ML20129G277
| ML20129G277 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crystal River  |
| Issue date: | 05/24/1996 |
| From: | Mcnulty W, Vorse J NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20129G267 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-96-330 2-94-036, 2-94-36, NUDOCS 9610030015 | |
| Download: ML20129G277 (24) | |
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- l. Nuclear Regulatory Commission '
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! Report of Investigation I i ! CRYSTAL RIVER NUCLEAR PLANT: i 1 POSSIBLE DELIBERATE VIOLATION OF PLANT l DESIGN BASIS e l 1 i 1 4 Office of Investigations l j . Reported by 01: RII i e i 9610030015 960918 PDR FOIA CALANDR96-330 PDR
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Title:
CRYSTAL RIVER NUCLEAR PLANT: i l POSSIBLE DELIBERATE VIOLATION OF PLANT DESIGN BASIS Licensee: Case No.: 2-94-036 Florida Power Corporation Report Date: May 24, 1995 P.O. Box 219 NA-21 Crystal River. Florida 32629 Control Office: 01:RII Docket No.. 50-302 Status: CLOSED Reported by: Reviewed and Approved by: I ws d!/n Jee s Y . 70 r's e . S r . Investigator fYhIluat i 1 Williain J. 4cNu,l';y; Direct r Office di Investigations Office of Investigations Field Office. Region II Field Office. Region 11 l WARNING The attached document / report has not been reviewed pursuant to , 10 CFR 5 2.790(a) exemptions nor has any exempt material been l deleted. Do not disseminate or discuss its contents outside NRC. l Treat as "0FFICIAL USE ONLY." 1 Copy _ of __
l SYN 0PSIS i l On November 29, 1994, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Region II, Office of Investigations initiated this investigation to' determine if certain I reactor operators at Florida Power Corporation's Crystal River Nuclear Plar.t l (CRNP) deliberately violated CRNP procedures by conducting an unauthorized evolution involving the relationship between the water level versus pressure l i n the makeup tank. 1 1 The investigation disclosed that on September 5, 1994, the Operations midnight l shift deliberately allowed the makeup tank water level to decrease, within i allowable limits, without adjusting the makeup tank overpressure to prevent entering a prohibited area of overpressure. This prohibited area was described by a CRNP procedural document which displayed a plot (curve) of permissible tank level versus pressure response. The purpose for the conduct of this evolution by the operators was to obtain actual tank level versus 1 pressure response data for comparison to the procedural curve. This curve i described the permissible operating region. j When the overpressure entered into the unacceptable operating region, annunciators activated, and the operators knowingly continued to obtain data without taking any action to alleviate the overpressure and allowed the unacceptable overpressure condition to exist for 35 minutes. The data gathered by the operators confirmed that the procedural curve differed from the actual curve. Based upon the evidence developed in this investigation, it is concluded that the shift supervisor, assistant shift supervisor, and two chief operators deliberately violated CRNP procedures by exceeding the allowable makeup tank overpressure, and delaying taking appropriate action to reduce makeup tank overpressure. l l Case No. 2-94-036 1
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l I i i I ACCOUNTABILITY l 1 The following portions of this Report of Investigation (Case No. 2-94-036) will not be included in the material placed in the Public Document Room. They consist of pages 3 through 23. i l i l l l Case No. 2-94-036 3
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1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Pace SYN 0PSIS................................................................. 1 ACCOUNTABILITY........................................................... 3 APPLICABLE REGULAT10NS................................................... 7 ORGANIZATIONAL CHART.......... .......................................... 9 LIST OF INTERVIEWEES....... ......... .................................. 11 DETAILS OF INVESTIGATION................................................ 13 Purpose of Investigation.......................................... 13 Background........................................................ 13 Contact with NRC Staff............................................ 14 Pertinent Documentation........................................... 14 Allegation: Possible Deliberate Violation of Plant Procedures.. 15 Summary..................... ............................... 15 Evidence.................................................. . 15 Investigator's Analysis..................................... 20 Conclusion.................................................. 20 SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION................................................ 21 LIST OF EXHIBITS........................................................ 23 Case No. 2-94-036 5 ,
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APPLICABLE REGULATIONS l l Alleaation: Possible Deliberate Violation of Plant Procedure by Licensee Technical Specification 5.6.1.1 requires procedures be established, implemented, and maintained covering activities as recommended in Regulatory. Guide'l.33, Revision 2. Appendix A, February 1978. Regulatory Guide 1.33, Appendix A recommends procedures for startup, creration, and shutdown of the makeup system. Operating Procedure-103B, Plant Operating Curves, Curve 8, Maximum Makeup. Overpressure, defines the-acceptable makeup tank overpressure versus makeup tank level operating region during operation. Administrative Instruction-500 (Al-500), Conduct of Operations, paragraph 4.3.1, Procedural Compliance, states it is the duty of every member of the Crystal River Plant work force to cnmply with procedures. i i Case No. 2-94-036 7
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- i ChiSTAL RIVER NUCLEAR PLANT :
(September 1994) ORGANIZATIONAL CHART , i l Gregory H. HALNON - Manager, Nuclear Plant Operations Third Shift (midnicht) Operations Personnel I Larry A. M0FFATT - Shift Operations Technical Advisor i David A. FIELDS - Naclear Shift Supervis'or ' Robert P. WEISS - Assistant Nuclear Shift Supervisor l Jack D. STEWART, Jr. - Chief Nuclear Operator j Mark Van SICKLIN - Chief Nuclear Operator i James T. ATKINSON - Nuclear Operator ; Christine SMITH - Nuclear Operator ; I i i l 1 l l Case No. 2-94-036 9
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i - I f LIST OF INTERVIEWEES l l i EXHIBIT ATKINSON, James T., Nuclear Operator............ ... ................... 10 FIELDS, David A., Nuclear Shift 0perator................................. 8 HALNON, Gregory H., Manager Nuclear Plant Operations.................... 11 M0FFATT, Larry A., Shift Operations Technical Advisor................... 15 SMITH, Christine, Nuclear 0perator...................................... 13 STEWART, Jack D. Jr., Chief Nuclear 0perator............................ 12 Van SICKLIN Mark, Chief Nuclear 0perator. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 WEISS. Robert P., Assistant Nuclear Shift Supervisor..................... 9 ! i Case No. 2-94-036 11 .
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l l l 1 Case No. 2-94-036 12
I DETAILS OF INVESTIGATION PurDose of InvestiQation This investigation was initiated to determine whether there was a deliberate
, violation of U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) regulatory requirements when plant operators at the Florida Power Corporation's (FPC) Crystal River Nuclear Plant (CRNP) conducted an unauthorized evolution to plot data for an operation curve which was in dispute.
Backaround On November 29, 1994, the NRC, Region II (RII), Office of Investigations (01) initiated this investigation (Exhibit 1) after licensee management reported operators on the midnight shift of September 5, 1994, violated procedures by conducting an unauthorized test. The dispute about the accuracy of the ' operating curve began on May 10, 1994, during a refueling outage at the CRNP. While performing a surveillance procedure, the operators observed a noticeable decrease in the makeup tank level. A comparison of the actual drop in makeup tank level with the maximum makeup tank overpressure curve in Operating Procedure (0P)-103B indicated a curve plotted with the actual data points trended toward the unacceptable region of Curve 8. This was documented in a problem report. Site Nuclear Plant Technical Support (NPTS), also referred to herein as site Engineering Department, evaluated the problem report and disagreed with the operators concluding that Curve 8 was correct as published. , On September 2,1994, NPTS asked the shift operators if they had anything more to say about the issue before it was closed out. The same shift operators i decided they needed more data because they were still concerned about the makeup tank overpressure / level curve (Curve 8). Hence, on September 5, 1994, , the midnight shift conducted an " evolution." The crew consisted of the ! following operators: Shift Supervisor, David A. FIELDS; Assistant Shift Supervisor, Robert P. WEISS; Chief Nuclear Operators Jack D. STEWART and Mark Van SICKLIN; and Nuclear Operators James T. ATKINSON and Christine SMITH. It was agreed by the crew that the evolution would be conducted to gather additional data by measuring the system response as the makeup tank level was lowered. Procedures were reviewed and it was agreed not to violate the operating curve to lower water level below 55 inches. In the event of a loss of coolant accident, ATKINSON was dressed out in anticontamination gear and stationed in the auxiliary building to vent the makeup tank if needed. INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: The operators did not place ATKINSON in the auxiliary building because they anticipated a possible loss of coolant accident. The evolution was conducted by lowering makeup tank water level and plotting data on the system response. Soon after the water level was reduced, the annunciator alarm sounded because pressure was in the unacceptable operating region. At this juncture, the crew continued plotting data without taking corrective action to reduce pressure or terminate the evolution. The overpressure condition existed for 35 minutes. Case No. 2-94-036 13
INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: The makeup tank is utilized for reactor coolant system letdown seal return, and chemical: addition. Hydrogen pressure i is maintained in the. tank to scavenge oxygen before it is pumped into the reactor coolant system. (The scavenging of oxygen prevents > corrosion of the nuclear fuel in the reactor.) i New data was plotted as a result of this evolution and a problem evaluation ! report (PER) was submitted by.the operators to plant management to have the L 01gineering Department (NPTS) reevaluate and rescind the old curve. When , management reviewed-the PER. they realized that the curve was a design basis ; limit. Any conscious entry into the unacceptable region of the curve would require a safety evaluation. In this case, there was no safety evaluation l conducted; thus, CRNP management concluded that the plant had been operated i outside of design bases. l l Contact with NRC Staff , On March 17, 1995, Thomas A. PEEBLES, Branch Chief, and Paul J. KELLOGG, l Section Chief, Operations Branch, Ril Division of Reactor Safety (DRS), discussed this matter with the reporting investigator. It was agreed that a L violation of plant p*ocedures had taken place when the operators exceeded the ' limit. According to the participating reactor engineer, Curtis W. RAPP, DRS, the procedure violated is plant Administrative Instruction (AI)-500 which states reactor operators are to maintain the plant such that administrative limits ! are not exceeded. In this case, the operators exceeded the allowable makeup
- tank overpressure then took no action to reduce makeup tank overpressure. !
Pertinent Documentation ! During the course of this investigation, various documents were collected from ; the Rll staff and licensee. They were: f i
- 1. Al-500 " Conduct of Operations" page 134 (Exhibit 2).
- 2. OP-402 " Makeup and Purification System" (pertinent pages only)
(Exhibit 3).
- 3. OP-103B " Plant Operating Curve 8" (Exhibit 4). :
i INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: The curve in question during the course of this ! investigation is OP-103B, Curve 8. This is one of the 20 curves in ; OP-1038. There are no other design basis limit curves in 103B. Pressures and levels on the right side of the curve are acceptable. Anything to the left of the curve is unacceptable. The operators were not aware that Curve 8 was a design basis limit at the time the , evolution was performed. ;
- 4. Logbook entry documenting the evolution (Exhibit 5).
INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: The logbook entry, at 0447, September 5, 1994, reflects that pressure exceeds limit. At the conclusion, the log reads ;
- total time makeup tank pressure exceeds the limit : 35 minutes. j i
Case No. 2-94-036 14 j i I
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- 5. Licensee Event Report (LER) 94-009-00 (Exhibit 6). ;
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- 6. }
Data plotted from September 5 evolution (Exhibit 7). 1 INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: The LER describes in detail the evolution which l took place including the stationing of an operator at the makeup tank vent header in the auxiliary to vent the tank if necessary in the event of a loss of coolant accident. Exhibit 7 is the data plotted during the i evolution of September 5, 1995. Note that the data points are on the left side (unacceptable region) of the curve. Alleaation: Possible' Deliberate Violation of Plant Procedures Sumary The following individuals were interviewed by 01:RII on the dates indicated regarding the possibility that they deliberately violated plant procedures. I Their transcribed interviews are Exhibits 8 through 15. I DATE OF NAME TITLE INTERVIEW David A. FIELDS Nuclear Shift Supervisor 12/01/94 Robert P. WEISS Asst. Nuclear Shift Supervisor 12/01/94 James T. ATKINSON Nuclear Operator 12/14/94 Gregory H. HALN0N Manager, Nuclear Plant Operations 12/01/94 I Jack D. STEWART, Jr. Chief Nuclear Operator 12/01/94 Christine SMITH Nuclear Operator 12/14/94 Mark Van SICKLIN Chief Nuclear Operator 12/i4/94 I Larry A. M0FFATT Shift Operations Technical Advisor 02/07/95 Evidence i
- 1. FIELDS stated that in May 1994, during an outage, a test was conducted and it was suspected that the curve (103B) was not accurate (Exhibit 8, p. 6).
- 2. FIELDS stated that Problem Report 94-149 was written to express concerns about the accuracy of curve-103B (Curve 8 of OP-103B) (Exhibit 8, pp. 6-7).
- 3. FIELDS stated that Nuclear Engineering (NPTS) responded to Problem Report 94-149 by letter indicating Engineering had determined that operating the makeup tank at the elevated pressures that they wanted was acceptable, and that operating there was a conservative place to be (Exhibit 8, p. 9).
Case No. 2-94-036 15
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- 4. FIELDS stated that an NPTS representative asked him, since his shift personnel were the ones concerned about the makeup tank overpressure issue, if.there was anything to add or any response they would like to make before the problem report was closed out (Exhibit 8, pp. 9-10). ,
- 5. FIELDS stated they, as a shift, without talking to management, decided to demonstrate the curve was not accurate (Exhibit 8, p, 10).
- 6. FIELDS stated the shift members came to him and expressed what they would like to do (Exhibit 8. p. 11). j
- 7. FIELDS stated they decided to bring the makeup tank to.its maximum level ;
of 86 inches and maximum pressure and then bleed the volume down just to i its low limits of 55 inches (Exhibit 8, pp.10-11). ;
- 8. FIELDS stated they planned to plot the response of how the actual system would respond, how the overpressure on the makeup tank would actually look on actual high pressure injection, or other things (Exhibit 8, pp. 10-11). ,
- 9. FIELDS stated that the shift reviewed OP-402. Nothing in the procedure .
prohibited the operators from operating the makeup tank from 86 to 55 ! inches (Exhibit 8 p. 12).
- 10. FIELDS stated that as a shift, it was proposed to raise the makeup tank level to 86 inches and increase makeup tank pressure to the limit of ,
Curve 8 (103B). The makeup tank would then be decreased to 55 inciies and pressure response of the makeup tank would be plotted (Exhibit 8, p. 13).
- 11. FIELDS stated the question was asked what covered this evolution and it was decided OP-402 provided adequate guidance (Exhibit 8, p. 13).
- 12. FIELDS stated nothing outside of normal operation of the makeup tank was ;
proposed. The question was raised whether they wanted to' bleed below 55 t inches (Exhibit 8. p. 13). :
- 13. FIELDS stated they decided that a test procedure would be required to !
proceed outside the normal operating limits of OP-402. Therefore, the ! bleed was stopped at 55 inches (Exhibit 8, p. 13).
- 14. FIELDS stated that " pre-job" discussion with the operators in the control l room established what actions would be performed and which instruments !
would be monitored (Exhibit 8, p. 14). ;
- 15. FIELDS stated they expected the makeup tank pressure high annunciator alarm to come in -- into alarm (Exhibit 8, p.14).
