ML20040D388
| ML20040D388 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Diablo Canyon  |
| Issue date: | 12/17/1981 |
| From: | Ghio V PACIFIC GAS & ELECTRIC CO. |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML17083A976 | List: |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8202010245 | |
| Download: ML20040D388 (29) | |
Text
1 (fh 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3
4 INVESTIGATION OF 5 DIABLO CANYON UNITS 1 & 2 6 INTERVIEW OF 7 VINCENT J. GHIO 8
9 Pacific Gas & Electric Headquarters Offices 10 Law Department Conference Room ij 77 Beale Street San Francisco, California 12 Thursday, j3 December 17, 1981 k i4 The above-entitled matter came on for further 15 heering, pursuant to adjournment, at 3:00 p.m.
16 >
- 17 APPEARANCES
On behalf of the NRC Staff:
l 18 g 39 OWEN C. SHACKLETON, JR., Moderator j 20 B.H. FAULKENBERRY a
la 21 y 22 s
f 23 24 25 8202010245 820127 PDR ADOCK 05000275 G PDR
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ERRATA SHEET Interview of V. J. Ghio, December 17, 1981 The following corrections should be made:
Page 201, Line 3, Change by to but.
Page 204, Line 1, Change Ingle'<on to Engelken.
The above corrections have been identified by Bobby H. Faulkenberry and V. J. Ghio.
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fii.
' 1 P, R, Q g E E Q l N, g E 2 3:00 p.m.
3 MR. SHACKLETON: This is December 17, 1981. The 4 time is 3:00 p.m. This is an interview of Mr. Vincent J.
5 Ghio. Mr. Ghio is a Senior Civil Engineer with the Pacific 6 Gas and Electric Company. This interview is taking place 7 in room 3101 of the corporate headquarters of Pacific Gas 8 and Electric Company at 77 Beale Street, San Francisco, 9 California.
10 The purpose of this interview is part of an 11 investigation being conducted by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory 12 Commission to develop the facts and happenings surrounding 13 tha present reverification program of the seismic design k,-.
14 of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. Present for 15 this interview is Mr. Ghio, from PG&E, and from the U.S.
16 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Region V, Mr. Bobby H.
- 17 Paulkenberry, Chief of Reactor Construction Projects Branch.
l 18 My name is Owen C. Shackleton, Jr. I am the Senior g 19 Investigator in Region V.
- 20 Mr. Ghio, are you aware, sir, that you.have the f
- 21 right to have your personal legal counsel present during the f 22 course of this interview?
! 23 MR. GHIO: Yes, I am.
24 MR. SHACKLETON: And do you waive that right?
25 MR. GHIO: Yes, I do.
(~
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e lelEh 1 MR. SHACKLETON: Thank you. Would you please 2 stand now while I administer the oath.
3 Whereupon, 4 VINCENT J. GHIO 5 was called as a witness and, after being first duly sworn, 6 was examined and testified as follows:
7 MR. SHACKLETON: Mr. Ghio, we would ask on the 8 part of the Commission that you please keep your testimony 9 that you are about to give on a confidential basis. IS 10 that understood?
11 MR. GHIO: Yes, it is.
12 MR. SHACKLETON: All right. At this time I will
, 13 turn the meeting over to Mr. Paulkenberry.
'- MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, would you give us 14 15 your current job title and a summary of the job responsib-16 ilities that you currently hold within PG&E?
- 17 MR. GHIO: Yes, I would. I am a senior civil
=
l 18 engineer and I am acting as the coordinating civil engineer g 19 for the work related to the Diablo Canyon buildings and j 20 structures.
21 MR. FAULKENBERRY : Mr. Ghio, from September through a
f 22 November,1981, have you had any involvement with the work l 23 that has been performed by Dr. Cloud regarding the seismic 24 reverification of Diablo Canyon?
25 MR. GHIO: Yes, I have.
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1 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Would you please describe 2 this involvement?
3 MR. GHIO: Yes. It was limited to reviewing 4 draft reports that Robert Cloud Associates provided in 5 draft form as they were evolving through the early stages 6 of their review effort.
7 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, it has been deter-8 mined by us that four separate draft reports of Dr. Cloud's 9 work have been submitted to PG&E. These draft reports were 10 submitted to PG&E on the approximate dates of October 21, 11 October 26, Noved er 6, and Nov d er 12, 1981. First of 12 all, did you receive any of these draft reports?
