ML20154F652
| ML20154F652 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Maine Yankee |
| Issue date: | 04/23/1998 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9810090302 | |
| Download: ML20154F652 (183) | |
Text
.
= _.. _...
DDR PBR UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION REGION 1 In re:
MAINE YANKEE ATOMIC POWER COMPANY
~
An Enforcement Conference was held before Loretta B.
Devery, Registered Professional Reporter and Notary Public, at the offices of the United States Nuclaar Regulatory Commission, Region 1,
475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, April 23, 1998, commencing at 1:00 P.M.
i PRESENT FROM NRC:
PRESENT FROM LICENSEE:
HUBERT MILLER MIKE MEISNER JIM LIEBERMAN MARY ANN LYNCH RON BELLAMY DAVID E.
BARRY DANIEL H.
DORMAN ETHAN BRAND GIOVANNA LONGO GEORGE ZINKE JOHN ZEWOLINSKI GREGG SWINDLEHURST TRACY WALKER GREG HUDSON GENE HSII TIMOTHY COLLINS A.
RANDOLPH BLOUGH RICHARD RASMUSSEN j
l TERRY REIS JIMMY YEROKUN
{
$q0 ALL POINTS REPORTING 723 Erlen Road Norristown, PA 19401 (610) 272-6731
}
Ig m-9810090302 980423
\\
U
.n-PDR ADOCK 05000309 T
PDR f"^*I(]t}
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 t
~
. ~ -
2 1
2 MR. MILLER:
This is an enforcement 3
conference, a meecing between NRC and Maine Yankee 4
to review the circumstances surrounding issues that 5
came out of an investigation by the NRC.
These 6
issues relate to the treatment of and handling of 7
the small-break LOCA codes, atmospheric steam dump 8
valve and system logic testing.
9 We probably ought to go around the 10 room, even though you've gotten the names, and do 11 introductions so everyone knows who's here.
And 12 then following that, my colleagues will make some 13 presentations to set the stage for the meeting, then 14 we'll turn it over to you.
15 But I'm Hub Miller, Regional 16 Administrator.
17 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Jim Lieberman, Director 18 of the NRC Office of Enforcement.
19 MR. BELLAMY:
Ron Bellamy, I'm in 20 Region 1, I'm the Chief of the Decommissioning 21 Branch.
22 MS. WALKER:
Tracy Walker, Senior 23 Enforcement Specialist, Region 1.
24 MR. REIS:
Terry Reis, Senior ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
3 1
Enforcement Specialist, Headquarters.
2 MR. RASMUSSEN:
Rich Rasmussen, Senior 3
Resident Inspector, Maine Yankee.
4 MR. BLOUGH:
Randy Blough, Director of 5
the Nuclear Materials Division in the region 6
MR. COLLINS:
Tim Collins, Chief of 7
Reactors Systems Branch, NRR.
8 MR. HSII:
Gene Hsii, Senior Reactor 9
System Specialist, Reactor System Branch, NRR.
10 MS. LONGO:
Giovanna Longo, Senior 11 Enforcement Attorney, Office of General Counsel.
12 MR. DORMAN:
I'm a Project 13 Manager for NRR.
14 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
John Zewolinski.
I'm 15 the Acting Director for the Division of Reactor 16 Projects for Regions 1 and 2 in the Office of 17 Nuclear Reactor Regulation.
18 MR. MEISNER:
Mike Meisner, Maine 19 Yankee President.
20 MS. LYNCH:
Mary Ann Lynch, Vice 21 President of Law and Government Affairs from Maine 22 Yankee.
23 MR. BARRY:
David Barry.
I'm with the 24 law firm of Pierce Atwood in Portland, Maine.
And ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
4 1
I'm here as outside counsel for Maine Yankee.
2 MR. HUDSON:
I'm Greg Hudson, with Duke 3
Engineering Services, a project director in the 4
Nuclear Group.
5 MR. BRAND:
Ethan Brand, with licensing 6
at Maine Yankee.
7 MR. ZINKE:
George Zinke, Director of 8
Regulatory Affairs, Maine Yankee.
9 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Gregg Swindlehurst.
10 I work for Duke Power.
'11 MR. YEROKUN:
I'm Jimmy Yerokun, NRC 12 Inspector in regional office here.
13 MR. MILLER:
Well, the reason why we 14 have so many people here is to make sure we can have 15 a full discussion with you on this topic.
l 16 We sent you a choice letter actually, 17 which is a letter that effectively says that we have l
18 information, we think we have what we need to make a i
19 decision, but it's your choice.
You made a 20 submittal, which I think was very helpful in terms 21 of -- fairly thick submittal, I guess when was it, 22 beginning of April.
We've studied that.
So I 23 expect that in this conference, we will be able to 24 carry on a good discussion with you and get to the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
5 1
issues and get to the things that we need to make 2
our decision.
3 I'm going to let Jim and John and 4
others lay out more completely what the issues are.
5 And as I say, the others will make a presentation.
6 But we'd like to have a good discussion.
And as I 7
say, don't take the numbers here as anything other 8
than our interest in making sure we leave here with 9
what we need..
10 MR. MEISNER:
Good.
We appreciate 1
11 that.
12 MR. MILLER:
We have studied very much 13 your submittal.
And my sense is that it has given r
14 us the basis to focus in on what we really need.
l 15 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
But there's room for l
l 16 additional dialogue.
17 MR. MILLER:
So with that, Tracy is 18 going to walk us through what the violations are.
19 MS. WALKER:
Actually, I'm just going 20 to lead in talking a little bit about the l
l 21 enforcement process, and then I'll turn it over to i
22 others to discuss the specific violations.
23 As I said, I'm Tracy Walker.
I'm the 24 Senior Enforcement Specialist in Region 1.
As Mr.
I ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
6 1
Miller said, today we're here to have a 2
predecisional enforcement conference, which actually 3
concerns apparent violations that were identified 4
during three Office of Investigations investigations 5
that were conducted between December '95 and October 6
of
'97.
7 We sent you the svnopsis of those OI 8
investigations in our letter to you on December 9
19th, which actually gave you the choice as to 10 whether or not you wanted to have this or needed an 11 enforcement conference.
And as Mr. Miller said, you 12 elected to both respond in writing and have this 13 conference.
14 The enforcement process actually begins l
15 with NRC evaluation of findings, either from an 16 inspection or an investigation -- in this case, it 17 was mainly from an investigation -- as well as 18 whether there are apparent violations.
dhen we l
19 determine we have apparent violations, we then look 20 at the safety and regulatory significance of those i
21 violations and categorize them based on their 22 significance into four severity levels, severity 23 level 1 being the most significant, down to the 24 severity level 4 being the least significant.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
7 1
If we have any potential severity level i
2 1,
2, or 3 violations, we normally hold a conference l
3 if the NRC thinks we need more information, or in 2
4 this case, if the licensee requests a conference.
5 The conference is essentially the last
~
6 step in the process prior to us deciding on what.the 7
appropriate enforcement action is.
A primary i
8 purpose is to discuss the apparent violations, their 9
significance, the reasons why they occurred, l
10 including the apparent root c a u r.e s, and any actions.
11 that have been taken to correct the violations and 12 prevent them from happening again.
13 In this case, since you requested the 14 conference in addition to providing the written 15 response, what we intend to do is just present the 16 apparent violation, and then basically turn the 17 discussion over to you to discuss those aspects of 18 the enforcement process that you feel are 19 applicable.
20 You also requested that we be prepared 21 to discuss the basis for our determination that some-l 22 of the apparent violations were willful.
We do 23 intend to summarize that bases when we present the 24 apparent violations.
However, it's not the purpose ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
8 1
of the predecisional conference to negotiate an 2
enforcement sanction, rather it provides information 3
that will be considered by the NRC in our decision 4
making process concerning whether enforcement action 5
will be taken.
6 We hope to have a good gave and take l
7 dialogue, but we aren't negotiating what the final 8
outcome will be.
There's a possibility that we 9
could do additional inspections or investigation, if 10 necessary, _and the apparent violations that are 11 discussed today may be subject to change.
The final 12 decision regarding the appropriate action will be J
13 made by both the region and in coordination with NRR 14 and the Office of Enforcement in Headquarters.
l 15 Prior to turning the meeting over to l
16 Mr. Dorman, I do want to note that any statements 17 made by the NRC staff should not be viewed as NRC's 18 final position, nor should the lack of our response 19 to a statement be viewed as our acceptance or our 20 position.
21 With that, I'll turn it over to Dan 22 Dorman to present the violations.
23 MR. DORMAN:
I will be presenting the 24 apparent violations related to the small-break 4
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
9 1
loss-of-coolant accident analysis and the 2
atmospheric steam dump capacity.
I'm going to go 3
through them fairly slowly so you can catch the 4
points that I make.
As Tracy mentioned, one of the 5
points I will be making is I will point out where 6
and why the staff perceived apparent willful 7
violations of regulatory requirements in the conduct 8
of licensed activities.
9 I will also explain why, when I get to 10 the apparent violation related to the misapplication 11 of the Alb-Chambre correlation, based on your 12 written response, the staff is revising its 13 statement of the apparent violation to clarify why 14 we believe the plant-specific evaluation model was 15 not acceptable as required by 10 CFR 50.46.
16 So the first set of apparent violations 17 relate to the analyses relied upon by Maine Yankee 18 to demonstrate the capability of emergency core 19 cooling systems at Maine Yankee for Operating Cycles 20 12 through 15.
21 In response to a Maine Yankee proposed 22 Tech Spec Change, the NRC staff amended the Maine 23 Yankee Tech Specs at Section 5.14, Core Operating 24 Limits Report.
This amendment became effective on ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
10 1
' November 18,.1991 during Cycle 12.
' Tech Spec 5 =.14. 2 2
requires, in'part, thatDthe analytic methods used to 3
Idetermine core operating limits, as listed in. Tech 4
Spec <3.10, shall'be limited to those previously 5
reviewed and approved by the NRC.
6-The only approved analytic method for 7
small-break loss-of-coolant accident analysis listed 8
in Tech Spec 5.14.2 for determining the core 9
operating limits specified in Tech Spec 3.10 was the l
10 RELAP5YA small-break LOCA analytic method.
During 11-the remainder of Cycle 12 and all of' Cycle 13, Maine 12 Yankee relied not on the-RELAP5YA small-break LOCA j
<13 analytic method, but on a small-break LOCA analytic 14 method developed by Combustion Engineering to 15 determine core-operating limits.
This is.an 16 apparent violation of the facility Technical 17-Specifications.
18 Furthermore, Maine Yankee submitted 19 Core Operating Limits Reports for Cycles 12 and 13 20 that stated, in part, that Maine Yankee used the 21 NRC-approved analytic methods listed in the facility.
j l
22 Technical Specification 5.14.2 in preparing the 23-report.
In fact, as I just stated, Maine Yankee did 24 not use the RELAP5YA small-break LOCA method.
This ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
... _ ~
~
~.-
11 1
constituted an apparent violation of 10 CFR 50.9 l
2 which requires, in part, that information provided 3
to the Commission by a licensee shall be complete i
4 and accurate in all material respects.
5 The Technical Specification amendment l
6 incorporating the Core Operating Limits Reports 7
requirements was reviewed by three managers of Maine 8
Yankee, who also either reviewed or signed the Cycle 9
12 and 13 Core Operating Limits Reports.
10 Additionally, these individuals stated 11 that they were aware at the time that the Combustion 12 Engineering small-break LOCA evaluation model, 13 rather than the RELAPSYA model, was used for the 14 Cycle 12 and Cycle 13 reload analyses.
15 In light of the importance of 16 performing safety analyses using approved methods 17 and the care apparently given to the analyses and 18 submittals, it appears ~ that careless disregard on 19 the part of the Maine Yankee staff contributed to 20 the Cycle 12 and 13 apparent violations.
21 MR. MEISNER:
Dan, are you going to 22 expand on that at all?
23 MR. DORMAN:
Not in this presentation, l
24 but what we'd like to do is get through these and I
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
12 1
then we can get into the discussions.
That's why I 2
wanted to go through these a little bit deliberately 2
so you guys can get whatever points you want to get
'4 out of that information.
5 MR. BARRY:
Could I ask you to just 6
repeat the last piece of that Tech Spec amendment i
I 7
was reviewed by three managers?
4 8
MR. DORMAN:
The Technical 9
Specification amendment which incorporated the Core 10 Operating Limits Reports requirements was reviewed 11 by three managers of Maine Yankee, who also either 12 reviewed or signed the Cycle 12 and 13 Core 13 Operating Limits Reports.
Additionally, these 14 individuals stated that they were aware at the time 15 that the Combustion Engineering small-break 16 loss-of-coolant evaluation model, rather than the 17 RELAP5YA model, was used for the Cycle 12 and Cycle 10 13 reload analyses.
19 MR. BARRY:
Thank you.
20 MR. DORMAN:
For Cycles 14 and 15,
-21 Maine Yankee did use the RELAP5YA small-break LOCA 22 analysis to determine the core operating limits.
23 However, the analyses used failed to provide i
24 assurance that the most severe postulated ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
13 1
loss-of-coolant accidents were analyzed.
There was 2
a portion of the small-break spectrum between 0.35 3
square feet and at least 0.6 square feet for which 4
no acceptable analytic method was capable of 5
calculating cooling performance or reliably 6
calculating cooling performance.
7 Analysis of the small-break LOCA abmre 8
the break size of 0.35 square feet was not possible 9
using RELAPSYA because the code terminated after the 10' safety injection tank actuation due to numerical 11 convergence errors.
In addition, the NRC-approved 12 large-break LOCA analysis method, WREM, although 13 later run down to 0.6 square feet, was not i
14 acceptable to calculate emergency core cooling 15 system performance in the small-break region of 0.6 i
16 square feet and above because the evaluation model 17 had not been campared to applicable experimental i
l 18 data to demonstrate its reliability in the 19 small-break region.
20 This constituted apparent violations of 21 the emergency core cooling system analysis 22 requirements of 10 CFR 50.46 and Appendix K because 23 the Emergency Core Cooling System analyses did not i
24 cover a sufficient portion of the break spectrum ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
14 1
using acceptable evaluation models to provide 2
assurance that the most severe postulated LOCAs were 3
calculated.
4 The Final Safety Analysis Report and 5
the Core Performance Reports underlying the Final 6
Safety Analysis Report for Cycles 14 and 15 were not 7
complete and accurate in all material respects.
The i
8 Final Safety Analysis Report incorporates the Core 9
Performance Analysis Reports, which were alao 10 submitted to the NRC.
The Core Performance Anulycic 11 Reports relied upon and incorporated the small-break 12 LOCA analysis described in Yhnkee At'omic Electric 13 Company report YAEC-1868 to demonstrate the 14 Emergency Core Cooling System performance.
15 YAEC-1868 contained statements that the 16 analysis of small-break LOCAs covered a " complete 17 matrix of break sizes" and "a sufficient range to 18 identify the limiting small-break LOCA condition for 19 Maine Yankee."
20 YAEC-1868 was not complete and accurate 21 in all material respects because it failed to 22 calculate a number of postulated loss-of-coolant 23 accidents sufficient to provide assurance that the 24 most severe postulated loss-of-coolant accidents
(
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
15 1
were calculated, as a result of a portion of the l
2 small-break spectrum between 0.35 square feet and at 3
least 0.6 square feet for which no acceptable ECCS 4
analysis was capable of calculating or reliably 5
calculating cooling performance.
This constituted 6
apparent violations of 10 CFR 50.9.
7 In its original statement of the 8
apparent violation related to misapplication of the 9
Alb-Chambre correlation, the staff stated that the 10 model overpredicted. core cooling performance.
In i
11 implementing the RELAP5YA code for ECCS analyses for 12 Cycles 14 and 15, an unjustified large cross flow 13 resistance factor was used for the flow path 14 connecting the intact loop and broken loop downcomer 15 nodes in the downcomer nodalization model.
16 The unjustified flow resistance factor 17 was derived from the emergency core cooling water 18 penetration factors which were based on large 19 penetration factors calculated with an error in the 20 application of'the Alb-Chambre correlation.
This 4
21 resulted in use of the unjustified large cross flow 22 resistance factor in the ECCS analysis.
23 In the written. response of April 3rd, 24 1998, Maine Yankee provided the results of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
16 1
correcting the errors in the correlation and stated 2
that the inputs to the model were unaffected.
Maine 3
Yankee concluded that core cooling was not 4
overpredicted and therefore there was no violation.
5 However, the corrected Alb-Chambre 6
calcuation also produced a non-physical result.
7 Therefore, there was no physical justification 8
presented for the selected model input for the Cycle 9
14 and 15 small-break LOCA analyses.
This 10 constituted apparent violations of the requiremente 11 of 10 CFR 50-.46 that ECCS performance must be 12 calculated with an acceptable evaluation model.
13 Finally, in January 1993, the Maine 14 Yankee licensee analyzed a decrease in steam 15 generator pressure, pursuant to the requirements of 16 10 CFR 50.59, using a best estimate model, rather 17 than the Appendix K model described in the staff's l'8 January 1989 Safety Evaluation Report regarding 19 RELAP5YA.
20 Additionally, the Best Estimate model, 21 contrary to Appendix K to 10 CFR Part 50, calculated 22 decay heat with the 1979 ANS Standard rather than 23 the 1971 ANS standard plus 20 percent, and 24 calculated the two-phase critical flow with the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
17 1
RELAP5YA mechanistic model rather than the Moody 2
critical flow model.
This constituted an apparent 3
violation of.the 10 CFR 50.46 requirement to i
4 calculate ECCS performance using an acceptable 5
evaluation model.
These were the apparent 6
violations related to the ECCS analyses.
7 There was also an apparent violation 8
concerning the submission of materially inaccurate 9
information provided to the NRC regarding the 10 capacity of the atmospheric steam dump valve at 11 Maine Yankee.
l l
l 12 On March 18, 1986, Maine Yankee l
13 submitted a Procedures Generation Package for l
14 emergency operating procedures to the NRC.
This 15 submission was made to demonstrate conformance with 16 NUREG-0737 regarding clarification of Three Mile 17 Island Action Plan Requirements, specifically Action 18 Item I.C.1,
" Guidance for the Evaluation and 19 Development of Procedures for Transients and r
l 20 Accidents."
l l
21 In this submission, Maine Yankee i
22 identified the capacity of the a tmospheric steam 23 dump valve as 5 percent of total steam flow.
In 24 fact, tne capacity of the atmospheric steam dump i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
18 1
valve was two and a half percent of total steam 2
flow.
The inaccurate statement was material to the 3
Commission because the relief capacity relates to 4
the ability to adequately achieve core cooling.
5 This constituted an apparent violation of Section 6
186 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, as amended.
7 The Maine Yankee employee'who prepared 8
the Procedures Generation Package stated that when 9
he submitted the package, he was aware that the 10 steam dump valve capacity was two and a half percent 11 and not five percent.
Therefore, this apparent 12 violation appears te have been willful.
13 Ron Bellamy will now present the 14 apparent violacions associated with the safety 15 system logic testing.
16 MR. MEISNER:
May I ask a question now 17 or should I wait?
18 MR. DORMAN:
Let's let Ron give his 19 presentation and we'll be getting into a discussion.
20 MR. BELLAMY:
There are two apparent 21 violations associated with the safety system logic 22 testing performed by Maine Yankee field engineers on 23 August 22, 1996.
24 The first apparent violation is cited ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
19 1
against Technical Specification 5.8.2 that requires 2
written procedures be established, implemented, and 3
maintained for testing of safety related equipment.
4 Specifically, a step of work orders 96-02928-00 and 5
29-00 could not be performed as written.
This step 6
required open circuit continuity be verified using a 7
volt-ohmmeter across circuits, and because this 8
could not be done due to resistance in the circuit, 9
the field engineers verified and signed the step as 10 satisfactorily completed.
No minor technical change 11 was processed.
And I note that your April 3rd 12 submittal admits this violation.
13 The second apparent violation is cited 14 against 10 CFR 50.9 for the failure to maintain 15 complete and accurate information, in that the field 16 engineers signed the procedural step as 17 satisfactorily completed when the verification was 18 performed visually instead of with a volt-ohmmeter.
19 The engineers understood the requirement and contend 20 that a visual inspection was an acceptable means to 21 verify the open contacts, satisfy the intent, but 22 consciously decided they did not need to initiate a 23 minor technical change.
This is considered 24 material.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
20 1
Your April 3rd submittal admits the 2
violation, but you disagree with our statements in 3
the December 19, 1997 letter that there was a 5
4 willful violation of Technical Specifications in 10 5
CFR 50.9.
And I note that you also disagree that 6
the field engineers -- with our statement that the 7
field engineers deliberately violated the plant 8
procedures.
9 Unless there's something that any NRC 10 staff have to offer at this time, I'll turn the 11 conference over to you.
12 MR. MILLER:
You see from the
)
13 recounting here what has come from the investigation 14 that we regard as serious matters.
And it is 15 important that we have an understanding of your take 16 on this, but these are potel.tially very significant 17 issues.
18 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Could I just make one 19 point before we turn it over Maine Yankee?
That in 20 Dan's presentation and our letter of December 19th, 21 there was only two apparent violations associated 22 with RELAP5YA.
We focused on the potential for 23 willfulness.
In your submittal of April 3rd, you 24 addressed willfulness for a variety of violations.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 21 1
So I just want to make sure that we know where 2
you're coming from on that particular issue.
3-Also, in your response of April 3rd, in 4-some cases, you: denied the violations specifically; 5
in other cases, you admitted the violations; and in 6
other cases, you said you recognized it did not meet i
7 NRC expectations and industry standards, but did not s
8 state whether your view was the violations were i
9 admitted or denied.
l 10-So in your discussion today, if you 11-clarify what you meant by did not meet NRC 12 expectations from the point of view of whether you j
i 13 feel that the violation is justified for not, I 14 appreciate that, 15 MR. MEISNER:
We will.
Before we get 16 into'our prepared portion of the presentation, I'd 17 like_to just ask a few clarifying questions, and 18 maybe some other folks would too.
19 Dan, in your discussions on the various 20 RELAP potential violations -- I'm not good enough to 21 hold those statements in my mind and compare against 22 what you said -- can I assume that except for the 23 Alb-Chambre correlation that your summary of those 24 is consistent with what was written?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
22 1
MR. DORMAN:
Except for the 2
Alb-Chambre, that is consistent with what was stated 3
in the December 19th letter.
With respect to the 4
Cycle 12 and 13 apparent violations and with respect 5
to the atmospheric steam dump, there was a brief 6
clarification point to start from on the basis of 7
the apparent willfulness.
8 MR. MEISNER:
And on willfulness then, 9
I guess I would summarize it as three individuals or 10 three managers --
11 MR. DORMAN:
Three managers.
12 MR. MEISNER:
-- for the RELAPSYA, knew 13 that the CE small-break LOCA code was used for the 14 Cycle 12 and 13 reload analyses, and also signed off 15 on the Core Operating Limits Reports for those 16 cycles?
17 MR. DORMAN:
And also reviewed the Tech 18 Spec amendment that incorporated the requirements.
19 MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
20 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
And signed the Tech 21 Spec application.
22 MR. MEISNER:
And can you discuss now a 23 little more, given that factual basis, your 24 conclusion as to willfulness or careless disregard?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
23 1
MR. DORMAN:
I don't know if I'm the 2
best one to do that, but maybe I can start it.
