ML20133N269
| ML20133N269 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | South Texas  |
| Issue date: | 08/05/1985 |
| From: | Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel |
| To: | |
| References | |
| CON-#385-237 OL, NUDOCS 8508130430 | |
| Download: ML20133N269 (228) | |
Text
i
- ORIGINA{_
O UNITED STATES l
I NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l '
l
\
DOCKET NO: STN 50-498-OL i IN THE MATTER OF: STN 50-499-OL HOUSTON LIGHTING AND POWER COMPANY, et al.
(SOUTH TEXAS PROJECT, Units 1 aim 2)
EVIDENTIARY HEARING O
HOUSTON, TEXAS PAGES: 14190 - 14407 LOCATION:
MONDAY, AUGUST 5, 1985 DATE.
=-_
.A O t
(
O ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, LNC.
Oficial Reporters I l
444 North Cacitol Street 0 05 m ,5 Washington, b.C. 20001 d< $$G1g@K 0500 ' 70 (202) 347-3700 T
NATIONWICE COVERACE
14190 1
2 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD 5 ----------------------------------X 6 In the Matter of: : DOCKET NO.
~
7 HOUSTON LIGHTING AND POWER : STN-50-498-OL 8 COMPANY, ET AL., : STN-50-499-OL 9 (South Texas Project Units 1 & 2 :
10 ----------------------------------X 11 University of Houston 12 Teaching Unit II, #215
) 13 Houston, Texas 14 15 16 Monday, 5 August 1985 17 18 The hearing in the above-entitled matter was 19 convened, pursuant to adjournment, at 9:05 a.m.,
~
20 BEFORE:
21 JUDGE CHARLES BECHHOEFER, Chairman, 22 Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
23 JUDGE JAMES C. LAMB, Member, 24 Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
25
(~)
s TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
- 14191 1 JUDGE FREDERICK J. SHON, Member, 2 Atomic Safety and Licensing Board.
3 4 APPEARANCES:
5 On behalf of the Applicants:
6 MAURICE AXELRAD, Esq.,
7 ALVIN GUTTERMAN, Esq.,
8 DONALD J. SILVERMAN, Esq.,
9 STEVEN P. FRANTZ, Esq.,
10 Newman & Holtzinger, 11 Washington, D.C.
12 O, 13 On behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission Staff:
14 EDWIN J. REIS, Esq.,
15 ORESTE RUSS PIRFO, Esq.,
16 Office of the Executive Legal Director 17 18 On behalf of the Intervenor:
19 LANNY ALAN SINKIN, 20 3022 Porter St. N.W., #304 21 Washington, D.C. 20008 22 Representative for Citizens Concerned About 23 Nuclear Power.
24 2s
(:)
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442 w------------ .__
14192
)
f 1 CONTENTS 2 WITNESS: DIRSCT CROSS BOARD REDIRECT RECROSS 3
4- JESSE POSTON 14199 -
14247 14287 -
5 6 GEORGE OPREA -
14299 14381 14401 14402 7 -
14378 14408 14405 8
^
9 10 EXHIBITS: FOR ID. IN EVD 11 CCANP Exhibit 113 14243 12 CCANP Exhibit 114 14291 Of 13 CCANP Exhibit 115 14306 14 CCANP Exhibit 116 14314 14322 15 CCANP Exhibit 117 14326 14327 16 CCANP Exhibit 118 14330 14349 -
17 CCANP Exhibit 119 14339 18 CCANP Exhibit 120 14350 -
14370 '
19 CCANP Exhibit 121 14371 20 CCANP Exhibit 122 14377 14377 21 22 23 24 25 C)
\.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442 s
1 14193 1 PROCEEDINGS 2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Good morning, ladies and 3 gentlemen. Are there any preliminary matters this l
4 morning? i 5 MR. SINKIN: We do have a couple.
6 Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ma s of the Board, on 7 Saturday, after Mr. Oprea was excused, I brought up a 8 matter concerning the minutes introduced through Mr.
9 Oprea of the management committee meetings. At that 10 time, I directed the Board's attention to portions of the 11 transcript wherein CCANP raised concerns about the fact 12 that the formal minutes of the management committee as O
~
13 opposed to the notes of Mr. Thrash were not produced in 14 discovery. I particularly called attention to* remarks by 15 Mr. Axelrad wherein he represented that everything that 16 was relevant to the Board's order of February 26 was 17 produced; that anything within the scope of the Board's 18 order was produced.
19 I suggested that the minutes I introduced l 20 called into question whether these representations by Mr.
21 Axelrad were indeed complete and invited the Applicants 22 to explain.
23 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I think, this may be 24 taken up -- why are we taking hearing time on this, when 25 this is a motion or something that can be handled in a TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14194 O
1 written manner and that might be the best way to do that.
2 We have witnesses sitting here waiting to be heard, and 3 we're trying to move the hearing along.
4 MR. SINKIN: I'm doing it precisely because I 5 did bring it up on the record and I wanted to clear it up 6 on the record.
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Assuming it won't take an 8 awful lot of time.
9 MR. SINKIN: It will not take an awful long \
10 time. In response, the Applicants said that I was 11 grandstanding and reiterated their position that their 12 discovery efforts fully complied with the Board's order.
O 13 The Board agreed with the Applicants that the minutes did u
14 not contain matters related to reportability.
15 I do owe the Board and the parties an apology.
l 16 Given the sensitivity particularly on the part of the 17 Applicants' attorneys to whether or not they're viewed as 18 acting in accordance with their obligations to the Board, 19 I should have realized I could not simply ask for an l
20 explanation without creating a furor. I should have l 21 approached Mr. Axelrad off the record but did not.
1 22 As a partial defense and explanation, when 23 Applicants responded to the Board's discovery order on 24 Quadrex, they provided a page from the July 24th, 1984
( 25 management committee minutes and so identified it as such TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
e~ 14195 v) .
1 and it is Document No. 48, but this page is smaller than 2 eight and-a-half by eleven and reproduced very poorly.
3 In contrast, the pages produced to the 4 September minutes were full size and quite clear. After 5 adjournment on Saturday, I reviewed these documents and 6 found I had placed the July 24th page in Mr. Poston's 7 packet to ask him what the page was.
8 It simply did not register on me as an actual 9 page from the minutes as the other pages clearly were.
! 10 When I received the July 24th minutes last 11 week, I saw that same page and believed I had not seen it 12 before. Similarly, I had not seen the June 26th page l 13 which mentioned at page four, item six, both the HVAC and
}'(s ,
14 computer program verification problems. The Board order 15 covered documents that concerned reportability or 16 potential reportability and that concerned the potential 17 existence in the Quadrex report of information reflecting 18 significant QA violations.
19 As Mr. Goldberg testified at page 28 of his 20 testimony, HVAC and computer codes were notified to the 21 NRC as significant breakdowns in quality assurance. So 22 arguably, Page 4 of the June 26th minutes was 23 discoverable. Between the July 24th, and June 26th 24 documents, I thought there might be a serious question 25 regarding what had been produced.
(.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
l (S. 14196 V
1 Now that I realize the July 24th document was 2 in fact, produced and that the June 26th item is no big 3 deal, I regret ever having raised the matter. I'm afraid 4 that ever since the selective service events, I've been 5 less than trusting of the Applicants and that's something 6 I need to work on. I do apologize to both the Board and 7 the Applicants, particularly Mr. Axelrad.
8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: You have further preliminary 9 matters.
10 MR. SINKIN: I have one other item. And it )
11 goes back to the corrective action request related to
~
12 CCANP 106, the audits -- Bechtel audit. Having had some
<~, 13 more time to consider that, it seems like on the soils .
14 issue when the Board put that issue into contention, 15 there was no discovery. And that the documents produced 16 voluntarily by the Applicants are typical of the kind of 17 documents that would have been produced had there been 18 discovery.
19 The audit deficiency in CCANP 106 that dealt 20 with the absence of hold points did cover the soils 21 procedure that, the QCP for soils. And it seems to me 22 that the deficiency see and the notifiability of that 23 deficiency do go to the current competence of the 24 Applicants in the 50.55(e) area and in the particularly 25 sense to place the current competence of the project QA TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14197
~~J 1 manager; and that the production of the actual CAR that 2 addresses that absence of' hold points is warranted and 3 that the Applicants reviewed it an decided that they were 4 satisfied with the explanation given by the witnesses.
5 I think the document should be produced for ;
l 6 review by the the Board and parties to see if we do want l
7 it introduced into evidence. And that was the only other .
8 matter I had.
9 MR. GUTTERMAN: Mr. Chairman, we addressed this 10 last week. At that time, I said if the Board wanted it 11 in the record, weld offer to put in it the record, we 12 would put in it the record. I don't think we ought to
> 13 engage in discovery. I think I've represented that it's 14 consistent with Mr. Jordan's position, his testimony, at 15 least that was my view, I don't think anybody would doubt 16 it but I don't want to be tectifying about it, but I 17 don't think we ought to engage in discovery.
18 I offered last week to put it in the the record 19 if CCANP wanted it in the record, CCANP wasn't willing to 20 accept that last week. I think we ought as to put it to 21 rest and forget about it already.
22 Mr. Jordan explained why it wasn't a 23 significant breakdown in the QA program that might be 24 reportable under 50.55(e), he explained that the hold 25 points were in the procedure, they just weren't flagged
(~)S x_
(.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14198 O
1 on the inspection checklist, and to him that was not a 2 matter that was adversely affecting the safety of 3 operations since the inspections were actually taking 4 place.
5 I don't understand what it has to do with the I
6 soils issue; I don't understand why it'can't be put to l
l 7 rest once and for all.
i 8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Staff have any comments?
9 MR. REIS: No, the the staff has no comments.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The Board is going to deny
'll that request. Not only because discovery has finished, 12 but we don't see from what we were told that the document O, ,
13 itself.would add anything significant to the record. ,
14 Now the 50.55(e) question comes up later and f
15 questions may be asked of Mr. Wisenburg and several staff 16 witnesses on reportability in general. So I think the 17 record will be adequate without this other thing. Any 18 further preliminary matters? Other parties?
19 Mr. Sinkin, I guess your witness.
20 MR. SINKIN: Oh. Thank you. I would calling 21 Mr. Jess POston to the stand. ,
22 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, as Mr. Poston is 23 making his way to the witness stand, I would just like to 24 note that we have with us today, Mr. Ferd C. Meyer, Jr.,
25 and Mr. John C. Wood of the firm of Matthews & Branscomb
\
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
E .
}
>m 14199 O'E ^
.1 who are counsel to the City Public Service Board of San 2 Antonio. They are with us back here.
3 MR. WOOD: Good morning.
4 MR. MEYER: Good morning.
5 MR. SINKIN: He has not been sworn, Mr.
6 -Chairman.
7 8 Whereupon, 9 JESSE B. POSTON 10 was called as a witness by CCANP and, having been duly 11 sworn, was examined and testified as follows:
12 13 DIRECT EXAMINATION 14 BY MR.' SINKIN:
15 Q Good morning _Mr. Poston.
16 A Good morning.
17 Q Did you bring with you minutes of the 18 management committee meetings that were held in 19817 19 A Yes, I brought minutes that dealt with the 20 Quadrex report in 1981 in accordance with your request.
21 Q Right. And you have those with you?
22 A Yes.
23 Q When were you first told, Mr. Poston, that you 24 were going to be sequestered as a witness?
'25 A Two or three weeks ago, as I recall.
t.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14200 1 Q- What were you told as to the conditions imposed 2 by sequestration?
-3 A It was explained to me in a series of steps 4 what that meant, and not to -- the conditions S concerning sequestering. ,
6 Q What were you told were the conditions?
7' A Oh, there were four or five or six as I recall; 8 not to discuss the testimony of others, not to sit in on 9 the hearings, not to stay abreast of the progress of the 10 hearings, things of that nature.
11 Q And were you able to observe all of those 12 conditions?
l 13 A I think so.
14 Q Were you at any time, by anyone, told anything 15 about the testimony in these hearings?
16 A No. Not after the sequestering.
17 Q Right. Did_you ever read any of the prefiled 18 testimony filed in these hearings?
19 A Yes.
20 Q And when was that?
21 A Oh, whenever it came up, a month ago, whenever 22 it was produced. Sometime awhile back.
23 Q Was that all of the --
24 A And I have reviewed them sense then also 25 because.it was my understanding that prefiled testimony
}-
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
e-r~'s, 14201
()
1 was fair game for me to look at, under the rules.
2 Q And by all, do you mean all of the Applicants' 3 prefiled or the NRC's prefiled or all?
4 A Well, I don't know whether I've seen it all.
5 I've seen the prefiled testimony of two or three people.
6 Q You've seen Mr. Jordan's?
7 A Yes.
8 Q Mr. Oprea's?
9 A Yes.
10 0 Mr. Goldberg's?
11 A Yes.
12 Q Mr. Wiesenburg's?
(O
>' 13 A No. "
8 14 Q Dr. Sumpter's?
15 A No.
16 Q Do you remember seeing anybody besides Goldberg 17 Oprea and Jordan?
18 A No, I don't recall. I don't believe that I 19 did.
20 0 The minutes that you have before you, Mr.
21 Poston, are those meetings also tape recorded? --
22 A No, not to my knowledge they're not. I'm 23 confident that they're not.
24 0 And to your knowledge, is Mr. Thrash the only 25 one that keeps a complete record of those minutes, of r~w]
\.-
l \
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
-T 14202 L)
I those meetings?
2 A Yes.
3 0 When did you join the City Public Service Board 4 staff?
5 A In June of '49.
6 0 What was your position in the period from 7 January 1, 1981 through September 1981?
l l 8 A With City Public Service?
9 Q Yes.
10 A Assistant general manager for operations.
11 Q When did you join the management committee?
12 A Around 1975, '74, on in there.
'y J 13 0 When it was first formed?
14 A Yes. What position did you hold on the 15 management committee from January 1st, 1981 through 16 September 19817 17 A Chairman of the management committee.
18 Q What was the role of the management committee 19 during that period as concerns the South Texas Nuclear 20 Project?
21 A Well, the management committee is the committee 22 of owners and the chairman convenes the meetings, and 23 organizes the forum for which the owners could get the 24 periodic reviews of the project, discuss the funding, 25 budget, schedule, and general progress of the plant.
(^)T L.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
I 14203
} .
1 Q Were there any particular areas that were 2 primarily the responsibility of the management committee?
j 3 A In what regard?
i 4 Q Things that the management committee would be 5 the deciding body on as opposed to the chief executive 6 officers or some other body?
l 7 A In regard to constructing the power plant?
8 Q In regard to the South Texas Nuclear Project, 9 any facet of that.
10 A Well, the management committee is the committee 11 of owners and insofar as the owners have an equity l
12 rosition in the plant, we look to the project manager for O
b> 13 timely and hopefully correct comple' tion of the power 14 plant, and we each look to our own company's 15 responsibilities insofar as husbanding the funds and 16 making sure they are satisfactorily spent and l 17 satisfactory progress was being made on the plant; things 18 like that.
I 19 0 And when I say that you looked to the 20 project man' agers for timely and correct completion, you 21 mean Houston Lighting & Power?
l 22 A Yes.
23 MR. SINKIN: I'm going to ask the Applicants to l
l 24 provide you with copies of CCANP 108 through 113, if they l
r3 25 would. Is that cricket?
V l
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
s 14204 N~)
1 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) These are the minutes of the management 2 committee meeting which you have in front of you. It's 3 just that they've been numbered as exhibits for reference 4 purposes. Thank you.
5 If you would turn to CCANP 108 at Page 2, the 6 fourth paragraph, starting --
7 MR. AXELRAD: What page did say, Mr. Sinkin.
8 MR. SINKIN: Page 2.
9 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Starting "Mr. Goldberg next 10 began."
11 A Yes, I have that.
12 0 Was this meeting, which is dated on the front t
- - 13 as February 19th, 1981, the first time that you learned 14 HL&P was conducting this particular review of Brown &
15 Root's engineering?
16 A I don't know whether it was the first time or 17 not.
18 Q Do you remember discussing the Quadrex report 19 in February of 1981 outside the context of the management 20 committee's formal meetings?
21 A In what time frame?
22 Q February 1981?
23 A I don't recall any discussions. Could very l
l 24 well have done so. I just don't recall any specific 25 discussions.
l l
l TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
c, 14205
()
1 0 When you first learned that this study was to 2 be performed, what were you told was the purpose?
3 A As I recall, it was to get a measure of the 4 progress, degree of completeness, technical approaches, 5 and so forth, concerning the Brown & Root engineering.
6 Q At that time, when the study was begun, what 7 were the major problems in engineering at the. South Texas 8 Nuclear Project that you knew about?
9 By the way, Mr. Poston, if it would help you to.
10 review the minutes, please feel free to do it.
11 A You're talking about in February of '817 12 Q In February of '81.
(~)
\ '
t- 13 A Well, I think it's correct that my feelings
'14 were that the engineering was late and incomplete and 15 probably not sufficiently far enough ahead to support 16 timely and orderly and efficient construction.
17 0 Well, in the February 20th minutes which are 18 part of CCANP 108, they're just in the back part, if you 19 would just turn about -- you say the numbers in the l 20 bottom right corner, if you will turn to Page 44767 21 A All right. I have Page 4476.
22 0 All right. Looking at item three.
23 A All right.
24 0 was that an engineering problem that you were
(~S 25 aware of at the time the Quadrex report began?
V
\
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14206 1 A Item three has to do with conduit separation.
2 O Right.
3 A I don't know whether this was an assignment 4 Quadrex was given; this is one of several problem areas 5 that the project manager reported to the management 6 committee.
7 Q And was this problem a cost and schedule 8 problem or was it a quality assurance problem?
9 A conduit separation? I would call that an 10 engineering design and construction execution situation.
11 Q When I contrast a quality assurance problem 12 with a strictly cost and schedule problem, do you -- does 13 that contrast make sense to you, do you understand?
\
14 A Yes.*
15 Q What -- okay. Let's look at item six on that 16 page, the cable tray support problem.
17 A I see it.
18 Q Was this an engineering problem that you were 19 aware of at the time the Quadrex report began -- the Quadrex 20 study began, I should say?
21 A We would hear about the cable tray support 22 problems from time to time, so it's probably fair to say 23 that when the Quadrex report was begun, that this problem 24 was on the surface.
25 Q Was this a quality assurance problem as opposed TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
i 14207
( .
1 to simply a cost and schedule problem?
2 A I would say that it's neither of those. I 3 would say that it would be strictly a manner of -- matter 4 of engineering execution, engineering design.
5 Q And on page 3, item 10, do you know what the ,
6 problem was in HVAC that's being called to the management
, , 7 committees attention in item 107 There's no detail 8 there.
9 A Well, it says here that it was slow in getting 10 started, so I suppose that's the problem at that time.
11 Q That the HVAC itself is slow in getting 12 started, the whole system?
13 A That's what item ten says here.
14 Q By February of 1981, was the HVAC system fairly 15 far along at the project?
16 A I don't recall where it sits on the progress i
17 charts. But apparently according to this, it was slow in 18 getting started, that was the perception at this time.
19 Q Turning to CCANP 109, at the first --
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin, while you're 21 still on 108 --
22 MR. SINKIN: Sure.
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Poston, on page 4475, 24 which is the first page of the February 20 meeting.
25 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
- 14208 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Item numbered 6, do you 2 recall what type of need Mr. Barker described at that 3 time?
4 THE WITNESS: I didn't hear the Board, was the word 5 " bead."
6 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: "Need."
7 THE WITNESS: "Need."
8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Pardon me, my sinus.
9 N-e-e-d.
10 THE WITNESS: Oh, "need."
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: In item 6. Do you remember 12 what, if anything, Mr. Barker had to say about that?
13 THE WITNESS: I don't recall specifically, but 14 apparently he felt that the project would be served by 15 having a third party review of engineering progress of 16 Brown & Root. That's my recollection of what need he was 17 talking about.
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I noe. Did he give any 19 elaboration of why or not?
20 THE WITNESS: I don't recall specifica. But the 21 feeling was as I mentioned before that the engineering 22 design was not progressing on what we felt at such a rate 23 as to support timely and efficient construction. And it 24 coomo reasonable that what he was talking about at that 25 time, and that's my vague recollection, was that he would TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-0442
14209
.. I 1 like or the project manager would like to get a third 2 party review of engineering status, things like that.
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay, thank you.
4 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Do you ever remember Mr. Oprea 5 saying that there were quality problems with the Brown &
6 Root work and that's why they wanted the Quadrex review 7 performed?
8 A I don't recall him saying that. He could very 9 well have said it. I don't recall him saying it, you 10 know, in this context at this time.
11 Q Do you perhaps remember him calling attention ,
12 to a pattern of 50.55(e) reports coming out of Brown &
O
[
13 Root's design and engineering prior to Quadrex beginning t
14 their work? !
15 A He could have. I don't recall any. I'm sure 16 the minutes would reflect if he did. I'm sure the record 17 would reflect if he did. ,
18 Q You feel that the minutes would capture that if i
19 he had said that?
20 A I don't see any reason why they would not.
21 It's possible that they would not. But I don't see any 22 reason why they would not at this moment.
f 23 Q Okay. Now, turning to CCANP 109, at Page 1, 24 the last paragraph, we're now at the March 19th minutes; 25 and if you would be more comfortable using the ones you 1
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-0442
14210
}
1 brought with you, feel free; they are the same documents, 2 other than the absence of the exhibits.
3 A Okay. We're on -- where are we, 4500 on the 4 bottom.
5 0 4500 on the bottom, last far. The first 6 question is -- can you tell me who Mr. Basilo is, 7 B-a-s-i-1-e?
8 A Well, I would have to refer to the signup 9 sheet. I think that would explain who he in.
10 0 Okay. That's fine, if you can do that.
11 A The signup sheet says that he was with Central i 12 Power & Light. My recollection in he was an employee of l N' I) 13 Central Power & Light.
l 14 Q But'other than that, an to what he did?
l 15 A lie van just representing Central Power & Light 16 at the meeting, is my recollection.
17 0 Okay.
18 A one of the representativen of Central Power &
19 Light at the meeting.
20 Q I see at the top right under the primary 21 representativen, there in a list in the minuten on 22 page 1 on the first page of the minuten, there is a list 23 of who was also present. And that Mr. Basile appearn for 24 CP&L.
{}
25 A That's right.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-0442
14211 1 Q In this paragraph at the bottom of page 4500, 2 it says Mr. Goldberg described the items which had thus 3 far been completed by Quadrex. Do you remember what 4 items Quadrex had completed by March 19th, 18917 5 A No, I do not. ;
i 6 0 on page 2, the second paragraph, do you 7 remember asking the recorded question and receiving the 8 reply as recorded?
9 A Yes, I do.
10 Q Turning to page 4517.
11 A All right.
1 12 Q Item 4 at the bottom, engineering plan-design 13 assurance and control, can you tell me what that item was
- l 14 about?
15 A My recollection is that it was another tool, 16 another of many tools, that were put into place to help 17 the engineering develop in a timely manner. And also 18 that the engineering, once designed, was correct and vould 19 result in correct construction of the plant.
20 Q Turning to CCANP 110, at Page 3.
21 A What page number?
22 Q 4541?
23 A All right.
24 Q That first paragraph says that Mr. Goldberg 25 reported one of the principle problem areas developed by TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
d 14212
(^}
v 1 Quadrex involved equipment specifications. Can you tell 2 us what Mr. Goldberg had to say about the problem in 3 equipment specifications, what that problem was?
4 A I don't recall what he said at this time. But 5 he did report briefly on some of the things that he had 6 heard that Quadrex was addressing, some of the concerns, 7 some of the features, of the engineering that Quadrex was 8 addressing.
9 And apparently, the significant itema that he 10 addressed according to these minutes, were the ones you 11 mentioned, the computer programming and the IIVAC design 12 and the equipment specifications. What he had to say
, 13 about specifically each, I don't recall the details. ,
14 0 Do you recall at all what that problem was that 15 Quadrex was pointing at, the equipment specifications 16 problem?
17 A The equipment specifications, my vague 18 recollection is and here it's just a recollection, in 19 that the equipment specifications in some areas didn't 20 aufficiently describe or were inadequate to got the piece 21 of equipment that we needed for the job. !
22 Ilowever, I don't have any recollection at that 23 time of any specification problem that would not support --
24 that would produce equipment that would nor support the 25 safe operation of the plant. I don't recall anything
({}
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 490-0442
r .
I 14213
(~')
R-1 like that at this time.
2 Q The next document I'd like to you look at --
3 JUDGE BECHi!OEFER: Mr. Sinkin, before you get 4 to the next document, are you through with 109?
5 MR. SINKIN: I'm through with 109.
6 JUDGE BECIIHOEFER: Mr. Poston, at this April 27 7 meeting --
8 MR. SINKIN: Excune me, Mr. Chairman. You mean 9 1107 10 JUDGE DECill10EFER: 110, I'm sorry. Are you 11 through with 1107 fx 12 MR. SINKIN: Yes.
(
~)
13 JUDGE BECill!0EFER: Okay. At this April 27 14 meeting --
15 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
16 JUDGE BECill!0EFER: During Mr. Goldberg's 17 report, I understand that took about 20 minutes from the 18 time not forth on this document. During that report, was 19 there any discuacion at all of the fact or circumstance 20 that come itema might turn out to be reportable to NRC7 21 Do you recall whether that subject was touched upon at 22 all?
23 Tile WITNESS: I think no. I think that it was --
24 I think it wan. It wan I think common knowledge with tho ownero that any timo you got into a report like this,
() 25 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
- f. .
l l
I
/^ 14214
(
1 that there may be some findings that would end up needing 2 to be reported to the appropriate body with the NRC. And 3 I think"that he may have mentioned that on this date, at 4 this meeting.
5 (No hiatus.)
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13 y, a 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 i
s.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-0442
cg-2 14215
N L) 1 JUDGE BECilllOEFER: Woro any particular itemn 2 discunned in that regard? !
3 THE WITNESS: I think that the minuten reflect 4 that. My recollection in that the important items that 5 the Quadrox -- I say the important, or among the 6 important items that Quadrex reported was the 7 aufficiency of engineering on the !!VAC and the 8 aufficiency of correctnoon and degroo of completonoon of 9 the computer codon supporting some of the engineering 10 donigns. 11 0 mentioned that and he also montioned, an I 11 recall, neveral other arcan that he told un that the k w) 12 Quadrex report was going to como down on, in addition to 13 many many other arcan, and that there may be featuren 14 that nooded to be recorted to the NRC when Quadrox como 15 down with their fininhed report.
16 JUDGE DECllllOEFER: Was thin equipment l
17 specificationn one of the arean that was talked about in 18 that regard?
! 19 Tile WITNESS: No, nir, I don't recall it being 20 that way. I think the equiptnant specifications was 21 probably just one of many genocal categorien that the 22 Quadrox otudy focunod on.
() 23 JUDGE BEClll10EFER: Mr. Sinkin.
24 Q (Dy Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Ponton, I'm going to ask 25 if Applicants will charo with you Applicants' Exhibit TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
~
U .
sg-2 i 14216
12 Quadrex was putting their findings in? .
13 A An I recall, he had asked Quadrex to stratify 14 the findings and their area of importance relative to 15 getting on with the engineering and getting on with --
16 and handling the correct licensing proceduron.
17 0 And do you recall him saying that in that 18 first category, most notious, that those items would 19 have to be reported to the Nuclear Regulatory 20 Comminaion?
21 A I don't think he said it that way. I think 22 that he caid it -- I think ho -- I don' t know whether ho
() 23 tied most corious with having to be reported to the 24 NRC. My recollection in that he caid that we may 25 identify como reportable itoma that will have to be TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
29-2 -
.i 14222
reported.
1 If they prove up as bona fide meeting the 2- criteria for. reportable items, that they would need to 3 be reported. Whether those were the same and synonymous 4 with most serious or not, I don't recall.
.5 Q Can you offer any explanation as to why this 6 part of Mr. Thrash's notes do not appear in the formal 7 minutes of April 27th, 19817 8 A I don't know whether they do or do not.
.9 Q Well, you have them as CCANP 110, Mr. Poston.
1
[- 10 And on page 3, which would be 4541, we have the Goldberg l
11 report on Quadrex. l I 12 What I'm asking is this section where Mr.
l*Y) l 13 Goldberg laid out the categories and apparently said L 14 'something to the effect that the most serious would have 15 to be reported to the NRC according to Mr. Thrash's f
16 notes does not appear in the minutes. ,
17 MR. AXELRAD: At this point I think the 18 representative of CCANP is improperly and incorrectly 19 characterizing what may or may not have been said and5 20 may or may not be reflected in Mr. Thrash's notes.