MR. GHIO: Yes, I did.
, 33 14 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Can you identify which ones of these you did receive?
16
. O: I can only recan rece M ng & & st
, j7 two that you just mentioned through the series. '
MR. FAULKENBERRY: That would be the October 21 l 18 19 and October 26?
g
,] 20 MR. GHIO: That is correct.
l 21 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Did you receive -- excuse me --
i 22 did you review and comment on the material contained within J.
these two reports?
23 24 MR. GHIO: Yes. I along with others did review 25 and comment on the draft reports.
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MR. FAULKENBERRY: Can you tell us who within (k) 3 2
PG&E asked you to comment on the material contained within 3
these two reports?
4 MR. GHIO: My recollection on that is I'm afraid somewhat hazy. It appeared in my area whenever 5
6 they were submitted or shortly after they were submitted 7
to PG&E and I either received them from the individuals g
that I think were designated within PG&E to coordinate g providing information that Cloud people needed for their work -- needed from us for their work -- or, alternatively, g I received it in a second stage through my functional discipline chief. I simply can't recall at this point which of the two options it was.
13
(. ..
g MR. FAULKENBERRY: Was there any question in
,g your mind that these reports were being submitted to you 1
for review and Comment?
MR. GHIO: Not really. I just received the 37 E
reports and was asked to comment on them.
l 18 19 MR. FAULKENBERRY: During the timeframe of g
October through November, 1981, was it considered to be 20 standard practice or standard procedure within PG&E to 21 review and comment on the results of contractors' work
} 22 g before it was published in a final recort form?
g MR. GHIO: I would say that that was our general 25 approach to things, yes. We would be reviewing drafts of L
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I reports from various consultants who were performing work 2 for us on Diablo Canyon plant or, for that matter, any of 3 the design work or engineering work that PG&E is involved 4 in.
5 MR. FAULKENBERRY: When you received these two 6 draft reports we have identified, the October 21 and 7 October 26 draft reports, did you consider it to be unusual 8 to be asked to review and comment on those reports?
9 MR. GHIO: I really didn't have any thought on 10 the matter at that time. It seemed to be a request to 11 review something for factual content, whether there were 12 any errors, since the work was just starting, basically, 13 or had just recently started, or whether it was incomplete
(,.
14 or could have been more complete, given what I or others 15 that work with me were aware of as being available informa-16 tion that may not have been accessed by the people from
- 17 Cloud. After all, they needed a lot of information. They I. :
l 18 had to come someplace to get it. They had to know where g 19 it was and who had it or who could help them find it.
a j 20 So that was kind of the thrust of our interrelationship, fa 21 I would say.
d 22 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, were you given any
$ 23 special instructions regarding how you should conduct a 24 review or regarding.how you should comment on Dr. Cloud's 25 work?
k
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_ . __ _ ______.m_ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . - _ . - - - . _ - _ -
, . .=
b' 1 MR. GHIO: I really don't recall any specific 2 detailed instructions. There may have been some I just 3 don't recall. I felt that reviewing it for factual accuracy 4 seemed like an appropriate thing. To me, it didn't appear 5 to be a matter of great controversy or concern. I thought 6 it was a job that needed to be done and we set about to do 7 it. Just sitting here right now, if I might add, I don't 8 know how anyone could embark on a review of a program that 9 evolved over years in a vacuum, just appearing and go to io it without having some assistance. I think we were trying 11 to offer legitimate assistance and provide information that 12 would be helpful in getting the factual information 13 accurately and as completely as possible portrayed.
k... 14 The program is evolving. At the outset, those 15 drafts that I saw I think were the first ones that emanated is in the program and we were reviewing them fairly rapidly 17 and we had to be timely as well as as complete as we could, l 18 given the other affairs that we were attending to and the t
- 19 other everyday business. I just -- it just seemed to me to j 20 be a worthwhile and appropriate endeavor.
fa 21 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, how were your comments f 22 on these two draft reports of Dr. Cloud's actually provided l 23 to Dr. Cloud?
l -
1 ,
24 MR. GHIO: Okay. The documents were marked and 25 I would go through it and I also had other individuals that 1
k j -194-l t
t 1 I felt had meaningful contributions review it as well. So 2 the documents that ended up were kind of a master compila--
3 tion of the comments of several people, all of whom had 4 familiarity and knowledge of facts regarding various of 5 the subject matter items covered in the scope of the 6 review that was being reported by that time. And the 7 comments were written on a copy of their report and it was 8 forwarded back to the contact coordinating group within 9 PG&E that was gathering all this stuff together. I'm in 10 the civil engineering group, so I was reviewing that area 11 along with my colleagues. The coordinator for all of this 12 activity with Cloud was gathering it from various depart-13 ments, various engineering specialty disciplines, and k,
14 forwarding it back to Cloud.
