ML20138M738
| ML20138M738 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Millstone  |
| Issue date: | 05/21/1996 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9702260139 | |
| Download: ML20138M738 (71) | |
Text
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Gfficial Transcript of Proceedings 4
!(
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION i
Title:
Interview of Michael Brown l
j Docket Number:
(not assigned)
Location:
Waterford, Connecticut Date:
Tuesday, May 21,1996
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Work Order No.:
NRC-679 Pages 1-66 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5
INTERVIEW 6
x 1
7 IN THE MATTER OF:
J i
8 INTERVIEW OF
- Docket No.
5 MICHAEL BROWN (not assigned) 10 11
x 12 Tuesday, May 21, 1996 13 14 Room 5 15 Simulator Building j
16 Millstone Nuclear Power Station
)
17 Rope Ferry Road 18 Waterford, Connecticut 19 20 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 21 10:30 a.m.
22 BEFORE:
23 JOHN HANNON Millstone Review Team Leader 24 CARL MOHRWINKEL Millstone Review Team Member 25 RANDY HUEY Millstone Review Team Member NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCNSEM 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S l
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(10:32 a.m.)
3 MICHAEL BROWN, 4
having been first duly sworn, was called as a witness 4
5 herein and was examined and testified as follows:
6 MR. HANNON:
Good morning.
Today is May the i
7 21st.
It's approximately 10:30.
My name is John Hannon 8
and I'm here at the Simulator Building at Millstone as a 9
leader of an NRC Review Team that's looking into the 10 handling of employee concerns and allegations at Millstone i
11 during the last ten years.
12 First I'd like to introduce the people in the 4
13 room.
As I said, my name is John Hannon.
I'm normally a 14 Project Director in the Office of Nuclear Reactor 15 Regulation and I have been appointed to lead this team.
16 With me is Randy Huey, a reviewer on the team and Carl 17 Mohrwinkel, also a reviewer on the team.
18 The interview we're having today is to help us 19 in a fact-finding mission trying to discover what, if 20 anything, went wrong with the process for dealing with i
21 allegations and employee concerns at Millstone and to 22 collect enough factual information to help us establish 23 probable root causes and identify potential corrective 24 actions that we could recommend be taken both at the NRC 25 and at Northeast Utilities in order to improve the process i
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for future employee concerns and allegations.
2 We're not doing an inspection, we're not doing
)
3 an investigation.
If we uncover any material in that 2
4 area, we would refer it to the appropriate authorities to 5
deal with.
Our focus is on the process and how it can be j
6 made to work better in the future.
7 We're transcribing your interview for two
)
8 reasons.
One is to permit us to concentrate on what 9
you're saying and make sure we ask the right kind of t
10 questions, minimize our note taking and after we get the 11 record of what you've told us, we'll go back and review it i
12 and use it in our deliberations to make sure we have l
13 considered your statements.
14 It's important for us that your transcript is 15 accurate, so we'd like to afford you the opportunity to 16 review it when we get it back to make sure it's an 17 accurate representation of what you wanted to tell us and 18 if you find errors or want to clarify, we would provide 19 errata sheets for you to do that on if you want to avail 20 yourself of the opportunity.
If you choose not to, we'll 21 let you sign a statement that you declined to review your 22 transcript at the conclusion of the interview today.
23 Before I turn it over to the questions, do you 24 have any questions for us?
25 THE WITNESS:
No, John; I think your NEAL R. GROSS Coum RepomRS AND TRANSCNSERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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instructions are very clear.
2 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
John, PDR.
3 MR. HANNON:
At the conclusion I will provide 4
you a copy of the instructions on how we're handling the i
5 transcripts and you should be aware when we finish our 6
report, unless you want to withhold your transcript, we 7
would place it in the public document room.
8 THE WITNESS:
That's fine, you can place it in 9
the public document room.
10 MR. HANNON:
Okay.
i 11 First of all, Mike, could you tell us what j
12 your involvement at the Northeast' Utilities has been, what i
13 your current assignment is?
1 14 THE WITNESS:
I've been with Northeast 15 Utilities approximately 24 years.
I started off in the 16 operations organization on Unit 2, spent a little time on 17 Unit 1 and then went over to Unit 2 INC as a Technician.
18 Did the start-up of Millstone 2 as an INC Technician, went 19 on -- I came out of the Navy prior to getting involved 20 with Northeast Utilities.
I went forth and headed up the
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21 INC start-up for a polisher on Millstone 2.
We did a 26 22 million dollar addition in the mid-seventies and then I I
23 went over and took the job of INC Manager from about '76 24 to '86 on Unit 3, did the design phase and the start-up of 25 Millstone 3.
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1 MR. HANNON:
Was that your first assignment as 2
a manager for Northeast Utilities?
3 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
4 O
So you have been a manager in the organization 5
for approximately 18 years?
6 A
Since about '78 actually and I then left the 7
INC organization of Millstone 3 in '86, came over and 8
started up the technical training programs as Manager of 9
Technical Training.
Stayed in that capacity until late 10
'92 when I was sent over to head up the recovery effort 11 of Millstone Unit l's operator training programs when they 12 failed, the '91, '92 failures of the operator requal.
13 programs.
I guided the recovery of those programs for a 14 year and then took over as the Director of Nuclear 15 Training for two years.
In March of this year I was 16 reassigned as the Executive Director of Oversight and 17 Safety for Millstone Station.
18 MR. HANNON:
So you were in the Training 19 Department until March of this year?
20 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
21 MR. HANNON:
Why did you leave it; what was 22 behind the transition from there to your current 23 assignment?
24 THE WITNESS:
You certainly would have to ask 25 management because they made that decision.
Generally, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCNSERB 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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1 I'd like to consider that starting up new organizations and new things is what they seem to have always put me on, 2
3 whether it was a polisher or Unit 3 or the training 4
programs and now the oversight organization, being a brand 4
5 new organization, they moved me down there to head that 6
effort up.
7 Also, certainly I have a long history of 8
raising issues here at Northeast Utilities.
I'm rather 9
outspoken so we certainly have a number of issues that 10 I've brought up over the years.
11 MR. HANNON:
Have you ever used the Employee 1
12 Concerns Program for these issues you've brought up?
13 THE WITNESS:
No.
14 MR. HANNON:
Have you ever raised allegations?
I 15 THE WITNESS:
Numerous times.
16 MR. HANNON:
With your management?
17 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
18 MR. HANNON:
But never used any other vehicle 19 like the ECP, the NSCP or --
20 THE WITNESS:
No, I've never used the Safety 21 Concerns Program, certainly raised a large number of 22 issues over the years.
23 MR. HANNON:
Have you ever had to go to the 24 NRC?
25 THE WITNESS:
I certainly provided testimony NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRBERB 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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1 to the NRC in the se, some extensive 2
testimony there.
I was heavily involved in that case.
3 MR. HUEY:
That was at our, the NRC's request.'
4 THE WITNESS:
Yes, that's correct.
5 MR. HUEY:
You haven't come to the NRC?
6 THE WITNESS:
No, I have not gone to the NRC.
7 MR. HANNON:
Could you give us some example of 8
your interactions with your management?
How do you feel 9
about how your issues were handled?
10 THE WITNESS:
I think when you look at 11 organizations, NU is a rather complex organization and 12 it's a big organization and especially when you're dealing 13 with the Millstone sight; it gets even more precarious to 14 manage your way through it.
You ask me issues, you want is specific issues that I raised.
16 They span 24 years, but some of the more i
1 17 recent issues was Unit 2 operator training.
It was my l
18 belief that we should not allow the unit to restart until 19 we did some extensive training of the Unit 2 operators.
20 The unit was down for ten months at that time and I made 21 sy position very well known to everybody that I would not 22 support the restart until they completed the retraining, j
23 which would delay the restart for about two more months.
i 24 Certainly that raised a lot of anxiety and certainly it C
25 waan't necessarily embraced as a great opportunity, but NEAL R. GROSS cous aeromeu meinmecmass tags M4aat ISL#e AVL ftW.
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the unit stayed shut down for the two months and we trained the people and when they were ready we signed off 2
3 and allowed them to restart.
4 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
What was the time frame for 5
that?
6 THE WITNESS:
Last year.
7 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
What months, though?
8 THE WITNESS:
May, June, July, that time 9
frame.
10 MR. HUEY:
And the basis of your concern, as I 11 understood it, was that the plant had been shut down so 12 long that the staff needed some refresher type training or 13 was it training to correct some other problem other than 14 just being rusty from not operator for a while?
15 THE WITNESS:
There was two concerns.
One, we 16 had just completed somewhat of an upgrade program, a
17 diluted upgrade program of their operators and I had a 18 pretty good handle as to where their operators were 19 technically from that capability, from a skill 20 perspective.
21 MR. HUEY:
Did you say a diluted upgrade?
22
.THE WITNESS:
Yes; what originally we wanted 23 to do was a complete reprogramming of the Unit 2 operators.' Management at that time felt that that was not 24 25 necessary and we basically implemented a subset of that.
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Remember in that particular outage they were down for 2
approximately ten months, I think.
3 We, in the training organization, looked at 4
some of the behaviors that brought on that outage, the Ofb 5
stuck rod event with and sow of the other 6
events and felt that we needed to do some extensive 4
training of the operators, even to a point of programming 7
B their thinking and their approach and philosophical 9
approaches.
10 That was early on not well received and we 11 agreed to a subset of that.
We went forward and did that 12 training.
The expectation was that we would be starting 13 up in the January time frame.
