ML20137B162
| ML20137B162 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 01/10/1986 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1479, NUDOCS 8601150142 | |
| Download: ML20137B162 (174) | |
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UN11ED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTdP. OF: DOCKET NO:
ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 309TH GENERAL MEETING OR G \ A;
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LOCATION: WASHINGTON, D. C. PAGES: 1- 146 DATE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1986 h (u n O P W W n r: w : --
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DAV/sjg 1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA *
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\m)T 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS 4
309TH GENERAL MEETING 5
6 Nuclear Regulatory Commission Room 1046 7
1717 H Street, N.W.
Washington, D. C.
8 Friday, January 10, 1986 9
10 The 309th general meeting reconvened at 8:30 a.m.,
11 Mr. David A. Ward presiding.
12 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT:
I 13 MR. DAVID A. WARD 14 MR. JESSE EBERSOLE DR. ROBERT C. AXTMANN ,
'15 DR. MAX W. CARBON DR. WILLIAM KERR DR. CARSON MARK I0 MR. CARLYLE MICHELSON DR. DADE W. MOELLER 17 DR. DAVID OKRENT MR. GLENN A. REED , , ,
18 MR. HAROLD ETHERINGTON DR. FORREST J. REMICK j9 DR. PAUL G. SHEWMON
. DR. CHESTER P. SIESS MR. CHARLES J. WYLIE 20 21 22 23 9 24 s>Peseres r.eoormn, Inc.
25
25541 01 01 2
./m DAVbw 1 PROCEEDINGS Nj' 2 MR. WARD: The meeting will now come to order.
3 This is the second day of the 309th meeting of 4 the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards.
5 During today's meeting, the Committee will first 6 hear a report on the activities of the Office of Nuclear 7 Reactor Regulation, Office Director. Second, hear about the 8 Davis-Besse restart program. Third, hear about and discuss 9 the reorganization of TVA nuclear activities. Fourth, hear 10 about and discuss the reactor pressure vessel integrity.
11 Next, continue the discussion of the proposed ACRS report on 12 the GESSAR II application and continue discussion of the 13 proposed ACRS report to Congreus on the NRC safety research
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14 program. And finally, discuss activities of our 15 Subcommittee on Quality Assurance and Design Construction.
16 Portions of today's meeting will be closed for 17 the purpose of discussing information, premature release of 18 which is likely to significantly frustrate the Agency's 19 performance of its statutory functions or this morning in 20 matters involving proprietary information and plant-specific 21 security information.
22 The schedule for Saturday is posted on the 23 bulletin board outside the meeting.
24 The meeting is being conducted in accordance with
() 25 provisions of the Federal Advisory Act and the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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[')DAVbw 1 Government-in-the-Sunshine Act.
L) 2 Mr. Raymond Frehle is the designated federal 3 official for this portion of the meeting.
4 A transcript of portions of the meeting is kept, 5 and I request that each speaker use one of the microphones, 6 identify herself or himself and speak with sufficient 7 clarity and volume so that he or she can be readily heard.
8 We have received no written statements or 9 requests to make oral statements from members of the public 10 regarding today's session.
11 , Our first item on the agenda is a briefing by 12 Harold Denton. We welcome you here, Harold, and we'll turn I' 13 it over to you.
\ )'
14 MR. DENTON: I want to cover topics that are 15 current within NRR, and if you want to talk about any other 16 i matters, I'll be happy to cover those too, but let me plan 17 , to cover sort of an overview of what is the current highest 18 priority in NRR, the operating plants and TVA. I understand 19 you want to talk about safety goals a little bit, and I'll 20 mention a few things we're doing on the international side 21 that I'll brief you on.
- 22 I issued license number 97 the other day, the way 23 I count, at least, for low-power operating plants, and I 24 would expect to issue the 100th license in the near future.
g ) 25 A handful of plants will probably be considered to make up a
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5541 01 03 4
[m DAVbw 1 the three that are needed to get to 100.
i _
2 That would be Perry, which is very near receiving 3 a low power license.
4 Clinton is being finished.
5 Hope Creek is being finished.
6 And Catawba 2.
7 So I would guess, out of those four plants, one 8 out of them will become the 100th low power license, and 9 eventually a full power license.
10 DR. MARK: Are you planning a large celebration 11 or street demonstrations?
12 MR. DENTON: I'd thought about breaking a bt le
~
(] 13 of champagne on the containment. But 100 plants is quite an j
14 achievement.
15 DR. SIESS: Before you that though, get an SER 16 written.
17 MR. DENTON: We don't really plan any NRC-type 18 celebration. It probably would be appropriate, but I think 19 l the industry is interested in knowing which one it will be.
I 20 ' Our number one priority today is operating 21 plants. As you know from our workload, we are shifting all 22 the time in our budget allocation to the care and feeding of 23 operating reactorn. I did want to metnion some of the 24 things we're doing on operating plants. You know, we
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v 25 reorganized a while back. I'm very pleased so far with the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5541 01 04 5
'N DAVbw 1l way that's been going. What we've asked the project (Q
2 managers to do for each class of reactor, such as the 3 Westinghouse plants or early GE plants, is to prioritize all 4 the actions needed for that plant.
5 In other words, first we've asked the project 6 manager to go through all the outstanding items needed on 7 this plant and prioritize them, working with the resident 8 inspector and bringing people in for the utility owner and 9 saying, if we can only do 12 or 15 things in the next yea: ,
10 what do we want to do on Point Beach or Prarie Island or 11 Turkey Point? What are the most important things to try to 12 get NRR, I&E and the utility all focused on the same idea?
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v 13 l, It would be far more effective, if we all put our 14 attention on SPBS or operator training and then to meet with 15 the owners' group and see if we can' t get sort of unanimous 16 agreement, so that for this class of plant these are the 17 most important things, get feedback from the technical side I
18 and attempt to get long-range planning and less fire drill
, 19 operations.
20 I would hope maybe by summertime, we might be 21 able to schedule mr stings with you on just what Westinghouse 22 plans and have the director of that division lay out what 23 he's concluded are the most important things to do for the 24 next few years on Westinghouse plants. Likewise, for GE and
() 25 the other vendors.
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5541 01 05 6 DAVbw 1' So perhaps by late summer, we ought to consider 2 meetings by class of reactors with the stress on strategy 3 and long-range plans. That seems to be going very well.
4 To assure that we don't treat similar designs 5 unfairly, we've got a system where the division will 6 exercise oversight on design or how we apply GEC-4. So 7 hopefully, we will have built-in checks to make sure we 8l don't treat Combustion plants a lot differently than 9 Westinghouse plants.
10 Likewise in the human factor area, the Division of Human Factors will assure that we are treating areas of 11 l 12 accreditation and procedures and control room design,
~
f] 13 I . consistently across-the-board. Certainly, the number one
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14 priority at the moment within NRR and probably the agency is 15 the TVA situation. We're giving a lot of attention to 16 that. It's fair to say we' re titled toward TVA, as the 17 ; State Department was once reported to have titled toward i
18 Pakistan.
19 I'm the chairman of something called the Senior 20 Management Team. It consists of the Director of NRR, the 21 Director of I&E, the Director of Region 2 and Tim Hayes of 22 our Regional Office. So we're meeting weekly and planning 23 activities of the agency.
24 , Hugh Thompson has been designated full time from t
() 25 TVA to make sure that we have a coordinated agency program.
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5541 01 06 7 (T DAVbw 1 He's been pulled out of his job as the head of the U
2 Westinghouse Division. He's got three assistants now full 3 time, and we may be beefing that up. He'll be briefing you 4 later today.
5 We briefed the Commission earlier this week about 6 what we' re doing on TVA, and they received a briefing from 7 the Board of Directors yesterday, and I think he'll be able 8 to describe what is going on. It's receiving a great deal 1
9 of attention.
10 Sequoyah 2 is getting first priority among that 11 class of plants.
12 One of the things we've been doing, and I think fl uJ 13 you've encouraged us to over the years is to look outside 14 the U.S. You remember the report on Sizewell we produced 15 several years ago, trying to compare the Hope Creek snubbers 16 design to Sizewell.
17 Somebody asked me about licensing plants in 18 Britain, how long it would take, and I notice we're still 19 waiting for the decision from their licensing authority on 20 Sizewell , but we are doing and have gotten pretty f ar along 21 in the same process comparing U.S. designs with the French.
22 The French have been very cooperative, and we've had an 23 exchange of information and business. So I would hope 24 sometime early this year, we'll be able to provide you with O 25 e revert eomewhet 11ke the Sizewe11 regere, which eereeeed 1
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5541 01 07 8 DAVbw 1 the Hope Creek safety issues.
I 2 It's interesting. There are a number of very 3 effective design measures that are in those plants that are 4 not in U.S. plants. I think we may have briefed you on some 5 of the decay heat removal aspects of those plants. It might 6 require a closed briefing, because of the sensitivity of 7 some of these issues, but we'll let you know.
8 We've begun dialogue with the Germans on their 9 design, so maybe a year or two later, say, in '87 sometime, 10 we might be able to come down and provide you the same sort 11 l of comparison between U.S. practices and the designs and the 12 Germans. '
- 13 , It would be our intent to continue this sort of
. s_- g 14 l things. We've invited over the designer of the Goll 3 and 4 l
15 Units. You may have visited that plant a year ago. We're 16 still very interested in how they've designed the backup 4
17 y bunkered systems, so-called.
18 DR. SHEWMON: Harold, on the German convoy plant, 19 j the design will consider the pressure bounda'ry? I'd be i
20 interested in hearing your comments on the pressure 21 boundary, as well as the aux feedwater system.
22 MR. DENTON: All right. I don't have any 23 comments today. We're not as far along, but it takesd a lot 24 of work to really understand what other countries are doing, t
f) o 25 l and we've been at this French comparison now for a year or ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5541 01 08 9 1 two on various things. We find a lot of similarities and a
{}DAVbw 2 lot of differences, and I think the Europeans tend to take 3 our designs as a base and go from there, and they've come up 4 with some very clever solutions to some problems, ones that 5 we have not implemented.
6 Tech specs for operating plants are still 7 receiving a lot of staf f attention. We have come up with a 8 set of criteria by which we would redefine much of the going 9 tech specs. We have had a lot of interaction with the 10 industry. Everyone seems to be thinking along the same 11 f lines. We've taken out of tech specs a lot of things that 12 are not required, to remove the boundary of those things
() 13 J l
where the licensee is able to make changes in the plant
, 14 under 50-59, a directio.. such that he can put a lot more 15 thing, into the 50-59 category than are in tech spects, 16 things like fire protection, snubber inspections.
- 17. In the past, the Staff thought the only way to 18 ' assure effective regulatory control over it was to make it a 1
19 tech spec. What has resulted is that we're flooded with 20 changes all the time. We have compared these criteria. We 21 have applied these criteria to the Wolf Creek plant as an 22 exercise to see how the tech specs have actually, and l 1
23 industry has done the same thing.
~2 4 I think we'll be able to come back to you )
) 25 sometime this year on tech specs, again showing you what is ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5541 01 09 10 DAVbw 1 being considered in that area.
2 I think it's a rather profound move to redefine 3 the boundary of those things. The licensee would be 4 permitted to make changes without coming to us. It would 5 tend to require in tech specs those things which are the 6 most important safety issues and the ones where we, for 7 sure, want to keep and exercise direct control.
8 MR. WARD: Harold, that program started out a 9 year or so ago with a lot of enthusiasm and energy. There 10 ! are a lot of people who thought it was a very important 11 effort. We haven't heard much about it. Have things gone I
12 as well as you'd expected? Is it just that we haven't heard 13 about it and the program is progressing actively?
14 MR. DENTON: I think that's it. We lost Don 15 Beckham, who resigned, who was a leading person in that 16l' area, but the enthusiasm is still there. There's been a lot 17 of Staff work to say, though we may not agree on these 18 l criteria, what does it take to apply them? I thought that i
was necessary to really demonstrate what the impact would 19 l 20 be of a new set. Also there's been some cone.rn on our 21 inspection side chat maybe we've gone too far and we're 22 taking too many things out of tech specs. So we' ve had a 23 lot of Staff interaction in that area.
24 We are briefing the Commission this month on the 25 status of the tech specs. So it's still a priority item.
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(']DAVbw 1 MR. REED: Let me take Harold off the hook a
%j 2 little bit. I have been attending some of the meetings, 3 probably most of the meetings, as a member of the Advisory 4 Committee on Tech Specs. I've been very happy with the rate 5 of progress. I thought they could meet their target with 6 milestones. They had a September wrap-up date on the 7 milestones, and they more or less met it. I haven't seen 8 the final result come up, but all the draft papers, the 9 essential decisions, these things, were made by September of 10
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'85.
11 DR. SHEWMON: One thing I'd welcome a 12 presentation on it. There was a paper -- I think it was in
() 13 Bill Kerr's trip report from the last AMS meeting. Someone 14 had done a probabilistic analysis of the risk that would 15 result from widening set points, so that you had fewer 16 scrams. .
17 - I would hope that something -- what they 18 concluded is not surprising, that some set points don't need 19 to be set as tight as they are. If we had some basis for 20 doing that, it might also be instructive.
21 MR. DENTON: We've tended to approve minor steps 22 toward this area, even while the new, more radical approach 23 was under development. Westinghouse came in with an
- 24 approach to redefine the island service times and the
() 25 surveillance times. We did approve that change. And ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5541 01 11 12 DAVbw 1 several vendors have come in with the same thing, and I 2 expect we will approve that also, because many of our 3 orioinal times were arbitrary, and they weren't based on 4 thorough technical study.
5-1 Another company that e're moving ahead with is 6; Seabrook tech specs. They have a PRA, and they look hard at 7 half a dozen systems who are in those dominant sequences, 8 and say, what should be the right limiting conditions and 9 operation for modes. They imposed somewhat different tech 10 l specs than a standard tech spec, but they had it fully 11 l! substantiated, and I think we' re going to go along with it, 12 largely in that area, because they've done a lot of studies,
- '; 13 and where they can show that tech specs on a particular
<J-14 vital safety system make more sense this way than the way I
15 [ we've traditionally done it. I think we'll pick that up.
I 16 l And you shouldn't be surprised to see us in I
17 I Seabrook, departing from the standard tech specs, but 18 l there's a good technical basis for it.
MR. EBERSOLE:. Let me ask you, Harold, in 19 l i
20 I particular, a lot of the responses of these extremely 21 numerous trips and escalations, I have suspicion it's going 22 to happen all over.
23 MR. DENTON: One thing we've been giving a lot of 24 consentual attention to is the balance-of-plant conditions.
I
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a 25 They've tended to, historically, and we've licensed plants ACE-FEDERAL REPO.1TERS, INC.
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6-5541 01 12 13 g] DAVbw 1 in the last couple decades, we took the approach that we a
2 have design basis events and, anything necessary for the 3 control of the design basis events will receive a lot of 4 attention. But we've never had design basis events, by and 5 large, in this business. And I think what we' re finding in 6 a number of cases is that what's causing this trouble are 7 trips coming from the balance of plant.
8 You look at TMI, Davis-Besse, Rancho Seco and 9 several other examples. You can find that the initiating 10 event is a failure in the balance of plant somewher.e. We 11 , find that about 25 percent of all trips, you have subsequent l
12 equipment failures.
{} 13 So I think in order '.o make a significant 14 reduction in the safety of existing plants, we've got to do 15 something about challenges to it. It's not as though, in a 16 reactor feed pump trip that has no safety indication, it i 17 often turns right around in an initiating event.
18 l 19 i
20 21 22 23 24 O 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 01 14 s DAVbw 1 We've thought about a couple of ideas. One 2 alternative would be to expand the areas that we regulate 3 and get into balance of plant. We've had a lot of 4 discussion. I don't think that would be the approach to go 5 to. It's slow. It's adversarial. It would be extremely 6 difficult to regGlate the balance of plant. The plant was 7 never designed to the same standards as the rest of it.
8 Another approach would be to stay out of it and 9 let INPO, NUMARC and the other industry groups, let them try 10 to improve the balance of planning for us.
11 I think what you're going to find us trending 12 l toward is sort of a middle ground. We certainly want the i
/ ') 13 l industry to do what they can. A couple of areas that you 14 will find us, I think, more aggressive in the future in 15 I operating plants than we have been in the past. One is, any 16 time there is a scram for any cause, I think you're going to 17 ) see the Staff pushing toward root cause determination of 18 that scram. In the past, if the root cause wasn't a safety 19 system failure, we would say, oh, that's balance of plant.
I 20 ' I think you're going to find us pushing these utilities to 21 identify and correct the root causes of the system trips, 22 whatever their cause. That's real life, telling you what is 23 I going on.
24 , We also, I think, might find a few targets of i
25 opportunities, such as the integrated control system in
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5410 02 02 15 DAVbw 1 B&W plants, where it just appears to represent something
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2 .that can be challenged and that we've got to move in and do 3 more in that area.
4 So I think you'll find us not wanting to get into 5 the BOP systems, but for those utilities, somehow, we're 6 having a lot of challenges. One encouraging area is the use 7 of INPO and t5e industry of indicators on plant 8 performance. We talk about -- I would really like to see 9 the development of a good set of performance indicators, 10 ones that we've agreed on and the utilities have agreed on, 11 if someone is operating their plant, if we can back off on 12 regulations, if performance is going downhill and we need
(~)
v 13 more inspections and reviews and so forth. INPO has 14 developed a set of 10 or 12 performance indicators that look 15 very good, and I think they're about to start use on a trial 16 basis.
17 j The first development by the utilities with a lot i
18 i of peer review and studies. We brought the vendors in. The 19 vendors reviewed them, and then they brought in a peer 20 panel, and I think Harold Lewis was on the peer panel, and 21 looked at the performance indicators, and Norm Rasmussen and j 22 Joe Hendrick. So they do have a set of indicators, and I 23 think perhaps in the long term that might be a way to 24 measure utilities' performances.
() 25 MR. REED: I'd like to go back to this balance ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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/'jDAVbw- 1 of plant. I wonder if we have defined it properly. It
\J 2 seems to me that something is not balance of plant, if it 3 isn' t changed to an ultimate safety service. For example, 4 aux feed on many reactors is interchanged to the ultimate 5 heat sink. Therefore, how can we call it balance of plant, 6 because it's really in the safety network?
7 MR. DENTON: We neglected that auxiliary 8 feedwater system for a long time in the regulatory system, 9 thinking that the heat removal system would be so reliable.
10 MR. REED: I think in this balr.nce of plant 11 thing, we ought to start to separate the steam power system 12 and its activities and all its contraptions and spaghetti
{} 13 from our thinking from anything that has to do with the 14 so-called safety envelope to assure decay heat removal.
15 Therefore, auxiliary feed is not balance of plant, in most 16 cases.
17 ! MR. DENTON: I think I've mentioned to you how I
18 l impressed I was with this dual plant that had the three 1 19 < redundant 50 percent trains to remove decay heat, 20 independent of the rest of the plant of the formal aaxiliary 21 feedwater system. That was a suitable approach to that 22 issue.
23 I think this area of balance of plant versus 24 performance indictors, were turning into a mode, because our 25 major concerns are operating plants, and our real-life goal
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[";DAVbw 1 is to define the good performers not bother them, but bother L) 2 the poor performers and prioritize them into the type of 3 plant that is really important for the utility and to do for 4 each plant, the ISAP approach. Look at everything you know 5 about these plants. PRAs, operating experience, design 6 factors.
7 We still have a lot.of resources in spite of our 8 being cut all the time, and we need to bring those to bear 9 on the most important issues.
10 MR. EBERSOLE:. What you're saying, doesn't that 11 automatically lead to a PRA for every plant, very detailed 12 system interaction? Looking at points of failure of the
(')
RJ 13 plant? .
14 MR. DENTON: We' re not doing it that way for the 15 severe accidents, but it certainly helps. We never really 16 decided to require one, but what I find is that the PRA is 17 ! so useful. At Seabrook, of course, it's hard to talk about 18 tech spec changes without a PRA in hand.
19 I'll mention one other item that might be related 20 to this. We have this proposal for Calvert Clif fs to modify 21 the various planning zones. I'm not enthusiastic about 22 going ahead with that proposal and taking my own resources 23 away from other efforts.
24 We have a major effort ongoing. It all depends
() 25 on how to attack the problem across-the-board. It just ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 05 18 DAVbw 1 seems to me that getting too involved with one plant is 2 preempting our ability to deal with all of them in a very 3 affective way, so I think I'll wait until we get the IPCOR 4 stuff a little better in hand.
5 MR. WARD: How does the enthusiasm for PRAs for 6 every plant compare with the concern about operation of 7 plants? I guess the problem I have is that the PRA doesn't 8 really seem to address in a very comprehensive way the sort 9 of thing you're looking at and then performance indicators, 10 the PRA assesses the design of the plan and not how it's l
11 l being operated. Have you got any plans to do something l
12 l there, and interest in making that PRA-like tool that can 13 look at operating performance as opposed to design
\
14 performance?
15 MR. DENTON: One of the problems everyone 16 recognizes is that the PRA tends to use generic data, not 17 l plant-specific data, and it doesn' t take very many failures 18 l in the maintenance department like at Davis-Besse, so that 19 ! whatever PRA you've got is no longer applicable. You can 20 l vary the PRA a factor of 100 in 1000, by assuming that the 21 system is not properly maintained or operated here or 22 there. So I n7 longer look on the PRA as the end all and be 23 all of safety.
24 ; What is a safe plant? Let me just mention a f"') 25 little bit about that? We talk about the safety goal and t -
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- _ . .~ .
5410 02 06 19 1 stuff like that. It seems to me there are about three
[}DAvbw 2 ingredients you can talk about. One is the societal goals 3 that were so well-enunciated back in safety goals -- don't 4 raise the risk of mortalities off-site. That's a pretty 5 high-level goal and difficult to operationally translate.
6 That's why I pushed the idea of the 10 to the minus 5 core 7 melt. The 10 to the minus 5 probability of an accident 8 challenging containment. I think you can keep challenges to 9 society down.
i 10 DR. SIESS: There's core melts kicking around.
MR. DENTON: The core melt I propose would be the 11 l j 12 I one that has the capability of challenging containment.
l
() 13 f DR. SIESS: I'm trying to distinguish between core melt 1, which is WASH-1400, and core melt 2, that 14 l 15 you're talking about, which is something that gets out of 16 containment.
17 : MR. DENTON: But even that design doesn' t achieve 1 8 ll real safety. You've got to oper6te the plant safety. It 19 seems to me the third part of safety is reliable operation.
20 So none of these tools do it by themselves. Even 21 the best-designed plant, if not maintained and operated 22 properly goes downhill fast.