15 Now as I recall, after I made my comments-and 16 kind of parcelled out -- I really cut up the report in
- 17 pieces depending upon which, in the case of civil engin-l 18 eering, which building area or structure was involved and g 19 asked the individual responsible engineers to review and j 20 comment on that and I just sort of collected it all. I fa 21 added some of my own cornents where I had knowledge or f 22 where I felt there was additional information that would Q
$ 23 illuminate the matter that perhaps Cloud had not accessed 24 yet. So I was kind of referring then as well as commenting.
25 That was kind of the essence of how we did it.
(
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(';. . 1 As I recall the first report, which I can't re-2 call the date -- I guess that was October 21 -- at the 3 time I was reviewing that one I did not have access to as 4 many of the individual building engineers as I did when 5 we were reviewing the second draft. It just happened that 6 there were more people available on the day it was being 7 reviewed that I had an opportunity to have a more compre-8 hensive look, which I thought was very appropriate at the 9 time because it seemed important to me that we access the io folks that had the firsthand information available.
11 It was a matter of attempting to get as much 12 accuracy in the information or a notation that there was 13 more information if we couldn't portray it in its entirety
(~ 14 at that time in a comment, just said as a comment in the 15 report that was going to go back to Cloud, you should con-16 sult with Mr. X, whoever it might be, he has got some addi-
- 17 tional information on this matter that you I think should l 18 review. It was that kind of a role that I was playing.
g 19 MR. FAULKENBE RRY : fir. Ghio, with regard to the a
j 20 comments that you have described for both of thase draft f: 21 reports, were all of your comments contained as handwritten d 22 comments on the draft document itself or were any of your s
j 23 comments or people working with you comments contained in 24 a separate document or under a separate cover and submitted 25 to Dr. Cloud?
(
1
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h
(#T 1 MR. GHIO: Okay. As far as my own are concerned, 2 I believe they were all contained in comments in the report 3 itself, with only one exception that I can recall, where I 4 referred in the report to a section whr e Cloud was attemp-5 ting to describe one of the design errors that we had 6 already reported to the NRC dealing with I'll call it the 7 mirror image problem -- I think thatwas in the first draft 8 of their report where they wrote that and it was a very 9 confusing and hard to understand passage and at the time I to was reviewing that I had recollected that we had a few weeks 11 or so before that had technical sessions with the NRC 12 representatives discussing these problems and errors and
. 13 that that was kind of an important error for everyone to
(' 14 understand just what took place. Subsequent to the meeting 15 with the NRC we were in draft preparation on our own side 16 of a techni, cal report wherein we were going to attempt to
- 17 describe all these matters. I had written a description of a
l 18 this error, just describing what it was, actually what it l g 19 was.
s j 20 So when I commented on the Cloud report and i
l ! 21 read their description -- I think as I recall it was- in-a l
l f 22 complate and it was very hard to follow -- I said I suggest t
l 23 that you refer to what I considered to be more accurate l
24 information describing that error. It was important, I l
25 felt , that any report on this accurately portray it. So I
. (.
i l
l
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l 1
as (0.9 1 did provide I think it was one page material that described 2 the error. That's all it did.
3 Now that is the only instance that I recall having 4 a comment amplified in that manner, other than just written 5 into the report itself. Now there may have been other 6 members of the civil engineering group that provided comment 3 7 that were amplified beyond what they wrote in the report 8 and may have discussed it with somebody from Cloud or what- j 9 ever. See, the Cloud pecole cane into PG&E right at the to beginning, whenever Day One was at the start of the program, 11 and said we're going to review all this, we need this inform -
l 12 ation. People would provide it to them and tell them some-13 thing about it, or here it is, and so these individual
(' 14 engineerc had I think by necessity -- I don't know how else 15 you could have done it -- communicated with representatives 16 from Cloud as to where the stuf f was and what it was and g 17 So then when they reviewed the report itself I think I l 18 recall some recitation to something like -- and I must admit i 19 I. am kind ^of characterizing what someone else did -- did a
j 20 Cloud review the material that we proviaad earlier. In 21 other words, that individual was concerned in reading the 1
f 22 report that they apparently didn't get around to using j 23 other information that they asked for. So he was just 24 concerned that the report hadn't caught up with the state 25 of the data that was provided. So that was the context or k..
