ML20134N768
| ML20134N768 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Millstone  |
| Issue date: | 12/17/1996 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9702240435 | |
| Download: ML20134N768 (171) | |
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. 1 VERBATIM PROCEEDINGS l l
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMIGSION PUBLIC FORUM IN THE MATTER OF NORTHEAST UTILITIES.
MILLSTONE UNITS 1, 2 AND 3 t ,
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EAST LYME PUBL2- LIBRARY COMMUNITY CENTER SOCIETY ROAD EAST LYME. CONNECTICUT C 1 l hlS12> ;
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9702240435 961217 PDR ADOCK 05000245 T PDR
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, 2 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17. 1996 g
4 4 L.)
1 . . . Verbatim Proceedings of the Public 2 Forum of the United States Nuc1 car Regulatory Commission 3 in the matter of Northeast Utilities, Millstone Units 1, 4 ~2 and 3, held December 17, 1996, at 7:05 P.M., at the p
5 East Lyme Public Library Community Center, Society Road, 6 East Lyme, Connecticut. . .
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9 10 11 MR. WA(NE LANNING: Okay. Good evening.
12 My riame is Wayne Lanning, I'm the Deputy Director for
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V 13 Inspections in the Office of Special Projects. This is 1 14 a meeting between the NRC and you, the public. This is 15 a continuation of our ef forts to keep you informed of HRC i
16' activities ongoing as they relate to Millstone. So, we i I
17 have about an hour or so interval of presentations. And 18 as soon as we get the view graph machine screen down,
, 1 19 M 'll show you what that is.
But I'll talk to it as we l 1
20 go through it here a little bit 21 Before I get into that, just one 22 administrative thing. We have a sign-up sheet. So -- l 23 who has got the sign-up sheet?
l 24 A VOICE: It's right here.
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. 3 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 MR. LANNING: Right here. Okay. That if 2 you want to make a statement or ask a question, I'd 3 appreciate it if you would sign your name on the sheet.
4 And I'm going to use that sheet when we get to the 5 question-and-answer session.
6 Why don't we first introduce the NRC staf f 7 who are here tonight bef ore I get into the agenda? We'll 8 start with Mr. Durr.
9 MR. JACQUE DURR: Good evening. I'm
, 10 Jacque Durr. I ' n. the Projects Branch Chief f o r- the 11 Inspection Branch under the Special Projects Of fice that 12 now comes out of NRR in Bethesda --
or in Rockville, O 1s " rviene.
14 MR. PHIL McKEE: And I'm Phil McKee. I'm 15 the Deputy Director for Licensing in the Special Projects 16 Office-in the Maryland office.
17 DR. BILL TRAVERS: And I'm Bill Travers.
la And I'm the Director of the Special Projects of fice. And 19 in a moment, I'll tell you a little bit about myself and 20 this relatively new organization that's been established 21 by NRC.
22 MR. GENE IMBRO: Okay. my name is Gene 23 Imbro and I'm the Deputy Director of the ICAVP Oversight
.24 Effort.
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4 i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS m DECEMBER 17. 1996 1 MR. LANNING: Okay. .We also have the !
2 resident staff here with us in the front row. ,
3 Let me just give you an overview of our l l 4 agenda tonight. As Bill indicated, Mr. Travers will give 5 us an overview of the Special Projects Office and talk ,
l 6 about our function a little bit following me. And then 7 Mr. Durr will give us a status of the enforcement .
8 process. We had an enforcement conf erence with Northeast I J
9 Utilities back on the 5th of December. And so he'll I 10 bring'you up to speed on what that process is and how 11 we'll progress from here. He will also talk about some 12 recent inspection results. These are inspection results 13 that are documented in our integrated inspection reports 14 that we issue about every six weeks. So he'll highlight l
15 come of the more important findings f rom that inspection l
l 16 report or reports.
17 ~Then Mr. McKee will give us a status of l
18 the 2.206 petition, the inf amous Gladys petition. He 19 will talk to where we are with regard to that petition, i 20 He'll also talk a little bit about the order that the NRC 1 l
21 issued to Northeast Utilities concerning the Employee i 22- Concerns Program and the need for an independent 23 reviewer. l l 24 Following Mr. McKee will be Mr. Imbro.
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l OECEMBER 17, 1996 4 1 Gene will ~ talk .to the status of the i ndeperident l 2 verification process that's ongoing. There's been a lot ,
3 of activity with regard -- within the' NEAC and he'll give 4 you some insight into that.
5 And then, finally, I will summarize for ;
6- you some recent changes we've made to the NRC restart
, l l 7 assessment plan and I'll also summarize our meeting we !
l 8 had this afternoon with Northeast Utilities concerning 9 their recovery plan. I l 10 And I think those presentations will tak'e l ,
i 11 a little over ari hour, at which time we'll take about a l
l 12 ten-minute break. And then we'll come back for a O 13 eeeetion-end-anewer seeeion.
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14 So, with that, let me introduce Dr. Bill l l
.15 Travers. He's the Director of the Special Projects 16 Office. 1 17 OR. TRAVERS: Thanks very much. I'm glad l
18 to be here tonight to participate in this meeting, which -
19 is really designed to provide the public with an update 20 on our NRC activities at Millstone 21 As many of you may know, the NRC is 22 plannirig to continue to hold these types of public 23
- meetings from time to time ac really one way of keeping 24 the public informed of our regulatory oversight l
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17 1996 a
1 actJ vities' at Millstone. And my principal purpose at 2 tht ooint in the meeting is to characterize the new, 3 re /ely new, NRC organization which I head which has 4 beesi :reated to oversee Northeast's efforts to restart 5 the Millstone units.
6 Before I do that, let me just say a few 7 words about myself. My background is science and 8 engineering, specifically physics and nuclear 9 engineering. .And just before being appointed as the 10 Director of the Millstone project, I was the Director of 11 the Spent Fuel Project Office in our Office of Nuclear 12 Material Safety and Safeguards.
13 .In that position I was involved with 14 directing NRC programs f or the transportation and storage 15 of radioactive materials, including spent nuclear fuel 16 from nuclear power plants.
17 I've also held a number of other positions 18 within the NRC, one of which for three and a half years 19 had me at the Three Mile Island site near Harrisburg, 20 Pennsylvania, where . I directed NRC oversight of the 21 clean-up activities at the damaged Unit 2 power reactor 22 In that role and in addition to the many 23 technical challenges that we faced, I had a significant 24 opportunity, both working there and living in the T POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 4
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l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 !
N l U i 1 ' community, to gain an understanding of the concerns of l J
l 2~ the people,living in the vicinity of that plant. J l
3 A lesson learned at Three Mile Island and 2 l
4 'one which seems particularly applicable at Millstone is i V ,
'5 that once 'an organization's public credibility- in 1
6 damaged, it's a very difficult thing to regain it. It's I 1
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7 clear to me . that at Millstone --
that Millstone is l l l l
8' probably the biggest embarrassment to both the nucicar .l 9 industry and the NRC since Three Mile Island. !
i 10 It's also clear that the principal l
11 responsibilities f or the problems.at Millstone lies with i l
12 the utility. As the licensed operator, Northeast has the l l \
13 primary responsibility for its activities to both -- to !
14- comply with NRC requirements and to ensure public health l
15 and safety. l 16 But, for its part, the NRC 'i n its l j
- 17. oversight role also has important responsibilities at 18 Millstone. The NRC has recognized that its programs did l
19 not work as well as they should have. Optimally, our 1 20 oversight pr'ocesses should have resulted in earlier i
l 21 Identification of problems and forced earlier corrective l I
22 actions by the utility. Since they didn't achieve this i
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! '23 result, it's obvious that our credibility with many of . i 24 you here tonight has been damaged. l I
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HEARING RE: MILL. STONE UNITS
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.C g i The only way I know to restore or begin to 2 restore credibility is through hard work, openness and 3 results. For our part in the conduct of our continuing 4 regulatory oversight at Millstone, that's exactly what we 5 intend to do. It's really a very simple philosophy. I 6 don't underestimate the complexity of implementing it, 7 however.
8 To help do this, j ust last month the NRC
, 9 created a new organization for the oversight of the 10 Millstone units. The new organization, the Special 11 Projects Office or SPO within the Office of . Nuclear 12 Reactor Regulation is the organization that I now head.
13 The SPO includes NRC staf f resources associated with both 14 licensing and inspection functions. As a result, NRC 15 staff' located at the Millstone' site, Region 1 and our 16 Headquarters Office have all been integrated into one 17 organization.
18 The principal managers have been 19 introduced to you tonight. I'll j ust mention again that 20 Wayne Lanning is the Deputy Director for Inspections.
21 Phil McKee is the Deputy Director for Licensing. And i
22 Gene Imbro to my right here is the Deputy Director for 23 our oversight of the ICAVP program.
24 The SPO was created to provide a much more 4
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9 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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1 efficient management focus for the niany and varied 2 activities that will need to be conducted prior to any i 3 -restart consideration. I anticipate that the SPO l 4 organization, while temporary, will continue through some e
l 5 initial period of power operations. >
l 6 The .SPO will be responsible for 7 essentially all NRC oversight activi' ties at Millstone.
, 8 Our focus will be forward'looking and designed to assess !
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9 the adequacy of the utility's action to complete its
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10 identification of issues and its corrective actions.
11 Again, our program recognizes that it is 12 the utility which has the fundamental responsibility to I
() 13 fix problems at Millstone and to ensure safety and i
14 compliance with our regulations. ;
15 We do, howev'er, recognize our !
16 responsibility to carry out ef fective assessments of the ,
17 utility's compliance with NRC requirements. The SPO has 18 been established to put us in a good position to do this.
19 We are caref ully planning and expect that >
20 our programs will be effectivo in evaluating whether or ;
21 not Northeast's corrective actions have been successf ul.
, 22 Importantly, our programs will be open. There will be l i
- 23 significant opportunity for the public to evaluate our i 24 activities.
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10 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 v
p 1 In my view --
and it is one that is l 2 limited by.' having f ocused on the Millstone situation f or 3 only the past several weeks --
Northeast has a ;
4 .significant amount of work to accomplish before any 5 restart consideration.
6 We heard some f rom the utility today about
'7 their plans .for getting towards restart. And Wayne 8 Lanning is going to summarize those towards the end of 9 the meeting this evenirig.
10 The scope of problems ranging from l l l 11 failures to maintain the design and licensing bases of I l
12 the units to the mistreatment of employees who raise l 13 safety concerns is daunting. While fixable, the l
". l 14 resolution of these problems will require a fundamental 1
15 and monumental. effort by the utility. It will require a '
16 f undamental change in the way Northeast runs its nuclear 17 business.
18 At two recent public meetings between the ;
I 19 NRC staf f and the utility, the new senior management team j i
3, 20 for the utility outlined its plans for turning the I 21 situation at Millstone around. While it's only a start, 22 I think it's significant that the utility has 23 acknowledged a broad range of failures and has targeted 24 the need for wholesale change in management philosophy. !
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i 11 l- HEARING RE: MILLSTONE. UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 2 0
1 Now they need to actually make these changes happen.
1 2 There is, however, some experience that l
! 3 ef f ective management redirection can work. In f act, this ;
i 4 has been accomplished at plants which were once on NRC's i
5 watch list, such as Brunswick, Turkey Point und Davis f 6 Bessie, which are now either good or suporior performers.
7 We will be f ocused on caref ully evaluating -
8 Northeast's implementation of' planned corrective actions. !
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! '9 To help ensure our evaluations are thorough, and as a !
l 10 result of our concerns about the of f ectiveness of the 11 utility's management in correcting problems, the NRC has ;
12 required two different independent third-party programs l 13 at Hillstone. These are significant actions.
l l 14 The Independent Corrective Action )
i 15 Verification Program which has been discussed in,other ]
l 1 l 16 public meetings is intended to help confirm whether or i i
17 not Northeast has corrected extensive problems with the
!. 18 design and licensing' bases of the plants. Gene Imbro is 'l l I 19 going to provide a short status on the ICAVP in a few l
20 minutes.
21 I am aware that there have been 22 significant concerns raised about the independence of the 23 third-party organization that will ultimately be 24 chartered for this task. Rather than address those
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12 l: HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l OECEMBER 17, 1996 L71 l L .1 1 issues'at this point in the me ting, we will plan to 2 ' discuss and answer some of-the questions you have about 3 those topics later on towards the end of the meeting ~ in 4 .the question-and-answer session.
5 In addition to the ICAVP, a third-party 6_ oversight of the utility's Employeo Concerns Program was 7 required by an NRC order issued in October. Phil McKee
-8 will be providing a discussion of that o" dor later in
! 9' this meeting. But let 'just say that this is- a l 10 particularly significant NRC action which was taken as a 11 result of concerns involving repetitive f ailures and the 12 utility's treatment of employee concerns and of those Q 13 employees, in fact, who raised such concerns.
14 The NRC will closely monitor these 15 activities as part of,. our restart assessment. And, 16 again, we intend that our programs will be open. We 17 expect to continue to conduct public meetings like thin 18 one, public inspection exits. In a' current agreement l
19 with the Nuclear Energy Advisory Council chartered by the 20 State of Connecticut, members of that organization can 21 observe in inspections at the plant.
22- For now, however, and due to the exttnt of 23 the problems which have been identified, the Millstone 24 units are shut down and they will remain shut down until POST REPORTING SERVICE
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t HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l .
DELEMBER 17, 1996
-b l' 1 the NRC Commissioners approve restart. I' don't really I p 2 know how long that's going to take. But schedules are 3 not our primary concern. Much of the topics that we i 4 talked about this afternoon had to do with schedules.
l 5 And when we concluded our remarks, we certainly indicated l
6 that our principal concern, while --
is not on the '
l 7 schedules that have been laid out but, rather, on our r
8 continuing effort to assess the corrective actions that ;
I-9 really need to take place before any restart 10 consideration.
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( 11 The message I'd like to leave with you l
12 tonight is that our program for avaluating restart I i l 13 readiness is being developed and it is mindful of both l 14 failures by the utility and the fact that our own '
15 regulatory oversight program did not work as well as it
, 4 16 could or should have. I 17 Before restart, which must ultimately be .
l 18 approved by the Commissioners, we plan to carry out a
, 19 thorough evaluation of the utility's corrective actions l l 1 l
20 and we plan to carry out our programs as openly as we )
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l 21 possibly can.
l 22 Again, I'm glad to be here this evening ,
l 23 and I look forward to some of your comments and questions 24 later on in the program. Thanks.
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l
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1 MR. LANNING: Jacque? j i
2 MR. DURR: The regulatory process which i
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3 we've going through -- I'm sure there's some' question in 1
4 .the public's mind about what's really transpiring here.
5 We've been at this regulatory business with violations at
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6 Millstone for the past year and you haven't seen anything ;
7 come. out the other side except we had an enforcement 8 conference. An/ everybody is wondering, "Where is this -
9 going?" So let me explain the process to you just a l I
10 little bit. 1 11 First of all, it's obvious that for a 12 violation to have occurred, the event had to take place.
13 'One of our inspectors had to identify it through some ,
l 14 vehicle. The licensee identified it. We identified it.
15 Once that's done by the inspector, he or she has to make 16 a connection between a regulatory mandate that says you 17 cannot do.it that way. Those are embodied in.our rules 18 which we keep referring to as the Code of Federal 19 Regulations. You'll hear us spout numbers sometimes and 20 I'm sure nobody understands those numbers but us. And 1 l 21 we'll say 10 CFR 50.54(f ) or 10 CFR 50.46. Well, in the 22 Code of Federal Regulations, that's a specific rule that l I
23 is imposed on the utilities and they all must follow it i
24 or they must have an exemption from that rule. i l -- i
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i HEARING'RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER. 17,' 1996 .
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v l 1 The other things that we can cite f r
2 violations for are, as I- said before, rules. We can cite !
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3 violations against the technical specifications or the l l
4 license that was issued. And that's embodied in a 5 document called the license. And the technical !
6 specifications is an appendix to that license. Okay?
l .
l 7 And then the only other things that we can :
l 8 cite against are orders. We've issued two orders against f i 9 Millstone. If they don't follow those orders, we can l l I
! 10 issue a violation for that. s !
l i l 11 Now, that sets in process --
once a l
12 violation has been.iesued, that sets in process legal --
l O 13 it e e leoei nroceee wherein the eti11tv hee the rient te ;
14 respond to that violation and either ref ute or accept it 15 and it can also leac on into a hearing process with the l 16' NRC procedure ;
17 But right now, we have --
there*c four 18 levels of violation that we could issue, Levels 1 through ,
19 4, which is kind of r, elf - exp la na to ry. Level l's, 2's and 20 3's are the highest levels of v. lations that we will 21 issue. Level 4's are generally issued f rom the regional 22 office and they usually come out under my signature or 23 Mr. Lanning's signe.ture. They're found by the inspector.
l 24 Management agrees with the characterization of the POST REPORTING SERVICE HAM 3EN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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i t 16 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER ~17, 1996 10 i
1 violation. And we send a Notice of Violation to the 2 utility in our inspection reports.
3 So . i. f you . go through our inspection
. 4 reports, you'll find that we've issued Noticos of ;
l 5 Violation. And these are generally Level 4's or less. !
6 Now, the other thing we can have is a non- j
! 7 cited violation. And that is that it is so low in the 1
8 spectrum of violations that it's really not a regulatory j l l 9 concern. The utility has identified it, noted it, j i
10 corrected it, taken the proper corrective action and the.
11 NRC will issue a non-cited violation.
l 12 What we just went through was 60-some )
.13 violations, nearly 65 violations,- at the recent i i l 14 enforcement conference. 'Okay? They were all in the l H
15 Level 1, 2 or 3 space. Whenever we hold a pre-decisional !
l 16 enf or cement conference, it means that we're looking l i
l 17 towards issuing escalated -- what we call escalated i
I 18 ' enforcement which will -- can have various sanctions i i
i 19 -attached to it. Primarily what you will see is it will !
20 bo issued as a violation. It will require that they take I
21 certain corrective action. And there is a high 22 possibility that there will be a civil penalty attached l
l 23 to that violation.
l 24 We are in that process today. We're in c
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17 HEARING RE: HILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 u
1 the process. We've had the. pre-decisional enforcement
- 2. conference, which is the chance for the utility to.
3 present their case, to present their side of the story.
4 We've got our facts. We want to hear their facts. We t 5 take that information back and it's under consideration 6 today as we speak. From that will come a determination 7- of severity. levels for those violations. Okay? Whether
! 8 they' re Level l's, 2's or 3's. It's possible, but highly 1
i 9 unlikely in this particular case, that you could come out 10 of a pre-decisional enf orcement conf erence, have a caucus l 11 at the end and determine no violation occurred. Okay?
l 12 That is a possibility, but it's very unlikely in
_j 13 Mi11 stone's case because we had 65 of these. So some of 14 them are bound to take.
L E 15 Once we determine the severity level, we l
16 have a process through which we will assess some l
l 17 penalties, if appropriate. Once that determination is
! 10 made, if it exceeds'a certain value -- and the number I 19 escapes me. But I think it's like $250,000.00 -- it will i
20 go to the Commission for approval. Okay?
21 So I would expect that the way it's going 22 to progress from here is we've had the pre-decisional 23 enforcement conference. The NRC is caucusing, if you 24 will, to determine what severity levelc and what POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i DECEMBER 17, 1996 !
r 1 appropriate civil penalties to assess. If it exceeds a ,
1 2 certain amount, it will go to. the Commission for
- 3 approval. So it's in that decisional process we will l l- .
I l-4: again, talk about; what's going on in there other than the :
5 process itself. So that's where we are today.
6 Now, you'll see in our inspection reports - i
- 7- where we issue violations right on the spot. I mean with l l .
8 the report, "Here's your violation. " And you'll also see l 9 us characterize things as apparent violations. That's j
( 10 the key word that tells you we think there may be 11 escalated . enf orcemerit here. Okay? So you'll hear me 12 . tonight talk about apparent violations. And you'll see i O 13 1 ene 1etter we eend te the eti11tv it w111 eev 14 something to-the effect that "You don't have to respond
[ 15 to this at this time. But we are characterizing.these as l
16 apparent violations. And, oh, by the way, if there's
.17 corrective action that you need to take, f or saf ety *o 10- sake, you need to do it now. Don't wait for the 19 enforcement to come out." Okay?
20- So, given that as a backdrop, the last two .
21 inspection reports that we've done for Millstone -- the
-22 last time I talked to you a little bit about what we've 23 been finding, the kinds of things that we've been i.
l- 24' finding.
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19 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 Inspection Report 96-06, which was through 2 .. J uly , the July / August time frame, we had one cited ,
! 3 violation for which we issued the violation with the I
l 4 inspection report. And that was failure to take i 5 effective corrective actions for safeguard of material.
6 Okay? They hadn't -- and if you go back in time, you'll l
l 7 find that they had other instances where they had not ;
8' effectively fixed the problem. And at this time-we saw ,
9 a repeat of that, so we issued a violation.on the spot l 10 for that particular instance. !
l l 11 Below . there you'll see six apparent l
12 violations across all three units. Okay? Now, these are ,
13 the ones that we think may be escalated, may be Severity l- 14 Level l's, 2's or 3's, and eventually there will be an 15 enforcement conference to: address these issues, a pre- l 16 decisional enforcement conference with the utility. -
17 Okay?
! i 18 I'll briefly run through these for you l 19 because -- the first one at Unit 1 was loss of control of l
20 the non-conformance reporting system and the failure to .j 21 use the non-conformance reporting system in accordance 22 with procedures. Every time they identified a non-23 conf orming condition, which was something that wasn't the l
- '24 way it was supposed to be -- now this is separate from l i
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DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 the' adverse condition reporting system. I know you got
'2 these things confused. But a non-conformance reporting 3 cystem will identify.a piece of equipment that came to
-4 the plant that wasn't the way it was-supposed to be.
5 They will write a non-conformance report.
6- When we went to look at that non- .
7 conformance reporting cystem, we found that they'-- where -
8 they kind of lost control of-it. They couldn't tell us 9 how many they had or what they were doing with them. So 10 we think that's a severe -- has.a significance to us in ,
11 the severity level. So we will be considering that. i 12 MS. SUSAN LUXTON: Mr. Ourr, may I ask a ,
( 13 question?
14 MR. DURR: Certainly.
15 MS. LUXTON: Now, clarify something for l- 1 16 me. These'six apparent violations, these are new, over 17 and above the 60 that we talked about in enforcement --
18 MR. OURR:- Yes.
19 MS. LUXTON: These are present that you-20 have just identified in the last --
21 MR. DURR: July / August time frame.
22 MS. LUXTON: Okay.
23 MR. DURR: This is new stuf f .
24 MS. LUXTON: All right. 3 i
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1 MR. DURR: Okay? The next one is Unit 2,
- 2 . control of reactor shutdown margin during the plant cool- 1 3 downs and failure to conduct the associated safety >
l 4 evaluation. Now. that " conduct associated safety 5 evaluation" should ring familiar to you from the 2.26 1
6 othing that's out;there, that they didn't obtain the FSAR 7 and they didn't do .the proper. cafety evaluations ]
8 ascociated with that. This has similar connotations. j 9 But this is where, when they shut down the l l
10 reactor, they're supposed to borate the reactor to !
11 shutdown conditions and they weren't doing that. They 12 were shutting ' down and borating as they were shutting
() 13 down. And they should have taken it all the way up in--
-14 MS. LUXTON: Do we have that in hard copy 15 right now?
1 16 MR. DURR: Yes.
17 MS. LUXTON: Out here on the table?
18 MR. DURR: No, I don't think so.
l \
19 MS. LUXTON: Oh, we don't?
20 MR. DURR: But it's in the inspection )
21 reports that we've issued.
l 22 MS. LUXTON: Okay.
23 MR. DURR: It should be in the public 24 document. I'm assuming that 96-06'is in the local public POST REPORTING SERVICE
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i document. You-should have access to'all that. .(
2 -MS. LUXTON: Oh, that will probably be t
!- 3 there next June, '
f 4 MR. DURR: 1.would hope not. But if.it's l 1
5 not there, let me know. We'll get one down there.
l 6 MS. LUXTON: Okay. Good.
.7 MR. .DURR: Okay?
8 MS. LUXTON: Mm-hmm. !
l 9 MR. DURR: The fact is'if you're really l
10 that. interested, I'll'give you my copy. !
