ML20072P512
| ML20072P512 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | South Texas, 05000000 |
| Issue date: | 10/10/1979 |
| From: | Brown R, Hauer H JUSTICE, DEPT. OF |
| To: | Jamarl Cummings NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTOR & AUDITOR (OIA) |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20071G868 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-82-513 NUDOCS 8304040293 | |
| Download: ML20072P512 (1) | |
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li UNITED STATES DEI'A RTM ENT OF J USTICE FEDER AL DUREAU OF INVESTIG ATION In Reply.1%.c Refer so 6015 Federal Building File N.
515 Rusk Avenue Houston, Texas 77002 October 10, 1979 Mr. James CturJningS Office of Inspector and Auditor Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C.
20555
Dear Sir:
Enclosed is one copy of our investigation of alleged improprieties at the South Texas Nuclear Project.
Very truly yours, Homer R.
Hauer Special Agent in Charge I
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By:
wo-Russell E.
Brown Supervisory Special Agent g...
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f NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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y gg t - r 3RIEFING ON INVESTIGATION OF QA-QC PROBLEMS
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g, AT SOUTH TEXAS NUCLEAR PROJECT (Closed to Public Attendance) j Tuesday, April 15, 1980
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J Pages 1 - 72 p
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Prepared by:
C. H. Brown i
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Office of the Secretary 7
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l' UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l
3 4
BRIEFING ON INVESTIGATION OF QA-QC PROBLEMS l
5 AT SOUTH TEXAS NUCLEAR PROJECT' 6
(Closed to Public Attendance) 7 l
8 l
' 9 Room 550 East-West Towers Bethesda, Ma'yland r
10 Tuesday, April 15, 1980 11 12 The Commission met, pursuant to notice, at 2:55 pm, 13 John F. Ahearne, Chairman of the Commission, presiding.
14 PRESENT:
15' Chairman Ahearne 16 Commissioner Hendrie Commissioner Bradford 17 ALSO PRESENT:
18 l
19 W.Dircks K. Cornell 20 M. Malsch J. Murray 21 V. Stello C. Seyfrit 22 W. Hayes R.
Herr 23 H. Phillips R.
Shewmaker 24 H. Thornburg R. Fortuna Seidel 25 J. Hoyle l
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PROCEED I-N G S 2
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
The Commission meets in a closed 3
meeting.
4 MR. STELLO:
We are here to discuss with you this 5
afternoon the results of our enforcement difficulties for 6
the construction activities in the South Texas Project.
i 7
There is a long history associated with the-8 South Texas Project that goes back, I guess a couple of 9
years ago, and even some recent allegations we have 10 received as recently as day before yesterday.
i So that the issue on the adivsability on the.
l 11 Problems involved with the quality control at South Texas 12 has been quite high.
It has been the subject of considerable 13 news media interest, it was on the national television 14 and the problems.have been ---
15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
This was also a result of i
16 Mr. Gonzalez's amendment wasn't it?
l 77 i
i MR. STELLO:
Mr. Gonzalez did request an FBI 18 investigation into the issue.
9 CRAIRMAN AHEARNE:
_I think it is also what led him to put in an. amendment, making it a crime to try.to impede into quality control inspectors.-
22 MR. STELLO:
It wasn',t' clear.
23
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' COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Do you look on this as 24 one continuing investigation or have there been 5 or.6' 25 4
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different investigation 3?
2 MR, STELLO:
There have been 5 or 6 different 3
investigations, and there are still some on-going.
OIA 4
for example, was still looking in to some of the issues as 5
the result of the investigations in the effort with t.he 6
FBI work, and the results-of the work that the Region did 7
The briefing, and the purpose of the briefing,.to 8
get that up front, is I think at the point we are going to 9
decide:
what's the appropriate enforcement action, based 10 on what we have found as documented in the draft report 11 that we sent to you.
We think that we are at the point 12 now where it is time to take some sort of action.
13 We are going to be describing to the Commission, 14 at least in general terms what course of action seems to 15-be warranted, based on what we understand today. I will make the point that things continue to move, and we continue 16 to get more information, and as this new information comes 77 in, we might decide to change our minds and take a different 8
course of action, but based on what we know today, to g
stop shop today, hopefully we could conclude to brief you as to what we understand and can describe to you the kinds of onforcement action we feel is appropriate, and hopefully, have some sort of agreement, at least in principle, that this is the correct way to go or if we need to do more, to have some understanding of what that more might be.
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With that introduction, let me ask Bob to go 2
through the briefing now.
I would prefer not to use 3
that overhead, which I think would be a distraction to 4
everybody, and to just pass out copies of the slides if 5
that would be easier.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I'm presuming the people back 7
here have copies?
8 MR. SHEWMAKER:
I think we have enough.
We 9
brought 25.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Bob, you are?-
11 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Bob Shewmaker.
12 Okay, the Attachments you got that.is Appendix 13 5, in the advanced copy of the report that we sent, we 14 didn't have a clean copy of that document when it was 15 printed.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I'm going to suggest that 16 Mr. Stello could identify for I&E a certain kind of 17
. marking pencile that would be able to be xeroxed and be 18 legible.
I find that so far, this is a second.in a series 19 f documents in which the outlines of things are 20 unreadible in them.
21 MR. STELLO:
Some of the documents we get are 22 j
marked that way and it bedomes difficult.
I think the 3
previous documents you are referring to were copies that 24 we received frcm others, and that's the way they were marked.
25
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MR. SHEWMAKER:
Okay, the purpose of the 2
investigation was ticked off, the most recent investigation, 3
was one of two fold.
First, was to address the allegations 4
that dealt with harassment / intimidations of quality control 5
inspectors at the site, and the allegations basically were 6
that the construction personnel were causing this pressure 7
and creating these situations.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: The allegations came through 9
from where?
10 MR. SHEWMAKER: They came from one individual on the 2nd of November, and those were characterized and 11 broken down into 12 specific allegations.
12 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Did that individual represent 13 himself, or did he represent a group of quality controllers.
14 MR. SHEWMAKER:, He represented himself, but in 15' the allegations that he made, it covered things that had 16
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So he had characterized, 17 9""*#"
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g MR. STELLO:
Do you mean MR. SHEWMAKER:
No.
The most recent is ---
21 MR. STELLO:
Because there are two Februaries.
22 The first was in February 1977,- was by and we are going to cover that a little bit and the background.
The most recent ones that were behind the present investigation
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was February of this year.
Maybe we ought to use some 2
of these' names so we can keep the two separated.
3 MR. PHILLIPS:
My name is Phillips, I'm the 4
Resident Inspector for South Texas.
Just a little bit' l
5 of clarification.
6 This individual did represent four other 7
inspectors.
1 t
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Thank you.
9 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Maybe we can add in right 10 here, the total of the previous investigations has been 11 something,ll separate investigations that have been carried 12 on before this big investigation was kicked o'ff this 13 November. So there was a series and we will go in to the 14 background.
15 The second part of the investigation was to
- l 16 review the current, at the time, November'of '79, j
17 effectiveness of the quality assurance program as it was j
18 being implemented at the site.
The concept there was 19
' pick enough areas where work is currently going on, look andseeiftheQAprogramisfunctibning,wehavegokto 20 I
21 get sufficient sampling and enough detail to be able to draw a conclusion.
22 S
those were the two' basic g6als and aims of 23 I
- 24 the investigation.
I 25 What we are going to do now is give you a brief on-l L
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what the findings were so you have the bottom line a little 2
bit early as we go through.
3 In the QA/QC area, the findings,,the ones that 4
we consider really critical were aginst three of the 5
criterion Appendix B.
1 6
The first being -- the first criterion which 7
deals with freedom of the QC organization to function.- An_d l
8 we identified the lack of independence on their part of 9
a cost and schedule and the freedom to identify problems.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Now, is that an explicit 11 criteriou la vur ---
12 MR. SHEWHAKER: Yes, the words cost and schedule 13 are used in the criteria; and freedom to identify problems.
14 What we found in the investigation -- we sort of 15-broke'it down in to five. areas, and we have findings and 16 examples of production pressure ---
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I'm sorry to stop you, but 77 could you be a little more -- tell me what exactly the gg linkage -- the independence of cost and schedule is in 79 our criteria?
Obviously I'm asking, because having read this I'm quite interested in it.
MR. STELLO:
Maybe it would be easier to read it.
" Criterion I,.the Applicant shall establish, t the earliest practical time, consistent with the 25 schedule for accomplishing the activities, a QA program
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1 which implies to Criterion I,"
which is a little ambiguous.
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There are five parts which gets to the cost and schedule, 3
do you want to hear everything?
4 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
Somebody call CP&L and 5
ask them to print a copy for Vick.
6 (Simultaneous discussions.)
7 MR. MALSCH:
It is in Criterion I.
8 MR. STELLO: What does it say, Marty?
9 MR. MALSCH: It says --
10 MR. SEYFRIT:
It says:
"Such persons and 11 organizations shall have sufficient authority in 12 organizational freedom to quality problems, ihitiate 13 recommend or try to provide solutions and verify implemen-14 tation of solution." It doesn' t have the words ---
15 MR. MALSCH:
"Such persons or organizations 16 performing quality. assurance functions shall report to a 17 management level such that this required suthority and 18 rganizational freedom, including sufficient independence 19 from cost and schedule when opposed to safety considerations, i
are provided."
20 21 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Including -- say it again?
22 MR. MALSCH:
Including sufficient independence 23 from cost and schedule when opposed to safety...."
24 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Fine, thank you.
25 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
That's correct.
Criterion I.
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CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I'm sorry, go ahead.
2 MR. SHEWMAKER:
What we had done was group the 3
examples that we found in the five groups, production 1
4 pressure, lack of QC management support, which has been one 5
of the things that came out of the allegations, harassment, 6
intimidation and threats, physical threats against the 7
person, and we will go in-to the details of this.
8 Under Criterion 15, we basically -- which 9
deals with non-conformance of how one tracks and handles 10 those, these will not be the exact words out of there, 11 but I will try to characterize them.
They fail to control 12 and monitor the trends of the nonconformances.
They 13 would identify a single nonconf rmance, but to look and see how the total of those affect what is happening at 14 1,5-the safety of things was.not being done.
On Criterion 18, which deals with the audit, 16 the fact that you need the audit function, we found that 17 they had failed to adequately utilize the audit function yg in performing the total of the QA program, things like 79 that.
Audits were not Completed as specified in the schedule.
The audits weren't in depth sufficient to find the kinds of problems that we sought.
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Y 23 finding is that we see it impaired the QA/QC programs.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
l 25 There is nothing implicit then, I
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in the criterion that would cover hassling, intimidation.