It 3
is in the Tech Specs, the application that Maine 4
Yankee filed in 1988 and that the staff issued the 5
amendment in 1991 was the first incorporation of 6
code requirements in the Maine Yankee Tech Specs, it 7
identified the list of analysis methods which were 8
approved for use for that purpose.
9 In that list, the only small-break LOCA 10 method was RELAP5YA.
The CE method was not in that 11 list.
These three individuals all reviewed that 12 amendment application and had reason to be aware 13 that the small-break LOCA method that was required 14 was RELAP5YA.
15 -
They also subsequently either reviewed 16 or signed the Cycle 12 and the Cycle 13 Core 17 Operating Limits Reports which contained statements 18 that those reports had been prepared in accordance 19 with that Tech Spec.
And they also stated that they
-20 knew that the small-break LOCA analysis had not --
21 had been done for the reload analyses not using the 22 RELAP5YA, but using the combustion code.
23 I think from this I think we reasonably i
24 expect they knew or should have known that the RELAP ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
24 l
1 code was the required code.
By their own l
2 statements, they knew that the CE code was used in 3
lieu of the RELAP code.
They knew or should have l
4 known the requirement.
They signed off on it 5
anyway.
6 MR. LIEBERMAN:
And given the l
l 7
importance that the Agency and the public expects us 1
l 8
to treat ECCS analyses, in summary, we thought more l
9 care should have been exercised.
But what --
10 MR. MEISNER:
I understand that.
I 11 guess -- all I wanted to get to -- and I think we'll 12 address it more fully when we start talking -- is I j
13 guess you're not saying that these folks saw the 14 RELAP analysis for setting operating limits and the 15 CE code for doing the reload analysis as mutually L
6 16 exclusive and deliberately signed off on this.
17 You're saying that in your mind that these things 18 are mutually exclusive and the folks should have 19 known
- hat.
20 MR. REIS:
I think we're saying they're 21 not mutually e2:clusive, are we?
22 MR. DORMAN:
I'm not sure what we're 23 saying is mutually exclusive 24 MS. LONGO:
I'm not sure what you mean ALL POINTS 'tEPORTING (610) 270-6731 I
l 25 1
when you talk about what's mutually exclusive.
2-MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
A reasonableness test.
3 MR. MEISNER:
Using a code for your i
4 license basis reload analysis versus using a code to 5
set your operating limits.
.I guess what I'm trying i
l 6'
to get to is I think in your statement-you see those 7
as, equivalent.
i 8
MR. COLLINS:
They should be the same 9
code.
If you recall the history of how the Kohler L
~10 came about maybe an explanation of that -- before l
i i
-11 there was ever a Kohler, okay, these numbers were in 12-the: Tech Specs themselves.
And what licensees would i
L 13 have to do is they would have to analyze the entire L
l
.14 break spectrum with their approved methodology, find 15 the limiting break, and out of that, they would pull l-16 your numbers out.
But the process involved l
17 analyzing your whole spectrum with the approved j
L 18 codes.
And that was. submitted to the staff, every 19 review for that cycle, the whole purpose of the 20-Kohler process was to eliminate that cycle by cycle 21 review, not to change the Tech Specs involved.
l 22 The steps would be analyzed with the i
23 approved method.
You find the limiting break, and
~24 you pull the numbers out of that analysis.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
26 1
MR. MEISNER:
I understand.
And one 2
more question, on the ADV willfulness issue, it's 3
limited to an employee knew that this dump capacity 4
was different than what he submitted in the 5
Procedures Generation package?
6 MR. DORMAN:
Yes.
7 MS. LONGO:
And he prepared the 8
package.
9 MS. LYNCH:
And it's limited to one 10 employee?
11 MS. LONGO:
Yes.
12 MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
Mary Ann?
13 MS. LYNCH:
I don't think I have any 14 questions.
?. 5 MR. MEISNER:
One thing we were 16 discussing before we came in here is that, you know, 17 depending on what we had heard and, you know, some 18 of this is new to us, we may or may not want to have 19 a short caucus or break-out.
Do you see any need to 20 do that?
21 MR. MILLER:
That's fine.
22 MR. BARRY:
Whether we take a break 23 just by natural --
24 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
Take a break now.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
27 1
MR. LIEBERMAN:
It's our normal 2
practice that at the end of the discussions, we take 3
a break.
The staff will consider whether we have 4
any additional questions, and you folks can consider 5
whether you have any additional issues.
6 MR. MILLER:
Feel comfortable, if you l
7 need to take a breuk and to caucus.
The important 8
thing here is to get to the truth and to the facts, 9
from your side, from our side and, you know, it's 10 perfectly appropriate to caucus --
11 MR. IGISNER :
I understand.
12 MR. MILLER:
-- at any time along the 13 way.
Do you want to take five minutes?
14 MR. MEISNER:
Why don't we do that, 15 take five or ten minutes.
What we need to discuss a 16 bit is the Alb-Chambre side of things.
17 MR. MILLER:
Just tell us more or less 18 what you're -- obviously I don't expect you to be, 19 you know, be cavalier about this, but if you just 20 tell us more or less what it is that you need to 21 discuss, and we'll be happy to break now.
The 22 question is from a logistics point of view, it might 23 be better -- I guess we don't have next door 24 anymore.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
...~
.~. ~.. -
~...- -.
28:
1 MR. LIEBERMAN:
They could stay here 2
and we'll be 3~
MR. MILLER:
We'll just step out-for a z
4 minute and just tell us, and we'll take a break.
5
-(Recess.)
6 MR. MILLER:
Back on the record I 7
guess.
8 MR. MEISNER:
Our-hesitation and 9
uncertainty is due to the technical nature of this.
10 I know for me in particular, and maybe for others, i
11 it's kind of hard to understand some of these type
-12 things.
13 One thing we came in here hoping to do 14 is avoid a situation where we get into a detailed 15 technical discussion, because I don't think --
16 that's not where our focus is.
I don't think that's 17 where your focus is.
And I didn't want to get into 4
18.
a battling Ph.D. type of differing professional 19 opinions.
20 So I'm going to recognize that we think 21 we have some understanding of the change.
I'm not 22 sure we have a deep understanding.
We were going to 23 talk about this potential violation in the course of
!'o 24 stepping through all of them.
I'd like to defer ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 29 1
that until then and take a shot at a technical l
2 discussion, but no more than a couple minutes.
And 3
if it bogs down, I think what we need to do is, 4
given the change in the statement of the violation, 5
see that written down and then perhaps respond on l
6 the docket with a technical discussion.
Does that 7
sound acceptable?
8 MR. MILLER:
Yeah.
Yeah.
Let's take 9
our best shot at a discussion, I agree.
It's i
10 possible, there is a lot of technical complexity l
11 here, and if it's important to the decision, then we i
12 need to have it.
If it's not, hopefully we'll be 13 able to determine that and just move on.
14 MR. MEISNER:
As you know, Hub, our 7
15 primary focus is willfulness.
I think that's not a 16 dispute on this issue.
17 MR. MILLER:
That's at the center of 18 what we're talking about here is careless disregard 19 and willfulness.
20 MR. MEISNER:
All right.
Well, why 21 don't we jump off then into our portion of the 22 agenda.
We have handouts here for the overheads.
23 And I want to warn you a bit, I'm going to be a 24 little long-winded up front.
Let's start with the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
... _.... -... _. ~. _ _ _
30 1
agenda.
l 2
As a good number.of you remember, it l
3 was a little over a year ago that Mike Selmon and I 4
were before you, before many of you, in another 5
enforcement conference on the Maine Yankee ISAT 6
violations.
And as you recall, we agreed with those l
7 violations as well as the underlying root causes 8
identified in the ISAT report.
9 We gave you, I think, a pretty sober 10 and objective review of our findings, they expanded 11 upon your identified root causes, and detailed the 12 corrective action you were putting into place for 13 ISAT.
14 I think if we were able to give you an 15 objective review on ISAT, because we represented at 16 that time a new management team for Maine Yankee, we 17 were unconnected to Maine Yankee's past, and we had 18 no vested interest in preserving any past 19 interpretations or misunderstandings that may have 20 happened along the way.
In fact, quite the 21 contrary, we h&d a clear vested interest in 22 unearthing and solving preexisting problems as the 23 new management team.
And that's what we intend to 24 do today.
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 m
e-
l 31 1
There are few people remaining in Maine 2
Yankee who participated in the RELAP problems as 3
they were developing.
So what you see in writing 4
from us on this subject and what we'll expand on 5
today is a retrospective view of RELAP with a fresh 6-set of eyes.
Both ISAT and RELAP sprang from some i
7 common root causes and both involved some clear 8
violations of regulatory requirements.
9 One difference though between the two 10 is the motive attributed to the individuals 11 involved.
A finding of willfulness and careless 12 disregard with respect to some of the RELAP -- and 13 by the way, when I use RELAP, I'm jvst using that 14 generically to cover the whole -rang < of violations.
15 And we don't feel that's correct, and that's what 16 Mary Ann and I will be discussing primarily today 17 and the notion of willfulness and careless 18 disregard.
19 But while I'm on the topic of ISAT, I 20 do want to raise a quick issue that Jim, Mary Ann, 21 and I had spoken to you and Terry back in late 22 December; and we requested th&L 'ry civil penalties 23 associated with ISAT and RELAP be severed.
So that 24 any follow-on activity to this enforcement ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.. ~
~
. - -... ~ _.. -
32 1
conference or the ISAT enforcement conference on 2
individual issues can be more clearly dealt with, 3
we'd like to renew that request.
l l
4 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
As you go into your l
f 5
presentation, there must be some dialogue to 6
establish a reasonableness test to at least explain 7
from your perspective how you translate the facts 8
before us.
9 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
And I think that's 10 going to be the bulk of what I'll be talking about.
l 11 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
Okay.
12 MS. LYNCH:
And I also, I think that's 13 where we're going with this.
j 14 MR. MEISNER:
So just real briefly, I'm
)
l 15 going to make some opening remarks with some 16 overheads.
And then I'm going to just talk for 20 17 minutes.
18 I think it important to paint a picture
.19 here from our point of view, then we'll step through 20 the individual potential violations.
And after 21 that, Mary Ann will discuss willfulness as well as 22 the ADV and circuit testing violations, talk about 23 mitigating factors, which is appropriate and usual 24 in an enforcement conference, and then I'll make ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
33 1
some closing remarks.
2 I know it may be funny to say, but 3
believe it or not, we really have been looking 4
forward to this enforcement conference, you know, 5
because of the OI investigations, the Department of 6
Justice referrals, and other factors, we've not been 7
able to have a dialogue with you on RELAP.
And 8
that's been a particularly frustrating state of 9
affairs for me.
10 As many of you know, communications 11 between the NRC and Maine Yankee for the last year 12 and a half have been quite strong.
We've been quick 13 to arrange meetings with you and have informal 14 dialogue with some or many members of your staff at 15 least on a daily basis.
We had every confidence 16 that we could have successfully restarted Maine 17 Yankee last year, and I think some of you felt the
~
18 same way.
19 And since the shutdown decision, I 20 think we've actually become an industry leader in 21 decommissioning.
And we don't get there in either 22 of those cases without a good, strong regulatory 23 relationship.
And that's why we found the inability 24 to communicate on RELAP to be particularly ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
=
34 1
frustrating, and perhaps some of you have as well.
2 Both Maine Yankee and NRC have l
3 completed separate investigations into these matters 4
and have cost into the millions of dollars.
The 5
cost though in our minds isn't the most significant 6
measure here.
Individuals have borne a heavy burden 7
in the last couple of years, and it will be j
8 difficult for them to recover, which goes right to 9'
the heart of why we're here today.
And again, the 10 belief on our part that the actions -- or really the 11 belief on your part that the actions associated with 12 these apparent violations were willful or 13 constituted careless disregard.
14 Your basis for willfulness has really 15 been puzzling to us up to this point.
I think now 16 we've got a really good understanding of what that 17 basis is.
And we'll try to address that as we go 18 forward through the conference.
And while you've 19 had investigations and reached conclusions, we have j
20 as well.
And we've been unable to find any 21 indication of willfulness or deliberate misconduct 22 on the part of our personnel.
We know that the 23 safety of the plant was never in question, i
24 And if we put aside for the moment i
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
35 1
which computer codes were listed in the Tech specs 2
at what time, I think it's clear that Maine Yankee 3
always, always used NRC approved codes for 4
small-break LOCA analysis.
And we know that the 5
underlying problems with RELAP -- and this is I 6
think our root cause -- was poor communications with 7
the NRC, aggravated by an insularity from the 8
industry and the NRC.
9 We also recognize and acknowledge the 10 critical importance of ECCS analyses and our 11 responsibility to provide knowledgeable oversight of 12 the vendors who perform those analyses for us.
And
'13 we recognize the regulatory significance of the 14 RELAP issues for the industry as a whole.
15 At this point though, we're many years 16 after the fact.
I'd like to respectfully suggest to 17 the NRC that no further regulatory purpose is served 18 by escalated enforcement against Maine Yankee.
19 First, because these apparent 20 violations, we believe, don't involve careless 21 disregard.
Second, because Maine Yankee is in 22 decommissioning.
And some I've talked to might say 23 that the facility and its employees, most of whom 24 are no longer with Maine Yankee, have already paid ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
36 1
the ultimate price here.
2 And third, because the regulatory 3
message has been sent and received by the industry.
4 And when you hear Maine Yankee or RELAP problems 5
discussed, they're synonymous throughout the 6
industry with the need to provide better oversight 7
of vendor analyses.
And I hope after this 8
enforcement conference, it will be extended to 9
include an understanding of the problems that can 10 result fram insularity and poor communications with l
11 the NRC.
12 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
Excuse me, Mike, can 13 we.ask questions during your prepared remarks?
14 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
15 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
To the issue of the 16 industry, industry as a whole has learned lessons, 17 do you have any cbjective evidence of that having 18 occurred?
19 MR. MEISNER:
I haven't gone out and 20 gathered objective evidence.
I've gotten a great-21 deal of anecdotal evidence.
I'm very active in the 22 industry.
I've been around it a lot in the last 23 year and a half, since I've been up in Maine Yankee.
24 And I can tell you that the people that I've l
l l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
37 1
discussed Maine Yankee with really understand that.
2 We all screwed up with the vendors.
That's 3
something that is really important, and we 4
understand that.
i 1
5 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
I'm aware of at least 6
two at minimum requests that have been processed in 7
the recent past, within the last few months, in 8
which licensees struggled to be able to articulate 9
they had fulfilled all the commitments contained in 10 safety evaluation reports, a la RELAP5YA.
And I 11 found it somewhat troublesome that indeed that's 12 part of the industry that we thought this message 13 was indeed going to.
So I guess I'm challenging you 14 to some extent in that area that the message has 15 really been fully appreciated.
16 MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
Well, I'm going to 17 touch on that a bit a little later, John, but I 18 think there is an overriding message out there with 19 the industry.
It may not have the level of detail 20 that would get down to perhaps compliance with your 21 SER conditions.
To me, that's something that is a 22 given.
23 I mean I'm a strong proponent of 24 compliance.
I know all the plants I've licensed l
l l
l l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
38 1
that have stood in line on that wholeheartedly.
I'm 2
not sure that that's necessarily a key lesson out of 3
Maine Yankee.
I think it's moreover all oversight 4
of your vendor and ensuring that the vendor meets 5
the regulations.
6 This is a very general overhead to give 7
me an opportunity to talk.
Again, I wanted to take 8
the opportunity because I sense at various times 9
that there's kind of a veil of suspicion that hangs 10 over RELAP and Maine Yankee with respect to RELAP.
11 And it's very difficult for me in the course of 20 9
12 minutes of talking to be able to pierce that veil.
13 And I would like to ask you to help me.
And I'd 14 like you to help me by mentally for the next 15 or 15 20 minutes trying to put yourself in the position of 16 a Maine Yankee employee.
17 As I talk through some of these issues 18 and viewpoints, try for the moment to take that 19 viewpoint and see if it doesn't resonate to some 20 degree.
21 So I'm going to give you a quick 22 overview of the RELAP story and then touch on a 23 couple of pretty central issues within that story.
24 And to start off, I'll tell you it's very difficult ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
o 39 l
1 to tell that story because it covers a number of 2
years and complex technical issues, a large number 3
of people and several different organizations.
But 4
at another level, it's really simple and 5
straightforward.
l 6
And first and foremost, it's a story of 7
very well-intentioned people trying to do their best 8
to get a difficult job done.
As someone who's been l
l 9
involved with these issues after the fact, I'm 1
i l
10 struck by the fact that in reading through relevant I
11 documents and talking to investigators, there's l
12 absolutely no indication that Maine Yankee or Yankee 13 Atomic employees intended to violate NRC regulations 14 or withhold information.
Quite the opposite, we 1
15 found people that were very safety focused and who 16 honestly felt at the time that they were compliant l
1 17 with NRC requirements, i
18 I'm not going to retell the RELAP story l
19 that we've provided in writing a few week ago, but I i
20 would like to emphasize a few points and describe 21 the conclusions that I've reached with the benefit l
22 of hindsight.
23 First of all, developing the LOCA 24 analysis capability was a pretty ambitious l
I ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
40 1
undertaking by Yankee Atomic.
I haven't worked as 2
an analyst myself, but I have licensed enough 3
reloads for both PWRs and BWRs to know that there's 4
probably no more complex and analytic area than LOCA 5
analysis.
And to create that capability was itself 1
6 an impressive undertaking.
i i
l 7
Unfortunately, they built their LOCA 1
8 capability in a vacuum.
We know
- . rom the ISA team 9
report, and it's really apparent to folks that are 10 new to Maine Yankee, myself and many of the 11 management team, that the organization was insular, 12 they prided themselves on being self-sufficient, and 13 they failed to keep up with evolving industry and 14 regulatory trends.
15 I'm convinced that in any point over a 16 roughly three-year period, had a Maine Yankee 17.
licensing engineer simply done what was normal and 18 routine for much of the rest of the industry, that 19 is pick up the phone and schedule a meeting with the 20 NRC to discuss difficulties in making RELAP work, 21 that the entire enforcement action wouldn't have 22 occurred.
I 23 Instead of resolving fairly normal 24 disagreements and regulatory interpretations and i
1 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
-. - ~ _.
l 41 l
i 1
computer modeling through a meeting with NRC's LOCA 2
Group, we're now faced with dealing with these 3
issues as apparent violations.
And I'll tell you 4
what a shame, that really is a shame.
5 Maine Yankee had the opportunity to 1
6 act, and we failed to do so.
And as a result, we 7
need to take full responsibility for the 8
consequences.
9 But while communications with NRC about l
l 10 RELAP were poor, communications between Maine Yankee 11 and Yankee Atomic were relatively good.
At all l
12 times, Maine Yankee was aware of the problems l
13 encountered with the RELAP code.
However, our 14 ownership and vendor oversight was weak, I
I 15 particularly with respect to employing a questioning 16 attitude, which was another problem identified by 17 ISAT.
J 18 Maine Yankee also concurred in and
. 19 directed all decisions related to the use or non-use l
20 of RELAP for licensing Cycles 12, 13, and 14.
And l
21 Maine Yankee is responsible for a collective 22.
misunderstanding on the need to submit the plant 23 specific application on RELAP for NRC review.
l l
24 Another missed opportunity, which would have raised 1
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 yn--+
y
. ~
42 l
l' and resolved the RELAP concerns long ago.
2 So while we disagree with how you've 3
cited some of the RELAP violations, and we hope 4
we're clear in the submittal that we made, we agree I
5 that RELAP merits enforcement.
We believe, however, 6
that in determining the severity of that action,
!~
7 certain mitigative or special circumstances should L
1 l
8 be taken into account.
And Mary Ann is going to be 9
discussing those in more detail later, but I just 10 want to touch upon a couple of those up front.
11 First, I think it's fair to say that i
12; the approval of the TMI' Action item 2KP31 was 13 unorthodox and contributed to the mindset that the l
l 14 plant specific application of RELAP for Maine Yankee 15 need not be documented.
As I mentioned earlier, l
l 16 such a submittal would have surfaced and resolved 17 all the RELAP issues at that time.
l 18 The TMI Action item approval also 19 served to exacerbate the insular attitude at Maine i
11 0.
20 Yankee by reinforcing the prevalent view that 21 additional communications on RELAP weren't necessary 22 until the NRC'came in to audit the code application, j
23
.I'm not raising this issue to be contentious or to i.
24 point fingers at all, it's clearly Maine Yankee's 1
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
43 1
problem, has been all along, but I raise it only to 2
suggest that there are other influencing factors 3
which should be considered when assessing the 4
severity of the enforcement action.
5 Secondly, I think it's also fair to say 6
that the NRC guidance on LOCA analyses and 7
interpretation of 50.46 is largely through word of 8
mouth and our interactions with NRC, rather than 9
written guidance that is usual in other areas that 10 NRC regulates.
11 Along those lines, I attended the 12 information conference last week, and saw some of 13 you there, that dealt in part with Maine Yankee 14 lessons learned on RELAP.
In fact, Mr. Collins, 15 who's with us here today, was the presenter on that.
16 And in his presentation, Mr. Collins emphasized the 17 lack of guidance for ECCS analysis, and presented a 18 rather long list of new guidance documents and other i
19 actions that are in preparation to remedy the 20 problem.
21 So while I'm in no way excusing the 22 RELAP issues, the lack of guidance for ECCS analysis 23 does make understandable how there could be varying 24 interpretations of what constitutes compliance with i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1
~44 1
50.46.and with Appendix K.
2 With that being said, I want to talk r
3
.about two specific aspects of the RELAP. story, 4
they're related and they're. central to most of the 5
apparent RELAP violations.
6 First of all, on the setting of 7
operating limits, several of the violations question 8
how and by which code application the LOCA related 9
operating limits were set for Maine Yankee.
As you 10 know, various operating limits are set prior to each 11 cycle by the LOCA analysis'.
For instance, peak 12 linear heat rate.
And while it's possible for 13 different break sizes to set different operating 14 limits, in practice this doesn't occur at Maine 15 Yankee.
Either small-break LOCA or large-break 16 LOCA, not both, will be sufficiently limiting to set 17 the operating limits for a particular cycle of 18 operation.
19 Specifically for Maine Yankee, the 20 large-break LOCA has always been the limiting event 21 which has set the core operating limits, regardless 22 of the small-break LOCA computer code used.
23 Throughout the period covered by the
-24 RELAP violations, large-break LOCA was analyzed ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
45 1
using the WREM, the WREM, large-break LOCA code, the 2
computer model reviewed and approved by the NRC for 3
that use.
Due to problems with RELAP, the 4
small-break LOCA analyses were performed using the 5
CE small-break LOCA code, which had also been 6
approved by the NRC for use at Maine Yankee.
7 However, the CE code was never used to set an
)
8 operating limit because large-break LOCA was always 9
limited.
Because only the WREM code was used to 10 determine operating limits and because the WREM code included in the Tech Spec through the Core 11 was 12 Operating Limits licensing memo, Maine Yankee and l
13 Yankee Atomic personnel assumed they were in j
14 compliance with the regulations and the Tech Specs 15 in setting LOCA relating operating limits.
16 MR. MILLER:
Can you repeat that one 17 again?
18 MR. MEISNER:
Sure.