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1:
I gist of the characterization of the comments, I would say.
2 MR. FAULTENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, you touched on 3 this a little in a previous question. Did you submit any 4 of your comments directly to Dr. Cloud -- and referring to 5 these comments you described in these two draft reports --
6 .to Dr. Cloud or any of his people directly or were they 7 given to someone else within PG&E?
8 MR. GHIO: The:latter is the case. I did not 9 give any comments directly to cloud. We had a coordinating 10 entity to do this.
11 MR. PAULKENBERRY: Can you tell us who within 12 PG&E that you gave these comments to?
, 13 MR. CHIO: Well, after I reviewed it I believe 14 I Passed the package I had completed to my supervisor, who u5 was Mr. Wollak, and he either passed them on to Mr. Rocca's 16 people, who were the liaison folks, or it may have gone
- 17 through Mr. Bettinger, who is the chief civil engineer, so l u3 that he saw it and kind of looked at what type of comments g 19 we had and how much was involved, level of effort. He had a
j 20 to appreciate the impact on his workforce and how much time fa 21 it was taking because we are all pressed for time. I just f 22 can't recall. I think that was the process. I finished my 23 job and handed it over to my supervisor.
24 It ended up, as far as I know, getting back to 25 Cloud by way of Mr. Rocca's contact.
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I?
l ( i MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, at the time that l
l 2 you reviewed and commented on these two draft reports, had 3 you ever been made aware by people within PG&E, by people 4 within the NRC, or any others that the results of Dr.
5 Cloud's work should not be reviewed by PG&E prior to being 6 put into final furn for submittal to the NRC?
7 MR. GHIO: No, I was not advised that we should 8 not be reviewing the reports by anyone.
9 MR. FAULKENBE RRY : Have you since been made 10 aware of this?
g MR. GHIO: I would have to say no. I have not 12 since been made aware of it. As a result of your inquiry, 13 the matter has obviously core up. What are the ground g rules? How can we operate in this world? Are we going to 15 do the job in a vacuum or are we going to do the job in a 16 manner that makes some sense? To that extent, but no,
- 17 there has been no directive to me by anyone that says do
=
not review the Cloud reports. I am currently not reviewing l 18
- 19 any Cloud reports because I don't have any. The ones that i
j 20 I have reviewed I have conmented on and that was in the l 21 past.
i MR. FAULKENBERRY : Mr. Ghio, were any of the f 22 23 comments you provided to Dr. Cloud intended by you to 24 remove adverse information from the reports?
25 MR. GHIO: No, sir. My objective was to provide k.
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l I
Ii
.: 1 comments that in my opinion reflected more accurately the 2 facts of the matter or to refer to additional information 3 or PG&E personnel from which apparently overlooked by ger-4 mane material could be obtained.
5 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Okay , Mr. Ghio. Were any of 6 the comments you provided to Dr. Cloud intended by you to 7 place PG&E or any of its contractors in a more favorable 8 light?
9 MR. GHIO: That was not my objective, intent 10 then, nor is it now. I was simply trying to get accurate 11 information into a report. No matter what report we are 12 talking about, whether it be Cloud or somebody else's that 13 I am reviewing in draft forn or whatever, my interest is
(
14 getting to the extent it is possible in a complex technical 15 matter as accurate as possible. There is undoubtedly going 16 to be times when the accuracy in another review later on, 17 if we look back we see we forgot something, there is some l 18 more information, or that is erroneous, needs to be
. 19 corrected.
20 But at the time I am doing it, that is what I l 21 am trying to do, get it as accurate as I can.
a f 22 MR. PAULKENBERRY: At the time that you reviewed l 23 the two reports of Dr. Cloud, the October 21 and the l
24 October 26 draft reports, were you aware of the concern l 25 by various people, including the NRC, with regard to the l
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e
(fl 1 independency of Dr. Cloud as a contractor to do this work?