14 MR. HUEY:
Were you in agreement with the 15 compromise"/
16 THE WITNESS:
I think I was in agreement in 17 that the technical issues were being addressed.
I didn't is feel the cultural issues were equally addressed and there 19 was a sharp division between myself and the Ops Management 20 and the Unit Director and all the other parties on the 21 need for the culture aspects.
22 We went forward, they were looking at a 23 January restart.
At that time we had identified that 24 there was significant problems in the EOP space in the 25 written EOP's.
We went forward and the company, the NRC
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NEAL R. GROSS court MEPORTERB AND MNBCfEEERB tags fM00E ISLAfe AVE., KW.
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at that time earlier in the fall of that year had raised 2
the issue of doing an EOP inspection.
Northeast Utilities 3
volunteered to conduct its own evaluation using ABB.
That 4
was conducted and it identified the weaknesses that we had 5
articulated to them were there in their EOP's.
6 The delay in the restart of the unit got them 7
started in EOP's and they wrote their EOP's.
Now, there 8
was a strong division between the training organization 9
headed by myself and the line organization as to the
{
10 extent of those EOP's and the impact it would have on the 11 operators.
Knowing where those operators were, I did not
'i 12 feel that they could successfully implement the new EOP's without approximately three weeks for each group of 13 14 training.
The unit at that time felt three days would 15 suffice.
So we certainly had our words and we prevailed 16 in the issue and they quickly came to find out that in 17 some cases three weeks was not enough and four weeks were 18 necessary.
19 So we did conduct all the training that was 20 necessary and then we restarted the unit.
21 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Was four weeks necessary for 22 certain types of operators?
23 THE WITNESS:
Some crews.
24 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Some crews.
25 THE WITNESS:
Some crews were weaker than NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TM4CNSERS 1323 RHoDE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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others and the extent of the EOP changes were that t
2 significant.
3 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
For clarification, he asked the question, but I still wasn't sure I got your answer.
4 5
Are you saying it was deluded, D-E-L, or diluted --
6 THE WITNESS:
Diluted.
7 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Di, D-I --
8 THE WITNESS:
Sure, because I don't think the 9
cultural aspects were included along with the technical 10 aspects.
11 MR. HANNON:
Give me an example of the kind of 12 training you would have wanted to implement to deal with t
13 the culture issues.
14 THE WITNESS:
It was pretty radical and I can 15 understand why people were emotional.
I felt that in the 16 case of the Unit 3 operator, and there was no secret about 17 that, that we needed to almost go back to a nuclear boot
)
18 camp and reprogram their entire safety ethic, their 19 values, their perspectives, their mission statements and 20 come up with a whole new way of interacting.
21 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Well, start a little bit what 22 you want them to do, what culture you'd want them to 23 adopt.
24 THE WITNESS:
Well, what I want to do is take 25 them off shift at that time for about, we were shut j
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down anyway, so was take them off in the evenings, bring them into this building in the evenings and work them for I
2 e
i 3
about six weeks with both the technical and the cultural issues emphasized by management on a daily basis of what 4
5 we want to see with regard to ownership, with regard to 6
values, with regard to making critical judgements and d
those type of behaviors and people felt that they were 7
8 there and that was not a necessity at this point.
There's 9
a different of professional opinion, I guess.
10 The issue was, certainly most critical on.my 11 mind, was the technical issues so they acquiesced at that 12 time to doing the technical issues, which were about two 13 to three weeks in duration.
14 MR. HUEY:
When you say they acquiesced, 15 that's the operations organization?
16 THE WITNESS:
The operations and Line 17-Management.
18 MR. HUEY:
And who, what was the vehicle for 19 forcing that acceptance?
20 THE WITNESS:
The EOP portion?
21 MR. HUEY:
Well, the aspect of this more 22 extensive operator training.
23 THE WITNESS:
The EOP, not the original issue.
24 MR. HUEY:
Right.
25 THE WITNESS:
The aspects was that certainly I NEAL R. GROSS coum REPOMERB AND TMANSCNSWW is2s RHooE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1-met with the ops Manager, Mike Gentry.at the time, and Guy 2
Bouchard and we certainly got into some extensive 3
discussions on the issue of where the operators were and 4
where the operators weren't and there was a strong 5
difference of opinion as to their ability to implement the 6
new emergency procedures.
The ops Management felt that 7
three days would be satisfactory and that was it.
8 MR. HUEY:
Did you work it out at your level 9
with the ops Manager?
10 THE WITNESS:
No, it was finally decided by 11 the Chief Nuclear Officer, John Opeka, because the issue 12 finally came down to one of which we would be staying down 13 for two more months to do nothing but training.
14 MR. RANNON:
This was only directed at Unit 3?
15 THE WITNESS:
Unit 2.
1 1
l 16 MR. RANNON:
Unit 2 only?
l 17 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
18 MR. HANNON:
So there was not spot at the time 19 that this cultural issue might affect the other units as 20 well?
21 THE WITNESS:
The behaviors inherent on Unit 2 22 were very different than the behaviors on 1 and Unit 3.
23 All three units were raised at different times and adopted 24 certain perspectives different from each other and when 25 you train them you get to observe some of those behavioral NEAL R. GROSS COURT RpoRTERS AND TMNScNSERS 1323 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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aspects.
2 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Give us a couple of examples t
3 of how 1, 2 and 3 are different in cultural attitudes.
4 THE WITNESS:
Well, you've got to look at Unit 5
3 was a unit that came up in the post TMI era.
There was
~
a whole different perspective on operating philosophies, 6
7 procedure, compliance, many issues grew out of the TMI 737 8
efforts and those type of things and a whole different, 9
you know, sight specific simulators, those type of issues.
10 So there was a certain value system that even carries 11 through to today in perspective in Unit 3 that is 12 different than Unit 2 and Unit 1.
13 Unit 2 stayed under the leadership of Jack 14 Keenan for many years and once again, I didn't think Jack 15 Keenan was a very good leader and I don't think he 4
16 instilled very good values and I think his focus was 17 wrong, but I wasn't working for him except for interfacing 18 with him on the training issues.
19 Unit 1, on the other hand, was a different 20 beast.
They were caparated from the fold.
They were the 21 boiler and the pressurized people never quite understood 22 the boiler so they allowed them to ru: by themselves 23 basically, you know, that was kind of like off to the side 24 and they're different and they do things different, so 25 there was very little attention every paid by the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TMSCROERS 1323 RHoOE ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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pressurized side.
The pressurized side tended to keep 2
somewhat in tune with each other.
Unit 1 in the '91,
'92 5
3 failure, part of their failure mechanism was they were 4
just disconnected from the industry and disconnected from 5
the other plants and when we went to rev. 6 and 7 of the 6
1021 they just never kept current.
7 There was also a much more difficult 8
transition in understanding all these new complex 9
scenarios in if we went into EOP space and their roles and 10 the formality of communications and those type of things 11 having been started up in a time where it wasn't there and 12 then being allowed to exist almost independent, as if they 13 were on a different site, they had a different 14 perspective.
As they went through the '91,
'92 failures 15 and at that time we had taken about 12 licenses away 16 between the management and the training organization, 17 there was basically brought about a certain amount of 18 reculturing, different type of times, different type of 19 issues that affected the dynamics here.
20 Millstone is a very different station because 21 of the three units and it creates a lot of the difficulty 22 that I think you folks come into contact with in the 23 concern side and sometimes reaching common understandings 24 across multiple units takes much longer than on a single 25 unit where you've got a single person and a single NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCNSERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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authority and those type of things.
i 2
MR. HUEY:
Could you give us your perspective O
3 on what created the environment for employee l
dissatisfaction with the company's ability to objectively 4
5 and appropriately address concerns and how that might have 6
changed in current day and the reasons for it?
7 THE WITNESS:
All right, Randy.
There's a lot 1
8 to your question there.
It covers quite a span of time.
9 There is a span of time and there has been 10 some significant shifts over time.
Certainly, if you go 11 back to the ra, the ra, 12 those eras --
13 MR. HUEY:
That's the '89,
'91 time?
14 THE WITNESS:
Yeah, but it's really '86 on.
15 You had Ed Mroczka managing the nuclear operation side as 16 the Chief Nuclear Officer and Ed looked at things in a 17 very simplistic manner and didn't necessarily appreciate 18 the complexity of what many of these issues brought to 19 bear.
He had John Opeka at that time who was managing the 20 transmission distribution side of the house and the fossil 21 side of the house as well as nuclear and basically I don't 22 think as heavily involved as maybe should have been.
23 You had Wayne Romberg as the Chief Operating 24 officer there towards that period, a rather political 25 individual.with political motivations and I think the time
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17 that preceded him you had John Stetz in Unit 1.
1 John l
2 Stetz, Wayne Romberg were very closely aligned in their 3
thinking and behaviors.
You got into a situation with Harry Haynes taking over Unit 1 and coming up with a bag 4
5 of problems and my belief at the time, had done a 6
relatively conscientious job, while some may beg to 7
differ.
8 In the historical record when you look at the 9
issues, the i
es, the reculturization of 10 the operators, there was the collapse of the intake 11 structure, there was a large number of issues on the plate 12 to deal with in that time frame.
13 I think in that time frame there was a certain 14, amount of overwhelming by the number of issues that Harry l
discovered when he took the watch on that unit and they 15 hadn't seen anything quite like that and that propagated 16 17 its own life, if you want to call it that.
t ece$.s 18 and I know each other going d
~
19 back many, many years.