23 MR. EBERSOLE:. How about a simple system to get 24 rid of decay heat?
() 25 MR. DENTON: I think we ought to keep working on ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 07 20 7 3 DAVbw 1 design. But take a plant like Point Beach or Prairie
\ _.)
2 Isand 1, Monticello, that has sustained superior 3 performance. You just don't have many challenges, and look 4 at the indicators by which you measure it? Obviously, you 5 start with a good design. That's about my measure of 6 safety. If you're not causing off-site doses by design, y'ou 7 don' t have a very high probability of core melt or challenge 8 anyway, and the performance of the plant is constantly 9 good.
10 DR. SIESS: But Harold, we were talking about 11 designs the other day, and I asked if somebody wanted to i
12 ' replicate Point Beach, do you think they could get it
(~ 13 through without a lot of changes? Suppose I wanted a 500 w}
14 megawatt plant, and I looked in the -- I'd say, gee, it 15 looks like that one works well. And I applied for a 16 replica.
17 MR. DENTON: You can' t boat experience. We've 18 j all had our favorite designs and what we thought would be 19 good for safety f actors in the heyday of construction. And 20 I think now we really have to look at performance. It's 21 like building race cars. It's time we really turned and 22 looked at that.
23 DR. SIESS: Do you think Point Beach would 24 necessarily perform as well under the existing management, i
() 25 if it were upgraded to meet current requirements?
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/m DAVbw 1 MR. DENTON: I guess I'm holding out the
(/
2 possibility that we're smarter today, and on GEC-4, where 3 we've changed our approach, I think we all have added a lot 4 of requirements in a lot of areas, and as they tend to 5 accummulate operating experience, if it turns out that's the 6 model plant,'we ought to copy it. Now my own view of what 7 the next generation will be, will be this EPRi design, where 8 they're putting a lot of money, a lot of attention into that 9 effort. I'm very encouraged by their attempts to design an 10 economical, safe, reliable plant, taking into account 11 everything that the industry has done.
12 DR. SIESS: Would you add " simple" to that?
(~)
%/
13 MR. DENTON: I think " simple" is in there.
14 That's their intent in that EPRI process is to come up with 15 the best that American technology can produce.
16 These are the things that I hoped I might talk 17 about. I'll be happy to cover any other things. But 18 certainly, operating plants are the major purpose of our 19 task.
20 DR. KERR: I don' t know how to bring this up 21 without being misunderstood, but there's something that 22 bothers me a bit. The Davis-Besse incident has received a 23 lot of attention, and I've read about the proposed penalties 24 and criticisms of what happened. I don't want to defend any
() 25 of the deficiences that were identified, because they were ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 09 22 DAVbw 1 real.
2 What bothered me about the way the thing has been 3 handled so far, is that nowhere have I seen any official 4 credit for what the operator did in the face of that 5 incident. It seems to be forgotten that faced with all 6 those failures and all those uncertainties and some of the 7 things that shouldn't have existed, the plant wasn't damaged 8 at all, and it apparently wasn't damaged, because there were 9 a set of operators who understood the situation very well, 10 and even when faced with a lot of failures, they know what 11 l to do to avoid core damage.
12 I'd like to see those guys get some credit for 13 h that. Nowhere had I seen any recognition that, in spite of 14 li all these deficiencies, that group behaved very well. What l
15 bothers me is that the next time it happens, they may be 16 tempted to sit down and call NRC up on the telephone and 17 say, " Hey, we've had an incident, and we don't quite know what to do. Tell us what to do to avoid violating all the 18 f 19 regulations."
20 l MR. DENTON: We have acknowledgod in public I
21 forums, and I did when I went out there, the performance of 22 the operators. I took a walk through the areas where they 23 ! had to go to to restore the plant to a safe condition, and 1
24 ! i they did it in 10 minutes. It took me about an hour.
(
- 25 DR. SIESS
- I think the main actors there were ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 10 23 DAVbw 1 not the licensed operators.
2 DR. KERR: The operating crew.
3 MR. DENTON: And the fine we're talkinga bout 4 when we say we're fining the operator, what we're really 5 doing is, we're fining the owner of the plant.
6 DR. KERR: I don't want to criticize what has 7 been done. It's just that it seems to me there ought to be 8 some way to recognize fairly good performance, it seems to 9 me, on the part of the operational crew, because I think the 10 morale of the groups is likely to suffer, if they do the 11 right thing, and then, in public, it looks as if all they 12 get was beat on the head for pretty good performance.
13 '
["] i MR. DENTON: It has been difficult for us to 14 l recognize good performance in any penalties, and we're a I
15 ' little bit worried that every time we pat the utilities on 16 the back, the next day you have a problem, but we do need to 17 ' find a way to recognize good performance by operators. We i
18 tend to have sticks and no carrots.
i 19 j MR. EBERSOLE:. I wish we could reward tho guys 20 for saving a booby trap, because they wore running one. You 21 could take a dual approach to this. Fine the management and 22 reward the ones who saved the day. -
23 DR. SIESS: It wasn't the management; it was the 24 design. NRC approved it, and so did we.
[' 25 !
i MR. DENTON: I think we understand the problem.
ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 02 11 24 DAVbw 1 If we had a good mechanism. That's why I think this 2 indication of performance is the key thing. If people have 3 continuing improvement, we ought to have a way to reward 4 them. What we're doing is taking the inspectors and the 5 reviewers of well-operated plants and not nagging them.
6 Maybe we should be doing that even more 7 strongly.
8 9
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('"T DAVbur 1 DR. MARK: This is a vague question, and you may V
2 not think it is specific enough to NRR. But I was 3 wondering, is there a tendency, wherever it comes to rest in 4 the agency, to transfer as much regulation and oversight as 5 possible into the hands of the operators to the industry, 6 the people doing the work, where you say', in effect, with 7 respect to safety and behavior it can be achieved that way 8 instead of by the agency agents?
9 MR. DENTON: I think that is a fair 10 characterization. It started really with INPO and the 11 recognition that our resources were limited and maybe 12 subject to budget whims, and if the utilities can come up
(} 13 with an ef fective system to self-police like INPO, wo should 14 recognize it and back off.
15 MR. REED: I thought I was almost hearing 16 Carson's remark as a push toward designated 17 l representatives.
18 Was that what I was hearing?
19 DR. MARK: Those words had not crossed my mind.
20 . (Laughter.)
21 MR. DENTON: I think, Carson, what we are doing 22 across the board is trying to find somebody to be interested 23 in our safety problems. Now, accreditation is one. It has 24 had some rocky bouncir.g around in it, but accreditation 4.s
() 25 surely an industry initiative that is improving operations.
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5410 03 02 26 DAVbur 1 I think you wrote a recent letter suggesting 2 that we back off in a periodic reexamination process. To a 3 good extent, we can find EPRI, the utility -- the B&W Owners 4 Group is turning into a very responsive organization. They 5 have had so many problems they have had to. But that 6 organization is taking very seriously the Davis-Besse event, 7 and now they are addressing the Rancho Seco incident.
8 I think where we defined an industry focus, they 9 are willing to face the issues and deal with it, we are 10 happy to step back out of it.
11 DR. MARK: I really suppose that that is what you i
12 would feel inclined to say. I just wanted to hear it.
(^T 13 MR. REED: Somebody just said define the LJ ;
14 i management. I think we have to keep thinking about the 15 l designated representative system. That may accomplish 16 i something with respect to a continuing control of management i
and its activities, not just to jump in on TVA, jump back 17 l 18 i ou*.
I 19 j MR. EBERSOLE: I am intrigued by your talk about 20 EPRI and its approach to design. I am certainly not in 21 touch with that.
22 Could you elaborate on that? Do they start by 23 looking at the GDCs and all the paper structure and 24 presumably they define safety? Are they going from the
() 25 roots up, or are they just trying to backfit?
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5410 03 03 27 DAVbur 1 MR. DENTON: I don't think they are trying to 2 match regulations, as I understand.
3 I am not sure I could do this justice. You could 4 get Saul Bernstein to describe the program.
5 But they sent out a request for proposal that, 6 really invited all the pertinent industries to respond, to 7 build something based on everything that has been learned, 8 and they had a lot more specific guidance and they gave a 9 lot of examples of things they wanted to achieve about decay 10 heat removal, all those things.
11 , It was very difficult to quarrel with their I
12 i objectives. They have got a very strong design team, and f) 13 (
the design team was a combination of utility and vendor, so ,
i 14 ' that every team works for two people. They are a 15 utility-vendor combined team, and they are going way beyond 16 the preliminary design, and they are going to specify in 20 17 volumes. The idea was that NPC would approve that.
18 l, MR. EBERSOLE: Is it just CE?
l 19 f MR. DENTON: No, I think CE is involved but MIT l
i is involved. Perhaps you need a briefing on it if you 20 l 21 l haven't heard about it recently. It is a major activity l
22 they have underway for three or four years.
23 I would really anticipate that the next new plant 24 f might well be one of those as opposed to a standard plant em l
} 25 l that we are being offered now by the vendors, the difference ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 03 04 28 7)j DAVbur 1 being the vendors have proposed one they would like to help 2 sell. The one EPRI is doing is meeting design 3 requirements.
4 MR. WYLIE: We have had some discussion about 5 that. They indicated to us -- this was back about two or 6 three months ago probably -- that they are probably a year f
7I away. But at that time they would be willing to come and 8 sit down and have some meaningful talks.
9 That i one reason we need to go look at the 10 proposal. At that time we were still out getting the 11 information requested from the utilities and vendors.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: Were they still talking about
() 13 something like the ASWR and the APWR? .
14 MR. DENTON: No.
15 DR. REMICK: Harold, is there any attempt to 16 incorporate those plant indicators into SALP reviews?
17 ; I realize the plant specific indicators may not 18;! be.
I MR. DENTON: We talked to Pate about the 19 l 20 ! indicators. We are not happy with the SALP indicators at 21 the moment.
22 We have some indicators in areas like fire 23 l protection. They have a SALP rating in such a narrow area, 24 but maybe they have focused on too small an issue rather
() 25 than on areas of corporate control and those sorts of ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 03'05 29 O DAVbur 1 issues.
Q 2 I think we are going to revise the SALP 3 indicators. I am not sure the industry would want us to do 4 that, to take their initiatives and turn them into 5 enforceable items.
6 DR. SIESS: Was fire protection in there because 7 both the NRC and the licensee were probably spending 20 to 8 30 percent of their time on it?
9 MR. DENTON: They were spending a lot of time on 10 it, but in retrospect it is not a good indicator of 11 corporate performance.
'2
. DR. SIESS: SALP was an indicator in many cases
() , 13 of the effort involved. One item in there is: how 14 responsive is the licensee to the NRC request, how complete 15 are his answers, and how cooperative is he? Is that really
-16 a measure of safety performance?
17 MR. DENTON: I think the thinking today is that 18 what we really need are measures on the number of 19 challenges, the availability of safety systems, the total 20 amount of time they are unavailable -- those sorts of 21 ideas.
22 MR. WARD: The performance indicators -- I guess 23 I am bothered a little by your indication earlier that you 24 might go in the direction where you are depending pretty
() 25 heavily on those. I can see where you would want to, but I ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336 4646 e -
l l
5410 03 06 30 1 DAVbur 1 guess the concern is that the sort of performance indicators (w]J 2 that people are coming up with, many of them are highly 3 subjective. They are gut feelings rather than any 4 scientific basis, let's say.
5 What can happen, I think, is that a clever plant 6 manager can begin to devote resources to improving those 7 performance indicators rather than to improving operation 8 and safety of operation.
9 So I am not as optimistic that that is going to 10 be a "be all and end all" solution as a monitor for safe 11 operations.
12 MR. DENTON: I don't think we would ever tilt
("N . 13 totally away from inspection of plants no matter how good
%) .
14 they were, but maybe tilt a little more heavily than in the 15 past, certainly if we go to plants that don't have trips, 16 that have low occupational exposures, and the trend year s' 17 after year after year is towards better performance.
18 , You can' t look at performance indicators over too i
19 i small a period. It takes a long period to see the trends.
20 DR. CARBON: Harold, we have had the utility 21 people tell us that they are not really very enthusiastic 22 either about the EPRI approach or standardization. They 23 don' t really feel it will provide an assurance that will 24 give the financial people confidence to really go in there 25 and make a big investment.
( })
i i
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5410 03'07 31 1 Can you comment on that?
'(}DAVbur 2 MR. DENTON: I don' t have a good feel for what a 3 utility really does on this. We tend to react -- I don' t go 4 -out in the market to ask what they would really like to 5 have. The amount of effort it is going to take would be 6 comparable to design and construct a permanent operating 7 license.
8 So whether they like it or not, it is about the
~
9 only game in town at the moment.
10 DR. CARBON: Some of them have a good plan for --
11 Point Beach or some plant that just operates real well.
12 They have their training programs all set up. They have
. ( ), 13
- their maintenance programs set up. It doesn't duplicate or 14 replicate any of them. The existing plant we know about.
15 MR. DENTON: I suppose we can consider it. No 16 one has ever proposed it for consideration. The only people 17 we are talking to that are close to that fall in this 18 category.
19 There are six or seven inactive plants. Those 20 people often want us to keep alive an option where they can 21 finish the plant. But no one is sitting there talking about 22 starting up.
23 Plants like Marble Hill, there are often 24 proposals on how that might be restarted, and they want us
('_) 25 to do so.
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5410 03 08 32 DAVbur 1 MR. WARD: Any other questions?
2 (No response.)
3 MR. WARD: I guess not.
4 DR. SIESS: One more. How is the reorganization 5 going?
6 MR. DENTON: At NRR? I think it is working 7 well. I think we have gotten through licensing so many 8 operating reactors that it is difficult for that group to 9 focus on all the problems that were occurring.
10 So I find it to be an improvement now that I have 11 got more people. I can go to Bob Manero if it is a GE I
12 i problem.
O 13 So I think it is giving us -- and the groups that
'd 14 are in the plants are snowing a little esprit de corps and 15 teamwork.
16 They are real experts on their class of plants, 17 based on everything that has occurred, not just in the 18 j U.S. but looking at at least the Westinghouse design. There 19 are U.S. lessons, Japanese lessons in operating experience, 20 AEOD reports.
21 I think you will find that that group is much 22 more knowledgeable about Westinghouse issues and works much 23 more closely with Westinghouse than you did in the other 24 ! type of organization.
1
(] 25 I We put the specialists all together, and we are J
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5410 03 09 33 1 still pushing ahead on the station blackout issue.
{}DAVbur 2 And Bill Russell's human factor organization is j 3 probably une that is still having the most growing pains, '
4 and INPO keeps volunteering to take over more and more of 5 it, and we keep trying to define the boundary.
6 But I am very encouraged. I do think -- we had a 7 meeting on Research and the budget cut in Research, and we 8 find NRR's budget is going to be cut in the future, too. So 9 we are going to have to continue to focus on priorities and 10 decide what we want to do.
11 DR. SIESS: On that subject, I understand that 12 ISAP is dead except for the two plants.
() 13 MR. DENTON: I wouldn't say it is, but I think it 14 is very close to it.
15 I have got to cut both my FTE level and my dollar 16 level, and I have proposed to the Commission various ways to 17 , do that.
18 one of the things I have considered is dropping 19 the requalification exam work altogether. It is not 20 something I am desirous of doing, but it is just forced by 21 priorities, dropping ISAP and just fishing up Haddam Neck 22 and Millstone. d 23 We are trying to think that way for all plants.
24 Here is the pilot, just put it in, and everybody kind of
() 25 move this way.
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i 5410 03 10 34 ,
1 DAVbur 1 MR. WARD: When you say, for example, drop the 2 requal work, but most of that is being done in the region, 3 isn't it?
4 MR. DENTON: It is not in my budget.
5 MR. WARD: Okay. I understand, I think.
MP. DENTON:
~
6 Advanced reactors is something I 7 have thought about dropping, depending upon how severe cuts 8 are in DOE.
9 There are a number of areas where we are 10 considering. Well, I don't think the Commission has made 11 the decision that ISAP is dead, but it is one of the 12 programs that we have offered up as a possibility to the
- 13 i Congressional Budget Office.
u.)
14 DR. REMICK: Harold, I have been impressed the 15 last month or so on the large number of changes, new faces, 16 !i people retiring. I think some of that is aging of the 17 h staff, reorganization, budget cuts.
18 l Do you have any concerns about loss of talent in i
19 ' your office at the present time, or do you feel it is 20 , healthy?
21 MR. DENTON: I think there is always a concern.
22 It is kind of inevitable if the present employment rules for 23 government employees do make it advantageous for anyone who 24 l is considering retirement to retire before June. There are
- 25 ! certain ways the government pays back your pension that
'}
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5410 03 11 35 DAVbur 1 make it worthwhile for most p9ople to get out, and I would 2 expect further attrition.
3 So we are going to lose a lot of our historical 4, base when people like Ed Case and Jim Riley leave the 5l agency, but it does provide a promotional career path for 6 our new talent. Probably more will retire in the next six 7 months than usual.
8 DR. MARK: Harold, five regions, I believe --
9 well, they are not entirely NRR -- but how frequently do you 10 pull those region directors or region senior staff into 11 Washington to hear what they have been running into and how 12 ' often they must do this or that?
13 MR. DENTON: We meet formally once a quarter, all (G
14 ; the program offices and regional administrators. We don' t 15,l always meet in Washington, but we meet as a group and go 16 l over for a couple of days everybody's problems.
I 17 ' DR. MARK: Would it be possible for some outsider 18 like someone from here to sit in the back of the room for 19 such a discussion?
20 MR. DENTON: I am sure it could be arranged. In 21 fact, we of ten invite in people like Zack Pate to give us 22 presentations on things that they are doing. We don't have 23 any problem with an ACRS member.
24 We also meet at least once a year with the fus') 25 Commissioners. So we have had several meetings where all ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I 5410 03 12 36
)
') DAVbur 1 the regional administrators meet with the Commissioners in
'J 2 public meetings.
3 4
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'5410 04 01 37
/'] DAVbur 1 DR. SIESS: Are there other meetings at lower
.s
(
2 levels?
3 There is always somebody meeting in Washington.
4 MR. DENTON: Yes. We have a weekly phone call 5 with the regions. The office directors and regional
, 6 administrators talk once a week by phone.
7 When you take things like TVA, the regional 8 administracors sit down once a week for a formal meeting.
9 DR. SIESS: What percentage of the region staffs 10 are NRR, I&E, and NMSS?
11 MR. DENTON: They are mostly I&E. NRR has people 12 ! in the regions under our budget. They do all the operator I
{} 13 l examinations. That is about 40 or so people. Then we put
. 14 resources out there to do licensing actions on all operating 15 l plants, amendments, and those sorts of things. But that is i
16 l a small fraction. Almost all of them are in Jim Taylor's I
17 - program.
18 When you get into things like TVA, you usually find the headquarters supplementing the regional resources.
19 l 20 DR. SIESS: Who does the regional administrator +
21 report to?
22 MR. DENTON: To me.
23 DR. CARBON: Harold, you mentioned advanced 24 reactors. Have you made any cuts in the resources devoted
-( ) 25 to your cooperative effort with EPRI or with the DOE and .
I ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. 1 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336 6646 l l
5410 04 02 38
' DAVbur
, 1 the advanced things there?
U 2 MR. DENTON: Not in the former, but in the 3 latter. I haven't cut the advanced resources for EPRI, but 4 I have proposed that the other be cut drastically.
5 DR. CARBON: Are they being cut drastically?
6 - MR. DENTON: I don't think any of these matters 7 have been decided, but I think it has been proposed 8 internally that we take big cuts in that area. Whether they 9 are true or not, we don't know. We can just wait.
10 If they take big cuts, we.can expect to cut our i
11 ' program also. But rumor has it that in order to match the i
12 l!
goals of the Gramm-Rudman bill we will have to cut some of
/ 13 - it.
(_) i 14 ! MR. EBERSOLE: Harold, in your reorganization, 15 i since it came up, you elected to get homogeneous 16 l assignments and you picked the vendors. We are about to i
17 ' have two-thirds of the problems from things that are not 18 vendor created.
19 , Have you got an ef fort in being to attempt to l
20 ' penetrate who really builds these plants? Is it the 21 utility? Is it even below the level of the utility?
22 In short, in a given utility do you find degrees 23 of conservatism? Do you tend to find really who is 24 responsible for building these plants?
/~l
\_/
25 l I would like to find, you know, the beneficiary ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 03 39 f7 DAVbur
(
1 or the credit, the pattern.
m- )
2 MR. DENTON: It is true that we have done it by 3 vendor and not by AE, and as we get into this balance of 4 plant pattern we find the B&W plants -- when you get into 5 the integrated control system, everyone is covered.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Why is that?
7 MR. DENTON: I don't really know why that is 8 except it is the free marketplace working that way. But I 9 think that is giving us problems, trying to cope with the 10 VOP.
l' ! MR. EBERSOLE: And you can rope in the best 12 practices?
(~j u.; 13 h MR. DENTON: I think at the moment we haven't 14 made much headway on tnat. But I do get back from the 15 industry owners groups, who are very supportive of this sort 16 , of thing, and the Westinghouse Owners Group, the CE Owners 17 ' Group seem very eager to ask who is in charge and having 18 , people they can talk to and will develop some real experts 19 in these areas, not only the vendor-supplied parts but the 20 VOP parts.
21 So maybe in a year or two we will have some 22 adequate assistance on design all over the map. But we 23 don't have that today.
24 l DR. SIESS: Are there owner groups for each I
()
<> 25 l; vendor?
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 04 40 s 'DAVbur 1 MR. DENTON: Yes.
)
2 DR. SIESS: Are they complete, all the owners?
3 MR. DENTON: I think so, yes. They have a lot of 4 things in common, and the way it helps us is that when there 5 is an operating problem it is clearer now how to deal with 6 it.
7 If it is a Rancho Seco type event and you have 8 got a group that recognizes they have to deal with it, it is 9 unlikely that if someone learns lessons from the integrated 10 control system it will affect GE.
11 l So it is getting a little clearer on which 12 problems deal with which plants.
(-]
v 13 l
DR. SIESS:
The fact that there are owners groups 14 i divided by vendor would suggest that the owners think that 15 the NSSS vendors -- what makes their problems common? Is it 16 l simply that NRC has concentrated on problems by vendor?
17 l MR. DENTON: It is hard to know. There have i
18 j always been vendor-oriented groups, the owners groups by 19 vendor, and what we did is sort of track along with the way 20 the industry prefers to work. You don't find a Bechtel 21 Owners Group.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: That is where all the regulation 23 was, the vendor's set of equipment.
