ML20137K115
| ML20137K115 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 11/14/1995 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20137J811 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-96-434 NUDOCS 9704040243 | |
| Download: ML20137K115 (179) | |
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@fficial Transcript of Prsocodings g NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
, interview of Kenneth Zahrt i
Docket Number: (not assigned)
Location: Thornton, Colorado l 4
i i
Date: Tuesday, November 14,1995 l l
f .
Work Order No.: NRC-411 Pages 1-178 IRIOrmLII00 I3 thIC IECCId V!ES b icd in actotace v:!!h the fg26m (! II.h TO!!:n Act, CT,67.[/.!3T.S --
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NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 40 3 970331
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1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA l
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I
)
+. +++ . .
4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS !
{
5 INTERVIEW l 6 ---------------------------------x 7 IN THE MATTER OF: : !
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No. !
1 i
9 KENNETH ZAHRT : (not assigned) !
1 10 :
11 ---------------------------------x 12 Tuesday, November 14, 1995 13 1
14 Room 303
[
15 83 East 120th Street 1
l l
16 Thornton, Colorado l
17 l 18 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 9:00 a.m.
21 BEFORE:
22 JONATHAN ARMENTA, JR., Inv.estigator 23 CHRIS CAIN, Technical Assistant
~. 4
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. - 1 EE9CEED1HQE 2
(9:00 a.m.)
MR. ARMENTA- 7:r the record, this is an 4 interview with Mr. Kenneth Zahrt.
, Mr. Zahrt, would you 5 please spell your full name.
6 MR. ZAHRT: Kenneth, K-E-N-N-E-T-H, L. for 7 Leroy, Zahrt, Z-A-H-R-T.
8 MR. ARMENTA: Today is November 14, 1995. It 9 is approximately 9:00 a.m. We are in Thornton, Colorado.
10 Present at this interview, Mr. Zahrt, is Mr.
11 Chuck Cain from our NRC Region IV office, and Ms. Hershey, 12 who is our court reporter. My name is Jonathan Armenta, 13 Jr., and I am here as an NRC investigator from -- also 14 from Region IV in Arlington, Texas.
15 This interview, Mr. Zahrt, is being tape i
16 recorded and will be transcribed by the services provided 17 by Ms. Hershey.
18 Would you please go ahead and state your 19 physical address.
20 MR'. ZAHRT: My physical address is $$$bg 21
.mmmmaammmmmm+ 73 22 MR. ARMENTA: Your ZIP code? l l
23 MR. ZAHRT:
24 MR. ARMENTA: Is -- do you have a mailing 25 address different from your residence?
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a MM. ZAHRT: No. Tnat is my mnnng 4tcarO23. ,
2 MR. ARMENTA: Your telephone number?
3 MR. ZAHRT: Area code
{
1 4 MR. ARMENTA: Your date of birth? '
5 MR. ZAHRT: ,
6 MR. ARMENTA: Your Social Security number?
7 MR. ZAHRT:
8 MR. ARMENTA:
, Are you employed at this time? i l
1 9 MR. ZAHRT: I am self-employed right now.
l 10 !
MR. ARMENTA: And what is the nature of your 11 business? i 12 MR. ZAHRT: Our busin ss is entitled B&M 13 Enterprises, and we are in a maintenance, a lawn service, 14 and a landscaping business..
15 MR. ARMENTA: When you say "we," who are you 16 referring to?
17 'MR. ZAHRT: My partner is Roland Sawyer and 18 both of our wives,~ Mary Zahrt and Marcie Sawyer. They are 19 all on the business.
i
-20 -
MR. ARMENTA: Did Mr. Sawyer used to work for 21 you while you were at Fort St. Vrain?
22 MR. ZAHRT: Yes, he did.
23 MR. ARMENTA: You -- when were you released 24 from Fort St. Vrai;?
25 MR. ZAHRT: I was released in August of 1994, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
1 August or September of 1994. I believe that was when it was.
MR. ARMENTA: '94?
4 MR. ZAHRT: '93? I don't know. I was going 5 to bring my letter. I should have brought my letter. It 6 had my date on it.
7 MR. ARMENTA: It wasn't this year; it was last 8 year.
9 MR. ZAHRT: Right.
10 MR. ARMENTA: All right. 1994. And -
l 11 MR. ZAHRT: Well, it was July of '94.
12 MR. ARMENTA: That was your last official day 13 with --
14 MR. ZAHRT: I went on vacation to Canada on a 15 fishing trip, and I got my letter in the mail a week 16 before I went on vacation from SEG.
17 MR. ARMENTA: Were you placed on l l
18 administrative leave before you were terminated?
19 MR. ZAHRT: Yes, I was.
20 MR. ARMENTA: When did your administrative i 21 leave start?
l 22 MR. ZAHRT: Starting March 26, 1994. )
23 MR. ARMENTA: So from March 26 to July '94,
- 4 fru were cn administrative leave until you were released 25 by SEG.
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i 1 MR. ZAHRT: Yes, I was. '
i 2 MR. ARMENTA: And prior to March 26, you had i
l l 3 provided day-t:-day cperations over at Fort St. Vrain 4 as --
what was your title? i i
i 1 5 MR. ZAHRT: I was the RPOS, which is t'he l 1
1 1 <
6 radiati6n protection operations supervisor for Scientific i 7 Ecology Group, SEG.
1 1
8 MR. ARMENTA: During the time that you were l 9 with Fort St. Vrain, did you have this position? Were you j I
10 in this same position, or were you promoted at any time l 1
11 during -- 1 1
12 MR. ZAHRT: I was hired there all along for 13 that position. I also started the project as the 14 st.pervisor for the site characterization. I had eight 15 technicians, and we did the site characterization. And 16 then when we completed the site characterization, PSC 17 wanted me to be a refuel floor lead tech, since I was 18 going to go right on into the project as the~RPOS, and 19 they requested SEG that I come over and perform lead tech 20 duties on the refuel floor during defueling.
21 And so I went over as an SEG employee, 22 contracted by PSC, and ARC, Applied Radiological Control 23 out of Georgia, they have the RP contract for the
- 4 defueling. But : went over as an independent to be a lead l
l
_ te n, and : served in tha: capacity for the entire NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTE AS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 202. 234 4433 WASmNGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 defueling process, which, cf course, at that time, I also, q when the defueling go: 5:wn to where we were getting ready I
- : get done -- I worked night shift, by the way, and I l l l
4 would go after night shift over to the SEG trailer and ;
1 5 work on staffing and work on stuff for the decommissioning 6 coming up.
7 So I spent a lot of time working on that 8 project after -- while the defueling was going on.
9 MR. ARMENTA: Prior to Fort St. Vrain, where 10 else did you work in the nuclear industry?
11 MR. ZAHRT: I worked at 15 different 12 commercial nuclear facilities throughout the country.
13 MR. ARMENTA: Can you give us a chronology, a 14 very quick where you spent your. time? What year did you 15 start in the nuclear industry?
16 MR. ZAHRT: I started in the nuclear industry 17 in 1979 at Hatch in Georgia and at Duane Arnold in Iowa, 18 and then I went through the Illinois circuit with the 19 Commonwealth Edison system of Dresden and Quad Cities and 20 Zion. I worked Brown's Ferry in Alabama, and I worked 21 Duane Arnold again.
22 Then I did some decommissioning activities for 21 Allied Technology in Massachusetts on a uranium oxide
_4 fari'ity down in Texas and Massachusetts.
. Then I went CI .:ack and worked at Cavis -- not Davis-Besse, but Perry and NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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4M 'b ck to Zion and down to Florida at Crystal Rivor. .
I w::nt 2 all cver really, you kncw. : spent 15 years doing that.
MR. ARMENTA: So when you first went to work 4 for SEG, did you start at the Fort St. Vrain location, or 5 did you sta,rt at a different location?
6 MR. ZAHRT: No. I --
SEG was the first time 7 at Fort St. Vrain in '90. Well, yes. Really in December i 1
8 of 1989 is when I started with SEG, and we did the 9 characterization in 1990.
10 MR. ARMENTA: So when the decommissioning 11 project started in '92, that -- you were the RPSO. l l
12 MR. ZAHRT: Yes. RPOS. That is correct.
13 MR. ARMENTA: Okay. Mr. Zahrt, just from the 14 year you graduated from high school to the present, what 15 education do you have?
16 MR. ZAHRT: I have a high school degree, and I 17 went back, not until I was almost ,
while I was in the b 18 industry, because I was trying to be -- I wanted to be' 19 hired on at Duane Arnold as a house tech, and their 20 requirements are you have to have a degree or you have to 21 meet their college requirements, which means a year of 22 chemistry, a physics course, algebra, math up to trig.
23 And so I went back and I took chemistry. I 24 took a year of chemistry, and I took physics, and I took 25 a l g e c' r a .
I got everything but my last course of trig, and NEAL R. GROSS COUAT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS l 1323 AHODE ISL AND AVENUE. N W I
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0r_ t, .
i 1 l - then ' went on the road again, you know, because I was a -
i l
r ; ::ntra ter and they le the contractors go. So I didn't.
l
- p :t ge: :ha: Ocmpleted. -
i 4 But I have been -- I was a YMCA director for a l
5 few years, and I went to school at the University of 6 Illinois, and I went to college at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, 7 for YMCA training and so on.
8 Presently to this day, I am still a certified 9 YMCA director and a certified YMCA aquatics instructor. I 10 am still that, but I am not pursuing that, because the 11 money is not there.
12 MR. ARMENTA: Did you -- during this time that 13 you went to school at various places, did you receive any le type of degree, either --
15 MR. ZAHRT: No.
16 MR. ARMENTA: -
associate's degree or --
17 MR. ZAHRT: No, I did not. No. And I truly 18 believe that was one of my nemesis and one of my downfall 19 at this project. No doubt in my mind, because when I 20 interviewed for this position, Jim Nicologsi from the home 21 effice came down to Wichita Falls, Texas, to interview me 1
22 f;r this position, because to be truthfully honest with !
l l
23 y:u, back in 1989, there was a lot of talk about Fort St.
24 / rain being the first nuclear commercial facility to be 2: i+:Orr.ed in the United States. It was going to be a l NEAL R. GROSS . .
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1 really good job, primo job. It would b3 a feather in
- anybody's cap to get on it.
- And I wanted to get on this project, because 1 4 wanted to do this project. And when Mr. Nicologsi came 5 down and interviewed me, at the time I was the project 6 manager'for Allied Technology at Wichita Falls project, 7 decommissioning a uranium oxide facility.
8 And I had just done one in Massachusetts and 9 did the whole ball of was, you know, and they were 10 interested in my expertise, in my experience in the 11 business, because all of my experience was firsthand, was 12 actually down in the trenches. Okay.
13 I didn't have a shingle. I distinctly 14 remember talking to Jim Nicologsi and saying, Jim, you 15 know, I do not have a degree. He says, Kenny, I know you 16 don't have a degree; I didn't come here to talk to you 17 about a degree. You know, this position that we are going 18 to put you in is not a degree position, doesn't have to 19 be. We want an operational health physics supervisor to 20 run this position.
21 And he said, Your reputation in the industry 22 has been impeccable, and he said, We want you. And he l 23 said, You have done real good jobs on these two 24 decommissioning projects, and if you want the job, the job 25 :s yours. So I took the job, you know. I mean, I said, NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 6202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234-4433
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1 Yes; I want the job. And that ic why th y hired ma. And
- ne said, Believe me; he says, The education means nothing right now. .
4 He says, he doesn't - but as we get into the 5 project, you will find out that I get to a certain level 6 and I can never go any farther, because I don't have the 7 degree and I don't have the shingle, and I am not a 8 cer'tified health physicist, not a CHP and so on. So I 9 know my limitations; I know where I am at. Fine. I 10 understand that.
11 I made a commitment in my life to educate my 12 sons and my wife, and I did that, and they went through 13 college and they got their degrees. And that is fine.
14 And I am years old, and I am not going back to college 15 right now, you know. I am going to retire here in a few 16 years. So that is the commitment I made, you know.
17 And I knew what level I wa's going to be at, 18 that is where I was going to stay.
19 MR. ARMENTA: Okay. That is fine. Mr. Zahrt, 20 do you have -- do you want an attorney present during this l 21 interview?
22 MR. ZAHRT: No, I do not.
23 MR. ARMENTA: Did you know that you could have 24 brought your attorney if you wanted.to? ,
25 MR. ZAHRT: Yes, I did.
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1 MR. ARMENTA: Having said that, do you still
- want :: continue with in;s interview?
- XR. ZAHRT- *
- es. -
4 MR. ARMENTA: Just so that it will be 5 understood, you are giving this interview voluntarily, of 6 your own free will.
7 MR. ZAHRT: Yes, I am. I have nothing to 8 lose. I can't get fired anymore. I have already been 9 fired. I have nothing to lose.
10 MR. ARMENTA: We talked a little bit before we 11 started out our interview, and we discussed with you the 12 issues that we wanted to hear from you and the issues that 13 you would want to talk to us. We told you that you have 14 the liberty to talk to us on just abcut anything that you 15 wanted to.
16 However, we did specify that we were here to 17 listen to you, and as a request on your part, to a phone 18 call made to our regional office. Is that correct?
19 MR. ZAHRT: That is correct. I talked to Mr.
20 Calan [ phonetic), and I told him that I didn't think I 21 could respond in writing to my NOV letter and do justice 22 to the response.
23 MR. ARMENTA: If during -- at any time during 24 the interview you wish to discontinue or terminate this 15 interview, you are not under any obligation to continue.
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1 You may do so. Is that understood? _
VR. ZAHRT- That is understood.
? MR. ARMENTA: Okay. And for any other reason 4 that you might want to break, personal reason, we can do 5 that.
6 -
I need to ask you to stand and raise your 7 right hand, because I need to swear you in, and the 8 informati~on that we have on record prior to the swearing 9 in -- is there anything that you have told us up to now 10 that would cause us to be misled by you or anything that 11 would be unfactual?
12 MR. ZAHRT: No.
13 MR. ARMENTA: I will now go ahead and 14 administer the oath.
15 Whereupon, 16 KENNETH ZAHRT 17 having been first duly sworn, was called as a witness 18 herein and was examined and testified as follows:
19 MR. ARMENTA: Thank you. You may be seated.
20 At this point I would like to just reiterate 21 the purpose of our interview is to listen to you. You 22 have been served by the NRC with a letter of notice of 23 violation, and I understand that you want to tell us your 24 side of the story. We are going to go ahead and allow you 2: tc de that, and having said that, I want to go ahead and NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPORTERS AND TAANSCAIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
turn it over to Mr. Cain who will direct some of the . .
luestions for you.
- 3:.':MINATION l 4 BY MR. CAIN:
5 0 There's three categories of survey records we 1
1 6 want to, talk about this morning. The first category -- l l
7 well, I think you are already familiar with this, but I 8 just want to make sure that we kind of put this in an 9 outline in terms of what we would do.
10 The first kind of survey record is the l
11 material release surveys that were conducted at Fort St.
12 Vrain, and then there are some survey records for -- that 1
13 support RWP work, and then the last -- )
14 A Infamous blocks.
15 0 Yes. The block survey, which was more of an 16 issue that we talked to Mr. Sawyer about, but we will also i
17 discuss that with you a bit as well.
18 So what I would like to do at this point is 19 just -- if we can try to discuss matters in one of those ;
20 three categories as we go through here, so we don't lose l
21 track Of which kind of survey records we are talking l l
22 about, that will be helpful to us.
22 And --
- 4 A That makes it easy, because those are the
- :nree tnings that was zerced in on the entire NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPOATERS AND TRANSCA!BEAS l 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W
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1 investigation. q l
2 I- Okay.
- - A Okay. Sc :: is nothing new. .
4 Q You have gotten the notice of violation from 5 us, and you have read that. And even before we got i
6 started'today, you indicated that you were planning to l
7 give to us a response to the notice of violation today 8 before we leave town.
9 A Yes. For the record, I have written out my I 10 response to the NOV, and it is right here, and I will give j 11 it to you, and you can save me some postage and everybody 12 else, and you can carry it back to the NRC office.
13 Q That will be fine.
14 A And it will go into the public document room 15 or whatever. .
16 0 Are you --
17 A And you can read it now if you like. I don't i
18 care when you want to read it. You know, if we want to 19 read it now, we can read it, because it pretty much tells 20 you just exactly how I feel about the violation and --
21 MR. ARMENTA: For the record, Mr. Zahrt has 22 given Mr. Cain the envelope which contains the response to 23 the NOV NRC letter.
'. .; BY MR. CAIN:
25 Q I won't read the whole thing right now, but I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOnTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W i2C2e 234 4433 vsASHiNGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
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._--~.~______--.....;
I do note that ye have stated in here that you contest --
-l 2 you are contesting the violation.
i
? A Yes. )
4 Q Okay. At this point, I think what I want to )
5 do is turn it over to you and let you give us some 6 information that would be helpful in responding to the 7 charge that records were falsified. And perhaps the best 8 place to start is with those material release surveys.
9 Can you -- would you describe for us the 10 nature of those surveys and why it is that you feel that
- 11 they were not falsified.
12 A Yes. I don't feel the surveys were falsified.
13 We probably made a decision -- I made a bad decision when
~
14 I discovered that the surveys that my technicians were 15 doing on the project were -- the documentation was not up 16 to snuff. Okay?
17 At that particular stage of the game, we were 18 under an absolute state of confusion, because we were i
19 operating under Fort St. Vrain, Public Service procedures, !
. 20 and we were trying to develop SEG procedures at the same i
21 time. Ckay.
22 And there was a lot of confusion on release 23 criteria. There was a lot of confusion on what we were l 24 g:ing to do, how we were going to release material,
- E ..e:her we were going :: release it because it was 1,000 I NEAL R. GROSS l COURT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202i 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
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'. DFM per 100 square centimeters, which is standard industry 2 practice. Ycu understand what I am talking about. Is i that correct? ,
4 0 I do.
5 A Okay. And Fort St. Vrain has some really 6 weird release limits. They had -- when we got over there, 7 they had any area that was greater than 100 DPM per 100 8 square centimeters, which is pretty restrictive, it could 9 release. And if you walked around the building and you 10 found an area that was greater than 500 DPM per 100 square 11 centimeters, you had to rope it off and decon it and clean 12 it up and everything like that.
13 And so when technicians who were house techs 14 made their rounds in the reactor building, they would 15 never, ever find something that was 500 DPM, because they 16 would have to go to work and rope off the area. So, 17 therefore, all of their surveys showed less than MDA, 18 because they counted most of their smears in clean areas 19 on a Tennlec. Okay?
20 Now, you know that the degree of detectability 21 from a Tennlee and a frisker are considerably different. >
l 22 Is that not correct? I l
23 0 Yes. I understand. I J
l 24 A Okay. You understand that, because Mr. Malone 25 fr:m Stiers, Anderson, Malone did no understand it. He NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202i2344433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
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I didn't even -- sfter I explained it to him, he didn't 2 understand it. Okay.
3 O By frisker, you mean a pancake beta gamma 4 detector. Is that correct?
5 A An HP-210 probe with a beta gamma detector, 6 which is -- could be an RM-14, could be an RM-15, could be 7 a Ludlum 177, could be Boring, could be a lot of things. .
8 Okay.
l 9 The thing that you need to know is friskers 10 are 10 percent efficient --
that is all they are -- you 11 know, where Tennlecs and BC-4s are 22, 24 percent .
12 efficient. You can detect 10, 12, 15, 20 DPM on a i
13 Tennlec. You cannot detect 10 or 11 DPM on a frisker. l l
14 You just can't do it. It is like reading a dosimeter, a j
\
15 0-200 dosimeter, and he says, All right; I picked up 4. )
16 Come on; you.got a calibrated eyeball if you can pick up 4 1
17 ; .. a dosimeter, you know.
18 Bdt, anyway, at this st' age of th'e game, the 19 confusion was astronomical, because we were in a lot of 20 problemc. No one was trained on the Fort St. Vrain 21 procedures. No one was trained when we went to the SEG 22 procedures, and you have got to understand now that the i
23 release of this material down on level 1 and level 5 came 24 at a time when the project was really having some problems
~5 wi:P procedures. Okay.
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. And we didn't know what we were going to do. I 2 We didn't knew how we were going to release stuff, and I l
- am trying to get my upper management -- th,at is Ed Parsons )
4 and Dick Sexton and Ted Borst who is the PSC facility 1
5 manager. I said, People, we have to make a decision on.
6 release' material.
7 The PDP -- have you heard of the PDP? Do you 8 know what it is?
9 Q You mean the decommissioning plan?
10 A The proposed decommissioning plan, the 11 absolute bible of that project. All through the inception 12 of the PDP, all through the inception of site 13 characterization, the PDP is talked about. You can't 14 violate the PDP; you got to be within the guidelines of 15 the PDP.
16 Well, the PDP stated that we couldn't release 17 anything unless it was zero detectable. Okay. Now, what 18 are we going to go by? Are we going to go by Fort St.
i 19 Vrain procedures, which means less than 1,000, or are we l l
20 going to go by Fort St. Vrain procedures which are less 21 than 100, or are we going to go by the PDP which is zero 22 detectable, which we know is very, very restrictive.
23 How are we going to get this stuff out? All 24 the stuff down on level 1 that we surveyed -- and this is 25 the Bixby surveys. Okay? All the stuff down there for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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1 ten years has been a clean area. PsC didn't even monitor .
2 people coming out of this area.' It is in a clean area, i l 3 Okay.
4 We put the PCM-1Bs into effect when we got on 1
l 5 the project. Got a lot of static over it, because PSC {
6 said, Ypu don't need it; it is not dirty; it is not I 7 contaminated, all our surveys. I went back during site 1
8 characterization, looked at surveys, because my management l 1
9 said, Look and see if you can incorporate any of the Fort 10 St. Vrain past routine surveys to help us with site 11 characterization for the decommissioning project. l 12 Q Let me interrupt you. What is a PC-1B7 t 13 A PCM-1B is a personnel contamination monitor. l l
1 14 You step into it. I am sure you have been in them before.
15 Q This is a portal monitor?
16 A This is a portal monitor that the nuclear l
17 industry -- it~ swept by storm about three or four years I 18 ago, because the NRC used to go through with their 19 inspectors and ding all the commercial nuclear power 20 plants on frisking techniques, because everybody that came 21 out of contaminated areas, what would they do?
22 They would do a turbo frisk. To do a two-23 minute, whole-body frisk takes a long time. And instead l 24 cf taking this probe and a frisker and taking two minutes 25 and moving it at one to two inches per second and frisk l
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your whole body --
2 And if you have got 150 workers coming out of l 3 an area and it takes two minutes a time,'does it not take 4 a rocket scientist to figure out that somebody is losing 5 money here, just by frisking yourselves out of a )
l l
6 contaminated area, not to mention the violations that are
{
i 7 occurring because NRC is saying, You are not frisking 8 properly. Okay.
9 You are doing a turbo frisk, and you are in l
10 violation of the procedure, because it says, Do a two-11 minute, whole-body frisk. You spent 20 seconds in that 12 monitor, and you are out of the area. And it dinged a 13 lot of people. And that is what happened; that is why the 14 PCM-1Bs came into effect.
15 O That doesn't have anything to do with material 16 release surveys.
17 A No. It has nothing to do with them, other 18 than the f act that we put them in, and they didn't want us 19 to put them in, but they are there now. Okay.
20 And during the cburse of this release 21 material, I am trying to get people, my upper management 22 people, now, to make a decision, to tell me what you want 23 me to do, you know. My technicians are doing three things 24 now: They are surveying materials down on level 1, and 25 they are documenting it on a release form, which allows NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RMO'E ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 2344433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
~
l l
- .e.
- '
.c =uavey Live carts or metal, two carts or wood, and
- mercus other stuff, and write it on a release form and say,.5urveyed One cart tf metal, all less than 1-K. Fine.
4 That is documented, and that happened. Some 5 of them put -- Jim Bixby put his entries in the log book.
6 There was so much material coming out that he didn't want 7 to write one individual survey for every piece of thing 8 that came out of that reactor building. And that is 9 understandable.
10 We are talking thousands of pieces of wood, 11 thousands of pieces of little bolts and stuff, you know, 12 that are surveyed. And so they put it on a release form, i 12 or he would document it in his log book: Surveyed one 14 dumpster full of metal. Okay. Less than 1-K. Or , Okay; 15 clean; ready to go.
i 16 All right. I took major, major flak from the :
1 M-K superintendents, because I was holding up work.
i 17 I was le not letting them get stuff out of the building as soon as 19 they wanted to. They would come into my office, and they 20 would say, Kenny, what is the deal here; how come we can't 21 just take this stuff out because it is in a clean area 22 anyway. I said, Because we have made a commitment to 22 survey everything that leaves this building.
- 4 And I am talking about Tom Dieter and Danny
- s :4 ; ; -:s and ennis Rchir and Clarence Boman (phonetic] who NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTE AS AND TAANSCRIBEAS
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1 1 is in the Fort St. Vrain records, and the memo came out in _
2 November of 1992. It is in my log book entry that Ted 3 Borst said, All SEG technicians and -- I don't know what 4 it says exactly, you know, but -- it has been a long time.
l 5 But the content of that memo states: You will
]
6 use -- be consistent with Fort St. Vrain procedures and 7 use a frisker to release material anything less than 1K.
8 Now, you know, I am no rocket scientist by any stretch of l 9 the imagination, but I do know that 10 CFR 20, there is a 10 passage in there that talks about release criteria and i
11 hat you have to use the most sophisticated type of ;
12 equipment that you have on site.
l 13 If you don't have it on site, obviously you 14 use the best that you have got. And I am not so sure, 15 because I don't quote 10 CFR 20; I am not real up on it.
16 Okay? But you need to look it up and look this passage 17 up, because if I am not mistaken, it says that if you ;
18 don't have the proper instrumentation, you need.to ,
1 19 purchase the proper instrumentation to get to the level of l 20 the best detectability available in the industry.
21 Now, is that correct, or am I wrong? Do you ;
22 know?