We were in the Navy together,b 44 20 served together, we still talk occasionally, is a 21 different type of individual than an is 22 different -- and once again, you see a lot of these 23 events, in my opinion, are driven by individuals and 24 individual behaviors and values.
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1 concerns, certainly raised those concerns and then one i
j needs to look at the hundreds of additional concerns and g
2 question the real value of those and not the values.
3 s
~
7 knows how to use the system et maximize his l
mission, whatever that mission may be.
8 i
l 9
I think his use of the Allegations Program, l
10 some of it was legitimate and some of it was to move his i
l 11 agenda forward, i
i 12 MR. HUEY:
That agenda being*/
13 THE WITNESS:
He originally, the thing that 14 got originally going was one in which he was slighted l
15 with regard to an overtime issue.
He was the maximum l
16 person on overtime.
When the company decided to levelize i
17 overtime, instead of starting from that point forward, he I
10 was high man, they allowed everybody else to get their j
19 overtime.
He was offended and originally there was going i
20 to be a price to pay and that was the initiating issue.
I 21 think over the years he raised some interesting issues and
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22 certainly history has shown some of those to certainly
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23 have been valid.
tM#
24 and you ask about cultures and 25
- values, worked with for many, many years in a
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the start-up of Unit 2, the start-up of the polisher, the 2
start-up of Millstone 3, so we had a lot of years of t4b 3
working together.
as an individual who was very talented, but he had a history here at Northeast Utilities 4
5 of taking a one month project and making it into a one 6
year project and I think when he early on raised the 7
concern about the Rosemount Transmitters, nobody took him seriously because they thought that this was another oafus 8
project or another XYZ project that he basically had a way 9
10 of enlarging.
g b
11
,had called me at that time and indicated 12 he was frustrated because nobody would listen to him and 13 asked for my help.
Knowing his involvement in some of C
14 these projects, I asked him to bring up the data and he 15 came up on a Friday, showed me the data and based on that 16 I arranged a meeting with the Vice President and started 17 him moving and then stayed involved with that whole 18 project for almost two years, three years that it carried 19 forward, trying to get that issues addressed.
so 20 certainly I had a large part to do in that particular 21 allegation.
22
.I think the real issue here at Northeast 23 Utilities, when you look at programmatic and that's the 24 purpose of your -- I think in the early years, it was a C#
25 certain amount of inepeness by senior management to NEAL R. GROSS coum Mercwmms Ano mNoceses 1as MMODE leLMC AWE KW.
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understand the complexities, l'
2 MR. HUEY:
In that they, what, too quickly 3
dismissed --
4 THE WITNESS:
They didn't understand the 5
issues.
Mroczka was a very simple individual in his 6
thinking, you know what I mean?
Him and I had a 7
discussion one day in I&C-3.
I pointed out to him that we 8
just didn't have the staff to adequately maintain that 9
facility inasmuch as we had 25,000 instruments which was 10 about two-and-a-half times Millstone 2 and we had the same 11 12 technicians.
And his logic was, well, maybe we needed 12 to get down to 10,000 instruments like Unit 2 because i
13 they're operating safety with 10,000 and the man was very 14 serious.
It wasn't cavalier, it was the way he looked at 15 things was very simplistic, you know, you don't 16 understand.
This is not a Millstone generation plant.
In 17 the end we got the staff, but he looked at things very,
]
18 very simply and it didn't help when you raised a complex 19 issue because it kind of blew right by him and he was your 20 Chief Nuclear Officer and you had Wayne, who was very 21 political in those days, who certainly didn't want to 22 cross hairs with any political issue.
23 MR. HANNON:
I have a question.
You mentioned 24 Wayne Romberg?
l 25 THE WITNESS:
Yes.
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MR. HANNON:
Did you ever raise an issue with
\\
l 2
him when you were working for him --
3 THE WITNESS:
No.
4 MR. HANNON:
-- as far as an allegation?
5 THE WITNESS:
I never worked for him.
6 MR. HANNON:
You did not?
7 THE WITNESS:
No, I reported to Fred Sears 8
when he was the Vice President of Operations.
9 MR. HANNON:
All right, thank you.
10 MR. HUEY:
What were the consequences of these 11 simplistic attitudes that ended up disenfranchising some 12 of them?
13 THE WITNESS:
I think it seriously contributed 14 to, he just doesn't understand, you know, it's a certain 15 frustration level and that type of thing.
And that, early 16 on, was I think very much the focus.
17 Millstone, as we brought on Millstone 3, 18 became a very complex site and still is a complex site and 19 inherent in that complexity is the root cause for the 20 Nuclear Concerns Program and other problems that play, is 21 that it's difficult for an individual to change three 22 sites, three units, that operate as three different l
23 entities and for many years that's the way they functioned l
24 until this last year, very independent of each other and 25 it was very diffiev't to get consensus and any issue that NEAi R. GROSS CouRr REpomERS AND TWSCMSERS 1323 rho 0E ISt.AND AVE N.W.
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required that basically stymied individuals from 2
championing; this is too hard to get to there so just walk 3
away from it.
4 It created a culture, I believe, and a 5
behavior that people just didn't resolve problems because 6
the vast majority of the problems spanned multiple units.
7 Concerns were just a subset of this culture.
So what you 8
don't see here that you see at let's say a North Anna is 9
the proactivity, the culture, the value of I need to 10 champion this issue and I'll see it through the end; this 11 is mind.
Nobody could say anything was mine because you 12 had three units and it's hard to convince, let's say, a 13 Unit 3 to abandon something that's working for it in the 14 interest of having some consistency across units.
They l
15 just don't want to hear about it.
It's worked for me for i
16 ten years, so why do I got to change?
What's driving this 17 change?
Now you want me to take something that I don't 18 feel comfortable with.
19 So pretty soon you can't accomplish very much 20 and the inability to accomplish then creates a culture and 21 a sub-culture of I ain't championing this issue and that 22 carries over into 5054's and updating FSAR's and I don't 23 own the FSAR's, I own wet lay-up, you know, who owns wet 24 lay-up; well, Chemistry Department, well, the System 25 Engineers, well Ops; nobody owns it.
On a single unit NEAL R. GROSS CouM REPoMERS AND TMSCNSERB 1823 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., t.W.
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1 site, it's very easy to say Randy, Carl, you own this.
On 2
a multiple unit site, it starts getting fuzzy as to who has to deliver the product in the end and when you look at 3
corrective actions or you look at concerns or you look at 4
i i
5 these different things, embedded in that issue is really 6
the core of the problem, in my estimation, and it creates 7
this whole issue of don't do it.
8 MR. HANNON:
How long have you been aware that i
9 that is at the root of the concerns at Millstone?
When 10 did you come to that realization?
11 THE WITNESS:
More so in the last year, year-4 12 and-a-half that that's really the root cause.
Part of 13 that was we've basically functioned in a very unitized 14 method.
So if you were on one of the units, you only 15 dealt with your unit and kind of lived in your world and 16 tried not to interface.
In the last year-and-a-half as 17 we've moved to try to bring about some real synergistic, 18 you began looking and saying why haven't you fixed this?
19 Well, it's too complicated or too difficult and you 20 started seeing that type of issue.
21 Also, more so in my role in training in recent 22 years in looking at the behaviors of Unit 1 in the '91, 23
'92 recovery effort which took place in '93, began why is 24 this different than this and began looking at, rather 25 extensively as we went through the recovery of Unit 1 and l
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24 1
the recovery of Unit 2, why the behaviors were so i
2 different and what drove those behaviors.
3 Got a fair amount into Stephen Covey's works in recent years, being licensed to teach the Covey 4
5 programs, and getting a better understanding of the 6
underlying behaviors and what drives those type of things.
7 Spent some time at Duke Power, some time at North Anna, i
8 spent some time at Saturn Corporation and getting an 9
understanding of why those organizations work and how we 10 differ.
11 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
What were you doing at those 12 differest locations?
Were you like on a rotational 13 assignment or Northeast or a developmental program or what 14 were you doing?
I 15 THE WITNESS:
No, I struck up a relationship i
16 with Duke and spent some time down there.
They were very 17 interested in the training techniques we were using here 18 at the time.
They were well advanced in the industry and 19 I was very interested in how they established a Duke 20 culture and that type of thing.
North Anna, I spent some 21 time with an NAI benchmarking effort to benchmark their 22 training programs which then carried over to their 23 culture.
Saturn, I've spent several trips down there at j
l 24 Springhill, Tennessee, formed a relationship.
We've had 25 instructors down there teaching at the Saturn Corporation NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPoMERS AND UWSCRSERS 1323 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., N W.
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1 and their instructors up here understanding why the 2
culture is the way it is and what makes it go and then 3
understanding why our culture doesn't mesh and connect.
4 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
But my point is you did that t
5 with the blessing of Northeast management, right, you 6
never left Northeast payroll?
7 THE WITNESS:
That's correct, I was always on 1
8 Northeast's payroll.
9 MR. HANNON:
So you're in a unique position 10 globally to observe this phenomenon and understand it and 11 when you came to this realization how, then, did you share 12 that with the other managers and what kind of reaction did 13 you get?
14 THE WITNESS:
I've been talking about it for 15 about two years to senior management.
There are 16 individuals who appreciate a technical resolution and the 17 behavior thing somewhat escapes them and the human 18 interaction element somewhat escapes and the human values, 19 I've had numerous discussions with senior management of j
20 the company on this issue and have been talking about it 21 for about two years.
