ML20087N585
| ML20087N585 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Catawba  |
| Issue date: | 01/26/1984 |
| From: | Langley H AFFILIATION NOT ASSIGNED |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20087N559 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-84-48 NUDOCS 8404040057 | |
| Download: ML20087N585 (15) | |
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I am giving this statement freely and My name is Harry Langley. l voluntarily to Billie P. Garde and Emily Ansell, who have identified themse ves I do to me as being investigators with the Government Accountability Project. I understand that this this without any promises of reward or inducements. statement will be provided to the Nuclear Regulatory Comission (NRC) for further investigation; and, in fact, I have already met with Mr. Bruno Uryc and Mr. Jack Bryant, both inspectors with the Region II office of the NRC. I am giving this statement because I believe that the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board of the NRC is not being told the truth by management officials of Duke Power Company (Duke) about the Catawba Nuclear Power Pla (Catawba). I was I worked as a welding quality control inspector on Catawba. Based on my experiences, I believe there are employed there for one year. serious construction problems known and unknown to me which resulted from deliberate mismanagement by Mr. Larry Davison, Duke Quality Assurance Manag at Catawba. Prior to that, I attended I went to work at Catawba in April,1977. I also school at Winthrop College for two years in Business Administration. It was at worked at Westinghouse for five years, beginning in 1969. Westinghouse that I learned about welding and had extensive experience i turbine welding. Af ter five years at Westinghouse, I returned to school on the G.I. Bill. Following two years of college, I applied and was hired as a From April 26 thru May 29, 1977, I only was allowed to do helper at Catawba. 4:'
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- 2 general help on the site. Although I believe I was qualified to do more advanced welding, which I told my supervisor, it was some weeks before I I was told I didn't know how to weld by was allowed to test out as a welder.
Ken Weber, the welding superintendent at the time. I was allowed to attend a school on the site that was provided every day from 4:00 to 6:00 to become eligible to take my welding certification test.
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The 70-hour program was provided by Duke Power Company and workers were If you were not a certified welder encouraged to attend on a volunteer basis. prior to beginning employment on the site, it was considered by management a good idea to attend this course. I do not believe attendance at this course was mandatory to become a certified welder. After the first day of class, I realized that my welding skills from Westinghouse put me far in advance of the In fact, I felt qualified majority of the people in attendance at this class. to take a practical welding test. In about three days, I requested permission I tested on 45 angle welds on 154 carbon. The test was in to do just that. one position only. Soon afterwards, I received a certification for graduating from the welding school provided by Duke. After welding for approximately four months, I went to talk to Beau Ross about becoming a welding inspector. That Soon afterwards, I began school in the Quality Control building. school lasted from six to eight weeks. There were approximately 12 craft There were four welding quality control personnel in that class with me. We had three inspector trainees and eight electrical inspector trainees. ' The first teacher was Larry Davison. He instructed teachers for the course. us in the basics of metallurgy, as well as gave us general instructions about the procedures used on the site.
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f3.ri ' ' pf - y;_ Each week of the school, we were given a test. In order to become a i certified welding inspector, we were required to pass each test and the course with an over 80 percent rate. On the first test, which was on the basics of metallurgy, our class did very poorly. During the second week, however, something happened which insured that all of us would pass. In the second week of the class, the day before we were to be given the test, the answers and a copy of the test appeared in our notebooks after our normal break in the course. From then on, every week, the day before the test in laterifternoon, Every one a copy of the test and the answers would appear in our notebooks. of the 12 of us received the same test and answers. During the second week, we received a copy of the test and the answers in our notebook after the late afternoon recess the day prior to the test. After the second week, each week, the day before the test, the answers and the test would appear in the notebook. We never knew who gave us the test and the answers. We only appreciated that we received it. The second teacher during the course was C. R. Baldwin. Mr. Baldwin taught us about the procedures and implementing the procedures for welding inspections on the site. The third teacher was Mr. Ross. Mr. Ross was the welding quality control supervisor. He took us around the site, went with us, showed us the various parts of the reactor and field examination of welds. I do not have any idea who supplied the answers or the tests to us in our book. We just appreciated them, studied them the night before the test, and came to depend on them. I do not know if either I, or others in the course with me, would have been able to pass at the required 80 percent rate had we not been given the answers.