11 MS. LUXTON: Good. Thank you.
12 MR. DURR: We'll short-circuit that 13- system, i
. l. 4 . Unit 2, containment sub-screens could 15 allow' debris to lurk within the --
that works core ;
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16 cooling system. Essentially what this is is there's a 1
'17 sump that they take wa'ter from'during.an accident and !
18 there are screens in there to make sure that debris l 19 doesn't . go through. 'Well, the screen size and the i i
20 openings weren't what they were supposed to be.
21 MR. CHARLIE LUXTON: Isn't that same as at 22 CY? Same problem?
l 23 MR. DURR: Same as at CY7 l
l 24 MR. LUXTON: Yes. Same problem?
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L; i 1 MR. DURR: -I don't know the answer to 2 that. I don't --
3 MR. LUXTON: Problems with the same 4 difficulty that they were having down there.
5 MR. DURR: Might have been.
6 HR. LANNING: Let me interrupt, Jacque.
7 MR. DURR: Sure. ;
8 MR. LANNING: The meeting is being 9 transcribed. And if you're asking questions like this, !
10 she's going to have a very difficult time hearing what !
11 you say. So if I could just ask you to bear with us I
12 ~ until we get to the question-and-answer session and walk 13 up to'the mike? .
f 14 MR. DURR: We'll be glad to take the ;
t 15 questions.
16 The next one, which you don't have -- Unit 17 2, qualification of sediment tank isolation valves. ;
18 Isolation valves in containment are supposed to be what- >
19 we call environmentally qualified. I mean obviously if
-20 it's in containment and you have an accident, the 21 environment inside the containment is really what we 22 would call harsh. Body temperatures and pressures ,
23 perceive radiation. So the equipment has to be able to 24 function in that environment. And there's -- they )
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. ,y 1 identifled seven containment isolation valves that didn't 2 meet that.
3 The next one was Unit 3, improper design l-4 conditions for the recirculation spray and quench spray
?5 piping supports. This has been an ongoing thing for some 6 time where they've identified'that the piping supports in 7 those systems were not designed _f or the temperatures that 8 they will receive.
9 Lastly, Unit 3 improper application of 10 the AS of E code for the letdown heat exchanger.
11 Essentially what this was is they used f aulty material in 12 that heat exchanger that didn't fully. comply with the i 13 allowables'of the AS of E code, allowables for tense of 14 stress. !
15~ And lastly, in the. report, we identified
-16 where the -- and note that the utility had perf ormed a
- 17 joint utility management audit on their oversight and 4 1 18 quality assurarice program.- And .. it. found that that ,
19 program was inef f ective because it had lacked management l
20 support for years preceding that.
21 The next report that was issued -- and !
22
- hat covered the period August 27 through October 25 -- >
l 2 3 -. was one cited violation again where the issue was 24 . technical specification violation, f ailure to include all POST REPORTING SERVICE i
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! 1 the applicable valves f or testing and f ailure to test the i
2 valves. And that was for Unit 2.
3 And there were six more apparent 4 -violations.- So that's 12, six in the last one and six in 5 this one. Six just in Unit 2. And three of these are 6 failure to take adequate corrective action for 7 identifying deficiencies. You'll see a recurring theme 8 in Inspection Report 96-04. We sent them a letter. It 9 says, "Your corrective action program is broken and it*c 10 not working. And here's three more examples of that kind 11 of thing. So it's still not working."
l 12. The next one is a technical specification
~
13 violation that both the -- and containment area hydrogen 14 monitors were inoperable. Unable to meet the post-15 accident time to place the containment hydrogen monitors 16 in service. They've don'e an analysis and they came up 17 with a time and they really couldn't meet that time.
18 Failure to update t he ' final safety 19 analysis report. 4, 5 and 6 really all kind of run 20- together. They're all the same - stem from the same 21 issue. Failure to update the fin'al safety analysis 22- report to reflect the time following an accident that the 23 hydrogen monitors would be placed in service.
24 Then there were three apparent violations
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t 1 at Unit 1. Failure to provide,a troubleshooting plan and 2 guidelines f or work order package. For those of you that l-3 don't know, Don is an' expert at this. I know because '
t I g 4 he's done it before. Troubleshooting is t your. radio 5 doesn't work well and so you start -- for us that came I 6 from the vacuum tube era, you used to pull the tubes and 7- check them one at a time. Well, that's troubleshooting.
8 When you pull the tube out to'see what -- whether it's ,
9 working or not, that's troubleshooting. Well, that's l 10 what they do in a nuclear > ower plant a lot of times with l 11 some equipment that's not operating. You kind of. have to l
12 go in and start taking it apart piece by piece. And you
(' 13 need to do that by procedure. ' And they weren't f ollowing l
l- 14 that procedure.
i 15 Failure to maintain the standby gas i
16 treatment system operable under certain conditions. This i-i 17 is really a kind of esoteric thing. They were having f
l 18 problems with the standby gas treatment system. They did '
19 an analysic that said it was gooo down to 20 degrees-20 Fahrenheit when in reality it was only good down to'45 21 degrees Fahrenheit. And we obviously had temperature's
! 22 last winter of less than 45 degrees. So they're in 23 violation of that requirement.
24 And lastly, we had an inspector come up to
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! HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 L
1 the look at the fire protection program. Now, we have --
2 one of 'our rules is Appendix R, which requires t.at they 3 have --
following the fire in Grounds Ferry --
and I 4 think it was circa 1978 when it was a -- reactor fire and 5 they really got into a lot of trouble. Some guy was 6 using a candle to check for air leaks and he set the 7 plant on fire.
f 8 We came-out with a rule. Appendix R,1that l 9 says nuclear power plants .have to be designed to 10 withstand fire. So we've taken a look at that fire 11 protection program that we've focused on. And they're i 12 really not doing well. on it right now. So we've
, 13 identified weaknesses in it and they need' to addresc l 14 that. This all is being ---
15 A VOICE: Jacque, before you go to your 16' conclusions, just to correct --
17 MR. DURR: Sure. l 18 VOICE: -- a statement you made with Ms.
19 Luxton. Some of these local reports require them 20 (indiscernible). j 21 HR. DURR: That's correct. That's i 22 correct. Some of these we picked up in -- we ran them 23 through quickly to get them in that enforcement package.
l 24 Thank you.
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. 28 l HEARING RE: . HILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 b) k, 1_ And, . as I said before, the corrective
- j. 2 action program remains inef f ective and until the recovery 3 . team devotes significant attention to it, it's -- that we !
4 will continue to find similar deficiencies. We talked 5 about that today at the meeting. They need to get a 6 better program in place. They need to make sure that the 7 corrections that we're lookiry for, corrective actions, 8 they've done the best job they can do. Or they'll 9 continue to end up with these kinds of violations.
10 We in the Licensing continue to find ;
11 design deficiencies which reflect the need to perf orm the i
12 design review with the ICAVP ' process. The design '
13 deficiencies are still out there.
14 But it isn't all black. If you read some 15 of our inspection reports, you'll find that successes l
16- have been noted in the shutdown.-- that is, the plant is- !
l 17 out there doing -- plants are vulnerable when they're -
18 shut down because they take a lot of equipment out of ,
19 service. And so the plant for all features of use has 20 what they call shutdown risk assessment and they go in 21 and they evaluate what they're doing and what the risk is 22 associated 'with that and make sure that they've done 23 things properly. And we're starting to see some l l
24 successes there, that they're really paying attention to i
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l 1 that. And that*G the operational side. That's the 2 operatiori of the plant. It's not the design and [
4
! 3 engineering stuff. This is the day-to-day operations ;
4 kind of thing. Okay? l 5 MR. LANNING: Okay. Mr. McKee will now l 6 talk to the status of the 2.206 petitions. l, 7 .MR. McKEE: And other things.
8 MR. LANNING: And other things. !
9 MR. McKEE: Good evening. This evening 10 I'm mainly going to talk-about the recent actions the NRC 11 has taken with respect to resolution of issues associated 12 with die handling of employee concerns at the Millstone 13 station.
14 But, first, I would like to touch on the E i
15 status of the 2.206 petition involving f uel of f-loading .;
16 practices at the . Millstone station that did encompass 17 also an issue at Seabrook.
18 i There is still an aspect -- the wrongdoing l 19 aspects of that petition are still under investigation '
i 20 and f ollow-up by NRC and that is still ongoing. So those r 21 aspects of the petition are still -- are not going to be 22 addressed in the noar future.
23 We do have what the agency terms a partial l 24 decision. And we're looking at the technical aspects and i . POST REPORTING SERVICE l
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v f 1 the other aspects involved with that petition. And our !
2 efforts were substantia 11y along, in completing our i i
3 petition, our goal is to get that aspect, that partial $
4 decision out in the near f utt're. And what I mean by the 5 near f uture, at least one of my goals is to try to get it ,
P 6 out by the 1st of the year. So that's where we stand on ,
'7 that 2.206 petition.
i 8 As Dr. Travers mentioned and as I'm sure '
- 9 many of you are aware, the NRC issued Northeast Nuclear 10 Energy Company an order on October 24, 1996. That order 11 addressed past failures in the licensing / management 4 12 processes and procedures for handling safety issues.
-O 13 .vou mieht net en the firet e11de becevee 14 I'm going to get into that pretty quick.
15 The NRC considers that the large number of 16 recently-identified safety issues within the past year or ,
17 so.at all three Millstone plants is clear and serious 1 18 evidence that some employees were reluctant to identify i 19 safety issues to the licensee. This f ailure to identif y 20 safety concerns is of significant concern to the NRC.
- 21 Before I cover some of the specifics of 22 the order and how those elements are'to be implemented, 23 I'd like to talk a little bit about the bases for the
~24 order. On the view graph there, I've identified some.
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1 And I do have some extra copies of my view graphs. I 2 have three that are available. If somebody should want ;
3 some, you can collect it during -- get them dering the ;
4 break.
5 Since about 1991, there have been numerous ,
6 licensee assessments, audits and internal task group ,
s 7 studies performed to assess Employee Safety Concern ,
h 8 Programs at the Millstone station. And these have s 9 identified substantial issues and problems. Most notable l 10 are several task group reviews done by Northeast 11 Utilities -in 1991 that confirmed a wide variety of l l
12 problems at the Millstone plants. j 13 More recently, the licensee completed a 3
14 review of the effectiveness of its Nuclear Safety !,
15 Concerns Program which was reported in January, 1996.
1 16- The report concluded that the Nuclear Safety Concerns !
17 Program had been and continued to be ineffective. The l 10 findings of the January,1996 study were similar to those 19 of.the previous licensee assessments and studies.
20 In July 12, 1996, a report by the 21 Fundamental Cause Assessment Team, a team assembled by 22 Northeast Utilities, concluded that licensee top-level l 1
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I and direction. Further, the team's report concluded that l
- t 2 the nuclear organization did not establish and maintain 3 high standards and expectations, and the nuclear 4 organization's leadership, management and interpersonal ;
5 skills were found to be weak.
6 In September, 1996, the Millstone 7 Independent Review Group regarding Millstone station and 8 NRC handling of' employee concerns on allegations -- this '
9 is a group headed by John Hannon of the NRC's -- of the 10 NRC. They reported the results of their review.-
t 11 The review group determined that in 12 general an unhealthy work environment which :did riot ,
1
() 13 tolerate dissenting views and did not welcome or promote f
14 a questioning attitude existed at Millstone plants for ,
15 the past several years.
16 That review group further concluded that {
17 poor environment has resulted in repeated instances of ,
i 18 ' discrimination and ineffective handling of employee !
19 concerns. l k
20 Well_ the findings of the Millstone l i
21 Independent Review Group -- that was the one done by the :
22 NRC --
were not new. The NRC in past studies and v 23 inspections had noted problems with licensee handling of 24 employee concerns. f
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DECEMBER 17, 1996 i 0 :1 In addition, a number of inspections and 4
2 investigations have substantiated many of the employee P 3 concerns and allegations for which the licensee's 4 corrective actions have proven inef f ective. As - a ' result, 5 the licensee has been cited a number of times for 6 violations --
and these included several escalated 7 enf orcement actions -- for the issues related to concerns :
8 raised by employees. l 9 Notwithstanding these actions, the 10 licensee's handling of- the safety concerns and 11 implementation of corrective actions for problems-12 identified by employees has remained ineffective. l f% i
() 13 For these reasons, the NRC issued the -
14 October 24, 1996 order. The order specifies two primary ;
15 actions. Thanks. That's the second slide that I have. l 16 First, the order directs the licensee, !
17 prior to the restart of any of the Millstone units, to j i
18 develop, submit and -- submit f or NRC review and begin to .
(
19 Implement a comprehensive plan for reviewing and .)
1 20 dispositioning safety issues issued by its -- raised by i
! 21 its employees and ensuring that employees who raise l
i-22 safety concerns can do so. without the fear of 23 retaliation. ,
i I l 24 The order also directs the comprehensive
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I 1 plan to address the root' causes of past performance i
2 failures as described in the licensee's July 12 report, l 3 which I mentioned earlier, and also the NRC's assessment 4 team report.
i I 5 Second, the second major element of the ,
!. 6 order, directs the ~ licensee to retain an independent 7 third party to oversee ~ implementation of its t 8 comprehensive plan. The independent third party is to 9 oversee implementation of the comprehensive plan by, one, 10 observing and monitoring the licensee's activities; two, l 11 performing technical reviews; three, auditing and l l
12 investigating, when necessary, cases of alleged i 13 harassment, intimidation and discrimination; four, 14 auditing and reviewing the licensee's handling of saf ety 15 concerns; and, finally, assessing and monitoring the 16 licensee's performance.
l 17 So those are the two major elements. And 18 on the next _ slide I'm going to talk about -- the order l I
19 also contains or specifies certain elements regarding its- l l
20 implementation.
21 First, the comprehensive plan is to be 22 provided to the NRC within 60 days from the date of the l
23 order. And this works out, according to the calendar, to 24 December 24. As we heard discussed at the meeting today
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1 with the licensee, it appears they're going to ask f or an i
2 extension or relaxation of that time for an additional 30 i I
3- days to provide their comprehensive plan to the NRC. So ;
4 that would be some time at the end of January.
I 5 With respect to the proposed independent f
6 third party organization, it was to be provided to the 7 NRC within 30 days f rom the date of the order. However. l l
8 on this --
I think this was discussed at the meeting 9 today. The licensee requested and the NRC granted a 10 relaxation in that time f rame, allowing submittal of the 11 proposed third-party organization within 60 days of the-12 date of the order. And this works out to Christmas Eve, 13 the 24th. I believe.
l 14 As was discussed in the af tornoon meeting, i 15 it was mentioned that they expect and they're looking f or 16 and they anticipate identifying that organization and 17 providing that name of that orgariization to us on the l 18 time frame specifled. {
1 19 Approval of the third party organization 20 by the NRC is required. Within 30 days of the NRC's 21 approval of the third-party organization -- and we'll 22 provide that to them in writing -- an oversight plan for ;
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.1 review and approva). '
2 After the NRC receives the licensee's 3 comprehensive plan and' the independent third-party 4 oversight plan, a notice of availability of the plans is ;
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5 to be published in the Federal Register and one or more
! 6 public meetings are,to be held to allow members of the 7 public -- and I assume those meetings will be --
that I i
h: . 8 meeting will be in this area --
to comment on the l i
l 9 comprehensive plan and the third-party oversight plan.
10 The results of the NRC review and public ,
11 comments on the comprehensive plan and the third-party l 12 oversight plan will be forwarded to the licensee, then an
() 13 independent third party -- and to the independent. third i 14 party for evaluation and implementation as appropriate.
15 Final approval by'the NRC of the third-16 party oversight plan is required. And.this approval is 17 required for the restart of any of the three Millstone j 18 units.
i 19 The third-party organization is to report !
1 20 concurrently to the NRC and the licensee on at least a j 21 quarterly basis the results of its >versight activities, 22 including all findings and recommendations. And the ,
23 licensee is required to respond to each of these l 24 recommendations.
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1 'And we did receive some correspondence K 2 from the Connecticut State NEAC, the advisory council, 3 and they requested that they receive or be a party to j 4 these reports. I anticipate t 'ne se reports will be 5 writing. And I think the lett. c went back saying that we 6 would provide them, you know, that they would be on 7 distribution or a copy of these reports.
8 Finally, the order specifies that the l' 9 third-party oversight will continue to be implemented 10 until the licensee demonstrates by its performance that 11 the conditions which led to the requirement of the l' ,
j 12 oversight have been corrected to the satisf action of the i
? n
' d 13 NRC.
14 So that, in a nutshell, is the basis of 15 the order, what the order contains and its implementation l 16 elemente.
l- 17 MR. LANNING: Cover them all?
18 MR. McKEE: I got them, I think.
19 MR. LANNING: Good.
20 Okay. Gene is going to talk to us abcut l
l 21 the Independent Corrective Action Verification Process.
i ,
22 MR. IMBRO: I have more handouts, if some i
23 people don't have any. Does anybody need a handout?
24 Well, let me talk a little bit about the
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1 ICAVP. Not much has happened since I spoke to you last -
- 2. - I think it 'was in September and then again in October, 3 October 10 --
other than what we've -- what we heard f 4 today. But let me -- the first slide? I'll go through i 5 a little bit of an oversight again just to ref resh your 6 memory.
7 What I have here is a slide that trl$s to f I
8 lay out in some graphic terms what the ICAVP or how the ;
9 ICAVP relates to all the other programs. And you can }
l 10 .look at these sort of overlapping triangles. That l
11 largest triangle is what the licensee is going to look l 12 a't . The licensee stated that they were going --
and [
13 these are Unit 3 numbers. There's some 82 systems that 14 are either Group 1 or Group 2. Those are essentially 15 risk-significant or saf ety-related systems. The licensee j 16 is going to do a thorough review of all those.
17 The ICAVP contractor will come in and also 18 perform, perform a review of what the licensee has done, N 19 to assure that the licensee has done a thorough. Now, a
20 again -- and I'll talk about this a little bit later.
21 But the ICAVP contractor will be inspecting to a scope l
l l 22 that we select, systems we select. i
\ i 23 The NRC is going to oversee, to be an 24 oversight of the ICAVP contractor. So I kind of like to
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.v 1 look at this as -- since the ICAVP contractor is doing 2 essentially what we' ask in terms of the scope that we ask 3 to be reviewed, it's essentially multiplication of our 4 resources. So we can, by controlling the ICAVP to the f
5 degree that we do, we can have a lot more comprehensive 6 review and a lot more in-depth review than if we were to 7 do the review ourselves with NRC people. So, in a sense, 8 you might look at the ICAVP as keeping the licensee 9 honest and we. keep everybody honest, hopefully, through 10 our oversight.
11 So, with this slide, the purpose of the r
12 ICAVP --
and, again, we issued an order on August 13 13 basically that required that the licensee do this before 14 - complete this ICAVP before plant restart. And that's 15 for each unit.
16 But it's to assist us in judging the 17 effectiveness of the Northeast programs. One of the 18 major findings -- and I guess as borne out by past 19 inspections and history -- is that Northeast, when --
20 well, one of the problems they had was wheri they knew 21 about things, they really didn't implement corrective 22 actions appropriately.
l 23 So the ICAVP was ordered by us to make i
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40 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i DECEMBER 17, 1996 R
L_J 1 did take the appropriate corrective actions, that they '
i 2 identified the problems that were out there and that they !
3 did an adequete job in correcting whatever problems that 4 were four.d.
5 So the purpose of he ICAVP is not 6 necessarily to provide additional discovery or additional 7 identification,of problems. We would expect that the O licensee's reviews are comprehensive and that they would ,
i 9 identify all the problems themselves and define some !
10 corrective action. So I guess f rom the licensee's point 11 of view. I guess they would hope that the ICAVP doesn't 12 find anything. Because the ICAVP is really to assess the l 13 effectiveness of their programs.
14 If the ICAVP starts finding problems, 15 where they find that the licensee has missed some areas 16 where they perhaps are in non-compliance with the 17 regulations, then that would cause us to reflect on what 18 or how effective the licensee's programs were. And if 19 they start to find problems that the licensee missed, I 20 mean certainly it's indicative that the licensee didn't
~
21 do a good job. And at that point, we would assess the 22 scope or magnitude of the problems and decide whether or 23 not the licensee, in fact, had done a thorough review.
l 24 And at that point, we would make some type of management i
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- l. 41 i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1- decision as to whether or not the licensee needed to go ,
2 back and needed to do f urther reviews or maybe needed to 3 start over - again. I mean, you know, if really the 4 program is not -- if their, the licensee's, program has 5 been that ineffective that the ICAVP comes up and finds j 6' a. lot of things wrong, then obviously they didn't do a '
l .7 good job. The licensee didn't do a good job. And so O they're back to square one, possibly. ,
i l
9 And our oversight is essentially going to 10 be a sample. So we'll get a sample of the ICAVP 1
- l. 11 contractor. .So we'll look at the same things they look 12 at, we'll look at things that they don't look at, to t
~
! (A) 13 assess how well they've done their job and how well the '
i l
14- licensee has done its job. l 15 Now, we understand that the public 16, confidence regarding --
public concern regarding i 17' independence and the erosion of public confidence in NRC 3 18 and NU. I mean an independent and credible review is as i
19 necessary .f or us as it is f or you. We -- as you perhapc i
! 20 have lost confidence and f aith in use .we have similcrly 21 lost confidence in the licensee. So in order f or them to i
l- 22 -- in order f or us to allow them to restart, they need to !
l l 23 rebuild their confidence with us, as we riced to do with t
! 24 you all.
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42 i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 But we think that the ICAVP is 2 ' independent. And there's kind of three areas that we 3 look at in terms of judging or trying to make the process I ,
4 independent. It would be, first of all, the independence ,
5 of the reviewing ~ organization, the independence of the' .i
! i 6 reviewers themselves doing the reviews and, of course, 7 the technical competence. But, also, the process needs ;
l 8 to be set up to allow minimum interface and independence 9 so that the contractor does not necessarily interface :
10 with the licensee.
I 11 So in terms of organizational ,
p 12 independence, we have specified no financial involvement -
O 13 And I think this has been misinterpreted or V with NU. ,
14 perhaps misunderstood. Maybe I didn't- explain it i
15 correctly the first time or whatever.
16 But when I say no financial involvement, 17 .I mean that the work of the reviewing organization, 18 whoever the ICAVP contractor turns out to be -- and maybe 19 it's going to be Sargent & Lundy for Unit 3 --
they ;
I 20 should not have any ownership interest in NU. So there j l
21 shouldn't be any conflict with Board members of Sargent 22 & Lundy perhaps being on the Board of Directors or any 23 ownership of Sargent & Lundy as a corporate entity in NU i
j 24' stock or that kind of thing.
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 Le 1 It doesn't mean that they could never have 2 worked for the licensee before. And the second bullet 3 basically tries to get at that by saying they should have 4 no current involvement with the licensee.
( 5 So it's -- unfortunately, it's a small 6 industry and almost everybody has worked everyplace, 7 especially 'with these typec of organizations, at one
- l. 8 point in time or another. So to say that the ICAVp 9 contractor could have never worked with the licensee ic
! 10 being very restrictive and maybe there would be no one 1
-11 that's credible that could meet that criteria. So we had ;
12 to allow some flexibility in that regard.
13 In terms of independence of team members, 14 again, no financial involvement with NU. So it's
( 15 basically saying that the team members cannot own NU r 16 stock, cannot be on any pensions or receiving any kind of j 17 ' remuneration or financial benefit f rom the perf ormance of la NU.
19 And again with the contractors, there l' 20 should be no prior involvement with the unit being
! 21 reviewed. So, essentially, if people are going to be on 22 the Unit 3 ICAVP contractor team, they should have never l
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23 worked at Unit 3 before.
- 24 In terms of program conduct, how we're POST REPORTING SERVICE
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44 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l
DECEMBER 17, 1996 l, 1 going to try and ensure -independence is to, first of all, l .2 we're going to select the systems. So we'll specify the 5 coope and there won't be pre-noticed or advance 4 information given. We hitve a process that we're laying 5 out that's still sort' of in the f ormative stages. But I 6 think we'll address this further as we go on down the 7 line.- But we're sensitive to the public's concern about 8 independence. And, again, it's a concern that 'we have as 9 well.