22 Harry Haynes, now that he's taken over for me 23 in the training organization, has really moved to try to 24 champion getting in, the covey programs is the base, the 25 Principal Standard Leadership Program, the Seven Habits NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPoMRS AND TMNSCM995 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1
Program as a base effort to reculture the organization and he has been working with our Human Resources group since 2
3 taking over from me to try to force that into a 4
reculturization, if you want to call it, and it's 5
certainly being reviewed at this point in time.
6 Certainly with the Managers, we brought in the 7
Covey Institute last year in the May time frame, after 8
returning from Saturn, and had them license 35 people on 9
our staff to teach the program and have since brought them 10 back to license to teach the Principal Centered Leadership 11 Program and we have a large number of people -- we began 12 offering that and the classes have been full and people 13 time and again, we can show you the sheets, claim it's the 14 best training they've ever had in their life.
15 So I believe if it was adopted as a base l
l 16 culture, it would bring out, because the entire emphasis 17 is on proactivity, you control your own destiny.
If you l
18 want to be successful, you take charge and this is how to l
19 do it, this is how you need to relate to John and Randy.
20 It talks about emotion backgrounds, it talks about your 1
21 whole life, it talks about areas of concern versus areas 22 of influence and how you manage those things and it gives 23 an excellent model.
24 The people here have been, I think that's what 25 they really need is some structured model to be successful l
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within.
i, 2
MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Who is the Director of Human b
1 3
Resources here?
e 1
1 4
THE WITNESS:
The Director of Human Resources
}
l 5
for training?
{
6 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Yes.
7 THE WITNESS:
For Northeast Utilities is now i'
s 8
Miss Judy Gorski.
She just recently took over.
1 9
MR. MOHRWINKEL:
I'm sorry, the name was?
i
- l l
10 THE WITNESS:
Judy Gorski.
11 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Okay, now, she is the 3
12 Director of Human Resources for all of Northeast?
13 THE WITNESS:
For all of Northeast Utilities,
(
j l
14 that's correct.
She just recently took the job.
15 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Is that considered to be a j
16 senior management type position?
I'm just trying to see i
17 how this fits into the organization.
)
18 THE WITNESS:
She's a Director level i
2 21 and Harry has formed a j
22 relationship with Judy and they have made recommendations j
23 to senior management in this particular area.
i i
24 I've had several discussions with station f
.A 25 management in recent. weeks on this whole issue of the NEAL R. GROS 8 count nanomne memweemass 1833 INCOE 18tAfe AVE KW.
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culture and the value system, what got us on the watch 2
list and why we're here and some of the things we need to 3
address, but certainly in order to raise an issue you need 4
to be tenacious and you need to understand your issues and 5
given that, you could get the issue addressed.
It's not 6
always easy, it hasn't been easy but I think management in 7
recent years, in the last two years, has certainly made 8
some significant gains on trying to understand issues when 9
people bring them up.
10 Certainly within the last few weeks, last few 11 months since I took over in March, one of my first efforts 12 was to shut down the 5054 effort on Millstone's 1, 2 and 13 3.
We only started that up last week after six weeks of 14 having it shut down.
They were already two months in 15 operation when I went in and certainly raised the issue 16 that I felt their work was totally inappropriate and was 17 wrong and they didn't understand the end point, if you j
18 want to call it, Mr. Covey's Habit 2, keep the end in 19 mind, where they want to end up, and the work that was 20 being done would not support a quality effort and they 21 needed to go back and rewrite all their procedures.
22
.While it wasn't heartily embraced, certainly 23 management carried that action out and shut it down.
24 Engineering volunteered to shut it down once confronted 25 with all the issues.
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i 29 l
1 MR. MORRWINKEL:
I just want to wrap that
- f..
2 question up on Human Resources.
, (1 3
Where did she come from; was she an NU person?
4 THE WITNESS:
Judy Gorski was head of l
5 Compensation within the company for many, many years as 6
Director of Compensation.
Prior to joining Northeast 7
Utilities, she was a high school teacher.
8 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Do you know offhand how many 9
years she's been at NU?
10 THE WITNESS:
Many.
11 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Many?
12 THE WITNESS:
Many 13 MR. MOMRWINKEL:
Do you think she's an 14 authoritative figure here?
When she speaks to management 15 do they listen to her?
16 THE WITNESS:
You don't push Judy Gorski 4
17 around.
In 18 the area of compensation, she basically carries out her 19 mission and is very succinct on knowing.
I have excellent 20 relationships with her over the years.
She understands 21 what she needs to do and she will get it done.
22 MR. MORRWINKEL:
So if she finds something l
23 here that she thinks is nuts and she says this project is 24 nuts, management is likely to go along with that?
C 25 THE WITNESS:
Very much so.
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1 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Okay.
2 4 O THE WITNESS:
She has always had the ear of 3
senior management of the company heading the compensation-which deals with all the benefits and all the things.
4 5
MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Well, you said at the beginning we're looking at process and we just want to see 6
7 how training, how Human Resources, how this all ties l
8 together in the process.
9 THE WITNESS:
There's kind of an awkward 10 situation here.
11 and we went off, in the name 12 of training the training organization, we were going to 13 train the training department by itself to teach Covey to 14 our own internal people and that's how we got into it 15 because the H.R. portion belonged to H.R.,
so we went off 16 and did our own thing and kind of ignored the corporate 17 side of the issue.
Now that Judy's back in, there's a 18 need to, we have all the licensed Covey instructors and they're not in the business of teaching Covey, not that 19 20 Covey is the beginning and and all.
I think it needs to 21 be intermixed with a certain amount of experiential 22 training.
23 We got into some experiential training early 24 on.
We built our Northfield Mountain facilities and r
L 25 certainly those are used extensively at the Saturn NEAL R. GROSS COUM REPomDW AND MWBCpWERB tass RHODE ISUWC AVE., KW, se m waamanos oe saanum
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Corporation and are extremely successful.
So we look to 2
use some of that and my recommendation certainly to senior 3
management is that we set covey as the base, we set the cultural and value system in place and we go through a 4
1 5
retraining program of all the workforce.
6 MR. HANNON:
How has that recommendation been 7
received?
Is it embraced by management and are there 8
actions being taken now to implement it?
9 THE WITNESS:
Yes and no.
Certainly Harry has 10 carried a piece of that with Judy Gorski and they have 11 presented management and that's been embraced as an i
12 element of the core program.
13 I'm looking more at a more reculturization of 14 the existing workforce than the training of managers 15 coming up and that type of thing, new managers, and that 16 will be presented this Friday to senior management.
17 Mike Brothers, who I just came from a meeting i
18 with him on that discussion, who's the Director of 19 Millstone 3 has been charged by senior management, along 20 with myself, to present to them a plan to address the 21 management and cultural issues by Friday of this week.
22 MR. HANNON:
How does that dovetail with the l
23 Millstone Employee Concerns Assessment Team Report dated i
l 24 January the 29th,
'96, the team report that was led by j
25 Mike Quinn?
l l
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32 1
THE WITNESS:
Mike Quinn's report brought 2
about some very intriguing questions because it certainly 3
identified that there was some serious trust issues.
My 4
recommendation to Mike Brothers is that we start off with 5
a four day program at Northfield Mountain to build trust l
6 between management and their subordinates.
I don't know, 7
John, if you're familiar, or Carl or Randy, on 8
experiential training at all.
]
9 It's probably the most powerful training I've 10 ever seen in the area of building trust.
It starts up 11 very simple and you move forward through this process.
12 Let me give you some examples.
You take your workforce 13 and you blindfold them.
You take your management team and 14 you bring them in and you and I aren't allowed to talk.
15 My job is to get you through the forest blindfolded; we're 16 not allowed to exchange any words.
So all of a sudden 17 you're blindfolded and you lose one of your critical 18 senses that you've become very comfortable with in life 19 and we're going to climb over logs, up rocks, down hills, 20 to get to the other end of this forest and we're not 21 allowed to talk.
Usually what you do is you get a stick, 22 a twig, and you put it in the person's hand and you start l
23 kind of like a blind man and you get that person through 24 to the other end.
It's called trust walk, and you get l
l 25 them through to the other end and you separate the two NEAL R. GROSS CouM REPoMERS AND UweCM8ERS 1323 MHoOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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33 1
groups.
2 Now you blindfold the management team and~it's 3
for the employees to get them back.through the forest.
4 Now they don't know which' manager or which supervisor 5
guided them through other than they know somebody guided
-6 them through these woods and you start this whole process 7
of building trust.
8 We have five high ropes.
The ropes are really 9
wires strung between telephone poles; they sit 40 feet off 10 the ground, so Carl, you and I, you're the management 11 person and I'm the hourly employee, and we're going to go 12 up cx1 the wire together, we're going to walk this high 13 wire together.
It's very difficult not to trust Carl if 14 all of a sudden we're up there together walking this high 15 wire.
16 There's issues which you go through -- you 17 can't fall off the wire, by the way.
You're in a harness 18 and the'~most you're going to fall is a foot, but when you i
19 have to start walking a wire 40 feet off the ground, it j
l 20 becomes pretty impactful, i
21 We have this effort where you're given all 22 types of material and you build a boat, to build a boat 23 and eventually you tell them you're going'down river in a l
24 competitive effort and your team has to check Randy's team 25 and Randy, you've got to inspect his boat, you're the NEAL R. GROSS court nEpoMEMS AND WNBCNSERB 1333 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1
quality organization, and in this process -- by the way, 2
all these behaviors are critiqued through all of, from I
3 beginning to end in these experiential efforts -- and as i
4 we go through, what happens is in Carl's team they have a 5
long history of having some Bosun mates or people good 6
with seamanship and their boat is much better than yours 7
and they don't give a damn about your boat, you know, 8
honestly in their cursory review, and at the last minute l
9 what we do is shift and make them go down in your boat and 10 you go down in their boat.