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The last test was an oral test, which was conducted one after another by going through a series of questions. We cheated on that test, too. This happened because we were allowed to question the person ahead of us when they came out of the room about what the questions were. In that way, everyone in the chain received the benefit of the question that was asked of the person ahead of him. Following completion of the welding quality control inspection program, we had to wait for certification to come back from Washington prior to our being allowed to perform welding inspections. I spent the ma'Jority of December and January travelling with inspectors because we were not allowed to sign off anything until certification came back. In January,1978, the certifications were received and I was allowed to ' do quality control inspections on my own. Almost immediately af ter I began my own quality control inspections, I began to develop serious concern about the quality of work on the site. In particular, I began to run into problems with Mr. Larry Davison, who would not allow me to write up nonconforming items which I believed should be docu-mented and identified. Although it is difficult to give numerous, specific examples of how Mr. Davison would degrade the quality control inspectors and harass them I can say with definite assurance that Mr. Davison's behavior, l wisecracks, threatening and intimidating comments, and general demeanor was l considered by all the welding inspectors to be something like the " Gestapo" that was reallj ~ running the plant. One example that I specifically remember, dealt with the stiffeners which were used on the Reactor II Vessel. The stiffeners were put on the l reactor wall after they were cleaned and painted in order to add extra
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' stiffness to the reactor in case of an accident. ihen I went to inspect the stiffeners or the areas where the stiffeners were to be installed in, according to the procedures, there was to be no slag, no voids, no cracks on the reactor wall. Unfortunately, that is not what I found. There was heavy slag, there were many cracks. I wanted to write a nonconforming condition for nonconforming item report for the walls prior to the stiffeners being allowed.
According to procedures, I brought this to the attention of my supervisor, Mr. Ross. Mr. Ross agreed with my consensus about the reactor walls. I took it to Mr. Davison. Mr. Davison said no, absolutely not. That he would not issue me a number for writing up the stiffeners. He said that I did not understand the 1 way things were done on the site. I returned to my work area in Reactor II. Not more than five minutes after I returned, a welding engineer showed up and told me to accept the item as-is because there had been a design procedural change. In this case, I forced the welding engineer to come and examine the work by not going along with Mr. Davison's intimidation attempts at 4 intimidating me to not write the NCI. In other cases, however, Mr. Davison succeeded in convincing me to not write up NCI's about conditions that I believed should have been identified. Another thing that bothered me about this particular incident with the stiffeners is that the procedures required that there be no rust on the metal and that all of the metal used be clean and one-half inch cleared. In fact, that was not the case. My visual inspection revealed a lack of fusion, rust, pieces of metal which did not fit flush against the reactor weld-and inadequate welds. Another incident which caused me concern was the quality of the welds which I inspected.- Another . inspector, Mr. Lindsay Harris and I inspected numerous welds on this
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' , 4 e site. Some of tWQ, the things that we looked for when inspecting welds, pyp ; y , y*. were whethehdNiN/were too big or too small, whether there was a lack of fusion, bad undercut, voids, slags on the fit-up, porosity, lack of fit-up, or other problems with documentation of the weld, rods, or weld material. One time during winter, Mr. Harris and I were inspecting welds which required that the walls be a temperatue above freezing prior to welds being done on them. When I put a wall thermometer up to the wall that they were _
, welding on, I discovered that, in fact, the wall was only 18 degrees; in fact, below freezing and that they had not heated it up to higher than freezing tempera tures . I wrote a QIA form up according to procedures. My supervisor, Mr. Ross, checked out the problem, agreed with me and helped to fill out the fo rm. Then I went to Mr. Davison. Mr. Davison said that I should not file the QlA. He told me that, "We would just be wasting more time," and that,
' "He knew everything" about these particul:r welds. Following the argument, I insisted that Mr. Davison--who had not left his office to look at the material--sign it because of the serious problems that could result from welding on walls that were too cold. I returned to my work area. This example is another example of how welding quality control inspectors would have to fight to be allowed to do their job.
During the time that I was a quality control inspector, the log for logging in nonconforming items was kept in the main office. For every NCI that I wrote up, or attempted to write up, the item was fixed by a change in engineering judgment, not repair. Although I do not remember the name of the specific welding engineer who often voided our identified conditions, it was very often the same person. Sometimes he would come over to the reactor and say, "Take the tags off and lat them go back to work," referring to Craft. i l
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Other times, he just tore the tags off himself and cleared out forms; in fact, signed the logs off where quality control inspectors should have signed them off. I do not know of any procedure which directed welding engineers to perform that function or give them the authority to clear out nonconforming conditions. However, I do understand that construction craft had time limits in which to complete certain work and if quality control inspectors were holding up the job, nothing would happen when items such as identified problems were signed off. Mr. Davison ran roughshod on all of the quality control inspectors on. the site. His personality not only rubbed people the wrong way, but actually forced them into a hostile situation between quality control and welding. Mr.. Davison would come out and berate quality control inspectors, saying you are doing things wrong this way, you are doing things wrong that way-- arguing with quality control inspectors who pointed out problems saying,
" Don't you think it could be 0.K.?" Another line Mr. Davison had used continuously was, "Do you realize how much money it costs to write up an NCI?" Mr. Davison would also ask questions sbout how long it would take and how much work it would take to clear out the NCI pointing out to workers that it would be much easier to sign it off or ignore the problem. After a while, quality control inspectors got tired of arguing with Mr. Davison. In my own case, I am aware that many times there were conditions which I would have written up as nonconforming items if I did not know that I would have to fight every step of the way beyond Mr. Beau Ross to write them up.