10 In terms of the independent review and 11 trying to keep an arms-length review, we want to have the 12 ICAVP contractor located not on site. Understand, they O 1s " eve to have eoceee to t8e ette- 1"ex meee to oo. voo 14 know, walk-downs', et cetera. But we don't want'them in 15 the proximity with NU employees so they can exchange 16 information, have conversations.
17 And, again, the next bullet here is in 18 terms of communication protocol. NRC is going to control 19 and monitor any interf ace between the contractor and NU.
20 So we expect that the ICAVP contractor, in doing the 21 design reviews, can -- will have questions. Those 22 questions should be presented to the licensee in writing 23 and there should be a written response. So there should
( 24 be no face-to-face interaction or minimum face-to-face I
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1 interaction. In some cases where perhaps they do need a 2 f ace-to-f ace meeting because it's r. complicated technical l 3 issue that maybe they rieed to cit down and explain, we 4 want them -- we want the ICAVP contractor to advise us at 5 Gome appropriate time in advance of - the need for a .
6 meeting and we will -- we will monitor that. We.will, 7 you know, try and schedule it. We will make sure that 8 .the NEAC observers, to the extent they can participate, l 9 will participate. We'll either monitor via telephone. !
10 If we can be present at the site, we'll do that, too. So l 11 the idea is that ther.e's not going to be working next to, !
12 you know, shoulder to shoulder with the licensee. The 13 ICAVP contractor and NU are going to be as separate as 14 possible. l 5
15 Again, any findings that como out ~ are
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l 16 going to be reported both to us and to the licensee
- 1 l
17 simultaneously. And any findings that come out are also !
l 18 going to be made public as the process goes f orward. So !
l 19 you'll be apprised of those either because they'll be in 20 the -- if we're apprised via correspondence, we'll put 21 that on the docket file and that's publicly available.
l f 22 We'll have briefings f rom time to time with the public to ,
f I 23 apprise them of the status of the ICAVP.
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i 24 And, again, we've asked the State and NEAC POST REPORTING SERVICE O HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 a
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k 46 1 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 to provide observers. NEAC has provided two observers -
2 and two alternates and they're going to -- and they're i 3 essentially your eyes and ears. They're local citizens. :
1 4 In terms of ICAVP attributes, again.-we i 5 will' approve the team, also review the review plan. We !
6 want to make sure that the scope and depth of the review 7 and the order plan are suf ficiently broad to cover all of 8 the technical disciplines, both design and on an !
9 operation side, and that the experience level of the '
10~ reviewers is a high level. So we want -- you know, we 11 want to have -- make sure the contractors are experienced 12 people. We're going to interview the contractors, as i 13 well as look at their resumes. The resumes, I think, )
i 14 will be submitted with the --
when the licensee 15 identifies to us the ICAVP' contractor.
16- Again, it's going to -- we expect -- we 17 require that the review be certainly a comprehensive 18 review of the systems 'and look at both the design and the 19 operational aspects.
-20 And the program will begin, as was laid l 21 out in the order --
I believe it was laid out in the !
l 22 order -- approximately when Northeast is about half --
, 23 has completed their review of half of the Group 1 of the l
l 24 risk-significant systems. So after -- and this is, i
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.1 again, Unit -- these are, again, Unit .3 numbers. So when 2 the licensee has completed a review of approximately 20 3 systems, give or take, and they have been reviewed 4 internally by their own QA, nuclear oversight. and the !
- 5 licensee'is willing to attest that " Hey, these systems, i
6 to the best of our knowledge, meet all the NRC !
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7 regulations", then the ICAVP reviewer can start.
8 And . we will select systems, maybe come 9 from the first 20 and.maybe not, depending on what the
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! 10 first 20 are. We want to make sure that the systems we 11 look at are important in terms of risk, have, you know, t
12 have a significant amount of changes to them where the
'13 licensee would have more of an opportunity to have made 14 mistakes so the things we can -- you know, we try to look 15 where we will firid problems.
16 Hext slide. So in terms of the scope of 17 the ICAVP, we're going to look at three things.
{
! 18 A VOICE: Would you please move that !
i 19 microphone? Move it towards you? :
20 MR. IMBRO: Sure. Okay. Is there 21 anything you want me to repeat that I've asked? No? j 22 Okay.. l 23 All right. Original -- we're going to 24 look at the original design, as well as system l l
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i 48 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 P1 U
1 ' modifications. So-for the unmodified portions of the
.2 system.-we're going to look at -- we're going to make 3 sure that the ICAVP looks at original design 4 considerations. So they may need to, you know. -relook at 5 _ piping analyses, for example, or other design factors 6 that were done by the AE.
7 Also, certainly we want to look at all the 8 modifications to the_ system because there has been --
9 we've'found areas where, in making modifications, the 10 licensee has made changes to the plant that put them in 11 non-conformance with the licensing basis.
12 Also, the other bullet that's up there 13 that I missed was we are also - the ICAVP contractor is -
14 also going to look at and assess the corrective actions l
i 15 of Northeast Utilities. So for all the things that NU l l
16 finds as a part of their system reviews or configuration j 17 management program, the ICAVP contractor will go in and I 18 assess the corrective actions both on a specific basis if
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19 it's a particular area, a-very specific area, or also on i
20 a programmatic basis if there's repetitive mistakes of !
21 the same type._ And they will need to make sure that the j i
i 22 are sufficiently
! corrective actions broad to cover 23 wherever that could occur in the plant.
24 Next slide. So again, in terms of our ,
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1 oversight, to-recap, we're going to look at a sample of
, 2' what the ICAVP contractor looks at. We're going to i l 3 look at things that the ICAVP contractor doesn't look at, l
4 -
things that are outside the scope. We're going to try l 5 and put together the best team we possibly can with NRC i
6 inspectors and contract support.
7 We want the public to be involved as much ,
i l 8 as they can. We're going to make this as visible a j l: i 9 process as we can. We want you to regairi confidence in l 10' us as'well as the licensee. Of course, the licensee has i
i 11 a lot to do with that, too, in terms of their. own part of -l t
12 the equation.
/' l 13 And the ICAVP is going to be a pretty 1 14 significant input to the -- to NRC's restart assessment 15 if and when that comes or-however it comes out.
16 'So that's essentially where we are with 17 ICAVP. And, again, it's pretty much where we were a l
18 while back. i i
19 MR. LANNING: Good. Thank you, Gene. l 1
20 I now want to talk to the NRC restart 21 assessment plan and talk a little bit about -- try to i
22 summarize today's meeting with Northeast Utilities. I l
- 23- We had published f or your review the first
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l 24 draft of the restart plan that we had developed. We got i
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1 some comments f rom the public. And we issued that as the 2 first draft of the~ restart assessment plan.
3 We have just made our first revision to ;
4 that. And I'll have copies of .the plan here on the table 5 f or you, if you'd like a copy during the break. But the 6 changes to the restart assessment plan are primarily due ;
7 to the creation of the Special Projects Office and also 8 we're updating some of the significant issues list that 9 we've both added and completed some of the activities on 10 that list.
11 For example, Mr. Travers here has assumed 3 i
12 . all those' responsibilities that had been delegated to the !
I) 13 Regional Administrator. So. he is assuming those 14 responsibilities. In addition, he's assuming some of the j i
15 NRR Associate Director responsibilities. l 16 As you'll recall, in the back of .that ;
1 17 restart assessment plan there's a checklist back there 18 and it identifies'some of the responsibilities of various i
19 organizations. And so you'll see that Mr. Travers has 20 now taken over those responsibilities.
21 The additions to the significant issues 22 list are additions f rom the Bagillio team inspection, f or i
j 23 example. There are additions from the 50.54 activities i-24- that NU has ongoing. They have identified some j l
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51 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l OECEMBER 17, 1.996 i . F"~~"1 -
lC l 1 significant issues. There are also issues there that the
! 2 residents and the Regional Inspectors have iderccified.
3 And so those have been added to the list.
4 We've also completed our inspection of a 5 small number that was on the original list and those will i 6 remain in the plan.f or you to see what we have completed.
l l 7 So, again, I'll have a copy of that plan 8 on the table here at the break.
l 9 Let me now talk a little bit about this 10 afternoon's meeting. We had a little over a four-hour 11 meeting with Northeast Utilities. In terms of 12 background, if you recall, Mr. Kenyon became President in 13 September. In October, he had established recovery teams 14 for each of the units and these' recovery teams were 15 really loaned utility executives and experts from --
16 well, they're from Virginia Power & Light and they're 17 from Philadelphia Electric. =And so each of the recovery
- 18. teams are responsible for one unit.
19 Our meeting today was, in essence, a 20 discussion of the progress those recovery teams have made 21 to date in formulating a recovery plan. As some of you 22 remember, we were scheduled to have a meeting in November
, 23 to talk about the status of the restart plan. NU was not l
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.24 able to support that because of this new organization it l
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1- had just put in place. And that's okay. t 2 So we met today and they provided us their !
3 recovery plans fcr all ' three units. Really what they 4 have done is provided us the strategy f or restarting each i
~5 of the three units. That. strategy concludes that two of 6- the units will be restarted or ready to restart by the 7 end of 1997 and the third unit will be restarted in early 8 1998.
9 In essence, the elements of their- 1 10 readiness f or restart really involves like five dif f erent 11 attributes which they will prepare and conclude they're i 12 ready to restart. For example, they will talk to system 13 readiness. This is talking to the systems in the power 14 plan that are now ready . to perform their- intended j 15 function, for example.
16 They talk about organizational readiness. ]
1 17 .This where there are structures in place, procedures are j 18 in place and the organization is ready to operate. j l
19' They also talk about the operational )
20 readiness. This is where the operators are trained, i
21 operators are retrained, for example, to a point to where j
-22 they.'r'e ready to operate the nuclear power plant. !
- 23 They also talk about a regulatory _
l l 24 readiness to restart. These include such things an l l
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1 response to the orders, response to the 50.54 letters,
'2 fulfillment of commitments that NU has made to us that 3 . have not been f ulfilled to date. -
4 And, finally, they talk about 5 communications readiness. This is where they're
, 6 communicating'with NRC, where they're communicating with 7 the public, concerning their status and where they are in :
8 the big scheme.of' readiness to restart.
9 They recognize that it's important that 10 they keep you informed of their progress. And so I 11 expect them to really start having more formal sessions -
12 with the public to talk about these communications.
13 In addition, they will be developing what ,
14 they call performance indicators. These are really i
15 nothing more than some of the more important things that l
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16 --they have to do. They will sort of track those as a 17 function of time. They'll ' discuss those with us to 18 review progress that has been made. I 1
19 For each of those perf ormance indicators, l 20 they will have established what the minimum requirement 21 is for restart. And so that's their goal for restart.
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22 So we will have an opportunity to review those goals and '
23 agree that those are. acceptable goals f or that parameter
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, 24 for restart.
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1 -Those have not, been developed yet. In i
2 fact, most of the details concerning the recovery plans l 3 are yet to come. They gave us a very broad overview of l
4 what the plans will include. They seem to have included 5 'most of the 'important aspects, most of the important I 6 issues that need to be addressed before restart. But 7 they are yet to provide the details of how they will l
l 8 achieve and saticfy many of those issues.
l 9 What's new about these plans? In my i
I 10 opinion, what's new is - when I say what's new in the 11 plans, this is really compar ed to our prior discussions 12 concerning Unit 3. If you recall, in the past Unit 3 was
'f 13 the lead plant. All resources were being developed, 14 devoted to Unit 3. They've taken resources from Units 1 15 and 2 and even from Seabrook to help get Unit 3 16 restarted.
l'7 This new strategy has changed that to 18 where they are now proposing that all three units are ir 19 preparation for restart at the same time. 'In other 20 words, they've taken back those loaned employees to Unit 21 3 and put them back in Units 1 and 2. And so each of the 22 recovery teams are progressing and developing a schedule 23 for restarting a unit.
. 24 Now, that's also something new in this POST REPORTING SERVICE Gi hAMDEN..CT (800) 262-4102 i
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t 55 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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1 recovery plan. It's the schedules. These schedules will 2 -- which are yet to come. But it's my understanding that 3L when we see these schedules, they will be staff-loaded.
4 How, what that means is they will take all these issues 5 and. deficiencies and programmatic issues that need to be 6 resolved and they will have estimat'ed the amount of 7 ef f ort necessary to fix that issue or fix that deficiency 8 and they will be able to schedule that out in time. And i 9 that will be the schedule. And that needs to be done in
.10 order to really put some credence in the schedule. ,
l 11 In other words, they will be able to say, l
12 "These are the. things that we're going to do. This is
) 13 the people, the resources necessary to get those jobs 14 done. And we can schedule those jobs and get it done by 1 1
15 this date." And it certainly helps us, for example, to f t i 16 schedule our inspection resources to come along behind j 1
17 them and verify, validate, audit those activities that I I
! 18 they think they have completed. i l
19 So there's still a lot of work to be done.
20 There's still a' lot of details to be developed f or these l
21 recovery plans. They indicated that.they think they'll 1 22 be in a position to issue those by the end of December. ;
f 23 And so we'll be looking forward to those.
24 It's very aggressive. It's sometimes in
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1 some places, I think, very optimistic. But only time 2 will tell. As you know, we're looking for results, some '
3 measure of progress that they're making. And so we'll be !
4 continuing to do that and inspect their activities.
5 That's about a summary of the meeting in 6 a nutshell. So we're ready.to talk about a 10-minute
'7 break, unless you've got anything else to add or anybody 8 else has anything.
9 So we're right on schedule. So we'll take L 10 j ust a quick 10-minute nap -- nap? -- 10-minute break.
11 MR. McKEE: Mention the sign-up sheet.
12- MR. LANNING: Oh, yes. The sign-up sheet. !
13 Good poi nt. We'd ask you to put your name on the sign-up 14 sheet if you'd like to ask a question or make a comment. j i
15 And the sign-up sheet is up here next to the projector. '
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16 (RECESS) I 17 MR. LANNING: Okay? Are you read /7 All 1
- 18 right. Here weago. I-have 11 names on the list.- So ;
i !
19 we'll start in the middle. No. We'll start the top.
20 Mr. Delcore? And you'll have to use the l
-21 microphone please, sir.
- f. 22 MR. RON DELCORE: 'I understand.
.23 Ron Delcore, Uncasville, Connecticut.
24 I've got some comments about today's meeting which you j l
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57 i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l DECEMBER 17, 1996 l M i J !
1 alluded to and somehow we don't seem to agree. I don't j 2 find that strange. But, at any rate, you know, we talked 3 -about a recovery plan today for four or five hours over i l
4 there at Millstone. Or I didn't, but you and NU did. l 5 And one of the things that I really f eel kind of strange !
6 about is that we don't really~ have any real l 7 accountability yet complete f rom NU with regard to those j 8 that were involved in creating the problems with regard ;
9 to whistleblowers and, also, accountability of two more i
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10 206's, accountability of violations that have accumulated i
- 11. during that period. And I really kind of don't ,
12 understand why we're discussing a recovery plan when we O 13 haven t rea11v deait with thoce ieeues. and 1 think thet i 14 those need to be dealt with prior to any recovery plan ;
l 15 discussions.
16 By the same token, _there hasn't been a ;
17 f ull accountability, as f ar as I'm concerned, with regard 18 to the NRC. Yes, I understand that Mr. Taylor is going j 19 to leave after the first of the year. But if you look !
20 back at the way the whistleblowers were escorted out the 21 door at Millstone and then you look at the pat on the l
22 back that Shirley gave Mr. Taylor and others that she j 23 asked to leave, there was a substantial difference in' !
24 their treatment. I t
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58 i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS F DECEMBER 17, 1996 i
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-1 In addition, there are other people who !
l 2 are culpable, probably starting f rom the Assistant or the !
6 3 Deputy Regional Management on down to those'in charge of I 4 the regional of fice that oversees Millstone's operations 5 that allowed that to go on for lo yearc.
6 Additionally, there are people within the 7 NRR and other places that were charge, have been in
.8 charge and continue to be in charge who were involved in !
9 allowing that to take place for the last 10 years. l l
10 So there really hasn't been any l 11 accountability to speak of by the.NRC. In f act, there's l l
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12 a token amount by the NRC and a token amount by NU. And, O 1s ee se. thet neede to se addre=eed before we teik ebout i
14 recovery actions. l l
15 My distinct impression at that recovery l l
i 16 meeting was that the recovery plan was'very fractured, ;
17 very preliminary and, for the most part, the first person I
)
10 to get up -- I think his name was Coli n -- was absolutely ]
l 19 confusing. And based on the questions that you guys 20 asked, it looked like they had def erred many, many of the '
l-l.
l 21 issues that you put forward to some other time, had not 22 addressed it in terms of recovery and had no real plan !
1 23 established for those. And I thought that was kind of I l
24 strange. l l
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! 1 I also felt that it was extremely' {
l .- 2- aggressive. And I could not see how they could get those l
3 three plants together. An opinion? I think they're I
? i 4 looking' to get Unit i and Unit 2 up bef ore Unit 3 because !
5 it has much less regulatory constraints upon it. And, in l l
6 fact, as they pointed out to you, they're going to have l f
7 to develop some white paper issues for licensing and I 8 design bases for Unit 1 because there isn't going to be l 9 a whole lot of information around So it will be much {
l 10 easier for them to get those two plants started f rom that .j 11 aspect than it will be Unit 3. And let's face it. Unit 12 2 puts out 900 megawatts.- That own that 100 percent.
13 Unit 3 is only owned 56 percent and the constraints on it .
14 will be very, very difficult compared to Unit 2 because 15 -it's a much newer plant,16 years newer or something like j l
16 that, 11 years newer just from'its first production of l 17 power.
l 18 I still recognize a distinct communication
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19 problem with providing we, the public, with information 20 from NU. And I recognize that in the form of their 21 reluctance to provide discrepancy issues, ACR's, you name 22 it. They were very reluctant to give us anything from l i
23 Unit 2. And I think it precipitated discussion between )
i 24 you people and Mr. Kenyon today about that. l 4
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1 We need to have it. We have every right !
i 2 to have it. And it's the only way that we're going to 3 determine whether they're deferring items to after the i 4 start-up that rightf ully should be done bef ore the start- :
5 up.
6 I've noticed on some of the OPR documents 7 that I've looked at for Unit 3 that many of the items ,
l 8 that they document'in their list as completed ~~ there 9 was like a 2400-item lict. And many that they document i
10 as completed, if you actually read them, they're not ;
, 11 completed. They've either deferred it to a trouble 12 report or they've deferred it to a design engineer or {
13 they've ref erred it f or accomplishment or something like 14 that. But they're not completed. Yet, they're checked 15 off on the list as being complete. You guys have got to 16 look at those. You really need to take a look at those.
l 17 I looked at them. I couldn't believe they were getting
! 18 away with it.
I 19 I noted today that most of the problems !
20 that you guys discussed with them that they were going to I
21 fix in short order have been on the table since 1989.
(
f 22 Many of them Mr. Durr addressed in his 1989 review, a l
l 23 two-week review that he did at Millstone with his review l j
{ 24 team. Procedure non-compliance, procedure updates, FSAR j i
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS j DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 problems, PNID piping problems, electronic print problems j 2 being the latest revision, you name it. Publications !
3 that were uncontrolled. It's been going on since 1989, l 4 guys. Nothing's happening. j 5 I viewed the information on the oversight i i
6' program as being weak and identifiable. There wasn't 7 anything.in there that I heard about that program that 8 seemed to be put in place or that had been established j 9 yet. And they're under an order that you gave them in i 10 October and they still haven't got it and they've known [
11 about it a lot longer than'that.
12 The recovery VIP seemed to have a good !
13 handle on his plant, the oversight recovery guy. I have i
14 to say that. And I also have to say that if Mr. Kenyon >
l 15 had not interrupted as many times as he did, there !
l I
16 probably would not have been a clear indication of what 17 the hell they were talking about today for the most part !
18 because he seemed to save them about every time they got I 19 in trouble. !
l l' 20 The only person, as I said before, that f 21 had a real handle on what he was doing seemed to Mike 22 Brothers. He seemed to have a very clear plan. He 23 conveyed that information to those of us that were !
24 sitting there in a fashion that at least made me feel s
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1 like he understood what was going and he was willing to 2 give forth the information about the ' number of 3 discrepancies. He provided information about his whole 4 start-up plan and where he thought the problems were 5 going to be and so forth. And I can't say that I gained 6 that from anybody else that I listened to today.
7 They seem to have very poor communication 8 with you guys over the last year. You guys seemed to be 9 in the dark today about a lot of stuff, asking a lot of 10 questions. So it would seem to me that the communication 11 that's going on between you and NU isn't acceptable f rom 12 my level sitting in the audience listening.
() 13 Every place I looked, the ICAVP process 14 was cursorily thrown in the pile in all of the schedules.
15 It didn't look like that really had a' place. It didn't 16 look like it really was the priority and important issue 17 that it should be. And I-don't think that was properly la placed at all in the value, in the content, in the 19 importance of that issue as described in the letter that 20 CRC got from Commissioner --
Chairman of the NRC. It 21 sure doesn't address an ICAVP process the way I heard it l
! 22 today. So I think you guys need to take a really close 23- look at that.
24 I mentioned to you already that NU t
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- i. HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 i b {
1 identifying discrepancies and ACR's and that kind of ,
2 stuf f for Unit 2 was - at least I think that's the issue 3 we were talking about at the time was Unit 2. They ' j ust .
l 4 didn't seem to want,to provide that;information.
{
l 5 I think there's an enormous amount of l
6 discrepancies and ACR's and so forth in Unit 2 and' Unit ,
l 7 3. And I think that at least f rom my perspective I could ;
8 read them and uriderstand them. I've got 12 years working 9 at Unit 2. I think I can understand better than most 10 people, maybe better than Mr. Kenyon. I don't know. !
11 There were a lot of issues that I heard i
12 both today and here tonight that seem to indicate that 13 there would be some laxity in -- on behalf of the NRC in i
14 terms of dealing with the requirement-that may have been l 15 established that then became lax as we got closer to 16 start-up.
17 If I could give you an example, I think 1 l
18 the last segment of Phil McKee's presentation, there was 1 l
19 a paragraph with regards that you guys were going to have 20 this oversight of the nuclear concerns program in place i i
21 as long as it took. And it kind of lent credence to me j 22 that you're going to oversee this thing and then they're 23 going to start up and a program isn't --
isn't maybe i 24' going to be all together, but we're still going to have POST REPORTING SERVICE l HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 I
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1 this oversight in place while they're running and watch 2 it and- make sure it's okay. And to me, that's 3 reminiscent of what.'s been going on f or the last 10 years 4 about their concerns program and I don't think that's 5 acceptable. So I think you need to modify or you need to 6 look af ter that particular issue and issues like it that 7 I heard today that I kind of got the indication that 8 there are going to be a lot of things like that because 9 there's going to be some relaxed -- to give you an 10 . example. I think when we -- at the onset of the ICAVP 11 program, there was going to be no financial connection 12 between Northeast Utilities and the group that was 13 selected as -- Sargent & Lundy, I guess, in this case.
1 l 14 Now there seems to be an indication that, you know, the i i
15 guy could have worked for NU before now, but now he just l
16 can't have any stock and he can't have any retirement and i
17 he can't have any financial --
current financial ;
18 dealings.
19 And I'm concerned that the programs will 20 be like that because that's what I saw when I reviewed 21 the Unit 2 start-up report. If you want to go back into l
l 22 your records, you'll find that there was a Unit 2 restart 23 report that was issued by Tommy D. Martin, our old l
[ 24 friend, that basically said we had this 350 plan and we l i
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- p. r 1- laid out all these requirements for Northeast Utilitioe 2 .to meet to start up with Unit 2. And about 50 percent of I l 3 it was relaxed and' wasn't accomplished and we didn't meet 4 all those requirements. So I'm real concerned right now 5 by what I see and what I heard today that those things 6 are going to slip again. And I don't think we want that. l 1
7 There was some mention tonight about l 8 coming a long way and that NU had admitted to its I 9 problems and that that was a real good start towards 10 getting back to recovery. And I'll agree with you that 11 when somebody admits their problems, it is a good start.