23 0 Well, yes. That is not my interpretation of 24 Fart 20, because you can always find more sensitive 25 i r.s t rument a t ien . There is always one type of NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 2021 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 instrumentation that is more sensitiva then what you -
2 happen to have. Generally NRC guidelines have been 1,000 3 DFM per 100 square centimeters removable, or 5,000 DPM 4 fixed.
5 A That is correct.
6 Q With a 15,000 max.
7 A That is right. And that is exactly --
8 0 And those are the criteria that we normally go 9 by.
10 A That is right. And that is exactly what they 11 did. Okay.
12 O This is what the Borst memo said, that you 13 were going to use those criteria?
14 A Uh-huh.
15 O Okay.
16 A That is correct.
17 0 All right.
18 A And that is what we used.
19 'O All right.
20 A And so then I say, to my management I says, 21 Well, why are you guys so all fired up about this PDP, 22 because you always tell me: The PDP is the bible; we 23 can't violate the PDP; and we can't change the PDP. The 24 only way we can change the PDP is to get it authorized by E the NRC and PSC corporate, whatever. That is the only way NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCAiBEAS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234-8433 WASMINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 1 you could change any portion of the PDP. Okay.
2 Reading that document is like reading -- that 3 is pretty dry, too. But it set the tone for the entire 4 project. Okay? And that particular -- in that meeting 5 with Ted Borst and Ed Parsons, when I walked out of the 6 office', you know, Ted said to me, he said, Kenny, you got i 7 a little upset in there, didn't you. l 8 I said, Yes, I did get a -- because, Ted, I 9 don't agree with you two people. I think it is wrong.
10 The reason you are going to less than 1K is very obvious.
4 11 It is money, absolute out and out money, because if we 12 find 10 or 12 DPM, we have got to do one of two things.
13 We either have to decon that object, or we have to ship it 14 out as rad waste. And lord knows, we know what it costs 15 to ship rad waste in comparison to shipping clean trash.
16 Is that not correct? It is pretty astronomical.
17 So -- and Ted -- or Ed Parsons even made a.
18 statement to me. He said, Kenny, there is no way that we I 19 are going to decon stuff that are 20 and 30 DPM. It is l l
20 just not going to happen. And we are not going to ship it 21 out and bury it as rad waste if it is 40 or 50 or 60 DPM, 22 because it is not -- it is too insignificant to worry 1
23 about, which I agree. It really isn't. It is not much to 24 werry about.
- 5 But they set the guidelines; they set the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 precedent, and then they changed directions on me.
2 0 All right. Now, move off in the direction now 3 of how we get to surveys that were conducted in 1992 that 4 were not documented until '93 and later perceived to be 5 falsified.
6 A Okay. They say that I falsified these 7 documents, because I signed my name on these documents in ;
8 '93, in February of '93, which the surveys were completed 9 in October and November of '92. i 10 And when I looked at the records and saw that 11 there was not documentation for all the surveys, I told 12 Jim Bixby and my technicians in a staff meeting; I said, l
13 People, our documentation sucks, stinks; you people are l
14 not doing your job. You are not doing your job correctly, 15 you know. You need to document everything.
1C. So I said, I want surveys generated for the 17 stuff that we brought out on level 1, and I said, I want 18 no surveys reproduced; I sant no surveys radioed. You 19 know what a radio survey is.
20 Q No.
21 A That is producing a survey that you didn't 22 even do, but you just write some. numbers in.
23 Q okay.
24 A Bring it out of the sky, and every technician 25 and every RP sucervisor in the industry, if you walk up to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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_.._.___.i 1 him and say, If you are familiar with radioing a survey, l 1
1 2 they will tell you exactly what it is. Okay?
4 3 And I specifically stated that to Jim and to ,
4 my staff. I do not want that to happen. If you did the 5 survey on this particular item, then produce the document, 6 period.- Go back to your log book entries; copy from your !
\
7 log book entries when you did the survey and make a 1
8 survey. Go back to the release log; if there is something 9 on the release log that you released, let it go. That is 10 fine. That is legal. Okay.
11 And night shift did do some of that. Okay. j 12 They did a lot of that, and day shift did some too. ;
13 O The question at this point: Now, why is there 14 a need to produce this record at this point in time in .
1 1; '93? What prompted the need for these survey records now?
16 You are saying that there were some materials surveyed and 17 released in late '92 that were less than the release 18 limits that were agreed upon.
19 But then something happens in early '93 where 20 someone says, We need to have records. We don't have 21 records; we need to have records ot those surveys. And 22 then you, as you just explained, then you go back and 23 request your technicians to document what -- from their 24 log books surveys that they performed.
25 What happened?
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That is the mistake that was made.
1 A I mado 2 that mistake. I took the hit for that mistake; I still 3 take the hit for tho mistake. It was wrong. I shouldn't 4 have done anything. I should have just left it go, and no 5 one would have found anything; there would have been 6 nothing', because I 6:as thinking to myself -- now, this is 7 me, and I made this decision. Okay.
8 And I am thinking, Geez, somebody is going to 9 come back, and they are going to see that we took out 10 three ton of material on level 1, but there ain't no 11 surveys for any of it. Now, how did you get it out of the 12 building, if you said you surveyed it but there is no 13 documentation showing that you surveyed it?
14 And I am thinking, God, that could be 15 devastating, you know, later on down the road. So I said, 16 People did you survey this. yes, we did. Did you not 17 survey it? No, we surveyed everything. I went to the M-K 18 people, to Tom Dieter, and I said, Tom Dieter, and I said, l l
19 Tom, did everything get surveyed that was on level 1 and l
20 level 3 from the reactor building. l l
21 And then he commenced to give me all kinds of I 22 crap. Yes, it got surveyed;. Jesus, you ought to know; you 23 are the one that held up all the work, you know. I said, 24 Well, I just wanted to make sure that everything got 25 surveyed. Did you see anything that ever left this NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W f 202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 building that did not get surveyad? He enid, No. Ha 2 said, God, they wouldn't let anything out of that l 3 building. ,
l 4 0 Why weren't the technicians in the habit of 5 preparing survey records for that work they did anyway? l 6 Isn't that a common industry practice? I 7 A It is a common industry practice. You are l
8 absolutely right. They just got lazy.
9 Q Was it because -- not to put words in your l l
10 mouth necessarily here, but you have already explained .
l 11 that this material on level 1 was essentially clean I i
i 12 material.
13 A It is a clean area.
14 Q It is a clean area. I mean, is that something 15 that maybe -- what is the explanation for why the 16 technicians didn't prepare these survey --
1 17 A Well, the technicians were really upset with 18 the fact that we were doing surveys in a clean area on 19 stuff that was already clean, and there is ten years of 20 documentation showing that everything down there was less 21 than MDA, from the PSC records. And.they are saying, Why 22 are we spending all this time doing this, when it is clean 23 anyway, you know.
24 And, you know, I was in numerous meetings and 25 fighting all kinds of fires and dragons, and I wasn't down NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANbCRIBERS 1323 RMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 there watching my technicians do all their surveys all ths ,
2 time. I had a lot of other people watching them do this, 3 ycu know. And they made a lot of comments,to me that, you 4 know, Boy, this is really stupid to do all this.
5 And so they probably took the avenue that,
~
6 Well, ghez, you know, there is not really -- it is not 7 that big of a deal. And, yes. I am not going to generate 8 one piece of paper for 650 different items, because I took 9 so much static from the M-K superintendents anyway that my 10 technicians after they got done doing their job, they had 11 to sit down and write up a survey. Okay.
12 And Tom Dieter would come into my office and 13 say, You know you got two technicians sitting on their 14 butts over there, you know, writing. I said, Tom, they 15 have to write; they have to document what they have done, l 16 and they have to do a survey when they come out of an i
17 area. So I am going to tell you right now, Tom, you are 18 going to have to wait unti-1 my technicians do their 19 surveys, bottom line. That is not debatable. ;
20 He said, Well, you ought to get rid of that 21 PCM-1B and you ought to get rid of all that documentation l 22 crap. I said, That ain't going to happen, so I said, you 23 might as well just stay away and don't watch them, because 24 there were many times when they were surveying stuff down 25 on level 1. Their craft people come to work. There is NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
.2021 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
l as I like 60 of them, and I have like 15 technicians, so we 2 have g'ot *15 people now.
2 And we are going into the buil' ding, and to go 4 into the building, you have got to log in on the computer 5 in the Digi-Dose system and go in the building. Okay.
6 Well, ho long does it take 75 people to log into a 7 computer that takes about 30 seconds? Quite a while. And 8 if they are not to work immediately, Tom is up in my 9 office, saying, You got people standing down there at 10 access control, and you are costing me money because they 11 are not getting in the building.
12 I said, Tom, it will take ten minutes. Don't 13 go down there until ten after 6:00, and then you won't get 14 upset, you know. Just let them go in the building, do 15 their job, and forget about it. So that was --
1 16 You know, and then he would come up after they ;
17 went down, and he says, You have got four or five 18 technicians down there on level 1, and they are surveying 19 everything, for God's sakes. They are surveying bolts and 20 washers and wood and struts and bars, and they are 21 breaking up bars and tearing them apart.
l 22 He said, They are surveying everything for l 23 God's sakes. He said, It is a clean area. He says, What 24 are you doing this for. I said, Tom, we have made a 25 commitment to survey everything. He said, Then I suppose l
l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBEP.S 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W l 12021 234-4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234 4433 l
a
. . . _ . . , . -_ . . ~ . - ~ . . - - . . .. .
1 they have got to document it after they get done. I ecid, q
2 yes, they do. Yes, they do have to document it. Well, 2 geez, you are costing me a le: cf money. I said, Well, I 4 am sorry, but that is just the way.it is. Okay.
5 And so when I went back and I saw -- I made 6 the decision to myself; I did not talk to Ed Parsons or 7 Dick Sexton or anybody else. You know, I am thinking, Ken 8 Zahrt, you have a couple tons of material that came out of 9 here, and you have got 23 technicians, and they are too 10 damn lazy to do their paperwork. By god, you are going to 11 make them do their paperwork.
12 So I did, and it pissed them off. They were 13 not happy about it. Okay. And when Jim did his surveys 14 and when they all did their release surveys and whatever, 15 Jim brought them up to me and I signed them. The mistake 16 I made was, I did not write an ROR on my staff when I ,
17 found that it happened, the ROR program was a bull shit 18 program anyway.
19 We can talk about that later, okay, because I 20 want to talk about that because it is referenced in this 21 Stiers, Anderson, Malone report, and it is a lie. Okay.
1 22 But -- so, you know, I didn't do that, and I l
)
23 didn't date when I signed my name. All 1 did was I i 24 reviewed the document to make sure that it was done, that'
. I 25 they had instrumentation, the dates were correct and so l
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{
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l
1 on. That is all I did.
2 O Now, you are talking about the records that they supplied to you in '93 --
4 A That were --
5 0 -- that came from their log books for surveys 6 they di,d in '92.
7 A In '92. That is correct.
8 O And let me make sure I understand one other 9 point now. What, again, is the reason why they didn't 10 document these surveys at the time they performed them 11 back in '92?
12 A Well, probably they were -- there was so much 13 stuff, it was just -- I mean, there were mountains of 14 stuff, Chuck. I mean, it Qas -- you walk down on level ~1, 15 there were just mountains of stuff. And frisking is a 16 mundane job. Nobody likes to frisk, and most of the 17 technici~ans on this project were seniors. You know the 18 difference between a senior and a junior Right?
19 Well, frisking is junior work supposedly. I 20 hired people for this project to do everything, no 21 specialists; you do what I tell you. If that means you 22 frisk for four hours, you frisk for four hours. Okay.
23 And seniors don't like to do that, don't like to do it at 24 all. They hate it.
25 And they probably felt that way, you know, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 they probably thought that there ware ao mtny l l
2 peopl.e -Fort St. Vrain and there was. Every technician f 3 on site surveyed some of that stuff, and th,ey put some on )
4 release. And one would --
5 Like the three of us, I would send the'three ;
6 of us down and say, Okay, Jonathan, Chuck, and Ken, and 1
7 the lady, you guys go down on level 1 and start surveying 8 that mountain of trash that is down there that is all 9 clean. We would survey it anyway. So you survey 50 1
10 pieces; you survey 100 pieces; you survey 100 pieces; I I 11 would survey 100 pieces. Okay. Who is going to document (
12 it?
i 13 Are you going to write up 50 surveys and you 1 14 100 and you 100 and me 50? No. That ain't going to )
1 15 happen. They are going to say, Well, we did a cart here.
16 Well, Chuck, why don't you go ahead and document it.
17 Okay. So Chuck documents it; he puts it on a release
~
18 form.
19 Or today Jim says -- or Jonathan says, No, I
~
20 am not going to document it; I am going to put it in the 21 log book. So Jim puts it in the log book. Okay. They do 22 that for,four or five days. It doesn't take long to 23 figure out that there is a lot of stuff there been l 24 surveyed but hasn't been documented, other than either on l
25 a release form or in a log book.
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1 I did not want them -- and neither did 2 management, and no one wants them to make a survey for 3 every piece that they surveyed. That is not feasible.
4 0 okay. I understand that.
5 A I mean, you just couldn't do that.
6 QI But you are there in late '92, and there is 7 not any survey records coming up to you for this work that 8 is going on down there. Right?
9 A ch, there is survey -- there is all kinds of 10 survey records coming up to me all the time. I get all 11 the release logs; I get all the RWPs; I get special jobs 12 that are going on.
i 13 Q No. I am talking about these release surveys 14 that we are talking about on -- this is the material 15 release surveys that we are talking about, that you later 16 request the technicians to generate in early '93 that they 17 didn't generate.
18 Why wasn't that identified in '92, late '92, 19 that these records were not coming up?
l 20 A Because there was confusion on where~they l
l l 21 had -- how they had to do it and where they had to put it.
l 22 If they put it on a release log, I might not get the 23 release log for -- until the end of the month, okay, 24 because it has got a whole bunch of entries, and they 25 wait -- we always waited to the end of the month to pull NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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1 the release log. , ,
2 And as I pulled the release log and when they i gave it to me like the end of October and the end of 4 November, they were pretty well done. Okay. And I look 5 at them and there are some entries in there, Frisked, you 6 know, material down on level 1; frisked steam generator, 7 cart of wood, and so on. And some came up to access 8 control.
9 And I really -- it really didn't appear to be j l
10 a problem at that time to me, you know, until I saw where
]
11 night shift was documenting on the release form and day i
12 shift was not documenting on the release form. They were 13 putting it in a log book. And that is when I said, Hey, j 14 you know, where is the documentation? If you are not ,
l 15 going to put it on a survey form, at least put it on the j l
16 release form.
17 Well, you know, we don't know -- are we 18 putting it on the release form because it is less than 500 19 or less than 1,000 or less than 100? It is Fort St.
20 Vrain's procedures, their release log; it is not ours.
21 You know, and then the big thing about the decommission 22 order being signed in December, thi~s all happened, now, in 23 2ctober and November and December. Okay.
24 And what are we going to do about procedures?
- 5 Are we going to use release criteria for Fort St. Vrain, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
i 1 or are we going to use the new SEG procedures? Or cro wa !
2 going to be consistent with the PDP? I am trying to get 3 answers, and then the decommission order gets signed, and 4 then on December 14, 1992, bam; we go from Fort St. Vrain 5 procedures to 108 absolute aborted SEG procedures. No 6 training; no nothing; you got it; it is your ball game.
7 Was there confusion? Oh, man, was there 8 confusion. Holy Toledo. I mean, it was just -- it was 9 unbelievable.
I 10 Q Let me make sure I have got the picture now.
11 It is three or four months later that you discover that l
12 the technicians have not been documenting these surveys ,
13 for these materials that have been released, and you 14 request them to go back to their log books --
15 A Well, see --
16 0 -- and recreate those records. Okay. !
17 A That is correct. Jim Bixby -- I had Jim Bixby i i
18 scheduled,on level 1, because he was the tech that was l 19 down on level 1. Okay. And Jim Bixby gets a pretty bad i 20 rap about this too. In fact, he has been terminated as 21 well. I mean, that is another story.
22 But, anyway, Jim Bixby.was down on level 1, 23 and he did a lot of the surveys. So I went to Jim, and I j 24 said, Jim -- and Jim had a tendency of being a little bit l
[
25 _ ezy 2kay. And I had to be real careful about l NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 reprimanding my people, because if I reprimanded my . .
2 people, I couldn't get anybody. SEG would not hire 2 anybody for me. Staffing was a problem on this project, 4 and they wouldn't help me out.
5 And I knew that if I got rid of people, I 6 would never get them replaced, and I was already in a 7 world of shit, you know, during :he entire project, and 8 they didn't want to help me. So, you know, I knew I had 9 to be a little careful on what I did with my technicians, 10 you know.
11 And let me tell you something. These 12 surveys -- this NOV letter that I got and this Stiers, 13 Anderson, Malone report specifically states that I 14 willfully falsified documents, and that I did it with 15 intent to mislead. That is what my NOV letter says and ,
I 16 that is what this report says. Okay. i 17 And I am looking at you and sitting in this i 18 room -- and I have told Don Neely, Bud Arrowsmith, Ed 19 Parsons, Carson Calton, Mary Fisher, Don Warembourg, the 20 whole MORT team, the whole Stiers, Anderson, Malone team:
21 I did not taisify anything willfully with intent to 22 deceive anybody.
23 I have never done that; I will never do that.
24 And if I thought that a technician did not survey 25 something, I personally would have terminated him myself.
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- . - - - . . - - - - . .. .- .- . . - . - - ~ . ~ -
1 1 would not tolerata that kind of business at all. But 2 nobody wanted to listen to me. Nobody cares about what I did.
4 SEG evidently went to an enforcement counssl 5 meeting with the NRC and admitted openly that, yes, we had 6 people that falsified documents.
7 0 I was there. ,
8 A Yes, we do, you know, so we are going to take 9 measures. All right. I went -- I was so upset when I got 10 my termination letter that I went and paid a nice $150 fee 11 to a good lawyer firm in Denver to find out if I had any 12 grounds to sue these people, because I was discriminated 13 against.
14 I went to the NLRB; I went to the Labor Board.
l 15 The only thing that my lawyer -- and I let my lawyers read 16 some my deposition, and they read the deposition and they 17 said, Mr. Zahrt, I am sorry to inform you that if you want l
18 to prosecute these people, you can do this. It is going 19 to take you a long time; it is going to be very involved.
20 And you have got a 50-50 percent chance of 21 winning or losing this case, simply because you signed 22 that document with your name that was produced in '93 that 23 they did in '92. It kind of looks like you were privy to
- 4 falsification. He says, It is done all the time; you know 25 that and I know that. He said, You got caught. And he NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W d2021234.4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
3 1 said, We will be willing to take your case if you want to .,
2 prosecute, but he said, Do you want to go through all 1
3 this, because, he says, you are going to go through a lot i l
4 of stuff through this. ,
i 5 And I said, Well, I understand I made a
~
6 mistake. i did make a mistake. It wasn't a very bad i
7 mistake, mind you, but it was a mistake. j i
8 0 What was that mistake?
9 A The mistake was I did not write an ROR on my 10 people, and I didn't date my signature. And I -- either 11 dated or put something on a document saying, This survey 1
12 was reproduced. Okay. I made that mistake. I understand i
13 that. Did anything happen to the public? No. Was there !
l 14 any chance of anything happening to the health and welfare 15 of the public of Colorado? Absolutely not, none 16 whatsoever.
17 Q Let me go back now and make sure I got some 18 points covered here. All of these release surveys that 19 are at issue here are for materials that were released 20 from level 1 --
21 A Level 1 and level 2 and 3. Those are the 22 three lower levels of the reactor building.
23 O And this is essentially clean material?
24 A Yes. These are --
25 ; In all three levels?
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1 A Yes.
2 0 And the technicians, as far as you are aware, 1 the technicians did ,cerform surveys of all,this material, 4 admittedly en masse, in groups. Now, we wouldn't have 5 expected every nut and bolt to be surveyed.
6 A They did, though.
7 Q Oh, did they in many cases? Okay.
8 A They did in many cases.
9 Q Well, you also told us that there were 10 occasions where they had -- they would have a boxload of 11 scrap metal, and they would do a survey of the box, of the 12 contents, and --
13 A Okay. Now, understand me. This boxload of 14 scrap metal was produced after they surveyed everything 15 and put it into the box.
, 16 O Okay.
17 A It didn't come out as a box. If it came out 18 as a box, they had this box over here, and they picked 19 every piece out individually and put it in another box.
20 Q Okay. So they are surveying individual items.
21 A That is correct.
22 Q And they are using an HP-210 probe.
23 A That is correct.
24 C A beta gamma detector.
1 l 25 A Right.
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4 . .
e
- . , - - . . . - _ _ . , , n.. . . . , n -- , ..
1 Q And they are -- as far as you know, every item -
2 that was surveyed was less than 1,000 DPM per hundred 2 square centimeter detectable.
4 A That is correct.
5 Q Okay.
6 A. I don't think you can find a technician on 7 that site nor an M-K worker nor superintendent that would 8 sit in here and tell you that they did not survey 9 everything that came out of that building. And they even lo showed it in the Stiers, Anderson, Malone report.
l 11 Q All right. Now, why is it -- well, the other 12 point, too, is, if I understand right, is that this is l
13 material that at other facilities or under other ,
1 l
14 circumstances might not even be surveyed at all, because l 15 it was considered to be clean material.
16 A Tf -- no. If materials in the turbine 17 material or reactor building of a boiler or in an ox 18 building of a PWR, before.it leaves the building, it will 19 be surveyed. You can't find a commercial nuclear power' 20 plant that does not do that.
21 O okay. Well, 1 missed your point then when you 22 said that MKF was complaining because you were holding up 23 the removal of this material because it needed to be 24 surveyed.
25 A Well, the reason being is because M-K NEAL R. GROSS CouAT REPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W a202) 234.4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202)2344433
1 superintendents ware there before the project started, 2 when ARC was still there. And level 1, 2, and 3 and the I whole reactor building is a clean area. When eney first 4 came out and bid this project way back in '89, they walked 5 through the reactor building at Fort St. Vrain.
6 , There was no PCM-1Bs, and nothing was 7 monitored coming out of the reactor building or the 8 turbine building in the entire operation of Fort St. Vrain l 1
9 was here. So they walked -- they came and walked at will. l 10 And when they came back to the project and we had PCM-1Bs 11 and everything was set up, they said, How can you do this.
12 For ten years it is a clean area for PSC, and 13 now they are off-line and the fuel is unloaded, and you 14 are telling me that this place is cracked up, you know, l
15 because when we did an initial site characterization,'I l
16 had a major war with Bill Woodard and Tim Schleiger who l 17 were PSC health ph'ysics supervisors.
1 18 And my technicians came in with a 2350 data l
19 logger and we were doing every floor, and I gave him every 20 results of all my technicians on every time. We counted 21 ever smear on a Tennlec. We didn't use a frisker. Okay.
22 And we were getting 15, 30, 80, 90, 60, 40, 20, 30.
23 Most of our surveys on initial site 24 characterization, there was hardly anything that was less 25 than MDA, minimum detectable activity. Everything showed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 a ilttle something, you know, there. And then when we .
- found 6- and 7,000 DPM up cn top of the PCRV on level 10
.n a c'_ean area, they about crucified me. They thought I 4 was trying to make them look bad.
5 And I told Bill Woodard and Tim Schleiger, I 6 said, Look, people; we are using a different instrument 7 than you people are using. It is much more sophisticated, i
8 and the detectability is much more sensitive than what you 9 are doing. l l
10 However, we were using the Tennlec in the chem 11 lab, and they were using the Tennlec in the HP office, and 12 their Tennlecs were showing all less than MDA, and the 13 Tennlec in the chem lab at least was showing some 14 activity. Very minute, but' it was showing some.
15 So we had a big war over that, and M-K felt 16 the same way. You know, when we started releasing stuff 17 down on revel 1, 2, and 3, they said to me, There's ten i 18 years' experience here in this area. It is all clean. It 1 19 was clean for PSC. Now, why in the hell isn't it clean i 20 for you guys, you know? I menn, that is the stuff that I 21 was going on.
22 O All right. I see what you are saying, but you 23 are still saying it was proper HP practice in your opinion
_4 to survey this material as it was surveyed before it was
- E re' eased.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODF ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234 443.$ WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
.\
1 A Yes. That is correct. ;
2 BY MR. ARMENTA:
3 Q Excuse me. I think you said earlier that l 1
4 management instructed you to go ahead and survey the clean j 5 area. Is that correct?
1 6 K Oh, yes. Yes. I was --
1 7 Q In other words, it didn't come from you, but 8 your management instructed you --
9 A Oh, yes. I was instructed to survey --
1 1
10 Q According to what you have said earlier -- l 1
l 11 A -- everything. j l
12 Q According to what you said earlier, PSC had 13 that as a clean area.
I 14 A That is correct. l 15 Q But your management insisted that clean area, I
l 16 level 1, be surveyed. Is that correct?
17 A That is correct. That is absolutely correct. I 18 I would have felt the same way anyway, Jonathan, in my 19 business, in my experience in the industry, but management 20 did instruct me to do that. That is correct.
21 And then when we started surveying and after 22 about the first or second day, they were taking smears and 23 stuff and about every piece that we surveyed had 3 or 4 24 DPM. I mean, that is pretty insignificant. I mean, good 25 1crd. You know, I mean, let's be realistic here, you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANS(,RIBER$
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'2021 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
i \
l 1 know. . .
1 l 1 2 And I agree with the less than 1,000. I agree i l
l
- witn that, you know. But bottom line was I was looking at 1
l 4 the PDP, and I was looking SEG saying, This is going to i 5 be a Cadillac, and we are going to do everything right on l
6 this prp]ect. ,
1 l 7 okay, fine. Maybe they are going to do 8 something that is good for the industry. Okay. But what j 9 happened? The almighty dollar came in. That is what 10 happened. For God's sakes, they are sure not going to 11 decon stuff at 5 DPM, ands if there is a survey that shows 12 that this piece of paper has 5 DPM on it and the PDP says 13 zero detectabic, then by God, we either better decon this 14 thing so when we take another smear, it shows zero DPM, or 15 we ship it out as rad waste. And that is expensive.