24 j DR. SIESS: No. We have got whole programs on
(~') 25 station blackout and aux feedwater, which are clearly not v
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1 1
5410 04 05 11 DAVbur 1 vendor-related items. But there is no owners group that has 2 been developed around Bechtel, as he said, which probably 3 has provided the same type of aux feedwater.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: I think they contribute to the 5 density of regulatory controls over the primary systems.
6, DR. SIESS: Rather than the actual physical 7 features of the plant.
8 MR. DENTON: I guess just to conclude, the 9 message is not new to you. We are giving less and less 10 attention to what I call traditional areas for reviewing cps 11 and OLs, but the bulk of the resources are going to try to 12 learn from operating experience and factor it back in.
(~} 13 ' But Lt is clear we are going to have 100 plants
%J .
14 running this year and we are going to add a few more to it, 15 and the bulk of the challenge to the regulatory system will 16 be to keep those plants safe, and they present a good set of 17 , issues and the ones that we have traditionally focused on.
l 18 1 DR. SIESS: You are going to look at the hardware 19 now instead of the paper?
20 MR. DENTON: I think we are going to look at the 21 people now. It seems that whole area of how organizations 22 perform, maybe we have been too much in the minutiae in this 23 business and not enough on higher levels. What we need is 24 some magic balance sheet.
('T 25 DR. KERR: To outsiders it sometimes appears that v
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5410 04 06 42 DAVbur 1 what one looks at is whether the regulations are being 2 violated. The correlation between that and safe operation 3 is not always clear.
4 I don't have a panacea for that, but I hope all 5 of us keep in mind that occasionally the correlation is 6 there, 7 MR. DENTON: What we are asking ourselves is:
8 how did we miss in the past?
9 There were a lot of meetings, a lot of back and 10 forth, the regulations were there, and we need a structure 11 that would prevent Davis-Besse better than the system did or 12 TVA for that matter.
13 DR. OKRENT: Do you have any answers?
O(~N 14 MR. DENTON: The best I can see is developing a 15 really good performance indicator that is meaningful and 16 really indicate what we want them to indicate.
17 DR. KERR: Again, without trying to defend TVA, my impression is within the Sequoyah situation a great deal 18 l 19 of the difficulty comes frcm the fact that there is not an 20 appropriate paper trail. QA was somehow not good.
21 I am not certain what the correlation between 22 that and safe operation is. It seems to me the same sort of 23 thing has been true cf some of the plants under 24 construction. Those plants may be in just as good shape,
() 25 may be as well built as plants now in operation. What they ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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. y 5410 04 07 43 DAVbur 1 got criticized for is not that they are not safe but that 2 one could not demonstrate QA, for example, documentation was 3 in place.
4 I don't know what the cure for it is, but I am 5 not sure that everything that we have been looking at is 6 directly related to safety. ~
7 MR. DENTON: I think that is probably right. In 8 other words, I would expect in time we will back off in some 9 areas, and we will come up with new ones. We now can learn 10 from experience, whereas before it was All kind of 11 ! forecasting what we thought would be it.
12 DR. KERR: I think that is right.
(~} 13] DR. MARK: In that connection you mentioned
\m/ .
14 developing performance indicators, sort of a water-tight, 15 formalized checklist. Well, vit%r; you really need is a 16 , better feeling, shared by yourself and by them, that you are b
17 really after the same thing.
I 18 l MR. WARD: Harold, thank you very much for coming 19 down. That was a helpful presentation.
20 MR. DENTON: Now, Hugh Thompson will go into the 21 TVA situation.
22 MR. WARD: Our next topic is a report from our 23 Davis-Besse subcommittee, and that is Mr. Remick.
24 DR. REMICK: I would like to remind the
() 25 committee, back in June, as you recall, Davis-Besse ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 08 44 73 DAVbur 1 experienced a loss of feedwater event. The NRC at that time NJ 2 initiated a fact-finding investigation, using the new 3 procedures that were basically in draft form at that point 4 on how to conduct such investigations.
5 The report of that fact-finding investigation, 6 which contains NUREG-ll54, is entitled " Loss of Main and 7 Auxiliary Feedwater Event at the Davis-Besse Plant on June 8 9, 1985."
9 Also, in August of 1985, the NRC issued a 10 50.54(f) show-cause letter, in which they indicated that 11 they had concerns regarding the apparent existence of 12 programmatic and management deficiencies.
{} 13 In response to that, at the end of September, 14 Toledo Edison submitted a two-volume Davis-Besse course of 15 action plan. That was in response to the 50.54(f) letter.
16 That course of action has been amended at least four times 17 i since September.
18 In response to the NRC staff request, the 19 Davis-Besse subcommittee held a meeting at the Davis-Besse 20 plant back on the 4th of October 1985, in which we heard 21 about a course of action plan. We toured the facility, 22 walked through the event, as Harold indicated he had done l 23 also.
24 Then I believe it was at the October meeting
() 25 Toledo Edison people came in and briefed the full committee ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 09 45 DAVbur 1 on their course of action.
2 At that time the staff indicated that they had 3 not had an opportunity to fully review that course of action 4 plan but they would be doing so and eventually issue an 5 SER.
6 That SER, to the best of my knowledge, has not 7 been issued yet, but the staff offered to come in this month 8 and give us a status report on that review. So this is not 9 necessarily a subcommittee report. It is a status report by 10 l the NRC staff on their review of that course of action 11 ! plan.
1 We anticipate that the SER will be issued
() 13 : sometime soon. I cm sure that staff will tell us this
\ l 14 l morning when we expect a date for that.
i 15 j In anticipation of it, the Davis-Besse 16 subcommittee plans a meeting on the 6th of February here in 1
17 Washington to review that SER. The last I knew, we would 18 ; expect then full committee review of that at the February 19 l meeting.
20 With that introduction, I would like to turn it 21 j over to staff. I believe Conrad McCracken is going to lead 22 the discussion this morning.
23 DR. OKRENT: Do I understand correctly that this 24 is just information?
(;
v 25 DR. REMICK: This is purely an informational ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 10 46 sDAVbur 1 status report of the staff's review.
2 DR. OKRENT: Could I ask one different question?
3 As part of the subcommittee meeting or the 4 subcommittee review, is the subcommittee considering broader questions than just under what conditions restart is going 5l I
6i to take place?
7 DR. REMICK: Like what?
8 I guess I don't know how to answer that, since we 9 have not -- we don't have the subcommittee meeting 10 established yet because we dcn't have the SERs. It is hard 11 l to know what is going to be covered at that other than 12 review of the SER.
i 13 Is staff ready?
(~/
x.
I 14 MR. MC CRACKEN: I have got a series of handouts 15 ! on the material we will be presenting.
16 ' MR. EBERSOLE: Forrest, while we are going 17 )i through this distribution, it is interesting to me that this 1 8 l: whole hullabaloo is occasioned by the physical loss of i
19 feedwater, an event which would have been precluded if the 20 design had incorporated originally a diverse standard 21 electric pump in its configuration, which it did not have.
22 Once they had. You recall it was disconnected and 23 nonqualifiec, anyway, i
24 If we can say that single absence, assuming
(~')
<j 25 l reasonable maintenance on it, would act as a barrier to what ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. l l 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336 6646
5410 04 11 47 DAVbur 1 we are doing today, does that mean then that where we have L) 2 such things that we have blinders?
3 We are looking at a great many things. It was 4 precipitated by that single mechanical defect. It is 5 interesting to me, and I wonder if those pumps start and we 6 never learn -- do you follow me?
7 DR. REMICK: I follow you.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: I think it is worth noting that we 9 have to go to the deadend.
10 , DR. REMICK: That is unfortunately true.
I 11 l Conrad?
12 MR. MC CRACKEN: What I want to go into a little
~s
') 13 < bit today is primarily status report, and then prior to 14 h getting into that I should focus a little bit on the fact i
15 that the review we are doing on Davis-Besse is a parallel 16 review.
17 Because of that, we are reviewing things as the l
18 j utility gets them completed or completes concept, and some 19 things -- we talked about perhaps at the last meeting or 20 this meeting -- as they finalize their work and, complete 21 their analysis we sometimes see a different result than they 22 originally intended.
23 So we are working at a moving ta,rget.
24 A couple of areas in here, I will show you that as I am going through it, where something we have prepared (a') 25 l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 04 12 48 DAVbur 1 perhaps a week or two weeks ago in our handout actually is 2 changing because the utility has done further analysis and 3 come up with a different means of handling a particular 4 issue.
5 What I have given you in the handout are two 6, separate sections. The first section are the slides that I 7' am showing.
8 The second section, entitled " Enclosure 2," lists 9' primarily the things that I am going to be discussing in 10 narrative form and lists a brief status of each of the 11 things we are looking at in the safety evaluation report.
i 12 ' And then at the very back I have included two system
/ 13 schematics which show the auxiliary feedwater system as of L..)3 14 June 9th, when the event occurred, and then the auxiliary 15 feedwater system as it is planned for restart.
i 16 l 17 F
18 l
19 '
20 i 21 22 23 24
('"') 25 L;
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5410 05 01 49 DAVbw 1 DR. REMICK: Mr. Chairman, if I may ir.terrupt.
2 We're starting about 15 minute,s late. Do we need to make up 3 15 minutes? Do we get a full hour and 15 minutes?
4 MR. WARD: You startd 7 minutes late.
5 DR. REMICK: I tried. So Conrad, you'll need to
~6 keep your presentation within 45 minutes, if you can.
7 MR. MC CRACKEN: Whatever you want. I can do it
' ' ~ ~'~
8 in 15, if you like, or we can make it last longer.
9 DR. OKRENT: Don't MAKE it last longer.
10 (Laughter.)
11 (Slide.)
12 Looking at the first area we're going to talk
~ (~} 13 about today, we're going a little bit into the background, D
14 very briefly, because I'm sure you're very familiar with 15 that. I will then look, just as an overview, at the major 16 actions to be completed prior to restart. Then an 17 evaluation status of our safety report. Then a summary of 18 the major open items that we feel need to be resolved prior n 19 to restart.
, 20 (Slide.)
21 Looking at the background information, we issued 22 our September 10th, 5053( f) letter. The safety evaluation 23 we're looking at will address each of those issues. In 24 addition, it addresses all the items we had in NUREG 1154, 25 ! which were defined by the investigative teams. So we'll
(}
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5410 05 02 50 DAVbw 1 be sure we closs those out, and we will cross reference, so 2 that anybody can look at any one of those documents and see 3 how we close out the SER.
4 DR. REMICK: Wasn't that in August, the 5050(f) 5 letter? 14 August, I thought. September 10th is when they 6 responded.
7 MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes; that's correct; right.
8 Licensee response. September 17th and 18th, after we 9 received their response on the course of action, we briefed 10 the Commission. Between October 1, 1985, and January 3, we 11 have receive six revisions to their course of action. Each of those, again, in some cases, they had given us 12 l
{} 13 preliminary information on their concepts of where they were 14 going, but as they got into analysis, they had to change, 15 and some of these were in response to Staff questions they 16 received.
17 The estimated schedule for the remaining 18 actions. The licensee estimates a restart between February 19 1 and March 31, 1986. He has a fluid date, I think, for a 20 good reason. They're trying to do a good job. They're 21 doing a very thorough evaluation of the entire plant. All 22 systems important to safety. As they go through that, they 23 are identifying things that need to be worked on. Until 24 they complete this identifying phase where they're finding
/~T 25 new problems or things that they feel need to be resolved,
\_/ ,
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5410 05 03 51
. ,7') DAVbw 1 they can't really set a finn schedule for fixing and
\_/
2 repairing all the things they need to repair. Therefore, it 3 is a little bit of a fluid thing. I think, by necessity, it 4 has to be a fluid thing.
5 This is our January 10th briefing to you. We are 6 planning to issue an SER in January. The SER we're going to 7 issue will have some open items in it. There are a few 8 areas -- and I'll discuss that as I get to the end of the 9 presentation, on things that we need to complete prior to 10 restart, but some of the information, the licensee doesn't 11 have available yet. Therefore, we can't review it. We're 12 going to try to get an SER out which addresses the majority 13 $ of issues. Then we'll put a supplement out a little bit (O ,
14 later. We're going to try to. issue this as much in advance
^
15 l of the February Subcommittee meeting as possible, provide l
16 you an opportunity to look at it.
17 : That's what's really driving our schedule to get l
18 ; that one out and try to get something to the Subcommittee, 19 so you have an opportunity to review it, before you 20 actually have a meeting. And then in the February '86 full 21 Committee presentation.
22 DR. REMICK: Are you fairly confident that we'll 23 be able to make that?
24 MR. MC CRACKEN: The way we're going now is, we 25 are going to make it. The only question is, how many items
(}
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1 5410 05 04 52 DAVbw 1 we leave open in it. Al De Agrazzi, who is the Project i
~
2 Manager, is working virtually full time on that, trying to I 3 get it out, so we can get the issues. The only question is 4 how many I will leave open that we can't really address for 5 you at that time.
6 (Slide.)
7 Looking at an overview of the major actions to be 8 completed prior to restart, again, without getting into 9l i specific details of each of them, we are going to certainly 10 l ensure that there is a resolution to all the events and 11 f specific problems. That obviously was step one.
i 12 ; The second item, which is probably much more l
^1 13 l significant, and it's taking a lot more, time by the n-l l
14 : licensee and Staff for review, is because the conclusion was 15 l that the event specific problems occurred due to lack of I
I 16 care and maintenance. We had a significant concern over all 17 - the rest of the systems that are important to safety. So a i
18 l Very extensive review has been initiated to look at all 19 j those systems, and that review appears at this point to be i
20 i one of the critical path items for getting the plant back on 21 line.
22 The third item is installation of the third 23 auxiliary feed pump. That will be installed and 24 operational. It's electric powered, which provides 25 diversity of power. We'll have that available for restart.
(V~')
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+
5410 05 05 53 DAVbw 1 MR. EBERSOLE:. Let me ask a question.
2 What are they going to do with the electric pump 3 that saved the day?
4 MR. MC CRACKEN: The electric pump that saved the 5 day we'll hit later in one of my slides. It's going to be 6 put back in again.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:. Will it be wired in and ready to 8 go?
9 MR. MC CRACKEN: Not for restart. At the next 10 refueling outage, they will have that one back again. So at i
11 l that point, they will actually have two electric pumps and 12 two steam pumps.
' ' 13 ! MR. EBERSOLE:. And the fuzes will be in place?
\/
14 l MR. MC CRACKEN: Hopefully. They had to buy some 15 i new switch gear to put that other pump back in.
16 j DR. MOELLER: When you say that you're resolving i
17 l the event-specific problems and the systems review, I note 1
18 fi that the emergency diesel generator No. 1 was inoperable, 19 due to the ventilation damper, and that the control room 20 HVAC system apparently failed during the event.
21 Are those included in these resolution of 22 event-specific problems?
23 MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes. They are not included in 24 the event-specific problems, but they are included in the
/ 25 overall review of the systems important to safety.
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4 5410 05 06 54 DAVbw 1 DR. MOELLER: And when you say you're getting to 2 the root cause to solve each of these, you're including the 3 root cause of these problems?
4 MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes, sir.
5 DR. MOELLER: Thank you.
6 DR. REMICK: One other item along that line.
7 What about physical security requirements that almost kept 8 the operators from performing their tasks? Is that being 9 reviewed?
10 l MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes; that's been reviewed, and I
11 l there are some changes. We can't really discuss a lot of I
12 details, publicly, on what that is, but there have been
(~)
%J 13 changes. They are modifying the steam and feedwater rupture 14 control system to simplify some of the functions it was 15 doing and also to improve man-machine interface 16 reliability, or basically make it failure-proof, as they 17 used to tell us.
18 l One area where we're seeing a change from what we i
19 i looked at not too long ago is managment restructuring with 20 focus on nuclear mission. They are currently in the process 21 of forming a holding company with Cleveland Electric and 22 Toledo Edison. Therefore, some of the changes that they
'23 have made in management that they discussed with us earlier 24 are going to be somewhat altered by this. They haven't
() 25 given us the final resolution of what that will be. We
' ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.~ . _ _ . . _ --_ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ .
5410 05 07 55 1 received a memo, I believe, Monday.of this week, which
{}DAVbw 2 discusses some of the things they're doing, and they 3 basically say that they won't complete that until they 4 finish all' the work they're doing, get Davis-Besse on line.
5 Then they'll look at combining some adminstrative functions, 6 and so on. So there will be some management changes
~
7 occurring down the line, and we are going to look into 8 that.
9 DR. KERR: One can identify changes in management l
10 structure, but how do you determine that the new management
- 31. is better than the old?
12 MR. MC CRACKEN: In reviewing the new management
() ,
13 structure they're going to have, I think part of what you 14 have to review is the people you're putting into the 15 l position, their background, experience, where they come I
16 from, and do they appear to be people who are going to focus 17 on the nuclear mission, as the organization has been doing, certainly, since the June time frame of this year.
18-l 19 How we're going to handle it or far out we're 20 going to go with it, we haven't really determined. We've .
21 advised the Commission that this is occurring. It is 22 something we're interested in.
j 23 DR. KERR: Who are the experts in Management who 24 do this review?
() 25 MR. MC CRACKEN: I don' t think it's an area where ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 05 08 56
' DAVbw 1 we have done a lot of work in the past, so I believe we're 2 plowing new ground, as we get involved in this type of 3 issue, but I don' t believe that we can ig nore management, 4 because it's obvious that it has a very significant impact.
5 DR. KERR: I'm not suggesting that you ignore 6 it. I'm just curious as to how you determine that the new 7 structure is better than the old.
8 MR. MC CRACKEN: I don't think we ultimately have 9 that problem. We also have the problem of how do we 10 influence, if we choose to try to influence. We don't have 11 an SRP, which addresses management, but it's an area that 12 we're seeing that we have to be involved in, and I think
() '
13 we're in the beginning of getting involved in that issue.
14 DR. KERR: I'm more concerned that you improve 15 things than that you become involved in it, because if you 16 become involved in it, it could be that you're fouling 17 things up. I'm assuming that that won't occur, but I'm just 18 curious. The review of management is being done by the 19 normal group within NRC that does other things like whether 20 ! valves will work.
21 MR. MC CRACKEN: The review of management, we're 22 looking right now within the new organization the way it's 23 focused, to decide exactly where that should sit, where that 24 functionally should be reviewed and who should be reviewing
() 25 it.
i ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 05 09 57
[^)DAVbw 1 MR. WARD: Conrad, are there any explicit v
2 criteria that you' re looking to use when you review either 3 the people or when you review the structure of the 4 organization? Do you have any criteria?
5 MR. MC CRACKEN: I don't think we do now, because 6l if you look at the scope of what you see at various i
7 utilities around the country, it's a rather broad spectrum 8 of how they handle management claimed in the operating plant 9 level and whoever runs the plant.
10 I I think we' re j ust trying to get into this now. l l
i 11 l I think it's something that we're going to have as part of 12 the reorganization. We are going to review it, and we i
. () 13 haven't established the criteria yet. So the initial part 14 is going to be review it and see whether it looks logical, 15 whether it seems as though it will provide the focus that it 16 needs to provide under the nuclear mission and try to define i
I 17 criteria for going with it, or do you expect that there will 18 be some criteria identified, or will you just sort of pass 19 on people and pass on the organization?
20 - MR. MC CRACKEN: I would suspect that eventually 21 we're going to be watching the way the NRC has worked over 22 the years, developed criteria. I wouldn't care to guess as 23 to when that would occur, though.
24 DR. REMICK: Would you proceed, Conrad.
) 25 MR. MC CRACKEN: They have implemented a new ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 05 10 58 1 maintenance organization. This includes some fairly
[~)DAVbw v
2 substantive changes in people they've got and what they're 3 doing, what their functions are.
4 MR. REED: I'd like to know on that new 5 maintenance organization, sort of unlike Dr. Kerr's very 6 sticky question with respect to evaluating management, it's 7 not difficult to evaluate maintenance organizations. You 8 can use appropriate, validated aptitude testing.
9 I'd like to know, has this company now adopted 10 and will they use aptitude testing?
11 MR. MC CRACKEN: They have adopted a very i
12 j specific training program for their maintenance people, and i
13 j they have adopted the training council approach for their
(~)N
\- .
I 14 l maintenance people, where they have very specific guidelines 15 that they have to meet for each of these people.
16 MR. REED: So what you're saying is that they're 17 really going to try to polish all those people into being l
18 l maintenance workers. I hapnan to know that this company 1
19 does not use aptitude testing to determine the 20 craftsmanship, potential craftsmanship of people.
21 MR. MC CRACKEN: In the past, I have heard that 22 issue discussed, and I was aware that they had not, whether 23 they have any intent to use aptitude testing in the future, I don' t know. There is a representative of Toledo Edison 24 l 25 who could probably address that.
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5410 05 11 59 1 DR. SHEWMON: They seem to have done a pretty
(}DAVbw 2 good job of selecting cperators.
3 Do you know how they selected those who are the 4 maintenance people?
5 MR..MC CRACKEN: No. Toledo Edison could 6 probably comment'on how they select their people better than 7 I could.
8 DR. SHEWMON: Not all well-operated plants select 9 their people.
10 MR. REED: I'm glad you had the statistics, 11 because mine are different, if you'd like to compare.
12 DR. SHEWMON: Well, Millstone last time we heard tg), 13 from them, and they.were one exception. ,
14 DR. REMICK: Would you proceed, Conrad.
15 MR. MC CRACKEN: They're going to do a complete l
, 16 ' analysis to support installation of additional primary 17 . system depressurization capability, and I'll go into that in I
i a little more detail.
.18 l 19 This is to provide them something in addition to 20 I the core which they currently have.
21 MR. REED: I believJ they made some sort of 22 presentation that they would like to put primary blown-down j 23 valves in the top of the heaters; is that right? !
24 -
MR. MC CRACKEN: That's what they're doing the
^
/~T (j 25 analysis on. If the analysis supports that they can do 1
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-5410 05 12 60 DAVbw 1 that, their intent would be to do that by the next 2 refueling.
3 MR. REED: Thank you.
~4 MR. EBERSOLE:. If they're going to do that, are 5 they going to do it in the context that.they anticipate, 6 actually, if they descend into the real depths of the 7 emergency to boil this reactor and emit stream through those 8 blow down valves and not water?
9 MR. MC CRACKEN: The blow down valuves would be 10 at almost the highest point in the system.
11 l MR. EBERSOLE:. That's the advantageous geometry 12 i they have, but it requires that you depress the level in the N 13 i boiler. .