Because only the 19 WREM code was used to determine operating limits, 20 that's the large-break LOCA code, and those 21 operating limits were only set by the large-break 22 LOCA, and because the WREM code was included in the 23 Tech Specs in the Core Operating Limits through that 24 license amendment as one of the identified reference ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
46 1
codes, Maine Yankee and Yankee Atomic personnel 2
assumed they were in compliance with the regulations 3
and the Tech Specs in setting LOCA related operating 4
limits.
5 MR. MILLER:
I want to ask two 6
questions there.
What I think you're saying is that 7
folks knowing that they were having trouble with 8
small-break codes, they felt that because the 9
large-break LOCA is dominant here, and that that is 10 whs.t's used to set operating limits, that 11 notwithstanding these problems, we're still okay.
12 MR. MEISNER:
There's a little more 13 than that.
Problems with RELAP, WREM sets the 14 operating limits, since I have problem with RELAP, 15 I'm going to fall back to the code I've used for 16 many cycles up to that point, that's been reviewed 17 and approved and accepted by the NRC, and that's the 18 CE small-break LOCA code.
19 MR. MILLER:
That leads to kind of a 20 second question, because I'm not a technical expert 21 here, so I'm going to ask some questions perhaps 22 that don't make sense in which case you can tell me 23 that's the case.
But if you have problems with a 24 code, it's conceivable that if I have the proper ALL POIN".S REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l 47 1
code, the large-break may not still be dominant.
2 That it's possible that if I were using the right 11 3
small-break, that that would become dominant.
Is 4
that a possibility here?
5 MR. MEISNER:
Well, I'm going to talk a 6
little bit more about the basis for this break 7
spectrum and all, 8
MR. MILLER:
Maybe I should let you 9
continue, but you see the question I'm asking.
10 MR. MEISNER:
But I just say that the 11 limiting break shouldn't be a function of which 12 computer code you use.
It's only based on physical 13 reality.
14 MR. MILLER:
But your recognition of 15 what is -- yeah, I mean reality is reality, and the i
16 codes all kind of approximate truth.
But you're 17 stuck with living with the codes.
I mean they're 18 their best, and that's what we rely on.
So if 19 you ve got a bad code, and by use of a bad code you 20 come to the wrong answer, you know, that could be 21 material.
22 I mean what you're saying is that the 23 folks said even though we've got some problems here, 24 this other code is dominant, the other sequence, the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
. -.-.~ -.
.=
(
W 48 1
large-break accident is the more important thing to 2-be concerned about, and on that basis, we know we 3
don't have a real. safety issue here because we're 4
not going to set operating limits based upon the 5
small-break on the large-break.
1 6.
MR. MEISNER:
And just going a little 7
further, Hub, that we then employed the code that we 8
had always used for small-break LOCA to that point, 9
and that'was acceptable to the NRC, to confirm that 10 that in fact large-break LOCA was more limiting.
'11 MR. MILLER:
Even though that wasn't 12 what we committed to or we had established as a 13 basis --
14 MR. COLLINS:
The CE code was not i
is approved for use in the'Kohler process, for which l
16 the Maine Yankee was now operating under.
There's a
~ 17 difference there.
I ruean the context for approval 18 of the code, the small-break code with CE, was
- 19 acceptable to us provided that changes that involved 4
20 that code were submitted for our prior review and E
21 approval, okay?
22 And you could still use the CE code
- 23 like that if you wanted to submit it to us and let 24 us make a review and approval of that application.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
_. ~... _..... _... _ _ _.
-. ~. _ _... _.. _. _ - _. _.
49 1
When you go to the Kohler process, we're taken out 4
2 of the loop-So we rely on the fact that you use 3
the method specified in the Technical 4
Specifications.
And.the CE code was not in the 5
Technical Specifications as part of the Kohler 6
process.
i 7.
1 MR. MEISNER:
And what this comes down l
8 to, let's-be clear,'is a point of interpretation.
-9 It's not a safety issue.
Because the small-break i
r 10 LOCA, the CE code did acceptably preserve safety.
11 It's a point of interpretation as to what is used to 12 set. operating limits.
And our folks felt that l
1 13 operating limits are set by large-break LOCA.
They E '
i 14 not only felt that, but they demonstrated that, j
l 15 There are no operating limits set by the small-break 4
16
'LOCA.
And that's what the focus is on.
17 So from a Kohler point of view, they t
18 used an approved, acceptable code, the WREM code, to 19-set those operating limits, and never set an 20 operating limit with a small-break LOCA code.
And i since it is a point of interpretation -- let me 22 just -- I've just got a few more paragraphs here, 2~
maybe this will be clearer --
24 MR. MILLER:
I want to come back and L
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
=-
50 1
I'm going to challenge this a little bit, because I 2
.think that'there may be a flaw in your logic there, 3
but go ahead.
4 MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
So you set the 5
stage here, large-break LOCA sets the operating 6
limits.
And then the acceptability of this position 7
was later confirmed for us in Cycle 15.
At that a
time, the RELAP allegations had surfaced and Maine 9-Yankee discontinued reliance on the RELAP code.
10 In December of 1995 -- and this is just 11-prior to Cycle 15, which started in January of the 12 following year -- Maine Yankee inquired of the NRC 13 if there was a need to amend the Tech Specs to 14-include the CE small-break LOCA model or the code as 15 an approved model right in the Tech Specs, a
- . 6 reference model that we could use.
17 And then over a series of 18 conversations, the response we received was that a 19 Tech Spec change was not necessary because 20 small-break LOCA did not set any core operating 21 limits, only large-break LOCA did.
And the code for 22 analyzing large-break LOCA already resided in the 23 Tech Specs.
24 Shortly after that this is in l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
51 1
1 December of '95 I'm talking about -- shortly after 2
that, in roughly mid January, the plant started up 3
for Cycle 15.
Within a week or two of that, the NRC 4
sent a team to Yankee Atomic to look at a number of 5.
things.
And what I want to do at this point is pass l
l 6
out to you an inspection report that covered, 7
amongst other things, that team's inspection.
I'll 8
wait a minute'until you all have a copy.
9 MR. MILLER:
While you're waiting, let 10 me just tell you what I'm concerned about.
A lot of 11 this depends upon how close to the margin you are.
12 One sequence or another is going to dominate.
13 You're saying that it's the large-break LOCA that 14 dominated.
15 And I guess to some extent this becomes
.12 16 a technical question, but if the codes that you're 17 using are sufficiently flawed, you could come to the 18 wrong conclusion on that.
Now here I'm speaking 19 just in terms of, you know, as much from a logic 20 point of view as from any expertise I have.
21 MR. MEISNER:
I agree with you.
22 MR. MILLER:
But if you're far enough 23 off, if there are questions about a code and how 24 accurate it is, you could be coming to the wrong ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
52 1
answer.
And it's conceivable that it's no longer 2
the large-break, it's now the small-break that 3
becomes dominant.
4 And so the question I have, and I guess 5
you're suggesting later on there's confirmation by 6
the NRC, and we can discuss that, but it was clear 7
in the minds of the people at the time, what was 8
their basis for thinking that notwithstanding the 9
problems with the small-break LOCA, we know 10 large-break will still be -- not the same problem 11 with the code in the small-break LOCA, we are 12 confident that the large-break will dominate.
13 MR. MEISNER:
And the answer is because 14 they had used'the CE small-break LOCA code that had 15 been used for the previous eight cycles and accepted t
16 by the NRC to give them the confidence that l
17 large-break LOCA would still woek.
18 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Why was the code
(
19 changed?
20 MR. MILLER:
The CE code, why did you l.
21 go away from the CE code I guess is the question.
22 MR. MEISNER:
Go away ~ rom it?
23 MR. LIERERMAN:
Why was the RELAP code 24 developed, in stew of the fact you had an approved ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 27.2-6731
53 1
CE code?
2 MR. MEISNER:
It was in compliance with 3
TMI item 2K330 and 31.
4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
And what was the 5
purpose of that TMI item?
6 MR. MEISNER:
To provide better codes 7
that were benchmarked against various testing 8
facilities.
9 MR. MILLER:
Which is I guess the 10 point.
I mean it was because there are phenomena, 11 there were some aspects of the old code that didn't 12 do the same job as the new code, the new code was 13 found to be more accurate, thought to be more 14 accurate.
So again, this presents a situation where 15 individuals are making a judgment that, 16 notwithstanding the fact there are these newer codes 17 which you're being asked to use because they are 18 more accurate, I can count on the fact that in the 19 past, the old codes told me that it was okay.
There 20 was a flaw in that logic it seems to me.
21 MS. LONGO:
Mr. Meisner, why was it 22 acceptable in the minds of Maine Yankee to continue 23 using the CE small-break LOCA code when the TMI 24 Action Plan specified that if the licensee were to ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.. -. - -. ~. _. -
54 1
continue using a code that had already been 2
approved, it would be necessary to do more work, to
'3 do more study and have the NRC review and approve 4
that?
Why was that accep. table in the minds of the 5
team to continue to use the CE code when that 6
additional work had not been done?
7 MR. MEISNER:
You mean when the RELAP 8
code had not been debugged?
9 MS. LONGO:
When it was not possible to 10 use the RELAP, and you continued to have problems 11 with the RELAP, and Maine Yankee continued to use 12 the CE small-break code, why was that acceptable in 13 the minds of Maine Yankee when they had not complied 14 with the conditions of the TMI Action Plan for 15.
continued use of codes that had been approved 16 pre-TMI?
17 MR. MEISNER:
Well, okay, let me --
18 first of all, you've raised a couple issues there.
19 And I'm not sure we want to go off on a tangent, but 20 the RELAP code was approved explicitly, 21 unconditionally by the NRC in 2K330 and 31.
22 MR. DORMAN:
There were 12 conditions.
23 MS. LONGO:
There were conditions --
24 there were 12 conditions.
My question is a ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
55 li follow-up to your statement that Maine Yankee felt 2
that it was acceptable to continue use of the CE code despite the problems with RELAP.,
4 MR. MEISNER:
And that's the key
-5
. question.
L 6
MS. LONGO:
And my follow-up question 7
to you is why did Maine Yankee think that was 8
acceptable when'the TMI Action Plan specified the 9
conditions under which it was acceptable to continue 10 using codes approved pre-TMI, but those conditions i
11 had not been met?
12 MR. MEISNER:
We continue to evolve as
-13 an industry, and I think as a regulatory body, and 14 we continue'to improve the tools that we have and 15 make them more and more precise and better 16 indicators of what's important to safety and what's 17 not important to safety.
That improvement, that t
18 continued evolution in success doesn't invalidate 19 what came before from a safety point of view.
20 MS. LONGO:
But the --
21 MR. MILLER:
I guess that's the part, 22.
frankly, I'm challenging.
I mean it's a little bit 1
[
23 like, if I could use an analogy, the fact that the 24 diagnostic techniques that were used in the past ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
56 1
were used in the past really doesn't say anything 2
about whether they're valid or not, and we've got 3
newer diagnostic techniques for a reason, because l
l 4
we've learned from experience that the old 5
techniques were not as accurate as they need to be 6
and because the new ones are better.
So we insist 7
upon the use of the new techniques.
8 In the area where that breaks down is 9
that we don't require any kind of technique in the
, ~13 10 MOV area, but in this area, we specifically require l
l 11 that you get approval of the codes that you're going i
12 to use.
In this case, we did approve use of the 13 later code, which now means that this is the code 14 you should be using, of course subject to meeting j
15 certain conditions.
Folks didn't meet those 16 conditions.
I'll accept if what you're telling me 17 is this is the thought that's in the mind of the l
18 people at the time --
19 MR. MEISNER:
It is.
l l
20 MR. MILLER:
-- but what I can't accept l
21 is if you're sitting here contending today that that 22 was a logical and a reasonable and a defensible 23 position to take.
Because it is conceivable again 24 that the flaws in the code, in the small-break LOCA ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 57 l
i l
1 code ~, were sufficient to essentially change the 2
picture, to have a different answer.
3 MR. MEISNER:
In the CE code you mean?
4 MR. MILLER:
Yes.
That the flaws, that the problems with the limitations of the small-break S
6 LOCA code would be sufficient to change it.
That 7
it's conceivable, until you run that, until you run 8
the approved code, the more accurate code, you l
9 wouldn't know whether the large-break LOCA was still 10 dominant or not.
That's the thing that I'm 11 challenging you.
I don't know that we should 12 continue to discuss this, but if you're telling us 13 that that's what's in the mind and the thinking of i
14 the people at the time --
15 MR. MEISNER:
That's what I'm trying to 16 get at is mindset, try to provide an understandable 17 point of view to you, that these people were 18 struggling to get the RELAP code up and operating.
19 They weren't able to do it.
And they had an 20 operating plan.
Cycle 12 started before this Kohler 21 submittal was ever made, and Cycle 12 is the first 22 of the violations.
23 MR. MILLER:
But the appropriate thing 24 to have done of course was to say that we don't meet I
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
58 1
the conditions to come forward, have that be above 2
. board.
And if they couldn't make it were'to get an
'3 understanding between us and the company over what 4
they were using.
And if they felt as though, you 5
know, they needed to change it, approach us.
And 6
they didn't do that.
7 MR. MEISNER:
I wish they had, and 8
_that's exactly my point.
We should have done that.
9 We should have done it any number of times.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
But I don't think 11 you're saying that, because you are denying the 12 violation for Cycle _13.
So I guess what you're 13 really'saying is they weren't required to do that.
14' What you're saying is not only as the mindset, 15' you're saying today what they did at the time was 16
'not legally wrong.
17 MR. MEISNER:
I'm focusing, Jim, on the 18 violation as written.
What the violation says is 19 that we didn't use RELAPSYA to~ set operating limits 20 and we should have.
We couldn't, it was impossible 21 because small-break LOCA didn't set the operating 22 limits, large-break LOCA did.
23 MR. MILLER:
But, Mike, you're missing 24 my point.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.a
59 1
MR. COLLINS:
You can't set the 2
operating limits without analyzing the entire 3
spectrum.
The WREM code could not analyze the small 4
part of the spectrum.
So you can't say that the 5
-limits were set _only by using WREM.
They were used 6
by analyzing WREM and some small-break method, 7
because you have to analyze the whole spectrum to 8
set the limits.
9 MR. MILLER:
And the important point 10 here, it's clear to you that you couldn't use WREM 11 for this, you used CE, but what we're saying here it 12 also was not appropriate nor logical to fall back on 13 CE, because there was a reason to go to the newer 14 code.
And the reason for going to the newer code 15 was because it was felt to be more accurate.
And 16 that accuracy and deficiencies and limitations were 17 known with respect to the older codes.
And so you 18 used that older code at your own peril.
I mean that 19 should have been in the minds of people at the time.
20 MR. MEISNER:
Granted.
Also in their 21 minds though, and that's what I'm trying to lay out 22 here, is how they got to this point.
They felt they 23 could rely on the CE small-break LOCA code because 24 it had been used previously.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
60 1'
MR. MILLER:
We'll accept that.
Go a
2 ahead.
'. 3 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
One of the struggles 4-that I think we're going to have throughout the day 5
is in 1998, we have a certain interpretation of what i
6 occurred historically.
7 MR. MEISNER:
Exactly.
8 liR ' ZEWOLINSKI:
And trying to get into
]
9 the minds of what people were actually thinking and 10 doing from 1988,
'89,
'90,
'91,
'92, is very, very 11 difficult.
And I'll go back to reiterate what Tim 12 just said'and play off of Jim, out of 50.46, ECCS 13 cooling performance must be calculated in accordance
-14 with an acceptable evaluation model.
It must be 15 ~
calculated for a number of postulated loss cooling 16 actions of different locations or other properties 17 sufficient, etc., before entering the next cycle of 18 operation, not afterwards or in 1998 to show, oh, we 19 operated safely through Cycles 12, 13, and 14, what 20 have you.
21 And so if you go back and you look at 22 what the violation is actually pointing to -- and 23 I'll go back to Jim's point -- there is a gap in
-24 there in which that analysis that you were required i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 1
i 61 1 --
to perform with' approved methods,.WREM andERELAP5YA,
~
f 14 t
2
.and ultimately you set your operating limits.
We 3-all know RELAPSYA was broken, was not operational-at O
the' time or would not run.
You all replaced it with 5-CE' methods.
6 MR. MEISNER:
Correct.
7 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
Tech Spec said RELAP, Et but yet you're saying we can use CE to fulfill the 9
small-break requirement of an analysis ahead of 10 time.
And I'm saying that RELAP is what's the code 11 of record.
That's the Tech Spec, that's the
. 12-license.
13 MR. MEISNER:
I'm trying, John, to get
- 14' to willfulness.
15 MR. MILLER:
I want to say, let me just 16 say, even if you're not saying that, even if you're 17 not trying to defend here today that that was the 18 legal thing to do or not, I'm not sure what you're
-19 saying, I think you're saying that you admit that 20 that wasn't the right thing to do from a licensing 21 regulatory point of view, is that what you're
'22 saying?
23 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
No.
24 MR. MEISNER:
All we need to do --
4 J
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
62
~
1 MR. MILLER:
There are two things to 2
argue.
You can argue on one hand that it may not 3
have been legal, but there was no willfulness 4
because people had a certain thought on their mind, 5
it was correct in safety space.
And I'm going to 6
say it was wrong in both connections.
7 It's wrong for the reasons that John 8
just talked about here with respect to what the 9
license required, what our approval required, which 1
10 is that you use this code under these conditions.
11 You didn't do it.
12 But I'll say even beyond that, I think 13 that I'm having trouble, not understanding what.
14 you're saying was in the minds of people, I might 15 accept that, but I won't accept that it was the 16 right thing to do.
Because to fall back on some 17 previous code that there was a determination we 18 should no longer use, I think it was for a reason, 19 that it was deficient and limited in important 20 respects, should have just in logic alone said that 21 that was not a correct thing to do.
l 22 To draw -- to continue to think that 23 the large-break LOCA was going to be dominate really 24 was dependent upon use of that old code that folks ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
63 1
knew was limited in some important way.
So even in.
2 that respect, I've got a problem in accepting, you 4
3 know, what was done, that that should have been 4
known.
5 MS. LYNCH:
Mike, maybe it would be 6
helpful to go to where you were going to go to 7
understand.
8 MR. MILLER:
We'll step back and we'll 9
let you complete your remarks.
10 MS. LYNCH:
I just think that may help 11 you understand better why there was a rational basis 12 for doing this.
- 13 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
l 14 Mh BARRY:
Not only for thinking what i
i 15 they thought, but for perhaps interpretation of the 16 Technical Specification the way it was interpreted.
17 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
18 MR. MEISNER:
Hindsight is great, but 19 as I indicated, when we went to the NRC and asked 20 for Cycle 15, do we need to put this in the Tech 21 Specs, which would have been a simple thing to do, 22 the answer we got back was no, because small-break 23 LOCA isn't limiting and your core operating limits 24 are set by the large-break LOCA code.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 64 1
MS. LYNCH:
That was after the 1
2 allegation.
3 MR. MILLER:
That's with the premise 1
4 that was presumed by the individuals who were making l
5 that statement that you were going to utilize the 6
approved code under the conditions.
7 MR. DORMAN:
The discussion that we're 8
referring to is in the December
'95, January '96 9
time frame.
It's in the context of the development 10 of the issuance of the order that was issued on 11 January 3rd, 1996.
12 The order contained within it a 13 discussion that describes the basis for concluding 14 that for operation at and below power level 2440 15 megawatts, under the conditions of the order, that 16 under those conditions, the large-break LOCA would 17 be limiting, and therefore, operating from that 18 point, the operating limits are then calculated 19 based on the large-break LOCA.
20 If you go back to Cycle 14, Cycle 13, 21 Cycle 12, without the order, you still need to 22 establish a basis for that cycle as to why the 23 large-break LOCA is limiting.
To calculate the 24 operating limits, you have to step back and say ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
65 1
let's go over the whole spectrum and then go 2
determine your operating limit.
So the context for 3
Cycle 12 and,13 is very different from the context 4
of the discussion in the January '96 time frame.
5 MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
Except what I'm
~6 going to get to is that it wasn't at 2440, it was at 7
2700.
That the staff drew this conclusion.
8 MR. DORMAN:
Well, the question was for 9
operation under the order, do you need to change the 10 Tech Specs to incorporate this in the code.
And so 11 that is in the context of 2440.
12 MR. MILLER:
We'll let you continue.
13 MR. MEISNER:
The inspection report I 14 passed out, if you turn to page 12, this is a 15 resident inspector's inspection report and also 16 included some team inspection results.
And you note 17 near the bottom of page 12, it talks about on i
18 January 24th to 26th, an NRC inspection team 19 inspection was conducted at the Yankee Atomic 20 Headquarters, the purpose being to review and verify l
21 various things.
And the first sub-bullet there is 22 use of Cycle 15 operating limits without reliance on l
l 23 RELAP5YA.
24 At that point, the allegations had i
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
I 66 I
~
1 surfaced.
Staff wanted to make sure that RELAP5YA 2
-wasn't being used for anything as a basis for going 3
forward on safety.
And then if you move to page 4
14 5
MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
You're aware that 6
RELAP5YA had been relied upon for numerous inputs 7
into, for example, 3K35, and I believe as many as 13 l
8 other items.
And that was the fundamental issue, 9
was there any results coming from that code.
10 MR. MEISNER:
Right, I agree, John.
11 You have a highlighted section in your handout there 12 that refers to Cycle 15 at 2700 megawatts.
And it 13 notes that "In the original Cycle 15 CPAR -" that's 14 the document that we submitted that describes the 15 evaluations that were done for that particular 16 reload -- "the licensee used NRC-approved methods to 17 perform design basis large-break LOCA analyses and 18 non-LOCA transients.
Thus, none of the Cycle 15 19 core operating limits for operation at 2700 j
20 megawatts were limited by small-break LOCA analyses, 21 and therefore, the core operating limits were not 22 defined by RELAP5YA analyses."
23 What they were saying is essentially 24 confirming the previous view, that small-break LOCA ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 67
~
1 analyses don't set operating limits.
And in this l
2 case, RELAP, which was an unacceptable model at this
)
3 point, didn't set a limit, and therefore, there need i
4 not be a concern.
5 All I'm suggesting -- we've had some 6
discussion here -- is I'm trying to get at people's 7
thought processes.
And they felt very clearly that i
8 large-break LOCA was limiting.
They used the best 9
tools they had at the time to confirm that with 10 respect to small-break LOCA.
And they felt they 11 were compliant with the requirements and the 12 technical aspects in setting core operating limits.
i 13 And I'm only suggesting here that there 14 were similar interpretations from others at the 15 time.
16 MR. LIEBERMAN:
I would read these same 17 words -- and obviously I'd like to speak to the l
18 author of the document -- but I read these words to 19 merely say what the company did.
The company used 20 the large-break LOCA, which was approved, and the 21 company set it by using the large-break and not the 22 small-break, which is the problem that we have.
But 23 this is not -- I don't read this as saying that NRC 1
24 is finding this acceptable, but rather this is what ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
68 1
the company did.
2 MR. MEISNER:
That's right, Jim.
And 3
I'm merely using it to point out a thought process 4
and how easy it is when they focus on operating 5
limits to come to similar conclusions that 6
large-break LOCA was limiting.
Therefore, the code 7
you use to deal with the small-break LOCA analyses, 8
whether it's broken or valid is immaterial.
And I 9
think there's the sense of that message in here.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
We're talking at cross 11 issues during this discussion, because to get to 12 willfulness, you first need to have a violation.