16 And my management told me, There is no way we 17 are going to do that, Kenny. We are not shipping stuff 18 out, and we ar.e not --
it is t.oo expensive, and we are not 19 going to do it.
20 Ted~ Borst is the PSC facility support-RP 21 manager. Ile can make that decision. What did they do?
22 They PDRed, which is a procedure DVA should request' --
22 they PDRed the Fort St. Vrain procedure to allow us to use 24 a frisker with an HP-210 probe, pancake probe, and frisked 25 fOr 'ess than 1K.
I NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TAANSCAIBERS
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1 Is that correct? Yes, that is all right. I ,
2 don't have a problem with that. That is fine. If that is 3 what they want to do, they can do that, you know. But, 4 you know, the PDP and the 10 CFR 20, you know, 5 interpretation; how do you interpret it? .
6 '
BY MR. CAIN:
7 o okay. Well, that is not so much at issue 8 here, as I understand it.
9 A Well, it is not an issue, but it sure had a 10 lot to do on this particular instance.
11 0 Well, okay. What I don't understand still is 12 you have indicated that senior health physics techs were 13 working to survey this material.
14 A That is correct, because I only had two 15 juniors.
16 0 Well, why -- I still don't understand why they 17 weren't documenting their results in late 1992.
18 A I. told you. There was.a lot of. confusion, and 19 they probably thought one of the other people was 20 documenting it. I mean, it is not high -- if you have 21 ever sat and frisked stuff for ten hours, you don't know 22 what I am talking about.
23 I mean, we are sitting here, talking in a nice 24 atmosphere, but we are not inside a reactor building with 25 a frisker, constantly doing something that they do on an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
l 1 assembly line, over and over and over. It takes hardly 'rus j
1
- intelligence; you can be a robot almost.
l 3 0 Yes. I understand now mundane.that work is. l l
i 4 But if I were investing all my time surveying all that l
1 5 material, it seems like I would be very sure that all the 6 time I ' spent doing all that work somehow got -- that got 7 documented somewhere.
8 A Well, I agree with you. I am in complete 9 agreement with you. That.is exactly what I asked my 10 staff. Why didn't you do this? In fact, I got so upset 11 with my staff at one stage of the game, I went over and 12 talked to Ed Parsons, my manager, and I said, Look, these 13 people are getting lazy; as far as I am concerned, let's 14 change the whole staff out; let's change them, get some 15 new people in here; they are stagnant; they are causing ;
l 16 problems.
17 Well, that wasn't done. That wasn't feasible.
1 18 0 Well, you can understand my concern that --
19 A Well, it was my concern.
20 Q -- it makes more -- it is more of a concern 21 that they are not documenting it than it is what release 22 limits were chosen.
23 A I agree; I agree wholeheartedly.
~
24 Q And then why is it that some sort of line 25 supervisor -- it may not have been you. I guess Chip NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 Sawyer was involved, I guess, in this work to a certain 2 degree too. Why didn't somebody in --
3 A Well, not only Chip Sawyer, but Mike Miles was ,,
4 involved in this work as well.
1 5 0 okay. Mike Miles, others perhaps, but the l l
6 question is: Why did it take three or four months before I
7 anyone in line supervision discovered that there were no I
\
8 records, survey records, being generated for all this many l
9 tons of material that had been surveyed? l 10 A There was so much going on on the project at 11 that particular stage of the game, and there were so many 12 things that were wrong that we were trying to fix, that we 13 really didn't think this was a problem. And if we didn't 14 get to looking at some of the -- reviewing some of the ;
15 surveys right away and we did it a month later, that is no 16 big deal.
17 It happens all the time. I mean, you go to 18 outages, and technicians do surveys or supervisors review 19 surveys. They may review a survey three or four weeks 20 later, because it is piled up and they haven't gotten to 21 it. But do they date it? No. They sign their name that 22 they reviewed it, and it was produced a month ago.
l 23 Is that falsification? Did you willfully, i
i 24 intently falsify that document, because you reviewed it 25 and you signed it, that you knew that they did it, but
~
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- that you signed it en that date? Is that 2 als121ca t ion't, ,
- In your estimation, as you sit here today and you listen,
- c you really think that I actually falsified a document 4 with willful intent to mislead?
5 That is the question. That is what I am 6 charged,with.
7 Q Yes. That is what we are trying to find out.
8 Q And I get the distinct feeling after talking 9 to you, you sitting in that chair, that you probably are 10 leaning towards that direction.
11 A Well, not necessarily. I am just trying to 12 understand the facts, that there were three or four months 13 in there where there were no records being generated for 14 this material, and then all of a sudden, something -- what 15 is-it that all of a sudden you become aware that there are 16 no records? What occurs that makes you aware?
17 A Beca'use I was so upset with the stuff that was 18 forced upon me. I had to take care of the old PSC records 19 from Rob Grant from ARC, which he did absolutely nothing 20 all the time that he was there during defueling, and I had i
21 to go back and do everything that he didn't dn, and T was l
22 responsible for it.
23 And that ticked me off, because that took a I
24 '_ c t of time. I had to try to keep the project going with l 1
- 5 the '<-K people which was an absolute travesty at the NEAL R. GROSS l COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
.202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 start. I had to try to som:how incorporsta procedurco which the procedures were really bad. I mean, they were 3 bad when we started; they were bad during the project.
4 And as we sit here right today, they are bad. Okay?
5 And nobody would listen to me, and you 6 couldnt get them fixed the way you are supposed to. No 7 one would listen. It was kind of like I was in this 8 tunnel, and nobody wanted me to do anything. All they 9 wanted to do was to get the project done in a timely 10 manner and in a safe manner, and that is what I wanted to 11 do too.
12 0 Okay. Well, by some manner or another, you 13 discovered then that there had been no records. You 14 requested the technicians to go back to their log books or 15 other primary records --
16 A That is correct.
17 0 -- and generate the survey records from that.
18 And then you got those survey records on your desk, and 19 you signed them, but didn't date them. Is that correct?
20 A That is correct.
21 0 That is what you indicated.
22 A I never dated anything.
23 o But it is your understanding that all the data
'4 that was on those records was accurate. There wasn't any
- 5 false data on there.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
- 202) 234.4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 A No. I don't -- that is true. And it says i.n y ::OV letter that I violated conduct, because records 1 were inaccurate. Well, they weren't inaccurate. The 4 people did it. I did not doubt that my technicians did 5 not do the survey. Whenever they brought a survey to me, 6 did I think it was inaccurate? No, I didn't. I never 7 did.
8 0 Let's explore why they weren't inaccurate, 9 make sure the record clearly reflects why they weren't.
10 Let's talk about the kinds of data that were on those il survey records and where the technician would have gone to 12 have gotten that information when he later prepared the 13 survey record for you and why he didn't just pull a number 14 out of the air or a model number for a survey instrument 15 or any of this other stuff, but that the information that 16 he recorded was, in fact, valid information that came from 17 a primary source somewhere.
l 18 Would you go into that? What kind of data is 19 he putting down on these survey records?
20 A Well, he is putting down the item that he 21 curveyed, the contamination levels on smearable and fixed, 22 and a dose rate if there is anything. Okay. And in order 23 for him to check out an instrument, he has to go to a 24 survey log. He has to go to an instrument check-out log 25 and check out an instrument. He can go back to the f
l NEAL R. GROSS COUAT AEPOR1E AS AND TRANSCRIBERS
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I 1 instrument check-out log and find out which instrum:nt 2 that he checked out. !
l 3 That parti:ular stage in the game, we had --
4 there was so much going on that we also changed the 5 proc,edure to allow us to set a frisker down on level 1 and 6 source check it daily, okay, and leave it there. And when 7 it came out of cal, we would take it out of service and 8 put'a new instrument in. Okay.
9 And so we had two or three friskers down there 10 that we did that with, that John Keith, our instrument 11 tech, would come in at 5:00 in the morning and go around 12 and source check all the instruments that were in the 13 reactor building. Okay?
14 So they could have used that instrument there 15 or went back to the instrument issue log and pick out the 16 instrumentation that was down on level 1 at that 17 particular time. Ani -hat is easy. All they have got to 18 do is go do it.
19 Now, do technicians always check out 20 instrumentation when they were supposed to? No, they 1
21 didn't. Did I rip them for it? Yes, I did. Did we have l
. I 22 staff meetings over it? Yes, I did, you know.
23 And we got -- we took a hit on that on an l 24 audit from the NRC. We had a lot of audits during this .
25 time period. NRC audited; SEG audited us; PSC audited us.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (2C2) 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 Nobody found anything. There was -- you know, we didn't' '
2 deceive anybody; we didn't try to deceive anybody. l 1
3 Good lord, if I wanted to deceive, I could 4 have deceived a lot of people, believe me. And I could 5 have --
when the surveys were there, I could have taken 6 the survey log and all the surveys and redid everything 7 and make sure that all the sequential numbers were, in 8 fact, in sequence. I could have done that. i 9 That is true falsification. I didn't want to 10 do that. I knew I didn't want to do that, you know. All 11 I was interested in is: Did you do the surveys? Yes.
12 And in staff meeting, I would have staff meeting every 13 morning at 5:45, and I would ask my people: Are you 14 people surveying everything? Yes. Is there anything that 15 has not been surveyed that went out of this building? No.
16 okay. I want to understand everybody right here.
17 O Next question: Was everything less than 1,000 18 DPM?
19 A Less than 1K, and 1 said, Are we meeting the 20 release criteria? And they all laughed and giggled at me, 21 yuu kuvw. Well, what release criteria are we supposed to 22 be meeting? I said, There is a memo on the bulletin board l
23 right here that Ted Borst has generated, that we can use a l l
24 frisker that is less than 1K. Do not count smears on a l 25 Tennlee anymore, because it takes a lot of time. Okay.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS j 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (2021 234-4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 734 4133
1 1 You take a wipe on a Tennisc, and you put it 2 in the plant and stick it in; you have to count it for 30 i
3 seconds. With a frisker, you take a wipet hold it over 4 the probe for about -- it only takes three to five seconds 5 for it to respond. If it hasn't responded in that, you 6 don't have anything. It is a lot quicker, and they were
- 7 happy that that memo came out, so they didn't have to take 8 all the smears, run up to level'7, count them on the 9 Tennlec, come back down, say, Okay, now you can let it go.
10 At this particular stage of the game, the 11 backgrounds were 60 to 80 counts per minute, which is 12 legal. The PDP said, If it is less than 300 counts per 13 minute, you can use it for a background. Okay. It was 60 14 to 'o counts per minute; therefore, we could do all the 15 frisking down on level 1 and level 2 and 3 and take it up 16 to level 5. And that is exactly what they did.
17 BY MR. ARMENTA:
18 O Mr. Zahrt, I am still having problems 19 understanding --
l 20 A I am always having problems, i 21 Q --
your answer to Mr. Cain's question.
22 A Okay. .
23 Q What evidence was there to substantiate that 24 your technicians did conduct surveys? You mentioned one:
25 instrument check-out log.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE (SLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 A Instrument check-out log. .
2 O What was number 2?
? A Number 2 is I asked them individually, and 4 they all admitted that they did. I checked with M-K 5 supervisors, M-K craft people, people at --
6 Q, okay. We are talking about testimonial 7 evidence.
8 A Testimonial evidence.
9 Q What other evidence do you have that convinced 10 you that these were accurate readings? Did you see any of 11 their logs?
12 A I reviewed logs occasionally. Yes, I did.
13 Q Whose logs did you review?
14 A I reviewed Jim Bixby's occasionally,.and I 15 reviewed refuel floor log, and I made tours of the 16 building all the time, and I saw my technicians surveying 17 the stuff.
18 Q There is no question in that whether they 19 surveyed or not. The question is: How accurate was this 20 inf orm~at ion , and where did they get the numbers that Mr.
21 Cain asked you a few minutes ago? Did they pull these 22 numbers from some magical in space here and just down?
23 How are you convinced?
24 A I am convinced that they were smart enough to 25 go back and look at the instrument issue log and their log NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202i 234.4433 wAsHNGTON. D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 books, to put the inf ormation on the curvcy: .
2 O Is that all that you have to --
3 A That is all that I have. You .know, that is 4 all that I needed. You know, I didn't think I needed any 5 more than that.
6 Cf Do you have any privileged information about 7 the investigation that was conducted to lead you to 8 believe that somebody checked those numbers?
9 A No. I don't have none.
10 Q So other than their word --
11 A No.
12 0 -- you don't have anything else.
13 A I don't have anything else.
14 O To show evidence that they did.
15 A That is correct. You know, see, I didn't have I 16 an opportunity to do any of that either.
17 Q Earlier you mentioned that at the end of the 18 month, you would check who had submitted surveys.
19 A No.
20 0 I think you mentioned --
21 A I mentioned that the release log at access 22 control, we would wait until the end of the month to pull 23 everything.
24 O Did you do that for October and November?
25 A Yes. Probably at that time we were doing NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 42021 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 that. . .
i t
l 2 0 And you didn't catch those surveys that were 1 1
l l l
3 missed?
i j 4 A Well, no. No, I didn't. I saw that there 5 were some -- I knew there was a lot of stuff going out, 6 but I d,idn't realize there were -- the volume that was ;
l 7 going on. I did see where they were surveying stuff from 8 level 1 and level 3, and that that was going on. I saw l l
9 that.
10 0 Was there an audit that prompted you, in i
11 addition to the answer that you gave to Mr. Cain, because i
12 he asked you, What prompted you to check. I 13 A No, there was no audit.
14 Q Was there an audit or any other report or any 15 information from your technicians that prompted you to 16 check whether these release surveys had been made?
17 A No. There was no audit, none whatsoever.
18 Q Was there any other report? .
19 A No.
20 0 Was there any information from your -
l 21 technicians that told you?
22 A No. Other than the fact'that they said, We 23 are doing a lot of surveying down on level 1, you know.
24 And then I went and looked. Well, in January, we knew we 25 had to turn off -- turn over -- January of 1993, we had to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W s202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202)2344433
1 turn over all of the 1992 records from PSC into thair i
1 l 2 document file, into their micro file. Okay. I 3 And we were given 30 days to do this. Well, l 4 we never got it done in 30 days. We didn't get it done by 5 the end of January, and it was just --
it was a real mess, 6 because Rob Grant had done nothing, and we had to really
. 7 scrape around to get everything, you know.
8 And then as I was looking through things, you 9 know, I looked and I thought, Geez, we -- god, we surveyed 10 a lot of stuff on level 1. I wonder why we don't have --
l 11 all we have got is release surveys. And I didn't see the l I
12 log book of Jim's -- I mean, I looked at it, and at times .
1 l
13 I went down and noticed that he had surveyed a dumpster of l 14 metal or surveyed a cart full of wood or whatever, you 15 know, and I would read that from time to time. I 16 And over the course of over two or three 1
17 months, it never really dawned on me how much was going j 18 out. And,by the end of November and into December, we 19 were done releasing stuff. I mean, it was completed, you 20 know. And so we were going into record turnover and we l 21 are going into procedure turnover, and there is just so l
l l 22 much chaos in the project at this particular stage'of the 23 game.
24 I mean, my concern was not the material on 25 'evel
_ 1, because I knew it was getting surveyed. That NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERF AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-s433
1 1 wasn't my concern at that particular stage of the gamn.- -
1 2 My concern was, What am I going tr, Jo about procedures, l 2 because -- let me tell you: My upper management, the vice :
4 president and president of SEG, Bud Arrowsmith and Don 5 Neely, when they put me on administrative leave, I had to 6 request a meeting with them.
7 And they told me the reason why I was put on 8 administrative leave, and they gave me these reasons.
9 One, falsification of documents; you have been charged 10 with falsification of documents. Two, you have been 11 charged with violation of procedures. Three, you have 12 been charged with harassment and intimidation. Four, you 13 have been charged with tampering with the ROR program.
14 These are four things that I was charged with 15 and why I was put on administrative leave. And ther said, 16 We are going to do a MORT. investigation; we are going to 17 do -- Stiers, Anderson, Malone is here to do an 18 investigation, and the NRC, the O&I office, is nere to do 19 a harassment and intimidation.
~
2 0 ,. And, Jonathan, I' interviewed with you on
.1 harassment at d intimidation. And I personally want to 22 thank you, because you are probably one of the guys that i
1 i
23 helped me and helped everybody decide that, no, I really 24 wasn't; I really did not harass and intimidate my ,
l
- 5
- schnicians. And I didnt. Okay.
NEAL R. GROSS COUAT AEPOATERS AND TAANSCAIBERS C23 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 2344433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234-4433 l
l
{ I
1 But I was charged with that. Now, I say: It a
- : falsified documents willfully and intently and you 3 people decide that that is what I did and I got 4 terminated, fine; I got terminated. But was that the 5 reason that I got terminated? No. The reason I got 6 terminated was because I violated SEG's code of conduct.
1 1
! 7 No questions asked.
\
8 And that code of conduct included procedure l l
9 violation, harassment and intimidation, and RORs. And I l 10 am here to tell you right now that if I violated 11 procedures, everybody on that site violated procedures. I 12 was the only one that really tried to fix these l l
13 procedures, and I was told to keep my mouth shut or I 1
14 would be terminated. I was intimidated by my own SEG J 15 upper management staff. Okay?
i 16 O Meaning Mr. Sexton, Mr. Parsons.
17 A Mr. Parsons, yes'. That open-door policy they 1
18 talk abou.t, that is an absolute joke. There is no open- !
19 door policy. That project was run by Mr. Ed Parsons, and 20 it was run by Don Neely and the home office at SEG, 21 period. And the violation of procedures, there are some 22 things that you people need to know and need to find out. l 23 Number one: Whatever happened to the original 24 MORT report? What happened to it? I will tell you what 25 .uppened to it: It got watered down The MORT report NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOATE AS AND TRANSCAIBERS 1'123 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202i 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
_ _ _._ _ -_ _ _ . . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ ~ . -
l l 1 that you people saw and the MCRT report that PSC saw was q
! 1 I 2 the third MORT report, after the third revision. I l
2 The first one'is gone. Okay. .What happened 4 to it? I don't know. What happened to my initial log 5 book, my first log book of the project? In my deposition, 1 l 1
6 talking'to Mr. Malone, my log book is referenced and he 1 7 has it. But my log book was given to the Westinghouse 5 lawyers, and I don't know the name. One was Lisa 9 something. l l
10 But, anyway, that first log book was given to l l
11 the Westinghouse lawyers. And, you know, after the second l 1
12 or third day of my deposition, nobody could find my first 1 l
13 log book. And I asked Mr. Malone, I said, Where is my log 14 book, the first one, the one that I documented all the ,
I 15 problems that I had with staffing, procedures, and so on. !
16 Where is that log book?
l 17 He said, I don't know; I don't know where it 18 is. I said, Well, I tell you what; you know, that tells a 19 lot about what I dealt with. Now, who has got it? Nobody 20 could find it. Where did it go? I don't know. I got a 21 good idea where it is, but I don't know where it is for 22 cure.
23 It is like this thing right here and this 24 thing right here, this NRC violation and the Stiers, 25 Anderson, Malone report, which you people, NRC, put a lot NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 of stock in. Evidently you put a lot of ctock in thic .
2 report. And there are some things in here that are very, 3 very upsetting to me, that if yvu put stoc'$ in this report 4 and PSC did too, then nobody listened to what I said in my 5 deposition, and I might as well not even have talked to 6 anybody, because nobody~ cared about what happened to me on 7 this project.
8 0 Why wouldn't your SEG upper management listen 9 to you?
10 A They didn't talk to me.
11 0 In defense of themselves. j 12 A They would not talk to me. Do you know --
l 13 O Do you know why?
14 A I have no idea. I don't know why. But 15 since -- when I was put on administrative leave on March 16 26, Ed Parsons called me at home on a Saturday night and 17 said, Kenny, there is a falsification document charge out 18 on you, and there is a violation of procedure, and 19 harassment and intimidation, and we have decided to put 20 you on administrative leave until the investigations are 21 done.
22 And after this conversation tonight, I can't 23 talk to you anymore.
24 This is my project manager now, the guy that 25 hired me, tc-lling me this, you know. So -- and from that NEAL R. GROSS
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I point on, I was kept in the dark. The.only thing I did !
1 2 was come and testify in my deposition, and during my ,
1 3 deposition, they had a team-building meeti,ng with SEG, Bud i
4 Arrowsmith, Don Neely, everybody. I l
5 They came in and talked to the technicians 6 about the MORT report, the Stiers, Anderson, Malone ,
1 7 report, the O&I investigation. And they said, you know, 8 We are going to meet down at the Raintree. My wife got so 9 upset -- and she is a nurse out there at that project, and 10 she still is. Okay. And she has gone through hell, !
i 11 believe me.
1 12 But, anyway, she had to go up to Don Neely on !
1 13 a Friday and say, Mr. Neely, would you please meet with my l 14 husband; he wants to talk to you. If you are going to go 15 over to a team-building meeting, would you take time out 16 to talk to my husband, because he has some questions he ,
l 17 wants to ask you. I 18 So Carrie Wood, the secretary, called me at 19 home and said, Your wife has set up a meeting with you and 20 Don Neely. My wife, For Christ's sake, set up this 21 meeting with Don Neely. You know, I said, Where is at.
22 Well, they are going to meet witi vou just before they go 23 in and talk to the staff on a team-building meeting. It 24 is going to be at the Raintree. Can you be there?
25 Well, I was busy doing stuff, you know, and I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (2021 234 4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202; 2344433
- _ - - - - . . - - - . . - . .~.
. l 1 said, Well, yes; I will drop what I am doing, because I !
2 want to talk to them. sc I will be there. So I went 3 home, showered, cleaned up, and I went to ,this meeting.
I 4 And they gave me about 15 or 20 minutes of their time, and )
l 5 they made it quite obvious that, you know, they were --
6 they ha'd other things to do and they didn't want to listen l
l 7 to me, but they listened to -- '
8 Until I started telling them about procedures 9 and about some of the things that they put me in, the 10 predicament that they put me in, that it was their fault, 11 it wasn't my fault, and that I worked under duress and I 12 was suppressed the entire time I was there -- they didn't 13 want to hear that. No, no, no, no, no. 1 14 You know, and what they did tell me, though, 15 out of this meeting, Jonathan, was: Well, Ken, we are not 16 going to make any decision on you until we get the Stiers, 17 Anderson, Malone report finalized, until we get the MORT 18 report finalized, until wd get the O&I investigative 19 report finalized. Then we will bring you back and we will 20 talk to you and we will give you an opportunity to defend 21 yourself, and then we will make a decision.
22 They told me that to.my face in this meeting, 23 Bud Arrowsmith and Don Neely. That was the last time I l l
24 ever talked to anybody from SEG or Westinghouse or PSC, 25 period. From that time on, never did I talk to anybody. i NEAL R. GROSS 4 COURT REPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N W l i202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 7344 133
-. i 1 My deposition was over. I never spoke to anybody until I 2 got in the mail -- well, I didn't get it in the mail.
2 What they did was, Harvey Story who came out to help 4 out -- I think you know Harvey Story.
5 They gave Harvey Story a copy of my 6 termination letter. Harvey calls me up and says, Kenny., I 7 would like to meet you for supper. So we go over to the 8 neighborhood grill in Loveland and we have supper. And he 9 says, I have got some bad news to tell you. H e says, I 10 hate to be the messenger of death, but, ne says, I am the 11 one that is elected to give you this. And he gives me 12 this envelope, and in it is my termination letter.
13 And he says, I am really sorry. I said, Why 14 are you giving me this termination letter. I was told 15 that Don Neely and Bud Arrowsmith would give me this 16 letter or they would at least gite me an opportunity to 17 defend myself, for Christ's sake And now Ed Parsons and 18 Dick Sexton, who would be the logical people to talk to 19 me, don't give me this letter; you give it to me. Now, 20 why is that? -
21 He said, Well, Kenny, I don't think anybody 22 wanted to talk to you. He said, I think they were afraid 23 of you. I said, Well, what do you think I am going to do, 24 for Christ's sake; beat somebody up here over this deal?
25 He said, Well, he said, I don't think anybody wants to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W a202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 734-4433
1 1 talk to you. I said, Yes, that is pretty apparent; nobody I a
2 wants to talk to me. So now you just terminate me, huh.
3 That is it. -
l 4 0 I am not going to confirm or deny any part of 5 the investigation that NRC conducted on the Stiers, ,
l I
6 Anderson, Malone investigation. But would it surprise you 7 if much of the testimonial evidence and/or documentation 8 did'not corroborate what you are saying? Would it 9 surprise you?
10 A No. Probably not. I mean, who is your 11 testimony? Are you talking Don Neely and Bud Arrowsmith?
12 A;e you talking to Ed Parsons and Dick Sexton?
13 Q Well, like I said, I am not going to confirm 14 or deny any part of the investigation, but I just wanted l l
l 15 to ask that question. I don'. know if you were privy to a ;
1 16 lot of the information or not. )
l 17 A I wasn't privy to anything. Nothing. And 18 nobody wanted to listen to me. And I even said to Mr.
19 Malone in my investigation, I said, Let's cut the bull
~
20 shit here. Let's get Don Neely, Bud Arrowsmith, Ed 21 Parsons, Dick Sexton, PSC, all the wheels; let's all go 22 into a room and let's sit down and let's talk about this.
23 Let's get the nut-cutting done here. Let's find out who 24 the hell is lying, you know. .
^5 I am willing to talk to anybody. Nobody wants NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 2344433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
1 to talk to me.
2 O one final question -- I think we need to take
=a creak here -- is: Was it customary to wait as long as 4 four months to review these surveys?