]
12 But I'll also say.to you that NU didn't have much choice l I
13 .about admitting. I think it's -- I think it's been l 14: pretty straightforward and it's been pretty much in black i
15 and white both in investigations reviews, Time magazine 16 and you name it, it has been there. And I think that it 17 was pretty straightforward and they didn't have much j 18 choice. l l 19 I think we're waiting for a similar claim 20 by you guys. And I think maybe we will be getting of f to 21 a good start.
l 22 . With regard to the issues that Jacque iurr '
23 had up on there about repeat violations, I've got to tell' 24 you. I don't know how many non-conformances you're going POST REPORTING SERVICE L HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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66 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 O
i N, A l 1 to find issues. If you go back and look at inspection l
2 reports, there's going to be a ton of them. So you may
'3 want to do up here right now and say, " Hey, we went back
- i. 4 and we looked at that and that's going to be a problem."
l 5 I think you better 90 back 'and dig into some more of 6 those reports and you're going to find a whole lot of i 7 them.-
8 There was a reactivity issue that you were 9 dealing with also in that 96-06 report. I think if you 10 go back in the last year or two, you_'re going to find 11 some rod incident problems on Unit 2 which are the same 12 issue. And they should be put together with the Gladys 13 issue. They should be put together with these other 14 issues and the fines adj usted accordingly. There's a lot 15 of reactivity issues, not only with Unit 2, with Unit 3.
16 I think with Unit 3 there was the occasion'of the five 17 times they failed to make sure that the borating valve, 18 when shut, that they had a Caution tag hung on. Ti s 19 must be seven or eight violations of that particular 20 issue which, by the way, you guys only leveled a Level 21 4 or Level 5 violation even though they did it seven 22 times, I think.
23 So what I'm saying is I think if you went j 24 back and you looked at the issues, I thirik that you could i POST REPORTING SERVICE j- A. .
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1 maybe boost your fines a lot higher than you're probably 2 talking about. l 3 Containment isolation valves not being j 4- qualified to be there? I'll bet we could find 100 of j 5 them guys. I'll bet we could go back in the last two or 6 three years and find 100 of them between Units 1, 2 and i 7 3 and Connecticut Yankee. l l
8 So when you talk about repeats, I think i i
9 you've got a long way.to go on those. !
i 10 One issue that's been especially troubling ]
11 to me -- and, by the way, the troubleshcoting one that l
12 was on 96-087 It seemed to me that at Unit 2 -- that was !
l O
13 a unit 1 teeee. eve it eeeme to me in unit 2 verv 14 recently there was a whist'eblower complaint, '
15 confidential complaint, made to you people with regard to !
I 16 the company not performing a troubleshooting issue I i
17 correctly. I believe it was in Unit 2. How come that 18 isn't a.part of this? I think that needs to be added to j
19 your - and these are just ones that I'm pulling out of ;
I 20 my mind, guys. You know what I mean? Stuff I'm 21 remembering. I'm not the guys that's monitoring. I 22 think you guys have a lot better recordt. If you don't, I
23 go back in and look at Tony Ross' 2.206 and you'll find' l 1
,- 24 a lot of that stuff right in there. Okay? j i
l 1
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68 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ,
DECEMBER 17, 1996 0 1 The other item that's especially troubling ~
2 to me and, also --
I'll try to knock this ' of f very j 3 quickly here for you. There still seems to be an !
4 insistence on updating and having the final safety 5 analysis report fixed bef ore we start up. My concern is 6 that the final safety analysis report contains many 7 issues of shutdown ' items to protect the reactor, to i 8 protect from core moltdown, to protect many, many risk ,
9 issues associated with being in a shutdown status which '
- 10. rely on a design basis and rely on the FSAR; that those 11 items should be the first thing that we want to correct ;
12 We shouldn't be letting NU get it done by >
13 the time they get the plant started. We should take that l
14 FSAR, dissect it, take the design basis requirements, the ,
15 license requirements and the tech specs dealing with the 16 shutdown conditions to protect the core, the shutdown ,
17 conditions to protect containment and the public, and get 18 them fixed now. And the PNID's -- you know, if we had a 19 Three Mile Island accident right now, could we go grab l l
20 the PNID's and know that this valve and this pipe were 21 located in this room and they were, in fact, 22 representative of what's on the PNID's? I don't know l
, 23 that we could do that.
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1 aspect of losing total power and the problems that they )
- l 2 have with.their diesels and so forth, can we accomplish j 3 what we want to accomplish with the documents that !
l 4 supposedly are controlled and are in place right now?
1 5 And I think that needs to be dealt with right now and l l
6 they need to have a requirement to fix that before they j 7 fix anything else. I j
8 Thank you. j l
l 9 ( Appla use ) i 10 'MR. LANNING: Okay. Mr. Blanch.
- l. 11 MR. PAUL BLANCH: Thank you. . My name is l
l 12 Paul Blanch. I live in West Hartford. I think we j ust
]
l.
O 13 sew en exemnie or the prob 1eme we re fecine with nr.
14 Delcore getting up here. ;
-15 What we have to remember is that f or each 16 of you sitting at the table and probably 40 other people l 17 in Washington and the region, we're paying you. We, the 18 residents of Connecticut, are paying each one of you one-19 quarter of a million dollars per year to do a job. l 1
20 And what do you do? You sit up here and 1
21 you take all this information and you don't respond. l l
< \
) 22 You'v: Got to remember who you're working for. You're j
!> 23 working for us. You're not working for Northeast 24 Utilities.
l 1
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is 1 (Applause).
i 2 MR. BLANCH: When have we ever had a 3' dialogue with the NRC7 And I don't call this a dialogue.
4 You allow us. to get up here and spend "X" amount of 5 minutes. You allow Northeast Utilities to have a 6 dialogue. I'm sure the session this afternoon was a 7 dialogue. 'We don't have a dialogue right now. This ic 8 a monologue that Paul Blanch is putting on.
9 We,~ members of the public, need to hold i 10 the NRC accountable. You have to respond to us. It's 1
11 our money. It's coming out of my pocketbook and everyone l I
12 else's pocketbook . who happens to be a rate' payer or
]
13 resident of Connecticut.
l 14 We've seen or heard about Northeast 15 Utilities
- recovery plan. We haven't seen the NRC"r-16 recovery plan. They don't have one. We don't know and j 17 are not aware of any procedures the NRC has for the 18 recovery. Northeast Utilities has been cited for the 19 failure of the Quality Assurance Plan. I think the ,
20 public ought to cite the NRC for the f ailure to even have 21 a Quality Assurance Plan. They don't have one. But, 22 yet, they require the utilities to have one, although ]
23 they have the resporisibility f or approximately 109 power ;
1 24 plants and they do analyses. But, yet, no procedures, no POST REPORTING SERVICE a O HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 {
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1 accountability, no quality assurance.
2 (Applause) {;
l 3 MR. BLANCH:' I do have a couple of l f 4 questions. And maybe we can get a dialogue here. First 5 of all, we saw a cited violation or an apparent 6 violation. It has to do with the Millstone 2 containment i 7 sump may have not f unctioned properly. Well, that sounds ,
i L
i 8 innocuous enough. I'd like Mr. Durr without using the ;
t l 9 words "beyond design basic, perfectly safe. Redundant r .
l 10 system, backup systems" to explain to the general public !
11 in a language the general public can understand what 12 would happen if we had either a small break loss of
() 13. Coolant accident or a large break loss of coolant 14 accident and that containment sump didn't f unction. I'm !
15 asking you to provide that to the general public af ter I !
16 sit down, which will be in about 30 seconds.
17 And the second thing I've been asking the 18 NRC and Mr. Lanning -- and I got a flip answer the last 19 we were in this room. And that was the consequences of l 20 a loss of inventory of the spent fuel pool. The NRC now 21 has acknowledged that the probability of that occurring, 22 a loss of inventory of greater than one f oot in the spent 23 fuel pool, occurs historically about one in every 100 24 reactor years. It's happened.here at Millstone. It's b
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72 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ,
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0 1 happened at Connecticut Yankee.
I 2 What they don't want to tell us is the i
3 consequences of that accident. Mr. Lanning said, "Well, 4 maybe it's three times what our new Reg 13-53 previously I 5 stated and that was permanent evacuation of . 254 square i
6 miles." I t's ~~ Mr. Lanning, it's more than three times 1
)
7 because that new Reg 13-53 assumes.a time period of 45 1 i
8 days after start-up from' refueling. I would venture to 9 say it's probably 50 to 100 times. And, again, I don't 10 know how many times we have to request the analysis, what 11 are the consequences, of a' loss of spent fuel pool i
12 inventory. l 13 Mr. Durr, I'd like you to explain now --
14 I'll go sit down -- the consequences of a failure to a 15 sump given a small b[eak or a large break loss of coolant 16 accident on Millstone 2. You can use that for an 17 -example.- !
i 18 Thank you.
l 19 MR. DURR: Well, let me --
20 (Applause) ;
21 MR. DURR: Let me tell you what I can do 22 ad hoc, extemporaneous 1y, unprepared. The purpose of the 23 sump, for. the public's benefit --
and I would have
, 24 answered this question if you'd asked it while I had it l p POST REPORTING SERVICE v HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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I 73 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 O up on the board. That's why we put them up there.
l 1 If ;
l l 2 anybody had any questions, we'd be happy to discuss it. '
l 3 The purpose of the sump -- if you have an j
, i
- l. 4 accident, as he's indicated, a large break loss of
- l. 5 coolant accident, where the pipe, one of the pipes 6 associated with the reactor breaks and you empty the 7 inventory or the water in the reactor into the i l
8 containment, initially water is taken f rom a tank outside l 9 containment and is pumped back into the reactor to cool l l 10 the core. Once that water is exhausted or nearly i 11 exhausted, you have enough water in the containment sump 1
12 now that you take suction off of that sump and you put 13 the water through a cooler and back into the reactor }
l I l 14 again to keep the reactor cool. Are we going okay so i
I l 15 far?
! 16 Now, what happens if the debris in the 17 containment associated with the loss of coolant accident, 18 the pipe breaks, there's going to be some high energy in i 19 there, and if there's debris generated and it catches on 20 the screens of that sump, the screens are there to take 21 out debris, obviously, so that it doesn't go through the l
22 pumps. And there are.some valves associated with that 23 recirculation that throttle it The problem results when
- 24 debris clogs those valves because the -- if the debris c
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1 gets through there and it's too large to go through the l
r 2 valve, if it's small enough to fit through the screen, !
3 then you end up plugging those valves. Then you end up 4 with -- assuming that -- if you assume that all of them I l 5 are clogged, then you have no way to put water back in ,
6 the reactor to cool it. And then have a meltdown. And i l
l 7 that's where you -- that's where it takes you.
I
! 8 So that's the consequences of not having ;
9 properly engineered the screen mesh size of that sump.
10 MR. BLANCH: You lef t out one thing, that i
11 there's a high probability of containment rupture also :
12 due to -- i f
O 1s nn ouns: we11. vo" keen ooime om eoe oo !
14 and on with this. But you end up with a meltdown and !
15 then you extrapolate it from there. Yes.
16 MR. BLANCH: The consequences of that?
17 MR. DURR: The consequences of a meltdown? i l
18 MR. BLANCH: A meltdown where the l 4
i 19 containment ruptured to the loss of the reserve.
20 MR. DURR:' It would be beyond design 21 basis. You asked me not to use that term. That'a why I 22 didn't go that far, because you said don't go beyond 23 design basis. But that's where you end up. You're ;
l 24 beyond the design basis.
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-1 MS. LUXTON: Well, what does that mean? 1 2 MR, DURR: It means --
I l 3 MR. BLANCH: Don't --
l 4 MR. DURR: It means that -- the NRC. back l
5 when they designed these power plants in the early 60's 6 and 70's, they deterministically said, "What's the worst ;
7 thing that can -happen? What's credible? What is a g 8 credible accident?" A credible accident is a large break l-9 loss of coolant accident. We call it LOCA, loss of 10 coolant accident. And so they were required to design 11 for that accident because that's the worst credible f 12 accident that we could conceive.
13 Now, you'could conceive incredible things.
14 But we didn't require the design for those things. We 15 required the design for credible accidents. And the 16 break of the largest pipe in the reactor was the credible 17 accident, the largest or worst case. And that's what 18 they designed for. So that's why you have these backup 1
1 19 systems that put water into a reactor to cool it.
That's 20- why you have a containment to contain it. That's what 21 these plants were designed for.
22 So what Mr. Blanch keeps coming back to 1
23 is, "Well, we don't think that's the worst thing that can !
I l 24 happen. Let's extrapolate beyond what at that time was )
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1 considered credible."
! i 2 MR. BLANCH: But'you're now saying that !
3 this is a credible' accident because you acknowledge that i 4 the reserve system may not function or has a high f 5 probability of not functioning. So now _ that is a
, 6 credible accident. l l
7 MR. DELCORE: And if -- j l
! 8 MR. BLANCH: And your five barrels of l
! i 1
! 9 trash that you take out of that sump twice in a row, you 1 l
l 10 need to start questioning, you know, why are you lecting i
f 11 that trash get in there? And that's what happened at CY.
i 12 MR. DURR: And now I have to result to l 1
1 13 you're beyond my technical expertise to answer that t :
l 14 question. I'm outside my area of expertise. I really l l l l 15 can't answer that. j l 4 l 16 MR. BLANCH: 'Then maybe people in -- could t
l 17- provide it.
l 18 MR. DURR: Maybe somebody can. But I'm i 19 not the guy to answer the question because I'm not 20 technically competent to answer that question. Okay?
21 MR. LANNING: Okay. I'm next. The answer j 22 I gave you before was not flip. It was a deliberate 23 answer. It was well though out. And just for the 24 benefit of the folks here, I'll repeat the answer.
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l 77 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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l l' Your request was to do a calculation of a l
! 2 beyond design basis event' involving total loss of 1
l- 3 inventory from the spent fuel pool. As you point out, 4 that event which is beyond the design basis and analyzed 5 in new Reg 13-53 -- and as you point out, it assumes a
! 6 certain decay time for that event to take place.
t I 7 But it doesn't matter --
even --
that l
8 event with that decay time, the consequences are 9 unacceptable. It's already beyond what's acceptable.
10 what's reasonable and what we're willing to accept.
l 11 So, to do that calculation, by increasing 12 the inventory in the spent f uel pool to do that arialysis, 13 .3ust makes those consequences more severe. There's no t
14 point in wasting the taxpayers' money, your money, to re-l l 15 analyze that when we already know the consequences are l
16' ' unacceptable. That was my point. And that was the 17 decision that the agency has made regarding your 18 question.
19 MR. BLANCH: But here we are again with an 20 accident acknowledged by the NRC that has a probability 21 of one in 100 reactor operating years --
22 MR. LANNING: No, sir. I have to correct i
23 you. The agency has not acknowledged a failure -- a 24 total- loss of inventory from the spent fuel pool as POST REPORTING SERVICE
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- a 1 credible. . That's not true. What has been analyzed is a. l
\
2 -depletion of inventory in the spent fuel pool which you J
3 pointed out was.like a foot. .This is --
I guess you l 4 . pointed,out the,AEOD study.
5 MR. BLANCH: That's correct.
6 - MR. LANNING: That's exactly right. Now, 5 1
7 that's much dif f erent than a total loss of inventory f rom i 8' the spent fuel pool. There are numerous feet of water f 9 above the core that's in that'poo). 14 feet, I guess, 10 something~like that.
l 11 'MR. BLANCH: Higher than that. i l ,
12 MR. LANNING: 'Yes. So there's still a lot i 13 of margin, even with that loss of inventory. And the i 14 report also points . out that -- I think there was no i l .
l 15 examples of where it got below there without being l
16 recognized by the operators. j 17 And, by. the way, we're going to have AEOD l j
18 come and talk to that report. You know? If you recall, I l
19 some time ago when I mentioned that they were doing this j 20 study, that we would have them here to discuss the 21 results of that study with the public. And we're going 22 to still do that. l l
23 So, I think I answered your question. j i
24 Mr. Dolan.
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l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l l OECEMBER 17, 1996 i 1 MR. .31M DOLAN: I wanted to address the '
1 2 micro issues and slightly touch on macro issues. You f
3 know, micro issues is Northeast Utilities, Millstone.
4 I'd .like to read a letter that I sent to the Day which I ,
'5 hope gets published.
l t
6 "After attending the recent NRC 7 ~ enf orcement hearings for Connecticut Yankee and Millstone l
8 station. I came away with one overwhelming belief. !
9 Northeast Utilities is moving forward. What 'was most 10 impressive to me was the candor with which Bruce Kenyon i
11 and Ted Feigenbaum acknowledged past deficiencies and 12 outlined what to me was an impressive leadership i O 1s nhi1osonhv to no 1omeer toierete iow etanderde. xenven I
14 and Feigenbaum stood up and told the difficult truth j 1
15 about Northeast Utilities' past . performance. They ;
16 admitted that mistakes were made by previous management l 1
17 teams, but pledged a new corporate attitude that will no l I
18 longer accept second-rate perf ormance, especially when it i 19 comes to caf ety. There was no alibis, excuses or i
20 evasions, j ust the unvarnished truth. " l 21 "Given that they f aced a potential hostile
- 22. audience of regulators, reporters and anti-nuclear l
23 activists, it was a remarkable presentation. Bruce ;
l 24 Kenyon's no-nonsense management style and the impressive 'l i
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- l DECEMBER 17, 1996 l l ] 1 team he assembled will help ensure Northeast Utilities 2 take the necessary steps to correct past problems and get !
- 3. the plants back on line. The economic well-being of j 4 Northeast Utilities and the people of New England depend i i
i 5 on that. Make no mistake about it. Northeast Utilities l l
6 Nuclear has.taken great strides towards the f uture under i i
l 7 Mr. Kenyon's leadership."
]
8 Now, another micro issue I'm concerned j 9 with is I'm concerned about the value of my house. I l
l 10 want reliable, cheap electric energy. That is very ,
11 important to the viability of this community. And we !
I 12 don't -- we want Northeast Utilities to be profitable.
13 We know what's going on over iri Shoreham where there's a i
14 billion dollars that has to be paid by the schools. .
I 15 Now I want to talk about the macro issues.- i 16 The macro issues, in my op-ed to the Current -- and one 'I 17 must conj ure some changes in that. I said at that timo l 18 - the United Gtates was consuming 18.2 million barrels-a ;
19 day. The Northeast, with the Oil and Gac Jourrial I have 20 today shows we're now consuming 19 million barrels a day. ;
l 21 The strategic patrolling roterve which' is supposed to be '
)
~22 750 million barrels has only got -- has never gotten more 23 than 590 million barrels. When I made my calculation l l
( 24 then, it had a 32-day supply if we had an interruption.
l l
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V 1 Right now it's 31 days.
2 Now, another thing. Did the --
I talk 3 about the international situation. Surely everybody e
4 reads what's going on in Hebron, an intractable situation 5 that everybody is scared that may break down. We know 6 Saddam Hussein now has started with his oil and he's all r
7 rebuilt 8 And people talk about accidents. Has 9 everybody forgotten what happened in Tokyo where those 10 idiots put that tub of nerve gas loose and killed 100 '
11 people and inj ured 5,0002 That's a macro issue.
12 Did you hear General Leben when he said f l
O 13 we re oet or certro12 we haven t neid our eoidiere for i 14 eight months. The New York Times had an article that 15 showed that right now there's a bazaar selling nuclear l
r 16 material over there. I'm not worried about something -- l l
l 17 trying to do here. I'm worried about whether it happened )
18 in New York City or Washington.
19 But there's another problem here. And in 20 -- to get back to the consumption, here's what the -- I 21 want to reflect what the Oil and Gas Journal, November 22 25. The U.S. trade deficit increased sharply for I
23 September f rom the latest replying period with crude oil l l i 24 imports costs'a major contributor. Imports of all types !
4 POST REPORTING SERVICE I HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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_ HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 of petroleum products rose more ' than nine percent in )
I 2 September to 5.97 billion, overall a deficit find of 10.1 l l 3 percent to 11.3 billion from a revised August figure.
4 Now, in today --
in Saturday's --
in 5 Saturday's Barrons, Robert Hormat -- Robert,Hormat, he's I
6 at Goldman-Sachs International He points out that the ;
i 7 second quarter balance of payment deficit was supposed to 8 be 39 billion. It's been jumped up to 48 billion, 9 refigured. The third figure -- the third quarter has !
)
10 gone from 48 to almost 52 billion.
11 Now, what does this mean? This means that 1 i
12 we need -- we need every one of those 109 nuclear power j 13 plants back on the line just as f ast as we can get them.
14 That's my macro issues. i 15 MR. LANNING: Thank you.
l 16 (Applause) 17 MR. LANNING: Rosemary Bassilakis.
I 18 MS. ROSEMARY BASSILAKIS: I'm Rosemary 19 Bassilakis. I live one mile f rom the def unct Haddam Neck 20 nuclear reactor, i
21 My organization, the Citizens Awareness !
l 22 Network, together with the Nuclear Information and i
23 Resource Service, submitted a petition to the Nuclear j 24 Regulatory Commission to revoke Northeast Utilities
- l l . POST REPORTING SERVICE !
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f 83 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 license to operate.the Millstone reactors. '
2 I'll just read one quick paragraph from 3 here. "The petitioners request that the NRC immediately-4 suspend or -revoke Northeast Utilities license to operate 5 Connecticut Yankee and the Millstone nuclear reactors due 1
6 to chronic negligent management of the reactors which for l 7 .over a decade has endangered and continues to endanger 8 occupational and public health and safety and the 9 environment due to resultant and cumulative maintenance
-1 1
10 safety problems and violations of NRC regulations." l l
11 I think that it's time that the Nuclear i 12 Regulatory Commission sends a message to utilities. i
( 13 throughout the country that this kind of operations will 14 not be tolerated. Nothing short of revocation of a 15 license should be handed cown.
16 And ~ I add that Rome wasn't- built in a day.
17 And Northeast Utilities didn't get into this dilapidated l
18 state of their reactors overnight. It happened over many1 l f l 19 years, perhaps 10 or even 20 years. It took years of 20 blatant arrogance, years of disregard to NRC license 21 requirements, years of possible misrepresentation of l 22 information to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and
.23 years of the termination of concerned employees who tried 24 to make a change.
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1 You know, the state that the Millstone 2 reactors are in right now and the Haddam Neck reactor has 3 really rocked the country. People are buzzing with the 4 talk of nuclear reactors. And I think that revocation of
~
5 their license is necessary to send the message home. And 6 just like they didn't get into this state overnight,
'7- they're not going to change overriight. It takes years to 8 bring about change. Years.
9 So, by thinking that they're capable of 10 making the changes necessary to operate their reactors 1
11 safely might be a grave mistake and you 'may be 1 12 endangering the public.
13 I would also like some guarantee that 14 we'll examine the Department of Justice investigations.
15 And you might say that you're not following them. But 1
l 16 since Northeast Utilities is a license holder of yours, !
17 you should be paying very close attention to the )
18 Department of Justice investigations and ycu should let 19 us know what's going'on with them. j 20 And I guess I would like to point out that 21 it's not easy to get on a Department of Justice l
22 investigation list. It takes big-time crime and big-time l
23 wrongdoing. This is.a Federal investigation. So I'd l
24 like for you~to fill us in. And at the very least, at POST REPORTING SERVICE
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85 l' HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS '
DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 the very, very least, before restart of those reactorc, 2 the Department of Justice investigation should be l 3 completed, you should have implemented their ;
4 recommendation and ' you have removed any responsible I i
5 employees at Northeast Utilities who had a hand in thic :
1 6 type of sub-operation.
t 7 That's about it. But just to close, I l
'I 8 would like to mention that also in our petition we asked [
l 9 for the investigation of Region 1 inspectors and to j ust l 10 get a good handle on exactly what did they know over the 11 past 10 years. Where were they? How come it wasn't
, r t
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12 f ound out years ago that there were holes in sump screens ;
j 13 and holes in containment walls -- not containment -- f uel i r l 14 pool walls the size of doggie doors and things like that? l, 15 So -- that's all. {
l 1 16 Thanks. {
17 (Applause) ,
18 MR. LANNING: All right. I'll talk to --
19 response to the DOJ attorney issues. There's not much I 20 can say about it. We have beeri directed, not asked, but f 21 directed by the U.S. Attorney that this is something that i 22 cannot really be discussed. I don't really know that !
l' !
23 much about it. But that's -- that is where we are. i 24 I agree with you; this takes years to !
! i
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.1 change It's going to be years before they're able to 2 absolutely fix all their problems. But there is -- there 3 will come a time which they will be able or should be 4 able to --
must be able to demonstrate they've made 1
5 sufficient progress to restart. j i
6 Concerning your petition -- Phil, do you .!
7 want to address the status of that?
