ML20155H720
| ML20155H720 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Rancho Seco, 05000000 |
| Issue date: | 12/29/1985 |
| From: | Simmons G SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20155H523 | List: |
| References | |
| RTR-NUREG-1195 NUDOCS 8605160366 | |
| Download: ML20155H720 (83) | |
Text
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p O Ul\11EU STATES
- NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l
l IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
1
- l EXAMINATION OF:
GRANT SIMMONS O .
l HERALD, CALIFORNIA PAGES: 1- 82 LOCATION:
DATE: SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1985 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
O Official Reporters 444 North CapitolStreet Washington, D.C. 20001 8605160366 DR 860306 (202)347-3700 g ADOCK 05000312 PDR NATIONWIDE COVERACE
I 1 BEFORE THE NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 2
3 4 In the Matter of: )
)
5 AUGMENTATION INSPECTION TEAM )
RANCHO SECO )
6 )
7 8
9 10 EXAMINATION.OF GRANT SIMMONS 11 SUNDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1985 12 13 k_-) g4 15 RANCHO SECO NUCLEAR POWER PLANT 16 14440 TWIN CITIES ROAD q 17 HERALD, CALIFORNIA 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (3
l L.)
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, PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. BulTE A BACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972 5594
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' A"^"c O Azz 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 AL CHAFFEE Nuclear Regulat. ..y Commission 4 1450 Maria Lane Walnut Creek, California 5
J. T. BEARD '
6 GORDON EDISON HENRY BAILEY ,
7 RON EATON Nuclear Regulatory Commission a Washington, DC 9 SACRAMENTO MUNICIPAL UTILITY DISTRICT 10 STEVE REDEKER Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station 11 Unit No. 1 14440 Twin Cities Road 12 Herald, California 13 0 .
i, 16 17 13 l
19 l
20 21 23 2.
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PETERB SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95535 TELEPHONE (914) 973 33g4
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3 O ' "- " c="o'"sa --
2 MR. CHAFFEE: We're on the record. Okay. This 3 is an interview of Grant Simmons.
4 MR. SIMMONS: Correct.
5 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. And this is associated with 6 a transient that occurred on December 26, 1985 at 7 Rancho Seco.
3 We understand that you've requested a 9 representative, that you have here. Would you briefly to describe who he is, and why it is you want to have him 13 here?
MR. SIMMONS: This is Steve Redeker, he's the 12 33 acting plant superintendent, although I believe they've O
V changed your title, whatever your title.
34 15 Do you want to know why?
16 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Well, you don' t have any 17 Problem with him --
l 13 MR. SIMMONS: No, I don' t have any problem with 19 him being here, t
20 MR. CHAFFEE: You feel comfortable with him 21 here.
22 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
23 MR. CHAFFEE: Fine.
MR. SIMMONS: He used to be my --
24 l
25 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
O PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE sulTC A BACRAMENTO CALIFORNIA 95335 TELEPHONc (sia) ova ses4
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2 MR. CHAFFEE: And we understand that you do not 3 have a desire to have a taping of the interview, and you 4 understand that the transcript will be provided to you for 5 your review. And you can do that in accompaniment, or not 6 in the accompaniment, with the representative that's here.
, 7 After you've reviewed it, if you have any 8 Problems with it, there will be errata sheets that you can 9 address anything that you don' t agree with. And then that 30 would then become the record of the interview. That gg record would then -- you would be given a copy of it at 12 the time the report is released, okay.
g3 When the report is released, in addition to you O 14 getting a copy of it, the interview goes into the PDR, 15 which then is available if the public wants to look at it, 16 okay.
17 MR. BAILEY: PDR being Public Document Room, so 33 it's available to the public.
39 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
i 20 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, I agreed to bypass the tape 21 and just use your sheet when I get it.
22 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Well, at this point, would l
l 23 you please tell us what you do here, and maybe just a_
24 little bit about your background.
25 MR. SIMMONS: Okay. I'm a shift technical O
PETER 5 SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. BusTE A BACRAMENTD, CALWORNIA 95535 TELEPHONE (996) 973 3394 ,
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- Q 1 advisor at Rancho Seco, and I,was the shif t technical 2 advisor during this transient on December 26th.
3 I've been in the STA program for approximately 4 five years now, at Rancho Seco. Probably, what, two to 5 two and a half years has been in. training, and the rest 6 has been on duty at STA.
7 MR. BAILEY: Did you say five years at Rancho, 3 or not all at Rancho. I didn' t understand you.
9 MR. SIMMONS: Okay. It's five and a half years 10 . total employment at Rancho Seco.
1 g3 MR. BAILEY: Okay.
12 MR. SIMMONS: With the past five years -- the g3 first six months, I was not employed as an STA.-
34 MR. BAILEY: All right.
15 MR. EDISON: And before Rancho?
16 MR. SIMMONS: I worked at Shipping Port Atomic
, gy Station, which is a little 75-megawatt power station back gg in Pennsylvania. Back there, I was -- when I left, I was 39 going for a senior reactor operating license there.
20 MR. EDISON: Were you an RO?
21 MR. SIMMONS: No. This was going for an instant 22 senior. It was a long program for an instant senior.
25 MR. EDISON: How long were you at Shipping Port *L MR. SIMMONS: Also five years.
24 MR. BAILEY: You were there in some engineering 25 O
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- r-2 MR. SIMMONS: I started off as a scheduling 3 engineer there, for the first two and a half years. For 4 the last two and a half years, like I say, was a long, 5 drawn-out SRO program.
6 And we were going to be what they called reactor 7 engineers, which is pretty equivalent to an STA.
1 3 Shipping Port is not really a full commercial 9 unit like Rancho Seco. It's like it as half -- at that 10 time, it was half Navy and half utility-owned.
33 MR. EDISON: And before Shipping Port?
12 MR. SIMMONS: That was college before that.
33 MR. EDISON: Do you have a degree --
14 MR SIMMONS: I have a bachelor of science in 15 electrical engineering.
MR. BAILEY:
16 Did you take any nuclear 17 engineering courses in school?
gg MR. SIMMONS: No.
39 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Well, could you briefly 4 20 tell us, I guess maybe first start off by explaining the shift rotation for STA's, then go into your activities 21 22 that led up to, and then, you know, commencing with your 23 involvement with the event.
MR. SIMMONS: The total shif t rotation's pretty 24 25 complicated. I guess you'd just say, for the part that we O
j PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE, SulTE A
, SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 9553S TELEPHONE (916) 973 5894
7 C 1 are duty STA's, we' re on for 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />.
2 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
'3 MR. SIMMONS: They provide us with a trailer and 4 a place to sleep here. We're on call for the 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />.
5 MR. EATON: Are you expected to be in the 6 control room any percentage of the time of that 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />?
7 MR. SIMMONS: We have to be there for every a shift turnover. Every shift supervisor turnover. So as a 9 minimum, three times a day.
Io We have to make out a log at every shift 11 turnover.
12 MR. BEARD: How long does it take you to get 33 from -- say it's in the middle of the night, like this s/ 14 was -- to get f rom wherever it is you' re sleeping to the .
15 control room?
16 MR. SIMMONS: I estimate from the time I woke up 17 when I heard the codes go off to the time I was up on the la turbine deck -- and I didn' t go imrediately to the control l
l 19 room -- up on the turbine deck, I figured five and a half 20 minutes, in the control room in six.
- 21 MR. EATON
- At what point in the 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br /> were i
22 you when the incident occurred?
23 MR. SIMMONS: The shif t rotation starts at 1600.
24 And I started at 1600 the previous day, Christmas day, l
25 the 25th.
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PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTIND CORPORATION
,3433 AMERICAN RIVER ORIVE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95325 TELEPHONE (914) 973 3394
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v 1 MR. EATON: 1600 the previous day, and this 2 happened at four o' clock --
3 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah. 4:15 on the 26th.
4 MR. EATON: So you' re 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> into it.
5 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, right. Twelve hours into 6 it.
7 MR. EATON: Okay. During the previous 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br />, 8 how much of the time had you spent in the control room, 9 prior to arriving on the scene?
10 MR. SIMMONS: I'm trying to remember who was on.
11 I tend to spend a lot of time in the control room, 12 Particularly the first day.
33 I would say -- and the Bailey computer was out r~ =
E-)' 14 also, and I was helping them to figure-out quadrant power 15 tilts, minimum main cores on the backup recorders.
16 So, out of the first swing shift, I was probably 17 up there five and a half hours. .
13 MR. EATON: Okay.
I MR. SIMMONS: The Bailey computer was down, and 39 20 I had to do some hand calculations for my morning log.
21 And that took me a little extra time than I 22 thought, so I was up -- during the midshif t, I was 23 Probably up until quarter to one.
24 MR. EATON: Okay. You went to bed --
25 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
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O ^=a eeer-2 MR. SIMMONS: Right.
3 MR. EATON: Okay.
4 MR EDISON: Heck of an alarm clock, isn' t it?
5 MR. BAILEY: I was going to say, that's a heck 6 of an alarm clock.
7 MR. SIMMONS: They wake you up.
8 MR. BAILEY: When it went into the code safety, 9 did the code safeties lif t?
10 MR. SIMMONS: Well, you've been here for the 11 last few days. Well, it's not foggy today, but f rom the 12 trailer you can' t tell. I mean, you can hear that there's 13 steam blowing.
14 By the ' time. I got up to the turbine deck -- that 15 was why I stopped at the turbine deck, to see what was 16 blowing, okay. I went over and saw both sides of the
?
17 atomspheric dump valve blowing.
18 And at that time, I just -- I glanced up at the 19 stacks, and I don' t believe there was any code safeties 20 lifting then.
21 MR. BAILEY: Going into the control room, what 22 was your impression of the situation the plant was on?
23 MR. SIMMONS: Well, before I went into the 24 control room, as I said, I went over to see what code 25 safeties were blowing.
PETCRs SHOR THAND REPORTING CORPurtATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE, BUIT E A BACRAMENTO. CALifDRNIA 95535 TELEPHONE (916) 973 3394
1 10 O ' seceuebeeoreehi eaa*reate=== aere1 2 was on shift, where steam was blowing, and we didn' t 3 exactly know where. So it's always good to know where the 4 steam was blowing.
5 So I went over to look at which code safety was 6 lifting, or which ADV was lifting, and maybe tell the 7 control room, hey, you' ve got stuck open on A or stuck 3 open on B. As it turned out, they were both lifting.
9 Coming back, running back toward the' control e 10 room, I met Wayne Morisawa. He told me that -- it was 11 very loud on the turbine deck because of the codes. And 12 he just yelled at me that we had the safety features
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initiation. So before I went into the control room, I 13 f~)
V 14 knew we had safety features.
MR. DTON: So from the tisae they lif ted to the 15 16 time you got there, they were still lifting, and it t.cok.
17 you between --
13 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
MR. EATON: -- five and six minutes to get 19 ,
20 there.
MR. SIMMONS: I knew we were having, or I 21 22 suspected we were having'an overcooling event, because 23 when you' re awoken by the code safetias, and I have done 24 this before, I sort of. count to 15 or 20 seconds, because you expect them to reseat in that amount of time.
25 PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATADN 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A 1 SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 973-5394 '
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b 11 h 1 And they didn' t reseat, they kept blowing and 2 blowing.