The message there is certainly 11 we're all in the same boat and you start coming to 12 appreciate this issue.
13 So what I've recommended is we go through four 14 days of the experiential training and in there there's a 15 thing called a Circle of Death which is a rather painful 16 experience, but it's a way to get it all on the table.
17 Randy, we're all in a circle, everybody in tne department.
18 We're going to tell you everything, Randy, we don't like 19 about you.
The only thing you can say is thank you, 20 there's no rebuttals, and everybody's going to go through 21 everybody and everything is on the table here and then 22 we're going.to talk about -- this may take several hours, i
23 but when we get done, we're going to talk about where 24 we're going from here.
25 Then go on from there, once we get back frem j
1 i
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l, 1
Northfield, into the Covey training which talks about i
2 mission.
Are you people familiar with Covey at all, 3
Stephen Covey's works?
Certainly the Fortune 500 4
companies, 300 of them use it today and it is the base of 5
operation for a lot of successful companies.
6 But one of the things it talks about is John, 7
you've got to write your own mission statement and John, 8
tell us what type of husband you want to be, what type of 9
father you want to be in that mission statement, what type 10 of I&C tech. you want to me, what type of Deacon in your 11 church you want to be, and when you get done, John, each 12 of us are going to read our mission statements to each 13 other, so there's almost a commitment.
And then we're 14 going to write a mission statement for the department and 15 part of Covey's way of doing this in the program is you, 16 this is why it's so impactful, you write your mission 17 s otement and then you write your obituary because you 18 died today and you have to write your obituary and then 19 you write your, you get what they call a 360 survey which 20 you have sent out previously to your peers and your 21 supervision and that.
They provide you feedback in the 22 area of the seven habits and what happens now is you have 23 to do a gap analysis between your mission statement and 24 how the world sees you.
They call that the Social Mirror.
25 And quickly you start bringing people to some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1
degree of realization of what's real and what isn't real 2
and what their values need to be and you can reprogram 3
them in real life.
4 MR. HANNON:
How far up in the organization 5
does this training that you're proposing take place?
6 THE WITNESS:
I think it has to go all the way 7
to the officer level.
8 MR. HANNON:
Has that been adopted?
9 THE WITNESS:
It hasn't been adopted.
I'm 10 proposing with Mike Brothers that we set that as a base 11 culture for all the nuclear units starting with Millstone 12 3 this Friday.
I think it will go a long way to 13 straightening out a lot of the trust-issues that are 14 identified in Mike Quinn's issues.
I think it will go a 15 long wsy to set common values which they lack, it will 16 embrace proactivity as a base culture; that you need to be 17 proactive to solve things.
It will talk about emotional 18 bank accounts, making deposits and withdrawals in peoples' 19 lives.
Those type of issues which I think we have 20 hithered to, figured we could somehow proceduralize.
21 There's nothing wrong, I don't think, our 22 Nuclear Concerns Program with regard to it's very much 23 like everybody else's Nuclear Concerns Program.
I think 24 it's lost in the culture that is a subset of Millstone 25 Station.
The three units doing things different ways, too NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 1
difficult to get things done.
l 2
MR. HANNON:
Part of that subculture we have I
3 heard from others is the tendency to be overly legalistic..
1 That was also referred to in Mike Quinn's report.
You 4
5 haven't mentioned that.
What is your view on that and how I
will this or will this training, experiential training 6
7 you're proposing address that concern?
8 THE WITNESS:
I think in the '80's as we went i
9 to our simplistic models under Ed Mroczka, Ed's battle cry 10 was you didn't need to be the best in the industry.
You just needed to be in the middle of the pack and when you 11 4
12 set an expectation that marginal performance is an 13 acceptable standard, you get substandard performance.
You 14 can't accept middle of the pack as an acceptable entity 15 and I think as t. hey began incurring their failures with 16 a
those type of issues, 17 the lawyers appeared on the scene and quickly began 18 influencing senior management on how to go.
19 And time and again, you could make 20 recommendations to management on ways to resolve it and 21 the lawyers had a different perspective.
22
,Certainly I went back to management on a 23 number of ceasions and suggested that they transfer 24 to the training organization.
It raised certain f
25 concerns through the lawyers that it would be considered NEAL R. GROSS cous napomBs AND MMSCREERS tan N100E ISLMC AVE., N.W.
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discriminatory inasmuch as we're moving him from his job O
and sending him to training organization and as soon as 2
3 the lawyers got in the middle of it, my belief is that and I alwayu had a relationship going back into the Navy 4
5 and that I c:ould certainly influence him, that his issues 6
could be resolv-d and that he could play an important role 7
out here.
,8 But, once again, time and again he made 9
recommendations dealing with steam generated replacement.
10 I thought, has a very strong ego.
He is very proud of 11 what he does and how he does it and I thought putting him 12 in charge of the steam generator IEC work would help 13 direct his energies into a more constructive area.
That 14 doesn't mean if he doesn't have legitimate concerns, 15 certainly he could expend his energy there.
The lawyers 16 felt that wouldn't be good and we certainly have had a 17 tremendous influence over the years with attorneys.
18 That's where the company's been.
If I told you otherwise, 19 John, it would be false.
20 MR. HANNON:
I understand; what I was getting 21 at is do you feel the adoption of your experiential 22 training, the Covey approach, will tend to diminish that?
23 THE WITNESS:
I would think there would be no 24 need because critical here is to try to rebuild the trust.
(
25 Until there's trust there's nothing.
You know, success is l
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really dealt -- and covey teaches this in his Principal 2
standard Leadership Program -- your entire trust model is 3
based on basically relationships and the value you put in 4
them and you need to demonstrate a model trust worthiness 5
if we're going to have a relationship.
6 And certainly I think having a way in which we 7
could build that trust, start communicating and renew the 8
relationships would be critical.
9 I think that what happened over the years as 10 we've brought on each unit, each unit was forced to adopt 11 more and more of the newer unit coming on and they never 12 spent the time to really integrate how they would function 13 as an organization and behave as an organization and once 14 we got one on line, then there was Unit 2 and once we got 15 Unit 2 we had to build a fence and get Unit 3.
So a lot 16 of senior management's attention was devoted to bringing a 17 Unit 3 on the line and these two units were just allowed i
18 to do their own thing and they lived in their own little 19 worlds.
20 I think Jack Keenan, and certainly Unit 2, had 21 an overbearing influence on the negative.
It's what I 22 have to believe Wayne wanted because he allowed it to 23 continue when he was the Vice President of Operations.
I 24 have to believe that Jack stayed much longer than he
(
Ithinkthatwasasubsetoffllll E$b 25 should have stayed.
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l because set one of his conditions for remcVing i
2 his concerns which then brought into question do you have
!(
)
real concerns or is this an agenda was Keenan had to go 3
4 and the more he pronounced that Keenan had to go, 'che more 5
he entrenched Keenan on Unit 2.
And it became a cest of 6
wills rather than let's look at the issues.
i M
7 I hate to say it, but secured Feenan's l
i 8
presence on that unit much longer than it ever should have i
9 been.
\\
i f
10 MR. HANNON:
You had made the recommendation 11 that be given an assignment to direct his l
12 energy constructively on the steam generatc>r replacement I
13 project.
14 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
15 MR. HANNON:
Now that he is a disenfranchise 6 16 empicyee, and then generally, this question is not 17 directed to him, but in general, do you think there would 18 be any value in having someone that has been 19 disenfranchised from Northeast Utilities brought back in 20 to help the reculturalization, as you put it?
LN 21 THE WITNESS:
No.
I had discussions with 22 as late as a week ago because 2.
c a summme s ' 1*
e 2-NEAL R. GROSS count nepomem me MNSONSBW taas nHODE MWe AVE KW.
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issues from our personal relationships and
,and I have 4
t$(s 2
always been able to do that and I do consider
- O a
3 friend, but that still doesn't support this issue.
4 a enda today is he has problems with the 5
NRC.
He feels the NRC has gone overboard on Northeast 6
Utilities and it's really their problem and I don't think 7
that's constructive in the middle of this whole effort to 8
reculture to start developing an anti-NRC culture on the 9
subset of this issue.
So based on knowing where he is as 10 of a week ago, I would say no.
11 MR. HANNON:
But in general, not just focused 12 on hin, would there be any value to bringing back anybody 13 else, perhaps?
Ci I
14 THE WITNESS:
No.
You see, it's evolved into 15 certain behavioral problems, and I worked 16 together many years.
I certainly testified to OI on Mk 17 behalf of and I certainly spent two years of 18 championing his issue, but that's separate from, you know, L
19 when you speak to e would like ultimately to get a
%b 20 Commissioner's job on the NRC.
So motive is to 21 ultimately become a Commissioner.
22 Now, if your motive is not really to fix the 23 issue:s, but you've got these subset motivep, then it isn't 14 9 24 constructive to go forth and could be an asset?
25 Certainly, but that's.not necessarily where his motive is.
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You take a person like rtainly that was a j
2 flagrant case where the man was used in the Nuclear 3
Concerns Program as a vehicle of protecting his employment, 4
when he flagrantly, you know, didn't do his job.
He went 5
home for a few weeks, took a few weeks off when he was i
6 supposed to be on Millstone 3 and then repeated the behavior and made the allegations only as a means to try 7
8 to secure his employment.