8 MR. McKEE: Well, your petition j ust came - ,
9 in. And our processes on petitions are that they go 10 through our Legal Office and we develop an i
l 11 acknowledgement letter. And the peticion hac been !
l 12 received and it's going through those initial processes fs. i Q 13 where we're looking at the issues and preparing an
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l- 14 acknowledgement of the petition and it will go in. l
)
15 Just based -- and I'm probably speaking i
16 ahead of things. The issues, the petition issues, will 17 generally address the issues that you mentioned for 18 actions against the licensee. We can't in the 2.206 19' process, at least as far I understand, address any 20 requests for actions against the NRC. So it's likely i l
21 that in our acknowledgement letter we will define how j 22 those will be dealt with. And they'll probably be dealt 23 with on separate paths. But we have received it and wo i
24 should be getting back and responding with an !
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C. l 1 acknowledgement letter on it. l 2 MR. LANNING: Okay. I L
3 .A VOICE: Is there any precedence for --
4 she 'had talked about the Oopartment of Justice f l
5 investigation being a prereq to restart. Is there a ;
r 6 precedence for that or -- you didn't address that. I l 7 don't think you did. !
8 MR. LANNING: I can't answer that because f t
9 --
let me answer it this way. The technical issues {
l 10 associated with the scope of their investigation will 11 become clear to us and it will become hopef ully clear to i 12 us bef ore restart. We made that request. We will ensure i 13 that those technical issues are resolved. If there are 4
14 criminal sanctions imposed, that's something that I ]
i 15 really.can't comment on or speculate about, j 16 Charlie Luxton. !
l 17 MR. LUXTON: Okay. My name is Charlie l I
- 18 Luxton. I live in Waterford and I'm a member of the l
l 19 Citizens Regulatory Commission. And I guess'I really 20 feel like saying that, you know, every time I get up here 21 I hammer the NRC. It's nothing personal. I look down 22 this table and 1 suppose I would probably like you guys
, 23 if I got to know you. But as a group, as this agency,
- 24 the NRC, you know, I still don't trust you guys. After
, \
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88 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 tonight's presentation, I don't know. It j ust didn't --
2 it didn't do it for me. .
i I
3 Anyway --
you know, I- don't even like 4 being here. I want this issue'done and gone and out of 5- my life. But I'm here because my f amily was. put at risk.
6 at greater risk than it needed to be. And I think you're 7 partly to blame in that. So that's why I'm here 8 ; hammering away at you. ,
9 So let's start with the ICAVP program 10 which I think I'd rather you rename it the Independent ;
11 Corrective Restart Action Program. Then you could call l 12 it ICRAP.
13 I think the problem you have regarding the 14 objectivity of this team has -- we made that known to ;
l 15 you. Our own plan was submitted to the NRC and to the l
16 Nuclear. Energy Advisory Council. And we received no >
17 answer per se to our plan, but NEAC seemed to find it. ,
l 18 reasonable. Mr. Konvon also stated that he would
- 19 entertain other reasonable options. So, you know, the 1
20 NRC's failure to entertain our ideas only serves to 21 undermine our trust in you.
22 You know, the dialogue I thirik has been ,
23 one-sided, that the NRC has even failed to respond to 24 several suggestions from the incumbents from NEAC. And POST REPORTING SERVICE O' HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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I l 89 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 I
! 1 your charter states that NRC business is the public's -
2 business. Yet, your actions defy this claim. And, I
3 therefore, again, no credibility.
4 I think any contractor in the nuclear 5 business has a built-in bias. And for the NRC not to {
i 6 seek out and demonstrate its desire for objectivity is a '
7 clear case of hypocracy. You claim to place public :
8 safety above all else. Yet, your history does not bear 9 this out. Promoting the industry is and always has been,,
10 it seems, your primary function. And this fact is !
11 documented.
12 In short, we have no guarantee that the 13 NRC will work on our behalf and we fear that the NRC 14 itself will tell the utility in advance which systems 15 will be looked at. Thus, we find the entire ICRAP '
16 business useless.
17 So let.me suggest a method that's also 18 simple, I suppose, but one that I would consider -- it 19 seems to be used everywhere. They should place the names 20 of the systems in a hat and you let six iridividuals with 21 no connection to the utility, the industry or the NRC 22 draw out the names. It's simple, it's cost ef f ective and 23 it's fair and nobody knows until it's done.
24 Now, I was going to ask f or an update on f
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i 90 f i HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS [
DECEMBER 17,'1996 l
V t 1 the George Gladys 2.206. Dut, such as it was, it wat -'
i 2 given. I understand there's even an older 2.206 -- Ross !
i 3 out there that was part of a 1994 -- you know, these j 4 unanswered questions and unresolved issues demonstrate
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5 the means by which the NRC hides issues under the guise ,
i i 6 of pending investigation. Dr. Jackson has promised a l l 7 resolution or had promised a resolution on Mr. Gladys' !
l ?
8 petition by September or October this year. And here's !
l l l_
9- yet another way in which the NRC protects the industry. i l
10 Once under the cloak of the legal process, all I
l 11 information becomes unavailable. No comment is I l
12 appropriate. And the issue can remain unresolved '
i O 1s iodefinitelv.
I i 14 Now. for an individual depending on j
- 15 expedient due process, f or speedy resolution of important t ,
j 16 saf ety matters. and f or a host of other j ust common-sense 17 issues, reasons, the NRC again failed miserably.
18 Now, during the past 16 months, the 19 Citizens Regulatory Commission has discovered really what 20 a pitifully inept and ineffective regulator the NRC has 1 I
l 21 .been since day one. And due to this rieglect, you have i
! 22 allowed Northeast Utilities to place my f amily and every )
i l 23 f amily in Southeastern Connecticut at greater risk. And i
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91 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 b
1 Imagine the outrage that I f elt when I read Dr. Jackson's i
2 words of praise for the empty-suit bureaucrats under i 3 whose leadership the NRC left at Haddam Neck? James i 4 Taylor, William Russell, James Milone and Stuart Eknar. ;
5 They should each be reelirig with a kick in the ass and an 6 indictment, not kudos.
7 And what changes really occurred? Dr.
8 Jackson barely reached outside the NRC in choosing new i i
9 personnel. Further, the Nuclear Navy remains a strong j 10 presence'in the agency, as does an unhealthy, permanent {
i 11 bias? Individuals with lengthy NRC careers are biased ;
12 and they should be highly suspect. A prior career in the 13 Nuclear Navy is absolutely worth praise, yet all service 14 careers may not always transfer well to- civilian 15 democratic responsibilities This military monostat 16 seems to be part of the problem with the utility as well.
17- The NRC's primary function, that of 18 protecting the health and welfare of citizens, has not 19 been well-served i ri the past. And in light of Dr 20 Jackson's recent reorganization effort --
and she may 21 simply be following Northeast Utilities --
forming of 22 reorganize, scapegoat a f ew individuals, claim you f ailed 23 and learned your lessons and move on, but, at all costs, j 24 don't look back.
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r 92 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS g DECEMBER 17, 1996 v
1 In my opinion, accountability has not .
2 taken place at the NRC. Public trust can never be 3 restored until this happens. You've got to clean house
.4 .first. Hold those responsible to account for their t
5 misdeeds. And then we can talk about reorganizing and 6 restart efforts. This time, include the public in the !
- 7. process. We demand the right to be involved as equals in 8 -decision-making that bears directly on the well-being of '
9 our families, our homes and our neighborhoods and the i 10 nation. We couldn't possibly do worse that you already 11 have. 'i 12 Thank you very much.
13 (Applause)
I 14 MR. LANNING: Charlie, I'd like to invite 15 you to dinner so you can get to know me.
16 MR. LUXTON: Good. I accept.
17 MR. LANNING: All right. We'll do it.
18 B. Reynolds.
19 MR. BILL REYNOLDS: I just have a small 20 statement. And, Jacque, try not to fall asleep. I l 1
i i 21 noticed when Charlie was talking, that you were going to l
22 fall asleep-on us.
- 23 MR. DURR
- No. I was right on the edge of l-24 my chair.
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l 5 l 1 MR. REYNOLDS: I noticed.
l 2 I had a couple of items, questions more
- i. i 3 than anything else about the credibility of the NRC and j t
4 the Northeast Utilities. We started this process several l
5 months ago, almost a year now. And we were told that the !
6 public was going to be well informed. The NRC said that 7 they would have f requent meetings with us. And they have i
l 8 been infrequent lately. And Northeast Utilities said l 9 they would keep us informed. Everything would be up 10 front. And they refused to come to any of our meetings i
11 we've - requested them to. So, to me, it's still a ri 12 indication that things are still being covered up or you O 13 seet don t we"t te heer the treth- )
l 14 And one of the questions.that leads to a '
15 question about the decommissioning of Haddam Neck -- f rom l
16 what I understand, the NRC recently incorporated in their j 1
17 policy that there will be no public meetings concerning 18 decommissioning of nuclear plants- because of what (
19 happened at the Rowe plant, the problems that they had.
20 That's not true?
21 MR. DURR: I'm not the guy to address 22- that. You're outside mp area --
23 DR. TRAVERS: Excuse me, Jacque. Let me
[ 24- take a shot of that. I'm not aware of any such policy. l l
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l -.J i 1 In fact, I'm aware to the' contrary- that there is, in 2 fact, a plan to have a public meeting in the vicinity of
-3 Haddam Neck.
4 MS. BASSILAKIS: But the meeting is not --
5 the public does not'-- they don't have any input on the 6 decommissioning process. It's j ust to vent -- ,
7 DR. TRAVERS: Well, I thought -- maybe I 8 ' misinterpreted your question. I thought you had said f 9 meetings. And maybe you meant public hearings. ' Well, in 10 _any w.. / , it's my understanding that in the not too 11 distant future, the NRC plans to -- and it won't be our l
12 organization because Haddam -- Haddam Yankee is not part 13 of this. But there is intended to be a public meeting in 14 the vicinity of that plant to refer for the public the l
l 15 process that NRC uses in its regulatory oversight of the l 16 decommissioning. So if that's what you're referring to, 17
~
I think it's not true that we don't intend to have such 18 public meeting. In fact, they do plan to have that.
I 19 MR. REYNOLDS: But the way you're
- . 20 explaining it, there's a difference between a public l
l 21 hearing and a public meeting. 1 l
1 22 DR. TRAVERS: Yes. ;
23 MR. REYNOLDS: We won't have a public l
l i 24 meeting where we can get up and bitch like we're doing i i
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.LJ 1 riow and they'll go home and say, "Well, we heard what ;
i 2 they had -to say. We'll just go about the business." l 3 What we need is a public hearing on exactly how things I 4 are being done, the responsibilities of it and how it's 5 going to af f ect our pocketbooks, because it will. Did I 6 make that clear? Okay. I 7- The second thing is I was watching a. '
8 slide. It seemed like there's been more violations over 9 the past couple of months and the violations ' haven't 10 stopped. They still continue. And, to me, that's an l l
11 indicati.on that things haven't changed. It's -- you're '
12 talking about the QA, the quality assurance of the NRC -
oV 13 and the quality assurance of Northeast Utilities.
14 Well,'I had a boss when I worked there, l l
15 he's here in this room right now, that don't know-the '
16 dif f erence between taking care of QA material and sloppy 1
i 17 housekeeping. And I think that mentality still' exists in 18 Northeast Utilities. You have the same people that l
19 created the problems in the past are still there.
20 They've gotten rid of a few people, some big names, I l
21 might add. They paid them of f. But the mentality of the i
l 22 people there, they still think that they didn't do !
l 23 anything wrong. And which they did. So this, too, has 24 got co be addressed. That kind of comes- under I -
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96 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 accountability. And that was my third thing.
2 Nobody has been held accountable. Bellucci 3 hasn't been held accountable. The company admitted that 4 he was one of the big problems because he was the leader.
5 So they give him a million dollars to go home and sit f or 6 a couple of years until things cool down. People forget 7 things. Then he can re-enter the nuclear industry field 8 someplace else, maybe even Carolina Light & Power where -
9 - where new administrative --
l 10 And this is what I've seen in the past.
l l 11 The people that screwed up at Millstone, Jack Keenen, a 1
l 12 f ew other ones, were responsible f or harassment. They've 15 been promoted in other plants. And the same thing has 14 happened with the NRC. You've got a new Director for l
15 Region 1 that came frori, I think Region 4, which is the 16 Texas region. It isn't?. Region 3 is Texas?
17 MR. McKEE: Chicago.
18 MR. DURR: Chicago.
19 MR. REYNOLDS: Chicago? Okay. Well, I'm 20 glad it wasn't from Texas because they had the same 21 problems that we have with Millstone concerning 22 especially unit whistleblowers.
23 So, all you're doing is switching people 24 around. And that doesn't impress us. And we still want A POST REPORTING SERVICE V HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 7~1. l sJ '
1 to know the truthful answers. We've heard f rom the past 1
2 probably about six months what the intentions of ;
, 25 Northeast is and of the NRC to get these plants back on 4 line. And you said that you wanted results. We, the i
5 public, haven't seen any results, either. All we've seen '
6 is people change, positions change. Mr. Kenyon related l l
7 to the newspapers, you know, that "We did this and we did l
8 that." We-haven't~seen any results.
9 I still get phone calls. Things haven't
]
i 10 changed. They're j ust doing it in a dif f erent way. When 11 are we going to know? And these plants shouldn't be even l l
12 considered for start-up without a track record. Just l
.( ) 13 like the track record that took them down, they have to 14 build a same track record to take them back up. l 1
15 That*c about it. !
16 MR. LANNING: Okay.
17 MR. REYNOLDS: Thanks for staying awake, 18 Jacque. l 19 MR. DURR: Let the record reflect that not 20 only was I awake through Mr. Luxton's presentation, but l 21 I thought it was articulate and well-prepared. j
- 22. (Applause) 23 MR. LANNING: But, also, Mr. Reynolds, I q l
I l 24 think your perception of the types of violations that
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I were issued, they are indicative of historical problems.
l 2 They continue to be examples of inadequate corrective 1
3 actions, et cetera. So what we're finding- is j ust more 4 examples of violations that we've known for some time.
5 So we're -- like you, we're looking f or results. And as !
l 6' new recovery plans are starting to be implemented, we'll i l
7 continue our inspection activities. And as we've said 8 before, that we'll discuss those results with-you as NU 9 makes progress. <
l l 10 MR. REYNOLDS: In other words, you're l 11 saying that all of the violations that you found now have i
12 been old violations? They have been --
I
! Q Q 13 MR. LANNING: Well, they're more examples I'
14 of the same types of violations. i i
15 MR. REYNOLDS: That's been going on f or l 1
l 16 years. l 17 MR. LANNING: Corrective actions, for
! 18 example. Yes.
19 MR. REYNOLOS: Okay. In other words, they
)
l 20 haven't did anything wrong for the past couple of months, j 4
F 21 you know, as f ar as the violations? You're reviewing old j 1
22 violations that you're just now catching up on?
l 23 MR. LANNING: No. We're reviewing current i
24 activities. But the violations that we're identif ying as 1
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1 inspectors are the types of violations we've. identified 2 previously.
3 MR. REYNOLDS: Right.
4 MR. LANNING: And it has more to do with.
S the --
6 MR. REYNOLDS: So it's repeated .;
7 violations.
8= MR. DURR: No. Let'me -- !
9 MR. LANNING: Their mentality hasn't 10 changed.. It's still the same thing. .
11 MR. DURR: No. Let me explain. I think :
12 a better characterization is, f or example, at Unit 2, we ;
() 13 closed out a series of licensee event reports that were 14 historical, that had occurred previously, that they 1
15 reported to us by regulation where we went in to close I l
16 out the licensee event reports because they said they had ;
17 done X, Y and Z. When we looked, they did X and Y but ;
18 they didn't do Z. They missed pieces of it, which is {
19 really reflected on their corrective action program that 20 should have captured all of that and made sure it was
- 1 l 21 done. Well, that's what we told them in 96-04, an
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l 22 inspection report, that "Your corrective accion program 23 doesn't work. And' this is just more examples of it a 1
l 21 doesn't work. And we won't let you restart until you get j i
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1 it fixed."
2 So, yes, when we go out to close, there's l l
3 a lot of things that we call open items, things that the-4 NRC has on their list that the utility -- We've -- either i 5 the utility has identified or we've identified, such as 6 violations. They go on our open items list. They need l
7 to take corrective actions f or those violations. We go 8 in and verif y that they did, indeed, do exactly what they ,
l 9 said. Same with licensee event reports. They send us a 10 licensee event report and it will say Corrective Action. l 11 what they did to fix the problem. We go in and some of !
12 those we verify that down to the last thing to make sure
() 13 that they did what they said. l 14 When we looked at some of these things, 15 they hadn't done what they said they were supposed to do. l J
16 MR. REYNOLDS: That includes.the mental !
i 17 capacity of the person doing the evaluation or the 1 18 corrective action. Human error. ,
1 l
19 MR. DURR: If it's human error or the 1
? l 20 process -- I don't know what it is. They need to l 21 identify it and then go and correct it.
! 22 MR. REYNOLDS: So you're trying to get a I 23 corrective action program that if a person makes a l
24 mistake, then -- !
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.1 MR. DURR: Somebody fixes it. ,
2 MR. REYNOLDS: -- they either -- they 3 either send them to school so it don't happen again or 4 somebody fixes it and corrects it.
5 MR. DURR: Yes. Yes.
6 MR. REYNOLDS: And this keeps happening?
-7 MR. DURR: That's correct. It's a chronic ;
8 problem and it has been for some time. That's why we s
9 sent them that letter that "You won't restart until you l l
10- get this fixed" because it affects all three units, not
.l 11 just one unit. i j
12 MR. REYNOLDS: So the result is that the 13 mentality of the people are still there that caused the .
14 problem in the first place that they did no wrong. So if 15 they did no wrong, you can't do anything to make it ;
)
16 right. l l
17 MR. DURR: I can't explain it.
18 MR. DELCORE: The question in my mind is 19 why'do we talk to them about restart and recovery. if ;
1 20 they're'still doing'it? Why don't we tell them, "When l 21' you can show us a couple, three months of continuous
.22 -inspection reports with no problems, hey, then we'll talk j i
23 .to you about a recovery plan"? If they're still doing '
- j. 24 .that, then that's --
i l
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l 1 MR. DURR: The letter -- ;
i 2 MR. DELCORE: That's the public's i
3 position. '
4 MR. DURR: The letter that we sent the -:
i 5 utility said, "You must have demonstrated that the ,
6 corrective action process is fixed. " And that means that i
,7 we can go in arid inspect- these things and we don't ' find :
l 8 stuff wrong. That's what we're looking for. We need 9 some kind of a trend. We some indication over time that 10 they've got it right. -
11 MR. DELCORE: But that's for restarting ,
l l 12 the units. I'm talking about even sitting down and !
13 talking to them --
14 MR. DURR: Well --
l 15 MR. DELCORE: -- before restart begins, !
l 16 when they're not -- it's obvious they're not ready if l'7 they're still having problems. ;
1 18 MR. DURR: Yes. And what I would argue is l l
19 that for something as complex and as widespread as this ,)
l 20 is for three nuclear power plants, the sooner you get a J 1i i
21 plan to get- it fixed, the better. That doesn't mean that I I 22 you're going to restart. That means that you've got to 23 implement the plan and it's got to show some success over 24 some period of time to demonstrate that you've got it POST REPORTING SERVICE
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1 right this time. That's what we're talking about.
2 So they need a plan today. They just j 3 'can't mill around for the next six months. They need a 4 plan to strike out in a direction that looks like it has 5 some reason f or -- or some chance f or success. That's ;
6 what we're talking about today. That's what we were l 7 discussing with them today. It was a plan that's ;
8 reasonable, that's going to take them long-term and get j i
9 .them some success. If we think that there's something 10 wrong with the plan, we'd obviously make note of that. I 11 But it's their plan to get it right. And we'll watch the 12 implementation of it over a period of time.
13 And if it -- if they -- that's why we warit 14 performance indicators. We want more than them coming in ;
15 and waving their arms, "It's okay. " I want something 16 quantitative and qualitative that says, "This'is why we 1
17 know it's okay because here's the demonstration. Here's l
18 the things that we used as a measure, as a barometer of 19 how things are coming." So that's what the plan was 20 today. It's j ust let's start of f in a direction that we 21 can all more or less agree to that has some chance for 22 success. I 23 MR. LANNING: Okay. Mr. Halloway.
1 i
j 24 MR. MARK HALLOWAY: Mark Halloway from '
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l 1 Niantic. I have aLnumber of questions and I prefer to 2 have each of them answered separately because they are --
3 probably touch upon different areas of expertise.
4 The first one I sort of blurted out as I 5 was sitting here during the presentation. And that was
-6 this sump issue regarding Unit 2. Is this the same 7 problem that has been discovered at CY7 Does anybody 8 have an answer to that?
9 MR ,. OURR:' See, I'm only aware of one l- 10 issue at Haddam Neck.- And it's not my plant. But I keep 11 my ear to the ground for other plants. But the problem ,
12 that I knew of . at Haddam Neck was the net positive O 13 euction heee. ;
14 MR. HALLOWAY: Well, that was one of the 15 . problems.
I 16 MR. DURR: That's the one I'm aware of. j i
l 17 I'm not sure that Haddam had the same problem.
18 MR. HALLOWAY: But another problem --
- j. 19 MR. LANNING: It's the same issue. Mr.
l 20 Halloway. It has to do with the ability of the sump l
21 screens to preclude debris from coming inside the -- l l l
( 22 MR. HALLOWAY: I'm familiar with the J l
23 plant. I was j ust verif ying it. Well, it seems to me l f
24 that of the f our plants we have in ' Connecticut, at least 1
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l U j 1 two of.them have the same problem. Has there been any i i l .2 bulletin put out to the industries asking others to
! 3 respond? Because --
l 4 MR. LANNING: That generic communication 5 was put out years ago, talking to this specific concern .!
6 and requiring them to make sure that the sump was
- 7 designed as described and credit taking for.the safety i
8 analysis.
l l 9 MR. HALLOWAY: But, you know, there was 10 nothing done years ago about correcting the problem. Now .,
'11 the problem is out there in the open where everybody can f
12 see it, without it having been corrected and --
13 MR. LANNING: Nothing appears to have been 14 done at Haddam or Millstone. Other utilities did take !
15 positive action. !
16 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay. That takes care of ;
17 that one. i 18 MR. DURR: Yes. And the other thing -- is 19 we're not talking big holes. We're talking -- I think j 20 the screen mesh cize was, what, .187 inches?
21 MR. IMBRO: Three-eighths of an inch, 22- Jacque. !
23 MR, DURR: I'm sorry?
I l 24 MR. IMBRO: Three-eighths of an inch. l 1
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-1. MR. DURR: Okay. But, you know, it's not 1
2 like it's baseball size holes. j
! l l 3 MR. HALLOWAY: But it's big eriough where l
- 4- it can accumulate six 55-gallon drums of debris over a )
1 1
5 period of time, thereby rendering the system useless. l
- 6 MS. BASSILAKIS
- How does that kind of j J
7 hole, literally a three-inch by three-foot gaping hole -- j 8' I j ust want to clear the record up. You're not talking 9 about Haddam.
10 MR. DURR: I'm talking about Millstone. ,
11 MS. BASSILAKIS: Okay. l 12 MR. DURR: Yes. You're right. Where !
13 these screens match up on the ' corners, there was a gap at i
14 ' CY . j 15 MR. HALLOWAY: My next question concerns 16 the restart plan. And hearing about it, that's a very !
17 aggressive schedule. I think that's probably putting it
]
18 mildly. Mr. Lanning, you could probably answer this .<
l 19 question. Does the NRC feel they have the resources to 20 look at these various restarts almost concurrently?
21 MR. LANNING: It's going to be a 1
22 challenge.
- 23 MR. HALLOWAY
- Do you have any means of 24 being able to tell the utility " Hey, we're looking at l POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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107 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 j3 1 this. Slow down. We're not going to deal with the other 2 one right now because we want to look at this one first"?
3 MR. LANNING: We will try our best _ to 4 obtain the resources necessary to do the inspections.
5 But in the event for some-reason we're not able to do_ it, 6 they'd have to wait on us. And that's what we mean by i
7 being a critical path.