3 MR. EATON: Do you believe --
4 MR. SIMMONS: So that's why I figured that one 5 of them might be stuck, which is why I went over --
6 MR. EATON: Okay.
7 MR. SIMMONS: -- traverse the turbine deck, to a see which one might be stuck.
9 MR. EATON: As a result of them being -- the to ADV's and the TVB's being open so long, do you assume that 11 the code safeties also looked -- do we challenge the code 12 safeties in addition to those -- is there any 13 determination been made?
14 MR. SIMMONS: At that time, I didn' t know. As I 15 said, I tried to look out the window to see how much steam 16 was blowing. There was too much fog, you couldn't see 17 that far --
13 MR. EATON: How about af ter the fact?
19 MR. SIMMONS: -- from my trailer, up to the 20 turbine deck.
21 MR. EATON: Okay. How about af ter the f act?
22 Did anybody go and try to get close to the valves and see 2p if they could touch them or feel heat from them?
/ 24 MR. SIMMONS: No, but we have acoustic monitors 25 on those valves.
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12 O ' "a =^ro"= ^h-2 MR. SIMMONS: And we have temperature stickers 3 on those valves.
4 MR. EATON: Okay. And?
5 MR. SIMMONS: And yes, some lifted. And I 6 forget the number that it lifted.
7 MR. EATON: Okay. That will be in your --
3 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, there is a separate group 9 working on that. I'm not working directly with that. I 10 know we had some number like four or five, it looks like, 11 lifted.
12 MR. CHAFFEE: These were the code safeties --
13 MR. SIMMONS: Code safeties.
14 MR. CHAFFEE: These are the actual boiler 15 safeties?
16 MR. SIMMONS: Steam code safeties. The lower 17 Pressure ones.
13 MR. EDISON: On the steam generators.
19 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
20 MR. BEARD: Was there any indication that they 21 had misbehaved, like stuck or anything, or just the fact 22 that they lifted?
23 MR. SIMMONS: Again, I haven' t looked at that 24 data yet. We have a separate couple of people that their 25 job is, one of their jobs is code safeties. And after O
PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER OplVE. SUITC A
- SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95525
- TELEPHONE (914) 972-5594
13 Q 1 every trip, or every lift, then they go and --
2 MR. BEARD: That's fine. I jo:3t thought you 3 happened to have --
4 MR. SIMMONS: No --
5 MR. BEARD: That's f-ine.
6 MR. SIMMONS: I don't have it.
7 MR. BEARD: Why don' t we go back -- I guess a we' ve got you as f ar as you getting into the control room, 9 and see if we can get you sort of into sequence of events 10 here.
11 But as you go through it, I'd sort of like to 12 ask you to look at it from the viewpoint of, you're 13 arriving in the control room as an advisor to the shift 14 super, right. So maybe you can sort of couch your 15 comments from that point of view, versus --
16 MR. SIMMONS: Well --
17 MR. BEARD: -- being an extra RO to help out, I 18 think.
19 MR. SIMMONS: First of all, all I knew was that 20 we had relief valves blowing, we were probably 21 overcooling, because they were blowing for so long. And 22 that we had evidently had safety features.
23 So first, I tried just to get my bearings, to 24 figure out what was going on. And I went in there and 25 looked, and sure enough, it was obviously at safety O
PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORAT10N 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE BulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972-3894
14 O 1 features, where you get all the blue lights on the first, 2 the top few rows of SFAS lights.
3 Next thing I made sure, I looked up at the 4 digital, where we have subcooling margin leaders, to see 5 what they said. And they showed we had lots of 6 subcooling.
7 I looked over at the rad coolant pumps, and we 8 had four running. I looked at all the rods, and saw all 9 the rods, all green lights, and no red lights, so it 10 looked like we didn' t have any rods sticking out.
11 During this time,-I-was looking over everything, 12 and I believe it was the shift supervisor came over to me 13 and told me we had total loss of ICS power.
14 By then, I was standing in front of, or 15 somewhere near panel H1R1, that has pressurizer level on 16 it, and I looked at pressurizer level, and it was 17 off-scale low, which seemed -- I guess at the time, it 18 seemed to me a little strange.
19 So I looked back at the subcooling margin 20 meters, and they had actually increased a couple of 21 degrees since I had first looked at them.
22 MR. EDISON: How much, to what? How much did 25 they -- roughly?
24 MR. SIMMONS: When I -- I believe, from what I 25 remember, they were reading about 90 when I first came in, n
U PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN MlVER DRIVE. BulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95325 TELEPHONE (916) 972 3394 .
15 1 MR. EDISON: Margin of 90.
2 MR. SIMMONS: Margin of 90 on both of them.
3 They were pretty close together. And you know, they had 4 increased. They weren' t 100 yet, maybe five degrees when 5 I looked at them a second time.
6 MR. BAILEY: You said early you thought, you 7 looked at the digital subcooling meter, and it showed that 8 you had a loss of subcooling.
9 MR. BEARD: No, he had lots.
10 MR. SIMMONS: No, lots.
11 MR. EATON: Lots.
12 MR. BAILEY: Lots. Okay. Let me go back to the 13 second, just to the instant that the shift supervisor told 14 you that you had a total loss of . power to the ICS.
15 What did that bring to your mind? Can you 16 visualize anything, a print, could you visualize any 17 equipment?
18 MR. SIMMONS: What I visualize, I think it would 19 be the panels where the ICS modules are, the power 20 supplies. Because I just looked at them a couple weeks 21 earlier.
22 I & C had been working on them, i5ad recorders 23 hooked up to them back there, so --
24 MR. EATON: What would you have expected 25 O
PETERS BHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA 95825 -
TELEPHONE (916) 972 3394
16 1 visually? If you visualized those, what did you O -
2 visualize?
3 I know these are really tough questions.
4 MR. SIMMONS: I know, because I went back and 5 looked at the panels eventually.
6 MR. EATON: A snapshot of that.
7 MR. SIMMONS: And I know what I saw back there.
8 I guess I did, you know -- the question, I guess, I said 9 to myself was, what does this do the plant, okay.
10 MR. EATON: Okay.
11 MR. SIMMONS: Obviously, one thing it does is, 12 it causes an overcooling. And at the time, I -- I guess, 13 looking at the meters, you know, they're half-scale.
14 MR. EATON: The Bailey meters.
[]
15 MR. SIMMONS: Everything fails -- yes, to 16 50 percent.
17 MR. EATON: Okay, let.'s go back along. I'd just is like that one snapshot of no power, you know, 19 instantaneously. What did that mean to you?
, 20 MR. SIMMONS: I knew we couldn' t control --
l 21 MR. EATON: You couldn' t --
l l 22 MR. SIMMONS: Everything that the ICS stations 23 control, -I mean, that'.s why we tripped. I guess that's 24 really what I thought first, i
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PETERS SHORTHAND REDORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE, BulTE A
- SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972 8894
17 m 1 That was the cause of the trip, loss of ICS 2 power.
3 MR. EATON: Okay.
4 MR. SIMMONS: And that was what was causing the 5 noise out on the turbine deck, that was why the ADV's 6 lifted.
7 MR. BEARD: When you lose ICS power, the meters 8 go to midscale. What about actuated equipment, like ,
9 valves out in the plant?
10 MR. SIMMONS: At the time of the event, 11 everybody says they go midway. The valves go half open.
12 And since then, I've talked to people, and I've said, you 13 know, they don't have to go half open, it depends if O i4 evervtatas 11=eer-15 If everthing's linear, yeah, maybe they go half 16 open, but -- what we have been told and have been taught, 17 is they go halfway open.
18 MR. EDISON: You' ve been taught that they go 19 halfway open --
20 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
21 MR. EDISON: Or you' ve been taught to operate 22 and act as if they are halfway open.
23 MR. BAILEY: Or both.
l 24 MR. SIMMONS: Well, it's both. If you lose ICS i
25 power, and if the demand goes to half scale, I guess we l
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PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 mMERICAN RIVER ORIVE. EUITE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPMQNE (916) 972 3394
18 1 have just assumed that everything is linear.
2 And if that demand says 50 percent open, you 3 -would expect that valve to be 50 percent open.
4 MR. BEARD: Okay. But when these valves 5 repositioned for this roughly mid-position, I grant you, 6 maybe it's 45 to 55, but roughly mid-position, that's an 7 automatic action, or inherent in the loss of voltage.
3 What does this do to you in terms of ability to 9 correct for that manually, in the control room, in other to words, move the valves?
11 MR. SIMMONS: From the control room? As far as 12 the valves go, I don' t know of any way to change their 13 position from the control room.
14 MR. BEARD: What about indications in the 15 control room of the position of the valves?
16 MR. SIMMONS: We know that what those Bailey 17 meters tell us is demand. Those are not actual position.
13 okay, now, as far as what the actual position 19 is, as far as percent open, there's no way to tell from .
. 20 the control room.
21 MR. BEARD: So what I think -- a summary of what 22 I'm trying to arrive at is, when something causes. loss.of 23 Power, the end result is, a lot of valves get mis-24 Positioned to what you think is going to be 50 percent.
25 But you really don' t know, and you don' t have an O
PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE, BulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95335 TELEPHONE (916) 973 3394 s
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19 1 immediate way to reposition them, regardless of that l 2 \
position, and it's going to throw the plant into a pretty ,
i 5 interesting transient. l l
4 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
5 MR. BEARD: Okay. That's all I'm trying to 6 get to.
7 MR. SIMMONS: Okay, It did.
8 MR. BEARD: It did, yeah.
9 MR, SIMMONS: And it proved it.
10 MR. BEARD: So I guess Steve or somebody came 11 over and told you that you had lost ICS power.
12 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
13 MR. BEARD: And then we sort of got you off the 14 track. What did you do next?
15 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t think I mentioned -- I 16 mentioned that I went back to the boron panel to put the 17 pressurizer level --
18 MR. EATON: Yeah, you said that you said it was 19 off scale while --
20 MR. SIMMONS: Well, okay. That was on H1 RC.
21 MR. EATON: Oh, okay.
22 MR. BEARD: Boron analyzer panel.
25 MR. SIMMONS: This is a different panel. This 24 is a panel a little bit farther back.
25 O
PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPNONE (916) 972 3894
20
() 1 Yeah. I had -- just to check out the 2 pressurizer level, because I couldn' t -- I really --
3 usually, when you have no pressurizer level, your 4 subcooling margin is no 90 degrees.
5 And I thought maybe we were missing something.
6 Maybe, I don' t know, ICS has something to do with 7 pressurizer level. And just to make sure, I went back to 8 this other panel and checked these two other meters.
9 They're uncompensated levels that we have, back on this 10 emergency panel.
11 But they also showed zero. I then went and 12 looked at the SPDS, the two television screens we have.
13 And it was pretty obvious we were definitely into an O 14 overcooling situation.
15 I looked at the screen, and at that time, as I 16 'said, we were about six, seven-minutes now into the 17 transient.
18 Temperatures were below 500 degrees. And it 19 was, you know, you looked at -- you get the trace when the 20 reactor trips.
21 So it was pretty obvious from our simulator 22 training that was an overcooling. We were going out -- it 23 went out the lower left-hand side of the box, and it kept 24 on going.
25 I then said, well, I guess -- well, that's true.
l
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i PrTERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SUITE A ,
SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95525 TELEPHONE (916) 972-5594
21 1 We had safety features, and I said, something's 2 overcooling us. And I remembered, watch out for the aux l 3 feedwater operate valves, because they open up on safety i 4 features. So I went over --
5 MR. BEARD: Your flow control valves? !
6 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah. No, not the flow control 7 valves. These are the SFAS valves on the SFAS panel. The 8 ones --
9 MR. BEARD: Okay.
10 MR. SIMMONS: -- that open up all the way on 11 safety features.
12 So I went over and checked those. And evidently.
13 the operator had closed those before I got to the control 14 room, because I found them closed.