5 A No.
6 MR. ARMENTA: Is that okay, we take --
7 MR. CAIN: Let me just -- a couple of follow-8 up, and then we will be through.
9 BY MR. CAIN:
10 0 So what I understand you to have told us, if I 11 can wrap this all up and put a bow on it, is that you got 12 survey records -- you requested your technicians to 13 prepare some survey records for what they did in the 14 latter part of 1992, and they did that, and they provided 15 you these records, and you signed them.
16 And as far as you know, you are telling us 17 today as far as you know, everything that was represented 18 on those records was valid data and that you never had any 19 evidence of any false information on those survey records.
20 Is that true?
21 A That is true. I mean, other than the fact 22 that Mr. Malone had copies of a lot of records and stuff 23 and in my deposition, you know, he was showing me stuff 24 that maybe Mr. Bixby made an entry on a log book that 25 didn't seem to be there. I said, Well, I don't know; you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRAN$CRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 would have to talk to Jim Bixby about that. I am not 2 privy to that information.
3 The surveys that I signed, I hpd every reason 4 to believe that the information that was on that survey .
5 was correct. I was not privy to look at anything'else, 6 period.' Now -- and I didn't at the time in '93, go back 7 and check everything. That I did not do. I didn't have .
1 1
8 the time to do that. Now, is that a right answer? I 9 don't know if that is the right answer, but I just didn't l
10 have the time to do that at that particular stage of the l 11 game.
12 I believed my technicians and I believed what l
13 they told me. Obviously I was wrong. I mean, if they did i l
l 14 something wrong and if they have stuff that shows that ]
15 they didn't do what they did, is it my fault because I 16 signed that- document? No , it is not. I didn't do the 17 surveys. I tried to tell people that. I did not do them.
18 All I did was review it. Okay. And I wasn't 19 privy to everything else. And the reason I wasn't privy 20 and the reason I think there is a conspiracy here against i 21 Ken Zahrt is because during my investigation, at one stage 22 of the game with Mr. Malone -- and if you ever read my 23 deposition, you will see it is in there -- I am looking at 24 survey forms and there is no signature on the supervisor 25 blank. It is blank.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENVE. N W t202) 2344433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 And I asked Mr. Malone, How com3 there is not 2 a signature on this survey form; where did you get this 3 survey form. Well, I got it out of document control. I 4 said, No, you didn't. You are lying to me. You did not 5 get that out of document control, because if you got that 6 out of c'iocument control, it would either have me, Mike 7 Miles', or Chip Sawyer's signature on it. That is the l 1
8 only way a document gets into document control is with our 9 signature.
10 Now, by God, that survey was given to you by 11 somebody before it was reviewed by me, and I want to know 12 where you got it. And he said, Well, I can only answer 13 two things. One, I can't tell you, and, two, I really 14 don't know.
15 I said, So, yes. You guys want the truth and 16 you want to know what is going on, but you don't want to 17 play fair with me.
l 18 0 okay. One further follow-up question here:
l 19 There was no survey record that was backdated because you l 20 signed these records, but you didn't date them wh'en you :
21 signed them.
22 A No, I did not. I put no dates on anything.
23 The only thing you will see on that is my signature.
2.; Tkay. I didn't date anything. I signed it. Now -- and I 5 explicitly told my technicians: If you are going to make NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
. ._ . _ _.._ _ __ _ _ .. . .__ _1_ . ._ . _
1 a survey, make sure that you did it. I do not want 2 anything reproduced, and I do not want anything falsified, 3 period. .
4 MR. CAIN: Okay. Jonathan, I think I am to a 5 stopping point if you are.
6 MR. ARMENTA: Let's take a break. It is 1
4 7 approximately 10:30, and we will go off the record.
8 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken.) I 9 MR. ARMENTA: It is approximately 10:40 a.m. l 10 We are back on record. The reason why we went off record 11 was to go for a break. j 12 Mr. Cain?
i 13 BY MR. CAIN:
14 0 I think as far as I am concerned, we have I
15 covered the territory I wanted to cover in regard to the 16 material release surveys. Now, can we move on then to 17 surveys for RWPs?
18 A Uh-huh.
19 Q And let you discuss those. To the extent that
' ~
20 you have a different message for us, for those surveys, 21 please describe the circumstances of those surveys and 22 tell us why or why not they were falsified.
23 A Okay. Great word, " falsification," you know.
24 The RWP surveys were done explicitly by Mr. Chip Sawyer 25 and Mr. Mike Miles and Mr. Duane Parsons. Those were the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCAIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (2024 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 l
1 three people that were involved in the RWP surveys. Duane ;
- Farsons, I hired him as a technician, and I put him in 1
3 anarge of the RWP program, because*he wrote RWPs while he i 4 was there working for ARC during defueling. Okas. And he 5 was familiar with the computer, and he was familiar with 6 the RWPs.
7 Now, when we started decommissioning in August l
8 of 1992, we were under Fort St. Vrain RWP procedures.
9 That is why I kept some of the people that were there that 10 were shift qualified, like Duane Parsons, Keith Bare, ;
i 11 George Blackert [ phonetic), Roland Sawyer. These people 12 were there, you know, during operation and during 13 defueling, and they were familiar with the RWPs. I was 14 not familiar with the computer, and I didn't write the 15 RWPs. !
16 I had a technician tha't did that, and Duane 17 Parsons was the technician that was in charge of the RWP 18 program. If he found any anomalies in the.RWP program or 19 any problems, he as a technician, it was his 20 responsibility if there needed to be an ROR written, he 21 should have wrote one. If something needed to be changed 22 or corrected or fixed, he needed to come talk to me, and 23 we -- and he should have done it; that was his job. Okay.
24 He didn't do that. He didn't fix the
~
25 pr riems,- he didn't correct the problems. He just NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 ANODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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A collected the problems and stuck them in a file,. - . - . - . . . - -and
. then .
2 later on down the road when Mr. Keith Bare got crazy and 3 went nuts, he provided Keith Bare with the information 4 that KeithBareprovidedwiththeStiers,Nnderson,Malone 5 report and the NRC.
l 6 ,
And this all boils down -- this entire !
I 7 investigation and everything boils down to the fact that i 8 one of my technicians, Keith Bare, and I had a .
1 9 confrontation in the stairwell. And it is in my 1
10 deposition; it is very lengthy; it is very long, and it 11 tells everything that happened. It tells -- he even tells 12 me in the stairwell that he is going to the NRC. He tells 13 me.
14 So I knew who went to the NRC. Everybody is 15 saying, Who is the whistleblower; who is the guy that is 16 putting forth all the information, you know. And at that 17 time, I said, I' don't really know for sure; I have' got a 1
1 18 pretty good idea, but I don't know for sure. It is kind 19 of like the Danny Hicks ROR stuff, you know. I had a 20 pretty good idea; I didn' t know for sure,- but I had a l I
21 pretty good idea, and it turned out it was correct. l l
22 But this is what happened in the RWPs. We had ;
i 23 a system whereby you could sign in on an RWP. If you went
-i to an ALARA meeting and you got prejob briefed on an RWP, 25 you were eligible to sign in on that RWP. You could go to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR$ERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 1202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234-4433
- - _.- - _ _ . .. - ..L- ..- . - . . - . - . .. - -..-.--
1 ten ALARA prejob briefings on ten different RWPs, be 2 authorized and have the ability to sign in on ten 3 different RWPs at any given time during a"part of this 4 project.
5 And Duane found this problem out. Okay. And 6 he brought it to my attention, and he said, Kenny, he 7 said, we have got guys signing in on RWPs but we don't 8 have surveys for them. He said, I think it is a problem.
9 I said, Okay, Duane; let's take care of the problem.
10 Well, he never did anything. He just you 11 know -- a little bit later on, you know, Chip comes to me 12 and says, Kenny, do you know how many RWPs worked today.
13 Five. Do you know how many RWPs were signed in on?
14 Twenty-eight. I said, Chip, how many RWPs do we have that 15 are current, that people can sign in on? He said, Well, 16 we have got about 28, 29.
17 You are telling me that 28 RWPs were 18 activated, but they only worked on five RWPs? He said, 19 Yes. He says, People are just signing in on RWPs at will, 20 man. They are going in here, and they are going in there.
21 And they are changing the mind. And they might sign in on 22 this decom RWP and the labor foreman will say, I don't 23 want you on that decom RWP; I want you to go up on level 24 11 and help with the con, crete cutting.
25 So they sign out. Level 11 had a Digi-Dose NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 6202i 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
too, so they could sign in and out cn level 11, same as '
1 m 2 they could on access control. Okay. So they could sign 3 in on one RWP; five minutes later, sign out; sign in on 4 another one, and do that.
5 Well, our RWP states specifically -- okay -.
6 that wh'en an RWP is activated and worked, it will have a 7 requirement on when to do a survey. It might be shiftly 8 when worked; it might be weekly when worked; it might be 9 daily when worked, you know, whatever.
10 But if that RWP is activated and it says, l
11 Shiftly when worked -- and we are working two shifts now; l 12 we are working night shift and day shift -- then we better 13 have two surveys for that on each day. Okay. Night shift 14 and day shift.
15 And we don't particularly want to use a .
16 routine survey for an RWP. However, on the refuel floor, 17 everything is encompassed in one almost. I mean, there is 18 all kinds of areas up there and different jobs going on, 19 and the routine is done every day, you know. So probably 20 you could use a routine for an RWP if it was applicable, ;
21 if it is possible. Okay.
22 We don't like to do that, but you could, and 23 probably the technicians got a little lazy and probably 24 used that sometimes, you know. I didn't reall~y check on 25 all that, because my RWP writer was taking care of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
, 202) 2344433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 2M4433
- . . ._ \
- 1. RWPs, understand. I had enough paperwork and other stuff -I l
2 to take care of, and that is why I assigned him to that. )
1 3 But he didn't do what he was supposed to do 4 either, but nobody cares about that, you know. Everybody j 5 cares about the fact that, You falsified documents because 6 you put surveys into RWPs that weren't supposed to be 7 there.
8 What I told Michael -- and I want to make this l
9 perfectly clear here, people, you know -- that I had a 10 staff meeting and we had turnovers every night on that I
11 project. And I met with Chip Sawyer and Mike Miles, my j 12 two supervisors. Mike is night shift supervisor; Chip is l 1
13 day shift supervisor. I brought them into my office --
14 BY MR. ARMENTA:
15 Q For the record, by " Chip" you mean Roland-16 Sawyer.
f 17 A Roland Sawyer. That is correctI. And I 18 brought them in my office, after they brought this 19 attention to me about RWPs. I said, People we have got a 20 problem with the RWPs. This is like in September, October 4
21 of '93. I said, We have got a problem with RWPs. If the 22 technicians aren't doing the surveys like they are 23 supposed to, you know, we need to get surveys into these 24 RWPs, or we need to fix the problem or correct the 25 problem, you know.
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i . .
1 We either need to go back and see if we can l
! l 2 use a routine that is applicable to the situation. If it 3 is not applicable, then don't use it, for God's sakes, you 4 know. But see if there is a survey or if they covered a 5 job or if they.did something or if they can remember from 6 the routine or whatever what they did on this, so we can 7 get proper documentation.
8 Look at the RWPs and see if somebody signed in 1
9 at 10:10 in the morning and he had to go in on an area l 10 that needs to be dressed out, and at 10:13, he signs out, 11 in three minutes, you know that he didn't work that RWP.
12 There is no way he could dress out, undress, work in three 13 minutes. There is nobody in the industry I know of, not 14 even Houdini can dress out in three minutes and undress, 15 and work in -- it is impossible; it can't be done, you l 16 know.
17 I have seen people take as long as 15 minutes 18 to get dressed. I have seen people dress in five minutes, 19 and I have seen contractors really scream and holler 20 because they are spending a lot of money waiting for 21 people to get dressed up to get into an area. That is 22 nuclear power. Okay.
23 And I told Michael and Chip; I said, God, look 24 at the RWPs, people, and if you have to, get with Duane i
I 25 and let's correct this problem. And it looks like we are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W l202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
~
m .
O 1 not doing business properly.1 We have given everybody the -
2 opportunity to sign in on an RWP at will. They are 3 signing in on RWPs that we are not even working any 4 longer.
5 We have people signed in on a concrete-cutting o
6 RWP, for Christ's sakes. We quit cutting concrete four 7 months ago. Now, why hasn't that RWP been deactivated?
8 Why didn't Duane Parsons come to me and say, Kenny, we are 9 done with this job now; this RWP hasn't been worked for 10 two weeks. Let's deactivate. Okay, fine. Let's 11 deactivate it, Duane, you know.
12 But he didn't come and do that. Why didn't he 13 do that? I don't know. Was he lazy? Was he tired? You know, why don't they document stuff? I don't know. But, 14 15 you know, I told them, I said,.Geez, people; I am going to 16 go talk to Ed and Dick, and I am going to see if we change 1
17 access control and see if we can change the way we do l 18 business, because it is quite obvious, we have lost 19 control completely.
So Chip and Mike and Duane fixed the RWPs. My 20 21 wife says, Don't use the word "fix"; it sounds bad.
22 Corrected the problem with the RWPs, you know, and I gave 23 it to them solely. I did nothing on the RWPs. Okay. I 24 took full responsibility of trying to get the problem 25 corrected, and I left it in the hands of Mike Miles and
~
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1 Chip Sawyer to correct this problem along with Duane 2 Parsons.
3 And what they did I never saw a' gain until the 4 investigation came around, and they bring all these RWPs 5 and this out and this out. I didn't see them then, and 6 then when they brought them out to me, it was like Greek 7 to me. I didn't see any of them at the time.
8 All Chip did and Mike, they come back in staff 9 meeting; we talked about it. And they finally said, Well, 10 we think we have the RWP problem corrected. We have gone 11 back and we have done what we need to do to the RWPs to 12 make sure we have surveys with them.
13 I said, Did you do anything illegal. I said, 14 You guys didn't reproduce any surveys; you didn't falsify 15 anything; and you didn't recreate anything that wasn't 16 already done. Is that correct? l l
17 And they both said, Yes, we didn't violate 18 anything; we didn't falsify nothing; we have got a bunch 19 of lazy technicians that they are not reading the RWP and 20 they are not doing what they are supposed to do.
21 And I go back over to Ed and Dick again, and 22 September of 1993, you will see it in my deposition. Was 23 Dick Sexton and Ed Parsons aware? It seems to me that 24 this Stiers, Anderson, Malone report, everybody was so 25 concerned on, well, who did this; who told you to do this; NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
I who was aware of this; who made this decision; and why did 2 you do this; and why did you do that.
3 They were aware of cne RWP pr6blem. I told 4 them in September of '93. I said, People, we have got a 5 problem with our RWP program. We have people signing in 6 on RWPs that are not supposed to be; we have got QA 7 people; we have got M-K superintendents; we have got 8 people doing tours. They are signing in on the wrong RWP, 9 because they are activated on that RWP. They have gone to 10 prejob briefing, and they think that RWP encompasses 11 everything.
12 There was only one RWP that encompassed 13 everything, and that was the HP guide or the RWP. That 14 means we wrote an RWP in January of 1993, mind you, under 15 the direction of Mr. Paul Michaud, an NRC inspector.
16 And he said, Why don't you guys, all you HPs, 17 have one RWP to sign in on, that encompasses everything i 18 for you people. Why do you have to worry about signing in l 1
19 on an RWP to make sure that you are in on that particular ]
20 RWP to cover that evolution? Why don't you have an RWP 21 that states, You can cover any evolution in any job, and 22 only RPs can sign in on it, and get a prejob briefing and 23 brief everybody on it.
24 We did that, under his direction, and under 25 the management I talked to, they said, Well, it is a great NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 idea; let's do it. So we did that, you know, and that is 2 the RWP we generated. That is the only RWP that you could 3 sign in on in the morning and sign out of when you left 4 work. Our RPs could do that.
5 Other people whenever they signed in on an l 1
6 RWP, when they exited the area, they needed to sign out of )
7 the RWP, because if they were going to do another job, 8 they had to sign in on another RWP and then sign back out l
9 of the RWP, because we needed that information to track i 10 dose for each particular job. ,
1 11 We decided that we would take the dose of the 12 RP technicians, because they get more dose than anybody 13 anyway, and the management decided, We will take an 1
14 average throughout the year of the total dose of the RP 15 department, and we will assign so much dose to each 16 particular job for the RP.
l 17 ALARA said, Fine; it is a good idea. It was l l
18 economical; it was a good decision. And that is why we '
19 did that. Okay?
l 20 Now, the RWP surveys that are talked about in 21 the Stiers, Anderson, Malone report and talked about in my 22 NOV violation, that we violated -- I violated procedures, 23 because I allowed my supervisors or technicians to put a 24 routine survey to an exis, ting RWP; that should have been a 25 special survey. So I violated a procedure.
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1 You know, I mean -- and that was a big thing, 2 you know. How many procedure violations were there done 1
3 on that project? Well, I will tell you what: There ain't 4 enough fingers and toes in this room with the four of us, 5 believe me.
6 BY MR. CAIN:
7 Q Well, the issue we want to zoom in here on 8 is -- in fact, let me just read out of the letter that was i 9 sent to you, so we make sure what we want to focus on 10 here.
11 It says, "Likewise, the SAM investigation 12 showed that some 20 survey forms related to RWP work were
'l 13 created substantially after the surveys were allegedly 14 performed, and that you admitted to having directed the 15 RPT" -- that is the RP tech - "to backdate a survey form, 16 and that you participated in the backdating activity by 17 reviewing and signing several of these falsified 18 documents, thereby contributing to the false appearance 19 that the survey forms documented contemporaneous survey 20 activity, noting that neither the RPTs who prepared the 21 backdated survey forms nor the supervisors who reviewed 22 them made any notation that they would have alerted an 23 outside observer that the documentation came into 24 existence at a much later date than the alleged survey 25 activity described on the forms.
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-s 1 i
l l 1 "The investigation concluded that the weight l l
l l 2 of the evidence supports the conclusion that the backdated l l
. 1 3 RWP survey forms were intended to mislead.'T l
4 Can you respond, you know, distinctly to 5 that -- to those issues now?
6 A Yes. I -- my signatdre probably isn't on n l 7 hardly any of the RWP forms, because I didn't do any of 8 them. The only one that I think that I can remember that 9 it might even be on would be a Rob Rankin survey. And Rob l l
10 Rankin did a survey for a particular job, and he didn't 1
11 document the survey evidently. l 12 And I told Rob, I said, Lid you do the survey?
13 yes, I did. 1Where is the documentation? He said, I don't 14 know; I just didn't write the survey up. I said, Well, 15 write the survey up. And he wrote the survey up. He put 16 the date on it; I didn't put a date on it. I signed it 17 again, just like I did the other surveys.
18 And the RWP surveys that Mike and Chip that 19 did not have surveys to, to my knowledge, sitting right 20 now in this room and during the entire investigation, I 21 did not think that they did anything wrong. I did not 22 check up on them, and whatever information they got to 23 produce what they did, I am assuming that they did it in l 24 good faith and with credibility. I did not doubt them; I 1
j 25 don't doubt them today as I sit here.
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1 Now, if there is privileged information out 2 there that shows that they did, well, then, fine. You 3 know, they need to be reprimanded. .That is it.
4 Q Let's kind of go through this thing sentence 5 by sentence and talk about it. If you want to follow with a
6 me, on I am on the top of page 2 of the letter.
7 A I have got it.
8 Q It says, "Likewise, the SAM investigation i
9 showed that some survey forms related to RWP work were 10 created substantially after the surveys were allegedly 11 performed,a 12 Well, I think we have already talked about 13 that, and we understand that, based on what we talked l
14 about earlier this morning, that, Yes, .that happens 15 sometimes, but that doesn't necessarily mean there is a 16 problem, at least from our standpoint; that as long as the l
17 information is accurate --
18 Is that what you are going to tell us now for 19 these as well, that there were some occasions --
20 A Yes, there were.
21 Q Okay. Let's --
22 A But take 20 surveys out of 5,000, and what 23 kind of percentage is that? Is there a corporation or a 24 company in the world that works under that type of a 25 percentage? I don't think so. Are there going to be
~
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Ui l l
1 mistakes? Yes. ;
I 2 .O Well, maybe the implication of this sentence i l
l .
3 is that because they were created substantially after the 1
4 surveys were performed, that therefore they were false 5 survey data.
6 A That is true. But as far as I am concerned, 7 it doesn't make any difference whether it was produced one 8 day after the fact or six months after the fact. If it is 9 late, it is late. Right?
10 Q But it doesn't necessarily mean it is 11 inaccurate. Would that be your point?
12 A Oh, yes. I don't think -- I don't believe 13 anything -- I truly believe that there is nothing that was 14 inaccurate, and I don't believe anybody tried to mislead 15 anybody with intent to mislead, like this investigation 16 says it is.
17 0 Okay. Let's go on to the next phrase of this.
18 It says and then also that you admitted to having directed 19 an RP tech to backdate a survey form. Did you do that?
20 And what does that mean?
21 A I did not -- that one RP technician was Rob 22 Rankin. I am going to tell you right now. And I did not i 23 direct him to backdate a survey. I said, Rob, did you do l
l l 24 this survey? Yes. Where is it? Well, I don't know.
25 Well, then, why don't you produce the survey. If you did l
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1 it, do it.
2 He said, Well, Kenny, he says, that was about 3 a week ago. I says, I don't care whbn it was; if you 4 physically did this survey and you have to do some 5 research to find out exactly what you did and what levels 6 were, the contamination levels, and you have to do some 7 investigation to complete this survey, you do that.
8 0 Okay. So all you are saying is that he went 9 back and prepared a survey record after the fact, which is 10 fine, to -- but the information on that survey was 11 accurate.
12 A That is correct. That is absolutely correct.
13 Q From his log book.
14 A And when he brought the survey to me, he said 15 to me, he says, What date do I put on this. I said, When 16 did you do the survey, Rob. He said, Okay. He said, I 17 will put that date on it. I said, Fine; get done with it, 18 bring it to me, and I will sign it. And make sure that 19 everything is right.
20 Is your instrumentation right? Did you sign 21 on instrumentation and instrumentation log, or did you do 22 what a lot of other technicians do, just grab a meter and 23 go and not sign it out because you think you are God 24 because you are an HP? You are not God, you know. I 25 said, You have to sign out things like everybody else,
~
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 2344433 WASHINGTON. O C. 20005 (202) 234 4433
03 1 period.
2 Now, if you don't sign it out and you grab a 3 meter, I an not going to be behind you saying, Ah , ah, ah, 4 you did that. I gave my technicians a trust level. Did 5 they violate that trust? Yes, probably they did. Now, 6 who is going to be responsible for that? Me, Ken Zahrt.
7 I take the responsibility because I was the RPOS.
8 I am taking the responsibility for backdating l
9 this survey. I am taking responsibility for falsifying i ,
10 this document, because I was the RPOS and because the SAM 11 pecple said I did it and I did it with intent to mislead.
12 Well, I am telling you right now: I have never don 13 anything with intent to mislead, period.
14 I did things on that project to make sure that 15 we had documentation and that everything was done 16 according to the procedures and according to the Code'of 17 Federal Regulations.
18 0 Okay. So from what you have told us so far, 19 if I understand right, you are telling us that once again, 20 just as we discussed earlier with the other survey 21 records, that there was never an occasion where you signed 22 a survey form related to RWPs that had any information on 23 it that was inaccurate or false as far as you were aware.
24 A Not to my knowledge, no. I did not contest 25 anything that they did, my technicians. I believed them NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W t202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
_ . . _ . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ - ~ _ n . _ ."_1 .- - . - _ _ . .
1 explicitly. They told me they did a survey; I believed 2 them.
3 O And you weren't aware of any survey forms that 4 in any way tried to misrepresent when the survey was 5 conducted in terms of its time -- its chronology or by the a
6 date.
7 A No, I was not. I didn't see any of those, 8 Chuck. Chip and Mike and Duane took care of the RWPs, and 9 when they got completed, they come to me and they said, in 10 my staff meeting, with Mike and Chip, they said, Kenny, we 11 think we have got all the RWPs corrected, and we have 12 surveys to everything.
13 I said, Fine. But they said, If we don't 14 change it, we are going to have a problem. I said, Okay; 15 I am going over and talk to Ed and Dick, and we are going 16 to change the way we do business. And we did. We did a 17 major change, which needed to be done. Okay?
18 Q Okay. All right. That is good, as far as I 19 am concerned. That really answers my questions in regard 20 to RKP surveys.
21 MR. CAIN: Jonathan, have you got anything 22 else on that?
23 MR. ARMENTA: No. I think that my question --
2% well, yes. I just need to ask you:
25 BY MR. ARMENTA:
NEAL R. GROSS MURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE 8SLAND AVENUE, N W i2C2l 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 .:202) 234-4433
1 o Again, can you provide any evidence, other 2 than testimonial, to substantiate that they did accurately 3 correct that?
4 A No. No, I cannot. No. I put a lot of trust 5 in my technicians, and I put a lot of trust in my upper 6 management.
7 BY MR. CAIN:
8 0 Well, let's talk about then this hot service 9 facility block survey. Now, I know that you weren't --
10 based on the information that I know, you weren't 11 primarily involved in this, that Chip Sawyer was the one 12 who actually did the survey. But give us what information 13 you can about whether this survey record -- whether this 14 survey was, in fact, conducted and whether it was properly 15 documented and in a timely manner or not.
16 A See, this hot service facility plug, contrary 17 to popular belief, I was involved in this plug quire a 18 bit, an awful lot, to be exact. And I conveyed that in my 19 deposition. In fact, I have one whole volume on that block 20 in my deposition, which I will give to you and you can 21 read sometime in your leisure. Okay.
22 And it is also referenced in this Stiers, 23 Ander"on, Malone report. And it has to do -- it hits a 24 1:t of things. It hits our ROR program; it hits a 2; falsification charge against a technician, specifically a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCAJOERS 1323 MHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
<2C2# 234-4433
so 1 supervisor. And it has overtones of being very 2 vindictive; always has, always was, and maybe we can 3 change that. I hope we can -- okay? -- bEcause this 4 block, it seems to me --
5 You do know the difference between 6 conditionally and unconditionally releasing something.
7 0 Well, for the record, why don't you give us a 8 brief description of that.