2 MR. STELLO:
What it is, it says that the 3
people who have the responsibility to construct the 4
plant are putting too much pressure on.the QA people 5
and you really don't have the~ freedom to go ahead and stop 6
the conflict or get QA activities corrected.
7 MR. SHEWMAKER:
One of the other things that we 8
didn't cite here, that I think comes out in this is the 9
fact that the person who initiates or identifies an item 10 of n neompliance is supposed'to be on the end of the chain after it goes up in resolution state,s'o that he 11 12 cxhestreb ' how it was resolved or if it was washed away r whatever happened.
And that was not' happening. So
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13 this is why, then, we saw some of these people continually 14 bringing these allegations up, but they'never knew what 15 happenedtothethingsthattheyidentihied.
16 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I guess what I'm tryinc to 7
get at or your answer is that it is Covered under organizational freedom.
I could see that on one set, g
the lack of a system being set up, and for example' the point that you just made, it..is more of a systematic problem.
On the other hand, I can see physical 23 intimidation competing with the organization, looks as 24 though it has gotten -
you are saying they both are 25 4
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covered under that.
2 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Criterion I - would be really, the 3
only one that would address the kinds of things like 4
harassment, or at least that was our assessment.
5 MR. STELLO: There are what, 18 criterion 6
independent of B?
The first one gets to this issue 7
pretty well.
I don't think that there is a great debate 8
that clearly says the kind of thing you saw would have 9
been harassment / intimidation, the subtleties of the system.
10 That clearly is not what you would anticipate as a health 11 criteria.
12 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I wasn't implyirig that I 13 thought it was a health situation.
14 MR. STELLO:
No, no.
Thuse kinds of things 15' are spoken to.
16 MR. SHEWMAKER:
In the second major category 17 on findings, we put in what we call safety, and there were 18 two items there and we will describe in detail why we have these there.
19 We ended up with questions concerning the 20 adequacy of safety related backfill, and as Vick indicated, 21 there have been some developments that are happening right 22 n w,and we will try and bring y'ou up to date on those 23 l
when we get to the back of the briefing on the related 24 soils area.
25 9
8 4.
12 1
Then there is a group of unresolved safety items 2
that came out of the investigation team.
We had to end 3
it some where and there are items identified that have to 4
be followed up, which are the normal kinds of things we 5
find on inspection investigations.
6 Now, we will turn to the next page and cover 7
the area -- I will give you some more background on this --
i 8
regarding the scope of the previous allegations.
9 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: But as far as.any of the other -- such as the concrete and that stuff, you 10 11 concluded there were no safety issues?
MR. SHEWMAKER: We will address the.ones"that 12 l
we think are still to be resolved as the result ofLthis 13 investigation.
I just wanted to sort of give you an 14 overview of the end point before we got there.
CHAIR EN AHEARNE: But your end point seems to be,that as far as adequacy of safety related items, the 7
1 questions,at least in your presentation, it is only on i
the soil backfill or at least that was my interpretation, i
19 that you had concluded that the areas such as the concrete was adequate.
MR. SHEWMAKER:
Okay, let me clarify that.
22 What we are saying is for the scope of this 23 investigation, out of the allegations that this team 24 pursued, we found no items that would lead us to believe 25 l
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1 that there is a safety problem.
2 Now, we are still looking at things from the 3
past that weren't covered in this investigation.
4 The first allegations on this plant were back 5
in February of '77, and as we indicated, there was a 6
series of allegations coming in and there were a series 7
of investigations to come of those as they came in.
There 8
were a total of 11 separate investigations carried out by 9
Region IV.
Something on the order of 53 allegations, which 10 is a matter of how you cut them up sometimes, but on that 11 order of the magnitude of allegations.
12 About 14 or a number like that, 14 or 15 of those we substantiated.
Now, while these were being conducted 13 1
14 by the Region, they did not have authority to take sworn 15-statements.
We did find.that one of these individuals 16 talked to botn by Region IV in the earlier allagations, was and as the result of these sworn statements taken in this 17 investigation the story has changed.
Whether that 18 happened in. other cases, we really haven't really 9
examined th'at at this point.
i 20 As Vick indicated, there was considerable interest because of the number of these, the media, Congressional interest and as the result of-this, the mid term inspection schedule was moved up by a year from 1980 to 1979.
So that mid term QA was kicked off in 25 4
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August of this past year.
Some of the findings of not 2
in compliance that came out of t; hat mid term QA, l
3 correlate to some degree of some of the findings'of this 4
recent one.
I will just mention.what they are.
5 Out of the mid term QA program or inspection was
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6 found that one of the subcontractors was not following his.
7 QA manual or procedures, procedural violations.
In l
8 adequate audits by the utility and Brown and Root on that l
9 subcontract.
10 Audit check lists were not mair.tained in the file 11 system.
Those records that had h en made were not in the 12 files for the people to.use and try to make trend analysis 13 on.
14
'Ibey failed to identi.fy changes in the - organization 15 in the subcontractor, the QA organization.
Those were the 16 kinds of things that came out of that mid term.
17 The FBI has been involved in this case ---
ig CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Who ordered it?
MR. SHEWMAKER:
I guess Gonzalez, basically.
19 They were looking at the question of falsified 20 records.
There was a question of trying to establish n
some records related to the Cadwelding and locations of the g
Cadwelds.
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Now, they were investigating over the period of' g
25 June to October, and they have sent their material to-the 9
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prosecutor down in that area, and on December the 4th, in 2
a letter to OGC, Justice declined further prosecution on 3
that case.
They did find two instances of false records, 4
but it turns out that they are things that are not 5
required as far as the NRC and as far as safety related.
6 They were commitments on the part of the licensee, for 7
his own use.
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' COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Commitments made in g
what context?
MR. SHEWMAKER: Basically what happened, they 10 11 were trying,from the records they had, trying to establish-exact position in hori=ontal and elevation, where the' i
12 a tual Cadweld splice was located in the placement or f
13 in a concrete placement.
This was after the Cadweld splice
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14 had already been accepted as passing all of the requirements.
S really, once the splice is accepted,, there is really 6
no need to know where it is.
It is;where you are maybe 7
building 100 splices and you are only testing two out of 100, you want to know where that group of 100 is in case your samples fail, to go back and find out where those are that might be questionable, because the test sample somehow didn't pass the test, but these had already 22 passed the test, so there is no need to identify those.
23 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
There is a commitment, 24 though? -In what form is t'he licensee going to take?
25
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1 MR. SHEWMAKER:
I cannot say whether it was in 2
a procedure or a spec or where?
3 MR. SEYFRIT:
It is in their internal procedures.,
4 really that they have set forth that are desired.
5 I'm Carl Seyfrit.
And while it is not something 6
that is required by NRC regulations, the fact that they 7
commit to it in their procedures, we attempt to make sure 8
that they follow their procedures.
So we, indeed, I believe 1
cited them for failure to have followed their procedures, 9
10 in spite of the fact that they are not required by our 11 regulations.
I 12 MR. SHEWMAKER: So that was the invo'1vement-at.
13 Justice and the FBI and OIA has indicated that they 14 would keep Justice informed of any new developments as 15 the result of the investigation that we have going ' on.
16 They were aware that that was underway.
17 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Does your investigation have a review of the FBI interviews?
yg MR. SHEWMAKER:
It did not.
19 i
MR. THORNBURG:
OIA has looked more in that 20 respe t to those things.
We fixed on a time period that-21 w uld be overlapped to the November 2nd allegations.
We 22 tried to look at the near term to see if hara.9sment and 3
intimidation was sort of a continuing dung and looked at the QA picture at about that time.
And ora has looked more e
17 1
in to that.
2 MR. SEYFRIT:
I might add that we did get l
3 copies of the FBI's report.
In the Region we went through 4
it and tried to glean from it, any items that might be 5
alleged that we had not previously been aware of.
And 6
we did find, I think, two or three that we had not been 7
previously aware of, and we did, indeed, look in to those 8
in some of our later work.
9 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Is someone from OIA here?
MR. STELLO:
Ye.::.
10 MR. FORTUNA:
What is that document date?
11 CHAIRFAN AHEARNE: What is the letter that you 12 are looking at?
13 MR. FORTUNA:
It is the letter dated 14 December 4th, as Mr. Shewmaker says, addressed to 15 Mr. Bickwit, the General Counsel, from.the Attorney General-16 down in the Southarn District of Texas, and indeed, that the A7 prosecutor Wasn' t planning to probe, based on the recommendations from the Bureau, which said they had g
no substantive violations, and including a copy-of the Bureau's report.
I was just curious as to what it was.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Marty, did.we write to them?
MR. MALSCH:
I'm not aware of it, I'm not sure.
23 MR. FORTUNA:
Yes, we were all aware of this.
24 In fact, the declaration was contained in the FBI report and 25 b
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I am familiar with this.
2 MR. STELLO:
Let me see if I can -- Gonzalez 3
wrote a letter to Bell requestion that this letter 4
be investigated.
Bell, in turn, requested the FBI to
+
5 look in to the matter. They lookedsin to the matter, wrote 6
the'ir report which went to the Attorney General in the 7
state, who, in turn, decided not to prosecute.
8 MR. FORTUNA:
Yes, the two things came up.
One 9
was independent of the other.
When Gonzalez wrote to 10 Bell, Bell bucked it down to Civiletti who was"then in 11 charge of Criminal.
They it got bucked further back down 12 into the bowels of Criminal Division of the* Justice 13 Department.
Headquarters was then aware, that their 14 region, which they called the United States Attorney's 15 ffice, was in fact doing, this investigation.
We told headquarters in Washington that their 16 regi n had declined, and that was confirmed in this-last 17 piece of correspondence, in this letter to us to Ba.c kwit, 7g that we are aware here on the record.
And that's g
why there is still on-going Justice Department interest in it at their headquarters.
They are still mildly concerned that the letter which Gonzalez sent to them, a year ago this time, whereby they wrote ~back to this agency to another office, OIA sent a monitor to take a look see,.in conjunction with the' office of' Inspection and 25 I
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Enforcement, so the left hand will know what the right 2
hand is doing.
That was the only thing that concerned me.
3 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
It happens all of the time.
4 MR. SEYFRIT:
It might be worth mentioning too, 5
at the same time, this letter went to Griffin Bell.
It was 6
the letter that was sent to the Chairman of the Commission,,
7 Mr. Hendrie received such letter that discussed the same 8
issues, but without specific reference to the request for 9
Justice Department to get involved.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Now, does OIA still have some 11 on-going work on this?
12 MR. FORTUNA:
This is the status of what we 13 have.
14 The one gentleman that we could afford to 15-pick out of the South Texas thing, per the arrangement that was made with OIA and I&E, Mr. Thornbu'rg, Mr. Cummings 16 and Mr. Stello, or particularily Mr. Thornburg, that 77 we w uld take a look at each district, that the special 18 task group which did the final on that mid term inspection, 19 would take a look from November ump-tee-ump, down through and looking at the allegations that have been made in about August or September,that time frame.