O MR. HALLOWAY: So you do have the ability 9 to prioritize which'one that you would like to look at
! 10 first and put the others on the back burner?
11 MR. LANNING: That's a possibility. You 12 know, we prioritize what we inspect. And that's a 13 possibility.
14 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay. General strategy 15 about restart plans. There was some talk about that 16 carlier and how NU was getting into some of their general 17 strategies. But you said they were a little short on 18 specifics. Are they going to actually come out with a 19 specific plan of action with some milestones in the next 20 --
in the foreseeable future so that you have a l
21 timetable?
22 MR. LANNING: It's my understanding that i 23 they will come out with a specific recovery plan with 24 details and schedules. And I believe I heard it was the
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1 end of this month. Is that what everybody else heard?
2' Okay. But it will be forthcoming. I i
3 MR. HALLOWAY: In regard to the !
4 Independent corrective Action Verification Program I was ;
i 5 led to believe when the NEAC Council was first looking ;
6 into it that that -- that it was being looked at from a ;
1
'7 Unit 3 standpoint. And I hear some talk now that the l t
8 ICAVP contractor, Sargent. & Lundy, is now being .
9 considered to look at all three units. I guess this 3 10 would be because all three units are being dealt with l l
11 simultaneously. Is this true?
12 MR. IMBRO: Well, all the units need to j 13 have an ICAVP. That was specified in the order. As long 14 as the contractor, whoever it turns out, meets the 15 criteria that I articulated before, then it could be the 16 same contractor, as long as they don't have a conflict 17 and they have sufficient resources to do the job.
18 MR. HALLOWAY: Yes. But the guidelines 19 that were presented in selection of this contractor were 20 geared specifically.for Unit 3. And now we're hearing 21 talk that --
l 22 MR. IMBRO: It doesn't make any l l.
! 23 difference. l i
[ 24 MR. HALLOWAY: It doesn't?
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1 MR. IMBRO: No. It shouldn't make any ,
j 2 difference. What would be' the dif f erence? I mean in 3 your mind -- I mean explain it to me because I can try to 4 explain it.
I 4 l
l 5 MR. HALLOWAY: Well, if you're looking at 6 prior work at a particular unit, you're going to look at l 7 all three units as being under the same type of 8 guideline. ,
l
- 9 MR. IMBRO
- Right. '
10- MR. HALLOWAY: kay. So -- ,
i 11 MR. IMBRO: But I mean -- but what's your 12 problem with it? I mean because I -- let me understand ,
() 13 what your question is.
1 14 MR. HALLOWAY: Well, I think that changes 15 -- that certainly changes the scope of Sargent & Lundy's 16 work in this area. Don't you think?
17 MR. IMBRO: Sure. Sure. It will expand j 1
18 it greatly.
19 MR. HALLOWAY: And it would -- it would 20 certainly --
because it was being done almost !
l 21 concurrently, you can't -- you can't tell me that you'll !
1 22 have knowledge of whether they've done a good job on one 23 unit before you put them in for the next since it's all 24 being done --
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1 MR. IMBRO: Well, that's -- i
'2 DR. TRAVERS: I think -- I think the ;
3 answer to your question is the use of any contractor, 4 whether it's Sargent & Lundy or another use, in this case 5 your question is whether or not they might be used, 6- Sargent & Lundy, on additional units, is one that I think 7 they're thinking about. I think they've indicated it.
]
8 Whether or not they ultimately see an advantage in ,
1 9 utilizing that contractor or another one will be an issue j 10 that we'll ultimately - have to judge in reviewing the 11 proposal that they have to make to us. So I think all of !
12 the elements that you're talking about would come into 13 consideration.
l l 14 MR. HALLOWAY: My issue would have to do j 15 with performance on one unit being able to be utilized as l 1
16 a basis for. performance on another unit.
17 DR. TRAVERS: Oh you mean holding up a ,
l 18 decision on whether or not they're --
19 MR. HALLOWAY: And obviously you can't do 20 that if they're all going in a row like that, i
- . l 21 OR. TRAVERS
- Right. Yes. I understand l l 22 the point. l 23 HR. IMBRO: But, still, the licensee is at i
24 risk because if they don't do a good job and we judge POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
l 111 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS '
I DECEMBER 17, 1996 L.J 1 that they don't do a good job, then all three units are 2 impacted.
L 3 DR. TRAVERS: Well, ultimately the ICAVP 4 is j ust one link in a' series of oversight tiers, if you 5 will, NRC being the final one. And the extent to which I
6 an ICAVP organization demonstrates that it's doing a good 7 job, we're going to force that issue out wherever it 8 occurs.
9 MR. HALLOWAY: But my point --
.10 DR. TRAVERS: Your point is well-taken.
11 I understand it. Yes. ]
12- MR. HALLOWAY: All right. Next question.
() 13 2.206 petition -- and Mr. McKee talked about that 14 briefly. I think it was mentioned earlier by one of the I 15 other questioners. You're separating a technical issue '
16 f rom an issue of wrongdoing in this? Is that what you're i 17 saying? The decision that you're going to be issuing 11n. ';
18- the near f uture will be on the technical aspect, yet, the l I
19 issue of wrongdoing is going to be some time -- 1 20- MR. McKEE: That's correct. I mean we are I l
21 separating the issues. We can't, you know, because of 22 the ongoing investigations, address the wrongdoings. So i
23 we're addressing other aspects of the petition and some
]
24 of the technical areas, yes.
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112 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 MR. HALLOWAY: Will your decision -- and 2 I know this is calling for a little --
3 MR. McKEE: Pre-decision ---
4 HR. HALLOWAY: But will your decision on 5 technical aspects of it affect wrongdoing aspects? In 6 other words, that one has to be made before people can 1
7 look at the wrongdoing?
8 MR. McKEE: To a certain extent, some of 9 the technical aspects -- not --
some of the technical 10 aspects that are associated with wrongdoing, we may not~
11 be able to address. Other technical aspects, we can 12 address. !
l 0 ;
V 13 MR. HALLOWAY: So you're able to isolate 14 some of those?
15 MR. McKEE: And it's a partial decision to 16 be followed up with the remainder of the decision --
17 OR. TRAVERS: Maybe I can j ust add -- and i 18 I think this is right. To the extent that we can't 19 divorce it, to the extent that the potentf al is there for 20 the technical issue to influence the wrongdoing issue, we 21 won't make the call on technical. It's going to have to 22 await the' resolution of the wrongdoing issue,. But, as 23 far as I know, we've been able to separate the issues 24 thus far for the most part. So the partial initial POST REPORTING SERVICE O HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 1.
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l' 1 decision has to do with the technical issues.
2 MR. HALLOWAY: Is there any statute of !
3 limitations that any of you gentlemen are aware of in ,
4 this petition? l l
5 MR. McKEE: I don't know. None of that [
t 6 I'm aware of, no. i 7 MR. HALLOWAY: Now, the other thing 8 concerns some correspondence that was sent to the NRC.
9 And since we don't seem to be able to get a response f rom 10- the NHC of fice and since I have at least five NRC people j
11 here, maybe we can address that. ;
12 There's a letter from the Nuclear Energy A 13 V Advicory Council that was sent in October addressing some ,
! 14- concerns about the Independent. Corrective Action ;
15 . Verification Program which has not been responded to yet. !
1 16 Now, it's over hu months old.
l !
l' 17 DR. TRAVERS: As timing would have it -- l l 18 'and it's been a while in coming, admittedly -- the ;
i 19 Chairman did sign out a response to that yesterday. I l l, 20 have a f ew copies of it. I gave Representative Concannon 21 a copy of it today and Senator Peters and others. And :
22 I've got a f ew with me that I can share with anybody who j l
l 23 is interested in looking at it.
! 24 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay. !
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1 OR. TRAVERS: But your point that it took 2 a while to get that response is noted. f 3 MR. HALLOWAY: Well, there was another l 4 letter that was sent out in October from the Citizens 5 Regulatory Commission.
6 DR. TRAVERS: That was responded to f
'7 ceveral days earlier than this one. !
l 8 MR. LANNING: It was signed out December l
r 9 9. !
10 OR. TRAVERS: Yes. l
, 11 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay,. So that'is a recent .!
! l l 12 -- and there was another one which probably doesn't go ;
13 directly to your office. But in July there was a 14 criteria for changes in evacuation procedurer, that was l
15 issued for public comment. And the CRC also issued a 16 letter commenting on that to the NRC Director of i
17 Regulations, I believe. And that was sent out in 18 Octoberg too. And although there was an acknowledgement l 19 received, there has never been any f ormal response to the 20 questions raised in that.
l 21 DR. TRAVERS: I'm not directly familiar i-22 with that one. But --
23 MR. McKEE: I'm not aware of it. I know 24 there were some issues of that. I wasn't aware -- and it I
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1 may have gone to another office.
l t
2 MR. HALLOWAY: Well, in the NRC l 3 publication it asked that the comments be sent to the I 4 Director of Regulations. !
5 MR. McKEE: Oh. Okay. So that -- :
i 6 MR. HALLOWAY: AnJ that was, you know.
l 7 because they were requesting comments --
8 MR. McKEE: Comments. j i
9 MR. HALLOWAY: --
'and criteria at. that i
)
10 time. And that was, again, sent out several months ago
, 11 and there's been no formal response, although there was 12 an acknowledgement that was received.
13 MR. McKEE: Okay. If you might give me 1
14 the date of that letter, I'might -- I'll follow that up l l
15 for you. I 16 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay.
17 DR. TRAVERS: Very often -- and I don't 18 know if it's the case here. But I'll just make note of 19 it. Very often when comments are solicited on a draft 20 document or on a position, rather than send detailed l 21 responses, the comments are sometimes addressed in the
, 22 finalization of that document. I don't -- again, I don't I.
! 23 know if that's the case here. But we can look into it i 24 and get back to you.
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i DECEMBER 17, 1996 l F"7 k_s i 1 MR. McKEE: And the summaries are provided l 2 in the Federal Register. So. it may have been -- if there
{
3 were several other comments, it may have been addressed 4 that way in the Federal Register notes.
l 5 MR. HALLOWAY: Okay. Thank you for your !
6 time. i i
7 MR. LANNING: Al Cizek.
t 8 MR. AL CIZEK: My name is Al Cizek. I I
9 work in the Nuclear Oversight Organization. Currently I 10 work in the Employee Concerns Program. I've been there 11 for about four months now. Prior to moving over to that ;
i' 12 group, I worked in Engi neeri ng for the last fifteen i
() 13 years, five of which were as a technical staf f person and l 14 ten of which were in a supervisory capacity. l l
15 I have' put together several prepared l 1
16 statements, generally brief, regarding the Nuclear I 17 Oversight Organization which I'd like to --
18 MS. BASSILAKIS: Could you move a little <
1 1
19 closer to the mike? We can't hear you very well.
l 20 MR. CIZEK: Do it all over or --
F 21- MS. BASSILAKIS: No, no, no.
22 MR. CIZEK: Okay. The first statement i
1 23 generally goes as follows. Oversight functions at other 24 organizations report to an independent body to avoid the l l
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.U 1 obvious conflict of interest and ensure success. For 2 example, the NRC Of fice of Inspector General, IG, reports 3 to Congress, not NRC Office of Nuclear Reactor 4 Regulations, NRR, NRC Of fice of Investigation, 01, or. in 5 come fashion itself. With independence, NU Nuclear can 6 expedite its credibility to' demonstrating the right 7 t hi rig. Without independence, NU Nuclear is back to 8 business as usual by saying, " Trust me."
9 Currently, the Vice President of Nuclear 10 Oversight, Dave Goebel, reports directly to the Chief 11 Nuclear Officer, Bruce Kenyon. A recent audit released 12 by the Connecticut Department of Public Utility Control 13 stated the following as an aid or highest priority 14 recommendation. " Determine if NU has reconstituted the 15 Nuclear Oversight Organization to be an independent group 16 consistent with preferred practicos for an oversight 17 organization." The benefit was stated as improved 18 Internal control. Furthermore, the same audit stated as 19 a finding, "NU and its Board has sufficient information 20 to realize that decisive action was necessary to address 21 deteriorating performance of NU's nuclear operation."
22 This Nuclear Oversight Operation reported 23 to the. Board complete independence would be achieved and 24 the Roard would have no choice but to act prudently.
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1 This would benefit NU's --
excuse me --
this would 2 . benefit nuclear safety, the rate payer and the 3 stockholder by avoiding a relapse of performance.
4 This recommendation was brought to the 5 attention of Dave Goebel for a portion of the Nuclear 6 Oversight Organization, but it was rejected. The basis ;
i 7- for rejection was the NRC would not allow it. The l 8 portion being considered was the Employee Concerns l 9 Program. So, clearly, my point is I think we need to 10 look at the oversight organization to see if we can truly l
11 make that- independent so they can exercise itself j l
12 orderly. I 13 The Employeo Concerns Program . plan is i
14 being developed by a group of volunteers using a 15 combination facilitator/ consultant. However, the group 16 of volunteers does not reflect a representative cross-I 17 section of employees. In addition, a large' portion of l l 18 employees are reluctant to participate since the new
. l 19 leadership is not yet proven; that is, it remains !
20 unknown. So right now I have quite a f ew reservations )
21 whether or not this plan will really reflect the 22 employees as has been stated by NU leadership.
l 23 And the last three were pretty quick here.
! 24 Performance indicators for the Employee Concerns Program 4
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C 1 were absent i n. the recovery plan. That's just an 2 observation based on what I saw this afternoon.
t 3 Performance indicators for a positive environment which 4 nurtures the identification and resolution of problems 5 are absent in the recovery plan, also.
6 And, finally, this essentially leads into 7 a question. As an introduction to that question, the NRC 8 inspection on the handling of employee concerns conducted
{
9 September,1995 and released December,1995 was generally l 10 positive, while the NU assessment conducted late in 1995, 11 released January, 1996, was highly critical.
12 How does the NRC explain this and what i 13 changed your mind? Bear in mind at least four l 14 individuals interviewed by the NRC were highly critical 15 of such matters as spent fuel, containment and aebris.
16 So within a very short period of time, NRC )
i I
(, 17 had basically put out an inspection report by i
18 interviewing anyone who was interested to participate and 19 some selected individuals. I believe -- spot-checking, 20 so to speak. Concluded that the program was working 21 okay. It had some problems, but it was generally meeting j 1'
22 the mark. That was issued in December, while in January,
- 23 the licensee did its own self-assessment and found it 24 basically in a deplorable state. And it just doesn't
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I seem to make sense how that can come about. ,
2 Can you offer any answers to that?
3 MR. DURR: Yes. Let me address that. I 4 think the basis for the conclusions were based on 5 interviews of employees. We've gone in there at least a
-6 couple of f:imes and interviewed employees.- Now, for 7 whatever reason --
and all we can do is go with the ;
i.
8 answers that we get. Whether employees felt coerced, 9 intimidated, whatever the case may be, what they told us ,
10 was that everything seemed to be okay and that if they -- l 11 if they had a problem, they had no reservations about ;
12 reporting it through their management chain. So I think n
l 1 13 that's the kind of feedback that we were getting. j i
i 14 Now, we can't -- we can't' -fabricate i
15 answers other than what the people, give us. Now, you're 16 correct -- and I think that's the report that essentially !
i l l l 17 said that there were still pockets --
I 'i l 18 MR. CIZEK: Yes.
l l 19 MR. DURR: -- of intimidation out there. l l
l 20 And we recognized that there were people out there who l l
l 21 voiced that opinion. But the propensity of people that l
i 22 talked to us during that inspection were f airly positive.
23 So we have to reflect that we see. I mean otherwise we'd ;
24 be f abricating inf ormation that we didn't have a basis to i
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1 make a judgment on. So all we can do is report the j 2' facts. And the facts at that time were that's what the i
3 people reported to us. ;
4 MR. CIZEK: Well, I can assure you that 5 myself and -- although he's not here, I can speak f or him 6 -- George Palanis was highly critical. I was highly
)
7 critical. Surely, it was not directed at particular i
8 pockets of the organization. My recent experiences i 9 within Millstone 1 Engineering were --
were totally ;
l 10 indicative of something which is pervasive. And clearly 11 I said that to Mr. Bigassio, I believe it was. Bigassio? ;
i 12 It's j ust -- well, it's more than an observation on my .
O 13 nart. It makee me hioniv euenicioue. !
MR. DURR:
~
14 Well, in -- well, we did, in 15- fact, report what you told us. I mean what we did is 16 report what you said, that you had reservations. And we
! 17 noted that there were people in the plant who had i
18 reservations. It's not like we denied it. It's just l
! 19 that if you take a sample and there's four out of "X" I J
l l 20 that say they have a problem and the rest of them say l
21 they don't have a problem, what do you report? You 22 report that the majority would indicate that everything I
l 23 was as acceptable, that there were still pockets out' l
i 24. there that indicated that they had reservations about the
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DECEMBER 17, 1996 i ks j 1 Employee Concerns Program. And that'c what we reported. '!
2 MR. CIZEK: But, clearly, if you go back, 3 your inspection findings missed the mark. I~mean you 4 really got the -- your responses to those findings, to 5 me, were in error substantially.
6 MR. DURR: No. The findings, we reported i 7 what the people told us. That's what it was. It was a l i
i .8 survey of the people. That's what they found. Plus, j 9 they found --
we looked at other aspects besides just ;
10 that. I mean we looked at how employees' concerns were )
11' closed out and we found that they were, in fact -- once i i
l 12 they were identified, they were being addressed.
f
-( ) 13 MR. CIZEK: Well, just another -- .
i 14 MR. DURR: Was that not true?
l 15 .MR. CIZEK: Pardon?
I l
16 MR. DURR: Was that not true? That once l
17 the utility had an employee's concern in hand -- now, how i- 18 .they got it, whether they got it f rom us or. f rom somebody 19 else -- did they not address the concerns? )
i i j 20 MR. CIZEK: They did not.
i i
21 MR. DURR: Well, we --
I 22 MR. CIZEK: I've been through my process 23 myself in 1995. Others did. What had happened with that {
24 program. is that most technical people, most of l
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> t 1 Engineering, was not interested in going through the 2 . Employee Concerns Program. Basically, the people there 3 were more interested in dragging it on and not bringing 4 it to closure.
5 MR. LANNING: I think you're right. I .
l 6 - think that i nspection had a number of problems. The way i 7 it went about its inspection -- in f act, that was one of 8 the reasons that resulted in the Hannon task force to ;
i 9 come back and get a different set of eyes and ears, a !
10 different charter and having the benefit of prior 11 evaluations of employee concerns, and redo that. So I l 12 think you're right. I think that inspection had its
'( ) 13 weaknesses. It served as a learning point f or the Hannon 14 inspection which, I think, did a better job.
15 MR. CIZEK: Okay. All right. Thank you.
16 I might j ust -- I'll j ust close and state :
17 that please do a very good job when you look at Millstone ]
j' 18 and give it the go to start because we surely can't l l
19 afford a misfiring, as we did on that inspection. I 20 Thank you.
l 21 (Applause) l 22 MR. LANNING: Jerry Reardon.
l 23 MR. JERRY REARDON: Good evening, ladies
- 24 and gentlemen. My name is Jerry Reardon. I reside in I
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1 Newington, Connecticut. It's located approximately 50 2 miles upwind of Millstone nuclear power station. ;
3 I empathize with Mr. Luxton whose family l
4 lives in the shadow of Millstone. And-this is the first !
S time out'for me. I understand you or some other agency 6 was tired of seeing the same old faces. And I see two l 7 new faces at the NRC Board. Mr. Imbro, Mr. Travers, l 8 welcome aboard. I wish you a lot of luck. j 9 I'm a 25-year employee with Northeast 10 Utilities. I also work in the oversight group, a 11 dif f erent branch than my predecessor. And first of f , I'd 12 like to make.a recommendation about the conduct of your j O
Q 13 meetings.
14' You require people to sign in at the f L
15 beginning of your sessions who plan to have questions or j 16 comments. And that seems a bit ridiculous to me since we i 17 haven't heard'what you have to say yet. And I feel that 18 it acts as a disincontive to' people to want to ask 19 questioris or comment. So, if you could, I'd like you to 20 wait until later on in your session to have people sign j i
21 in, if that's necessary at all. l 22 MR. LANNING: Let me respond to that. It 23 just tries to add some order to this. But even after we l
24 90 through the list, I always ask if there's others in POST REPORTING SERVICE
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125 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 the audience who did not sign up who would like to-make I
l 2 a statement or a question.
l 3 MR. REARDON: Yes. But, Wayne, you're 4 missing the point. The point is that it's- an -initial i 5 disincentive right f rom the beginning of the meeting for
. 6 people to really think hard about questioris and comments, -
l 7 requiring them to sign in before they've even given it l 8 serious consideration.
9 So, Mr. Travers, if you can take some 1
10 action on that, I'd appreciate it.
I 11 The second part of that process on the l l
12 conduct of the meetings is -- gee, I've-f orgotten. Let's j 13 see. Let me think. You -- oh. Okay. 'You covered a lot i
14 of material tonight. And I've' been going to these i 15 meetings since last December, '95. And I've noticed that i 16 you wait and hold off for questions and comments until l 17 the very end. And I think you're missing out on a 18 wonderf ul opportunity here for dialogue by presenting an 1
19 agenda item and then asking for questions. Okay? And l l
20 save the comments until the end of the meeting. But get 21 the questions and get the dialogue established while all 22 of the information is f resh in everybody's minds so we're j 23 not all searching and trying to recollect and fumbling j 24 through notes and just generally fumbling in general .
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1 That is something, Mr. Travers, if you would-seriously 2 consider taking some action on that, I think it would 3 really benefit the flow of the meeting.
4 OR. TRAVERS: Thanks. l 5 MR. REARDON: I have a series of questions 6 and I'd like a response to each one of them, if you can.
7 They're short questions and I'd appreciate short answers, '
8 if you can. All right? l 9 You talked about the status of the Gladys 10 petition and you talked about the wrongdoing i
11 investigation. But I failed to hear who is doing that.
l 12' Why is it taking so long? Is there a statute of 13 limitations of some sort on this petition? And if NRC is ,
14 doing this, why can't it be shifted to the FBI or some ;
15 other investigative organization who has the hutzpah to l
16 get these things done in a more timely fashion? l 17 (Applause) i 18 MR. McKEE: All I can comment -- and I ;
19 think Wayrie -talked somewhat about j ust investigations of 20 wrongdoing of that are -- and I'm speaking out of . my l l
21 knowledge of what they consist of. I'm not an l
22 investigator in that area. They do take time. They take I 23 interviewing people and investigating evidence. It's the 24 nature of anything, I think even things done by the FBI
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l 127 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 in certain investigation aspects when you get into that
^2 take a while. I'm not sure if I can say much more than 3 that. They do require time. And that's what --
4 MR. REARDON: Who is the lead i 5 investigator? What agency? NRC7 6 MR. McKEE: Well, NRC has an -investigative >
7 --- you know , Office of Investigations which do certain 8 investigations. But my' understanding is they can't do !
9 certain criminal aspects. They recommend when an l 10 investigation gets to that-point to various other of fices !
'11 like DOJ and they carry on the aspects of --
12 MR. REARDON: It's still not clear in my 13 mind. Who is doing the wrongdoing investigation of the 14' Gladys petition right now?
15 MR. McKEE: Of the Gladys petition?
16 MR. REARDON: Right. You mentioned in 17 your presentation that the wrongdoing investigation is 18 ongoing.
19 MR. McKEE: There's ongoing aspects within 20 the NRC, but that is one element possibly of a larger 21 investigation. That's one element that we're restricted i 22 really to give much knowledge'or to talk about that may l
'23 have been referred to the Department of Justice.
24 MR. REARDON: Is there a statute of POST REPORTING SERVICE b- HAMDEN,-CT (800) 262-4102 !
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'I limitations of any type involved in that? :
, i l 2 HR. McKEE: I think on certain criminal -- ,
3 there is statutes of limitations. I don't know on any 4 aspects there if there are or are not. So I j ust don't 5 know. i
- 6. MR. REARDON: Can you f olks check that out ;
7 so the next meeting you can give us an understanding of L
8 that, if there is some potential impact down the road on c
s 9 that investigation?
10 MR. LUXTON: I believe I asked that j 11 question earlier about a statute of limitations. The l ]
'12 response I got was that, as far as you gentlemen knew.