13 You're focusing on the intent.
Hub, a few minutes 14 ago, was focusing on the underlying issue of what 15' the requirement was.
They are two separate issues, 16 but --
17 MR. MILLER:
I think we understand what 18 you're saying.
Why don't we proceed and we can --
19 we very well may disagree, but let's just keep going 20 here.
21 MS. LYNCH:
And I would just say keep 22 in mind the reason again we asked for this 23 conference is because of the willfulness issue.
So g
24 that's why we are focusing on the mindset.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
~ ~. __ _._ _ ___ _ _ _.. __ _.. -
.. _ _.- ~
69
~
1 MR. MILLER:
You're right, no argument
'2 at-all with what you're saying.
Beyond' legal, this.
r 3
is what people were thinking, and you're. sharing l
4 with us your insights as you understand that.
But 5
expect us to kind of push back as we try to 6
understand whether that was. logical or not, 'o r 7.
whether you can defend that or not.
- Willful, 8
careless disregard, these are the issues that we're 9
considering.
So I agree we need to discuss that.
10 MR. COLLINS:
With regard to this 11 highlighted. area, my recollection of the purpose of 12 this inspection was to confirm that our technical 13 basis in the order which would allow operation under 14 Cycle 15 was_not invalidated by any subsequent 15 analyses that Maine Yankee had done.
And basically 16 what-these highlighted words,-I believe, the way 17 I interpret these, were the large-break LOCA 18 analyses and non-LOCA transients, so everything 19 other than small-break LOCA was done with methods 20 that the staff had reviewed and approved.
So we 21 didn't have an issue with results from those i
22 analyses.
23 And the numbers that appeared in the 24 CPAR were'not the result of any analysis with i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
70 i
~
1 RELAP5YA.
So if RELAP5YA was good or' bad, it 'didn't 2
matter as far as the numbers go in the report.
I 31 think that's all these highlighted sentences mean.
4 That's the way --
5 MR. MEISNER:
And that's all I'm using 6
it to suggest.
Similarly to the idea that the 7
numbers in the previous cycles weren't set by the 8
small-break LOCA code.
And whether that code was --
9 we're jumping back and forth here between 10 understandable mindset and whether or not.there's a l
l'1 violation.
16 i
12 I'm trying to paint the_ picture that 13 people had and used judgment and followed a certain j
14 thought process in reaching a conclusion _that didn't 15 have any under-the-table overtones.
16 MS. LONGO:
Mr. Meisner, I just want a
~
17 clarification.
You keep on using the phrase "the 18 numbers that were set."
Are you saying that the 19 determination -- by that do you mean --
20 MR. MEISNER.
The core operating 21 limits.
22 MS, LONGO:
You do mean determination 23 of core operating limits, okay.
24 MR. DORMAN:
Let me clarify something ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
71 1
too, Mike, going to the mindset.
You raise the 2
discussion regarding in December '95-January
'96.
3 In your submittal on page C-7, you said that when 4
MYAPCO raised the issue of whether the Tech Specs 5
needed to be amended to add the CE LOCA methodology, 6
that suggests to me that at that point in time, 7
there was, even though you had 14 cycles previously 8
where small-break LOCA did not contribute directly 9
to the operating limits, that there was a question l
10 in Maine Yankee's mind as to whether the CE code, if 11 we're going to use it in Cycle 15 under the order, 12 should be in the Tech specs.
l 13 MS. LYNCH:
There was only a question, 1.
t 14 having gone through the RELAP allegation and the two l
l 15 weeks of meetings at Yankee, people began to say, l
16 well, do we need to go in with a Tech Spec change l
17 now.
You see, it was an education process, 18 MR. MEISNER:
Prompted by the 19 allegations, renewed focus and sensitivity.
20 MR. MILLER:
Do you understand the i
21 point that I'm making regarding the flaw in 22 reverting back to the CE, and still -- and then also 23 believing that if I use that code, which might be 24 flawed in some respect, that it's problematic to i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 f
._-_.._.m 72
'l continue! to think that it's still going to be
-2 large-break rather than small-break?
Do'you l
3 understand.the point I'm trying to make?
'4 MR. MEISNER:
I do.
l 5
MR. MILLER:
And are you saying that we 6
fell into that same trap here?
I'm trying to
{
l l
7_
understand that.
That we made the same conclusion 8
in this?
I'm missing what you're trying to point 9-out.
)
10 MS. LYNCH:
We're only trying to say I 11 think that there was as rational, credible reason or 12 basis.
13 MR. MILLER:
I understand that.
I 14' understand generally what you're trying to do, but
. 15 I'm trying to follcw the specific arguments that 1
16 you're making to make your point.
What are you 17 trying to say here?
Are you trying to say that we 18 made that same mistake?
19 MR. MEISNER:
No, I'm trying to say 20' though that there are parallel thought processes 21 there that back in cycle 13 --
22 MR. MILLER:
Don't worry about 23.
offending us, I mean just say what you --
24 MR. MEISNER:
Back in Cycle 13, as you ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 I
. _. _.. ~ _ _.,..
'3 1
pointed out, we fell back to this small-break CE 2
code.
That isn't going to give you the.best result 3'
as a new generation code would.
4~
Up in Cycle 15, we used RELAP, which in 5
'your view was a. broken code.
In both cases though, 16 the end. result as far as setting safety limits for 7-that cycle didn't depend on the small-break LOCA L
8 code itself.
l L
9 MS.'LONGO:
Mr. Meisner --
~
10' MR. MEISNER:
Maybe I'm missing your 11-point, Hub.
'12 MR. MILLER:
Well, I guess it seems to t
13 me again that -- let me walk through it again.
Your-14 main point is that large-break dominated -- the 15 thinking at the time that large-break dominates, not 16 small-break.
17 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
18 MR. MILLER:
And for that reason,
-19 effectively, the fact that we have problems with 20 this code is really moot from a safety point of 21 view, as a minimum from a safety point of view.
You-22 could argue that that was a reasonable thing.
What 23 I'm saying is if you believed that the codes were l
24 flawed, the codes were limited in some way, then ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
74 1
that's not still a defensible conclusion to make.
2 Because if you're using the flawed codes, you're not 3
certain if it's still going to be large-break that 4
will dominate not small-break.
And you're using 5
codes that were limited in some way, CE, because you 6
know that was a code that we were going away from or 7
inFisting you go aWay from for a reason.
- RELAP, 8
because you knew that there were problems, you 9
couldn't make it work.
10 MS. LYNCH:
I think if I can answer 11 what I thought was your previous question, I think 12 we are saying if we were wrong in Cycle 12 and 13, 13 then we were wrong.
And you were wrong to allow us 14 in Cycle 15 to use the same approach.
Now, we're 15 not saying again to cast blame, but just so you 16 understand the thought process.
Is that what you 17 were after?
18 MR. MILLER:
Yes.
I'm trying to 19 understand if that's the point you're trying to 20 make.
Don't worry about trying to, you know --
21 we're trying to get at the truth here and not worry 22 about offending anybody.
23 MS. LYNCH:
That's what we're trying to 24 say.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-673]
4 75 1
MR. COLLINS:
Recognizing the Cycle 15, 2
we're talking about the order governing Cycle 15.
3 And the order reduced the power level as well.
And 4
so the use of the small-break LOCA code, RELAP5YA, 5
its importance we thought was being tempered by this 6
power reduction that was required.
The operating
'7 limits were set by a large-break LOCA analysis at 8
2700 megawatts, okay?
We cut that power level back 17 9
like 2440 or something like that, okay?
10 And that was in view of the fact that 11 we didn't -- there was so much uncertainty 12 associated with the LOCA analysis as a whole, in 13 particular in the small-break.
So I don't know if 14 we made that same mistake.
I want to take issue 15 with that.
We didn't know what to do with the 16 small-break, so we said, well, we're going to cut 17 back, give you a significant power penalty, 10 18 percent, to account for that, figuring that the 19 large-break LOCA limit set at 2700 would certainly 20 be conservative relative to small-break limits, 21 which might be set at 2440.
So that's a different 22 approach than saying we made the same mistake.
We 23 consciously took into account that small-break 24 uncertainty.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
- ~.
76
~
1 MR. DORMAN:
That's from the order.
2 And the order also sent Maine Yankee back to do 3
confirmatory analyses updating the Cycle 15 for 4
taking into consideration changes in the facility.
5 And we also looked at uncertainties related to some J
6 of the concerns that we had with the TMI issue, 1
7 2K330 and 31.
8 And Maine Yankee went back and did 9
those analyses, they submitted them to the staff, I 10 want to say somewhere around January 10th.
And it 11 was in response to thut that the staff came out and 12 did the audit that's addressed here, to verify and 13 validate that we had the basis.
The Tech Spec 514, 14 when you follow through the small-break and the 15 large-break and you find the limiting break and i
16 calculate the operating limits provides the basis 17 for determining the limiting break and then 18 calculating the operating base.
19 The order itself and the confirmatory 20 analyses that Maine Yankee dld and the follow-up 21 verification that we did provided the basis for 22 Cycle 15 for determining the limiting break from 23 your calculation.
So I think the context of the two 24 cycles are very different.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
77
~
1 MR. MEISNER:
But recognize too that 2
some of'that.was done every cycle when the CE code-3 was used previously.
You know, you'take into
-4:
account modifications, you take into account 5
. configurations.
-6 MR. DORMAN:
But you did those analyses 7
using the approved codes.
And in those previous 8
cycles, you submitted them in the Tech spec 9-
> amendment to amend the operating limits under the 10 Tech Spec.
And under the Kohler, you needed to do 11 the same things using the methods specified in the 12 Tech Specs and operated basis.
13~
MR. LIEBERMAN:
I think the bottom line 14.
is if the highlighted words were really our position 15 in general for all the cycles, then there would not 16 have been a reason to derate the plant.
The best
.17 evidence that this doesn't represent our position is 18 that we derated the plant, as others have said, to 19 reflect the uncertainty, since there was no 20 acceptable small-break model for us.
Maybe we 21 should go on.
22 MR. MILLER:
Let's go on.
l 23 MR. BARRY:
May I just have a moment?
24 (Off the record discussion.)
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 l
78 1
MR. MEISNER:
One other point before we 2
move on --
3 MR. BARRY:
And this is -- I have not 4
had the opportunity to review all of the witness 5
transcripts, as you know, but I think it's important 6
both with respect to the violation, the existence of 7
violation as points one and two, willfulness point 8
two, to consider the issue of how and why the RELAP 9
code was put into that Tech Spec code list in the 10 first place and what was the mindset when it was 11 done.
Was it required to be put there because a 12 small-break LOCA code was required to be in the Tech 13 Spec?
That would be one viewpoint.
14 And I suggest to you that it's my 15 understanding, based upon the evidence that was 16 developed during the OI investigation, that is 17 not -- that was not the view of the Maine Yankee 18 personnel.
That in 1989, when this whole Tech 19 Spec -- this whole license amendment was 20 contemplated to remove the cycle specific limits 21 from the Tech Specs, Maine Yankee asked Yankee 22 Atomic to prepare a list of codes that -- a list of 23 approved codes.
And my understanding, again, is 24 that RELAP5YA was included in that list way back in ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
I l
79 l
L i
~
1 1989 because the SER had issued, it was anticipated 2
that RELAP would be used in connection with future L
3 cycles, but that it was included, not because the 4
Maine Yankee personnel understood that it was used 5
or required to be used in connection with setting 6
core operating limits in connection with Cycle 12, 7
Cycle 13, or any other cycle, but that it could --
8 it was an approved code that could be used in --
9 MR. MILLER:
You're stating it was 10 authorized, not required?
l 11 MR. BARRY:
It was authorized and it 12 had been approved.
13 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
This was Maine Yankee
'14 approached the NRC in 1982 to find a method that 15 would satisfy 2K330 of the TMI Action Plan, and 16 submitted RELAP5YA for staff review and approval.
17 Through a series of questions and a 18 number of years, the agency ultimately issued the 19 safety evaluation, essentially accepting RELAP5YA in 20 January of 1989 with 12 conditions in the safety 21 evaluation.
18-22 MR. BARRY:
Understood.
l 23 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
If you go into the T'AI 24 Action Plan and read the 0737 document itself, it l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
80 1
says "and one year after approval, a plant specific 2
application should be made."
And all of that is 3
tied to we ressing issues that have emanated from 4
TMI and the importance the Agency has placed on 5
small-break LOCA analysis.
6 So the Agency was under the belief that 7
this would be the code that would be ultimately 8
adopted as the code of record to address TMI for 9
2K331, because that's the plant specific piece that 10 needed to be submitted.
11 And I think you all have characterized 12 the project manager wrote you a letter in May of '89 13 saying he saw the code was operable, whatever, and 14 the story goes from there.
But fundamentally that is was to be the code of record for small-break LOCA.
16 MR. MILLER:
More generally, can't we 17 stipulate to the idea that the whole reason after 18 TMI that there was an item on codes was because 19 there were problems with old codes, small-break 20 codes; and that the whole idea behind that item in 21 0737 was to cause licensees to address those 22 deficiencies.
23 Now, in all plants, the previously used 24 codes were not found to be deficient.
At some, they ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 81 1
were, and some, they weren't.
But there were l-2 problems with older codes and until you either l
3 proved that they were still good or you went to 4
another qualified code, there was a requirement.
It 5
wasn't just an authc rization.
6 You had to either demonstrate the old 7-codes were good or develop and justify use of a new 8
code.
That addressed the issues that came out of l
9 TMI.
j l
l i
10 So I'm not sure I accept the idea that 11 the reason for going to RELAP was just that that was 12 something you were permitted to do rather than 13 something you were required to do.
You could have 14 used the old CE code, but you couldn't do it unless 15 you were to demonstrate -- qualify it in some way.
16 MR. COLLINS:
You have to address the 17 TMI Action Plan.
i 18 MR. BARRY:
I don't disagree with l
19 anything Mr. Zewolinski or you have said..
I think l
20 it's important'from a perspective standpoint to 21 understand the genesis of how that code came to be 22 included in the Technical Specifications listing.
l 23 And my perception is that there was a recognition 24 that the code, you know, there was further work to ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
=
82 T
l' be done There's no -- I take no issue with your l
l 2
statement, Mr. Zewolinski, about the conditions.
l 3
And I think that was always fully recognized.
And 4
the fact is it was put into the Tech Spec code 5
listing in 1989 in anticipation of this license 6
amendment removing the cycle specific limits, that's 7
just -- I think that's documented.
8 MR. MILLER:
Why is that relevant to 9
this discussion?
10 MR. BARRY:
Well, if you combine that 11 with the mindset of it was in there and the mindset 12 that, as Mr. Meisner has discussed at length, that 13 yes, it was in there, but it was not a code that 14 was required to be used in setting core operating j
15 limits for every cycle, that's why I think it's 16 relevant.
17 MR. COLLINS:
That confuses me.
I mean 18 the amendment, the purpose of that amendment was to 19 identify the codes to be used to set the core 20 operating limits.
Why would you include that code 21 in that amendment if it wasn't going to be used to 22 set core operating limits?
23 MR. MEISNER:
And the answer is simple, 24 that they were working hard to get it in shape, and ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
83 i
l 1
1 they weren't able to in the time period before the 2
next cycle.
3 MR. COLLINS:
Whether it was good or j
4 bad or the code was good or bad or not, the reason 5
it's included in that amendment is because it's part 6
of the process for determining the core operating 7
limits.
I 8
MS. LONGO:
I'm puzzled by your 9
statement that it ~was only in there because it might 10 be used.
As Tim said, the Tech Spec spec 1fies the 11 codes which may be used, but if you really believe 12 the small-break had nothing to do with determining 13 core operating limits, why on earth put it in the 14 Tech Specs at all?
15 MS. LYNCH:
It probably shouldn't have 16 been put in there.
17 MR. MEISNER:
I'm speaking again from 18 the mindset at that time, because you may make a 19 sufficient modification to the plant or the fuel 20 where it could be limiting in the future.
21 MS. LONGO:
So you acknowledge that 22 small-break could be used in determining core 23 operating limits?
24 MR. MEISNER:
Right.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
. -,.. ~.._.-
l 84 1
1 MR. BARRY:
And the witnesses -- again, 2
my understanding of the testimony that was offered 3
during the OI investigation is that the witnesses 4
said that,-that it was because of the SER, 5
recognizing there were conditions, there's no.
l-6 dispute about that,.but that the code had been --
7-there was this SER, it was listed by the Yankee 8
Atomic folks in this list of approved codes.
And 9
the witnesses said that it was'their understanding 10 that it was possible in future cycles, depending 11 upon changes, that small-break could-become the 12 limiting break, in which case the RELAP code would 13 have come into play in terms of establishing core 14
-operating. limits.
19 7
15 I'm relating to you my understanding of
'16 what the witnesses testified to as to what their 17 mindset was.
And I believe that that accurately i
18 reflects what they told the investigators, and
~19 that's my only point.
20-MR. MILLER:
Okay, I think we 21 understand.
22 MR. MEISNER:
It's relevant for l
23 willfulness.
24 MR. MILLER:
Let's proceed.
ALL. POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
- _. _. ~ - _.
~.. _. _ _ _. _ _.. _... _. _.. _. _ - - - _. _.. _ _... _.. _ --
t 85 c.
1 MR. MEISNER:
Well, that one was easy, 2
so the next one.is probably going to be just as 3
easy.
4 This goes to the issue of-how wide a 5
break spectrum do you analyze.
Again, I'm trying-to 6
give you a feel for_ thought process and mindset, as
.7
- opposed to whether'with today's eyes there's a 8
violation, a technical violation.
Let me just jump i
9 into it.
10 Another area central to several of the 11 violations has to do with the extent in which the 12 small-break LOCA spectrum was analyzed.
Formal 13 analyses were conducted to cover breaks in
.1 square 14 feet through.35 square feet.
With a spectrum above
.15
.35 square feet, engineering judgment was used.
If 16 we step outside the analyst's role for a moment and 17 get away from the computer codes and assumptions, 18 there's certain things I think we can all agree on 19 without having an extensive analytic background.
20 First, the limiting LOCA break size is 21 a function only of current plant design and 1
22 configuration.
23 Second, absent significant changes in 24 plant or fuel design or plant configuration, the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 86 f'
1 limiting break size doesn't change.
2 And third, the actual limiting break l
3 size can't change simply because you used a 4
different computer. code to get there.
5 MR. COLLINS:
That's not true.
It can 6
change dramatically depending on which computer code 7
you use.
8 MR. MEISNER:
I'm talking about 9
emphasis the word " actual."
There's only one 10 ac'tual.
11 MR. COLLINS:
Actual, okay, as opposed 12 to the license being suspended, okay.
13 MR. MEISNER:
So I think most analysts 14 I know would actively understand these ideas.
15 And they recognize that a computer model or 16 simulation of a LOCA is different than reality.
17 They rightly tend to be influenced by past persons' 18 experience and expect current calculations to 19 reflect previous calculations or similar designs.
20 If they don't, there's something wrong that needs to 21 be fixed.
22 This thought process was present during 23 the preparation for Cycles 12 through 15 at Maine 24 Yankee.
The analyst and Maine Yankee personnel knew ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l l
l 87 l
1
(
1 that large-break LOCA had been limiting in the past 2
for Maine Yankee; and they expected to confirm that L
3 fact for Cycles 12 and 13.
That is, they expected l
4 to confirm that any plant configuration or fuel 5
changes for those cycles hadn't resulted in 6
small-break LOCA becoming more limiting than l
l 7
large-break LOCA.
l 8
So they conducted their small-break l
9 LOCA analyses using RELAP, starting at
.1 square l
10 feet and working their way up.
And by the time they l
11 reached.35 square feet, they had established what i
12 they had expected to find, that small-break LOCA PCT 13 varies inversely to break size.
In other words, the 14 smaller break resulted in a larger PCT, which I 15 think for Cycle 12 and 13 was.15 square feet.
16 So as we all know, and I wonder if it l
17 isn't somewhat central to your concerns, that at.35 l
l 18 square feet, the analysts ran into problems with 19 running the RELAP code.
And that's been variously l
20 described as the code terminated or the code failed.
I i
21 What really happened is that if 22 sufficiently small time steps aren't used in RELAP, l
23 it will fail to converge in a solution.
And I think 24 that's nothing unique to RELAP.
If you've taken ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
~--
88 1
numerical analysis courses in college, you know that 2
that's really a characteristic of computer modeling.
3 And not only was this behavior not 4
unique to the RELAP code itself, but within the 5
spectrum of RELAP analyses, it wasn't even unique to 6
the.35 square feet case.
7 Similar failures to converge happened 8
at various smaller break sizes.
And I want to 9
emphasize the word " smaller."
In those cases the 10 analyst would simply rerun the caLe with smaller 11 time steps, or take some other apprcpriate action.
12 But they didn't rerun Maine Yankee analysis at.35 13 square feet.
The key question is why not.
14 And I think the answer to that question 15 determines in part whether you reviewed the RELAP 16 issues with some suspicion or with some trust.
You 17 know, I'll just say frankly looking at the one 18 extreme, we speculated that perhaps the alliance 19 specters have hypothesized something along the 20 following lines that these analysts knew that they 21 were dealing with a faulty computer code that was 22-incapable of modeling small-break LOCAs at or above 23
.35 square feet.
Therefore, they had to go to 24 unusual lengths to obfuscate this code defect and
-ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
89 l
t 1
engage with Maine Yankee in some kind of effort to 2
conceal the problem from the NRC.
j 3
fWe don't know whether that really 4
reflects OI's feelings or any of your feelings at 5
all, but the truth is a whole lot simpler than that 6
hypothetical interpretation.
7 Even though the.35 square foot run 8
failed to converge on the final solution, the 9
analysts had already gathered the critical 10 information they were looking for, and that is that j
11 the peak clad temperature continued to decrease.35 12 square feet.
i 13 Now, we know as a practical matter that 14 no one analyzes the whole break spectrum.
In fact, 15 they can't.
You can always question whether there's 16 a more limiting break above or below or in between 17 the breaks that you've already analyzed.
At some 18 point, engineering judgment has to enter into every 19 analysis.
So -- and that's what happened with 20 RELAP.
21 The analysts, they did just that.
They 22 used their judgment to conclude that they had 23 sufficient data points to demonstrate two things, 24 that PCT decreased with increasing break size and ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l ;
l 90 1
that the limiting small-break LOCA PCT was well 2
below the large-break LOCA PCT.
3 MR. MILLER:
Well below, what's that l
4 based on?
5 MR. MEISNER:
Can anyone quantify that 6
for me?
7 MR. BRAND:
On the order of 200 8
degrees.
9 MR. MILLER:
So it was by a wide i
10 margin?
This kind of goes back to the earlier 11 question I've been asking about this premise that, 12 you know, large-break that would dominate, and how 13 close are they.
The closer it is, the more the 14 argument to the point that I've been making becomes 15 very important.
16 MS. LYNCH:
Should we follow up with 17 you on that?
.18 MR. MEISNER:
I think you'll find that 19 in the Duke report.
20 MS. LYNCH:
If not today, we'll follow 21 up with you on that issue.
22 MR. MILLER:
We've been having some 23 internal discussions here today and before we leave 24 here today, we'll decide whether we need more.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
91 1
MR. MEISNER:
Okay.