21- If all that Mr. Sinkin is asking is why a ,
22 particular paragraph in Mr. Thrash's notes does not
(} 23 appear in the formal minutes, I think the question 24 should be asked in that fashion so as not to confuse the 25 witness.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
29-2 14223 1 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Do you have any explanation, 2 Mr. Poston, for why Mr. Goldberg's classification of the 3 Quadrex finding or explanation at least of the four 4 categories Quadrex planned to use and remarks related 5 thereto would not appear in the minutes of the meeting?
6 A Well, as far as I can tell, the important J
7 items reported on the top of page 3 of the minutes, on 8 the third page, you know, reflect that Quadrex, the ,
1 9 progress of Quadrex was discussed and presented by the 10 project manager. And at the end of that paragraph he 11 talks about the areas of concern at the moment. And as
) 12 far'as fulfilling the needs of the minutes, I feel that
- 13 they are representative of what went on in this meeting 14 in April.
15 Q Did you ever give Mr. Thrash any instructions 1
l 16 as to.what should appear or not appear in the formal
! 17 minutes as regards what went on in a meeting?
18 MR. AXELRAD: Are we talking about this r
L 19 particular meeting?
20 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) I'm raising a general 21 question, whether you ever gave Mr. Thrash instructions l~ 22 as to what should appear or not appear in the formal
..Q 23 minutes --
'\e 24 A I don't think so.
25 MR. AXELRAD: I object to -- the question's TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-2 14224 1 been answered.
2 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Do you know if Mr. Thrash was 3 ever given instructions -- let's limit this to the 4 January or February '81 through July '81' period, if 5 during that time Mr. Thrash was acting under 6 instructions from anyone on the management committee or 7 otherwise related to the owners as to what he should or 8 should not put in the minutes, the formal minutes?
9 A I don't think he was operating under any 10 different instructions during that time period than he 11 has from the beginning until today.
f) ~
Well, then let's go back to the instructions 12 O
$_/
(
13' at the beginning when he was first instructed to prepare 14 formal minutes. Were there certain ground rules laid 15 down as to things he would include in the formal minutes 16 and things he would not?
17 A We felt that the minutes should reflect action 18 items, substantive items, decisions that would provide 19 the chronology and memorialize the actions and 20 transactions that took place to design and build and 21 license the plant, get it operating. From the beginning 22 I believe that the secretary did a correct and fully
(} 23 adequate job of that assignment.
24 Q You've never had any reason to doubt the 25 accuracy or correctness of the formal minutes prepared TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-2 14225 1_ by Mr. Thrash?'
2 A No, sir.
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin, do you have 4 further questions on this general subject?
i 5 MR. SINKIN: Not on Applicants' 59, no.
6 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: No, I mean on preparation 7 of minutes.
8 MR. SINKIN: No.
9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Possibly, Mr. Poston, when
- 10 minutes are prepared, is there first prepared draft 11 . minutes which are circulated to the management committee 12 members?
( ,
, 13 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: And then do each of the 15 members supply their comments to 1tr. Thrash?
I- 16 THE WITNESS: Mr. Thrash supplies us a few 17 weeks after the meeting with his portrayal of the action 18 items and the discussions, significant discussions that -
19 took place at the management committee meeting. And _ _ .
20- then we review these at the meetings, at some subsequent 21 meetings in the presence of the other co-owners and him,
, ~22 the secretary, to agree, make any typo changes, name
-( ) 23' corrections, things like this, that these correctly
. i
\- 24 portray the decisions and the feelings and the judgments 25 of the management committee on the items.
TATE REPORTING (713)_._._-8442_
498 ...__._,..
sg 14226 O '
1 And, then, once that is done, if there are any 2 changes involved, then they're put in. If there are no 3 changes involved, which is the vast majority of the 4 minutes there are absolutely no changes involved, maybe 5 someone's name spelled wrong or a date or something like
~
6 that, but the substantive agreements and understanding 7 amongst the owners are the big things that we look for 8 when we suggest that the minutes do not correctly 9 reflect what the secretary put and in those instances, 10 we do get a change, 11 But I don't ever recall any change that was 12 put in, that was retrofitted into the minutes that did 13 not completely one hundred percent reflect what was 14 meant by the owners when they made certain statements at 15 the management committee meetings.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, with respect to this 17 April 27 meeting, do you recall whether the draft 18 minutes might have reflected additional information on 19 this discussion of categories which didn't make it into 20 the final?
21 THE WITNESS: No, sir, I don't recall. I do 22 not recall. But I feel that they did not.
23 During these meetings there are sometimes a b- 24 lot of side bar remarks made by people that don't, you 25 'know, don't end up being constructive, they don't end up TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
09-2 14227 D,m 1 being concurred or agreed as a route or a line of action 2 to take by the management committee. And the secretary 3 I feel has done a very good job of filtering these side 4 bar remarks out or remarks that are not of substance or 5 are not substantive.
6 And I believe that the minutes correctly 7 reflect the feelings and correctly reflect the character 8 of the presentations made to the owners. And I have no 9 recollection where anything of substance, of important 10 substance, such as this Quadrex report, were altered or 11 changed subsequent to the original draft being made. I O_/
.g 12 have no recollection.of thit.
13 JUDGE LAMB: Could I get a question in here, 14 too, please, Mr. Poston?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes.
16 JUDGE LAMB: Were there any topics which, as a 17 matter of policy or general practice, were not reported 18 because they were proprietary or confidential or of that 19 nature?
20 THE WITNESS: I don't recall any. I don't 21 recall any at the moment. I would say that -- however, 22 I would qualify that by saying that if items came up l]l' 23 that were not in the purview or not correctly in the 24 responsibility area of'the management committee, well, 25 the secretary would not record those things, you know.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
eg-2 )
l 14228 '
1 He was very strict and very fair-and very correct, in my 2 opinion,'of putting down discussions, decisions that 3 affect the correct responsibility of the committee of 4 owners.
5- JUDGE LAMB: Thank you.
G JUDGE SHON: Two minor questions.
7 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
8 JUDGE SHON: When these are circulated, these 9 minutes are circulated in draft form to the members of 10 the committee, are they circulated to everyone who
.11 attended the meeting whether or not he or she is part of
) 12 the committee? That is, how broadly are these minutes 13 reviewed for correctness?
14 THE WITNESS: They're reviewed by the 15 management committee principals and their alternates.
16 JUDGE SHON: I see.
17 Secondly, you mentioned that it's usually I 18 think you said a few weeks between when the meeting 19 occurs and when the final minutes are issued and that in 20 the interim this corrective process goes on and you have 21 another meeting often to agree upon what changes are to 22 be made; is that correct?
~N 23 THE WITNESS: Sir, that happens like this:
(d k- 2,4 The secretary drafts the minutes and sends them to the 25 participants from three weeks to two months following a TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
E -
1 ag-2 14229 b
1 meeting. And then at the next meeting after we have 2 received those back at our home offices, at the meetings 3 themselves any changes that are involved are put in 4 right there in the open meeting.
5 And my recollection is, I would have to study 6 these minutes again, my recollection is that when 7 changes are made, that that meeting where the changes 8 are suggested, or typos, is actually reflected in that 9 month's minutes.
10 JUDGE SHON: I see. Can you explain why then 11 this particular meeting that you had been discussing, p)
( 12 CCANP 110, the April 27th meeting, has an issue date for 1
13 the minutes on page 3, also numbered 4541, of April 14 30th? It appears that this only took three days rather 15 than the weeks that you suggested and I wonder whether 16 this particular meeting might not have been subject to 17 the usual procedures with regard to review and 18 discussion?
19 THE WITNESS: Well, if he gave us three-day 20 turnaround, the secretary was doing an extraordinary 21 job. In fact, he could, may always have these things 22 ready in two or three days. It's just that it's from
() 23 several weeks to several months that my memory recalls 24 that we usually get them.
25 I have -- I don't attach any significance if, TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
.. _ . . _ _ = . - . ._ . . - - . - . - - - --
2g-2 14230 1 in fact, they did come up and were presented three days 2_ af ter the meeting. I don't attach any particular 3 significance to that.
~
4 JUDGE SHON: Well, they seem to have been 5 finalized three days after the meeting.
6' THE WITNESS: Well, you know, as I said, as a 7 matter of perfunctory performance, the management 8 committee approves the minutes of previous meetings as a
.9 part of their regular agenda. And without -- I have not 10 inspected the minutes following this, but I feel that 11 that process did take place on this.
12 JUDGE SHON: Was, there a meeting of the 13 managdhent committee between April 27th and April 30th?
14 I don't think we've had minutes introduced from that 15 meeting, if there was.
16 THE WITNESS: Is it your feeling that the i
17 April the 27th draf t minutes ended up being the April 18 27th final minutes?
19 JUDGE SHON: I just don't know. I have no 20 idea. You had outlined a pro, cess which seemed to take 21 at least until another management committee meeting took 22 place, if you see what I mean. You've described a
(} 23 process that would take at least until another meeting k' '24 had been held and would of ten take weeks.
25 MR. AXELRAD: Judge Shown, if I could help, TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
~
29-2 14231 1 the minutes of the meeting of July 23, CCANP Exhibit No.
2 113 --
3 JUDGE SHON: Yes, uh-huh.
4 MR. AXELRAD: -- on page 6, the page which is 5 numbered 4604 at the bottom --
6 JUDGE SHON: Yes.
7 MR. AXELRAD: -- there is a reference to the 8 draft April 27th meeting, they approved that change.
9 Perhaps if you'd like to ask Mr. Poston any questions 10 about those --
11 JUDGE SHON: I see. So, the sequence
(~'\
\ _) 12 apparently here was that draft minutes were circulated, t
13 they were approved at the July 23rd meeting and then 14 dated the 30th of April, even though they had been 15 approved a couple of months later; is that right?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
17 MR. NEWMAN: It's got a preparation date on 18 it.
19 THE WITNESS: Yes. In fact, sometimes when we 20 would have real heavy agendas and maybe meet for six, 21 eight, ten hours a day and it would come time to
'22 reviewing the minutes, sometimes that would be the
()i 23 item -- the minutes would be the item that would be
~
24 deferred to the next meeting. .
25 And, so, while we may have been given copies TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442 ___.- ,_. _ _ _..._-
cg-2 14232 0 '
1 of the draf t minutes before the immediate following 2 meeting, sometimes it may be two meetings later or three 3 meetings later before we go through and review all of 4 the minutes to assure that they correctly reflected the 5 thoughts and the decisions of the management committee.
6 JUDGE SHON: In general, then, the date at the 7 end of the minutes would reflect the date the draf t 8 minutes were prepared rather than necessarily reflecting 9 a date after the meeting at which they were approved; is 10 that right?
11 THE WITNESS: Well, the date on the minutes as (x
12 they are finally printed and paginated reflects the date .
13 that the meeting took place.
- 14 JUDGE SHON: Yes. But it also has another 15 date which is the date immediately before Mr. Thrash's 16 signature in each case and that date in this case 17 apparently represented the time he prepared draft 18 minutes.
19 THE WITNESS: It may have. It may well have.
20 JUDGE SHON: Yes, sir.
21 JUDGE LAMB: If you look at number 109, you'll 22 see that the date that the minutes -- date in the
() 23 minutes for 109 is on March 21st, which is the day k 24 following the day on which the second meeting was held.
25 So, apparently it is the date on which the draft was TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
gg-2 14233 7_s O
1 prepared.
2 JUDGE SHON: That's what I was asking, whether 3 it is indeed the date when the draf t was prepared. It 4 appears to be. It appears that that date above Mr.
5 Thrash's signature, the last line above his signature in 6 most cases is simply the date on which they were 7 prepared, regardless of when they were approved.
8 THE WITNESS: Probably, yes, sir.
9 JUDGE SHON: I see.
10 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I --
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Are these --
' 12 MR. REIS: I,think we might -- I'm sorry.
13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: What I wondered was whether 14 these documents, such as, for example, CCANP 110, is 15 that a copy of the draf t minutes or the final minutes?
16 THE WITNESS: Are you looking --
17 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I'm looking at the one that 18 goes from, if you look at the bottom numbers, from 4539 19 through 4541. ,
20 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, may I recall from --
21 I'm sure you've all generally attended meetings where 22 the minutes are presented by the secretary who has
() 23 signed them at that point and then an item comes up,
'- 24 usually the first order of business, are there any i 25 corrections or something to the minutes. The minutes TATE REPORTING
.~ -
(713) 498-8442
cg-2 14234
(
\_/
1 then are reflected in the next -- any corrections are 2 reflected in the subsequent minutes of the meeting.
3 I mean, the way it comes up is the final 4 minutes are presented to the body at the next meeting 5 and they ask for corrections. It doesn't mean they're 6 retyped.
7 MR. SINKII,: I also think I can clear up one 8 thing. I think when Mr. Oprea was testifying he said 9 that when they are the final minutes, then they are 10 paginated with the number at the bottom right corner so 11 that these documents with the number at the bottom right 7! 12 corner should be the final minutes.
13 0 (By Mr. Sinkin) Is that correct, Mr. Poston?
14 Is this --
15 A Yes, sir.
16 JUDGE SHON: That fits with the fact that we 17 noted that there were several corrections yesterday that 18 had indeed been carried out by the time this copy was 19 prepared.
20 I'm through with my questions. I just wanted 21 to get the sequence right.
22 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Poston, on Applicants'
('^;) 23 Exhibit 59, these notes of Mr. Thrash, you stated w
24 earlier that you had seen them before and that your 25 attention was directed to certain portions. Had your TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
Eg-2~
14235 U<s 1 attention been previously directed to the portion where 2 Mr. Goldberg lays out the four categories and the 3 notation on the side says "we'll have to report to NRC?"
4 A Well, what page are you reading?
5 Q It's on page 3 of these. It's about a third 6 of the way down where he lays out the four categories.
7 Had your attention previously been directed to that 8 section?
9 A I don't think so. I think my attention was 10 directed to where my name may or may not appear. But it 11 could very well may have, I just don't recall.
12 Q All right.
L('
13 JUDGE BECH'HOEFER: Mr. Poston, do you have any 14 idea why those four categories are numbered 1, 2, 4 and 15 57 16 THE WITNESS: No, sir, I sure don't.
17 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Are you ready to go on to 18 the next --
19 MR. SINKIN: Yes, this is a good time for a 20 break, if you'd like.
.21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Why don't we take about a 22 fifteen-minute break.
23 (Brief recess taken.)
.(])
24 (No hiatus.)
25 TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
14236 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. Back on the record.
2 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Poston, when did you 3 see an actually copy of the Quadrex report?
4 A My recollection is in September of 1981.
5 0 Was that the first time, to your knowledge, 6 that a copy had been sent to the City Public Service in 7 San Antonio?
8 A Yes. That's my recollection.
9 Q Turning to CCANP 111 page 4564.
10 A All right.
11 Q Quadrex is now on the list of major problems 12 according to this document. Can you tell me why Quadrex
[]
i 13 was added to the list of major problems at this time?'
K.
14 MR. PIRFO: Excuse me, Mr. Sinkin, I didn't 15 hear any specific page reference.
16 MR. SINKIN: It's 4564.
17 MR. PIRFO: Oh, okay.
18 A We're in June of 19817 19 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Right. If I'm correct, the 20 meetings in May were cancelled. Do you remember that, 21 the --
22 A Yes, that's my recollection.
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I understand we're to blame 24 for that.
25 THE WITNESS: I'm afraid so, sir.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
i 4
14237
("/)
x_
1 A " Major problems" is a category chosen by the 2 project manager to be the paragraph head for presentation 3 that he would make to the committee of owners monthly or 4 when we would have our meetings, and my recollection is 5 that sometimes the category would be called major 9
6 concerns, sometimes it would be called major challenges, 7 sometimes major problems.
8 I don't know what prompted the project manager 9 to come up with that specific title, but certainly the 10 Quadrex report and the Quadrex allegations, Quadrex 11 focuses and concerns, were a major -- an item of major 12 consideration to the project manager at that time and to l3 h_) 13 the committee of owners, naturally.
14 0 Using CCANP 11, turning to the last page.
15 "MR. PIRFO: 111.
16 MR. SINKIN: I'm sorry, 111.
17 0 (By Mr. Sinkin) Turning to the last page of 18 CCANP 111, it's Exhibit No. 13, titled " Major problems."
19 Do you see that? -
20 A Does it have a page number?
21 0 4579.
22 A Yes, I have that page.
23 Q Do you see that the word " audit" is struck 24 through and replaced with the word " review"?
25 A Yes, I do.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
- - .-. . - . . - . _ _ . , - - -_- - - - - - - . __ - .. . - - _ . . ~
4 4
I 14238
. ll 0 Do you remember why this change was made?
2 A No, sir, I don't. .
3 A It seems a reasonable change. " Audit" usually
[ 4 has to do with accounting and financial records. I 5 personally don't have any problem with either word. l 6 Q Turning to CCANP 112, and in this instance, I 7 think we'll probably have to use the CCANP exhibit book.
8 A Yes.
l 9 Q Once again, we have notes Mr. Thrash made which l 10 have been' identified as the June 26th meeting. Have you 11 seen these notes before?
12 A I think so. I think I saw them for the first i A *
\_/ 13 time-three or four weeks ago.
[
~
14 Q Was your attention directed to certain portions l 15 of these minutes or these notes, I should say?
4' 16 A- As I recall, we focused on where my name was i 17 tied to a remark and to Quadrex issues.
3 18 Q Were you asked questions about your j 19 understandings of those particular items? :
20' A I don't understand the question.
21 Q Were you questioned as to how you understood 22 the particular item recorded in Mr. Thrash's notes?
[
$ 23 A No, I think my questions were just be prepared 24 to give my recollection of what I was -- what I meant to i
} 25 say as noted here on the secretary's penciled notes.
1
!~ l
(.
^
2 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14239 o
1 0 You see the -- ir. the brackets on the lef t-hand 2 side, the No. 1110?
3 A Yes.
4 Q And the item next to that, do you remember Mr.
5 Goldberg discussing the potentially reportable findings 6 in the Quadrex report on June the 26, 1981?
7 A Generally remember that that subject came up, 8 yes.
9 Q Once again, do you have any explaination for 10 why Mr. Goldberg's discussion of items being reported to l 11 the NRC does not appear in Mr. Thrash's formal minutes of 12 ' June the 26th?
13 A No. I would have to look through the minutes 14 of June the 26th to see what it said.
15 Q On page 4564, item 6 --
16 A Yes, I see that.
17 Q There does not appear to be any mention of 18 reports being made to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
19 A I don't see it in the minutes.
20 Q But as to why it's not in the minutes, you have l 21 no explanation?
22 A No, I don't -- in fact, I don't know whether 23 every time there was a 50.55(e) or an exchange with the 24 NRC that the minutes reflected it throughout the life of 25 the plant.
O3
~ ... .
i l
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498 t
__ _ _..__ _ _ _,.._ ._. ._._.__ -8442. - . _
cm 14240
/
1 Q Going down to the bracketed No. 1115, in the 2 Thrash notes, do you see that?
3 A Yes.
4 Q Do you remember Mr. Hancock asking if the 5 Quadrex report would be sent to the Public Utility 6 Commission?
7 A Vaguely. I vaguely remember that. ,
8 Q Do you remember Mr. Goldberg saying no it would 9 not?
10 A I don't remember what his response was. I 11 don't remember what his response was at that time.
12 Q Do you remember what Mr. Goldberg would have
.p
'k-)
s 13 said that Mr. Thrash might have recorded as "Goldberg has 14 refused to' send to NRC"?
15 A No, I don't know what was said, you know, 16 actually said at that time.
17 Q Do you remember Mr. Goldberg being questioned 18 as to whether the report would be given to the NRC?
19 A I remember generally discussions like that.
20 Q Do you remember anything he might have said as 21 to why he would not be sending it?
22 A I think that my recollection is that he 23 convinced us that he was doing the right and correct 24 thing with the Quadrex report and all of the issues
-x 25 relative to the Quadrex report, and I recall that I was TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14241 Q
1 convinced that all the steps that he was taking on this 2 issue and all the licensing issues were correct, timely, 3 forthright, sufficient, honest.
4 Q Do you remember you asking whether the report 5 would be sent to the intervenors?
6 A Yes.
7 Q And was the answer was no, it would not?
8 A I don't remember if the answer was just like 9 that.
10 Q What do you remember about that particular 11 dialogue; why did you ask the question?
12 A Well, because I knew that if it went to the 13 intervenors, that it would immediately get into the.
~
14 public domain and get to the meBia and then as I returned 15 from the airport in San Antonio, that I'd have media 16 there asking me some questions about something I was not 17 expert on. And t'erefore h I just wanted to be forewarned 18 whether or not it was going to take that route at that 19 time.
20 I know that ultimately, and in the right and 21 correct time, according to the regulations, that it must 22 go through over there and that's fine. I just wanted to 23 have some forewarning as to when.
24 Q It was your impression on June of 1981 that
< 25 eventually the intervenors would receive a copy of the TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442 I
14242 3
G 1 Quadrex report?
2 A Yes, sir.
3 Q And why was that your impression?
4 A Well, because everything about the plant, every 5 bit of good and bad and immediate information concerning 6 that plant ultimately gets to the intervenors; and from 7 there,. straight to the media, and from the media straight 8 to the people working on the plant, and I just wanted to 9 be in a position as representing San Antonio's interests 10 to be able to answer the questions correctly that the 11 general public wants to know, and therefore it's a 12 concern to me when these things hit the public domain.
13 Q Do you have any explaination as to why none of
'{
14 this dialogue between Mr. Hancock and yourself and Mr.
15 Goldberg about release of the Quadrex report appears in' 16 the formal minutes?
17 A No, sir, I don't know why it doesn't appear in 18 the minutes. I would say that the minutes reflect, as I 19 said earlier, all the action items and substantive things 20 that the management committee is concerned with.
21 Q Turning to CCANP 113, it's the July 23rd 22 minutes?
l 23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin --
l 24 MR. SINKIN: Yes?
l
. . 25 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: One question I raise on 113 l s f
\
I TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14243 1 is I'm not sure that was ever formally admitted. I was 2 checking the records on Saturday and I didn't find it.
3 I'm not sure whether --
4 MR. SINKIN: I appreciate your calling that to 5 my attention, Mr. Chairman.
6 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Poston, if you would 7 review CCANP 113 and see if it does indeed appear to be 8 the minutes of the July 23rd, 1981 management committee 9 meeting and July 24th, 1981 management committee 10 meetings?
11 A They appear to be.
12 MR. SINKIN: Based on that, Mr. Chairman, I
) 13 would move CCANP 113 into evidence.
14 MR. PIRFO: The staff has no objection.
15 MR. AXELRAD: Subject to the same 16 understandings that we previously had with respect to the 17 purpose for which these documents would come into 18 evidence.
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes. CCANP 113 will be .,
20 admitted.
21 (CCANP Exhibit No. 113 received in evidence.)
22 ,
23 'Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Turning to page 4603, at the 24 bottom there's an indented and quoted paragraph. Do you 25 recall what change was made by this revision to the 3
.( ,
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
. l l
l 14244 1 February 19th minutes?
2 Do you see where I am directing your attention? ,
3 A Yes.
4 Q There's a proposed change to revise the fourth 5 complete page paragraph on'page 22 read as follows. And G then there's a quoted paragraph. Do you know what the ,
7 revision was?
8 A No, sir.
9 _Q Presumably there is an insert that is being 10 made in the -- in some of the minutes.
11 Q As I read that that's a proposed change to the 12 February 19, 1981 minutes, that the paragraph-quoted be 13 revised as set forth in'these minutes. ,
s, i .
14 A That's probably a correct reflection of what 15 'was said in February.
16 Q But in terms of.what was actually revised, you 17 don't recall what was being revised in terms of what was 18 in the draft and what's set forth here?
19 A Well, we can go through the time to look in the 20 February minutes and find out what's on -- in that 21 paragraph.
' 22 Q What you'll find in the February minutes is
- 23 this revised paragraph, that's why I'm asking the 24 question.
- 25 A No, I don't recall what was substituted, what k
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14245
(}
1 was in there in the first place.
2 0 Okay. Turning to page 4678, do you recall at 3 the bottom of the page there's a dialogue between 4 yourself and Mr. Saltarelli recorded; do you recall that 5 dialogue?
6 A Yes.
7 Q Does that accurately reflect the dialogue 8 between you and Mr. Saltarelli?
9 A Probably does.
10 0 Do you know in this time period what the 11 opinion of HL&P project management was of Mr. Saltarelli?
12 A Of Mr. Saltarelli?
13 Q Yes. -
u 14 A I never ask anybody that their -- I didn't ask 15 anyone from HL&P what their opinion of was of Mr.
16 Saltarelli, no.
17 Q Was there ever an opinion expressed by HL&P of 18 Mr. Saltarelli's work?
19 A There may have been. I don't recall any.
20 Q I just want to check one thing with you, Mr.
21 Poston, whether the handwritten notes on the document I'm 22 showing you are in your handwriting.
23 A This is not my handwriting here.
24 0 That's all I want to know.
25 THE WITNESS: You want to identify it for these TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
-r ,
14246
.O- . .
1 folks over here?
2 MR. SINKIN: No, we won't be asking any 3 questions about the document.
'4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Just for my information, 5 which document is that?
6 MR. SINKIN: It's Document 10 pro'uced d by HL&P 7 in the original discovery, it's an April 16th addenda 8 drawn up by Mr. Poston that had some handwritten notes 9 for the April 27th meeting on it.
10 MR. SINKIN: I think that's all I have, Mr.
11 Chairman.
12 MR. PIRFO: We have no questions.
. 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Axelrad or Mr. Newman?
\
14 MR. AXELRAD: Could we have a minuti, Mr.
15 Chairman.
16 MR. PIRFO: They want a minute.
17 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Do you have -- do you want a 18 few minutes? Take a five minutes break; ten if you need l 19 it.
. 20' (Brief recess.)
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay. Back on the record, j 22 Mr. Axelrad.
23 MR. AXELRAD: We have no questions, Mr.
24 Chairman.
25 BOARD EXAMINATION A.s TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14247 1 By Judge Lamb 2 Q Mr. Poston, could you share with us your view 3 of how the management committee viewed the Quadrex 4 report?
5 A Yes, sir. When Mr. Goldberg came aboard with 6 Houston Lighting & Power to be the principal person with 7 The Light Company for handling the South Texas Project, 8 early on he told the management committee that he wanted 9 to get this assessment by an outside third party, capable 10 group of engineers and technicians and scientists to 11 review the status of engineering on the STP, because it 12 was his perception that the engineering was behind and if 13 we were to get on with this plant, that we needed'to do 14 something with this engineering lag.
15 And so-he engaged this group of engineers, 16 which I think they had a name change in the genesis of 17 this thing, sometime -- they.had another.name in the 18 beginning and as the project proceeded, it became 19 Quadrex. But when they came to the -- toward the end of 20 their report, they, in discussions with Houston Lighting 21 & Power, my understanding, and perhaps discussions with 22 Brown & Root, because in the development of their study, 23 they needed to be closely aligned and working with the 24 Brown & Root engineering staff and the Houston Lighting &
25 Power staff, to get the results and to get the answers TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
a em r^3 14248 V
. 1 that they were looking for, and that were needed.
2 And in April, May, along in there, they said 3 that it looks like we were going to focus on certain 4 areas. And then when we finally got the report in May, 5 it was reported to us by Houston Lighting & Power and as 6 I recall, they told us in May, that some of the issues 9
7 raised, if they turned out to be true, were reportable to 8 the NRC.
9 But it was our understanding, even at that time 10 and even in the months following subsequent to May and 11 June, July and August, that a lot of this finding by the
,_ 12 Quadrex group was subjective and was candidate for r >
l j> '
13 rebuttal, candidate for clarification, maybe even on more
! 14 complete dialogue between the Quadrex engineers and The 15 Light Company people and the Brown & Root people, maybe 16 some of their findings were based on incomplete or 17 incorrect information that would be modified.
18 So we looked -- I personally looked on the 19 Quadrex report as a sort of a draft report all the way 20 until I got a copy of it in September and even today, I 21 feel that much of the Quadrex report, certain things in 22 the Quadrex report, are merely Quadrex's opinions and 23 subjective assessments of the tasks.
24 So I felt comforted that experts under the
(~3 25 direction of The Light Company were overviewing the
\_/
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14249
(
1 engineering and I felt comforted that with this overview r
2 and overlap and there had been others in times past that 3 would come in and look on the progress and look at
! 4 certain features of the design of the plant, that
.5 hopefully we could get on, that we could identify 6 problems that Brown & Root or others could address and 1
7 solve and get on with the timely engineering and 8- construction of the plant.
