~. OffdsiReponers l S001160(Mk .LLL Ncch C::itel St eet -Wcshingten O.C. CC01 i, N ATICNWIC E COVERAGE. D Al'Y e i a

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_-_-------------------------------------x 2i BEFORE:

3i NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION THREE MILE ISLAND .t SPECIAL INQUIRY GROUP 5

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Oral Deposition of HERMAN M. DIECKAMP 7 APPEAPANCES: 3, GEORGE T. FRAMPTON, JR., ESQ. For - Nuclear Regulatory Cocu:lission 9, Special Inquiry Group 10i DAVID J. EVANS, ESQ. U.S. NRC TML Special Inquiry Group f 11 4 JAMES B. LIBEPP.AN General Counsel 12 13l ALSO PRESENT: V Hartmut Schierling, E.H. James C. Snell j,3 R. Lawrence Vandenberg 15 TAKEN AT: 16 l i Three Mile Island Wednesday, 17l Middletown, Pa. Octotar 3, 1979 at 9:10 a.m. I 18 19 l I E E E,,, X,,, 4 1 WITNESS: EXAMINED BY: PAGE NUMBER 40,i 21 l Herman M. Dieckamp Mr. Erampton 2 I I 22 23 l t s-.) 24l \\w, neO N t C 8L STENQ4ma psetC SE RveCE. tela OLD WILg acaQ. wvCus S$ SNG. 84 19480 0

f I 1-A l-l E _X _H _I _B _I _T _S i 9 2! Exhibits Page g s. 3 Exhibit 18 49 I 'x l e S' 4 I i 6i i 7 8i I i l 9 i 10 ' 11 12 > i l 14 - i 15 16 i I s 17 ' i 18 i I 19 i i i 20 i I i i 22 23 i O_. 25,[ j i l weseeCR STENOG A A***C ggewiCt. 1413 QLO MILL #Cao wv0Metteme. PA. 19480 s

2 I HERMAN M. DIECKPMP, Sworn /b 2!, MR. FRAMPTON: This is the deposition of Mr. 3 Herman Dic-kamp being taken by the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory j ,( 4l Commission's Special Inquiry Group on the accident at Three t 5l Mile Island at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania on October 3, 6 1979. 7 present in addition to Mr. Dieckamp are Mr. i 8 James Libernan, representing GPU and Mr. Dieckamp. In 9l addition, Mr. Vandenberg, Mr. Snell, Mr'. Schierling, Mr. 10, Evans, and Mr. Frampton all of the Special Incuiry Group. 11! BY MR. FR7MPTON: 12 ; 0. Mr. Dieckamp, I have shown you our Witness [ 13 Notification Form that describes the purpose of this depo- \\ -- l 14 I sition, your rights in connection with it, and the fact that i 15l the transcript of the deposition may eventually in whole or i 16l in part become public information. t 17 Have you read that and do you have any cuestions 18 i about it? I 19 A. No. I have read it and I have no problem with it i i 20 l whatsoever. 21 0 We do have the. benefit of prior public testimony that you have given, which we have studied and we also have 22 i the transcript as corrected by you of the deposition you 23 - ("N 24l gave, I believe, in early August to the President's Commission i 25 Staff. { l =o.cn svamoon e=ic sanvier. i is o6o with eoso. wvowissi=o. en veevo l l

i 3 I We will attengt not to repeat matters that are -s I x / 2 covered in that other testimony just for the purpose of saying ( j 3l that we asked you the same questions. We will try to focus i 4 on things that have not already been covered in prior testi-s 5: many. l I 6-I would like to begin by asking you a series of 7! questions concerning your activities on March 28th and the 8' four or five days after that. 9j I believe that you have testified before that you i 10 ; were in Harrisburg that morning and that you got a message 11 around 9:00 o' clock in the morning about an incident at 12 TMI-2 and that you shortly thereafter talked to Mr. Creit: 1 7s \\s-() 13 i and Mr. Arnold, is that right? i j 14 A That is right. 15 0 Thet. fou recall talking to either Mr. Arnold or 16. Mr. Creit: an hour or two later in the m'orning on that date? I 17! A That is right. 18 0 Based on what you learned from them in those 19 telephone conversations or any other conversations you had 20 l that morning, wnat kind of an impression did you have about t the situation here? 21 22 A I couldn't say that the impressions I' gained were l 23 l Very clear in talking with Creitz and Arnold. I guess I \\ ("' 24 learned of the shutdown of the plant, the actuation or the \\% l 25! emergency core cooling system, the radiation alarms, the t MOmeCN sismocaapteic sastviCE. 14t3 OLO usLL ocao. wromissaho. pa. issio n

r* l 4 I declaration of the site in general energencies, the off 2l site radiation monitoring, the indicated levels of off site .A 3 activity releases, specifically at Goldsboro. Tne indication 1 ar the impression from the plant that there had been fuel 4 y l 5 damage. -6; I recall specifically having cuestioned the obser-1 ) 7 vation conclusion about fuel damage and having questioned it 8 on the basis of saying that, "Well, if the emergency core 9 cooling system was activated, isn't the design basis for the 10 emergency core cooling system to prevent that fuel failure?" 11 Therefore, I am not sure I know why we got failed fuel so I 12 am nervous about that con.clusion. If we got radiation, we [\\_g) 13 can' t set that aside but at least I was concerned about what appeared to me to be the immediate inconsistency of those 14 things. 15 l I really did not get a very strong feeling about 16 17, exactly where we were. I didn't get the feeling of impending l 18 l danger or the depth of problem that I ultimately became aware of. 19 I also, on that,ame morning, stood in on the 20 Bill Scranton press briefing in the State Capitol. It at 21 have been around 11:00 o' clock in th'e morning; at which 22 point I guess it was Bill Dornsisf who was giving a fair ~ 23 (T 24 l amount of a run down of what he understood to be the status N--fl ' 25l of things at the plant. I don't know where Dornsisf gnt his i MonuCR tirascemeptesc sanviCf 148 3 OLD M'LL #0ao. wvoesssssase. 84 testo

i 5 I information, but I guess my immediate reaction at the time 7g\\vl. 2l was that Dornsisf was terribly positiva and I wasn't quite 3I sure in my own mind that there was a basis for being cuite ~ [ 4j as positive as he sounded. i Si G How did you come to go to that briefing? I 6 )! A Since I was in that complex there, I was in the 7l North Office Building in a meeting with the Pennsylvania PUC, -9 I became aware of that briefing and I just decided to go up 9! and listen in to see -- it was just another opportunity for 10l me to learn what was going on. 11 ! G Nobody turned to you, I take it, and asked you 12 i during the briefing what.you knew about this? i p-~5 13 A No. I am not sure anybody even knew who I was. '\\_g/ 14 It is a very small crowded kind of a little room and I just 15i stood in the back and listened to the -- the reporters were all crowded around the front talking to Dornsisf and Scranton. 16 17 I was probably kind of unobserved. Not that I made any great effort to be unobserved, but I didn't make any effort to

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push myself forward because I frankly had very little 19 20 l inf rmation. t G Why do you say he was surprisingly positive? 21 5, .Because he was -- my impression was simply that I 22 l i I l 23 ', felt he was positive. It was not that he was saying things i that I knew to be wrong, but that he was saying things that [ 24 %/ i \\\\ " I didn't. feel that I would have been able to say with quite 25 -o -, c..n,........e..m e t ....oto-,u......mo.............,.

t 6 I that degree of positiveness, simply because of what I didn't -s i / 2, 'i - know rather than what I did know. ~ l I definitely had that kind of a feeling, you know, i f 4 i a kind of a generalized feeling. In a sense, I probably N i 5! learned -- Dornsisf's words were probably 90 percent of what 6l I knew at that time. In a sense, I took his words 61so as i 7 being somewhat reassuring to me of the status of things even 3i though I was a little nervous of whether he really knew things i 9, as well as they sounded when he made the statements. 10l a As you stood there, did you believe that the plant i 11 i was shut down? 12 A Yes. No, I was assured of that early on that the i Imr 13! plant had tripped, the rods had been inserted, the power \\-/ i 14 l level was down, and the plant was shut down. What I did not 15 I know at that time and did not come to know a day or a day and I l 16l a half if not more, that the. energency 1-the high pressure i 17 injection system had been defeated or interrupted and thus 18 ' the very premise that I was dealing from that the inherent i i 19 plant system would prevent these kinds of occurrences had 20 ' been contravened and had not been able to function. (sic) 21 Q. As of late morning, was Mr. Dornsisf saying or 22 did you note that the reactor coolant pumps were off or i '23 there was some problem with forced cooling? 24 A No, I don't have a recollection -- a specific ,/)s (., 25 knowledge of whether the coolant pumps were turned off. I i l won.c= sn~oo....e s a.v.es. i u s oso viu.o. . w.o...,~a.... i..io 4

i 7 l'l really did not become aware of that -- perhaps I was aware g-~ ( I 2 of ito I was aware that they had to have been off because I g j ^ l 3: became aware late that same evening after the plant had -- i 4! after forced cooling had been re-established that a limi' ting s l 5; factor had been in getting a coolant pump back into operation. I 6j I guess I have to say in that sense I had to become 7l aware that the pumps had been of f and that the forcing action f I 8l had stopped. 9' O. I am interested in the reaction which you expressed 10, and I believe it was over the telephone, to Mr. Arnold about 11 the possibility of fuel failure. I 12l The way I hear.d it, do you recall saying to him ("'y \\ ( f 13l in substance, "That can't happen, that is why we have an 1 14 emergency core cooling system"? A I don't know whether I said it that way or whether 15 l t 16 I said that is inconsistent with the des'ign -- the basis for 17 the design criteria of the emergency core cooling system. I i am sure there is a substantive difference in the way you say 18 that, but as I recall, when the suggestion -- I think both 19, Arnold and Creitz were very direct with me in saying, "We 20 feel there are indications. failed fuel." There ic no i 21 ) question that they said that. 22 My reaction to that was one of being somewhat 23 j reluctant to believe that on the basis of my understanding /) 24 \\~-(' #, f the way in which the emergency core cooling was supposed 25 t neOsetCM STE404 rap 4 C SERVICE. t al3 OLD wtLL #Cao. wvomissene. en isoto

8 I l to work. g I \\s 2i G It is that state of mind I am really trying to get t 3J at. I e t 4{ You have had very extensive experiences with * ( 5 reactor operations and reactor design. I wonder if that is i i 6' a fair reflection of a state of mind that we have these i. 7, safety systems so it can't happen, it is impossible, that is 8[ not supposed to happen. t 9l Is that a fair characterization of your thinking to i about the safety systems that they made impossible, in effect, i i 11 some kind of fuel damage? 12 : A Let me comment. about that. I (s 13 First of all, with respect to the background, I 14 have certainly had alot of background in nuclear power, but I 15 would not, at that time, have listed myself as one of the I 16 i nation's experts in water reactors. Alot of my experience has been in the breeder 17 reactor technology and that sort of thing. There are alot 18 I of details of water reactors that I have come to know since 39 the accident that I didn' t know r.n that day. 20 With respect to.the state of mind thing, I would 21 have to say that~ philosophically, I have always understood, I 22 f y u know, the fundamental basis,of the reactor safety and 23 i I j /~'i the fundamental aspects of all the possible faults and 24 i (_ b / reliabilities and faultries and analysis and the maximum 25, l l i I l womecu sta=oomas=ec saevics. tess o6o +66 nomo. wvowiesima. ** eesso w

9 1l and credible accidents and all those things. Certainly, 2> they never in my mind got even to the point of saying it l l 3! can't happen. ~ t l' 4 At the same time, I have to say to you that ihdeed i s 5i my reaction was one of having an initial reluctance to 6l accept the observation of failed fuel on the basis that meant 7l to me that the emergency cooling system had not functioned in the way in which it was supposed to have functioned. That 8l 9l was the conclusion that I drew. f 10 I said I am reluctant to accept that unless we .i 1; i really know that is the case. It implied that immediately 12 to me that says, " Hey, that means the emergency cooling 13 system didn't work." That is something that needs to be sq}- looked at, 'that is something that needs to be checked, that 14 is something that needs to be pursued. 15 0 I think that af ternoon you met Mr. Herbein and 16 37j Mr. Miller on the steps of the State House as they were coming to brief the Lieutenant Governor, is that right? la A. Yes. 39 0 Was that by chance or design? 20 A. No. In talking.to Creitz later in the morning, g \\ and I don't recall exactly when, he told me that Herbein g s had this date set with Scranton at 2:00 o' clock. Since 23 l l 12:30 or .g j our session with the PUC was over around lunch, t w/t/ something like that, ILdecided that I will stick around and 25 -o -. c. w......e...v.c..... o s , u...... m............. )

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10 1 I will sit in on that session; again, wanting to learn more (c) / I +'~'. 2l and find out more. \\ 3l I went to the Lieutenant Governor's office and got 4 there about 2:00 o' clock and stood around for awhile and' i \\ l I talked to a few of the guys and told them who I was and what 5'; l 6, I was there for. 7' Sometime before 2:30, and I don't know whether 8l it was ten after 2:00 or somewhere in there, I was in effect i disinvited. I said, "Okay, this is your business. I am not 9 i 10 here to inject myself so if I 'm disinvited, I will leave." 11. Q. By whom were you disinvited? u A. Specifically, Ray Holtz. I don't know what his 12 (~i. s j b is or whether he is still there. I think he h:2 pre-13

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t jal viously been with the Governor's Enercy Council, the Lieuten-l a.nt Governor. He came to me a:1d said, "You know, we would 15l 16l kind o# like to keep this at a low key meeting, just among i j7 l the local folks." i I said, " Ray, do I understand you are asking me 18 to leave?" He said, "Yes." I didn' t think it was appropriate 19 I rgue with him so I left. t 20 In a sense, I p,ersonally didn't have anything 21 specific to contribute to the conversation, but I was g concerned that our guys would be careful about not glossing g I things over and what have you. As I walked out, I did indeed l :q g )N d en unter -- and this was now by happenstance, I encountered 25 l Womecw 37tmoemappeC SENvrCE. 1413 04D WiLL scaO. wT0W8SSING PA '9410