I think it is 2
clear that all the prior and all the subsequent 3
analyses that have been done have supported the 4
reasonableness of that judgment.
5 I need to emphasize that it didn't 6
occur to the analysts or other personnel that the 7
RELAP code was incapable of calculating at or above 8
.35 square feet.
The code termination for that case 9
was simply a matter of numerical analysis 10 convergence.
Those problems are typical of those 11 problems, and typical of those that had occurred at 12 smaller sites.
At no time -- or at the time, no one 13 even entertained the thought that the code couldn't 14 calculate larger break sizes.
And we believe that 15 had it been pressed and pursued, it probably could 16 and would have.
17 So in summary, for Cycles 12 and 13, we 18 believe that there was sufficient information to 19 calculate -- there was sufficient information 20 calculated to demonstrate a decreasing PCT trend 21 with break size, including.35 square feet.
22 MS. LONGO:
Excuse me, you said Cycles 23 12 and 13.
Did you mean Cycles 14 and 15 if you're 24 talking about RELAP?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
92 1
MR. MEISNER:
I'm sorry, thank you very 2
much.
14 and 15.
The code convergence problems at 3
.35 square feet, just like similar code convergence 4
problems at smaller break sizes, weren't indicative 5
of a faulty code or inability to reach a solution.
6 And having gathered sufficient data to draw a 7
conclusion, engineering judgment was applied, just 8
as it has to be in all similar situations.
And I do 9
want to emphasize that there were no sinister 10 undertones to this issue at all.
There was no 11 desire to hide information.
And there was really an 12 honest intention to satisfy regulatory requirements.
13 MR. LIEBERMAN:
You're really talking 14 about violations C and D here.
15 MS. LYNCH:
Which you made. clear 16 earlier today you didn't feel was willful.
17 MR. LIEBERMAN:
But that's one where 18 Maine Yankee says it did not satisfy NRC 19 expectations.
Your view -- is it or is it not --
20 are you or are you not accepting the violation for 21 that particular item?
22 MR. MEISNER:
That's a rough question.
23 Duke did do an independent look at this.
And we're 24 relying to a large extent on their independent look.
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 t
1 93 1
We have agreed with and incorporated their findings 2
and that's what they've found, that there were a 3
number of times when we should have gone to NRC and 4
discussed this issue with them on RELAP.
And at 5
that point, sitting around a table like we are 6
today, all these disagreements and problems would 7
have come up and we would have solved them in a 8
collegial fashion.
We do that all the time on 9
technical analysis issues.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
But that didn't happen.
11 MR. MEISNER:
But that didn't happen.
12 MR. MILLER:
But distinguishing between 13 the question of whether you thought people willfully 14 knew that there was a violation and then proceeded 15 to commit it, or distinguishing between that and 16 whether a violation as we sit here today occurred or 17 not, are you saying that this was a violation?
1 18 MS. LYNCH:
No.
I think the answer is 19 no.
20 MR. MEISNER:
I think the way the 21 violation is characterized, and that's that the 22 analyses were not capable of calculating ECCS 1
l 23 performance for the break spectrum above
.35, I
l 24 don't think there's been a showing of that.
I think ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 l
94 I
i l
1 there was an assumption that because of the 2
termination of the code at that point that it 3
couldn't calculate beyond that.
I'm not sure that 4
assumption was ever challenged or proven one way or 5
another.
6 MS. LYNCH:
Mike, I'd also like to 7
emphasize here that we really have relied on the 8
Duke analysis or investigation, which you received l
9 earlier in March, earlier this year, to reach our 10 determination of whether there was or was not a 11 violation.
12 MR. LIEBERMAN:
What did Duke say?
13 MS. LYNCH:
And Duke I believe 14 concluded there was not.
15 MS. LONGO:
I'd like a clarification in 16 view of that statement.
You have said in several 17 places in your response of April 3rd that MYAPCO 18 agrees that RELAP did not meet the NRC's 19 expectations concerning compliance with 10 CFR 20 50.46.
So are you saying that we're interpreting 21-the rule incorrectly?
22 MR. MEISNER:
Oh, no, not at all.
23 MS. LONGO:
That we're applyin'g the 24 rule incorrectly?
l l
ALL POINT 2 REPORTING (610) 272-6731
95 1
MR. MEISNER:
No, I'm saying that we 2
didn't keep up with understanding what those 3
expectations were.
4 MS. LONGO:
You say that you didn't 5
meet our expectations.
Are you saying our 6
expectations have nothing to do with the rule or 7
what the rule requires?
8 MS. LYNCH:
No.
We're saying because 9
of the isolation of the LOCA group and the LOCA 10 group not communicating -- the Yankee LOCA group not 11 communicating with the NRC LOCA group, there was a 12 misunderstanding about the expectations.
And 13 there's not a lot of written guidance on what 50.46 14 requires, unlike a lot of other regulations.
15 MS. LONGO:
I'm trying to understand 16 what you mean by expectations if it doesn't mean 17 what we think the rule requires.
18 MR. MEISNER:
Expectations, we're 19 talking about things like plant specific
-20 applications and RELAP should have been reviewed and 21 approved prior to implementation.
1 22 MS. LONGO:
You're talking about t
23 process, not what the rule requires?
24 MR. MEISNER:
Those things that are f
t ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
- - _ - - - - =-.. -.
I 96 l
l 1
necessary at a lower level to effectively comply
(
l 2
with the rule, and comply in a way that the NRC l
l 3
finds acceptable.
l l
4 MR. HUDSON:
Perhaps let me add a 5
couple of points here to attempt to clarify this.
6 The observations, comments, and conclusions of our 7
independent assessment team were I would say as 8
follows:
9 One, there is a limited amount of 10 guidance formally published on the requirements for 11 acceptance, review, and approval of LOCA analyses, 12 as would be typically found in other areas like 13 standard review plans or whatever.
Two 14 MS. LONGO:
Again, are you talking 15 substantive or process?
16 MR. HUDSON:
Excuse me.
The second
)
17 point that the technical review team said was, j
18 however, given the lack or limited nature of the 19 formally provided guidance.
Typically its standard 20 review plan guidance branch specification positions 21 are a formulation of the staff's interpretation of 22 what Title 10 typically requires.
23 Given that even though there was l
24 limited formal guidance, there was an understanding ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.~.
97 1
between the industry practitioners in the LOCA 2
community and their counterparts in the NRC that had 3
evolved over the years in the development of LOCA 4
analysis models.
And so that there was that common 5
understanding between the standard practitioners in 6
the industry and your counterparts in the staff of 7
what consisted of acceptable submittal and 8
justification documentation to receive NRC 9
acceptance.
10 So there was a common understanding 11 that had evolved over the years from the NRC and the 12 industry as to what the requirements, if you were, 13 and I use that word little R, not big R, what the 14 requirements of the NRC were as far as documentation 15 justification for LOCA analysis.
16 The third observation and conclusion
?. 7 that the independent team made was that the manner 18 in which Yankee Atomic personnel proceeded with the 19 development of plant specific applications of the 20 LOCA analysis and the actual results of their work 21 were not consistent with these -- I will call them 22 understandings that have evolved over the year 23 between NRC staff and industry LOCA practitioners on l
24 what -- when the NRC should be -- what types of l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l 98 l
l l
1 problems should the NRC be notified of, what is the l
l 2
level of interaction required, what is the timing of i
1 3
that interaction.
That is, in a very capsule form, 4
sort of what I believe to be perhaps pertinent l
t 5
conclusions of our independent assessment team.
6 MR. MILLER:
Those are all very good 7
insights, and I think -- but in some respects, they 8
speak perhaps to root cause rather than to whether l
l 9
there was -- and often we have a situation where it 10 does come down to a matter of interpretation.
And 11 we interpret Tech Specs and regulations all the 12 time.
13 But the licensee is obviously in a more 2
14 difficult position of arguing that, you know, they 15 were acting in good faith or were coming to the 16 right conclusion when there was no contact and when 17 the whole rest of the industry was coming to the 18 right answer by interaction with NRC.
It's still --
19 it doesn't change whether there's a violation or 20 not, it doesn't seem to me.
It has more to do with 21 how you got there.
22 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
If I heard the point 23 you were trying to make correctly, Mike, you're l
24 saying because you did not run the codes above 0.35 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
99 1
square feet or below
.6 square feet, that in and of 2
itself is not a sufficient basis for the Agency to 3
take an action?
4 MR. MEISNER:
That's right, or to 5
conclude that the code was incapable of calculating 6
at those levels.
What we should have done is sat 7
down with the staff and formally licensed our 8
thought process, which everybody does.
And my view 9
after the fact is that this would have been a 10 reasonably compelling technical basis, given that 11 you continued to have decreasing PCTs across a wide 12 range for the staff to license that.
13 MS. LONGO:
I don't mean to interrupt.
14 I was not able to follow -- I had a follow-up 15 question for you, because I'm still -- I'm not 16 understanding that the question I'm asking is being 17 answered.
And that's -- I just want to make sure J
18 that we're talking on the same wavelength here.
19 I'm trying to understand this statement 20 in your response that you agree that --
21 MS. LYNCH:
Where are you reading from?
22 MS. LONGO:
Page C-19, "MYAPCO agrees 23 that RELAP analysis did not meet the NRC's 24 expectations concerning compliance."
And my ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
100 1
question to you is are you using expectation -- when 2
you say NRC expectations, are you talking about our 3
expectations for a process for approving a code, or 4
are you talking about our expectations for what is 3
an acceptable code?
6 MR. MEISNER:
I don't think the 7
expectations for what is an acceptable code are 8
easily available.
And had we done what we should 9
have, and that was interact more with the staff, we 10 would have understood what those were.
But having 11 failed to do that, then we couldn't meet the staff's 12 expectations.
13 MS. LONGO:
Again, what I'm trying to 14 understand is you agree that Maine Yankee did not 15 meet NRC expectations.
And I'm questioning are the 16 expectations that you did not meet, were those our 17 expectations about how to approve a code or were 18 they the expectations that you did not meet our 19 expectations on what constitutes an acceptable code?
20 MR. MEISNER:
The latter I think.
Let 21 me give you some examples.
One expectation is that, 22 like I said, plant specific applications should have 23 been reviewed and approved by the staff before 24 implementation.
Another expectation is that we ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
L l
l 101 l
l i
1 shotld notify NRC of significant problems 2
encountered during development.
3 MS. LONGO:
I would characterize those l
4 as procedural expectations.
Again, I mean we have 5
stated an apparent violation that we think the rule l
6 50.46 required the ability to analyze the entire 7
break spectrum.
Are you saying that you did not 8
meet that expectation?
9 MR. MEISNER:
No.
What we're saying l
10 with respect to that is there's been no showing that l
11 we couldn't analyze it.
And the only way that we 12 can understand that the violation was written that 13 way is because a conclusion was drawn about the l
14 failure of the code at.35 square feet.
So we're 15 trying to offer an explanation for that.
16 MS. WALKER:
Can I ask the question a 17 different way?
Really what I think the question l
18 we're trying to get answered here is whether or not 19 you admit that there was a violation.
So going back 20 to what the requirement is, the requirement says 21 that you're going to have an evaluation model and 22 you're going to calculate break sizes sufficient to
{
23 provide assurance that the most severe postulated 24 loss of coolant losses were calculated.
So given ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
102 1
what the requirement is, was what you did in Cycles 2
14 and 15 with RELAP5YA, do you believe that that 3
was sufficient to provide that assurance?
4 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
5 MS. WALKER:
So I take that meaning 6
that you deny that there was a violation of 50.46?
7 MR. MEISNER:
There was an appropriate 1
8 application of engineering judgraent.
9 MR. MILLER:
What is your basis for 10 saying that?
j 11 MR. MEISNER:
That the spectrum that 12 was analyzed starting at
.1 with the limiting break 13 at
.15, from there on, PCT continually decreased as j
14 we went higher in break size.
15 MR. COLLINS:
The other supposedly 16 approved or the other approved small-break LOCA 17 model that you had used, the CE model, when it was 18 used to analyze the small-break spectrum, concluded 19 that the limiting small-break was
.5.
Now, that's 20 totally inconsistent with what you're saying, with 21 what the results are with the SYA limited 22 small-break.
And that
.5 seems to be in what we're 23 describing as the blind spot.
So why wasn't that l
24 data point taken into account?
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
103 1
MR. MILLER:
You're saying that they're 2
hopping from one side of the fence to the other on 3
what they're trying to argue?
4 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
If you say --
l 5
MR. MILLER:
We fall back on the CE 6
code in one case when it helps us justify that the 7
large-break LOCA ~I guess is the limiting condition, 3
8 but when it comes to meeting this requirement, they 9
ignored the fact that
.5 was the limiting break 10 size.
11 MR. COLLINS:
The limiting of the small 1
12 breaks, not the limiting on the small breaks, the 13 worst of the small breaks.
14 MR. MEISNER:
As you pointed out 15 though, Tim, as you change codes, you move around, 16 and the intent in going to RELAP is to come out --
17 the intent in going with the better code is to come l
18 up with a better answer.
I
)
19 MR. COLLINS:
The code couldn't even 20 analyze the point which the previous code was i
1 21 indicating was the worst one.
l 22 MR. MEISNER:
The key point I want to j
23 make is that's not true.
It's not that it couldn't 24 analyze it, it's that we didn't, ar.d we didn't based ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
=...- -..
l l
104 1
on a judgment base also.
2 MR. COLLINS:
How do you know that it i
3 could?
How do you know that it could?
You know, 4
for a code to be acceptable to us, you need to l
5 demonstrate that it can do its job, okay?
At
.35, 6
the code bombed, okay?
And you're presuming that, 7
well, if we just continued to make the time steps 8
smaller and smaller, it would work, but what did you 9
do to convince yourself that that was really true?
10 MR. MEISNER:
The code bombed just like 11 it had bombed at smaller break sizes.
At
.35, the 12 PCT was already coming down and it hit its peak when 13 we bombed, the analysts had already gotten relevant 14 information ou't of run.
15 MR. COLLINS:
That was a judgment they 16 made?
17 MR. MEISNER:
Yes, which continued.
18 MR. MILLER:
I'm not the expert here, 19 so I'm the best person to summarize.
Maybe you're 20 saying that effectively they had stopped dividing 21 time steps at a point where they thought they had j
22 brought it out and that they felt as though their l
23 understanding of the physics of this were such that l
24 it was only going to continue to get smaller.
And ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
-.... - ~.
105 1
that's the technical question here.
2 MR. MEISNER:
That's right.
3 MR. MILLER:
The question is whether 4
that was a reasonable assumption to make or not.
5
'And your_ contention.is that that was a reasonable I
6 judgment to make.
And we might have a different 7.
view, that you might have had an idea that in fact, 8
you-know, this thing may-have turned around and gone-9 the other way.
That's-a judgment call we won't-10 settle here.
.1 1 MR. MEISNER:
It got up to_the point of 12' safety injection, tank injection, which in all cases 13.
then the PCTs decrease after that.
The event is 14 already turned around at that point.
15 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Then why under the CE 16 model do you have a different. result?
17 MR. MEISNER:
Well, I'm not -- I can't 18 give you the best answer to that, but I think Tim 19 already said-it, that these are approximations of 20 reality.
You're trying to converge on the truth.
21 And you try to have merged values.
22 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Let me ask a question.
23 Duke's response says that they agreed the industry 24 standard is consistent with NRC's position that ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
106 1
small-break evaluation might be capable of analyzing 2
any break size within the range.
They say the model 3
must be capable of analyzing them.
They say the 4
RELAP evaluation model has not demonstrated the 5
capability to analyze break spectrum.
6 Is Maine Yankee or Duke aware of any 7
other license where they have a small-break model 8
that has not demonstrated the capability to analyze 9
the spectrum?
10 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
No.
11 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So when you say
"(
12 industry practice, it's except for Maine Yankee, all 13 the other licensees do it that way?
14 MR. HUDSON:
That's the conclusion of 15 the team, and that gets to the heart of what you e
16 were saying a moment ago, was that the conclusion of 17 the team was its standard in industry practice was 18 to have codes with a demonstrated capability of 19 covering the entire spectrum.
And that was the 20 conclusion of the team.
That in and of itself was 21 standard industry practice, and that was and is the 22 expectation of the NRC.
23 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
But then that 24 doesn't -- that doesn't mean that that's the only a
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
107 1
interpretation of the 50.46 requirements.
2 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So far except in the 3
Maine Yankee situation, no one has taken that 4
position.
5 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Right.
And 6
different organizations that do LOCA analysis have 7
run a different spectrum for their plant or plants 8
with different selection break sizes.
You can look 9
at those and decide, well, were enough breaks run 10 for that plant.
11 And for instance, the CE analysis, you 12 know, the one that was the license had based here, 13 they ran three.
And you could ask is that enough.
14 Well, CE concluded three was enough.
Yankee Atomic 15 ran way more than three.
They weren't able to run 16 these ones in the blind spot that Tim is referring 17 to.
18 And they looked at the results of what I
19 they had for the cases they were able to run, and
]
I 20 they concluded that they had identified the limited j
21 PCT as being 0.15.
The trend was down.
They looked 22 at the phenomenon of what was going on in those j
23 larger breaks, and they made an engineering judgment 24 that they were not going to get worse peak high l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
)
i
108 i
1 temperature for these cases.
They were not 2
specifically run through, had not specifically run 3
through.
And that was their basis for saying that 4
4 they met the requirements of the. law.
And that's 5
why they believed that there's no violation.
6 But clearly, based on what we know now 7
and what you all are saying, that's not the 8
expectation.
The question is is it the law.
9 MR. HUDSON:
I wanted to reiterate off 10 of some of the comment that Mike made in his opening 11 comments is that if the licensing individual or an 12 individual in the LOCA organization had simply 13 said -- come to you all and said we understand this 14-is a standard industry practice, this is the 15 capability and the techniques and approach that you 16 have seen from all the other utilities, we have a 17 different situation, and we're just coming to you 18 and letting you know that we are taking a slightly 19 different approach and this is our rationale for 20 that approach.
21 And it is our conclusion that if that 22 effort had been made, it's entirely within the realm 23 of possibility that if the engineering justification
-24 and explanation of the phenomenon was logical and ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
109 1
rationale that the analysis may have been acceptable 2
to the technical staff.
And they would have 3
said yes, we recognize that you have analyzed a 4
partial spectrum, but we accept your technological 5
based rationale for why that's acceptable, or we 6
have some additional questions, things of that 7
nature.
8 So I think the fundamental failing, if 9
you will, was just, you know, to have that 10 awareness that this has been industry practice, and 11 since that is what has consistently been provided to 1
12 the staff, that is the staff's expectations of the 13 capability, that it exists in the codes, and the way 14 compliance with the code has been demonstrated.
And j
15 so that's -- it's back to the issue 16 MR. MILLER:
I think we've got a pretty 17 good thrashing through of this.
And I think we 18 understand what you're saying.
And we're not, as 19 Tracy said at the beginning, we're not going to come 20 to a conclusion here.
We're not going to -- the 21 important thing is to understand what you're saying 22 and you understand what questions we have and answer 23 them to the best of your ability.
24 MR. COLLINS:
The written submittal --
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
110 1
I'm looking at page 41 of Duke's statement -- and it 2
talks about small-break.LOCA analysis and it says, 3
"The review team was unable to draw a definitive 4
conclusion regarding the RELAP5YA PCT for the 5
unanalyzed portion of the Maine Yankee small-break 6
LOCA spectrum."
7 Okay, you follow that with a statement, 8
it says, "However, it is concluded that the 9
small-break LOCA PCT for all of these analyzed meets 10 the 50.46 2200 degrees F criteria, and that 11 small-break LOCAs remain bounded by large-break i
12 LOCAs."
13 There seems to be contradictory 14 statements.
You're unable to draw a conclusion 15 regarding the PCT for the unanalyzed portion of the 16 spectrum, and then in the next statement, you draw a 17 different conclusion, that it meets the criteria.
18 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Let me explain that.
19 Those are my words.
What we mean there is that 20 there is no analyzed result, quantitative code 21 run saying the PCT is X, okay?
So obviously they 22 didn't run cases, the cases we're concerned about 23 here, so they could not tell us what is the PCT and 24 we cannot say it was okay.
That's all we mean by ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
111 1
definitive conclusion.
2 But the general conclusion, the second 3
part your reading there, what that means is that 4
three years later, after looking at not only what 5
Yankee Atomic did with RELAP5 for Cycle 14 and 15, 6
but looking at what they did subsequent to that with 7
perhaps RELAP5, you know, later version, what 1
8 Siemen's was contracted with to do, what CE went 9
back to do, what the review team knew about LOCA 10 behavior, and based cn where we thought their code 11 was going for these larger break sites, we didn't 12 see anything which led us to believe that this 13 decreasing trend in PCT was all of a sudden going to 14 take off and be limiting.
That's all we're trying 15 to say.
16 MR. COLLINS:
The problem we have with 17 that is all that stuff is after the fact and needs 18 to be part of the plan.
19 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
It is after the 20 fact.
21 MR. HUDSON:
Just for the record, I 22 must point out that the rationality that Gregg 23 described is Conclusion 5 of the report and the 24 basis submitting supporting, that is the basis.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
112 1
MS. LYNCH:
I was going to try and 2
answer the question of whether or not we believe 3
there is a violation.
I'll take a stab at it.
4 If your interpretation of 50.46 5
embraces the staff expectation, then there was a 6
violation.
But that's to be distinguished from what 7
the Yankee folks interpreted.
It's basically a 8
question of interpretation of 50.46.
So if they 9
were wrong in their interpretation, then there is a 10 violation.
11 MR. MILLER:
And I think your point --
12 and we understand it, and it is important that you 13 address the question of what was in the minds of 14 folks, and that's important, because we are talking 15 about willful and careless disregard.
And so I 16 appreciate that.
{
17 MS. LONGO:
There's -- I think there 18 may be a discrepancy between the Duke report and 5
19 something Mr. Meisner said.
And I'd like it 20 clarified if I could.
I believe, Mr. Meisner, that 21 you said that Maine Yankee believes that the RELAP 22 code is capable of analyzing any point on the 23 small-break spectrum if you just kept on reducing 24 the time steps; is that correct?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
113 1
MS. LYNCH:
I thought you said it was
-2 licensable.
3 J4R. MEISNER:
No, I didn't say that.
4 What I said was in the past, when the code has 5
terminated, lesser break sizes, what the analyst 6
would often do is just rerun it at smaller time i
7 steps.
And I was posing the question why didn't 8
they do that at
.35.
9 MS. LONGO:
Did you make a statement 10 that there was a judgment made that if small enough 11 time steps were used that the RELAP would be able to 12 analyze any point on the break spectrum?
13 MR. MEISNER:
No.
No.
14 MS. LONGO:
I'm --
15 MR. MEISNER:
In fact,'I pointed out --
16 I also made the statement that the way the violation 17 is characterized -- maybe we should just read it 18 back -- but the way the violation is characterized, 19 it's characterized as not being capable of 20 calculating above
.35.
21 MS. LONGO:
And I understand you 22 dispute that.
23 MR. MEISNER:
My dispute was only to 24 say that there's been no showing of that.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 114
)
l 1
MS. LONGO:
By us you mean?
2 MR. MEISNER:
There has been perhaps an 3
inference, due'to the termination at.35 that it 4
couldn't go any further.