15 We were still -- I recognized we were still 16 going down fast, because I had only, you know, it had only 17 taken me six, seven minutes to look at SPDS, and we were 18 500 degrees or below.
19 I thought maybe we were double feeding, with 20 both main feedwater and aux feedwater. So I went over to 21 the panel, and I looked over to the panel. And I said 22 domething like, you know, we're really cooling down, are 23 we double feeding.
24 And the operator said to me, no, we tripped both 25 main feedpumps. And I looked up to my right, the turbine l
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22 0 1 plant annunciator board, and sure enough, you know, he was 2 telling me the truth. I verified that we had two 3 annunciators in that said water feedpump A tripped, water 4 f eedpump B tripped.
5 MR. EATON: You said it was obvious from our 6 simulator training that we were having an overcooling.
7 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
8 MR. EATON: What simulator training are you 9 referring to?
10 MR. SIMMONS: We have both -- STA's have 11 requalification with a crew. ,
We go back with a 12 requalification crew. And also, we have, every.other 13 year, STA training, back at the simulator.
14 STA's tend to have a lot of simulator time, it 15 seems. I've been back there I think, 14 or 15 weeks now 16 in my four or five years.
17 MR. EATON: What specific training -- I'm sorry.
Is What specific training?
19 MR. SIMMONS: What specific training --
! 20 MR. EATON: You're at the simulator.
21 MR. SIMMONS: All kinds -- mostly emergency j 22 procedure, heat transfer upsets, also subcooling upsets, 23 tube --
24 MR. EATON: Any specific events that you looked
- 25 at, previous LER's, anything like that?
l l O i
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23 1 MR. SIMMONS: Previous LER's?
2 MR. EATON: Any previous events? Any previous 3 subcooling events that you looked at in the simulator?
4 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t know if there were 5 specific plant events.
6 MR. EATON: Are you aware --
7 MR. SIMMONS: They give us --
3 MR. EATON: Yeah.
9 MR. SIMMONS: You know, steam leaks --
10 MR. EATON: Okay --
4 11 MR. SIMMONS: -- that give us -- they give us 12 things like aux feedwater valves stuck open, and things 13 like that.
O i4 an. z^roa= oker. Are you ere of e=1 ereviou-l 15 overcooling events in the industry?
16 MR. SIMMONS: We hade.one. We had two.
17 MR. EATON: Okay, you had two. Were those l 18 replicated at the simulator for you as part of your 19 training?
20 MR. SIMMONS: Well, the one was in October.
And -- well, I was back at the simulator. They didn' t do 21 that one. Because that was due to to a stuck -- oh, no, 22 25 that was the other one.
I don' t believe they did the Rancho Seco 24 25 transient. The light bulb incident, with the loss of NNI O -
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24 1 power, I don' t think they can set that exactly up at the 2 simulator.
3 MR. EATON: The 1978 event.
4 MR. SIMMONS: (Nods head.)
5 MR. EATON: That B-W simulator there is, quote, 6 unquote, a " Rancho Seco" one. I understand it's not what 7 you' ve got now, but --
8 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
9 MR. EATON: And they still can' t replicate that 10 '78 event, huh? Or at least you don' t remember them doing 11 that for you. Or for your --
12 MR. SIMMONS: They can' t -- no. Because I' ve 13 never seen them fail the instrumentation, not all of it.
14 Not such that you'd have a loss of NNI that we did back 15 in '78.
16 MR. EATON: Okay.
17 MR. SIMMONS: They failed, they can fail one or 13 two instruments, but I've never seen them start to fail 19 just about everything.
20 MR. EATON: Have you ever had training in, or 21 discussed the possible total loss of ICS?
22 MR. SIMMONS: Not -- no. I don' t think we've 23 ever -- not the total loss.
24 MR. EATON: Um-hmm.
25 O
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25 1 MR. SIMMONS: We've talked about what will 2 happen to valves, such as 50 percent when they lose power, 3 okay. B u t --
4 MR. EATON: But individual --
5 MR. SIMMONS: But as an integrated -- yeah. As 6 an integrated loss of ICS, we have --
7 MR. BEARD: Overall plant response.
8 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
9 MR. BEARD: Well, is it immediately obvious that 10 if you lose ICS power, this directly puts you into an 11 overcooling transient?
12 I mean, you know this now, because you' ve had 13 the event.
l-O i. MR. SIMMONS= That's rieht. .
15 MR. BEARD: Two weeks ago, did you know that?
16 MR. SIMMONS: No. .
17 MR. BEARD: Okay.
! 18 MR. CHAFFEE: Do you happen to know how the 19 Pl ant would respond differently to a loss of NNI as 20 opposed to a loss of ICS at this point?
21 MR. SIMMONS: At this point, I'd say, how it 22 would respond, I don' t.
23 I think -- we're told it responds differently, 24 depending on what intervals a w cranked out at the time,
~
25 1
I l
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26 I went through a loss
] 1 2
and where the plant is at the. time.
of NNI --
3 MR. EDISON: Well, didn' t you have one of these 4 18 months ago?
5 MR. SIMMONS: Yes, I was there for it 18 months 6 ago.
7 MR. EDISON: Okay, so you sort of know how it 8 responds.
9 MR. SIMMONS: Well, I know how it responded that 10 day. Like I say, it depends -- that was when we were at it hot shutdown, when we lost NNI.
12 It may respond completely different when you 13 lose power, NNI power at 100 percent.
14 MR. BEARD: Does it depend a lot on what part of 15 NNI power or all of NNI power is actually lost? Like if 16 you lose --
17 MR. SIMMONS: I'm sure it does.
13 MR. BEARD: -- NNI, X percent, or Y, it's a hell 19 of a difference.
20 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, yeah. Because it's controlled 21 in different --
22 MR. BEARD: That's right.
23 MR. SIMMONS: -- parameters.
24 MR. EDISON: Let me ask you a question about 25 your sequence of events here.
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27 1 I notice in your personal statement, you said 2 you saw the shift super go in the back and restore the ICS 3 power, right --
4 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
5 MR. EDISON: By pushing S1 and S2 back up.
6 That's Steve Wood?
7 MR. SIMMONS: Wayne Morisawa. They're both -- I s consider both shift-supervisors, because Wayne was a shift 9 supervisor before Steve.
10 They both have the title of shift supervisor.
11 MR. EATON: Who was in charge?
MR. SIMMONS: S teve Wood , that day.
12 13 MR. CHAFFEE: Did that alternate?
14 MR. SIMMONS': It used tc, okay. They' ve been 15 doing this for, I don' t know, four months, six months.
16 And it used to alternate every other day.
17 And I believe now, it seems, from what I 13 remember, that most of the time Steve Wood was the shif t 19 supervisor.
20 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
21 MR. EATON: Okay. You said you were back there 22 when Wayne reset the Sl/S2 switches?
23 MR. SIMMONS: Wayne asked me -- he found them.
24 tripped. And he asked me, should he reset them, and I 25 said something like, you know, you might as well try, you O
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l 28 can' t do much harm now.
] 1 Was this after you looked at them?
2 MR. EATON:
3 MR. SIMMONS: I looked --
4 MR. EATON: You said you had gone back to that 5 panel.
6 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. I looked -- Wayne yelled at 7 me, and I was probably somewhere right around there by the 8 SPDS or something like that. -
9 And he pointed up, and he said, you know, those 10 are tripped or something. And I think I should reset 11 them. And that's when I said, " Yeah, go ahead. It can' t 12 hurt us."
13 MR. BEARD: All right. The answer to your O '
d 14 question, Wayne --
15 MR. EDISON: Ten minutes before he collapsed.
16 MR. BEARD: The answer to your question, is 17 obviously, as an operator, Wayne knows a little about the 18 plant.
19 MR. SIMMONS: Wayne has a lot of experience 20 here.
21 MR. BEARD: Yes. But I guess he was asking you, l-22 in a technical consultant frame of mind. You know, if I 23 do this, am I going to get in trouble. And I'd like to 24 know if you have any feel for, if you restore ICS power, i
! 25 how you would expect the valves that had been in mid i
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29 1 position, how you'd expect those to react.
2 Will they go to..some predictable place, or will 3 they go random places, or one time --
4 MR. SIMMONS: We seem to know now where they'11 5 go. At the time that we --
6 MR. BEARD: I' m not -- it's not clear to me that 7 anybody knows right now.
3 MR. SIMMONS: At the time we restored it, we 9 didn' t know.
10 MR. BEARD: Okay.
11 MR. SIMMONS: And I don' t think, you know, like 12 I say, we were overcooling severely.
13 MR. BEARD: Um-hmm.
14 MRs SIMMONS: And we needed some valve control 15 back.
16 MR. BEARD: So the situation warranted, go ahead 17 and go with it.
, is MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
19 MR. BEARD: Okay.
f l
20 MR. SIMMONS: If you find out that it was a l 21 wrong move, you can go back and trip it again.
l 22 MR. BEARD: Sure. Fine. I'm not criticizing 23 you, I was just really trying to understand more if you 24 knew where those valves would go.
25 MR. SIMMONS: No. Not when we threw the switch.
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30 1 MR. EATON: But you say you do know now where 2 they would go when you --
3 MR. SIMMONS: Well, we've done it twice. And 4 the valves went the same place twice in a row. S o --
, 5 MR. EATON: So it is now fair to assume they 6 will always go to that place, or -- do you see my point?
7 MR. SIMMONS: I --
8 MR. EATON: Because I' ve asked other people, and 9 they say, well, they could go open, they could go shut, it 10 depends.
11 But you seem to feel fairly secure that they 12 will return to the same place every time.
13 MR. SIMMONS: Well, there's six valves'we O i4 ogeaea, 9 99ea- -
15 MR. EATON: Uh-huh.
16 MR. SIMMONS: Twice.
17 MR. CHAFFEE: How do you know you pegged them?
f 18 MR. SIMMONS: Because the operators had to take l 19 them -- I saw both times, particularly the second time I i
I l 20 was watching them, there was hands all over the panel, and i
l 21 they said everything's pegged.
22 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. So the indication's on the 23 control room board --
24 MR. SIMMONS: And I saw all kinds of hands on 25 the toggle switches, trying to --
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l 31 1 MR. CHAFFEE: You don' t have valve position 2 indication in the control room for these things.
3 MR. SIMMONS: Just demand.
4 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. When you guys were 5 manipulating these switches, did you know how they entered 6 into the circuitry, the power supplies, or -- I mean, did 7 everybody know in their mind that was S1 and 2, or just 8 some switches that were in that panel that seemed to be in 9 a tripped position?
10 MR. SIMMONS: I knew that once we found them, I 11 knew they were S1 and S2.
12 When they said to me first that they had lost 13 ICS power, I went back and they had the cabinets open by 14 that time. And I looked, and sure enough, all four power 15 supplies were de-energized, the lights were off.
16 The white breakers were on, though. They had 17 little white breakers on each power supply.
18 So I went back and checked the ABT, and everyone 19 else seemed to do, and --
20 MR. EATON: Well, wait a second. At that time, 21 did you also look up at the two switches, S1 and S2?
22 MR. SIMMONS: No. Because the two switches 23 aren' t in the same panel -- -
24 MR. EATON: Okay.
25 l
O l
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32 O I MR. SIMMONS: For one thing. They are one panel Vj 2 to the right.