9 Q All right. If you conditionally release 10 something, that means we are going to release a piece of 11 equipment from the building to the protected area. The 12 protected area is inside the fence, the perimeter of the 13 Fort St. Vrain property. Okay.
14 In order to get inside the protected area, you 15 have to be badged or you have to be a visitor and 16 escorted, just to even get through the guard house to get l 17 into the protected area. Then you go into the vital areas
! 18 which are the reactor building obviously, and you have to 19 be on RWPs and so on. Okay.
20 Now, are there RCAs inside the restricted or 21 protected area? Yes, there are. What is an RCA? It is 22 a radiological controlled area. What encompasses an RCA?
23 It could be a radiation area; it could be a high radiation 24 area; it could be an airborne radioactivity area; it could 25 be a locked high radiation area.
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i 1 O Okay. Now, we understand that this plug was j l
2 located down in the truck bay and was outside the RCA. Is 3 that correct?
4 A That is correct.
l 5 Q Okay. So I understand that.
,6 A But initially it started inside the protected 7 area, outside the building altogether. Okay? But you 8 need to know the whole story on this plug -- okay? -- !
1 9 because I think it will clear up some problems that you 10 might have with this.
11 Jonathan, I don't know if you are familiar 12 with this plug or if you can follow along with this, but I 13 am going to take you from the beginning of the l 14 chronological event of this plug. Okay? Because in my l 15 estimation as the RPOS, everything was done according to l l
16 procedure, and everything was done that was correct on 17 this plug.
18 And how in God's name it gets into this report 19 and gets charged the technician of falsifying the document l
20 is unbelievable. I mean, it is just incredible, because l
l 21 the particular day that the technician found this plug --
22 and the technician was Keith Bare.
23 It was brought to his attention by Mr. Tim 24 Schleiger from PSC, because I was on vacation that day. I 25 was playing golf. I had the day off, thank God, finally.
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1 And while I was gone, Tim Schleiger made his rounds as a 2 PSC oversight person, and during his rounds, he 3 nonchalantly took a smear on this plug and-thought he 4 found some contamination; mind you, knowing that he 'is not 5 qualified to take smears and stuff. That is what he says.
6 He comes up into the RP office, and he gets 7 ahold of Mark Zachary, the OR coordinator, and he says, 8 Mark, I think we have got a problem; we have this hot 9 service facility plug which weighs about 15,000 pounds --
10 it is a big concrete structure -- sitting outside, and it 11 is not marked as contaminated; it has been surveyed and' 12 released. And I think maybe there might be some 13 contamination on it.
14 He says, I don't know what may have happened; 15 it may have leeched out or whatever, but he said, I think 16 you need to send a technician out and take a look at that 17 block. So Mark sends Keith Bare out. Keith Bare goes 18 out, surveys this block, and finds a couple fixed spots on l 19 this block, and says he finds a 4,000 DPM smear on this i
l 20 block.
21 He goes crazy. He writes an ROR. That is l l
22 fine. That is what should have been done. The ROR was 23 generated by Keith Bare, signed by Mark Zachary, because I 24 was gone at the time and he could act as that; sent it 25 over across the street, and they processed the ROR.
NEAL R. GROSS COUPT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W
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1 What they did was they brought the block back 1 2 in immediately and put it in the truck bay. I come to 3 work the next morning, and it is all over.. It is a state 4 of chaos. Oh, did you hear what happened? Keith Bare i 5 found a spot on the block outside, and, geez, we brought j
, 1 6 it back in and ROR has been written and everything else. 1 l
7 In the staff meeting, says, Oh, man, geez, how did that
)
8 thing get out.
9 And I said, Was an RC4 generated? Yes. Fine.
10 I asked Keith, I said, Did you make a survey. Oh, yes, he i 11 says. I got a survey; oh, boy, I got a survey, you know.
12 I said, okay, let me see the survey. So he shows me the 13 survey, and I look it over. And, yes. He has got some 1
14 fixed spots on it,. and we talked about it in our staff 15 meeting in the morning.
16 I said, People, we surveyed this block up on 17 the refuel floor, and the background was a little high, 18 and then we put it down in the truck bay. And a lot of l
19 technicians surveyed this to get it outside the building.
20 We wanted to get it outside the building, because it took 21 up a lot of space on the refuel floor. And M-K was in a !
22 hurry to get it out.
23 And Dieter said, Well, it is okay; let's set l l
24 it out. And I said, No, Tom; we are not going to sit it I 25 out. If the background -- and then one of the techs,
.NEAL R. GROSS .
COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 David Strait said, Well, Kenny, the background is -
2 fluctuating up here. I said, Well, if the background can 3 ntay at 100 counts a minute and you can survey it up here 4 for fixed, and there is no smearable on it, you can send )
I 5 it out.
6 But if you can't get the background level 'to I
7 le:ss than 100, you know, then you need te cend i* out to
- 8 the truck bay and survey it and make sure that it is clean 9 before you send it out, because when that ROR was 10 generated, the next day David Strait came into my office, l
11 and he said, Kenny, he says, am I going to get in trouble l j
12 over that block because it is outside. He said, My name 13 was on that release form, you know. i 14 When they surveyeJ. it, they put it on the 15 release form, the release form that we talked about in 16 access control. That is where they documented that block, 17 less than 1K and it went out, less than SK fixed. It went 18 out. Okay.
19 Well, what happened was we conditionally 20 released it, so if -- and noboc/ throughout this entire 21 investigation, nobody understands that it is conditionally 22 released, and if it has got 300 counts fixed on it, it is 23 3,000 DPM fixed, it is less than SK fixed. There is 24 nothing wrong with that.
25 We haven't released it to the public yet. It NEAL R. GROSS COURY FIEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 5202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 is not unconditionally released. Now, are we going to 2 release it? No, we are not going to. release it, until it 3 is completely surveyed, until we know that the leeching is i 4 done, because we know it has been in there for ten, eleven 5 years, for God's sakes. And does concrete leech? Yes, 6 concrete leeches contamination. It'is imbedded. Why do f 1
7 you think they scabble concrete? To get leeching out.
8 Okay.
I 9 So we conditionally released it. What did !
l 10 Keith Bare find on this block? Well, he found a couple l 11 spots that were 100, 200 counts per minute fixed. He i l
12 found one smear that he documented on his survey that was 13 4K smearable. Understandable, it needs to be brought in.
14 Okay.
i 15 Somewhere along the line through this great l l
16 rumor mill at Fort St. Vrain, a number was thrown out:
l l
I 17 400,000 smearable. That is pretty significant, is it not, 18 400,000?
19 0 Uh-huh.
20 A Okay. Well, this was told to me. They said, 21 Well, Keith Bare found a 400,000 smear on it, and, boy, 22 somebody is going to get in trouble, you know. Well, what 23 we did with this block was, I put a lot of technicians on 24 it; we surveyed it; a lo,t of them surveyed it; they 25 released it and they sent it back out.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W s202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234-4433
30 1 And before it went out of the building, 'ip 2 Sawyer and Mike Miles -- and nobody even realizes this, 3 you know. Chip sawyer and Mike Miles in m'y office, I say, 4 Mike, you have people that surveyed that block on night 5 shift. Chip, you have had people that surveyed that block 6 on day shift. There must be seven or eight different 7 technicians. Some documented some of it, and some didn't.
8 When we brought the block in, I told Chip, I 9 said, Go get an instrument; check out an instrument; call 10 Tom Dieter and have him meet us down in the truck bay, and 11 I am going to find out what is on this block.
12 He goes gets an instrument. Chip and I on day 13 shift go down to the truck bay. We look this block over.
14 I have Keith Bare's survey in my hand. I am showing'one 15 4K smearable on a turnbuckle, 2- or 300 counts, and then I 16 see a 1,500 counts fixed, which means -- equates to 15,000 17 DPM, because they use an HP-210 pancake probe. Okay.
18 He is showing 1,500 counts on his survey on a 19 spot. I said, Chip, put the frisker on that spot and see 20 if you get 1.,500 counts. We put the frisker on that spot.
21 We didn't find nothing. Tom Dieter, the M-K 22 superintendent is witnessing this. He is watching us do 23 this survey.
24 I said, Take a smear on tne turnbuckle where 25 he got 4K. I want to see if it is smearable. We took NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 five or six smears on it, less than 1K. We found no 2 smearable contamination on that turnbuckle. We found no i 1,530 counts fixed on that block. We did find some spots 4 that were 2- and 300 counts over and above where he didn't 5 frisk, because he didn't frisk the wnole block.
6 And I said, Well, it is pretty obvious that, 7 you know, maybe we need to do a really good survey of this 8 block, like every inch of it, people, you know. And I 9 said, I don't care if it takes three months; I don't give 10 a shit. When this block goes out the door, it better be 11 surveyed, every inch, and you better have a lot of smears 12 and you better have a lot of dose rates, and you better 13 have a lot of fixed readings.
14 Now, I said, Michael and Chip, I don't give a 15 shit if you guys do it or if your technicians do it. But 16 when that block goes out the building, by God, it better 17 be documented, and it better have a very good survey.
18 Case closed. That was -- I left; that was it.
19 Chip come up to me and he said, Kenny, the 20 block is going -- a couple days later he come up, and he 21 said, The block has been surveyed and everything else, and 22 we are going to take it out of the building. I said, 23 Fine. Is it clean? He said, Yes, it is. Is there a good 24 survey done on it? yes, there is.
25 I said, We will have to wait and see in about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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1 six months. We better post it to where we are going to 2 have to survey it on a monthly basis, because .it could 3 leech again. If we go out there and we fi6d that it has 4 leeched again, the same old process all over again, 5 people. We have got to write an ROR; we have got to bring 6 it back into the truck bay in the building; we have got to 7 decon it; we have got to send.it.back out.
8 Understand, now, we are not unconditionally 9 releasing this block. We are conditionally releasing it, 10 and it stays on site, period. Okay? That was it. I go 11 to ALARA meeting, and after Chip did his survey, told me 12 it was done, I go and I write an excerpt to the ROR, 13 stating that what happened on the block and what we did 14 and everything else. Okay.
15 Then an ALARA comes up, and I go to the ALARA 16 meeting, and PSC -- it is the last order of business was 17 this infamous block, and at this ALARA committee meeting, 18 they asked me what happened on the block. And I say -- in 19 the ALARA meeting, I say, Well, Keith Bare surveyed it 20 initially, and -- I am sitting beside Tim Schleigar now, 21 because he is on the ALARA meeting as well.
22 I said, Tim found some contamination on it, 23 and we surveyed it up on the refuel floor and maybe we 24 missed some spots on it. So we brought it back in, wrote 25 an ROR on it, and we deconned it. Yes, we did. They NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
I said. Is there any smearable on it? Mo, there is not; 2 there is no smearable on the block at all. We have'got it
?I cleanad up to where there is no fixed. Well, how many 4 fixed apots were on it?
5 You know, and I am looking and I am thinking, 6 Well, we are talking about 5,000 DPM fixed; that is 500 7 counts. Right? Counts per minute. And I had to explain 8 how to determine DPM over CPM, taking CPM and divide it by 9 the efficiency and you get DPM. Okay. Mr. Malone didn't 10 understand that, and to this day, I don't think he 11 understands it. And I don't think he understands 5,000 12 DPM on fixed contamination.
13 But I said -- I told the ALARA committee that 14 we had a couple -- a few spots that might have been over 15 the limit. Well, everybody is thinking that 1,000 counts 16 per minute -- I mean, 100 counts per minute is over the 17 limit fixed. It is not. It i t, 500 counts per minute.
18 And we only had a couple spots. The one was 1,500 that we 19 never, ever found. We did find a couple that was 300 and 20 500, you know, but the majority of them were 100 and 200.
21 So Keith Bare got wind of what happened in the 22 ALARA meeting, because he types up the minutes, because he 22 worked for Mark Zachary. So Keith Bare takes it upon 24 himself to say, Well, Zahrt lied in the ALARA meeting; he 25 dicn't tell them the truth, you know.
~
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1U4 1 And so in my deposition, Mr. Malone says, i 2 Well, isn't it true that you lied to the ALARA committee.
3 I said, No, I didn't lie to the ALARA committee. Where 4 did you get that information? He said, Well, there is 5 some testimony saying that you didn't tell the ALARA l l
6 committee everything that went on. I said, I told the 1
I 7 ALARA committee everything, and they were very content and l l
8 very confident with what was done with that block. It was :
9 done correctly. Everything we did on that block was done 10 correctly.
11 Do I doubt that Chip Sawyer did the survey on 12 that block? No, I don't doubt that he did the survey on 13 that block. Jesus, I had -- I must have had ten 14 technicians that did surveys on that block. I mean, that i
15 block was surveyed more than anybody I have ever seen.
16 And now you are trying to say that he didn't do the 17 survey.
18 How do you know he didn't do the survey?
19 Because he put a date on the survey that he happened to 20 write the survey up when he was in a class. And you are 21 saying that he wasn't on site; he wasn't logged in. How 22 could he do that survey? Well, that survey probably took 23 place over a period of a few days.
24 If he instructed one of his technicians to 25 count his smears -- and that is perfectly legal; that is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSC9tBERS 1323 awODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 234 4433 .e< HINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 why we kept the person at access control, to take care of 2 people signing in and out of RWPs and if technicians got
- i. a hurry and they couldn't count their smears, they l 1
4 could drop them off at access control, and the access )
i 5 control technician would count the smears, give them back 6 the results, and they could write them up on their 7 ' surveys. Done all the time; it is done today, for God's 8 sakes, you know.
9 No. Did he sit there and count each smear on 10 a Tennlec for 30 seconds? Why, no. He didn't have the 11 time to do that. If he had done that, I would have ripped 12 his throat out, because he had other things to do, you 13 know. If I had caught him in that Tennlec room counting 14 smears as a supervisor, I would have been very upset, 15 because I don't need him to'be in there counting smears.
16 - But the fact that that block was surveyed by 17 Chip Sawyer, I have no doubt in my mind that he did that l l
18 survey. The Stiers, Anderson, Malone report says he 19 falsified that. The NOV letter says he falsified that, so I 20 obviously nobody took my testimony and nobody took his 21 testimony, and they took Keith Bare's testimony and 22 everybody else's, but they didn't take ours.
23 Now, why is that? Why are we proved guilty
- 4 cefere even given an opportunity to defend ourselves?
- 5 Nobody asked us; nobody wanted to ask us. You know, Mike NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATEAS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W OC2i 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
avs ;
1 1 Miles isn't brought into this; Mike Miles -- he was
- . ir.volved in this block as much as Chip was, for Christ's l i
2 ::akes. Night shift surveyed as much as he'did, you know.
4 Chip did the survey. Yes, he did. I didn't ,
1 5 care who did it, you know. It is kind of like -- have you 6 ever seen the show, Absence of Malice? You ought to look 7 at it sometime, you know, because that is exactly what 8 happened here. ;
i I
9 And, you know, this block is amazing. I ought 10 to give you my deposition and let you read, because I am l I 11 not going to -- my deposition doesn't change from what I 12 am telling you right now. And an ROR was written on that ,
1 13 bicek survey. Fine.
14 Did I doubt Keith Bare's survey when he said 15 he found 4K and 1,500 counts? No, I didn't doubt it. He 16 said he found'it, he found it. It is documented on a 4
17 survey, by God, and he wrote an ROR on it. Okay, fine.
18 Let's take care of the problem. Never once did I doubt 19 his survey.
20 I told the investigators that, and to this 21 day, sitting in this room, if Keith Bare said that is what 22 he found, I believe that he found that. I don't doubt his 23 survey; I don't doubt Chip Sawyer's survey. I don't doubt
- 4 P. 3 t we did cr that block.was correct, because we did
~
"= ything that we were supposed to,do.
. I
,l NEAL R. GROSS I'
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'021 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C ?0005 11
1 And now we are getting reprimanded for it.
I 2 Why? Jesus, what were we supposed to do?
~
i O Okay.
4 A You know, does it clear the block up? I mean, 5 it didn't clear the block up with Malone. It didn't clear
, a 6 the block up with SEG. It didn't clear the block up with s i 7 Keith Bare. Is it going to clear the block up with you 8 two individuals? I don't know.
9 Q I understand what you are saying.
10 A I have no idea. Am I going against a loaded 11 deck here? Yes. I don't think there is any way for me to 12 win this. You know, I can't belie'a it. It is -- and 13 this brings up, and it goes right into the ROR program. I 14 discussed the block; as far as I am concerned, the block 15 is over. Okay.
16 I want to talk about the ROR program.
17 0 Well, let me -- before you get to'that, let me 18 ask you then, a question that relates to all of these 19 surveys. And that is something you have touched on, but .
20 Jonathan and I have talked about this. And we don't 21 understand why -- .
22 We would like to get your perception on why it 23 would be that if all of these survey records were properly 2.;l prepared--maybenot timely but that is not i eal
'l 25 lsignificant -- and the information was accurate on the NEAL R. GROSS
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I .
1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 20h 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 !202) 234 4433
1 1 survey records, and if especially the MORT team, which is
- a.. SEG team sits down with its own employees and with an 3 interest in defending itself -- certainly they -- it is l 4 only natural that they would -- why would their 5 conclusions be that there were records falsified, when 6 they themselves understand how this process works, how 7 surveys are performed, how technicians document surveys i I
8 sometimes substantially after the fact of the survey? :
I 9 Why is it that they arrive at a conclusion 10 that records are falsified, given your very plausible l l
l 11 explanation for all of these records that they weren't? I 12 What is your assessment?
13 A Do you want my real assessment on that? !
l 14 Q Well, of course.
1 l
15 A > .I thought I pretty well put forth that. You l l
16 know, they had to prove something. SEG definitely had to 17 prove tomething. Theresare some things that went on in l
, 1 18 that project that shouldn't have went on. And whether or 19 not the fact that they can blame me for something and take 20 maybe the whole theme of what is going on away from them, 21 then it would be beneficial for them.
22 O So you are saying they were trying to divert
. 23 attention away from something else that was more serious?
e 24 A Sure. No doubt.
25 Q What would that be?
NEAL R. GROSS COURT RE, PORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS
'323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W 42021 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202} 234-4433
'1 1 A I think they tried to divert attention to the 2 MORT report, to the absolute MORT report. Now, I am going l l
3 to tell you something, people. I made a mistake. I i 1
4 admitted it. I admitted it in my deposition.
l 5 Q Let's make sure we understand what the mistake l 6 is again.
7 A The fact that I didn't write an ROR and that I ;
8 didn't date my signature. That is the mistake I made. j 9 And throughout this entire ordeal, that is really the only i l
i 10 mistake I made.
11 Now, do you think that that mistake was so 12 astronomical that it required me to lose my job for 13 falsification of documentation, after you have talked to l 14 me? And that I was the respons4bility -- it was my fault i i
15 that the procedures were screwed up and that it was my 16 fault that the ROR program was screwed up, and it was my 17 fault that the harassment and intimidation was there; it l 18 was my fault that the falsification took place?
19 No, it wasn't. I was not responsible for none 20 of that. I was responsible for directing the technicians 21 to go back and do the work that we hired them to do. Yes, 22 I was.
22 O Well, there is nothing wrong with that. We 24 understand that.
25 l A Would I do it any differently today? No, I
. NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433 i202) 234 4433
1 wouldn't do it any differently, other than the fact that I 2 would write the ROR, and I would -- you will notice on my 2 notice to the NRC, : .".e . is a date underneath my 4 signature. I don't sign my name now without putting a 5 date on it anytime. That taught me a good lesson. okay.
6 1 I will never do that again, but -- '
7 Q But we understand your message --
8 A I don't do --
l 9 Q -- for this entire morning that you -- we l 10 understand this much about your message: that it is your l
11 contention that none of these survey records contained any 12 false data.
1 13 A That is right.
14 O That to your knowledge all these survey 15 records contained accurate data, survey result data, 16 instrument identification data, that all this information 17 as far as you.were aware was accurate.
18 A That is correct. And I did not instruct any u i
19 to falsify anything or not put anything that was not 20 accurate on a survey. I have never done that, and I never i 21 will, and I don't think you will find a technician out 22 there that will tell you that I did that, because I didn't 23 do that. No way, shape or form.
24 And the MORT report, why would a company come 25 and MCRT themselves, and find 256 violations with the NEAL R. GROSS COURT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W 202J 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 will tell the truth.
2 O How do we know who we would subpoena?
3 A Well, it is one of the individuals that I 4 talked to.
5 Q You do not want to give us his name.
6 A No, I don't. I don't think it is fair to --
7 would it make any difference? I ask you personally:
8 Would it make any difference? I don't think so.
9 0 I need the information to investigate, if the 10 NRC staff decide that it needs to be investigated. ,
11 A Who is going to listen to my tape and who is 12 going to listen to my recorded document here? Who has 13 privy information to that? Is it NRC? Is it SEG? Is it 14 PSC? Is it Westinghouse? You know, the reason I don't --
J 15 0 You fear that this person may be terminated 16 from employment?
1 1
17 A I think it could probably cause him some !
I 18 hardships. You know, it is very possible. He is a very 19 good friend of mine. He served on the MORT team. He was i 20 with me during initial site characterization. He told me 21 at the time during initial site characterization that, 22 Kenny, man, these procedures you are getting are bad. You 23 are getting hosed. He told me that early on. He said, 24 You better look at these procedures, because they are 25 really bad.
NEAL R. GROSS-COURT AEPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W
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1 And when we got them, they were really bad.
2 And I can give you his name, you know. I would sure hate 3 to have anything happen to him, because he'is very well 4 thought of, and he is a pretty high official up in SEG, 5 you know, so -- you know, I mean, I just -- I have a lot 6 of friends out there.
7 It is just like I requested a copy of the 8 Stiers, Anderson, Malone report. I told Mr. Malone, I 9 said, When you get done, could you please send me a copy, 10 because I want to see what you guys are charging me with.
11 Well, yes, Mr. Zahrt; no problem; we will send you a copy.
12 I didn't get a copy. I didn't get a copy at all.
13 I asked for a copy of the MORT report. No, I 14 didn't get that either. I asked for a copy -- I think I 15 asked you for a copy of the O&I report, and you said that .
1 f
16 when you get completely done, you might be able to send me 17 one, didn't know for sure. I 18 0 Yes. I said that you can obtain one aftr.r the 19 investigation is completed.
20 A That is right. Now -- right. Well, I am 21 assoning that since I got terminated and since all the 22 report is in and since the O&I people did what they did on 23 this Stiers, Anderson, Malone report that it was 24 completed.
25 Q Well, it has been completed.
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. - - - . . - - . - . . - . _ - - . - . . - ~ . . . - - - -
1 l
1 A Okay. So I did not get a copy of that either.
2 I didn't get a copy of anything. However, when I got back 3 from Canada, in my mailbox was a draft copy of the Stiers, 4 Anderson, Malone report. Now, the content hasn't changed, j 5 other than the AAAs and the BBBs and the CCCs and t?e DDDs 6 in the final report are names. They are not letters. But 7 the content hasn't changed. ,
8 At least it gave me an idea of how bad I was 9 getting railroaded, and after I read it -- who sent it to i l
10 me? I have no idea. It appeared in my mailbox, 11 postmarked from Denver, in a manila envelope, and that is l
12 it. I don't know who sent it to me. I have no idea. I 13 don't know.
l 14 Q Could it be this --
15 A Obviously somebody wanted me to read it.
16 Q Do you think it is possibly the person that 17 you do not want to mention at this point?
18 A No. I don't think -- I don't -- I can't say.
19 I don't know, but I don't think -- is it possible? Yes, 20 it is possible. But I don't think he did it, you know, 21 because he is really -- he is very up on certain things, .
22 and the only thing that he has told me -- because he has 23 been over to my house and has eaten supper with my wife 24 and I, and we have skied,together, and we have developed 'a 25 really good relationship.
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w 1 And he has never really incriminated himself 2 in any way, shape, or form, nor has he ever offered me any 3 informaticr He just said that, Kenny, you ought to read 4 the first initial MORT report. He says, You aren't going 5 to believe it.
6 O Mr. Zahrt, right before we take a break here, 7 do you feel that when you backdate a form, that you do not 8 falsify that form?
9 A When you backdate it?
10 Q Yes.
11 A Yes, you probably do. It is a matter of 12 interpretation, I believe 13 O Do you feel that -- you have just told us that 14 you did not intentionally falsify these records. Do you 15 believe that you caused these records to be falsified, 16 one, neglected to write an ROR; two, you reviewed and you 17 gave your approving signature as a supervisor?
18 A I believe that the surveys were not 19 inaccurate, even when they signed them, backdated them, 20 whatever you call it. I believe that nothing they did was 21 inaccurate to this day. And, yes. I made a mistake by 22 probably telling them to put that date on it. They should 23 nave put the date that they did the survey. I understand 24 that. Okay? That is a mistake I made, and, yes, I will 25 suffer the consequences for it.
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 2344433 WA$HINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 And all I am saying during all of this, which 2 no one has listened to me and no one has heard me, and I 2 am not so sure you people are hearing me e~ither, that if I ,
l 4 made that mistake for falsification, okay, and you are I 5 terminating me because I falsified documents, which 1
6 doesn't really seem to be a major issue here in the public 7 and everything else --
8 Q I will go back to the question that Mr. Cain 9 asked you: Why would SEG confirm that its supervisors l
10 falsified records? Why would they confirm that?
11 A I don't know. I can't answer that question.
12 You need to ask them. Did you ask them that question?
l 13 You need to ask them. Why? Because I agree with Chuck.
14 They know very well what goes on in the industry, and they 15 know very well what happens with surveys. Okay.
16 And I will be the first to say that if I truly 17 prepared a document that was completely false, I would say 18 I falsified that document. The fact that I signed a 19 document that was produced in 1993, that was done in 1993, 20 I didn't falsify that document. I just didn't date it the 21 time that it was made.