We have a wrap-up as to the field work. We do not have a wrap-up as to a report, which is going to be in the form of a memorandum down to the Department and O
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down to the Commission, EDO, etcetera.
So they beat 2
us, so to speak, on the present status of the site.
We 3
are looking at it back in time, only as to harassment, 4
intimidation and that sort of thing. Anything that we 5
glean along the way from our interviewees regarding 6
potential safety issues, gets sent back to I&E.
7 As I was saying a little earlier, we have finished 8
this pocket of work here, we still have threads that go _ _ _. _
9 out and we can take a look at those kinds of questions.
10 Does that focus on where we are?
11 MR. STELLO: Yes.
As I understand it, based on 12 what you have found this far,is consistent ui'th the 13 results of what the task group has found.
You have not 14 found anything that suggests that we have taken any wrong 15 turns in the harassment and intimidation and things of that 16 cort or have you asked different questions?
17 Have you found sogething that we ought to know 18 that is of any problem of any kind?
19 MR. FORTUNA:
Any interview statements that we 20 take have been dribbled off to your office as we take them.
21 However, we are going not going to make a recommendation kind of report, we are going to wrap it up, tie it together 22 23 and you can analyze it and make ydur own judgment.
4 MR. STELLO:
I did try to get the point across that based on -- I understand that OIA come up with.
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1 the same consistency that we have come up with, so that l
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we don't have any concern that there is any surprises.
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MR. FORTUNA:
I don't see any surprises in what, 4
we have done.
It is just more of the same as opposed to i
5 something different.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Fine.
i 7
MR. SHEWMAKER:
I think we have finished OIA.
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8 The Resident Inspector was assigned to this 9
site in late August of 1979, and by the way, we do have 2
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10 the Special Investigation Team here today to answer any
)
11 specific questions, and the Resident Inspector was a member i
12 of that team.
13 As we have said before, the allegations that were.
14 investigated here numbered 12 when they were boiled down.
15-As the result of the investigation, 19 additional allegations 16 were developed.
17 Mr. Stello directed the Special Investigation.
on November 3rd.
g
, was dat tdggered by 19 this set of allegations to the Resident' Inspector?
0 MR. STELI0:
In part.
It was also the result of ~
what -- the FBI report, any new allegations,'we decided that we needed a rather thorough look at those questions 3
to decide whether there was an issue here and to somehow-24 deal with it correctly.
My feeling at that point was that s
~
~A~'
a I.
22 1
of the investigation, I wanted it to be independent of 2
what the Region had done, in an effort to get an independent
~
3 look beyond the investigations that they had done, since t
4 at least what they had come up with and what'the FBI had.
~
5 come up with, the new allegations suggested that perhaps 6
it wasn't being tied together the way it should, and I 7
decided that the Task Force may be able to look at.it, 8
in part, the other concerns.
9 MR. SHEWMAKER:
The team that was put together, 10 we tried to get people from the different disciplines of 11 the areas that were specified that we would look at. So 12 we had some one in the civil area, soils, welding and 13 in the QA/QC area.
The team was run under Headquarters 14 directicn and we had representatives from all of the Regions except Region V.
15 As I said before, this investigation was 16 different in that -- different from the earlier investigations 17 that had been done on South. Texas in that the Team had g
the authority to take signed sworn statements.
g They actually conducted 57 formal interviews, and took 24 sworn signed statements._There was something like 50 less formal interviews made.
22 The time period covered from November 10th through February 7th and it involved some 1100 inspector hours.
The areas that we covered by the investigation, 25 9
a p
Ino m
4.-
- c.- -
g-
,y-p
C 23 1
we were really in some five major areas.
2 Category I, concrete structures, the area 3
that most all of the allegations had been related to, 4
that activity area of concrete placement in the civil 5
area.
6 The other areas that we wanted to look at, but 7
in order to try and evaluate the effectiveness of the 8
current program in the QA/QC, included soils, welding a,nd 9
NDE, the. handling of audit reports and nonconformance to 10 general, and the audit function.
Very little welding 11 had actually been done at the time, and of course, 12 nothing was really being done in the electrical area.
13 We indicated in the transmittal letter of the 14 early draft of the report that we would try and have it 15' finalized today, but we do not have it finalized'.
We are going to be having a mee'ing after this' session to try 16 c
17 and finish it up.
There are some changes, really nothing 18 major.
I might point out one that you might consider,.if 19 somebody is really counting numbers it might change somebody's 20 idea, but on Page 2 of the draft, and this is the one 21 that is dat,ed April 9,1980, under that paragraph that is 22 underlined that says:
"Results" about a third of the way 23 down the page or half way down,'it says:
"8 of the initial 24 12..."
that should be "9".
We had one that was a partial that we looked at in the last couple of days, 'and we decided 25
=.
24 1
we need to chrow that in to a nonsubstantiated.
2 In the second line there, where we say:
"Two of 3
the initial 12 were partially substantiated.."
it should 4
read:
"One of the 12 was. partially' substantiated."
5 We will, of course, transmit copies of that 6
as soon as it is final.
The last person came in today, 7
that was able to sign it.
One person had a series of 8
heart attacks so he won't be signing.
He is still out.
9 We have passed out the Appendix 5 which should 10 replace the one that was in the earlier version.
11 Now, to get to the results of the investigation in some detail, and I don't know how much detail you. want 12 to get in.to, we..can look at which of the allegations w'e 13 felt fit in to the five categories that we had in the 4
violation of Criterion I. dealing with the freedom and 15 i
independence of the QC inspectors.
Under threats, we basically had what I considered, 7
really three very strong ones where we had a situation that had a threat by someone that we would -consider in a management function in the construction side of Brown & Root.
In one case it was a construction superintendent, 21 and in two other cases it was a foreman.
And in all 22 cases, the person who was alleged to have made the threat 23 admitted to making the threat, and in all three of these 24
'25 cases admitted that it was 'made under a loss of temper?
9 m
~
i-it 1
25 a
t 1
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
What kind of a threat?
2 MR. SHEWMAKER:
I think you would characterize 3
them as a threat of physical harm.
l 4
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
By " characterize,"
do you 5
mean that they were?
6 MR. SHEWMAKER: That's right.
Bodily injury.
7 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I ought to~ stomp you 8
around.
9
- MR. THORNBURG
That's getting close..
f-10 MR. SHEWMAKER:
We saw some instances of 11 harassment, the type of thing, one that I recall a 12 construction person was boasting around the s'ite that 13 I was able to get away with this particular procedural 14 violation while this QC inspector was there.
And that
[
15' QC inspector heard that as a rumor.
That is the type of I
16 thing that underminds and harasses that'QC inspector.
17 The Attachment 5, uhich has the Brown and Root 18 corporate policy, they had a meeting where that was given i
19 as a speech, then it was later printed and handed out to 20 everybody.
21 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I gather, by the fact they went to the difficulty of actually printing this they 22 felt that was fine.
23 MR. SHEWMAKER:
They did believe that.
4 That, to me, is an example of harassment, and the I
e, 26 1
statements that were made to QC people about:
Well, you 2
may not be here much longer; that sort of thing.
- Threats, 3
verbal type harassment.
4 We have examples of intimidation.
The case of 5
A-52, we wanted' to look at that particular one.
6 This is a case of where he did something because 7
he felt his' supervisor.would not support him.
In other 8
words, he took an action based on what he was expecting 9
or the way he was expecting his supervisor to react.
So 10 he was intimidated by what that suprvisor told him in the 11 past.
12 The lack of management support, that was one of 13 the allegations -- one of the things that came through on 14 a lot of the allegations that the low-level QC inspector 15 identify something, and will not, say sign off on a p ur card which would release construction to go ahead 16 with construction.
It goes up to the supervisor and maybe 17 another level up, and that supervisor was being -- would tg get in to a discussion with construction, and the supervisor g
w uld sign off on it overriding the CQ -- low-level QC 20 inspector.
The QC inspectors ended up with a feeling that:
well, why;should I flag it, everytime I flag it somebody is going to override it, a situation I don't think, is one w uld generate a feeling on our part that all' of the 25 i ;
s
l-27 i
1 problems are going to be identified and properly taken 2
care of.
t 3
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: But certainly I would have 1
4 viewed this as management support.
5 MR. SHEWMAKER: The paper itself, yes.
And it 6
brings in the cost and scheduling, you know.
I
,7 CHAIRMAN AREARNE:
That not only brings it in, i
8 that makes it.
9 MR. SHEWMAKER: Right, and it is repeated often.
10 Production pressures, the instance that I remember 4
11 most vividly is probably the one that there was a hold 12 up by QC, they knew all of the high-level construction j
13 managers were standing around, the concrete was on the 14 way, and everybody was trying to get the QC to sign off.
15' They had a very short time and in some of the instances 16 they had actually reviewed the placement, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> before, i
17 and they found out that construction had gone back in and done some additional work, then the QC would go in yg there and would find additional problems.
9
- Y "I **#*
"" *#
- 9#**
20 pressure.
21 4
All f those things together really built a 22 finding against criterion I, th'at. basically says there is 23 a lack of required independent QA' function and we 4
did find-one or two noncompliance examples in these five 4
- q e
a 28 1
categories.
2 The other significant quality related problems.
3 First we would put in the area of the civil QC inspector 4
qualifications, and civil procedures.
The finding there 5
that we actually had four items of noncomplaince.
The 6
one that would be, I think, the most significant is the
- 7 question of what we found in the failure to follow their j
8 own procedures in qualifying the QC inspectors.
There 9
were instances found where QC inspectors did not have 10 adequate training or experience for the job that they were 11 assigned to do.
~
12 MR. THORNBURG: This could feed to the intimidation
~
13 and independence thing, because if the guy isn't too.we'll i
qualified and starts nit-picking the construction foreman, 14 he is under pressure to produce, and I think that also 15 plays a role too.
16 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: When you said the people g
aren't qualified, which standard are you using?
MR. SHEWMAKER: Those basically were the standards that Brown & Root had established which do reference some of the ANSI standards.
d 21 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
They are underqualified 22 by Brown & Roct's own standards?
MR. SHEWMAKER: Right, which incorporates some
+
of the ANSI standards.
25 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: We
,have a Reg Guide on standards?
i a,
c.-,.
e--
n
i l
l 29 l
t 1
MR. STELLO: That's what I have asked Minogue to 2
develop.
3 MR. THORNBURG: There is a Reg Guide in this 4
particular area, but the definitions are not as tight as 5
we believe they ought to be.
6 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Does that Reg Guide apply 7
to this plant?
8 MR. THORNBURG:
I would assume so.