5 MS. LONGO:
But you are not saying that i
6 you believe or that you have concluded that Maine i
i I
7 Yankee has made a judgment that it is capable of --
8 I'm trying to --
9 MR. MEISNER:
That's right, I didn't 10 conclude that.
11 MS. LONGO:
Okay, because I notice this 12 statement in the Duke report which I noticed 13 earlier, at the bottom of page 41, "The RELAP 14 evaluation model has not, demonstrated the capability 15 to analyze the historical Maine Yankee small-break 16 spectrum."
And you are not disputing that.
)
17 MS. LYNCH:
What we're saying is this 18 technical discussion that we're sort of going around 19 the fringes of should have occurred many years ago 20 and didn't.
21 MR. MILLER:
Okay, all right.
We'll 22 caucus at the end, and if there's some lingering 23 piece here that we want to nail down further, we 24 will come back to it.
Right now, I'd like to have ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
115 1
this move on.
Where are you?
2 MR. MEISNER:
Well, those are my kind 3
of overview.
4 MR. MILLER:
We need to take a break 5
for five minutes.
6 (Recess.)
7 MS. LYNCH:
I wanted to clear up one 8
thing that was pointed out to me at the break that 9
was an incorrect statement on my part.
Earlier I 10 was asked what Duke's position was on whether or not 11 there was a violation, and I said their position was 12 there was not.
And it's been brought to my 13 attention that they did not take a position.
So if 14 I could just make sure that that's clear.
15 MR. LIEBERMAN:
If we asked Duke, would 16 they have a position?
17 MR. HUDSON:
At this point in time, we 18 have no position.
19 MR. MEISNER:
Why don't we step through l
20 the individual violations.
We probably covered most l
21 of what we need to say on most of them.
22 A.1 and B.1 are very similar, different 23 cycles is one difference.
In summary for both of 24 them, we believe the core operating limits were ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
116 1
established using Tech Spec 5.'14.2 approved method, 2
and namely the WREM code.
And I would point out the 3
difference between -- one of the differences between 4
A.1 and B.1 has to do with the fact that the Core 5
Operating Limits Report for Cycle 12 wasn't approved 6
until three months before the end of the cycle.
7 And I'd ask is it reasonable to expect
'8 that the staff, having already approved the basis 9
for that cycle, meaning the CE small-break LOCA 10 model and the WREM code, is it reasonable to expect 11 that three months before the end of the cycle that a 12 licensee would reanalyze using RELAP simply because 13 RELAP was listed in the Core Operating Limits 14 Report.
And I think if there's.not any other 15 discussion, we'll leave it at that.
I think 16 otherwise, we've pretty well covered this.
17 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
18 MR. MEISNER:
A.2 and B.2, I guess this 19 also we covered I think in a fair bit of detail, but 20 let me just ask the question of the staff:
Is it 21 your expectation that those references listed in the 22 Core Operating Limit Report must include the 23 small-break LOCA reference?
24 MR. COLLINS:
I would think it should ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
~
117 1
have a small-break reference, yeah.
I don't know 2
how else you can determine your core operating 3
limits if you don't have one.
I mean I would expect 4
that you've got to have that.
5 See, I mean earlier on I said that all 6
the Kohler methodology was intended to do was to 7
facilitate the administrative aspects of types of 8
changes that were typical from cycle to cycle, okay.
9 Before we had the Kohler process, you had to analyze 10 the break spectrum, the whole break spectrum.
And 11 in order to do an entire break spectrum, you have to 12 use both your small-break and large-break models, 13' okay, determining the limiting break, and out of 14 that fell the numbers that would go into the Tech 15 Specs.
16 The Kohler process was not intended to
'6 17 change any of those technical steps All it was 18 trying to do was to facilitate cycle to cycle number 19 changes, the numbers that were in the Tech Specs.
20 So to get us out of the review loop, we needed to 21 know what methods you were going to use 22 specifically.
Now, since the technical steps 23 previously used both the small-break and the large-24 break, and the technical steps after the Kohler ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
118 1
process was implemented, you also have to specify 2
the small and large-break.
So it's my expectation 3
that the small-break needs to be included in that.
4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Are you aware of 5
licensees that they're not included?
6 MR. MEISNER:
I guess what I'd say is 7
that I don't know that that's representative of the 8
understanding across the industry.
And I think it's 9
something worth finding out.
I don't know that --
10 Maine Yankee, particularly back at that time, was in 11 isolation.
And it may shed some additional light on 12 the level of guidance that's available for doing 13 these analyses.
And it might go to even the fact of 14 whether or not you consider this to be a violation.
15 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So you're saying that 16 there's a. possibility, but you don't have any 17 firsthand -- you don't have any information to 18 suggest other licensees do not have this in their 19 Tech Specs.
20 MR. MEISNER:
I don't have any 21 firsthand information.
It's based on my 22 understanding.
23 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Anyone else here have 24 an understanding?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
119 1
MR. SWINDLEHURST:
I can answer that.
l 2
I placed a call to Westinghouse to ask this 3
question.
They went to their room of Tech Specs 4
where they have copies for and they looked at five, 5
and if my recollection is correct, two of them had 6
small-break in them, two of the five they looked at.
7 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Did not?
8 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Had small-break 9
MR. LIEBERMAN:
So three did not.
Do 10 you know which three of those are?
11 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
No.
12 MR. MEISNER:
And the other thing I'd 13 ask on these two violations is when you look at the 14 wording of the Tech Spec, that it has the references 15 in it, and it notes that th'e codes shall be limited 16 to.
It doesn't say that the codes -- all the codes 17 have to be used in determining core operating 18 limits.
19 That's another area where I think, if 20 nothing else, it's open to misunderstanding, a 21 misinterpretation, and again may go to the question 22 of whether or not a violation exists, or if one does 23 exist, the severity level of the violation.
24 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
120 1
MR. MEISNER:
C and D then.
In 2
summary, I'd ask you to take a look at the words in 3
there about the incapability of calculating above 4
.35.
And I'd reiterate that I don't think that's 5
been demonstrated.
It may be a wrong inference from 6
the notion of the code failed at
.35.
And I would 7
also ask you to think again about the idea that when 8
you're talking about a break spectrum, it's an 9
impossibility to analyze the entire break spectrum, i
10 that you have to some way use engineering judgment.
l 11 And what we have here is a judgment call about the 12 use of judgment.
13 MR. COLLINS:
Well, I'd like to 14 differentiate though.
The impossibility comes from 15 the fact there was an infinite number of points.
16 It's our expectation that your code could calculate 17 any given point, okay?
And our problem with what we 18 saw with RELAP5YA was we could specify given points 19 that we believe the code -- we're confident the code 20 had not demonstrated its capability to do that, and 21 there was evidence that the code wouldn't calculate 22 that, okay?
23 MR. MEISNER:
Well, I think you could 24 say the first part of that for any code that you ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
121
'1 hadn't demonstrated it at any given point, and as 2
far as evidence of it couldn't, I'm not sure that's 3
the case.
4 MR. COLLINS:
The evidence that it 5
couldn't is the fact that the history of the 6
,' development of that RELAP code, it was under 7
development since something like 1984.
8 MS. LONGO:
'89.
9 MR. COLLINS:
They started developing 10 it back in
'84.
11 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
'83, 12 MR. COLLINS:
A long time ago, okay.
13 And up till 1990, they were still having problems 14 getting it to run at
.35, okay?
And I believe that is it was they had to continually use smaller steps to 16 get it to run at that point.
And it becomes a 17 matter of practicality.
i 18 I mean if you say it's totally 19 incapable, well, if you have an infinite amount of 20 time and an infinite number of time steps, maybe it 21 will work, maybe it won't.
But the evidence that 22 I'm making reference to is the fact that over 10 23 years, it was a real struggle to get it to the point 24 it was at, and it was still bombing at
.35.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
122 1
MR. MEISNER:
And other points as well, 2
less than that.
Violation E.
3 MR. BARRY:
I'm sorry, just excuse me 4
for a minute, before we move too far past this, I 5
just want to ask Mr. Meisner a question.
6 (Off the record discussion.)
7 MR. MEISNER:
Violation E, there are 8
really two issues in this violation.
One which 9
we've talked about extensively, and that's the idea 10 that the code couldn't calculate below.35 square 11 feet; but the second element of Violation E is that 7
12 through the underlying document, and that's 13 YAEC-1868, that we concealed that the break range --
14 that an insufficient break range was analyzed.
And 15 I think that's worth taking a couple minutes to talk 16 about, because perhaps while maybe you haven't 17 designated E as a point of willfulness or careless 18 disregard, the idea of concealment itself may be 19 suggestive of this.
20 And what I propose to do is in a very 21 few minutes to walk you through the document in 22 question and then leave it to you to make your own 23 judgment on whether or not there was concealment.
24 The first page on here is not part of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
123 1
the document.
The second page is the cover to the 2
document.
And this is the technical basis for a 3
small-break LOCA analysis for -- you'll note on this 4
that we've darkened out the names of some 5
individuals.
6 Let's start at the abstract itself.
7 That's the third page in your handout.
And I think 8
you've already made reference to this in some 9
previous questions.
The underlined sentence says 10 there that " Evaluations were performed over a 11 complete range of break sizes and axial power 12 shapes."
And we acknowledge that a statement like l
13 that could easily be misunderstood if it were taken 14 out of context, but that we feel that this document 15 needs to be read as a whole in order to understand 16 what that statement means.
17 And if we step through -- and we've 18 only excerpted the pages that are relevant to the 19 discussion, this is a fairly long document.
If you 20 look ahead at page number 10, it's about the fifth 21 or sixth page in your handout, the underlined 22 section there clearly states that the largest break 23 size analyzed for Maine Yankee was.35 square feet, 24 and notes that this covered a sufficient range to ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
124 1
identify the limiting small-break LOCA condition for 2
Maine Yankee.
3 If you look at the next page, which is 4
numbered 17, that the underlined portion denotes 5
that the base analysis matrix consists of break 6
sizes between
.1 and
.35.
7 If you look at the next page, number 8
20, the same kind of thought, although a little more 9
detailed, that the break sizes, and then in 10 parenthesis, consisted of
.1,
.35 at.05 increments.
11 And more of the same down at the bottom of that page 12 in the underlined sections.
13 The next page, number 22, again talks
)
14 about various specific break sizes and gives ranges 15 in different areas.
16 Perhaps the most telling is the next 17 page, number 31, which is the start of a series of 18 tables where we explicitly lay out those break sizes 19 that were evaluated for this analysis across the top 20 of the matrix.
Similarly, on the pages that 21 follow --
22 MR. MILLER:
Can I ask did you know --
23 again I know you're trying to make a point that --
24 the point you're trying to make is that no one was ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
y 125 l
i.
1 1
hiding.anything.
j 2
MR. MEISNER:
Thats right.
3 MR. MILLER:
So explicitly what was l
1 4
done and what was not done.
Maybe this is back to a j
l 5-technical question, but within the industry, common 6
practice was'to look at certain discreet points, not 7
analyze every point, because we know that that's not 8
feasible.
But was it' common to come to a point and i
j 9
then just' cut it off on the basis that.the trend is
)
10 going in a different direction and therefore, rather i
the whole range in increments, that in 11 than bracket
- 12 some cases, you just cut it off and truncate it at 13 some point and not take it the whole range because
- 14 that code had'already made the point.
Do you know?
j-15 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Yeah, the way I view 1
.16 it is i
17 MR. MILLER:
Do you understand the 18 question?
19 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
The way I view it is 20-generally you do a full spectrum once, and that, you 21 know, a lot of cases.
I~
22.
MR. MILLER:
In some increments where 4
l' 23_
it's point --
24 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
So you can establish ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
- l
+
.,y.
-w-.yy
+
+g..,%.A e
47=
W
i 126 4
1 a trend of behavior of different break sizes and 1
2:
different break locations, maybe different power
{
3-peaking, extra shapes.
And then.there's, depending 4
on'what issue'you're trying to address, usually you
)
5 do a subset.
It's called a mini-spectrum.
It might 6
be three, it might be one, just depends on the l
7 seriousness of the issue you're trying to address.
8 So there'is precedent in my mind for 9
doing less than a full-blown spectrum, complete set 10-at times.
But you do need to establish --
11 MR. MILLER:.But that's after doing the l
12 whole thing.
13 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
But you do need to
~ establish a full spectrum once.
14 15 MR. COLLINS:
In general, if you're i
16 introducing a new model, wouldn't you generally'use 17 a wider spectrum for your test cases?
18 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Yes.
19 MR. MEISNER:
So the focus of this 20 violation, however, is on concealing'information and 21 whether or not we fully disclosed the range of break 22 sizes analyzed.
I ask you to take a look at this in 23 a little more detail at your leisure.
24 MS. LYNCH:
And I'm sure you have the ALL POINTS REPORTING
_(610) 272-6731
i 127 1
full document.
2 MR. MEISNER:
Yeah, but I think these 3
are the key areas.
Make your own judgment.
Does 4
this constitute concealment?
5 MR. LIEBERMAN:
In your investigation 8
6 of this matter, did you ever find out why the 7
abstract said one thing and the rest of the document 8
said something else?
i 9
MR. MEISNER:
I don't know that we ever j
10 found that out.
But I think the interpretation is 11 fairly straightforward, and it's addressed in 12 further detail in the Duke report.
And that's 13 that -- it's a summary statement that is intended to.
14 be read with the rest of the document.
15 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
16 MR. MEISNER:
Violations F and G,
- boy, 17 I hesitate to get into this, but we talked -- or I 18 talked earlier about having a two-minute technical 19 discussion.
Maybe we could at least make sure we 20 have a common understanding of how this violation 21 statement is to be changed and what the intent is, 22 and see if we can make any headway in a short period 23 of time.
24 MS. LYNCH:
Perhaps we could get a copy ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
)
128 I
1 of what you read to us.
i
'2 MR. COLLIllS:
Well, the fundamental 3
change I think, wasn't it, Jenny, that the statement i
4 of the original violation said that we -- the 5
problems with Alb-Chambre resulted in overprediction 6
of cooling performance.
And your subsequent 7
submittal to us said, well, things may have not been 8
done exactly right, but the end result didn't really 9
result in an overprediction of cooling.
10 After we revisited the problem again 11 and reassessed the model, we didn't get an 12 overprediction, the cooling performance was the 13 same, okay?
And I think that's what drove us to 14 change our statement of violation.
15 Now, I'm not exactly sure what the 16 words are now, but I believe it has to do with an 17 unacceptable model, because it wasn't supported by 18 the -- basically there wasn't any technical 19 supporting justification for the value used.
Is 20 that, Jenny, why?
21 MS. LONGO:
The large cross position i
22 wasn't justified.
l l
23 MR. COLLINS:
Right.
The Alb-Chambre i
24 correlation wasn't used correctly.
Even in the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
'l 129 1
subsequent revision you got it, I.believe there was 2:
a non-physical result.
And that was still used as 3
the basis for supporting the cross position that 4
resulted.
5 So the new violation will be that you 6
used an unacceptable model because it wasn't 7
supported by any -- the physical justification for 8
the number chosen didn't have any basis because it 9
was a non-physical result.
It didn't result in 10 overcooling, that's all we're changing in the 1
11 violation.
It was not -- it's true it didn't result 12 in overprediction of cooling, which is what you 13 pointed out.
As a matter of in fact, I think in i
14 your report, you said there was a modeling error or 15 unsupported model --
16 MR. HUDSON:
Yes.
17 MR. COLLINS:
-- but it didn't in fact 18 result in overcooling.
19 MR. HUDSON:
That's correct.
20 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
I'm not so sure 21 that's correct.
22 MR. HUDSON:
Well, I'll defer to you.
23 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
The review team 24 concluded that surely there was an arithmetic error, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
130 L1 okay?
The outputs of this correlation, once you 2
1 plug in your flow rates and your fluid conditions,
-3 will give you a range of answers which should, one
'4 would realistically think, lie somewhere between 5
zero percent penetration and.a hundred percent 6'
7 However, the mathematics of this 8
formula are that you can get negative numbers and 9
you can get numbers greater.than one.
That is a 10 fact.
Okay.
i 11 If I wrote this correlation,~I would i
12-have had a max-min limit on the output, you know, 13 value greater than this, round down one; value less 14 than this, zero.
But that's not there, okay?
15 And what we determined is that if they
.16 had done the arithmetic correctly, it would have 17 gotten a negative number, right?
The negative 18 number doesn't mean that there's -- the model's no 19 good, what it means is that the inputs they were 20 selecting from the RELAP5 run to evaluate the 21 magnitude of the penetration told them there was no 22 penetration, okay?
That's what it told them.
23 MR. HSII:
The way we looked at it is 24 you used a wrong -- because exponent term was ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
131 1
dropped off Alb-Chambre correlation, you come out 2
with a penetration factor of more than one, range 3
from 2 point something to 8, something like that.
.4 To be realistic, meaningful, it had been to be zero 5
and one.
6 And we understand the final number you 7
used was between.96 and one, that's the number 8
used.
So we don't dispute that, but what we are 9
saying is the calculation for your number, because 10 you copy a number of Alb-Chambre penetration factor 11 between 1,
2, and 8, that was wrong number.
And 32 that does not provide basis to justify your.96 and 13 1.
14 What we are saying is the difference 15
.96 and
.1 16 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Okay, you're saying 17 at that point in time.
I'm not going to argue with 18 you.
19 MR. COLLINS:
At that point in time.
20 MR. HUDSON:
That's our understanding 21 of the point of your 22 MR. COLLINS:
Right.
23 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Okay, I understand.
24 MR. COLLINS:
At that point in time.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
132 1
1 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Subsequently, it was 2
concluded the modeling was okay, but at that time, 3-the technical basis was incorrectly calculated.
4 MR. COLLINS:
At the time that the 5
model was being used to support operation of the 6
plant, it didn't have a basis.
7 MR. MEISNER:
I'm not quite sure where i
8 to go with this, but I think we need to go back and 9
think about it a bit.
I guess I'd ask the staff is 10 this are you looking at this as a significant 11 violation?
12 MR. LIEBERMAN:
I'm not sure if we can j
1 13 say that today.
9 14 MR. MILLER:
You mean significant in
]
15 the sense of potential escalated?
16 MS. LYNCH:
Escalated.
17 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
18 MR. LIEBERMAN:
I don't think we should 19 say.
20 MR. MEISNER:
Violation H, I guess I 21 won't go into this in much detail unless you're 22 interested.
But simply point out that we agree with 23 the violation.
And we'd like to emphasize there was 24 no intent here to work around the 50.59 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
4 133 4
1 requirements.
And I hope you understood what we're 2
trying to say in the submittal, that at the day that 3
the 50.59 evaluation was signed off, there was in 4
fact a valid RELAP calculation that could have been 5
put in-place in this best estimate evaluation.
6 And if someone were trying to hide this 7
or work around 50.59 or anything that you might l
8 consider underhanded, there was absolutely no need 9
to do it, because we had a valid calculation there, 10-which was in fact several months later incorporated 11 into the next revision of the 50.59.
j 12 I probably talked too long.
Now I'm i
13 going to turn it over to Mary Ann.
14 MS. LYNCH:
Thanks.
I love being 15 what's standing between dinner or the end of the 16 day, but we've had a fulsome discussion of a lot of 17 things.
And I'll try not to repeat what Mike said.
18 You can go to the next slide, Ethan.
19 And I am, for RELAP, just focusing on Cycles 12, 13, 20 and 14, although perhaps I should only focus on 12 21 and 13, given where we are today.
22 Next slide.
I apologize to those of l
23 you who may have written some of this language and 24 who know it by heart, but I'm operating under the
(
-ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
134 1
assumption that perhaps all of you are not as 2-familiar with it as I have become in the last two 3
months -- or laat two years I should say.
And I 4
just wanted to make sure we understood and had the 5
same definition of wi11 fulness coming out of this 6
meeting as you have.
7 And what we've looked at is some of the 8
things that you've put out over the years on what 9
willful is and what it is not.
And we understand it 10 to be a deliberate intent to violate or falsafy or 11 an intentional act or omission that the person knows 12 would cause, Maine Yankee in this case, to be in 13 violation.
14 We also understand that it embraces 15 careless disregard, which we understand to be 16 something akin to acting with reckless indifference.
17 We've also looked at what's not 18 sillfulness.
And we understand that you yourself, 19 when you've looked at it, have determined that a 20 serious but defective effort is not willfulness.
We 21 understand that where there are credible reasons for 22 someone to taking an action, that is generally not 23 been determined to be willful.
24 Finally, we understand at least as far ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
135 1
as you're concerned that simple errors, misjudgment,
~
2 miscalculation, ignorance, or confusion is.not 1
1 3
necessarily willful or careless disregard, that it 4
'goes beyond those things.
4 5
So with those definitions in mind, I 6
will try -
Ethan, you-can go to the next slide --
7 to just work very quickly'through this, at'least so g
8 you understand why we believe that what we're 9
talking about is not willful.
10 As Mike Meisner explained to you 1.1 earlier, we believe that there were credible reasons 12 for assuming that the Tech Spec change which became 13 effective late in Cycle 12 did not apply to Cycle 14 12.
We also believe we have explained to you why 15 RELAP was listed in.the Tech Spec.
And it 16 certainly --'again there were cre'dible reasons.
The 17 employees interviewed established that RELAP was 18 listed on the Tech Spec precisely because the 19 employees believed it might be used, not that it 20 would be used.
i
'21 Next slide, Ethan.
I'm going to I 22.
think not' spend a lot of time on this.
We talked 23 about the break spectrum, and I don't want to 24 belabor that.
We do think in sum that people had a ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.. ~
i 136 1
technical basis for what they did and certainly 2
worked hard to meet your expectations, even if their 3
understanding was incorrect.
4 I think, based on where we are today, I 5
don't need to go into the oversight of the vendor 6
issue.
We had come into this conference thinking 7
that that was an issue in terms of careless 8
disregard.
I would just like to say that Maine 9
Yankee felt that it had retained a knowledgeable 10 vencor.
And we feel to this day that their code 11 wari has been strong, and it certainly was the 12 reason that Maine Yankee stayed with Yankee through 13 that.
14 MS. LONGO:
I have a question for 15 clarification on the oversight of vendor issue.
16 Although I'm not raising it in terms of willfulness, 17 okay, but in terms of the carefulness of your 18 oversight, okay, and that is that we've had some 19 discussion and you brought a copy of the YAEC-1868 20 report and the language -- you pointed to the 21 language in the report saying that in summary it 22 says one thing, analyze a complete range of break 23 sizes, the complete spectrum, and then inside 24 gives numbers going up to.35 with tables and ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
137 1
statements.
2 And my question to you is even if M,aine 10 3
Yankee relied upon YAEC to perform a model that was 4
acceptable under 50.46, don't you think that it 5
would be reasonable, if anybody had looked at those 6
tables, to ask questions or to talk to YAEC about 7
why, why do you say this is a complete break 8
spectram, why do you say you did this, the numbers 9
don't indicate that.
10 MR. MEISNER:
Yes, that is reasonable 11 to expect.
And we know that there were --
12 independent of when a document is issued, there were 13 frequent meetings with Yankee Atomic, and they 14 discussed a broad range of issues and current 15 analyses and what the problems were.
I can't say 16 that there was a discussion like that in those 17 meetings, but they occurred on the order of 18 monthly.
19 MR. BARRY:
And your question goes to 20 whether if someone were reading that document, 21 whether they would pick up the inconsistency between 22 a statement --
23 MS. LONGO:
Wouldn't be reasonable to 24 pursue the inconsistency?