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Where the ABT's are?
4 MR. SIMMONS: No. The ABT's are -- you have to 5 go around the whole set of panels to see the ABT's.
6 MR. CHAFFEE: They' re one panel different from 7 the power --
8 MR. SIMMONS: From the power supplies. From the 9 individual plus/minus power supplies.
10 MR. EATON: En route to the ABT, do you pass 11 that panel that has the Sl/S2?
12 MR. SIMMONS: No. But that panel was open. I 13 just didn' t happen -- I looked at -- I didn' t look at the 14 top. I' looked at all the lights, all the modules.
15 There's a lot of lights on a lot of auxiliary relays and 16 such, and they were all out. I didn' t look at the top.
17 MR. EATON: Did you look at the top later, 18 before Wayne brought it to your attention?
19 MR. SIMMONS: Not before, no.
20 MR. EATON: So you never actually looked at 21 S1/S2 until Wayne brought it to your attention that they 22 were open.
23 MR. SIMMONS: I'11 tell you, I looked -- I was 24 getting -- I looked at the ABT --
, 25 MR. EATON: Um-hmm.
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33 1 MR. SIMMONS: All three ABT's had green lights
[}
2 on them, which means they hadn' t transferred, and it means 3 they had power.
4 MR. EATON: Normal power supply, okay.
5 MR. SIMMONS: I then went back and, we just had 6 lost, like you say, 18 months ago, we lost NNI. Everybody 7 was pretty up on what we have for NNI.
8 I didn' t specifically remember the ICS power 9 supply. I know there's four of them, and I know they're 10 auctioneered. But as f ar as the S1 and S2 switches, I 33 wasn' t sure they had S1 and S2 switches.
12 And I looked. They have little mimic buses on g3 the NNI cabinets, of the NNI power supplies, which have G
(> 14 the S1 and S2 switches that .the NNI has.
15 And I said to myself, you know, maybe this panel 16 has S1 and S2 switches also. And I went back and I looked 17 above the power supplies. Because I know in NNI, that I
ig they're at the top.
l 39 And I looked in the panel that had the four l 20 Power supplies at the top, and there's no breaker there.
21 So I said, well, maybe ICS power supply does not have an 22 Sl/S2 switch.
gg I did not look, unfortunately, I did not look in 24 the other -- top of the other panels.
25 MR. EATON: Okay. See, one of the things that
(
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34
' I came out in an earlier interview was that four people 2 looked at S1/S2, and didn' t realize that they were in 4
3 the -- didn' t recognize that they were in the trip 4 position. And you' re one of the -- now, this is 5 g contraire. In other words, you weren' t one of the 6 ones --
7 MR. SIMMONS: If I looked at -- I'm an 8 electrical engineer --
9 MR. EATON: Yeah.
10 MR. SIMMONS: And admittedly, I like to play ,
I 11 .ith w switches. And if we had lost NNI power and__I was 12 back there, I feel now -- I can' t remember looking at 13 them. .
O i4 e we aiaa't neve ear vo er, evea ie eo edoar l 15 thought that they were closed, I would have cycled them.
16 What's it hurt? It doesn' t hurt anything if you cycle 17 them. If you don' t have any power to betjin with --
18 MR. EATON: That's an interesting statement.
19 MR. SIMMONS: -- trying to open them and reclose ,
20 them again --
l 21 MR. EATON: Yech. I understand what you' re 22 saying. One of the th),ngs that was brought out, or l
23 mentioned, was the fact that from a human factor.._
24 standpoint, number one, they were up high.
I 25 Number two, they're not adequately labeled as to O
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35 1 0-N, 0-F-F, although I guess the O on one is --
2 MR. SIMMONS: I didn' t look at that. I heard 3 that, I didn' t look. I haven' t gone back and looked at 4 that.
5 MR. EATON: Yeah. Number three, they were both 6 in the same position, as opposed to one being open, one 7 being shut. And --
3 MR. SIMMONS: What was that?
9 MR. EATON: Both S1 and S2 were in the smne 10 Position, as opposed --
33 MR. SIMMONS: That's true.
12 MR. EATON: -- one being in one position and 33 another --
14 MR. SIMMONS: They were both down.
15 MR. EATON: So the assumption that I've gotten 16 so far in interviews is that, they must be closed. They 17 must be in the make position.
18 Now, by virtue of the f act you didn' t look at 19 it, by virtue of the f act you say, you know, you' re a 20 double-E, so you would have at least checked them or 21 cycled them. I'm not sure what conclusion I'm drawing 22 from that.
23 But you also said that it couldn' t hurt to cycle 24 them. And I guess one of the things that's come out is 25 the fact that nobody really knew what was going to happen PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALWORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972-3394
36 i 1 to the valves, once you got power.back.
2 MR. EDISON: But he could have cycled them right 3 off again. So it couldn' t hurt. ,
1 4 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
5 MR. EATON: Absolutely. I'm a little tough --
6 down with that.
7 MR. SIMMONS: We were in safety features --
3 MR. EATON: Yeah.
9 MR. SIMMONS: We were in a large transient, 10 because we didn' t have NNI. .
II - MR. EATON: Um-hmm.
12 MR. SIMMONS: And it's quite possible, I i
13 thought, if you got NNI power back, things are going to O i. see 1o= be==er- .
15 MR. EATON: Yeah. I think --
16 MR. REDEKER: He means ICS power.
17 MR. SIMMONS: Did I say NNI?
13 MR. EATON: Yeah, you mean ICS power.
19 MR. SIMMONS: I've been doing that all the time.
20 I had the NNI transient, too, here, 18 months ago.
21 MR. EDISON: In the early part of the transient, 22 before you got in the control room, they tripped the main.
23 feedpumps.
24 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
MR. EDISON: The first few minutes. If they had 25 O 7 PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CONPORATION 1 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DR8VE. SulTE A SACRAMENTO. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972-8594
37 1 not tripped those pumps, I guess it would have made it a 2 little worse, right? They would have been pouring water l
3 into the --
4 MR. SIMMONS: Oh --
5 MR. EDISON: -- steam generators.
6 MR. SIMMONS: Yes, eventually they would have.
7 MR. EDISON: Is there eventually a high-level a trip?
9 MR. SIMMONS: Of the feedpumps? ,
10 MR. EDISON: The feedpumps.
11 MR. SIMMONS: No. -
12 MR. EDISON: On the steam generator.
13 MR. SIMMONS: There's a high-level limit on the 14 valves, but there's no pump trip.
15 MR. EDISON: Okay, I see. So that the 16 high-level --
17 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, the --
, 18 MR. EDISON: -- feedback is to the valves, and l
i 19 not to the pumps.
20 MR. SIMMONS: If~we had ICS power, yes. If you 21 go to high-level limit, it closes the valves, but not --
l 22 MR. EDISON: Okay. But without ICS, if the main 23 feedpumps had not been tripped, they would have just kept 24 feeding the steam generators.
25 t
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k A.
38 7 1 MR. SIMMONS: Once the pressure got down to (J
2 where they could feed the steam generators, yes.
3 MR. BEARD: What about getting the high level 4 that actuates the turbine trip, and have!'turb'ine tirip come s
< s' 5 back and do something on main feeds? ,
S 6 MR. SIMMONS: There's no high-level trip. ,
\
7 There's no high-level -- 4 3 MR. BEARD: No high-level turbine trip? ' ', .
,, /
9 MR. SIMMONS: -- turbine trip. b,
^
10 MR. BAILEY: What do you mean by, once the r
11 pressure got down to where they could feed the stefa - . ,
12 generator? ,
13 MR. SIMMONS: Again, this is knowledge I gained 14 af ter the trip by looking at the traces we've got. When_,
15 the demand signa.1 on ICS went to about 50 percent for the 16 Pumps also, the pump speed ran back, because they were 17 gceater than 50 percent for our 75 percent power level.
13 ; So they slowed down, their discharge pressure 19 went down. That's why the aux feedpumps started. Aux .
20 feedpumps actually started before loss of -- or not before 21 loss of ICS, before SFAS. x x .,
22 MR. BEARD: But main feed still --
~
23 MR. SIMMONS: Or before the --
l 24 MR. BEARD: -- kept feeding.
> 25 l
l O
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T
- ' 39 e
r'O 1 MR. SIMMONS: Before the operators took the i&J
)(
~
2 feedpumps, too.
MR. BAILEY:
% " , '4,'s 3 It started because the main 4 feedpumps ran back to --
5 MR. SIMMONS: To less than --
i 6 6 MR. BAILEY: Fifty percent of --
7 MR. SIMMONS: Well, yes. To less than 850 pound g discharge pressure. So the aux feedpumps both got an
,, 9 auto-start signal.
MR. EDISON: But then that pressure would pick 10
< > ; gj up again as --
'$. MR. SIMMONS: Well, as you feed --
12 yg - MR. EDISON: -- kind of a surge down and then 34 back up?
MR. SIMMONS: As you feed aux feedwater in, of
, 15 16 course, as you see the steam generator pressures 37 decrease --
yg MR. EDISON: All right.
' And eventually, it looks like, 99-MR. SIMMONS:
from what I have, I believed at the time that the feedpump 20 21 discharge pressure was down around 850 pounds or somewhere in that area.
l 22 ,
MR. EDISON: Yeah.
23 MR. SIMMONS: And it started up, and main 24 25 feedwater reg valves would also be half open or something O
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40 1 around half open, with loss of ICS power.
2 MR. EDISON: Yeah. So --
3 MR. SIMMONS: So you would have fed the steam 4 generators, when you got down to less than 850 pounds, 5 minus head losses.
6 MR. EDISON: In the steam generators.
7 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
3 MR. BAILEY: So if they had to trip the main 9 feedpumps, they would have pretty soon been adding water 10 with the main feedpumps and auxiliary feedwater pumps 11 both.
12 MR. SIMMONS: Both.
13 MR. EDISON: Well,'now, wait a minute, though.
O- i. this is eefore ther eaesed the dume ve1ves and the 15 atmospheric release. I mean, the atomospheric release in 16 the bypass valves.
17 MR. SIMMONS: True.
Is MR. EDISON: So the steam generator pressure 19 would have been down right away, wouldn' t it? Until they 20 gagged them.
21 MR. SIMMONS: That's true. It would have 22 decreased. I don' t know, you say right away --
23 MR. EDISON: Well --
24 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, it takes some time.
25 MR. EDISON: It was dropping right off --
O l
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41 3 MR. SIMMONS: Well --
MR. EDISON: It was below below 800 psi, it 2
3 looks like, by --
4 MR. BEARD: Quarter after.
MR. EDISON: -- two minutes into the event.
5 MR. SIMMONS: But we' re analyzing whether that 6
7 was aux feedwater or ADV's or whatever.
g MR. EDISON: Well, whatever. ,
MR. SIMMONS: We' re analyzing whatever gave 9
10 us --
yy MR. EDISON: Whatever the 800 pounds main feed-w uld have kept feeding, right.
12 yg MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
() y4 MR. BAILEY: You're analyzing -- -
MR. SIMMONS: What actually gave us the most 15 16 cooldown.
y7 MR. BAILEY: Oh.
yg MR. SIMMONS: What percentage --
MR. EDISON: If they had not manually set the 19 20 Pumps --
MR. SIMMONS: -- of the cooldown was due to yy 22 stuck open ADV's, TVB's, aux feedwater --
MR. EDISON: If they had not manually tripped _.
23 24 the pumps, is it possible they could have flooded the steam generators?