11 t I ! Herbein, Miller, and George Kunder. They were getting out ({s[ 'T 2l of the car and coming up the steps. I stopped there and A 3l spoke with them for a couple of minutes because they were ~ c' 4 late and I didn't want to hold them up. q j i 5! My first reaction was one of chagrin that those 1 6I three guys should all be absent from the plant, and I sort 1 i i 7 of expressed that view to them. I said, "My God, who is a; watching the store?" We had some brief discussion to that r 9l effect. i 10 ! I don't think I could swear to it, but my mind I 11l tells me that I think I said something to them like, "Tell i 12l it like it is." You know, it was just a rather brief encounter f~') 13l because they were in a hurry to get there. v 14 4 You didn' t see them af ter they came out? A No, I did not. 15 16 G Did you get any chance to talk with them about 17, Eheir impressions about the status of the plant at that time? i 18l A No, only very briefly and only to the extent in 39 l that brief encounter they in no way reflected to me that l things were in some extreme state of distress. 20 I guess I can't be clear in my mind about the 21l! - degree of which that was explicitly stated or the degree ,.2 73 l to which I somewhat concluded that on the basis of their own decision for the three of them to absent themselves from 'N 24 ) 4 ~ the plant. I certainly didn't have conveyed to me at that 25 l women seremoseaa=ec senvice. tais oLo ao66 nomo. wvowissewe ma tesso

12 i I f point any indication of the level of difficulty that V} ( 2I ultimately we all became aware of. 'I 3l They didn't let you know or give vou the impression that they might still have a continuing problem from an 4 5! operation's or shut down point of view? 6 A Well, I am very hazy on that. I would not 7 characterize it as their saying that everything was completely 8l under control. I think in terms of their feeling cf comfort i 9f that things were stable, I think I got that impression from 10 them. 11l When you get to the specifics of whether there l 12 was a pump running at the time and the problem they were [) 13 having with re-establishing pressure, I am not sure the v 14 exchange was anywhere near of sufficient depth to get that 15l kind of a real feeling on the status of things. I 16 ! I didn't get that. kind of a mixed feeling until i i 17; after I.got back to New Jersey, and talking with Bob Arnold i 18 on the phone and hearing from him that he and Herbein, after 19f Herbein returned from the Lieutenant Governor's office, that I 23,; he and Herbein had sort of reached a position or a judgment 21 that says, "Let's just jam water in it until we take that l 22 thing solid and get flow,",and that they then achieved that i I by 7:00 or 8:00 o' clock in the morning. f 23 I think I was talking to him in that time period /N 24 l \\ / 25 with thit sort of milestone having been reached. i WomeCut StreeOgnapsesc stay:CE. 1413 000 MILL eQAO. wvCassgesped, ya tee 10

13 1 Again, I would say if I tried to recreate, I would ,-s (_,/ I sort of -- in the business then of understanding the effort i 2 ( i s 3 that was necessary to re-establish force convection that I ~ ( 4l became more cognizant of the exact or at least the degre'e of I 5; problems that they had been through during the day. l 6 ', G Between 2:30 in the afternoon and whenever you 7 talked to Mr. Arnold as you just described, did you have any 8f other conversations or status updates about the plant? I 9l A No. I guess I can't reconstruct where all the time 10l went. I basically proceeded to go back to New Jersey. What l 11 I don't know right now, and I would have to consult records 3l as to how I got back. I don't know whether I flew back or i () 13 . I am not certain about that. was driven back, ~ l I might have been driven back. Very likely I

4

! was driven back which in turn would contribute to the time 15 schedules involved. 16l 37 l G Did you have any contact with media people or 1 t with NRC people on Wednesday? 18 l A No. 39 I O Didyouhaveanyparticipationindrafti.}gany g press releases or statements that would be read on the phone g in response to the inquiries? g A No. g G On Thursday I believe you came back to the site {~} g x4 for the briefing of the Senators and Congressmen who came \\ " g; i l MO8eeCK STENOGW APweC St#vtCt. tel3 OLD MeLL ROAD. wroMesssNG. P4 19410 i

14 1 up here frem Washington? () l 2l A Yes. ( 3! G Had-you known you were going to do that as of 4_i Wednesday night, do you remember that? 5: A I don't know whether I got that Wednesday night or 6 Thursday morning. It seems to me I got to the site around 7l 1:30 or 2:00 o' clock. I know I flew out so I suspect I got gl that word Thursday morning. 9, 4 Did you introduce Mr. Herbein or make a short 6 l 10 i introduct' ion? 1 A I made a few introductory comments and Herbein j pr vided a briefing. Do you have a transcript of that? 12 I /h i 0 I don't know whether we do. I think one exists. 13 (,/ I personally have not seen it. j, A A transcript of that exists because a fellow -- well, one of the things I was concerned about and what I g knew of this visit was whether or not the Lieutenant Governor's g office was knowledgeable of this. i I tried to make sure he was aware of this visit, 19l l so if he chose, he could sit in on this discussion or briefing L 20 1 or what have you. He toured the plant, I think, around noo'n that day l but chose not to be present during this briefing with 23 Senator Hart and other members of his subcommittee. He did 24{ Mf-I have a fellow by the name o'f Benesch attend for him. 25j 4 MOse,CM S?tNO4eapM4C StevaCE. f eta AD assLL ocao wTo8HSSING. P4. 19610 _,~...-

i 15 ("'T i Benesch wanted to record it. I personally said I \\~sd i. 2 to Benesch, "Look Benesch, I am not sure we record the doings 3j of Senators without their approval. I don't have any problem I k 4 in recording it, but I think you better make sure Senator 5 Hart has no problem with it." 6 It turned out that he did not have a problem and i 7 as a result Benesch made a recording. I 8 Benesch agreed to give a copy of the recording 9 to Dick Vollmer. He subsequently refused to give us a' copy 10 so we were able to get a copy from Dick Vollmer. There is i 11l a transcript. It has got some rough spots in it because of 12 ! the quality of the recording and the like. I think it is b)' probably one of the better indicators of Jack Herbein's (,, 13 A.:_ 14 specific state knowledge at that time and how he was express-l 15l ing it. I To me, I think alot of the tdne of that even 16l-17 though it was in that kind of a session and in many subsequent 18 sessions, it was very difficult to main. control of any 19 tone. Alot of the tone was, there is alot we don't know. 20 g When you were at the site, did you discuss with 21 Jack.Herbein or anyone else the fact that there were small r 22 releases being seen as a result of off gassing the primary 23 system and gas going through the auxiliary building? Did [s 24 that come up on Thursday? %(.) l t

"4 25 A

I was aware that there was some continuing levels MOM *CR STINCo#apusC SteviC E. 148 3 OLD M'L6 #0a0 WV0wessemo. P4, iteto Q..

i 16 1 - of releases and local radiation. I was of the impression ('~) l s-2 that they were cuite minimal, minor. 3j Probably the most significant specific thing that i f' 4I I was not aware of was the high measurement by the helicopter i 5l over the stack that afternoon. 6 G Thursday afternoon? 7, A That is right. i I don't know whether Jack was aware of that 3 9 measurement because it was right at about 2:00 o' clock or p) somewhere in that area. I had this general feeling of 11 rather minor, you know, a few M. R. kind of environmental readings, but no indications of specific levels of release 12 i as measured at that same time and no discussion or awarener i p 13 of the plant operations that were leading to those releases. 14 I I O It appears that mid or late af ternoon the people 15 in the Unit Two Control Room, at least, had correlated these 16 releases or peaks in the release to the venting of rhe make-97 up tank and so forth. 18 There wasn't any discussion of correlation between 39 an operation and a release that day? g A I certainly was, unaware of that. 21 G. Did you then return to Parsipanny after the 22 briefing of the Congressman? 23 A Yes. l O 24 I t ~b g While you were at the site on Thursday, did you 25 l I l I l =o=.c= s incenaan.e saav.es. r ei s o6o =iu. acao. wvomissma. a.. issio l

17 I have any contact with media people or with NRC people? \\- 2 A Well, when I got to the Visitor's Center, I met 3 Dick Vollmer. I had known Dick Vollmer alot of years going ~ 4' back to Atomics International. We spoke about the situ *ation 5l and what he was going to be doing. I think his anticipation l 6 i and my understanding at the time was that he was going to lead I i 7I an NRC investigation into, I guess at that time, I may have 8i called it, an event rather than an accident. i i 9 i During the briefing with Senator Hart, I intro-10 duced Dick and asked whether he had anything he wanted to 11 say. He said just a very few things like, "I just got here," 12 and what we are going to.do about an investigation. [' b 13 I also met then while I was there, the first of \\~-( ja our guys -- maybe not the first, but a number of the guys who were arriving for the purpose of the GPU, Met-Ed inves-15 l 16 tigation. Specifically, Bill Lowe and Tom Cremins, and I am not sure how many others, but they were arriving that 17 afternoon to go into the plant to begin their investigation. 18 I think they remained there in the Visitor's Center j9 f r this briefing of Senator Hart; essentially for the reason 20 f expecting that Herbein's summary of things would be sort 21 of an-immediate opportunity for them to get a bit of an 22 i overview status, starting point understanding where things 23 O 24 l i were. \\ / w <' 0 As of that time, had you made any requests for 25 j mo-.en str=oonana.c ss=vice. i.i s oso =.st oa o..vo ...,=o......i. l c

I 18 l assistance from other industrial groups outside of GPU? I 7,('. N-2 A Well, to the extent that a fellow like Bill Lowe ( 3 I was outside GPU, I would have to say no. Bill Lowe is a ~ 4 consultant who has worked for us for many years. In tha't ( i 5' sense, he was an outside guy, but not in the sense of the i 6 outside of what became the industrial advisory group. J, 7' G Mr. Lowe, cr his firm, has a standing contract 8 with GPU Service? l 9l A Yes. i 10 G Did you learn that evening fror Mr. Arnold or i from other people that the analysis that was ongoing here 11 ; 12 at the site revealed that. the problem was probably more (J~'), 13 serious than you thought before? ja A I think it was in talking with Bob Arnold that evening, Thursday evening, that I first became aware that 15 I 16l the high pressure injection system had been defeated and I

7l that very likely the core had been uncovered to some degree.

I In the course of that, I became aware of a next level of 18 awareness of the potential damage to the fuel. 19 Beyond that, it was my impression at that tim, 20 both from the visit Thursday afternoon and still also from 21 that conversation with Bob, that things were stable. I think 22 l 23lI it was my perception'of a growing awareness of a greater i level f Potential physical damage to the core materials 24 25l discharging, you know, with early recognition of the possibilitiet I l womica str=oonap= c stovect. s u s oLo wiL6 =cao. wvowisse=o. en. seeto a

19 1 g-'g of cracked, popped glidings and the like, and getting to I I ~'( 2l the point of starved cooling and uncovering. being more i severe and the damage to the fuel, but still coming back then

l to, we have flow, we have forced confection, temperatures are s

5 in reasonable ranges, things seem to be stable. 6l I think it was also -- I know it was on that Thursday night that Bob said to me, "I have been thinking 7' 8 further about the kinds of things we are going to have to 9 do in terms of the investigation and organizing the investi-10, gation and so on, assistance in the ongoing operation. I i i 11 i have a number of thoughts about how to organize it and the 12l kind of people we better bring into the job." 1 (s 13 He said, "Do you want me to come in and see you 14 ! first thing in the morning?" I said, "No, I think the best i l 15l thing for you to do is to go straight to the site and don't 16 bother to come in and talk to me about it. Just go straight 17 to the site and begin talking with Jack Herbein to begin 18 implementing these things." 19 0 You are speaking now of the investigation? 20, A This was in the context at that point then of l 21 " investigation that I think by that point a growing awareness 22 that we had more things that we were going to have to do than 23 : just kind of quietly sit back and investigate. There was i 24 a greater awareness that there were more problems that were {) s,4 25 I going to be required to support the ongoing operations and MONiCE STr%Ce#APw6C staveCE, tot a OLO esiLL e,so wrouissimo, me toevo ^

i 20 t 7-~ l{ the like. \\',) '2i I don't know that that was scecified in terns of A. 3 specific activities, but -- l ( 4 G What I am getting at is this: Mr. Arnold at 'some 5 point on Thursday night or Friday morning perceived a need i 6l for, I think, what he called a more formal inquiry board l 7, which would be people from the service company and some outside 8 people to look into what had happened. l 9' Was there a distinction between that idea of his 10j and your now perceiving a need for outside people to help you 11 I with the recovery, with the ongoing problems? 12 A I would charac.terize it this way: On probably ('s} 13 Wednesday night, Thursday, we identified a half a dozen i 14 fellows to be sort of an incident-accident investigation f 15 I inquiry group. I 16 0 To reconstruct the events? 17 l A Yes, what happened. i 1 18 By Thursday night they had grown to an awareness 19 l of a greater need to provide additional levels of technical 1 support to the plant. It was in that relationship that Bob 20 21 I said he had thoughts about. organization and people and tasks division support. He and I did not discuss that in detail. 22 4 I said, " Gee, I an sure you got to do that; just 23, go straight to the site and begin doing it. Don't bother () 24 / \\_k+' 1 25l to check with me on that." That is what put him at the site .o=,c= orr~o ....ne. ...cr. .... oto ,a.o.a.. o....~. ....o

i 21 1 ! early Friday morning. (~N 2! G. And you began to work on calling more people? "( l 3l A No, let me go one more step. ~ l Then comes Friday morning and there is the ma'jor ( 4 5i release that caused the significant upgrading of people's 6i awareness of the fact that things were not as stable as 7 previously perceived or assumed or characterized. I guess 8: I became aware of that around 9:00 or 10:00 in the morning, - l 9 roughtly. 10, G How did you learn of that, do you remember? l 11[ A I think we started getting phone calls about news I 12 inquiries. I am not clear on this, but I probably got a I ['i 13 phone call from Bob Arnold early Friday morning or in that d 14 ; time period that gave us kind of a status report on what -- 15 about this release and the implications of it. l 16l It was at that point that I then sort of officially i 17 : decided that we were going to need more help, more smarts, I l laj the best smarts we could get and began then to make incuiry 1 19 throughout the industry to get assistants to give us a hand. 20 As I began then to call people, it was still in 21 a very generalized kind of.a way. I think by that time I 22 had become. aware that we were faced, and again there is this l 23 ! growing awareness, that we had the probability of extensive i /~N 24 core damage from the evidences of uncovering. I became more ( ) 25 i keenly aware of the significance of some of the hot spot i me.ex svu.oon.,.e s s.v c a. i. osa msu.o. . m e........ ,..,o l

l 22 1i temperature indications as contrasted with the mixed mean (% \\~s]- -{ outlook temperature and also aware of the presence of the 2 3l large cuantity of non-condensible gas in the primary system.