And the reason I raise it ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 L
138 1
1 is because if you'll recall in the demand for l
2 information, we noted the statement of the LOCA l
3 mar.ager at YAEC that he did not explain that the 4
code had terminate at.35 or what that meant because 1
5 he didn't think it was important.
And in your 6
discussion, in your response of April 3rd, you say 7
that for Cycles 14 and 15, the use of the RELAP with 8
this blind spot wasn't willful on our part because 9
we relied on YAEC.
And we thought that what they 10 did was acceptable.
But I'm not talking about l
11 willfulness here, I'm talking about the degree of i
12 oversight.
You know, having that YAEC-1868 in hand, 13 wouldn't it have been reasonable to have pursued, 14 you know, that apparent inconsistency with YAEC?
15 MS. LYNCH:
No, I think Duke answered 16 that to the extent that the question is does the 17 document explain to a reasonably knowledgeble reader 18 what's going on here, and the answer was the 19 document is clear.
So I don't think that it would 20 be reasonable to go beyond that, given the 21 assumption that the document is retsonably clear.
22 MS. LONGO:
But my question is in your 23 response, you were pointing out in response to the 24 Cycle 14 and 15 violation that you don't have LOCA ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
139 1
expertise, and so you wouldn't have understood that.
2 But what I'm saying is even if you didn't understand 3
the meaning of the language, the code terminated at 4
.35 because of SIT actuation, convergence errors, 5
blah, blah, just the inconsistency on the face of 6
the introduction in one place saying analyze 7
complete spectrum of break size, and then in another 8
place showing numbers only going up to
.35.
9 MR. MEISNER:
And I think the answer is 10 yes, that's a reasonable thing to question.
We 11 don't know at this point whether that was questioned 12 or not, but we know that there were continuous 13 meetings between Yankee Atomic and Maine Yankee to 14 discuss all these analyses, progress, status, and 15 whatever.
And my presumption -- and it's only a 16 presumption -- is that having had all those meetings 17 and come to the final document, that they 18 interpreted that abstract statement in terms of what 19 they already understood, and that was probably we 20 analyzed break spectrum and the engineering judgment 21 that went along with that to conclude it was 22 sufficient.
23 MS. LONGO:
That'c an assumption?
24 MR. MEISNER:
I'm strictly speculating.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 2~7 2 - 6 7 3 1
=. - -.
140 1
MS. LONGO:
Okay, thank you.
2 MR. MILLER:
Let me go back and ask 3
this, perhaps opening up earlier discussions, but 4
was there or was there not a feeling at Yankee 5
Atomic and/or Maine Yankee that they were not the 6
code was not working as it should have worked, I 7
mean that this thing was -- that there was a 8
problem?
9 MR. BARRY:
During what time period?
10 MR. MILLER:
During the time period 11 when you were -- during these cycles, during this 12 period of time.
Clearly, there was a recognition 13 that-they were not having -- it was not coming to 14 convergence, but, you know, that you were having a 15 problem making it work in this range.
And as Tim 16 was saying, that you were trying for a number of 17 years to make that thing work.
But I mean so there 18 was recognition of a problem, and that 19 recognition -- and that was surfacing at Maine 20 Yankee, and it's not -- Maine Yankee was aware that 21 there was a problem.
22 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
23 MS. LONGO:
Are you saying Maine Yankee 24 was aware that the small-break and large-break codes ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
141 1
did not converge?
2 MR. MILLER:
There was a problem in 3
making RELAP work.
4 MS. LONGO:
I'm sorry, I didn't 5
understand the question.
6 MR. MEISNER:
You're talking Cycle 12 7
and 13 when we were using the CE code.
8 MR. MILLER:
In a very, very big
)
9 picture point of view, I'm just trying to get a 10 picture.
So there was recognition that this thing j
11 was not operating, not working over the full range 12 of small-break LOCA, that there was a gap between --
13 MR. MEISNER:
No, there wasn't that 14 recognition.
There was a recognition that RELAP, 15 the code as a whole, needed a number of things done 16 to it in order to successfully run at, I think it's 17 fair to say, any break location.
And they were 18 working over a several year period to make that 19 happen.
20 I' don't think -- and someone correct me 21 if I'm wrong -- that, you know, we got it working at 22
.1 square feet and then spent another six months 11 23 getting it working at
.2 and then
.3.
It was that 24 the code itself, being able to calculate in their l
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l 142 1
mind at the time any necessary break size.
And that 2
took on the order of three years, right, two to 3
three years to get done.
And those problems were 4
discussed between Maine Yankee and Yankee Atomic 5
periodically, roughly every month.
6 MR. MILLER:
And this was over the 7
period of time where NRC had approved -- or the 8
licensing action, the approval of reloads and so on 9
was conditioned on using it?
10 MR. MEISNER:
Yes.
But the reason why j
11 no one panicked and the reason why they continued in 12 a workmanlike fashion to work away at RELAP as 13 opposed to bringing in a big team to accelerate 14 development and get it done is because they felt 15 they were doing the right thing, both from a safety 16 point of view and in compliance with the regulations 17 in the Tech Spec by using the small-break LOCA code 18 as a confirmatory code that didn't rise to the level 19 of having to set operating limits, which would have 20 gotten them in non-compliance with the Tech spec.
21 MR. MILLER:
Basically, again we're 22 back to where they were where both Yankee Atomic and 23 Maine Yankee knew they were having problems making 24 this code work at any point, but that's okay, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
143 1
because we'll run the CE code because large-break, 2
in our minds, is dominant, small-break load analyses s
3 are bounded. or mooted by -- they're not important 4
because the large-break will establish what our 5
operating limits are.
So they basically just sort l
1 6
of walked past again what the condition of the 7
license approval or approval was.
But folks knew 8
that there was a problem.
9 MR. MEISNER:
Yes, absolutely.
But the i
10 important element in that is they also believed that
]
l 11 the small-break LOCA code had been approved by the l
12 NRC in the past.
And there was absolutely no need, l
13 no reason not to use it as a confirmatory analysis.
14 MS. LYNCH:
Maybe I should make one 15 other point.
In my haste to shorten this and not 16 repeat things, I think I skipped over an important 17 point, which is they did recognize that there were 18 problems, and the Yankee folks were trying to make a j
i 19 code work.
20 What didn't occur and what should have j
I 21 occurred is a discussion with LOCA folks.
Now, at 22 least part of the reason for that discussion not
}
l 23 occurring was the understanding that at some point 24 the NRC would come by to look at it.
So they were l
l I
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
144 1
just struggling in their isolation.
They were 2
trying their best to make it work, but I think it's 3
fair to say --
4 MR. MILLER:
Why don't you go ahead 5
Mary Ann, continue.
6 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Can I say one thing, 7
Hubert?
You might be under one misconception that 8
might be important.
They were not rerunning the CE 9
analysis for these reloads.
The CE analysis was run 10 in 1977.
And it was just being checked off as being 11 valid each reload.
And there was never any 12 reanalysis after 1977 until 1996.
I just want to 13 make sure you didn't think they were backing up and l
14 rerunning the old code.
All they were doing was
'35 beginning to use the 1977 results.
16 MR. MILLER:
They were relying on the 17 previous small-break LOCA analysis.
18 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
While they were 19 working to try to get the new code to produce some 20 good results to implement it on reload.
21 MR. MEISNER:
What they would do is 22 take an approach that's very common in the industry, 23 and that's they look at what changed in the upcoming 24 cycle from a design point of view, fuel point of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.- ~.
145 1
view, and confirmed that with those changes, the 2
previous code was still valid.
3 MR. MILLER:
Make a judgment about 4
whether you could still rely on the previous code, 5
okay.
6 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Not to prolong this, 7
but did they question why under the CE code the 8
limiting small-break was.5?
Under the RELAP5YA j
9 where the limiting break was
.1 or.125, that seems 10 to me to be'a substantial difference.
Maybe it's 11 not.
12 MR. SWINDLEHURST:
Yeah.
And the 13 understanding we had and we agree with them is that 14 the RELAPS is a more modern, better and more 15 sophisticated code.
And it gave better results and 16 that the limited cases really were smaller.
And 17 that's confirmed by the Siemen's model and the later 18 CE model.
19 MR. MILLER:
The logic back then was 20 that again it's we're focused on operating limits, 21 and our operating limits are going to be established-22 by small -- by large-break and the fact that it's a 23
.35 and I can't get RELAP to run in that range, in 24 that sense it's not an issue.
I can still argue ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
146 l
1 with their premise on not using this later code, 2
going back to where I was at the beginning, but I'm 3
just trying to understand, folks knew that they had l
4 problems with it.
It was clear that NRC had 1
5 approved, in our assessment, and I guess we were 6
approving each core code at that point, is that 7
right'?
And we had to close out 037.
And in closing 12 8
out 037 or 0737, we did it contingent upon use of 9
this thing.
10 MR. COLLINS:
0737 wac a specific item.
11 It had two parts.
One was the code review and then 12 the plan specific analysis.
The SER that was issued 13 for item 2C330 was the code approval for RELAP5YA 14 which had the' conditions attached to it.
And that 15 was within a year of issuance of that SER, they were 16 supposed to have submitted a plan specific analysis 17 applying RELAP5YA to that specific plan.
That got 18 lost in all of this business of the --
19 MR. MEISNER:
Well, it didn't get 20 really lost.
I mean the Pat Sears letter seemed to 21 presume it.
22 MR. DORMAN:
The submittal was not done 23 apparently because of the Sears letter which came 24 out about four months after the staff approval of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
J 147
~
1 the code.
2 MR. COLLINS:
Cycle specific analysis 3
would be approved by us if they involved Tech Spec 4
changes only.
5 MR. MILLER:
All right.
Thank you for 6
that.
Go ahead, Mary Ann.
7 MR. BARRY:
Starting with Cycle 13, but 8
Cycle 12, we did get an SER from NRC essentially.
9 MR. COLLINS:
Sure, Cycle 12 preceded 10 the Kohler process, so that would involve some Tech 11 Spec changes.
12 MR. BARRY:
And the SER acknowledged at 13 least for Cycle 12 was continuing to use the CE 14 code.
15 MS. LYNCH:
Ethan, you can flip.
This 16 is our conclusion just to the RELA.
i ssues of the 17 willfulness.
Just as you've had an investigation 18 and OIG has had an investigation, we've had multiple 19 investigations and have followed the investigations 20 and interviews.of other people.
And what we have 21 concluded after two years is that, on the basis of 22 all of these interviews, is that the people that we 23 talked to and that you talked to were consistently 24 willing to defend their approach on a technical l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i
{
j 148 I
l
~
1 basis.
2 And this is as much the next point 3
based on the Duke independent assessment.
There was 4
an isolated group, unfamiliar with what your j
5 expectations were and with what standard industry 6
practices were.
We believe that lack of 7
communication with the NRC is fundamental and goes l
8 to the heart of this problem.
And it was caused at 9
least in part by the project manager's letter which 10 caused a belief in Maine Yankee, perhaps mistaken, 11 but certainly a belief on Maine Yankee's part that 12 no further communication was necessary.
13 We have also concluded that we had a 14 reasonable basis to retain Yankee as a vendor.
And i
15 that while Yankee's efforts on the code work may 16 have been defective, and our own efforts on 17 communic'ation certainly fell far short, that these 18 were not indicative of careless disregard.
19 I'm going to flip now to atmospheric 20 steam dump.
At the end, I'll talk a little bit 21 about all three of these issues.
We don't have a l
22 lot to say on this one.
We agree with you, that the
\\
l 23 reference to 5 percent capacity was inaccurate.
We 24 agree with you that it was material and we, I think, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I I
l 149 1
have explained that to you in prior submittals going l
2 back two years.
3 It was our conclusion, however, that 1
4 the error was caused by a judgment -- judgment 5
mistake by the involved employee, who was a I
6 non-supervisory employee, that when it was 7
discovered by Maine Yankee, it was immediately 8
reported to you.
And we just do not view it as
{
\\
9 willful or egregious.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Why?
11 MS. LYNCH:
Why?
Well, as we 12 previously explained, the employee indicated that he 13 felt that the PGP package was something that would 14 be changed from time to time, that it was an 15 iterative or evolving document.
I don't think it 16 ever occurred to him to go back and change it.
17 And in fact, when the NRC approved this 18 submittal later on, the SER approving it recognized 19 that there would be future changes in the PGP, and 20 that SER said if you make further changes, just 21 leave them on file at Maine Yankee.
22 MR. MILLER:
I may have had it wrong l
23 here, but you're caying that I submit something that 1
24 says it's 5 when it's 2.5 is okay because I know at l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
~.
150 1
some point later on I can change it?
2 MS. LYNCH:
I don't know.
And I'm not 3
saying it's okay.
We believe it should be cited as 4
a 50.9 violation, which when that regulation was l
5 promulgated, I think some of what you focused on was I
6 whether or not you needed a willful intent, and you 7
wanted to be able to have a violation that captured l
8 inaccuracies absent a willful intent.
9 MR. LIEBERMAN:
But going back to Hub's 10 question, the gentleman realized the document was 11 going to the NRC, realized the information was not 12 accurate, said to himself, evidently, wel?., this is 13 subject to change, so since it's subject to change, 14 it's okay for NRC to read an inaccurate document.
15 MS. LYNCH:
And I don't condone that.
16 MR. LIEBERMAN:
But it's hard to for us 17 to accept that's not some degree of recklessness.
13 18 MS. LYNCH:
It's hard for us in that it 19 certainly falls far short of our expectations.
20 MR. MILLER:
Mary Ann, I'm going back 21 to your statement that you don't think it was 22 deliberate.
What do you mean by that?
23 MS. LYNCH:
Let me say in a cognitive j
24 sense, this person was not -- the person who put the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
/
151 1
package together was not a licensing person.
He 1
2 stated, when we interviewed him in 1996, he was not 3
aware of the requirements.
4 MR. MILLER:
The requirements for what?
5 MS. LYNCH:
For accuracy.
6 MS. LONGO:
Did I understand you to say 7
that the individual in question at the time did 8
not -- it did not occur to him that there might 9
be -- that it might be a bad thing to do to give 10 this inaccurate document to the NRC?
11 MS. LYNCH:
Yes.
12 MS. LONGO:
That the issue never arose 13 in his mind that it might be a problem?
14 MS. LYNCH:
Yes.
15 MS. LONGO:
Is this what he told you?
16 MR. REIS:
Doesn't the record state i
17 that the individual tried to tell his management 18 about it.
19 MS. LONGO:
That's why I'm asking the 20 question.
21 MR. REIS:
So therefore, he l
22 acknowledged that something was wrong.
i 23 MS. LONGO:
I'm just trying to find out i
24 from your investigation, is your understanding that ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
152 1
it never occurred to him it might be a problem?
2 MS. LYNCH:
That's my understanding.
3 At the time that the submittal was made, it did not 4
occur to him that this was a problem.
5 MR. LIEBERMAN:
After the submittal was 6
made, did he recognize that the information was 7
inaccurate?
i 8
MS. LYNCH:
He recognized it was 9
inaccurate before and after.
10 MR..LIEBERMAN:
Before he submitted it 11 and after?
12 MS. LYNCH:
Yes.
13 MR. LIEBERMAN:
And did he raise it 14 with anybody or did he just keep it to himself?
l 15 MS. LYNCH:
He did not raise the issue l
16 of what was in the document to anybody.
17 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Based on your 18 investigation.
I 19 MS. LYNCH:
Based on our investigation.
20 MR. BARRY:
But to get at Terry's 21 point, and so that the record is clear, this 22 individual, I guess to put it in laymen's terms, 23 told one version of events at one point in time and 24 afterwards did allege that he had talked -- raised ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 4
_~ _-
153 j
i 1
it in some way with others.
1 2
Now, our investigation, Maine Yankee's 3
investigation, did not support that so-called 4
allegation.
And, you know, until today, quite 5
frankly, we did not know what OI's investigation 6
concluded with respect to that so-called allegation.
i 7
MR. LIEBERMAN:
You said that this is 8
more appropriately characterized as a 50.9 9
violation.
The reason why we focused on 186 and not 10 50.9 is because 50.9 was not in effect at the time.
11 In 1996, we did ute Section 186 as a basis to i
12 capture inaccurate information.
Under the Vebco 13 decision, the Court of Appeals held that 186 14 captures inadvertent as well as deliberate l
l 15 violations.
I 16 And the reason why we went to 50.9 was 17 because we recognized to the average person a 18 material false statement implies a degree of 19 wil) fulness.
And we wanted to have a regulation 20 that just addressed complete and accurate 21 information and then we could put the appropriate 22 adjective on it.
23 Maybe I should ask, recognizing the 24 potential legal issues over the 50.9 violation, the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
=
154 1
company vould be willing to accept a 50.9 violation?
2 MS. LYNCH:
Yes.
3 MR. MILLER:
But it's also -- I just 4
want to make sure it's your contention that this was 5
not somehow reckless or willful or careless 6
disregard to knowingly submit wrong information to 7
the NRC?
8 MS. LYNCH:
I think it's a very 9
difficult issue because our investigation showed no 10 intent, or as Jim has discussed, no sense of the 11 materiality of it.
j 12 On the other hand, this individual was 13 very safety conscious.
His reputation within the 14 industry -- within the company was one of being a 15 safety conscious individual.
And I think he just 16 truly felt that the document was going to be 17 changed, and the next time they went in and changed 18 it, they'd change it.
It's not acceptable to Maine 19 Yankee, I want to make that clear.
It's not 20 acceptable.
21 MR. MILLElt:
I hear what you're saying, 22 I'm only shaking my head because I just have a rough i
23 time believing -- or not believing, but l
24 understanding how you can rationalize that knowingly i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
155 1
submitting wrong information is not somehow willful 2
or careless.
It sounds like that's your position 3
today.
Is that your position today?
Is it your 4
position today that to submit to NRC wrong 5
information would not be considered careless?
6 MS. LONGO:
Knowingly.
7 MR. MILLER:
Well, knowingly.
I mean I 8
know it's 5,
and I'm going to say it's 2.5; is that 9
your position today?
10 MR. MEISNER:
If that were to occur 11 today --
12 MR. MILLER:
Is that your position 13 today?
14 MR. MEISNER:
No.
15 MR. MILLER:
That that would not be --
16 that you would accept that as not being careless or 17 deliberate?
18 MR. MEISNER:
I think, correct me if 19 I'm wrong, but one of the distinctions that needs to 20 be made I think is between t h,- individual and the 21 company.
The company as a whole would not consider 22 that to be appropriate activity.
The individual --
23 and I think Mary Ann is having a hard time 24 explaining it because it isn't rational what he ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 j
l
~
l 156 l
l l
1 did -- the individual simply didn't even consider i
2 the matter, and this is the way to put it.
l l
3 And as a result, one of the corrective 4
actions we put in place was to provide some pretty 5
widespread comprehensive training on what i
6 expectations are as far as providing information.
7 MR. MILLER:
It sounds like careless 8
disregard to me.
9 MR..LIEBERMAN:
Our position is the 10 company can only act through its employees.
Years 11 ago, I remember a case involving, I believe Cooper 12 Station, where we asked a question were the sirens, 13 the emergency notification sirens installed.
A l
14 person at the very bottom of the company was 15 responsible for doing that.
And he knew there was 16 another siren to be installed, but he had hoped to 17 get this siren installed pretty promptly.
So he 18 told his management it was installed.
The company 19 told us it was installed.
For whatever reason, it 20 never got installed.
We concluded that it was 21 careless disregard.
22 Management didn't intend to give us i
l 23 erroneous information, but the person the company 24 was relying on to give them the information did give ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
157 I
1 us information in a willful way, knowing it was 2
wrong, and we charged that to the company.
3 We see this -- this is the same as that 4
situation.
We can't tolerate the company submitting 5
information to us by the person they're relying on 6
to give them the information knowing it's wrong and 7
not doing anything about it.
8 MR. MILLER:
You don't have to react to 9
this.
You don't have to react to what I'm going to l
i 10 say, but I'm just going to tell you that it bothers l
11 me to have you sit here today and describe that 1
12 situation and to say that you think it doesn't 13 appear to be deliberate or to be a matter of 14 careless disregard.
Just common sense says that 15 that's not reasonable.
l 16 MS. LYNCH:
Let me clarify.
If that's 17 the standard, it certainly is.
Okay.
18 MR. BARRY:
If what's the standard?
19 MS, LYNCH:
As Jim Lieberman had 20 described it with that particular case, which I'm 21 not familiar with, I just want to say what we're 22 talking about today, the difficulty of it was 23 recognized by the Commission.
And that's at least 24 one of the reasons why 50.9 was promulgated, l
i l
ALL POINTS' REPORTING (610) 272-6731
158 1
particularly as you get into the non-supervisory 2
employees.
3 MR. LIEBERMAN:
The reason why it was 1
4 promulgated was when we used 186, inadvertent l
1 5
statements, it gave the wrong impression.
That's i
6 not the issue here.
And I'm not sure if there's 7
much more to talk about.
8 MS. WALKER:
Let me just, out of 9
clarification then, since you've admitted that this 10 is a 50.9, you would consider this a 50.9 violation, 11 do you consider it a willful 50.9 violation?
12 MS. LYNCH:
If there's no distinction 13 between the entity and the individual, then it would 14 be willful.
Okay?
15 MR. MILLER:
Okay, let's move on.
16 MS. LYNCH:
We're clear on that.
17 Moving right along to the next easy one, this is the 18 violation that came out of the logic testing in the 19 summer of 1996.
And as we stated in our written 20 response, we agree with the violation.
Once again, 21 we disagree that the violation was willful.
And I'd 22 like to at least work through -- and I'm sorry, I 23 don't have enough copies, but I will leave with you 24 one of bhe work orders.
I'll just leave this here ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
159
'I and you can look at it at your leisure.
2 The work' order provided that the 3
individual needed to verify that the circuitry was 4
open using the volt-ohmmeter.
He did not do that.
5 And he did not do a minor technical change to the 6
work order as is required.
This was based on 7
engineering judgment.
When I spoke with him, and I 8
guess I would say that it wasn't a decision.
And 9
earlier you said there was -- when you talked 10 about when Dan Dorman talked about why it was 11 willful, he indicated the employees consciously 12 decided not to begin the MTC, which I assume is the 13 willful aspect of this.
14 As I spoke to that one individual who 15 remains an employee of Maine Yankee, and I asked him 16 why an MTC was not done, he told me that it didn't 17 occur to him because the circuitry was so clearly 18 visibly open.
He did minor technical changes in 19 other areas in this work order, three of them that l
20 day, he understood what the end result or l
21 expectation was.
22-It is again not something that we 23 condone, but we have seen this, and many other 24 people in the industry have seen that this sort of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
160 1
thing is generally cited as a procedural 2
non-adherence cited to Appendix B, Criterion 5.
And 3
we truly do feel that that's the citation that 4
should be given to this violation.
And I will leave 5
with you some of these pages that have been marked l
6 just to share with you at another time --
7 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
8 MS. LYNCH:
all that he went 9
through.
But he can clearly see it, again it was a 10 mistake in his judgment to just confirm that the 11 circuit was open visually.
12 MR. MILLER:
All right.
13 MS. WALKER:
I have a question for you, 15 14 Mary Ann, before we leave this --
15 MR. MEISNER:
Just for my 16 understanding, you know, procedural violations are 17 reasonably common throughout the industry.