O 13 there waen t env.
- 14 MR. McKEE
- I thought -- I thought when i
15 you were talking you were speaking' statutes of 16 limitations on the 2.206. I didn't make -- I didn't at 17 the time think of -- for 2.206's there's no statute of 18 limitations. Any criminal aspects -- and I don't know a 1 19 2.206 might get into that.
l l 20 A VOICE: This would be tied into this. l l
21 MR. REARDON: Yes.
- 22. MR. McKEE: Then I stand corrected. You i
l l- 23 know, maybe I gave you -- you know -- !
i i
24 DR. TRAVERS: I think we don't know. We j l
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i 1 don't know about a statute of limitations. To the extent !
i
!: 2 we can find out and answer the question, we'll do it.
l i 3 MR. REARDON: And next meeting give us a l 4 re-status? ?
i 5 DR. TRAVERS: We'll look into it and see t 6 what we can find out and what we can say.
7- MR. REARDON: Yes. Thank you.
1 8 MR. DURR: There is a statute of 9 limitations that we impose on violations, if that's at I l 10 all of interest to you. l l
11 MR. REARDON: No, it isn't. I 12 MR. DURR: Okay. l 13 MR. REARDON: Thank you, sir.
l 14 This question was already asked, but I !
15 think I need to follow up at this point. How much I 16 pressure does this riew all-plant review approach by NU 17 place on your . inspection arm to do the follow-up l
i 18 inspections? The reason I ask is over the years I've had ;
19 some dealings with NRC and time after time it's almost 20 automatic, some of the responses I would get is "We have 21 limited resources. And we can't look at everything. And 22 sometimes we can't look at anything." But the message 23 came clear to me over the years. You have limited 24 resources. So I'm really concerned that this switch to POST REPORTING SERVICE A HAMDEN, CT. (800) 262-4102 i
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- LJ 1 an all-plant review is really going to put you folks in l 2 a pressure situation that may cause you to capitulate on 3 some serious concern areas.
4 So one solution I see is that you folks 5 develop a plan, a schedule, with manpower to convince the 6 public that you're capable of doing that follow-up 7 inspection work f or all plants simultaneously. That's a 8 comment.
9 MR. DURR: Can we respond to that?
10 MR. REARDON: Certainly.
11 MR. DURR: For the Millstone Unit 3, you 12 know, we issued a restart assessment plan and for the
( 13 restart assessment plan the significant issues were 14 enclosed in there. It has been resource-loaded. Yes.
15 We're doing that as we speak and we're doing it for the 16 other two units, also, because we want to know the answer 17 to that question, also.
l 18 MR REARDON.- Sure. We all do. A word of
.19 caution. I think the gentlemen previously -- I think it 1
20 was Ron Delcore who previously mentioned that he had a 21 look at the issues list and some of those show Closed but l
22 they were deferred to another tracking mechanism. So i 23 what you f olks think you're going to inspect may j ust be 24 a small f raction of what you should be inspecting. So a POST REPORTING SERVICE
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d I 1 word of caution.because Mr. Delcore's concern is now -- i 2 MR. DURR: That's a good comment.
{
3 MR. REARDON: His point that he's raising.
4 MR. DURR: Good comment. The fact is I )
5 wrote that down. I've got a little mark by it. You were ,
i 6 talking about the oversight -- or the restart plan for !
l 7 the utility. And I wrote down "Def erred items not done. " i 8 MR. DELCORE: ORP. Right? '!
l 9 MR. DURR: Yes. ORP. That's what I -- l 10 MR. DELCORE: I looked at Unit 3's ORP.
11 I haven't seen any other ones. !
- 12. MR. DURR: Yes.
13 MR. DELCORE: There aren't any others that l
14 I "Know -- i 15- MR. DURR: I wrote it down and put a star 1 16 beside it.
17 MR. DELCORE: All right.
18 MR. DURR: See? We're paying attention. -l 1
19 And he thought I was acleep.
20 A VOICE: We can always count on you, l 21 Jacque, j i
l 22 MR. REARDON: You gave a summary about the ;
l 23 fact that NU since 1991 onward has repeatedly issued j 24 reports about their Concerns Program and identified known q' POST REPORTING SERVICE
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.s 1 problems since 1991. And to the best of my recollection, i i 2 that's factual. However, my experience in late '95
! 3 showed me that when you people inspected that program, l
i 4 you came up with a report that showed it to be squeaky i
- j. 5 clean. Now, I know . you've already spoken about this !
! 6 . previously. But I'm bothered by the fact that the NRC 7 ignored, that I know of, at least three or four 0 employees' input that told you that that program was 9 f aulty. And my personal experience was the' NRC l 10 inspectors purposely ignored those comments from those 11 employees. And that still bothers me. I guess it gets .
12 back to the accountability issue.
13 And even though you say the Hannon report 14 did a follow-up or a f ollow-on to that. I take exception l 15 to that because the Hannon report interviewed a select l i
16 group of whistleblowers, but I don't think they I 17 interviewed any one of the employees who provided input !
\
18 to that NRC inspection back in '85. y 19 MR. DURR: This is the Employee Concerns 20 inspection?
21 MR. REARDON: Yes, t
22 MR. DURR: Well --
l 23 MR. LANNING: Yes. Okay. Let me comment l l
- 24 on that. i r, 3
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i 133 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i DECEMBER 17, 1996
.v 1 MR. REARDON: Okay.
2- MR. LANNING: If we ignored input and
- 3. didn't iriclude it in our inspection report, that's not j 4 acceptable. We need to go back and find out why. I i 5 ' don't know exactly who or what current NU employees were l 6 interviewed by the Hannon team. i l I know there were some. ,
l
! 7 MR. REARDON: It must be a matter of I 8 record at NRC. I'm certainly of that, sir.
l l l 9 MR. LANNING: I would guess it is, yes.-
{
i 10 MR. REARDON: As a result of the Hannon 11 report and our own report showing that our Employees
( 12 Concerns Program-is virtually -- or has been virtually
/O-Q 13 non-existent over the years, you mentioned tonight that i
l 14 you now have an order and you really emphasized this !
! . l l 15 order, that order requiring NU to develop a program plan, !
l l 16 a comprehensive pl'an for employee concerns, and amongst !
l i
! 17 other items you ticked off. !
l l 18 My-question is what force does the order ;
l 1
19 have over just the Code of Federal Regulations, which l
)
l 20 over the years had we been abiding by we would have 21 addressed our own employee concerns? What's the 22 difference between an order and the Code of Federal l
l 23 Regulations as far as power? l l \
24 MR. McKEE: That's probably a -- as f ar as l
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HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i DECEMBER 17, 1996 l 1 power, the order and the Federal Regulations are both .
I 2' requirements that the licensee has to respond to. I l 3 don't know if I can get into distinguishing the 4- dif f erence in that. But I might add that, you know, that )1 5 the order-was issued and it does have ' the impact and 6 requirements and it does require, you know, the issue and
)
7 it does require resolution or.a certain action, you know, )
8 prior to plant restart. i 9 MR. REARDON: Makes me dream about i 10 accountability. That keeps tracking back in all of this.
11 Now, you want to issue an order. You want to do this. ,
i 12 You want to require this. You want us to develop that.
A V 13 Had we had accountability 20 years ago, had the 1
1 14- accountability two years ago, that's really all that's 15 -needed.
16 MR. McKEE: Well, I might add- the )
I 17 regulations -- and that was . one area in the order -- j 18 don't -- or don"t specifically address a lot of elements l
19 .for Employee Concerns Programs. The NRC issue was that I 20 safety issues were being raised and weren't being
- 21. corrected. And that is a regulatory concern. And that 22 was really, as I mentioned in my talk, was one of the --
23 really the primary emphasis and basis for that order to j l
24 have that program, you know, in offect and the elements t .
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135 I HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ,
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1 that we specified in requiring the licensee to take 2 action on it.
! f 3- MR. REARDON: Yes. But my poirrt is had '
l 4 the people been held accountable f or not addressing those ;
I 5 concerns In previous years, that would have done the job i 6 more effectively.
f 7 MR. McKEE: Okay. I understand your i 8 comment. ,
9 MR. REARDON: And that echoes a previous ,
i l 10 statement by someone that we're putting the cart before ,
i ;
l 11 the horse. We're making all these great plans to recover t
12 and to ensure the future, but we're not holding people ,
() 13 from the past accountable. So that there's really a ;
14 false message there.
15 Last question, f olks. You mentioned about 16 the program that the ICARP -- '
17 A VOICE: ICAVP. !
l 18 MR. REARDON: Okay. !
19 MR. LUXTON: ICRAP.
20 MR. REARDON: Right. ICRAP. Okay. You 21 know, if I was allowed to ask these questions right af ter ;
i 22 the presentation. I would -- but you say that once NECO I I
23 completes the problem identification for half the list
- 24 systems --
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l l 1 MR. IMBRO: Yes. That's right.
2 MR. REARDON:. -- that the IC --
l 3 MR. IMBRO: AVP. !
-4 MR. REARDON:- --
AVP will come in and !
5 -select their systems --
'6 MR. IMBRO: No. We will select the )
i 7 systems.
I 8 MR. REARDON: Okay. j L
i 9 MR. IMBRO: We will select the systems, l
- 10. MR. REARDON: For them. Okay. Okay.
11 MR. IMBRO: But, again, it won't be 12 confined to those 20 systems. I mean -- we're using Unit
() 13 3 numbers again, which are the only ones that I have on 14 the tip of my tongue. The licensee is going to look at 15 82 systems. Okay?
16 MR. REARDON: Right.
17 MR. IMBRO: Okay. And the ICAVP will look 18 at some set of those. But they're not necessarily --
19 they won't be chosen f rom the first 20 that the licensee 20 looks at. If we did that, then we have no assurance that 21 they're going.to do anything with the other 62.
22 MR. REARDON: Yes. You know where I'm 23 going.
24- MR. IMBRO: Right.
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137 HEARING.RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 U.
1 LMR. REARDON: So there's some kind of 2 delay factor here --
3 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
4 MR. REARDON: --
that once they finish ,
5 half, they're still subject to the entire -- ;
6 MR. IMBRO: That's right. And in addition ,
7 to that, we're going to look at systems that they don't 8 look at or at least a system they don't look at. !
l 9 MR. REARDON: Okay. Thanks for -
l 10 clarification. Thanks for your patience, sir. ,
t 11 MR. IMBRO: Thank you. l 12 (Applause)
( 13 MR.'LANNING: Joe Besade.
- 14 MR. JOE BESADE: We meet again, Wayne. I 15 didn't think it was going to be this soon.
16 MR. LANNING: It's a pleasure, I'm sure.
17 MR. REARDON: I sure hope so.
18 I'd like the public to know that a while I 19 back Mr. Lanning was able to get me on site of Unit 3 and 20 I was able to show on the term of the building a waste 21 line that was held together with duct tape for 17 years 22 and despite all .this involvement with Northeast t
23 Utilities, contractor, QC, et cetera.
24 When 1 showed -- oh, when I showed both r
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v 1 the NRC and Northeast a three-inch waste line, they both 2 diagnosed the system wrong and called it a roof drain and i
3 tied in with a plastic spool piece and no danger.to the 4 public. Af ter I insisted it was a sanitary drain because 5 it had ~ a T-trap in the photo I asked for and was 6 furnished by Northeast Utilities,'the first ACR said it 7 was to be held in a control room. When I told them by 8 State law this system had to be tied in solid, they were 9 agreed and said " Pipe ~ it in according to State code."
10 They sent me another photo showing the completed job, now 11 calling it an_ air vent drain. I can furnish copies of 12 the above, if necessary.
13 Bef ore Unit i restart, I would like to see 14 for myself if the rusted-out system has been replaced, as 15 I have been verbally told by the NRC from Maryland by 16 phone. Most of the Unit i remedies has been cleaned up 17 and painted'due to vintage and neglect. From the metal l la piping and vessels I believe it is like putting a new 19 suit on an old man. This plant should not be allowed to 20 start up and should stay closed down like Connecticut 21 Yankee.
22 (Applause) 23 MR. BESADE: We are told the NRC l 24 inspectors change nuclear sites every five years, just l
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1- about the time that they get educated to the site and 2 their responsibilities. The NRC has said the inspectors 3 come here with 30 percent knowledge and 70 percent on-4 the-job training. Isn't that a good reason for the local 5 residents'to.be concerned?
6 Thank you.
7 ( Applause ) ,
i i
8 MR. LANNING: Susan Perry Luxton. ;
9 MS. LUXTON: I'm Susan Perry Luxton from ;
l 10 Waterford, Connecticut. Mr. Travers, welcome to our '
l 11 community. ]
j 12 DR. TRAVERS: Thank you. '
( 13 MS. LUXTON: So how do you feel about the L 14 meetings so far? Do you feel like you -- aren't you 15 wearing a lot of hear or what? Was it like you expected 16 or what?
l 17 DR. TRAVERS: I didn't have an l
18 expectation. But I've certainly learned a lot about the 1 19 concerns that people have about this project.
20 MS. LUXTON: I must tell you, you had -- !
21 we've gone very easy on you. We haven't gone as easy on !
l 22 Mr. Imbro. He's really gotten the flak on one of -- we ;
l
, 23 know Mr.. Lanning and Mr. Durr. So you've' really -- we' re l I
- 24 starting off easy with you.
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- -1 MR. DURR
- Believe her, too. !
2- MS. LUXTON: Pardon? l 3 DR. TRAVERS: I said, "Believe her, too. "
4 MS. LUXTON: Mmm. I have made a -
~5 suggestion about the questions after your presentations j
I 6 in the past. That's why 'I must j ump in out of order and l 7 ask. questions because I'm the kind of person that has to i 8 have a question immediately while it's on the screen. I i
i 9 can't wait an hour later and then come up with my I I
'10 questions. So I second that man's motion to have j l
11 questions following each o<erhead.
l l
12 I'm j ust going to go through my list and i 13 they probably won't be very organized. But I want to 14 start off saying I went to the last two enforcement j 15 meetings. I didn't go to today's meeting. But I !
16 definitely think any -- I'll go on record saying that I l
17 feel any talk about restart is definitely premature at 18 this point in time. I don't care about plans or 19 anything. Definitely premature until the criminal ,
4 20- investigations are solved, the Gladys petition has been 21 solved and any of the other issues.
22 But I came away from the CY enforcement i 23 conf erence with -- was that I recommend that NU hire an 24 outside contractor to decommission Connecticut Yankee l
l l ..
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1 because af te:- -hearing about NU's mismanagement, CY 2 mismanagement for all those years, I don't feel that l l
3 they're capable of decommissioning that plant themselves.
4 (Applause) ,
5 MS. LUXTON: Now, let's see I also am
! 6 not satistled with some of the answers that you have been I i
7 giving the public tonight. Totally unacceptable. And I P
8 guess I'll start with Mr. McKee. The two points you told !
9 us in your answers are totally unacceptable. You may 'not 10 be able to give us any more on certain issues tonight, 11 but we have been asking since September, 1995 for ,
12 resolution of the issue and then you told us it would be 13 in April. And then we had a hearing in April and then 14 you told us it would be a couple of months later. And j 15 then you told us it would be in August and there was 16 ongoing investigations. Then you said it would be in the 17 fall and it's still ongoing investigation. And now 18 you're saying the first of the year. It won't be just 19 the technical decision. This is totally, totally 20 unacceptable. We are not going to buy this stuff. A rid 21 so go back to the boss, whoever it is, and tell him that i 22 the public, or me -- I'm j ust saying myself and no one l l
23 else -- this is absolutely ridiculous because we cannot' )
1 24 investigate this in a much, f ar more timely manner. And j l
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f"' 1 N_A 1 if there is a statute of limitations and that statute of i .
2 limitations runs out before this --
before the public 13 gets a resolution on this, it will be appalling. It will l
4 be an absolute crime. And that will entail an 5 enforcement meeting on the NRC by us. We'll have our own 6 enforcement meeting and you'll all be invited to come. ;
7 (Applause) 8 MS. BASSILAKIS: We're serious. ,
9 MR. LANNING: -I understood that.
10 MS. LUXTON: Now, we were here that night i 11 I gave the pink slips in New London to Mr. Russell, to f 12 Mr. Taylor.- Nobody -- hasn't listened to me.
j
() 13 MR. LANNING: I thank you for not having 14 any tonight.
15 MS, LUXTON: You weren't on the pink slip 16 that night.
I 17 Okay. So let's get back to.what we're 18 talking about. Apparent violations. Now, I'm still not I
19 clear. Have all those apparent violations been addressed - '
20 or are they still pending? Are those 60 violations that i l
21 we heard on -- have they been addressed? j 22 - MR. DURR: When you say have they been 1
23 addressed, do you mean --
24 MS. LUXTON: Resolved. Fixed.
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143 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 7_q.
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l' MR. DURR: Has the utility fixed them?
l 2 MS. LUXTON: Right.
3 MR. DURR: I don't know the answer to 4 that. I really don't know the answer. i 1
5 MS. LUXTON: Now -- j 61 MR. DURR: Anything I told you would be 7 speculation on my part at this time.
8 ' MS. LUXTON: How, should we be concerned, I
9 if they are not fixed and they're in this shutdown mode--
10 MR. DURR: No. Let me -- let me explain 11 to you. j 12 MS. LUXTON: Don't make it too long.
() 13 MR. DURR: It won't only take a second.
14 MS. LUXTON: Okay.
15 MR. DURR: As soon as an inspector finds 16 an issue that even looks like it's a violation, the first 17 thing we do is a safety assessment of it. What does it 18 mean to the operation of the plant at that point in time? I
! 19 And is it safe? Do they need to take immediate l
! 20 correctivo action? That's why in the letter we say, )
21 "These are apparent violations. But if corrective 22 actions are warranted, don't wait.for any more. Go fix. j i
23 it." So the --
- 24 MS. LUXTON
- Mr. Durr, please. How can i
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1' you sit there and say- things like that af ter the history 2 that we've uncovered about the way the NRC has enforced 3 their rules in the last 10 years? How can you really say 4 that?
5 MR. DURR: Becauce I have resident 6 inspectors there that are watching this whole thing.
7 They're watching it, j ust those kind of things.
8 MS. LUXTON: And so you're telling me that 9 they've changed f rom the way they've operated in the last 10 '10 years?
11 MR. DURR: Who is they?
12 MS. LUXTON: Anybody. Anybody at the NRC 13 that does -- that issues violations or that --
14 MR. DURR: Well, all of these resident 15 inspectors save one are brand-new. You've got a brand-16 new crop of residents and senior residerit inspectors.
17 MS. LUXTON: How many? Four?
18 MR. DURR: Five. Five out of the six.
19 MS. LUXTON: At Millstone? Brand-new?
20 Not for Region 17 21 MR. DURR: Four. Four out of the six.
22 One is missing right now. We're down to five people 23 right now.
24 MS. LUXTON: So they were not at Region 1 POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 I
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145 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 F7 L_) '
1 at any time in the past 15 years?
2 MR. DURR: Oh, sure.
3 MS. LUXTON: Oh, they were at Region 17 4 MR. DURR: Certainly. But they weren't at 5 Millstone.
6 MS. LUXTON: They weren't at Millstone.
7 MR. DURR: That's correct.
8 MS. LUXTON: They were never at Millstone.
l 9 Okay. I 10 MR. OURR: Well, don't say they were never 11 at Millstone. They were never assigned to Millstone. i I
12 That's true.
) 13 MS. LUXTON: Okay. All right. So if they l 14 --
is it -- if they haven't fixed these apparent ,
l 15 violations, in the shutdown mode that it's presently in -
16 -
17 MR. DURR: Yes?
18 MS. LUXTON: --
is this any issue to us !
! 19 that these violations are not fixed?
20 MR. LANNING: The safety-significant
! 21 violations have been corrected.
22 MS. LUXTON: They have been?
23 MR. LANNING: Yes.
24 MS. LUXTON: Good.
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j 1 MR. LANNING: There are some of those that 2 have not been corrected. ;
I
- 3 MS. LUXTON
- Okay. Now -- okay. Well, L
4 -this brings me to talk about the FSAR resolution that Mr.
5 Delcore was talking about, fixed now before restart. I E
6 thought that.was a very good point. You didn't respond l l
- 7. to it. What's your response to that?
8 MR. LANNING: Okay. Good. I'm glad you 9 brought-that up because we should have responded to it.
10 For example, bef ore -- you know, Unit 2 is trying to off- l l
l 11 load he core as we speak. They would have done that 12 some months ago if we had agreed. But we insisted that 13 they evaluate and correct all those deficiencies that 14 they identified.
15 .MS. LUXTON: Why didn't they -- l 16 HR. LANNING: They're 'of f-loading the core 17 because they need to take some valves that they have to i 18 off-load the core for.
19 MS. LUXTON: All right. I 20 MR. LANNING: We required them to address 21 a large number of deficiencies related to the spent f uel l
22 pool and the transfer of fuel prior to going into that 23 mode of operation. So -- l 24 MS. LUXTON: So what you're saying is they I
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1 'have their --
'they have updated or fixed their FSAR l l
.2 before they could unload the --
3 MR. LANNING: Exactly.
l 4 MS. LUXTON: .All right. What about --
l 5 MR. LANNING: But not updated the FSAR 6 yet. But they're fixed the systems where there were l
7 identified deficiencies. For example, those coming out 8 of the 50.54(f) activities where they identified design 9 discrepancies. It's those that they had to address prior ;
10 to moving it to the spent f uel pool.
11 MS. LUXTON: Okay. That's one example.
12 So get to the rest of the units. What about them? Are j
~ 13 they going to have to have their FSAR's completely
(
14 whatever you call it, updated, fixed, whatever now, soon 5
15 or before restart? .
i 16 MR. LANNING: They're going to have --
17 they will update their FSAR before restart. Unit 3, as i
18 far as I know, will not be off-loading the core. f 19 MR. DURR: Let me explain something.
l 20 Maybe it will help. Every day the resident inspectors j
- i. 21 call me in Region 1 and they report plant status. One of
[- 22 the. things that they report is shutdown risk. And it 23 evaluates the systems that are needed at that point in i
24 time for each one of the units.
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, L_.J 1 MS. LUXTON: Okay. Do they have it coded? l i
! 2 MR. DURR: Yes.
3 MS. LUXTON: Yellow, red and all that?
! 4 MR. DURR: .Yes. i i
5 MS. LUXTON: Well, I've seen some of those l
, 6 and I don't like the way some of them are --
l l 7 MR. DURR: Well, what -- and we don't like l-8 some of them, either. But -- and we've mentioned that to l
lc
, 9 them. But the thing is that the shutdown risk is j i
10 evaluated almost every day by the senior resident or the 11 resident inspectors. And we look at what systems are in P
l 12 service and out of service and what they intend to take l
,-n U 13 out of' service and so that we're sure the plant is safe 14 for the mode that it's in.
15 MS. LUXTON: So the plant is safe for the l
16 mode it's,in. All right. So what does the yellow and j i
17 the red and all that mean? I've forgotten now. l 18 MR. DURR: Well, if -- for instance, if I 19 you need two systems to support shutdown cooling, let's 20 say -- l 1
21 MS. LUXTON: Right. j 22 MR. DURR: -- a rid you take one out of i
- 23 service -- l l -l 24 MS. LUXTON
- Right. Because you're fixing
- l. ]
! 1 1
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'l it.
2 MR. .DURR: Yes. Because you're going to 3 do somethinq with it.
4 MS. LUXTON: . Okay.
5 MR. DURR: That may -- that may impact the 6 ' color. And it goes from green to yellow.
7 'MS. LUXTON: Right. Yellow is the worst?s 8 MR. DURR: No. Red.
9 MS. LUXTON: Oh, red is tne worst.
-10 MR. DURR:- Red is - -
11 MS. LUXTON: All right. So when is it in 12 red? How long can it be in red? Can it be in red a
() 13 couple of days or can it only be in red two hours? ;
14 MR. DURR: Well, most of the systems are i
15 - defined by the technical specifications and it tells you 16 how long a system can be out.
l 17 MS. LUXTON: Okay. All right. )
18 MR. DURR: Bef ore you have to do something j 19 else. So that part of it, though, is under continuouc 20 evaluation by the resident inspectors on a daily basis.
21 MS. LUXTON: Okay. So is that supposed to j 22 be an answer to my question about the FSAR and not l 23 needing to complete it now?