l As I began to talk to people, I said to them,'

5 "Look, I think we need people who are system analysts, people 6 who understand the hydraulics and understand heat transfer." 7 I said, "I don't know exactly what we are going to have to 8 do. I jr.st think we are going to need smarts in those areas. '9l Who do you got? Who is a good guy?" i 10 ' If I happened to know of somebody, I would say, 11 "Could so and so come to help pitch in and see what we 've got 12 l to do?" It was not in a. clear knowledge that we were going O 13 to do A, B, C, but rather a kind of a feeling that these (,/ 14 were the areas of technology or the areas of different 15 disciplines or phenomenon that we were going to have to deal 16 with. I 17 4 Did you spend a good part of Friday calling I 18 ; people yourself, or did you have other staff people doing 19 alot of that, do you remember? i 20 A I spent a good part of Friday and through virtually 21 lall of Friday nighte I stayed overnight in the office. l 22 calling people and talking occasionally with the site. We 23f were having significant telephone problems with the site so I 24 we kind of worked out an arrangement that Arnold would try (-), w _. 25 to call in and call back to Parsippany every hour or hour MONICK ETENOSeapuiC SERVICE. te t 3 OLO neeLL WOA O. WTOMISSsNG. Da 194 0 9

23 i and a half as he would get a chance to give us an update. 1 I ) 2i During Friday night, communications weren't too j j

k..

3i bad at 2:00 o' clock in the morning. I spent a fair amount of 4 time several times that night talking with Bill Lowe about 5! the business of the non-condensible gas, the hydrogen, the i l 6l way it was measured, the size of the problems with radiolytic 7l decomposition, the rates and all those kinds of things. i Having a certain back of the envelope awareness 8l. 9l of radiolytic decomposition of water because years ago I i worked on solution reactors where you get alot of radiolytic 10, decompos'ition.... 11 ; 12 ;i I spent a fair fraction and I couldn't tell you exactly whether it is a half or two-thirds of the-time 13 L./ j gl during Friday -- late Friday morning and Friday afternoon i calling people. Bud Cherry, one of the guys, pitched in. 15 I He called several people, several organizations. One of his i 16 37j guys had worked at Electric Boat and he gave us a name of a guy at Electric Boat and got access to some health-physics 18 people. j9 That went on, I would say, during the day Friday 20j and on into Saturday morning. I think some of the initial l g Pe P e I contacted were EPI peopl,e and askec* specifically l 22 i f r Levinson and Zebroski because I had gotten to know those 23. i individuals quite well over the last few years and knew of g b their capabilities. 25 o. e =.m,o o..,-,e.. .e e..... o uo, u......,...,,,,.....,,,, o

I 24 t I i Floyd Culler helped me identify people within 2l Oak Ridge who could be useful to the radiation control or .k l 3l radiation waste problem. He was a fellow by the nare of l [' 4 Bob Brooksbank who came as a result of that inquiry. m 5! I talked with Bud Cherry, I talked with Philadelphia 1 i 6' Electric and Public Service Electric and Gas relative to i 7' health-physics type people through Bud Cherry through Jim i 8 McConnell who made contact with Electric Boat. I in turn 9l had to call a fellow in the Naval Reactor Branch by the name i 10j of Miles in order to get Electric Boat to feel comfortable i 11 ' to fet a health-physics guy become available, et cetera. 12 It was that kind of a chain of communications that (~)'s, 13l we. had to go through to get that guy here. lal I talked to people at Bechtel, I talked to my i 15 former colleagues at AI and asked them for specific people. I 16 I think there is a list of organizations that I 17 l specifically contacted that we gave to the NRC Inquiry Group. 18 I don't know whether you have that list or not. MR. FRAMPTON: Off the record. 19 (Discussion had off the record.) 20 l THE WITNESS: This started, you know, late Friday l 21 22 morning, Friday afternoon, Friday. evening on through Saturday i i 23 l and as late as Saturday evening and Saturday evening I know specifically after getting to the site here I was still -'y 24, \\sd~ 25 . calling people like Libarrando and Kauffman from EG&G or J -1 1 ..e..........e.....c...... w. a..................

i 25 h (] fellows with a law program background and also I called Dale \\J( 2l Myers at DOE and asked him to round up masses of foremest experts in hydrogen because we need a hydrogen expert here. ~ f, s a Most of these people that I had contacted, a good fraction of s 5'; them, arranged to arrive here late Saturday afternoon. I 6 We had the first sort of formative meeting of the I IAG -- what became the IAG down at Building 26, somewhere 3 around,and I don't know whether it was 4:00, 5:00, 6:00 'f o' clock in the afternoon, on Saturday. I 10 BY MR. FRAMPTOM: II 0 Let me stop you for a minute and ask you whether l 12l by the end of Saturday night you had pretty much completed 13 v [' the process of calling people to get the major systems you 14 needed or whether that continued on into Sunday morning? 15 A. No. I think it ought to be characterized this 16 way: With the exceptien of discussions'with B&W Management 17 and dis.cussions with Westinghouse that occurred over the 18 next two or three days, my efforts to aggregate additional 19 people into that group essentially stopped. What happened 20 then, was the group tended to self aggregate additional 21 people, guys like Levinson and Zebroski and Leavy, began 22 to bring in other people on their own. 23 0 For areas that their colleagues perceived -- 24 A. That's right. That group then grew from, you 25 know -- I, guess personally I might relate to nucleating MONICE S?t40GRapwlC 9 tRwCt. 14 8 3 OLO Mf LL #Ca O wv0MIStamG. #4. 594t0 t

--w ee f 26 I, 25 to 30 people. That group then grew to something over a g ) J{ 2 hundred in the next week and I think there were a few people 3 that also sort of added into that group by the NRC. The specific guy that falls into that category is the instruhent t 4 s 5 guy. 6 G 'Ackerman? 7, A Ackerman. I think he was brought in -- maybe 8 Vic Stello or someone called him and Ackerman kind of joined 9 that group. 10 In other words, it kind of became an amalgam of 11 people once the original nucleation and then it sort of self - 12l propagation and co-opting.some of the NRC people. D) 13 Did you yourself identify areas where the best ( s 14 people that you could get quickly would be NRC people? Did 15 you request specific people from the NRC? 16 A I would say there was only on'e -- I keep thinking i 17 ; maybe two, and I can't think of what the second one was, but I 18 at least one specific case where I did not go after :omebody in the NRC because I knew he was the best guy. When I went 19 after the fellows at EG&G because of their loft background, j 20 they in turn said, " Gosh, we work for'the NRC and we are not 21 sure we wan.; to give you a hand..We may have a conflict of 22 23 interest problem." ~ I said, "Well, I would hope that you can talk to ( 24 \\_ o' # i l the NRC'and resolve that problem because we are both trying 25 ' i mo mect svenoanamme samvice, seus oLa meLL nono. wvomissimo. pa. testo

l 27 !Il to do the same job." Indeed, that is what happened. They ,o I, ) i v-2 ( talked to the NRC and then got back to me and said, "We've 3 got it cleared and we will be there." i l I felt kind of good about the way that worked out. 4 i 5l We didn't really end up with a hard barrier there that was 6i controlled by a conflict of interest question. I guess I i 7 didn't really relate to anybody specific in the NRC. After S I got here I began.to realize that concurrent with this 9! formation of the IAG, the NRC fellows had their own network i 10 : out that was accessing all kinds of organizations, vendors, i 11 ! contractors, their national labs. I guess over the next few i 12j days we found that some of these organizations were fighting 'G 13 themselves get ing the same or similar or slightly different i 14 : questions from the two sources, one from us and one from the 15 NRC and we had a little bit of confusion occassionally out in 16l some of these contractor shops in terms 'of who is calling l 17 I what shots. I 18l Again, I think those things werked out. Titey 19 were not really a critical problem other than a bit of a t 20 very minor piece of inefficiency, and that is a neutral word. 21 QL I would like to go back for a minute to Friday 22 morning and ask you whether yon had any conversations on 23 Friday morning or ear'ly Friday afternoon with either NRC i people or state officials as a result of the evacuation plan. tG 24 t / I k-Q ~ i 25 l A I don't recall any conversations with anybody in 1 i l womics snwoomanaec unwice. isis oto west mono. wrousesimo. en tunc l

28 I Pennsylvania State Government on Friday. I recall conversa-g \\ 2 tions on Friday afternoon with an aide to Governor Burn who { 3i was calling to keep Governor Burn informed. Ide did have ~ l that contact, but I don't recall and I am virtually certain (' 4l 5l that no direct contact between me and anybody in Pennsylvania i 6l State Government. 7' I don't have any recollection of any specific 8l conversation with anybody in the NP.C on Friday. I do clearly 9 recall on Saturday morning approaching noon or 11:30, 12:00 10 ! o' clock, somewhere in that general time period, getting three I t 11l phone calls in rapid succession from Denton, Hendrie, and 12 Fatson all with the same. message. They said, " Gee, we urge ['))s 13 you guys to get busy and try and bring as many outside experts N. 14 as you can." 15 I specifically recall talking to Jack Fatson I i 16l and rattling off the longer list of people that we had already 17l made arranaements with. I don't have cuite the same recol-lection of the same degree of a longer listing in talking 18 I with Denton or Hendrie. I may have, I may not have. 19 20 0 Did Mr. Hendrie tell you that Denton was going to come to.the site? 21 A No, I don't have any remembrance of that. 22 ( 23 0 Did Denton? / 24l A No. I think he told me, "I am here." (_ / l G He was already here? 25l I l wometCE STENOGRAPHIC SERytCE telt OLD esaLL eoAO. wrcane9sseeg pa igeno I

-od 29 1l A. Yes. This was Saturday morning when I talked to ) s 2 him. I probably learned about it in the newspaper or maybe { 3! Bob Arnold or somebody told me Friday night that he had I 4 arrived. That would have come up late Friday afternoon.' i 5 0 Do you recall any other subjects that you talked 6 about with Harold Denton? 7 A. In that time period, Friday or Saturday? i8' O. Yes. 9 A. Again, I am virtually certain I didn't talk to i 10 ; him on Friday and on Saturday. I think the principle thrust i 11 of it was, "Why don't you guys go to work and round up as many experts out of the industry as you can find to beef up 12 13 the support?" I think that was the gf st. of it. I don't have a recollection of any other content 9 to that discussion. 15 0 Did you talk to either of them on the telephone 16 before you arrived at the site about whether the NRC was 37 going to get more involved in secision maki.ng here with 18 respect to tr.o. operation of the plant? 39 ; I A. Nc. I had that kind of a conversation with Denton g once I got here. I don't recall -- not in terms of specific g occassionsi but sort of an amorphous recollection of the g tone because as far as I was concerned, and I think I g l radiated that to Denton and others, whether it was Stello, u)

s with any conflict in g

i V Ross, or Mattson, that I didn't see i 25 esO*siCM STEModeaPasc stavsCt. tala OLO asshL 9040 wvoasessited pa. tSeto

~ _ _ _ -.. l 30 Il terms of who is in charge. I felt we were both faced with r^N ( ) v 2 ( a " hell" of a tough job. ~3 ! In fact, I made specific pleas to sort of set I r 4i aside the normal adversarv relationship between regulator 5 and regulated. I think I said, "Look, we got one job to do, 6 let's combine our resources to do this job." 7 I also told Denton that if the problem ever got i S) so bad that we as a company had to agree that it was beyond i 9l our resources to handle, there was not going to be any 10 problem in terms of who is in charge. We weren't going to i l 11 be reluctant to ask them to bring in their resources or 12 ; what have you, f) 13 0 When you say their resources, you mean the NRC v l 14 - resources? 15 i A The federal government or whoever. I just felt 16 that we have got a problem here that we have' got to handle, 17 ; and thi,s is not a time for some sort of dancing around the 1 18 daisy chain of who is in charge. Who's responsible? Who 19 i isn't responsible? That wasn't the issue. 20 0 Did you feel that the NRC's technical assistance on the weekend and over the next week or 10 days was a very 21 22 significant input or would you say that the bulk or almost t 23 l all of the technical' expertise came from GPU and from the [) 24 other industry people who came in to help you? (q 3 . 25 A I would not say the latter. 8 08etCK STEMOGeaposiC St#TtCE, tela Obc MsLL SO AC. wv0 Met ts**G. P4. 59000

31 1l I think that 's sort of irhat happened; the way I T (d 2 would' characterize it, is that at the first meeting of the IJG -( l 3j I said to the fellows, "I think we got three or four major i f 4i problems." I said, "One: We have got to begin to bette'r i 5l understand the potential state of physical disarray or 6 coolability of the damaged : ore. i 7 " Two : We have goc to understand what unicue problems a we may have associated with the cooling system at that point which 9 concained a significant amount of non-condensible gas. 10 " Three : We have to figure out how we are going 11, to get from here to there; mainly something we are going 12 to construe is a confident and reliable cold shut down. 13 "Four: We have got a hell of a problem with 14 radioactive waste." On Saturday afternoon I outlined those four areas 15 ! i 16 j and I don't know if it was on a blackboard or a big white i j piece of paper. I asked specific guys to take charge of 17, 18 specific pieces. I think I asked Zebroski to take hold of the j9 damaged core thing. I asked Levinson to take hold of the 20 i heat transfer reliability.. I asked Warred Owen'-to-begin to 21 ~ look at the questions and the procedures and the path that 3 we were going to follow in getting from here to there. 23 I asked Bob Brooksbank of Oak Pidge to kind of ) 24 f ( e l-V" take charge of the radioactive waste handling management 25l l 1 -) l MohtCR STtNOGm4P*MC SERWCE. 1413 OLO 888LL #Cao, wvowessimo, se togio l t.