2 MR. GHIO: Yes. I would say -- it wasn't an 3 overriding consideration. I would say I was aware that 4 there was concern that it be in fact truly independent, 5 on the one hand; on' the other hand, I was looking at it 6 from the standpoint of how can anyone, once again, how can 7 any entity be expected to do such a program without having 8 some degree of contact with the people who performed the 9 work that he was reviewing. I knew of the concern for to independency but it never really was a great influence on 11 me in terms of going about getting the job done. I was 12 trying to get the job done. The direction, as I understood 13 it, was to review the reports for adequacy, accuracy,
( completeness, and that's it.
14 15 MR. FAULKENBERRY : Mr. Ghio, when you reviewed 16 these reports, was it ever a concern of yours that you might
- 17 be jeopardizing the independency of Dr. Cloud to do this
=
l 18 work?
g 19 MR. GHIO: The manner in which I felt I was a
j 20 performing my role, I really didn't consider that I was I
21 -- that the process we were into was going to jeopardize
-i f 22 the independency. It was not a thing or an aspect that t
l 23 transcended all else that I was doing. It just was not a 24 -- it wasn't a problem. I just had to look upon the job 25 as something that required review for completeness and
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?. 6 hb* I accuracy and that was it.
2 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, have you seen Dr.
3 Cloud's final report or final draft report which was for-4 warded to the NRC by letter dated November 18, 1981?
5 MR. GHIO: No, I have not. I cannot recall 6 having reviewed er seen that report or reviewed it.
7 MR. FAULKENBERRY: If you haven't secn this 8 report I assume that thers is no way that you would know 9 whether or not any of the comments that you made or that to any of your people made in the draft reports of October :21 11 and October 26 were actually incorporated into the final 12 draft report, is that correct?
13 MR. GHIO: I think that would be a fair char-(~ 4 acterization. I must admit I'm having a little bit of 15 difficulty. Apparently there were four drafts of the docu-16 ment and they bear a lot of resemblence to each other. So g
17 I could probably -- if you could show me the latter report l 18 I may be able to recognize it. But I have certainly not, 19 that I am aware of, reviewed that particular one against j 20 the comments or whatever.
i
! 21 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, for the record, I a
d 22 am showing you a draft report entitled Preliminary Report
$ 23 Seismic Reverification Program, dated November 12, 1981, 24 from Robert L. Cloud Associates, Inc. It was transmitted 25 to the NRC under a cover letter from Philip A. Crane to k..
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I
(, h i Mr. R. H. Inglekon, and the cover letter 4a dated November
- 7. 18, 1981. The question is, do you recall having seen this 3 draft report and having reviewed the information contained 4 within?
5 MR. GHIO: Well, I cannot -- I'm afraid I can't
's renember the date of the report or whether this is the one 7 that I looked at. I do recall just it was either yesterday g or the day before when we wanted to see for ourselves whe.t, 9 if anything, was modified that we did compare one of our 10 comment sets, which is the one dated October 21 -- that would 33 be the first draf t -- versus another Cloud report. I'm 12 n t sure if we were comparing it to this one or the one 13 previous to this or the one previous to that. I really
can't say. I do recall in an attenpt to become knowledgeable 34 is n where we stood for the purposes of being accurate for 16 your -- in representing what we had done or hadn't done for 37 the purposes of discussing the matter with you, we undertook l E .
j 18 that.
g 19 B ut I mus t a dmit I can ' t -- I don ' t know whe the r '
- 20 I was comparing it to this one or not at the moment.
f 21 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Okay. Thank you.
L i MR. GHIO: Sorry.
l f 22 l .
l j
~
23 MR. PAULKENBERRY: Is it correct to assume that 1
l 24 the majority of your conments that were made by you and l
l 25 people within your group were contained within the first l
l l -204-1 l - _ _ _
+
_1 si 1 draf t report, which would be the October 21 draft report?
~
2 MR. GHIO: I'm not sure if the majority, I mean 3 the totality of them was in the two reports and I haven't 4 added up to see which.one had the most. !
l 5 MR. FAULKENBERRY: When you compared the first s' report, as you recall, either the first or second report, 7 with a subsequent draft report to determine if comments 1 8 had been incorporated do you recall whether or not you l
9 determined whether the majority of those comments that you 10 were looking at had actually been incorporated into a sub-11 sequent draft?