9 And I believe that that opinion is shared by 10 the other owners relative to Quadrex. We knew that with 11 Mr. Goldberg and his staff at, Houston Lighting & Power 12 that whatever the regulatory bases that needed to be
-0 13 touched would be touched in the timely and correct 14 manner.
15 And it was -- that was our opinion, my opinion 16 at that time and it is today. He is a -- he and his 17 staff have exhibited to us that they know how to get the 18 plant built and licensed, and I think that his handling 19 of the'Quadrex report was correct, and I think it got the 20 results that we were looking for; I think it has end'ed up 21 tobeaproductivetoolinmakinganychanges,makinganh 22 alterations, you know, making any -- putting any help in 23 the engineering needs for the plant into place, and so we 24 feel that it's served a good and useful purpose.
{).
25 Q You mentioned that you were informed of this, I TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
/~s 14250 U
1 think you said, in May, but you did have not a management 2 committee meeting in May, as I recall. Was there a 3 special meeting for this or some other kind of 4 communication for this, or was it perhaps scae other 1
5 time?
6 A I don't recall what the forum was at this time.
7 We could look back through the notes and determine what 8 forum was that we were told that the Quadrex report was 9 in print. But I knew that it was a complex report 10 containing many issues that the owners, you know, were 11 not'really up on those all those details and all the 12 regulations and so forth and so on and what.the
! 13 qualifications of engineering that are necessary to go
\
! 14 ahead and continue construction.
t 15 All we knew is that Houston Lighting & Power 16 was familiar with and knowledgeable of and responsible 17 for touching all the bases that needed to be touched and f 18 we were convinced and are convinced that all the basis l
l 19 were touched correctly and adequately.
20 0 I was just inquiring about the point whether 21 you were actually notified by some special measur'e in May 22 since you didn't have a management committee meeting, or 23 whether it was perhaps in some other time, maybe at the 24 June meeting.
25 A Well, let's see. Do we have any minutes here
(
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
(~} 14251
%/
1 of a May meeting.
2 Q I don't believe so.
3 A I don't recall at this time what the forum was, 4 as I say, that we were given or told that the Quadrex 5 report was finished. I could maybe research the records l.
6 to make a determination on that. '
7 Q No, that won't be necessary. Thank you. Did 8 the committee or did you as a member of the committee 9 view the Quadrex report as being a problem? In other 10 words, when it was completed, did you view it as 11 something of an albatross, a difficulty, the report, 12 itself?
O ,
13 A I'll tell you, if -- I feel, I felt at the 14 time, that Brown & Root engineering was having problems, 15 because it couldn't get the work out. And we had had c 16 other committees, groups, technical engineers, technical 17 companies, look at the project in various aspects from 18 the beginning. And I suppose I viewed this as just 19 another one of those, perhaps more extensive.
20 And I knew that Brown & Root was having l
c 21- engineering problems getting the work out, and so when 22 Quadrex came out and confirmed that and then brought 23 these other issues up that maybe some of the scientific 24 calculations or supportive data to develop the
('T
\_/
25 construction drawings maybe needed to be relooked at or s
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14252
\
-1 augmented or proven up or whatever, it certainly wasn't, 2 you know, a feeling of comfort that went through the 3 management committee but it was a feeling that, "Well 4 yes, we recogn.ize there were problems and maybe -- and 5 here the problems are, and hopefully we can get our arms 6 around these problems."
7 Q Did you -- you mentioned, I think, in a couple 8 of instances in which you or other members of the 9, management committee questioned whether the report would 10 be turned over to the intervenors or to the public. On 11 these occasions, did Mr. Goldberg or anyone else in HL&P 12 refuse to turn over the report to any of those 13 organizations after being requested to do so by you or 14 other members of the committee?
15 A No, sir. I don't believe any of us ever j 16 requested that the reports be given to various places.
17 Our concern was are we doing the right thing; are we 18 doing the correct thing according to to the code of 19 . policy imposed by the NRC to build a nuclear power plant, 20 and we were always assured that we were, and in
(; 21 retrospect, I feel that way at this point, that all the 22 correct and legal bases were touched.
23 In regard to your question about turning it 24 over to the intervenors, the -- the_ correspondence and 25 the identification of progress on that plant, you know, k_.-
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14253
. a t
r-' _
1 as you know, is a matter of law and policy, it gets wide 2 distribution.
3 And as an objecter, you know, we each have our 4- other duties back in our home companies and we rely on 5' The Light Company to build and license the plant. When 4
6- these letters would get into the hands of intervenors or 7 be mailed as a matter of fact to the intervenors, they 8 would in that time frame and.I suppose even today, 9 immediately go to the media and it would look like the
. 10 media would,.if it was a lax time news periods, they 11 would pick it up and you might get a headline or you 12 might get a large print-on page.2, and it was a source of 13 ~ annoyance, you might say to me, to have to be able to 14 cite what all the legal requirements of a 50.55(e) are, 15 'and what regulation does this or that fall into and what-16 is the scientific basis for calculation being i 17 insufficient, differential equations supporting this~or 18 that pipe support, and we recognized that if our i
19 reporters back home would call us on Saturday night or 20 Sunday morning and say, " Hey, what's the problem with 21 this or that."
22 And then if we can't answer it, we felt just a-23 little bit of embarrassment not being able to answer. We 1
24 would like to refer that to the experts, we must do that.
25 And so any time you got information, even in 4
' s.
k' i
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
b 14254 <
l 1 draft form, which I consider draft form, things that 2 haven't been fully ~ thought out, things that haven't been l 3- fully developed, answered, resolved by the owners, or by 4 the project manager to get those into the public domain 5 just creates a problem for the owners.
6 And of course, the other thing that really is E 7 bothersome is the fact that when it gets in the 8 newspapers, when negativism on this plant gets into the 9 newspapers, it doesn't help us to keep good qualified
{ 10 people on the job on the site.
11 We recognize that the law and the rules and the 12 openness that are necessary in the construction of this
(~h 13 plant, which is important to all of the owners, very 7_/
s ,
14 *important to all the owners, substantial monies are spent 15 and dedicated to getting this plant licensed and 16 operating, that.when you get these negative vibes that 17 are unanswered are not correctly answered by amateurs 4
18 such as me or such as any of the other owners, other than
. 19 Houston Lighting & Power, get that in the paper, that 20 it's difficult to keep, hire keep and retain good 21 employees.
22 And so I feel a little bit bad about that 23 aspect of this public domain issue. But we try to work 24 around that, and we are insistant that The Light Company 25 do what's a hundred percent required by the law, nothing 4
O TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
l 14255 (v^)
1 more, nothing less; and as far as I'm concerned, they've 2 always done that.
3 0 Are you aware of any sentiment among members of 4 the management committee to the effect that the report 5 should have received wider distribution than it did; this 6 is during the period between the time the company 7 received it and September?
8 A I don't recall any of the management committee 9 wanting the report distributed to anyone.
10 Q Were you, or any of the other members of the 11 management committee, as far as you know, ever advised or 12 requested by HL&P to keep the report confidential from 13 the public or from NRC or from this Board? .
14 A No, sir, I don't recall anything like that. I 15 say my recollection is that we got the report -- I got 16 bound copies of the report sometime in September. That's 17 my recollection. And I know of no such request by 18 anybody with The Light Company in that regard; on the 19 contrary, I think there attitude has been to us, complete --
20 whatever the rules are, we'll follow them to the hilt.
21 We've got to get the plant built, we're going 22 to touch all the bases, we're going to do -- we're going ;
l 23 to do it right and correct. And that's all I, to date, l 24 have gotten from Houston Lighting & Power Company.
/~' 25 Q Did the management committee or any one inquire TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
.O 14256 V
1 into whether the HL&P decisions on 50.55(e) reporting to
- 2 NRC concerning the Quadrex report were appropriately 3 made?
4 A In retrospect?
5 0 Well, was this question discussed or was it 6 raised as to whethor HL&P was correctly reporting Quadrex 7 matters to the NRC?
8 A I don't recall us getting involved in that.
.9 The only thing, in that kind of a dialogue, we could 10 have, I don't recall. The only thing that we wanted in 11 that time, in 1981, was for them to do the correct thing.
12 And I believe --
ps) 13 0 Well, what I'm asking is whether the. committee -
14 or any members of the committee reviewed formally or 15 informally, whether the correct thing was being done?
16 A I don't recall us taking that on as a task, no, 17 sir --
18 Q Excuse me, go ahead.
19 A It was my -- it's my understanding that that 20 when the reportable items were generated and met the 21 criteria, that they were reported to the NRC. And that 22 is, I think, that that was the correct thing to do and I 23 believe they did do it, as I recall.
24 Q Did the management committee normally inquire 25 into these things, that is the details of whether the TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14257
- (*)
)
1 company was performing as it should in reporting things 2 to NRC under 50.55(e) ?
4 3 A I don't believe the management committee 4
4 specifically did on this issue. I know that the
, 5 management committee was dedicated to assuring that all 6 the correct steps were made on the plant, and that there 7 were licensing steps made, that they were the correct 8 ones. And I can assure you that if those committees of j 9 . owners after the expenditure of all these monies and all !
10 this time felt that Houston Lighting & Power was being 11 ~ 1ess than candid and less than correct, we would have 12 certainly raised that point and objected to that point.
> 13 My recollection is is that Houston Lighting &
14 Power convinced us, explained to us, the owners, that the 15 steps that they were taking with this report as well as 16 all of the other reports that we've had in times past was 17 being handled correctly.
18 JUDGE LAMB: Thank you, that's all I have.
19 0 (By Judge Bechhoefer) Mr. Poston, I want to 20 follow up on a few documents that we've gotten, some of 21 which you have and some of which you haven't been 22 questioned about thus far.
23 The first one is I want to go back to the April 24 27, '81 meeting, of the management committee. The 25 question that Mr. Sinkin asked you, I guess the last TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
l 14258
\
1 question, was whether you were familiar with certain l 2 notes. It was a document No. 10.of the group. I don't 3 want to ask you about the notes, I want to ask you about 4 the document, itself. The letter dated April 16, '81.
5 A Yes, sir.
6 Q Are these -- is this the proposed addenda which 7 you sent to the other management committee meet.ings 8 members? ,
9 A Yes, sir.
10 (No hiatus.)
11 12
'13 -
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 4
O i
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
.cg-4 14259 LI 1 Q On page 2, what does item number 2 reflect, 2 the one that says "ASLB proceedings status report?" Do 3 you recollect what you had in mind?
4 A Sir, weren't there ASLB proceedings going on 5 at this time?
6 0 They hadn't started yet.
7 A They had not started yet?
8 Q They were to have started in May.
9 A Actually, I have -- what San Antonio does in 10 developing the agenda is we suggest possible items which 11 the project manager may want to discuss and sometimes we
) 12 put things on here which ultimately don't get discussed 13 or substitute. I don't know what our thinking was at 14 that time to put that on there. Perhaps ASLB 15 proceedings were imminent or --
16 Q That they were.
17 A Okay.
18 0 I notice the minutes, however, which were 19 introduced made no mention of that, that's why I 20 wondered whether you had any idea what that item meant.
21 A Sometimes -- as I was saying earlier, 22 sometimes we suggest things on the agenda which never
() 23 get discussed. Other times agenda items are covered, 24 but if the owners feel that no decisions were made that 25 require action by any of the owners, no directives were TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
eg-4 f,s 14260
()
1 given to any of the owners, to the project manager or 2 nothing substantive, important to the responsibilities
.3 of the management committee, then they don't get into 4 the minutes. And presumably there was no action 5 required by any of the owners at this time, it was just 6 a report if time permitted to get into perhaps. I don't 7 recall how that was handled or whether it was discussed 8 or not.
9 Q I see. So, the minutes would not necessarily 10 have the disposal of all of the items that are on the 11 agenda or proposed agenda?
12 A That's correct, sir'.
t' .
13 Q Would there be any relationship to this item 14 and potential discussion of whether the Quadrex report 15 should be -- the relationship of the Quadrex report to 16 the proceedings?
17 A I'm inclined to think not, but I just don't 18 recall.
19 I can assure the Judge that in this period 20 that the owners and the project managers were a hundred 21 percent dedicated to doing the correct things. We had 22 been through show cause, we had been through engineering
() 23 delays, we had been through shutdowns and we didn't want A 24 any more problems. We wanted to get on with the 25 building of the plant.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
4
.cg-4 ;
i 14261.
- s. 1 And I can assure you that if any of the owners
~
2 felt that some bases weren't being touched, that we 3 would have, if so, made sure that the bases were being 4 touched. But we-were convinced from listening to the 5 project manager and listening to the rules, without 6 second guessing him or reading the rules ourselves or 7 whatever, we really were convinced and are convinced at 8 this time that whatever steps must be taken are taken.
9 Q Now, this.apparently relates to the same 10 meeting. Would you have your counsel show you what was 11 provided to us as document number 11.
.g
- 12 Do you rec,ognize whose notes those might have 13 been?
- 14- A They look like my notes.
- 15 Q Well, that helps. Now, do you know what you 16 meant by the last four lines on the second page?
17 A The last four paragraphs on the second page?
18 Q Four lines.
19 A Four-lines.
20 Q I'm sorry, 21 A Yes, it says here, "There will be several 22 areas of concern which may reflect on potential
' () 23 .licensability of the plant. These will need reporting 24 to the NRC." The other concerns grade down.
25 And my recollection of that is that Goldberg TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
- ~ ,
cg-4 14262 O '
/ 1 reported to us in this time frame that some of the areas 2 of focus of the Quadrex report may end up on the report 3 as items that need to be reported to the NRC and that l 4 there are other items which are serious and may need 5 addressing and fixing but would not need reporting to l 6 the NRC. ;
7 Q Did this have any relationship to all of the 8 items which Quadrex said affected licensability or which 9 were categorized at that time in that --
10 A Well, I don't know if I understand your 11 question, but I --
12 Q Well, the Quadrex subdivision of items (U) 13 affecting licensability, the first category, would this 14 have had a relationship to all of those do you think? l l
15 A I would -- as I understand it, the problems 16 were -- and we talked about it earlier, the problems 17 were stratified. Houston Lighting & Power asked for the l 18 problems to be stratified in the report. And it's my 19 understanding that licensing concerns or the 10CFR 50.55 20 regulations require that in certain areas if they meet a i
21 criteria must be reported, certain other areas which may 22 be serious problems may not be reported, they just need
(} 23 fixing.
24 That may or may not be a correct assessment on i
25 my part of what the rega are, but it was my t
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442 ,
cg-4 14263 V
1 understanding in accordance with my notes right here 2 that those that needed reporting would be reported and 3 that those, the other concerns grade down; they did not, 4 insofar as reporting is concerned, need to be reported.
5 Q (By Judge Shon) Mr. Poston, I think one of 6 the things the Chairman is driving at is in the four 7 sets of -- the set of four categories that had been 8 mentioned to you as being reflected in the Quadrex 9 report, the top category was items which affect plant 10 licensability. Was it your understanding that that was 11 synonymous with items that must be reported to the NRC,
) 12 the two were one in the same?
13 A I thought that they were stratified according 14 to most serious and right on down. And I would think 15 that what may be most serious from an engineering 16 completion standpoint or from a proving up of the 17 calculations and so forth may not necessarily overlay a 18 hundred percent with what must be reportable. But, you 19 know, it certainly makes sense.
20 I would say that in retrospect that you may 21 find potentially reportable items in all of these four 22 categories. I don't recall now whether, you know,
(~j) 23 absent any specific notes to that effect that the most 24 serious problems completely overlay or are synonymous
! 25 with those that must be reported immediately. Could TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
r- -
- cg-4 l 14264 1O f 1 very well be.
2 Q Thank you. That's all I wanted to establish, 3 your understanding at the time.
1 4 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Mr. Poston, when, if 5 you recall, was the management committee aware that, 6 shall we say, Brown & Root was in trouble in staying on 7 as either architect engineer or particularly architect 8 engineer?
9 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, of course, I hate 10 to object to a question by the Board Chairman. This l 11 particular witness has been subpoenaed by Mr. Sinkin to l %
12 testify with respect to management committee r,'
13 consideration of the Quadrex report.
o- 14 I realiz'e, of course, he is here and to the 15 extent that the Board wants to ask him any questions, it 16 is free to do so. But I do want to make sure the Board l
l 17 realizes that when it issued the subpoena it did make i
18 clear that the witnesses that would be appearing would 19 be testifying on the matters which were identified in 20 the two documents that Mr. Sinkin has provided. I note 21 that only for the Board's information.
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, I just wanted to see 23 if Mr. Poston could elaborate on a dialogue which k' 24 apparently also took place at the April 27 meeting. And 25 I'm referring to document number 1 concerning the Brown l
TATE _ REPORTING (713) 498-8442 ._
(_
l . ___
- f. Cg .
i 14265 iV 1 & Root documents. It's document number 1, page 2, 2 there's a dialogue there --
3 MR. AXELRAD: I would be glad to show him that 4- document if you do wish to question him with respect to 5 matters beyond for which he is appearing today.
6 If I may just interrupt for one minute. I'd i
7 also like to point out if the Board does get into 8 additional questioning, the parties will want to follow 9 up on the Board's questioning and I'm not sure how far 10 the Board wants to go in those particular directions.
11 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, could I see what it 12 is you're looking at? .
13 Oh, okay.
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Does the Staff have any 15 opinion about whether we should ask any questions along 16 this line? I intend to ask Mr. Poston.only about items 17 that were directly attributed to either questions he 18 . asked or comments he made, at least according to Mr.
19 Thrash's notes. There were only two or three of these.
20 MR. REIS: We are opening it up into a new 21 area which the witness was not called for and did not 22 testify to on direct and in that sense it's improper.
O 22 aa r, ir =he ao ra r 11r re 1 te c rr ror -
24 complete record and it feels that the record would be 25 absolutely improper without it, the Board can question TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-4 14266 1 him about it. But it certainly is beyond the subpoenas 2 and beyond the direct examination to go into these Brown 3 .& Root matters other than the Quadrex report and those 4 things that relate to Quadrex.
5 MR. SINKIN: As far as the intervenors are
.6 concerned, if you wish to go beyond our direct case, we 7 certainly have no objection.
8 Mr. Chairman, I also wanted to observe there 9 has been a sort of generic term " facts and 10 circumstances" which has been used to encompass broader 11 information than might otherwise have come into the 12 record over my objection and I think the facts and
['
s 13 circumstances of the Quadrex report certainly include 14 the management committee's attitude about Brown & Root's 15 engineering on April 27th, 1981.
16 MR. ;REIS: Mr. Chairman, there's another 17 general problem with this. These documents were 18 provided to the Board, I guess to all the parties, as 19 part of discovery because discovery wasn't complete.
20 ordinarily discovery documents aren't provided to the 21 Board at all and using discovery documents to further 22 the examination, I don't know whether that makes -- how
() 23 that falls.
\' 24 MR. SINKIN: I don't understand. The Board's 25 the one that ordered the discovery so they would 9VRJYW&E60XA Cl#1LA901-fld@
cg-4 14267 LJ 1 obviously have to be provided to the Board.
2 MR. REIS: It was in lieu --
3 MR. SINKIN: It was in lieu of granting the 4 parties discovery.
5 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Mr. Poston, what I will 6 ask you at this point is whether the particular dialogue 7 that seems to be represented by these notes on the top 8 of page 2 of this series of notes, you see where your 9 name --
10 A Yes, sir.
11 Q -- is there? Did that inquiry have anything 12 at all to do with preliminary reports which the 13 management committee'might have received about'what was 14 coming out of the Quadrex study? This was a week or so, -
15 a little over a week prior to the delivery of Quadrex, 16 but preliminary reports had been made. Did your inquiry 17 here have anything to do with what you were learning or 18 might have been learning preliminarily about Quadrex?
19 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, do you want to ask 20 him first whether he has any recollection of that 21 particular inquiry before you ask any further questions 22 on it?
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Oh,'yes. Yes.
)
\~
24 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Do you have any 25 recollection of that sort of a dialogue that appears to TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
eg-4 14268
'O V
1 be there on the first four lines?
2 A I have a weak recollection of it, yes, sir.
3 Our concerns about Brown & Root, you know, 4 dated back to the early part of the project when 5 schedules were not being met, when completion dates were 6 not being met, naturally as early as '77, '78, '79, '80, 7 '81; however, the delays in engineering and the degree 8 of incompleteness of the engineering and the 9 construction were of concern to me. And we were from 10 time to time making appeal to Brown & Root to maybe hire 11 more technical staff, maybe reorganize, beef up certain 12 areas, whatever it took, stimuli from the top of their 13 organization.
14 And I think that the Quadrex report in my mind 15 was just another report that pointed up engineering 16 delays and engineering shortcomings, if you will, that 17 we had already sensed and known about from the 18 beginning. And I think that -- I say from the 19 beginning, I would say since '78, '79 when we had other 20 looks by other consultants as what could we do to 21 bolster Brown & Root engineering to help the plant. And 22 I would imagine in this context that my statements 23 related to that, how could we use any consultant's help
({ )
k- 24 to bolster Brown & Root engineering.
25 Q Well, in the course of that dialogue, did you TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
Gg-4 14269 O,
\_/
1 view the ongoing -- do you think that dialogue stemmed 2 in part from the Quadrex -- what was coming out of the 3 Quadrex review?
4 A I just don't recall. I think they were 5 parallel concerns that came together as the Quadrex 6 report was finishing. I think they were parallel 7 concerns.
8 ,
I think the -- well, my feeling and my 9 recollection is that we have always been concerned about 10 the degree of incompleteness and certain other questions 11 about Brown & Root engineering on the one hand, and on A
i g_) 12 the other hand here was another consultant that was
(
13 aboard who was about to come out with findings on the 14 same issue, namely Brown & Root engineering. They were 15 coming together.
16 And I think it's reasonable to presume that 17 that is what made me bring this issue up at this time at 18 this meeting, the fact that these two concerns were 19 coming together and hopefully, you know, the Quadrex 20 findings would help the Brown & Root engineering in 21 whatever -- or help the project in whatever way was the 22 best way to go from there.
('T 23 Q Did the management committee either at this
%J 24 point in time or later view the Quadrex -- what was 25 coming out of the Quadrex review as likely to determine TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-4 14270
{j}
~
1 whether Brown & Root would stay on as architect 2 engineer, or would be kept on, I should say, as 3 architect engineer?
4 A I think that the Quadrex report was one in 5 many other areas of symptoms that dictated that we make 6 some changes in the engineering for the nuclear plant.
7 Whether the Quadrex report precipitated a thought that 8 was already in the minds of others or not, I can't say.
9 All I can say is for myself that the Quadrex report 10 corroborated what was obvious to me or apparent to me 11 for several years prior, that they just didn't have
(/
s_ 12 their arms around the engineering needs for the plant.
I ..
13 And that if we were going to finish the plant properly 14 and correctly and timely, that we needed to make some 15 changes to that engineering effort.
16 0 So, would you say that the Quadrex report 17 would be the straw that broke the camel's back?
18 A It may -- ,
19 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, the witness just 20 finished saying exactly the opposite, that it was one of 21 many symptoms.
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, I'm exploring that a
(). 23 little bit.
V 24 A I would say that if it were not for the 25 Quadrex report, that Brown & Root -- we would still have TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-4 14271 0
1 had to address what was there and that is the Brown &
2 Root engineering shortcomings, with or without the 3 Quadrex report, because I think that in retrospact, I 4 think we all can see that at that point in time that the 5 engineering had some shortfalls, were behind schedule, 6 had some of these other problems that were identified by 7 Quadrex. And had it not been Quadrex, it would have 8 been someone else or maybe none of the above and maybe 9 we'd have just made the decision to make some changes 10 with engineering on the job without the Quadrex report.
11 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Do you recall whether O 12 at the management committee meeting, any of them, there
>_/
13 was discussion at all of the particular method by which 14 Houston Lighting & Power chose to review the Quadrex 15 report? In other words, the substitution of what's been 16 known here as a review committee for the normal IRC 17 review, the review committee being Mr. Goldberg, Mr.
18 Robertson and --
19 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, again, I remind you 20 that it's beyond the scope of direct. I mean, the Board 21 has some leeway, but it.is beyond the scope of direct.
22 MR. SINKIN: I don't consider this question
()
23 beyond the scope of' direct at all, Mr. Chairman.
24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I don't think that's -- I 25 think this was the management committee consideration of TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-4 14272
/~N
(_)
1 the Quadrex report.
2 MR. NEWMAN: I think, not in the nature of an 3 objection, Mr. Chairman, but for clarification, it's not 4 clear that it's been established that the witness knows 5 how the Incident Review Committee functioned or how 6 things were done normally inside the company. He may 7 not be aware of how that process worked. And to ask him - -
. 8 about a change is not -- or a differentiation from that 9 I don't think would be helpful.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, yes.
11 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) First, are you or the
')t - 12 management committee aware of the manner in which the 13 Quadrex rebort was reviewed for reportability to the 14 NRC?
15 A All I know is that it was reviewed by Light 16 Company officials and by Brown & Root engineering 17 persons to determine what was reportable and what was 18 not reportable and what needed further study.
19 Q So, you are not aware of the particular method 20 of review and whether it differed in any way from the 21 review of other 50.55(e) matters; is that correct?
22 A I don't know of any different treatment that 23 was given to these findings, given the nature of the
-( ])
\- 24 source of the findings, from any other reports that 25 would go to the NRC f rom the project.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
z..
'gg-4 14273 1 Q Okay. That's all I wanted to know on that.
2 My next question relates.to what appears to be 3 or what is marked as being a July 27 management 4 committee meeting. First, we have CCANP Exhibit 113 are 5 minutes of a July 23rd and a July 24 meeting. To your 6 knowledge, was there a meeting on July 27 as well?
7 MR. AXELRAD: A meeting of the management 8 committee, Mr. Chairman?
9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes, yes.
10 What I'm. referring to, by the way, for 11 counsel's -- I'm going to ask him about a document which 12 was provided to us as a supplementary. document on April
-13 26'which is headed notes of --. excerpts from notes of a i 14 July 27th meeting.
15' A I don't recall whether there was:a meeting --
16- I brought all the minutes that referenced Quadrex in 17 '81. I did not bring any July 27 minutes.
18 MR. SINKIN: Can you give a document number on 19 that'one? It was the supplement April 26th --
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The top one. It's the
~21 first supplement. These I guess are Mr. Thrash's 22 notes.
'23 MR. AXELRAD: We did identify those in our k 24 ' April 26 letter to the Board. Those are excerpts of 25 notes of the July 27, 1981 meeting. I'm not sure TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-4
~
14274 (T) v 1 whether -that was just a typographical error in our 2 letter or not.
3 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) My only question, was 4 this the same meeting as the ones that are -- of the 5 meetings that are included in CCANP 113? Those exhibits 6 have a July 23 meeting and a July 24 meeting which 7 include the chief executive officers, but I wondered if 8 this was the same as either of those or was this a 9 different meeting?
10 A Sir, yes. What we've been doing here, see, we 11 have -- two or three weeks ago or four weeks ago was the Q
first time I'd seen these penciled notes of Mr. Thrash.
12 s
13 So, we were trying to tie down the official minutes with 14 these notes that you're suggesting we look at.
15 Q Right. Right.
16 A So, your question again is, sir, please?
17 0 Well, first, was there a meeting on July 27 or 18 do these notes represent one of the meetings that were 19 included in CCANP Exhibit 113?
20 A I think these notes refer to July the 24th.
21 Q Now, do you remember the dialogue in the 22 middle of the first page of these where it says "are our
'( ) 23 standards too conservative" and then there's a mention 24 of something Mr. Saltare111 said? Do you remember that 25 dialogue?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
C9-4 14275 O
1 A No, sir, I don't remember that one.
2 Q I wondered if it had anything to do with 3 Quadrex findings?
4 A I just don't recall whether it did or not.
5 Q I was wondering what the " analyze our way out 6 of it" meant.
7 A Sir, just in trying to put this together, 8 apparently those comments that you referred to do not 9 deal with the Quadrex. The Quadrex seems to have --
10 discussions seem to have occurred later on in that same 11 meeting.
12 (No hiatus.)
(
13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
() 23 24 25 TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
14276 v .
/
1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's why I wanted to find 2 out about that.
3 THE WITNESS: Apparently that remark dealt with 4 painting of control panels.
5 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, may I suggest I think 6 the month is wrong. I think these refer to a meeting in 7 June. As I look through the Exhibit 111, it seems to 8 follow more closely the June meeting than the July 9 meeting.
10 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Reis, it follows exactly.