32 1' problem. I said to these guys, "Look, I don't know all of lT ~, \\_s,/- 2i you guys in great detail, and I don't know each of your ( l 3l feelings of greatest knowledge, but I think yc u yourselves 1 know where you can best contribute to these four areas. ' I' 4 5 i, Conglomerate yourselves into the groups that are working on 6: these problems and go to work. " 7' I said, "That is about as much as I can tell you aI what to do." I felt I picked four knowledgeable good guys to I i 9: provice leadership and I think they did just that. I e 10 I think that group initially got started on what i 11f I would characterize as these major general problems. 12 It was my impr.ession then in my irrediate encounters 13 with Stello, Ross, and Mattson that they were, you know, () 14 i concerned and aware of the same problems and were accessing i 15 their own independent resources relative to those kinds of 16 alems. I think I also felt that they were working alot of nearer term problems in terms of detailed imrediate contingency 17 13, plans. At that time, I was not as well plugged into the l 19 l group that Arnold and Herbein were working closely with. And ' i 20 ;t I guess was immediately headed up by Bill Lowe and Tom 21 l Cremins and later had Dick Wilson. added to it, which were the 22 sort of guys providing the closer end support to the plant. 23, I 24 I was not paying as much attention to what they were doing. They were kind of being-managed directly by 25 1 t isonsCM STgnoemapwec sgnysCE. tela OLD usLL #caO. wvowessisse pa. seeio 4

33 l I Arnold and Herbein to support the operations on the short-7-'d) 2 range basis. ( 0 That is what came to be called the technical 3 4 ! working group? l 5! A No, I don't think so. I think that is what was l 6l called the technical support group in'the later oeganization. t 7l If you look at the organization chart, that 8l body was headed up by Dick Wilson's technical support group, '9 ! but that started out, you see, as the hard core of guys from i 10f what we had sent in as th9 initial investigation team, then 11 immediately fanned itself into a sort of round the clock 12 ] direct operations support function with Bill Lowe, I think, ') 13 handling one 12-hour shift and Tom Cremins handling the xs 14 i other, or something like that; and Dick Wilson then arrived l 15f and began to provide additional support to that. 16l g When was the technical working group set up? 17l A I will get to that. Let me finish first. I la My impression then with the NRC was that they i 19 were working alot of t'..ese contingency problems. They may 20 well have, in the first day or two, you know, then focusing \\ 2' more specific on the immediate aspects of the plant; more I 22 l aligned with_ what Bill Lowe and the Tom Cremins' group were t i 23l doing. What became the IAG was working on these longer 1 term problems. []> 24 y'y I would say that my impression is that everybody 25 l ~ ..c.....................................,....- A

u.. 34 / 1 (N I was sort of working.like hell to learn as much as he could to 2 understand as much as he could, to figure out as many uncer-( 1 3! l tanties, contingencies, fallback positions, future problems, (~ sl l and the like. 5 \\ j In a sense, if we had a problem in that early 6, period of the first few days, we didn't have a mechanism 7 in place for sorting out the-priority of those problems and 8 for combining c.eur resources, allocating our joint resources 9 to those problems. There tended to be sort of a parallel, l 10 i : t tightly coordinated effort on going there. II Again, on one hand that might sound critical, but 12l on the other hand I've go-t to say to you that I think that p 13 is sort of the inherent way in which the first time you are s, 14 faced with something like that is going to develop. 15l You say when did we lay on the technical group? 16 We established an organizational structu're on Wednesday, the 17 following Wednesday, which set forth an organization headed 18 by Bob Arnold with four segments under it. The technical 19. support group under Dick Wilson. The plant operations under 20 Herbein. The radioactive waste management -- I am not sure -- 21 well,.by.that time, we had the other guys brought in from 22 Commonwealth and Duke. Frank Palmer stepped into that spot. 23 ! B'rooksbank was helping him. 24 Then we set up another group with people from ^ 25 i Burns and Rowe to try and handle the emergency ad hoc' l M O msC at STth00 map **1C S ERysC t. t ela OLD MtLL acap. wicMeste%e. Da t9910 0

l 35 (~N I li construction activities. ) \\_/. i l~ 2l When you say, "We set up this group," who 3l basically laid out the structure, was it you or you and 4 others? 5l A By Tuesday night, I had gotten to the point where 6 I felt that I had a sufficient awareness of the major blocks 7, of effort and their priorities that I felt that I was able 8 then to start talking about an organization to handle those, i 9! because up to that time things were in a very ad hoc state. i 1 10, People were beccming somewhat restent because of the ad hoc i 11 unstructured aspect of it. 12 i I guess it was Tuesday night that Denton, on his i () 13l own, reached the conclusion that we needed extra support and s l 14 ' made the calls to arrange for Bill Lee and a couple of guys 15 from Commonwealth. 16 Wednesday morning Warren Owen' and John McMillen I 17 grabbed, ahold of me and said, "Look, we have got to organize la this thing." We closeted ourselves and began to lay out i 19 the organization structure that ultimately became established. j 20 There were certain dynamic interplays between i 21 ' myself and the other two guys. Those.got resolved down to I this organization of ' hose four major elements, plus a techni-c 22 I 23 ; cal working group for the purpose of sort of providing a i (c-w) 24 coordination form plus the identification was somewhat 25, separate. The IAG group showing it plugging into the technical i, Mose*CM **EMoomaps.eC s antsCL 1483 OLD MsLL RoaO. wwom:ssewe. pa. tseio

I - . - = - ~ _ 36 I support group headed by Dick Wilson, and have C.em sort of f-g A be the backup longer hair technical assessment behind the i ~s 2 ( 3l technical support group of the organization itself. [ Did you intend that the technical working gro'up 4 G 5! would serve as basically Arnold's senior staff? 6 A Yes. It was the mechanism whereby -- I am not 7, sure it ever worke in exactly the way in which it was con-3 ceived, but I think as time went on the technical working 9i group and the Arnold staff meeting kind of fused together i I 10 ! and its purpose tho"gh was to provide the form for cross l 11j functional review and approval of major initiatives, major i 12j strategies, major decisions, major what have you. (') Like the business of what is our plan for getting 13 T- }' 14 from where we were to gettine to co to cold shutdown. That 15 i was a major piece of strategy with all of its procedures 16 and fallback positions related to it. That got hamrered out on Tuesday afternoon in a session that I personally led. 17 18 For example, if we;were to make a change to that 19 plan, the technical working group was the mechanism whereby that change would get cross functional review to provide 20 your self assurance that all the affected aspects of the 21 operation participated in that review and decision making 22 23

process,

.I also personally took the initiative to invite {']' 24 I 's - 3 the-NRC to be a directment of that technical working group and V* 25 wo=ics sismoomaamic stavice. sees oso w LL eoao. wrouissi%e. en iogio ,~. .,_m

a-a.- I 37 . (-) If had no problem with that whatsoever. I felt that was a \\,I i 2 practical way to begin to better join our resources. I ( 3 I think I also have to say that as soon as that organization structure was brought forth and I reviewed 'it ( 4 s 5! in detail with Harold Denton, I think it was around 2:00 i 6i o' clock - in the af ternoon on that Wednesday, from that time 7f forward, the NRC also said, " Gee, we now also have a specific 3l organization structure." 9 It seemed to me that our composita organization i i 10 i functioned a heck of alot more smoothly all of a sudden; i 11l whether it was less sort of competition, less regulator, 12 regulatee, more of a combined composite approach to the i (~% s ) 13 problem. Alot of things seemed to just all of a sudden fall %d 14 I in place with the establishment of that organizational 15 structure. 146 ! I don't know what other factors might have contributed to the kind of maturing of the relationship l'7, that occurred on that time scale, but that is how I recall it 18 19j happening. 20 4 Did you spend a good bit of your time Tunday and then the following days coordinating the IAG? 21 22 L Yes. 23 0 Were you'the main point of contact between all of these outside people and the GPU people, or did they fX} 24l x-mostly go directly to the people who were interested in the 25 esOMcCet $f t40GeapossC SERvtCE I413 0L0 esetL #0a0 wvoneesse=0.P4 testo

w --= w 38 5 i I (N same problems with GPU? '%s) , (_ A In a sense I was, and in reality I wasn't. 2 3 Saturday night we kicked it off. On Sunday the f ', l group met and we started on a path of having Dick Wilson' d' 5 come in and brief these outside advisory group people on the 6l plant status and the problems we were dealing with and how i 7l we saw them. 8 That effort on Sunday afternoon got interrupted 9 by the great hydrogen bubble. i I 10l Sunday night the IAG met with the NRC people from 11 the site here. The principle activity being the NRC people, i 12 l Denny Ross and Roger Mattson giving the IAG their view of [ ')\\ f 13 the state of things and their view of the critical problems. (., 14 that we faced. 15 Joe Hendrie sat in on that session on Sunday 16 night. After that broke up there was a'little more time 17 that I. spent with some of the IAG members kind of refining 18 the activities and the thrust. of where they were trying to 19 l go and whether the IAG could or could not effectively function r in an area that went as deep into procedures as co,ntrasted 20 21 with the technical analysis. I think there was a feeling that the IAG didn' t have the righ-t kind of people to get as -t 22 That their role was better in l close as procedures as such. 23 O) the sort of bigger picture analysis kind of an area. 24 g w ('._ Somewhere along the line, I guess Sunday night if sas 25 wo=.c= sta=oo....e s e. vies. i.. : o6 a =.u. no.o. w vomi s si.... ees.o

. n. -: ,~.. -.-.

i 39 I have the timing right on this, Denton said, "My God, I I 5-2, didn't see anybody from B&W at the IAG." I said, "I agree 4 3; with you. I don't understand what happened. I have a l ~ ($ 4l committment from B&W to have people here." t 5i I think what really happened to the B&W people, i had 6! because they/other people on tho site, whomever from B&W 7' arrived just got co-opted into that activity on site. I 8l then called back, and I guess it was probably Sunday night, 1 9; to B&W and said, " Hey Goddamn it, you have got to have some-I 10 ' body here, a higher level guy." Monday morning John McMillen i 11 showed up. 12 During Monday. afternoon, the IAG spent alot of [~')\\ 13! time interacting with John McMillen and a couple of his senior vc 1 14 l guys sort of getting the B&W view of'where we were and what i IS the problems were. I 16 Monday night we met with Roge'r Mattson and Dennis

7 Ross, I think, for the purpose of reviewing the result of this first inttraction between B&W and the IAG.

That ended 18 ' up really -- it didn't end up achieving that. It ended up j9 being alot of detail discussions as far as with Roger' 20 Mattson on the subject of thermo couples and how they are 21 designed and what they look like and their measurements and 22 i 23l that kind of thing. Tuesday morning Denton and I don't know if it i (T 24, (s / L was Denton and Mattson, or Denton, Mattson, and Stello, 25 esO*ssCM STENOGRAPhoc sinwCE. f ot 3 OLD MILL ocao. wroesesssess es. teeto O

..:._.. mc u- - r l 40 If confronted me'with the proposition that you guys don't have 7-s, k _) ( 2l a firm plan on how you are going to get from here to there. 3l I said, "I have to agree with you. We will be back tonight ( 4 4 at 7:00 o' clock with a plan." 5l Tuesday afternoon I closeted nyself with McMillen, 6i Warren Owen, Bob Arnold, Dick Wilson and a couple more B&W t 7 ! guys and we just hammered out point by point what is the plan i i 8 for going from where we are to cold shutdown. What is the 9 route we are going to take? What is the step? What is the 10, sequence? What is the rationale? What if this fails? What 11 do we do next if this fails? What do we do if the pump 12 fails? What were the fallback positions to that plan? () 13 It took us about six hours to hammer that out. 14 There was alot of reluctance to sign up for a plan. There i 15 l. was the sort of feeling that saa have got alot more analysis 16 to do and I just hung in there with the ' things that if we had 17 to make,the decision right now, what would it be, because la! that is what we were faced with. That, of course, in turn 19, led to having in place in the control room, or at least to 20 a degree, having in place in the control room at all times 21 the fallback procedure. 22 We weren't in a position anymore to be in the 23 business.as usual protracted review and approval processes (~' 24 because if God decided to turn the pump off, we had to i N-d 25 have somebody there who knew what to do, whether it was ) moe..c= straco==* e scavies. sais oso mets mono wvowissi e insio l l

x:n.n +.,. w,a_ 41 1 I! approved or not. 2 ~ .( We put in place these procedures and their fall-3 back procedures, while at the same time the NRC undertook to do their own review of that and comment on it, and if i 5l effect approve, if you will. l 6l That plan then was reviewed in detail with Denton 7 and Stello, I think. I don't know whether Roger was there i 8 or not on Tuesday evening. 9; Then it was on Wednesday morning we turned our j Id attention to organization and Wednesday afternoon that 11 l organization was put into place. 12 In between time, yes I was acting as a messenger j s l 13 boy, I was acting as an interlocketer. I did alot of cross 14 j communicating with people at breakfast at the Holiday Inn, 15 hopping from table to table. We indeed had this problem'of 1 16 l trying to keep this group of. people orga'ni::ed and focusing l 17 ! on issues. At the same time, developing a sense of priority 1 l 18 ' of what were the things we really had to do. j 19 l One of the problems that I had or felt I had with 20 some of the NRC guys was a tendency to say, "Why in.the hell 21 aren't you.doing this? You can do that in three days. Why j in the hell aren't you doing this? You can do that in four 22 23 ! day. Why aren't you doing that? You can do this in one day." I l l 24 l I wasn't quite sure what the priorities really y', 25 ought to be. I may have appeared a little reluctant on some ( neomics STamo4 AAPesec SgSyseg, g493 OLD hasLL NOAO, WTQtalSSt%S. P4 19600 I L

c-A. -- =., I 42 I of those items. What I ' 4 nd of felt was a need to sort out L'~}c (. 2l those priorities. 3 (Short recess.) 4 BY MR. FRAMPTON: 5 O Mr. Dieckamp, just a couple of specific points 6l in the sequence of events that we jumped over that I want 7 to ask you about. i 8l You spoke of a telephone call from Jack Wattson 9l at the White House on Saturday. Do you recall whether you 10 asked him or the White House for any support during that I 11 i phone call or at any other time? 12 A No. I think in that phone call he said to me that I () 13 he was the guy tagged with the responsibility to make whatever 14 I national resources available that existed. I i I did not -- I don't think I made any specific 15 l 16 requests. I Later when I heard of the President's visit on 17 l 18 Sunday, I did call him to make a specific request. In that 19 specific request I specified three things. I said, one: 20 ' I don't want any helicopter around the transmission lines 21 because they are absolutely vital and critical. Two: You 22 have got to control the traffic so we don't jam up the 23 ingress, egress to the plant. Three: I would like to have I ) 24 you restrict the number of people in the party in the control (c/ 25 room to 15. He said, "We will absolutely do all of that." \\ I wo=.en svamoeaan=ie samvice. ius o6a u.a acao. wvowisse a. ea teeio