- 16. FIELDS stated that as a precaution and understanding the bases of Curve 8 :
(103B), the auxiliary nuclear operator, which in this case was ATKINSON, , was stationed in the auxiliary building to vent the makeup tank in case of ! loss of coolant accident occurred (Exhibit 8, p.14). !
- 17. FIELDS stated that a third licensed operator (STEWART) was in the control I room to plot the pressure and level of Curve 8 (Exhibit 8, p.14).
Case No. 2-94-036 16 1
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- 18. FIELDS stated the evolution was started, data taken and makeup tank level and pressure restored over a 32-minute timeframe without incident. The collected data was plotted and became the basis of Problem Report 94-267 (Exhibit 8, p. 14).
- 19. FIELDS stated there were procedures to follow when an annunciator alarm sounds on the main control board (Exhibit 8. p. 24).
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- 20. FIELDS stated that when a makeup tank overpressure condition exists that .
the procedure called for closing valves that let hydrogen in thus reducing pressure (Exhibit 8, p. 24). INVESTIGATOR'S NOTE: Closing the valves does not reduce pressure, it ! . maintains current pressure. The hydrogen has to be manually vented. That , is why the operator (ATKINSON) was stationed in the auxiliary building.
- 21. FIELDS stated that they expected the annunciator alarm when they pulled l the annunciator response procedure (Exhibit 8 p. 25).
- 22. FIELDS stated they were going to get their data in the 35 minutes they ;
, were in the unacceptable region of the curve (Exhibit 8, p. 25).
- 23. FIELDS stated that as a precaution in case of an unrelated loss of coolant accident, they placed an operator in the auxiliary building to vent the pressure off the makeup tank if told to do so (Exhibit 8, p. 25).
- 24. FIELDS stated that placing an individual in the auxiliary building was an ,
adequate safeguard to vent pressure if needed (Exhibit 8, p. 26).
- 25. HALNON stated the Operations supervisor (FIEloS) did not have the 4 authority to violate an operating curve (Exhibit 11, p. 16). i
- 26. HALNON stated the fact they had someone in the auxiliary building to vent t pressure indicated they anticipated the alarm could come in (Exhibit 11, l
- p. 14). ,
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- 27. Van SICKLIN stated that prior to the evolution, they (operators) pulled :
the "AR [ alarm response)" which stated they were to vent the makeup tank when the alarm annunciated (Exhibit 14, p. 10).
- 28. Van SICKLIN stated the alarm annunciated and it was agreed that a response would not be made to vent the tank until it got to 55 inches (low point on !
the curve) (Exhibit 14, p. 17).
- 29. Van SICKLIN stated the hydrogen pressure did go to the un:cccptable region of the curve and that the alarm response procedure call'ed for venting.
However, this was not done while the points were plotted (Exhibit 14,
- p. 18).
- 30. Van SICKLIN stated they violated the operating procedure when they continued bleeding off water after the alarm annunciated (Exhibit 14, p'. 19).
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31.. WEISS stated he was the assistant nuclear shift supervisor on duty that night and_ involved in the evolution they performed (Exhibit 9, p. 4).
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- 32. WEISS stated he collected the data, evaluated it, and wrote the problem ,
report on it (Exhibit 9, p. 4).
- 33. WEISS stated before the test FIELDS was the shift supervisor, Van SICKLIN was the chief'and in the control room, STEWART was on the board,' SMITH was on the board, and ATKINSON was in the auxiliary building (Exhibit 9,
- p. 5).
- 34. WEISS stated they discussed what they planned to do to put the makeup tank level at the.high end of the normal operating level band'and put makeup pressure to the curve and then bleed the makeup tank to 55 inches which is the lower limit of 'the curve (Exhibit 9, p. 5).
- 35. WEISS stated it was discussed that if pressure did go above the curve, that they should have somebody standing by in the auxiliary building ready ;
to vent the makeup tank if any signs of reactor coolant system leakage occurred (Exhibit 9, p. 5).
- 36. STEWART stated he was the senior licensed reactor operator on the control board and responsible for manipulating the controls of the power plant, per the directions of the operators and senior reactor operators (Exhibit 12, p. 5).
- 37. STEWART stated Carl BERKSTROM, an FPC employee in the Engineering Department (prior to the September 5, 1994 " evolution") went to his shift supervisor (FIELDS) and said they were getting ready to close out issues (e.g., Curve 8) unless they (operators) had additional input (Exhibit 12, '
- p. 6).
- 38. STEWART stated they, operators Van SICKLIN, WEISS, FIELDS, and SMITH on the midnight shift on September 5. got together and talked about the whole situation and what they could do to bring to light what their concerns were (Exhibit 12. p. 7).
- 39. STEWART stated it was suggested that they put the makeup tank on the curve, as management had wanted them to do all along, and stay up there and just bleed down to 55 inches and see what the pressure did
-(Exhibit 12, p. 7).
- 40. STEWART stated that being chief operator on the board, he wanted to be sure they had every contingency covered. They wanted someone dressed out in the contaminated area to bleed the pressure off (ATKINSON in tne auxiliary building) (Exhibit 12, pp. 8-9).
- 41. STEWART stated there was a high makeup tank pressure alarm almost immediately when they started dropping pressure (Exhibit 12, p. 9). ;
- 42. STEWART stated he called out they had the high pressure alarm in, and the shift supervisors decided to continue the test and make sure there was someone " downstairs" ready to go in case "something" happened, and tracked it for test purposes (Exhibit 12, pp. 9-10).
Case No. 2-94-036 18
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- 43. When asked if he anticipated that the pressure limit of the curve would be l exceeded, STEWART. stated he did not want to say he anticipated it: he l wanted.to make sure he had all of the contingencies covered if something were to happen with a loss of coolant accident. He wanted to protect the makeup pumps at all costs (Exhibit 12, p. 11).
- 44. With regard to the' annunciator _ response, STEWART stated it tells you to bleed the pressure reduce pressure back to within the specs of the curve, and there is no timeframe given for that (Exhibit 12, p. 12).
- 45. STEWART, when asked if he was concerned with operating outside the~ curve being a procedure violation, stated he thought the crew discussed maybe being outside of an FPC procedure.(Exhibit 12, p. 13). 1
- 46. STEWART stated that Curve 8 was the procedure violated (Exhibit 12,
- p. 13).
- 47. ATKINSON stated he was (at the time of the evolution) the auxiliary building operator and his duties were to follow the rules of.-- or the direction of the board operitors and the senior reactor operators on duty that night (Exhibit 10, p. 4). j
- 48. ATKINSON stated his only participation was as primary plant operator.- He ;
was directed by the board operators to stand'by to vent the makeup tank ' should the need arise (Exhibit 10, p. 4).
- 49. ATKINSON stated he did not normally stand by to vent the makeup tank because the valve that they have to open to vent the makeup tank is in a j radiation area. Normally they (operators) don't stand by in that area (Exhibit 10, p. 7). '!
- 50. ATKINSON stated he was ordered to be there (auxiliary building) by the board operator in case they needed to vent the makeup tank (Exhibit 10, i
- p. 7). '
- 51. SMITH stated that on the midnight shift she was assistant to the chief, STEWART, assisting him on the control board (Exhibit 13, p. 5).
- 52. SMITH stated they did get the alarm in for makeup tank pressure but knew it was coming because of the evolution they were performing (Exhibit 13,
- p. 5).
- 53. M0FFATT stated as shift Operations technical advisor his duties consist of conducting administrative activities related to plant Operations and be available to provide reactor operations advice to the shift supervisor if needed (Exhibit 15).
- 54. M0FFATT stated that no one on the midnight shift told him they were going to conduct the evolution or asked for any advice about the evolution (Exhibit 15).
Case No. 2-94-036 19
Investicator's Analysis Based on the interviews of reactor operators _ATKINSON and SMITH it was apparent to the 01 investigators that they were not a part of.the decision-making process and were following the directions of the senior operators ~and supervisors. Conclusion The midnight shift' operators FIELDS, WEISS, Van SICKLIN, and STEWART, on September 5, 1994, deliberately violated plant procedure when they exceeded the allowable makeup tank overpressure and failed to take appropriate action to reduce makeup tank overpressure. Case No. 2-94-036 20
l SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION I This matter was referred tc the Department of Justice on March 22, 1995. William P. SELLERS. Senior Legal Advisor for Regulatory Enforcement, General Litigation and Legal Advice Section. Criminal Division, stated he dorlines prosecution in lieu of civil remedies available to the NRC. i l 1 l l 1 l l l 1 I l l Case No. 2-94-036 21 , I
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1 LIST OF EXHIBITS Exhibit No. Description 4 1 Investigation Status Record, dated November 29, 1994. 2 Al-500 " Conduct of Operations" page 134. 3 OP-402, Makeup and Purification System. 4 OP-103B, Plant Operating Curve 8. 5 Logbook Entry of September 5,1994. < l 6 FPC Letter to NRC, dated December 19, 1994, with attached i LER 94-009-00. 7 Newly Plotted Curve. 8 Transcribed Interview of FIELDi, dated December 1, 1994. 9 Transcribed Interview of WEISS, dated December 1, 1994. i 10 Transcribed Interview of ATKINSON, dated December 14, 1994. 11 Transcribed Interview of HALNON,. dated December 1, 1994. 12 Transcribed Interview of STEWART, dated December 1, 1994.
'i 13 Transcribed Interview of SMITH, dated December 14,-1994. {
l 14 Transcribed Interview of Van SICKLIN, dated December 14, l 1994. I 15 Report of Interview with M0FFATT, dated February 7, 1995. l [ ! l! l Case No. 2-94-036 23 , 1
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i i j Case No. 2-94-036 EXHIBIT 10
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. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
! s , NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION gh.> 3 +++++ 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS ! l 5 INTERVIEW 6 ----------------------- -
----x !
l 7 IN THE MATTER OF: : 8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No. > j 9 JAMES THOMAS ATKINSON : (not assigned) 10 : J l 11 ---
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i 12 Thursday, December 1, 1994 13 f l i 14 Conference Room 202 ; i l 15 Crystal River Plant ; i 16 6745 N. Tallahassee Road ) l ; i 17 Crystal River, Florida !
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18 ; 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at ) l 20 10:07 a.m. 21 BEFORE: 22 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator 23 . William McNULTY Investigator 24 CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer 25 EXHelT f 0 -
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1 i 2 l i 1 APPEARANCES: 2 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission l 3 1 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator l 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations i 1 5 401 Marietta Street i 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323- l l, l l 7 WILLIAM J. MCNULTY l l 'I ! 8 . Field Office' Director i
.9 NRC Office of Investigations i t 10 1450 Maria Lane j t
11 Walnut Creek, California 94596 12 CURT RAPP l
'13 Reactor Engineer - NRC, Region II
! 14 6745 N. Tallahassee Road i i 15 Crystal River, Florida 32629 16 17 I 18 On Behalf of the Interviewee,. James Thomas Atkinson ! l I l 19 GREG HALNON ! I 20 Operations Manager 21 Crystal River Nuclear Plant 22 , 23 , ! 24 L 25
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- 3 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S l
1 2 MR. VORSE: Good morning. My name is Jim Vorse. 3 I'm an Investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory 4 Commission. We are at the Crystal River Nuclear Plant at 5 the Nuclear Administration Building, Room 202. The time 6 is 10:07 a.m. Date December 1st, 1994. 7 We are here to interview Mr. Atkinson about the 6 in.cident, the experiment, deviation from procedure that 9 happened on September 7th, 1994, concerning the curve with 10 the make-up tank. 11 Present are myself, Mr. Bill McNulty, also an 9 12 Investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Curt 13 Rapp, Reactor Engineer, NRC, Region II, and Mr. Greg 14 Halnon, who is the Operation Manager here at Crystal River 15 Nuclear Plant. 16 Mr. Atkinson, would you please give us your full 17 name and spell it for us. 18 MR. ATKINSON: James Thomas Atkinson, 19 A-T-K-I-N-S-O-N. 20 MR. VORSE: And what's your job here? 21 MR. ATKINSON: I'm a nuclear operator. 22 MR. VORSE: Would you explain your duties to us 23 and how long you've been doing this. 24 MR. ATKINSON: I have had my license since ! 25 December 3rd, 1993. And my duties are to maintain safely I
4 i t I an efficient operation of Crystal River Unit III. 2 MR. VORSE: Would you -- Were you on the shift, 3 on the midnight shift on September 7th, 1994, when the 4 curve incident happened? 5 MR. ATKINSON: Yes,'I was. 6 MR. VORSE: Okay. Can you explain your 7 participation in this event? 8 MR. ATKINSON: At that time I was the auxiliary 9 building operator, which is the primary plant. And my 10 duties were to follow the rules of -- or the direction-of 11 the board operators-and the SROs on duty that night. 12 MR. VORSE: Okay. My understanding is that 13 there was a -- not an experiment, but a slight deviation 14 from the make-up tank curve within the procedure, OP 15 procedure 103B.
.1l6 Can you explain your participation in that?
17 MR. ATKINSON: The only participation that I had 18 in that was to go by what the board operators directed me 19 to do as the primary plant operator,-and which mainly 20 involved bypassing a regulator for putting hydrogen into i 21 the make-up tank and standing by to vent the make-up tank 22 should the need arise. l 23 MR. VORSE: Did you think this was unusual? 24 MR. ATKINSON: No. We fill and vent the make-up 25 tank basically weekly to get the non-condensibles out of i
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i 5 1 the RCS. l 2 MR. VORSE: Did you express any reservations 3 about conducting this test on Septembe'r 7th?~ Did you 4 bring -- 5 MR. ATKINSON: No,.I did not. , 6 MR. VORSE: Were you aware at any time that this 7 test was outside the design basis? 8 MR. ATKINSON: No, sir, I wasn't. 9 MR. VORSE: Curt, you got any questions? 10 MR. RAPP: Yes. As a matter of fact, when you 11 said that you were sent down to the make-up tank area to 12 bypass the H2 regulator, hydrogen regulator, is that 13 routine that the hydrogen regulator is bypassed to add ; 1 14 hydrogen to the make-up tank? ! 15 MR. ATKINSON: Since they've come up with this ! 16 new curve we've had to bypass the regulator to achieve the ' 17 pressure in the make-up tank that they desire. 18 MR. RAPP: And which new curve is that? 19 MR. ATKINSON: That's the new 25 cc per kg 20 hydrogen in the RCS limit curve. 21 MR. RAPP: And before that it wasn't necessary I 22 to bypass a regulator? 23 MR. ATKINSON: No. It's set at anywhere from 15
- 1. l 24 to 20 pounds and we usually just leave it in service. l i 25 There was no need to ever bypass the regulator.
l l m . -.