What in 18 this case in your mind distinguishes this from those 19 kinds of violations?
20 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Well, we have 21 procedural violations, and sometimes we conclude 22 they're willful, and we have made citations for 23 willful violations.
If someone knows the procedure 24 is supposed to be followed and they don't follow the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
161
~
1 procedure, we may treat that as a willful violation.
2 And in this case, based on the 3
investigation, it appeared to us that he was aware 4
of the process in the change in procedure.
He knew 5
the procedure wouldn't work as stated, and he didn't i
l 6
go through the process to make the change.
So we l
l 7
saw that as willful.
8 MS, LYNCH:
Jim, wouldn't that make all 9
procedure non-adherence violations willful?
I mean 10 that I --
11 MR. BELLAMY:
There's an important 12 difference in this one.
And the difference in this 13 one is that he signed on the procedure to indicate 14 that he checked it with a volt-ohmmeter.
It wasn't 15 until several weeks later that he went back and he 16 changed that on the document.
17 MS. LYNCH:
That's not accurate.
It 18 was several days later.
It was several days later 19 that they clarified, and they clearly put down the 20 day that they clarified that.
21 MR. BELLAMY:
But at the time that he 22 did the test, he signed that he checked that circuit 23 with a volt-ohmmeter.
l 24 MS. LYNCH:
I think what he was signing r
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
162 1
in his mind was the procedure said verify that this 2
circuitry is open using a volt-ohmmeter.
He could 3
see that the circuit $as open, and he verified that 4
the circuit was open.
5 Again, we don't take issue with it.
6 There was a violation.
I think though it's more 7
properly cited as a procedural non-adherence 8
violation.
9 MR. MILLER:
Let's take that under 10 advisement.
Obviously this question is a good 11 question.
This is one that you could look at a lot 12 of procedural violations and question willfulness or 13 not.
It gets you into a lot of factors.
It gets 14 you into what was the guy required to sign for and 15 how clear was the requirement and a whole lot of 16 things that get raised on this kind of thing.
17 We understand what you're saying about 18 it, and we'll take this under consideration.
19 MS. LYNCH:
I'd like to point out one 20 other thing, that the employee was very familiar 21 with this procedure.
There is another step later in 22 the procedure which has a verification of the open 23 circuitry without the volt-ohmmeter as well.
So I 24 think that all of that contributed to the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l;... _-
163 1
1 engineering judgment.
2 MR. BARRY:
It's an alternative 3 2 verification I think in a later test step.
It' i
4' allows the engineer to exercise the judgment, I
~
l.
- 5 believe, to-either verify with visually or using'the 6
volt-ohmmeter.
-7.
MS. LYNCH:
I have that page tabbed as l
8 well, so it's not going to take a long time for you.
9 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Can we just go back to 10 the atmospheric dump valve just for a half second?
11 MS.. WALKER:
-Before we go back, can I I
12:
ask a_ question that specifically applies to this?
I 13 maan hopefully, it will be simpler to answer.
We've 14 presented this as a Tech Spec violation against 15 procedures.
Is there any significance in you saying
'16 it's an Appendix B, Criterion 5 violation?
Do you 17 see any difference between those two?
18 MS, LYNCH:
Well, I guess the 19 difference I see is that potentially the willfulness 20 aspect of it.
21 MS. WALKER:
Why?
Why is it different?
22 I mean yo, can willfully violate the Tech Spec i
23 procedure requirement.
I mean do you think that the L
-24 Tech Spec requirement doesn't apply?
l-l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
2cs 1
MS. LYNCH:
No.
We've been struggling 2
with this.
I've seen a lot of violations over the 3
years on procedure non-adherence, I mean not a lot, 4
but enough that when we saw this, I have to say it 5
really struck us why it is being cited this way.
6 MS. WALKER:
So there's no significant 7
to be read into the fact that you've called it a 8
Criterion 5 whereas we called it a Tech Spec?
9 MS. LYNCH:
No.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
When you look at Tech 11 Spec 6.8.1 and Reg Guide 133, Reg Guide 133, those 12 procedures you need to implement Appendix B.
So 13 sometimes we use the Tech Spec violation, sometimes 14 we use the Criterion 5, it's the same violation, 15 most violations that we consider inadvertent.
And j
l 16 as Hub said, we'll take this under review.
17 Going back to the previous violation on 18 the steam dump valve --
19 MS. LONGO:
Excuse me, I had a 20 clarification question before we went away from 21 this.
Did I understand you to say that the 22 individuals made an engineering judgment that it was 23 not necessary to do a minor technical change?
24 MS. LYNCH:
No.
What I said was it ALL POINTS REPORTINf (610) 272-6731
f 165 1
didn't occur to them.
I mean I think everything l
2 they were doing is an engineering judgment as they 3
go through the job.
But they did not. consciously, 4
as I understand it, reject that they needed to do an 5
MTC.
Just visually, the circuitry was open, it 6
didn't occur to them.
7 MS. LONGO:
The engineering judgment is 8
about doing the visual thing?
9 MS. LYNCH:
That's right.
10.
MS. LONGO:
Okay, I just wanted to make 16 11 sure I understood what you were saving.
12 MS. LYNCH:
That's right.
13 MS. LONGO:
I'm sorry.
14 MR. LIEBERMAN:
New can we go back to 15 the --
16 MS. LONGO:
I'm sorry.
Thank you.
1 17 MR. LIEBERMAN:
On the counseling or 18 whatever you did from the point of view of 19 disciplinary report --
20 MS. LYNCH:
On ADV?
21 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Yes.
Were other 22 employees aware of it?
Did the company employees 23 know there's an issue in this case in that you found 24 it unacceptable, and you've mede it clear that this ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
_f.
m.... _ _ _. - _ _ _. _ _. _ _ _ _ _
166 l
1 type of performance is not acceptable, or has this 2
been.a private thing with this particular employee?
3
.MS. LYNCH:
This particular employee, 4
it.was a private thing because of the 10-year span.
5 There really was a lot of significance attached to, 6
as: far as management knew, it was the only issue 7
that had ever come out, that he was a good employee 8
with a good safety consciousness.
And so there was 9
private counseling.
10 I think it might have been handled i
11 differently,-although I'm speculating, if it wasn't
'12 10 years old, but you really wrestle with what 13 you're doing.
14 MR. MILLER:
Jim's question is have you 15 put'out the word that you expect people to --
I 16 MS. LYNCH:
Oh, yes, yes.
Mike P
17 answered that before.
We have had education 18 sessions for every --
19 MR. MILLER:
On this specific point?
.2 0 MS. LYNCH:
-- for every engineer on 21 this particular point.
22 MR. MILLER:
For accuracy of 23 information?
1-24 MS. LYNCH:
Yes, absolutely.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
,- 1
167
~
1 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Following the 2
identification of this issue?
3 MS. LYNCH:
Yes.
4 MR. MEISNER:
Prompted by it.
5 MS. LYNCH:
Yes, prompted by it, yes.
6 I'm sorry.
I didn't understand your question.
7 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Okay.
8 MS. LYNCH:
I'm ready to move off of 9
logic testing, move to mitigating factors And I've 10 lumped these together somewhat because we do view 11 that a lot of these issues are related and are 12 related to the root causes of isolation and poor 13 communication and a lack of a questioning attitude 14 that we had addressed with ISAT.
15 I haven't, and I'm not going to attempt j
16 today, except if you have questions, to separate 17 these things out for each of the three areas we've i
18 been talking about.
But I do want to say that with l
19 all of these issues, once they'were identified, I
20 Maine Yankee had evaluated the potential safety 21 issues.
More importantly, we reviewed the 1
22 management and communication issues.
We met with 23 the NRC in Rockville in 1996, in July, to talk about 24 corrective actions with respect to the management ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
..,. ~
l 168 1
and communication issues, particularly as we 2
interpreted them arising out of RELAP.
3 One of the fundamental changes that 4
Maine Yankee made as a result of these three root 5
causes was to contract for management services'with E
6 Entergy.
And that's now an old story, but.I think 7
it does go to the heart of a' lot of the issues we're 8
talking about today.
9 More painfully for Maine Yankee, a 10 majority of mid and most of the senior level 11 management has been replaced in the company in the 12 last 12, 13, 15 months.
Maine Yankee, with these 13 issues and incidents, took appropriate investigation 14 into the actions of personnel and the compliance 15 issues.
Generally, we found that the individuals 16 involved were non-supervisory.
And again, we found 17 no intentional desire to violate or falsify any 18 information.
19 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Before you move off 20 that page, when you refer to the replacement of 21 managers, are those primarily actions the company 22 took, or is that as a result of people leaving the j
23 company voluntarily?
l 24 MS. LYNCH:
Some have left voluntarily, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 d
169 1-but there were a number of high level changes early 2
in
'97, after Entergy came on board, and those were 3
not voluntary.
4 MR. MEISNER:
Jim, as we discussed in 5
the ISAT portion of the conference, it was prompted 6
by our review of ISAT and alone identifying the 7
additional causes.
8 MS. LYNCH:
And in fact, in that same 9
time period, when Entergy came on board, and some of 10 you may recall from our commitment in our ISA 11 response, and I use the word commitment loosely, but 12 what we viewed as a follow-up action, Maine Yankee 13 had committed to doing management assessment.
And 14 that did take place last year, and a number of 15 actions occurred as a result of that.
16 We do feel that enforcement on the 17 issues that we've identified today, since many of 18 the root causes are the same as what gave rise to l
19 issues in ISA, would be duplication of enforcement.
20 As Mike has earlier suggested to you, we think that 1
21 the deterence effect has already been achieved.
The 22 industry is, and my evidence is anecdotal, like 23 Mike's, aware of the Maine Yankee problems and the 24 Maine Yankee issues.
And any additional enforcement ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
170 1
I think would not add any great learning to the 2
industry.
3 Another thing we want to have you 4
consider is as you evaluate whether or not these 5
incidents should be the subject of escalated 6
enforcement is that the ISA evaluation itself, which 7
looked at I believe every computer code except 8
RELAP, found that the computer code work by Yankee 9
was generally strong.
17 l
10 We do feel that the lack of formal 11 guidance on 50.46, coupled with the isolation of the 12 Yankees, and I use that collectively, contributed to 13 erroneous understandings of what was required.
14 Finally, as difficult as this may be, 15 I'm taking you up on discussing all of the issues 16 that we think need to be discussed.
And we think 17 that the project manager's letter contributed to the 18 lack of communication that we saw throughout the 19 early '90s.
As the OIG itself concluded, that 20 letter was the subject of some non-traditional 21 processing.
And I don't know if I have exactly 22 captured the quote, but that's certainly close to 23 what the OIG said.
24 The OIG found that there was no ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
171
~
1 technical review of the project manager's letter, 2
that that was contrary to what had been the case in 3
other instances.
Maine Yankee certailly was unaware 4
that there was no technical review of the project 5
manager's letter.
And the project manager's letter 6
was vague and ambiguous.
7 I don't say all this to make excuses.
8 As Mike indicated earlier to you, Maine Yankee could 9
have and should have had better communications with 10 the NRC.
I do mention it, however, to shed light on i
11 the mindset of Maine Yankee, and to show that there 12 was no conspiracy to withhold information or to 13 mislead the NRC.
14 Maine Yankee sincerely believed that 15 there would, or if there was follow-up, it would be 16 through an onsite audit or inspection.
And we feel 17 that this fact should be acknowledged as you assesa 18 the level of enforcement.
19 Finally, we think that your actions 20 should consider the actual consequences of all of l
l 21 these matters.
Our written response addressed this l
22 to some degree.
The health and safety of plant 23 personnel and the public was never compromised.
24 This was validated by the ISA, a most thorough ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 t
172 1
inspection.
And I think it was also validated by 2
both prior and subsequent small-break LOCA analysis.
3 There's no potential consequences to 4
the plant.
The plant was always capable of 5
responding to design basis accidents.
And we I 6
think have already talked about the regulatory 7
significance of this.
8 I'd like to say one other thing in 9
summary that isn't on any slides.
Mistakes were 10 made.
There were deficiencies in approach.
There 11 were deficiencies in communication.
There were 12 deficiencies in procedural adherence.
And as we've 13 indicated today, there were indeed some violations 14 of NRC regulations.
But we see no evidence of 15 willful, intentional misconduct.
16 While we would like to have --
17 MR. MILLER:
Could you say that--
18 MS. LYNCH:
Subject to the caveat we 19 discussed earlier on ADV.
And if the actions of the 20 employee are imputed to the company, there was 21 willful disregard to ADV.
22 We would, I guess lastly, I'd just like 23 to emphasize how strongly we believe that for the 24 most part there were hard working, sincere people ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 173 1
trying to do the job every day, always with a safety i
2 consciousness at the forefront of what they were 3
doing and what they were thinking.
4 Maine Yankee's corporate reputation --
5 MR. MILLER:
Do you say that do you 6
say that, in light of what was found in ISAT and 7
your own assessment, that safety was always at the 8
forefront of the decisions made at the station?
l 9
Because I would challenge that in light of what came 10 out of ISAT and what came out of your own assessment 11 of the signif,icant weaknesses, you know, failure to 12 encourage -- to have an environment that was 13 positive for raising safety issues.
The findings 14 out of the ISAT I think are really.to the contrary.
15 It was an economic pressure being there.
16 MR. MEISNER:
Let me take a shot at 17 that.
18 MR. MILLER:
I don't want to get into a 19 debate on semantics, but the way you're painting it 20 here, you're painting a picture that safety was 21 paramount and drove -- that there weren't problems.
22 I mean that's the impression I get as I sit and 23 listen to you.
I don't want to quibble.
I hate to 24 do this, but I think it's important that we're real ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
174 1
accurate here.
2 MR. MEISNER:
I think I understand what 3
you're saying.
I think we're focused here on RELAP, 4
primarily RELAP and willfulness.
5 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
6 MR. MEISNER:
I'm convinced that the 7
folks both at Yankee Atomic and Maine Yankee did 8
have safety foremost in their minds in RELAP.
They 9
went out of their way, Jhile struggling with an 10 ailing code, to make sure in their minds that they 11 used NRC approved and previously used codes to 12 establish the safety basis for the plant, namely 13 small-break LOCA.
And they never shirked on that, 14 they never even considered --
15 MR. MILLER:
So you're restricting that 16 just to RELAP and that aspect of things..
I kind of 17 got the impression from the way you were 18 generalizing, Mary Ann, forgive me if you weren't, I 19 got the impression you were talking much more broad.
20 MS. LYNCH:
We were focusing on RELAP.
18 21 Mike is accurate.
22 MR. MILLER:
All right.
Well then, go 23 ahead.
I'm sorry.
24 MS. LYNCH:
And we understood that your ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
=-
175 1
primary focus coming into this was on RELAP.
2 MR. MILLER:
All right.
3 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
Excuse me, as I said 4
in the beginning, there had to be something if it's 5
not willful.
And it's either -- it's probably an 6
area of competency or even incompetency of certain 7
individuals in discharging their duties if this is
.8 not the answer.
9 MS. LYNCH:
I think there can be 10 something that is a mistake or an error that is 11 s ho;-t of incompetency or careless disregard.
We 12 talk about willfulness being a spectrum, but 13 willfulness is only one end of a spectrum that goes 14 from absolutely perfect behavior to absolutely 15 abhorrent behavior.
16 And I see willfulness as being a 17 spectrum on one end of that with something in the 18 middle that is probably what we all approach every 19 day, you try and do the best you can, but none of us 20 are perfect and so there are mistakes that are made 21 from time to time.
22 MR. MEISNER:
Let me finish up with one 23 minute of remarks and add on to that.
We spent so 24 much time trying to get across an idea that folks
~
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
176
~
1 went through a scrutable and understandable thought 2
process, albeit misguided in cases, to preserve 3
safety.
Folks had a reason for the break spectrum 4
that they analyzed.
It wasn't that they ran up 5
against a faulty code that couldn't calculate above 6
.35.
They had a reason.
They had the information 7
they needed and they proceeded.
They had a reason 8
for, in every area of RELAP, for the judgments that 9
they made, such as we don't think we're setting core 10 operating limits with the small-break LOCA code.
11 Given that, and I hope you give us l
i 12 that, because we did try to go to pains to get that 13 across, and maybe we focused more on that rather 14 than the compliance area, but given that, that 15 doesn't rise to the level of careless disregard.
16 When people make honest, 17 well-intentioned mistakes, that doesn't equate with 18 careless disregard.
If they've gone through a 19 thought process that and agonized over that l
l 20 thought process to reach a conclusion, even if the 21 conclusion is mistaken, it doesn't constitute i
f 22 careless disregard.
And I think that's the key 23 distinction we're trying to make here in that 24 continuum that Mary Ann is describing from I
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
l l
177 l'
1 willfulness to mistake.
There is something below i
2 careless disregard.
3 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
One of the themes I've 4
heard all day is you're essentially working with the 5
lowest common denominator.
And I'm not sure that 6
the three individuals that we have highlighted in 7
our work are the lowest common denominator.
I think 8-there are higher level managers that maybe did not
'9-take their job responsibilities with the 10 expectations that the Agency holds for people in 11 that position.
12 MR. MEISNER:
I will disagree in part, 13 John.
14 MR. ZEWOLINSKI:
And maybe we're 15 solving two different prcblems.
16 MR. MILLER:
What I want to do at this 17 point --
18 MR. MEISNER:
Can I just answer that?
19 I'll disagree in part and go back to agree they 20 could have done better, but was that careless 21 disregard.
I think they made an honest distinction 22 between what set operating limits and what was used 23 for confirmatory analysis --
24 MR. MILLER:
Let me ask a question.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
j 178 1
MR. MEISNER:
-- rightly or wrongly.
2 MR. MILLER:
Let t?.e ask a question on 3
that.
Is it your contention here that the 4
discussions at the higher level focused on that?
I 5
mean that the people doing the technical work were 6
telling at the people at the higher levels, people 7
in licensing and other people who are Maine Yankee 8
employees interfacing with NRC, that when the issue 9
was were we or were we not following through on the 10 stipulations and the things that were in our 11 approval which called for the use of this code and 12 demonstrating it within a period of time, that in 13 the discussions that were had over, you know, are 14 we -- are we making it work or not work, that the 15 folks specifically discussed, well, it's not 16 working, but that's okay, because large-break LOCA 17 dominates and we're not required to do that somehow, 18 and that's the kind of specific discussion that was 19 had?
I mean that's the kind of logic that was --
20 MR. MEISNER:
I feel confident in 21 saying essentially, yes.
Not those words, but that 22 those discussions took place.
And they reached 23 conclusions that they felt were supportable and 24 compliant with the regulations at that time.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
179 1
Mk. MILLER:
So the people at the 2
higher levels that John's talking about, knowing 3
what the requirement was from NRC is to use that 4
code and to make it work, that this was what was in 5
their mind as well, this is what they concluded?
6 I'm not talking about just the people, the 7
practitioners at Yankee Atomic --
8 MR. MEISNER:
They considered the 9
requirements of 50.46 and all and looked at it with 1
10 a certain pair of eyes and concluded that, based on 11 what they knew was being done, based on the safety i
19 12 basis and technical basis that they are aware of, 13 that they had, for instance, in the case of you 14 discussed what 50.46 said, that they had sufficient 15 data to conclude that they had found the limiting 16 break.
17 Now, I think we make a mistake if we 18 paint the picture with today's viewpoint.
For 19 instance, on the violation of 50.59, Maine Yankee 20 folks, it just went over their head that a 50.59 was 21 even to be done.
And it wasn't until the NRC 22 resident prompted Maine Yankee that we went and 23 conducted a 50.59.
24 There was an evolving understanding of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 180 1
a whole range of things, but I'm confident, based on 2
the records I have seen and what I've heard, that 3
they took into account all that information.
And 4
there was never an attempt to end run any 5
regulation.
Based on their current understanding, 6
they felt they were compliant.
7 MR. MILLER:
What I'd like to do at 8
this point --
9 MR. MEISNER:
Is that a fair statement?
10 We brought Dave along not as a counselor, a legal 11 person, but because we have nobody left at Maine 12 Yankee that knows all the details.
And Dave's our 13 database.
And he went through, particularly the DOJ 14 investigation on our side, and he knows all these 15 documents in and out.
We didn't feel the need for 16 legal counsel, but someone who could help us on the 17 facts.
I feel comfortable in concluding that.
18 MR. MILLER:
What I'd like to do is to 19 take and caucus for a minute.
So at this time, 20 we'll ask you to step out while we take a few 21 minutes.
22 (Recess.)
23 MR. MILLER:
Well, we have what we 24 need.
You've given us your view of what's happened ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
181 1
and.your perspective on it.
And that's important
'2 for us as we.look at the violations that existed.
'3 And.also it's very important as it relates to your i
t 4
ongoing activities because, you know, while you're 5
not ~ producing power anymore, you're still. handling 6
material, and there are safety-issues.
And so you 7
still'have to worry about~doing the right thing at 8
' Maine Yankee.
And so we'll take all of this p
9 discussion under advisement.
l l
10 There's nothing left in the way of
'1.
specific questions or information that -- we think we've.got what we require to make a decision.
13 Certainly you haven't misread me.
I've been j
'14 somewhat agitated at times during this discussion as l
lI l
15 I heard you characterize.some of these things.
Yet o
l 16 it has concerned me some that -- it has concerned me 17 that you characterized some of these things as not 18 being willful.
19 How much of that's just a matter of 20 semantics versus how much is your view of what you 21 expect your people to do today, I hope it's more the.
22 former, not the latter.
It can't be the latter, 23 because as 1 said before, the business of submitting L
24' something to us that you know is not right is just ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
182 1
completely unacceptable.
And we could never 2
tolerate that and you can't tolerate that.
So with.
3 that, I don't know, is there anymore to offer?
4 Nothing really left to be said.
5 MR. MEISNER:
Let me just say I 6
completely agree with you that when we try to talk 7
mindset, we run the risk of implying to you that we 8
buy into a particular mindset, and that is not the 9
case.
We are putting in place the highest standards 10 at Maine Yankee today.
And we'd like you to come j
11 out, as we talked about last week, and take a look 12 and see.
13 When you talk about the past especially 14 10 years ago or so, there were different standards.
15 There were different understandings.
And we're 16 simply trying to make that explicable in the context 17 of willfulness.
I agree, I will never condone 18 anyone submitting an incorrect statement knowingly.
19 And if that happens today, that person isn't going 20 to be around.
21 MR. MILLER:
Okay.
Thank you very 22 much.
Appreciate you coming.
23 (Proceedings closed.)
24 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
. -... - ~ -... ~ ~. ~ - - -...
- _ ~.
183 1
v.
.p
_Q.ERTIFICATION i
1 I,
Loretta B.-Devery, do hereby certify that i
j-the testimony and proceedings in.the foregoing matter, taken on April 23, 1998, are contained fully
]
1 and~ accurately-in the stenographic notes taken by me and that it is a true and correct transcript of the J
same.
Q MY
%AW I.,ORETTA B. DEVERY, RP[
i NOTAnte it 2 7 2
LOAEm A : C ? ~.
- .or., r w.;
Low Souei v,1w;. <.w:e..,r t, M y conmss,on e,...n_.u.,,,,. n,
-~
4 The foregoing certification of this 4
transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the d
same by any means unless under the direct control and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.
4 e
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 2.
_,