~.-.. :~a - l 43 i 1l I don't know whether the latter one was quite adhered to or ~x f C \\ 'j 2 not in the sequence of events. i 3i G Do you know how and by whom the decision was (,' made on Saturday morning that Met-Ed, GPU would get out 'f o 4 i 5l the press briefing business? I 6l A Well, by that time I think I probably -- whether it 7 was Saturday morning or Saturday afternoon or just when it i 8l was, I probably participated in that decision because it was l -9, becoming apparent that there was alot of problems with the 10 ; press concentration on what they perceived as conflicting i 1; l statements. 12 I also felt strongly that the press demands were ) 13 an excessive call on Jack Herbein's time and energies. ja! So I said I thought that we should withdraw from -- I guess by that time it was also apparent that the NRC 15 16 was going to be having standup briefings and I said we should withdraw from the daily standup briefing. That if we have i.7 g [ got something to say, perhaps we should put out once or twice i 19l a day a brief written statement, but that we should try to minimize this opportunity for press concentration on appear-20 ances of conflict. 21 l I just didn't feel that was serving any good 22 l purpose so I felt that we should modify our approach. 23, 4 Had you received any pressure or suggestions frcm (') 24 s_ c0' the NRC or the White House prior to that decision being made 25 esch*CM STthoemaPeseC SteytCt. 14 9 3 OLO **ILL Roa0 wv0Me SStaoG. Da 19610

vw 44 1 to take that step? O 2l A. No. I never had any conversation about it from (- i 3i the NRC. ( 4 I did get a phone call from Jack Matson sayin'g, 5; " Hey, these conflicting press stories have got to stop." 6i I then told him, "We have already decided to cease 1 7 the daily standup briefings which are the source of alot of iaj that." On one hand he told me the importance of not feeding 9l those conflicts but by that time we had already made our i i 10 l own decision as to what we felt was the proper thing to do. 11. Q. I just want to put on the record a short discussion i 12j we had during the break about how you went about calling people and identifying needs from outside your own organization 13 ja ' on Friday the 30th. 15l Is it fair to say that as of Friday you weren't I able to identify alot of the specific needs that you had, but 16 rather called the people for gen,eral restraints and abilities? 17 A. Yes. The calls were not in relationship to 18 19 l clearly defining specific tasks, but rather a feeling on my l part that the tasks were of such a general magnitude and sort 20 f yet to be defined scope,that we needed people with strong 21 basic backgrounds,. rather than narrow specialties. 22 I 0 When you arrived here on Saturday afternoon or I 23 fG evening, I think you said that you had a meeting with Mr. 24 ( )# l D Denton and possible with Mr. Stello that night. Do you 25. i

m 45 i 1' recall such a meeting? 2' A. I am not clear on that. I toay well.have. I don't k 3 recall saying that I had one with them on Saturday. ~ i (- 4 Q. I may be mistaken about that. A. I may have had one, but I just don't relate to it 5l 6 right now. 7' G In the first meeting that you had with Denton and 8; Stello and that grt.up, whether it was Saturday evening or I 9! Sunday, what conversations did you have with them about what 10 the NRC's role was going to be in overseeing or possibly 11 vetoing any major plant actions? 1 12 A. I don't recall.any specific conversation about V] 13l [ that. I don't recall eny assertion from them as to what l 14 ! their role was going to be. I guess I didn't even conceive I \\ 15 ' of it as an issue. I had no trouble in my mind accepting from the outset that this was an unusual situation. 16 We clearly were not talking in ter:ns of operating 17 in strict relationship to tec W. cal specs which were drawn jg 39 l up for a different set of conditions. We understood completel and just implicitly that this was a situation where we 20 l 21 ; needed to be glued together. I 0 S y u assumed then that the NRC would be in the 22 1 p and any major decision making? 23 A. Certainly that was my assumption. I think I have 24 w/ 25l to say I can't specify a cutoff level where the plant WON'CM STEMO4eaposec SteveCE. Ides OLD wtLL mOaO. wvontaStsNG. Da 195t0

46 j 1 l operated within its perceptions of its authorization versus s i 2-where we would feel that there is an item of sufficient ( I 3 importance that we would have to ourselves take the initiative 4 to insure that we had the NPC on board and approving. I' ( 5! think I have got to believe that interface between the 6 nickel and dime items and the more significant items that 7! had to develop with time was not clearly articulatable t 81 at the outset. 9 0 Let me turn now to the question of the issue of i i 10 whether unit two was improperly rushed into commercial 11 operation prior to the end of calendar, 1979 (sic) in order 12l to realize a certain financial tax or other benefits for the I' /*N() 13 company. As I said before we started, this is an issue 14 that has been raised in the press and in the public. It is 15 an issue we are looking into. I don't believe we have any 16 predisposition that we would like to try and get as many of j7 the facts as we can and call the evidence one way or another 18 if we are able to do that at the end of our inquiry. j9 I know you have testified about this subject at 20 some length elsewhere and I will try and not simply repeat g that. 3 Let me begin by asking you this: I think you had 23 i i said before that you were aware that any tax advantages that () 24 \\-/ t might accrue to the company in 1978 did not necessarily 25 MoheCM STtesOGmapwec samysCE. 148 3 OLD uf LL 20a0. WYOMSSSING, #4 19410 0

v1 47 1 depend on the plant being declared into commercial operation O O 2 by the end of the year as you understood the perhaps rather ( i vague tax criteria that were used, is that correct? i 4 A. I was aware or made aware of the tax case that f, '- 5i indicated prior precedent for allowing, and I don't know whether it is the tax credit or the accelerated depreciation 6 half year convention; based upon a condition of the plant 7 8j being ready to operate, I think might have even been the 9 words in the ruling, as contrasted with depending upon some specific declaration of its being in commercial service. 10 i I i 0 Do you remember what the source of your awareness 11 f 12 of this was? A. I think it was brought forth by the GPU controller O j3 U r his tax people who looked into this question.. 14 0 Do you recall whether there were discussions about 33 the subject during the latter half of 1978 in which you 16 37l participated? A. Yes, there were discussions. 18 Q Where do you recall that the people who talked 39 j i to you came down on this issue, if they did? Did they say i 20 it is our opinion that we probably wouldn't have to actually go commercial according to the existing criteria and rulings g l or that we would? What was corsunicated to you as the g f bottom line on this? g 'd A. It was my understanding that it was their judcment l l enomsCK STt*e0Gnapwee stavect. 1413 OLD MetL 80AO. wYoneessang. pa oteto L. m

m. 48 l I that plant had long since ret the minimum criteria consistent g-) \\,J. 2 with the tax codes. (' l ~ 3l 4 By long sense, you mean some time in the spring ~ 4i of 19787 5l A I don't know whether it was exactly the spring. I f 6 It was at some point back towards the riddle of the year, 7 late in the spring, middle of the year. I don't recall a 8 specific date, but long since meaning not last week or two 9' weeks ago, but several months before that time period of the 10 discussion. 11{ 0 Do you remerber whether there was any concern that 12 if the plant had apparently qualified in the spring that that () 13 might be jeopardized by the down tim. over the summer to 14 replace the valves? l 15 i A I don't recall that kind of a thing, specifically. I I do recall sore discussion of the case where the plant had 146 1-7 only operated for the briefest period of time and then was is down for a significant length nf time. I think in that case up i the tax treatment was disallowed. That is my recollection. l 20l There was, you know, a degree of judgment involved in terms of what degree of operability is really required to justify 21 22 or to qualify -for the varicus tax. treatments. .23 I don't think that is very specifically stated. It is sort of implied from these rulings rather than being () 24 \\ud-i 25j a statement of a specific set,of criteria. It is easily I MOh4CK STENOG A4ptstC SEnveCE, 14 8 3 QLD wall noaO. w vOne*SS6mo. ' A 19e10 n

49 I measurable. l ( 2! O, This is something you recall knowing during 1978? 3! A. Yes. ~ ( 4 0 Do you recall whether there was any reconsideration 5! of the question of whether unit two would actually have to i I 6l go commercial before cualifying for the tax benefits in i 7 December of 1978? 6 8i A I don't have any recollection of a specific l 9 reconsideration. 10, MR. FRAMPTON: Off the record. 11 (Discussion had off the record.) I 12 ' MR. FRAMPTOM: I would like to have marked as T ) 13 Exhibit 18 of this deposition a one-page memorandum with 14 an attachment dated December 28, 1978 entitled Status of 15, TMI, Number Two for Income Tax. Purposes. 16 (Whereupon, the memorandum en' titled Status of TMI 17 : Number Two for Income Tax Purposes was marked as Exhibit 18 Number 18.) BY MR. FRAMPTOM: 19 20 Q. Mr. Dieckamp, that document indicates that it 21 was sent.to you a.'ong other people. Do you recall getting the document and reading it? 22 A. I don't have a specific recollection of this 23l document. I do have this recollection of some uncertainty 24. ~ v about the degree of readiness for operation if necessary to 25, i naosseCK STINOGR AP***C S ERVICt. 1413 CLO usLL #0A0. *vCasessiNG. sa_ lesso

^4 ' - - ~ 50 I ('] qualify and I gather -- \\ / s- ( 2l 0 In late December? i 3l A Yes -- I gather this document brings forth a 7 case where the tax treatment was cuestioned because of the 'N 4 5 degree of operability at the plant. i 6 0 Along the lines that you mentioned before? 7) A Yes. i 3l 0 Do you recall if the specific subject that is i 9l covered by this memorandum was discussed by you in late i 10 i December with anyone? The specific item in there that says something 11 A 12 ! about two more tests need to be accomplished in order to do l' ( 13 something or the other? 14 i G Right. 15 A I don't have a recollection of that. 16 O I believe that unit two was resynchronized with the grid sometime in mid or late September of 1978, is that 1:7 18 correct? 19 A Whatever that date is. That ought to be a part of record. go 21 Approximately? A Yes. 22 23 G Do you recall any discussions after that to the ~ effect that the tax advantages would be available or tax es) ( N;; ga ~~ treatment would be available based on the continued operation 25 McNaCur $7tNoemaPMeC SERveCE. 1413 OLD MILL eQ AO. wf 0Mt SSING 94. 19410 0

-. c. A -m 51 j I f"'s l of the plant after the September resynchronization regardless 2;l N~- of whether it might have been available on the basis of the ( 3l plant's operation back in March and April? l ( I don't have a recollection -- again, a specific 4 A s 5l discussion that says here is a specific milestone that now I 61 does or does not enable the tax. I rather have an impression 7 of kind of a general judgment relative to operability. i 8! G What was that general judgment? 9, A Well, in relationship to the other tax referenc'e 10l which describes the degree of operability of that plant or 11 - says -- I think it uses words to the effect of ready to l 12l operate or something. 1 () 13 I guess what I'm saying is, I don't have any t 14 impression of judgments having been made on the basis of I 15 specific milestones. I would rather have impressions'of 16 people having been asked, does the plant seem to conform I'7 with the kind of language in thi.s other ruling that says 18l basically ready to operate. i9l 4 When you are talking about the other ruling, you l are talking,about the revenue ruling? 20 A Yes. The other. case, whatever you want to call 21 it or whatever you should call it, 22 23 G Do you recall whether there was any discussicn of ( this subject at a mee. ting of the GPU or GPU Service Company 24 Board in December of 19787 25 l l ..e .......e..........., m. .o m.....,,..... ,,,,o

- =. _ a. 52 l 1 A. Yes. 2 0 Was Mr. Arnold there during that tire? ( g(6 3 A I think so, yes. What do you recall about the conversation or ' 4 0 (' s 5 conversations on the subject at that meeting? Who said what 6 to whom about this? 7 A I can't reproduce that. I think I have the 8 impression that at that meeting there were statements or discussions to the effect that Bob Arnold, who in icoking at 9 these criteria -- I shouldn't use the word criteria, descrip-10 tions of ready to operate or operability felt that the plant 11 had a.! ready met those kinds of conditions. 12 13 0 Prior to that meeting? ('~h d 14 A Prior to that meeting, yes. I Was he showed a revenue ruling or a list of O 13 1 criteria to your recollection? 16 A I don't have a recollection of that having been I j7 i' an official piece of the meeting where sorebody grabs this ja 79 i and gives it to Bob Arnold and says, "What about that?" I have the impression that perhaps screwhere in 20 a side bar discussion this was reviewed with Bob. gj 0 But you do have a reco.llection of that happening, 22 of his looking at some criteria and giving a judgment based 23 on his review? 7-% 24 A. Yes. 25 WO%sCF ST ENOQma *=sC SE *VsC E. t a13 Ob3 *:6L #0 A D W.OMsSSme pa teetc 1 e

w 53 7-~

1l You know, having said in my opinion him not being (_-)/. l 2 a tax lawyer, but in my opinion the ocerations of the plant 3' are consistent with what is described here as operable or I ( 4l operability. 5i G This December 28th memorandum, Exhibit Number 18, i 6 seems to reflect a slightly different outlook on that. An 7 cutlook that suggests that in order to make sure of getting 8 the desired tax treatment you would want to make sure to go 9-commercial in 1978. Do you recall whether this surprised i 10 ' you or you took any particular notice of that? 11 l A I didn't take any particular note of that.