25 l
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42
. 1 MR. SIMMONS: No. Because you get main
~)
2 steamline failure logic at 435 pounds.
3 MR. BAILEY: Would that be --
4 MR. EDISON: At 435 pounds of pressure --
5 MR. SIMMONS: In the steam generators.
6 MR. EDISON: You mean when it gets that low.
7 MR. SIMMONS: When it gets that low.
3 MR. BEARD: Yeah, but isn' t it possible to have 9 double feed and have overfilled it, before you get that 10 far, before you get that low? I'm asking, I' m not --
yy MR. SIMMONS: To get to -- you' re saying to get 12 to over ninety-two and a half percent, ninety-five percent yg in the operating range? That's what you consider an
() 34 overfill?
15 MR. BEARD: Well --
16 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, you consider 600 inches?
y7 MR. EATON: No, we meant --
yg MR. BEARD: Literally full.
19 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, literally full?
20 MR. BEARD: Literally full.
21 MR. SIMMONS: I would think you' re going to get 12 below 435 pounds, just as engineering or operator 23 judgment, you' re going to get less than 435 pounds in 24 isolated main feedwater before you fill the generators up 25 to 600 inches.
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43
() 1 MR. BEARD: Well, let me look at it a little 2 differently. Assuming you' re in a double fill condition, 3 okay. Then the only thing that's going to turn of f 4 automatically is going to be in the absence of ICS now.
5 The main steam protection package is going to 6 isolate main feed, when you get down to 435 pounds or 7 whatever the number is.
g MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
9 MR. BEARD: But it doesn' t isolate aux feed.
MR. SIMMONS: No, it doesn' t.
10 yy MR. BEARD: So the best it's going to do is kill 12 main feed for you, with some time delay, response time, yg But it will leave aux feed running. And like 14 y u said earlier, those valves will go to wide open. 3o 15 y u could still be pumping it right on up there, I would 16 think.
MR. SIMMONS: Yes, 17 yg MR. BEARD: I haven' t gone thrcugh the 19 arithmetic and looked at the flows and all those kinds of 20 things, but I guess what I hear you saying is, your 21 judgment of the situation is that you probably would trip ,
at least the main feeds before you got there, and --
22 MR. SIMMONS: I think --
23 MR. BEARD: -- how much would happen later on 24 25 aux feed, we' re really not sure.
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44 O
G 1 MR. SIMMONS: Aux feed, like you said, would 2 continue.
3 MR. EDISON: That's purely a manual shutof f?
4 MR. SIMMONS: For auxiliary feedwater, yes.
5 MR. EDISON: With a failed ICS, I mean.
6 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
7 MR. BEARD: Because one of the questions that's a come up in our minds has been this question of, suppose 9 there had not been any operator action for -- pick a 10 number. Ten minutes, twenty minutes, whatever number you it want to pick.
12 What's the worst that could have happened? And 13 it looks like steam generator overfill is in that category.
14 of we're not sure. We don' t know right now.
l MR. SIMMONS: They would fill quicker.
l 15 16 MR. BEARD: Oh, no doubt, no doubt, no doubt. -
17 MR. EDISON: This is still with the dump valves l 18 and bypass valves open, because --
19 MR. BEARD: Yeah.
20 MR. EDISON: Because we wouldn' t want to say --
21 in this hypothesis, you' re not allowing any operator --
22 MR. SIMMONS: Right. -
MR. BEARD: You can' t have both sides -- you 23 24 know, we're trying to assess --
25 MR. SIMMONS: Well, then, that would help you PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. BulTE A SACRAMENTD. CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972 5594
45 out. Because you'd isolate quicker, it would isolate main j .. j } ]
2 feed quicker, if you're dumping steam. :
3 MR. BAILEY: Yeah. Suppose they had isolated 4 the turbine bypass valves in the dumps, and not tripped 5 the main feedpumps or not closed the safety features, 6 auxiliary feedwater valves.
7 MR. BEARD: Yeah, but you' re going to very g rapidly get into the what-if game, 40,000 varieties of it.
9 And I'm not sure we really want to do that with --
10 MR. BAILEY: I'm just -- I'm not expecting gy anybody to know the answer to it.
12 MR. BEARD: But there are a lot of questions in y, this thing about, for example, one of the things that I
() g4 would-expect your company to be looking into, as part of the review of this event, would be, do we want this plant 15 16 designed to be -- when we lose. ICS power, wnich is going 37 to happen from time to time -- to set up a scenario that 18 we're double feeding, and start aux, you know, where it t
-~
will automatically start aux feedwater, very early in the 19 I ' - ~ '- ~
~ transient, so you get into a double feed situation, and 20 run the risk of an overfill.
21 i
I'm n t sure you want that, if you look at the 22 i design part of it. In other words, it's one part oE_the _ _
23 review t say, did the equipment perform the way it was 24 25 f
O
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46 1 intended to perform, or the way it was designed to
{}
2 perform.
3 There's a second and much more interesting 4 question of -- given that I understand your design, is 5 that the way I want this plant to run. You know, we're 6 just trying to get a hold, a handle on some of that.
7 MR. EATON: Let me get back to the actual 3 operating events of the night. As you saw it, as one of 9 the members of the operating crew.
10 Did the shift supervisor, SCO's, CO's, any of 11 those, call upon you for information and the kind of help 12 that you would expect them to, in terms of you being the 13 engineering expertise on shift?
( 14 MR. SIMMONS: I' ve thought about that question 15 before. And I'm trying to remember if they ever did, if 16 they, you know, asked me, do you think we should kill all 17 aux feedwater or whatever.
13 And I can' t -- I don' t remember them ever asking 19 me that.
20 MR. EATON: Okay. I mean, there's no doubt that 21 you were very helpful as an operator, you're a licensed 22 senior, anyway, as I understand.
23 MR. SIMMONS: That's right.
24 MR. EATON: Yeah, but I'm just looking at, 25 trying to focus in right now on this engineering expertise O
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47 1 on shift, which is one of the reasons, obviously, the 2 Commission has --
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Did they --
4 MR. EATON: --
required STA's.
5 "MR. CHAFFEE: Did they consult with you on the 6 concern of pressurized thermal shock, relative to, you 7 know, as things transpiring. Were you involved i'n that, g or --
9 MR. SIMMONS: I was getting very nervous about 10 pressurized thermal shock, yes. Because we cooled down --
3g particularly when we were starting to get -- we got the 12 atmospheric dumps and the turbine bypass valves closed, yy and we had slowed our cooldown rate down a little bit, and O 34 we started to catch up.
15 HPI had started to catch up with the cooldown.
16 We had regained pressurizer level. We had subcooling 17 margin of -- I forget, I calculated it. But pressurized gg level came back on scale. It was high, it was over 19 100 degress, I know that.
20 And then, I think if you look at the graphs, it 21 was like 150 or even more.
22 -S even with almost no pressurizer level, we 23 were Pretty deeply into thermal shock.
24 MR. CHAFFEE: Would you have expected --
2 25 MR. SIMMONS: So --
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. - . ~ . . - - . - - , - . , - - - . .
48 l 1 (Pause.)
O 2 MR. SIMMONS: So what I suggested was, number 3 one, cut back on HPI, okay, which they were already -- I 4 think they were already thinking the same thing, okay.
5 And in fact, I went down and I actually did help 6
close down on one or two HPI valves, because they had four 7 valves and one operator back there.
g Then I suggested -- it was right around that 9 time or a couple minutes later, we got ICS power back.
10 And that stopped aux feedwater, yy I'm trying to think, it might have been before that even, but we started pressurizer spray.
12 yy MR. BEARD: Excuse me. Did you say that when 34 ICS power came back, it stopped aux feedwater?
MR. SIMMONS: Well, it stopped it when the 15 16 Perator closed the valves.
MR. BEARD: Oh, okay. So you --
17 yg MR. SIMMONS: It took manual control, and --
MR. BEARD: So you got -- right.
19 MR. SIMMONS: -- took the toggle switches, and 20 21 ran them back.
22 MR. 3EARD: Right, y MR. SIMMONS: _I said, hey, you know, we need Pressurizer spray. We've got level back, we've got plenty l
24 l
25 f subpluming back.
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49 1 We' re getting deeper into thermal shock, we' ve 2 got the reduce the pressure. So I said, yeah, good idea, 3 when they started spraying.
4 MR. EATON: Who, from your vantage point, 5 standpoint of the entire event, was maintaining people on 6 course, or not maintaining people on course, as a result 7 of the utilization of OP procedures, including the ATOGS 8 and any other procedur.es that were required to handle the 9 event, or mitigate them?
10 MR. SIMMONS: The only -- I know S teve Wood had 33 the procedures out. -I know he had the emergency 12 Procedures out, because he had to classify the event --
yg MR.' EATON: So that's the E Plan.
A 14 MR. SIMMONS: We had --
15 MR. EATON: Are you talking about the E Plan, or 16 EO-1, or --
17 MR. SIMMONS: No, E Plan. Emergency Plan.
18 MR. EATON: Okay. I guess I want to 39 specifically look at --
20 MR. SIMMONS: They had evidently had -- when I
, 21 got into the control room, the red book, the EOP, one, 1 -
22 two -- was already open.
23 So they had evidently already gone through_that. .
! 24 MR. EATON: What do you mean, gone through that, l
l 25 EO-1, EO-2, EO-57 PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. EUITE A BACRAMENTD, CALIFORNIA 95825 TELEPHONE (916) 972 3394
1 l
l 50 0 1 MR. SIMMONS: No, EO-1, EO-2.
L/ )
2 MR. EATON: Okay.
3 MR. SIMMONS: I can' t . ' .er to where it was 4 opened at the time.
5 MR. EATON: Okay. Do you remember, whoever was 6 reading them, or was anybody reading them, and asking --
7 MR. SIMMONS: No. No one was reading them when a I saw them. The book was open and it was sitting on the 9 RO desk.
10 MR. EATON: Were they being used throughout?
11 Was anybody trying to maintain some sequence of stepping 12 through EO-5, which I understand to be the applicable 13 emergency procedure?
O MR. SIMMONS: I went back -- I believe that they V 14 .
15 must have, my guess was, anyway, that they had read them, 16 or at least started through EO-5 before I got there.
17 Af ter I went down through this and looked at ICS 13 power and the AVT and all this sort of stuff, I went back 19 to EO-5, and read the first three steps, t
20 And that's about as f ar as we got, because I 21 knew the first step, you know, said isolate the l 22 generators. Well, that's what we were doing. We had sent 1
i 23 PeoPl e out to isolate the ADV's, TVB's, and the aux water. .
24 flow control valves.
25 MR. EATON: Which --
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51 1 MR. SIMMONS: So I said, okay, we are doing, 2 Performing --
3 MR. EATON: Okay, which step? Three point one 4 or three point two?
5 MR. SIMMONS: Which step?
6 MR. EATON: Well, there's a significant 7 difference --
g MR. SIMMONS: We're not required to memorize 9 numbers --
MR. EATON: No, no, there's a significant 10 yy difference. Three point one takes a look at the generator 12 level. And --
yg ?1R. SIMMONS: Okay.
MR. EATON: And actually as a result of that -
14 MR. SIMMONS: Then it was three point two, 15 16 because three point one says, if you get up to 95 percent, 17 do whatever's --
yg MR. EATON: Okay.
19 MR. SIMMONS: -- below.
20 MR. EATON: Okay, so you went through step 21 three. Were any other procedures used, or was that 22 Procedure carried on further to --
MR. SIMMONS: I don' t know whether -- I didn' t 23 24 carry it on any further.