11 MR. REIS: It does?
12 MR. AXELRAD: Both in time and -- yes, item No.
13 6 was being taken first, in the second paragraph,on page 14 2 of the July 24th note beginning at the 40 and then item 15 'No. 7 Quadrex is taken up at 9:55 and in the minutes it 16 shows next discussion, exhibits 9.
17 MR. REIS: Oh, I see.
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, anyway. I was just 19 trying to tie it down. It does seem that it's reasonable 20 that it could tie into the 24th, July 24th.
21 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) My next question is on ,
22 the se:ond page, the one that has two numbers 81129 and 23 00481, what is the discussion of the -- the discussion at 24 the top of the page, does that relate to the Quadrex 25 report, the Quadrex items, the one where you mention or
(
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
gS 14277 G
1 where there is a statements of blow out of water? Is 2 that your words or is that Mr. Thrash's words or --
3 MR. SINKIN: Where are you, Mr. Chairman.
4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Toward the top of the second 5 page, at the top of the second page, where you, 6 apparently, Mr. Poston --
7 MR. SINKIN: I'm sorry, can we start over which 8 document we're looking at --
9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, the second page of 10 what is marked July 27, '81, meeting but apparently is 11 July 24.
7_
12 MR. SINKIN: Okay.
J 13 0 (By Judge Bechhoofer) Mr..Poston, you 14 apparently asked about serious. problem areas.
l 15 A Yes, well, in trying to interpret Mr. Thrash's f
16 notes here, apparently the comment about blow out of j 17 water is attributed to Mr. Saltarelli.
l
[ 18 0 Do you remember Mr. Saltarelli's saying 19 something like that?
20 A No, sir, I don't remember that at this time.
21 0 Do you remember any comments on taking -- or 22 trying to avoid taking prob 1 cms out of design sequence?
23 MR. AXELRAD: I don't see any reference to l 24 problems here. i Are you reading from the back?
(~) 25 0 (By Judge Dechhoefer) I'm trying to interpret 2;
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14278 1 what the word what means, what we're trying to avoid 2 taking out of design sequence, what those comments might 3 have meant.
4 A The minutes on page 4678 talk about a dialogue 5 between Mr. Saltarelli and Mr. Goldberg, and Mr. Poston 6 got involved in it somewhat. My questions to Mr.
I 7 Saltarelli after his little presentation was how a 8 problem that he described could have happened. And I 9 think that this characterized, this question 10 characterized the kind of earnest appeal that we were 11 making to Brown & Root to try to get to the, if you will, 12 root of the engineering problems.
O<
~
13 0 So this related to the outside pipe problem as 14 it's referred to on page 4678?
15 A My recollection of it, it dealt with 16 engineering progress, engineering approaches. And Brown 17 & Root had brought in Mr. Saltarelli who was a new, 18 relatively new face to the management -- to their staff 19 at the management cowmittee meetings, and I was taking 20 the opportunity to question him in line with what is it 21 going to take to fix the engineering progress on the 22 plant. And in that tone, this question was addressed.
23 Q Do yoc know whose remarks the -- what's in 24 quotes as "all high risk," end quote, do you know what
{) 25 that meant?
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14279 1 A No, sir, I don't recall that.
j 2 0 Was that -- you don't recall whether it was or 3 Mr. Saltarelli, or someone else, for that matter --
4 A No, sir.
5 0 -- or whether it was even said.
6 A I don't recall whether or not it was said, t
7 0 Immediately thereafter, was there some 8 discussion of reportability?
9 A The -- are you referring to these penciled 10 notes?
l 11 Q Yes. Do you remember any discussion of that 12 subject?
13 A Not in specific. I know that in all of this
\_
14 time, that Houston would report to us what had been l
t- , 15 reported to the NRC and why and what was the nature of
[ 16 the problems and so forth, things like this, 17 Q But as far as you know -- well, do you remember f-18 discussion of the two or three specific items mentioned?
19 The computer codes, the shielding and the HVAC?
20 A Yes, sir, I do. I do remember discussing 21 those.
22 Q Was the discussion limited to that?
23 MR. AXELRAD: I'm sorry, the discussion of 24 what, Mr. Chairman?
25
{).
JUDGE BSthBOEFER: Of reportability to NRC.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
l., 14280 1 A My recollection is that after sifting through 2 the reports or the report by Quadrex, that we were told L- 3 that the potential reportable and/or reportable items 4 consisted in the HVAC, computer code verification, and 5- shielding calculations.
6 Q Any other specific ones you might recall?
7 A I can't recall any. I might if I look at these 8 -minutes. I know that I was convinced at the time that 9 all of the items that needed to be reported were 10 reported.
11 Q Now I want to go to a much later meeting, but
'12 it's included in the same series, the documents were all O.
g 13 stapled together. They were provided to us at the same 14 time. This is a September 12, 1981 meeting.
L 15 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I would like to I
16 bring to the Board's attention again, those were not 17 meetings of the management committee. To the extent that 18 Mr. Poston has been subpoenaed here to discuss management t
[. 19 committee meetings, we will now be going on to a
! 20 different subject. I just want to be sure that the Board l 21 realizes that.
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's what I was going to
[ 23 ask. It's a meeting apparently where Mr. Poston was 24 included.
25 MR. AXELRAD: I understand. But that's not the TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14281 1 point I was making,_Mr. Chairman. There are undoubtedly 2 meetings Mr. Poston attended that were not meetings of 3 the management committee.
4 If the Board wants to go beyond the scope of 5 Mr. Poston's subpoena, obviously the. Board can do that, 6 but again you would be opening up additional areas of 7 inquiry which this' particular witness was not subpoenaed 8 here for and which were not covered in his direct 9 testimony. And I don't know if the Board wants to extend 10 the sco'pe of Mr. Poston's testimony in that fashion.
11 MR. SI:iKIN: Mr. Chairman, are you referring to 12 CCANP 837 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I could check.
14 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I think CCANP 83 is 15- the actual minutes for which those are the rough notes.
16 I could be mistaken.
17 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I guess that's correct. It 18 says the same, but is CCANP 83 -- let me ask you, is that --
19 is this a management committee meeting or is this some 20 other meeting; CCANP 83.
- 21. THE WITNESS: Apparently, this September 22nd 22 meeting is not a management committee meeting.
23 MR. SINKIN: September 12 is the actual 24 meeting.
't ) 25 THE WITNESS: Excuse me, September 12, yes. Is TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
lC:1 1 not a meeting of the management committee. It's just a ;
2 meeting of STP participants.
3 MR. MEYER: If it would be helpful to the 4 Board, as I prepared Mr. Thrash and assisted him in his 5 testimony for the Brown & Root litegation, these are his
~
6 notes, this exhibit are simply his notes, they're not 7 minutes in the sense that they were presented to 8 presented to those present for their approval, simply a 9 typed up set of his notes that he kept while he was at 10 the meeting.
11 MR. PIRFO: Is he talking about 83 --
12 MR. MEYERS: Yes, Exhibit 83.
13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Right. Right. What I had p
s .. .
14 originally been asking about what is the rough notes of 15 what turned out to be 83, but the wording is the same, so --
16 Okay.. If it isn't a management committee 17- meeting, I guess I will not ask Mr. Poston about it; I'll 18 ask Mr. Oprea.
19 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Mr. Poston, I want-to 20 ask you another. question about or a question about the 21 July 23 management committee meeting. This also was a 22 document supplied to us in you're request about Brown &
23 Root but I don't know whether this strictly relates to 2:4 the Brown & Root replacement or whether it relates to the 25 Quadrex report; that's what I wanted to ask you. It's
. TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
/~T 14283 U i 1 Page 2 of document number 3, which was supplied to us 2 with respect to Brown & Root. But I don't know whether 3 it's strictly related to that.
4 On page 2 of the document it has a No. 8114, 5 and also 00475, there's a comment in the middle 6 attributed to Mr. Btrker. Do you remember -- and it says 7 something about NRC and achieving credibility. Do you 8 remember any discussion of that sort?
9 A No, sir, I can't recall anything about that, at 10 the moment.
11 0 So I take it you have no recollection whether 12 that would relate to the Quadrex report or not?
13 A I don't recall. I would imagine it does not 14 deal with the Quadrex report.
15 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, can I call your 16 attention to the second page of exhibit CCANP 113, in the 17 bottom paragraph?
18 MR. SINKIN: Second page?
19 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Do you remember whether 20' the discussion of the vendor control program which is 21__ indicated both there and in CCANP 113, did that have to 22 do with anything that the Quadrex report raised? -
23 A Well sir, I'm looking at the minutes of the 24 July 23rd, 1981.
A 25 Q Yes.
U i
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
,, 14284 5) 1 A On the bottom paragraph on page 2, and in it 2 Mr. Barker talks about important items / action and he 3 explained that a number of recent examples of dispute 4 between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Houston, in 5 each case the NRC ultimately agreed with HL&P. He felt 6 that the backlog of non-conformance reports was being 7 worked off at a satisfactory rate and that the vendor 8 control program should be cleared up by the end of the 9 year.
10 And my recollection of it, that was out of the 11 context of Quadrex issues. My recollection is that that 12 was out of the context of the Quadrex issues.
(t^)
13 0 So --
14 A Or not in the context of the Quadrex issues.
- 15 0 So it had nothing to do with the mention of the 16 Quadrex report of what might be called vendor control 17 issues?
18 A I don't recall it being in that.
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think that's all the Board 20 has now. Mr. Sinkin?
21 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, given what we've 22 just been through, I think I'd prefer to do redirect 23 after lunch.
24 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, there were a very 25 limited number of questions asked by either Dr. Lamb or
(~T u.)
(_.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
r f-S 14285
'u J 1 yourself. We would very much like to have Mr. Poston's 2 examination be finished so he can go back to San Antonio.
3 I would strongly urge that we complete the examination 4 now.
5 MR. SINKIN: There were numerous documents ,
6 referenced, Mr. Chairman, that are in various packages 7 and it's obviously been a little extraordinary going 8 around finding them; I certainly haven't the time to 9 thoroughly familiarize myself with the documents the 10 Chairman was asking about.
11 MR. AXELRAD: And is obviously it's not 12 necessary for him to familiarize himself with those 13 documents in order to ask questions solely based upon the 14 questions that Mr. Lamb and Mr. Bechhoefer has asked.
15 This is not a reopening of examination on the entire 16 documents referred to, they were very limited to the 17 precise questions that the Board has asked. There was no 18 reference to anything else other than what the Board 19 asked.
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's correct. I did not 21 intend to open up the entirety of each of those 22 documents. Sometimes I just wanted to find out how the 23 documents fit into the number of meetings and that kind 24 of thing.
25 MR. AXELRAD: I understand, Mr. Chairman. That
("J}
w t
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14286 (3
\J 1 was my response to Mr. Sinkin's remarks.
2 MR. PIRFO: Mr. Chairman, to the extent the 3 Board needs to consider this, Mr. Sinkin has the staffs 4 documents to the extent the questions are limited, then 5 we can allow him to use that and if I feel the need, 6 we'll go over and look over his shoulder, to the extent 7 there's going to be cross on these documents, he can make 8 copies of our documents to give them back, or, you know, 9 we're willing to let him use those.
10 MR REIS: He can use them. No need to copy 11' them.
12 MR. SINKIN: Well --
, . '13 MR. PIRFO:. What I'm saying is, I've i
14 ' represented to Mr. Sinkin that he can use our documents 15 and I don't want to yank them from him. But if there's 16 going to be any -- if there's going to be any time 17 involved on these documents, cognizant of what the Board 18 has just said, I think that type would probably be 19 relatively short. I don't want Mr. Sinkin's opportunity 20 to use them to 21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I'd give them five minutes, 22 but --
23 (Discussion off the record.)
24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin, we would give 25 you like five minutes or something like that. I don't TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442 l
r 14287
( -
1 think we should wait until after lunch.
2 MR. SINKIN: Okay.
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: If you do want a short five 4 minute break.
5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I certainly would appreciate 6 that much.
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay, we will give you that. ,
8 (Brief Recess.)
9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Are you ready?
10 MR. SINKIN: Okay.
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay, back on the record.
12 O
hl .
13 REDIRECT EXAMINATION 14 15 By Mr. Sinkin:
16 0 Mr. Poston, when you said that items in the 17 Quadrex report were incorrect or incomplete, needed to be 18 modified, were you relying on Houston Lighting & Power 19 for that information or did you make your own analysis of 20 Quadrex that led you to those conclusions?
21 A I was relying on Houston Lighting & Power.
22 0 And the discussion about keeping the Quadrex 23 report confidential, prior to September, in the period 24 from May to September 1981, were there discussions in the 25 management committee about "This report needs to stay (3
\_/
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
j""%
14288
\m/
1 within Houston Lighting & Power or within the project and 2 not get outside the project"?
3 A I don't recall any conversation about keeping 4 this report confidential in that time frame you 5 mentioned.
6 Q And in response to the Chairman's question, you 7 said that Document No. 11, which were some handwritten 8 notes of the April 27th, 1981 management committee 9 meeting, were your notes. Is that correct?
10 A I'd have to look at that exhibit. Yes, these 11 are notes, handwritten by me.
12 MR. SINKIN: All right. Based on that, Mr.
O f 13 Chairman, I would move that this document, I would ask .
14 that this document be marked for identification as CCANP 15 108 and at this time would move it into evidence.
16 MR. PIRFO: 108?
17 MR. SINKIN: Am I wrong on numbers?
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We're at 14, at least.
19 MR. SINKIN: Yes, 114. I will make copies at 20 lunch, 114, I will make copies at lunch for the reporter 21 and anyone else that needs it.
22 MR. AXELRAD: I might say, Mr. Chairman, I 23 assume we have no objection. But I'm having some 24 difficulty reading those handwritten notes myself.
{} 25 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Poston actually read all
\ .. .
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14289
.O 1 the parts that I asked questions about into the record 2 already. But --
3 MR. AXELRAD: On that basis, I will have an 4 objection, Mr. Chairman, to the extent that any portion 5 of that document is relevant to the Board's questioning, 6 it was read into the record. And I see no basis for any 7 other portion of that document now to be made a CCANP 8 exhibit and brought into the record and I think will 9 unduly burden the record.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think he read --
11 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, this is, to date, 12 the only available recording of this meeting, other than O
j.
13 by the secretary, I think it does provide us with at 14 least Mr. Poston's understanding of what was said in the 15 meeting related to the Quadrex report which is what these 16 minutes were produced in relation to. And I think it's 17 an appropriate exhibit from that point of view.
18 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, that statement is 19 irrelevant to the objection.- If Mr. Sinkin had wished to 20 make that particular document an exhibit and marked for 21 identification or anything else, he had ample opportunity 22 to do that in other instances. At this particular time, 23 all that is before this Board is the redirect based upon R24 the examination by the Board.
l l
25 The Board asked Mr. Poston some questions with N._
l TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
, 14290 Tm/-
1 respect to a limited portion of that document, he read 2 that portion of the document into the record, and it is 3 not appropriate for Mr. Sinkin to now attempt for any 4 reason to get other portions of the document into the 5 record.
6 MR. SINKIN: I would point out, Mr. Chairman, 7 when the document was produced, we were told the author 8 was unknown. And it was not until today we learned that 9 the author was Mr. Poston.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That was only because I 11 asked.
12 MR. SINKIN: And that was because you asked, 7_
,- 13 yes..
14
- MR. AXELRAD: To us the author was unknown, Mr.
15 Chairman. We did not take every document that we found 16 handwritten notes of and circulated to everybody within 17 all four companies to try to ascertain whose notes they 18 were.
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I don't think we need this 20 one in, just for the reason that I believe Mr. Poston 21 read the four lines that I asked him about, and then went 22 on to explain what they meant. So I think we will 23 decline to accept this one. I don't think we need to.
24 MR. PTRFO: Can I get a clarification, Mr.
's 25 Chairman. Has this been marked as 114 now?
(~A L
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
-._-.~.
1 l
14291 i l
1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: It's marked as 114 and not 2 admitted.
3 MR. SINKIN: Not admitted.
4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Not admitted.
f 5 (CCANP Exhibit No. 114 6 for identification.)
p 7 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Poston, the Chairman was 8 asking you about document No. 1 in the Brown & Root 9 discovery package sent July the 2nd. And I'd like to go 10 back to that for one second. You were on page 2 at the j 11 top. Are you with me, Mr. Poston?
r i 12 A I think so.
, - 13 Q Okay. You were discussing with the Chairman 14 the question o'f whether you had reached a conclusion by 15 this point on whether Brown & Root should be removed from -
4 16 the project, what the timing was of'the management i
i 17 committee's concerns in that area. And I note that 18 further down on the page, on the left 1+ says, why didn't 19 we know - "Why didn't they know." And it's quoting Mr.
f 20 Borchelt, if I'm pronouncing that correctly, where he 1 21 talks about kick Brown & Root off.
22 As of this time, of this meeting, April 27, 23 1981, were you in agreement or was it your feeling that 24 Brown & Root's failures were -- had reached the point
- 25 where they deserved to be removed from the project?
)
I TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
4 i
14292
. 1 A Well, in answer to your question, your premise 2 in the front of your question was incorrect in that we 1
3 had not discussed removing Brown & Root as engineer in 4 this time frame. But noting that error, from time to 5 time, the productivity of Brown & Root engineering was 6 discussed but it never was an agenda item, never was 7 voted on, never was concurred upon, it would just come up 8 for topic by individual members and those in attendance 9 at the meeting from time to time.
10 Q But as of April 27th, 1981, it was not your 4 11 feeling that that problem had reached the point where 12 Brown & Root should be removed as architect engineer?
13 A I felt th'at Brown &-Root, my personal feelings 14 at that time was that we needed engineering help, either i
15 with Brown & Root being bolstered or with another 4
16 architect engineer being there, or some combination of 17 the two. <
18 Q You spoke about other errors that had been
- 19 received over the course of the project that the Quadrex i
20 report was one more in a series of reports. Had there 21 been, to your knowledge, any report on design and 22 engineering at Brown & Root that had gone into as much 23 depth as the Quadrex report did?
24 A I don't think so.
C 25 (No hiatus.)
(
i (
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
sg-6 l
l 14293 7-( '
1 Q Was there any report more critical of Brown &
2 Root's design and engineering than the Quadrex report 3 was?
4 A Probably not.
5 Q In discussing the July 23rd minutes, if you 6 would turn to page 4678 on CCANP 113.
7 A All right.
8 Q In that last paragraph you were explaining 9 what your reference was to and I see that you're 10 recorded as saying that you inquired of Mr. Saltarelli 11 how all of this had happened. As I had read your "all
(/
J 12 this," it referred to all this in the paragraph above.
13 That would be the computer codes, the HVAC system, the 14 pipe design out of sequence, all of those things you 15 were saying to'Mr. Saltarelli how could all this have 16 happened and that that's what his answer responds to.
17 Is that a correct representation of the 18 dialogue between you and Mr. Saltarelli?
19 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I don't L1 20 that being part of a question by the Board. cnink 21 that was a question that had been raised by Mr. Sinkin 22 earlier.
(~')
%j 23 MR. SINKIN: No, no. The Chairman called 24 attention to this particular point and Mr. Poston 25 referred to trying to get to the root of the engineering TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-6 i 14294 1 problem and he was referring to engineering progress.
JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think that's correct.
2 3 We'll overrule the objection.
4 MR. SINKIN: Maybe you got some confusion F 5 because the Chairman got there through that other 6 document dated July 27th. It's the same dialogue, if 7 that's at all helpful.
8- MR. AXELRAD: May I have a repetition of the 9 question, please?
10 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) When you used -- you're
. 11 recorded as saying you inquired of Mr. Saltare11i how 12 all this could have happened. And as,I had read that
\_:
13 originally, it seemed to be referring to all the matters 14 in the paragraph above that follows directly. In other 15 words, the computer code problem, the RVAC problem, the 16 pipe break.outside containment problem; that what you
, 17 were asking Mr. Saltare11i was the more general I
18 question, how could,all this have happened and that he 19 responded that it appears to be the result of lack of 20 coordination between technical disciplines, but insisted 21 that Brown & Root had discovered many of these problems 22 a year ago.
() 23 Is that how you read the dialogue between you 1 k- 24 and Mr. Saltare111 and whether it's accurately recorded 25 here?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-6 14295 g
\ )3 i 1 A I don't recall whether it just refers to the 2 last item in the previous paragraph or to the whole 3 paragraph, I don't recall.
4 Q Referring to CCANP 83, Mr. Poston, I just want 5 to be clear on one thing. Do you have that document?
6 A Let me see if --
7 Q It's dated September 22nd.
8 A Yes.
9 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, the Board 10 specifically decided that since this was not a 11 management committee meeting, it was not going to ask O,
12 any questions of Mr. Poston on that.
13 MR. SINKIN: I understand that. I'm just -- I 14 understand that, Mr. Axelrad.
15 MR. AXELRAD: Well, then I object to any 16 question you' re going to ask about that document, 17 whatever it is.
18 0 (By Mr. Sinkin) My question is, is this not a 19 meeting, a special called meeting of the management 20 committee to discuss the topics that are at hand with 21 the CEO's? Isn't that what that says in the first 22 paragraph?
MR. AXELRAD: That's not what it says in the I) 23 24 first paragraph.
25 MR. SINKIN: Wanted members of the management TATE REPORTING (713) ___
498_-8442 _ _ _ _ _ _ _
sg-6
-s 14296 L] '
1 committee to meet with HL&P today prior to --
2 MR. AXELRAD: That is different than the 3 meeting of the management committee.
4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's what he answered to 5 my question. He said it wasn't.
6 MR. SINKIN: Excuse me?
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think he answered my -
8 question that it was not a meeting of the management 9 committee. If it had been, I would have asked a few 10 more questions, 11 MR. AXELRAD: Members of the management 12 committee can attend meetings other than meetings of the
')i. .
13 madagement committee.
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That was essentially my 15 question and he answered it that way, so --
16 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Well, to your recollection, 17 Mr. Poston, was there any meeting of the management 18 committee in September of 1981 other than this meeting 19 and the meeting on September 15?
20 MR. AXELRAD: I object to that question. That 21 question implies that this is a meeting of the 22 management committee and you just had a question and
()
n 23 answer that said it was not.
k- 24 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Was there any meeting of the 25 management committee in September of 1981, Mr. Poston?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
og-6 i 14297 n
(_)
1 A I don't recall any.
2 Q Was it considered unnecessary to hold one 3 because the meetings of September 12th and September 4 15th had been held?
5 MR. AXELRAD: I object to that question. It's 6 totally outside of the scope of the Board's question.
7 The Board simply first had thought it wanted to ask a S question with respect to this particular document. It 9 decided that it did not. The Board did not raise the 10 question of whether or not there were meetings in 11 September.
12 If Mr. Sinkin wanted to inquire on that 13 subject, he could have done so back when he first asked 14 Mr. Poston in the course of the direct examination as to 15 the meetings that were held and which minutes he had 16 brought with him.
17 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I have raised the 18 question because it seemed to me that the Board had been 19 directed away from asking questions about this document 20 by a totally artificial distinction between what was a 21 management committee meeting and what was a management 22 committee meeting with the -CEO's. And I think that the
() 23 fact that there was no management committee meeting 24 indicates that indeed these were in place of the regular 25 management committee meeting and that it's a totally I
l TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442 i
ng-6 14298 1 artificial distinction.
2 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, if I may add, not 3 only is that distinction not an artificial one, but it 4 was also, as it was pointed out to the Board before, 5 these particular documents were simply notes kept by Mr.
6 Thrash of those meetings. Those were not minutes of the 7 management committee meetings, they were not circulated )
8 to management committee members for approval. It is 9 totally different than minutes of the management 10 committee.
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think we will sustain the
(~
- . 12 objection, given Mr. Poston's previous answer on whether A..
13 it was or wasn't a management committee meeting.
14 MR. SINKIN: That's all I have, Mr. Chairman.
t 15 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Applicants or Staff?
16 MR. REIS: The Staff has nothing.
i 17 MR. AXELRAD: Nothing, Mr. Chairman.
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The Board has no further 19 questions.
12 0 Mr. Poston, we thank you for appearing and
- . 21 you're excused.
22 THE WITNESS: Thank you.
() 23 MR. AXELRAD: And, Mr. Chairman, I assume that
-' 24 the sequestration order is now removed since Mr. --
25 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's correct. Mr. Poston TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
,_ _ . . _ , _ . _ _ ~ ~ . _ - _ ,
ng-6 14299
.A V
1 can read the newspapers like anybody else would read 2 them.
3 We'll break. About 2:15 we'll start.
4 (Luncheon recess taken.)
5- JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Back on the record.
6 Any preliminary matters before we resume Mr.
7 Oprea's cross-examination?
8 MR. SINKIN: No, Mr. Chairman.
9 10 Whereupon, 11 GEORGE W. OPREA, JR.,
12 having been previously duly sworn, testified further 13 upon his oath as follows:
14 15 CROSS EXAMINATION (Cont'd) 16 BY MR. SINKIN:
17 Q Good afternoon, Mr. Oprea.
18 A Good' afternoon.
19 Q At the time HL&P hired Jerome Goldberg, did 20 Mr. Goldberg have a reputation for honesty?
21 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I object to that 22 question. I don't believe that type of questioning is
() 23 warranted in view of the limited issues in this 24 proceeding.
25 MR. SINKIN: Well, obviously the honesty and TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
l:
sg-6 i
14300 l 0--
1 candor of Mr. Goldberg, Mr. Oprea, Mr. Frazar have all 2 been an issue in this proceeding.
3 MR. AXELRAD: I don't believe that honesty is 4 an issue in this proceeding. The only thing that's in 5 issue in this proceeding is whether some statements that 6 were made were to some extent complete or whether some 7 other matter should have been referred to. There has 8 been no explicit accusation of dishonesty on the part of 9 any person.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think the Board will 11 sustain that objection.
'O
)- / 12 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Turning to page 6, line 19 of
\ .
13 your testimony, Mr. Oprea, you state in that answer'that 14 you called Mr. Karl Seyfrit in late August.of 1981.
15 Is it not true, Mr. Oprea, that on August 16 27th, 1981, Mr. Collins of Region IV called you and 17 requested an unrestricted review of the Quadrex report?
18 A I don't recall that conversation at all, Mr.
19 Sinkin. .
20 Q You don't recall Mr. Collins telling you he 21 was sending a Region IV inspector to review the report?
22 A No, I don't.
() 23 Q Do you remember a Region IV inspector, Mr.
[a 24 Hale, coming to the project to review the report?
25 A I thought it was Mr. Shannon Phillips and at a TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-6 14301 7';
'V 1 subsequent date af ter Dick Frazar had talked to me that 2 he came down either the next day, he and Mr. Kerr or 3 Herr, I believe, to review the Quadrex report, per se.
4 I think he went down on site.
5 But I don't have a recollection of Mr. Collins 6 calling me about an unrestricted review of the report or 7 him saying he is sending somebody down to review it.
8 When we said the report was available, and I believe Mr.
9 Goldberg indicated that to Mr. Sells, to the NRC to 10 review it any time, it was to review it within our 11 premises at any time unrestricted. So, they had access (q
J. 12 to the report Volume 1 through 3, so they could review 13 it in whatever manner they wanted to.
14 Q Let me be sure we're approaching these events 15 in the correct sequence. The NRC conducts an 16 investigation, Mr. Herr and Mr. Phillips. During the 17 investigation they asked to see the Quadrex report.
18 I believe you and I talked yesterday about Mr.
19 Frazar calling you saying that these guys are here and 20 would like to see the report, can I show it to them.
21 After they had seen the report is the period of time I'm 22 dealing with in my question.
() 23 MR. AXELRAD: Wait a second. I'd like to go 24 back to the question. I don't recall the testimony 25 being of Mr. Frazar asking can I show it to them. Mr.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
~_ _
cg-6 14302 Oss 1 Frazar may have called Mr. Oprea with respect to the 2 report, but I don't recall anything about can I show it, 3 asking him for permission.
4 Can we have a transcript citation, Mr. Sinkin?
5 MR. SINKIN: Well, I'll just rephrase it and 6 we'll let the transcript say whatever it says.
7 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) You received a call from Mr.
8 Frazar in August saying that there were members of the
. 9 Nuclear Regulatory Commission who wanted to see certain 10 documents and you told Mr. Frazar to make the Quadrex 11 report available to them; is that correct?
O 5/ 12 A Yes, that's correct.
I s.