6 1 MR. RAPP: A point of clarification. Are you a 2 licensed operator? l l 3 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, sir. l l 4 MR. RAPP: Okay. And you have an RO license. l 5 MR. ATKINSON: That's correct. 6 MR. RAPP: Have you performed this evolution, 7 the hydrogen fill operation, on the make-up tank before? 8 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, sir, I have. 9 MR. RAPP: From the control room. l 10 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, sir. i 4 1 11 MR. RAPP: Okay. And how is that evolution 12 performed? Just a general description. ! 13 MR. ATKINSON: There's a make-up valve called 14 MUV-134 which is opened from the main control board. And 15 I have my auxiliary building operator go bypass the I 16 regulator, which those are in line. l 17 And whenever the make-up tank pressure gets to 18 the desired pressure, then I'll have him close off the 19 regulator and I'll close my isolation valve from the . 20 control room. 21 MR. VORSE: This -- When you were posted in the 22 Aux building on the night of September 7th -- d 23 MR. ATKINSON: Right. 1 24 MR. VORSE: -- this was an unusual incident, was 25 it not? I mean, you don't normally do.what you did.
l i 7 I 1 MR. ATKINSON: Stand by? e 2 MR. VORSE: Yeah. j 3 MR. ATKINSON: No. I don't usually stand by to i 4 vent the make-up tank because the valve that we have to P I 5 open to vent the make-up tank is in a radiation area. And i 6 normally we don't stand by in that area. 1 l 7 MR. VORSE: Well, why -- Do you understand why l l 8 you were there? 1 9 MR. ATKINSON: Because I was ordered to be there 10 by the board operator in case they'needed to vent the 11 make-up tank. That's the explanation I got from the board i 12 operator. ; 13 MR. VORSE: Are you aware of anyone that 14 protested this test, that said it was not the right thing 15 to do because it was outside design basis? 16 MR. ATKINSON: No, I'm not. 17 MR. VORSE: You never heard that expressed by 18 anyone? 19 MR. ATKINSON: No, sir. I 20 MR. VORSE: Throughout your whole experience on i 21 that evening? l 22 MR.~ATKINSON: That's correct. 23 MR. VORSE: Bill, do you have anything? 24 MR. McNULTY: All right. Prior to going on l 25 shift, Mr. Atkinson, were you' aware that there was some l
l i , l i 8 1 l 1- discussion between members of your shift and engineering , l ' 2 that there was a problem with the curve? i 3 MR. ATKINSON: Well, let me explain one thing , 4 right off the bat, is I was fairly new to this shift. 5 Okay? And prior to getting on that shift I didn't know 6 that there was any discussion. Okay? 7 I had been on this shift approximately, at the 8 most, three weeks. And one of those weeks was in recall.' 9 The first I heard about the discussion was when I 10 first came to the shift. And then I wasn't clear on i 11 exactly what it was all about. Okay? ) i I 12 So when it came, they wanted me to stand by in ! 13 the Auxiliary building. I knew that they had -- they were l 14 doing some evolution. Okay? I wasn't super clear on what i 15 they were going to do. I just knew that the shift 16 supervisor and the assistant shift supervisor and both 17 board operators were very clear on what their functions 18 were. 19 And with that understanding, I felt confident 20 that everything would go as they had planned. I 21 MR. McNULTY: Was this evolution discussed with 22 yot prior to the shift starting? 23 MR. ATKINSON: Just the basic functions of 24 presning up the make-up tank and doing a bleed and 25 watching it follow the curve. That's -- It was like a
9 1 verification of the curve. 2 MR. McNULTY: Were you aware that they intended 3 to go outside the curve? 4 MR. ATKINSON: No, I was not. 5 MR. McNULTY: As far as standing by to vent the ) 6 make-up tank, why would you have to vent the make-up tank? 7 Under what circumstances would it have been 8 necessary to vent the make-up tank? 9 MR. ATKINSON: Well, in the case of a LOCA I 10 know that we would have to do that. 11 MR. McNULTY: And as far as you know, that was 12 the only reason that you were standing out there by the ) 13 valve? 14 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, sir. ' i 15 MR. McNULTY: What circumstances could cause the l ^ 16 tank to receive that overpressure that would be necessary l 17 to vent it in case of a LOCA? 18 MR. ATKINSON: I'm not sure I understand what 19 you're saying. 20 MR. McNULTY: Maybe I'm not asking the right 21 question. 22 Why would it be necessary to vent the tank? ! 23 MR. ATKINSON: Well, should the pressure be too 24 high in the make-up tank -- 25 MR. McNULTY: Right.
10 1 MR. ATKINSON: -- and we did have a LOCA, I 2 would expect the level in the make-up tank with the 3 hydrogen overpressure to be significant to cause hydrogen 4 binding in the make-up pumps. 5 MR. McNULTY: What could cause the pressure to l 6 build up to the point that you'd need to vent it in the 1 1 7 make-up tank? l l 8 MR. ATKINSON: There wouldn't be any additional 9 hydrogen going in there. There would just be the hydrogen 10 overpressure that was/HirMLL additi:fn p 11, on the tank. 11 MR. McNULTY: Right. And would that occur 12 because they had operated outside the curve? i 13 MR. ATKINSON: Not necessarily. I think -- I 14 MR. McNULTY: There could be another reason for j i 15 that to occur? 16 MR. ATKINSON: I think maybe an incorrect 17 calculation somewhere could have constituted that. 18 MR. McNULTY: Do you see where I'm going with 19 that? 20 Do you have anything to add to that for the -- 21 MR. RAPP: Well, the point being is -- is that 22 if you follow the curve -- 23 MR. ATKINSON: Right. 24 MR. RAPP: -- and you stay in the acceptable 25 operations area, there should be no need to vent the make-
_ _ .m. _ -- ._ _ . . _ . . _ , .._.m...-__ _ _ - _ _ _ . ~ . _ .. _ . _ . . _ _. i 11 l 1 up tank; is that correct? l 2 MR. ATKINSON: That is correct. i 3 MR. RAPP: All right. So in performing this i i 4 evolution then it would be considered abnormal to have l 5 someone stationed at an area to vent the make-up tank in j 6 the case of an accident. I 7 MR. ATKINSON: That's correct, also.
- 8 MR. McNULTY
- Unless someone intended to operate 9 outside the acceptable limits.
10 MR. ATKINSON: I wouldn't say intended. I would 1-11 say -- !
- i
! 12 MR. RAPP: Expected to operate outside the --
- 13 MR. ATKINSON
- No. I wouldn't say expected. I
)
14 would say if by chance you happened to, which was -- I-d 15 guess they were trying to clarify whether or not they were
- 16 going to operate outside that curve, which I'm positive 4
17 they had no intentions of exceeding the curve. 18 MR. McNULTY: So you were just out there as a 19 just in case measure then?
- 20 MR. ATKINSON
- I was the hands-on person.
, 21 MR. VORSE: When you first showed up on shift, 1 22 what was going on with the operators and the shift 23 supervisor? i 24 Were they talking on this -- about this -- doing
, 25 this? Were they looking at any documents, looking at the we , . - - - - - - - - ,,.e - ,--
1 I 12 I procedures? Did you see anything like that?' 2 MR. ATKINSON: Well, I had a discussion with one 3 of the board operators that said that the issue had been 4 open for quite a while. And that's -- And he just kind 5 of give me a brief overview of what was going on, which I 6 guess I just wasn't that caught up with it, you know, like 7 the rest of them. 8 MR. VORSE: Who was tnat that briefed you and i 9 what did he say? 10 MR. ATKINSON: His name was Mark Van Sicklin. 11 He's also a -- He's a chief nuclear operator. And he 12 just basically said that there's a concern concerning one i 13 of the curves for make-up tank pressure. And that's 14 basically all he said. 15 MR. VORSE: Did he say what that concern was? 16 MR. ATKINSON: He just felt as though the curve 17 was inaccurate. That's what he explained to me. 18 MR. VORSE: Did he explain to you how they were 19 going to -- how they were going to find out how inaccurate 20 it was? 21 MR. ATKINSON: No. No. 22 MR. VORSE: Did anyone say, we're just going to 23 go ahead and conduct this experiment and we don't care 24 aboct regulations, procedures, anything like that? 25 MR. ATKINSON: No.
. .- . ~ . - - . . - - . . . - . . . _ - - - . . - . . -
13
; 1 MR. VORSE: Well, Curt, you got any technicals l
l ., 2 that you want to talk abbut?
- 3 MR. RAPP
- No. That was easy.
4 MR. VORSE: Well, this will conclude this 4 5 interview. We appreciate you coming, Mr. Atkinson. 6 MR. ATKINSON: Certainly. i 7 MR. VORSE: Did you come here freely and 8 voluntarily without any coercion? l i { 9 MR. ATKINSON: Yes, sir. l 10 MR. VORSE: Is there anything that you would l l 11 like to put on the record regarding what we've talked j 1 12 about today to expand on it a little bit? 13 MR. ATKINSON: Not at this time. 14 MR. VORSE: Okay. Anyone else? 15 MR. McNULTY: No. ) 16 MR. VORSE: Okay. That concludes our interview. 17 It's concluded at 10:21 a.m. , 18 Thank you. 19 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at 20 10:21 o' clock a.m.) 21 ***** i 22 23 24 4 25
~
/Y CERTIFICATE i This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
Name of Proceeding: Interview of James Thomas 1 Atkinson Docket Number (s): (not assigned) Place of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States j Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of t foregoing proceedings.
/
_2nnd A?n
/
.' M a y "cial Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
r I i
4 l lI l i ! E EXHIBIT 12 1 ( J i Case No. 2-94-036 EXHIBIT 12 l$0W40N? l$pp
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~ 1 UNITED STATES OF AMER Mb i l 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION j l l 3 + ++++ i 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 1 5 INTERVIEW l 6 - - - - - - - - = = - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
=--~~-x 7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No. 1 9 JACK D. STEWART, JR. : (not assigned) 10 : i 11 - - - - - - ------------------------
-x 12 Thursday, December 1, 1994 i
13 14 Conference Room 202 15 Crystal River' Plant : i I 16 6745 N. Tallahassee Road 17 Crystal River, Florida i 18 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 10:35 a.m. 21 BEFORE: 22 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator 23 William McNULTY Investigator 24 CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer
;5 EXHIBIT f1 l _OF_ l /o PAGE(8)
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2 1 APPEARANCES: 2 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 5 401 Marietta Street l 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 ; l 7 WILLIAM J. MCNULTY i 1 .< 8 Field Office Director i 9 NRC Office of Investigations l l 10 1450 Maria Lane I 11 Walnut Creek, California 94596 12 CURT RAPP 13 Reactor Engineer - NRC, Region II ! 14 6745 N. Tallahassee Road ; l 15 Crystal River, Florida 32629 16 l 17 18 On Behalf of the Interviewee, Jack D. Stewart, Jr. 19 GREG HALNON 20 Operations Manager 21 Crystal River Nuclear Plant 22 23 24 25
. .i 3 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 MR. VORSE: The time is-10:35 a.m. We're at the 3 Crystal River Nuclear Plant Administration Building, Room 4 202. The date is December 1st, 1994, and we're going to 5 conduct an interview this morning concerning the deviation 6 from the curve of the make-up tank on September 7th of 7 1994. 8 I'd like to introduce everybody to'the record. 9 I'm Jim Vorse, Investigator, Nuclear-Regulatory 10 Commission, Office of Investigations. 11 Present also is Bill McNulty, Investigator, 12 Office of Investigations. 13 Mr. Curt Rapp, Reactor Engineer, NRC, Region II. , 14 And Mr. Greg Halnon, who is the Operations 15 Manager here at the Crystal River Nuclear Plant, who has 16 been requested to attend this meeting by the witness. 17 I'd like you to introduce yourself, please. 18 Spell your full name and state your occupation gp" p,p($ 19 MR. STEWART: My name is Jack Dedar Stewart, Jr. 20 I'm a Licensed Chief Nuclear Operator at Crystal River, 21 Unit III. 22 MR. VORSE: And would you describe your duties 23 to me, please. 24 MR. HALNON: And spell your name. 25 MR. STEWART: The spelling of my last name is
4 1 S-T-E-W-A-R-T. 2 My duties are to operate the nuclear -- Crystal 3 River Nuclear Power Plant within the guidelines of 10 CFR l 4 Federal Codes pertaining to nuclear power plants, and to 5 operate under the guidance of the operating procedures I I 6 that had been approved by Florida Power Corporation. j 7 MR. VORSE: How long have you been doing this? 8 MR. STEWART: I got my license in late 1986; 9 I've been working at Florida Power since 1983. 10 MR. VORSE: Can you describe to us what you were 11 doing the night of the midnight shift on September 7th, i 12 19947 l l 13 MR. STEWART: I was che chief nuclear operator 14 on duty on the control board. l 15 MR. VORSE: And what do you do at the control l 16 board? 17 MR. HALNON: Can I clear one thing up real quick? 18 MR. VORSE- (Nods affirmatively.) 19 MR. HALNON: The problem report was written 20 dated the 7th, and the actual event that we're talking 21 about was on the 5th. 22 MR. VORSE: Okay. 23 MR. HALNON: Midnight shift of the 5th. 24 MR. VORSE: All right, I'm glad we got that 25 clarified. Okay.
. - - _ . = . . - -.
t 5 l . I 1 MR. HALNON: And that's why we're going to get 2 you the log books of the 5th. I'm assuming that's what-3 you wanted. l l 4 MR. VORSE: Yes, that's what we want. 5 MR. McNULTY: Thank you. l 6 MR. VORSE: Okay. Thank you for clearing that I 7 up for us. 8 MR. HALNON: Sure. 9 MR. STEWART: I forgot the question. 10 MR. VORSE: Okay. 11 The question is, what exactly do you do at that 12 board -- well, I know this is a very complex thing, but on 13 the evening of September 5th, now, when we -- when we did 14 this test that occurred, what were your duties? 15 MR. STEWART: Well, I was the what you would 16 call the senior licensed reactor operator on the board, so 17 I was the person responsible for manipulating the controls 18 of the power plant, per the directions of the ops and the 19 SROs. 20 MR. VORSE: Do you recall this test that was 21 conducted with the curve? 22 MR. STEWART: Yes. 23 MR. VORSE: Do you recall any discussion about j 24 that test? 25 MR. STEWART: Oh yes. l
6 1 MR. VORSE: Can you kind of tell us what that 2 discussion was? 3 MR. STEWART: Well -- 4 MR. VORSE: And who was involved. 5 MR. STEWART: We had a concern about the make-up. L 6 tank overpressure that stemmed from a test, an SP-630 that 7 was run coming out of'the refueling outage back in the l 8 Spring. And we had documented our concerns via a problem 9- report and over the period of time between then and this 10 -- this evening there there was letters transpiring i 11 between Engineering and Management and our shift as to-12 what was going on, what was, you know, the problems, how 13 we -- they were addressing our concerns. I 14 And it got down to the point where there was a t 15 letter that was put out just prior to this, a couple of L 16 days, I don't remember the date, that said Engineering had ! 17 come up with the concerns that we didn't feel was being l 18 addressed by Engineering properly, and that if there was 19 no other input, that they were going to close these 20 concerns out. I believe it was going to be that Friday. 21 So, Carl Berkstrum (phonetic) came to my shift 22 supervisor and said, you know, I know you guys are 23 involved in this make-up tank overpressure concern from ! l 24 your testing SP-630; they're getting ready to close these l l 25 issues out unless you guys have some additional input. I
7 , 1 . l 1 And so we all got together.- And the guys that l l 2 got together was Mark Van Sicklin, who is the one who's 3 been pushing the concern directly. He was another chief 4 operator on the chief's desk that night. Myself. l 5 Christine Smith, who was the other licensed RO on the 6 board. And Rob Weiss, who was the assistant shifter. And 1 7 Dave Fields, who was the shifter. 8 And we talked about the whole situation, said, i 9 well, what can we do that could bring to light what we're 10 doing, you know, what our concerns are here. And it was 11 suggested that we pet the make-up tank on the curve, as 12 Management had been wanting us to do all along, and stay l 13 up there and just bleed down to 55 inches and see what the 1 l 14 pressure did. And track it using the computer points and I l 15 the chart recorder itself. 16 So, we got to talking about, well, how can we do 17 this, do we have any procedural guidance that will let us 18 work with this. And we got out OP-402, and it was felt by 19 everybody on the shift that OP-402 covered everything that i 20 we were going to do. So we had guidance to control us 21 through this evolution. So that's basically what we did. 22 MR. VORSE: Did anyone raise any concerns about l 23 violating any procedures or being outside design basis or 24 express any reservations about conducting this test? 25 MR. STEWART: We knew that we didn't want to l l
8 i 1 violate any curves, especially design basis curves.