Certainly in his legal h
9 judgement, you know, the Judge threw the case out with i
10 prejudice because the man had perjured himself numerous i
11 times.
i 12 MR. HANNON:
Which case is this you're 13 referring to?
14 THE WITNESS:
what was his -- I'm 15
- sorry, sorry, the LO 16 case.
4 17 so when you ask that question, you have to try 18 to identify if the person's motives are certainly nuclear 19 safety and certainly -- and I believe motives 20 initially were very focused on nuclear safety and I 21 believe an many of the issues he raised were 22 legitimate n.uclear safety issues, but they've now subset 23 this into a separate agenda which I don't necessarily 24 believe that you want to bring in and import as a base Cf 25 culture.
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I don't think our issues are with the NRC or 2
with anybody else, it's with ourselves and the way we deal O,
3 with our issues and I think we need to fix those.
4 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
You mentioned that w
ts 5
to be an NRC Commissioner.
Is that your personal view or 4
6 personal speculation or did he tell you that?
g
)
7 THE WITNESS:
No, he told me that.
and I j
8 are friends.
I'm probably more friends with more managers 2
9 than anybody else on the management team in the company.
i 10 I can separate out the issues and I don't. have a problem il separating out the issues and moving forward with what's a 12 real issue and what isn't an issue.
13 '
MR. MOHRWINKEL:
As you have been talking to (s
i N..
14 us today, you've been very helpful identifying things you 15 raised with management and I think you've been very open 16 with us in terms of how those different suggestions were 17 perceived.
18 As of today, May 21st, how do you think you're 19 perceived by management here at Northeast Utilities?
20 What's their view of. you?
When they are behind closed 4
21 doors and your name comes up, what do they think?
1 22 THE WITNESS:
I frankly think that they, it's 23 a dichotomy.
Certainly they like what I do because it's 24 kept the.n out of trouble in the end.
In a reflection, 25 they consider it my style to be, it's been described as i
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)
1 unacceptable in that I will throw a hand grenade into the f
2 room and then pick up the pieces afterwards.
I make it 3
quite clear when I move in on an issue that I'm not' going i
4 to budge on the issue, so they need to understand the 5
issue and we're going to resolve it in some satisfactory 6
way.
7 So they're not used to dealing with that.
8 You've got to realize utilities, and you deal with them 9
every day in the week, are very conservative people and 10 they're not used to people getting in their drawers at 11 that level and telling them this is the way it's going to 12 be, thank you, and this is a problem and let's get on with 13 discussing it.
3 14 Now, obviously they put me in charge of 15 oversight and knowing how we dealt over the years, I have 16 to assume they appreciate that.
While they may hate it 17 while it's going on, and it goes on pretty regularly like 18 on a daily basis we're into them on different issues, it's t
19 something which, I don't think they appreciate it.
20 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
You do or they don't?
21 THE WITNESS:
I don't think they appreciate 22 it, but I think they consider it necessary.
23 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
So your leaving training them 24 was a promotion?
J 25 THE WITNESS:
Well, I don't think so.
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45 l
i promoted it in name and not in money, it's the same money.
2 I don't know why they did that.
It totally has lost me.
1 3
I think there was a lot of emotion because the executive l
4 director level was above this unit director, but then 5
there was a lot of objection by the unit directors that 6
this Executive Director of Oversight shouldn't be a higher 7
pay level.
To me it's academic; they're paying me the 8
same amount of money to do the same job.
9 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Let me ask you, we heard a 10 suggestion from someone and you've been talking about your 11 background in training and some of this Human Resources i
12 and trust type relationship training and so on, see what 13 you think about this idea.
14 Somebody suggested to us that the cultural 15 issue here is negative towards whistle-blowers, even the 1
16 use of the term is negative.
This person suggestion that 17 to make it more positive within the culture here, that 18 everybody's position description call upon them as a 19 professional obligation to have a positive duty to raise 20 health and safety concerns, whether they be of a nuclear 21 variety or broken stepladder, that they have a positive 22 requirement and that managers be rated on how well they 23 react to the raising of these concerns as part of an 24 employee's professional obligation.
25 This is me speaking now, not the person who NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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.i 46 1
spoke to us, but I would make the connection with EEO and 2
sexual harnssment, that managers in most organizations are 3
now rated on their sensitivity to EEO and are rated 4
negatively if they allow sexual harassment to exist in 5
their workplaces.
6 So the suggestion from.this employee was that 7
a similar situation be set up for raising health and 8
safety concerns.
I'm just curious as to your reaction to 9
that suggestion.
i l
10 THE WITNESS:
It certainly doesn't hurt, all 11 right?
I don't think, I think it needs to be done in 12 conjunction with other things.
I've been pressing the 13 corporation for some time to look at the up-cropping of 14 the Nuclear Concerns Task Force.
I've been pressing them 15 to develop a program to measure the quality of trust 16 department-by-department.
To measure the comfort level of 17 individuals to raise concerns department-by-department, 18 manager-by-manager, director-by-director and a survey that 19 would be done quarterly and that we provide intervention 20 for those departments that don't meet our expectation and 21 for all departments we establish clear key performance 22 indicators, even for the good performers, to continually 23 improve there and we measure quarterly.
24 That's been an issue that I've championed time l
25 and again.
I went out and solicited the help from the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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United States Coast Guard Academy and asked the coast 2
Guard, Commander Bob Albright, to give me a hand in this.
3 I developed a relationship with him.
He heads up' 1
4 management training in there and he developed a survey 1
5 tool, an excellent survey tool, at least in my opinion, to 6
do that and he was willing to use his senior class this 7
year to go in and measure department-by-department and we 8
were looking to take this same survey toci and provide it l
1 9
to'some stations that were on the watch list free of j
10 charge to use and some stations that were INPO 1 SALP 1 to 11 measure a benchmark where INPO 1 SALP 1 and I&C department I
12 and maintenance department or work control department is i
13-as compared to us.
14 We developed that tool and then our Human 1
1 15 Resources Department rejected that and they rejected it on 16 the basis that we should not be considering using a non-17 professional organization like the Coast Guard Academy to 18 administer such a tool and they would consider their own 19 survey tool and they are considering some survey tool for 20 the whole company as a whole.
In the interim period, the 21 company in the last week has brought in Dr. Chu who's done 22 some work at other utilities and he has a survey took, 23 which I haven't seen_and I don't know how specifically it i
24 addresses the concern level issues and the trust level 25 issues, but he's coming back this Thursday evening and
)
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we're supposed to meet with him and I'm anxious to see 2
what he's got and certainly I'm not enthralled with the 3
Coast Guard.
My only thought was with the Coast Guard is 1
4 if the cadets from the same class administer this, 5
employees wouldn't certainly feel threatened and if the 1
6 ground rules were all we were getting was department 7
information, certainly no name information and that, we 8
might get a decent benchmark and then be able to do this 9
quarterly.
l 10 I think your question, Carl, is one in which i
11 if you put it in the job requirements that's decent, but 12 we really need a way to measure that effectively.
13 MR. HUEY:
Measure what effectively?
)
14 THE WITNESS:
Trust, communication, the issue 15 associated with, oh, how should we say, comfort level at 16 raising concern at the first line, second line, director l
I 17 level.
18 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
I think this was the person's 19 point, was that because there is no positive requirement 20 on people to be concerned with health and safety issues, 21 there's a negative reaction to them bringing one forth.
22 If it was in their position descriptions that you have 23 this positive obligation to raise concerns that you become i
24 aware of and the manager had in his position description, 25 his or her position description the thought that you have NEAL R. GROSS CoVRT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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a positive professional obligation to deal with the 2
raising of concerns, this would create a healthier, more 3
open concern environment.
1 4
THE WITNESS:
A lot of attention was given 5
last year to training all the management team on how to 6
manage nuclear safety concerns and certainly there was l
7 mock simulations set up where people were being evaluated 8
in that training and a continuation of that could be very 9
easily what you're talking about, Carl.
10 MR. HANNON:
Let me follow.
As part of your 11 executive oversight role in your current position, it 12 appears that you would have some oversight of the 13 assessment that was recommended by the Mike Quinn task 14 force that said to make self assessment a way of the life 15 for the NSCP, they propose an annual effectiveness 16 i assessment and there's a connection there with what type 17 of criteria you would impose to assure it's effective, how 18 would you measure it and so forth.
19 Have you given any thought to what those 20 criteria would be and how you would measure the 21 effectiveness of the NSCP?
22 THE WITNESS:
Let me just say, we've given the 23 consideration.
It's interesting enough, if I could just 24 share this with you, what we just saw with, we looked at 25 the Mike Quinn report, said it's a pretty serious NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.
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indictment of sorts and certainly demands some actions.
2 When we proposed the Coast Guard, we do a survey every i
3 quarter, we establish KPI's, we follow-up, which was in 4
response to the Quinn report, we got into a rather 5
emotional with the people who ran the Quinn report because 6
they believed that the real motive behind this was to 7
challenge their findings.
They were the ones who 8
originally raised the objection to H.R. which then killed l
9 that whole effort.
They felt that they should be the ones 10 to go back out and survey this issue again and it got into 11 one of these crazy ownership issues.
12 Certainly my motives, in presenting this 1
13 wasn't, I assumed that their findings were a given and now 14 we need to identify.
Their findings failed to tell us 15 what departments were in what relationships and, by the 16 way, we did find out some department information.
I know 17 they did collect some general information.
Interesting 18 enough, two departments came out, I understood, reasonably 19 clean.