Again, 12f I had this impression that the criteria -- again, I hate to i

(s) 13 use the word criteria -- the description is alot more 4 14 j general than what that memorandum would suggest in terms of specificness of completion of specific tests. 15 16 G D you recall whether anyone ' lse who was a e j7 recipient of this memorandum of December 28th expressed 18 any views about it to you or discussed it with you? A Discussed what? 39 l G The memorandum or the views expressed in it. 20 A. .I don't recall a discussion of that memorandun. 21 g Jk) you recall the discussion of this point of 22 view, narely that it'still would probably have to go com-23, ! mercial in order to make sure of getting the tax treatrent? (~^~1 24

\\_2 A

I think it is fair to say that at some point in 25 ............................ oso - u....................

. w- ~- 54 l I! the discussion, it may well have been characterized as saying g -) QA 2 if the plant is commercial, there will be little cuestion (s i 3 about it. I don' t recall tha t as having been stated as the ~ c(,~ 4 l limiting necessary and sufficient condition. 5; O Are you talking about a discussion at the board 6l meeting or a discussion at or about the time this remorandum 7 was circulated? 8' A Again, I don't recall any discussion at the time 9 of that memorandum. I recall the discussion at the time of i the board meeting and I recall the content there being the 10 ! 11 fairly broad characterizations necessary to cualify. I 12 ' recall the judgment that,, "Yes, we had met that level of ~w cualifications." 13 ja ! I recall somewhere along the line of having been 15i sort of made aware of another ruling that tended to undercut that by citing the example at the plant that operated only 16 1 i f r a short ceriod of time. 17 I I think in my mind that was a very exeggerated 18 case because that plant had operated for an extremely short

9 peri d of time at a very low power level.

20 I don't think that I' personally felt that I was 21 making the judgment as to whether we did or didn't meet 22 the tax criteria. 23 MR. LIBEPMAN: I think by inadvertent, Mr. f) 24 LA Frampton, you referred to the memorandum as saying it had E 25 f l .... c.mo...... e.....c...... o m..u. .. m o-i........ ....o l I

i 55 I rx a reference to commercial operation. As I look at it, it \\ V (' doesn't unless I am missing something. It talks about passing 2 i 3I some test, but it doesn't talk about what has core to be known as the elusive term "conrercial operation", correc't? 4 t 5l MR. FRAMPTON: Yes, you are correct. 6l Let me pursue that a little bit. \\ 7l BY MR. FRAMPTON: l 8' G I understand that a nuclear power plant does not I i 9 have to go through the complete power essention test schedule I 10 ; required by the NRC and be cualified to operate at full 1 11 l power rating in order to be declared commercially available, t 12 is that your understanding? () 13 A Well, I think in general terms that is true. One i 14 l does not find in any regulations or any literature a state-l 15l ment to the effect that those are the criteria for corrercial. 16 i I must say that we were keenry aware that in the 17 rate making process the auestion.of whether the plant was 18 I or was not commercial was an important question and that we i 19 took steps to try to, well in advance, describe to the 20l commissions the purpose of the test program and the kinds of 21 things that would be accomplished. The discipline or vigor with which they would be accomplished before we would declare 22 23 the plant commercial'because we felt we did not want to be l () 24 in a position where someone would later say, "Well, you just \\-d a willy, nilly declared it commercial for rate making purposes." 25 MOmeCN STENQQmapWlC ggsvegg, 14t 3 @LO Mg(6 30a3. wygwg ggggg, pa tggd m

-+ u w r 56 I We wanted to say, "No, it is a definite plan that (/- g (_ 2 we will have gone through in order to declare it comrarcial." (' 3 I think it is also proper to say that this is i e k 4 probably the most explicit that we have ever been in that I 5 regard. 6 0 In fact, GPU -- the GPU system had had. a plant that 7j went commercial at 60 percent of its power, had. it not? 8l A Yes. 9l 0 But in the case of Three Mile Island, unit two, 1 10l you had made some representations or had some communications i 11 with the Public Utility Commission in Pennsylvania to the 12 effect that you would not declare the plant in commercial () 13 operation until you had completed the full test secuence i 14 that you had mapped out and that the NRC recuires, isn't 15 that correct? 16 A I would have to let the lette'r stand on itself 17 in term.s of its own merits, in t.erms of the specific degree I I haven't looked at the letter in a few months 18 [ of committment. so I don't recall exactly what it says 16 terms of that we 19 20 ' won't do this before that and if it says that, fine. 2; G What was. your understanding -- A It was my understanding that it was our intention 22 to conduct that program before declaring the plant commercial. 23 i ) We felt that there was so much uncertainty on the (% 24 part of alot of parties about what was meant by commercial, 25 l ............................ _ m..................... i

.. e - u _. i 57 1 f~~} i what was the purpose of declaring it conmercial, what was a \\_( l~ the impact of declarine it comiercial, that we felt it was 3' l in our interest to try to articulate all those factors to ( 4 the commission so as to provide a basis. khen we later went 5 in saying that the plant was commercial'and asking for a l 6 i rate making treatment, that we could say, "Look, this has 7 been the program, this is what we said we were going to do 6 8 and what we intended to do. This is the degree to which we 1 9 have done that. " H3i G Did you yourself regard this as a firm plan? I 11! A I regarded it as a firm plan, but I also felt I 12 free to exercise some jud7 ment about that plan and I think I rw ksI 13 just a specific example of that is that we declared the plant \\ i 14 l commercial even though it had not -- you know, what was it? l 15 I think it was at 98 percent power when we declared it 16 commercial. It had been at 100 percent for a rather brief l'7; period of time. 18 l I felt free and comfortable in making the judgment 19 that that differ ntial was not significant in terms of what 20 we were trying to demonstrate and accomolish. 21 0 Was it your understanding that you had made some 22 kind of a committment to the PUC in Pennsylvania, whether 23 i that committment was revocable or not, to wait till you iinished i ("% I ( ) 24 l the testing program before declaring the unit in commercial s./ i \\* It j 25 : operation? l esO4sCE S?tmO6#ArmeeC StewsCE tela OLO nest 4 moaO. wvotessesme sa teeto

u.:. .a.. SP 1 (' A. I am having trouble in terms of black and whiteness ( ( 2l of committment. 3l I personally felt.and personally felt that it was f-

l in our best interest, to conduct the program in a way so 5

that there could be the least cuestion about whether the plant 6l was qualified to be declared coemercial. I personally then t 7 ! felt that adherence to our prior statement of intention of 8 the plan was the best way to minimize any downstream arguments t 9l about whether it was or was not commercial. 10 Let me just say that I have trouble accepting 11 the word committ. ment when we indeed departed, but I don't 12 think we departed. in terms of the intent or the insignificance C. 13 of what we said we were' going to do. We essentially adhered 14 to our plan. 15 0. Would it be fair to say that representations were 16 made that that was your plan? ~ 17 A. Sure. I guess, again, the letter speaks for it-18 self. I 19 i 0 What conversations can you recall having with 20 Mr. Arnold in the second half of 1978 about the desirability 21 of going commercial before the end of the calendar year, 22 if any? 23 A I don't recall any exact dates or any exact 24l subjects or things like that. 25 I would have to say that I felt that we did have 'l womecs sit 400mapuec Stevict. 1413 OLO weLL sono. wvoisissimo ma tseio

~ j l 59 i I{ a schedule for taking the plant corrercial. I think we did N e l 2i have a feeling that we wanted to achieve that milestone, (' l 3: you

know, relatively early on.

I k' 4 ! I am sure that there was some suggestion that'we i 5i would like to accomplish that before the end of the year. I 6 am also sure that in those conversations with Mr. Arnold I 7f told him explicitly that the staff was not to depart frcm the i 8' requirerents of the test program; in fact, they were not to 9, depart from doing things in accordance with their own judgment 10 i for the simple purpose of achieving the schedule. l 11l 0 When do you recall telling them that, as best as i 12 [ you can place it? O) ( 13 A I am sure I had the same kind of conversation with them two or three times over that time period of the 14 6 fall and winter, which had the general content that says, 15 16 "Yes, we want the schedule removed. Yes, we want to complete 17 l the program. By all means we sh.ould not sacrifice doing the I 18 job right." 19 G Why did you feel that it was necessary to say that to him? 20 A .To make sure he. understood the relative importance 21 of conducting the program properly and safely in relation-22 23. ship to schedule. I l [) I think one side of discussion about schedule only 24 ,\\-,C, might not have conveyed the proper emphasis. 25, i 4 mOnica STtmoemapsesc stav,CE. 1413 OLD wLL eOAO wvouessage ma sesto

a i 60 (T I; G Did you have any belief or view or concern that l %s(.' 2! without that kind of caveat from you he might feel some 3I undue pressure to push ahead with the test schedule? i i i A I had no reason for concern. I felt it important 4 5j to make sure he didn't imply some pressure that I didn't l 6 want to convey. I felt it was important for me to be 7 explicit about tha t. 8i G Do you recall any further about any discussions 9! with him on that subject or do you recall what his response 4 l 10 ' was in any of these conversations? f 11 i A I don't know that there was any specific response. I 12 There certainly was no ar.gument. I think if anything, I ) 13l would characterize it as one of saying, "I understand." t 14 ! O Did you ever have any discussions with him about i 15 the specifics of the time schedule in terms of whether it* 16 could be shortened, telescoped, or wheth'er any tests that you 17i had planned to do that were not recuired by the NRC could i 18 be postponed? 19 A No, to the contrary. I at no time ever suggested 20 deletion of the test. If'anything, and again my memory -- l 21 you would hcve to look at the record on this, I have a 22 recollection of. suggesting that the time at. power be reason-23 I ably substantial in terms of the number of days, not just t - (.) the one hour or one minute, but that there be a reasonable 24 V 25 period at power again so that it was not just a fleeting I teONICet STrasqqmaputC gtsveCf. 1483 OkO ne:LL NOAD. wfossessene. pa toeso i 1

l m. l 61 I accomplishment. 0(~% l (_ 2l I am unaware of how many days it had actually i 3' been operating when we did declare it commercial.

Again, f

k 4 you can check the record on that. i 5 Again, that was a matter of judgment as to how I 6; many days you would be at full power. What did we say ir.. I 7 the letter to you? Do you have that letter? I 8 ! MR. LIBERMAN: I furnished it to the gentleman. 9 THE WITNESS: I think the letter said four days. 10 MR. FRAMPTON: Off the record. 11 (Discussion had off the record.) 12 BY MR. FRAMPTON: [%) 13 0 Do you recall any conversations with Mr. Herbein 14 i about the' desirability of going commercial before the end of 15 the year and the relationship between that desire and the 16 test schedule? 1-7 A I am not sure. I think I might have talked with Herbein once about the status of the test program and where 18 19 we were. In general, these kinds of discussions were 20 l dominantly with or through. Bob Arnold. 21 22 0 Do you have any recollection of saying to Mr. Herbein in substance', "We would like to go commercial before 23 the end of the year, but we don't want to rush it. And if [/ - ; ) 24 \\- i 25 we don't make it, we don't make it"? i l =omics sn=oaa n .e sanvice. v.i s oto =iu..o o. w,ou... =o..._.....

u. j 62 I A. I have no trouble saying that that is consistent 3 ) 2 with what my position was. If I did say such a thing to j 3' Herbein, that would not surprise me. I don't recall a ~ 1 f.( 4' specific occassion of.having done that. If Jack recalls that, 5 fine. 6 0 In your own view, what were the major advantages.of 7j going commercial before the end of the year or the major i 8} reasons why it was desirable? I I 9, A. Well, I don't know that in my own mind I attached 10, extreme importance to it even though I think it was our 11 general feeling that that would be the preferable case. 12 I saw in the trade off as involving the impact on [O 13ll income if we declared the plant to commercial too early in %] ' 14 relationship to receiving rates to cover the cost versus 15 the risk of the plant of going commercial sometime beyond 16 the end of the rate making test year for'one of our cases. 17 That to me was the trade off. I think from my i 18 own personal view of that was that I was more concerned about 19 the earnings attrition from declaring it commercial before the rates were in effect than I was a few days or weeks 20 I 21 beyond the test year in the Penn-Elec case. That was my own sort of weighing of some of these considerations. 22 23 0. Let me as1d you to explain for the record the 1 9 [) 24 disadvantage of declaring comrercial well before you receive Li approval to include the entire unit in the rate base. 25 MO8e'CIE STthConapwec sanwsCt. latS OLO ueLL soao. wvoaseggises. pa 100 0 c

s-; = { 63 II A Well, the declaration of the plant being w \\_ 2 (,3 commercial in accordance with the FERC accounting principles 3l really signals the change in ' the accounting for the plant. e-l. 4l At that time one ceases to capitalize returns 5 on the capital employ, one begins to charge operating an 6l maintenance expenses directly to income and stopping to i 7l capitalize those. One begins to take deprec ation on the 3l investment and so to the extent, those expenses are recog-9l nized in the income statement and are not either taken -- 10 l not taken or capitalized; one impacts on the company's t i 11l earnings very directly until such time that rates are in 12 place to provide revenues to offset those costs. [m) 13 4 Let me go back to see if I understand this. N i 14 ' Before the unit is declared commercial, there 15, are certains costs of the test program whien can ultimately 16 be capitalized and put into a rate base?' I 17 A Yes. 18 ! n Those include both the cost of money and the i 19 l actual cost of operation or some of the actual costs of I 20 operating the plant during the test period? A Most of the costs of construction, operation, 21 22 maintenance that is going on, start up test.prograt, as 23 l well as the allowed cost of money both for the borrowed i f~) 24l funds as well. as the ecuity portion of the investment. l s_( ', l 25l G-When'the unit is declared commercial, after that i woe..ex strucomarwic sanvics vers oco me. soao. wrouessia.o. ea. vesto