- 2 That's, you know, you don't ever violate a design basis -
!- 3 curve. And at.that time it was not known to anybody that j 4 that curve was, in fact, an actual design basis curve. We 5 don't operate on design basis curves. . Florida Power's 6 policy has always been to come up with some sort of an
- 7 administrative curve below a design basis curve so that we i
l 8 would always -- we may be in violation of a Florida Power 9 policy if something went wrong, but we would never be i 10 challenging a design basis of the plant. ! 11 So had anybody.up there known anything about that ! l 4 12 being an actual design basis curve, we'd have never done i 13 anything about it, said, ney, no. 14 MR. VORSE: Mr. Atkinson was station in the Aux
- 15 building in the event of a LOCA, is my understanding.
!' 16 MR. STEWART: Yes. 17 MR. VORSE: Are you aware of how that ! 18 transpired? ! 19 MR. STEWART: Yes. Being the chief operator on l 20 the board I was wanting to make sure that we had overy-t 21 contingency covered, that, you know, Murphy's Law, what j 22 can go wrong will go wrong routine. So, I wanted to make . 23 sure that if something happened with the plant and we had i 4 24 a LOCA and we're coming down on this curve and all of a b 25 sudden the thing doesn't act the way everyone's hoping it
9 I and expecting it to, because Engineering has said that it 2 should follow this and we had indications from SP-630 that 3 it may not, so I wanted to make sure that if, in fact, it 4 didn't, that I had somebody down there ready to go, 5 because he had to get dressed out, get into a contaminated 6 area in order to be able to bleed t.e pressure off. So I t >-ty-fv' 7 didn't want to challenge the plant So, we -- making sure 8 that we had somebody available ready to go and not tied up 9 doing anything else. 10 MR. VORSE: When you were letting the level down 11 did you get any annunciators? 12 MR. STEWART: Yes, we got the high make-up tank 13 pressure alarm almost immediately when we started dropping 14 pressure. 15 MR. VORSE: And what did you -- 16 MR. STEWART: Or that level. 17 MR. VORSE: Did you follow procedure to react to 18 that annunciator? 19 MR. STEWART: Yes, we did. 20 MR. VORSE: What was -- do you remember 21 basically what you did? 22 MR. STEWART: Well, I called out that we had the 23 high pressure alarm in and the shift supervisors noted 24 that, okay, we understand that, go ahead and continue 25 running the test, make sure you've got Dave or the boys
10 ' 1 downstairs ready to go in case something happens, and we r- , 2 tracked it for the test purposes. 3 MR. VORSE: Did you ever hear anyone -- I may be j 4 repeating myself here -- prctest doing this test?- 5 MR. STEWART: Excuse me? ; j 6 MR. VORSE: Did anyone protest the conduct of ! i l l 7 this test? Did anyone say, this is not right, we should ; 1 8 not do that? l l 9 MR. STEWART: No. I 10 MR. VORSE: And give a reason? ) l l 11 MR. STEWART: No, i 12 MR. VORSE: Okay. To your knowledge there was i 13 no one else other than your shift involved in this j 14 decision to conduct this test? ! i i 15 MR. STEWART: To my knowledge, no, i l 16 MR. VORSE: Curt, do you have any technical 17 questions you want to ask? 18 MR. RAPP: Is this the first time this situation 19 or this question about the accuracy of this curve has come l 20 up, to your knowledge? 21 MR. STEWART: No, sir, no, we've brought this up l 22 They many times, starting from right after that SP-630. 23 -- Engineering made a comment that both curves were going 24 towards zero. So, first they would look like they were t 25 merging. And when we looked at the way the curves were i l
4 11 ; I and the way they were interacting we said, we don't 2 believe that that's true. 3 MR. RAPP: What about prior to the performance 4 of SP-6307 Was there any discussion about the accuracy or 5 the applicability of this curve? 6 MR. STEWART: I don't know that for a fact, but l r 7 I've heard rumors, but I don't want to comment on rumors. 8 MR. RAPP: Is it a routine evolution or 9 routinely to post someone at the make-up tank at that area - 10 in order to vent the make-up tank during a hydrogen fill 11 operation? 12 MR. STEWART: During hydrogen fill -- 13 MR. RAPP: Yeah. 14 MR. STEWART: -- operation? i 15 MR. RAPP: If.you're having to add hydrogen. 16 MR. STEWART: No. We don't anticipate 17 challenging any curves. 18 MR. RAPP: 'But in this case you did anticipate i 19 that you would exceed the pressure limit of the curve? 20 MR. STEWART: I don't want to say that I l e 21 anticipated it, I wanted to just make sure I had all 22 contingencies covered if something were to happen with a 23 LOCA. I want to protect the make-up pumps at all costs. 24 MR. RAPP: Now back to the oirerpressure alarm. 25 Whenever you receive that alarm what actions do you take
l . ( 12 1 and what's the time frame that you execute these actions? 2 MR. STEWART: The actions tell you to bleed the 3 pressure off just in basic -- you guys have got copies of 4 the OP-402 someplace, I think. Dave Fields may have had ; 5 them when you were talking to him. 6 But it did base -- the AR basically tells you to 7 bleed the pressure, reduce pressure back to within the 8 specs of the curve, and there's no time frame given for 9 that.
,, 10 MR. RAPP: So generally speaking, how soon do {
11 you take that action? 12 MR. STEWART: As soon as we got down to the 55 13 inches, which is as low as we were going to take the make-14 up tank for OP-402, we started to comply with those 15 actions. 16 MR. RAPP: Okay. Maybe I didn't clarify 17 something. Not even if with regard to the test that's ran 18 just as a normal operational issue, when you receive this 19 overpressure alarw, when do you execute the action to 20 relieve that overpressure condition? 21 MR. STEWART: That would depend upon what's 22 going on at the time with the entire plant. With that 23 curve, not knowing that that was a design basis curve, had 24 I had something else going on with the plant that may take ] 1 25 higher priority, it may take a couple of minutes for me to i l l
13 1 get to it, but I would act on it as promptly as I could 2 without being extreme, I guess. 3 MR. RAPP: I think that's all I have here. 4 MR. VORSE: Bill? 5 MR. McNULTY: In your discussion in regards to ! i 6 what procedures may cover this, were you concerned that -- ) i 7 that if you operated outside the curve that that would be q l I 8 a violation of a procedure? 9 MR. STEWART: I think we mentioned that in our 10 discussion about running the test, that, you know, we may 11 be outside of an FPC procedure, but we had no idea that 12 this was a design basis curve. And -- 13 MR. McNULTY: As far as being outside the 14 procedure, do you recall what procedure was mentioned? i i 15 MR. STEWART: The curve stands by itself in 16 OP-103 bravo, curve number 8. The only time it's , 17 mentioned in 0 -- is in OP-402 when you're adding hydrogen i I 18 or nitrogen to the make-up tank. 19 MR. McNULTY: And what does it say there? 20 MR. STEWART: It says -- I don't want to try and ! l 21 quote something off the top of my head, I'd have to get l 22 the procedure out. It's documented -- l 23 MR. McNULTY: What's your understanding of what l l 24 it says, that you're not supposed to operate? 25 MR. STEWART: Keep -- keep it at the curve or I l l l l
. . . . . . - - . . . . - . _ . ~ . - . ~ _ ~ ~ . _ ~ ~ ~ _ - - . . . . - . - ~ . _ . -
14 ( 1 below.- 2 MR. McNULTY: Okay. And does it say that you 3 have to take immediate action to -- 4 MR. STEWART: No. 5 MR..McNULTY: -- to keep it at the curve or I j' 6 below if you go outside? 7 MR. STEWART: No. 8 MR. McNULTY: To your -- that's your -- 9' MR. STEWART: To the best of my knowledge, no, 10 it doesn't tell me that I have to do some immediate 11- dramatic actions to comply with this. Like I said, l 12 nothing in anything we ever did led us to believe that 13 this curve was a design basis curve at the time we did the i 14 test. Nothing. 15 MR. McNULTY: Curt?- l 16 MR. RAPP: ho. 17 MR. McNULTY: Jim, do you have any other 18 questions? l 19 MR. VORSE: I don't have any other questions. I l 20 think we'll go ahead and conclude this interview at this l 21 time. The time is -- 22 MR. McNULTY: Does'he want to add anything? ! 23 MR. VORSE: I'm sorry. Would you care to add i 24 anything?
- 25 MR. STEWART: I have nothing to add at this
! o i 15 ' 1 time. ; 2 MR. VORSE: Okay. Did you come here voluntarily ; 3 without being coerced? 4 MR. STEWART: Yes. 5 MR. VORSE: Okay. ; 6 MR. RAPP: Jim, let me ask one more question. ; 7 Let me clarify something. j f , 1 l l 8 MR. VORSE: Sure. l 9 MR. RAPP: All right, is your license a reactor l 10 operator license or a senior reactor -- l l 11 MR. STEWART: Mine's a reactor operator license. 12 MR. HALNON: We have two reactor operator 13 licenses on the board. One is an RO or an NO- . 14 classification; one is CNO. The CNO is the senior guide. 1 15 We go by seniority, not by license. 16 MR. RAPP: Thank you. l 17 MR. VORSE: Okay. We'll conclude the interview ) i 18 at this time. The time is 10:50 a.m., December lat. 19 Thank you very much. I 20 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at ! 21 10:50 o' clock a.m.) 1 22 ***** 23 1 24 25 l t l l l
{b l CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in j the matter of: Name of Proceedings: Interview of Jack D. Stewart Docket Number (s): (not assigned) , Place of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida L were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the I court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
/
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g g S. Nay b du w' Off.tcial Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc. l l l \ l
4 t 1 7 i i i = l i t ll I R ? i 4 I i i 3 4 1 l i i EXHIB T 13 } i i 1 1 4 i i i l l 3 l t 1 i i g i i i 4 ) l i Case No. 2-94-036 EXHIBIT 13
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0 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA , ; i 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 +++++ 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 -------- - -- ------
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7 IN THE MATTER OF: ,_ : ! 8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No. 9 CHRISTINE SMITH : (not assigned) 10 : , 11 ------------------------------x 12 13 Wednesday, December 14, 1994 6 14 gf 15 Conference Room 202 16 Crystal River Plant 17 6745 N. Tallahassee Road 18 Crystal River, Florida 19 20 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 21 9:357 a.m. 22 23 BEFORE: 24 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator 25 CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer 1 EmilBIT [3 l 0F lo PAGE(S) cAsrNo. 2-94'd36- PAGE
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2 1 APPEARANCES: ! 2 On Benalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission , 3 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator ! 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 5 401 Marietta Street 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 7 CURT RAPP : 8 Reactor Engineer - NRC, Region II 9~ 6745 N. Tallahassee Road !
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10 Crystal River, Florida 32629 11 12 13 On Behalf of the Interviewee, Christine Smith 14 GREG HALNON 15 Operations Manager 16 Crystal River Nuclear Plant 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 l 25
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,1- P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 9:35 a.m.
l l 3 MR. VORSE: Good. morning. Today is the 14th of ) 4 December 1994. We're going to interview Ms. Christine 5 Smith. 6 I would like everyone in the room here to 7 introduce themselves and give your name and your' title, 8 please. 9 Curt, start with you. i 10 MR. RAPP: Yes. My name is Curt Rapp, R-A-P-P. 11 I'm a Reactor Engineer, Region II, Division of Reactor 12 Safety. ' 4 13 MR. HALNON: I'm Greg Halnon, H-A-L-N-O-N. I'm l i 14 the Manager of Nuclear Plant Operations, Crystal River, i l 15 Unit III. 16 MR. VORSE: And my name is Jim Vorse. I'm an 17 Investigator with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's l l 18 Office of Investigations, Region II. 19 Christine, would you please give us your full 20 name, spell it for us. 21 MS. SMITH: Spell the first name too? 22 MR. VORSE: Yes. 23 MS. SMITH: Okay. My name is Christine Smith. l 24 C-H-R-I-S-T-I-N-E, Smith, S-M-I-T-H. And I'm an l 25 Assistant Nuclear Operator, Crystal River, III.
. - . . _ . _ .._._ . - . . _ . _ . _ - _ _ . _ . - . _ _ _ _ . - . . . _ _ . - .~.__. .---_ . . - - 4 1 MR. VORSE: Okay. And what are your duties as 2' assistant operator? 3 MS. SMITH:. Normally, as an assistant nuclear 4 operator I work in-the Aux Building, but I'm also a 5- licensed reactor operator, so I also work the Main control I 6 Board. m. 7 MR. VORSE: And what are your duties at the main I 8- control board? { 9 MS. SMITH: Normally taking log readings, 10 performing surveillance procedures and operating 11 procedures, starting up, shutting down the plant, handling 12 anything that might happen. 13 MR. VORSE: What type of license do you have, 14 again? I 15 MS. SMITH: Reactor Operator's License. 16 MR. VORSE: And how long have you had that 17 license? 18 MS. SMITH: Approximately.a year and a half. j l 19 Mt. VORSE: Were you on the midnight shift of
;20 September 5th, 19947 l l
21 MS. SMITH: Yes, I was. 22 MR. VORSE: Would you tell me who also was on i 23 that shift. l 24 MS. SMITH: Myself, David Fields, Robert Weiss, 25 Mark van Sicklen, Jack Stewart, and Jim Atkinson in Aux .!
l L- l t 5 1 Building. i 2 MR. VORSE: What were you doing that' night on 3 that shift? 4 MS.' SMITH: I was the-reactor operator on the ; i 5 board. I was the assistant to the chief, who was -- how r 6 do I say it, he was senior to me and pretty much i 7 directing.