9 MR. SEYFRIT:
I'm not sure that it does.
Reg 10 Guides typically apply only when they embrace them as part of their submittal, and I don't know,-in this case, 11 12 specifically whether they did or not.
We do.know that they embrace some of the ANSI standards and those are the ones 13 that are really at issue here.
But I'm not really sure 14 15-whether they embrace the. Reg Guides or not.
MR. DIRCKS: Whatever it is, I.think we ought to 16 1
k at it.
17 COMMISSIGNER BRADFORD: But that commitment is 18 enough for you to inspect against, to line up their g
qualifications against the ANSI standards?
MR. THORNBURG:. (Nods in the affirmative.)
MR. STELLO:
We can inspect against what they have.
The issue is, is the standard which applies to this activity good enough?
The conclusion is that it 24 is not, it needs to be upgraded in a better, either Reg Guide
+._.
q_.2 t
l 1
30 i
l i
l or Regulation and promulgated that will beef up 2
considerably the requirements for CQ inspectors.
3 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Is that equivalent to saying 4
the ANSI standard is too?
5 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Yes.
6 The next general area is the area of soils and 7
plank backfill that was looked at in trying to uhke an g
assessment on the effectiveners of the current QA/QC 9
program inplementation.
10 We found several areas of noncompliance in that-11 specific area of soils.
Six, to be exact.
12 We f und failure to compIste compaction in a cordance with the qualified procedure.
Failure to 13 documentlift thicknesses in one of the passes which 14 ne as determine in order to understand what the 15 quality you are actually putting in to place.
We found 6
two failures to control test equipment.
Test equipment 7
is required for imperical type tests on field samples.
18 We found failure to hava a systematic field sampling program.
We found failure to take prompt l
corrective action of test equipment failure.
In addition to those noncompliances,-we=found other questions that home in on the soils question that we ended up with.
We have some confasion in trying to 24 identify the materials that were actually used in 25 L
1 l
l I
'~--
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I l
e 31 1
laboratory test programs where liquefaction stud.ies, 2
versus the materials that were used in the field.
We have l
3 been trying to get that clarified on the. phone today, 4
and I guess it is still unresolved as to whether the i
5 materials that were. tested in the laboratory for lique-s 6
faction analysis are actually, in fact, the materials 7
that were put in place in the, field.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
You say that there is some 9
question.
Has the question been documented or is there a 10 question that exists which is it a question that we believe 11 there was a different material tested?
12 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Well, on the basis of the 13 information we have, what brought it to the inspector's 14 attention was the information we had, there was a 15 p ssibility se were talking about two different materials.
I 16 And as yet, we have not gotten the documentation from the 17 licensee that would indicate otherwise.
We are seeking that informaticn.
18 We also found that we were unable, and they 19 were una ew e r records at the time, to establish 20 the fie]d placement sequence that had been reached, in 21 order to try and go back and see in what sequence the backfill material'was placed.
We have not been able to 3
get that information.
W have a questiun about the compaction,that 25 l
a
E
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32 1
degree of compaction under those buildings resting on 2
this backfill material.
When the last lift was placed, 3
the last six or nine inches of that last lift was to be left 4
loose, and in some instances what is done in construction, 5
you come back and cut that material away then fill on the 6
firm material.
They were not doing that.
They have 7
indicated that they have literature that shows that this-8 is acceptable.
We still have not homed in and been able 9
to resolve that question.
'10 There was a question over a test fill program, 11 and the adequacy of what they had done in a test fill 12 program to establish what lift thickness and how many l
13 passes with the patching equipment they would have to I
14 make in orde.r to achieve the design densities.
i 15 When the team left the site, c" course, some of 16 these questions were relayed to the licensee in an 17 exit interview, and the licensee embarked on an exploratory.
18 program of this in-place material, and we are still 19 beginning to get some of the results of that.
So all of 20 that is not yet really analyzed yet.
We will talk about 21 a little bit of that at the end, of this latest informaticn.
22 That characterizes the questions that we had in the soils area.
23 I
4 One thing I would like'to add before I go to j
25 the next area is that there have not been allegation in this O
h
I l
s.
33 1
particular -- this particular discipline has not had 2
allegations in this area.
The only reason that we looked 3
at it was it is a major area of safety related work 4
that has been on-going, and was looked at because of our 5
attempt to look at the total QA/QC program effectiveness.
6 The next area that was looke'd at is.tte welding 7
and NDE area.
The major findings ewze:we have had.6 non-8 compliances in this area, the major ones being:
failure 9
to test the welder qualifications ' specimens with' the 10 proper radiographic techniques, so that what happens is 11 what ends up with a question of whether or not the 12-welders are properly qualified.
This, I believe, the 13 number is something like 150 welders' qualifications is 14 a question because of this.
15' There has not been a great deal of. welding 16 o mpleted, so if we are going to catch something like this, 17 this was the time to identify it before a lot of high 18 quality welds had been put in place.
The other major item in this area was. failure 79 to control radiography and the liquid penetrants.
We 20 f und problems in radiography, the quality of the 21 radiographs, problers in their interpretation of what they saw in the radiographs.
In the liquid penetrants, 23 we saw problems in the indications they had of' flaws-were not re-examined as required by the code requirements.
4
________________.__.______.m____
1
.I l
I c,
34 1
The other noncompliances in that area dealt 2
with failure to control documents, documents out of date, 3
not being superseded properly and voided.
Failure to 4
control weld area cleanliness.
Our investigators acutally 5
observed this going on in an unclean situation for welding, 6
and it does effect the welding.
Failure to control design 7
changes in welds, and failure to handle the outdated 8
procedures.
9 The next major area dealt with the -- their 10 methods of handling the nonconformance.
These include 11 all types of nonconformances.
Many sites have assigned 12
-different names and. acronyms to the way they handle their 13 reports.
At this particular site, they call it j
14 an NCR, Nonconformance Report, they also have another f rm which is called a FREA, which is a Field Request I
15 f r Engineering Analysis or Action.
16 t
We found that while many of the things had been l
77 identified in one or other of these types of record keeping 18
- ^^ ^
E E"
19 them in the FREA cateogry and the FREAs at the site are not looked at in total.
In other words, I built. up a list of about 1000 FREAs, but no one ever.*looks at them to trend them and if I have, say, 50 FREAs on a containment building, no one ever looks at the aggregate of 50 together to see what-the total effect is.
Each one is e
i s
i
.-1 i
35 i
J l
1 in itself,' isolated.
So what the team found was that 2
things that were identified as discrepancies that we would 3
normally see in the -- what we call the NCR group that 4
are looked at on trend' analysis, were, in fact, not being j
5 classified in to that grouping at South Texas. So we 'see 6
that there is a total number of discrepancies that fall 7
in to this category that-really hasn't been at all tracked.
8 We had the one finding in that particular area.
1 l
9 Again, that was somewhat related to some of i
10 the allegations. The inspectors said, yoh know, I tried 11 to initiate an NCR which has to be tracked, and they turn 1
12 around, the supervisor or construction puts the pressure on 13 and it ends up being a FREA, which means none of this is 14 tracked very well, as far as trending and what the total 15' effects are.
i The next major area was the area of audits. We 16 f und four noncompliances in that area.
I think we have l
17 to classify all of those as critical, the audits being I
18 really the total bounds in defense and depth. that we are l
19 1
king at it in a QA/CA program.
We found in this failure-I 20 f the licensee to provide procedures or to. perform 21 f
supplemental audits that they had indicated would be 22 perf rmed in their reference documents.
The adequacy and 23 the frequency of audits did not meet 4
what they indicated they could do.
25 4
1
~
c.
36 1
We found the depth of the audits by Brown & Root, 2
that they had to perform, were not sufficient.
We found 3
failure to follow procedings to document the control 4
to unsatisfactory conditions, and failures.to take prompt 5
corrective actions.
6 So those in total as outlined in noncompliances 7
that were found, we have a number of items, as I indicated, 8
we will have to follow up.
Some of them relate to these 9
five areas I have outlined.
One of the areas that we 10 specifically came away thinking needed beefing up in this-11 case, I think we come out with the impression that we have situation here where the licensee is, in fact, not 1-a 13 exercising sufficient control over his contractor.
Ankin 14 this case this contractor has what I consider the total 15 packages.
He is the designer, the engineer, he is the constructor and builder, and he also has the QC functions.
16 S
he has all three parts of the package and in that 17
. situation, it certainly is important that the licensee yg have a very close handle on that total scope of work.
yg BRADFORD: What would happen if 20 he required the QA/QC to be done by HP&L instead of --
21 well, by a separate entity all together, anyway, not by Brown & Root?
~
MR. SHEWMAKER:
Well,.we have -- there was an instance at one plant where a requirement was placed --
s f-9
~
1 i
37 t
l l
1 right now, I guess we would have to say that a licensee 2
would certainly not be staffed to ever handle anything 3
like that.
4 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Did you ever have 5
licensees to do the QA/QC instead of the construction 6
company?
7 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Yes, there are licensees ---
8 You have to look, there is a difference.
Some of them i
do it all themselves.
{
g 10 MR. SEYFRIT:
There are a number of different 11 combinations that you see.
We have one licensee which also has Brown & Root as the constructor, at Comanche Peak' where
[
12 the utility, while they don't do all of the QA/QC work, 13 they have taken over absolute control of that function.
3 4
The QC/QA people from Brown & Root report to TUGCO supervisors.
That way, the have taken control, and as a matter of fact ---
17 t
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Did that also come as 18
~
the Lesult of unsatisfactory experience with Brown & Root?
19 MR. SEYFRIT:
I think that is probably a fair statement isn't if Phil?
21 i
MR. SEIDEL:
You are talking about TUGCO, 22 Texas Utilit,ies Generating Company, they were dissatisfied 23 with the performance of the corporate -- Brown & Root 24 QA.
They just decided that one day all of the Brown & Root 25
~
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J 38 1
QA/QC people would report to their company.
However, the 2
QA/QC people still get their pay checks from Houston.
3 CEAIRMAN AHEARNE: Do we see any improvement?
a 4
MR, SEIDEL:
I would say, yes, some improvement.
5 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Do we have any other examples 6
of Brown & Root?
4 7
MR. SEYFRIT:' I think these are the only' two s
i j
8 at the present time that Brown & Root is involved in, j
9 South Texas and Comanche Peak.
10 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I guess I should ask 11 rather than assume that because of TUGCO's dissatisfaction 12 was the same sort of thing as seen here, and 'not that, 13 for example, construction was proceeding too slowly?
14 MR. SEYFRIT:
No, I don' t think that it was 15
,that.
It wasn't exactly the same either.
For example, 16 I don't know of any indication that TUGCO had that there
- 17 was the harassment and intimidation and that sort of thing taking place.