One was mine, in the training organization, the 20 other was procurement.
Now, procurement was the one that 21 really intrigued me because they had gone through a 22 downsizing and an outsourcing of their folks.
So there 23 was a downsizing that they had gone through.
24 But interesting enough, both organizations 25 were the only two organizations that went through all the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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51 1
Covey training; 100 percent of the workforce went through 2
the Covey training and that was the organizations in the l
3 company that had gone through when the survey was j
4 conducted.
5 MR. HUEY:
One thing that you said that 6
intrigued me, and I wanted to get back to, was the aspect 7
of your having pushed the self measurement aspect with 8
self monitoring the effectiveness of programs that are 9
supposed to change actions and cultures, that you raised 10 that issue with management over the last couple of years.
11 To that effect and sort of accepting the 12 axiom, if we will, of what gets measured gets done, how 13 well has management, senior management, top management, 14 embraced that adage and are things moving in the right 15 direction?
16 THE WITNESS:
I think they saw their role in 17 the Managing for Nuclear Safety Program last year, which 18 they did with management, as something which they were 19 measuring and I think it had effect because there was a 20 large number of people that needed remediation and a 21 large, and a smaller subset of those people who failed.
22 So that program certainly, I think, they saw fulfilled 23 some of that need.
24 I looked at there was a bigger issue of 25 reculturization and they looked at we need to address NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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these nuclear concerns and we need to make sure that John 2
knows how to do this effectively, so we're going to put 3
him in a role-piay simulation and we're going to evaluate j
4 him with video tape going and everything with strict 5
criteria and that's what they did.
i 6
MR. HUEY:
Is management's arms around the 7
full scope of the' problem yet?
8 THE WITNESS:
It depends on how you address 9
the problems.
10' Certainly they are adding people to the 11 Nuclear Safety Concerns Program under Larry Chatfield.
12 Larry will tell you that if the problem comes to him, i
13 they've already lost, it's an after-the-fact issue.
14 There's an intriguing issue that's starting to evolve 15 since we formed oversight.
I'm starting to get a fair 16 number of concerns dumped in my lap every day or every 1
17 week -- every day is an exaggeration.
Some people 18 perceive because of all of the negative press associated 19 with concerns and what it's done to the company, that they 20 don't want to raise a concern but now that they've got 1
21 oversight, that's oversight's job.
So I've got several 22 concerns now that are in my house.
Don't really know what 23 to do, and we're chasing them as fast as we got.
We don't 24 have staff, so I was supposed to meet this morning, have 25 yet to meet with an engineer with some concerns.
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There's a couple of engineers in Unit I who 2
have raised concerns.
There's a procurement problem l
3 that's been put in my lap and these are just a fair number, of concerns that are starting to flow into the oversight 4
5 as they see this must be oversight's role to fix any j
6 issues.
7 MR. HANNON:
Let me -- Randy's question was a 8
good one and you may be in a position to see globally what 9
is going on from your past experience in the training 10 department and I'm concerned about the answer you just 11 gave us.
There appeared to be some turf battling over 12 some of the proposed corrective actions.
I believe we're 13 going to be talking later today with an individual that is C,-)
14 charged with putting an action plan in place.
15 THE WITNESS:
Eric Fries?
16 MR. HANNON:
Yes, Eric Fries, but from your 17 y rspective, Randy's question again, has management v
18 ' understood globally what needs to be done to correct, get 19 after some of these problems that need to be measured, 20 need to have some objective criteria put in place and 21 monitored for effectiveness and your earlier answer left 22 me with a very uncomfortable feeling that there are still 23 some subpockets of people trying to take charge and 24 without any oversight.
3 25 THE WITNESS:
I'm sorry for interrupting; NEAL R. GROSS coum puromus meinveensens 1asB IMODE SL#@ AVE., KW, Sie 3944488 WAs>GNGTOR D.C. EsDSs701 som 3364435
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warned me not to do that, but the issue I think is one in
)
2 which, I think there is a tacit understanding that we're l
l 3
going to have to do some measuring.
Certainly_the Coast 4
Guard issue is dead and that's all right.
Maybe_Dr. Chu's 5
efforts, if it's the right one. or maybe the one that_the -
6 corporate wants to use, but being that it's going to be 7
used corporate-wide, I don't'know how it addresses the l
4
^
i f
8 nuclear ones.
9 So at this point in time I don't see anything 3
)
10 in place.
My hope was before the class graduated this l
11 week, when the President shows up, that we would have had i
12 the results in-hand, and that's not the case.
Certainly 4
13 that's being directed by the motion senior level of the i
i i
14 company through the H.R. back through Mr. Fox and that IS.
that they want a professional survey tool and they want i
l 16 this and they want that.
So those things will, assuming s
i 17 that they really follow-through in some timely fashion, r
18 then I think the issue addressed on measuring could be l
19 addressed and maybe there's some other way to measure
[
20 other than through some survey tool.
i i
21 I think as dynamic as the organization is with f
22 regard to re-engineering and the troubles with the morale i
1 23 and that on the watch list, you almost need to measure 24 quarterly at this point in time.
I don't think you have 25 enough stability in the organization to go much longer NEAL R. GROSS CoORT REPORTERS AND TMNSCRIBERS i
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1 55 1
than that and not understand trends and why trends are 2
happening.
3 MR. HUEY:
I guess from what I was hearing you 4
say that management certainly is anxious to measure and 5
willing to measure.
The big question is what to measure 6
and how to measure and --
7 THE WITNESS:
And who's going to champion it.
8 It's the Millstone disease.
9 MR. HUEY:
Now you had a vehicle though that i
1 10 had been produced and --
1 11 THE WITNESS:
I've got that vehicle today.
that was the Coast Guard survey 12 MR. HUEY:
13 questionnaire and that has been presented by you to 14 management and has been rejected.
15 THE WITNESS:
Not because of the quality of i
16 questions; because of who the developer was.
Everybody 17 agrees the questions were scientifically and statistically 18 developed so that there is validity to it.
The questions 19 are asked several times in several ways so you've got your l
20 validity models and all that satisfied.
It was just who 21 created the document.
22 MR. HUEY:
Now, is someone else going about --
23 THE WITNESS:
Corporate is looking at a 24 corporate-wide and that is Mr. Richters, Vice President of 25 Human Resources.
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56 1
MR. HANNON:
This is Ed Richters?
-2 THE WITNESS:
Ed Richters, yes, and there is 3
some discussion of that coming out in the fall time frame, 4
maybe, and I don't know where that's going.
They said 5
this Thursday we're meeting with this Dr. Chu and 6
supposedly he has some survey tools and whether they 7
address your concerns side of things or just trust or 8
other issues, I don't know and I can't give you any 9
insight at this point in time until I look at his tool.
10 MR. HANNON:
Do you feel that there is a 11-corporate structure in place, are you working on a task 12 force say with Human Resource people to develop this?
13 THE WITNESS:
No, I am out of the loop.
I 14 took on the effort to champion the initial effort.
15 Certainly have been told that that isn't going forward and 16 they've got their own ideas and you've got to realize that
'17 my interest in this was to resolve the question that'was 18 brought forth in the Quinn report and oversight is not 19 responsible for nuclear concerns.
The oversight 20 organization as a whole is with Larry Chatfield and 21 certainly we talk daily.
Larry and I, Gary Bouchard, 22 Drawbridge and Dr. Bonaca talk every day at 1:00 o' clock, 23 from 1:00 to 2:00, so we certainly get into the concern I
24 side not necessarily with names, but many of the issues
)
25 that come to me I pass on to Larry or Larry provides 1
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57 1
resources to me to help chase some of these things.
2 MR. HUEY:
Am I correct in reading you, 3
though, that you don't view management's current reaction 4
to your specific proposal as a rejection of the need to do 5
what you were suggestion.
It's the method of doing it?
6 THE WITNESS:
That's my understanding at this 7
time.
8 MR. HUEY:
So you don't feel that, you don't 9
feel disenfranchised?
10 THE WITNESS:
I don't feel disenfranchised.
11 Everybody will tell you.nothing works fast enough for me.
12 I look to move things along and it's a common criticism of 13 me.
Nothing moves ever fast enough.
14 MR. HUEY:
Well, there's moving and you can 15 move in both directions.
I sense from your discussion 16 here today that it's not your opinion that things are 17 moving in the wrong ~ direction.
They might move in the 18 right direction faster than they are.
19 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
20 MR. HANNON:
I also get the sense from your 21 discussion that another component that seems to be missing 22 here is team work.
You've got various factions of doing 23 things, championing an issue and then find out that they 24 get torpedoed by some other faction in the company.
25 So the team work element doesn't seem to be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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very sophisticated at this point.
2 THE WITNESS:
It's like everything else, you l
3 know, these issues don't discourage me so sometimes you 4
get torpedoes and you pick up your toys and you continue J
5 on.
Would I have liked to have seen this thing resolved?
6 Sure; would I have liked to use the Coast Guard?
7 Certainly, but if the Dr. Chu achieves the same results or 8
they achieve it some other way, that's also fine.
But 9
most things need a champion.
I don't necessarily see that 10 champion.
11 Frank Scalia was charged to go on and look at 12 a survey tool and what's available out there, so he's out 13 there looking at what's available.
The last discussion I
)
l 14 had with him is he thinks he's got a company that might be 15 acceptable and feels that will use the majority of the 16 Coast Guard questions, as a matter of fact, in this i
17 company survey tool.