, I was like an' assistant to him on the control 8 board, g 9 MR. VORSE: Who was "him"? !
l 10 MS. SMITH: Jack Stewart. I i 11 MR. VORSE: Would you describe your involvement ; i 12 with the makeup tank curve evolution that happened that-1 13 night on September 5th. 14 MS. SMITH: Okay. My involvement was while Jack l - l 15 Stewart was performing the evolution I was watching the 16 balance of the plant, to keep an eye on it and handle 17 anything else that might come in to distract-them from 18 what they were doing. I was just watching the balance of 19 the plant. 20 MR. VORSE: Did you see anything unusual that 21 bothered you while you were performing your duties? 22 MS. SMITH: No, I did not. We did get the alarm 23 in for makeup tank pressure, but we knew that it was 24 because of the evolution they were performing. Other than 25 that, nothing was out of the ordinary.
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1 . I 6 1 MR. VORSE: Did anyone on your shift express i 2 reservations about doing this evolution, something like ! 3 "this is a problem"? 4 MS. SMITH: No. 5 MR. VORSE: Did anyone say that the curve was l 6 design basis?
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7 MS. SMITH: No. 8 MR. VORSE: Did anyone consult with the shift 9 technical operations advisor, that you know of? 10 MS. SMITH: I do not know. 11 MR. VORSE: Curt, do you have anything you'd
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12 like to ask Ms. Smith? l 13 MR. RAPP: Yeah, let me go over a couple of 14 things. 15 Do you know what the makeup tank over. pressure ) 16 reading was prior to performing this evolution? 17 MS. SMITH: I'm not -- I don't understand your , 18 l question. 19 MR. RAPP: What was the -- What was the makeup 20 tank pressure before they did this evolution? Was it 21 above or below the curve? 22 MS. SMITH: Below the curve. 23 MR. RAPP: Below the curve? 24 MS. SMITH: Well, it could possibly have been on 25 the' curve because at the time we were being directed to l
t l 7 l 1 run right on the curve. I -- I can't recall exactly. 2 MR. RAPP: Okay. All right. 3 Is it -- Jim mentioned the design basis aspect 4 of this curve. Is that typical that when you're given an 5 administrative limit curve that that is also a design 6 basis limit? h. 7 MS. SMITH: No. This is the first case I've 8 ever heard of. I -- I never knew that it was design 9 basis. 10 MR. RAPP: When did it first come out that this 11 was a design basis limit? i 12 MS. SMITH: Several months after the evolution. 13 MR. RAPP: Okay. Is this the first time that 14 the accuracy of this curve has been questioned? 15 MS. SMITH: Not that date. I know Mark van l 16 Sicklen has had a concern for some time that the curve l 17 might not be accurate. 18 MR. RAPP: Okay. And "some time" goes back to i 19 how far?
'20 MS. SMITH: I can't say. I can say 21 approximately eighteen months or so. I can't speak for 22 him. I'm not sure exactly what point they started 23 questioning.
24 MR. RAPP: Okay. That's all I have at this 25 time.
8~ 1 MR.~ VORSE: Okay. -Ms. Smith, if you had known 2 that the curve was a design basis what would you have 3 done? l 4 MS. SMITH: I would have; reported it:to my shift l l 5 supervisor. I would have said, you know, this is not a 6 conservation action to operate on a design' basis curve. 7 Weshouldn'tbeanywhereclhaetoanydesignbasiscurves. 8 And I would have strongly suggested that we stay away -- l-9 operate away from the curve-and look into the matter. j 10 MR. VORSE: J To your knowledge were any managers j 11 other than your shift, or any managers above your shift i 12 consulted with before this event took place? I
- 13 MS. SMITH
- I don't know.
14 MR. VORSE: Is there anything that you'd like to 15 clarify or discuss with us? 16 MS. SMITH: No, not at this time. ' 1 17 MR. VORSE: Do you have any other questions? 18 MR. RAPP: Yes, let me review a couple of items, j j 19 if I may. \ 20 You said you were in the control room -- 21 MS. SMITH: Yes. 1 22 MR. RAPP: -- during this evolution. And your 23 position was -- was what? What was your position? l i 24 MS. SMITH: A reactor operator. { 25 MR. RAPP: Reactor operator, okay. 1
9 1 In'that regard then, as a reactor operator, i 2 ' referring to A-I-500, and the~part that I have 3 highlighted, would you take a look at that. 4 (Document handed to witness.) ! 5-As a reactor operator would that also be part of f-6 your duties or your responsibilities? 1 7 -MS. SMITH: Yes. 8 MR. RAPP: Okay. To ensure that administrative l , 9 limits in the plant are not exceeded? ) 10 MS. SMITH: Yes. 11 MR. RAPP: Okay. { All right. Thank you. i 12 That's all. 13 MR. VORSE: Okay. At this time I'd ask Ms. i 14 i Smith, has anyone forced you or coerced.you into coming 15 here to this room today and promised you anything? 16 MS. SMITH: No. 17 MR. VORSE: Okay. At this juncture I'll go 18 ahead and terminate the interview, and thank you very much 19 for your time.
- 20 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at t
21 9:44 o' clock a.m.)
- 22 *****
i 23 j 24 i '
' 25 i
a
- l. Io CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings l
before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
- Name of Proceeding: Interview of Christine Smith 1 Docket Number (s): (not assigned)
Place of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida were held as harein appears, and that this is the original ]: transcript thereof for the file of the United States i Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true i and accurate record of thb foregoing proceedings.
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_.-Teggy S . May l offfcial Reporter- - 1 Neal R. Gross and'C . , In . ! 4
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l I l EXHIBIT 14 ) 1 l-l l Case No. 2-94-036 EXHIBIT 14
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l 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA I 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l ' l 3 + ++++ i l 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 ----------------------------------x 4 7 IN THE MATTER OF: ... : 8 INTERVIEW OF
- Docket No.
9 MARK van SICKLEN : (not assigned) 10 ; 11 ------------- ---
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12 Wednesday, December 14, 1994 13 14 Conference Room 202 I 15 Crystal River Plant 16 i 6745 N. Tallahassee Road j! 17 Crystal River, Florida i i 18 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 10:00 a.m. 21 BEFORE: 22 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator EXHIBIT l#/ 23 CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer PAGE / OF M PAGE(S) 24 25
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2 ! l , l 1 APPEARANCES: I i ; j 2 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory _ Commission 3 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator i 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 5 401 Marietta Street l j ( 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 l 7 CURT RAPP l 8 Reactor Engineer - NRC, Region II l 1 9 6745 N. Tallahassee Road 10 Crystal River, Florida 32629 11 12 , i l 13 On' Behalf of the Interviewee, Mark van Sicklen 14 BRUCE WILLMS 15 Chief Nuclear Operator 16 Florida Power Corporation 17 Crystal River, Florida 32629 18 19 l 20 21 I 22 l 23 24 25 l i
__ . ... _ _ . - _ _ . . _ - . . . _ ._._~ - . _ _ . __ . ____ 3 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2- MR. VORSE: Good morning. Today is the 14th of 3 l December 1994 and the time is 10:00 o' clock a.m.- We are ' 4 here to interview Mr. Mark van Sicklen. 5 And I'd like to go ahead and ask everybody 6 around the room to' identify themselves and spell their 7 last name -- full name for me. 8 Curt, would you start out? 9 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp. C-U-R-T l 10 R-A-P-P. I'm with Region II, NRC, Division of Reactor l 11 Safety as a Reactor Engineer. 12 MR. WILLMS: My name is Bruce Willms, W-I-L-L-M- i 13 S. Chief Nuclear Operator with Florida Power Corporation. 14 I'm here as a witness. I 4
- 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN
- My name is Mark van Sicklen, 16 M-A-R-K V-A-N S-I-C-K-L-E-N. Chief Nuclear Operator, l
17 Florida Power Corporation. 18 MR. VORSE: And my name is Jim Vorse, V-O-R-S-E. 19 And I'm a Investigator with the NRC Office of - 20 Investigations, Region II. 21 Mr. van Sicklen, would you please give me your 22 title again. 23 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I'm a Chief Nuclear Operator 1 24 at Florida Power's Crystal River Unit III, Nuclear Power j l 25 Station. l
4 4 1 MR. VORSE: What type of license do you have? 2 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I have a Reactor Operator's 3 License. 4 MR. VORSE: And how long have you had this 5 : license? 6 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I got licensed in December of 1990. 4 7 8 MR. VORSE: And would you describe your duties 9 to me, what you do? 10 MR. VAN SICKLEN: My duties as the chief nuclear 11 operator, I work between the Main Control Board and what 12 we call our clearance chief's desk. Depending on the 13 station that I'm at I'm either responsible as chief on the 14 board, you're the senior of two reactor operators on the 15 board and you're responsible for operating the nuclear 16 power plant, safe operation of the nuclear power plant, 17 and interfacing with all the shops to get the day-to-day 18 work done. You're responsible for the safety of the 19 plant. I 20 Out on the chief's desk your responsibilities are 21 a little bit different. You're still a licensed operator j 1 22 on the shift but your main function out there is writing 23 4 clearances for the plant and working with the shops to get 24 the daily work schedule done. 25 MR. VORSE:. Would you describe in detail your
_ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . ___ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ . . . . ~ i i 5 ! l 1 involvement in the September 5th, 1994, curve evolution on 2 the midnight shift. 3 MR. VAN SICKLEN: My involvement on that night, l 4 my actual involvement for the evolution is I went in the 5 controlroomandIplottedmakeuptankleveleffressure b 6 against the curve in OP-103. 7 MR. VORSE: Was this an unusual evolution, was 8 this different than what you normally would do? 9 MR. VAN SICKLEN: The evolution in itself, doing 10 ableedetkhemakeuptankisnotunusual. a We operats 11 within 55 to 86 inches. We often do feeds and bleeds to urgt
-12 the reactor cooling s,ystem.
13 That night we specifically did a bleed that we 14 planned to do for other than, I guess, normal 15 circumstances. We didn't need to bleed the water out of 16 the makeup tank that night. i 17 MR. VORSE: Was there some disagreement between 18 the operators and Engineering about the makeup curve? I 19 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I have expressed concerns over l 20 the makeup tank curve on where we're being told to operate 21 right now on the curve and I've been discussing those 22 differences between Operations and Engineering for 23 approximately 18 months. 24 There was disagreements, I guess that's the words 25 that you used, between the two departments. We were all
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i 6 j 1 working toward one goal. I kept going up through my 2 management, which talks to Engineering, and we've had - l 3 different occasions throughout the year that I've gotten L , 4 tviacher with the engineers to talk about it. 5 There was differences of opinion on whether or i 6 not the curve was accurate. i
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7 MR. VORSE: Was there some effort to close out 8 an evaluation report on the difference of opinion between i 9 reactor operators and Engineering on the, you know, the ; i 10 disagreement that occurred? From Engineering -- 11 Engineering was going to close out the issue about the 12 curve -- 13 MR. VAN SICKLEN: There was a Problem Report 149 14 that up until this morning I thought -- I was told 15 differently this morning by one of the engineers, but up 16 until this morning we had a letter that was given to me, a 17 letter dated September 2nd, and it was handwritten on the 18 top,makeanycomments$hb this and give it to Greg. Do 19 you have this September 2nd letter that I'm talking about? 20 MR. VORSE: No. Can I have it? 21 MR. VAN SICKLEN: It was -- it -- From what we 22 got out of this letter that we got on September 2nd, it i 23 appeared that they were going to close out Problem Report i 24 94-149, Action Number 8, corrective item. 1 l 25 MR. VORSE: Okay. And after you --
l j 7 l 1 MR. VAN SICKLEN: And it looks like Engineering ' o 2 -- Engineering believes this curve is accurate and ; I 3 reasonably conservative to. protect the high pressure j 4 injection pumps from he_,,yogo6Edp _ng4 g phonetic) gas intrusion, in n 1 5 the worst case, large break LOCA, is the quote out of the I 6 letter that came out on September 2nd. ) 7 MR. VORSE: And what was your opinion when you 8 saw that? 9 MR. VAN SICKLEN: My opinion at that point, when 10 I read that I brought it to my assistant shifter -- 11 MR.'VORSE: Who is that? j 12 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Rob Weiss. And I said, hey, I i 13 got this from Carl Bergstrom and he's got right on here l 14 review and write comments to Greg Halnon. And that's l 15 written draft recommendation. 16 And it was a letter to Bruce Hickle, the plant 17 manager, from Pat Hinman and Jerry Campbell. And I 18 brought it to him and said it looks like they've answered l 19 all our concerns and they feel that it's accurate and 20 conservative, l 21 MR. VORSE: So, what did you do then? 22 MR. VAN SICKLEN: At that point I told Rob Weiss r l 23 that I'm to the point where they've answered all our 24 questions and that's what they believe, then I'm done. 25 I'm -- All my concerns I have is -- is -- I'll give in.