22 Now, it is quite obvious that my 23 interpretation and your interpretation and SEG's 24 interpretation and the NRC's interpretation of falsifying 25 a document is different. And I am not going to win that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHCOE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
.202; 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
I 1 argument. I understand that. Oksy. I am not going to 2 win that argument. So penalize me; terminate me. They i did. : have accepted that. No problem. -
4 Q Did you contact the Department of Labor after 5 you were terminated in July '947 6 A Yes, I did.
7 0 And what did they say?
8 A I thought I was discriminated against, because 9 I really believe that there were other issues involved 10 here, and when the Westinghouse lawyers conferred with all 11 the SEG people and the MORT team, they had a lot of secret 12 meetings, and they had a lot of hush-hush stuff. And I 13 really believe that I was discriminated against.
14 Q Did you file a complaint officially?
15 A I tried to file a complaint with the 16 Department of Labor, but the ontleman told me, Mr. Zahrt, 17 do you feel you were discriminated against? I said, Yes, 18 I do. He says. How. And I told him. And he said, Well, 19 you are not black; you are not Hispanic; and you are not a 20 woman. And SEG has the right under Colorado law to 21 terminate you at will for any reason, and they don't have 22 to tell you why.
23 And, therefore, he said, I don't think you 24 need to talk to me, because I don't think you have a 25 discrimination charge. And I left, because I figured NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND 1 AANSCABERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W 2C2: 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
I there was no use pursuing that avenue, you know. So --
2 And during all this, which nobody, nobody even 3 wants to consider is my 15 years of impeccable reputation 4 in the industry, and how I feel about what went on, and 5 how I feel today, you know. Nobody really cared. I don't 6 think they still care, period.
7 I believe, I strongly believe that Ken Zahrt 8 was expendable and I got terminated, because, yes, I made 9 a mistake. I falsified that document, because I signed my 10 name in '93 and didn't date it. So according to the legal 11 letter of the law, I talsified that document.
12 Did I do it with intent to deceive? No , I did 13 not. Does that mean anything? No. Did the investigation 14 find out and bring out that everything was surveyed? Yes, 15 it did. Did anybody take that into consideration? No, 16 they didn't. Not at all.
17 BY MR. CAIN:
18 0 Now, you make --
I think maybe you are being 19 too hard on yourself when you say based on what we have 20 talked about that yot' said that you -- you just said that 21 you falsified a document, a survey record, because you 22 signed it.
23 A Well, I mean --
l 24 O Let's talk about that --
25 A That is a legal letter -- I mean, that is a
~
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i
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ .____.__.n_______._..
11/
1 T.atter of interpretation. ;
l 0 Why do you say that you falsified it, just 3 because you signed it?
4 A I don't say I falsified it. I say that is 5 what they are saying I falsified. The fact that I signed 6 that document in '93, they are saying that I as a l l
7 supervisor falsified that document. That is true 8 falsification. Legal letter of the law, is that true 9 falsification or not? l 10 0 Well,'oased on what you have told us of the 11 facts, it doesn't appear to me that you falsified the l
12 document, if all you did was to certify that -- what are I 13 yot doing when you sign? If I understand right, your 1 1
14 signature means, I have reviewed this document.
i 15 A That is correct. l 16 0 And I find it to be -- to have been acceptably I 17 prepared. I 18 A That is correct. That is correct.
19 0 There is not anything there that smacks of 20 falsification to me.
21 A That is the way I feel, too, you know, but 22 they changed the procedure to make the date on the other i
i 23 side of the supervisor's review in '94. So now there is a 24 date in the upper left-hand corner of a survey map that a 25 technician puts down when he does the survey and signs it, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W
'202)234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433 i
iv 1 and then there is a date down in the right-hand corner of 1 l
2 the survey now that when the supervisor reviews it, he l i
. 1 3 dates it. Okay?
4 That has been changed. There was a problem l
5 with the procedures. There was nothing procedure-wise 6 telling us how we had to do it at that particular time, 7 and I was concerned with whether or not they did it, and I l
l 8 they did it; they did the surveys, you know.
9 So I didn't feel that when I put my signature i
10 on there, that I falsified that document. I didn't 11 produce that document, for God's sakes. I didn't do the 12 survey; I didn't put the date on it; I didn't do anything.
13 All I did was I looked at the information on 14 it to make sure that they had the proper instrument with 15 the cal due date, that the cal due date was not out of 16 cal, you know, and that they used -- they didn't use an i
17 RO-2 to frisk a contaminated thing, because you can't use l
18 an RO-2 to frisk. That is a dose rate instrument.
19 I wanted to make sure that they didn't have 20 anything wrong on the survey, and that is what I reviewed 21 them for.
22 O Were you in the habit of dating survey records I j 23 when you signed them?
l 24 A No.
l 25 0 so you didn't treat this document any ,
l 1 NEAL R. GROSS l count aceonTcas mD inANseniecas 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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1 differently than any other.
2 A No. No , I didn't.
3 0 There was no intention on your~part to not 4 date it, so that it would be known about the time 5 difference between when the survey was conducted and when 6 you signed it.
7 A No. If I had an intent to do that, I would 8 have dated it, and then I would have instructed one of my
, 9 technicians to go back and change the sequence number in 10 the log book, so it would coincide with what it was 11 supposed to be. But why would I do that? I would have to 12 go back and redo 15 or 16 pages of RWP stuff. No , I am 13 not going to do that. Geez.
14 MR. CAIN: Can we take a break at this point, 15 and --
16 MR. ARMENTA: Sure. It is about --
17 approximately 11:45. We need to take a break.
18 (whereupon, a short. recess was taken.)
19 MR. ARMENTA: It is approximately 11:55, and 20 we are back on the record. The reason why we went off 21 record was to take a break.
22 BY MR. ARMENTA: ,
23 O Mr. Zahrt, the only last question that I had 24 for you is that you mentioned Just a few minutes ago 25 t. ha t -- something to the effect that under law. What did
~
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i
__ . j A6v .
J 1 you mean by that?
2 A Off the record or on the record?
! 3 Q On the record.
4 A On the record. You mean, as far as 5 falsification goes? Is that what we were talking about?
I 6 0 Well, let me ask you this. I am not 7 obligating you to answer on the record. If you want to go 8 off record, we can go off record, but I may have to come j 9 back and ask you questions.
10 A Well, on the record is fine. I am just trying 11 to --
1 12 O It is up to you. I just want to give you -- I l 13 want to make sure that you dictate that it is on record. l l
l 14 See, your testimony is voluntary. -
15 A Right. That is fine. I am just --
I am 16 trying to understand what you want me to say here, what 17 you want me to answer. j 16 0 Well, you mentioned something about under law, 1
19 you said, I falsified records, something to that effect. I 20 What did you mean "under law"?
21 A Well, what I meant to say was: Is the fact 22 that I signed that document in '93 that was produced in 23 '92, is that true falsification of a document under the 24 legal letter of the law? Does that mean that that is a 25 falsified document? That is what I am asking you; that is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTFRS AND TRANSCRIBERS -
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-- - ---..~~ .. - _.__ _ ~ .._ . . . . - ~ - - - - - - - ~ - - - ~ - - I m es e
- ~
what I meant to say.
2 O Did you have a conversation with your attorney 3 about this?
4 A Yes, I did.
5 0 Can you give us the information that you gave 6 him?
l 7 A I told him that I signed a document that was l
8 produced in '93, that was produced in '92 that was !
I 9 actually constructed -- I mean, the technicians did the !
l 10 surveys, and the mistake that I made was that I signed the 11 document that I reviewed it; I didn't date it the date 12 that I reviewed it. I just signed that I reviewed that 13 document.
14 And my lawyer said, probably the fact that you l 15 signed that document in '93 is an interpretatien process 16 where you may have falsified that document. He says, It 17 happens all the time in the industry; it happens -- he 18 says, We do it in our office, for God's sakes. But he 19 said, It is a matter of interpretati",n, and you probably 20 got caught. And he said, If you want to prosecute these 21 people, there is a 50-50 chance that you might win and you 22 could lose.
23 And if you lose, you are g6ing to have to pay 24 all the court costs and all the court fees and everything 25 else, plus go through all this ordeal again. Do you want NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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- - . - - . . . . - - . . . . . . . ~ . . . . . - - - . - - . - .
1 to do that? He said, If you want to prosecute these !
2 people, we will prosecute them.
3 But he said, Understand one thing; when you 4 prosecute them, they are going to come after you with both 5 barrels. And you are going to have to sit in a court of 6 law and you are going to have to go on the stand and you 7 are going to have to defend everything. They are going to 8 bring everything out.
9 I said, I don't have a problem with that. I 10 want them people to suffer for some of the things they 11 made me do as well as what I did. I just think that what 12 I got charged for was very excessive and very unrealistic.
13 And to this day -- and you will never convince me
- 14 otherwise, that I was not discriminated against or that I 15 was not used as a political scapegoat in this position.
16 No doubt in my mind.
17 0 Do you have plans to file.a complaint with the 18 NRC about harassment-intimidation? l 19 A Right now, probably not. I guess I am going i
20 to wait and see what the NRC does, because during this 21 entire process, if SEG determined that I needed to be 22 terminated because I falsified documents, which obviously 23 their interpretation and my interpretation is quite a bit 24 different, okay, and if I got terminated and I was blamed l 25 for everything that went on during this process, then why NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202i 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 didn't the other people that were involved in this get 2 blame.d as well? ,
3 If SEG would have sent me a termination letter I
4 and said, Ken Zahrt, we have decided to terminate your l 5 employment because you violated SEG's code of conduct --
6 that is what my letter stated -- well, how about Ed 7 Parsons and how about Dick Sexton and how about Chip 8 Sawyer and how about Mike Miles, the other managers on 9 this project?
10 Am I the only one that violated this code of 11 conduct? Am I the only one that got terminated? Yes, I 12 am the only one that. got terminated. But was I the only 13 one that was responsible for some of the messes that 14 happened here? No, I wasn't.
15 And I have been charged unrightfully for being 16 responsible for the violation of procedures in the ROR 17 program and sitting in M-K's pocket and being Danny I
18 Hicks's friend. It is even mentioned in the Stiers, 19 Anderson, Malone report, for God's sakes, the infamous 20 cask deal that you and I talked about on the ROR, where l the people said, my technicians felt that I, Ken Zahrt, 21 22 was a friend of Danny Hicks; therefore, I softened all the 23 blows for him and I got everything diminished for him, 24 when in actuality, I was the one that was trying to.get 25 him terminated, because he was a supervisor and he did NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 some things that were absolutely against the regulations.
]
2 And I wanted him terminated; I wanted him ;
3 reprimanded, and I wanted him punish'ed, and my upper 4 management told me time and time again, Ken, you do not l l
l 5 administer the punishment; you write the RORs, you sign ;
. 1 6 them, and you send them over, and we will take care of the 7 punishment. It is not your technicians, and it is not 8 you. You don't have anything to say about what we do for 9 disciplinary actions.
10 And I tell my management, Ed Parsons and Dick 11 Sexton and Bill Hug and Carson Calton who are part of the 12 project, I said, You people are wrong; you are doing a bad I
13 thing here, because you are putting me in a real bad light !
l 14 with my staff, and I have lost credibility with my staff, 15 because you think that because I am a frieni of Danny 16 Hicks and I play golf with him and I play racquetball with i
17 him, that he messes up, he gets an ROR written ca him; I '
l 18 don't do anything; you people don't do anything. Siy staff 19 thinks that since he is my friend, I have softened the 20 blow for him. Totally wrong.
21 And in the Stiers, Anderson, Malone report, it 22 even references this ROR about the cask, about my 23 conversation on the golf course with him, you know. And 24 to bring you up to speed on this: You talk about the ROR.
25 Why didn't I write an ROR on the technicians NEAL R. GRCSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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I when they did their surveys, when I went back and found 2 out that survey documentation was done? Why didn't I 3 wrote an ROR? Well, I will tell you why I-didn't write an 4 ROR: Because I felt about the ROR program at that time 5 just about like the technicians do, that it was just 6 nothing but a piece of shit program that nobody cared 7 about.
8 You document a paper, and nothing ever got 9 done. Every time we wrote an ROR on somebody, nothing 10 ever happened. It was a futile attempt. At that 11 particular time, it probably ran through my mind: There 12 is no use writing an ROR; nothing is going to happen 13 anyway, you know, so I didn't write the ROR.
14 Looking.back at it now, yes, I should have 15 written the ROR. I understand that. But I didn't have 16 fmith in the ROR program. My staff didn't have faith in 17 the ROR program. And neither did the craft people. And 18 after what happened to Danny Hicks, I could understand why 19 they didn't have faith in it.
20 But what I can't understand is how the Stiers, 21 Anderson, Malone people can come out and say that I 22 purposely kept information from my management en the RORs 23 that were written and that I channeled only the 24 information that they needed to know, so they could make a 25 decision on the disciplinary action on RORs.
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..v 1 Now, RORs are radiological occurrence reports, 2 and when we started the project, we were under Fort St.
3 Vrain's ROR program, which happened to be an HPIR. That 4 is a health physics irregularity report. Anybody can 5 generate it; anybody can write it. Anybody has that 6 ability. Okay.
7 It is not like you should listen to Ken Zahrt 8 and he should generate every ROR, because, you know, I l
9 shouldn't. I am not everywhere. Okay. But the ROR that l l
10 really has me upset, that references me in the Stiers, 11 Anderson, Malone report and proves that I lost credibility ;
I 12 in my staff and to my management, for God's sakes, is the l 13 fact that in August of 1992, when the project just got l 14 started, Danny Hicks gets an HPIR written on him. Why?
15 Because George Redmond and I were with Danny 16 Hicks out on'a golf course. We were trying to release a 17 cask on the refuel floor that sat in the hot service 18 facility. They wanted to bring it up, decon it, and get 19 it out and send it down the road. Okay. We were working 20 on it, deconned it, spent a lot of time on this cask.
21 We decided, well, we were going to try 22 strippable coating paint. Are you familiar with the 23 strippable coating paint for decon, where you paint 24 something and then when you pull off the paint, it pulls 25 of the contamination. Well, that is what we were going to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W v202) 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
i l
j 1 do for this cask.
2 Sunday afternoon, we decided to play golf,-
l 3 Danny and I and George Redmond, George is a PSC oversight 4 person. We are out on the number 2 tee at Maryanna Butte, i 5 and Danny looks at me and he says, What are you doing 6 Sunday. I mean, we were playing golf on Saturday or l
7 Sunday, and he said, What are you doing early Monday 8 morning. And I said, Going to work.
9 He'about you coming in early and covering me 10 and I will pain that cask. Or he said, Why don't you 11 bring some technicians in early and we will paint that 12 cask. I said, Danny, I am not authorized to bring anybody 13 in for overtime. Nobody is coming in early to paint that l 14 cask. He said, Well, you know, if you want anything done l 15 right, you have got to do it yourself, so he said, I think l
16 I will go in and paint that cask. )
l 17 I said, Danny, you are an M-K superintendent, 18 for Christ's sakes. What are you doing, going in, 19 painting a cask? You have got workers that will do that.
20 You are not going to paint this cask. If you go in and 21 paint that cask, you are going to get an HPIR written on 22 you. I am going to tell you that right now, so don't do 23 it.
24 Well, we dropped the conversation, and George i
25 Redrnond, the PSC person, was there, and he looked at me,
~
I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIDERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234-4433 l
.__ __._____- _ ___ i _ _.- _ . , - - _ _ j
.L e o 1 1 and he said, Kenny, do you believe what he said; do you 2 believe that little shit is going to go in there and paint 1
s 1 3 that cask. I said, I don't think he is going to do that, j 4 George; I told him if he did, he is going to get an HPIR 5 written on him.
6 Well, I come to work Monday morning; I conduct 7 my staff meeting. Okay? Everybody goes to work up on the 8 refuel floor. Lo and behold, the cask is painted. It is 9 still wet. There is still wet paint on the cask. And my j 10 staff is in my office, and they are livid. I mean, they 11 are upset, because they are saying, Did you come in early j l
12 and cover somebody to paint that cask. No.
13 The laborers want to know who painted that 14 cask, because they are supposed to paint it, and if 15 somebody come in and painted it that wasn't a laborer, 16 they are going to get paid for it. I said, No. They 17 said, Do you have any idea who painted that cask. I' :
18 said -- this is to my staff; this is to Mike Miles and 19 Chip Sawyer.
20 I said, I got a real good idea, but I don't 21 know for sure. You are asking me right now, right here 22 and now, if I know who painted that cask. No , I do not.
23 I have got a real good idea. But I said, Let me tell you 24 something. You want to know how you can find out? Go to 25 the Digi-Dose fast track system, pull up the computer and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 42026 234 4433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 find out who signed in early in the morning, and you will 2 find out who painted that cask, because it will show you 3 who was up on the refuel floor. -
4 That is exactly what they did. They went in 5 to access control, pulled up the Digi-Dose system and 6 found out that Danny Hicks signed in at 5:09 Monday 7 morning and exited at 5:39. He spent 30 tainutes in the 8 building, and he painted that cask. He signed in on the 9 wrong RWP. He painted a cask without RP coverage in a 10 contaminated area. There is two major violations that he 11 did. And he violated my trust, because he told me he was 12 going to do it, and I told him not to do it, and he went 13 ahead and did it anyway. Okay. -
14 All right. Did I have privileged information?
15 Yes, I did. But at that particular stage of the game when 16 my staff asked me if I knew for cure if he painted it, I l
17 didn't know for sure. I am telling you, I am honest. I 18 had a good idea, but I didn't know until they brought him 19 up on the fast track, and they said, What are we going to 20 do. I said, Write an HPIR on him now. Get it and we will 21 send it over.
22 We did that. Okay. Now, the HPIR goes over 23 to PSC now, because PSC is taking care of it. This is 24 early '92 now, August of '92, and the ROR program is not 25 being conducted by SEG; it is being conducted by PSC.
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i ., v e
1 Steve Shiro (phonetic), Dale McCue (phonstic), Ted Borst ]
2 are taking care of the HPIRs.
< 3 They wait for a month. It is a month before 4 they make a decision on this HPIR, because nobody wanted j j
5 to process them. There was a lot of paperwork, and it was j 6 a real pain in the butt. And so Steve Shiro'just wouldn't 7 act on it right away. Okay. It takes a month to do it.
l 8 What do they do after they find out? They !
9 don't do anything to Danny. They don't slap his hand; 10 they don't restrict him from access; they don't do i
11 anything to him. When I get the corrective action on that 12 HPIR, I go over and talk to Bill Hug, Ed Parsons, Dick 13 Sexton, Carson Calton, and I say, What is wrong with you 14 people; what are you doing to me.
i 15 I am the RPOS on this project. We have an M-K i 16 superintendent that blatantly violated procedures and 17 blatantly violated an RWP, not to mention the fact that he 18 told me he was going to do it. It was like premeditated 19 murder. He told me he was going to do it; I told him not i
, 20 to do it. He went and did it anyway, and then we write an
- 21 ROR on it, and you don't do anything to this guy.
22 Now, what kind of credibility do I have with 23 my staff? My staff think I am a laughingstock. They 24 think I am a joke. They think I got him off the hook, 25 because he is my friend, because I play golf with him.
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1 And I can remember when George Redmond cam 3 in 2 Monday afternoon and George Redmond said, Jesus, Kenny, 3 can you believa it. That little turd actually went up and 4 painted that cack, after you told him not to do it.
5 I said, I know, George; we wrote an ROR on it 6 and everything; it is being proceacec; it is over to PSC.
7 It is in their hands. He said, Man, he said, I can't 8 believe it. I acid -- and George Redmond, I love him to 9 death, but if you want to get something around on the 10 project, just tell George Redmond and it will be 11 everywhere.
12 And so it didn't take long. Within two days, 13 everybody knew about the conversation on the golf course.
14 Okay. Stiers, Anderson, Malone in their investigation, 15 what do they come up with? They come up with the fact 16 that I had privileged information on this ROR with Danny 17 Hicks, that I didn't do nothing, and I circumvented 18 information to my management, and that I got blamed for 19 this ROR, and I got blamed for Danny Hicks, because I was 20 his friend.
21 Now, you talk about a bunch of bull ahit, and 22 you talk about intent to deceive. That was intent to 23 deceive right there. And I took the blame for that, and I 24 shouldn't have taken the blame for that. Now, I got it in 25 that report right there, and it is on my record, and NEAL R. GROSS -
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rm 1 something that will never, ever be gone.
2 Who listens to me? Nobody. Who wants to 3 know? Nobody. You know, I mean, Jesus. And this report 4 is filled with that stuff. I wouldn't wipe my butt on 5 this report, but it sure hammers me, you know.
6 0 Let me ask you something, Mr. Zahrt. When I 7 interviewed you on record about the harassment-8 intimidation, we discussed the RORs, and I vividly 9 remember discussing this particular ROR that you have just
~. 0 detailed. What I cannot remember is why you weren't so 11 vivid about the account when I asked you the first time.
12 Why are you bringing more detail now than you gave the 13 first time when I asked you about it?
14 A Because.I thought when I told you -- did my 15 story change any from the time I told you? Can you 16 remember? The only thing different would be you talked to 17 George Redmond, and he didn't know whether it was in a 18 racquetball court or a golf course. Well, I am telling 19 you right now, it was on Maryanna Butte, number 2 hole, 20 and George even admits that that what it was.
21 Other than that, you go back and look at my 22 testimony, and there will be nothing different from my 23 testimony that I just said right now from what I told you.
24 O Well, my question is then: Why were you not 25 as detailed with me then as you are now?
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1 1 A I wasn't accused -- because I wasn't accuced 2 of anything then. It was just like -- that ROR was just 3 like every other ROR, Jonathan. Upper management made the 4 decision to put out disciplinary action. I had no say-so 5 in the matter. I was out of the picture. So whatever I 6 recommended to management, they didn't care. And they 7 told me that many, many times.
8 And I even talked to you in that O&I on that 9 harassment and intimidation investigation. We talked
- 10 about the Dean Ross incident. Okay. And I also told you l 11 when I went over and talked to Carson Calton and Bill Hug 4
12 and Ed Parsons and everybody else, and I said, You people 13 need to do something with this man. This is a dangerous l 14 situation. This man needs to be reprimanded.
l 15 Well, they didn't do anything to him either.
l l
16 And I distinctly remember telling you about that in that l l
1 17 harassment and intimidation, because I physically stepped 18 in front of him and one of my technicians. It was coming 19 down to a physical confrontation, and had I not been 20 there, there probably would have been a physical 21 confrontation. Okay.
22 I distinctly remember that, but the ROR 23 program -- this isn't the only one. All the RORs on Danny 24 Hicks, it is the same thing. Upper management made the 25 decision. For God's sakes, you were there when the fourth NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W
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1 ROR was written on Danny, when he made the harassment and 2 intimidation charge to Rick Neely. He said, I am going to 3 kick your ass, because you wrote that ROR dn me. I am 4 going to kick your ass.
5 He threatened Neely in the presence of Chip 6 Sawyer, so there was a witness, and that brought the house 7 down, believe me, especially with Jonathan Armenta from 8 the O&I office there, investigating harassment and 9 intimidation, and we have got an M-K superintendent 10 already intimidating one of my technicians. Okay.
11 And I don't need to tell you that the house 12 really came down on that. But did you ever get an 13 opportunity to look at the final corrective action on that 14 fourth ROR on Danny Hicks? Have you ever gone back and 15 looked at that?
16 I got an opportunity to look at that ROR in my 17 investigation with Stiers, Anderson, Malone. And it was 18 amazing, because after the fourth ROR was writter nn him, 19 I went over and talked to my management, and I said, 20 People, it has been two and a half years now. Danny Hicks 21 is a pathological liar. He will lie right to your face.
22 He doesn't need to be working in this environment. He has l
23 caused us a lot of problems.
24 This fourth ROR that has been written on him, 25 you people as upper management need to make a decision and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RMODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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_i 4
1 move him from this project, beccuse it is going to cau=c a .
2 ;ct of problems. And they said, Well, do you think you i
3 can train him. I said, I have tried for two and a half s 4 years. I don't think I can train him. He is too '
5 egotistical, and he is too self-centered. He is not 6 trainable. He has one thing in mind: production.
4 7 He will do what he can do to get the job done. l 1
8 He don't care about procedures; he don't care about 9 technicians. He don't like anybody telling him what to 10 do. It is time for him to move out of this environment, 11 and if you bring him back on this project, you are doing e
12 me a grave injustice, and you are doing the project a 13 grave injustice.
14 And what do they do? In the corrective action ;
15 of this ROR -- because Mr. Malone said, Well, you talked 1,6 to your management about this; why do you suppose they put 17 this down as a corrective action, that they are going to 18 move him over to the engineering trailer, take him off the 19 floor, let him work in an engineering capacity, let him 20 apologize to the RP staff that he will not violate 21 procedures anymore, and then eventually bring him back 22 into the building again?
23 I said, Man, I have never seen this ROR, 24 because when they put me on leave, they locked me out of 25 the building. So I couldn't see anything, so this is the I
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~
first tims I have sr.en it. But I am really cmazed thst 2 that committee, my upper management, made that decision to 3 try to retrain him again, when I explicitly,said, Don't do 4 it; you are going to lose so much.
5 You are going to expect too much from him. He 6 is goins to have to'be like God, and he can't do it. I am 7 going to tell you right now. Plus first step he puts in 8 that reactor building and a technician sees him, where do 9 you think my credibility with my staff is? Out the 10 toilet. So I said, You shouldn't do this.
11 And they had made a decision to do this, mind 12 you. Okay. So Mr. Malone says, Well, how come he was 13 moved off site? I said, Because -- it wasn't because of 14 the ROR and it wasn't because of SEG.
15 It was because the vice president of M-K, Mr.
16 Agee, came in for a meeting with all his managers, ,and 17 they met at a restaurant, and he told Bill Hug and Tom 18 Dieter and all the wheels that, Hey, if we have a 19 superintendent that is harassing people, we need to get 20 him off site now. And they moved him.