13 Q Okay. Subsequent to that event, your 14 testimony says that you called Mr. Seyfrit and offered 15 him a briefing, offered to discuss the report with him 16 and his staff. My question about Mr. Collins calling 17 you would have been after Mr. Herr and Mr. Phillips had 18 been at the site, did Mr. Collins call you and request 19 an unrestricted review. You said you don't remember 20 that. Did Mr. Collins send Mr. Hale to review it, that 21 would be a separate visit from Mr. Herr and Mr.
22 Phillips. And I just want to be sure that we were in
() 23 the same sequence of events when you were answering.
-- 24 A I understand, but I don't recall that either.
4 25 Q Okay. When you talked to Mr. Seyfrit, did Mr.
TATE REPORTING . _ _ _ -
(713) 498-8442
sg-6 -
14303 1 Seyfrit encourage you to . send the report to the 2 Licensing Board?
3 A At the time that we gave them the brief or 4 when he --
5 .Q No, this would be in late August when you 6 callad him.
7 A When I called Mr. Seyfrit, I called him to let 8 him know that we felt perhaps a briefing of the Quadrex 9 report would be apropos and that Mr. Goldberg and I 10 would be willing to come up there at whatever time was 11 available to them. I think they identified to us that p/
\_ 12 September 8th would be the date.
- 13 It was on that date when Mr. Goldberg and I 14 went up, with Mr. Goldberg doing the primary briefing of 15 the report to the staff, to the NRC staff of Region IV, 16 that Mr. Seyfrit may have asked about whether or not we 17 considered reporting the entire document as reportable.
18 At that time we indicated, I believe at that time or we 19 may have gone back and said we'll discuss it another 20 date, but I believe it was during that session that we 21 indicated that we did not feel the report was 22 reportable, that we identified those deficiencies that
()
23 fell within the reportability requirements or criteria 24 and we reported those. And that should at any time in 25 the future during a dispositioning of those findings we TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-6 14304 1 find any other items that were questionable that would 2 fall within the reportability domain, that we certainly 3 would follow up and report them.
4 There was no discussion whatsoever about 5 turning over the report to the Licensing Board, not that 6 I recall.
7 Q In the time period from the time Mr. Herr and 8 Mr. Phillips were on the site and the time when you 9 learned that the NRC staff had asked HL&P to turn the 10 report over to the Licensing Board, in between those two 11 periods of time --
12 MR. SINKIN: Do we have a problem?
~
13 MR. AXELRAD: The NRC staff, are you talking 14 about the NRC staff counsel?
15 MR. SINKIN: Staff counsel, fine.
16 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) The NRC staff counsel said 17 turn the report over to the Licensing Board. In between 18 the time of Herr and Phillips visiting the site on 19 September 14th or somewhere in there when Mr. Reis 20 visited with Mr. Newman and Mr. Axelrad apparently and 21 said the report should be turned over, in that period of 22 time did you have any conversations with anyone at NRC
()
i 23 as to whether the report should be turned over to the
's 24 Licensing Board?
25 A None whatsoever.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-6 t4 14305 l; -
1 Q When you went to brief Region IV on September
, 2 8th, 1981, did you bring copies of the Quadrex report to 1
I 3 that meeting?
4 A I don't recall whether or not we did. I know 5 Mr. Goldberg had his notes relative to what he wanted to
.6 brief them on and I don't recall if we brought copies 7 with us or not.
8 Q Do you know if you -- well, let's see, you 9 don't know if you brought them.
10 Do you know when HL&P first provided copies of 11 the Quadrex report to Region IV?
12 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Sinkin, is that question -
13 other than the copies that were provided for their 14 review at HL&P? Are you talking about sending copies 15 or --
16 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Sending copies to the Region 17 IV office, when HL&P first actually sent copies to the 18 Region IV office. ,
19 A I believe it waa in consonance with the 20 discussion that NRC counsel had with our licensing 21 attorneys relative to releasing the report to the 22 Licensing Board.
23 Q So, it would have been af ter the contact from 24 the NRC staff counsel when it was a general sending it 25 to the Licensing Board, at that time it was re --
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
- I sg-6 14306 O ~
1 A It was released to the Region IV personnel as l
l 2 well.
3 Q At the September 8th meeting, did Mr. Goldberg l
4 describe the Quadrex report as a disaster for the 5 project?
6 A I don't recall the exact words. I'm sure he 7 indicated to the staff that it was a report that was of 8 great concern to us and it could have some impact on the 9 schedule of the project.
10 Q Did he indicate that the dispositioning of the 11 report could set the project back at least a year?
12 A He may have. I just don't recall.
13 0 Mr. Oprea, I'm going to hand you what I ask be 14 marked as CCANP 115.
15 (CCANP 115 marked for 16 identification.)
17 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Do you recognize this letter, 18 Mr. Oprea?
19 A i Is it all r '-bi if I go ahead and read this?
20 0 Oh, sure.
21 A Your question, Mr. Sinkin?
22 0 Whether you recognize the document.
23 A I believe I do.
L 24 Q This is a request from HL&P to Region IV to 25 proceed with certain safety-related and TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
.ag-6 14307
/~s U
1 non-safety-related work at the site?
2 A I guess it could be categorized such as that, ,
3 yes. t 4 Q During this time period, the letter's dated 5 October 16th, are you still operating under the 6 conditions that major work at the project must be i
7 reviewed and approved by the NRC regional office before 8 going forward?
9 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I would first like
-10 to object to the questioning on this letter on the basis 11 that it has no relevance or materiality to the matters 12 before this proceeding. This letter dated October 16, 13 1981, pertains to work thab is to be sought to be 14 continued after that date. That date is clearly after 15 both the Board and the Region were notified of the 16 replacement, intended replacement of Brown & Root. It's 17 af ter the Quadrex report had been provided to the Board 18 and to the Staff. And I can see no relevance or 19 materiality to the issues before this proceeding as to 20 what work was sought to be continued af ter that date.
21 MR. SINKIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, this is 22 actually an effort to work backwards showing what HL&P
{J 23 requested permission to proceed with at various stages 12 4 in the process. At this stage it is correct that 25 Quadrex has been released. Nonetheless, this letter is
~
cg-6 l
14308 1 a measure of what HL&P thought was appropriate to l
2 proceed with even with Quadrex released. And it traces 3 back to a series of letters and requests to Region IV.
4 This is sort of the ultimate one.
5 MR. AXELRAD: If I can just respond. There 6 would have to be so many factors that would have to be 7 taken into. account in any review why any work would be 8 acceptable in any particular period of time that we 9 would be embarking on an inquiry here that will take an
( 10 extremely prolonged period of time 11 I would suggest that rather than working 12 backwards for something which is irrelevant and 13 immaterial, that CCANP, if it can do so, start with 14 something that is relevant and material and then we can 15 see at what point the materiality stops.
16 MR. SINKIN: I actually don't intend to engage f 17 in any lengthy cross-examination on this document, Mr.
18 Chairman. It is also, if I am correct, the document 19 referenced in-the Board's~ order setting special hearings 20 responding to the release of the Quadrex report and 21 that's another reason that I'd like to have this 22 document in the record.
23 MR. AXELRAD: Well, that in itself is A' 24 completely irrelevant and immaterial to the issues in 25 this proceeding. There were a number of procedural TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
1 cg-6 14309 j
($) 1 1 orders back in Phase I that led to the issues that were !
2 ~ resolved in Phase I and what was able to be taken up in 3- Phase I. We are now in Phase II.
4 If Mr. Sinkin wanted additional materials in
'5 the record in Phase I, that's when he should have gotten 6 them into the record. We are now dealing only with 7 materials which are relevant and material to the Phase 8 II issues.
9 MR. SINKIN: Well, it's relevant and material 10 to the Quadrex issues which were not litigated in Phase 11 I.
-A
\_) 12 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, if I can be heard, 13 since you're -- the Staff has not been heard.
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We were just discussing 15 it. We would like to hear from the Staff.
16 MR. REIS: Much of the Phase I hearing dealt 17 with work that was going forward in the spring of '81 18 and release from the stop work orders and the voluntary 19 stopping of work and the agreements that HL&P had 20 entered into stopping work after 79-19 was issued and 21 releases at that time and what work was to be done and 22 how. And, as I remember, I'm trying to recall the exact
() 23 year, there was much testimony on it.
k 24 How this -- why this should come in at this 25 part of the hearing, I'm not quite sure. I'm thinking TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
29-6 14310
~
1 about it and trying to draw a logical conclusion.
2 But let me point out that much of this 3 evidence I think was already in. And unless there's a 4 special reason for our expanding our work and going back 5 to what we already heard as to what work was to go on 6- after 79-19, I don't see any reason for this to come 7 in. I don't think Mr. Sinkin has yet shown why it's 8 relevant or material to the issues here.
9 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think he tried to in his 10 original opening statement, I thought he referred to 11 it. Not specifically, but I'm not sure why this one is 12 relevant. He did say that he thought that one of the
- reasons that the Quadrex report was not -- that the 13 14 Staff or us was not informed of the Quadrex report was 15 so that HL&P could go ahead with safety-related work.
16 And if the Quadrex --
17 MR. REIS: Well, I think you need more than an 18 attorney's conjecture to get a question in and I think 19 that's all we have.
20 MR. SINKIN: Well, that is --
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Of course, this was the 22 document where we hadn't known about the replacement, 23 there is some question about whether safety-related work
[Y~)
% 24 should go on. But that's not pertinent certainly to 25 reportability.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
29-6 14311 7-V 1 MR. AXELRAD: Exactly.
2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think we'll exclude this 3 for. lack of relevance to the particular issues we're
-4 litigating.
5 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, do you remember 6 the-September 18th, 1981 letter referenced in this CCANP 7 excluded exhibit?
8 A No, I don't.
9 Q But to the best of your knowledge, such a 10 letter was sent?
11 A Certainly I wouldn't have referenced it if I (L'3 12 hadn't sent it.
(.; .
~
13 Q I only ask because we certainly can't find it 14 in any of the public document rooms. That's been a 15 problem.
16 Okay.
17 By the time you testified in the May 1981 18 hearings, had Mr. Goldberg come to you and told you that 19 it was clear to him that Brown & Root was not going to 20 hire a top-level nuclear executive reporting directly to 21 Mr. Feehan?
22 A I don't believe that perhaps reflects what Mr.
23 Goldberg may have said. First, in May, and I think it H()
'- 24 even prevailed through mid-year of 1981, Brown & Root 25 was still pursuing the hiring of a senior nuclear TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-6 l
,s 14312
(_)
1 executive. I think Mr. Goldberg's concern was that that 2 senior nuclear executive, the placement of that 3 individual in the organization was being resisted by 4 Brown & Root, such as they were resisting that 5 particular officer reporting directly in to their chief 6 and executive officer Mr. Feehan.
7 Q And had Mr. Goldberg already encouraged you to 8 take a look at alternatives to Brown & Root in the 9 design and engineering process?
10 A We're in May?
11 Q Yes.
(- A 5-2 12 He indicated that he felt based on their l.
13 resistance, he thought perhaps that could impact their 14 ability to perform the job of engineering design in an 15 effective, efficient manner. He thought perhaps that we 16 might have to keep in mind alternatives that we might 17 have to address without addressing those alternatives at 18 that time, it was just a statement.
19 Q He didn't approach you and say that you should 20 actively seek alternatives to Brown & Root?
21 A Like removal of Brown & Root?
22 0 Well, obviously --
'(] 23 A No.
-- 24 0 -- we' re looking at what that phrase means.
25 But I understand you distinguish between looking at TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-6
- 14313
/
U
.1 alternatives for Brown & Root and removal of Brown &
2 Root. That's clear in your testimony.
3 I'm saying that as of May 1981 or as of the 4 time you testified in Phase I, had Mr. Goldberg come to 5 you and said HL&P should actively seek alternatives to 6 Brown & Root?
7 A He was concerned about the possibility that
.8 Brown & Root was -- would not be able to perform the 1
9 responsibilities they had in the engineering design 10 effort and, therefore, felt that we ought to keep in i 11 mind that should such be the case and they not be able C)
\_- 42 to perform, that we ought to have some alternatives in 13 mind and he felt time was of the essence to keep those 14 in mind without specifically identifying what those 15 alternatives were.
16 0 At the time you testified in the Phase I 17 hearings, did you look upon Brown & Root as having been 18 forthcoming with you, straightforward with you?
19 A I don't know what forthcoming means, but I 20 know what straightforward means.
21 Q Let's use straightforward then.
22 A I believe I had some concerns because there
() 23 were times that Brown & Root didn't really -- I felt 24 didn't really shoulder the full responsibility of 25 problems that we felt they should have shouldered, TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
E '
cg-6 14314
-j')
b 1 identifying that they were their responsibility to 2 solve. And at times they would try to put pressure on 3 us as the client ' to back off and allow them to do their 4 thing without any encumbrance, direction or involvement 5 on the part of the client.
6 Q Did you feel that they concealed information 7 from you that you should have known?
8 A I don't believe that was the case at that 9 time, no.
10 0 When you were briefed about the Quadrex report 11 by Mr. Goldberg, did he point to design verification as O. "
%_/ 12 one-area that Brown & Root was weak in?
- 13 A I don't recall that discussion at all.
14 Q Did you at some point in the May-June '81 15 period learn that Brown & Root's design verification 16 program had problems?
17 A I may have, but I just don't specifically 18 recall a particular point in time in which it may have 19 been brought to my attention.
20 Q Mr. Oprea, I'm going to hand you what I ask be 21 marked as CCANP 116 and ask you if you recognize these 22 notes.
I)
%.J 23 (CCANP Exhibit No. 116 marked for 24 identification.)
25 A Yss, I do recognize it.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
1 1
(~3 14315
'wi 1 Q When did you write these notes?
2 A I believe these may have been written a day or 3 two prior to a scheduled meeting that Mr. Goldberg and I 4 had with Mr. Saltarelli and Mr. Rice from Brown & Root 5 which was to take place on the afternoon of July 2nd, 6 which I believe was a result of a team building effort 7 that we had going on on the project at that time.
8 0 In these notes at the top of the first page, 9 you state that I believe that's Mr. Reis and Mr. Peeper.
10 Maybe you can state those names for me?
11 A A Mr. Rice, a Mr. Pieper.
12 Q Mr. Pieper?
13 A Right.
14 0' 'Okay. That "they don't know nuclear" and you 15 say "they connive." What did you have in mind by the 16 phrase connive,-what was it you were referring to?
17 A I was really referring to the answer I guess 18 was what I gave you earlier about forthright, 19 forthcoming, as you put it.
20 First I might clarify, these are notes I 21 believe were in preparation to the July 2nd meeting.
22 First two pages I believe of this document that you 23 handed me represent the preparatory work that I'm sure I 24 may have had some discussion with Mr. Goldberg, we may 25 have had a meeting at this point in time, as a prelude to
{
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14316 b)
1 the July 2nd meeting which shows up in the -- the last 2 two pages.
3 Q So the last two pages are the notes from the 4 meeting, itself?
5 A It's the adgenda I had set up for the meeting.
6 0 Okay.
7 A But basically, the feeling that they connive 8 and such, I guess this pretty well reflected a bit of 9 frustration on my part in regard to the status of the 10 project at that time, and in essence they were always of 11 the opinion that we should stand back, as I said, earlier
- 12 and let them do their thing; they didn't take full
\~# 13 responsibilities for problems at times that should fall
( ,
14 directly within their camp and that they should shoulder, 15 and they in essence wanted us to not be involved to any 16 extent whenever they felt it was desirable for us not to 17 be.
18 And so I used these, I'm sure, because might 19 have frustration at that time to connotate in a heavy
~
20 manner that frustration.
21 Q And down at the item that says EVAC, you -- if _
22 you would just read me what it says right after HVAC?
23 A "Why didn't they tell us 18 months ago about 24 the problem."
25 Q That word is " problem" at the end of that line,
{
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14317 1 I wasn't sure?
2 A Yes. Yes.
3 Q Now, is this the HVAC problem identified in the 4- Quadrex report?
5 A Could have been.
6 Q And design verification is next. Where you 7 state, "How come you know about these problems and didn't 8 let us know."
9 What was the problem that Brown & Root inew 10 about that they didn't let HL&P know about in design 11 verification?
12 A Well, one of the things that came up and I O 13 think even Mr. Saltarelli may have indicated in some of 14 the meetings he had with us that they knew about some of 15 these problems for at least a year or thereabouts. And I 16 think I was reflecting upon the statement similar to that 17 that I may have received from Mr. Rice, about the fact 18 they knew about some of these.
19 Q How long had Mr. Rice been on the job by this 20 time, do you know?
21 A Probably about one year.
22 Q About a year?
23 A Roughly a year, maybe 14, 15 months.
24 Mr. Sinkin, I don't know if you know the
{} 25 purpose of a teambuilding session.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
A 14318 U
1 Q I don't. Didn't you tell us the purpose of a 2 teambuilding session?
3 A I think Mr. Goldberg touched on the point in 4 his testimony about organizational development. Team-5 building is set up with the express purpose of bringing 6 you and your opposite numbers, in this case from the A/E 7 contractor, together to review problems that you feel are 8 problems and virtually allow you to vent at one another 9 and then sit down with the goal in mind of solving the 10 problems and moving forward in a more positive vein. And 11 that allows both us and them to tell how we feel about 12 one another's performance.
[
13 0 And so these were your notes of what you a
14 intended to vent?
15 A Well, I was venting, apparently, on the paper.
16 My agenda, as you well know, were a little more well 17 mannered and I presume that during the course of our 18 discussion, we may have been well mannered or not and I 19 know we weren't in some cases.
20 Q No w', in the agenda, itself, the third page of 21 this document, the first item under the overall heading 22 "Why does Brown & Root not respond forthrightly," you 23 give, you talk about the Quadrex report findings and 24 Brown & Root's claim that they knew about -- well, maybe 25 you better read that line to me, Brown & Root claimed
(]}
t TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14319
}
1 they knew about something.
~2 A They knew about some items, about those items 3 for as long as maybe one year to 18 months.
4 Q Those items.
5 A Yes.
6 Q Okay.
7 A I think that relates back to what I stated 8 earlier that Mr. Rice reflected when he and I discussed 9 the Quadrex report, after it was submitted to Brown &
10 Root and our staff and we reported those deficiencies 11 that were reportable, they indicated to me that, "Well, g- 12 we knew about some of those for a year or thereabouts."
f' 13 And -- now he may have known about them, maybe his staff 14 knew about them and they were working with my staff, but 15 I sure as heck didn't know about them.
16 And that's when I expected him to allow me the 17 privilege of knowing anything that he knew about the 18 project, whether or not it had any negative impacts on 19 the project, and I felt he ought to let me know about it.
- 20. O Well, if you're in a situation where you have 21 your architect engineer coming to you and saying we knew 22 about all these problems and have known about them for a 23 year or more, why is it at that point that you just 24 didn't step in, stop work and say, "We're going to get 25 all these problems cleaned up and not go forward until
(])
(
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
(~) 14320 V
1 you do"?
- 2. A At this point in time?
3 Q Yeah.
4 A They weren't the type of problems that would 5 solicit from you that real drastic step. I think you 6 look at the Quadrex findings, per se, they were relative, 7 for the most part, with the exception of the three, 8 dificiencies, towards the productive nature and 9 capability of Brown & Root to do the engineering design.
10 So there wasn't anything in that report that 11 indicated to me that we had a catastrophic, chaotic 12 situation on the project; we had a concern situation on g-)
~! 13 the project.
14 Q In the third item in item 1, 2-C, it says "too 15 many F.DR 's . " Are those audit deficiency reports?
16 A That's correct.
17 Q And those are audits performed by the Quality 18 Assurance Department?
19 A Both by their's as well as ours.
20 Q And apparently, your concern is that too many 21 of them remain unrecolved and that that's the 22 responsibility of management not pushing them to some 23 resolution?
24 A Yes. Virtually is the message there. Now, you
() 25 recognize that even if they had ten ADR's I may have TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
r~' 14321 9).
1 thought those were too many. I don't know what the 2 number was, but there were a number that were outstanding 3 and they were not being dispositioned, I think, in a 4 timely basis. It could have been that a number may have 5 been in the 30 day or 60 day category. But some of them 6 justifiably were in that because of some of the things 7 they were doing in a more complex nature to resolved.
8 But we try to maintain all these deficiency reports at 9 the lowest possible number that they can.
10 Q And I presume that item number 4 is the 11 attitude that you summarized earlier --
73 12 A Yes.
d-13 Q -- about Brown & Root? -
14 A That's* correct.
15 0 On the second page of the agenda, we have a 16 notation Frazar, as I see it. Can you tell me what it 17 says about May 13th?
18 A I really don't understand it because that 19 second page was not part of the meeting that we had with 20 Mr. Rice and Saltarelli.
21 0 That's a part of what I was wondering. That 22 page really doesn't belong with this document, does it?
23 A No, it doesn't.
l 24 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I would move CCANP
{} 25 116 into evidence.
(
I
! TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14322 1 11R. PIRFO: Does that include both pages?
2 MR. SINKIN: Well, we can tear the back page 3 off if,that would make people more comfortable.
4 MR. AXELRAD: It then becomes a-three page 5 document.
6 MR. SINKIN: It becomes a three-page document, 7 the first page of which has the word " connive" underlined 8 and then there's a third page that is titled subject too --
'9' maybe you can help me with that, Mr. Oprea. What is the 10 actual title?
11 THE WITNESS: I really don't understand the 12 third word.
,e 13 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Off to the left it says July s.
14 2, meeting?
15 A Maybe is subject to comment, it looks like it 16 might be that, but I really can't make it out.
17 Q That's fine.
18 MR. AXELRAD: No objection to those three 19 pages, Mr. Chairman.
20 MR. REIS: No objection.
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: CCANP 116 will be admitted. ,
22 (CCANP Exhibit No. 116 admitted 23 into evidence.)
24 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, I'm going to show 25 you a document and ask you if the handwritten notes are
(])
t TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
('T x_/
14323 1 in your handwriting?
2 A No.
3 Q Okay. Thank you.
4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: What did you just show him?
5 MR. SINKIN: I showed him that April 16th 6 agenda that we talked about with Mr. Poston that has the 7 handwritten notes on the April 27th dated document. I'm 8 still trying to figure out who wrote them.
9 0 (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, who told you that 10 the NRC staff counsel had contacted HL&P in September to 11 discuss the Quadrex report?
r3 12 A I don't recall if it was Mr. Newman directly or
\, )
13 perhaps Mr. Goldberg as a result of Mr. Newman's call to 14 him. But either one of the two sources conveyed that 15 information to me.
16 Q And did either Mr. Newman or Mr. Goldberg tell 17 you that the NRC staff suggested that HL&P turn Quadrex 18 over or did he tell you that they had ordered that the 19 report be turned over?
20 A I think the impression I got is that they 21 recommended that the report be turned over.
22 0 You had the sense that you had the option not 23 to?
24 A No, I did not have that sense. I felt that a 25 recommendation is like, "We would like to have that
({}
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14324 Q(_/
i 1 report."
2 Q Okay. Turning to CCANP 78, if counsel would 3 share that with you. Oh, you have that there.
4 Mr. Oprea, who, besides yourself, evaluated the 5 proposals to replace Brown & Root that were received in 6 response to the RFP sent out in late July of 1981?
7 A Mr. Goldberg, members of his staff and myself.
8 I believe I might mention, Mr. Newman was involved from 9 the standpoint of reviewing the response on regulatory 10 and licensing matters, and any things that might reflect 11 on the contractual basis.
12 Q The last sheet of CCANP 78 is a rating sheet, O'g #
13 apparently, was this rating sheet used to evaluate the 14 proposals?
15 A No, it wasn't. I might identify what that 16 rating sheet represents. In fact, the whole document is 17 a draft of the report that we were going to give to the 18 owners in regard to the replacement of the contractor in 19 the A/E and construction management area. And it was a 20 draft that Mr. Goldberg and I wore reviewing; we asked 21 Mr. Newman to prepare it for us so we could review it, do 22 what is necessary from editing it, correcting it, adding 23 things and what have you.
24 If I recall on the cover letter, I received 25 from Mr. Newman, with this draft document, he identified O(~Ne TASE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
l l
1 14325 1 that he is also included this rating sheet that he used 2 just from his own knowledge of what was going on in the 3 evaluation, and that he looked at himself as an amateur 4 in regard to trying to rating the technical aspects of a 5 project, the mangement aspects et cetera; and he said, 6 you know, you may or may not want to use it.
7 Well, he was right, we didn't use it; I didn't 8 use it; I don't know if Mr. Goldberg used it; and in the 9 course of our evaluations, I knew my evaluation, I used 10 the RFP for as the basis for reviewing and I looked at 11 each of the contenders or each that used, to perhaps have 12 the option of being considered, against the particular g
)- 13 areas within the RFP. -
14 I didn't use this rating sheet at all, as a 15 matter of fact, or in the course of any discussion we had 16 with Mr. Jordan, I believe on the morning of September 17 12th, rating sheets were not discussed, numerical values 18 were not discussed. Individuals that were asked there 19 opinions reflected upon their viewpoint as they reviewed 20 the documents thit they had at their disposal.
21 So I look at it as sort of a free contribution 22 on the part of Mr. Newman that I don't think any of us 23 used.
24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Were the sheets filled out
( 25 when you had them given to you?
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
w 14326 r-)
D 1 THE WITNESS: You are talking about the rating 2 sheets?
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: No, sir. All they did was 4 submit the blank along with the draft copy to use 5 whichever way we individually thought we would want to 6 use them. I preferred not to use them because I had my 7 own way of evaluating the proposals and I'm sure Mr.
8 Goldberg had his own methodology as well.
9 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Oprea, I will hand you what I 10 ask be marked as CCANP 117 and ask if you this is the 11 letter that you referred to by Mr. Newman to you.
12 (CCANP Exhibit 117 marked 13 for identification.)
t.
14 A Yes, that's it.
15 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) In the amateur reference in 16 Mr. Newman's letter is to Mr. Newman trying to put a 17 quantitative number on the various categories in the 18 rating sheet. Is that correct?
19 A I think not the quantitative numbers but the 20 whole process of using that rating sheet in regard to 21 evaluating the proposal.
22 Q So Mr. Newman actually created the rating sheet 23~ as a document?
24 A I believe as he was preparing this draft, he 25 just picked off certain areas that he felt that would be
. N.s TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14327
_(
1 would propose to try to rate. I assume that's what he 2 did.
3 MR. SINKIN: I would move CCANP 117 into 4 evidence.
5_ MR. AXELRAD: No objection.
6 MR. PIRFO: The staff has no objection.
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: CCANP 117 will be admi.tted 8 in evidence.
9 (CCANP Exhibit 117 admitted 10 into identification.)
11 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, if you would look
, 12 at CCANP 83, and on page 2, in the 6th paragraph, t) r 13 beginning at 224, Mr. Newman, does that accurately 14 ' reflect what you remember the discussion being about the i 15 construction permit amendment?
l 16 A I'd like to review this document, if I might, 17 at least the first couple of pages.
l 18 Q Sure, feel free.
19 A Because they don't really look like formal 20 minutes of the management committee, they look like 21 minutes of sorts, perhaps, that were recollections on the 22 part of somebody.
23 Q Let me suggest to you that based on a 24 discussion of somebody earlier today, this is not a formal meeting of the management committee that we are
{} 25 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14328 1 look looking at, it's a special meeting of the members of 2 the management committee with others.
3 A This reflects the one on September 12th meeting 4 that -- to it was a called meeting that Houston Lighting 5 & Power had. We've asked the owners to attend that 6 meeting so we can review the assessment or the evaluation 7 of the proposal for the replacement of Brown & Root as 8 architect engineer and construction manager.
9 Q Right.
10 A Okay. The question now, Mr. Sinkin.
11 Q Yes, looking at Page 2, paragraph being at 224, 12 Mr. Newman.
13 A Uh-huh. -
- k. -
- 14 Q Does that accurately reflect the discussion as
. 15 you recall it regarding the possibility of a construction 16 permit amendment?
17 A I don't recall the exact words and 18 presentation. I know that Mr. Newman was concerned about 19 having an early decision as to whether or not we were 20 going to replace Brown & Root as architect engineer and 21 construction manager with somebody else, and that indeed 22 there could be a potential of impacting the licensing 23 activity, perhaps a CP amendment or a FSAR amendment or 24 whatever. And I'm sure he reflected that to us several
(} 25 times, about the need to move forward expeditiously as TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
I 1
p 14329
(_/
1 well as once that decision is made that notification had 2 to be forthright, be given to the licensing board.
3 Q In the next paragraph, it says the discussion 4 drifted to the possibilities of the new engineer 5 eventually having to take over construction as well. Do 6 you know the nature of that particular discussion, why it 7 . was considered the new engineer might have to take over 8 construction as well?