That did not appear to be a factor 18 19 in their decision, but they didn't feel that the job 20 was being adequately controlled in terms'of the numbers of items reworked _and ---
21 22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Were the numbers too high or-1 "I 23 MR. SEYFRIT: They were obviously too high, I
- 24 think.
25 They felt they wanted ---
e
--w<-
~
- 39 l
I l
1 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: That's why I didn't 2
assume that.
l 3
MR. SEYFRIT:
I mean the problems in construction 4
were not being delt with.
5 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I see, they were having 6
to go back and do things over?
7 MR. SEYFRIT:..That's correct, and they wanted to 8
make sure that the inspection was properly _done the first 9
time around so that this didn't happen.
10 MR. THORNBURG: So that the work got done properly 11 before the inspection.
12 MR. SEYFRIT: So those kinds of factors were involved.
13 I might mention that I have had communications 14 15-fr m HL&P, and they have.been in contact with TUGCO, and they are discussing and considering the. possibility of 16 their taking the same kind of action.
They have not 17 yet made such a decision, and I don't know whether I would 18 an p sh them in that direction right now or not, but l
19 I'm not sure that that's the total answer.
You buy something, i
20 but then I-think you give up some other independence that I
may be as desirable.
l 22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: What other indeoendence-do 23 you have?
MR. SEYFRIT: Well, if HL&P takes over the entire 25 v
-mn..s
,ew.
q wm s.wo - m-~s>,w.w-r-.-
.--r
}
40 1
job of controlling the quality assurance / quality control 2
effort, they still have dae ~ ultimate end of rapid l
3 construction and-so forth, so some of the same driving l
4 forces that are present now with Brown'& Root would be t
5 present in EL&P'.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: So you are saying there'is 7
some alternative plan rather than Brown & Root?
8 MR. SEYFRIT:
Yes, I think frankly, that a much, 9
much stronger HLEP presence on site, without necessarily 10 taking over.
l'1 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I see.
12 MR. THORNBURG:
We are sort of moving ahead 13 in a way.
We are considering encouraging Houston Power 14 and Light to get more involved.
We haven't talked quite about 15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I will stop my digression at 16 the moment.
Here, you have Brown & Root having 17 construction in two agencies, you have the TUGCO -
18 pr p sition where Brown & Root does the construction' and 19 the Brown & Root people still have to report to the 20 utility.
21
- Now, you were' pointing out that that would i
l 22 l
lose some of the independence, but'---
MR. SEYFR,IT:
No, I didn't suggest that it would d5 1 se, I just don't think'that youLgain any independence.
L l
en-L' l.
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- := : -
.=
1 1
41 1
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Well, to some extent -- Well, 2
go ahead.
3 MR. SEYFRIT: It is not clear.
4 MR. STELLO:
I think it is an area that does 5
need to be looked at, but the bottom line is there needs 6
to-be an improvement in the QA/QC organization, at least 7
in terms of the way in which you.are getting the job done.
8 That's one way. There are others we will talk about at the end.
9 MR. SHEWMAKER: Okay, conclusions.
I don't think 10 we need to rehash the first few'there.
11 We have reached the conclusion that we have got 12 a QA pr gram that is impaired, we have got lack of 13 independence.
74 Now, this lack,of independence really comes out 15 only in the civil area.that wa have seen.
That is really the only major area that has heavy work activities.
We have really no clear cause that affects relationships resulting in deficient systems and components as a result of this. We don't see, in the civil area, as a result of this investigation, any major problems with regard to safety.
22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
As you went through your 23 description, one of the questions that was sort of 24 puzzling about it,is that are the quality-control people not 25 r
=
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42 1
nearly adequate, so is the fact that they get harassed 2
and pushed around and don't raise their problems, those 3
problems that they don't raise don't seem to have led 4
at least in judgment so far, in safety problems.
That 5
could be because they don't raise the problem in non-6 safety areas, it could be because of the Problets. they 7
raise could be that they are not being very competent 8
if the problems they raise weren't ' really problems.-
9 MR. ETELLO:
Well, that's-a third possibility, 10 and even in spite of the difficulty, the job is not 11 getting done, although that the activity doesn't stop 12 them from saying I don't think you have to investigate 13
'them.
And one way to measure that is to look at the end 14 product.
When you look at the concrete of the South 15 Texas project, it doesn't look like Marble Hill.
16 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
No, no.
There is another 17 way had, I'm not sure what would have been done is to ig look at the kinds of things on which they'got harassed 19 r look at the issues they have decided not to raise'in 20 which you judge whether or not those are real issues.
MR. STELLO: Are you aware of any issues that.
21 were n t raised because of the activities or-harassment?
22 MR. SHENMAKER:
No, a'll of the people that were 23-24
. interviews basically said that, you know, they had always 25 brought everything up.
I guess it is just this feeling
~
I i
43 1
1 of frustration ---
2 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
But you also mentioned some 3
area that they felt should have been in NCRs but instead 4
became FREAs.
Did you look at those and say, yes, those 5
really should have been NCRs?
6 MR. SHEWMAKER:
I think we looked at it from 7
the standpoint of trying to compare it to what we would 8
see on another job, and we would say, yes, it probably e
9 should be in the category of an NCR, because that is the i
10 system that gets tracked.
So you have a long-term evaluation.
11 12 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
But you really though, 13 trying to make an estimate of were they not really 14 mPetent Pe Ple to raise the problems, or where they C
were mpetent people raising problems to ---
15 MR. SHEWMAKER: We did, of course, identify some 6
of these QC inspectors at level one that were not 7
adequately qualified.
I guess we/did sit down and look g
and see if those were the ones who were well -trained.
Depends on how you look at the.
problem.
If you look at a-specific instance, there was harassment not with respect to a particular item, but there was a whole series as-was pointed out,and on some 23 of the ~ others; nobody looked at all of the problems contained in tha sum.
There is a pattern of harassment of:
25
~w e -
.. l e.
44 l
l 1
the QA people that's a conclusion that affects the QA 2
program and the purpose of the QA program is to assure 3
safety, so it is ---
4 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Yes, I know. I was just trying 5
to get a sense of how much of'that would be due to the 6
the f act that a bunch of people like that are competent.
7 MR. EAYES:
That seems to be disconnected.with 8
safety here, and I find that an-incompetent QA program 9
isn't what I think ought to then achieve in connection with 10 safety.
11 MR. DIRCKS:
But isn't it the single items of 12 harassment ---
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
My point is that we have 13 a QA program that really looks terrible.
Now one of the 14 things you conclude ordinarily would be terrible,is the 15 product.would ha terrible. But that's not what you find.
16 I was just wondering skeptically is it because 77 the QA people are terrible?
g e
,a ers f
e ng somewhat 19 misunderstood, I would like to make a comment to maybe-bring this in to some degree of-perspective.
It was mentioned here earlier that there was 22 something like 1100 hours0.0127 days <br />0.306 hours <br />0.00182 weeks <br />4.1855e-4 months <br /> of effort went in to this inspection.
Our routine program up to this point represents something on the order of an equal number of hours, making it
-l g
45 1
a little less than more, over a long period of time.
Ss we-2 have concentrated a great deal of effort and compacted 3 l it into a small space, and I'm not really sure, you know, j
)
4 I can't put numbers to this, but I rather imagine that if i
5 5
you look at the' rate of noncompliance. items or some'such 1
i 6
measure as that, per inspector hour of effort, you would 7
see that they are not tiat greatly different'.
And.what,
t 8
I'm suggesting is the possibility that over a longer period 9
of time, if we had looked at these same areas, the same 10 number of things would come up, but in single isolated l
11 cases rather than a broad spectrum.
f 12 MR. THORNBURG:
It is a little over'the 13 average.
)
14 MR. SEYFRITS:
It may be.
I MR. STELLO:
I.think the way it is cited ~it is f
15 a different issue here.
That is the issue of harassment 16 i-l 17 and intimidation and the way Che-QC inspectors have been--
rea ed.
18 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Victor, I'm not saying that'-
9 we an tolerate harassment of the QC people.
That's 20 4
not the issue I was trying to make.
i 21 MR. STELLO:
That is clearly r.ot a situation 22 that you want to tolerate.
I think, a strange relationship between QC people and construction people is.normally trouble i
24 You would expect to see some normal adversary role, because f
~
---x,
t I
46 I think it is a natural involvement and it is too mut;h 2
here.
It is beyond that.
But you always look at the 3
product to decide where are you.
If the product looks f
4 like it is good, in this third possibility, although these 5
problems are there, that somehow they are' st_ill managing l
l 6
I at this point to still get through and have this quality 7
job done so that the product is still, at least for the.
8 most part acceptable.
We are seeing the innocent problems.
j 9
Now, we are going to get, very quickly, in.to this 10 soil issue, which is not a trivial problem.
It is a safety l
l 11 problem.
It is related to tne QA, it is not related to.
i 12 these allegations. But the way in which they'have been.
13 doing the job, it is producing, at least in this particular 14 area, questions which are fairly significant.
So it is not 15' to say that the product is completely free of the problem, 16 you can see a realtionship,-at least there is an inner 17 one, that some of the problems were saved because of the 18 soil, we are now saying come new problems-which we are l
l 19 finding out even now, today.
S if I think you give us just another moment, 20 i
there will be a clearer connection.
J 21 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Okay.
I would like to give you 22 i
~
a rundown, sort o'f on the curre'nt status.
We will leave 23 the soils there until last.
24 As far as concreta activities, as the result of 25 s
^
4 8
47 i
i 1
their immediate action letter, the complex concrete i
2 placements have been halted since December 21st.
3 Now, I will explain what complex concrete f
4 placement is.
That would include all concrete in the 5
reactor containment buildings, and it also includes, as 4
6 defined and identified by the licensee and the constructor.,
7 those other placements in Category I buildings that were 8
involved, complicated embedments, anchors,, supports and that 9
sort of thing, and heavy reinforced areas.
3 10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: And the reason for that 11 stoppage was?
12 MR. SHEWMAKER: The reason for that' stoppage 13 was, in fact, the findings of this investigation, the-l 14 question of some QC inspectors not being adequately 15 qualified.
We did have some findings with noncompliances 16 in Procedures in the concrete placement.
And they --
17 failure to follow those procedures will have a more prounounced effect on the completed structure in these ig l
complex placements.
So those'have been halted and 19 remain that way.
20 I
Just recently in the area of welding, and 21
.i because of the question about qualification of those 22 we ers, the. licensee has issued his own stop-work 23
- rder, 2,
. I believe on what, March 18th?
MR. SEIDEL:
Yes, and it was reconfirmed on the 25 l
l'4 th. '
\\
l v
. :a. ::. -
.g o
s, y
o e 48 1
i 1
MR. SHEWMAKER: Then it has been reconfirmed just
- 2 recently, yesterday.
