ML20093K090

Forwards Attachment 1 to T O'Neill 840727 Petition,Omitted from Original Submittal Due to Administrative Error. Affidavits in Support of Petition Will Be Executed on 840730

ML20093K090
Person / Time
Site:	Diablo Canyon
Issue date:	07/29/1984
From:	Devine T GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
To:	Asselstine J, Palladino N, Roberts T NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
References
2.206, NUDOCS 8407300441
Download: ML20093K090 (7)

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GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT T

190't Oue Sueet. N W . Washington. D.C. 20009 202-232-8550 cc: n-- .

July 29, 1984L -;

Nunzio J. Palladino, Chairman Thomas Roberts, Ccmmissioner 84 JW. 30 m3:01 James Asselstine, Commissioner Frederick Bernthal, Commissioner g- : .- .. .

• Lando Zech, Commissioner D00 i' .d i U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3.3M '"

1717 H Street, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20555 Re: Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2 Docket Numbers 50-275 and 50.-323 ( 2.2 0 0, T x /

Dear Commissioners:

Through an administrative error, Attachment 1 to Mr.

Timothy O'Neill's July 27, 1984 petition under 10 JFR 2.206 was not served on the Commission. It is enclosed. Please excuse any inconvenience due to this error. On Friday the document was delivered to the Office of Investigations, however, as an exhibit to Mr. O'Neill's July 27, 1984 affidavit in support of the petition. That affidavit also is enclosed.

The Office of Investigations has the original.

This letter also is to notify the Commission that one, and possibly two, affidayits in support of Mr. O'Neill's petition will be executed on Monday, July 30. This submission will confirm the substantive contents of Mr. O'Neill's charges and provide further independent evidence of retaliation and "

a quality assurance breakdown at Diablo Canyon. Further, on Monday Mr. O'Neill will execute an affidavit refuting Pacific ng Gas and Electric's (PG&E's) public responses to his charges.

os Mr. O'Neill believes that PG&E and Bechtel engaged in crude R$o misrepresentations to the public. Since the PG&E/Bechtel So statements were not in a public forum, they may not involve en material false statements. Clearly, however, public misrepre-

- sentations must be considered in any assessment of PG&E's

$$ corporate character and competence. If there ever is an accident oc at Diablo Canyon, the public must be able to rely on the

@@ accuracy of the utility's statements to the press.

N O$ All further affidavits executed on Monday will be shipped S'"

to the Commission immediately. On Tuesday, July 31, Mr. O'Neill will provide detailed evidence in support of his allegations to Mr. Meeks of the Office of Investigations. A court reporter will be present, and a transcript prepared.

I The legal issue.s covered by Mr. O'Neill's petition include --

'gn7 1) retaliation for performing quality assurance / quality control functions; and 2) deficient corporate character and competence, k)T .

due to false statements and records, suppression of the mand 4 tory disclosure system for quality assurance violations that may

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e NRC Commissioners July 29, 1984 Page 2 have been reportable under the emergency provisions of 10 CF' Part 21 and 10 CFR 50.55(e) due to their scope and safety signi-ficance; as well as repetitive violations that have perpetuated the quality assurance breakdown first discovered by the Nuclear Services Corporation (NSC) in 1977 These issues must be resolved prior to any commercial operating license decision. See, e.g.,

Union Electric Co. (Callaway Plant, Unit 1), ALIE!74 M,7 NRC 343, 366 (1983); and Houston Lighting and Power Co. (South

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Texas Project, Units 1 and 2), CLI-80-32, 12 NRC 281 (1980),

respectively. As a result, counsel will cooperate fully with the Office of Investigations to get relevant evidence promptly to the Commission. If desired, Mr. O'Neill and supporting witnesses will personally brief the Commission, in order to avoid any docketing delays.

Respectfull submitted, i t Thomas Devine-Counsel for Mr. O'Neill l

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• j M Cilh ed T l 1355 12th Street Los Osos, CA 93402 July 24, 1984 Mr. Harold W. Karner, QA/QC Manager Pullman Power Products Corporation P. O. Box 367 Avila Beach, CA 93424

Dear Mr. Karner:

It is with sincere regret that I am forced to sub-mit this letter of resignaticn, in protest of working conditions that do not provide the required freedom from harassment for me to perform my duties in accordance with i lederal law. Recent events have indicated that my per-sonal safety has been compromised, and I can no longer work in an atmosphere of harassment and intimidation.

4 Over the past year, I have seen quality problems at Diablo Canyon, and I have tried to work within.the system as much as possible to resolve these problems. When it j is obvious that the system is not responding, I have a i

legal responsibility to go outside of the system. As an inspector, I endeavored to work to the letter of our ap-proved procedures, and if these seemed unworkable, I took steps to offer what I felt to be viable solutions. For these actions I have been physically harassed, verbally intimidated, and threatened with disciplinary action.