9 A Oh, I'm sure that the dialogue with the owners, 10 they probably brought it up, as to what if Brown & Root 11 decides not to go along with being the constructor, what 12 do we do? And of course, I'm sure that's the extent of 13 the conversation; there may have been some viewpoints 14 expressed that if they do back off then we're going to 15 have to go out and have some additional proposals to see 16 who would be willing to build it.
17 Q Turning to Page 3, the second paragraph, 18 beginning "Mr. Cowan brought up." At the time you 19 testified in 1981, there was an agreement in place 20 between Brown & Root and Houston Lighting & Power that 21 Houston Lighting & Power would not sue Brown & Root. Is 22 that correct?
23 A I think it was an agreement between the owners 24 of the South Texas Project and Brown & Root.
25 Q All of the owners?
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
5 14330
(~}
v 1 A The tolling agreement was set up for a two year 2 period. And that was set up strictly so that we would 3 not waive any rights that we had should, at a subsequent 4 date, that we did get involved in any litigation, that 5 those things that would fall under the statute of 6 limitations could still be pursued within that forum.
7 Q By Mr. Oprea, I show you what I ask be marked 8 as CCANP 118 and ask you if this is the unexecuted final 9 draft of that agreement.
10 (CCANP Exhibit 118 marked 11 for identification.)
12 A Did you say the executed?
13 Q Unexecuted, I said.
14 A Oh. It appears that it might well -- well 15 might be.
16 Q Does it capture the essence of what the tolling 17 agreement might be?
18 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I would like to 19 object to this line of questioning. I cannot object to 20 the document being identified but the tolling agreement 21 between the owners of the plants and Brown & Root is not 22 relevant or material to any issues in this proceeding; 23 we've previously raised objections to any testimony with 24 respect to the tolling agreement and my recollection is 25 that those objections have been sustained by the Board.
{}
(_
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14331
{}
1 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, what we're doing is 2 sett!ng into the record the circumstances under which Mr.
3 Oprea was testifying in Phase I, when he gave the 4 testimony that the Board's February 26th record raised 5 questions about; and we will proceed to develop the 6 contention the for Mr. Oprea's testimony in Phase II as a 7 different context, and this is simply one point in the 8 context of the Phase I testimony.
9 MR. AXELRAD: I don't understand, Mr. Chairman, 10 how a draft of an unexecuted document back in 1979 11 dealing with potential litigation between the parties can
- 12 have any relevance to the issues in this proceeding, y~' 13 dealing with whether or not matters should have been 14 reported to this Board in May of 1981, and what the views 15 of Mr. Oprea were in May of 1981. This is far remote and 16 particularly in view of this'being an un executed, draft 17 of another document which was apparently, in fact, 18 executed, which makes it completely useless for purposes 19 of this proceecing.
20 MR. SINKIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, there are two 21 things that are at issue in this proceeding, not only the 22 Quadrex report but the removal of Brown & Root and why 23 HL&P might or might not have testified to the removal of 24 Brown & Root during the Phase I proceeding.
25 Now, we consider the tolling agreement as
}
\
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14332
(
1 relevant to' setting a context for why or why not, 2 basically setting a context of how HL&P would be 3' testifying in Phase I.
4 Now we agree that this is a draft of the 5 tolling agreement; this was all that was available that 6 we could find in the records; but my question really to 7 Mr. Oprea was whether it captured the essence of what was 8 agreed to in the tolling agreement and it can come in 9 simply to report that without being the actual agreement.
10 MR. AXELRAD: I might also add, Mr. Chairman, 11 I'm not sure how I understand how a non-lawyer looking at 12 a very highly legal type of document several years after f- 13 the facts can possibly be expected to testify as to s
14 whether or not it c*aptures the essence of the document 15 that was finally executed.
l 16 Again, two years later, from this document, 17 more -- actually more important, six years ago.
18 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, the staff doesn't know 19 the relevance or material of this document and therefore 20 agrees that it should not come into evidence.
21 (No hiatus.)
l- 22 23 24 25 C:)
\
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
Eg-8
,_ 14333
(
1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The Board is going to 2 reject this particular document, but the Board thinks 3 the original should be in the record and Mr. Oprea 4 subject to questioning. We don't have the original.
5 The executed copy is what I'm talking about.
6 It was an agreeraent in effect during the 7 period of time and I think it is relevant to Mr.
8 Sinkin's case. And we don't think that Mr. Oprea should 9 be asked to compare the original and the draft. In 10 fact, I don't think the draft is worth much of anything 11 in terms of what's at issue.
,m 12 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, if I mav just ask
((_)
13 the Board to reconsider. The fact that there was a 14 tolling agreement has been testified to. To whatever 15 extent that has any relevance and materiality in this 16 proceeding, that's a fact that's in.
17 Now, the particular executed tolling agreement 18 terms and conditions under which the parties agreed not 19 ,
to institute litigation at a particular time, I don't 20 believe that's relevant and material to the issues 21 here. So, I would ask the Board to reconsider on that 22 basis.
(~') 23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, our -- we don't know o
k- 24 what those terms and conditions are. Although I can 25 assume that perhaps there's some semblance to the draft, TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-8 l 14334 l
(:)
1 we can't assume they're identical.
2 The terms and conditions or what a company 3 official is bound by could conceivably affect his 4 testimony, not in terms of perjury so much as in terms 5 of completeness and the extent to which one pursues a l
6 particular topic.
7 But anyway, we don't think the draft is worth 8 much of anything. That draft was never binding on any 9 company official or anybody else. But presumably the 10 final copy was or the executed copy was.
l 11 Is there much difficulty in obtaining copies
( 12 of the executed copy?
l 13 MR. AXELRAD: I don't know, Mr. Chairman.
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER. Mr. Sinkin, I assume you 15 wouldn't object to the executed copies?
16 MR. SINKIN: Obviously that's a preferable 17 document, j 18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Because we don't think this 1
19 is worth too much.
20 MR. SINKIN: I understand.
21 I'll proceed?
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes. In terms of -- would
() 23 you have many questions to ask Mr. Oprea about whatever 24 the final document is?
25 MR. SINKIN: I don't think so, Mr. Chairman.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-8 14335
(~~)
V 1 I think the document itself will speak to the terms and 2 conditions. I was just setting the stage for what the 3 document was so I could move it in. But obviously it 4 would be preferable to have the actual document and I 5 can 90 ahead from here and the document can be put in
~
l 6 when it's available.
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We would have no objection 8 to that as long as maybe the parties can stipulate as to 9 authenticity when we get it.
l I 10 MR. AXELRAD: Fine.
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Assuming Mr. Oprea is l
12 not -- I mean assuming you can get it by the time Mr.
13 Oprea is excused.
14 MR. AXELRAD': That's fine, Mr. Chairman.
15 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) On page 3 where we are in 16 this September 12th meeting, the second full 17 paragraph --
18 A Excuse me, Mr. Sinkin, are we still on your 19 CCANP 83 is it?
20 Q CCANP 83, page 3.
21 A All right.
, 22 Q The second full paragraph beginning "Mr.
)
l
() 23 Jordan." Do you remember that dialogue? l
\
24 A No, I don't.
25 0 At the time you were testifying in the Phase I
.. TATE R.EPORTING (713) 498-8442
________3
ag-8
(')
(_/
14336 1 hearings in May-June of '81, were there any ongoing 2 discussions at HL&P about whether to actually bring 3 litigation against Brown & Root?
4 A No. -
5 Q Looking at page 4 at the bottom, Mr. Jordan 6 said he comes down on Bechtel's side for several reasons 7 and then lists a series of reasons. Did you essentially 8 agree with those reasons expressed by Mr. Jordan?
9 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, there were
]
10 previous objections to a question about replacement of 11 Brown & Root with respect to the selection between 12 various proposing firms and the Board had ruled at that 13 time that the decision among the available architect 14 engineers, that that was not relevant and material to 15 this proceeding. l 16 MR. SINKIN: I'll withdraw the question, Mr.
17 Chairman, that is correct.
18 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Looking at page 5, the second 19 paragraph, the observation by Mr. Jordan on Brown &
20 Root. Would you agree with that observation about Brown 21 & Root reghrdless of who was selected to replace them?
22 A I agree that Brown & Root did not have the
() 23- resources and they were having some difficulty in 24 acquiring those that they felt they needed and those 25 that we felt they needed.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
og-8
, ' 14337
(_)
1 Q What about the third part of that, areas where 2 they didn't even know they needed the resources, did you 3 find that as well?
4 A Well, when you qualify it and say areas, there 5 were some areas there that they were deficit in 6 resources. One of them was, as a result of the Quadrex 7 report indicated, that they needed some stronger more 8 experienced resources in certain select areas. And I 9 would say with certain qualifications, that's a good 10 statement.
11 Q And then looking at the seventh full paragraph
'T
(~d p 12 beginning "Mr. Hancock asked Mr. Goldberg," was it Mr.
'd 13 Goldberg's sense at that time that when Brown & Root was 14 replaced, HL&P would have excess staff because so many 15 HL&P people were doing the work of Brown & Root?
16 A I have to read that paragraph.
17 MR. PIRFO: I think I'll object to that. Was 18 it Mr. Goldberg sense? I don't understand what the 19 question means.
20 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Well, there's a statement in 21 this paragraph Mr. Goldberg said that he was also 22 looking for a good contract administrator. Mr. Goldberg
() 23 explained that HL&P will have excess people after the 24 change because HL&P has had a staff to compensate for 25 Brown & Root weaknesses.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
ag-8 14338 s/
1 Well, let me ask you if it was your opinion 2 that if you brought in a new architect engineer, there 3 would be excess HL&P staff because HL&P staff had been 4 busy compensating for Brown & Root weaknesses?
5 A Well, in part I think that's a true reflection 6 of what Mr. Goldberg said, that we brought certain 7 people on with added strength that perhaps they did not 8 have in certain selected areas. But he didn't say that 9 these would be overabundant to the project throughout 10 the project's life during the engineering and 11 construction. He said at the outset if you brought a 12 Bechtel* person on board who had access to greater 13 resources, we might not need all those people we had and 14 what we would do is succumb them over to Bechtel and 15 then use them at a later date as those needs did 16 surface.
17 Q I see. And that's what the contract 18 administrator would be dealing with, would be moving the 19 HL&P people over to Bechtel. Is that why that's tied 20 together?
21 A I would imagine those people that were 22 affected were included in the contractual agreement with
() 23 Bechtel, yes.
24 Q Mr. Oprea, I show you what I'll asked be 25 ~ marked as CCANP 119 and ask you if these are your notes TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-8 14339
)
/
1 of the September 12th meeting that we have just been 2 reviewing.
3 (CCANP Exhibit No. 119 marked for 4 identification.) -
5 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, in my brief review 6 of these notes they appear to be perhaps a series of 7 notes of different meetings. On the third page there 8 seems tc be a different date up in the upper left-hand 9 corner -- I'm sorry, on the fourth page.
10 MR. SINKIN: Frankly, I couldn't read that.
11 MR. AXELRAD: And on page 3 there seems to be
( \
. .,/ 12 a listing of names almost as if there was a different
(
meeting or different people involved. -
13 14 MR. PIRFO: Mine are also -- I'm sorry, Mr.
15 Axelrad.
16 MR. AXELRAD: So, perhaps the witness should 17 be asked to make sure he --
18 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Please be sure of what it is, 19 Mr. Oprea.
20 MR. AXELRAD: -- know what these pages consist 21 of.
22 A Well, I'm trying to identify it. It appears 23 that the minutes in their totality represent meetings k 24 that Mr. Goldberg and I, licensing attorney and one of 25 our other lawyers met with Mr. Jordan on the morning of TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
eg-8
.o 14340 U
1 September 12.
2 The third page indicates to me that starting 3 there with the Hancock, Pokorny, et cetera, indicates a 4 meeting that afternoon with members of the owner's staff 5 so we can give them an appraisal of the proposals that 6 we received. And then the next page looks like perhaps 7 related to a Tuesday meeting which I would have to 8 surmise was the Tuesday, September the 15th, I recall 9 where the CEO's of the owners met to review the 10 proposals as submitted to us and then decide upon
' ll- whether or not Brown & Root should be removed and by 12 whom.
13 Q Do you think that the last two pages are the 14 September 15th meeting?
15 A Well, I can't-make out the date on it, but I'm 16 just speculating because these seem to be set up in some 17 sort of a sequence. The first two pages look like they 18 might be reference to the meeting that I identified with 19 Mr. Jordan on the morning of the 12th. The third page 20 indicates members of the owners that were there. And 21 then when I see the next page it says Tuesday, September 22 whatever that says, it very easily could have been
() 23 September 15th.
\ 24 MR. SINKIN: Does anyone have a 1981 calendar?
25 MR. PIRFO: Fresh out.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-8 14341 0 '
, 1 A Well, I know the 15th of September was a 2 Tuesday.
3 0 (By Mr. Sinkin) You do know that the 15th of 4 September was a Tuesday?
5 A Yes, because our Board met on the previous 6 week to review --
7 Q Could the last two pages be your notes for the 8 preparation of that meeting?
9 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I object to this line 10 of. questioning. It's gone on a while. I don't 11 understand -- A, the issues that I take it we're 12 litigating right now are not how well Bechtel does and 4._ .
- 13 how construction is going forward. We're litigating 14 right now should the Quadrex report have been turned 15 over earlier --
16 MR. SINKIN: No.
17 MR. REIS: -- Wait a second -- and the failure 18 to notify the Board of the substitution of Brown & Root 19 which had taken place -- which took place later. It 20 essentially involves Mr. Oprea's testimony in May. .
21 The Board -- unless we are looking at the 22 small issue of whether the Board was notified a week
() 23 before they were actually notified or not, I just don't 24 think it pays. I think we're spending a lot of time on 25 something that is not really relevant to the issues TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
ag-8 14342 1- involved.
2 I don't understand why we're going through and 3 rehashing these meetings in the week of September 10th 4 or 14th, whatever it is, and what's the materiality.
5 The question was whether Mr. Oprea knew when he 6 testified in May that -- whether he had discussions
.7 about relieving Brown & Root and really that was the 8 issue that was set for hearing. And what happened in 9 September is really immaterial.
10 In some of the speech I try to reconstruct
'll things in my own mind and try to figure out the 12 materiality of this. But really I have a great trouble -
w .
13 in ' figuring out the materiality of this. The question 14 was was there a misrepresentation to the Board in May 15 and whether the Quadrex report was reported soon enough, 16 whether it shculd have come to the Board or the NRC 17 sooner. But these meetings in September don't seem 18 material to.either of them.
n 19 MR. SINKIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, the issue is .
20 'the consideration of the removal of Brown & Root which 21 began with HL&P's decision in June, June the 29th, 1981, 22 that-they would seek alternatives for Brown & Root as
( 23 24 architect engineer.
The context of that information is all the way up until the time the Board is notified 25 formally that Brown & Root is being removed.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442 j
cg-8 14343 (v~)
1 These minutes and notes reflect the thinking 2 that was going on throughout that process as to why 3 Brown & Root should be removed and that's why they're 4 relevant. We're not talking in this instance about Mr.
5 Oprea's testimony in May. The issue started really with 6 the June 29th decision.
7 MR. REIS: If it's not relevant to Mr. Oprea's 8 testimony in May, I really don't know what it's relevant 9 to.
10 MR. SINKIN: It's relevant to the McGuire Rule 11 that requires the Applicants to notify the Board of 7-
> 12 significant new information from the project which might 13 influence the Board's decision and the fact that the 14 notification of the removal of Brown & Root did not come 15 until late September of 1981. We are now exploring what 16 they knew, when they knew it, what actions they took in 17 between the time that they began serious consideration 18 of removal of Brown & Root or at least finding 19 alternatives to Brown & Root and when they actut'ly made 20 the decision and that's the history we're developing in 21 the record right now.
22 MR. REIS: That wasn't listed as an issue in 23 this proceeding, Mr. Chairman.
)
-' 24 MR. SINKIN: I beg to differ, Mr. Chairman.
25 MR. REIS: Further, I don't think there's any TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
i ag-8 14344 1 question about wh'en they chose Brown & Root, when the
~
2 time was that they chose Brown & Root and when they 3 notified the Board. And we're just wasting hours.
4 MR. AXELRAD: Perhaps'if Mr. Sinkin could 5 inform the Board _where he is going with this particular 6 line of questioning as to these documents.
7 As Mr. Reis has just pointed out, the Board 8 was informed on September 24th. The testimony of the 9 witnesses for HL&P so far has described in some detail 10 the decisional process, including the meetings that were
- 11. ' held on September 12th, September 14th and September 12 15th.. *
'k ./ -
- 13 If Mr. Sinkin has something different than 14 what has been told the Board on these matters that he's 15 trying-to prove, then perhaps it has some relevance, 16 although it's difficult for me to perceive. But just to 17 go into further notes of the same meetings already in 18 the record is.very difficult to fathom-the relevance and 19 materiality of. ,
20- MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I did have a 21 response.
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes.
23 MR. SINKIN: I think we have seen repeatedly k 24 ~in going-through minutes kept by Houston Lighting &
25 Power or kept by the partnership of meetings of the 1
i TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
eg-8 m 14345 k~)
1 management committee or the management committee in this 2 case with other partners that the material in the formal 3 minutes does not necessarily include everything that was 4 said or that went on at the meetings. And it's almost 5 like a visceral reaction on my part now to try and 6 introduce any underlying notes that might capture 7 everything that was said instead of what Mr. Thrash 8 apparently felt was worth putting in the final minutes.
9 We have a number of other documents that have 10 underlying notes to meetings that are already in the 11 record, but apparently those are needed to complete the
- x. . 12 record because of the manner in which Mr. Thrash
( ..*
13 prepares his final minutes.
14 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, if I can respond 15 to that briefly.
16 In the first place, Mr. Sinkin insists on 17 calling these formal minutes and they are not. They are 18 Mr. Thrash's notes, they are not formal minutes of any 19 meetings.
20 And, secondly, in order to bring any 21 additional evidence into the proceeding, Mr. Sinkin is 22 going to have to provide this Board something other than
() 23 his visceral reaction. If he can point to anything in A 24 the particular documents that he wants introduced which 25 will make a constructive contribution to this TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg 14346 O
1 proceeding, then perhaps they can be considered on their 2 merits. But the simple notion that just because he 3 doesn't like what kind of notes Mr. Thrash took, 4 therefore he's going to give this Board and try to 5 introduce in this proceeding every other scrap of paper 6 he can find, that is simply not a basis for admitting 7 evidence into this record. -
8 MR. SINKIN: The fact that these are not 9 formal minutes that have been reviewed by someone else 10 for directions only heightens my concern as to whether 11 they capture everything that indeed went on.
) 12 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin, can you point 13 t'o anything in CCANP 119 that you think should be in the 14 record? I mean, that would contribute materially to the 15 record? Because I think the objections are more on 16 materiality than on strict relevance. I think all of 17 _these things are to some extent relevant.
18 MR. SINKIN: Well, frankly, Mr. Chairman, on 19 119, I thought what we had originally was four pages of 20 notes from this meeting, but it now appears from Mr.
21 Oprea's explanation only page 3 relates to the meeting 22 itself and that's obviously more sketchy than the
()
\
23 minutes.
24 So, I think in the case of 119, it probably is 25 not a material addition to what's in the minutes in TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-8 l
rx 14347 b
1 terms of what's recorded in Mr. Oprea's notes.
2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Given that, we will sustain 3 the objections to 119 and the questions being asked 4 concerning it.
5 MR. SINKIN: Well, let me get clear, Mr.
6 Chairman. 119, page 3 is Mr. Oprea's notes relevant to 7 that meeting. And I'm saying that that page does not 8 contribute substantially to highlighting anything that 9 went on in that meeting. The two preceeding pages are 10 Mr. Oprea's notes of a morning meeting before this 11 af ternoon meeting of September 12th took place and
()
p 12 repres'ent the only record that we have of the morning 13 meeting that apparently took place between Mr. Oprea and 14 Mr. Jordan and perhaps someone else. I haven't asked 15 that question yet.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Do you see anything in
- 17. there that would go to prove your case?
18 MR. SINKIN: Well, I see an assessment and a 19 recommendation by JHG, who I assume is Jerome H. _
20 Goldberg, that, number one, if STNP was a new job, he 21 would want Bechtel. Assessment number two, however, 22 since STNP has a long history of engineering neglect, he
() 23 seems to think that Stone & Webster would be a better N- 24 idea. And that those observations about STNP not only 25 highlight the situation at STNP, but I think highlight TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
G9-8 14348 T-()T 1
1 other documents that refer to whether a new contractor 2 would even come in on this project to take over for 3 Brown & Root.
4 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, again I don't see the 5 materiality of this, how this advances the record.
6 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The Board doesn't see how 7 any of that would be material.
8 MR. PIRPO: Or in that particular case 9 relevant.
10 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, in terms of the 11 different contractors.
/~^,
h- 12 MR. PIRFO: Right.
i .
13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: And perspective 14 contractors, that's true.
15 MR. SINKIN: Well, it's not critical.
16 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, would this be an 17 appropriate time for a --
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes, yes.
19 MR. SINKIN: Good time for a break.
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Take a fifteen-minute 21 break.
22 (Brief recess taken)
()
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Back on the record.
24 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, we do have the 25 executed copies of the tolling agreement. And as I TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-8 s 14349 *
~ (d 1 understand it, this will be CCANP Exhibit No. 118? ,
l 2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Right.
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin, will tnis be 4 substituted for what you originally had as 118?
5 MR. SINKIN: That's fine.
6 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: You have moved to admit 7 118, have you not? Or did you?
8 MR. SINKIN: I'm almost -- well, actually I 9 don't think I actually got to movir.g its admission 10 before the objections to its admission started. I will 11 formally move its admission at this point.
q
>-/ 12 MR. AXELRAD: I. object' for the same reason I i
13 objected to before.
14 MR. REIS: Right. The Staff objects for the 15 same reason as it objected before.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We have ruled. CCANP 118, 17 the substitute version, will be admitted.
18 . (CCANP Exhibit No. 118 admitted 19 in evidence.)
20 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, just so I'm clear 21 as to what's in this executed version, can you tell me 22 who signed for Houston Lighting & Power at the bottom of
() 23 the last page?
k- 24 A That's Mr. Dean.
25 Q Oh, Mr. Dean. Thank you.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-8
/"N 14350
(_)
1 A Hollis R. Dean.
2 0 Mr. Oprea, I'll show you what I'll ask be 3 marked as CCANP Exhibit 120 and ask you if these are the 4 meeting minutes for September 15.th.
5 (CCANP Exhibit No. 120 marked for 6 identification.)
7 A I believe these are Mr. Thrash's recollection 8 of the meeting. These are not official minutes of the 9 meeting as normally used by any members of the 10 management team or by the owners. -
11 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Then I think, Mr. Oprea, I
(')
p< 12 will ask you to review this document and tell me, even 13 though it's a long document, whether there are any parts 14 that you consider not to accurately reflect what took 15 place at that meeting.
16 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, that's an 17 incredible suggestion. This is a document totaling 18 eight and a half pages purporting to reflect notes of a 19 meeting that took place on September 15, 1981, almost 20 four years ago. It would not present any useful 21 information in this record to have anyone try to read 22 through a document of that type and give a credible 4
a
() 23 answer as to whether or not those eight and a half pages 24 do or do not reflect what happened four years ago.
25 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, beyond that I have l
TATE REPORTING _
(713) 498-8442 _
sg-8 14351
~ '
1 maybe a problem in that a lot of this meeting appears to
.2- reflect only which of the contractors are to be chosen a.
3 or not chosen, as the case may be, and I question the 4 relevance of that portion of it.
4 5 Could you direct the witness' attention to 6 particular points in this that you wish to emphasize and 1
7- that you.believe are material? I think tha't would be a 8 preferable basis to proceed.
9 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) On page 1, Mr. Oprea, 10 paragraph.beginning "Mr. Oprea passed out."
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Let the record reflect that
- j. ..
x 12 -irrespective of what happens, there's more to that 4 k. ! ,
13~ sentence.
14 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Whether that particular ,
t 15 paragraph, Mr. Oprea, accurately reflects the press 16 release that was prepared and the visit that you and Mr.
[ 17 Goldberg had with Region IV regarding advance notice of
,. .18 this change?
19 A I don't have an exact recollection. In all 20 probability, I did reflect on those subjects as a n
21 prelude to the formal parts of the meeting getting under i
- 22 way.
!() 23 Q Turning to page 3, the third full paragraph 24 .beginning "At 10:37," the observations that Mr. Goldberg I 25 makes about Brown & Root in that paragraph, do those
____ ~ _ _ _., _ ,_ TATE REPORTING _ . _( 713)_.49,8_-8442 .____ _ _ _ _ ___ _
sg-8
'r' 14352 1 . accurately reflect -- do you have any problem with the
- 2 way Mr. Goldberg's observations about Brown & Root are t
- 3 recorded?
4 MR. AXELRAD: I don' t understand what the i
5 question about do you have any problem how something is 6 recorded. If he is asking Mr. Oprea as to specific
- 7 statements in that paragraph and whether Mr. Oprea
'8 agrees or disagrees with those statements or whether 9 those statements were, in fact, made at that meeting, 10 ' those can be perhaps relative and material questions.
.11 But asking whether he has any problem just is not a 12 meaningful question and cannot contribute to the (j , ,
- 13. record.
14 MR. REIS: In addition to that, the Staff does 15 not see the materiality of that paragraph in looking at i
16 the issues that the Board has to decide, b
17 MR. SINKIN: Well, in --
i 18 MR. REIS: There may be a sentence or some 19 place in there, but it's hard to wean it out.
20 MR. SINKIN: Let me try and pick out a few i 21 sentences, j
l 22 MR. REIS: I don't think there is any.
J
'() 23 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) In the second sentence, it's 24 recorded that Mr. Goldberg said he was having difficulty 25 'with Brown & Root regarding schedule and budget and a i
.-.-. TATE REPORTING _ __ _ (713)_498,-8442,__ _ _ , _ , _ _
cg-8 14353 1 couple of sentences later it's recorded that Mr.
2 Goldberg explained that Brown & Root would not divulge 3 how its schedule and budget had been developed. In 4 essence, Brown & Root refused to talk to HL&P about the 5 subject.
6 MR. REIS: I don't see where that's material 7 to the issues in this proceeding. And I think to some 8 extent there was material of that sort in the record 9 before in the Phase I, but I don't see how it furthers 10 the record to have more information at this time or why 11 it's particularly material at all.
O 12 MR. SINKIN: Well, I am -- these observations 13- obviously are not observations solely as of September 14 15th, 1981. These are observations developed over the 15 history of the project by Mr. Goldberg as to his views 16 of Brown & Root's attitudes and performance. The 17 witness has testified to some extent to those and I'm 18 trying to see if these were the sentiments expressed by 19 Mr. Goldberg as of that date reflecting on his entire 20 history with Brown & Root. l 21 MR. REIS: I don't see how this goes to Mr.
22 Oprea's statement that between the issuance of 79-19 and
() 23 December 1980 -- was it December 1980 -- and his I
' - 24 testimony --
25 MR. GUTTERMAN: April 30th of 1980.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-8 r~3 14354 LJ 1 MR. REIS: April, April 30th of '80 and his 2 testimony in May of '81 there were no discussions 3 involving the removal of Brown & Root, how this relates 4 to that.
5 MR. SINKIN: I don't know that I was trying to 6 relate it to that.
7 MR. REIS: Well, I don't know what other
~
8 issue? On Quadrex? What's it relating to? What is its 9 materiality?
10 MR. SINKIN: It relates to how HL&P viewed the 11 performance of Brown & Root and whether those attitudes (8
12 about Brown & Root's performance prevailed over a long 13 period of time.
14 MR. REIS: Theoretically that might have some 15 indication of whether there were discussions within 16 Brown & Root about -- within HL&P about getting rid of 17 Brown & Root, but really it's not really probative of 18 that at all and it's just not material and we're going 19 on with another document that's not material.
20 (No hiatus.)
21 22
() 23 24 25 WNRFUW@R@ ufo OZM)LNR-fMKW
r-f~s 14355 L) 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Do you remember what you 2 asked?
3 MR. SINKIN: Let me try and reconstruct it; 4 it's been awhile, Mr. Chairman. I was calling attention 5 in the third full paragraph on page 3, first to Mr.
6 Goldberg's citing the difficulty with Brown & Root 7 regarding schedule and budget, the second sentence, and 8 then the sentence beginning in reply, Mr. Goldberg 9 explains that Brown & Root would not devulge how its 10 schedule and budget had been developed. In essence Brown 11 & Root refuced to talk to HL&P about the subject, whether 12 that was the relationship between Brown & Root and HL&P
}/ 13 as reported by Mr. Goldberg at this time.