12 MR. GHIO: I can't determine whether it was more 13 than half or less than half. Some were and some were dis-14 regarded. I think, as I recall in this comparison, the 15 impact of our comments was rather negligible. I mean, if 16 I can use one word to characterize it, I think that -- in
- = 17 fact there were some just plain editorial comments, there l 18 were sor.0 typo comments and there were some comments that g 19 indicated th'ey had factual information incorrect and I think j 20 there were a few of those that were picked up. There also 21 may have 'been~ some amplification in the final or the later f~ 22 of the reports that I reviewed and conpared against our l- 23 original to, wherein Cloud had done more work and had 24 proceeded to either make additional contacts for information 25 that we recited as being appropriate in the earlier report 4
9 Y
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13
(?!*s f~ .1 and actually used that and other information or other analy-2 sis or whatever they did to further expand and the extent, 3 the detail of coverage in their report.
4 So in my view, the comments that we made were, 5 first of all, appropriate and necessary and, to the extent 6 that I would say that Cloud really felt that was helpful t 7 and appropriate, he incorporated some and many he disre-8 garded. So it is a mixed bag.
9 MR. FAULKENBE RRY: Mr. Ghio, to the best of your 10 knowledge, have you received any other reports of Dr. Cloud' 3 11 work other than that contained within the two draft reports 12 which we have identified?
13 MR. GHIO: No.
14 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, at the November 3, is 1981 meeting with the NRC at Bethesda, Maryland, in which 16 you were present at that meeting, Mr. Norton stated that g
17 as of November 3,1981 no report on Dr. Cloud's work had j 18 been submitted to PG&E. Yet you and other persons present g 19 at this meeting knew of the submittal of the October 21 m
j 20 draft report. First of all, did you hear Mr. Norton make 21 this statement at the meeting?
f 22 MR. GHIO: No, I did not. I was at the meeting
$ 23 and I was seated. not at the conference tables, but in the 24 audience or spectator area. I was present during most of 25 the meeting, but not all; I did leave on a couple of
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( 1 occasions. I don't know whether I left when this statement 2 about when we received the report was made or not or whether 3 I.didn't hear it because my mind was wandering.-- it was 4 long and a very uncomfortable room, I felt, and I had to 5 get up a couple of times and step out and get some air and 6 whatever -- I really don't recall that statement being made 7 at that meeting. I didn' t hear it.
8 MR. FAU;KENBE RRY: Mr. Ghio, at any tine during 9 the meeting and up through the actual close of the meeting 10 and the time that you pepple left the Phillips Building in 11 Bethesda did anyone tell you that they were aware that Mr.
12 Norton had possibly made an inaccurate statement?
13 MR. GHIO: I do not recall anyone relating to me 7
\ that he had. That whole matter just went by me. No one 14 15 made any comment or statement on erroneous information 16 portrayed in that meeting that I am aware of to me. I can't
- 17 recall such.
l 18 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, I continue to refer g 19 to the November 3, 1981 meeting and specifically the j 20 transcript that was taken of the discussion at the meeting.
f: 21 Lines 23 through 25 of page 215 of this transcript and lines f 22 1 through 4 of page 216, this was in response to a question l 23 by Mr. Eisenhut and I will quote, he statad "When will we 94 be expected to see that short term report?" Bob Cloud said 25 "It is essentially complete." To which Dr. Cloud was asked
(
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11 I by Mr. Norton to answer. Dr. Cloud then responded -- and I 2 quote again - "I believe it's -- we will be turning it in 3 either this week or next, so you should have it shortly 4 thereafter."
5 Did you hear this statement?
6 MR. GHIO: Now that one so'inds a little more 7 familiar, but you are just reading the words back from the 8 transcript. I think I may have heard a part of that or 9 not. But whatever it was, it didn't ring any bells to me u) at all. First of all, I wouldn 't have even been sure what 11 report he was talking about, what version. I knew they we e 12 doing some work and I didn't know what our commitment was 13 as far as filing documents. I take it I guess that was
(- 14 evolving at that time when we would have a finished product n5 that we could submit. Nothing ever struck me as being 16 unseemly, inaccurate, or misrepresented. That's really --
17 it was like your earlier question when you asked me was I l 18 concerned about when we were reviewing the reports the g 19 matterrof: independence and I said I was peripherally aware a
j 20 of it as being an issue but never thought of it as being fa 21 so significant an issue that we ought not to get the job f 22 done. I would cast my response here in the same light.
! 23 I just never saw any -- nothing c.=used me to jump up and 24 take alarm, if you will.
25 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, to the best of your
(
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- k -
1 i knowledge, does PG&E have a policy, written or otherwise, 2 of not volunteering information unless it is specifically 3 asked for by the NRC?