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I i 8 q l 1 I'll say they're fine. l
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l 2 What we did do is,.he said, well, let's getLa ; ! 3 copy of the calculation that they used for this curve. A 4 calculation that we brought up over the past'few months l 5 and it showed how they came up.with this curve. .So I, as ! l 6 a chief nuclear operator out on the chief's desk, I can l
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7 leave the control complex, and I came over to the Admin 8 Building here I pulled that calculation out of the filing l 9 cabinet and I made copies of it for me and Rob. ..And I l l 10 brought it back up to him and, again, I'm telling you 1 11 stuff that is before September 5th. It was -- we started i 12 on midnight, whatever that Saturday,'at midnight. Friday i 13 at midnight, Saturday morning is when we started on
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14 midnight. That's when I saw the letter. 15 So, that weekend we both -- I gave him a copy and THeock 16 I took a copy next door and we started just. paging him7 d m Thed . *r md 17 paging itten* His -- and I paged +ridmine, and just l 18 bringing comments back and forth to each other on some of l
- 19 the assumptions.made on that calculation that came up with l l
l 20 that curve. And basically we looked that over for two j l 21 days. 22 MR. VORSE: And then what did you decide to do? l 23 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Then I asked Rob Weiss, and I THE"s s 24 was over there at the chief's desk, that I"..." something . N. I 25 here doesn't look right to me, but they've gone over the l l
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l 9 1 whole thing, Engineering has, and I believe they, you j i 2 know, I'm not -- I don't have anything personal to gain by ! 3 this or I don't think anybody in Engineering, I've nothing 4 personal with anybody in Engineering. I said, you know, 1 5 I'm still -- I'm done, this is what they've come up with, 6 this is fine, that's fine with me. I said, I'd like to 7 just do a bleed. Let's take OP-402 and it's within our 8 procedure, you know. They tell us to operate here, they l l 9 want us to operate on the curve, let's just bleed water. 10 And let's watch it go right down the curve like they say. 11 And he said, well, let me think about that and I'll go 12 talk to the shifter. And he went in and talked to David 13 Fields. 14 MR. VORSE: Did you all research thoroughly all 15 the procedures, all the administrative procedures and all 16 the other operating procedures before you made that, you 17 know, as you were thinking about -- 18 MR. VAN SICKLEN: No, it was just an off-the-19 cuff OP-402. He went in and talked to Dave Fields and 20 then I came in, he called me in and we all discussed it. 21 And we -- at that time we thought, well, we're just going 22 to bleed water out of the makeup tank, which is a normal, 23 it's not an unusual evolution, and we have a procedure to 24 do such. And Dave Fields said, you know, that sounds okay 25 with me, let's look. And Rob Weiss brought up, you
l 10 l
, J 1 know -- l l
2 MR. VORSE: When they looked,_what did they do. l I 3 2'm sorry to interrupt you, but when they looked what -- j
- j j 4 how did they look? j 1
t . , j 5 MR. VAN SICKLEN: When I say " looked", I guess j ' 6 thought about, we talked about. And out of that I know l I 7 Rob Weiss brought up, okay, let's -- is there anything 8 we're doing wrong here. 9 And we looked and we said, you know, I can't 10 think of anything, let's look at the AR. We pulled out 11 the AR form, we looked at that and that said okay, if this 12 thing'does goes down the curve and maybe bobble to and fro . I 13 on the curve, if the alarm comes in what are the actions i 14 on the alarm. And we looked at that and said, en the 15 actions on the alarm is to vent the makeup tank. 16 So we said, well, we have an idea it might not 17 follow the curve, is what Mark is saying, but we don't 18 know and Mark doesn't know, we really don't. And we've 19 given Engineering data in the past that we've gotten just 20 normal feeds and makeups to the makeup tank, that we've 21 plotted it on the curve and given them showing it starting l 22 to the right of the curve and going to the curve. 23 So we looked at the AR and we said, well, the 24 actions of the AR says to vent the makeup tank. So, just j 25- in case, let's get somebody on station and vent the makeup I
l l l' l 1 11 l I 1 tank in case it does go to the unacceptable reading in the l
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l 2 curve. l l l , 3 MR. VORSE: And how did you accomplish that? i 4 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Well, we called Jim up and -- I l 5 MR. VORSE: Jim who? l l 6 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Jim Atkinson, he was in the 7 Aux Building. And we said, okay, let's go ahead and under i 8 the worst case let's get somebody ready to do that action ! 9 and let's bleed. And I'd already been given a letter from l l l 10 Pat Hinman, that I think you got a copy of also. There 11 was differences, now we're operating by -- we have a Ako 12 recorder on the board that tells you makeup tank level e4 "Sh 13 pressure. And then we have the computer that you can get 14 minute by minute updates of what level of pressure are. 15 And they differ some. 16 And a few months earlier I brought that to the 17 attention of which way we're going to operate, because on 18 one here it looks like you can cross over the curve and i i 19 the other one it looks good. And again, that was REDAS l l J 20 that we got back from SP-630 where we actually run the SP l l 21 where we did major changes in the makeup tank level of j l 22 pressure. And I plotted all these out on OP-103 and I ; 23 gave them to him. s 24 And then they came back with, well, the 25 recorder's not accurate enough, but this is what we drive l l 5 l ! l
12 l 1 by in the plant. So they came out with a letter that I l
- 2 got. I guess Pat Hinman had talked to Dave Jones who told 1
3 me. 4 MR. VORSE: What's Pat Hinman's job again? 5 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Pat Hinman is --- l l 6 MR. WILLMS: At this time he was the System ,
~- l 7 Engineer for makeup system.
i 8 MR. VORSE: Assistant engineer? , I 9 MR. WILLMS: System engineer. 1 ! 10 MR. VORSE: System engineer. And he's the one 11 involved in this curve? t j 12 MR. WILLMS: From an engineering standpoint, ! i ! 13 correct. i l l , 1 l 14 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Nuclear Plant Technical l I i 15 Support, Nuclear Project Engineer. l 16 MR. VORSE: Okay. So, let it reflect that Mr. l H%snn8 gp : 17 Wemm6Hdi - l 1 18 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Hinman. I I 19 MR. VORSE: Hinman. Spell it for me, please. l 20 MR. VAN SICKLEN: H-I-N-M-A-N. 21 MR. VORSE: Okay. And his job title again? 22 MR. VAN SICKLEN: His job title -- l 23 MR. VORSE: Then. 4 24 MR. VAN SICKLEN: -- as of -- I'm not sure what 25 it was then. I think he was the system engineer that -- l
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13 1 this says -- I'm getting his name that I read you off the 2 September 2nd letter that he wrote. And it says Nuclear l 3 Project Engineer, Nuclear Plant Technical Support. ; 4 I believe at that time he was turning over to ! 5 Phillip Salisman who ended up taking over the makeup ) 6 system, as the makeup system engineer. , 7 MR. VORSE: So he is the -- he is the chief l l 8 engineer in charge of this curve that -- 9 MR. VAN SICKLEN: He was the one mostly that we 10 had been working with since probably just a little bit 11 before we even run SP-630 that we'd been working with as i l 12 far as the makeup tank over pressure curve. l ! 13 Back in August 8th of 1994, I told him that I . l 14 hadn't heard anything about that all of a sudden the ! i l 15 recorder was not accurate enough, that I needed to drive ; l 16 the plant by the computer updates. So he gave -- I asked l l 17 the shifter on duty, Garret Hebb was the one on duty at l 18 the time, I said, did you hear anything that we need to I l l 19 drive the plant by the computer updates. And he said no. 20 So I told Pat Hinman that, you know, he needs to get that 21 word to the people on shift then. And he wrote me a 22 little speed letter to me and Garret Hebb to tell us to 23 operate by the computer updates, not ey the recorder, 24 because of discrepancies found on SP-630 between the two. , 25 MR. VORSE: Did you disagree with that?
l l l 14 1 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Did I disagree? l 2 MR. VORSE: With his decision? l 3 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Well, me and Garret-Hebb both 4 agreed that that wasn't e acceptable, you know, we'll go 5 ahead and do that right now but it's not acceptable in all l 6 plant areas. The reason why the main control board has ; i 7 all the recorders on it is that recorders will give you l 8 real time, you don't have to wait for updates. That's 9 what we normally drive the plant by. And that if that 10 recorder wasn't good enough, me and Garret Hebb -- I say 11 me and Garret Hebb, I don't know the letter that Garret 12 wrote but the words Garret used to me was we need the i 13 recorder to be accurate enough, we need to fix that 14 problem, because that's what we drive the plant by. 15 MR. VORSE: Is there anything, Curt, you need to 16 get regarding the recorder? 17 MR. RAPP: No, huh-uh. 18 MR. VORSE: Okay. So we've got someone down in 19 the Aux Building to turn the valve in the event that 20 there's a problem. You have -- you're prepared to do the 21 annunciator alarm. And so I think that's where we left 22 it, we've got somebody down in the Aux Building and now 23 we're going to go through the evolution. s 24 Can you describe that to me? 25 MR. VAN SICKLEN: All right. The evolution, we
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l 15 l 1 all discussed what we were going to do. Nobody had any } 2 reservations. We brought up that the annunciator alarm -- f 3 the annunciator alarm -- never mind there. l 4 We just -- we went to OP-402 and we reviewed 5 OP-402. And in OP-402 we were clearly -- we had a i 6 procedure to do the evolution as far as the bleeding. And [ 7 the curve isn't referenced in OP-402. Everything is I , 8 assumed that once you put hydrogen -- OP-402 addresses it ' i
'9 as far as the hydrogen addition to keep it on or to the
! 10 right of the curve. And once you're there the curve is ! 11 simply supposed to be a pressure versus volume curve. And +
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12 once you put it there you change volume, you'll always'be ) 13 where you started. If you're on the right of the curve up i 14 at 86 inches and it's just a pressure versus volume curve, 15 you take so much water out you'll just follow that curve i 16 down. And you'll be right where you were at 55 inches. j i 17 Less pressure, but that's the whole basis of the curve. I i 18 It's just a pressure volume one, pressure volume two l 19 curve. 20 So there was nothing in OP-402 for us to violate. 21 We said, okay, we got a procedure, now we'll just do the l 22 bleed. It should just go right down the curve. That's l
'23 what we were looking for. And I was going to plot data l 24 against the recorder. I plotted two charts, one against j 25 the recorder and one against what I was getting from the l
I I ; l 16 ) i i i computer, to show, you know, maybe the computer's just [ t ! l 2 going to write it right down and maybe the recorder just !i L 3 goes out to lunch. I don't know which one is going to be l 4 the most accurate right now. That letter tells-me the
- I 5 computer is most accurate and until they fix the recorder l
l l l 6 that's all we have to go by. Transient situations or if I
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7 the computer is not up you have to revert back to the 8 recorder. 9 So, Jim was stationed down there. Christine 10 basically was just -- she was going to watch balance of 11 the board. Dave Fields and Rob Weiss were there. And 12 Jack Stewart did the bleed. L 13 The pressure was to the right of the curve. l 14 Actually I think we added hydrogen to get it right up to 15 the curve. And then we took care of that. We let that 16 sit for a while. And then he pulled the handle out and 17 bled water out of the bleed tank and bled it down to 55 18 inches. When he did that the alarm did come in. And we , 19 looked at pressure and it appeared that the recorder 20 itself was actually staying pretty close to the curve. I 21 On the recorder again, when we started we were to ; l i i
- 22 the right of the curve. Since we were operating by the R
l 23 computer the computer was right on the curve. And there ) l 24 was a discrepancy in the start places of the two instru- ; i j 25 ments, depending on which one you looked. It's the same , h
l Cornf0fG A , t/4LvE_ 17 o p e. c3ees w Nc
- 1 instrument. Once the cc.mpuncr la valuer. /k%, then one goes l
l 2 to the recorder. 3 And the recorder started going toward the curve 1 4 as we bled down. And the computer point, what it was 5 updating -- and again, we were in now a transient l 6 situation as far as level and pressure were changing. Not I 7 steady state anymore and we were waiting for updates. 8 So, in that case the computer's not as accurate j l 9 as far as when you get an update there's so many times to 10 get that and then it takes another update. Do you 11 understand what I mean? l l 12 MR. VORSE: (No verbal response.) 13 MR. VAN SICKLEN: And I was basically there just 14 plotting it on the curve to see if it was -- if it goes 15 down this curve, I was -- I didn't have any more safety 16 concerns. I was going to -- I was done. 17 The alarm came in and it stayed in. And we said, 18 okay, N iet's look at where we are. And depending on i 19 which chart you're looking at, at one point we were back 20 into the unacceptable region, the curve. And then it was l 21 basically a response. I don't think it even -- we didn't 22 talk about it, about us let's stop right here. Our game l 23 plan, what we went into thinking was we'll just go from 86 24 to 55 and then if it's unacceptable we will do the and 25 vent the tank.
,)
18 1 And that's what we did. It went all the way down j 2 to 55 inches and then Jack turned around and filled the ! 3 makeup tank back up. And he had Jim ventefthe makeup tank ; 4 per 5 MR. VORSE: At any time during this evolution l 6 did anyone express reeervations about violating procedure? 7 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Again, at that time our mind-8 phonetic) was not in the same. This word came up 9 two weeks after. We did, you know, hindsight, everybody 10 looks back and says, well, now you run a test. That's etr~o s e rp hwassr g l 11 wasn't on mindsigh that night. On mindsigin, we were just i 12 doing OP-402 and we didn't violate that procedure. l l 13 It did go to the unacceptable region of OP-103 14 and the AR is what brought that about. The AR says, look i 15 at OP-103 and if you're on the left vent the makeup tank. 16 And we did that. We didn't do it right away. We -- Like 17 I said, we were bleeding and data was jumping around. And 18 I was getting -- I was plotting points to the left of the i 19 curve. No, nobody brought up, wait a minute, let's stop 20 here and vent the makeup tank. This is where we've been 21 told to operate and the last thing we got from Engineering 22 was it was safe to operate there. j 23 So, once we started we said, well, nobody thought 24 like, hey, let's stop right here, right away, go vent the ; 25 makeup tank. We brought it down to 55 and then we did the
l l 19 ! l . 1 AR actions. Nobody made any reservations before that. 2 MR. VORSE: So-you don't think that anybody
- l 3 looked at the 103-B before before you did the evolution?
4 Is that what you're telling me? S MR. VAN SICKLEN: We were referring to 103-B 6 before we did the evolution. I had copies of 103-B out 7 that I've plotted. As we bled the water down I plotted it 8 on 103. And the AR, when the AR came in when we bled, 9 that made 103 applicable. And 103-B is the procedure 10 that's saying that we violated -- that we did. What made ; 11 that applicable was the AR, and the actions got done on 12 the AR to vent it back to the right of the curve. But 13 nobody made -- we didn't talk about going over to the left 14 of the curve. ! 15 MR. VORSE: Did anyone ever bring up design , 16 basis? Was that ever discussed? l 17 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Nobody knew it was design usa n 18 basis. And now what I'm hearing M ,' it took Engineering 19 two months after the evolution to find out that it was a 20 design basis curve. It was just an OP-103 curve to us, 21 that we were told to operate right on the lino. Nobody 22 knew we were operating on the line of a design basis 23 curve. 24 Now I, you know, the past few weeks I keep 25 getting more and more data fed back. And again, I heard
20 l 1 this morning from an engineer that there's an actually -- 2 they recalculated it again and there's actually another 3 curve to the left of the OP that's the actual design basis 4 curve. It varies from point three to point nine pounds. 5 So, I still, clear cut right now, we're assuming 6 OP-103 is the design basis curve is what we found out now, 7 a couple of months after our evolution. Whether that even 8 ends up tomorrow being a design basis curve, I don't know. 9 I can't answer that. 10 MR. VORSE: If you had known it was a design 11 basis curve would you have -- 12 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I don't think that anybody, 13 licensed operator, if they knew that was a design basis 14 curve would have allowed it to go to the left. When 15 you're talking design basis curve you're talking to us, 16 -that's like bringing the rods past their allowable limit. 17 That's just not acceptable to do that. You do whatever it 18 takes to stay to the right of that. And we would have 19 done that if we knew it was a design basis. If it was a 20 design basis and we knew that, I don't think anybody would 21 have been operating right on it. 22 MR. VORSE: This AR that you refer to, when you l 23 read it did you -- you read it during this evolution? l 24 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Well, we brought the AR out 25 before we did the evolution. And that's wnat in my mind
21 1 prompted us to say, okay, well, let's have Jim stationed
- 2. there in case -- in case it just takes off to the left and 3 we just stop it right there and vent the tank. We'll have 4 somebody there ready to perform the actions of the AR if 5 we need to. l 1
6 MR. VORSE: Curt, do you have anything? ; 7 MR. RAPP: Let me check here. 8 Let me clarify a couple of points. 9 Was makeup tank pressure at the start'of this 9 - 10 test, was it to the right of the curve, was it c:4 the l 11 curve? What was makeup tank pressure just prior to the 12 start of this evolution? j I I 13 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Just prior to the start. 14 Depending on the instrument you used by the REDAS -- not 15 the REDAS, REDAS is afterwards. The computer points, it ! I 16 was on the curve. The recorder showed it to the right of 17 the curve. ! l 18 MR. RAPP: How much difference is there between 19 the computer point and the recorder point? 20 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Okay. One point six pounds. 21 MR. RAPP: All right. And how much difference l 22 was there at the end of the -- at the end of the evolution j 23 between the allowable limit and the curve, or the actual i 24 makeup tank pressure and the curve? 25 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Say that again, you want the l i
. .. . . . =- . . . . - . - - - . . .. . - . . _ . i 22 1 difference'between the two? l 2 MR. RAPP: You got the 55 inches. What was the 1 3 difference between the data point and the allowable limit? 4 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Okay. It looks like what I , 5 got plotted here at 56 inches on the computer point was ) 1 6 sixteen point three pounds. And what I got here is 7 fifteen pounds on the recorder. ) 8 MR. RAPP: Okay. So you're talking about, like, 9 one point three, one point five then, something like that. 10 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Right. (Nods affirmatively.) 11 MR. RAPP: Okay. All right. 12 MR. VAN SICKLEN: That's the difference between 13 the two. l 14 MR. RAPP: Right. ; i 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Does that answer your question 16 or do you want the difference between that end the curve i 17 itself? 18 MR. RAPP: That's fine. i 19 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I gave the difference of these l 20 two. l 21 MR. RAPP: Right. Yeah, that answers the 22 question. 23 okay. So then back to the original question: 24 Did you have to add hydrogen in order to bring makeup tank 25 pressure on the limit curve?