3 And that deals with welding --
ASME Code 4
welding and that associated with Category 1 welding.
j 5
That is sort of an evolving situation, and would appear 6
that that came out as the result of findings of this 7
investigation, the facts that these welders are not 8
qualified.
9 Another thing that came out of the investigation 10 were the findings of harassment and intimidation... The 11 licensee has hired an independent consultant to come in 12 and look at the environment under which the QC people'and construction people have to work.
13 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
That hasn't been completed, I
14 J
15-then?
MR. SHEWMAKER: The study has been completed.
We 16 have not received a copy of it.
I understand the Region j
17 People have looked at that at the site.
We do have an 18 executive summary, which sort of summarizes that.
g MR. PHILLIPS: We have received a copy of it, but I'm not sure they reached the sauma conclusion.
CHAIRMAN AEEARNE:
In what sense?
22 MR. PHILLIPS:
That they believe there isn't i
23 any pressure of any great amount-at this time.
MR. SHEWMAKER: They concluded that the pressures l.
i l
.. ~,
c.
49 1
were really not coming from construction, but the situation 2
was being created within their own management organization 3
and the QA/QC group.
They even made the statement that 4
the working relationship between individuals in construction.
5 and QA/QC is so'nd.
sThat seems to be about 180 degrees u
t 6
from the findings of this team.
i 7
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
This was, you say, done by i
l 8
a consultant hired by the company?
9 MR. SEIDEL:
A Mr. Howard was the auditor.
10 I know nothing about this consultant firm.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
It is not a group that I&E 11 is familiar with.
12 MR. PHILLIPS:
No.
13 MR. SHEWMAKER: They outlined some steps that 14 they felt the licensee should take.
I might just mention 15 those'qdickly.
The licensee has put those in a letter.
i 16 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: And the licensee is ---
7 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Trying to take some action, g
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: But based upon the g
consultants.
20 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Their recommendations.
Reemphasize the role of QA/QC to' construction j
personnel, and I don't know their. exact speech and for 23 forth, but that acutally came before,'I believe, just 24 before this report was available.
25 l1
g 50 1
Additional training and seminars, and meetings 2
to strengthen the role and understanding of the purposes 3
of functions of QA/QCs.
4 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Seminars with whom?
5 MR. SHEWMAKER: All the workers.
6 Revised salary schedules for QA/QCs.
And the 7
last, improvement of the communications by QA/QC
+
8 management at site meetings and with all the low-level 9
personnel in QA/QC.
10 In addition, the licensee has committed to 11 some changes in the QA program, and the way they are going 12 to implement that, and those came about as the result of 13 a meeting which was made up of people from the team and 14 Region IV the end of December.
And there was a series of 15' 9 steps that were -- or items that were outlined.
The 16 licensee has been proceeding to try and implement these 17 9 steps, and at the present time, it appears that 5 of 18 these still have not been fully satisfied.
The Region 19 has been following the licensee's implementation of these mmitments, maybe Phil wottld want to say something about 20 that.
21 MR. SEIDLE:
With regard to the 9-point program 22 there still are some 5 items wh'ich remain open.
23 Item number one, which is a concern about Brown &
4 Root 'osts which was expressed, I think, in a January 4th c
25 4
0 p
)
51
}-
i 1
meeting.
l 2
COMMISSIONER HENDRIE: This is the Appendix'S 1
3 speech?
l 4
MR. SEIDEL: Yes. There is concern regarding on-
?
5 site authority, for the QAs to have more organizational i
j 6
freedom.
They are permitted to place noncomplex concrete l
7 placements.
They have been observing their activities to j
j 8
see just how this will impact on the QC performance.
1 9
With regard to the second item under. number 2, i
10 which deals with the FREAs and NCRs,.they had not i
J 11 completed a coding and printing effort to code all of these j
12 FREAs into engineering disciplines and looking for trends.
j 13 This is not completed.
i 14 They have not revised their procedure for i
control of FREAs.
With. regard to Item No. 5,.apparently 15 j
16 this has to do with procedure revision with regard to 17 pre-planning placement activities, specifically we are l
. talking about a-list before concrete is put in place, 8
thereby, on-site engineering / construction QC people.
9 identify what must be done before placing the concrete, 20 yet they are placing it in an informal manner, it has-21 never been formalized.
Yet they rely on that.
This 4
22
}
has not been done yet.
1 Item No. 7 of this 9 point program is i
24 augmentation of site QA staff.
Are they indeed adequately i
-~
52 1
staffed. We don't know the number' of on-site QA 2
surveillance people representing the licensee, are they 3
sufficient.
We.will have to observe to see if.these 4
numbers are adequate.
Are they functioning adequately.
5 In other words, have they brought about 6
changes as a result of this task force effort that has 7
improved their performance at the site.
8 Item No. 9 is the last Item.
I said Item 7,
)
j-9 Item No. 9 is the last item.
Of course, they have made 10 commitments to reemphasize the role of the quality 4
11 nur 1 pr gram. This is in progress, this effort is 12 n t glete. They made a commitment to conduct refresher training methods, this is in progress.
With regard to 13 the salary administration program, that is trying to make g
4 5-the salaries of QCs competitive.with QCs elsewhere, and the relationship to the workers at the site, there has been no action taken to do that, as'we know of.with. regard to 17 this item.
18 With regard to improved communications, this
[
is in progress, but it is not complete.
Concerning the.
i.
20 relationship of resolution of conflicts between QC 21 3
inspectors and construction people, a procedure has been 22 generated, reviewed and approved on how to handle these 23 types of conflicts.
Whether or not it works or not, remains 24 to be seen.
Again, owe will have to inspect their activities l
25 e
I m..
n 1
'I 53 I'
i 1
and their judgments.
l 2
That essentially summarizes those.
3 MR. SHEWMAKER:
Okay, the last item under i
j 4
current status is an up-date on the soil situation.
5 You will probably find when you go back to your t
l 6
offices tonight you have received a PN.
We just recently,
5 7
received informaticn that the MEAB, that's Mechanical g
Electrical Auxiliary Building, where Unit 2 has a 9
differential settlement both north to south, of one inch, 10 the south end having moved downward.
The licensee has 11 indicated that this is the result of the heavier loadings 12 due to construction sequence which has been placed on the south end.
13 14 The licensee has indicated that no piping is 15 urrently attached in this building, and that they feel that the situation ou'ght to correct itself as they get 6
the loading more uniform,as will be the case when the 17 structure is Completed.
We really have not had a chance to evaluate this at all.
I guess we have the question of 9
whether that may or may not relate to some of the deficiencies we identified in the backfill program, and 4
1 whether or not there is a cause of effect there, I can't 22 say at this time.
We are looking at that possibility.
As far as our planned actions, there is, of course, 24 a new allegation related to drugs, which is being investigated.
25 l
l
54 l
1 We are looking at and considering ---
l 2
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
This intimidation, does that l
3 relate to the procedure?
4 MR. SHEWMAKER:
That's my understanding, yes.
l 5
MR. SEYFRIT:
Yes, but in a different 6
discipline than we have talked about before.
There was 7
a QC man involved, that was 1 out of 4 as I understand it.
8 It was a discipline of mechanical rather than civil.
It is 9
a different group of people.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
It is still Brown & Root then?
11 MR. SEYFRIT:
Oh, yes, it is all Brown & Root 12 n b th sides, Ehat's right.
MR. SHEWMAKER:
One of the planned actions is 13 civil Penalty in the area of these noncompliances that we--
14 15-there were a total of 22.noncompliances defined by this investigation.
That is being considered.
I We also are considering an order which would 7
handle trying to correct the situation that we see.
8 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
What would you base the order 20 MR. SHEWMAKER: The order would address corrective 21 action in the area of welder and welder requalification i
22 l
and relook at any welds that were completed by those welders that didn't have adequate qualifications.
24 l
It would address the NCR and FREA trending 25
i j
55 1
situation.
The audit surveillance, the problem of 2
qualification of the civil QC inspectors, and somehow 3
we need to address a mechanism or provide a mechanism 4
for getting increased involvement of the licensee in to 5
the QC functions.
6 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Why do you just restrict it 7
to the civil, is.it the turn of events that the other is 8
still on going?
9 MR. SHEWMAKER:
I guess, as far as I know, 10 the team didn't really get in to all areas, as far as 11 qualifications of inspectors.
I guess we don't know that 12 at this time.
Perhaps it should be broadened.
13 MR. STELLO:
I think the issues is that we 14 do know where there is a oroblem.
We hocefully are coina 15 to cover this with an umbrella that says you have got:to 16 get your whole act together and make sure that this doesn't 17 occur.
The recent incident of yesterday when they cut 18 back now, in the welding area, is, I think, a good sign yg that they are looking very carefully and are stopping the 20 21 w rk when things aren't moving correctly.
To the extent 22 f the. attitude, I don't see that they will have further p
ems, an ey
, then we are going to have to 23 cite them for that.
4 u
u n
area, Bob, that I think is 25
.I I,
I l
__ 1.- -
q I
l l
56 e
1 important.
We are going to have to find a way we can 2
get some answers to these questions on the soils, as there 3
are some areas where we have made some measurements and 4
the soil is not up to the standards that it should have 5
been, the area is not under construction at the moment, 6
but off to the side.
We are going to have to lay a time 7
table, as there really.is a serious question on the soil 8
under some of these structures when the construction 9
begins.
We should get to that very quickly, so we don't 10 have to have a situation develop exactly the same as in 11 the past.
We should perhaps find a mechanism to get 12 that information.
i CEAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Is there any way we can reach 13 Br wn & Root?
14 MR. STELLO:
We are looking at that question.
15 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I recognize that the licensee 16 is probably responsible, but ---
7 MR. STELLO:
This most recently allegation that g
we are speaking of, depending on how that goes, it may g
give us a mechanism to get there directly.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: What does that mechanism 21 look like?
22 MR. STELLO:
This particular allegation has a-23 flavor to it where Brown & Root personel, we got hold of an individual and requested he sign a particular document 25
57 1
saying you didn't see any safety problems here, and ha 2
will sign this document to relieve his drug charges.
3 This at least has a potential for ---
4 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Now, what part,of our 5
regs is it that ---
6 MR. STELLO:
I wasn't thinking in terms of our 7
regs.
8 COhMISSIONER BRADFORD: It is a matter of violations 9
of law?
10 MR. STELLO:
Whether we can get them specifically 11 under Part 21 on this issue.
12 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Isn't there some way -- we 13 haul in licensees to public meetings, is there any way we can insist that the licensee can burden Brown & Root ---
74 U*
15
' "
- Y*
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: They are the ones that we ought to be really ---
MR. STELLO: That's the last item.