. \_
(~'/
[
14 j MR. MC CRACKEN: What it provides for, currently, 1
15 i with the core they have and the makeup pumps they have, if 16 within 20 minutes of total loss of feedwater, they initiate 17 bleed and feed, .they can prevent core uncovery. And they're t
18 l looking at preventing core uncovery.
19 MR. EBERSOLE:. Do they intend to do this by the 20 first premise of driving water through these valves or are 21 they going to deliberately depress the valves and go to the 22 simple boiling?
23 MR. MC CRACKEN: Initially, you have to assume 24 they're going to put water through the valves. What the 0) 5 w/
25 intent is by putting the additional relief capability on ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-5410 05 13 61
(] DAVbw 1 top of the candy canes and making it at a higher point, is w,'
2 that it would actually gain them time, where now they have, 3 say, 20 minutes for total loss of feedwater. And I don' t 4 have the numbers, so please don't write it down, that by 5 adding two additional relief capabilities on the primary 6 loop, they may have 30 minutes times to prevent core 7 uncovery between the initiation and total loss of feedwater, 8 because they can depressurize much more rapidly.
9 10 11 12 13 CJ -
14 15 16 l l
17 3 l
18 '
19 20 21 22 23 24 25 1
1 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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l
5410 06 01 62 DAVbur 1 MR. EBERSOLE: Is this seen as sort of a saving 2 grace for all the troubles they have had -- the dynamics of 3 the controls?
4 MR. MC CRACKEN: I don't think so.
5 MR. EBERSOLE: This is not a generic step?
6 MR. MC CRACKEN: No. This particular plant, 7 Davis-Besse, was unique in its bleed and feed capability 8 because of not having a high enough head and pwmp to cover 9 the core. So this was a unique situation. It is a 10 resolution that is plant specific to Davis-Besse.
11 it MR. MICHELSON: Are they going to design for 12 intermittent slug flow then through the devices?
( i 13 9 It is going to percolate unless you are assured that the waterline had dropped well down. There is a period 14 {
15 l of time where percolation will occur and you will have all i
I 16 steam. Initially you will have mostly water.
17 MR. MC CRACKEN: The particular devices they are 18 j looking at -- and they are looking at a broad scope of where 19 they are going to act -- are not going to be relief valves.
20 They are going to be various safety grade block valves.
21 MR. MICHELSON: I understand. That is why I said 22 whatever device they use. The problem with all devices of 23 this sort are slug flows, and they are not designed for it.
24 It is going to damage any device you use unless you are sure (n) 25 you are not going to hit it with intermittent water slugs.
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5410 06 02 63 I 1 MR. REED: This, I think, is the first beginning
(>)DAVbur 2 of something very important. I would like to quote Jesse.
3j The NRC should think about this possibly generic. I am glad 4 to find this first alternative mode of decay heat removal 5 enhancement. I think the NRC should focus on this and help 6 in the activity.
7 DR. REMICK: Beyond Davis-Besse?
8 MR. REED: Beyond Davis-Besse.
9 MR. MC CRACKEN: Okay.
10 (Slide.)
11 j Getting a little into our actual status on the i
12 safety evaluation, the management and programmatic aspects,
/~
(_T ,/ 13 ! this initially, with the focusing of management onsite, the I
14 ) movement of people to the site, and the engineering 15 l functions now being next to the site, certainly has provided 16 the opportunity to increase awareness of what is going on 17 ; and I think obtain a more aware management as to the i
18 I problems and how to solve the problems.
19 With the change and reorganization in forming the 20 holding company, we are not sure that the site organization 21 is going to be as close to the purse strings, to senior 22 management, as would be desirable. That is one of the 23 things we are looking at in our review.
24 The mair.tanance function -- and as you go through
( 25 each of these in the back, the narrative pretty much goes ace-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 06 03 64 1 down with what I will discuss, the maintenance function.
.(v}DAVbur 2 Some of the primary things they have done is to 3 increase the ratio -- or decrease the ratio, so now that 4 they have about one supervisor for every 10 workers in 5 maintenance, where in the past they had about one per 25.
~
6 It used to be that a maintenance supervisor spent 7 his entire time in an office doing paperwork. They have 8 given him a clerk to do paperwork, so now that the 9 maintenance supervisor has to spend the majority of his time 10 out at the site actually observing maintenance which is 11 going on.
i 12 MR. REED: What do you mean by out at the site?
() 13 MR. MC CRACKEN: If they are putting in a pump, 14 he is out watching them.
15 ' MR. REED: At the work station?
16 MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes.
17 !
The maintenance organization has a new planning l
18 function to try to give them a better method of controlling 19 critical path. This particular function right now on 20 planning is going through a lot of work trying to absorb all 1
21 the new things that are being identified in their systems 22 reviews as they are going through the whole plant and trying 23 to find out where that fits in on critical path so they can 24 ! get the plant back online.
() 25 MR. REED: How many maintenance people in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 06 04 65 1 combined electrical-mechanical? How many do they have in
(}DAVbur 2 their organization for Davis-Besse?
3 MR. MC CRACKEN: All I saw was a shrug of the 4 shoulders. I will give the number which I think is about 5 right, based on the last talk I heard. I think they have 6 got about 100 people total right now in maintenance. Some 7 of those I think may ba temporary. The permanent full-time 8 staff I think is about 60. I am not positive of that. That 9 is at least the ballpark of where they are.
10 DR. REMICK: That has been increased or is going 11 to be increased, am I correct?
12 MR. MC CRACKEN: It has been increased. The
() 13 permanent number has been increased significantly over what 14 they originally started with.
15 MR. REED: I have got no problem with the 16 number. I think it might be even more than adequate. I 17 would be concerned about the quality and the aptitude.
i lJ l DR. REMICK: Along that line, Conrad, in the next 19 month I wonder if you will find out from the licensee 20 whether they do use aptitude testing or not. I am sure the 21 staff will remind the licensee chat that is not a regulatory 22 requirement, but just so we knaw what the facts are.
23 MR. MC CRACKEN: I will be glad to.
24 In the procedures area they have gone through all
() 25 their ACOG procedures. They have reviewed the procedures ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 06 05 66 DAVbur 1 that the control operators need to utilise, and the intent 2 of that review was to go through the procedures with the 3 operators, having the operator identify any place that 4 looked like he might have a problem meeting what the 5 procedure says.
6 This is focused'back on the event of did the 7 operator know the steam generator dried out or not? The 8 answer was, well, he had to know that they were both less 9 than eight inches and the pressure was decreasing, and the 10 . operator said, hey, that is a little ambiguous. I can't I
11 really tell if it is dry in any simple, easy way.
12 So they have gone through all their procedures, 13 and the operators have looked through them and said, hey,
~)
14 here is a place where it says I have got to read this meter 15 ' and that meter isn't graduated well enough to tell me that 16 answer.
17ll Where they have found that, they have made i
18 i changes in procedures. The operators are being retrained in i
19 the procedures, such that they have eliminated that kind of 20 ambiguity.
21 In the case of steam generator dryout, instead of 22 defining it by looking at uwo level gauges, which are rather 23 inaccurate, and making a determination if pressure is 24 decreasing in the two generators, they simply go with 600
() 25 degrees Fahrenheit primary temperature on a very large ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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L 5410 06 06' 67 1/"3 DAVbur 1 safety grade gauge, which tells you easily that is where you
'V 2 are.
3 MR. MICHELSON: What are their plans concerning 4 simulator training?
5 MR. MC CRACKEN: All of their operators are being 6 run through simulator training.
7 I MR. MICHELSON: Which simulator?
8 MR. MC CRACKEN: The B&W simulator.
9 MR. MICHELSON: Does that simulator have the 10 auxiliary feedwater break detection in the control system?
11 MR. MC CRACKEN: I think I will let the li:ensee 12 answer that.
() 13 f DR. REMICK: Identify yourself first, please.
14 Ii MR. MYERS: My name is Ted Myers, Safety and 15 Licensing Director at Davis-Besse.
16 Simulator training is conducted at B&W's generic
, 17 l simulator, which has the control room layo'Jt, mostly 18 replicating the SMUD facility. During this last training
' 19 session we had installed better plant response in 20 programming the simulator as well as actually locking up our l 21 switch lineups, et cetera, so that we actually made the 1
22 control panel look like and the operator actions be able to i
23 be walked through like Davis-Besse. However, the plant 24 layout is not exactly like that.
() 25 MR. MICHELSON: My question is much more ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 06 07 68 1 specific than that. I think I understood the part you
)DAVbur 2 discussed.
3 You have added -- I have forgotten what the name 4 is -- the SFRCS. Is the SFRCS on the B&W simulator?
5 MR. MYERS: The effects of SFRCS are programmed 6 into the simulation. The actual buttons are not 7 functional.
8 MR. MICHELSON: That was my understanding. You
. 9 can' t do simulator training, which means going through the 10 actions, I thought, on the B&W simulator at the present 11 time?
12 MR. MYERS: That is correct.
() 13 MR. MICHELSON: So that part of the training will 14 be done by walking through on paper, I guess, or something?
15 MR. MYERS: It is actually done at the simulator 16 site, walking through, and any discrepancies we expect from 17 the actual response and the simulator have been done.
18 Simulator training was just completed for our 19 last SROs as a result of the upgrades in plant startup 20 design. .
21 , MR. MICHELSON: Are you getting a plant specific 22 simulator in the future?
23 MR. MYERS: Yes, sir. That is under 24 procurement.
() 25 MR. MICHELSON: What is the delivery date?
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/^N DAVbur 1 MR. MYERS: 1988 it will be completed and in
'b 2 operation.
3 DR. REMICK: And let me correct, that the SFRCS 4 system is automatic. The error came because the operator, 5 either to confirm action or anticipation of action, pressed i
6 i the wrong button. But actually it is an automatic action.
7 MR. MYERS: Yes, the steam feedwater rupture 8 control system is automatic and has been installed at 9 Davis-Besse before the event. The operator interface is 10 what was missing at the simulator, and again that was locked 11 up, not functional.
12 MR. MICHELSON: But the plant response is already
() 13 in the simulator, including the automatic?
14 DR. REMICK: That is my point. I think it is.
15 MR. WARD: But in answer to your question, in the 16 incident the operator anticipated the automatic action?
17 DR. REMICK: He either anticipated it or he was 18 l going to confirm it.
19 MR. WARD: He anticipated it and pressed the 20 wrong button?
21 MR. MYERS: Yes. That activity, of course, in 22 simulation can' t come through without actual real live 23 interface with the programming. That does not exist if the 24 generic simulator is used for training.
() 25 l MR. EBERSOLE: Does the system act with ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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(~';DAVbur 1 coincidence requirements so as not to make a mistake? Is it v
2 action confirmed by dual signals?
3 MR. MC CRACKEN: You are talking about the 4 simulator now?
5 MR. EBERSOLE: No, the actual system.
~
6 MR. MC CRACKEN: I don't believe I know what you 7 are asking.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: In a complicated control system 9 like that, you can have a single daisy chain of controls 10 that tells it to do something. You can then have a second confirmatory string that says both of them have to tell me.
11 l 12 ' It appears here there is a price to be paid for
() 13 y the wrong action. I am merely asking you if you employed 14 coincidence in the design'of the system.
15 DR. SHEWMON: He didn't design it.
16 MR. EBERSOLE: Well, whoever knows.
17 i MR. WARD: Mr. Myers, do you understand the k
18 question?
19 MR. MYERS: I am not sure I understand.
20 MR. EBERSOLE: In the coincidence systems you use 21 two signals to cause an accident take place. You require 22 both of them to go. Then you put a third one in.
23 MR. MYERS: To verify?
24 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a two out of three
() 25 function.
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5410 06 10 71 1 MR. MYERS: The SFRCS is two out two taken
}DAVbur 2 twice. The problem, however, in the operator action -- it 3 has been more of the man-machine interface and follow-up 4 verification. -
5 MR. EBERSOLE: But if left out by itself, it is a 6 two out of four, take your choice?
7 MR. MYERS: Yes.
8 MR. EBERSOLE: Thank you.
9 DR. REMICK: Will you proceed?
10 MR. MC CRACKEN: Then looking at the plant r
11 l review, the event specific investigations, root cause 12 reports, there are a total of 12 of those. We have g
( j 13 .A completed our review and find acceptable 10 of them. We are 14 still completing review on an additional two, two that we 15i have are not completed.
I 16 l One has to do with the pressure transient that L
17 i occurred in the steam lines subsequent to the event. The i
18 l other has to do with the motor operated valves and the 19 specific repairs that are being implemented.
20 They are into a very detailed program on 21 resetting all their motor operated valves, and that is one 22 of the other items that it appears could be critical path, 23 along with some of the maintenance elements, in getting the 24 plant back online.
() 25 DR. REMICK: By the way, did you cover the STA l
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,/'}DAVbur 1 and security?
Q./
2 MR. MC CRACKEN: I didn't, as a matter of fact.
3 I was looking at the clock and trying to rememoer. I think 4 I needed to be done by 10:30.
5 The shift technical adviser has been changed.
6 Instead of sleeping out at the front of the site and being 7 on 24-hour shift and not being near the control room, he is 8 now within the secured area complex, and he is within about 9 two minutes, and he is now on shift. So they have changed 10 what they do with their STA.
11 Security requirements. They have made changes to 12 their valve locking system, to how the operators have
() 13 access, to key card and locked areas to eliminate the 14 , concerns that occur as a consequence of maybe not being able 15 to get a valve unlocked or to get into an area.
16 DR. REMICK: Will we hear more about that at the 17 subcommittee? I would like to hear that in detail. Will 18 ! the staf f be able to provida more at the subcommittee 19 meeting?
20 MR. MC CRACKEN: I think we could. Some of it 21 would have to be ob,viously a closed meeting.
22 MR. MICHELSON: Have you bad to add more STAS?
23 Since they now have to go on shift,. you don't get the same 1
24 coverage. What have they dorse to get more STAS all of a
() 25 sudden?
l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 06 12 73 1 MR. MC CRACKEN: They had enough STAS to make the
(}DAVbur 2 change to 12-hour shif ts, which was their immediate action, 3 and they are training an additional group of STAS to go to 4 eight-hour shif ts, so that they will actually be rotating 5 the STAS as they do the normal shif t crews.
6 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
7 MR. MC CRACKEN: I think I covered that part of 8 it.
9 Review of other systems important to safety.
10 This particular program includes a look at all paths, LERs, 11 maintenance work orders, things that might indicate problems i
I with systems. They have found that that is a useful 12 l
/~h 13 ! exercise but not nearly as beneficial as interviewing
\j ,
14 operators and maintenance people.
15 For every system they established a systems 16 engineer who is in charge of that system. That person is 17 i responsible to go back and investigate what has gone on.
18 ' They have talked to various systems operators, plant 19 j operators. They have interviewed between a minimum of three 20 and a maximum of 35 peopla per system, with an average of 21 about 10 people per system, to have these people tell them 22 where they had difficulties in the past, where there were 23 recurring maintenance problems, where things didn't operate 24 , the way they were supposed to, and then went through this
- l
(_), 25 entire list and went looking at the system to determine ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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/' 1 root cause.
V)DAVbur 2 This particular program has resulted in them 3 adding an enormous amount of maintenance work orders to the 4 plant during the outage. Even though they have been working 5 away on maintenance work orders which were there in the 6 past,.the actual total numerical log has been increasing 7 because they are adding more to it all the time.
8 MR. MICHELSON: I have a comment and a little 9 problem.
10 If you focus on systems with five people to one 11 system, how do you assure the appropriate systems 12 integration, which is many times where the problems come in 13 in such emergencies?
f~)
x.
14 There are interactions that you hadn't thought of 15 or integration.
16 MR. MC CRACKEN: That is at the bottom of the 17 ! next slide, but we can get rid of it at this point.
I 18 l Each of these individual systems programs then 19 funnels through a series of review committees until they get 20 to an integrated committee, where they look at the entire 21 plant and all the integrated functions and where they tie 22 together.
23 Part of this entire program includes seven 24 integrated tests, to and including 100 percent reactor trip
() 25 tests, as they are going back through power escalation,
~
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[j)DAVbur x.
1 testing the various integrated functions of these systems to 2 see if .in fact they do perform as they are supposed to.
3 In this particular evaluation, they have gono 4 through all the Chapter 15 analysis, and we have ourselves 5 reviewed that. We have reviewed that they have identified
~
6 all systems important to safety, and that just doesn't mean 7 those identified as safety related but main feedwater 8 systems, and so on, which are not, and in trying to identify 9, those functions to be sure that we know what has to operate l
10 l and then define a testing condition that can be used to I
11 ' verify that it in fact will operate under the conditions it 12 is supposed to operate under.
/~T 13 ,
(_) ,
14 !
15 i 16 !
17 18 ;
i 19 l 20 21 22 t
3 23 24 ,
i) 25 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. '
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5410 07 01 76 O DAV/bc 1 Looking at the thermal transient ef fects, that
\.J 2 really wasn' t in the design basis for the steam generator 3 reactor vessel. It was not a very severe thermal transient.
4 (Slide.)
5 Then, to look at the plant modifications, the 6 specific modifications that have been made, this is a place 4 7 where we can gain t little time if we choose to do so. I've 8 listed an enclosure to the specific changes to SFRCS, the 9 auxilliary feedwater system, and the startup aotor-driven i
10 feedpump.
11 I have that on a series of about four slides, 12 summarized, but it is listed in that enclosure , too, for
].
() 13 I each of the systems. So I'll just be showing you what is in 14 the enclosure you've got. I can flip them up rather 15 rapidly.
16 (Slide.)
17 ; If there are any major questions that occur, 18 perhaps we can stop and ariswer any of them. On the SFRCS, 19 they are dele ting is 'ation of main steam and main feedwater 20 on low steam generator level because there was really no 5
21 good reason to isolate it on low level.
22 They are disabling auxilliary feeowater isolation 23 to last steam generator depressurized. That was a concern 24 over single failure that was identified in NUREG 1154, where s
O 2s vou coe1a wi#a en 1 otee1#a doeh eteem aemeretore e# eae 1ow ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 07 02 77 2
(3) DAV/bc 1 pressure signal.
2 Therefore , what this does is the first steam 3 generator depressurizes. It's isolated from aux feedwater.
4 The second one is maintained available for steaming. So you 5 don't totally isolate both of them.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Let me ask, why is the pressure 7 parameter significant to tell you you shouldn' t put water 8 in? If it's dry, you don' t have pressure. Isn' t it the 9 level parameter that you are concerned about?
10 I'm having a little difficulty.
MR. MCCRACKEN: What you' re looking at is a 11l 12 change which is going on. And this is one of the things (Q_) 13 that all the B&W plants are looking at, which is controlling 14 primarily on level versus pressure.
15 What they're looking at in the long-term is going 16 to strictly level control. They are considering in the 17 long-term, which are some of the items down at the bottom of 18I this.
19 MR. EBERSOLE: Depressurization is a sign. they're 20 runnina out of water, aren' t they?
21 MR. MCCRACKEN: It's also the sign of steamline 22 break. Perhaps what we were doing was focusing too much on a 23 an unlikely event being steamline break and having the 24 control logic set up to worry about a steamline break, when LI 25 in fact we should have been worried about boiling dry.
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[' DAV/bc 1 MR. EBERSOLE: You were talking about loss of 2 feedwa te r. You're designing to the break and getting the 3 loss of feedwater flow.
4 MR. MCCRACKEN: I agree. That's one of the 5 things that's being looked at now by them to try to get back 6 to the logic of the most probable event, is the loss of 7 feedwa te r. Therefore , you should be designing to try to end
'8 loss of feedwater.
9 MR. EBERSOLE: You put water than in a 10 depressurized secondary? Is that correct? Because you need 11 the eculpment. Then, how are you going to argue about the 12 bad consequences of that?
() 13 The reason for not doing that is you're going to 14 put your low steam into an open break.
15 MR. MCCRACKEN: Part of that is yo.: have to do 16 the analysis of how much you can af ford to blow in there and 17 ; what the consequences are. l 18 MR. EBERSOLE: But the first priority is to get 19 water in there , whe ther it's broken or not.
20 MR. MCCRACKEN: Yes.
21 MR. EBERSOLE: That's all I want.
22 MR. MCCRACKEN: I don' t disaaree with that at 23 all.
24 DR. REMICK: As I recall, on to the old system,
() 25 they had a dry steam generator was purely a definition, ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 07 04 79
,m
, t j DAV/bc 1 there was no water in the steam generator. And, the re fore ,
2 you should have pressure at that point if there was no 3 break.
4 So the way you defined dry steam was purely 5 arbitrary. There was still water and you still have 6 pressuce ; correct?
7 MR. MCCRACKEN: The point they defined as the dry 8 generator, they still had enough steam to run their 9 auxilliary feedwater-driven pumps, yes. I think the overall 10i picture tha t they' re trying to get to, long-term 11 ! modification to SFRCS, then they do this conditional l
12l analysis. They want to maintain all auxilliary feedwater O
.t.mj 13 valves open and eliminate automatic closure signals.
14 MR. EBERSOLE: If you're doing all of this, it 15 seems that almost all of them would have the generic flavor 16 to these B&W once-throughs. And, in the background, I guess
(
17' you look at a field of other ways that this is done at the l
18 I other B&W plants and contemplate , at least, maybe you're 19 doino a generic design here.
20 Are you doing that? -
21 MR. MCCRACKEN: The B&W owners group are very 22' much involved with this particular set of changes that are l
23 going on. They are going to get back to us on a plant-24 specific basis by May of this year, having looked at exactly
\- 25 what's going on at Davis-Besse.
i ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 07 05 80 1 MR. EBERSOLE: I think what may have happened
(~J)
% DAV/bc 2 here might be a helpful thing for all B&W plants.
3 MR. MCCRACKEN: I think, if you were not a member 4 of Toledo Edison sitting there with a plant shutdown for as .
5 long as it's been, you might agree that this is probably a 6 healthy event.
7 MR. WARD: Conrad, the logic of this system 8 though, there was an original basis for it. That is, 9 concern about the effect of the steamline break. Nex t
, 10 year's incident might be a steamline break.
11 Are you confident that the emphasis isn' t being 12 changed too far?
I) v 13 MR. MCCRACKEN: I think so. We ' re looking at 14 that very closely, at what they' re trying to accomplish, and 15 you really have to be careful not to over-emphasize some-16 thing which is a really unlikely event, and focus all of 171 your attention on an unlikely event, when ignoring the i
18l primary event that is going to occur.