-~~ -~ ~ 64 i i I' 'T point in tire under FERC rules, those expenses are no longer J ( eligible to go into the rate base for FERC purposes, is 2 3! that ri~ght, for wholesale rate purposes? l (~s 4l A Without getting too narrow about it, I would say I 5; in general the recuirements are that those expenses no longer I 6l be capitalized but be incurred currently in the operating 7 income statement. 8, The question of rate base, I think, you have got i 9 to watch that terminology. That is why I say capitalized. 10l While it is an investment, we usually say it is rate base. I 11{ When a regulatory commission has accepted that investment 12 as a basis for determining rates. rN ( ) 13! O Is it your understanding that the State Public s l Utility Commission usually gives you rate relief based on 14 the additional plant as of the date it decides to do ' hat, t 15 f 16 i or as of the previous date on which it decides that the plant I l'7l was eli,gible for such treatment?. I 18 ' A I think the record on that is extremely clear. It 19 is if and when they get around to it, and that is a very 20 difficult problem. I think you can look at the record on Three Mile One, Homer City.Three. Whatever major investment. 21 22 l In general, there is a delay between the time that that f plant goes into service and those costs are no longer 23 l 4 (~3) 24 l capitalized and the time which rates are granted to compen-v., sate for those costs. 25 .,,e=.u......e.....e.....om...u................,.

r... - _.. =. i 65 G You suggested in the deposition taken by the (} 2l President's Commission that in'the interim period, there is a s i 3; danger of losing the benefits of the operating expenses and ( ^'- 4l the interest costs, the cost borrowed, but in this time i I 5

period between declaring commercial and getting rate relief, I

6' can you explain how those expenses are considered operating I expenses? t O A Those expenses are not benefits. 9f G Getting credit for them in effect? 10 A I think what I said there, once incurred those 11, expenses are never recovered. Once they are .c".e, one only 12 i achieves rates -- maybe I should say normally achieves the A(_,) 13 rates prospectively. Once the rate order is handed down i I 14 and the extent to which the revenues match the expenses to l 15 ! make you whole, you are okay. The prior absence of revenues l 16 to offset those expenses is never recove' red. That is lost 17 : forever.. I think I said to the President's Commission that 18 for that reason and when plants have significant expenses 19 and significant levels of investment involved in them, a 20 major incentive or major objective that we have is to try to 21l plan ahead so as to synchronize the rate making and the 1 22 date on which the plant goes into service. 23 0 I think in some earlier testimony, public testimony n() 24 l before the President's Commission, you mentioned thac one of o 25 the reasons for wanting to get into commercial operation in ~ =o=eca ses=ocaa**e saavies. su s o6o =% noao. wro.ssiaa.... seeio

66 i I 1978 was the testing or potential problem with the test year. r~wg (j ( 2 It is my understanding that only one of the three i 3 operating companies had a test year, the end of which co- ? 4i incides with the end of calendar '78, is that right? 5! A I think that is right. i 6{ G You were aware of that at the time? I 7 I A. Yes. 8 g By the time, I mean in late '78. 9: A Yes. i 10 ! Can you describe why it would be desirable to go 11, com.narcial with.in the test year with respect to that utility 1s 12 pending application? () 13 A Yes. It simply eliminates a technical argument 14 l as to whether or not those expenses should be recognized 15 in the rate making. 16l However, you can also look at the record and I 17 think you will find that many commissions permit rates to 18 go into effect and recognize plants that have come into 19 l being modestly beyond the test year. It is a very pragmatic I 20 l thing. i It would be extremely disadvantageous if you 21 waited until your test year could. reflect a. full year of 22 23 l expenses for that plant. , ~. l What that means is that you would have the entire s) I 24 i l duration of the rate case with no revenues for those expenses 25 ~ womeCm STtwoonapwse sgRveCE. tota OLD wekk # CAD. wrousselNG P4, 19910 v -.

1 _r x-67 1' so you almost end up with a recuirement for some normalization I- \\ 2 to adjust the test year expenses to reflect what they would 3 be had the plant been in service as well as any other of fsets i 1 (' 4! that may be incurred hecause of the plant being in service. 5i Then you get into the question of regulatory practice, i 1 6j precedence and the like as to the degree to which the i7' commission will reach out and recognize a plant which is not 8! yet in service in that process. l. 9l But as such reaching cat is done, the business 10l of having the plant commercial during the period of test year, 1 11 : in my mind, simply closes or constrains the opportunity for 12 a very, very narrow technical argument to not reach out 13 and normalize for those expenses, nj 14 (L What would the technical argument -- what result 15i w uld the technical argument have if it prevailed? In other i w rds, if you had gone commercial on January 5th and the PUC 16 37 l

said, "No, no, you did not make the test year," what would they do; would they set up a new test year of June to June or la something like that?

What would be the possible -- 39 YU"

~~

20 gl happened exactly that.way,.certainly there would be a signifi-cant impact until such-time as that plant was filled -- on g the other hand, if you look at the practices, I think in 23 1 fact the Pennsylvania commission has made statements about 3

W their willingness to reach out and recognize the plants that g

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-+ . +. _ -.. j 68 1* are not yet in service. There is a linit to that. \\(/ - 2 Any number of things can be done to adjust for e I 3 i that. We, in effect, went' through that because we originally ( 4 ! were planning that the plant would be in service by May 31st. 5 1 ! It was necessary to kind of recycle one of the cases in order e i 6I to bring it into coincidence with the plant going into l 7 service. 8 G Do you recall any discussion about whether it would 9 be desirable to have the plant in commercial service prior to 10 the oral arguments before the PUC that were scheduled for i l 11 i mid-January, I believe, of '79? \\ 12l A We may have talked about that kind of thing. I (a) 13 can visualize it as being the kind of thing we would recognize s 14 as e factor. 15 0 So you wouldn't be surprised if it was recognized i 16 but you don't recall conversations about it? 17 A I don't recall a specific one that was set up on 18l a date based on that basis. Again, it gets back to the point I 19 l in my mind that says, "We are involved in a process that l 20 has certain opportunities for technical argument.and we would 21 like to minimize our vulnerability of those technical i 22 ' arguments." 23 0 Was there ever any meaningful concern about whether I 24 failing to make the FERC Rule 9D deadline might actually {m)- 25 result in disallowance of some of these expenses? That rule l l ~ l MO*seCK STEMOG AA*meC Stay *Ct. t ot a OLD usb6 #0A0 wv0MsSSING. e4 19410

m -- o l 69 1 (} '{ requires you to make a report in explanation if you don't %~ ( 2' meet the 120-day deadline. t 3l A Yes. Was there any concern that some expenses might 5 actually be disallowed if the time period dragged on too long? 6! A Certainly that is a concern. I think.my own 7 impression of that also is that we, on occassion, sensed 8j that the regulators, the state regulators, would like for us 9 to defer completion of the project and continue to capitalize I 10 costs and not recognize the cost of the rates. The FERC i 11 guidelines of 120 days also constitutes an argument as to 12{ why you*cannot or should not continue to defer coming to /~T i (,) 13 grips with the issue of declaring the plant corrercial. 14 ! G When you say the state regulators, is it the 15 state regulators or the company that has an incentive to try 16 to capitalize as many of these test expe'nses as possible? 17l A The company has an incentive to convert capitalize i 18 earnings to true earnings as early as possible. The regulators 19 seem to have a desire to delay coming to grips with the issue. 20 0 The rates may be higher due to the delay? 21 A Yes. You will find in the record cases where they ( 22 have suggested that the absence of rate making is not impor-23, tant because one can just go ahead and capitalize these /~'t i I. ) 24 j expenses. ' s-; 1 Y.) 25l Was that a perceived position of the Pennsylvania I 'l . ~..........................<...................... 9

m - - -a l 70 I PUC on your part? ( 2 We were~ concerned about the Pennsylvania Commission's A 3! behavior in this regard. I think their. behavior in the (~=

l Philadelphia Electric case on Salem One was a good indicator i

5! of their preferences or their thinking so as to say I felt I 6! In my mind that the importance of the FERC standard or the 7; FERC criteria on 120 days was a basis to suggest to the 3' regulator why we needed to come to grips with this matter 9 and could not in turn delay the rate making process. ? 10 Granted, if we had engaged in that gace planning 11 : of delaying the coming to grips with it and appearing to 12 l be happy because of the capitalizing expenses, we would have (~) I V , 13j then opened up a vulnere .ty to a later disallowance on 14 i the FERC audit. 15 g What penalties or disadvantages, if any, was 16 GPU or the operating companies suffering as a result of not 17 having met the original committment to go on line in May 18 l or June of 1978? 19 A I don't recall that we were suffering anything } 20j significant relative to the pool. I am sure there-may have 21 been some capacity payments because of the absence of this i [ i 22 generating capability for GPU, but that is not an extremely 23 ; large quantity. I think that was running 20 at that time,22, . fh , t 1 24 S25 a kilowatt year. l s4e " 25, G But that was not in your view a substantial 1 l womeCM STENO 4mapwsC Stevict. 1413 OLD weLL *ca0 w rc us e s4 =G Pa teoso

u. l 71 l I! incentive to get the plant commercial compared to various m) 2l other measures one way or another? l 3l A. No, I don't think so. I am sure all nickels add 4 up to dollars and what have you, but I would not in my mind i 5 have identified that as an overriding consideration. 1 6i MR. FRAMPTON: Off the record. 7 i (Discussion ~had off the record.) i 3l (Short reces.s.) l 9l BY MR. FRAMPTON: t 10j G Mr. Dieckamp, do you recall making any calls to 11! people at EPRI on Thursday, Thursday night, about getting i 12l some help to Milt Levinson or Mr. Zebroski or anyone else? 13 A. I might have. I think I was in contact with them. v. i 14 I don't know whether it was Thursday night or Friday morning, 15l I really don't. i 16 MR. LIBERMAN: Off the record'. 17 (Discussion had off the record.) 18 BY MR. FRAMPTON: 19 0 We were speaking before about the IAG. How did 20 the results of the group's work or of the various. groups' 21 work.get input into the operations? l 22 A. That input came mostly, I think, a number of ways. 23 I suspect it really did not start having a significant affect 24 until we set up the organization and people like Zebroski and Q: ? 25 Levinson sat in on the working group -- technical working ~ r wo.en svenoaa,-ie scavies. vais oto viu oao. nouissi..... iseio r. -.,,,,,,, _., - _ + - - _,,

w -~ 72 i Ih groun and began to make direct input there. Then as time V(- went on, other people, and I don't know whether that 2! 3l started exactly on Wednesday-or Thursday, but people began to (. 4 do things. 5. l I think that for the first several days the role 6i of the Industry Advisory Group was one getting up to speed 7 and beginning to look as some of the longer range issues and af later began to do specific things like planning for natural l 9l compaction, doing some diagnostic work on looking at the i 10 self-powered neutron detectors, Ackerman hooking up this or 11 j that or other things of that sort began to get in. 12 r I don't think~in the early days they did not have f 13l a significant impact on the direct operations. s 14 l 0 When they did have more of an impact, how was that 15l structured? Was it through Bob Arnold or you? 16 ' A No, it was direct frcn Levinson sitting on the ) i l~' t technical working group of the organization and its daily j i 18 meetings. Then by setting up, you know, sort of collaborations 19 for working arrangements between specific people in the 1 20 Industry Advisory Group and the plant staff people that were 21 concerned about something. i 22 When you look -- in my' mind, and'again just kind 1 23 of a summary about it,.the role of the IAG, that sort of m 24 l surfaced early on, was the added confidence that it gave I \\ 25 both us and the NRC that there was a separate set of guides MOMeCit STENOGRAPmC SERVICE. 1413 OLD usLL RO AO. wvout984NG. Da 19910 j

_u. m n m_. i 73 I with a recognized degree of competence that were looking at 7 2 some of the problems and coming up with some independent 3i impressions and judgments and anticipations. I ~ k 4 I think it was that rule in let's say the first -- 5 let's say you had two or three days of getting up to speed 6f and then you went into this phase of some added confidence 7 from the presence of these extra analysis, advisors, antici-i 3-pators, then you went into a later phase of more detailed i 9 interactions of Ackerman hooking up this or that, a tempera-e 10 ture reading; or Zebroski talking to somebody to dig out some data about reconstructing the core damage or Levinson 11 12, and others, Leavy, getting very specific in consulting on [/) 13l the transition to natural confection and the anticipation l f of how that was going to go and those kinds of things. 14 i l You mentioned earlier about the comment about 15l 1 16l whether the industry ought to have such 'a thing set up 1-7' ahead of time. I think one, in order to do that effectively, 13 i one has to assume that our experience here would constitute i i 19l a model and the benefit of having some kind of a prearranced situation would,be to kind of anticipate, provide earlier 20 awareness of what spectrum. of skills you wanted, what kind 21 of basic organization you ought to have, what kind of people 22 23, would be able to move in and provide leadership. It would l { not take as long to develop a sense of priorities and a () 24 - %./- t 25 l sense of structures that was.necessary to get there. -o

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.a s J 74 1' (% Maybe there was somebody that was a much better i 1 i s_/ 3 \\ crisis manager than I happened to be or whoever else happened 31 to be that could have done this in one day instead of three -~ or four, but that is how long it took us in this case. I 5' think the objective, the next time around, would be to 6 compress that time scale to get to the point where such added 7 resources were useful and meaningful and helpful. 8 G Are you aware of any cutback in maintenance or 9i decision not to increase the maintenance budget or effort i 10 l in the time frame of December, '78 or early '79 with respect II to unit two? 12j A I am not aware of anything in terms of specific /% I3 (,) i details or specific numbers or specifit people or activities. 1 Id i I am clearly aware that at all times we are trying to look at 15 the budgets for our major activities. i 16l I am also keenly aware that because of the costs I7 that we.were experiencing, we made an effort to analyze I8 our cost experience with that of others in the industry to 19 the extent we could by accessing the FPC form something or 20 other, which reports these costs. We were always concerned 21 about whether these costs were uniformly reported under the i .22, same ground rules so that the comparisons were meaningful. 23 We derived the impression that we were among the ) 24 higher plants, whether it was Oyster Creek or Three Mile ~./- i 25, Island, as were among the higher organizations in terms of i