.._ .. . . - - - . . . .- _ - . . - . - .... . -.-..-. . - - ~ -- -. . .
i 23 ! f 1- MR. VAN SICKLEN: I belieVe when We started, ! i 2 before the evolution got started Jack had-to add hydrogen 4 3 to bring it right up on the curve, is what we did. s 4 4 MR. RAPP: And he was using -- i l '5 MR. VAN SICKLEN: He was using -- , t 6 MR. RAPP: -- computer point -- l ] l 7 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Right. He was using the , i
- 8 computer point is what we stil1~had a letter-from Pat 4
i 9 Hinman to use. 10 MR. RAPP: That is per the letter from 11 Engineering?
- i 12 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Right.
) 13 MR . : RAPP: Okay. All right. i
- 14 'Now, when you began the' bleed, when you began _the i l
- 15 bleed how soon did the alarm come in, the over pressure ,
-i 16 alarm?
- 17 MR. VAN SICKLEN
- I can't recall exactly. I i !
4 - 5 18 know it was soon after we-started the bleed. Soon, again, , 19 you know, looking back at the data we were actually j 20 outside there 30 minutes. It didn't seem that to me up 1- l l 21 there. It'must have been some time that it was allowed to. j 22 stabilize or something that -- I didn't see in my mind up 23 there that wasn't the real time that it felt like to me, l , l q 24 but again, I can't -- I don't recall exactly when it did j 25 come in. 4 i i i
. . . . . - _ . _ . _ . _ - . _ __m._._ _ _ . - _ - _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ . . . .._ _ . .. _ _ _ .. ._
l 24 l 1 MR. RAPP: Was this a continuous bleed operation 2 or did you --- 1
- l 3 MR. VAN SICKLEN
- It was just a continuous )
4 bleed. We pulled our handle out -- l l 5 MR. RAPP: Okay. l 6 MR. VAN SICKLEN: -- and we just opened up the 1 7 bleed valve. And it bleeds at the flow rate of what let j 8 down 6 Mbset at, which is normally anywhere from'65 to 80 9 gallons per minute. Land it's a 30.8 gallons per inch is 10 what the makeup tank level is. , 11 MR. RAPP: So there was no whole point in there , t 12- in which you allowed the system to stabilize, the computer ! 13 point would catch up with the recorder point? l 14 MR.LVAN SICKLEN: The-computer would catch up, I ! 15 ' don't know. I don't recall when we got to 55 inches !
-l 16 whether or not when we stopped the bleed we let it sit [
17 there for awhile just to allow it to catch up before he l 18 turned around and pulled the handle out, another handle to j 19 feed the water back in. 20 MR. RAPP: All right. 21 MR. VAN SICKLEN: So I don't recall how that l 22 went. l-23 MR. RAPP: Jim touched on this briefly, but I 24 want to go back over it. 25 When it was recognized that makeup tank pressure
- . . ~ .
)
25 1 was not going to follow the curve, i.e., that the curve 2 was not accurate, it was not conservative, then why did 3 you continue to lower makeup tank level? 4 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Again, I wasn't the one 5 lowering level. I was plotting it and we were all working 6 together. We weren't sure whether what we were getting So s&LE.sp 7 was just bubbles. I had a big discrepancy of what I was 8 seeing on the recorder and wl.at I was seeing on the 9 computer, and wasn't sure whether maybe the computer was 10 hanging high because the next update would show how low it 11 got. It was in a transient condition. So every time you i 12 looked up at the computer it could still have last minutes l 13 update, which would have given you the higher pressure 14 where it wouldn't have looked accurate. ! l IL But even about 60, around 70 inches it looks 16 like, even on the recorder it looked like I was starting i 17 to get data now. That was my first point to the left of l 18 the curve. And at that point it wasn't clear to us that 19 pressure was actually there. It was still in a transient l 20 type condition. And it just didn't, again, up front, we 21 decided, well, we'll just go to 55 inches, see what it 22 does, if it goes to the left we'll do the AR. 23 MR. RAPP: Okay. All right. 24 You said that this issue about the curve not 25 being accurate had been brought up prior to SP-630 being
i l l l 26 i 1- performed. How far back did this issue with the accuracy-2 of this makeup tank curve go back? 3 MR. VAN SICKLEN: We've been having nuclear , l 4 safety concerns, me personally, since about May of 1993, j 1 5 about 18 months is when we first started bringing the 6 issue up. That was when it first came to light that we 7 needed to put more hydrogen in the makeup' tank. i I 8 The curve wasn't the major issue back then. The 9 major issue was we're being told to keep pushing this 10 thing up, pushing this thing up. Our biggest concern at 11 that point was, now we can't emergency borate anymore, as 12 far as what we as operators think is emergency borate. I 13 We can always start a second makeup pump. Past j i 14 practice has been any time the running makeup pump is 15 running and you just go up and open up the BWST suction 16 valve, the BWST where it sits would always be the l 17 governing head to the makeup pump. When you did that 18 you'd automatically start getting borated water. 19 When they start bringing about the issue let's 20 now, we had a high alarm set point of 15 pounds on the 21 makeup tank. We normally operated anywhere from, normally 22 you'd find it between five and maybe 12 pounds. 23 And now, we first got a letter back, the very 24 beginning chemistry recommended and I think we had a l l 25 violation come out of where we brought it up to 20 pounds.
27 1 And the alarm was in. And at that point, just us sitting 2 up on the board we started saying, wait a minute now, with 3 the makeup pump -- makeup tank at 20 pounds and the BWST 4 just sitting here vented to atmosphere, that makes it . 5 different than what we're normally used to where we just 6 go open that valve now and nothing's going to come out of 7 BWST. With 20 pounds in that makeup tank it's all going 8 to come out of the makeup tank until you lower makeup tank ~ 9 level now to what pressure equalizes. 10 So that was our first concern that we started 11 bringing up about just raising pressure in the tank. And 12 we got into that a little bit. There were some appendix R 13 concerns. How the original FSAR design basis had it in f 14 there originally the regulator set at ten pounds. And I i 15 think that's what we got a violation for. It was found to j i 16 be at 15 pounds. 17 And that come about and we started suspecting the 18 curve as being accurate becauce the more we were told to 19 operate it every time we did a change we found -- I found 20 -- that it didn't -- the plant dynamically -- what we were 21 -- in order to achieve some of the hydrogen, since we were 22 limited by the regulator you had to actually put hydrogen 23 in and then put more water in to squish the bubble, make 24 pressure go up. And every time we did that -- 25 MR. VORSE: Excuse me. I'm sorry to interrupt,
l i
'28 1 but I thouyn'~ I heard you say the curve was accurate. You 2 said that about six sentences ago. Did you mean to say.
I 3 inaccurate or accurate? It sounded like you said j l 4 accurate. I i 5 Did you hear that,: Curt, or did I just mis -- 6 MR. VAN SICKLEN: If I said accurate I probably 7 meant inaccurate. 8 MR. RAPP: What wa's the whole statement? 9 MR. VORSE: It was that they first-started 10 noticing that the curve was accurate, is what it sounded 11 like. 12 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Okay. Was not accurate, would 13 have been my correct. 14 MR. VORSE: Okay. 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN: When we put water in to try 16 and squish the bubble we'd start out right on the curve. 17 We'd put it right on the curve as much we could and then 18 we'd raise level and it would come up and go away from the 19 curve. 20 MR. RAPP: To the unacceptable. 21 MR. VAN SICKLEN: No, no, no. This is to the i 22 acceptable. 23 MR. RAPP: To the acceptable side, okay. 24 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I know it's hard to get on the l 25 recorder. I could draw it on the board to make sense to i
29 1 you if you'd like. 2 MR. RAPP: I just want to clarify which way it's 3 going. ; 4 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Right. When we added water to 5 it would go -- it would start out on the curve and 6 continue to the right, now, of the curve, more in the ! 7 acceptable region and not ride the curve. 8 MR. RAPP: Okay. And that was brought to 9 Engineering's attention, that this response was not 10 following the predicted curve whenever you raised level? 11 MR. VAN SICKLEN: That's correct. And then we 12 went into the outage. We'd try, we had to change over 13 management and we were trying to bring our new management 14 up to speed, our immediate management, the plant man -- 15 our operations manager, up to speed on our concerns since 16 he was taking over in the beginning of this year. 17 I had a few conversations with, I guess, 18 Engineering. And I don't know whether at that point -- 19 no, I know at that point I didn't talk to the NRC yet. 20 We went into the outage and unless you're doing l 21 the outage you don't put hydrogen in there. Toward the 22 end of the outage we run SP-630. And SP-630 is a full l 23 flow test of the makeup system, the makeup pumps where you ' 24 take the makeup pump and you bring it all the way up to 1 25 540 gpm. That's a full flow verification type test.
,_ . . _ . . _ _ . _ . . . . . _ _ _ _ _ . . ~ _ _ _ . . . _ _ . . . _ _ . _ _ . . . . . . . . . _ . _ l 30 (- 'l But out of that I was.the one on the board 2 reading the SP. I had two operators, one on each side of r 3 the ES control and the makeup valve. And we were bringing , 4 up flow and as we did so, because we were running, we down 5 to 20 feet in the BWST, we only started with an initial 12 l
. pounds in the makeup tank.
i 6 And as we brought level down l 7 it came all the way down to 18 inches, which 55 is our l 8 normal operating limit, now levels going all the way down 9 18 inches before it started taking water from the BWST. ! t 10 And out of that data I went over and I got the chart f 11 recorder and I brought ~this back and I took this against 12 103 and I started making plots of each makeup pump run. 13 Because now we had a bunch of data where we started at 70 14 inches and went all the way down to 18 inches in the 15 . makeup tank. And I plotted all that up. 16 And on July 19th, we had another meeting with 17 Engineering that they were trying to resolve our concerns. 18 'And our Management -- we didn't do much dealing with like 19 my immediate supervisor any more. The dealings were 20 basically with, I guess, our Management getting with 21- Engineering saying come talk to the operators. And I sat 22 down, me, another operator, Carl Bergstrom, Pat Hinman, 1 23 and Steve Rowe. 24 MR. VORSE:
. Okay, who -- what are the job titles l 25. for each one of these people?
l
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_ . . - = _ . . _ _ . ._ .___~_..-__.--.--...__ _- - _ - . ~ 31 4
-1 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Myself, I was chief nuclear 2 operator. There was another operator there.- Carl 3 Bergstrom at that. time was -- he was just going into a 4 different title I guess. He was going from a shift 5 supervisor to what he is today. He's a manager nuclear ;
6 plant engineer in, like, support shift. He's like.Greg
- v. ,
7 Halnon's assistant. He's got a manager title like Greg i 8 Halnon. And he sat in.as-like a third party. And we had-9 Pat Hinman, who was at that time a systems engineer. ~ And 10 Steve Rowe,-who I think at that time Steve Rowe was still i 11 assigned to operations as an ops engineer. But he had .
- 12 expressed some concerns to me personally that he'd brought 13 up over the makeup tank issue back in the late '80s. i i
~ 14 So at that meeting we all sat down, and me and 15 the other operator gave them -- I gave them all the curves 16 I'd plotted from SP-630. We'd give them curves that we l 17 just plotted from doing routine adds to the makeup tank. 18 And we showed them that it was starting way to the right 19 and was coming to the curve. 20 And actions items out of that meeting was going , 21 to be they were going to take a look at the curve and 22 independently Pat Hinman and Steve Rowe were going to do 23 independent calculations to verify the calculations that 24 were done. The calculations itself was done I believe by l l 25 Gilbert. I'm not sure. I got that calculation again. j l
. . . . - _ _ _ . - _ _ . , _ _ _ . , . , . , , _ _ . ____ .i
t 32 I 2 They were going to do both independent calculations. 2 We talked about to satisfy our concerns the 3 possibility of bringing back what we know as makeup valve 4 64. That's a valve that at one time had been in the ' l 5 system. It is between the makeup tank and the makeup
.l 6 pumps. So it's a valve that you can shut and then all of ;
7 a sudden the makeup pump can't suck off from anywhere else , l l 8 but the BWST. You can isolate your makeup tank and your I 9 hydrogen out of the system. 10 That valve erratically, due to the different way l 11 I guess it was designed -- all the facts I don't know 12 here, so this is my opinion -- it had gone shut is the 13 fact. I guess bd and had burned up a makeup tank 14 before. Normal operating, I guess, while we were doing j A cv 15 testing on ES-AFside, ES, it was an ES control value 16 engineering safeguards. One side, I guess, had made it 17 gone closed. I'm not sure whether that's a fact or not. 18 The valve had gone closed and we'd burned up a makeup 19 pump. ! 20 So, the plant had diz3 bled the valve. We took ! vAws , 21 makeup shed9 64 basically out of the system. We took all ! 22 the controls off vent as far as it still has an actuator 23 up there but it doesn't have any air to it. And it's just 24 a chained open valve now. 25 So we don't have the ability here at the plant
- . -. . . . ~.. - - - . . . ~-. - _ . _ -- . -. _.- ,
i 33 1 now to isolate-the makeup tank. The makeup tank during an
]
2 ES actuation when the BWST suction valve's open we just go 1 3 to an equilibrium with the BWST. 4 We'd given all this to them at the July 19th l
- 5 meeting. And they were going to get back to us. I never 6 heard , word back from them and it was probably a month i
7 later. And I asked the other operator and he'd heard a 8 little bit back. And I said, you know, I'm still not l 9 satisfied with this. So I brought it up again to Greg 10 Halnon. And I called Greg Halnon in there and the number l 11 one thing on my list is, you know, I'm still not getting
- 12 any feedback back from Engineering on all the data that we 13 keep giving them. And he said, okay, he'll, you know, get
- 14 somebody to come see me.
4 15 And that's about the time frame that now I said, 16 okay, let me at least go talk to somebody else. And I I
- 17 talked to the resident NRC.