24 MR. OURR: No. That's the answer to 1
1 POST REPORTING SERVICE i HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 ;
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150 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 should they -- should they be doing something now?
2 MS.~LUXTON: Right.
3 MR. DURR: Mr. Delcore's statement that --
4 MS. LUXTON: And you're saying the 5 resident inspectors are keeping you daily -- ,
6 MR. DURR: We're watching plant safety ;
7 every day..
8 MS. LUXTON: Oh, I feel so comfortable.-
9 MR. DELCORE: And are you saying that t'he !
10- PNID's and all the associated documents and all the l J
11 license stuf f is applicable to that particular system are . ,
12 all correct? l 13 MR. DURR: No, that's not what I'm saying.
14 MR. DELCORE: That's what I'm telling you 15 they should be doing before they do anything else.
16 MR. DURR: I understand that. But what
- 17. I'm trying to point out to you is --
18 MR. DELCORE: Because when they're moving f uel, 19 if they have an accident, they go to a PNID and look to !
i 20 see if this valve is there and if it isn't there or it's l
? ,
l l 21 a dif f erent modification than what they have, I don't i l I l 22- know how they're going to be able to protect their j i
23 ventures to make sure they don't have any problem.
[
24 MS. LUXTON: That is a good point. You i POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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151 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 have to admit. That's a good point, isn't it? Tell me.
- 2 Do you think that's a good point, what he j ust said? If 3 they go and the modification -- because we've seen that 4 their modifications haven't -- the paperwork hasn't kept 5 up with the modifications. If they go and try to find it 6 and it's not in the paperwork or whatever, then there 7~ could be a problem. Now, that seems like a valid 8 concern. Can you address that? But don't let -- any 9 more. What do you-think about that?-
10 MR. LANNING: Well, I think it's a good 11 point. I think that was a part of our looking~at the 12 discrepancies and the adequacy of procedures prior to lh 13 unloading of fuel at Unit 2. Right?
14 MS. LUXTON: Okay. Good. Thank you. Now f 15 -- okay. The corrective action not working. The 16 corrective action program not working concerns me. It's 17 still not working. But I don't know -- if you have to go 18 into a long-winded answer, then I don't want you to-do j 19 it. But how did we get them to get their corrective 20 action program working? I was under the impression by !
21 them at their meetings that that's what this ACR business ]
22 is. The ACR's. They assume -- as soon as something !
23 comes up, they immediately identify it and'this is what 24 the ACR -- and they sounded so good at the meetings with 1
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,_ DECEMBER 17, 1996 l- l 1 the public. You know? But obviously it's not working. i 2 MR. LANNING: It's not working.
3 MS. LUXTON: So how are you going to make 4 this --
5 MR. LANNING: We're going to put it on the 6 restart list and we're not going to let them start up !
7 until they demonstrate that it's working, j 8 MS. LUXTON: Okay. Now, Mr. Imbro --
9 MR. IMBRO: Let me respond to the other ,
10 question because, you know, part of our restart decision 11- is going to be based not only on their correcting ,
12 specific. issues, but they need to demonstrate to us that 1
() 13 they can maintain some -- you know, sustain a reasonable 14 level of perf ormance and that they have programs in place 15 that continue to keep them in compliance with the 16 license.
17 MS. LUXTON: Right. So you're talking 18 about over a period of time.
19 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
20 MS. LUXTON: Right?
l 21 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
22 MS. LUXTON: I would think. Okay. Mr.
23 Imbro, now, selection of. systems --
24 MR. IMDRO: Right?
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l 153 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ,
DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 MS. LUXTON: How are you going to select l
2 a system? Randomly? Do you know yet?
3 MR. IMBRO: Well, we probably - - - well, 4 we're going to use a couple of things. .Let me first back 5 up arid say that we have a plan that's going to go through ,
6 the Commission soon and so I can't really talk too much 7 about that until it's approved. However, we're going to 8 use risk insights. We're going to look at the systems .
t l
l- 9 that we feel are the largest contributor of risk, some i 10 systems. We're going to look at systems that have been f
11 . modified by the licensee over the years or --
maybe 12 perhaps complex modifications where the licensee has had c :
d 13 -ample opportunity to f all on their f ace. We' re goirig to l 14- pick those things up. And in some cases we might look at 15 systems that are neither risk-significant -- j ust pick a 16~ system that people wouldn't expect we would look at, just 17 as a kind of a sanity check to make sure that they I 18 haven't looked at the --
you know, we don't want to i 1
19 profile what we're going to look at, you know, totally.
l
- l. 20 I mean obviously we want to look at the things that are
! 21 risk-significant because those are the things we need to 22; give our selves assurance that the plan is safe. But we'd l
, 23 also like to, j ust as a verification of the process, look' 24 at things that maybe are not so important but, hey, we 4
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1 need to look'at that to make sure that they've done a 2 comprehensive review. .
3 MS. LUXTON: Sounds like a good plan. I i
4 like it. It sounds like a good plan. Some l'ittle random I 5 thing that they wouldn't think you were going to look at.
6 MR. IMBROs Yes. Right.
7 . MS. LUXTON: Now, the questio'n is they're I
8 not supposed to know which system you're looking at.
9 Right? i i
10 MR. IMBRO: That's right. i i
11 MS. LUXTON: I see this as the key 'i 12 problem. ,
13 MR. IMBRO: Well, that's part of it. Yes.
14 MS. LUXTON: Yar know why?
15 MR. IMBRO: Yes, I know why. l l
16 MS. LUXTON: Why? Go ahead. Tell me. l l
17 Because your history is you always tell them.
18 MR. IMBRO: That's right.
19 HS. LUXTON: That's right. We all know 20 it. We've read it in every single document, every single lIl l
21 piece of paper. You can't not tell them. There's 22 something about -- you always leak everything to them. ,
i 1
l 23 Right? We know that. You know that. So we don't trust :
I l 24 the -- 4 4
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1 MR. IMBRO: I don't even know what the 2 systems are right now. So I mean -- so there's no chance ]
3 --
4 MS. LUXTON: But you will know. And I bet i i
5 you anything -- )
6, MR. IMBRO: Yes, at some point we will. ]
7 But we're'not going to really~make those decisions until !
8 after they've identified at least the 20 systems. l
~9 -MS. LUXTON: Right. So how are we going 1 i
10 to make sure they don't find out? How are we going to I i
11 trust you to not tell them? I bet you can't tell me how. l 12 Can you tell me how, Dr. Travers? And this is --
i - 13 MR. IMBRO: I can't tell you. But if I 14 told you, you wouldn't believe me anyway. j 15 l DR. TRAVERS: The best we can do -- and it !
16 may not be good enough f or you tonight -- is to give you 17 an . indication of our intentions. And our intentions are l l
18- clear on this matter. Our intent is that the systems l 19 that are identified by us f or inclusion in the ICAVP, no i
20 matter how it ultimately turns out that we select them, !
- 21 are going to be kept close.
l 22 MS. LUXTON: Kept close?
i.
23 ' OR. TRAVEr<S: Kept close. And if they're 24 not, you can look t'o me for someone who might be
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l t- 156 l HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 considered to be someone who should be accountable for i
\
l 2 that kind .,f thing. ;
L 3 MS. LUXTON: Mm-hmm. Okay. You know, I'm 4 not~-- I like the idea of picking them out of a hat. ,
5 OR. TRAVERS: But there's still -- I mean ,
i.
6 you could do that. I mean that's one --- '!
7 MS. LUXTON: Why can't you do that?
l 8 DR. TRAVERS: But that --
9 MS. LUXTON: Then you wouldn't even know i 10 what they are.
l 11 DR. TRAVERS: Oh, I see what you're 12 saying. But somebody has got to know. j O 13 MS. LuxTON: well. that's all right. I l 14 A VOICE: Let the CRC do it. l l ,
15 MS. LUXTON: No. Let any -- let somebody j l
16 in the bull pit go - and choose a system, say, that you 17 chose and we pick them out and th:sn they would be given 18 to the contractor. But -- that's interesting to work on, l' 19 something. I don't know. All right.
20 I'll try to be brief. But you know that 21 it's dif ficult for me. Let's see. Okay. Oh, yes. Now, 22' this is a problem I find, this minimum inter' ace between l
l '23 the ICAVP contractor and NU, because we know that NRC ;
l 24 inspectors and NU' don't have minimum interf ace. Over the l i
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kJ l 1 years historically, NRC inspectors and NU people that i
2 Work there become very friendly. I mean I'm not -- you !
3 know, it's just the way it has become. They're like i ;
j_ 4 buddies. I see them at the enforcement meetings. I j 1
5 mean, you know, it's " Hey" -- you know. They're just '
6 very friendly. Okay? So you are no one to talk about !
l 7 communication protocol. Ha, ha .- Or minimum interface. l 1
l 8 Because you're guilty of serious interface, which is a j l
I 9 silly word.- But, you know -- i i
10 HR. IMBRO: I might take issue with that i J
11 because I' think we try and maintain our independence. I 12 mean I think these fellows are on the site every day. ;
13 They have to interface with the licensee on a 14 professional level. I don't think they're buddy-buddy.
15 I don't 'think they go out and drink beer with the guys at j l
16 night. I mean they do their job.
l 17 MR. DURR: I know they don't.
l 18 MR. IMBRO: No. I mean, you know, there's !
I 19 very -- we have very strict policies on that. I mean 20 there's no fraternization. They're not allowed to 21 participate in any of the licensee programs, the licensee 22 selling, you know, whatever, you know, camping equipment 23 or something like that. They can't buy that kind of'
( s 24 stuff. So I mean there are -- ,
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158 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 1 MS. LUXTON: That's interesting because I 2 heard differently.- And I've heard from people that 3 worked at_the plant that's different.
4 MR. IMBRO: Well, tell us.-
5 MS. LUXTON: And I heard --
6 MR. IMBRO: 'Give us the examples.
7 MS. LUXTON: Pardon?
8 MR. IMBRO: Give us examples.
9 MS. LUXTON: Specific examples?
10 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Because that's not 11 supposed to happen.
12- MR. DURR: Well, whatever you've got.
i 13 Just --
14 MS. LUXTON: Well, the other day at the 15 enf orcement conf erence, I was standing around and one of 16 the local NU people came on and started -- well, I don't 17 know. Because then it's going to sound like - I was 18 eavesdropping and I really wasn't eavesdropping. But it 19 was -- it had to do with -- I think it was Mr. Durr and 20 somebody f rom NU and he was talking about, if I remember, 21 something about how can he find a tractor or a lawn 22 mower l 23 MR. DURR: Not me. Not a tractor.
l 24 MS. 'UXTON:
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1 like they were really buddies and that they were -- maybe 2 it'wasn't you. But it.was.somebody.
'3 MR. DURR: Yes.
4 MS. LUXTON: And it struck'me that -- as 5 a matter of fact, not only did it strike me, but it 6 struck somebody.else who came up to me later and said l 7 that should not have happened.
l l- 8 MR. DURR: I agree.
9 MS. LUXTON: There should not be that kind i
10 of close connection between the regulator and the l 11 regulated. And you know what? I didn't -- it didn't l '12 even really hit me until this other person came up and O 13 - mentioned it. en emnlovee. Ane thet e whv 1 decided 1 l 14 should mention it tonight, because he picked it up. I ,
15 was naive enough to not even really pick'it up. I was .
(
16 kind of standing within earshot. It didn't really hit 17 it. But --
18 MR. LUXTON: Excuse me, Sue. I might cite l 19 one example. Wasn't there a case of a resident. inspector 20 who purchased a home from an NU employee?
1 21 MR. IMBRO: Yes. But that's -- why is I i
l 22 that a problem?
i
( 23 MR. LUXTON: Is that -- :
l 24 MR. . IMBRO: I mean did he get it for
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1 nothing?
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2 MR. LUXTON: No. '
3 MR. IMBRO: He paid f air market value. I l i
4 mean -- !
5 OR.-TRAVERS: Yes. I-mean let's not get l
i 6 into -- j l !
7 MR. LUXTON: It's just a coincidence. I -i i !
8 can't really -- l 1
,' 4 9 DR. TRAVERS: I think we've tried to l I
10 explain what is the general policy on fraternization. !
- _ 11 And it is simply' that we try to maintain an arm's l
l 12 distance because of several reasons and riot the least of I 13 which can simply be the percepted problem associated with 14 it. So it really is a responsibility of ours and we take I l l 1
15 it seriously. And it goes f urther than suggestions that l
- 16. if you're acting f riendly with someone, that you're going 17 'to do ~ them a favor that goes against the regulatory
.18 grain. There is a problem of perception and we try to 19 avoid that as well.
l
.20 MS. LUXTON: Mm-hmm. Good. Thank you.
21 Okay. Now, I'm concerned about Mr. Kenyon's race to )
l- 22. restart with the three plants. Because when he came in 23 in September, he was very adamant about he was going to j 24 take as much time as he needs to to' get Millstone 3 ;
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i 161 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS I DECEMBER 17, 1996 1- started and he was going to put all the resources into it 2 and do it right, do it right no matter how long it took. ,
3 That's the impression I got in the public. And now all ,
4 of a sudden, the impression that we've gotten is that -- j i
5 this actually was said in the paper, " race to restart."
6 Race to restart. I'm uncomfortable with racing to f 7 ' restart. Okay? f 8 Now, what I'm uncomf ortable about is they !
9 were forthcoming with the list of deficiencies for Unit l 10 3. We haven't heard a thing about anything on Millstone ;
11 2 or even Millstone 1 except that Millstone 1 had 16,000 l
12 deficiencies ~or whatever. We haven't heard a word about
() 13 Millstone 2. Now all of a sudden we're racing to 14 restart. We don't even have any deficiencies. We don't l
l 15 know whether they're completed or whatever. Are we going 1 16 to get that, like we did for Millstone 3, or what? Or is j l
L 17 this j ust - going to be behind the scenes and all of a l
.l
. 18 sudden in May they're going to come out and say Millstone '
l 19 1 is ready to restart? So are they going to come f orward l l l l 20 with that?' Do you know? l l
21 MR. LANNING: You weren't at the meeting i 22 this afternoon.
i 23 MS..LUXTON: No, I wasn't. !
I -l 24 MR. LANNING: Okay. I raised that issue !
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l 162 MEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS DECEMBER 17, 1996 O
U 1 with.them today and made a point that the public had a 2 need to kriow what those -- that list of deferred issues 3 were.
4 MS. LUXTON: Mm-hmm.
5 MR. LANNING: And we do have the list on 6 Unit 3. And I thought that worked well. And we'll have 7 a similar . list on the other two units. We haven't 8 received.the list.
9 MS. LUXTON: Great. Thank you so much f or 10 asking that question. Okay.
11 I'm almost finished. Now, generic 12 communications. I don't think they work because we've.
h 13 seen with the screening the generic communi' cations don't 14 work. You send out a letter. You trust the licensee.
15 You say, "There's a problem with a plant in New Orleans 16 or whatever. There's a problem in Texas You better 17 check this in New England. " It doesn't seem like generic l
18 communications work, especially with the utilities like 19 NU who probably ignore them, where -- because you trust 20 the entity, the utility, to'do the right thing. But-21 sometimes they don't. So I think that's something that 22 you should write down, the questioning of generic --
23 because they don't have any power. It's j ust "This is a 24 problem. Why don't you check into it?" They go, "Okay.
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1 Fine." They put it in the wastebasket and that's it.
2 Why wasn't CY ever on.the watch list? I ,
I 3 think it should be after-the-fact on the watch list.
4- MS. BASSILAKIS: .They've been on the watch j 5 list for decommissioning.
6 MS. LUXTON: Right. For decommissioning.
7 That's the -- I'm going to go on the record in saying ;
8 that I think that CY should be on the watch list while !
9 they're being decommissioned, even though they shouldn't ' .
10 be decommissioned by them. They should be decommissioned !
11 by an independent contractor. ;
12 .Now --
I'm going to finish. This is my 13 ending. Listen to this. This is what I got. of f of l 14 documents since OIG reports. I want you to hear this.
15 It will only take a minute. NRC -- this is in black and i
16 white. "NRC did not realize this practice was t
17 inconsistent with the normal discharge scenario outlined 18 in Millstone 1 FSAR. 010'found that many NRC resident !
19 inspectors were not familiar with the Millstone 1 FSAR.
20 Resident inspectors did not question the licensee's
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21- . practice. NRS Headquarters staf f did not conduct a f ully 22 adequate evaluation." That was from Case 95-771-12 23 95, NRC failure to adequately regulate Millstone 1.
24 Here's another one. "In spite of L
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LJ 1 increased NRC inspections and evaluations, deficiencies 2 that had been identified at Millstone in 1991, NU's self-3 assessment has persisted. NRC should have taken more 4 aggressive action." Case 96-02(S), May 31,- 1996. '
5- DRP' directing NRR, CU-29, it should have t
6 been handled difforently. NRC did not obtain an NSJ for l 7 lines from 1973 to -- until 1995. In 1988, NRC denied .j 0 NU's request to exempt CU-29 f rom testing requirements ef !
'f 9 NSJ. However, NRC did not achieve NSJ c'ompliance until 10 1995. So from 1993 to 1995, they did not request
- 11. compliance.
t l
12 Do you wonder why we, the public, are 13 skeptical of your good intentions? This is what we've 14 received in reports. The last two reports, these did not f 15 involve an issue in 1995. You know, I hope'-- you know, l 16 I trust that you individuals are doing the right thing 1
17 and that you're sincere in doing it. i l
18 I just want you to understand where we in 19 the public are coming from on this side of the table. l l
20 DR. TRAVERS: I' appreciate that. And I 21 think we do. And I think you're right. It's up to us to 22 demonstrate. And we're going to try to do the best job 23 we can.
24 MS. LUXTON: No, not j ust words.
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! LJ 1 OR. TRAVERS: That's right.
! i 2 MS. LUXTON: But results. And it takes !
l 3 time.
! 4 A VOICE: And accountability. '
5 MS. LUXTON: Right. And that's what we 6 want, accountability. l l ;
7~ Thank you. ;
b i
8 (Applause) 9 MR. LANNING: Okay. That concludes our 10 list. And we've been told by our good friends here at 1
11 East Lyme that we've got to vacate the building here very 12 quickly. !
i 13 A VOICE: Mr. Markowicz has a. question. ;
14 MR. LANNING: So -- certainly.
15 MR. JOHN MARKOWIC2: My name is John l
16 Markowicz. I'm a resident of Waterford. I'm also on the
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17 Nuclear Energy Advisory Committee. I need to clarify 18 some things that were said ested at Millstone plants f or .I l
19 the past several years.
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20 That review group further concluded that j 21 poor environment has resulted in repeated instances of i l
22 discrimination and ineffective handling of employee l- ~23 concerns.
l 24 Well, the findings of the Millstone i
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I 166 1 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS 'I DECEMBER 17, 1996 Ls i 1 Independent Review Group -- that was the one done by the j 2 NRC --
were not new. The NRC in past studies and 3 inspections had noted problems with licensee handling of 4 employee concerns. I 5 In addition, a number of inspections and 6 investigations have substantiated many of the employee 7 concerns and allegations for which the licensee's 8 corrective actions have proven inef fective. As a result, 9 the licensee has been cited a number of times for 10 violations --
and these included several escalated 11 enf orcement actions -- for the issues related to concerns 12 raised by employees.
13 Notwithstanding these actions, the 14 licensee's handling of the safety concerns and -
15 implementation of corrective actions for problems i 16 identified by employees has remained ineffective.
17 For these reasons, the NRC issued the 18 October 24, 1996 order. The order specifies two primary i l
19 actions. Thanks. That's the second slide that I have.
l l
20 First, the order directs the licensee. '
-l 21 prior to the restart of any of the Millstone units, to l 22 develop, submit and -- submit f or NRC review and begin to :
I 23 implement a comprehensive plan for reviewing and )
1 24 dispositioning saf ety issues issued by its -- raised by )
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1 its employees and ensuring that employees who raise 2 safety concerns can do so without the fear of 3 retaliation.
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L 4 The order also directs the comprehensive- 4 5 plan to address the root causes of past performance i-t 6- failures as described in the licensee's July 12 report, l 7 which I mentioned earlier, and also the NRC's assessment 8 team report, 9 Second, the second major element of the 10 order, directs the licensee to retain an independent 11 third party to oversee implementation of its 12 comprehensive plan. The independent third party is to 13 oversee implementation of the comprehensive plan by, one, i
14 observing and monitoring the licensee's activities; two, 15 performing technical reviews; three, auditing and i 16 investigating, when necessary, cases of alleged 17 harassment, intimidation and discrimination; four, 18 auditing and reviewirig the licensee's handling of saf ety {
I 19 concerns; and, finally, assessing and monitoring the ]
20 licensee's performance. l 1
21 So those are the two major elements. And l l
22 on the next slide I'm going to talk about - the order !
l l 23 also contains or specifies certain elements regarding its 24 implementation.
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l, i i 168 HEARING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l l DECEMBER 17, 1996 !
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LJ i 1 .First.: the comprehensive plan is to be 2 provided to the NRC within 60 days from the date of the ,
3 order. And this works out, according to the calendar, to 4 December 24., As we heard discussed at the meeting today l'
5 with.the licensee, it appears they're going to ask for an
- 6. extension or relaxation of that time for an additional 30 4
7 days to provide their comprehensive plan to the NRC. So 8- that would be some time at the end of January. ;
9 With respect to the proposed independent l 10 third-party organization, it was to be provided to the 11 NRC within 30 days from the date of the order. However, 12 on this -- I think this was discussed at the meeting )
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.V 13 today. The licensee requested and the NRC granted a -
14 relaxation in that time f rame, allcwing submittal of the 15 proposed third-party organization within 60 days of the 16 date of the order. And this works out to Christmas Eve,-
17 the 24th, I believe.
18 As was discussed in the af ternoon meeting, 19 it was mentioned that they expect and they're looking f or 20 and they anticipate identifying that organization and
- 21. providing that name of that organization to us on the 22 time frame specified. I 23 Approval of the third-party organization I
24 by the NRC is required. Within 30 days of the NRC's i
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1 approval of the third-party organization -- and we'll 2 provide that to them in writing -- an oversight plan f or i
3 conduct of this third-party oversight is required to be !
4 developed by the third party and forwarded to the NRC for 5 review and approval.
6 After the NRC receives the licensee's l 7 comprehensive plan and the independent- third-party j i
8 o w rsight plan, a notice of availability of the plans is l 9 to be published in the Federal Register and one or more l l
10 public' meetings are to be held to allow members of the I 11 .public -- and-I assume those meetings will be --
that !
I 12 meeting will be in this area --
to ' comment on the !
13 comprehensive plan and the third-party oversight plan. {
14 The results of the NRC review and public j 15 comments on the comprehensive plan and the third-party i l
16 oversight plan will be f orwarded to the licensee, then an !
i i i 17 independent third party -- and to the independent t.hird f 18 party for evaluation and implementation as apprc,.,riate. l 19 Final approval by the NRC of tae third-
! 20 party oversight plan is required. And thi3 approval is l l
l 21' required for the restart of any of the three Millstone 1
22 units. !
23 The third-party organization is to report 24 concurrently to the NRC and th \ licensee on at least a 4
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.. q b l 1 qua terly basis the results of_.its oversight a tivitir 4, ]
2 14bIuding all ' f i ndi ngs and re' mmendations./ ArJ the I
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3 licensee is ' required to ' respond to each of these ;
- 4 recommendations. N ~-
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5- And we did receive some .:orrespondence
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6 from the-Connecticut State NEdC y the odvisory council. l
, ( l 7 and they requested that they receivPor be a party to >
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CERTIFICATE I, Paul Landman, a Notary Public in and for the State of Connecticut, and President of Post Reporting Service, Inc., do hereby certify that, to the best '
of my knowledge, the foregoing record is a correct and verbatim transcription of the audio recording made of the proceeding hereinbefore set forth.
I further certify that neither the audio operator nor I are attorney or L
, counsel for, nor directly related to or employed by any of the parties to the action and/or proceeding in which this action is taken; and further, that neither g the audio operator nor I are a relative or employee of any attorney or counsel S
l employed by the parties thereto, or f~mancially interested in any way in the outcome of this action or proceeding.
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In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and do so attest to the above, this 8th day of January 1997 On f . +-- -
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- Paul Landman,
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President O
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