14 MR. PIRFO: That's a different question.
15 MR. SINKIN: Is it?
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That one we will uphold the 17 objection to. I'm not saying everything in the 18 paragraph; but we don't think that has relevance as of 19 September 15th.
20 MR. SINKIN: Could you just elaborate a little 21 bit the basis for the ruling so I'll know what other 22 things that maybe I don't need to ask?
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, it's our thought that 24 as of September 15, if that was HL&P's attitude on the 25 September 15th, it doesn't speak badly that they finally TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
,'~h 14356 y
I told us that Brown & Root was being fired ten days later 2 more or less.
3 MR. SINKIN: I see.
4 JUDGE SHON: This was on September 22nd.
5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I'm sorry -- wait a minute.
6 MR. SINKIN: No, this is September 15th 7 meeting.
8 JUDGE SHON: Oh, okay.
9 MR. SINKIN: The whatever these are are dated 10 September 22nd.
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: By the way, we will allow 12 you to ask about the last sentence in that paragraph, if
-- 13 you would want to.
14 MR. SINKIN: In this paragraph?
15 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes.
16 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Actually, on those sentences 17 that I --
18 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I will have an 19 objection about that last sentence.
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I want to hear about it.
21 MR. REIS: Curiosity has nothing to do with the 22 materiality or the relevance to the issues.
23 MR. SINKIN: I think I can -- that's the 24 Staff's point. I think I can tie the materiality and r'% 25 relevance --
U TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14357 1 MR. REIS: Go ahead.
2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I was trying to save time.
3 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, the views reflected 4 in the sentences that I just called your attention to, 5 were those the same views that you held at the time you 6 testified, the views expressed by Mr. Goldberg, did you 7 agree with those views about Brown & Root's relationship 8 with HL&P and did you hold those views at the time you 9 testified in the Phase I proceedings?
10 MR. AXELRAD: These are views with respect to 11 how schedule and budget were being developed?
,_s 12 MR. SINKIN: No, views as to the fact that 13 Brown & Root simply refused to discuss the subject with
\
14 HL&P in any meaningful way'.
15 MR. AXELRAD: But the subject discussed is 16 schedule and budget?
17 MR. SINKIN: The subject discussed is schedule 18 and budget.
19 MR. AXELRAD: Perhaps we should restate the 20 question for the witness.
21 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) The views that Mr. Goldberg 22 expresses that Brown & Root, he had difficulty with Brown 23 & Root regarding the cost and schedule and explained that 24 Brown & Root would not divulge how its schedule and 25 budget had_been developed, in essence, Brown & Root TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
~
14358 1 refused to talk to HL&P about the subject.
2 Relating this back to your observations about
.3 Brown & Root's relationship with HL&P at the time you 4 were testifying in the Phase I proceedings, is this an 5 example of the kind of relationship that existed at that
.6 time?
7 A I can't either say "yes" or "no" to it because 8 I don't recall Mr. Goldberg saying anything such as that 9 in my presence about any problems he had with Brown &
10 Root relative to cost and schedule, that they refused to 11 talk or acknowledge subject; he may have indicated to me 12 that they had some problems. relative to maintaining the 13 schedule for coming tu? with the reforecast and cost and s -
14 schedule. But-I can't attest one way'or the other to 115' those statements.
16 Q All right. In the next sentence, Mr. Goldberg 17 says that the basic problem was that Brown & Root did not 18 work ~for the participants but rather the participants are 19 deemed by Brown & Root to work for them.
20 Was that an observation that you held about 21 Brown & Root at the time you testified in the Phase I
.22 proceedings?
23 A I think perhaps the intent of that message, 24 whichever way Mr. Thrash had finally been able to 25 paraphrase it, was the fact that the way Brown & Root was
(
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
r 14359
(_y/
1 conducting their affairs was like they were the owners 2 and that the participants were subjected to their whims 3 and ways. And I concur with that, that did occur over a 4 period of time with Brown & Root.
5 0 And would the last sentence of that paragraph 6 where Mr. Goldberg states that in terms of the quote 7 " peculiar chemistry," unquote of Brown & Root -- the 8 intent to schnooker, deceive, et cetera, would that 9 coincide with your views as of the time you were 10 testifying in Phase I as to how Brown & Root acted 11 towards HL&P?
12 MR. REIS: Mr. Chr.irman, the question that we 13 have before us was whether HL&P discussed whether there 14 were discussions within mangement, higher management of 15 HL&P, with Mr. Oprea taking part of the replacement of 16 Brown & Root between the time of the issuance of the 17 Quadrex report and the time he testified. I don't see 18 how that's probative of that.
19 MR. SINKIN: Well, Mr. Chairman, there is 20 another issue, and that is how HL&P perceived Brown &
21 Root at the time they were testifying in Phase I, which 22 is a separate issue in this proceeding. That is the 23 issue I'm attempting to lighted here.
l 24 MR. AXELRAD: Even if there is any kind of an 25 issue of that type, it's an issue or it's a question
(-)
\_/
s TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
! 4~(
14360
~J 4
1 that's been raised in the terms of whether or not there
- 2 were any concerns over the performances of Brown & Root 7
3 engineering services, and whether that concern was not 4 described at the time of the May, June testimony.
5 MR SINKIN: No.
6 MR. AXELRAD: That is exactly the way it was 7 put in the Board's questions to the parties to address 8 with respect to previous testimony.
9' JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That sentence, I think --
10 We'll overrule that.
11 THE WITNESS: What is the question now, Mr.
12 Sinkin.
I-
) 13 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) The last sentence in that
.(- _
14 paragraph, Mr. Goldberg, expresses a view of the peculiar 15 chemistry of Brown & Root, particularly their intent to 16 schnooker, deceive, et cetera, whether that coincides
, 17 with your view of Brown & Root at the time you testified
~18 in the Phase I proceeding?
19 A I concur with the peculiar chemistry. I don't i
20 _think I've ever talked about schn'ookering and deceiving; 21 I've said at times that probably more recent times, 1
22 having the opportunity in retrospect to review rafts of
^23 information over the past couple of years that perhaps 24 they may have been less open with us and perhaps not !
reflecting the candor we would expect them in certain
{} 25 s.1 !
- l i
l TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
.__ __ _ _ _ _ . _ . . . _. _ _-. - - -. ,_ _ - . _ _ _ . _ _ . - _ _ _ _ - . _ _ . -~ _
14361
)-
l' issues.
2 But in May when I was testifying before this 3 body, I had no feeling whatsoever about the intent or 4 purpose of deceiving action on the parc of Brown & Root.
5 Q What about at the time you later testified in 6 Phase I?
7 A No, not then either. It's just been within the 8 last couple of years, that other information had come to 9 my attention that indicates that probably they had been i
[ 10 less than candor at times. l l
11 Q On page 6, paragraphs 3 and 4, was the concern 12 about the impact of removing Brown & Root on the f
l
( 13 licensing hearings a concern prior to this September 7'
( .14 12th, September 15th meeting?
15 MR. AXELRAD: I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman. Could I 16 have that question repeated or at least some 17 identification of what concern we're talking about.
t 18 MR. REIS: And also I would like -- the third 19 paragraph, right?
20 MR. SINKIN: The third and the fourth paragraph 21 are the two items I called attention to.
22 O (By Mr. Sinkin) Had there been any prior 23 discussions prior to this meeting about telling the 24 licensing board about the possible removal of Brown &
{} 25 Root as architect engineer?
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14362 1 A I believe when we found that there perhaps were 2 alternates we could pursue and after we submitted the 3 request for proposal to the four entities and got their 4 response, we realized then that we had potential 5 alternates we could pursue to some good point of 6 fruition.
7 And I believe as we look at the proposals, Mr. .
8 Newman did this for us, looking at the response that each 9 of them had relative to the the licensing issues that 10 we'd been faced with, making the change in A/E and 11 construction management, we felt that, he felt and 12 explained to us that it was uncertain as to once we have O 13 r$ade the decision and once we've notified the Board and 14 the NRC staff o$ the decision as to who would replace 15 Brown & Root in those selected areas, that the earlier
! 16 decision the better because we weren't too sure whether 17 or not we would have to go through a hearing process 18 relative to that change and whether or not it would 19 inhibit the ability to bring on Bechtel in this case as 20 early as we wanted them to come on as the engineer of 21 record.
'2 So we were made aware of it, and the
!3 sensitivity of that situation as we were reviewing the 24 proposals. And up to the points in time that we finally 25 decided that Bechtel would be the one that we would t
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14363 v(~'l 1 appoint, if we could come up the right contract and an 2 agreement in principle with them.
3 Q Now, the request for proposals went out in late 4 July of '81. Is that correct?
5 A That's correct.
6 Q And when did you receive the responses?
7 A I believe around the middle of August, if I 8' recall.
9 0 And was it at the time you received the 10 responses that you had the sense that there was indeed a 11 good possibility an alternative would be~available to 12 Brown & Root?
13 A I think after we received the responses and we.
14 saw the answers, and we saw what it reflected, the 15 attitude of the four organizations, we felt there was a 16 definite avenue we could pursue that would lead us to a 17 successful alternate to Brown & Root as A/E and
.18 construction manager.
19 Q I guess I'm trying to get the date as somewhere 20 between mid-August and September 15th, when you had that 21 in your mind that there was definitely an alternative l
l 22 available.
23 A Well, I would say that once the' review of all 24 the four proposals were completed and that was completed Q
L/
25 just about the morning of the 12th of September when we TATE REPORTING SERVICF, 498-8442
/q 14364 D
1 had that meeting with Mr. Jordan, it was at that point in 2 time that we felt we had something that we could probably 3 pursue more positively than anything else, and it was 4 just a matter of picking the right course and negotiating 5 the right, if you want to call it, set of principles that 6 should be part of the contract, ones we have an agreement 7 in principle.. ,
8 Q Was it the pending testimony of an intervenor 9 witness on September 28th that led you to actually make 10 the announcement on September 24th?
11 A No, it had nothing to do with it. Just so ;
)
12 happened the time table was coincidental; we, on -- if I k i p' 13 -recall on September 15th, after we had the meeting with
, 14 the chief executive officers of the other owners, and 15 they all reviewed in some depths the assessment that was 16 made of the proposals, and all agreed that indeed Bechtel
( 17 would be our choice assuming that we can get the 18 agreements in principle, that as soon as that agreements j
19 in principle is completed, and we have the foundation for 20 a contract, we would then make the announcement. !
l 21 And it took up until almost September 23rd, if 22 I recall, for Mr. Goldberg to finalize the negotiations 23
( with Bechtel on some items that were part of that 24 agreement in principle, that in turn would constitute the 25 contract when it was finalized.
t f
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
( -
14365
/~}
%/
1 And.it was at that point, the 23rd if I recall, 2 that the decision was made to release the press 3 announcement and of course, simultaneously with that, to 4 go ahead and notify the Board that we were making the 5 replacement.
6 0 Turn to page 7, the fourth full paragraph' 7 beginning "there followed a long discussion," about the 8 middle of that paragraph it's recorded that Mr. Cowan 9 said, "It is hard to tell the licensing board how good 10 the construction is and be litigating against Brown &
11 Root about how bad it is."
12 During the licensing hearings in 1981, had HL&P
>- 13 withheld suing Brown & Root in order not to influence the 14 licensing hearings?
15 A Did you say " withheld not suing"?
16 Q Had HL&P withheld suing Brown & Root, not sued 17 Brown & Root, in order not to influence the licensing?
18 A We we weren't contemplating suing Brown & Root 19 at all until the end of 1981.
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Was that because of the 21 tolling agreement?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes. As I recall, Mr. Jordan in 23 representatives within the CEO's of the other owners, met t 24 along with lawyers and Brown & Root, and apparently the
(~T 25 tolling agreement was getting ready to expire and it V
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14366
[~-
1 appeared that there wac an unwillingness to come up with 2 the proper words and extend the tolling agreement and as 3 a result, it led to filing the suit, I believe, seemed 4 like on the 26th or 27th of December of 1981.
5 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I would move CCANP 6 120 into evidence.
7 MR. AXELRAD: Objection, Mr. Chairman. These 8 are, as have been previously described, notes of an 9 individual. To the extent that any questions with 10 respect to any matters in these materials may have any 11 relevance or material to this proceeding, those questions 12 have been asked of the witness; the witness has answered
'O x /' 13 those questions, so that material is in the record.
14 The document has been identified so we can 15 travel with the record to illustrate the questions and 16 answers of this particular witness. This material is not 17 probative and should not be admitted into evidence.
18 MR. SINKIN: I would disagree, Mr. Chairman. I l
l 19 think the document is probative to what was said at the 20 meeting. I have been working off the record with 21 Applicants to see if we can stipulate something about Mr.
22 Thrash to deal with these minutes.
23~ MR. AXELRAD: They are not minutes.
24 MR. SINKIN: Whatever they are. It may -- if --
r-)
(/
25 in order to protect the evidence ao to the quality of its TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
i l
14367
( }-
'1 contents,-it may be necessary to call Mr. Thrash to say 2; that he took these minutes. I'm trying to avoid that.
- 3 But-_I think the document,'whether it's minutes or 4 -recordingsHof the individual who usually takes the 5 minutes, does represent what went on, the discussions 6' that were held, that were relevant to the replacement of
- 7. Brown & Root,'which is in issue in this proceeding and as 8- such is a relevt.nt and material document that should come 9 into evidence.
10 .MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, this document 11 contains eight and-a-half pages, almost-all of which is 12 locally irrelevant to the issues before this Board. The
'. 13 Board has specifically instructed in the course of this 14 proceeding today, specifically instructed Mr. Sinkin to 15 address those' specific aspects of this document which he I l6 knew were relevant or material; he has done so.
17 To the extent he has any material information 18 this this document which he thinks is probative, he has 19 .been able to elicit that through the questions and
~
20 answers of the witness. The only other thing he can 21 possibly be doing now is trying to bring in through this 22 stratagem a host of irrelevant information written by an 23 individual who is not present here and containing --
24 ' consisting of notes which have not be approved by any of
{} 25 the other participants in the meeting.
i,..
g TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14368
.{
i 1 That could not possibly be probative or l
- 2. . relevant evidence and it's not competent.
3 MR. SINKIN:- We've had other documents of this 4 sort.: limited to the paragraphs about which questions were 5 raised and I'd be willing to do that with this document 6' as well.- I don't feel a need for any of the other 7 paragraphs other than those I called attention to.
8 MR. AXELRAD: Even those materials, to the best 9 of my recollection, were all or almost all, minutes of 10 management committee meetings which had been reviewed and 11 approved'by.the members involved, and therefore to some 12 extent.had at least some additional validity with respect 13 to the statements.that were-being used.
~
14 In this particular -- this particular document, 15 none of that is true. And even those particular 16 sentences or paragraphs that Mr. Sinkin cites, they're 17 not probative evidence for this -- the fact that Mr.
.18 Thrash wrote those notes is not probative evidence.
19 The only thing that's relevant is whether or 20 not Mr. Oprea agreed with that statement or heard that
'21 statement being made. And to the extent that that might 22 have been'useful'information, that has been asked and 23 that has been answered and already in the record.
24 Anything beyond that is not appropriate.
25 MR. SINKIN: Well, Mr. Chairman that's why I
..)
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
V
~T 14369 (G
1 started out by asking Mr. Oprea to go through the 2 document and see if there was anything that he disagreed 3 with and that was decided to be too long an inquiry.
4 Maybe to settle this I'll ask Mr. Oprea to go 5 to just the paragraphs we have discussed and see if
~
6 there's anything he disagrees with as to what's recorded 7 there by Mr. Thrash and if he doesn't disagree with 8 what's recorded there, then I will move the document in 9 as if Mr. Oprea had indeed reviewed I had to make changes 10 in the minutes or whatever.
11 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Let's hear from the staff.
12 MR. REIS: Excuse me?
(^<3 f 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Does the staff have a 14 position?
15 MR. REIS: Yes, I think it can come in to .
16 illustrate his testimony -- illustrate the 17 cross-examination that went on and to the extent he's 18 already --
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: The four paragraphs or the 20 entire document.
21 MR. REIS: No, the four paragraphs. To 22 illustrate the testimony, but not beyond anything other 23 than illustrating the testimony that has been said so 24 far. There's nothing else shown here. But as
{} 25 illustration of the testimony.
s TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
/~T- 14370
(.)
1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I think the Board will admit 2 the document just to the extent they illustrate the four ,
3 particular paragraphs, possibly the top of the first page 4 which' introduces what meeting is involved, although I 5 guess we have testimony to that effect. For that limited 6 extent is all we will --
7 MR. AXELRAD: But not for the truth of the 8 matters stated therein.
9 -
JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That's correct. But to 10 illustrate what the witness -- what the witnesses 11 answers, of course, are in the record. So for that 12 purpose we will let 120 in.
(^< ' 13 (CCAMP, Exhibit 120 received 14 in evidence.)
15 MR. SINKIN: I may have a difficulty with your 16 count on the number of paragraphs, but I think the record 17 will accurately reflect which paragraphs were addressed 18 and we don't want to worry about that now.
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I was counting one on page 20 1, one paragraph on page 3 and -- oh, wait a minute. 2 21 or 6, I guess it's five paragraphs, one on page_7.
22 MR. SINKIN: I --
23 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Oh, five paragraphs. That 24 was my mistake.
(} 25 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Oprea, I'm going to show you i
l l
1 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
)
- gs 14371 V
1 what I ask be marked as CCANP 121.
2 (CCANP Exhibit 121 marked 3 for identification.)
4 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) I realize, Mr. Oprea, that is 5 a memorandum in one Brown & Root official to another 6 Brown & Root official and doesn't indicate it was copied 7 to you. However, the memorandum in good part purports to 8 be a record of a conversation that Mr. Broom had with 9 you. And my question is whether Mr. Broom has accurately 10 documented the conversation he had with you?
11 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I object to this 12 because I don't know the relevance and materiality of O'" 13 this, looking at the issues before the Board.
14 MR. SINKIN: Have you reviewed the document?
15 MR. REIS: I've read it through quickly, unless
- 16 I am pointed to particular paragraphs, I don't see the 17 relevance and material of this memorandum of September 18 the 22nd.
19 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, clearly the 20 question is too broad; to begin with, if Mr. Sinkin has a 21 specific statement or a specific sentence which he wishes 22 the witness to focus on and ask him questions about that, 23 then perhaps that might be probative, depending upon what 24 the statement or sentence is. But to ask --
(')
<j 25 MR. SINKIN: I can walk through each sentence l
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
F.
) 14372
(~'/
x-1 if that's --
2 MR. AXELRAD: But each sentence may not be 3 material and relevant.
4 MR. SINKIN: I can walk through each sentence I 5 would consider material and relevant if that would serve 6 the purpose. I thought --
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yeah, I think it would be 8 useful if you ask the witness first whether he has any 9 recollection at all of this particular call.
10 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Okay. On September 22nd, 1981 11 did you receive a call from Knox Broom of Brown & Root?
12 A I don't recall. Could I have an opportunity to
- ~
( 13 read this document?
e 14 Q Sure.
15 A I've read the document.
! 16 Q Having reviewed the document, Mr. Oprea, do you 17 remember receiving a call from Knox Broom on September 18 22nd, 1981?
19 A I don't recall it, no, sir.
20 Q Do you remember Brown & Root at any time 21 suggesting to you that Stone & Webster or another 22 suitable architect engineer other than Bechtel could be 23 brought in to oversee Brown & Root's activities for a 6 24 to 12 month period as an alternative to the actual 25 removal of Brown & Root?
({ )
-(_-
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14373 l 1 A Are you saying at any other time other than 2 stated'as what's stated in this document? No, I~ don't. !
3 Q Turning to CCANP 86, Mr. Oprea, I have an 4 administrative oversight here I think in my notes that it
~
5 never came into evidence while I was talking to Mr.
6' Goldberg and I believe you received a copy of this t 7 document.
8 I just want to check that you were familiar 9 with a letter from Mr. Goldberg to Mr. Halligan in April 10 of 1982, 11 A I glanced at the letter, but I was looking for 12 any reference to myself in this but I don't see it.
O, 13 Q Yeah. I think I can cure that, if you will 14 give me just a second. IftheApplicantshaveEN-519 ann 15 .could show you Appendix B, which is in the front of it.
16 It has the actual letter reproduced with the actual 17 services. Well, I can show it to yo'..
u This is EN-619.
18 A You're indicating'that it was submitted as an !
19 attachment to this letter that went to John Collins?
~
20 Q This is bound into what is known as EN-619, the 21 Bechtel Corporation report on engineering transition.
22 A I'm at a loss.
23- Q I'm merely using it to illustrate to you what
~24 the service list was attached to this letter originally, 25 the letter and the service. list were bound into this L.)
4 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
I f] 14374 .
Lj l 1 document.
2 A Well, I would think that the service list 3 didn't pertain to the letter, would be my guess.
4 Q You wouldn't?
5 A If this letter went to Mr. Halligan, it 6 wouldn't have a service list on it.
7 0 If you'll notice the c.c. at the end.
8 A Oh. Well, it says service list. I have no way 9 of correlating this letter to the service list if that 10 indeed is the -- well, I guess there is one way. Yes, it 11 identifies, you're right.
12 Q And the name at the top of the service list is
,3
(-) -
13 your name. Is that correct?
. 1, 14 A That's correct.
15 MR. SINKIN: Mr. Chairman, I'd like to move 16 CCANP 86 into evidence at this time.
17 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman. The only thing 18 that he has established is that Mr. Oprea was on the 19 service limit. He has not established that Mr. --
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Oprea, do you remember 21 this particular letter?
22 THE WITNESS: No, I don't. I know there was 23 some correspondence that went between us and Bechtel 24 relative to the Quadrex report, particularly their 25 findings, but I don't remember this specifically.
(]}
(s.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
=
14375
( };
1 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Do you remember having a 2 discussion with Mr. Goldberg about whether Bechtel's 3 -assessment of the Quadrex report was adequately 4 addressing the generic findings in the Quadrex report?
5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: If we hold the line -- just 6 hold the line a minute. We're going to check if our 7 records show that it was admitted or not.
8 MR. SINKIN: Okay.
9 MR. AXELRAD: We may be spinning wheels for 10 something we don't have to.
11 JUDGE LAMB: I have it being admitted following
~
12 the morning break on the 17th.
7' 13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I have a reference 12404,
\ .
14 now let's see. It's admitted on page 12404.
15 MR. SINKIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I haven't read anything 17 preceding or following that, but it does say admitted on 18 that page.
19 MR. SINKIN: All right.
20 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I can't tell you if there 21 were any qualifications to it.
22 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Mr. Oprea, are you aware that 23 in their further review of the Quadrex report, that the 24 Bechtel Corporation found a component which Brown & Root
() 25 may not have properly identified as safety related?
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14376 j
1 A Their review with Bechtel reviewing it and 2 Bechtel in turn may have identified something else that 3 may say --
4 Q A component that Brown & Root may not have 5 classified as safety related that should have been 6 classified as safety related?
7 MR. AXELRAD: They have two " mays" in that 8- sentence. They may have identified something that may 9 failed to be properly classified?
10 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) A component which Brown & Root 11 may not have properly identified as safety related.
- 12 A I don't recall. I don't know if that was
-! 13 brought to my attention or not. .
14 (No hiatus.)
15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 2s C:)
f TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
F' Cg-10 y 14377
\
1 0 .If you would review CCANP 92. My first 2 question is whether you reviewed this particular 3 pleading. before it was filed with the court?
4 A No.
5 Q Mr. Oprea, I'll show you what I ask be marked 6 as CCANP 122 and ask you if this is your sworn statement 7 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
8 (CCANP Exhibit 122 marked for 9 identification.)
10 A Yes, it is my sworn statement.
11- MR. SINKIN: I would mov+: CCANP 122 into 12 evidence. .
13 MR. REIS: The Staff has no objection.*
14 MR. AXELRAD: No objection, Mr. Chairman.
15 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: CCANP 122 will be 16 admitted.
17 (CCANP Exhibit No. 122 admitted 18 in evidence.)
-19 MR. SINKIN: That concludes my 20 cross-examination, Mr. Chairman.
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Is the Staff prepared to 22 cross-examine at this -- do you want a short break?
. () 23- MR. PIRFO: Yes, please.
Okay.
24 JUDGE BECHHOEFER:
25 MR. PIRFO: Shouldn't need any more than five TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
w; cg-10
,- s 14378 L]
1 minutes.
2 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Okay.
3 (Brief recess taken) 4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: On the record.
5 MR. PIRFO: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
6 7 CROSS-EXAMINATION 8 BY MR. PIRFO:
9 Q Mr. Oprea, I show you CCANP Number 116. I 10 believe you testified that these were the notes you made 11 in preparation for a meeting with Mr. Saltare111 a day A)
\
- - 12 or two prior to that meeting?
t, -
13 A These are the notes that were made prior to 14 the July 2nd meeting, yes.
15 Q Right. July 2nd. At that time, the time you 16 made the notes, were you still endeavoring to work with 17 Brown & Root to complete the project?
18 A Oh, absolutely.
19 Q So, no decision had been made yet to terminate 20 them as architect engineer?
21 A No. If you recall, I think some of the 22 testimony that has been made, and I may have even
() 23 referenced to it, on June 29th is when we had that k-' 24 meeting with Mr. Jordan, Goldberg, Barker and myself.
25 It was at that point in time we decided we would pursue TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-10
- 14379 7)
'w) 1 other alternates.
2 So, Mr. Goldberg and I then proceeded to get 3 on what we called sort of an exploratory activity. We 4 talked to Bechtel, Stone & Webster, Ebasco and 5 Westinghouse as to whether or not there were any options 6 or alternates that might be in our favor relative to 7 making changes on the project. It wasn't until after 8 Mr. Goldberg and I returned from the trip that we made 9 that took us through probably up till about the middle 10 of July that there were some potential alternates.
11 So, we were continuing during that entire o '
\J 12 . period of time, even up to the point in time that we
' 13 made the final evaluation, to support Brown & Root and 14 encourage them to move forward in a very positive 15 sense.
16 0 So, had that change occurred by the July 23rd, 17 '81 meeting?
18 A You mean the change in regard to our attitude 19 in supporting Brown & Root?
20 Q Right. The change with regard to attitude.
21 A No. I don't think that there was any change 22 whatsoever in our endeavor to make Brown & Root perform
() 23 until such time it was conclusively decided in around 24 December 12th to the 15th that we had an option to 25 pursue.
i TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
r- -
cg-10 73 14380
'J -
1 Q December 12th?
2 A Oh, I'm sorry, September. September.
3 0 September.
4 A September 12th to the 15th. I think probably 5 on the 15th of September we met with the CEO's 6 representing all the owners. At that point in time is 7 when we conclusively decided to pursue the Bechtel 8 route, assuming we would be able to have an agreement in 9 principle that would constitute the foundation for a 10 formal contract.
11 Q Let me show you to refresh your recollection p
k- 12 with regard to the testimony CCANP 120 and the last
(~
13 sentence of the third full paragraph. Just so the 14 record's clear, would you just -- that's the paragraph 15 that refers to Mr. Goldberg's perception that there wac 16 an intent to schnooker and deceive on the part of Brown 17 & Root.
18 Now, when you were questioned about this you 19 testified that your conviction about any lack of candor 20 on the part of Brown & Root came to you at a much later 21 date. Was this af ter they had been removed as architect i
22 engineer?
} ,)
(s ,
23 A Yes, it was.
I 24 Was this after they had left the project as Q
25 constructor?
L TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
Cg-10
- 14381 J'
1 A Yes, it was.
2 Q What brought you to this conviction? Was it 3 the Brown & Root litigation?
4 A Yes.
5 Q Documents you had seen in that litigation?
6 A That's correct.
7 MR. PIRFO: That's all I have, Mr. Chairman.
8 JUDGE SHON: I have rather a short question.
9 It's just sort of a loose end that we perhaps might have 10 tied up with Mr. Goldberg and didn't.
11 (m '
\- 12 BOARD EXAMINATION (Cont'd) 13 BY JUDGE SHON:
14 Q Throughout both his testimony and yours you 15 have said that the decision even to look for 16 alternatives was not made, as I understand it, until it 17 became evident that Brown & Root was not going to make 18 one personnel change, that is the introduction of a very 19 top-level executive with a good deal of nuclear 20 experience. Is that correct?
21 A Perhaps I ought to clarify that, Judge Shon.
22 It was the fact that they were attempting to hire that
() 23 individual. But I think the question in point was 24 whether or not they would allow that senior nuclear 25 executive with good experience base to report directly TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-10 14382 1 to the chief executive officer.