The organizations participating in any or all of the above illegal activities include Pullman craft, craft management, -

engineering, quality assurance, quality control, PG&E qual-ity control management via the Quality Hotline, and PG&E project engineering. These acts do not provide the organ-izational freedom mandated by 10CFR50, Appendix B, Criteria 1.

This action -is taken neither lightly nor voluntarily.

I would like to continue my employment at Diablo Canyon, as I feel I can make:a quality difference; however under the present conditions this is not possible. Management must assume its legal responsibilities and provide suffi-cient organizational freedom for QC inspectors to perform their legally mandated duties'without fear of harassment i or reprisal.

l l Vary truly yours, ,

". / .

Timothy . 'Neill F.S. Within 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />, I expect, to receive by return mail the prom-ised report on the distribution of my July' 14, 1984 letter among the crart which it concerned (enclosed) .

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AFFIDAVIT .

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.: n My name is Timothy J. O'Neill. I am providing this affi-davit freely and voluntarily without any threats'@4inBb@@- A!0:01 ments or coercion to Mr. Thomas Devine,who has identified ur. .

himself to me as the legal director of the Government Ac -

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countability Project (GAP) and serves as my counsel ~for' disclosures to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC),

I have instructed Mr Devine to file my statement with the NRC Commissioners in support of a legal petition submitted on my behalf for corrective action at the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.  !'

I worked at Diablo Canyon from July 5,1983 to July 24, 1984 as a quality control (QC) inspector for Pullman Power Products. I have ten years' experiance in the we1 ding indu- ,

stry, including 2 years experience in quality assurance functions. My resume prior to Diablo Canyon is# attached as Exhibit 1.

On Tuesday, July 24 I resigned my position, in protest of management intimidation and physical harassment that as a practical matter made it impossible to perform my legally-mandated responsibilities. Management would not let me perform thoce duties,even when required by an internal procedure. My resignation letter is enclosed as Exhibit 2.

To illustrate the severity of the repression on-site, in my {

belief I was harassed on 20 occasions since January 1984, l including 14 times since the April 13, 1984 low power test vote on Unit 1. The retaliation was in response to my reports of quality assurance (QA) violations, including 12 which I believe Pacific Gas and Ele ~ctric (PG&E) legally was l required to report to the NRC within 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br /> due to their safety significance. Instead of reporting these severe 1

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safety problems to the government, management'tried to prevent me from documenting them at all through thr QA '

system. Even worse, I found that I was the target, rather than the QA violations.

This extended to being the target of threats and physical violence,. including being doused with water during an inspection and rope whipped immediatly prior to my

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resig6ation.

The harassment got significantly more ugly after manage -

ment copied and distributed my-July 14 memorandum to QA/QC manager Karner on'the fire extinguisher incident. On July 23 I overheard two construction workers behind me make statements that I believe to be directed against another l inspector and myself. One. worker stated loudly, in a man-ner so that we couldn't miss it: "My .44 from behind will take care of the both of them." I realized that it would be dangerous to continue working under these conditions.

1 The next day I turned in my resignation to Mr. Karner. I was none too soon. That morning a craft worker whipped me ,on the face with a rope during an inspection. He apolo-gided after other personnel in the area warned him about harassment. Aft.er lunch, a supervisor requested my daily records. That morning the same supervisor lectured me for l the amount of time I spent writing reports of QA violations.

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After turning in my resignation PG&E QC supervisor Ron Hob-good confiscated documents which I sought to disclose to the NRC Office of Investigations as evidence of illegality.

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Through this statement, I adopt the substantive information

i. contained in the petition filed today on my behalf by Mr.

Devine. The QA violations covered in my 14 areas of re-quested reinspection are illustrative, not comprehensive. .g' Ltcenstag 74g pua7 IJ 'THIS ATW3fNG~RE UpotG he IMO !Ui0ACfMeWT "

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, I DuetotheNRCstaff'spreviouspracticehthisyearof turning my affidavits over to the utility, violating my confidentiallity and.then sitting on problems that NRC investigator Isa Yin later. recognized immediately as sig-nificant engineerin'g' defici~encies-- I will not submit s de-tailed affidavit. I will provide specific detailed sup-porting evidence to Mr. Yin and the Office of Investiga .

tions for every point in the petition and numerous other

- examples. My previous disclosures are en~cI6s'ed as Exhibits 3-6.

I have read the above three page statement and it is true, accurate and complete to the best of my knowledge and be-  :

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