25 MR. EATON: Do you remember anybody else reading O
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52 p'
v 1 it, or trying to run people through it, or -- I'm trying 2 to ascertain the usefulness --
3 MR. SIMMONS: I ' don' t --
4 MR. EATON: --
of the procedure --
5 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t at this time. I know 6 you' ve talked to Steve Wood, and he's probably told you 7 what he wanted me to do, you know, about, oh, five, six, 8 seven minutes after I got into the control room.
9 I know -- I'm sure he told you I was on the 10 phone for calling people --
1 11 MR. EATON: All right.
12 MR. SIMMONS: I was back and forth.
13 MR. EATON: State and county and --
14 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, no. That was Cleveland .
15 Williams.
16 MR. EATON: That's right, Cleveland.
17 MR. SIMMONS: I was trying to --
l 13 MR. EATON: Bring in management or --
19 MR. SIMMONS: Bring in management or bring in 20 the day shift crew, calling for help.
21 MR. EATON: Okay. How about any other 22 procedures. Let's get of f the EO. How about, were there l 23 any other procedures used in trying.to stabilize the 24 Plant?
25 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. When things calmed down a O
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53 1 little bit, calmed down meaning, I've at least figured out 2 where we were and what we were doing, I got out B-4.
3 Either that, or it was already out. But I believe it was 4 already out.
5 And I went through B-4, to see if there was 6 anything we forgot.
7 MR. EATON: 'B-4 being --
g MR. SIMMONS: Cooldown. That's our cooldown 9 procedure.
10 MR. EATON: Cooldown, okay. Do you remember how yy far you got, or what particular part you were looking at?
12 MR. SIMMONS: I went through it twice, in fact.
yg The second time was when we were trying to establish main 14 feedwter again.
15 And just by luck, by coincidence, we had not 16 reset our main steam failure logic. And I ran, just 37 happened to read over the step that says, you know, at yg 650 pounds, inhibit the main steamline failure logic.
19 And I looked over, and it was still enabled.
20 And I said, gee, maybe we ought to inhibit that.
i 21 MR. EATON: Okay, so --
22 MR. SIMMONS: S o --
23 MR. EATON: That was brought out? -
24 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah. The operators said, oh, 25 gee, we were trying to establish main feedwater anyway, we O
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4 54 1 wondered why we couldn' t get the valves open.
MR. EATON: That came out a little bit 2 Okay.
3 earlier. Any other procedure that you' re aware of vaguely i
j 4 or.specifically?
5 MR. SIMMONS: The only two or three I know we
- 4 had out was the emergency procedures within EO-5, B-4, and 7 the Emergency Plan.
3 MR. CHAFFEE: What is the significance of, I 9 think it's the term, interim pressurized thermal shock l go region?
33 MR. SIMMONS: Well, we just call it PTS now.
12 Yes, pressurized thermal shock. If you cool the vessel 4
13 down too fast, or you' re at a low temperature and a high O - i4 Pressure, ehe vesse1 hecomes brittie, and it's Possih1e, l
15 if you get a low enough temperature with a high enough f 16 Pressure, you may crack it, or even, as they say, shatter 37 it. But at least put a big crack in it.
- 33 MR. CHAFFEE
- Okay. You guys exceeded -- the 19 term has been told that you were in the interim 20 -Pressurized shock region.
21 MR. SIMMONS: Well, okay, yeah --
22 MR. CHAFFEE: Is that the right --
l 28 MR. SIMMONS: We were in the pressurized thermal 24 shock region, PTS' region, yes.
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- . . . . . - - - . - - , . . - - - - - - - - - . - - - - - - - ~ ~ ~ - ~ - - ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ' ~ ' ' ' ~ ~ ~ " ' ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
55 O aa ce^rrs== rae ter= t=teri= i= =ot 2 applicable?
3 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t believe so. I thought we 4 tried to get the word interim out of there last time. I 5 thought -- B & W, I believe, told us the interim brittle 6 fracture is not a correct term.
7 MR. BEARD: I think you were trying to get to a the question of --
9 MR. CHAFFEE: Yeah.
10 MR. BEARD: Were you in a B & W --
11 MR. CHAFFEE: But that's not --
12 MR. BEARD: -- recommended region to do 13 something, versus some NRC-required limits?
\ 14 MR. CHAFFEE: Yeah. I'm trying to understand --
15 I understand your procedure requirements in this area are 16 more limiting than the brittle fracture curves that are in 17 the tech specs. Is that true?
la MR. SIMMONS: Yes. I think I know what you' re 19 referring to.
20 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay, there's a --
21 MR. SIMMONS: There is a --
22 MR. CHAFFEEi There's a B & W --
23 MR. SIMMONS: There's a reactor vessel PT limit 24 in tech specs, okay --
l 25 O
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56 i
i th 1 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. And you guys never exceeded 2 that.
- 3 MR. BEARD
- Do you know, have you looked at it 4 specifically --
5 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t know.
- 6 MR. BEARD
- -- to see if you exceeded that.
7 MR. SIMMONS: I have not looked, no. I have not a looked.
9 MR. BEARD: Are you planning on looking at that?
10 MR. SIMMONS: I am now.
33 MR. EATON: Okay, here's the interim one that I 12 think they're referring to.
33 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. That' s --
3 14 MR. EATON: The title --
15 MR. SIMMONS: -- the interim one.
16 MR. EATON: --
as the interim.
37 MR. SIMMONS: Well, that's --
i ig MR. EATON: And that's where we' re being i
19 confused.
20 MR. SIMMONS: It still does have interim.
l t
MR. CHAFFEE: Well, can I see that?
(
i 21 22 MR. EATON: Yeah. This is EO-5. That's the l
23 one --
! 24 MR. CHAFFEE: Oh, I see.
MR. EATON: See, interim brittle fradtures is 25 O
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57 1 the curve, it's this particular curve here.
i 2 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay, this is the tech spec limit 3 here.
i 4 MR. EATON: Okay, that's why my question is, 5 what's the basis of this interim brittle fractue curve?
g MR. SIMMONS: Oh, okay. That's tech spec --
7 MR. BEARD: Is your question what's the basis of
! 3 it, or what's the significance --
9 MR. CHAFFEE: Yeah, what's the significance? If 10 you' re in the interim brittle fracture curve, what does 33 that mean to you?
12 MR. BEARD: I think he's asking if you' re i 33 between the two --
14 MR. SIMMONS: It means --
15 MR. BEARD: You're into the interim brittle 16 fracture --
17 MR. SIMMONS: Well, as an operator, you have to j gg get out of it.
39 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
20 MR. SIMMONS: I know that. You have to 21 depressurize to get out of that region.
l 22 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. But beyond that,. in terms
- 23 of its design basis, or the likelihood of actually having, 24 you know, a crack propagating type stuff, that type of 25 engineering understanding is not --
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1
(" 58 1 MR. SIMMONS: You know, I know it's based on 2 material analysis, and I know, you know, I can give you l key words and snappy phrases, you know, and sharp EV notch 3
4 and all this kind of stuff. And quarter-wall, 5 through-wall cracks, but in general, I know, you know, g what that's trying to prevent is high pressures at low 7 temperatures, where the material fails, does not have much j s ductility. It's a catastrophic type f ailure.
- 9 MR. CHAFFEE
- Okay. Do you happen to know where 10 you were farthest into the region during the event, in
- yy terms of pressure and temperature?
Y u know, what the worst case intrusion into the 12 y, region was?
I4 MR SIMMONS: Well, I mean, I can look at the 15 graphs. You mean, did I memorize it, the numbert --
16 MR. CHAFFEE: No, no.
i
{ 37 MR. SIMMONS: I did not memorize the numbers.
gg MR. CHAFFEE: No, I was thinking that possibly, l y, as the -- somebody must be looking at -- what was the most 20 significant intrusion we had during the event, into this 21 criteria? I was hoping that you might have known the answer to that, not that you should, but since you'.re 22 l '
inv lved with --
23 24 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
25 O
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59 MR. CHAFFEE: I was hoping that perhaps you did.
( 1 2 Okay.
3 MR. SIMMONS: I guess I don' t know. Not right 4 off the top of my head.
5 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
6 MR. BEARD: Are you through with the PTS 7 question?
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Say it again?
9 MR. BEARD: Are you finished with the PTS?
10 MR. CHAFFEE: Yes.
11 MR. BEARD: I have something, triggered my mind -
12 on. When Ron was asking you about emergency procedures, 13 you said you had one out, you went through two or three 14 steps of it.
15 And you at a step where it said something like 16 isolate the steam generators.
17 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
13 MR. BEARD: Okay. In your plant design, unlike 19 Bellafont, for example, I believe your ADV's and your 20 turbine bypass valves are downstream from the MSIV's? .
21 MR. SIMMONS: There are no MSIV's at 22 Rancho Seco.
23 MR. BEARD: You have no MISV's?
24 MR. SIMMONS: No.
25 O
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60 O i "a ca^rr=== ra == or the -- z' orrr- ^r-1 2 you done?
3 MR. BEARD: Go ahead.
4 MR. CHAFFEE: Are you done?
5 MR. BEARD: That was it.
6 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. The use of the shutdown 7 Panel to deal with these automatic dump valves and turbine g bypass valves. When did you become aware of that as a
, possible alternative to dealing with that problem?
10 MR. SIMMONS: When Mike Hieronymus mentioned it.
! yy What was it, you know, the 26th in the morning, or 12 sometime after we had stabilized the plant.
gg MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. And I would assume, based 14 on that,'you didn' t hear any discussions of that in the i
15 control room until that time, relative to that concept?
16 MR. SIMMONS: No.
17 MR. CHAFFEE: No.
yg MR. EATON: Were you aware of the switch, had 39 you had training on the switch?
l 20 MR. SIMMONS: We had had training on the switch, 1
i 21 yes. It was put in the last outage. We get modification I -
l 22 training for all the modifications they do during the l
23 utage.
24 MR. EATON: How do you --
25 O
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61 Q
.\s 1 MR. SIMMONS: Once he mentioned it, of course, I 2 knew --
3 MR. EATON: Yeah. Everybody's bells went off.
4 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
5 MR. EDISON: How do you think the staff would 6 have reacted to switching over and essentially abandoning 7 the control room, and moving into the remote shutdown a panel area to take control?
9 I mean, no qualms about it if you had thought of 10 it? Would you have felt comfortable leaving the control 11 room, you know, staff leaving the control room, going to 12 remote shutdown panels?
13 MR. SIMMONS: I'm sure I wouldn't feel 14 comfortable leaving the control room --
15 MR. EDISON: I guess they don' t have leave, 16 right?
17 MR. SIMMONS: Oh.
13 MR. BEARD: You have to transfer --
19 MR. SIMMONS: You' re saying just for this 20 transient?
21 MR. EDISON: Yeah.
22 MR. SIMMONS: Oh. I thought you were talking 23 about control room evacuation.
24 MR. EDISON: No, no. I guess you could transfer l 25 l
l PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE. SulTE A BACRAMENTO, CALWORNIA 95535 TELEPHONE (916) 972 8894
62 and people could stay in the control room, and just go
{ 1 back there --
2 3 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
4 hR. EDISON: On the remote shutdown panel.
5 Wouldn' t have been any problem, I mean, that wouldn' t have 6 bothered people to do that, would it? To trans.ter the 7 control.