18 MR. VORSE: Who is that? l 19 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Todd Cooper. And I told him, ! 20 you know, I got some concerns over this curve and I don't j 21 think it's accurate right now. And he listened to me, and ad l 22 it was'four different occasions. I.think by the second 23 time I brought it up to him again, he assured me that he 3 24 put it on his hit list every day, or something, that he'll i 25 keep track of, he's going to start asking Management
i i ! 34 i 1 questions on it to get it resolved for me. 2 And then I basically didn't hear very much back l 3 at all until I saw that September 2nd letter. I talked to l 4 Todd one more time on what my other options would be to l l 1 5 take it any further. And we then went and talked off the 6 record for a little bit. 7 At that point I had still not decided to make a 8 allegation against my company. And then I saw the l 9 September 2nd letter I guess was the next letter that come 10 out. That brings us to the present. 11 MR. VORSE: So, you made extensive efforts to 12 bring all this to the attention of someone to get it 13 right. And when you plotted the curve during the 14 September 5th evolution were you right? 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I was -- I feel that the data 16 that we gained from what we did was very useful as far as 17 I was right. And hopefully our whole intent, it was not 18 at a personal level. Ther#3's nothing to be gained here l 19 except for nuclear safety. That's the only motivation 20 here. 21 I understand Management has pressures and l 22 Engineering might have pressures where they feel that they 23 need to do something. But that's definitely not put on me 24 as a operator. I don't feel those pressures from my 25 management. They might tell me, yes, you will operate on l 1 l
i 35 1 the curve; but I basically speak freely. And nobody's 2 told me I can't. So, there.was nothing personal between i 3 me or'anybody else. Our whole intent when we did plot f 4 that carve and we stopped at 55 was I was right and now we l 1 5 do have a serious nuclear safety concern here. And we I 6 wrote the problem report on it. And we gave the problem 7 report back and we said, you know, you know, this 8 shouldn't even be tacked on to Problem Report 149 that. 9 they're about to close. Let's write up another one and 10 say, you know, here we simply did a makeup tank bleed and j 11 about half-way through on the makeup tank recorder you can 12 see that it clearly is not following the curve. 13 MR. VORSE: What problem report number is thac, i l 14 do you know? 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I think it's 267. If you need 16 to know for sure I can get one. I don't have the pack l 17 here with me. 18 MR. VORSE: I've got -- here, I have it with me. 19 Would you take a look at that and tell me if that's the ' l 20 one you talked about? i 21 MR. VAN SICKLEN: (Examining document.) This 22 is tlie problem report that I mentioned that we -- 23 MR. VORSE: This is Problem Report 94-0267. 24 MR. VAN SICKLEN: And at that point the only 25 thing that if you say want to be proved is we took what we
. . - - . . -. _.. ~ - . - - . . . . _ . -- . - . . . - -.~.
36 l 1 did and gathered data and gave it right. back to the plant A i 2 in'the form of a problem report: you know, this is f
~3 important, we need to keep addresaing this issue, we don't' 4 want this. issue to die. We have data here that we're not j-5 going to let go by. So, we're going to give you this and,
- 6. you know, we gave it to the NRC inspectors,at seven 7 o' clock this morning, and he got'a copy before the plant i
8 manager did. And we gave a copy to the plant manager. 4 l 9 MR. VORSE: So, your intent was to -- to bring , 4 , t 10 to the attention of your management that there was a I-l 11 safety concern and that the curve.as previously enacted by ! 12 Engineering was incorrect and you wanted to make sure -- i l 13 MR. VAN SICKLEN: My intent of what?- [ 14 MR. VORSE: Go ahead. 15 MR. VAN SICKLEN: It wasn't the intent of us i 16 doing the bleed. The bleed -- my mind when we did the 17 bleed, everybody's mind was -- I was going -- if it's 18 going to act right on the curve I was done, all my 19 concerns, I was just going to jump out and say, okay, l 20 you're right, I'll let it die. l 21 When we did the bleed and I got data, then at 22 that point we said, well, wait a minute, I'm not going to i 23 let this thing die right now. We need to write another 24 problem report and we need to bring it again to attention 25 to get it fixed, to somehow -- You know, we even brought t 4 r,-c--s- , n _ ,,-.
- ,,-,<7-e < , e - - -
l L 37 l l 1 suggestions up that maybe there's a pipe in there that's vosuh6 2 not being accounted for'as far as -- It keeps acting for 3 everything we show, like you have more volume of gas space l 4 in the tank. And as you lower level pressure is not , l 5 following that curve, it stays up higher. 6 Now, those dynamics. I'm not an engineer. There 7 was things brought to my attention afterwards that during REcrac 8 that evolution you cut off some eeeeggpflow, temperature 9 goes up some in the tank, and that might have accounted. 10 I don't know. That's -- I was just trying to -- okay,.we 11 still have a problem here. Give it back to Engineering 12 and let them fix it. 13 MR. VORSE: And as far as you know-this is still 14 being discussed and trying to work something out as far as 15 having an accurate curve? 16 MR. VAN SICKLEN: It's still an open item right 17 now. The same curve is still in OP-103. And we have a 18 short term instruction to run at least two and a half 19 pounds below that curve. 20 MR. VORSE: During this evolution on September 21 5th did anyone say, wait a minute, we're in violation, we 22 have to stop this thing, we got a, you know, we better 23 look at this, we better look at that. Did anyone say hey, l 24 we're out of our -- we're out of our -- l 25 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Nobody told me or I didn't
- - - _ _ . . _ ~ _ . - - - . - . . . . . . . - .---
L ! 38 : 1 hear anybody say that. We addressed the AR and we 2 addressed -- we do the actions to correct it, but nobody
)
3 said stop right there, let's -- a.a soon as you get the ; I 4 first dot to the left of the curve,.the next one might be ! l l 5 to the right, we don't -- as soon as we got to the left l i 6 again we didn't know it was the design basis curve, j s-j 7 nobody, to answer your question, no. l 8 MR. RAPP: But you do understand what the l l
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9 purpose of the curve is for? l
\
10 MR. TUui SICKLEN: The purpose of the curve. The l 11 curve, again, there was differences. I thought the curve, l 12 from reading the calculation was to prevent hydrogen from ) I 13 ' going into the makeup pumps with some -- there's some 14 safety factor put up on that. That's why we didn't think_ l 15 it was a design basis. There's stuff in there that they 16 added columns of water in on'the makeup tank, okay.' You l l 17 get this pressure and then you add so many feet safety l 18 margin and that's where that curve came up with. So 19 there's safety margins built into that curve is what we ! 20 were assuming. That's why we didn't think that was tne 21 actual design basis curve.
;' And as far as ARs, well --
t 23 MR. VORSE: You wanted to say something about 24 ARs? 25 MR. VAN SICKLEN: No. We'd looked at the ARs l l l
1 L 39 , I and the AR's what made it applicable. And we'd already, 2 before we did any bleed we all looked at the AR and we - 3 discussed it, hey, we'll take actions for that AR when we l l 4 need. l 5 MR. VORSE: Could we go off the' record for just l ! 6 a second. I want to look at some documents and make sure , l ! 7 that -- 8 (Off the record.) 9 MR. VORSE: We'd like copies -- I'll go back on l 10 the record. Recorder tracers. Okay. 11 How about the letter that you wrote the note on. 12 We have the September 2nd -- 13 MR. RAPP We do have that letter, the September l l 14 2nd letter? i 15 MR. VORSE: I believe we do, but we better ask , 16 for another copy just in case. 17 September 2nd letter you talked about where you j 18 wrote something on the top. ; 19 MR. VAN SICKLEN: I didn't have -- I didn't 20 write what's on the top. ! 21 MR. VORSE: Well, someone did. You know, check 22 with Halnon -- 23 MR. VAN SICKLEN: The one that gave it to me --
. 24 and again, it appears --
9 25 MR. VORSE: Do you recognize this -- I l
40 1 MR. RAPP: I don't think we have this one. 2 MR. VORSE: I don't either. We're going to ask 3 you for ask copy of that, please. 4 MR. RAPP: Yeah, we just need a copy of that one 5 as well. l 6 MR. VORSE: Okay. What else can you think of 7 that -- do you have? 8 The ES valve? Do you know what that stands for? 9 MR. VAN SICKLEN: ES stands for engineering 10 safeguards. 11 The valve number, I think, you talking about 12 makeup valve 647 What we call-MUV-64. It stands for 1 13 makeup valve. 14 MR. VORSE: I want to see the document -- I 15 MR. RAPP: There was one point in there in which 16 you discussed the response to SP-630 from Engineering was
. 17 that -- or from some event, was that the recorder was 18 inaccurate and you had a memorandum to that effect.
19 MR. VAN SICKLEN: A speed letter to Garret Hebb, 20 which was the shift supervisor on duty at the time that I 21 called the man up on the phone and I asked him to send me
- 22 a letter. And he sent one to me and the shift supervisor.
l 23 MR. RAPP: All I'm asking for in that particular 24 case is to get a copy of that letter as well, that memo as 4 25 well. l L l
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l l 41 ; t 1 MR. VORSE: Okay. If you'll give me those ; i 2 documents I asked for copies of and I'll go ahead and get l 3 it on here that we're taking these documents -- or going l
?
4 to get copies of--- 5 MR. VAN SICKLEN: .I need copies of these l , 6 back -- 7 MR. VORSE: Yeah, we will promise we will not
, 8 take your originals. We will'just ask for some copies.
I i 9 MR. VORSE: All right,.we're back on the record. 10 We took about a five minute document gathering session. l 11 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Was that last five minutes off l 12 the record? , l . I ! 13 MR. VORSE: No, I was just going to'say on the d 14 record what documents we did collect. 15 So, we did get interoffice correspondence dated 16 September 2nd, '94, and the subject is makeup tank 17 hydrogen over pressure. And it's to Mr. h.Hickle. And l 18 it's M, N as in November, P, at the top T as in. tango, S 19 as in sierra, 94-0429. And it deals with hydrogen over , 20 pressure in the makeup tank. Okay. 21 And then we also have here recorder tracers on 22 the operating that we talked about in the earlier 23 testimony. 24 MR. VAN SICKLEN: And that was that recorder i 25 chart right there, is from SP-630.
42 1 MR. VORSE: SP-630. l j 2 MR. VAN SICKLEN: That was done May 10th, 1994. i 3 MR. VORSE: And it's stamped on there May 10th, 4 1994. 5 And lastly we have a Florida Power Corporation 1 6 speed letter from -- or to Garret Hebb, H-E-B-B, and Mark l
- m.
l 7 van Sicklen from Mr. Pat Hinman. And the date is August l 8 8th, 1994. l 9 We're going to collect all -- copies of all three 10 of these documents from Mr. van Sicklen this morning. 1 11 Okay. Do you have'anything you want to ask Mr. l l 12 van Sicklen, Curt? l 1 l 13 MR. RAPP: No.. , i l l 14 MR. VORSE: Okay. Once again, we understand j r , i 15 that no one in your shift was aware that this was a design l r l i 16 basis curve and no one ever brought, hey, this is a design ) l 17 basis, we got to stop now. That was never mentioned. l 18 You've talked quite a bit, Mr. van Sicklen. Is l 19 there anything else you want to add to what you've already 20 dircussed? 21 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Can I take a break and come 22 back in? 23 MR. VORSE: Sure. Okay. We'll go ahead and 24 take a - postpone the interview while Mr. van Sicklen 25 talks with his -- with whoever he wants to talk to and
. . _ _.._._.__..m__ . _ _ _ _ . . _ . _ . _ . _ - _ _ .
l 43 1 we'll get-back later. l l l L 2 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken at 11:00 l l 3 o' clock a.m., after which the proceedings resumed at 11:13 j
. 4 o' clock a.m. as follows:)
\ 5 MR. VORSE: We're going back on the~ record. 1 I I 6 Mr. van Sicklen spoke briefly with someone about ! 7 some of his concerns and I would like for Mr. van Sicklen , l 8 to tell us from his heart what, you.know, what he feels 9 was the real story behind the evolution on September 5th. 10 Would you go ahead-and just tell us what you think. 11 MR. VAN SICKLEN:' Like I said, what-you're here 12 for might just be the September 5th event. If not, if 13 that's all-that you're interested in, then what I'm.saying 14 probably ain't going to help. All I'm saying is, me 15 personally, I'm trying to be very open and honest and just 16 give you all the facts. , 17 What was gained out of what that evolution that 18 we did, and again, our minds and our -- what we as the on 19 shift operators were thinking right then, we didn't - I 20 mean, nobody even said the word test, nobody thought about 21 it at that frame point. It was only weeks afterwards that ! 22 -- it's almost like twisting what we did in hindsight. I 23 see your point and Management's point, that that wouldn't 24 be done again. I can see where they're coming from, and 25 they're right. I l 1
44 1 We should have kept going through the system and i 2 kept trying to bring this out. The data thau was gained 3 that night was gained and given back to basically help . I 4 everybody. Help the plant, help the company and help us 5 operate more safely. ; 6 MR. VORSE: Did you consider bringing the curve 7 to the attention of Management, a health and safety issue? 8 Did you think there was a health and safety issue involved i 9 in showing us that curve was wrong? 10 MR. VAN SICKLEN: It was in my mind that it was 11 a nuclear safety issue. And I talked to the NRC about 12 that on several occasions. There's four that I can 13 remember off my head and none of them are documented. Two 14 of them I know where I was on the control board and he 15 just came up and I just pulled him aside and said I just 16 need to talk to you about this. I've done a lot that I 17 could do, I'm not getting the feedback and I'd like to 18 bring it to your attention. 19 MR. VORSE: Is that Todd Cooper? 20 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Todd Cooper. 21 And he put it on his what he called his little 22 " hit list" or his reminder program, that he would get some 23 information out. And he'd look into it personally. 24 And that's basically, you know, coming here and 25 talking to you today. I've waived the right of counsel
45 1 and I'm just being open and honest right now telling you 2 what brought us up to that event and everything that'has 3 happened up to that. 4 And, you know, right now the data is there and 5 the company will take that data and will come up with a 6 better curve. That's what I'm expecting out of this. 7 That problem report should show that, you know, that curve 8 is not accurate and now we're going to come up with a 9 curve that's accurate. And I think the company will do 10 that. 11 MR. VORSE: Curt, is there anything else you 12 want to ask? 13 MR. RAPP: No, huh-uh. 14 MR. VORSE: Well, I certainly appreciate your 15 candor, Mr. van Sicklen. I know that this is not an easy 16 thing to do, to talk to people from the NRC, Lnd*we 17 appreciate your efforts today. 18 Is there anything you want to add besides what 19 you just said? ) l 20 MR. VAN SICKLEN: Not at this time. I'll wait 21 and hear back how you interpret what I told you and I'll 22 wait and hear your response. And if there's more that I 23 need to talk to you, more documents I need to show you 24 I'll bring it to you at that point. 25 MR. VORSE: Okay. Well, we'll go ahead and l l
)
46 f ! I conclude the interview then. It's 11:15 a.m. Thank you l 2 very much. 3 ***** l 4 5 6 . 7 l 1 8 , i 9 J 1 I 10 l l 11 12 i 13 i i 14 i l l 15 l 16 17 18 i 19 20 l 21 l 22 I I 23 24 25 l l
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l TI CERTIFICATE ., This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission ~in the matter of: 1 Name of Proceeding: Interview of Mark van Sicklen l \ , Docket Number (s): (not assigned)' ; Place of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of thef} foregoing proceedings. C'
- .. y -l 5 2s, a5 porter Neal R. Gross'and Co., Inc. ,
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