19 I think that's what occurred here.
20 MR. WARD: Yes, but the system is supposed to be 21 able to deal with both events. Unless we ' re concluding the 22 steamline break is incredible, we don' t have to worry about 23 it, you still have to nava a system that can deal with that.
24 MR. MCCRACKEN: Rig h t . And I think the way we ' re
() 25 dealing with it is, in this case , we ' re trying to do the ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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( ,yf DAV/bc 1 initial change is to only isolate the first generator 2 depressurized, saying, Okay, that's where the break was. So 3 we ' re considering a break.
4 But you still feed the other end because you've 5 got to remove heat. Then , long-te rm, we ' re saying , Hey, 6 maybe the best way to handle that isIp3 ahead and open all 7 the valves on the auxilliary feedwater system; because the 8 most logical thing you're going to need is wa ter for 9 cooling, but have a safety-grade capability of shutting.
10 And because the steamline break is the less likely event, 11 you've got a safety-grade capability to shut it and you're 12 protected from steamline break if you need to be.
( ,) 13 But it is a less likely event still. Instead of 14 having the valve flows first, then you have to reopen it, 15 let's assume we need to keep this thing cool to start with 16 and have that be our primary concern.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: The steamline break can occur 18 either in one or two places -- outside containment or inside 19 containment. If it's inside and you keep feeding it, you're 20 going to blow the containment.
21 MR. MCCRACKEN: Inside is one of the big 22 worries. That's what you've got to look at very closely, 23 how much water you can drop into containment.
24 MR. EBERSOLE: Ou ts ide . So you boil a lot of
'O s- 25 steam 'all over the place , and you maybe induce chill. You ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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[
m 4
5410 07 07 82 DAV/bc 1 put supervisory circuits in that define where the break is,
{
- 2 like containment pressure , to discriminate?
3 MR. MCCRACKEN: I don' t believe that Davis-Besse 4 has that installed at this time. I don' t know of any intent 5 to do so at this point.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: Isn't that significant to know 7 where the break is in that way?
8 MR. EBERSOLE: It's significant to know whether 9 the break is inside or outside containment. But I believe 10 there are cuite a few indicatars you have that will tell you 11 that.
12 MR. EBERSOLE: But that's not automatic? There's (s 13 no automatic bias on what you do to this control system.
It's whether it's inside or outside.
14 l 15 MR. MCCRACKEN: No, and I don' t think, based on 16 what I've heard about their discussion, based on what 17 they' re looking at in terms of long-te rm changes , that the re 18 would be any intent to do tha t .
19 MR. EBERSOLE: The real worry is if it's inside.
20 MR. MCCRACKEN: It would certainly be more 21 desirable to have it outside containment, if you're going to 22 have one.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: All right.
24 (Slide.)
25 MR. MCCRACKEN: Looking at a few more of the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 07 08 83 1 specific modifications, these are to the auxilliary
(~)/
s_ DAV/bc 2 feedwater system. They're going to maintain the auxilliary 3 feedwater turbine steam inlet lines hot by pressurization, 4 and they' re installing a new inlet valve, which is 5 associated with the reliability of not having that turbine 6, overspeed when you first initiate steam to it.
i 7 Talk about the torque limits, which is for 8 motor-operated valves , that's a major item they're working 9 on.
10 They've installed a new governor on the auxilliary feedpump turbine number one. This is the same as 11l one that was replaced earlier in auxilliary feedpump turbine 12 ll ,
![ ) 13' two. They've opened and removed the hand-wheels and 14 depowered the suction valves from the condensate storage 15 tank. This is to eliminate a concern for that being a 16 common mode of failure to supply of water. .
17 They've added a 10-second time delay and revised i
18l the pressure set point for the auto transfor to the service 19 water system. This is just to prevent having spurious 20 transfers of service water, which then puts the operator in 21 the position where he's got to be shifting back to a 22 condensate storage tank and he's doing operations that he 23 really shouldn' t have to do.
24 They will test this to ensure that these changes
() 25 haven' t altered the ability of that system to perform its ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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I 5410 07 09 84 1 function. That actually will be draining down the
()DAV/bc 2 condensate storage tank to the right level and watching that 3 trip function take place.
4 MR. REED: A lot of these things, such as trying 5 to get all the valves in the safety system in the open 6 position so you can get them open.
7 MR. MCCRACKEN: In the aux feed system.
8 MR. REED: Okay. You can rely on checkvalves.
9 When you begin to rely on checkvalves, you must always make 10 sure that the maintenance is good, because of water hammer 11 problems and backflowing problems. So I'm sure that these 12 people will be aggressive as they do this, that the y ' re
<x
(_f 13 checkvalve maintenance is good. -
14 One - thing I'd like to ask, in the systems and all 15 the changes that you've now seen, who is responsible for the 16 original design? Was it the utility? For the original 17 1 design of what I would call vulnerability of putting in four I
18 steam-driven pwmps to provide for auxilliary feedwater 19 capability.
20 Who was the responsible partner? Who came out 21 with this judgment?
22 MR. MCCRACKEN: The auxilliary feed system, I 23 believe, they'll correct me if I'm wrong, was an AE design.
24 MR. MYERS: Ted Mye rs , again , from
( 25 Toledo-Edison.
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)
('DAV/bc 1 As all balance of plant designs for original 2 construction at Davis-Besse , the architect-engineer was the 3 prime designer. However, it was reviewed and approved by 4 Toledo-Edison. The design at the time.
5 MR. REED: It was also reviewed and approved by i
6 the NRC; right?
7 MR. MYERS: The original design at the time, 8 however, to place it in the timeframe , was in the early 9 seventies. And I believe a lot of input was taken from 10 other non-B&W type designs that the AE was working on at the i
11; time for auxilliary feedwater.
i l
12! MR. REED: In other words, he didn' t recognize
() - 13 the dif ference between a B&W with no inventory or low 14 inventory steam and a huge jug of pressurized water.
15 MR. MYERS: If there was that recognition it didn't reflect itself in the lack of complication of the 16j 17' sys tem .
18 MR. REED: Thank you.
19 DR. REMICK: Carl, did you have a question?
i 20 MR. MICHELSON: Ye s . You say you removed hand-21 wheels? What do you mean by that? Remove them from the 22 vicinity? Put them beside the valve? Or, what do you mean?
23 MR. MCCRACKEN: The hand-wheels were physically 24 removed from the valves. Whether they' re hung beside them O
(-)
I 25 or not, I don't know.
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k:
!/54100711 86 j[( DAV/bc 1 MR. MICHELSON: It's kind of like this physical
[ 2 security bit. If you go too far, what happens in an 3 emergency if you have a pipe break?
4 DR. REMICK: Le t's hear the answer.
5 MR. MYERS: That particular supply line to the 6 auxilliary feedpumps was installed in the original design 7 and came from a very hot source of water. They we re the aux 8 feedpumps that were delivered. The seals will fail under 9 that temperature of wa ter. So those have always been 10 isolated lines to the system and its backup wa te r supplies ,
11 like this system also. As reliability evaluation would lend 12 you to try to eliminate all possibility of lining that
~ I
(<
- 13l lineup to the pump inadvertently, so the valves or shut 14 handwheels are removed comple tely.
15 MR. MICHELSON: This is open, not shut. This 16 bullet up here says: Open and remove handwheel and 17 3 depower. I just wondered why all of those.
t 18 ! MR. hYERS: I'm sorry. Tha t's to the storage l
19 I tank.
20 MR. MICHELSON: This is for the conde n sa te 21 storage tank, I assume.
22 MR. MYERS: In that case, these are suction 23 valves and they, themselves , are removed comple tely.
24 MR. MICHELSON: The handwheel is removed. Is it
(~' , I
_) 25 just taken away, never to appear?
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I 5410 07 12 87 I'D DAV/bc V 1 MR. MYERS: That's correct.
2 MR. MICHELSON: What happens if you break the 3 pipe and the condensate storage tank is filling a 4 compartment somewhere? Do you assure yourself there are 5 other valves you could close?
6 MR. MYERS: I think we've assured ourselves that 7 we don't care as much about filling the compartment as we do 8 about making sure.
9 MR. M'ICH ELSON : It's the same problem with 10 industrial security. People worry about locking all the 11l doors. Now I start worrying about having valves handy but 12 not being able to operate them in an emergency.
() 13 MR. MYERS: If the pipes were broken in that 14 vicinity, we probably can' t ge t to it. If it's not broken i
15l in that vicinity and we' re worried about draining into a I
16l compar tment , obviously. . .
17! MR. MICHELSON: I assume you've gone through an i
18 j analysis of some sort before you took drastic actions like 19 inactivating a valve. That's the question really.
20 MR. FLOWER: Olin Flower.
21 The test action plan item 2E-ll requires that all 22 valves in the suction of a pump such as this be open. In 23 this case , we 've actually had them where they' ve convinced 24 themselves to consider these valves now as just a piece of j
() 25 pipe. The valves are open and the handwheels are removed.
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5410 07 13 88 DAV/bc 1 So, for all practical purposes, that's a piece of 2 pipe there , not a valve .
3 MR. MICHELSON: All I'm really trying to say is 4 that somebody else sometime or other did an analysis of pipe 5 breaks in which they say, Okay, if the pipe breaks here, 6l i I'll run over here and close this valve.
7 Now, has that analysis been re-reviewed to make 8 sure tha t valve wasn' t there for some other function and 9i might have to be turned, closed in a particular emeroency 10 that you've already written of f because you had the valve?
11 MR. FLOWER: In our review of this particular 12 application, the utility did not question when we imposed
~
13l 2E-ll upon them. So I've got to assume that, ye s , they made I
14i that study and found it satisfactory.
I 15 MR. MICHELSON: I'm assuming tha t , at the moment, 16l I was trying to get an answer that, yes, that study has been l
17 done. They' ve de te rmined tha t this valve is not at all 18l needed and can be treated as a piece of pipe for all 19 eme rge ncie s .
20' MR. MYERS: That's correct.
21 MR. MICHELSON: You've done that analysis?
22 MR. MYERS: Actually, the review of why the valve 23 was there did not show a rigorous analysis originally of why 24l it was at tha t location.
j (e,) 25 MR. REED: I'm sympathe tic to what Carl is ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
I 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646
5410 07 14 89 DAV/bc 1 saying. I worry about over-reaction and over-focusing on 2 the incident of yesterday.
3 MR. MICHELSON: Forge tting about the study of the 4 day be fore .
5 DR. REMICK: Could we proceed? We have about 6 five more minutes to wrap it up.
7 DR. KERR: Excuse me. Where are we going to put 8 that handwheel? Are we going to put it in the garbage dump?
9 MR. MICHELSON: The garbage dump apparently, 10 well-removed.
11, DR. MARK: Take your valve , too, and just put in i
12 a piece of pipe.
(") 13 MR. EBERSOLE: Just on the subject of pumps 14 for auxilliary feedwater, how many are there?
15 MR. MCCRACKEN: Suction pumps for auxilliary 16! feedwa te r? I've got that on the last picture you've got, l
17 the schematic.
MR. FLOWER: Be careful there now. If you have 18l i
the two schematics, you have the startup, I believe it might 19l 20 not show them there. It would on the June 9 th or whatever 21 schematic.
22 MR. EBERSOLE: They're a single-line suction 23 point; righ t? A single suction line.
24 (Slide.)
,y
) 25 What do I do with the workmen while you've got ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 3
4 5
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8 9
10 11 12 (7
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5410 08 01 91 DAVbur 1 MR. MC CRACKEN: You have got two tanks. I know 2 this doesn't show up. That is why I made sure they gave me 3 one in the handout. You have got two tanks and one suction 4 pump for the condensate storage tank and a condensate pump 5 for the second degree water supply. The second degree water 6 supply is the service water.
7 MR. EBERSOLE: In any case, I focus down to one 8 pipe, and I guess I will have no stoppage of that. I have 9 got multiple suction points. I just intuitively don't like 10 single track suction pipes.
11 Has that been looked at?
l 12 l MR. MC CRACKEN: The review program that Toledo
{} 13 l Edison is doing -- and we are going to review, but haven't 14 reviewed because they haven't completed it yet -- is the 15 review of all their systems, and in reviewing systems they 16 are reviewing functions and why things are the way they 17 are.
i 18 ' We are trying to go back to the original design 19 basis and make a determination before they modify something 20 what the purpose of it was and the stated intent of what it 21 is going to be used for. In fact, is that the best purpose 22 to use it for?
23 They are documenting that in these individual 24 system reviews that they are doing.
() 25 MR. EBERSOLE: It is a point of vulnerability ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 08 02 92 DAVbur 1; here where you both tie up the condensate storage tank as
, 2 well as those tanks?
3 MR. MC CRACKEN: It is, but looking at ultimate 4 decay heat removal you still do have service water backup 5 available.
MR. EBERSOLE: Thank you.
6l 7 DR. REMICK: I suggest we proceed.
8 In the subcommittee meeting, if they should 9l%'.ctuallycometojustifywhatevertheyintendto improve on i
10 ! tt:at, we anticipate there will be additional questions.
11 MR. MC CRACKEN: I am sure.
12 The remainder of the specific items are in
~
1
') 13 ! Enclosure 2, which I gave you in the handout.
l 14 l (Slide.)
15 Looking at, then, the summary of major open items 16 I needing resolution prior to restart, we have concarns about 17 the effectiveness of new maintenance organizations they will 3
18 y put in place. They are doing an enormous amount of work, but any time you bring in a complete influx of rew people, 19 l 20 you bring in now management, it is going to ta'te them a 21 while to shake out and see how it operates.
22 We are looking for a demonstration of how good it 23 works. We went out with a team onsite and re.'iewed it as 24 they initially got into position. We now intend to go out
')
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'N DAVbur 1 progress since they started.
a 2 They recently had an event which was not too 3 complimentary to the new organization. The startup feed 4 pump which they had installed, the new feed pump, when they 5' went to start testing it they had some difficulty with the 6 recire valve on it.
7 They disasserabled the recirc valve. They found 8 out there were pieces of metallic debris in it. They went 9 back to check their strainer and see what was wrong and 10 found that they had not installed a strainer to clean the 11 i system as they were doing the recirc testing of it.
12 That gave them concern that maybe they had
~', 13 ! damaged the pump. They disassembled the pump and found in 14 f fact a few manufact'uring defects within the pump casing, i
15 l which they had to send back and get repaired.
16 So they did have some difficulties. One thing I
17 ' was that they did test and find it and looked at the cause 18 and are getting it repaired. The other was it still 19 occurred. So they are having some dif ficulties getting 20 everything finalized.
21 Demonstration of functionality of the systems 22 important to safety.
23 We have a full-time crew ensite from the t:RC 24 involved in this review of the systems and the systems test
' ') 25 l program. We are reviewing them as they review them. We ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 08 04 94 l DAVbur 1 have reviewed all the functions. We are satisfied they have 2 identified all the functions that need to be tested and all 3 the systems.
4 We are now getting down to writing individual 5 systems test programs and integrated systems test programs 6 to demonstrate that everything will function the way it is 7 supposed to, considering the amount of maintenance they have 8' done and the amount of changes they have made in some of 9l these systems and modifications.
10 I think it is unrealistic not to anticipate they 11 j are going to have some problems. The shakedown of some of 12 these systems are going to cause some difficulties. Some
~'} 13 things will fail. They are going to have to go back and 14 ' determine root cause, go back and rerepair it.
I 15 '; So we anticipate the actual startup, going 16 { through these system tests, which go all the way through I
17 full power operation, is going to be a rather lengthy 18 program.
19 ; And the other point is the staff review is not 20 ; yet complete. There are a few items that we haven' t 21 resolved between staff and licensee.
22 Some of the staff members would like that third 23 , pump to have an automatic start on it. The licensee, for 24 : some reason, would like to keep it manual start. They don' t
/[ l 25 ' like the idea of having three pumps start automatically.
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l 5410 08 05 95
' DAVbur 1 It may be ov,erfeeding the generator.
2 The staff has concerns that the suction strainer f
i 3 on that drawing in the last diagram, which is on the 4 condensate pump suction line, is being left in. Staff 5 doesn't want any strainers in. The licensee said, hey, the 6 condensate storage tank is a nonsafety-related system, we 7 want to keep that strainer in there in case we have a 8 failure in this nonsafety-related tank, any kind of seismic l
9l event or something, and have our safety grade service water 10 system available, which doesn' t go through a strainer.
11 l So that type of issue is still outstand _ng. We 12 l are trying to get it resolved between ourselves.
( ') 13 r MR. REED: As I recall, the Davis-Besse B&W plant 14 is somewhat different from all other B&W plants. It has 15 t elevated steam generators, is that correct?
MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes. It is a raised loop 16 17 ll'style.
18 MR. REED: It is a unique system compared to the 19 l other seven or eight, and I wondered a little bit about the 20 concern on steam generator overfeed, if it isn't as much of 21 a concern with elevated steam generators as it is always a 22 concern.
23 Is the staff aware of this?
24 MR. MC CRACKEN: We are aware of this. Now, you
[l are getting into the area of personal opinions, not things 25 ll ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 08 06 96 DAvbur 1 we have discussed with the rest of staff.
2 Certainly, one thing that seems logical maybe to 3 consider is instead of allowing the generator level to drop 4 after a scram, as they now do, down to 30 inches, they 5 maintain about 50 or 60.
6 MR. REED: You know why they do that, I assume?
7 MR. MC CRACKEN: Yes.
8 MR. REED: Well, it seems to me that I wouldn't 9 be doing that.
, 10 MR. MC CRACKEN: I think again each of us has a 11 personal opinion on how we think it should be handled or 12 considered.
/'}
\_/
13 All we can say in this case is that they are 14 doing some fairly thorough analysis to see what they can do 15 to improve the margins they have or the times they have 16 during transients.
17 DR. REMICK: Any other questions for Conrad? Any i
18 l other concluding remarks from Conrad?
l 19 ' (No response.)
. 20 DR. REMICK: I have a request from one committee 21 member for the subcommittee meeting that he would be 22 interested in the failure success rate on operator licensing 23 at the plant and any changes that are anticipated that might 24 affect that. At the subcommittee meeting that would be
()
25 fine.
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'yDAVbur 1j If there are no other questions, I want to thank i 2 you for a nice, concise p*:esentation and for finishing 3 within our time limit. We will see you on the 6th of 4 February in the subcommittee.
5 MR. MC CRACKEN: Okay.
6 MR. WARD: Let's break and return at 11:00 7 o' clock.
8 (Recess.)
9 MR. WARD: Our next topic for discussion is a 10 briefing, first from the staff and then for the substantial I
11 I part representatives from TVA, a briefir.g on the program of 3
12 reorganization of the nuclear activities at TVA.
13 ' First, a word to the subcommittre. This first 14 ) hour of presentation is intended to inform us, bring us up 15 , to the current level on the status of the program at TVA and 16 ! the activities.
i.
17 j After hearing that, following lunch, we have 18 allotted another 45 minutes or so just for committee i
19 j discussion, taking what we have heard in this morning's 20 briefing after lunch to spend some time so that the 21 committee can decide whether or not it believes it should 22 play a more substantial role in reviewing the TVA program 23 than it has in the past and, if so, how the committee should 24 ' go about it.
25 If you would keep that in mind, if we have some
'~')
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l l l
5410 08 08 98 yN$ DAVbur 1 time after lunch, we would like to discuss that.
l G j 2 To start out, I will introduce Hugh Thompson, of
} 3 the NRC staff, NRR, whom Mr. Denton described this morning 4 as playing a leading role for the NRC in monitoring this 5 reorganization effort.
6 Mr. Thompson.
7 MR. THOMPSON: Thanks, Mr. Ward. We certainly 8 appreciate the opportunity to address the ACRS today on an 9 issue which the staff identified as one of the four major 10 items and areas in its 50.54( f) letter to TVA, along with 11 the specifics on the various sites.
12 i Corporate was one which we felt was extremely I
13 ' important and a key element that we are reviewing prior to
(~J) u 14 restart.
15 As you know, recently TVA announced a significant 16 change in their corporate structure, which we, the staff, 17 j briefod the Commission on earlier this week and TVA in fact 18 l briefed the Commission on yesterday.
19 Part of the Commission's view of this step was 20 that it was certainly an important step that indicated 21 aggressive action was being taken by TVA on this matter and 22 that our review of the submittals that have been before us 23 is kind of being held in abeyance, giving the new manager at 24 TVA and Mr. White an opportunity for him to look at the
() 25 ' activities that have been planned, those that are ongoing, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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[^S DAVbur 1 and then report back to the committee.
\_J 2 So at this time the Commission's view of the 3 corporate matters are pretty much being held in abeyance 4 pending TVA reaffirming their previous submittal. I would 5 think it would be appropriate for TVA to describe the 6 details of these corporate changes that have been made.
7 They are here today to do that.
8 -
So without me getting into further telling what 9 TVA did, I think Jim Hufham and Chuck Mason of TVA are here 10 to provide some specific details, and at the end of their 11 presentation if there are any particular questions, either 12 of the staff or to TVA, we would be pleased to respond.
13 MR. WARD: Thank you.
(
14 l Mr. Hufham.
I 15 MR. HUFHAM: Thank you, Hugh.
16 We do want to thank the committee today for 17 i asking us to come back. We were here in October, wnere I l
18 l talked to you, and we described as many changes to'our 19 organization as we could at that time.
20 I At that meeting I announced that we would have 21 several significant changes coming, one of which would be 22 Chuck Mason would be returning to assume the position in 23 charge of our nuclear operations. Since that time he has 24 returned. He is fulfilling that job. He is also our Deputy 25 Manager in the Office of Nuclear Power.
( })
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5410 08 10 100 DAVbur 1 Chuck will be going into more detail today than I 2 was able to go into in October. The agenda is before you, 3 and we have handouts of the slides Mr. Mason will be using.
4 So with that comment, I would like to introduce 5 Chuck, who will make our presentation on the 6 reorganization.
7 MR. MASON: I am Chuck Mason, Deputy Manager of 8 the Office of Nuclear Power at TVA.
9 Also, as Jim indicated, I have a seccnd title and 10 a second hat as Manager of Nuclear Operations, directly 11 responsible for the three operating sites of the Nuclear 12 Services Division.
{} 13 14 (Slide.)
As shown by the agenda, my pr'esentation consists 15 of a management overview and an update on the issues at each 16 site.
17 l Because of time constraints we can't possibly 1
18 l address each item in detail. So I intrite your questions at 19 any time. I hope to allow time for questions at the end, so I
20 ' that we can assure that we actually cover what you 21 specifically wanted to hear.