3 And here you are, working this thing in th.e 9 control room, you know, ycu're --
10 MR. SIMMONS: All the -
3y MR. EDISON: All the operations occur in the 12 control room all year long, you' re f amiliar with it and 33 everything, and now you' re asked to go back down the hall 14 to some other room and --
15 MR. SIMMONS: The shutdown panel has two 16 switches on it. It has auto and close on the ADV's and 17 TVB's. It doesn' t -- you don' t have control of the ADV's 13 and TVB's, so you can' t control them --
39 MR. EDISON: But you can close them.
20 MR. SIMMONS: Well, yeah, you can close them.
21 MR. EDISON: And also aux feed.
22 MR. SIMMONS: You must be able to close aux feed 23 from there. To tell you the truth --
24 MR. EATON: Just close, or control?
i
- 25 i
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63 MR. EDISON: But the question I'm asking is
[]) 1 2 what --
3 MR. SIMHONS: I know you can -- if you can close 4 them -- all you can do is close them from there, because I 5 know it's a strange setup, because you use one of the 6 Pumps, you cycle the~ pump, and you close a cross-tie 7 valve, motor operated cross-tie valve.
g, And the SFAS files are modulating. So you use
, those to control flow on the --
10 MR. EDISON: My question is hos the operating gy crew, how you or the shift super people have felt about 12 doing that. About going back there and actually using it, yg in a transient that appeared to you to be a pretty serious 14 transient. -
15 MR. SIMMONS: I guess it's --
16 MR. EDISON: Would that have frightened you at 37 all? Let him answer.
jg MR. SIMMONS: Would that have frightened me?
g9 MR. EDISON: Yeah. I mean, in the same sense ,
20 that you left the aux feedpumps running, because, well, 21 maybe they won' t restart. You know, let's give ourselves 22 a little edge here.
gg So the same feeling about abandoning the control 24 r om, in terms of running things.
25 O
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64 y MR. SIMMONS: I won' t say it would f righten
~2 me --
l MR. EDISON: Well, pick your word. Would you 3
4 have had second thoughts about doing that, even if you 5 knew that was --
MR. SIMMONS: I'd definitely have second ,
6 7
thoughts, because -- although we've been trained on it, g there is a precedure -- there is a control room evacuation
, procedure, which we're not evacuating the control room, but it r. ort of half works, you know.
10 yy And that way of feeding the generators has never been tried.
12 MR. BEARD: But I guess his question --
yg MR SIMMONS: 'We've had training on paper, you I4 i
know, but that's it, you know.
15 MR. EDISON: Because the transient is -- you 16 37 don' t know what's going to happen to the transient. I l y, mean, you can go back there to that remote panel, maybe
' close valves.
19 But you' re still there running the rest of the li I
20 show, after that, right, but -- ,
21 y MR. SIMMONS: Yeah.
MR. EDISON: But I'm just wondering if there g
would have been a hesitatien, even knowing that it was p
there.
25 O
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65 1 MR. SIMMONS: I am guessing, yes. There would 2 be a great hesitation.
! 3 MR. EDISON: What I was trying --
4 MR. SIMMONS: Just because the operators have i
5 had no real experience with it. And they' ve had lots of d 6 experience on their --
7 MR. EDISON: Exactly.
3 MR. SIMMONS: Their ATV's and their ICS 9 stations. And it's a very -- if I remember, it's a very 10 strange setup.
33 You' re cycling pumps, and like I say, you're 12 feeding one generator through one path one way', it's ,
, 33 not -- the two paths are not the same. You're doing two 14 different complete actions to feed the two different 15 generators.
I 16 MR. EDISON: It's not exactly high reliability, 17 in terms of having been used and used and used?
, gg MR. SIMMONS: Yes. I don' t think, as f ar as I'm l
19 concerned, I certainly couldn' t come up with the exact
- A l 20 flow path to which generator you' re using what dials and
, 21 what pumps with.
i 22 MR. BEARD: Do you have technical references 23 down there you could use?
24 MR. SIMMONS: We have procedures down there, 25 so --
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66 1 MR. BEARD: So you could look it up, okay.
2 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah, you could.
3 MR. BEARD: Let me ask you. His question 4 presumes something I'd like to make sure is correct.
5 It presumes that before one can go to the remote 6 shutdown panel and use it, you have to more or less 7 activate it by switching the control from the control room 3 and, in essence, incapacitating the control room to a 9 large degree, before you can use the remote shutdown to panel.
it Is that technically correct?
MR. SIMMONSr You isolate certain components.
12 13 It's not one big switch that you take and throw over, and O i.
an of a sudden, the contre 1 reem deeen' t have cenere1 of 15 15 different components.
16 MR. BEARD: How do you effect this transfer?
17 How do you activate that panel? What does it take to make
- 13 that panel active?
19 MR. SIMMONS: I know for the ADB's and TVB's 20 it's a simple switch.
21 MR. BEARD: Where is the switch located?
MR. SIMMONS: The rest of it -- oh, those i 22-l 23 switches are above the meters.
24 MR. BEARD: On what --
25 ME. SIMMONS: Because I happened to go down and O
i l
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67 3 1 look at it --
2 MR. BEARD: The remote shutdown panel, or amin 3 control room?
4 MR. SIMMONS: No, on the remote shutdown panel.
5 Control is taken away remotely at the panel.
6 MR. EATON: As a result of your training on 7 shutdown and site control, which you said you' ve had, and 3 you' ve used the procedure -- I take it you' ve walked 9 through the procedure and stuff like that?
10 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
33 MR. EATON: Does the procedure, do you remember 12 of fhand, I know you don' t have to quote it f rom memory, 33 but does it require operators to isolate, to go to isolate 34 on certain pieces of equipment?
15 MR. SIMMONS: 'Oh, yeah. They put in quite a few 16 isolation switches for Appendix R.
17 MR. EATON: Okay. And the purpose of those 13 isolation switches are --
19 MR. SIMMONS: It cuts off any signals from the I
20 control room --
21 MR. EATON: I take it --
l 22 MR. SIMMONS: Such as, if there's a fire in the 23 control room, and a switch shorts together, and-wants to-24 stop a pump that you want to have running, make a -- well, 25 this is HPI pump, would be an HPI pump, that it doesn' t O
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I 68 )
I g stop that HPI pump when you want it to run. '
2 MR. EATON: So it removes that control function 3 from the control room.
4 MR. SIMMONS: From the control room, yes.
5 MR. EATON: Okay.
6 MR. CHAFFEE: Were you in the control room when 7 they lost ICS power the second time?
g MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
9 MR. CHAFFEE: In dealing with that, are you 10 aware of whether or not they sent anybody to the shutdown yy panel when they re-energized it, or when the lost it?
12 MR. SIMMONS: No. I'm not.
33 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Then you don't 'know for a y4 fact whether they did or not.
15 MR. SIMMONS: I don' t -- f rom my recollection, I 16 d n' t remember them sending anyone down.
y7 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Were you in the control y, room at the time when people were talking about this 19 strange sound?
20 MR. SIMMONS: Which strange sound?
21 MR. CHAFFEE: The one later on in the event, 22 where some people were speculating that the makeup p' ump --
MR. SIMMONS: What time? If you tell me what 23 time, because there were some strange sounds --
24 25 MR. CHAFFEE: I guess it must have been about --
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69
] 1 MR. SIMMONS: The plant was not in its normal 2 configuration.
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Probably around 4:44.
4 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, okay. Those times, I believe, 5 if you're referring to this --
! 6 MR. CHAFFEE: Maybe about 4:40.
I, 7 MR. SIMMONS: Okay, I think I know what you' re a referrino to, though. We revised the times after looking 9 at the computer printouts.
10 You' re talking about the makeup pump --
11 MR. CHAFFEE: Yeah.
12 MR. SIMMONS: No. The reactor operator said he 13 could hear something. And I remember him saying, you O
14 know, what is that strange noise.
15 And I couldn't hear it. I listened, you know, 16 for a second or two, and I couldn' t hear it.
17 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
13 MR. SIMMONS: And I know he said he heard, you 19 know, a big bang or a big explosion when the makeup pump 20 was finally destroyed. I did not hear that one, either.
21 He said he definitely heard it. I --
22 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Were you involved in any of 25 the problems associated with the reactor coolant pump seal 24 injection?
15 MR. SIMMONS: No. I was evidently -- I think, O
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70 t from looking at, now looking at the times, and thinking 2 back, I was probably on the phone with Jim Eckhardt.
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay.
4 MR. SIMMONS: Because when I came out of the 5 shift supervisor's office, Rick Wolfe had just, something 6 like, you know, oh, know, we just destroyed the makeup 7 Pump.
g ,
MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. That's it. I don' t have 9 any questions.
10 MR. BEARD: You mentioned, in answer to his yy question, you mentioned you revised the times. This sheet 12 that you've got in front of you was a first cut, granted, y, at least your contribution to it was --
O y, MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
15 MR. BEARD: -- very early on. Has your 16 Post-trip review progressed to the point where you'd say y7 this thing is significantly inaccurate in times or yg anything like that, that --
19 -
MR SIMMONS: If you go down --
20 MR. BEARD: Or we should -- I guess what I'm 21 trying to get to is simply, should we wait until we see 22 y ur scenario, your sequence of events, before we start 23 doing things, or is this one.f airly close?
24 MR. SIMMONS: This one's f airly close.
25 MR. BEARD: Okay.
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71
{ 1 MR. SIMMONS: If you get down, if you want a 2 time, the time between loss of ICS power and reactor trip 3 down to the secotid, you' re going to see changes.
4 MR. BEARD: Okay.
5 MR. SIMMONS: If you want -- and like I said, 6 the makeup pump, for some reason, seems to be quite a few 7 minutes off.
3 The new number for the makeup, at least the trip 9 of the makeup pump, we know that was on IDADS, that was on 10 our computer. That happened exactly at five o' clock, or 11 ten seconds after five o' clock.
12 And I believe here we said --
13 MR. EATON: Four forty-five.
(
14 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah. And that's 15 --
15 MR. EATON: Manually tripped makeup pump.
16 MR. SIMMONS: Yeah. That's 15 minutes 17' difference. And I don' t know why --
13 MR. CHAFFEE: Five o' clock is when the makeup 19 pump tripped?
20 MR. SIMMONS: That's according -- yes, ~0500:10.
21 So that one episode there seems to be --
22 MR. CHAFFEE: That makeup pump tripping -
23 MR. SIMMONS: -- something wrong.
24 MR. CHAFFEE: What's that based on? Electrical 25 breakers tripping?
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72
] 1 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. Electrical breakers I t did --
2 tripping. That's true.
3 MR. BEARD: The operator tripped it manually, 4 didn' t he?
5 MR. SIMMONS: Yes, he did.
6 MR. BEARD: Because he went over there, and I 7 guess he said that the breaker was in on it, but it only 3 was drawing 20 amps instead of 60 or 70, and he knew --
9 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
10 MR. BEARD: -- there was something bad wrong, yj and he tripped it.
12 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. Normal is 60, and --
yg MR. CHAFFEE: That may not be inconsistent 14 with --
y$ MR. BEARD: Just the time.
16 MR. SIMMONS: He said to me a little bit 17 later --
gg MR. CHAFFEE: That's not -- no. I don' t think it's inconsistent with this thing. The time is -- I mean,
. 19 20 the thing was not being able to perform its function for a 21 Period of time prior to them actually tripping it.
22 MR. BEARD: Yeah.
MR. CHAFFEE: . So that's not -- this simply says 23 they isolated the pump at 5:05. One of the first things 24 25 O
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73 O i ther ata i= the groce== or 1 o1 ti=9 it - eaev 2 secured it.