2 Q That's exactly what I meant.
3 A All right, sir.
4 Q At the highest level reporting directly to the 5 chief executive officer?
^
6 A Yes. .
7 Q Does Bechtel have such a person reporting 8 directly to its chief executive officer?
9 A They have Mr. Chuck Halligan who is a 10 vice-president of the Houston office who formerly was a 11 vice-president out of, I believe, the San Francisco 12 office answers directly to Harry Reinch who is the 13 president of the Bechtel Power Corporation.
14' Q Thank you.
15 Q (By Judge Lamb) Mr. Oprea, did you consider 16 the possibility of reporting part or all of the Quadrex 17 report to the NRC under 50.55(e) as a QA breakdown?
18 A No, sir, I thought the three deficiencies that 19 were identified that fall in the reportability category 20 as some identification of QA indeed represented what we 21 felt based on the review, the Brown & Root review and 22 subsequent to that, our three senior-member review, that O 23 eho rethe r eaeta #cerevree=ta k-' 24 deficiencies.
25 I think I stated earlier that based on what TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
-Cg-10 14383 y
I was reported to me even subsequent when I had a chance 2 to look at the executive summary, I felt there wasn't 3 any pattern whatsoever that indicated a QA breakdown. I 4 didn't see anything other than three isolated events 5 that were deficiencies and, therefore, felt that it was 6 not a QA problem.
7 We originally started out, if you recall, 8 Judge Lamb, to look at the overall effectiveness of 9 Brown & Root and how well they were doing the 10 engineering to be able to support production 11 requirements out in the field. And we felt that even
(~)> 12 during the course of doing that.should any deficiencies d '
13 surface, we certainly would address those deficiencie's 14 and report them. And based on the results, I feel that 15 we did exactly what we were expected to do.
16 Q was there any discussion as far as you know of 17 that possibility?
18 A Going beyond what we had already reported?
19 Q Well, of reporting it as a QA breakdown either 20 in part or in total?
21 A No, sir.
22 Q What additional do you feel would have been i( ) 23 necessary to make that disclose the QA breakdown? What 24 do you think was missing that caused you to conclude 25 that it was not a QA breakdown?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442 _
. a cg-10
- s, 14384
- 5. /
1 A Well, if there would have been a greater 2 number of deficiencies and perhaps if there would have 3 been some interrelationship to those deficiencies that 4 in my mind's eye would constitute root causes of the 5 sort, perhaps that would have been something that would 6 have triggered that.
7 Q In retrospect do you feel that it was a QA 8 breakdown?
9 A No, sir, I don't.
10 0 In 1981 in the period between the time the -
11 Quadrex report was submitted and September, did you J 12 consider the possibility of reporting -- of submitting
(-
13 that report to this Board?
14 A Between the time of Llay 8th and September?
15 Q Right. And the time it was actually 16 submitted.
17 A No, sir.
18 0 Did you discuss that possibility with others?
19 A No, sir. That possibility never even entered 20 my mind, primarily because during the Phase I hearings 21 we were really looking at those things that were 22 fallouts of the show cause and the 79-19 investigation.
()
23 They were oriented towards construction and construction 24 QA activities. And everything that we had done in the 25 Phase I hearings, testifying and such, was heavily TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
r ,
sg-10 14385 7,
'V 1 oriented to all those things that transpired as and l
2 affected the outcome of show cause and also 79-19.
3 And it never dawned on me that that was a 4 document that should have been presented to the 5 Licensing Board, no more so than it was a document that 6 we should have presented to Region IV. It was a
! 7 management assessment. It was a review of Brown &
f l
8 Root's potential of performing effective engineering l
l 9 work to support a production schedule. I didn't l 10 think -- when I think of it now that the Board would be 11 interested in production elements of the project, that's
,Q more of a management concern on a day to day basis.
(_/ 12 It 13
- just seemed to me that it was something that was not l
14 really in vogue to do.
15 Q Do you feel that the problems that were l
16 reported to you by Quadrex could bear on the competence 17 of HL&P to control the design and construction?
18 A I find that a hard question to answer because 19 I really can't see how HL&P could be held totally 20 accountable. I recognize that perhaps there are things l 21 that we may have done prior to that point in time that l
l 22 perhaps may have given us a greater insight. For 1
() 23 instance, if I was able sometime in 1980 to perform the 24 assessment, we probably would have uncovered a number of i
l 25 these shortcomings of Brown & Root at that time.
i
! TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
.cg-10' g 14386
.U 1 I guess that pretty- well suffices and provides 2- the answer .tx> the question.
3 Q In retrospect, looking at it now, do you think 4 it should have been submitted to the Board?
5 'A No, sir, I don't believe so.
6 Q Did the NRC Staff suggest, as far as you know, 7 to anyone at HL&P earlier than September that the 8 Quadrex report should have been submitted to the Board?
9 A Not that I know of, no, sir.
10 Q The first indication that you know of was the 11 ' conversation between Mr. Reis and Mr. Newman?
( 12 A Yes, sir. ,
.L.
13 Q In your *1981 testimony, did you make any 14 conscious effort to avoid raising the issue of the 15 -Quadrex report?
16 A No, sir. There wasn't any occasion, any 17 direct question of any sort that in essence brought to 18 my mind's eye it was something that ought to be 19 -discussed.
20 Q Did you advise anybody else to avoid
.21 mentioning it?
22 A No, sir, there was no discussion whatsoever
() 23 with anybody about whether or not we should or should
\ 24 not mention it.
25 Q Did anyone advise you to that effect?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-10 14387
%)
1 A No, sir.
2 Q In other.words, what I really would like to 3 ask you is whether you or anyone else as far os you know 4 attempted to retain that report as confidential or to 5 conceal it, especially from the Board or NRC?
6 A No, sir. I don't think there was any time 7 that we connotated that as confidential. We identified 8 that as something that had to be uniquely retained on 9 the project and to be used by those people on the 10 project that had a right to use it or a need to use it 11 in order to perform their job, but that was the extent
(~)
(_/ 12 of, if you want 'to call it, any administrative control 13 over it.
14 Q Now, with respect to Mr. Newman s 15 participation in the decisions involving B&R, as you're 16 familiar, I'm sure, questions have been raised as to l 17 whether that participation was, in effect, in a company l
18 management role centext or as a lawyer practicing his 19 profession on behalf of the company.
20 Am I correct in assuming that as a senior 21 professional executive, you've had experience in dealing 22 with lawyers in matters relating to contracts?
() 23 A Yes, for a number of years.
24 Q Now, do you judge based on that experience 25 that Mr. Newman was functioning in a role that TATE REPORTING (713) 493-8442
cg-10 c.s 14388 i }
v 1 reasonably could be characterized as a managerial or 2 executive or other decision making role within or on 3 behalf of HL&P relative to the replacement of B&R?
4 A No, sir, not in my mind's eye. He was 5 strictly serving as a legal advisor, a legal support in 6 those areas as I identified earlier that were licensing 7 and regulatory oriented and in some cases relative to 8 some contractual matters.
9 JUDGE SHON: Thank you. That's all I have.
l 10 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Following up just a 11 little on Mr. Newman's role. Was Mr. Newman's l}
(_; 12 recommendation of a particular contractor based solely
(.
13 do you feel on legal consideration?
14 A I believe solely he reflected particularly 15 Stone & Webster, gave them favorable recognition mainly 16 because of the sophisticated approach they had in 17 addressing the licensing activities that would take 18 place as a result of the change of AE and construction 19 manager. Their response was much more sophisticated 20 than the others, indicated they did much greater 21 homework and had a greater base of knowledge that they 22 felt could be pursued in regard to the regulatory 23 licensing activities.
(])
L. 24 Q So, you feel that was the primary basis for 25 Mr. Newman's recommendation?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-10 s
14389 1 A I'd have to say yes because he didn't discuss 2 with me his thoughts about the AE construction manager.
3 During the course of our meeting with Mr. Jordan when 4 Mr. Jordan asked everybody on a sequential basis what do 5 you think or what's your opinion, I'm sure he reflected 6 what his thoughts were f rom a tota 1Lly standpoint. But 7 he was not brought in to do anything from a managerial 8 standpoint, to make any sort of executive reviews or 9 judgments or suggestions to any member of our executive 10 team. He was strictly there to give us the legal 11 support and the advice that we needed that pertained to n
(_) 12 those matters that again I said we,re licensing, 13 regulatory and contractual in nature.
14 Q Now, turning to another subject, were you 15 aware before the fact that Mr. Goldberg was going to 16 assign a special review team to review the reportability 17 of the Quadrex report, the review team being Dr. Sumpter 18 and Mr. Robertson and himself?
19 A The best I recall, Chairman Bechhoefer, i,t was 20 on the afternoon of May 7th when Mr. Goldberg reported 21 to me the meeting they had with Quadrex, Brown & Root 22 and our team that Brown & Root was going to go ahead and
( }j 23 conduct a reportability review. And I believe it was at 24 that time that he indicated that once they had submitted 25 their review to him, that he and Dr. Sumpter and TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-10 14390 1 Robertson would then convene to review that plur> other 2 elements of the report. I believe it was late in the 3 afternoon of May 7th.
4 Q Did he ask for your approval or did he just 5 inform you that that's how it was going to be?
6 A No, I believe he told me that's what he's 7 going to do and I know I reflected very positively on 8 it. I said in essence I think it's a good idea, I'm l 9 well pleased with that, I'm glad you're doing it that 10 way. Because these three gentlemen represent a great 11 reservoir of experience and knowledge that related to 12 nuclear power plant engineering and construction.
1 \.
i 13 Q Were you aware at that time of the, well, l
14 shall I say IRC procedure which would normally be 15 followed for deficiencies?
16 A Yes, sir, I was.
17 Q Did you have any discussion with Mr. Goldberg 18 about the difference in the type of review which was 19 going to be given the Quadrex report vis-a-vis what it 20 might have received if referred to the IRC?
21 A No, sir, I don't recall that we did.
22 Q Do you recall any discussion of what types of
() 23 documentation -- what documentation the review of the 24 Quadrex report was going to receive for purposes of 25 HL&P's files?
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
Cg-10 14391 t,h v
1 A No, I don't. We didn't discuss that at all.
2 0 Do you recall whether anyone in HL&P was 3 directed to take care of the documentation of the review 4 of the Quadrex report?
5 A No, sir._
6 Q Do you particularly have any recollection of 7 the discussions with Mr. Blau on that subject?
8 A No. He and I would normally not have any 9 contact.
10 Q Would you have your counsel show you what was 11 marked -- what was sent to us as document 17.
G
(-
/) 12 MR. AXELRAD: The April 19th documents, the 13 first document production?
14 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes.
15 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) We were advised that 16 these notes were Mr. Blau's. Do the last two items 17 perhaps refresh your recollection at all, the last two 18 items which are sort of five and six I guess in terms of 1,9 the time.
I f 20 MR. AXELRAD: There appear to be ten items on l
21 the page, Mr. Chairman.
22 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I was talking about 5:00
) 23 o' clock and 6:00 o' clock.
k- 24 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Items 9 and 10, I'm 25 sorry.
TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
cg-10
_ 14392 V
1 A I'm trying to understand what is written here. l l
2 No, none of those --
3 0 You don't recall any discussion with.Mr.
4 Goldberg or others about setting up a documentation 5 system for the Quadrex report?
6 A No, sir, not at all.
7 Q Okay. The next document I'd like to ask you 8 about is the one that was Number 8 of the Brown & Root 9 replacement series. Now, these apparently are Mr.
10 Pokorny's notes, but do you have any recollection of a 11 discussion -- well, first, were you present at -- is
. (~)
_e 12 this a meeting -- is this the September 12 meeting at 13 which you were present?
14 A If this is the one on the afternoon of 15 September 12th, I was present at that meeting, yes.
16 Q Do you recollect any discussion comparable to 17 what's indicated under the Tuesday on the first page?
18 A Apparently those are his notes relative to a 19 briefing that I gave the owners about Mr. Goldberg's and 20 my meeting with Region IV on September 8th relative to 21 Quadrex. And apparently whatever -- if these reflect 22 what I said, he indicates that we met with Region IV 23 concerned with Quadrex, they were receptive and
}
\' 24 eventually or evidently agreed.
25 Q Well, I was going to ask you, do you recall TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
sg-10 14393 V
1 what they evidently agreed to?
2 A Well, I don't know how Mr. Pokorny picked this 3 up in our conversation. I feel sure that perhaps what 4 may have taken place is the fact that se indicated that 5 should we find any other type of deficiencies during the 6 course of dispositioning hhe findings, that we indeed 7 would go ahead and report these to them. And we even 8 made perhaps some comment that should they be 9 widespread, that perhaps it would be an issue that we 10 would want to make in regard to the whole report.
11 MR. REIS: Mr. Chairman, I move to strike the
) 12 last statement. The witness' testimony is based wholly 13 on conjecture. He doesn't say he remembers a thing 14 about it. He says a'pparently from this, maybe. And 15 from his answers I don't see there's anything but his 16 trying to conjecture what it may mean with no knowledge 17 and no recollection.
18 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Does this refresh your 19 recollection at all as to anything you might have said?
20 A Not really.
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I guess we will strike the 22 last answers then. We were only interested to the j
(} 23 extent you remembered.
24 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Mr. Oprea, turn to l 25 the -- well, it's one of the supplemental documents, one TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
r eg-10 14394 O '
1 we got on April 26 which was the excerpts from notes of 2 the July 27.STP management committee meeting. And on 3 the second page, the discussion at the top of the page 4 which apparently Mr. Poston initiated, do you remember 5 any of that discussion?
6 You were present, were you not, at the July 27 7 meeting?
8 A The best I recall, yes.
9 0 You remember --
10 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, I think that we 11 have established through Mr. Poston it was not a July 27
) 12 meeting, that was probably a July 24 meeting.
13 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It 14 was July -- that's the one that the date was wrong.
15 Yes, that was July 24.
16 (No hiatus.)
17 18 .
19 20 21 22 23 (2) k- 24 25 TATE REPORTING (713) 498-8442
14395 j
. /)
V 1 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Do you remember any of 2 the discussion on reportable items that is referenced 3 here? Were the three items referred to specifically the 4 only discussion of --
5 A Well, I don't recall the discussion per se.
6 0 I see.
7 A During this management committee meeting. I do 8 know what was reported insofar as deficiencies that were 9 the fallout of the Quadrex report.
10 Q Do you know what the reference to where it says 11 "all high risk," unquote, did that include any Quadrex 12 items?
O 13 A I have no idea.
14 Q You don't remember that discussion at all?
15 A No, sir, I don't.
16 . O I don't know whether you were shown this 17 document by Mr. Sinkin earlier or not, but No. 27 in the 18 Brown & Root replacement group, it may have been one you 19 were shown already. If so, let's me know. Otherwise, 20 possibly you could testify as to whether or not you 4 21 recognized it.
22 MR. AXELRAD: Thinks No. 27 in the materials 23 produced on July 2nd?
24
{}.
25 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Yes.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
\
l 14396
()S
( i
\
l MR. AXELRAD: What was the question, Mr.
I 2 Chairman?
3 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: If Mr. Oprea has not already 4 been asked, I wondered whether he recognizes this 5 particular document?
6 MR. SINKIN: Could you describe it in a little 7 more detail, Mr. Chairman?
8 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Well, it's an undated 9 document.
10 'MR. AXELRAD: In the upper right-hand corner 11 has 0319827.
_s 12 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Are these your notes?
13 A' Yes, they appear to be.
u.
14 Q Do you know what they reflect, what their date 15 is?
16 A I'm sure it had to be either on June 29th or 17 subsequent thereto, relating to the alternate courses of 18 action that we might take on the project. I'm sure it 19 maybe took place after the exploratory that Mr. Goldberg
~
20 and I went on in talking to four entities about the
_ 21 potential of their involvement in some alternate 22 activities on the project. But I can't attest as to the 23 time frame.
24 Q Do you know, if you'll look under the column 25 that says NRC, item four, do you know what that would i
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14397
( ')
x/
1 refer to?
2 A My recollection is the possibility that Brown &
3 Root had been removed in part.
4 Q And also under the NRC column, could you 5 explain, perhaps, items two and three, two saying 6 " trigger hearing" and three " don't foresee significant 7 problems"? Do you recall what those items refer to?
8 A I just have to speculate, Chairman Bechhoefer.
9 Q Don't do that.
10 Finally, under item five, which states, if I 11 can read it correctly, "would construction be suspect,"
12 do you recall your thoughts in that connection?
b- 13 A I don't know specifically why that item was put .
14 on -- or in my notes, I don't know -- or ddn't remember 15 or recollect the conversation this led to my putting down 16 these different categories.
Now, turning to -- among the same series of 17 Q 18 documents, the one that's -- was numbered 30 when it was 19 submitted to us, this is a one page series of notes, my 20 question to you is: Are these your notes, or do you 21 recognize them?
22 A They are my notes. I believe what this 23 represents is after we decided, I think it was after the 24 exploratory, that there were alternate paths for us to l 25 pursue on the project, this may have been a direct result TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14398 Os 1 of Mr. Jordan asking me what I thought the time table 2 might be for us to move forward to the final point in 3 time were a decision would be made.
4 And I believe I may have scratched out based on 5 where we were at that time. And I believe it was around 6 the 16th of July, what I thought the time table would be 7 from that point forward until the point in time that we 8 finally made a decision.
9 0 So at that point in time, you expected that we, 10 the Licensing Board's, would be informed by August 28?
11 A Yeah, we felt by that time, I think, we were 12 working on a real tight schedule, you can see here, and 13 of course it didn't materialize. And we thought that if
}rd t-14 we could move very quickly, that perhaps we.might be able 15 to have a decision, so that at roughly about the middle 16 of August, we would have established a decision path as 17_ to which way we'd go.
18 If you see discuss with T.F. That's Tom Feehan 19 from Brown & Root. And then " discuss with others," which 20 could be -- trying to remember who those others are. May 21 be some others that might be related to the project i
22 indirectly. And then go down the line three and inform 23 this the necessary regulatory bodies as to what we were 24 doing.
25 Q (By Judge Shon) Is it correct, Mr. Oprea, that h ..
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14399
- us)
('N 1 the new agreement, 9-1, you were projecting that you 2 would have a new contract with an A/E and all, the first 3 of September?
4 A I would say that would be the agreement in 5 principle. It would take a little longer for a contract.
6 Q And that actually occurred when?
7 A We actually had an agreement in principle about 8 September 23rd.
9 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Is there any 10 significance to the circumstance that on this proposal, 11 you were going to inform the Licensing Board two or three 12 days before you reached agreement in principle whereas in 13 fact we,were informed one day after?
~
- 14 A No, there isn't. I think any resemblance of 15 this anticipatory schedule would and what actually took 16 place was just purely coincidental. I think this was 17 based on what information we received by talking to the 18 four entities during early July about their interest; 19 they were interested and I speculated as to what the time 20 table might be to get to the point that we had a new 21 agreement in principle.
22 I think it was just a relative indicator; it 23 _had no positive overturns to them except what we were 24 trying to do was direct our energies and resources to the 25 path of coming up with a decision as early as possible.
3 N /
(
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
r s 14400
'0 .
1 Q Well, if you turn down to where it says other 2 considerations, item two, when you say " inform board 3 August 15th," is that this Board or some other board?
4 A- HL&P's, Houston Lighting & Power Company's 5- board.
6 0 Oh, okay. Would you now turn to Document 31, 7 and is this document 31 a predecessor of the document 30 8 we've just been talking about?
9 A That's right. This document 31 is in essence 1.0 the precursor to No. 30, in that I sat down and listed a 11 number of things and put dates on them. And then after I 12 had a chance to review them, I think I may have r 13 reshuffled some of these and came up with what I thought .
14 was a more appropriate approach in time table that we 15 perhaps might be able to pursue.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Just one second. I have to 17 find one thing.
18 I guess that's all the Board has at the moment.
19 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Chairman, if we could have 20 perhaps five minutes, I think we may have a couple of 21 questions? I think it would be useful to try to complete 22 Mr. Oprea's testimony today so we can start a new witness 23 tomorrow.
24 MR. SINKIN: That's fine. Bo you have a lot or 25 a little.
(..
-TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14401
\/ l 1 MR. SINKIN: Very little, I expect.
'2 MR. AXELRAD: I think we need about five 3 minutes.
4 (Brief recess.)
5 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Back on the record.
6 7 RE-DIRECT EXAMINATION 8
9 By Mr. Axelrad:
10 Q Mr. Oprea, when you were being questioned by 11 Mr. Sinkin on Saturday, you were shown a copy of 12 Applicants' Exhibit No. 59, which are Mr. Thrash's notes 13 of an April 27, 1981 meeting, of the management. committee
\
14 and you were asked whether you had seen that document 15 before. You indicated that you had not. Would you like 16 to clarify that, that answer, please?
17 A Yes, I did err in making that statement. I 18 meant that I hadn't seen it prior to getting involved in 19 this forum. In other words, I did see it in preparations 20 for my testimony here which was like several days ago, 21 prior to my Saturday appearance.
22 Q Okay. Fine. But you do not or you did not see 23 those kinds of notes in any other fashion for review in 24 routine fashion?
25 A No, sir, not until such time as I was made ks TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14402
\_/
1 aware of them a few days ago.
2 Q Also, on Saturday, in responding to some 3 questions from Judge Bechhoefer, you were being 4 questioned with respect to Mr. Goldberg's description to 5 you in May of 1981, of a meeting he had with Mr. Sells in 6 Bay City. And you were asked whether there was going to 7 be any follow up with Mr. Sells in terms of Mr. Sells 8 review the report. Do you recall whether Mr. Goldberg 9 indicated to you whether the report, the Quadrex report, 10 would be available to the NRC for review in the future?
11 A I was aware, indeed, that he did make that 12 statement to the NRC that the report was available for 13 the NRC's review at any time that they saw fit to review 14 it on our premises.
.' 15 MR. AXELRAD: That's all we have, Mr. Chairman.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Sinkin.
17 MR. SINKIN: I have no questions, Mr. Chairman.
18 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: I'd just like to ask one or 19 two questions to follow up on the redirect question with 20 regard to Mr. Sells, the notification of Mr. Sells.
21 -
22 RE-CROSS EXAMINATION 23 24 Questions Mr. Pirfo:
25 Q Mr. Oprea, you said you recollected that him TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
1
)
l 14403 )
l 1 making that statement to Mr. Sells?
2 A No, he made me aware of the fact that the 3 report, at least I got the impression that he told Mr.
4 Sells that the report would be available to NRC staff to 5 review it on our premises.
6 O And it was aftet the meeting he had with Mr.
-7 Sells at the hearing in Bay City?
8 A I don't recall if he said it at that time, 9 after he told me about that meeting, or sometime prior to 10 that time. But I knew he intended to make the NRC report 11 available, I mean, the Quadrex report available to the 12 NRC to review at ther leisure on our premises.
. 13 Q But you did not speak with Mr. Sells?
. 14 A Oh, no, sir, I did not.
15 MR. PIRFO: Thank you, that's all.
16 JUDGE LAMB: I have one question that I 17 neglected to ask a little while ago.
18 19 BOARD EXAMINATION 20 21 By Judge Lamb:
22 Q Mr. Oprea, would you look at page 7 of your 23 testimony, please. Lines 5 thrpagh fifteen, those two 24 sentences.
25 A Five through 15.
-)
V
~.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14404 1 Q Five to 13.
2 A Yes, sir.
3 0 On that occasion, did you get any reaction from 4 .the Seyfrit or anyone else on the staff?
5 A Not that I recall. It could have been during 6 the period that we were discussing that where they'may 7 have then come back and said "Well, certainly during the 8 process of dispositioning those findings, which we assume 9 you're going to disposition all of them," we said, "Yes, 10 we will disposition all of them." He said, "Well, in 11 that process if you find you have any other deficiencies, 12 you would report those," and we said certainly we would.
7s
()x f
13 Q Mr. Seyfrit or other members of the staff did
.i .
14 not suggest to you that you should submit that report?
15 A I don't recall that, no, sir.
16 JUDGE. LAMB: Okay. Thank you.
17 Q (By Judge Bechhoefer) Just one question, 18 following up on what the staff asked.
19 Do you recall when you discussed with Mr.
20 Goldberg the availability of the Quadrex report to the 21 staff, whether Mr. Goldberg stated that he had a copy of 22 the report or at least volume one of the report with him l 23 when he met with Mr. Sells?
24 A The impression I had is that he indeed had some 25 parts of the report with him when he briefed Mr. Sells on
}
~
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
14405 1 the Quadrex report, whether it was all three volumes or 2 the executive summary or whatever it was, I had the 3 impression that he had a document there with him.
4 0 Was that impression from what Mr. Goldberg told 5 you?
6 A What from what he told me, yes, sir.
7 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Thank you.
8 9 RECROSS-EXAMINATION 10 11 By Mr. Sinkin:
12 0 One question based on Judge Lamb's question.
O v 13 At the meeting on September 8, did you come 14 away from that meeting with the sense that Region IV was 15 leaning towards the conclusion that the Quadrex report 16 should have turned ove'. as a whole to the NRC as 17 representing a breakdown of criterion 7 of Appendix B, 18 the control of purchased services?
19 MR. PIRFO: I o b j e c t t o t h a t'. I'm not sure 20 what the NRC region was thinking of was relevant or this 21 witness is testify to that facts. --
22 Maybe if he rephrases, I won't have as much 23 trouble with it. But the way he asked is he couched in 24 it terms of what the region was thinking.
(} 25 Ma. SINKIN: I asked what was the impression he s
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
,f.
14406
\~)
1 came away with as to --
2 MR. PIRFO: I'm sorry, that escaped me. I'm 3 sorry, I apologize.
4 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: That latter question is 5 okay.
'6 MR. PIRFO: I'm sorry, that's not what I heard 7 the first time. I don't know what was asked, but but I 8 withdraw the question.
9 MR. AXELRAD: I would like to have the question 10 repeated.
11 Q (By Mr. Sinkin) Did you come away from the 12 September 8th meeting with the impression that the Region
,N 13 IV staff was leaning towards the conclusion that the 14 entire Quadrex report should have been turned over to the 15 NRC staff as representing a breakdown in criterion 7 of 16 Appendix B, the control of purchased services?
17 A No, I did not.
18 MR. SINKIN: Thank you.
19 MR. PIRFO: I'm not sure we have anymore time 20 but we pass if we do, we have no questions.
21 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: You are welcome to follow up 22 on any of the last series.
23 MR. PIRFO: We decline the opportunity.
24 MR. AXELRAD: No further questions, Mr.
25 Chairman.
' g-]w
\,-
! (.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
- 14407 1 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Mr. Oprea, you are excused.
2 What is the schedule for tomorrow, Mr. Frazar 3 will start off?
4 MR. AXELRAD: Mr. Frazar will be testifying at 5 9:00 o' clock. Do you have an estimate of how long his 6 examination might take, that would help me make sure that --
7 the last witness after Mr. Frazar will be Mr. Wisenburg.
8 MR. SINKIN: My feeling is we might get through .
9 both Mr. Frazar and Mr. Wisenburg tomorrow and maybe even 10 get to Mr. Robertson but I won't really know that until 11 midday.
12 MR. AXELRAD: Okay, we will certainly have Mr.
13 Frazar and Mr. Wisenburg available tomorrow morning and i
14 if it appears that Mr. Robertson will be in the 15 afternoon, we'll contact him.
16 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: Is if Mr. Roberson in the 17 general area?
18 MR. AXELRAD: Yes, he's in Houston.
19 JUDGE BECHHOEFER: We'll adjourn until 9:00 20 tomorrow.
21 __ (Recess at 6:20 p.m.)
22 23 24 25
(:)
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, 498-8442
i nj 1 CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTERS 2
3 This is to certify that the attached proceedings before 4 the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR COMMISSION in the matter of:
5 6 NAME OF PROCEEDING: EVIDENTIARY HEARING HOUSTON LIGHTING AND POWER COMPANY, 7 ET AL (SOUTH TEXAS PROJECT, UNITS 1 AND 2) 8 9 DOCKET NO.: STN 50-498-OL STN 50-499-OL 10 11 PLACE: HOUSTON, TX r~ 2 DATE: Monday, August 5, 1985 L) 13 14 were held as herein appears, and that this is the 15 original transcript thereof for the file of the United 16 States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
17 18 19 '
E%" DG R. Patrick Tate, CSR 20 f --
21 % A m- - ' _
V] 'N Susan R. Goldstein, CSR 22 Official Reporters 3
0 25