18 At the meeting we are talking _about, it it quite apparent this_will be one of the major issues, and we-20 hope to direct this to the officials from Brown & Root as 21 well as the licensee, but my view is the~ licensee is 22 the individual who is responsible.- He has got to get 23 his act together, and if that means that he has got to do 24 something different with Brown & Root than he is doing, 25 v
e
-~
-= ' -.
,+l 1
58 4
1 we should direct that change or he can find some other i
2 way to do it, but the first responsibility, the first 3
level we look at is the licensee.
4 There are questions as to whethef or not we ought to find -- want to look at mechanisms to get to the 3
f l
6 architect / engineering firm and the next level would be 7
Brown & Root.
Bill raised this questier. in the briefing 1
g last week. I don't know if there is an easy answer.
9 MR. MURRAY:
Generally, I would say no.
This is a function for ite licensee to perform and we hold them 10 j
11 responsible for all of thctse things not done.
If we were to deal directly with the AE, that woulci imply 12 somehow that this regulatory agency would want to see 13 the plant get built, and I don't think we want to imply 14 that.
We just make sure,that it gets built safely.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Right.
MR. MURRAY:
If it does not get built at all, we say to the licensee, you make sure it gets built safely, 18 we just want to make sure.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Let us assume that we do go out with some sort of notice, et cetera, we put out-a public announcement as such, do we put in Brown & Root?
MR. STELLO:
In this pM ticular meeting we are 23 i
referring to, specifically, especially in light of.this 24 particular piece of paper, there is no doubt in my mind 25 4
, ~
-,,-,-r
--w
-r--,m
,.,w,,
p 4
,,-,.g.,
..m,----
+ -,
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59 4
1 their senior officials of the company must be there if 2
this issue is squared away.
3 CHAIRMAN ASEARNE:
What I was trying to get at, 4
for example, let's suppose you go forward somehow, some 5
penalty goes out in the press' release saying the NRC 6
is laying a fine on such and such a licensee.
We go 7
on to say this is because.of the continual violations of 8
standard noncompliances of QA/QC of Brown & Root.
9 MR. STELLO: We haven't normally done this.
10 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I know that.
i 11 MR. STELLO:
I don't like to decide this --
l 12 I will be happy to look at it.
CHAIRMAN T.HEARNE:
I would like very much for' 13 14 y u to look at that.
MR. STELLO:
I, guess I don't see anything 15 fundamentally wrong,.especially with respect to the l
16 meeting we are going to have.
I think we want to be 17 clear to the Brown & Root officials ---
I CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
What kind of schedule do i
19 5
y u have on this for considering these ---
20 MR. STELLO: With respect to the enforcement package?
4 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Yes.
f 23 MR. STELLO:
If things settle down for a day or two and we can get it developed, I would suppose in
-l
_ ~.
t
60 1
1 i
1 about a week we can have the enforcement package.
The 2
order we are talking about is much more difficult.
3 I guess I can assume the report will be finalized 4
within that time.
5 MR. DIRCKS: Assuming there are no more allegations.
6 MR. STELLO:
Well, there already are.
Those will 5
7 not be finished.
8 MR. THORNBURG:
The scope of the investigation 9
has to stop.
10 MR. STELLO:
I had the problem of looking at a
)
11 way which to get in to the press announcement, what 12 particular action would involve Brown-& Root specifically.
13 I just want some more time to think about that.
MR. MALSCH:
Are any of the Part 21 violations 14 I
similar to the B&W situation?
15 MR. STELLO:
Yes, that is one.of the issues 16 that came out of the briefing last week.
j 17 l
MR. SEYFRIT: What is the Part 21 connection here?
18 MR. STELLO:- We are going to look in to it,
~
19 4
no one has an answer at the moment.
0 CIMMISSICNER HENDRIE: What you have. is a QA/QC program in which there appears to be more than the normal and perhaps irreducable amount of friction between the construction and -
i 23 QC/QA shops.
There appears to be less management support in the QC than we would like to see and relations of that 25
.l
61 1
kind.
2 Nevertheless, it isn't clear to me from what 3
you have said today, there is any very clear evidence to 4
me, much of any evidence, that-in spite of the QC program, 5
it hasn't been effective and resulting in a satisfactory 6
construction product.
7 Now, it is certainly not a' situation that one 8
would encourage or want to tolerate going on, because as 9
they go on with the plant, getting in to more complicated 10 areas, especially over in the mechanical and electrical 11 areas, it is that much tougher to get a quality product.
12 than it is in some of the heavy concrete work'that they.
13 are doing now.
So you would like to get a hold of it.
14 It isn't clear to me that, in fact,,there is much evidence, 15 if any evidence of safety.related deficiencies, and if there 16 isn't, then you have to say, well, it is a safety related 17 problem that people are snarling at the QC inspectors and gg so on, I think that is the point you stressed.
MR. STELLO:
Let me make one exception to what 19 y u said.
I think in the area of soils ---
20 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE: Well, the soils question is 21 an pen one.
I'm not talking about that.
22 MR. STELLO: That's a QA breakdown.
The QA system 23 wasn't doing its job in making the engineer's backfill done, 4
in the way that was supposed to get it done.
So that's ---
25 i
~
I 62 l
1 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE: But you wouldn't cite 2
them because the construction people were being nasty 3
to the QC people.
You cite them because they failed to l
4 get the soils compaction specified.
L 5
MR. STELLO: That's exactly right.
6 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
Now, I was going to ask.
7 Do you have a thought for where you are going on the 8
enforcement action here?
9 MR. STELLO: What appears to be warranted is 10 a civil penalty based on ---
11 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE: It appears that the i
12 utility is in motion.
l
~
l 13 MR. STELLO:
Yes, the utility is in motion.
14 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Except that it hasn' t 15-caught up with the system.
16 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
Listen, you get 3,000 17 construction workers and assorted people on the site, not 18 much of this surprises me.
MR. STELLO:
You take the experience of it 19 being a half dozen of both arguments.
He has found and 20 rre ted the problem himself, he has decided to take 21 s me a tion, that's a QA function itself.
22 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Who, the licensee?
23 MR. STELLO:
He decided the welding wasn't going 24 the way he thought it ought to go and stopped it again.
e
~
.... : _ : ~
~~ '
j c
'i 63 I
1 Well, the civil penalty to me seemed to be ---
COMlISSIONER HENDRIE:
Is.it clear.you are-3 going to get the best action from the collection of people 4
in South Texas, I guess, is what I'm getting to.
1 5
MR. STELLO:
Well, that's not all.
I think we 1
~6 have to get an order which gets in to some of the areas 7
and problems of the past, in to causing things to get 8
turned around.
I think that's necessary.
- j 1
~
9
-I'm also beginning to believe that the concept 1
j 10 of:
Let's get together and have a p*blic meeting, do u
11 this on local at the site, and get put things on the table 12 and let's talk about them.
I think that is 'an.important i
]
13 thing also.
I will propose that the enforcement. package 14 include a civil penalty, and I don't think it is going to i
i 15 be big dollars;.
The requirements that ought to be in the 16 order, including an order to have a public meeting.on j
17 or before some date, whatever I decide on.
In a nutshell, i
18 that's the kind of enforcement package, as I see it, 19 that is appropriate now.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Let me ask a couple of.
20 21 questions if-I could about the investigative technique.
1 There has been a pretty high turnover.of people
.)
f 22 leaving. If I'm' reading the summaries of the ~ interviews -
l 23 j
24 correctly, I didn't notice,you had interviewed many of 1
l' 25 the people-who had left.
Is that-correct?
{
.I
s.
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1 MR. HAYES:
That is true.
2 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Why not?
3 MR. HAYES:
Most of them weren't available.
4 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Wait a minute, of course, 5
they are available, if they haven't left the counrtry.
6 bm. HAYES: Right.
Well, I guess in part, we 7
looked to OIA, but in part too, we had to bring this 8
thing to a lul?. some time, and there were quite a number 9
of them. Where do you stop, I guess is the ---
10 COMMISSIOa.t R BRADFORD: Well, just intuitively, 11 I would have thought that you might some time get a more 12 complete discussion, shall we say, of practices of the 13 site by interviewing people who didn't also have a 14 e ntinuing job stake in what they were saying.
15-MR. STELLO:
But that had taken place in the earlier interviews, befora they left the site.
16 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Okay, so you are saying y7 that is true?
18 ELLO:
In the earlier interviews that are 19 already done.
The scope of this particular group that 0
I had in mind was to take a look right now and get in to it with the OIA activity, looking back in to the previout allegations of people who had raised ---
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
Okay, as long as somewhere in the agency these people are being picked up.
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Is that what OIA is doing?
l-j e.
65 1
MR. FORTUNA:
Yes, sir.
2 MR. STELLO:
In our first investigation 1
3 interviews we did that too, take a look at the people who 4
had left.
5 MR. SEYFRIT: The ones that were conducted by the 6
Region before-this present one, there were a number of people 7
who had left the employe that we did talk to.
I can't 8
give you an actual count of those, and I'm sure I can't 9
say that we talked to each and every one of them, but we-10 did talk to a number of them.
11 MR. THORNBURG: There is another point though.
12 Dee sat down and talked to another 50 people without taking their names.
They talked'a little bit about turnover rates 13 14 and general problem areas.
Is that correct?
MR.
MYES:
Yes.
This turnover.kept coming up.
15 16 E* E
- 9"
- "E y7 to people who were there, recognizing they were not the.
8
-pe ple who had left.
I asked them why some of those people left, and I got a. variety of answers, I would say about a third of them was because of poor management.
They said the management is all fouled here, I have never worked in a place where management is so sc2.ewed up.
Comments like that.
Another third felt that.the-merchants in Bay City was taking advantage =of them, they 24 didn't like the area, their families didn't like.the area l
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1 and that was why they were moving.
I didn't get the 2
answer that I thought I might get, harassment and things like that.
4 COMMISSIONER HENDRIE: Sounds normal to me.
COMMIS'SIONER BRADFORD: Well, except that the 6
numbers, if I understand them correctly, 22 of the 39 in 7
the CQ inspection group, as of February 1, 1979, voluntarily 8
terminated or were terminated or reassigned.
I don't know, 9
maybe that's. normal, but that sounds like an~ awful lot.
10 Nell over half, and it is against that background that 11 it seems to me that it would be desirable for somebody to i
j 12 somehow be talking to that group as well ahd see what 1
l 13 they have to say.
i 14 MR. SEYFRI7: We have talked to a number of them
{
15' because they show up on other jobs.
As he indicated, about i
16 a third of them leave because they can make more money 17 some place else and we see some of those showing up in other,
l 18 places.
l 19 COMMISSIONER BRADFURD: Yes, but you wouldn't 20 be talking with them some place else.
You have got to 21 systematically go after this group.
l 22 MR. SEYFRIT:
Right.