I don't see a purchase order and I 18 don't see a whole lot of energy at this time, but it's one 19 of those, it's percolating on some back burner.
20 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Just two follow-up questions.
21 A minute ago you said you meet with Chatfield and someone 22 else every day at 1:00 o' clock?
23 THE WITNESS:
That's correct; I try to, we try 24 to.
25 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
And you said we discuss NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1
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concerns not necessarily the names.
Does that mean 2
sometimes you do talk about names?
3 THE WITNESS:
It depends on what came to me 4
and what the issue is and where the person is.
Sometimes 5
it's necessary to discuss the names because of the 6
particular uniqueness of it and only one person is 7
handling this issue.
Larry has provided some of the 8
support to chase some of these issues.
I brought in 9
Yankee engineers to chase some of these issues.
Right now 10 I'm not staffed.
The company's gone through this rather 11 painful process of how it's staffing positions and we're 12 the lead organization to be staffed, but it's taking us 13 months.
So either they have to come from contract 14 sources, myself or from Larry's organization and what he 15 has in place.
16 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
So you're saying that it's 17 your feeling and it's Larry's feeling that sometimes names 18 have to be put on the table.
19 THE WITNESS:
That's correct, depending on 20 what the issue is.
Now, Larry doesn't share with me what 21 comes into his nuclear concerns.
It's me sharing with 22 him; this is what I've got on my oversight plate.
23 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
From people who come to you?
24 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
25 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
Okay, I wasn't clear on that.
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THE WITNESS:
No, it isn't Larry issues.
2 Larry says nothing.
When you deal with Larry, Larry says j
3 nothing, but I'll say to him, I need you to get Randy, can 4
I get Randy and I need him to go down and speak to Carl.
5 He just raised this issue and we need to get an 6
understanding of the depth and breadth of this issue and 7
somebody needs to chase this now.
8 MR. MOHRWINKEL:
So that when people come to j
9 you with a concern, they don't expect anonymity; is that 10 what you're saying?
11 THE WITNESS:
I don't think they do because in 12 most cases they raise it to second and third party in some 4
13 cases and somebody told them to go to oversight.
14 Depending on where and how the issue comes to me.
I have 15 an engineer right now to ec'd about eight people, asked me 16 to take a look at this issue and cc'd about eight people 17 on an E-mail.
Now, is he concerned with maintaining his 18 identity confidential?
I don't think so by virtue of the 19 fact of the distribution of his cc.
20 MR. HUEY:
But it's interesting, it sounds 21 like the environment within the organization has created a 22 situation where you basically have parallel concern 23 programs.
24 THE WITNESS:
Well, we're not a concern 25 program.
We're just trying to do what we can to resolve NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 rho 0E ISt.AND AVE., N.W.
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these things and move them along if they happen to come to 2
us.
3 MR. HUEY:
But if I understand the process 4
correctly, though nominally, the company is hoping 1
5 for an encouraging -- an environment where employees will 1
6 raise their concerns through their direct line of 7
supervision and get things addressed efficiently and --
i f
i 8
that way.
i 9
THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
j 10 MR. HUEY:
And if for whatever reason those 11 individuals don't feel comfortable doing that, they can 12 come to this Nuclear Safety Concern Program and get that 13 issue addressed.
14 THE WITNESS:
That's correct.
15 MR. HUEY:
Now it seems like there's 16 developing a third alternative of if you don't want to go i
l 17 up through your supervision and you don't want to really 18 be labeled in the nuclear safety concern mold, you can say 19 well, we can attack this program by bringing it to the 20 oversight.
21 THE WITNESS:
Because that's their job; in 22 their perception, that's their job to resolve things that 23 aren't right out there.
It's a craziness, but it's the 24 nature of where we are today.
25 MR. HUEY:
I guess I want to ask you, guess NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHoOE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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I'll express a concern in the form of a question to you.
2 Do you have any fear in that context that 3
since you're not staffed to do that type of a function 4
that some of these employees that come to you, instead of 5
using the other established methods, may end of getting 6
short shifted and further disenfranchised and maybe --
7 THE WITNESS:
In all cases, if something is 8
brought to me then it's my obligation to close that issue.
9 Now, where I get that resource to do that is another 10 issue.
Certainly recognizing Larry Chatfield has a lot of 11 expertise in this particular arena and certainly j
12 recognizing he has responsibility for concerns, I make l*
13 sure that he understands everything that's brought to me.
14 I think that needs to happen and do what we can to try to 15 keep up with this.
16 I don't know if this is a short-term 17 phenomenon as oversight creeps onto the scene or if it's 18 going to be a more sustained thing or as we revise the 19 culture, if we're able to do that, whether this will 20 evaporate because there will be some trust level with 21 management and people will go forward.
22 you know, if you look at the Quinn report it 23 says 40 percent of the people don't trust management.
24 Let's assume this report is wrong, so there's only 37 25 percent, still 37 percent of the people that won't do that i
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and now looking for an alternative approach.
2 MR. HANNON:
I just had one follow-up question 3
in your role in the nuclear oversight function.
Before 4
you had developed some, I'd call them outreach 5
relationships with other rescurces to help you enhance 6
your effectiveness.
7 Have you done anything in that regard with 8
your new function and, if so, what and what are your 9
intentions long-term?
1 10 THE WITNESS:
I believe you need to look 11 inside and outside.
I believe the industry's too 12 incestuous.
That's why I'm always looking outside and in 13 that period in training I developed relationships with the 14 U.S. Olympic team, with West Point, with other areas.
15 One of the things which I have pressed the 16 corporation to do is to hire Brad Scott and there is an 17 effort, I need to get on with doing the paperwork, but I 18 think there's a genuine interest to bring Brad Scott into 19 oversight.
Colonel Scott heads the Center for the 20 Enhancement of Human Performance and senior management has 21 agreed in principle to bringing Brad Scott on board and 22 I'm hoping we capture him when he gets out of the Army in 23 July and Brad has done a couple tours of West Point in the 24 area of the Center for the Enhancement of Human 25 Performance and is one of the most remarkable individuals NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 3
1 on maximizing relationships and individual contribution 2
and motivating people and I think we need him in the 3
oversight organization recognizing our long, long, long 4
history of. difficulty in the area of concerns, in the area 5
of 5054, maintaining our design database, corrective 6
actions not being effective, peoples' behaviors, values 7
and those type of things that we need a czar, if you.want 8
to call.it, of human behavior.
9 Certainly. Miller has supported that.
Ted 10 Fieganbaum, when we raised it, supported it.
He's an 11 individual who I certainly respect.
He has a bachelor's 12 in nuclear engineering and a master's in human performance 13 engineering and he's done two tours at West Point heading 14 up the Center for the Enhancement of Human Performance and 15 I think he could be marvelous.
16 Now, will we get'him?
IBM offered him a job-1 17 as heading up all of their corporation training and q
18 another organization has offered him a job, but he would 19 prefer to come here to NU.
)
20 MR. HANNON:
What about other facilities, j
21 other nuclear facilities'that have effective oversight 22 activities; are you looking at anybody else?
23 THE WITNESS:
I haven't looked at anybody yet.
24 We came on to the scene in March and have been swamped 25 with these 5054 issues because we were instrumental in NEAL R.- GROSS COUM REPORTERB AND TRANBCNSERB 1
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1 shutting down that whole effort.
Concurrent with that, I 2
had some problems dealing with the Unit 1 operator 3
training programs and jumped in the middle of that with 4
Bill Riffer to straighten out several things and moved to 5
have a license removed and I have taken several actions in 6
several other areas so there hasn't been the breather.
7 My first objective is to try to get a staff on 8
board and then, I think what your question is is very 4
9 legitimate, is we need to understand what works good in 10 oversight and how oversight works inside and outside of 11 the industry and I think we will learn that.
My desires 1
12 are we steal ideas and use the best of everybody's ideas 13 and you could leverage them and build off of them.
14 MR. HANNON:
Okay, I don't have any further 15 questions but I wanted to offer you one last opportunity 16 if there is something you thought we should have asked and 17 we didn't or something else on your mind now that you want 18 to share with us, please, before we complete the 19 interview, we'd like to hear it.
20 THE WITNESS:
I think certainly your questions 21 have been very comprehensive.
You covered a broad scope.
22 Do I think Northeast Utilities has all the answers?
23 Obviously not.
I don't think we bridge the issues.
I 24 think they're wrestling today with the cultural issues for 25 the first time in ten years, fifteen years and I'm not I
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1 certain how it's all going to play out.
Certainly, Mike 2
Quinn's report and other reports bring a lot to bear to 3
the table and there's tremendous effort on your part at i
4 the NRC to get this issue somewhat addressed because it's 5
causing an equal amount of concern in your house.
6 So I don't think -- it's a plague on both j
7 houses at this point and needs to be somehow cured.
l 8
MR. HANNON:
I want to thank you for 9
participating with us today in this review effort and 10 close giving you this document that describes what I went i
11 over with you earlier about how we're going to be treating 12 the transcripts.
Our transcript custodian will be getting i.
13 in touch with you when we receive it to set up an 14 appointment with you to have you view it for accuracy.
15 It's approximately 12:15 that the interview is 16 concluded.
17 (Whereupon, the interview was concluded at 18 12:15 o' clock p.m.)
19 20
-21 22 23 l
24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCNBERS 1323 RHoDE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
Name of Proceeding:
Interview of Michael Brown Docket Number:
n/a
]
i Place of Proceeding:
Waterford, CT were held as herein appears, and that this is the original j
i transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
Paul' Thorn Official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co.,
Inc.
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