4 MR. GHIO: Could you run that one by me just one 5 more time?
6 MR. FAULKENBE RRY: Yes. Basically , Mr. Ghio,
~
7 what I am asking, to the best of your knowledge, does PG&E 8 have a policy, either in writing or has it been given out 9 verbally, which states that employees of PG&E should not 10 volunteer information- to members of the NRC enless it is ij specifically asked for?
12 MR. GHIO: I'm not aware of there being a policy 13 written down for that or against that.
g MR. FAULKENBERRY : Would you repeat your answer 15 in a more positive term, either yes or no? Are you aware 16 of a Policy?
- 17 MR. GHIO: No, I am not.
MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, what are the ground l 18 g 19 rules, as you understand them, as of today within PG&E with a
j 20 regard to the way that the results of Dr. Cloud's work or
! 21 any other contractor's work involving Diablo Canyon reverif-i f 22 ication activities should be handled prior to submittal to 23 the NRC?
24 MR. GHIO: Well, as far as I can tell and under-25 s tand, the policy is to take working drafts of the reports t
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(Il 1 that are provided and review them for accuracy, completeness ,
2 or calling attention to material that is we think available 3 that is germane that ought to be considered in preparing 4 the report. It is just a matter of our. policy is to review 5 working drafts of information, reports.
6 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Okay, Mr. Ghio. Has any 7 special instructions been sent out by any members of your 8 management expressing any special way that Diablo Canyon 9 reverification work activities should be handled?
10 MR. GHIO: Well --
ti MR. FAULKENBERRY: Maybe I should clarify that.
12 I'm talking about the review or your review of any Diablo 13 Canyon reverification work.
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l 14 MR. GHIO: The only thing I can think of at the 1
15 moment relates to the Cloud program -- and I may be for-16 getting something here now, so it's just what I can 17 remember -- I think the other day or recently I saw, and g
l 18 it was an older document, a letter transmitting one of the l
g 19 later, I think one of the versions of the report that some-j 20 body else had had and that had already been processed or
! 21 whatever was done with it -- I don't think I had seen it i
f 22 -- that said review this to see if it contains any errors s
or erroneous information. That was the general tenor of
[ 23 24 the covering document. But other than that, I can't recall 25 any other direction at the moment.
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jc h.k 1 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, I'll rephrase this 2 question slightly. Has anybody asked you or informed you 3 that you should handle the review and comment of Dr. Cloud's 4 work any differently than you should review and comment on 5 any other contractor's work?
6 MR. GHIO: No.
7 MR. FAULKENBE RRY: Mr. Ghio, would you explain 8 to us what the standard procedure is within PG&E regarding 9 the review of the results of "any contractor's work prior 10 to it being published in the final form"?
11 MR. GHIO: Well, generally when we receive it it 12 would usually have an individual, a lead individual or a 13 load department group, perhaps, that is contracting for
(- 14 technical work to be done. They would distribute copies 15 of it to the appropriate members of the technical staff 16 who might have some meaningful input or need to know what
- 17 the results of the study are indicating and would get kind
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l 18 of a roundtable review of it, if you will, or individual i
g 19 review and meet and discuss it and either provide comments a
j 20 back to the consultant or maybe expand the scope of the fa 21 work. You know, a lot of consulting work, the scope is f 22 not fully definable at the outset. So a lot of the review
[ 23 results in gee, we need some more done out in this area, 24 that sort of thing. That is the gerfaral approach, I would 25 say, to reviewing these reports.
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2 business activity. You hire a consultant to do work, you ;
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3 want to review his work. We typically are not -- usually )
4 the reason we hire a consultant -- in fact, exclusively, I 5 would say -- well, there's two reasons. No. 1, we don't 6 have the particular expertise that is involved or needed 7 or, No. 2, we have the expertise but we don't have the 8 staff available to devote to it at the time. If those are 9 the two situations -- and it kind of obviously would lead to to a different level of review in those two separate pieces.
11 In one where you don't have the expertise you really are 12 relying on a consultant and you are reviewing it , generally 13 to see if it looks generally reasonable to the level of
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14 knowledge in the subject matter you miaht have. But you 15 are basically accepting his work.