23 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: Again, reading from the 24 summaries I couldn't tell, they are signed at the end, and 25 the signature comes under the statement:
"To the best of my S
67 1
knowledge and belief, this statement is true."
Ic that 2
a sworn statement?
3 MR. MURRAY:
It is.
k 4
MR. SEYFRIT:
I think we were going to try and j
i 5
clarify in the body of the report, the first Appendix in 6
there are sworn statements, that is, where you have i
7 statements, and it is entitled at the top uniquely, and 8
I can' t remember the exact title.
9 Then the second part of it, where there are
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10 statements indicated there are summaries of other 1
1 11 interviews.
Now, all of those that come under the. heading 12 of " Summary of Starements" are sworn statements, but they 1
1 13 have been summarized here in order to try to protect the la identify of the individuals.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I see, nut if in fact, 15 l
16 anything in one of those statements were to turn out to be deliberately false, that would be a prosecutable 17 i
.vi lation in itself.
18 MR. SEYFRIT: That's correct.
yg I
MR. NURRAY: It would be in violation of the law.
20 MR. SHEWMAKER: All of those in Appendix 2.are 21 signed sworn statements.
Those that have been excluded 22 are summary statements.
3 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I guess I don't have any 4
other questions, but just a comment though.
25
l1
'68 i
1 I'm struck by what seems to be a fairly wide-2 spread network of undesirable events, violations, what l
3 have you, but especially so in light of the fact that this 2
4 is your 5th or 6th investigation of this or similar 5
problems with this company.
This would be striking enough 6
if it were the first investigation.
They seem to be 7
very slow learners and so I would certainly be supportive 8
of ---
9 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
Eleven.
4 10 COMMISSIONER 3RADFORD:
Eleven such investigations 11 Well, in any case, the point is that it all takes 12 n, I think, basically more seriousness than.this is simply-the first time around.
13 CHAIRMAN mi WE: Has the company been cited 14 15-f r vi lati ns prior to this?
MR. SEYFRIT:
Yes, they have been cited a number 16
- f. times.
17 CHAIRMAN AHEARNEi Have there been penalties?
18 MR. SEYFRIT:
There have been no civil penalties.
9 MR. STELLO:
I think the answer to the question that I thought about myself, you have to look at the number of hours you put in to it, the number that was expressed.
22 l
earlier, the number is higher than probably one would i
expect.
I also, don't think that the_ licensee, until
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this investigation, and the exit interviews following these
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69 1
investigations,really had an appreciation of the problem.
2 Maybe, Carl, correct me if I'm wrong, I guess maybe it 3
would be fair to say that I don't think we really gave him 4
the impression that he really had this' kind of a problem 5
until now.
6 MR. SEYFRIT:
I think that's fair.
I think further, i.
7 that it would be fair to say that he, perhaps, had.not 8
recognized it was that broad a problem.
The previous 9
investigationa were spread out over a period of time, and 10 in general they were. conducted to look in to specific 11 allegations on specific points and we just simply didn't 12 broaden them to look at this kind of persp'ective.
One can certainly look 'in hindsight that mayb'e 13 14 we ought to have looked in to it, and we didn't see at 15 the time, a legal reason.to do that. We were.trying to 16 take care of specific problems as they came up.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
I have one specific 17 5
. question that I skipped over.
~
ig one of the interviews it was said that one of 19 the supervisors said words to '.the effect:
"Whenever you 20 call the NRC, I will find out about it.
I will find out 21 about it, I will know who caused trouble."
22 Now, I gather that_particular guy would deny 23 making a statement in quite that way, but you do, in fact, 4
in looking at these allegations, look in to the allegation-25 e
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70 l
l 1
if Brown & Root got a call from us,every time he had 2
a call expressing concern.
3 MR. SEYFRIT: I think that OIA is looking in to i
4 that, to the best of my knowledge.
l 5
MR. FORTUNA:
No.
6 COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
OIA is not looking in to 7
that?
g
. MR. SHEWMAKER:
Let me address that.
We picked 9
up that same thing in the report, and that is one of the 10 allegations that has nat been investigated.
In fact, we 11 are hoping that OIA will pick that up.
l MR. FORTUNA: We will now.
12 MR. SHEWMAKER: We have that one.
We will be 13 getting with you.
y4 O
BURG:, I think Dick did look in to this 15-a little bit.
Dick Herr was our investigator.
6 l
MR.
HERR:
In fact, you will find that he 17 l
did admit saying those words.
I confronted him on that.
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
At least in the summary, 19 he just gives a different twist to it.
20 MR. HERR:
But he did admit saying the words:
21 "Everytime somebody goes to the NRC, I'm going to find out about it."
He admits that, then he says, but what I meant was, when they come down here they do the -
24 investigation, then I find out.
He says I don't have to 25
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1 explain how.
He said it was true, the guy said it, but 2
he put a different intrepretation on it.
.t 3
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD:
There is clearly an 4
ambiguity there.
The person alleging it said'something 5
to the effect that every time a complaint is made, I get 6
a call that tells me who made it.
It is that telling him 7
who made it part that disturbs me; I
~
8 MR. STELLO:
Yes.
We will look in to it.
9 MR. SHEWMAKER: It is not defined as allegation 10 18-A, that particular one.
11 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
I need a vote to close tiiis i
12 meeting.
All in favor?
13 14 (Chours of ayes.)
CHAIRMAN AHEARNE:
John, you.say I should.-also 15 ask to.look at the. transcript to.see which portions can 16 be released.
17 MR. HOYLE:
Yes, we should ask the staff'to 18 look at those portions to see which parts'.should be 19 re eased.
20 MR. STELLO: I would hope that I would not have 21 to release this transcript until at least after we 22 de ided on the enforcement.
23 I
COMMISSIONER BRADFORD: I would vote to withhold 24 it as a practical matter.
25 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Yes, so would I.
i e
i
.,[*
t 72 i
I 1
COMMISSIONER HENDRIE:
I would join.that.
I 2
must say, I didn't find any of the discussion which is likely 3
to be separable and releasable in a contemplated enforcement 4
process.
5 CHAIRMAN AHEARNE: Thank you very much.
6 (Whereupon, the necting was concluded at 4:55 7
P***)
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19 20 21 22 23 24 25 I
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RESULTS OF INVESTIGATION INTO ALLEGATIONS OF HARASSMENT OF QUALITY CONTROL
^
INSPECTORS AT THE SOUTH TEXAS PROJECT N
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PURPOSE OF INVESIIBAIJ.0H INVESTIGATE CURRENT (NOV. 1979) ALLEGAT10lts 0F llARASSMENT, INTIMIDATION OF CONTRACTOR QUALITY CONTROL INSPECTORS AT THE SITE.
~
. - REVIEW EFFECTIVENESS OF QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION.
4 I
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+
BACKGROUND SERIES OF ALLEGATIONS MADE DURING Tile PERIOD FEBRUARY 1977 TO NOVEMBER 2, 1979.
MOST OF THE ALLEGATIONS WERE NOT SUBSTANTIATED.
C.0NSIDERABLE MEDIA INTEREST.
CONGRESSIONAL INTEREST.
MIDTERM QUALITY ASSURANCE INSPECTION SCHEDULE MOVED UP DNE YEAR (T0 AUGUST 10, 1979) - SOME COMMON PROBLEMS IDENTIFIED.
FBI INVESTIGATION - JUNE 1979 - OCTOBER 1979.
DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE EXPRESSED INTEREST.
OIA LOOKING INTO HISTORY OF ALLEGATIONS WITH IE TECllNICAL ASSISTANCE.
RESIDENT INSPECTOR ASSIGNED AUGUST 26, 1979.
ALLEGATIONS MADE BY. WORKERS TO RESIDENT INSPECTOR ON NOVEMBER 2, 1979.
DIRECTOR, IE DIRECTS INVESTIGATION NOVEMBER 3, 1979.
9
4 INVESTIGATION MULTIDISCIPLINE TEAM.
UNDER 110 DIRECTION REGIONS I, II, III, IV REPRESENTED FORMAL INTERVIEWS - 57 (24 STATEMENTS UNDER OATID LESS FORMAL INTERVIEWS - 50
-TIME PERIOD - NOVEMBER 10, 1979 TO FEBRUARY 7, 1980 1113 INSPECTOR E00RS AREAS COVERED
-- CATEGORY I CONCRETE AND STRUCTURES DIRECTLY ASSOCIATED WITil Tile ALLEGATIONS
-- SOILS
-- WELDING /NDE
-- HANDLING OF NONCONFORMANCE REPORTS
-- AUDITS
RESULTS OF INVESTIG E Lolt NUMBER OF ALLEGATIONS SUBSTANTIAIED REGARDING CONTRACTOR BROWN & ROOT QC: INSPECTORS (CIVIL)
-- THREATS
-- HARASSMENT c
+
-- INTIMIDATION LACK 0F MANAGEMENT SUPPORT
-- PRODUCTION PRESSURES AMOUNTS TO LACK OF REQUIRED INDEPENDENCE OF QA FUNCTION
)
.0THER SIGNIFICANT QUALITY RELATED PROBLEMS
-- QUALITY OF:CERTAIN PLANT BACKFILL QUESTIONED
-- WELD QUALITY / WELDER QUALIFICATIONS
-- DISPOSITION OF NONCONFORMANCE REPORTS
-- ADEQUACY OF AUDITS 4
.LANUMBEROFITEMSFOR-FOLLOWUP
. : TOTAL OF 22 ITEMS OF NONCOMPLIANCE-NO CLEAR' TRACK T0? GENERICALLY DEFICIENT. SYSTEMS, STRUCTURES.0R
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COMPONENTS.
..-----w,
m..--,.-.-.-.-
-,.-.y--
k COELUSlCNS-QUALITY ASSURANCE PROGRAM IMPAIRED.
LACK OF INDEPENDENCE OF GA INSPECTION FUNCTION - CIVIL DISCIPLINE.
NO CLEAR CAUSE - EFFECT RELATIONSillP RESULTING IN DEFICIENT SYSTEMS COMPONENTS AND STRUCTURES.
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CURRENT STATUS IMMEDIATE ACTION LETTER IN EFFECT - COMPLEX CONCRETE PLACEMENTS SINCE DECEMBER 21, 1979 llAVE BEEN llALTED.
LICENSEE STOP WORK ORDER - WELDING AS OF MARCil 18, 1980.
WORK IS i'
RESUMING AS CORRECTIVE ACTION IS MADE.
LICENSEE liAS STUDIED WORK ENVIRONMENT.
CONCLUSIONS l
LICENSEE ilAS COMMITTED TO Cl1ANGES IN QA PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION.
9 e
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ELMNED NRC ACTION CIVIL PENALTY ORDER (S)
PUBLIC MEETING O
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