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9 ,..,,, - - ~,

.a -- ~ . = -.... ~.. 75 I s, the amount of money that we expended on operating and mainten-g/. \\s_ 2l .( ance for the plants. i 3l We also felt that our plants had an outstanding (~ \\ 4l capacity factor of records. I personally felt to the degree i5i that those expenditures contributed to those capacity factor I 6 performances, we were doing the right thing, but I couldn't i 7 prove that there was a one to one corelation between those S, two. 9 G So you -are not aware of any overall cutback? 10 A I am not aware of a specific cutback. I am sure 11, we had budget restraints and pressures. i 12 Again, we attempted to assess those in relationship w I 13 to the experience and practices of others. 14 By the way, there is a GPU report on that subject 15 where we attempt to corelate or compare our experience with 16 that of others. i MR. FRAMPTON: Off the record. 17 la (Discussion had off the record.) 19 MR. FRAMPTON: For the record, we have just 20 requested to see if we can get a copy of the document that i 21 the witness referred to. 22 BY MR. FRAMPTON: 23j G Mr. Dieckamp, one of the things that we have i c [J; 24 certainly -- i 25 ' A You know -- let me.just back up for a minute. I i I mowics stamoonapusc sanwict. tais oto neiLL moso. wroneissens 84 tseio

76 1 i think at the last management and review meeting the corrent l \\. ! was made about O&M restrictions and cutting back on simulator I 3l training in order to, you know, reduce expenses, at which b ai b t time I said, "No, we will have annual simulator training; 5 don't go to the once or every two year side." You know, we 6 were trying to balance those things. 7f 0 One of the things that we have certainly tentativelt 8 identified as a serious problem has been highlighted by the 9: accidant here is that neither the industry nor the government 1 i 10 seems to have done a very good job in the past of evaluating II operating experience and getting information that can be 12 ' learned from that experience back to the people who need it. O() l In particular, nobody has really heretofore thought about 13, 14 setting up a system that would be effective in weeding out 15 i the important information from all of the unimportant 16 information and seen that it gets to the right place. 17 In a prior deposition, you had some pretty 18 interesting things to say about the advantages of having what 19 j you would call an operations analysis type person working t 20 l for you to look at your own operating experience.and other .i 21 people's. I wonder i'f you have scme thoughts about what the i 22 utility company -- the utilities can individually do in this 23 area and how they might go about coing it and what they o)) 24 can't do; what is it, if anything, that is better done by ( ' q: 25 industry as a whole or by the NRC or the government of somebody ' s MC P6t C K $TENOGRa#MIC ggRygCL 1493 OLO MsLL #Cao, wrowsgse%g, ya stelo

.a e 77 1 else? -s V+ 2 A Well, you put your finger on alot of the pieces g 3: of it and I did elaborate on some thoughts for the Fennedy ( 4 Commission deposition and I continue to feel that that is 5j.an extremely important piece of learning. I would character-i i e it as none of us having recognized the importance of 6 I l 7 using operating experience as a source of development of 8 a sense of values for the maturing of the technology. I 9f think it becomes complicated because you said a key thing 10 ! when you said prioritize and you also used a key thing in 11 terms of sorting out and identify which things are important i i 12 and not important. I f )' 13 i I think there is also an opportunity here for \\_/ l l alot of loss if you end up with alot of duplication. I 14 15 think it might not be best if everybody tried to do it for themselves. 16 i

7 The kinds of thoughts, I have is that when we 18 think of putting a degreed man in the control room in all shifts, I think one of the things you also have to think about 39 t

is what intellectual pursuit do you give that guy in order 20 i 21l to keep him engaged and happy and make his position meaning-ful. I think this business of the operations analysis, the 22 pursuit of the understanding and the operational events that 23 () 24l you bserve is one of the kinds. of things that that guy \\s _,% i 25l could do that would be synerg.istic with this task of I MON 8 Cit STEPsO4Napurc SE2VeCE. 149 3 040 w'L6 moac. wroess 9 8tNG. 84. t96f9

y 78 l I understanding the safety and being there as a resource person -w ']'( 2 in case of an emergency. 3i I think one needs some kind of a structure where i each company does a good job of analyzing its own experiences 4 3 and then somehow comes together on an owner's group basis i 6; or something to get the crossfeed from the other companies 7' and to do that on a fairly frequent basis. I think in that l 8i, deposition, I suggested monthly. 9 I also suggested that I think there would probably i 10l be merit then in someone like the NRC doing this essentially 11l in parallel so that we perhaps,have the benefit of a degree 12 j of redundant look at those issues. () 12 I think the problem here, when you try to trace s y l back specifically through Davis-Besse, is that that event 14 15 was just snow into a mountain of other analogous paper. The 16, only report with significant details in-terms of the event, l I is the one that came through a private reporting service, 17 l but even that report provided no evidence of the significance 18 of the observations, no derivation of the meaning. It was 19 - all just very matter of factly reported as A did this, B did 20 this, C did something else.; no derivation or meaning. As 21 far as I can tell, Toledo didn't pick it up, B&W didn't pick 22 s_ 23f it up, the NRC didn't pick it up, we didn't pick it up, the (4 significance of that event. y 24 j l L When you look at the forms of the official reporting l 25 I womicz straoosse=ec samvect. eats oto we6L noso. w,ouissimo. en seeio e

79 i I channels, those were all so sketchy as to -- well, a guy g-s 'l 2f would really have to be looking -- like walking across the i 3, United States and stop off'in Kansas and reach down and pick 4 up a nugget of gold. It is just a needle in a haystack. 5l You do have the problem of looking beyond these I 6i events, not just accepting these events as the ordinary ? 7' behavior of components, but rather analyzing those events i 3l for their meaning in terms of the system and safety assump-i 9; tions, the operator training procedures and the like. 10j The very, very fundamental thing in the Davis-11 Besse matter is that that signal that there had not been a i i 12 ' proper anticipation of system behavior in response to a leak [) 13 from the pressurizer and that then significantly undercut N/ the validity of the prior procedural reviews and training 14 15 i and the like. That wasn't detected. Here with one kind of i 16 a leak, the system behaves fundamenta11y'different than it 17 does for most other leaks. One has to ' recognize that and 18 make sure that the procedures and the training are recognized 39 and that was missed. 20 l I do believe that one of the most important things 21 that ought to be' learned out of this is to treat these plants 22 as maturing technology, which means you learn from the N i 23 experience with them'as you go. lY 24 G On Wednesday, March 28th, it appears that there ( g" 1 25 was quite a bit of advantage in being away from the control I weseecs sttwooma*meC samvect. set 3 Cho wtLL sono. wvomessimo pa testo .n,n

-.: _u. 80 I room in terms of the ability of people to diagnose what was -~ \\1 2 i happening even though they had alot less information. i i 3{ There were quits a few people with experience, i ~ 4 s.- competent people, who got themselves pretty well organized 5 in the control room and had alot of information available to 6 them but they were having really a terrible time, it appears, i I 7i throughout the day really doping out what the situation was. 8 At the same time, people with much less informa-9 tion in places like Parsippany and Lynchburg, Virginia C 10 seemed to be able to take some of that information and 11l diagnose what was happening by mid-afternoon and wanted to i 12 ' get back to the control room with input. 13 I think you have discussed in prior testimony 14 ; the desirability of having an experienced engineer in the 15 control room knowing something perhaps a-little more than 16l an operator or even a shift supervisor about the way in l 17 l which the system may be working or not' working as expected. 18 Q. It has also been suggested that it might be 19 advisable to have some kind of a national centralized command 20 center where basic plant perimeter data can be talemetered 21 through the same channels that are set up for a reactormeter t 22 and where you have, instead of having ho,tlines to the NRC, 23 you have a hotline from the control room to this place so (~)- 24l that instead of speaking with people with engineering degrees ( '?- . 25 in every one of 160 control rooms, you have people at the =C acosseC4 STENOenapusc stav8CE. 1483 OLO estLL #0AD. wvoese SSING. #4. 19610

- L.. : u. -,a I 81 l central location who can do this kind of a diagnosis. Do I 7 w) i ( I 2 you have any reactions to that latter suggestion? I 3l A I don't think the perimeter of importance is 4 proximity. I:think the perimeter of importance is breath 5; of knowledge about the basic phenomenon involved in training. I 6! Again, I think the problem of the limitation of l 7' the fellows in the control room was that their experience I, 8 and their training was heavily concentrated under the 9 presumption of operations in the normal regime and that they i 10 t were not knowledgeable enough about all of the transfer fluid 11 l flow, safety phenomenon that manifest themselves when you 12 get into the way the hell off normal regime as we did. rS i ( 13l I think, again, the advantage of the guys at a %/ i 14 distance was not their distance, but rather their depth of 15 knowledge in their training. If you say.then that there is 16 such a limitation of people with such knbwledge, maybe then 17 in order to get broad coverage, one needs to centralize them. 18 I am not sure that is necessarily true, because in 19, turn you still have got a problem of a backlength in terms i 20l f how does that knowledge on the part of those secarated observers get back to.the control room and get translated 21 into actions and decisions and the like. 22 23, I.would definitely be against any concept of (' Y. N remote control. I just can't conceive that that could ever 24 L 25 ; I. guess I think of the. guy in Bethesda who doped it work. 48OhlCA STEPeOGmapuf C S t#vtCE. 1413 QLD uaLL RoaO. wvonetSSING #4 196to O

-. = = w 82 i 1 out towards the end of the day, Vic Stello. Well, I think 7-~x l ) \\ / '~~( 2' Vic is an unusual guy in terms of his breadths and depths of i 3; knowledge. I don't happen to know who may have kncwn how ( 4 much at B&W and Lynchburug or even Parsippany. I think our 5I guys in Parsippany were restricted by the amount of informa-l 6 . tion available to them. Their ability to contribute would i i 7 have been enhanced had they had more information directly aj available to them without the impedances of a communication i 9l lack. k I tend to think the dominant line of defense 10j 11 needs to be in the plant. I think there has got to be a 12 tight loop there for observation, deduction, conclusion, (m) action. 13 W. / 14 ! I don't have alot of confidence in the remote control concepts. Perhaps when I say remote control I am 15 16j purposely using demeaning adjectives, but I don't have alot ) i of confidence in the real ethicacy of that. Maybe it can 37 18l w rk. I think it is different than the Savannah River, which l 39l is a remote emergency control, but that has kind of, as I understand it, one purpose. That is where the ultimate guy g, mashes the button that gives the ultimate shutdown. That is 21 a very narrow kind of a thing. Here we are talking about 22 all of the analysis,'all of the understanding, and all of 23 the decisions to begin to operate and maneuver the plant in [) 24l S J.- 25j the event that it is gotten far outside its normal regime. moa.cn stewoonap=ic sanvics seis o6o witL nono wrouessova en seeio

m. m._, I 83 I 7 ~) It is one thing to control the plant if it is still solid \\,i 2 t. water with pumps running. It is another thing when all of I 3, a sudden you have no pumps', no natural circulation, a large (- 4 amount.of non-condensible gas, et cetera. 5l I personally tend to think that there is not going 6 to be an easy substitute for solid competence on the plant's 7 site. That doesn' t mean that remote observers and remote i Sj diagnosticians can not be useful, I don' t mean to say that. i 9l I don't think that is the route to a permanent fix, but that l 10 is a personal judgment. 11 i MR. FRAMPTON: I think it is a couple of minutes 12l before 12:30. We promised to finish by then, so we will. i s ) 13 Thank you very much for your time, your cooperation. 14 I This has been very helpful for me and we appreciate it. 15 THE WITNESS: We hope so, and Tna hope it has been 16l useful to you and we hope.the final repdrt will be useful. I 17i I think our feeling has been that we have a special obligation 18 to be as open and cooperative as we know how on all these 19 investiga'tions because we think it is critically important 20 that the full range of the facts come out in our report, in 21 laymen's language. 22 MR. LIBERMAN: Mr. Dieckamp earlier referred to \\ 23 ' the level of power operation of TMI-2 during the power i [~i 24l essention p.ogram at various levels. I would simply like to \\we$ l 25 call to your attention, because of the flood of papers you -o.e= m oon...e s uv.es. im ato..u..o.o <e..... o... 1... .w..

l 84 1! ('"N, l perceive, that on August 23rd I sent Mr. Vandenberg a copy of \\ / t 2' a letter and some enclosures that I had sent Nr. Whitman in 3 a letter of August 20th that. included a graphic form and also i 4l in a very short summary a level of energy generation and I 1 5l think it may be a useful document to refer to. 6 The question I have is that in the deposition of j 7' Mr. Toole, he had a very large diagramatic presentation of 8lI sequence of the test program. I don't know if Mr. Evans 9' and Mr. Vandenberg are aware of this fora, but it may be 10 of some useful purposes for you. If you don't have it I would II like to renew the offer to get it to you in scme form that i 12l would be useful to you because I think it tends to present r~s ( -) 13 I as well as I think we can what the program was in graphical j s, I4 form. I I 15 : MR. FRAMPTON: I think we would like to have that. 16 i Thank you very much. 17 (Whereupon, the deposition was concluded at 18 12:30 p.m.) 19 CERTIFICATE I hereby certify that the proceedings and evidence 20 are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by me on the hearing of the foregoing cause, and that this copy is 21 a correct transcript bf the same. f I i' 22 l -{ I J I kW O 23! oseph'C. Spontalylli, Peporter i tary Public in and for the ,-s ( ) 24l mmonwealth of Pennsylvania x '_ ) i i MONICK STENOGRAPHIC SERVICE 25 i My commission expires ~ July 20, 1981 ...., a.w.o...... e. an.c c.... a o., u..... m e...., ~......... ...}}

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