22 As the TVA Board told the NRC Commissioners 23 yesterday, the TVA nuclear program is in great difficulty.
24 The TVA Board is committed to restoring the confidence of
() 25 NRC, the Tennessee Valley Region, and the nation in TVA's ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 08 11 101 7N DAVbur 1 ability to safely and efficiently operate its plants. TVA
\s) 2 has taken aggressive steps toward that goal.
3 I would like to preface my presentation this 4 morning by confirming and explaining an item that Hugh 5 mentioned and that you have heard about here in the past 6 week.
7 Last Friday, the TVA Board announced that the TVA 8 was bringing a new top manager to the agency for the entire 9 nuclear program, retired Admiral Steve White. He starts 10 next Monday, January 13th.
11 Mr. White served in the Navy for 33 years and 12 retired after serving as a four-star admiral in charge of
~T 13 the Navy's Materiel Command. This command consisted of (J
14 250,000 people and was responsible, among other things, for procuring the Navy's ships, including their nuclear ships, 15 l 16 their aircraft, the electronic systems, shore facilities and I
17 i other Navy supplies.
18 j l He is a product of the nuclear Navy, and his 19 l experience in the nuclear Navy ranged from serving aboard
. 20 the Navy's first nuclear submarine to serving as an 21 assistant to Admiral Rickover, and at one time he was 22 commander of ninety nuclear powered submarines.
23 Mr. White comes to TVA for two years on an 24 employeo loan through a contract with Stone & Webster
() 25 Engineering Corporation.
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5410 08 12 102 DAVbur 1 We have clearly defined Mr. White's role. ~he N
2 TVA Board entered into a written agreement, a written 3 memorandum of understanding, between him and the TVA Board 4 of Directors that astablishes the objective of providing TVA 5 with the management capability so that at the end of two 6 years the TVA nuclear program will be approved and TVA will 7 have enhanced capability to manage the program with 8I permanent TVA personnel.
9 That is the basic charge the Board has given.
10 The essence of the memorandum of understanding is that I
11 ! Mr. White has the responsibility and authority to manage our 12 total TVA nuclear program.
13 i Some of the highlights of this memorandum of 14 i understanding are:
I 15 Mr. White will have direct authority and 16 l responsibility for the management, control, and supervision 17 of TVA's entire nuclear program, including but not limited 18 k to the design, construction, maintenance, and operation of 19 all existing and planned TVA facilities. This includes the 20 authority to establish management and operating policies, 21 procedures related to TVA's nuclear power program, including 22 any aspect of personnel management, training, and 23 communications.
He has direct access --
24 l
(', 25 MR. REED: I sort of rate success in nuclear ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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p/ DAVbur 1 activities in three components: people, equipment, and w
2 design.
3 Did you say that Mr. White would really have the 4 ability to control all three?
5 MR. MASON: Yes, sir, he definitely does have 6 that authority.
7 8
9 10 11 12 O 13 .
14 1
15 16 17 l 18 l
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[~ DAVbw 1 DR. MOELLER: To whom does he report?
Ns 2 MR. MASON: He reports directly to the general 3 manager and the board of directors. The general manager is 4 -- I don' t know how to describe it. He's the right arm of 5 the board of directors.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:. What happened to the dominant 7 position that personnel used to have in operations? You 8 know, you got your people sent to you from a rather distant 9 and certainly not very cognizant personnel department rather 10 than getting them through the more intimate path of 11 assessing their ability and getting them that way.
12 MR. MASON: I think I can address that better on I'd (J
13 a later slide. .
14 MR. EBERSOLE:. All right; fine. I didn't see 15 it.
16 MR. MASON: Subject to certain reservations of 17 ; authority that have been invested in the board by the TVA i
18 l Act, Mr. White is authorized to hire, remove and assign TVA 19 contract personnel as he deems necessary and to redirect or 20 restructure the activities and functions of TVA offices, 21 insofar as nuclear power activities are involved. He has 22 direct responsibility for providing nuclear power budget and 23 financial information and developing and directing budgets
- 24 for approval. The internal TVA activities and functions l( ) 25 necessary for the successful operation of the nuclear l
l '
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5410 09 02 105 DAvbw 1 program, including the Nuclear Safety Review Staf f, shall 2 report to Mr. White. He is authorized and directed by the 3 board to cooperate fully with the United States Nuclear 4 Regulatory Commission and any other agency or entity, 5 governmental or otherwise with jurisdiction over or 6i interest in TVA's nuclear power program, to assure the safe, 7 reliable and efficient design, construction and operation of 8 TVA's facilities.
9 He'll be responsible for all aspects of TVA's 10 , relations with NRC and other agencies or entities.
11 Mr. White's first effort will be in analyzing, 12 , over the next 30 days, details of TVA's most serious i
^1 13 ! technical, nanagement and communications problems. At the 1 ,
end of that time, he will report his evaluations of the 14 l 15 i situation and his plans for corrective action to both the 16 l board and the NRC.
17 I'm sure that you recognize the significant i
18 j recent announcement that the authority which the board has 19 given Mr. White and the comments I make today regarding the 20 organizational and plans, are subject to change. Mr. White 21 will be on board one day of next week. As I said, he'll be 22 evaluating our situation and developing his own plan of action.
23 l 24 I personally don't anticipate sweeping changes, 25 but I recognize and ask that you also recognize that there
[v')
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' - DAVbw 1 will be some changes.
2 Until specific changes are identified, we're 3 proceedir.g in accordance with our docketed, performance 4 improvement plan.
5 MR. MICHELSON: Question. You haven't showed us 6i the slides in the handout of the organization of this Office 7 of Nuclear Power. I do have it here in front of me, and 8 and it lists a whole lot of names, but very few vacancies.
9 Was this already agreed to by Mr. White? This 10 ! organization. Or is this the one subject to change?
11 l MR. MASON: This is 9 one that's subject to i
12 change.
^') 13 l MR. MICHELSON: This was prior to his coming 14 i aboard.
15 MR. MASON: This is the one in effect as of 16 : today.
I 17 I MR. MICHELSON: So this is part of what you see 18 that we might see changed?
19 ! MR. MASON: There'll be some refinements. As I 20 ; say, I don' t anticipate sweeping changes.
21 MR. EBERSOLE:. Fine. One other quetilin while 22 I've interrupted you. Is it anticipated that rs. rtite be 23 l in Chattanooga?
l 24 ' MR. MASON: He will be in Chattanooga.
'^)_s 25 li MR. EBERSOLE:. Thank you, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. I 202 347 3700 Nationwide Coserage 800 336 6646
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' (^}DAVbw 1 MR. REED: One other point. Mr. White comes to
\_/
2 you from the Navy. The Navy, for many, many years, in the 3 nuclear Navy has used aptitude screening and testing for its 4 nuclear Navy personnel.
5 Do you anticipate you might impose that?
6 MR. MASON: The management supervisory people we 7 do not currently use an aptitude test battery of the same 8 nature as the Navy does. For our operators and craft 9 people, we do use general aptitude battery. I don' t think 10 l he'll change that. He may want to go to something 11 particularly in our body end training input to use in 12 , aptitude test battery for engineers. I don't know that he
/~T 13 would, though, but that's a good possibility.
t_s . :
14 ' MR. MICHELSON: One more question, as long as 15 you're interrupted.
16 There has been in the press media talk about a l l 17 , nuclear consultant to the board.
l 18 l Is that still valid, or is this gentlemen now 19 going to take that function?
20 MR. MASON: This gentleman, because of his 21 experience and background, and the board feels like they no 22 longer have to have a separate nuclear consultant.
l 23 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
l 24 MR. MASON: I feel like we've made significant t( ) 25 progress in the last few months, and we have a solid course I
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/',DAVbw 1 of action laid out. As I indicated, I don't anticipate 2 sweeping changes but there will be refinements.
3 MR. EBERSOLE:. Could I ask a question of the old 4 Office of Power? I don't see any reference to that.
5 MR. WARD: Jesse, do you think that'll come up as 6; he moves along? We haven't given him a chance to get off.
I 7l MR. MASON: The old Office of Power no longer has 8 anything to do with the nuclear program, as of three months 1
9 ago or six months ago.
I 10 l MR. EBERSOLE:. All right. That eliminates h
11 l that.
i 12 MR. MASON: Of course, we still coordinate with 13 the operation people on dispatching power.
14 l MR. EBERSOLE:. Do they still order what plants 15 j they need?
16 l MR. MASON: We have a Power Supply Planning Group I
17 ' that looks at long-range facility needs; yes.
18 ' (Slide.)
19 i To begin discussing where we are, I'll put this 20 slide back up which we showed to you in October. This is l
21 l the organization that was put in place in July 1985. One of 22 the things it did was to bring all the key players in the i
23 ! nuclear program under one single manager, Hugh Parris, I
i 24 ' reporting directly to Bill Willis.
') 25 MR. EBERSOLE:. It looks like Mr. Parris has got ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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1 l
l 5410 09 06 109 1 a big ear.
(]DAVbw U
2 MR. MICHELSON: Is this still valid? Is 3 Mr. White coming aboard?
4 MR. WARD: This is the old organization 5 MR. MASON: I pointed out this was presented to 6! you in October. This was the first time that TVA had all 7 the nuclear people under a single manager reporting to the 8 board and general manager, where he can really get the ear 9 of the board of directors on nuclear problems. This 10 included the key offices and groups which are involved. The 11 principal offices, I won't say the key, because there wsa a 12 couple of others that the board of directors and the general
(] 13 l manager a this level above Hugh Parris, the Nuclear Safety 14 Review Staff and several consultants.
15 MR. EBERSOLEs. Could you comment on the nuclear background of Mr. Willis and Mr. Parris.
16 l I
17 ' MR. MASON: Mr. Willis has no direct nuclear 18 experience. He came up through our construction 19 organization. I don' t believe he was involved in the 20 construction of any of our nuclear facilities, directly. Is 21 there anybody who can amplify that?
22 Mr. Parris has no direct nuclear operating 23 experience or design experience. He's been involved in the i
24 nuclear program since day one at TVA, as a part, originally, O 25 ef eae vo er sopotz ete##i#o creen eaet eveto eea l
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5410 09 07 110 DAVbw 1 alternative power supplies. And after that, in the early 2 days of Browns Ferry and the evaluation of different types 3 of plants. He, I guess, for the last few years has been 4 senior manager involved in the nuclear program with no 5 direct nuclear operation and construction experience.
6 MR. EBERSOLE:. So I guess critical decisions 7 which are nuclear-related will start with White and proceed 81 to you? Is this correct?
l 9! MR. MASON: Put the next slide up, and'7.'11 10 discuss that a little bit.
11 l (Slide.)
12 We now draw this organization chart a little bit 13 differently. It's still basically the same. Everybody's
{
14 l under one single manager, but we draw the chart 15 differently. We want to show the chart that reflects our i
16 present areas of emphasis and future areas of emphasis.
l? l Consequently, the support of the operations phase of our 18 nuclear program, rather than the design and construction 19 l phase.
20 For years and years, we've been a design and .
I 21 construct agency, and that's where the principal effort has 22 been in building new plants. The operations people took 23 over the plants and operated them, I guess, as best we 24 I could. I guess that's one way to put it. We didn't have i
- good coordination and teamwork between the design, the s._- 25 l ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 09 08 111 1 DAVbw 1 organization and the operating organization, because they
'J 2 had one charge to design and build plants, and we had a 3 charge to operate them. I think the organization we've got l
?
now brings all that together and focuses on the fact that 5 l we're not longer in the construct mode or the design mode, 6
even though we're finishing a couple of projects. It's 7 primarily support of the operating organizations.
8 MR. MICHELSON: Excuse me. Does this chart now 9 mean that Mr. Parris has nothing to do with the nuclear 10 generation?
11 MR. MASON: That's correct. As of last Friday, 12 l Mr. Parris no longer has anything to do with the nuclear
-_ 13 ' program.
, \ :
~
14 !
MR. MICHELSON: This block at the top replaces 15 the one called "Parris" in the previous slide?
16 l MR. MASON: That's correct. Mr. White is the 17 Manager of the Office of Nuclear Power. He reports directly 18 to Mr. Willis and the board of directors. You can put 19 i 1
Mr. Willis and the board of directors in one block, because 20 l they function as an entity.
21 I'm shown under Mr. White as Deputy Manager of 22 the Office of Nuclear Power, and my second hat still shows 23 me as Manager of Nuclear Operations directly responsible for 24 what we call the three operating sites -- Browns Ferty,
,3 25 Sequoyah and Watts Bar, even though Watts Bar does not have
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5410 09 09 112 DAVbw 1 an operating license, it's close enough that it's operated 2 and managed in the same fashicn.
3l DR. OKRENT: Question. The engineering and 4 construction people that are shown in the blocks on the 5 right, are they people who are devoted 100 percent of the 6 time to nuclear power programs or they part of some larger 7 block of construction?
8 MR. MASON: The manager in engineering, I have in i
9I back of the room, and I'm going to have him address nart of i
i 10 l that, if I can't adequately state it, or if he disagrees I
11 ! with the way I state it.
12 His primary emphasis is, of course, nuclear. I e', 13 guess probably 99 percent of his time is dedicated to the wJ l 14 i nuclear program. He has an engineering staff that's l
available for other TVA agencies to call on, if they have an 15 l 16 engineering problem. If a fossil plant has an engineering 17 ' problem, they write a contract to get services from Mr 18 l Cantrell's organization. The incumbent is not involved in 19 ! that, other than as a far removed supervisor. He's got i
20 lower leyel people that actually handle that. So I would 21 say this time it's probably 99 plus percent of the time 22 dedicated to nucler.
23 MR. WARD: But this is the only engineering and I -
24 i design of fice in TVA.
(~'; 25 ! MR. MASON: No, I won't say that. Within the
\m) l
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e 5410 09 10 113 DAVbw 1 Office of Power, as Mr. Ebersole mentioned a while ago, we 2 have a group of designer people who design transmission 3 facilities, substations, and transmission lines, and the 4 communications networks associated with those transmission 5 facilities.
6 MR. WYLIE: This is the only pr plant, though.
7 MR. MASON: This is the only power plant design 8 organization.
9 MR. CANTRELL: I'm Bob Cantrell, the Manager of 10 1 Engineering at TVA.
11 Since Chuck has come back, he's not aware that I 12 now also have the transmission system engineering
() 13 capability. The Office of Engineering and Construction, all 14 of the engineering design and construction efforts, report 15 in the nuclear program, because that's where the 16 predominance of our busin'ess is, except for the fertilizer i
17 ! people.
18 MR. EBERSOLE . So this includes the fossils and 19 the hydros, the works.
20 MR. CANTRELL: We have those people. It's a 21 small portion of our work, but we feel we can share some 22 expertise, but they are generally dedicated small groups, to 23 both the fossil and hydro program.
24 MR. WARD: Can you give us a fraction there?
(,N) 25 What fraction of your office's effort will be devoted to ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 09 11 114 7' DAVbw 1 nuclear?
)
2 MR. CANTRELL: Greater than 80 percent.
1 3 MR. MICHELSON: At some point, are you also going 4 to clarify how the engineering is divided between site 5 engineering and central engineering, since they're under
'6rI different supervision, as I understand it? They have 1
7' differnt responsibilities.
8 MR. MASON: I'll get into that in just a minute.
9 I would like to go through this basic 10 ; organization chart and point out that some of the people l
11 i maybe that are different now than who are on board six months ago or held these positions six months ago. As I 12 l
'~ ')
13 f indicated, one of the significant moves with Mr. White, is 14 ; that the Nuclear Safety Review Staff now reports to the line 15 organization and Mr. White. That will be effective next 16 Monday. Kermit Whitt is the supervisor. He's had that job 17 and has been af filiated with that organization since it was 18 born, I guess.
l .
19 l MR. MICHELSON: That's a downgrading of the 1
20 i reporting responsibility of that organization, which used to 21 be to the general manager and now it's to the office
-22 manager.
23 MR. MASON: That's correct.
24 i MR. MICHELSON: So the board now longer gets e~ . t
/ 25
/
) direct reports from Mr. Whitt but rather, indirect reports.
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5410 09 12 115 DAVbw 1 MR. MASON: That's correct.
V 2 MR. EBERSOLE:. I see a degree of isolation from 3 the board and the general manager, in that the buck falls on 4 your table now.
5 MR. MASON: Well, this is a big part of our 6I emphasis in our new organization, is accountability.
7 Mr. White is not only accountable for production, he's 8 accountable for quality. He's accountable for communictions 9 He's accountable for employee morale.
10 MR. MICHELSON: Who's accountable for independent i
11 l review of safety, since he's responsible for direct?
i 12 MR. MASON: Our quality assurance group. We also
, 13 ! have nuclear safety review staff, a nuclear safety review
- s. / l 14 ' board that's neutral of all utilities, who provide that 15 i independence, i
16 ! MR. EBERSOLE:. Chuck, in the course of your h
r 17 presentation, are you going to be able to take, let's say, a 18 l4 .iypothetical job that originates by an order from Power and i
19 f is issued to Design to produce and is produced. It goes to 20 l Construction and it goes to Operation, and close the circuit I
21 ' to be sure that the Design organization receives from the 22 ultimate user confirmation that it has been built and is 23 being run according to the integral concept.
24 , That was one of the deadly things that never
( ,
- 25 happened. I think everybody would be much interested in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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.g 5410 09 13 116 DAVbw 1 how you closed that circle. I can't visually see it up 2 there. Maybe you can check it through.
3 MR. MASON: It's not accurately reflected on 4 either of these organization charts, but if you look at a 5 later one -- I'll put it up -- I think you'll be able to see 6 it.
7 MR. EBERSOLE:. Okay.
8 9
10 11 i
12 ex 13 U -
14 15 16 17 l 18
- 19 20 21 22 23 7, 24 l O 2s ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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/~N DAV/bc 1 DR. OKRENT: By the way, did Mr. Whitt check out L) 2 a large fraction of the difficulties that TVA has found 3 itself in?
4 MR. MASON: Certainly, their reviews had 5 indicated that we had symptoms of the situations we'd gotten 6 ourselves into, not only his but reports from INPO on the 7 NRC staff and our quality assurance organization said there 8 were symptoms before we got to the place we found ourselves 9 in.
10 Those symptoms obviously were not acted upon I
11 I ,
properly.
12 DR. OKRENT: Were his comments very strong so I
13 they would hit you in the face?
()
s- .
l 14 MR. MASON: A lot of them were, I can assure you 15 of that.
16 Kermitt, would you like to comment on that?
17 S MR. WHITT: I'm Kermitt Whitt, Director of the 18 ! Nuclear Safety Review Staff.
I 19 Yes, some of the statements were very strong. We 20 wrote our statements as we saw them. There were no 21 constraints of any type. Had we been extremely smart in the 22 management control system and the management practices, NSRS 23 should have seen what was coming and should have done 24 whatever necessary to tell the line organization that this
() 25 is what was ahead of them and to take corrective action.
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I
\
5410 10 02 118 DAV/bc 1 We had whatever clout was needed to do that. I 2 can' t speak for everybody in NSRS. I guess I wasn't smart 3 enough to put all this together and show it in advance.
4 MR. MICHELSON: At w' hat point in time are you 5 responsible for this function?
6 MR. WHITT: What period of time? Since October 7 of 1977. I'm sorry, 1979.
8 MR. MICHELSON: For this function, you were in 9 charge of the Safety Review' Staff in '797 10 MR. WHITT: I was Director of the Nuclear Safety 11 Review Staff starting January 3, 1985.
12 MR. MICHELSON: So it's very recently that you're
() 13 responsible for it.
14 MR. WHITT: The total organization, yes, sir.
15 But, since '79, I've been responsible for the operations 16 'part.
17 MR. EBERSOLE: Kermitt, did you actually probe 18 l into design issues and make resolutions of them? I'm just 19 probing into a dark corner just to see to what degree you 20 could go down in the corners and dig up the dust.
21 MR. WHITT: We could and can probe wherever we 22 think needs to be probed.
23 MR. EBERSOLE: Then you've got the wherewithal to 24 l ~
interate where you think you should probe. I'll take a case l
() 25 in point. The old 10-inch main steamlines which feed the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 10 03 119 1 DAV/bc 1 HPCI pumps has been a design issue for years. That's a
^\
N-) 2 potential for disaster if they blow.
3 Are you acquainted with that?
4 MR. WHITT: Not personally. I'm not personally 5 accuainted to talk about it, but I am aware of it.
6 MR. EBERSOLE: That's all I wanted to know, 7 whe ther you've judged that it's all right.
8 MR. WARD: One more cuestion. Go ahead, Max.
9 DR. CARBON: What were your responsibilities, 10 since . . 1980 or some thing? Prior to January 1985.
11 MR. WHITT: I was, for a couple of years prior to 12' that, I was Assistant Director, and prior to that --
13 DR. CARBON: Of what?
""' 14 MR. WHITT: Nuclear Safe ty Review Staf f. Prior 15 to that, I was head of the Operations Review.
16 DR. CARBON: Thank you.
17 MR. WARD: Chuck, if we continue at this pace, 18! will you be able to ge t through all your presentation in 30 l
19
- minutes? Or do we need to let you go?
20 MR. MASON: We need to speed it up.
21 MR. WARD: - Why don' t we hold questions and 22 comments for a while. Go ahead.
l 23 MR. MASON: We certainly recognize that )
24 organization charts don' t make things happen. In our 25 refinement of the organization, we picked the people who 1
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5410 10 04 120 4
73 DAV/bc 1 were best-qualified for the positions, that we could fill V -
2 with TVA people.
3 We supplemented the TVA people with new hires 4 from outside TVA and we've used contractors to fill line 5 positions where we do not have adequately experienced 6 personnel and we've been unable to recruit them.
7 That's something that's new for TVA; it's never 8 been done before. The basic criteria that we used in 9 selecting people are the proven track records in the areas 10 that we feel are most important. And that's an attitude of 11 quality first, good communicators, motivators, sense of 12 responsibility and accountability, team players as opposed
() 13 to. turf-builders.
14 We feel like our key managers set the example.
15 Good communications teamwork. Frequent discussions so we 16 can speak with one voice as an agency.
17 (Slide.)
i 18 I'd like to review with you some of the key 19 people that have been brought in to make our organization l
20 more effective.
21 In addition to Mr. White, we've brought in Dick 22 Denise, who is the assistant to me. Mr. Denise comes to TVA 23 with more than 20 years experience in nuclear power and he's 24 a well-respected name in the industry. He served most
() 25 recently as the Director of the Division of Reactor Safety ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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/' 1 with NRC Region IV. In his position with TVA, he'll be V]DAV/bc 2 spearheading special projects in design.
?