16 If it is a consultant doing work that we are g
17 capable of doing ourselves but don't have the resources l 18 available at the time, we can review it in more, in a g 19 little more depth because we have a more fundamental under-1 j 20 standing of the subject matter. Those are the two general 21 characterizations of consultancy that I would indicate we l
l f 22 experience here.
l 23 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, based upon what 24 you have said then, would you consider your review of Dr.
25 Cloud's work on those two draft reports and the commenting b
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l i on the material contained within : the reports was handled in i 2
accordance with the standard PG&E procedures for all con-3 tract work that was in effect during that period of time?
4 MR. GHIO: I would say so, yes.
5 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, do you know of any 6 effort that has been made by any employee of PG&E, including 7
yourself, to revise the results of Dr. Cloud's work such ;
1 8
that it does not reflect a true, complete and accurate g record of his findings?
10 MR GHIO: I would say the answer to that is ji definitely no. Insofar as completeness, I think we'd have 12 to say that we comment on areas where we think the work 13 isn't complete -- and in fact the Cloud report says it 14 themselves sometimes , that more work is necessary and if 15 they don't say it but we think there is more work that has 16 been done that cot *1d be -brought to bear, we'd reference
- 17 that. But- I know of no instance _where we had attempted to do anything to misrepresent the situation.
l 18 g 19 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, on the cover letter j 20 of one of -the draft reports . I believe you or members of f 21 your group reviewed you have listed a list of initials of i
f 22 persons within your group that have reviewed that report.
23 Could you give us the names of the individuals corresponding 24 to those initials?
25 MR. GHIO: Yes, I could. The first one is
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- 4 hfh 1 myself. The second one is Stanley Hanusiak. The next one 2 is Chung Li. The next one is Igor Sokoloff. The next one 3 is Ming Lee. The next one is Oscar Rocha. Let's see, I 4 guess I should indicate here that Mr. Sokoloff is not 5 presently organizationally in our group but he is still 6 doing some work in the Diablo Canyon area. After Mr. Rocha 7 is Ceorge Lenfestey. By the way, would you be interested 8 in titles of these individuals?
9 MR. FAULKENBERRY: No.
10 tiR. GHIO: Okay. The next one is Otto Steinhardt.
11 And the last one is Erwin Wollak. Now all of these people are not in the group that I*m working in. I wanted to 12 ,
13 clarify that.
A g4 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Thank you, Mr. Ghio. Mr. Ghio, 15 do you know of any conscious er pre-arranged plan, written 16 or otherwise, for PG&E employees while attending meetings
. 17 with the NRC to limit or otherwise constrain their responses l
18 to NRC questions?
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- 19 MR. GHIO: To limit or restrain their responses?
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, j 20 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Constrain.
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j 21 MR. GHIO: Or constrain. Well, no. I don't i
l f 22 know of any -- you said written or otherwise understood 23 Policy, is that what you said?
24 MR. FAULKENBE RRY : Instructions or policy.
25 I'll rephrase that slightly, Mr. Ghio. Prior to attending i -2 14-
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- ,k h9 1 any meeting or prior to attending meetings with NRC per-2 sonnel, do you know of any instructions given to you by 3 anyone within PG&E to linit or constrain responses to 4 questions posed by NRC employees?
5 MR. GHIO: No, I really can' t say that I believe 6 we have such an instruction.
7 MR. FAULKENBERRY: Mr. Ghio, that's the extent 8 of the questions that I have for you.
9 Owen, do you have anything to add?
10 MR. SHACKLETON: I'd just like to ask Mr. Ghio, it this is an opportunity, inasmuch as your testimony here 12 will become a matter of a public record and I know that as
,.. 13 a responsible engineer in PG&E you are concerned over the 14 happenings concerning this seismic reverification program, 15 if there is anything you would like to say to help clarify 16 what is transpiring for the public, you have this oppor-17 tunity.
g j 18 MR. GHIO: Well, I guess one thing I could say g 19 is what is transpiring and what is communicated to the j j 20 public unfortunately are not always one and the same. For f: 21 people practicing in this area it creates an extremely
- f 22 dif ficult set of circumstances to attempt to work under i
j 23 when I think our objective is to build facilities that 24 meet the required standards in a conscientious manner and 25 in a timely manner. It isn't always represented that that t ,
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h!1 1 is what we are attempting to do. From my perspective, 2 that's what I think we are attempting to do and I think we 3 ought to get on with the job.
4 MR. SHACKLETON: Thank you. I have no further 5 questions. We will now go off the record. The time is 6 3:53 p.m.
7 (End of interview.)
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