21 And that is why he got moved, you know. And 22 thank God, because if they had put him back in the 23 building, I am telling you what. I don't know what would 24 have happened, but there probably would have been a riot, 25 a big riot. Okay NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRiNSCAtBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W
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- - - - - - - - , . . . _ . . . . . _ . . . , _ _ . . _ _ . ~ . . . . , . , . . . _ , , .
l 1 This is the -- these era the problems that I .
1 2 faced with my upper management all through the project on 3 a'1 the RORs.
. I had nothing to do with the RORs.
4 Everything was done by management, Ed Parsons and Dick 5 Sexton. And many times they told me: Kenny, we are not 6 going to make the disciplinary action on Danny Hicks;'we 7 are going to leave it to Bill Hug. He works for M-K.
8 I said, Jesus, Ed, this is an RP problem. The 9 kid doesn't respect some of the RP stuff. You as a 10 project manager need to make an example out of this boy 11 now, before it gets into astronomical proportions. He 12 said, Kenny, I told you before; you don't make the 13 decisions, just like on the procedures.
14 He threw me out of his office many times. He l
15 says, Kenny, you don't understand. We spent a million and 16 a. half dollars on these procedures. We are not going to 17 rewrite these procedures. I said, You -- this was back in 18 January of 1993 now, and I am telling my project manager, 19 Hey, if we got MORTed today, January 1993, if the MORT 20 team came in and MORTed us, you and I would both be fired, 21 because we are in violation of procedures, Ed.
22 They are so bad that you can't work them. You 23 stopped the V&V process on us. You wouldn't rain the 24 technicians on the procedures. You committed for a 30-day 25 training session. You trained nobody, and you threw a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 complete cet of 108 proceduroa et us cnd than thora ia -
2 violations all over and now you don't want to fix them, 3 because it is going to cost money. -
4 I said, Jesus, what is this. .He says, Kenny, 5 You just got to work with the system, and you have got to 6 work wi'th the procedures and leave my office. Okay. I am 7 gone. See you.
l 8 I mean, it is -- Don Neely made an example out 9 of me in July of 1993 over procedures, and you can ask any 10 staff person that is on site, because it was in front of 11 my entire RP staff and all the managers. It was also the 12 same day I was leaving to go on vacation. It was my 13 birthday. It was 6 , as a matter of fact.
14 He come in to give us an outlook of what SEG 15 is doing and what they are going to be doing in the 16 business and what we are going to be doing after this 17 project and all this. And procedures.were brought up by 18 somebody in the crowd. And Mr. Neely looked at me and 19 said,'Well, Ken Zahrt is the RPOS or. this site. If the 20 procedures are a travesty, it is his fault. It is his 21 responsibility.
22 If you haven't fixed those procedures, it is 23 your responsibility; it is your fault. I am telling you 24 what: You could have just reached up and slapped me up 25 across the face. I hit about 9,000 degrees. And I knew NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTER $ AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202i 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20003 (202) 234 4433
i
- _ - _ .-.. _- .. . - , . . . . . _ , _ ..__-,_.._....-.--.4 1 that that was not the, time nor the plcco to talk about 2 procedures.
3 And you could feel a penny drgp in that room.
4 The staff, the entire staff sensed a majo'r problem coming 5 on here, and I looked at Mr. Neely and I said, Don, I am !
6 going to tell you right now; this is not the proper time 7 nor the proper place to discuss these procedures. If you i
l 8 want to talk to me about procedures, we will talk to it l
I S' after the meeting.
i 10 He said, Fine, you know, and that was it. And 11 I was so mad and the staff was pretty upset too, because j l
12 he said, Well, he said, bottom line is the procedures are !
13 your responsibility. Bottom line is I didn't write the l
14 procedures.
I just tried to fix them, and they wouldn't 15 fix them.
16 So I left. I didn't eat any cake. I didn't 17 stay for any of the refreshments. I was so mad, I left. l 18 I went home, got my wife, got my boat, and we took off to 19 Canada. And I never looked back.
~
20 But when I got back, Dick Sexton told me, he l 21 said, Kenny, he said, Don Neely was really upset at you; i
22 he was really mad. In fact, he said, He talked to Ed and 23 I and he said, I want you to call Ken Zahrt and I want you 24 to get him in this office now; I want to talk to him.
- E And Dick said, Well, he is on vacation; he is NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W (202) 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
1 going to Canada. And Ed said, Well, maybe we better lot 2 him cool down and maybe we better let you cool down before j 3 this confrontation takes place. Well, tha,,t confrontation 4 never took place. He never, ever come back and talked to 5 me about him, ever again, never.
6 And as we sit here in this room today, a year 7 and a half after my termination, the procedures are still 8 screwed up. Now, you tell me if there is a problem. And 9 you tell me if Ken Zahrt was the problem on that project.
10 No, he wasn't.
11 Now, everybody says, Well, why do you wait so 12 long to bring this all up; why didn't you tell me then. I 13 answered the questions that everybody asked me. That is 14 in my entire deposition right there. Has anyone read my 15 deposition? I don't think so. I don't think anybody has ;
16 read my deposition, other than Stiers, Anderson, Malone.
17 Have you people read my deposition in its 18 entirety? I don't think so. .I don't think so. Don Neely 19 said, Kenny, when you get done with your deposition, we 20 want to read it'. They never read it, not at all.~
21 And my -- I tell you what. I spent five days 22 in deposition with a court recorder, just like I am 23 talking to you people. And my days were from like eight l 24 c' clock in the morning to six o' clock at night, and we -
25 eckafewbreaksforlub.chandafewbreaksinthe i NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W l202i 2344433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 l
1 morning and the afternoon, and that is it.
2 other than that, Mr. Malone was sitting there, 3 just hammering question after question after question 4 after question, relentless, all the time for five days.
l l
5 Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, you'know, constantly; l 6 When I got out of that, my brain was fried. I l
7 was not happy. I was upset. I went home. I told my 8 wife, I said, I am going to tell you right now; I better !
1 9 look for another profession. They ain't listening to me.
10 Nobody is listening to me. Nobody cares. My nuclear l i
11 industry is over. I am done. They are going to terminate 12 me. I am going to tell you that right now. I am gone.
13 And I told Mr. Malone that the second day. I 14 said, I don't know why we are continuing this 15 conversation, because you have already determined that I 16 am guilty. Where is the innocent until proven guilty in 17 the United States? It ain't in this -- not in this room.
18 You guys got me guilty now, period.
19 You don't want to hear about the procedures.
20 You don't want to hear about the duress. You don't want 21 to hear about the comp time; you don't want to hear about 22 the overtime. You don't want to hear about the things 23 that really caused me a lot of problems on this project.
24 All you want to hear about is the fact that I 25 falsified a survey. I didn't do the surveys, you know. I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W (202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
I I didn't falsify them. Bottom line. So -- and I don't evbn .
2 know why I am talking, because I don't think it is going 3 to do any good.
4 0 Well, we are here to listen to you. Do you 5 have anything else that you want to say, or anything 6 else -.
l 7 A Oh, I am sure there is a lot that I would like l
8 to say, you knca, but I am not so sure that it would do l 1
l 9 any good, you know.
10 Yes. There is one thing I want to talk about, 11 and that is comp time -- okay? --
because I had to 12 administer it and I thought it was against the law at the 13 time and I know now that it is against the law, that you 14 cannot give an hourly employee comp time. If an hourly 15 employee works overtime, you got to pay him overtime.
16 That is bottom line.
17 Management -- I am a manager. You can give a 18 manager comp time. In fact, most companies, you got to 19 work 45 hours5.208333e-4 days <br />0.0125 hours <br />7.440476e-5 weeks <br />1.71225e-5 months <br /> before you start getting any overtime. You 20 have got to give or donate five hours or ten hours of comp 21 time to an organization betore you can get overtime. I 22 don't know how the NRC works.
23 Do you guys get paid for -- if you work ten 24 r. curs a day, do you get paid ten hours a day? or do you i
25 get paid eight hours and two hours overtime? You know, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202) 234 4433 W ASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 there are some rules according to the lcw that have to bg 2 adhered to, and one of them has to do with hourly ]
3 employees. !
4 And hourly employees are supposed to be paid i 5 overtime. Now, if they work 40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br /> -- if they work 45 6 hours,,they get 40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br /> of straight time and five hours 7 of time and a half. That is legal. That is the law, for 8 Christ's sakes. I as a manager, if I work 44 hours5.092593e-4 days <br />0.0122 hours <br />7.275132e-5 weeks <br />1.6742e-5 months <br />, I get 9 paid for 40, and then if I want to take an afternoon off 10 sometime, I get it with pay, because that is comp time.
11 That is legal.
. 12 You look in the NLRB, and it will say that 13 that is legal. But you look in the NLRB and you found out 14 if it is legal to pay hourly employees comp time. I don't 15 think it is. And the thing that was so upsetting about 16 this project was from the inception, they said, We are not 17 going to work a night shift, and we are not going to work 18 any overtime.
19 And I am sitting in a meeting with the head 20 muckety-mucks now, with the Ed Parsoraes and the Jim 21 Crouches from Westinghouse, the Bill Hugs and the Tom 22 Dieters and the Tom Howards and the Don Neelys and they 22 are telling me at the start of the project, We ain't 24 working any overtime, and we are not working any night 25 shift. .
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1 Tom Dieter, the M-K suparintendant, has hired i
2 a super.intendent to be night shift superintendent. We
? hired Mike Miles to be night shift supervisor, for i
4 Christ's sakes. And I am sitting in this room, and you 5 people are telling me we ain't going to work a night i
6 shift. ' I look at Tom Dieter, and I say, Tom, is this l 7 true; you are not working a night shift. He says, Yes, we l 1
8 are working night shift; we have got it scheduled; yes, we 9 are working the night shift. l l
10 I said, So, people, how am I going to run a 1 11 project with eight technicians. You have allowed me to 12 start this project with eight technicians. You want me to !
u 13 run a night shift and a day shift with eight technicians.
1 14 How the hell am I going to do that? Is that possible? I 15 don't see how it is possible.
16 So what are we going to do? Are we going to 17 hire more. people? No. It is not authorized; we don't l l
18 have the money. What are we -- how are we going to cover 19 night shift? Well, they are not going to work night 20 shift. They just said they are going to work shift, for
\
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21 Christ's sakes. M-K says they are going to work night 22 shift.
23 And Tom Dieter says, Look, we are going to i
24 work night shift; why don't you get the guy some help. He 25 needs technicians for Christ's sakes. Why don't you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRAN$CAlBERS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 1202) 734 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 authorize soms more technicians to him. When was it when f 2 ! was finally staffed? We started the project in August.
3 I never got fully staffed until September or October.
4 When did all the problems happen with the 5 surveys? September and October. When did all the i
6 problems happen with the surveys and the procedures?
7 September and October 1992. Well, it is no wonder. There 1
8 was so damn confusion and chaos going on that nobody knew i 1
9 what the hell was going on, and they wouldn't do anything.
10 How many people do they have on site now, SEG?
11 They have got 150 people out there. They wanted me to do the same thing with 23 people that they are doing with d
12 13 150. Now, is that right? How many people have they got ;
i 14 doing Chip Sawyer's job? They got three people in his 15 position. How many RPOS's have they gone through since I j
\
16 left? Two.
i 17 You know, McDuffy is gone. They forced him 18 out of there. Now Mike Berring is in there, you know.
19 What they want, what SEG wants -- and if this pisses SEG 1 20 off, I am sorry; I don't care. But what they want is they )
l 21 want a yes person and they want somebody that is going to 22 sit in there and take all their crap and not do anything.
23 Well, I am telling you right now, people: I 24 am not a yes person, and when they do something wrong, I 25 tell them. Now, do I do it right? Probably not. You NEAL R. GROSS
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1 1 know, I probably use some of the lcngucgo I shouldn't do, 2 and I probably go about it the wrong way. But at least
? they knew how I feel when I get done. -
4 And I think they terminated me and they got l
5 rid of me for obvious rer. sons. And --
6 d Do you feel they violated any labor law?
7 A Sure, I do. Ain't no doubt in my mind. I 8 mean, I told time and time again -- I said, We can't do 9 this. Ed, we can't do this. Comp time is illegal. You i 10 can't give comp time. He said, Well, we don't have any I l
11 money in the budget to work, Kenny. I said, What do you 12 mean, we don't nave any money in the budget? I know it is !
l 13 a fixed bid contract, but for Christ's sakes, you say we 1
14 are not working any. overtime.
15 Statement he made in a meeting was, There will 16 be no overtime on this project. Come on. What are we 17 working? Saturdays, ten hours;. concrete cutting goes to 18 ten-hour' days. We have problems with turnover. I have to 19 give technicians to stay on the floor at noon and expect 20 them to work through their noon, so I have to either give 21 them comp time or not pay them for working through the 22 noon hour, and they expect them to come in early and stay -
23 '. ate and everything else.
24 And, you know, they are hourly people, and my 25 technicians don't have a lot of money, you know. So what NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR@ERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 202i 234 4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433 l
r .
1 do they do? They live from week to weck. They are not 2 financial wizards, and they are on the road, and they are 3 traveling all the time. And, you know, it is really 4 funny, because --
5 Another thing that I need to bring up is this 6 open-door policy of SEG's and how I was thwarted with the 7 open-door policy. Ed Parsons ran that project with an 8 iron hand. You could not contact the SEG home office 9 unless you went through him first.
10 Now, I understand the proper chain of command 11 in management and that if I have a problem, I bring it to 12 you, Chuck, if you are my supervisor. Okay. And if I 13 don't get justification frcm you, then I take it to 14 Jonathan, because he is your supervisor. Right? And if I 15 don't get justification from Jonathan, then I go to the 16 main people that do run this project or run the company.
17 And.I have ever right under the letter of the 18 law to do that, do I not?- If I don't get it from one, to 19 go to the other; if I don't get it from them, then I go to 20 where I need to go. Okay.
21 During this project for two years, two years 22 mind you, I never had a payroll that was correct. They 23 either forgot to pay one of my technicians or they didn't 24 pay him enough or they didn't do something. And I go ov6r 25 to Ed, and I would say, Ed, you know, my technicians, they NEAL R. GROSS COUAT AEPOATERS AND TRANSCAiBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i2C2) 234-4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 234 4433
l need their money; they don't have a lot of money; they 2 look for their paycheck every week; they didn't pay this :
2 guy tnis week. They sent his check somewh,ere else.
4 Well, Kenny, SEG office is new; you have got 5 to learn to work with the office. Well, I took that for 6 about a' year, you know, and then I said, Ed, we have still 7 got problems with payroll. They are not paying the people 8 on time. And I guarantee you that M-K don't have problems 9 with payroll, because they pay people from right here.
10 Well, we can't do that, because we don't have the money to 11 bring somebody out to make the payroll right here on site. ,
12 I said, Well, then, you know what. There is 13 people out there in the industry that do this for a 14 living. Why don't you hire them to run SEG's payroll so 15 we don't have this problem. Oh, we don't have the money 16 for that, and SEG is not going to do that.
17 What are we going to do about this problem, i
18 Ed? Well, they can fill o.ut a report and send it to me, ,
l 19 and then we will send it on to the home office. Well, !
20 technicians filled them out every week, but they just 21 stayed in his office; they never got sent to the home i
22 office.
23 You know, and finally it was over Christmas, ,
l 24 .;nd of all people to not get paid, who didn't they pay?
^5 Keith Bare. They didn't send him a check, and he needed !
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.~
1 money for Christmas. He said, Do you believe this; thoy 2 didn't se nd me my check . And I thought, Jesus, this is
~
3 two years now.
4 So I went over, and Ed was gone, which Ed was 5 gone a lot on this project. He was always gone. SEG had 6 him doing other stuff, rather than being the project 7 manager on this project. They had him bidding other jobs 8 and doing other things. You talk about intent to mislead 9 and intent to deceive. That is intent to deceive.
10 I am going to tell you a couple reasons why 11 they did intent to deceive. Don Neely made a statement 12 that he wasn't. aware that Ed Parsons was gone off-site as 13 much as he was, that he traveled, because his time sheets 14 showed that he was actually on site.
15 Well, yes. SEG was paying Ed Parsons out of 16 the Fort St. Vrain money, but he was doing projects for ,
17 SEG off and on. Christ, they -- he went over to Europe 1
18 someplace to do -- for the World Radiation Council. He l 19 was over there a month. The project manager for our 20 project was sent overseas for a month to represent the 21 United States in a world nuclear conference. .
l 22 Are you telling me they don't have somebody i 23 else they can send over there, out of all the CHPs they l
- -; I hace got in their office and all the problems that we are 25 having on Fort St.Vrain, and they take our project manager i
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1
__....--..---..-.4 .--,. - *~- - --~ * - - ~ ~ ' - * - - ~ -
l 1 and send him over there? ]
2 And then Don Neely says, Well, I wasn't aware 1
3 he was gone from the site ac much as he was, when every l l
4 time Mr. Parsons traveled somewhere, that travel voucher i 5 was signed by Don Neely, nobody else. He signed every 6 travel' voucher. He knew when he was gone, but then yet he 7 said he didn't.
8 Now, let me talk about falsifying a document.
9 Okay. You people say that I falsified these surveys. I 10 talked to Don Neely after I got this investigation 11 started, and I looked him in the eye, and I said, Mr.
J 12 Neely, I want to know one question.
13 These 108 surveys or 108 procedures -- excuse 14 me -- that were submitted at the start of this project, 15 you signed every one of these procedures. Did you read 16 all of these procedures, because that procedure 17 specifically states that if you signed that, you have reed 18 it.
19 And if you signed all 108 of these procedures i 20 and you paid a million and a half dollars for these 21 procedures to be written, you got screwed. And if you l
l 22 signed every one -- if you read all these procedures, you 23 would have known that if you have a health physics 24 cackground, that we could not operate under these.
- 5 He said, Kenny, I didn't sign all those NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
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l 1 procedures. He said, Yes, I did. He said, I signed all 2 the procedures, but I didn't read all of them, because I couldn't read all 108 of those procedures- He said, I had 4 procedure writers that were writing them. He said, So I 5 took their information. And he says, We needed to get the 6 project started, so I signed the procedures and sent them 7 back, so we could get the project started.
8 And you talk to me about falsifying a 9 document, when you read -- you signed 108 working 10 procedures and never read them? I don't need to talk 11 anymore as far as I am concerned when it comes to 12 falsification of documents, for Christ's sakes, and then 13 put the blame on me, because I didn't implement them.
14 Come on. You know, where it justification here?
15 ,
And let me tell you, you know. I don't 16 care -- I do care about being terminated, because I really 17 enjoyed my job, and I thought I did a real good job. And 18 if they are going to terminate me,~then fine. But if they 19 are going to terminate me, then they should have 20 terminated Ed Parsons, Dick Sexton, Chip Sawyer,'and Mike l 21 Miles.
22 They -- why was I singled out and why was Chip 23 sawyer singled out? Why wasn't Mike Miles involved in 1
24 this? Why wasn't Ed Parsons involved in this? Why wasn't 25 Dick Sexton involved in this? What happened to Dick j NEAL R. GROSS !
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1 Sexton, Ed Parsons, and Mike Miles? They all three got' 2 promoted. Geez, that is pretty good, ain't it?
3 You know, I mean, I could talk for days, )
4 because this all happened because of Keith Bare. And my 5 depositicn -- you know, rather than me sit and talk to l
6 you, you know, I gu'ss e you need to read my depositions. I 7 Whether or not you want to do that or whether or not 8 you -- I don't care, you know, and if you don't want to, 9 then I will pick my depcsitions up, and I will take them l
10 home and when I leave this room, I am over and done with. l 11 You know, as far as I am concerned, my nuclear )
12 career is over, and this whole ordeal is over. It gets me )
- 3 so upset when I talk about it, sometimes I can't even 14 hardly think, you know, that I just want to be rid of it.
15 You know, I realize it is a bad situation; I got i l
16 thoroughly screwed in the situation here, and it ain't 17 going to change.
18 I,mean, I appreciate talking to.you two 19 gentlemen. I understand the importance of this, and you 20 are the first two that would ever listen to me. You know, 21 whether or not it does any good, I don't know, you know.
22 Q Mr. Zahrt, you brought some documents, 23 including your five volumes, I think, of your deposition 24 and the response to the NOV -- NRC NOV letter. Are there
- any c:her documents that you would like to discuss at this NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRAtcSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W
$202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
l
.I 1 time th'at you brought along with you? j l
2 A No. I brought -- I just brought notes that I 3 war.ted to go over some things, and I brought a copy -- a 4 draft ~ copy of the Stiers, Anderson, Malone report, because 5 I wanted to refer to it on some of the charges, you know.
l 6 But the things that disappeared during this investigation, I l
7 just politely disappeared, was my first initial log book, l
8 my entire files. I never got any of my stuff.
9 I finally got stuff out of my office at a j 10 later date, but when I got them back, there were certain 11 things gone in my files that were disposed of like my 12 record of all the comp time that I gave to all my people.
13 That semehow disappeared, you know. And some of my files 14 disappeared.
l 15 And, you knew, I don't know why. Why would 16 they disappear? They were mine. They were in my files.
i 17 They belonged'to me, but yet' they are gone. Now, why is 18 that? I , don't know, you know.
19 Have you guys seen the initial MORT report? l l
20 No, I don't think you have. Has anybody seen it? No.
21 Has anybody seen my deposition? No.
22 Q. How many revisions do you think there are to 23 the MORT report?
24 A I know there were two. I don't know if there 25 was any more than that, but I know there were at least NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER $
1323 RHOOE ($ LAND AVENUE. N W i2021 2344433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 2344433
tas 1 two, so that means that the MORT report that you would 2 have seen would have been the third one. And did you see 3 a MCRT report? Did you have the opportunity to rer;ew t.he 4 MORT report? ,
5 A I guess what I was trying to ask is: The 6 original MORT report that you discussed earlier, are you 7 sure it was not a draft copy that was later finalized? Or 8 was it a final report issued that was later revised?
9 A I can't answer that. I don't know. I 10 couldn't tell you. I will tell you what, though. I am 11 sitting here right now in this chair, and I will bet my 12 life -- and you could take a guillotine and cut my head 13 off -- that if you ever saw the first original MORT 14 report, it would be considerably different than the one 15 that you read.
~
16 -Everybody seems to be so interested in getting 17 the truth and getting proper documentation and getting 18 dates and' times and everything'like that, but when it 19 comes down to people really accepting responsibility, they 20 aren't. They are not doing that at all.
21 All through this investigation, I accepted the 22 responsibility that I made a mistake. I did that.
23 Q I guess I -- let me see if I understand. What 24 you are telling us after,Mr. Cain and I discussed some of 25 the issues on the NRC NOV letter, the subject about the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 132) RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W 202: 234 4433 WASMiNGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
i i RGRs, the open-door policy, the comp time, this ]
2 information, are you saying that SEG is somehow violating 3 NRC regulations in doing what they are doing? ~
i l
4 or are they just not following the procedures?
. l 5 or is it just an internal political thing going on? Or 6 what is it that you are trying to tell us that the NRC j 7 would look into?
8 A Oh, I don't think they -- I don't know as they )
1 l
9 are violating any NRC regulations, and I don't think they ll l
- 10 willfully, intently decided to do what they did on comp ;
11 time. I just think that they didn't have the money and 12 they weren't going to pay overtime, so they decided to 13 give comp time, period.
14 And if you really want my honest opinion, I 15 think Ed Parsons kept a lot of stuff from the home office.
16 You talk about keeping stuff and keeping information from i
i 17 management. I didn't keep anything from management. I am )
I 18 going to tell you that right now. j 19 The only thing out of all of this that 20 management was not aware of was the fact that I told Jim q l
21 Bixby to go down and the technicians to go down and 22 construct the surveys that they actually did and make l
23 documentation for the survey stuff that was re. eased on l
24 level 1.
25 I did that on my own. Okay. That is the only NEAL R. GROSS l COURT REPOATERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 1202) 234.4433 WASHINGTON D C 2000$ (202) 234-4433
I thing out of this entire investigation that I kept from 2 management. I kept nothing else from management. I have a talked to you about the ROR program. They-know how I felt 4 about it. I talked to you about the procedures; they know 5 how I felt about it.
6 They knew everything. The harasnment and 7 intimidatien, you remember that charge. What did Keith 8 Bare tell me? He said, You harassed me and you 9 intimidated me, because you told me that if I didn't do my 10 paperwork right, I might as well go flop burgers at 11 Mcdonald's. And that is right. I told him that.
12 I told my staff that many times. In fact, 13 Keith Bare may have talked to you, and if I distinctly 14 remember the conversation between you and I on this 15 harassment ,d intimidation charge, you said, Mr. Zahrt, 16 is it true that you told your staff that if they didn't do 17 their paperwork right, that they would be flopping burgers I l
18 at Mcdonald's? )
I 19 And I said to you, No , Jonathan, that is not I 20 correct. Let me tell you what I did say, and I have said 21 it many times in my staff meetings. People, if you cannot l
22 do your paperwork correctly and you cannot document 23 everything that you need to do, you might as well go flop 24 burgers at Mcdonald's, because you do them a lot better 25 lge:dthanyouwouldme.
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1 That is what I told them. I have told them 2 that many times, and I still feel that way. Now, is that 3 harassment and intimidation? What am I supposed to do 4 when a technician comes up to me and says, I forgot to do 5 a survey? O h', that is fine; sure, sure, you can do that:
6 I don't care; that is fine; do it some more.
7 What kind of latitude and leverage? Did I B ever say, I am going to fire you? No, I didn't. Did I 9 ever say, You are going to be gone? No , I didn't say 10 that.
11 Q Mr. Zahrt, on face value, getting back to that 12 falsification, if you would show one of those survey 13 results to anyone, with that date and your approving 14 signature, do you think that in your opinion, the date 15 that is on that survey, would it represent the date that 16 it --
would it lead any reasonable person to believe that 17 that survey was conducted on that date shown?
18 A Yes. I believe that if you looked at that 19 survey, you would say that that survey was done in '92. j 20 0 At the date shown. I 21 A At the date shown.