Another example of a serious problem, which I do not believe could be corrected, dealt with a 30 inch pipe that came through the auxiliary
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g,tc , ' ' 1. . g a :, building on the reactor side. The pipe required that the weld on the sleeve of the pipe be welded all around. Because there were so many problems with the concrete pour which the pipes sat in, it had to be chiseled out a number of times and re-poured. It was impossible to use any type of weld on the back of the sleeve which held the pipe. I wrote an NCI because the pipe could not possibly have received an all-around weld on the slotted sleeve. It would have required the concrete to be torn completely off and re-welded. Instead, the concrete was poured just flush with the pipe, and it was patched up from front to back. There was no way to seal up the pour in the back of the pipe. Where the flange was put on, the flange was beveled and, therefore, created the condition in which no welding could be done to the back of the - pipe. In fact, there is no way to know if there is weld at all on the back side of that pipe. I attempted to write up an NCI. This incident was early in February,1978. Mr. Davison would not allow me to write up an NCI. Although I had a major argument with him, in fact, no NCI was written. To the best of my understanding, no rework was ever done on that particular pipe. A final example, which I remember, dealt with a personnel airlock number 205-206 in the Unit II Reactor. Procedures required that the ring on the airlock, which was quite large, ils inch to a three-quarter inch wall, be pre-heated to a certain temperature. The specifications called for that weld area to be heated to that temperature as a requirement to insure that the welds were of the proper strength. When I went to inspect the tack welds, I discovered that they just split and cracked away, indicating that cold welding had taken place. Welders and steelworkers were both doing tack , rigging at the time I was inspecting. It was obvious that they did not use l
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to the craft workers to see if they began to use heat as required by the procedures. I warned them that if they did not begin to pre-heat from the inside while welding from the outside, that I would write up a nonconforming condition. On the third or fourth return, I wrote an NCI and ordered them to stop the work. I took the NCI to Larry Davison and explained to him what was going on. He told me in no uncertain terms that the Number Two Airlock was not going to be like the Number One Airlock. He said, "There we're so many NCI's on the Number One Airlock that it took a long time to finish it. - It wasn't going to take that long for the Unit Two Airlock, even if it took di fferent inspectors." Mr. Davison's message to me was very clear. He also reminded me that I was a relatively new inspector and that I should listen to him about what to write up and not write up if I wanted to keep my job. I was outraged at Mr. Davison's ignoring the serious violation of the craft people in not using the proper procedures in sealing the airlock. I wrote up an NCI anyway, and returned to the airlock. Later that day, the same - welding engineer I have referred to before came out to the area, looked it over and said that they had changed the procedures. He removed my hold tag and work continued without the airlock receiving any pre-heat. Although these are the only specific hardware examples I can recall, I know that Mr. Davison's way of doing things caused numerous examples like this throughout the site. I am sure if NRC inspectors and investigators will talk to quality controi inspectors at the Catawba site, they will hear the same story over and over again. Another incident concerns for a number of reasons, which I would like to share with the NRC inspectors. This incident involves forgery by a
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welder to sign off on a nonconforming item report. In this incident, a welder purposely falsified the signature of a quality control inspector, Mr. C.D. Crisp. onlNCI number, I believe, 2664 or close to that, in late February. Because we had been told many times that this was definitely not to be done, he became very scared. This particular welder asked me if I would make a correction on the NCI which would, in fact, solve the problem that he had gotten himself into. I refused to do that, but suggested to him that his problems were, in fact, very serious, and that he turn himself in to supervision, explain the problem, and, hopefully, they would not take
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away his job. In fact, that is what happened. The man who falsified the documents did not lose his job. I believe that the hardware incident, which the falsified documents related to, in fact, was corrected; however, I give this example because when I was later terminated, there was no such leniency provided for a much lesser offense, if any. Following three and a half to four months on the job as a quality contfol inspector, I was fi red . I do not believe that I was fired for the reasons stated by Duke and, in fact, following my termination, I filed suit against Duke for wrongful termination and slander. Although this case was never tried on the merits as a result of procedural deadlines passini, I still believe that my removal as quality control inspector resulted from unfair and illegal actions taken against me because I continued to identify problems which I believe existed on the site. The following is a brief recounting of the events which lead to my termination. More details will be provided the NRC upon request. l On April 5,1978, I was approached on the site by another worker who had a "tip board." A "tip board" was a type of innocent gambling which l l d'