3 Primarily, right now, he's involved with Watts 4 Bar. He had early nuclear experience with Babcock and 5 Wilcox and the nuclear ship, Savannah. After that, he was 6 deputy manager of DOE's Savannah River operation.
7 Another man that we brought in is Lawrence 8 Martin. He has over 25 years experience in the nuclear 9 power industry, most recently as section chief in Region IV 10 l with NRC. He came out of the Nuclear Navy, worked for Duke I
11 Power Company in the engineering part of their organization 12 i during the Oconee startup; and with McGuire before he went I
/~') 13l to NRC.
() ;
14 l Larry Jackson, Assistant to the Manager of 15 , Nuclear Operations, has I don't know how many years of i
experience in nuclear power. He started out with the 16 l!
17 l initial crew at Farley, went to NRC in Atlanta. He's been 18 with INPO essentially since day one of its existence, and he 19q has served as supervisor of the Radiological and Chemistry 1
20 ' Division of INPO.
21 Bill Bibb, who is our site director at Brown's 22 Ferry, came to TVA under a contract with the Management 23 Analysis Company. Bill has over 30 years experience in the 24 nuclear power field in plant operation and project
[) 25 management. He's had an SRO license at several facilities. '
s.
)
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( DAV/bc 1 He participated as a GE startup supervisor and engineer at a n]'
2 number of plants, foreign and domestic. He was project 3 manager of the WPPS II project when it first got licensed a 4 year and a half or two years ago. He's got some good 5 experience and he's proven to be a valuable asset to Brown's 6 Ferry.
7 Some of the key TVA people that we've moved 8 around, Willie Brown, we've moved to Watts Bar as project 9 manager because he's got a proven track record as a shaker 10 and a mover and a good connunicator. He's made significant 11 improvements in the construction operation at Watts Bar.
12 Bill caudill, who was one of Mr. Parris' three
(~)
V 13 l assistants on the previous slide, we've now moved him back l
14 to Watts Bar as site director.
15 Part of your questions, Mr. Ebersole, on 16 personnel, we have moved down from our corporate personnel 17 staff the head of that staff, who is now working directly 18 l for Mr. White and myself, and has been in that organization 19 for about the last four months to help us developing some 20 employee development plans and better communications 21 ability; and also the ability in helping us trying to 22 recruit and bring on more new people.
23 Another one of the assistants, the comparison 24 staff on the previous slide, is Jim Darling, who is now the
() 25 project manager.
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5410 10 07 123 DAV/bc 1 MR. EBERSOLE: Do Whitt and Ziminski stand 2 parallel, eye to eye?
3 MR. MASON: I've not seen yet. Mr. Whitt will 4 likely report here on Monday when Mr. White comes aboard.
5 As of today, he still reports to Mr. Willis.
6 MR. MICHELSON: Where is the responsibility for 7 Bellefonte?
8 MR. MASON: We have a project management team.
9 Mr. Darling is responsible as project manager for both the
- 10 design and construction of Bellefonte. That same situation 11 exists on Watts Bar Unic II, whereas, Watts Bar Unit One, we 12 consider as an operating facility.
13 l DR. REMICK: ' Chuck, where is the training center?
-( }
14 MR. MASON: The training center is under me in 15 this organization.
16 DR. MOELLER: Maybe you said this earlier, but is 17 ; Mr. White happy with this organizational scheme?
18 MR. MASON: I have not talked to Mr. White in 19 detail about this. Mr. White came into TVA back in November l
20 and spent about three weeks with a team of people. I know, 21 in his comments as we're looking, he did not see any basic 22 holes in the way we were organized.
23 DR. MOELLER: At least he's happy to begin this 24 way.
() 25 MR. MASON: Yes. Like I indicated, I'm sure he i
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,DAV/bc 1 will have some refinements. We have a vacancy that I'm n
2 trying to recruit for, and I'm also trying to work with an 3 architect-engineer to assign me a contractor to fill that 4 position for some period of time, until I can recruit or 5 train one of my own people.
6 That's a position that I'm holding open until 7 Mr. White actually gets on board, to see if he is in basic 8 agreement with that program.
9 DR. MOELLER: And you've worked or know Mr. White well enough to know that you can work with him?
10 ll 11 l MR. MASON: I'm sure I can work with him. I've 12 worked with a lot of people, including admirals before.
(D
<J 13 l, (Laughter.)
14 l lM. MASON: I spent 22 years in the navy in the l
15 naval reserve. I've had a lot of interaction at a lower 16 l level with an admiral during that time. And I survived it.
E 17 ! (Laughter.)
h 18 i (Slide.)
19 This is a backup slide. I don't know if it's in 20 your package or not. I'll try to address Mr. Ebersole's 21 question on how do we handle design changes. I'd first like 22 to point out that I read through the transcript of the last 23 meeting. It seemed to me that some people felt like all we 24 4 had done with the site director is change the name of the l
[nj') 25 I plant manager and put a lot more bodies in it. And that's ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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-5410 10 09 125 DAV/bc 1 not the case at all.
2 What we've done with our site organization is l l
3 that the plant manager is still there, still has basically i 4 the same responsibility he's always had, that is, operations l 5 and maintenance of the plant.
6 What weve tried to do with this site 7 organization is relieve him of a lot of the burdens of 8 worrying about procurement of material for design changes, i 9 warehousing, budgets, plant roads around the perimeter, a 10 lot of peripheral stuff that his attention will get diverted 11 on before he'll provide the support for it.
12 Now, so he'll concentrate on the operation and 13 maintenance'of the plant. One way of looking at this, if
(])
14 you want to compare it with a private utility, we have, in i- 15 essence -- we don't have vice presidents, but we have 16 , essentially a vice president in charge of that facility.
I 17 ! If it was a single unit utility, I think you 18 could relate very well with what we're trying to do here.
19 We put the appropriate people to support that facility on a 20 single unit utility. This would be practically the whole 21 corporate organization on a single unit utility.
22 He has-the authority and responsibility to see 23 that that facility is operated and maintained safely and 24 properly. One way of looking at the design organization
() 25 that we have at the site with the private utility, private ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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l 5410 10 10 126 ;
/'s DAV/bc 1 utility has a design organization at the site. Generally, O
2 they'll call on an architect-engineer for the resources to 3 do modifications that are still funneled back through this 4 design entity at the site.
5 We look at our Knoxville office. Mr. Campbell's 6 organization in Knoxville is our architect-engineer.
7 MR. MICHELSON: Does that mean Design Services 8 reports to him? -
9 MR. MASON: Design services? Let me tell you, 10 this is one of the areas that we're going to refine. When 11 we set this organization up, you're familiar, Carl, with 12 some of the past practices of TVA, of turfbuilding and
{} 13 arguing over whose responsible for what. When we set this 14 organization up, the site organization went out and hired us 15 a design guy. The design people from Mr. Campbell's 16 organization that were sent down there still reported to 17 him.
18 He, not their MAS. And that's really where their 19 loyalty was. So we had an extra layer of people in here.
20 l Our own design guy reported to this fellow, and was 21 evaluated by this fellow and was charged with keeping an eye 22 on those guys from Knoxville that were sent down.
23 We' re going to eliminate that layer, responsible 24 ,
directly to the site director. This guy will make out
() 25 l project manager's appraisal forms.
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5410 10 11 127 DAV/bc 1 MR. MICHELSON: Where are the design decisions 2 made that directly influence the safety of the plant?
3 MR. MASON: They'll be made right here.
4 MR. MICHELSON: Those will not be cleared back 5 through Knoxville? He'll report to the site director?
6i MR. MASON: He will have the responsibility for i
7l the design director. That's the design we're working on 8 now.
9 MR. MICHELSON: And you'll have there the 10 adequate expertise to cover all the disciplines involved?
11 MR. MASON: That's correct. And if we need l
12 additional resources on a particular area of expertise,
/~S 13 we'll call on our tech engineer. He'll submit to this man V i -
14 whatever technical expertise he needs.
15 MR. MICHELSON: The problem I have is why do you 16 , need to have an engineering organization in Knoxville if l
17 this i~s where the design decisions are made?
18 ' MR. MASON: One reason we have a design 19 organization in Knoxville is that we can't have all the 20 technical ability at the site.
21 MR. MICHELSON: They act as consultants, I 22 gather. l 1
23 MR. MASON: They act as an architect-engineer in 24 home office in Gaithersburg or San Francisco. They also 1
(} 25 develop design criteria and design procedures that are used ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. I 202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646
5410 10 12 128 DAV/bc 1 on site. They set the standard that the actual technical 2 decisions and responsibility for those technical decisions 3 will answer to that man on site.
4 DR. OKRENT: Who is in charge of ';he safety at 5 the site?
6 MR. MASON: Our quality nssurance organization 7 and our nuclear safety review board.
8 DR. OKRENT: Which are not on that chart.
9l MR. MASON: We have a quality assurance staff i
10 I here, but quality assurance is centralized in our 11 organization.
MR. MICHELSON: But your nuclear safety is 12 l i
(~ 13 { there. The board is in the operating --
n) 14 ;! MR. MASON: The nuclear safety review board is 15 , under the executive vice president for Nuclear, again i
16 correlated to a private utility. Steve White.
r 17 ) MR. MICHELSON: Everybody goes to Steve White 18 eventually, yes.
DR. MARK: Where on that chart do people go with 19 l 20 their complaints, or worries?
21 l MR. MASON: It's not shown on here, it's shown on 22 the previous chart. We have an Employee Concerns, long-term 23 employee concerns program. We have one manager who reports 24 ' directly to me and Mr. White. He has at each site at least
- ~. :
( ) 25 ; one individual whose sole responsibility is to be a ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'5410 10 13 129 DAV/bc 1 listening post for employee complaints.
2 DR. MARK: All right, they don't have to go to 3 Knoxville then.
4 MR. MASON: No. We have a man on each site, 5 including Knoxville-Chattanooga, by the way.
6 7
8 9
10 11 12 13
.(0~) ,
14 15 16 17 l
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, DAVbur 1 MR. EBERSOLE: At the bottom there you have got
\ _j' 2 three managers, right?
3 MR. MASON: These are site directors.
4 MR. EBERSOLE: Those are the site directors?
5 Okay, I understand. Those are the site directors.
6 Now, those are little islands that are complete 7 in themselves, cren't they?
MR. MASON: No, they are not complete in 8l 9 themselves. They have the responsibility and authority. At 10 ! the operating end is a thread of continuity to assure they l
11 ! don' t develop any totally independent islands.
12 i For example, in this organization we have
(] 13 ! chemistry people, health physics people that go from plant
_/
l 14 to plant to certify that our policies are being carried 15 out. We are developing policies and directives that are 16 issued in this office to ensure that we have a common goal at each of the plants.
17 )
18 l MR. EBERSOLE: But they are self-supporting?
I am not clear about that.
19 l 20 (Slide.)
21 MR. WARD: Chuck, could I ask you a question 22 about that because I think it is related?
23 i Do your design services go there? Your design l
24 ! services group. Is that strictly liaison for the Knoxville (j) u 25 i
design office? Can they use smaller projects?
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[ DAVbur 1 MR. MASON: They do anything that they have the 2 capability to do without additional resources.
3 At Browns Ferry we have probably 200 people. At 4 Sequoyah we have about 150. At Watts Bar we are built up to 5 about 150.
6 MR. WARD: But projects over some magnitude go to 7 Knoxville?
8 MR. MASON: He still has the responsibility for 9- them. He may take the project and go to an outside 10 architect engineer.
I 11 l MR. WARD: All right. What about the 12 modifications block? What does that mean?
i (i 13 l MR. MASON: On an operating site -- now, this is is j Browns Ferry. The effect of Mr. Ebersole's question, he 14 l 15 does what on a dasign modification?
16 If the plant manager sees a need for a design 17 modification, he writes a design change request, and basically -- I will skip a lot of details -- he goes to the 18 l 19 ;i design organization for scoping the solution for his 20 problem. If he agrees with the proposed solution, he okays 21 lI it and goes back for a detailed design.
22 Once his der ign modifications group, which is 23 comparable to what you might consider in construction --
24 they are the implementers of the modification that the
() 25 i design generates. They provide field engineers and craft ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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['s DAVbur 1 personnel to implement the modification. They do the
(_)
2' planning, make sure the material is there, make sure that 3 the work plan is developed in the proper degree of detail.
4 They go out and do the work when it shows up on schedule.
5 When it is finished and we are ready to test it 6 and verify that it meets the test criteria, Design Services ,
7 when they design it, they will specify what 8 post-modification tests have to be done. When they get 9 through implementing it, we have got some test engineers who 10 go out and do the actual testing to verify that it meets the 11 design requirements.
12 MR. WARD: We seem to have some burning Max, Paul, and then Dave.
() 13 l questions.
14 DR. CARBON: The design modifications done by the 15 Design Services Group, who reviews those for the safety 16 l aspects?
i 17 MR. MASON: The Plant Operations Review Committee 18 i does it -- the design organization does unreviewed safety i
questions and determinations. Then the Plant Operations 19 l 20 Review Committee does it.
21 DR. CARBON: Does the Plant Operations Review 22 Committee have all the expertise to handle the systems 23 interactions?
24 ' MR. MASON: Not necessarily. That is why the
() 25 design services organization -- when they do the design, ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 11 04 133 DAVbur 1 they introduce the unreviewed safety questions.
2 DR. CARBON: And they will have a full complement 3 of safety people?
4 HR. MASON: Yes. If they don't have it, they 5 will get it from the architect engineer or from our 6 Knoxville facility.
7 DR. CARBON: Then Mr. Whitt's group simply looks 8 over some of them?
9 MR. MASON: Mr. Whitt's organization is not 10 l necessarily in the modification. The Nuclear Safety Review 3
11 l Board reviews and assures that the safety evaluations are i
12 done properly on modification. Then Whitt can pick and
, 13 ll choose what he looks at.
14 DR. CARBON: What does the' nuclear safety staff 15 do?
16 MR. MASON: That is the Nuclear Safety Review 17 Board now. They are the staff for the Nuclear Safety Review 18 ! Board, the full-time staff for the three Nuclear Safety 19 Review Boards. Each plant being of a different manufacturer 20 l' and dif ferent vintage, has a different Nuclear Safety Review 21 Board. It is a part-time job. They meet at least once a 22 quarter, or more frequently as necessary. It is a typical 23 Nuclear Safety Review Board. That is the permanent staff of 24 the board.
(] 25 DR. CARBON: Are they under the plant manager?
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5410 11 05 134 DAVbur 1 MR. MASON: No. They are under myself and 2 Mr. White. That is this group right here.
3 DR. CARBON: I see it there. That is what I am 4 asking.
5 I guess I don't really understand yet what they 6 do.
7I MR. MICHELSON: They are their ACRS.
8 MR. WARD: Sir, I guess this is all very 9 interesting, but I would like to know when you expect to get 10 ; to the problems which you felt led to the closing down of 11 the plants and what is going to be done to fix that so they 12 f can be started up again.
'~') 13 l Will you get there if we give you a chance?
~~/
l 14 l MR. MASON: Not in the time remaining, but I will l
15 l try to address that.
16 l I guess I feel like the basic problem were a lot 17 3 of technical reasons why the plants are shut down and why Watts Bar has not started up. The reason for those 18 )
i 19 ! technical problems are lack of management attention or i
20 i management -- they are management in nature. That is why we 21 are concentrating on how to rebuild our management structure 22 to get the appropriate people in there to resolve the i
23 l technical issues and get the plants back to running so we 24 won't run into the same situation in the future.
i n
LJ 25 i The basic reason the plants are in the situation ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 11 06 135 DAVbur 1 they are in now is management in nature. That is the basic 2 root cause. The organization and structure of the 1 management control system, lack of accountability.
4 DR. SHEWMON: There is something here that talks 5 about accountability, communication, performance 6 measurements, and training.
7 MR. MASON: Put that slide up.
8 (Slide.)
9 These are what we think rebuilding the management 10 structure is going to provide for so that we don't get back 11 in the situation we are in now. It is timely focused and i
12 stresses accountability. We are using project management,
^
{} 13 which is a new concept at TVA.
14 We have, for example, a project manager in charge 15 of environmental qualification and support of the equipment 16 up there. He has access to draw any TVA organization, L
17 f whatever resources he needs. They work for him in solving 18 l l
I that problem. He is responsible for solving that problem.
19 The same thing goes for the site director. He is 20 responsible for that site.
21 The same thing goes for Mr. White. He is 22 accountable.
23 You build that into day-to-day activities.
Again, I say that is new to TVA. We haven't 24 {
() 25 really stressed that in the past.
ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 11 07 136 DAVbur 1 Teamwork and communication, communication with 2 our employees and communication back and forth between the 3 various groups, the operation and the design group and the 4 modification.
5 We are going to set goals, primarily in the areas 6 of regulatory performance and the INPO performance 7 indicators. We are going to measure our performance in 8 regard to those. It is a very key part of our effort.
9 Training and retention of key managers. We are I
10 l doing some other things in TVA that we have been negligent l
in in the past. We have got a college program for SROs, who 11 l 12 f have been operators for years and years and do not have the 13 benefit of a college education.
14 We have got 21 people right now, I believe, 15 enrolled in a degree program, taken totally off the shift.
16 l We have sent them to the University of Tennessee to pursue a k
17 j degree. We pay their tuition and their salaries for that 18 l time. If they maintain their SRO qualification during the 19 l Thanksgiving break and Christmas break and various holidays, 20 they do not do their retraining during those periods.
21 We have had the first five graduates of that 22 class in December. We bring them back into the plant and 23 use them in some of our key managerial positions. We feel 24 ; l like they have got valuable experience and they have
- 25 ! demonstrated management capability to assume shift ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 11 08 137
/, DAVbur 1 supervisor roles, and we want to take maximum advantage of
()
2 their experience.
3 Another thing we are doing in this regard that we 4 haven' t done in the past is put engineers and managers into 5 license training. TVA has not done that as a practice in 6l the past.
7 We have got, I think, 38 people total enrolled in 8 the SRO tra ining and licensing program for engineers and 9 managers. When they get their license, we are going to put 10 them on shift as assistant shift supervisors and let them 11 get some hands-on operating experience so that in the future 12 we can better develop plant managers and key managers in
(~s, 13 other areas of our organization.
. LJ 14 We are taking, for example, some design 15 engineers. To show you how we have changed, we are taking I
16 i design engineers, construction engineers, and putting them l
17 f in that licensed plant rather than just the operations 18 folks.
19 A couple of you are familiar with some of the 20 past practices in that regard. We feel like we have made 21 significant improvements in our ability to go across 22 organizational lines and work together.
23 DR. MOELLER: The opportunity to enter the 24 college program is highly competitive, I presume, or is
~
/ 25 l selective?
\~)'
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g r 1 @ m mgi 3 g- l
2 5410 11 09 138 T~'TDAVbur 1 MR. MASON: The operators initially had a little
'V 2 apprehension about it, but the people have now graduated and 3 they have put other people in. I think almost universally 4 the operations people want to get involved in that program.
5 We can't take everybody at once, but it is a program I am 6 dedicated to and that I am going to pursue as long as I am 7 in a position where I can see that that program is carried 8 on.
9 MR. WARD: Gentlemen, I think we are going to 4
10 have to cut off questions, MR. REED: May I make one statement that is very 11 l 12 pertinent?
T 13 MR. WARD: I think not, Glenn.
'\_lq -
14 Let's give Mr. Mason 10 minutes to wrap up, and N 15 then we can have a couple of questions.
16 (Slide.)
17 l MR. MASON: I want to update you on the status of f
18 l each one of the sites with regard to the technical issues.
s j .
19 l I won't have time, I guess, to go into a lot of detail, but 20 the basic reason that Sequoyah chut down, that we 21 voluntarily shut it down, is because we had serious concerns s
22 that our environmental qualification program for that 23 facility was not adequate.
24 l This was brought out -- I don't know how we got
(,[ 25 into that, but it was pointed out at some of our quality ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646 L
5410 11 10 139 DAVbur 1 assurance audits questions kept coming up that we weren't 2 real sure that our environmental qualification program was 3 adequate.
4 SRS had some comments on it. We had some 5 violations associated with the program. In order to answer 6 those questions, we hired Westech Corporation, which is an 7 architect engineer, to come in and independently look at our 8 environmental qualification program.
9 As a result of their look, we felt that we were 10 in bad enough shape in environmental qualification to 11 1 justify shutting down the plant.
12 It was a good decision. We did it. We found a f~)
w:
13 lot of problems associated with environmental qualification, 14 and it was not all just in paperwork. We actually had some i
15 l.
hardware that did not meet the requirements. We have had to 16 change out and reroute the cables, the conduits. We had to 17 l change out some wiring and motor operated valves and limit i
18 l switches, junction boxes, and that sort of thing.
19 So when we get through, we feel like we are going 20 to have the best documented and the most defensible 21 environmental qualification program in the industry. If not 22 the best, it will be very near the best. We will really 23 attack that problem with a great degree of attention. But 24 we are getting close.
25 For Sequoyah we will give you a ballpark figure.
( })
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5410 11 11 140
/- 1 If we think we can finish up all of our identified work i )) DAVbur 2 activities that we know about now, in late January, early 3 February. That is an optimistic schedule. It only 4 considers the items that we know for sure we have got to 5l do. There may be some additional environmental I
6! qualifications, cable rerouting for example. That comes out 7 in the next two or three weeks.
8 We think after that time there will be some 9 period of time to put together a final report on the 10 activities that allows NRC to evaluate and question us on 11 what we have done.
12 The startup date. There is not a projected OV ,
13 ; startup date. The startup date is sometime in the future.
- 14 I don' t want to put a date on it.
15 The other aspects that we have got to address at i
16 Sequoyah before restart, major aspects, are the ones out of 17 l our 50.54(f) letter that we got in September, operational 18 resdiness plans. That is well underway. The cable tray 19 support analysis is closed out. The design control survey, 20 that was highlighted in our 50.54(f) letter. We have that 21 adequately under control, and we have got an outside 22 consultant working with us on that.
23 The employee concern program has the potential of 24 developing new work activities, but we can't predict what O 25 might come out of the employee concern program.
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5410 11 12 141 DAVbur 1 (S1ide.)
-2 At Watts Bar probably the biggest unknown up 3 there and the thing that is going to take the most time is 4 the employee concerns or allegations.
5 So we have a major program of interviewing 6 people, asking for any safety concerns.
7 We have over 5000 people. We had over 4000 8 concerns. About a little less than 2000 of those concerns i
9 are possibly safety related.
10 The others are related to promotions, pay, 11 veterans benefits, and that sort of thing, a little less 12 than 2000 safety-related concerns.