22 Q When, in fact, it wasn't. l 23 A The survey was done, but the documentation was 24 not produced in '92.
25 Q Now, my question is: Would any reasonable
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_ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ - - - . . _ - . _ - - - - - - - - ~
1 person believe thnt that survey was conducted on the date 2 shown on the survey? i s !
3 A Yes, probably. I would think so. It is no 4 different -- Jonathan, it is no different than you and me.
5 I am a supervisor, and you are a technician. Okay? And i l
we are, working an outage.
i 6 And let me tell you: This has i
7 happened many, many times, many times.
8 You do a survey in the reactor water clean-up 9 heat exchanger room. You do it on a Friday. Okay? I 10 have 125 technicians working for me on night shift and day 1 11 shift,- and they are all doing surveys every day. And 12 every day, I set between 60 and 80 surveys, and I have an 13 in-box, and it piles up.
14 And your survey ends up on the bottom, and I 15 don't get to it, and before I get to it, some more get 16 laid on top of it. And pretty soon, it is a couple months 17 before I get to the survey that you actually did. Okay?
18 I review that survey, and I sign it. I don't date it; I i 19 just sign it. Yes. He did that survey on that date.
20 And I sign it, and it is done all the time.
21 The supervisors in the industry do it 22 constantly. Was the survey produced a month and a h lf 23 ago? Yes, it was. Did you sign your date that you signed 24 it today? No. You just sign it as a supervisor that you 25 reviewed that survey and made sure that all the stuff is NEAL R. GROSS COURT AFPOATERS ANO TAANSCRiBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. D C 20005 (202) 2344433
I 1 correct on there 2 But the date shows that it was done on a month 3 and a half prior to that. I mean, i.t is ,- geez, it is 4 done all the time, you know. Does the supervisor feel 5 that the technician did the survey? Well, was he sitting 6 there, watching him do it? No , he wasn't. Does he have 7 documentation in front of him, showing that the survey was 8 done? Yes, he does. I 9 Does he doubt that the information on that ;
, 10 survey is incorrect? Well, if he has got any salt, he 11 doesn't. I mean, Jesus, you hired these people to do a 12 job, you know. I would say when you give me that survey 13 and I look for it, I am looking for mistakes.
14 I am looking for stuff that you may have put 15 on there, that doesn't seem right. And if it doesn't seem 16 right, I am. going to put a sticky pad on it, and I am 17 going to say, Jonathan, how can you get a smear off of an 18 RO-2. Or, Jonathan, how can you get a 50-MR reading off a 19 frisker? It is impossible.
20 Y6u have the wrong instrument on this survey.
21 Please go back and check and make sure that you have got 22 the right instrument, you know, because if an auditor sees 23 this and says, 50 MR, HP-210 probe, you can't get 50-MR 24 with an HP-210 probe. It detects contamination, doesn't 25 detect radiation.
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1 And that is what I looked at when I look at surveys. Okay? And all I am saying is that date -- it is 3 insignificant, Charles. I think you understand what I am 4 saying.
5 MR. CAIN: I do.
6 THE WITNESS: And, you know, as far as I can 7 see, I got terminated because of this falsification, 8 because of the surveys. That is why I got terminated.
9 I think it is a little excessive. I thought 10 it was excessive when it happened; I even think it is more 11 excessive after I read my deposition, and I think it is 12 truly excessive when I read that Stiers, Anderson, Malone 13 report, you know.
14 .
And even to this day, sitting in here, I have 1
- 15 one who is convinced and one who.probably isn't convinced.
\
16 It is a matter of interpretation again. And who is going 9
17 to lose in this matter of interpretation? I can tell you 18 who is going to lose. The record shows that.
19 BY MR. ARMENTA:
20 0 Do you have anything else, Mr. Zahrt, that you 21 would want to disclose before we conclude this interview?
22 A I don't think so. Let me look and see what I 23 have got here on my thing. We talked about the 24 procedures. we talked about the V&V process, how that was 25 called off. They did no allow 30 days' training session NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTER $ AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE l$t.AND AVENUE. N W
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1 for the RPTs. There was constant staffing problems. Thny i
2 said we weren't going to work any overtime and no night l l
2 shift. That was a 1: = . Comp time was allowed, which was 4 not supposed to be.
5 The ROR program was virtually in the toilet i
f 6 from August 31 on the first HPIR that was written on Danny 7 Hicks until I left. No one -- I mean, it was just l t .
8 virtually nonexistent. Ed and Dick claim they knew 9 nothing about what was going on. That is a lie, total i
10 lie. The only thing they didn't know what was going on 11 was about the Bixby surveys. They knew about everything .
12 else. .
1 l
13 I told you about Don Neely and the procedures.
1 i
14 Where is my first log book? The MORT report. Why was I 15 locked out'of my office the 26th and never allowed to get 16 any of my belongings, treated like a criminal. They never 17 ever body counted me out. They didn't care, you know.
18 Q Let me ask you a question. You mentioned Ed 19 Parsons and Dick Sexton. You believe -- I think you 20 mentioned earlier that you believe that the original MORT 21 report recommends that they are terminated.
22 A Uh-huh.
23 0 My question to you: What do you think *. hat 24 MORT report bases that recommendation on? ,
25 A I don't know.
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i 1 Q Terminated for what? d 2 A I didn't see it, Jonathan. I don't know. I ,
3 can't answer that question. All I know is what was told 4 to me, because I wanted to see a copy of that MORT report.
5 Q I mean, that is pretty strong language, to 6 recomme'd n --
7 A Yes. Very strong language.
8 Q -- the program manager and the --
9 A And the TSS, technical support supervisor. ,
l 10 0 -- Mr. Sexton's position --
11 A Because it was told to me by my source that I i
12 George Smith re' commended that Ed and Dick were aware of 13 what was going on with a lot of the stuff, and that Kenny 14 and Chip did not keep information from them.
15 That first initial MORT report cited some 256 )
16 violations. Now, you know, I have a problem with that, 1
17 because number one is: I never got to talk to the MORT ;
i 18 team either. I talked to some of the MORT team. Okay.
19 But I asked them; I said, Where were you when the project 20 started. Why weren't you here to help us on this project?
21 Nobody wanted the MORT team to start that ,
22 project out, because t. hey knew what would happen if the 23 MORT team came on in August of 1992. You talk about some 24 violations and you talk about some nasty stuff. There 25 w:u;d have been a lot.
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1 Well, there was no way that Ed was going to I I
2 have the MORT team come and do an investigation that early l 3 in t he project. Okay. And why would a company come in j l
4 and completely destroy itself with a MORT investigation? l l
5 Why wouldn't a company come in and do an investigation and j 6 try to' help the project rather than try to hinder the l
7 project? '
8 And my understanding from that first MORT 9 report was it was so devastating that it implemented too l
10 many people in higher management that in order to satisfy l 1
11 what the MORT report did, they would have to get rid of a 12 lot of people.
1 13 And, hey, fine. Okay. You decide to get rid l 14 of me. Fine. If I am going down, how about the rest of l 15 you guys going down too. Why are you putting all this l 16 blame on me, you know. Put the blame where it belongs.
17 You know, if you guys determine that we made some mistakes 18 and we should be terminated, okay;.let's do-it; terminate 19 us. Fine. I don't have a problem with that.
20 I made a mistake; I screwed up, you know.
21 Terminate me. Okay. Why don't you terminate Ed and Dick 22 and Chip and Mike, because they were supervisors, too, and ;
23 they -- you know, everybody says, Well, who told who and 24 when did you do this and what date did you tell him this, 25 ar.d did he specifically say this, and did you specifically NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W s202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
l-, .
.- .. . - . - - ' L--- - - L --
1 say that. I don't know. ..
2 Do you know what you said to your son two and i
3 a nelf years ago? For Christ's sakes, no. I can't tell 4 you what I told my wife or even what I talked about with 5 somebody two and a half years ago, let alone try to 6 remember it under oath, for God's sakes, you know.
7 Nobody cared; nobody cared. Yes, they cared.
8 They cared, because that would be devastating to the l 9 project. If they had to get rid of the entire front line 10 supervision of that project, what do you think the 11 ramifications would be to PSC and the NRC, not to mention 12 the project, for Christ's sakes.
13 I mean, two people that has been there from ;
14 inception, me and Chip, we knew a lot about that project; 15 we knew a lot about the facility; we knew a lot about the 16 procedures; we knew a lot about a lot of problems. And if 17 they get rid of us, their problem is gone. i 18 They don't have two guys anymore complaining !
19 about what is going on. We get rid of these guys, they 20 are out of our hair. They did. They got rid of us, you l
21 know. I mean, I truly believe that Ed Parsons was so 22 afraid of his job that if Don Neely said, Shit, he would 23 squat and start grunting. I mean, that is the way Ed 24 Parsons felt about Don Neely.
25 And whenever Don Neely came to that site, Ed NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 202)2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
-J 1 Parsons -- it put a fear of God into Ed Parsons. And do J l
2 you think that during the time of that project, that upper j i
3 mana'gement would come in and just come ov,er and say, ,
4 Kenny, you know, geez, you guys are doing a great job. I l
5 come out here to see you and to see how things are going.
6 They never did that; they didn't have time to do that.
7 Besides, whenever Don Neely came on site, Ed 8 Parsons kept him over there, would not hardly even allow 9 him to come over to the building. They didn't want him to 10 see BY anybody, didn't want him to interact with the 11 technicians. I don't think he really wanted Don Neely to 12 know some of the things that were going on with payroll, 13 with procedures, with the ROR program, with other things, i
14 you know. I 15 It is quite obvious, see, if anybody kept 16 anything from management, it was Ed Parsons kept stuff 17 from upper management, not Ken Zahrt. I tried to tell --
18 I sent a-memo in to a staff meeting, because I got a memo 19 in my box that said, SEG wants to exercise its option on 20 the ope'n-door policy. If you have a concern and you feel 21 that you are not getting Justification, then you can 22 present it at a staff meeting.
23 Well, did I ever get to go down to Oak Ridge 24 and a staff meeting? No. I was the only supervisor and 25 the only SEG employee that never, ever went down to their NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCAIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i202i 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 fccility. They didn't want me down there. They kn:w what I 2 I would down there. They didn't want no part of me going 3 down there. ,
4 So after two years of having my payroll 5 screwed up and I go over to talk to Ed. Where is Ed? Oh, ,
i i
6 he is down at the staff meeting in Oak Ridge. I said, 7 Jesus, he has been gone for -- he is gone all the time, 8 Dick. What is the deal here? He said, What do you mean.
9 I said, I have had it, Dick; I am fed up to here with this 10 payroll crap. It is Christmas week coming up, and they 1
11 don't even pay Keith Bare, for Christ's sakes.
12 of all people not to pay, you don't pay Keith 13 Bare. I mean, Jesus, he needs the money like anybody else 14 does. So I said, Dick, you are the acting PRPM since Ed i 15 is gone. I am going to draft a letter, and I am going to 16 fax it down to Oak Ridge, and I am going to send it right
^
17 into the staff meeting, because, I said, I have had it 18 with this. payroll. j 19 Two years is long enough to suffer for not j 20 paying my people on time, and you are telling me that they 21 are experiencing growing pains tor two years. Come on.
- 22 Not for payroll, not for 23 people. I am sorry, but I 4 23 have a hard time stomaching that. So I drafted a memo, 24 and I sent it, faxed it, right into the staff meeting. Ed 25 Parsons was in that staff meeting, and I addressed it to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBIRS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENLM. N W 1202) 2 3 4433 WASHINGTON O C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 1 Don Neely.
And in that memo, my concerns were the 2 payroll. Why can't SEG pay their people on time? ,
If your 4 secretaries cannot pay my people, then why don't you hire 5 a firm that will? Instead of sending all this gobbledy-6 gook pdperwork that you send to us, why don't you spend 7 more time on trying to concentrate on paying your people 8 on time? l
)
1 9 I sent that in to the staff meeting, and Don i 1
10 Neely read this in the staff meeting, and this was the l 11 first time that Ed Parsons ever saw that memo. I mean, i
12 and I tell you what. Ten minutes later, he leaves the l 13 staff meeting, and he calls me from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, 14 on the phone.
15 And he says, Kenny, what is the idea of 16 sending this memo in without my okay. I said, Ed, I am l
17 just exercising the open-door policy. You are gone; you 18 are gone all the time; you have been gone for two weeks;
! 19 you are never here. Every time I have a problem, you are 20 never around.
I 21 You are always doing something else. How can 22 you be a project manager and always be gone? What is the 23 deal here? Dick Sexton is the acting PRPM since you are 24 gene. I talked to him about the memo; he read the memo; 25 he agreed with it. He said, Kenny, you are right. He NEAL R. GROSS COUR1 AEPOATERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W
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1 1 said, This is ridiculous. He said, Go ahacd cnd send it
- i r. .
1 i He said, Dick authorized that." I said, Yes, l 4 he did. I went over and talked to Dick before I sent it.
l 5 He said, Well, I will see Dick when I get back. He said,
. I 6 In the meantime, don't yoa .:ver, ever send a memo in and 7 bypass me again. Don't you ever do that, because if you 8 do, you won't be working out there.
9 I just hung up. I didn't say anything; I 10 didn't do anything. I just hung up. I thought, So much l
11 for that open-door policy, you know; so much for that.
12 So I don't want to really take a whole lot 13 more of your time, but because there is so many instances 14 that happened during that that could come up during 15 conversation, we could sit and talk for hours and days -- l 16 I am telling.you -- on instances that happened on that 17 project. I 18 And that is why when you read my NOV letter --
19 and you have read it -- you can understand how I feel.
20 MR. ARMENTA: Chuck, do you have anything 21 else?
22 MR. CAIN: No.
23 BY MR. ARMENTA:
24 O Mr. Zahrt, be, fore we close, your final 25 statements?
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_ . . . _____ _ _ _ _ __ ._ ~ _ -- - - - - - ~ - - - - - - - - ~ - ~ ~ - - - - -
1 A I don't have any final statcm:nto. I mann, I 2 don't --
3 C I hope that we have complied to your request 4
in coming down here and listening to what you have to say.
5 A You have replied to my request, and in answer 6
to a qQestion that you asked m3 a little bit ago off the !
7 record of why I didn't feel as adamant about this as I did l 8 when I talked to you during the harassment and 9
intimidation stuff -- and we haven't even touched on the 10 Danny Hicks, which was a major problem in this project, 11 major.
12 But I wasn't asked about a lot of the stuff, 1
.l 13 you know, and I really thought that I probably was going 4
14 to keep my job, you know, because I liked my job. I i
, 15 enjoyed doing it, and I thought I did a pretty damn good i 16 job of it, too. I made some mistakes --
17 0 Had you known as hindsight -- I 18 A Had I known --
19 Q --
that problems would arise afterward, would !
20 you have disclosed more information?
21 A Sure. Oh, yes. You know, because I think 22 what they did in my deposition was, they asked me point 23 blank yes and no questions. Did Ed Parsons -- was Ed 24 Parsons aware of the Bixby surveys? No. Was Dick Sexton 25 aware of the Bixby surveys? No. We didn't go into a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W i2021 2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (204, M44433
_ _ _ _ . _ ~ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ . . _ - - _ _ - - - - - - - - - - - .
j 1
1 1 whole lot of stuff on it, you know. They didn't want to .
l 1
2 hear about the fact, you know, of why I did it. j 3 Mr. Malene had no comprehension of how surveys l
4 are done and why they are done and what is done. He had 5 no comprehension of nuclear industry or any terminology, 6 and thd lady taking all my testimony had major problems 7 with all of the terms and stuff that we went through in my 8 deposition.
9 0 You are referring to the court reporter at 10 that time.
11 A The court reporter. That is correct. I mean, 12 they were talking to Mr. Malone, and that court reporter 13 was like me talking to a five-year-old watching Sesame 14 street. I mean, it.was like, I don't think any of this is 15 getting through to you people. You don't understand what 16 I am telling you, you know.
17 And they didn't ask. They weren't concerned 18 about me. They weren't concerned about the project. I 19 have one whole volume here that starts from the oeginning 20 of the project, and it shows everything that I have done e 21 in it. I sat and read it, you know, but that was thrown 22 out the window. They didn't care about that.
23 It was like maybe that was just filler time 24 fer them, until they could get all the stuff arranged with 25 a'^. the surveys and stuff.
_ Understand, when they NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPOATEAS AND TAANSCRIBE AS 1323 AMODE ISLAND AVENUE N W i202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON. O C 20005 (202) 234-s433
- -- -.- .~.. . - - .-. - ..- - - . - - - . . . . . . . . . . . . .
1 presented me with all these surveys cnd all thnce RWPs cnd i
2 everything else, I had never seen it. I signed them, you 3 know, when I reviewed them, but they went back'into record 4 storage in the document, and I never seen any of them 5 until they brought them up.
l 6 , How were they brought up? How were they l l
7 brought up? They were brought up because Mr. Keith Bare 8 brought them up. Okay. We talk about intent to deceive.
9 Okay. I had a very open-door policy with my staff, and I 10 told all my staff, If you have a problem, bring it to me.
11 Don't just bring me a problem, but when you bring me a 12 problem, bring me a solution and correct the problem.
13 That is why we have problems, and if you have
, 14 a problem, let's fix it. And if it is within reason, we i
15 will do it. Okay. These surveys that were taken off o'f '
l 16 Jim Bixby's desk before they were signed and these RWP l 17 surveys and everything that Duane Parsons worked with Mike 18 and Chip on, he made copies of all this stuff, and he kept 19 them, and he put them in a file.
20 An'd then later on, when Keith Bare made a 21 statement to me in the stairwell, he says, I am going to 22 get your ass, Zahrt; I am going to the NRC and I am going 23 to get your ass, because I don't like you; I' don't like 24 the way you manage. And he did just that.
25 He went to the NRC, and he got information NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER $
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1 from Duane Parsons, and Duane supplied him with all the
.TWPs; said, Well, look here, they did this, and they did 3 this, and this is wrong, and this is wrong", and here is 4 all this and here is all this, and take this and give this 5 to Stiers, Anderson, Malone, and take this and give this 6 to NRC, and do this and do this.
7 You know, if Duane Parsons and Keith Bare had 8 a problem with what was going on when they first 9 discovered it, way didn't they write an ROR? Why didn't 10 they come to me and say, Kenny, let's fix this now. I 11 would say, Okay, fine; let's do it. In fact, the first 12 time that Duane Parsons come up to me and said, Kenny, we l
13 have got some problems with RWPs, I don't.know when it l
14 was. It was like March or April of '93.
15 I said, Duane, you are in charge of the RWP 16 program, and'you write the RWPs. If there is a problem, I [
17 want you to eliminate the problem. That is what I hired 18 you for. That didn't happ'en; he didn't do that, you know.
19 Q Why do you think he came to you to tell you?
20 A Who? .
21 Q Mr. Parsons.
22 A I think he probably came to me, because he was 23 concerned about the RWP program.
24 0 Do you think he might have wanted an answer 25 fr:m /cu, a solution?
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. (202) 234 4433
_ _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ . _ _ _ . ~ . . _ .
1 A Probably. Yes, he probably did.
2 0 And you probably know that he should have j l
3 written an ROR. -
4 A Yes. !
l I
5 0 Why didn't you tell him to -- why didn't you i 6 instruct him to writ'e an ROR?
)
7 A- I don't know. I can't answer that. I tell 8 you why. Because Duane Parsons and Keith Bare took part 9 in the V&V pr.<.ess on the procedures. They were very 10 voiceful and very adamant, and they put a lot of marks on 11 the procedures, and they were very, very -- they were 12 probably the best read technicians on procedures.
13 They knew the procedures as well as anybody, 14 even as good as I did if not even a little better. They 15 knew what they should have done, even more so than me.
16 Whether or not he came in to me and said that to see if I 17 as a supervisor would tell him to do what he had to do, 18 which my staff in staff meetings would always say, Kenny, 19 don't tell us how to do something; don't tell us; we know 20 how to do it. Tell us what you want us to do, and we will 21 do it. But, you krow, don't insult our intelligence; we 22 know how to do our job.
23 And so I pretty much put a lot of faith in my 24 technicians. As it turned out, it was my demise. And, 1
i 25 you know, just like you people asked me, Well, why didn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 1202) 234 4433 WASHING f0N. D C 20005 (202) 234.a433
1 you write an ROR; well, why do you think you did thia; 2 why -- you know, I don't know.
3 Why didn't Keith write an ROR?" Why didn't 4 Duane write an ROR? Why didn't they fix the problem with 5 the same thing? Why didn't they talk to me? I can't 6 answer that. Are they at fault? Yes. They are just as 7 much at fault as I am, I think.i 8 But do they get reprimanded? No. Duane 9 Parsons got promoted. Keith Bare is protected. I mean, 10 it is just amazing.
11 Q All right. We will --
12 A I have got a question. Do I get a copy of 13 this?
14 Q This is not a regular investigation that we 15 would conduct normally, like we.do all of our 16 investigations. In fact, we are treating this a little 17 bit different.
~
18 A Then why the court 2. eport er? I mean, is it I 19 for your information?
- 20. O Well, this is an investigation, but is being 21 conducted a little bit different than our regular alleged 1
22 complaints that we get at NRC. The reason for this is l 23 because this is on a matter that has already been touched 1
24 already. This is part or an extension or this has 2p substance to a previous investigation we conducted.
- NEAL R. GROSS COUAT REPORTERS AND TAANSCRIBERS l 1323 AHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W i202l2344433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 2344433
1 Now, I cannot -- I am not going to lie to you 2 that you can have a copy of this transcript until -- only 1 until after our investigation. If any field work is 4 further needed to -- if we need to talk to more people or 5 conduct more interviews, that means that this portion, 6 this s'gment, e this investigation is continuing, and you 7 would not be able to get a copy until then.
8 It would be only until after the investigation 9 or field work would be completed. Do you understand?
10 A Uh-huh.
11 O And I even say that with some reservation 12 because of the position of this part of an already-13 completed investigation, although we are treating it as a 14 se'parate. But it is still a continuing -- or a linger of 15 a former investigation.
16 A .So after talking to me today and listening to 17 my response to my NOV letter, does this mean that you are 18 going to reop'en the investigation at Fort St. Vrain?
19 Q That would probably be up to the NRC staff. I 20 think that --
21 MR. ARMENTA: Chuck, correct me if I am wrong.
22 I think that this transcript is going to be reviewed by 23 members of the NRC staff and possibly make a 24 reccmmendation where to go from after a review. Is this 25 correct?
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l 1 MR. CAIN: That is correct.
2 BY MR. ARMENTA:
2 O So I think that I would be speaking out of 4 turn to tell you, Well, we will conduct further 5 investigation. That is why I am saying: If it was a -
6 regular' routine investigation, I could tell you what 7 process I need to go through. But I think this will be 8 guided by a recommendation of a panel with NRC staff.
i 9 A Well, you know, I am sure it has crossed your 10 mind, too, that you want to know why I am talking now.
11 You want to know why I requested this meeting with you 12 people. Has that gone through your mind?
13 0 I think I have asked you before. I think I 14 have asked.
15 A Why are you doing this now, you know? Well, I 16 am going to.tell you why, you know, and the reasons are 17 real simple, you know. Number one, this NOV letter is on la my record, and.it goes into the public document room. I 19 understand that. And it is a charge that has been charged 20 against me.
21 Ard I am contesting it for obvious reasons.
22 But if the NRC determines that I was the cause and that it 23 was my fault, then I will accept that, and I will take my 24 ' umps where they go.
But all I am hoping through this 25 neestigation to you people and to hear me out is to NEAL R. GROSS COvAT REPOATERS AND TAANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W 6202) 234 4433 WASHINGTON D C 20005 (202) 234 4433
1 understand why I did some of the things I did and tho 2 duress that I worked under while I was there all the time, 3 ar.d that justice was definitely not served by terminating 4 Ken Zahrt.
l 5 Now, if SEG openly admitted into an l 6 enforcement meeting with you people that, yes, our 7 supervisors did falsify documents and our technicians did 8 and everything else, you know, they are missing the 9 picture, and they are missing my feeling and my 10 reputation.
11 0 Well, I think that Mr. Cain explained this to 12 you probably this morning, and that this has nothing to do 13 with the decisions that have been made on the case itself, 14 but actually based on the NOV letter.
15 MR. ARMENTA: Is that correct, that he 16 received?
17 MR. CAIN: That is correct.
18 -
MR. ARMENTA: An investigation has already 19 been completed.
20 THE WITNESS: I know that.
21 MR. ARMENTA: At NRC. !
22 THE WITNESS: I know.
23 MR. ARMENTA: Regarding this issues that we 24 are talking about. Now, this letter is specifically aimed 25 at your person.
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1 1/e l 1 THE WITNESS: Okay. And I gesponded. )
i i
- MR. ARMENTA: Right. Now, the re. commendation 3 that this NRC panel may make, whatever it'is, it will 4 affect Kenneth Zahrt only and not SEG or PSC. Am I 5 correct?
6 MR. CAIN: Yes. That is the reason we are 1
7 here is to listen to your response to the notice of 8 violation that was written to you, to determine whether j 9 that is a fair portrayal of the facts and to hear your 10 side of the story, and then make a decision as to what we 11 do as a follow-on to this notice of violation. That is l 12 why we are here, and that is the only reason we are here.
13 MR. ARMENTA: I just want you to understand j
14 that.
l 15 THE WITNESS: Okay. l 1
16 MR ARMENTA: Okay. And I think that for the 17 other interview that we conducted likewise, it does not
]
18 change anything else that has progressed up to here by 19 NRC. Okay?
20 It is approximately 1:18 p.m., and this will 21 conclude our interview with Mr. Zahrt.
22 (Whereupon, at 1:18 p.m., the interview in the 23 above-entitled matter was concluded.)
24
- ~
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1
. . - . . - ~ . . - . . - - . - . . . .- - -~._. .. . .
This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory mmission in the matter of: .
Name of Proceeding: KENNETH ZAHRT Docket Number (s): --
Place of Proceeding: Thornton, Colorado were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and thercafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
hAa h^ ( ,
Helene Hershey Official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
1 I
1 i
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