m , n . happened on gal {all the time in which workers bought a piece of the pool for a smali anNd M seney and then either won or lost in a drawing the next day. I did'not buy a chance on the "tip board" on the site. Later that afternoon, after work, I was approached by the same individual at a grocery store in Newport. He again offered me a chance at the "tip board." This time I bought a chance. The next morning, I and other workers went down to the Reactor II building and were calibrating welding machines. About 10:20 a.m., Harry Barker told me that Beau Ross wanted me to call him. Mr. Ross told me that Cecil Wall wanted to see re at the office. When I went to the , office, the following people were waiting for me: Cecil Wall, James Boyd, Jack Holland, Vivian Wildes, Doug Beam, Larry Davison, and Ken Busby. They . told me to sit down. Doug Beam held up a "tip board" to the three of us and said, "He wished we could kick him in the ass and make it all go away." He
. asked each one of the three of us if we knew that gambling was against company policy. We all said yes. Doug Beam, the construction project manager, said that it was a terminating offense. He never once asked us if we were guil ty.
I asked them why I was up there. Doug Beam said that my name was on a list of three names: Joe, Buss, and Harry Langley. Doug Beam asked me if I had anything to do with this on the job. I replied, " half and half." I explained that I was asked to participate on the job, but didn't do it on the job. Mr. Beam asked me if I bought a tip. I told him yes, but off the job. Mr. Beam said, "We are going to deal with the part on the job." He did not ask Busby or Boyd specifically about their playing on the job. He only asked me. I was never once directly accused of any charge. I was just intimidated and indicted without being asked any questions as a result of my name being on some piece of paper, which I never saw, which allegedly he had found in the reactor building.
i . The three of us were sent outside while a discussion took place. Then we were called bac in with Beau Ross, and told by Cecil Walls that the , decision was to le us go, but we were told that in view of our excellent work record, we would be allowed to come back on after 90 days. That we would not lose our benefits or seniority. We would only lose pay. Mr. Wall told Beau Ross to go with me to get my tools and equipment turned in at the warehouse, etc. There we met up with Busby and Boyd. I also met up with Larry Davison, who wanted to see me 1n his office before we l' eft. Charles 7 Baldwin was there also. I do not recall if Beau Ross stayed with me or . not. Mr. Davison said to me, "If you tell us who sold you the tip, we will make it a lot easier." I asked Mr. Davison if he would give me my job . back. Mr. Davison said no, that I would have to stay out for 90 days. I said if he wouldn't give me my job back, that I was going to Charlotte to a lawyer. Mr. Davison told me that if I made any trouble, he (Mr. Davison) would make it hard on me, and that I would never get my job back. I then went to get my pay. The paymaster called security and had all of us taken off the site. Following my being fired, which I believe was a wrongful termination, as a result not of gambling, but as a result of my raising continuous problems on the site and refusing to not allow Mr. Davison to verbally override those problems, I brought suit against Duke Power Company. I never knew that I could go to the NRC or the Departnent of Labor with those problems. I always thought they were outsiders we were not supposed to talk to. When I came on the job, everyone told me to duck back into my V shell if the NRC came. Workers were scared of them because they were afraid they would get asked something they'didn't know the answers to. They told us not to talk to them. Whenve knew the NRC was coming on the 5,ite, we were r l I
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told to stay'lle our books, and if asked a question, to look up the y . . answer in the: In summary, my biggest concern about the Catawba site is that all the power for construction of quality control rested with Larry Davison. He was the man that said "yes" and "no" to writing up a problem or not writing up a problem. He controlled the work force. I decided to write this testimony both to the hearing and to the NRC when Warren Owen, the Vice President of Duke Power Company, at the hearing, painted a real pretty picture. I want , to make sure that the Board understands that the plant is not built the way Duke would like them to believe, and to insure that it is safe before they get a license. I will cooperate with any NRC or Justice Department investigation into my charges.
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YM( / HarryL1ngley/ V SUBSCRIBED AND SWORN to before me, a Notary Public, this [b b. day of January,1984. n
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