3 MR. EDISON: Can we go off just for a second?
4 MR. CHAFFEE: Off the record?
5 MR. EDISON: Yeah.
6 (Thereupon a discussion was held of f the 7 record.)
3 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay, Our understanding is that 9 you'll provide us a preliminary sequence of events that's 10 been brought up to date, to the best of your knowledge, it going through about time period 0507, and then we'll have 12 it available in the next couple of hours.
' 33 MR. SIMMONS: Yes. We'll provide that.
O 14 Mht. CHAFFEE: Okay. Are there any more specific 15 questions?
16 MR. EDISON: No.
17 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. The only last question we is have is somewhat general. Is there anything we haven' t 19 addressed with you that you think is important that the 20 team should be aware of, relative to the event, or 21 anything else that you think is significant, relative to 22 the activities out here?
23 And if any of those things you have are of the 24 type that you would feel more comfortable telling us 25 without the representative here --
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74
() 1 MR. BEARD: Confidentially.
Confidentially, I'm sure that he 2 MR. CHAFFEE:
3 would be willing to leave.
4 MR. REDEKER: I'd be willing to leave.
5 MR. SIMMONS: I guess I don' t.
6 MR. CHAFFEE: Are there any --
7 MR. SIMMONS: When you say confidentially, do 3 you mean totally off the record?
9 MR. EATON: Sure.
MR. SIMMONS: Not taped. Not in the transcript.
10 yy MR. CHAFFEE: Can we do that?
MR. EDISON: We can do it. And let's go of f the 12 yy record for a minute and think about what we can do and we 14 can' t do.-
15 (Thereupon a discussion was held off the 16 record.)
MR. CHAFFEE: Okay, back on the record. Okay, 17 gg any more specific questions for Grant?
MR. BEARD: I have no questions.
19 I
20 MR. EDISON: No.
MR. BEARD: I guess we want to go to the general 21 12 question.
MR. CHAFFEE: Okay, the only general question I 23 have is, is there anything that you want to tell the team l
24 25 that may be pertinent to the event, or associated with the i
[h V
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75 here- that we aou18 he re or, ia ter== or O i ctivitte 2 our evaluation of the event?
3 If those items include something that you would 4 prefer that the representative not be here, so state, and 5 we'll remove him, and he's agreed to leave.
6 If not, go ahead.
MR. SIMMONS: No, Steve can stay. The only 7
a concern I have is the amount of time licensed operators, including STA's, spend in re-qual per year. It's a number 9
jo of days per year of training.
MR. BEARD: This would be continuing or 13 12 retraining, versus initial training.
MR. SIMMONS: No, this is -- that's right. This 33 ,
O.
is requalification. I feel that we get -- the initial 14 15 training is completely adequate.
16 MR. BEARD: And you say your concern would 17 extend to basically all licensed people, plus STA's? I 18 guess your STA's are licensed.
MR, SIMMONS: All STA's -- yes.
19 MR. BEARD: All right.
20 l
MR. BAILEY: How many days were you on the i 21 22 simulator during the past year?
MR. SIMMONS: During the past year? I believe l 23 l
24 it was ten days for this past year, in '85.
l MR. BEARD: The amount of retraining, okay.
25 l
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76 l
1 MR. CHAFFEE: Have you -- if you have this 2 concern, has it manifested itself in any form? Have 3 you -- I guess it's hard to quantify.
4 MR. SIMMONS: Only our feeling that when we 5 originally got our licenses, when you go through your 6 18 months of RO training, and then follow it up with seven 7 months of senior training, you know a whole lot when you 8 take -- you try to know everything when you go for your 9 oral and written exam.
10 And with the amount of time that's spent on 11 recall training,-basically boiling down to two days a 12 week, or two days every five weeks, and then that's not 13 every week during the year. If you take out times for 14 exams, for going to the simulator, that sort of stuff, two .
15 days every five weeks, plus all the requirements that the 16 training department has, teaching on emergency planning.
17 Emergency plan is perfectly legitimate, and we 18 need that training. But you' re not trained on systems, l
l 19 and you' re not trained on EOP's, plant and things.
l 20 MR. EATON: When you' re on shif t, you' re on 21 shif t for 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br /> on that -- you' re not on shif t. When 22 you're on duty, as an STA, you' re on for a 48-hour period.
23 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
24 MR. EATON: How long are you off before you go 25 back on again?
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77 1 MR. SIMMONS: Minimum of tbtee days.
2 MR. EATON: A minimum of three days. What's the 3 norm?
4 MR. SIMMONS: Normal? Probably five days, six 5 days.
6 MR. EATON: Okay. So you' re on for two, of f for 7 roughly a week, on for two, off a week --
8 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
9 MR. EATON: -- on for two, off a week.
10 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Do you have any concerns or 11 thoughts relative to any NRC regul~ations, or anything that 12 have had any negative impact, in terms of the event, or 13 other things associated with the activities here?
p .
14 MR. BEARD: Possibly the reporting requirements.
15 MR. SIMMONS: Well, that's NRC -- the one-hour 16 reporting requirements that the NRC has, that's fine. I 17 think one hour is legitimate.
l 18 The only problem I have, and I have been caught l 19 on the phone with the NRC, the red phone, is, they don' t i
20 let you off. If we could tell them a little bit, say, l 21 hey, I'll get back to you, and they say, no, we' ve got to 22 maintain an open line.
23 Well, that means I can' t set the telephone down i 24 on the desk and leave. They want you there, they want 25 you -- and we, in this last transient, we had it.
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78
(] 1 We had to stop, well, we didn' t stop, but we had to look and give Cleveland Williams, who was talking to 2
3 the NRC, maybe every five minutes, they wanted RCS 4 temperature, pressure, pressurizer level, subcooling, and 5 how many RCP's we have on.
6 And that's a little distracting, because 7 you're --
8 MR. BEARD: Now, you were --
9 MR. SIMMONS: Well, what's the temperature now, 10 you know --
3y MR. BEARD: You were in the control. room when 12 those kinds of questions were being answered?
MR. SIMMONS: On the phone, yes. From the NRC, 13 14 yes.
35 MR. BEARD: Can you give me any feel as to --
16 obviously, that's an interruption for the operators.
17 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
18 MR. BEARD: Now, that's clear. Can you give me 19 any feel for the significance of it, or was it a great 20 interruption, sort of a minor nuisance --
l MR, SIMMONS: For that crew and the people we 21 22 had working, we had the senior reactor operator on'the telephone. And we couldn' t find anybody else to_ man that.
23 24 telephone.
25 All the other operators were out straightening O
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79
(] 1 out the plant, running the boiler, going down and valving They were all being used.
2 out the makeup pump, whatever.
3 MR. BEARD: Grant, what I'm trying to get to is, 4 obviously, there's an impact.
5 MR. SIMMONS: Yes.
6 MR. BEARD: Obviously it ties up a man. In this 7 case it was a senior. And you prefer that not be done.
8 I'm trying to get a better handle on what is the 9 impact of tying up this man? Is it a nuisance or is it a 10 hell of a problem?
11 MR. SIMMONS: For this specific transient, I 12 think it was a hell of a problem.
13 MR. BEARD: Okay. That's all I wanted --
1 V 14 MR. SIMMONS: It's possible, I think -- and I l 15 don' t remember exactly where Cleveland was all the time --
i 16 MR. BEARD: Um-hmm.
17 MR. SIMMONS: But I know he was on the phone a is lot, and I believe at the time we smoked the makeup pump, 19 he was on the phone with the NRC. It was a time that they l
20 wanted an open line.
21 MR. BEARD: Well, let me ask you about that. Do 22 you believe that if there had been another senior-23 available in the control room, say the guy that was on the
, 24 Ph one, tied up on the phone, if he hadn' t been on the Ph one, are you suggesting that maybe that mistake might 25 PETERS SHORTHAND REPORTING CORPORATION 3433 AMERICAN RIVER DRIVE, SulTE A
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80 h I not have occurred?
2 MR. SIMMONS: Oh, yes. If we had one person 3 standing back --
4 MR. BEARD: Okay. That's what I want to 5 understand.
6 MR. SIMMONS: -- and saying, hey, you know, why 7 are you closing 25003 when we've got SFAS. You make sure 3 the makeup tank valve's open.
9 MR. BEARD: So -- all right.
10 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Do you have any thoughts in 11 terms of. lessons learned, that would be good to take away 12 from this event for others to be able to use? In terms,of 13 minimizing the severity of the event.
14 MR. SIMMONS: I guess only the obvious. That 15 you have to jump on auxiliary feedwater on B & W plants 16 very quickly, to prevent an overcooling. Severe 17 overcooling.
13 MR. BEARD: Is there some design implication 19 that is obvious also, like instead of the valves going to 20 full open, they could go to half open or something, that 21 would --
22 MR. SIMMONS: I would --
23 'MR. BEARD: -- be a simple thing that would make 24 an improvement?
~
MR SIMMONS: It sure -- I was thinking this 25 O
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81 1 afternoon what I would like to see. I would almost like 2 to aee auxiliary feedwater blocked, then let it -- I know, 3 Three Mile Island type --
4 MR. EDISON: Davis-Besse type.
5 MR. SIMMONS: But unless you don' t have HPI, but 6 we have HPI. If you've got safety features on a safety 7 features signal now, if you get a safety features signal, 8 and you only have one HPI pump start, then fine, start aux 9 feedwater.
10 MR. BEARD: Where's your heat sink, if you don' t 11 start aux feedwater?
12 MR. SIMMONS: Well, your option is maybe better.
13 Like I say, I just thought of it.this afternoon, I haven' t 14 thought it through.
15 It looks to me like the auxiliary feedwater 16 system we have is too large and too powerful.
17 MR. BEARD: There is some concern in NRR at the 18 moment that because the plants are designed with redundant 19 systems, all of which are able to do everything, and then 20 that's so that you can accommodate potential f allures.
21 But if you have no failures, then you get so 22 much aux feedwater, in terms of GPM, and the temperatures 23 are so much cooler than the normal feedwater, you do get.a 24 setup here.
25 MR. SIMMONS: If you look at the time it takes I
I l
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82 1 for an operator to respond to an overcooling, versus an 2 overheating, the operator has to be so much faster for an 3 overcooling to save it from something like PTS. And 4 overheating.
5 MR. BEARD: Okay. I think it's a good point.
6 MR. CHAFFEE: Anything else?
7 MR. SIMMONS: No, I think that's all I have.
8 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Any other questions?
9 MR. BEARD: I'd just like to say thank you. I 10 fell like I've learned from the time you shared with us.
11 MR. CHAFFEE: Thank you very much again.
12 MR. SIMMONS: Thank you.
13 MR. CHAFFEE: Okay. Off the record.
-14 (Thereupon the interview was concluded.)
15 16 17 18 l
19 i 21 II 23 24 25 O
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r 83 m 1 CERTIFICATE OF TRANSCRIBER 2 I, Ramona Wilson Gordon, an Electronic Reporter, 3 do hereby certify:
4 That I am a disinterested person herein; that 5 the foregoing Nuclear Regulatory Commission interview was 6 recorded and thereafter transcribed by me into 7 typewriting.
8 I further certify that I am not of counsel or 9 attorney for any of the parties to said hearing, nor in jo any way interested in the outcome of said hearing.
33 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand 12 this 29th day of December, 1985.
13 4 14
/
RAFONK WICSUN GORDON 15 Official Reporter ,
16 17 18 19 20 21 22 25 24 25 O
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.