13 I We are investigating each and every one of them.
({])
14 We are finding a lot of them substantiated, probably about 15 50 percent.
16 Substantiated doesn't necessarily mean that we 17 have to take corrective action. It means that there is 18 validity to that concern.
19 One of the major concern is associated with 20 welding.
21 There's maybe 200 individual concerns related to 22 the welding program. We are looking at the welding program, 23 and the big picture is to make sure we include all the 24 concerns.
() 25 There has been a major effort going on in the ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 80 4 336-6646
l 5410 11 13 142 l 1 welding program in the investigation thus far.
[G] DAVbur 2 We are using the contract with the Department of 3 Energy -- through them -- and EG&G Idaho and other national 4, labs participate as necessary to verify that they are 5 satisfied.
6 7
8 9
10 ,
I
- 11 j i
12 13
. (] .
14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 O 2s ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
202-347-3700 Nationwide Coverage 800-336-6646
5410 12 01 143 1 DAV/bc 1 Brown's Ferry has several more items than the
(~ h
\J 2 other two plants. We ' ve got a lo t more work to do at 3 Brown 's Fe rry. Environmental qualification is going to be a 4 major effort at Brown's Ferry. It's an old plant. We have 5 not had good design control and configuration management for 6 Brown 's Ferry. There's a lot of ef fort in revisiting that 7 scene to get that back on track.
8j Appendix R, we still have some modifications to 9 do. This is Brown's Ferry Unit Two, which is our first i
10j Brown's Ferry Unit to start up. We're not projecting a 11 startup date for Brown's Fe rry, although we do hope to have 12' by the middle of February a detailed schedule of the 13l activities, integrated activitie.s at Brown's Ferry.
14' It will be I think at the earliest fall or 15 winter, at the earliest, when we start up Brown's Ferry 16 Two. Brown's Ferry III and Brown's Ferry I are further into 17 the future because we have committed before we start those 18j two units up to make sure tha t all the post-TMI backfits are 19 installed.
20 They still have a significant amount of post-21 TMI modifications to do.
22 MR. WARD: Thank you very much, Mr. Mason. We 23 can take two questions. Short questions. Ye s .
24 MR. REED: What I think I'm hearing is that the re q 25 probably is a turnabout from 1980. When I happened to be on
%)
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-5410 12 02 144 1 DAV/bc 1 the INPO team, a turnabout from the feedstock material type
,9 lJ 2 of thinking. In other words, you have a big people 3 problem. And, in 1980, it seemed to me that there was a 4 feeling that you could take any unselected warm body and 5 through your systems train this person to be anything, 6 without any selection. -
7 I think you' ve told me you' re turning that 8 around.
9 MR. MASON: I'm not going to confirm that tha t 10 was our 1980 position.
11 ( Laug hte r. )
12 MR. MASON: But, certainly, we' re not doing that 13 now. That's directly opposite what we intend to do.
Il '
14 MR. REED: I have the quotes written down.
15 I would like to make a comment in regard to 16 that. We ' ve got a lot of people problems, but they' re not 17 people problems across the board, they're management type 18l problems. We' ve got a vast amount of resources, good people l
19 ' at the intermediate level and the working level.
20 They need to be drawn together and function as a 21 team and I think that's the direction we ' re headed. And I'm 22 confiden t that we 'll ge t this program back on track.
23 MR. WARD: The second and last question.
24 DR. MARK: You spoke of the kind of things which g~ 25 you're working through at Sequoyah before you're ready to
%j ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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5410 12 03 145 1 DAV/bc 1 start. Is the NRC staff keeping pace with you and saying, q'
'- 2 yes, that one is now qualified, and stuff? Or is that only 3 to be done af ter you've finished?
4 MR. MASON: NRC staff, as a result of the 5 activities back in early December, I gue ss , whe re the senior 6 management team got real active and Mr. Thompson was 7 designated as the senior executive for TVA, we've worked 8 very well with the NRC staff. I don' t know that they've 9 told us on anything yet, That's okay, you can mark it of f 10 your list.
11 I don' t know if there's daily contact but, 12 certainly, we' re talking weekly. We've got this massive
_ 13 ef fort at Watts Bar. We ' re working with the NRC to identify 14 the approa'ch we're going to use with that program.
15 And before we put it all on the docket and say 16 that's it, we are getting some feedback and comments from.
17 the NRC staff. Instead of going all the way down the road l
18 and having to back up to square one.
19 MR. WARD: Thank you.
I 20 Mr. Thompson, is there anything you'd like to 21 say?
22 MR. THOMPSON: I guess I'll second that point, 23 that we are trying to keep clearly abreast and integrate our 24 scheduling and our views at an early stage in the 25 programmatic aspect as well as monitoring the implementation O
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l l
5410 12 04 146 1 DAV/bc 1 of those. And, secondly, the Commission has indicated, as x- 2 requested by TVA, an agreement to allow at least a 30-day 3 period for the new manager of Nuclear Power to come on board 4 and evaluate the issues and come back and brief the 5 Commission on some of the things you were asking about --
6l the root causes of their previous problems and why the .
7 corrective actions are addressed.
8 I think, with that, we ' re optimistic. We ' re 9 moving forward. We think things are moving in the right 10 direction, and we want to maintain our new schedule and pace 11 l with the TVA e f forts .
12i DR. KERR: Are you convinced that the TVA problem 13 is soluable in the fore seeable future?
q 14 MR. THOMPSON: We believe that the foundations 15 l have been put in place, the building blocks to have that 16 solution. We don' t see any specific item right now that's 17 i insurmountable. Obviously, the specifics on the Brown's 18 f Fe rry , the further away you look at a particular plant, we 19 have le ss information than I think TVA has, less 20 , information, and we have not reviewed some of that 21 information. In the de tail, we've looked at Sequoyah or 22 some of the others. Watts Bar.
23 MR. WARD: Okay. Thank you very much. Le t ' s 24 break for lunch, come back at 1:10.
,s 25 (Whereupon, at 12:10 p.m., the mee ting recessed ,
i )
'~'
26 to reconvene in unrecorded session at 1:10 p.m., this same 27 day.)
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L CERTIFICATE OF OFFICIAL REPORTER
,q i.)
This is 'to certify- that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING: 309TH GENERAL MEETING ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS DOCKET NO.: '
PLACE: WASHINGTON, D. C.
DATE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1986 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
(sigt) I i A (TYPED)
DAVID L. HOFFMAN Official Reporter ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
Reporter's Affiliation O
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>U=LIC NOT1C= =r T==
UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSIONERS' ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1986 The contents of this stenographic transcript of the proceedings of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission's Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS), as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions recorded at the meeting held on the above date.
No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at this meeting accepts any responsibility for errors or inaccuracios of statement or data contained in this transcript.
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TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY PRESENTATION TO ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS JANUARY 10,1986
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AGENDA TVA PRESENTATION TO ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 1986 INTRODUCTION JAMES W. HUFHAM MANAGER OF LICENSING C CX MASON MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW O. D o
UTY MANAGER tce os auC. TAR POWER
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ISSUES UPDATE - -- - --- - -----"~~
CHUCK' MASON
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POWER AND ENGINfERING ORG NIZAiiON (NUCLEAR)
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W- E . WE, S. A. WHITE DE.NTY MANAGER C.C. MASON g
. NUCIEAR SAFETY REVIEW STAFF
, N.W. MU g SUPPORT FUNCTsONS; seICL E AR LICENSING J.W. HUFNAM MANAGER ASSISTANT MANAGER QUALITY ASSullANCE JR. DURA 8 L st J. MUL 4 34 HUMAN feESOtstCE DEVELOPMENT M E. TAYLOft NUCLEAR $AFETY STAFF F.A. SZC2EPANSK8 ASSISTANT TO THE EMPLOVEE CONCERNS DEPUTY MANAGER E.K. SLIGER RP. DEN 4SE I
MANAGER MANAGER .
PROJECT MANAGEMENT NUCLEAR ENGINEER:NG &
OHG AH8Z ATION pPER AT BONS CONS T AL'CTION senesente C.C. MASON (VACANT)
J. P. D A RL ING Watts Bas Unit 2 W.R. BROWN l l MANAGEg MANAGER ENGINEERING CONSTRUCTION C gSON #4E R. W. C ANTRELif I I ASSISTANTS TO MANAGER MA A R t31 EAli NUCLEAR SERVICES L.L. JACKSON IAC8389I LL MARTW J. 81UTTON I I DROWHS FERRY SEQUOYAH WATTS SAR (Acting) .
N. L ASERCROMe8E W.T.Co m E 88LL alas
04 O
i MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENTS TIGHT FOCUS - STRESS ACCOUNTABILITY STRESS TEAM WORK AND COMMUNICATION STRESS G0ALS AND MEASUREMENTS OF PERFORMANCE TRAINING / RETENTION 0F. KEY MANAGERS D
9 J
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KEY SAFETY ISSUES FOR SEQUOYAH we EQUIPMENT QUALIFICATION OPERATIONAL READINESS PLAN EMPLOYEE CONCERN PROGRAM ELECTRICAL CALCULATIONS CABLE TRAY SUPPORT ANALYSIS s
- DESIGN CONTROL SURVEY i
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KEY SAFETY ISSUES FOR BROWNS FERRY MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE LICENSING ACTT.VITIES INDEPENDENT SAFETY EVALUATION FIRE PROTECTION OPERATIONAL READINESS MAINTENANCE ENVIRONMENTAL QUALIFICATIONS INTEGRATED SCHEDULE DESIGN CONTROL SEISMIC SUPP. ORT APPENDIX R l
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- 7
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KEY SAFETY ISSUES FOR WATTS BAR QUALITY ASSURANCE OF DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OPERATIONAL READINESS EMPLOYEE CONCERNS / ALLEGATIONS ENVIRONMENTAL QUALIFICATION WELDING O .
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0 ACRS BRIEFING DAVIS-BESSE RESTART FROM 6/9/85 EVENT O - JANUARY 10, 1986 CONTACT:
SLIDE 1 -
BRIEFING GlTLINE O
o BACKGROUND o MAJOR ACTIONS TO BE COPPLETED PRIOR TO RESTART o SAFETY EVALUATION STATUS o SIMIARY OF MAJOR OPEN ITEMS NEEDING PESOLUTION PRIOR TO RESTART O
l (DNTACT:
O suoe2
BACKGROUND O o SeeTeeeR 10,1985 - LICENSEE RESa0NDS TO 50.5 ace) LETrER o Su'it#ER 17,18,1985 - BRIEFING TO COPMISSION ON FOLLOWUP ACTIONS o OCTOBER 1, 1985 - NOVEPBER 16,1985 - FOUR REVISIONS TO LICENSE'S PLAN SUBMITTED .
o ESTIMATED SCHEDt.Q.E FOR REMAINING ACTIONS, FEBRUARY 1 TO MARCH 31, 1986, LICENSEE'S ESTIMATE FOR PLANT READINESS
- JANUARY 10,1986, ACRS BRIEFING
- JANUARY 1986, ISSUE SER ON PESTART
- FEBRUARY 1986, ACRS SUBCOPNITEE
- FEBRUARY 1986, ACRS FULL COPNITTEE CONTACT:
C. McCRACKEN .
Q X28595 SLIDE 3
)
~
MAJOR ACTIONS TO BE COWLETED PRIOR TO RESTART o RESOLUTION OF EVENT SPECIFIC PROBLEMS o SYSTEMS REVIEW AND TEST PROGRAM TO ENSURE ALL SYSTEMS IMPORTANT TO SAFETY ARE FUNCTIONAL o INSTALLATION OF THIRD AFW PlfiP (ELECTRIC POWERED) o MODIFY STEAM AND FEEDWATER RUPTURE CONTROL SYSTEM TO SIFPLIFY FUNCTIONS TO IFPROVE MAN MACHINE INTERFACE AND RELIABILITY o MANAGEE NT RESTRUCTURING WITH FOCUS ON NUCLEAR MISSION O o IFPLEENTATION OF NEW MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION o COPPLETE ANALYSIS TO SUPPORT INSTALLATION OF ADDITIONAL PRIMARY SYSTEM DEPRESSURIZATION CAPABILITY (T0 BE INSTALLED AT NEXT PEFUELING)
CONTACT:
C McCRACPal X28595 O SLIDE 4
(v3 SAFEW EVALUATION STATUS SELECTED TOLEDO EDIS0N ACTIONS o MANAGEMNT AND PROGRAWATIC ASRCTS MANAGEN NT RESTRUCTURING MAINTENANCE O -
PROCEDURES (STA SECURilY) o PLANT EVIEW EVENT SKCIFIC INVESTIGATIONS (RDOT CAUSE REPORTS)
EVIEWS OF OTHER SYSTEM IMPORTANT TO SAFF.TY (PART OF SYSTEMS REVIEW AK) TEST PROGRAM)
THERMAL TRANSIENT EFFECTS (STEAM GENERATOR; REACTOR VESSEL)
CONTACT:
C, McCRACle X28595 .
O Sune s
SAFETY EVAL.UATION STATUS O.
WIFCTB) TniFT10 H)lSW ACTIONS (CONT'D) o PLANT PODIFICATIONS - -
SFRCS AFWS SUFP - MOTOR DRIVEN FEED PLPP O
o SYSTEMS REVIEW AND TEST PROGRAM (SRTP) e CONTACT:
C. McCRACKEN X28595 ,
O StIDe e
l 8^*" '"^"'^'to" STA"'S O
o DECAY HEAT REMNAL RELIABILITY AND CAPABILITY -
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CONTACT:
C. McCRACl(EN /
X28595 i.
SLIDE 7 / .
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SIW ARY OF MAJOR OPEN ITEMS NEEDING RESOLUTION PRIOR TO RESTART
'O o EFFECTIVENESS OF NEW MAINTENANCE ORGANIZATION EVALUATION AND MANAGEMENT OF MAINTENANCE WORK OPDER BACid.0G o DEMONSTRATION OF FUNCTIONALITY OF SYSTEMS IWORTANT TO SAFETY THROUGH SYSTEMS REVIEW TEST PROGRAM o STAFF REVIEW NOT YET COWLETE O
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=
9 CONTACT:
C McCRACIEN
)d8595 St.IDE8 O
i
O 4
0 4
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ENCLOSURE 2 STATUS OF STAFF EVALUATION OF DAVIS-BESSE RESTART O
O O
o STATUS OF STAFF EVALUATION Q OF DAVIS-BESSE RESTART MANAGEMENT RESTRUCTURING The licensee has restructured the management organization to provide a stronger, more cohesive nuclear program. The Vice President, Nuclear, reports directly to the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. The Assistant Vice President, Nuclear, has been assigned additional responsibilities. New management personnel have been hired. In addition, more support functions have been physically located closer to the plant. Changes have also been made in meintenance, engineering, planning, and training departments of the plant organization.
States of Staff Review Based on the review of the licensee's management restructuring, the staff believes that the changes should improve management control. The licensee's current attitude and cooperation with the staff is excellent.
Future perfonnance will be evaluated and reported through the Systematic Appraisal of Licensee's Performance (SALP) program.
MAINTENANCE The licensee has established a more focused maintenance organization. New management personnel have been hired and the number of first-line supervisors has been increased. There has been increased support for maintenance activities in such areas as spare parts, training, and facilities. In
(]~
addition, the licensee has increased the scope of the planning function.
Status of Staff Review The staff's on-site maintenance review team identified concerns with organizational
= interfaces and backlog of Maintenance Work Orders (MWO's). Revision 4 to the licensee's Davis-Besse Course of Action provides details of the organizational interfaces. With ragard to the MWO's, the licensee had 1855 MWO's outstanding as of the June 9, 1985 event. During the investigation of the event and the implementation of corrective actions, an additional 3860 MWO's were developed (through November 7, 1985). Approximately 3000 MWO's were cleared through November 7, 1985 leaving about 2700 as of that date. During 11/7/85 through
'12/4/85, the licensee added 1000 MWO's and cleared approximately 750. The licensee is in the process of identifying those MWO's which must be completed priur to restart. Prior to restart, they have committed to complete all preventative maintenance and any repairs or modifications that may impact operations of systems important to safety. The staff's maintenance review team plans to revisit the site prior to restart to further assess the licensee's maintenance program.
PROCEDURES The licensee has reviewed and modified the emergency operating procedures to eliminate ambiguity. With regard to reporting of events to the NRC, a check list of required information is posted by the telephone and the personnel O> designated to report events are receiving additional training. The role of
the Shift Technical Advisor (STA) has been modified so that the STAS work 12
- r. hour shifts and they have been relocated so that they can reach the control room within two minutes. Changes have also been made to the access system E an d valve locking devices so that operators can have more timely access to safety related equipment.
Status of staff Review The staff finds that the licensee's course of action for the procedural items is generally acceptable.
PLANT REVIEW Toledo Edison has submitted all 12 root cause reports documenting the investigation of specific equipment malfunctions and their analysis of the thermal transient associated with the event. The licensee is in the process of evaluating the reviews of other systems important to safety. The results of the evaluation, including testing to be performed and any modifications to be made, will be reported to the staff prior to restart.
Status of Staff Review To date 10 reports have been found acceptable by the staff and 2 reports are
/~' still under review. With regard to the effects of the thermal transient on the steam generator and reactor vessef during the June 9,1985 event, the staff finds that the transient was within the design bases for both the reactor vessel and steam generators.
MODIFICATIONS TO STEAM AND FEEDWATER RUPTURE CONTROL SYSTEM (SFRCS)
.- PRIOR TO RESTART Toledo Edison is making modifications to SFRCS, prior to restart, to reduce the likelihood of spurious actuations and isolation of feedwater flow. These modifications will (1) delete the isolation of main steam and main feedwater on low steam generator level; (2) Eliminate Auxiliary Feedwater (AFW) isolation to the last steam generator depressurized; (3) electronically dampen the steam generator level signals; (4) rearrange the SFRCS manual actuation switches; and (5) provide fans to the SFRCS power supply cabinets.
Status of Staff Review The staff finds that the changes to be made to the SFRCS prior to restart are acceptable.
1 Longer Term Modifications to SFRCS To further improve SFRCS, the licensee plans the following long term actions (subsequent to restart): (1) maintain all AFW valves open and eliminate n automatic closure signals subject to the results of post accident' containment U environment and recriticality analyses, and (2) complete reanalysis of the l j SFRCS logic for modified AFW valve alignment.
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MODIFICATIONS TO THE AUXILIARY FEEDWATER (AFW) SYSTEM PRIOR TO RESTART The licensee is making the following modifications to the AFW system, prior to restart, to impreve reliability: (1) feed each auxiliary feed pump turbine from both steam generators, except for low pressure AFW initiation; (2) maintain the AFW turbine steam inlet lines hot by pressurization up to a new inlet valve; (3) properly set the torque and limit switches for motor operated valves; (4) install a new model governor on AFPT-1 (the governor on AFPT-2 was replaced earlier); (5) open, remove the hand wheel, and depower the AFW suction valves from the Condensate Storage Tank (CST); (6) add a 10 second time delay and revise the pressure setpoint for auto transfer to service water; (7) remove strainers from the AFW pump suctions and install a coarser mesh strainer on the CST supply.
S_tatus of Staff Review The staff finds that the changes appear acceptable. Staff questions are being resolved.
Long Term Modifications i
To further improve the AFW system, the licensee plans the following long term modifications (subsequent to restart): (1) reinstall the original electric >
Q startup pump (two turbine driven and two electric driven pumps will exist when completed); (2) improve the AFW level control;, and (3) maintain all AFW valves in the normal open position.
INSTALLATION OF"A 800 GPM MOTOR-DRIVEN STARTUP FEEDWATER PUMP MODIFICATION PRIOR.TO RESTART Toledo Edison is installing a new 800 gpm motor-driven pump, prior to restart, to improve the unavailability of AFW. This new pump will: (1) provide 100% capacity AFW flow from a diverse power supply; (2) be manually started from the control room and be loaded on one diesel generator; (3) be capable of being locally loaded on the second diesel generator; and (4) have manually operated discharge valves which are normally open.
Status of Staff Review The staff finds that the change is acceptable.
Long Term Modifications The licensee plans the following long term modifications: (1) provide the capability to load the electric driven pump on the second diesel generator from the control room; and (2) provide for control room operation of the i discharge valves.
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SYSTEMS REVIEW AND TEST PROGRAM The licensee has identified the systems important to safety and is developing a program to functionally test those systems.
Status of Staff Review The staff has established a systems review and test program group. This staff group maintains a continuous presence on site and reviews licensee proposed actions.as they are developed. Based on the staff's review to date the proposed scope of testing is acceptable. Sr.aff review and monitoring of system specific test procedures is continuing.
RELIABILITY OF THE MAIN FEEDWATER (MFW) SYSTEM The licensee has implemented a number of changes to the MFW system to improve reliability, thereby reducing challenges to the AFW system. These include:
(1) replacement of circuit board which initiated MFPT overspeed trip; (2) increased margin between nonnal S.G. level and low level trip setpoint; (3) install control oil system accumulator; (4) correct cause of power supply failures and; (5) in the long term perform a detailed reliability analysis.
Status of Staff Review The staff wil) address these actions in our Safety Evaluation.
RELIABILITY OF AFid - LOSS OF MFW AsofJung9,1985,thelicensee'spredictedunavailabilityoftheAFW was 2x10 . The licensee predicts the unavailability of the planned three pump AFW system to be consistent unreliability in the range of 10 gith to SRP 10.4.9 10-5 per criteria, demand; i.e., an compensating factors such as other methods of accomplishing the safety function of the AFW system or other reliable methods for cooling the reactor core during abnormal conditions may be considered to justify a larger unavailability. The analysis is based on NUREG-0611 and NUREG-0635 methodology. A plant specific PRA, using actual plant data, is to be provided after restart.
Status of Staff Review The staff concludes that the improvements in AFW reliability are acceptable for restart. Pending review of the plant specific PRA, to be provided after restart, the staff believes that at least a factor of 5 improvement has been achieved.
BLEED AND FEED The licensee has completed plant specific analyses to demonstrate.the A capabilities of bleed and feed with the current systems. Additionally, they iJ' t have consnitted to upgrade the bleed capability with redundant safety grade components.
. n Status of Staff Review Based on staff review there is adequate capability to bleed and feed provided that the operator intiates PORV and two makeup pumps within 20 minutes of a loss of main feedwater event. The licensee's modified procedures to initiate bleed and feed at 600*F reactor coolant system temperature instead of steam generator low-level (8 inchesl provides additional assurance that it will be properly initiated. The licensee connitted, as a long term item, to provide increased capacity (redundant and safety grade) to relieve reactor coolant .
system pressure down to HPI operating capability.
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