ML20195B192
| ML20195B192 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Millstone  |
| Issue date: | 10/06/1998 |
| From: | NRC |
| To: | |
| References | |
| NUDOCS 9811160060 | |
| Download: ML20195B192 (200) | |
Text
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VERBATIM PROCEEDINGS l
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l
PUBLIC' MEETING IN THE MATTER OF NORTHEAST UTILITIES, MILLSTONE UNITS 1, 2 AND 3 )
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WATERFOR.D TOWN HALL O. 15 ROPE FERRY ROAD , ;
WATERFORD, CONNECTICUT Y!
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POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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2 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L(). OCTOBER 6, 1998 1
-1 . . . Verbatim Proceedings of the Public-2 Meeting. of the United States Nuclear. Regulatory
'3 Commission: in the matter of Northeast . Utilities, 4 Millstone Units 1, 2 and 3, held October 6, 1998, at 5 7':00 P.M., at -the Waterford Town Hall, 15 Rope Ferry i
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6 Road, Waterford, Connecticut. . . I 7
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11 CHAIRPERSON WAYNE LANNING: Okay. If 12 we'll begin our Good
{ }. you'll get your seat, meeting.
13 evening and welcome. My name is Wayne Lanning. I'm 14 the Director of Millstone Inspections from Region One l 15 Office. I 16 This is a continuation of our periodic ;
i 17 meetings between the NRC and you, the people of j 18 Connecticut. This- is where we tell you about the ,
l 19 ongoing activities at Millstone, what the NRC is doing, It 20 and receive your feedback and comments on the
.O.~.
l a- 21 activities that have occurred at Millstone.
!I 22 In August, the Special Projects Office l_
!. 23 was disbanded. And many of you will recognize some new 24 faces up here at the table tonight. And that's really POST REPORTING SERVICE
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L .f- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ;
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 l- .1 as a result of the transfer of the regulatory oversight -
2 ' of Millstone site activities. to the Region One Office, 3 which is. located in King-of-Prussia,. Pennsylvania, 4 - which is just outside of Philadelphia.
5 On my- right, let me introduce Mr. Hub 6 Miller. Mr. Miller is a Region One Administrator. And 7 he'll be.our'first speaker tonight. lHe'll be. talking i
.8 about. his plans' anc'. philosophy . and oversight ~ of the "
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9 Millstone site.
10 To his. right is Mr. Gene Imbro. Gene 1
11 oversees the Independent Corrective Action Verification j' } 12. Program. And to his right is Larry -Nicholson. Mr.
13 Nicholson is from our Region One Office. He is a 1
14 Deputy Director in the Division of-Reactor Safety. And l 15 it's his division that performs technical inspections
- 1 <6 like fire protection and qualifications. To his right 17 is Bill Dean. Bill is a new face, sort of. He was l
..18 with us last year, but he is now the Project Director l
- '19 out of our Headquarters Office. And he replaces Mr.
'20 Phil McKee.
O' i ax 21 On my immediate .left is Bill Axelson. )
1 4 22 Bill is the Deputy- Regional Administrator in Region I
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i 23 One.
r 24 Now, we also have other NRC staff l lO i POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
'( ) OCTOBER 6, 1998 1
1 1 primarily over here,-which includes'the Senior Resident i 2 Inspectors and other staff from our Headquarters 3 office.
l 4 There are copies of the agenda on the 5 back table. And I want. to just briefly go over the l
6 agenda. As I indicated, Mr. Miller will talk next l 7 about NRC oversight of Millstone activities. And that i
13 will be followed by questions concerning his I 9 presentation. He'll be' followed by Bill Dean. Bill 10 will -give us a ' status of the Safety-conscious Work l
{ 11 Environment and introduce the Little Harbor 12 Consultants, who.will give us a status
.(]). of their most
'13 recent activities. Then we'll take a five-minute 1
14 break. '
1 15 And then when we reconvene, Gene Imbro 16 will give us a status of the -Independent Corrective 1
-17 Action Verification activities that have been ongoing i 18 at Unit 2. And that will include some results of.some ]
- - 19 recent inspections by NRC staff. Those team leaders 20 are'here tonight.
~C.
i a 21 And following Gene, Bill Dean will give
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} 22 you a quick overview and update of the revised NRC i 23 policy on potassium iodine. And then we'll take a
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2:4 break and, after that break, we'll go into our general (N
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L U.
jr'( OCTOBER 6, 1998-l l'
! 1 question-and-answer session'. And we must conclude our i .2 meeting by.11:00 P.M. tonight.
3 Let' me just cover some administrative 4 'nformation.
i .This-is the -- we'll be using the same l
L 5 format for this , meeting as we've used in. the past.
6 This-is a meeting concerning Millstone. So I'll ask '
l 7 that you limit your. questions and comments- to 8 activities at Millstone.
9 The questions following the 10 . presentations of the topics, they should be limited to o
11 just those topics. In other words, after Mr. Miller 12 makes.his presentation, you may ask him questions about 13 his topic and not venture 'into Safety-Conscious Work 14 Environment because that will be-a topic r that will be 15 covered-later.
~16 We 'll_ limit each questioner . or commenter 17 to five minutes. That will give everybody -an 18 opportunity-to ask a question about that topic. And if 19 we want to repeat some questions, if we still have time
- i Llir 20 left in the 30 minutes, we'll do that. If there are lh -
21 . more speakers cn questioners than fills the 30 minutes, py'ylf
{ .22 we'll postpone :your questions to the general answer-hi '23 and-question period at the end. So your questions will 24 receive an answer.
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6 jf y MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i ,/ OCTOBER 6, 1998-1 This is a transcribed meeting. So I 2 would ask you to identify yourself when you come up to 3 the table, to the microphone, to identify yourself and 4 where you're from.
5 So,.with .that, let me turn the meeting 6 over to Mr. Miller.
7 MR. HUBERT MILLER: Thank you, Wayne.
8 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: You've_got to get 9 close to it. It's on.
10 MR. MILLER: Can you hear me? I'm very
} 11 pleased to be here this evening. I want to do three 12 about
((} things. I want to talk a little bit the 13 transition of responsibility from the Special Projects 14 office to the_ region that Wayne talked about.
15 Secondly, I have visited the Millstone site over the 16 past several days. I was here about a month ago. And 17 .w hile the visits were brief, I have formed some 18 impressions and I can give you some impressions of I. 19 where I think Millstone is, at least in a general way, 20 that may be of use to you or of interest to you. And 0-_
a 21 then, thirdly, I can-speak very briefly about broader
-l ll '22 agency developments aimed- at changing how we do b 23 business to'become more effective in the inspections 24 that we do and performance assessment / enforcement.
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,rus MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i
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OCTOBER.6, 1998 L 1 Much of that coming from lessons learned that' we -- '
2 lessons that 'we've learned from Millstone and other i
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3 plants. And,. hopefully, that'will'be' of interest to 4 you as well.
5 As Wayne said, the Commission itself, in 6 making a' decision to authorize the restart of-Unit 3, 7 decided that sufficient progress had been made. While 8 there:was much work yet-to be done at Millstone, >
9 sufficient progress had been made. That the patterns 10 for review of Unit'2 were sufficiently established in g 11 the restart of Unit 3, that it was felt that'the need (j L12 for'the Special Projects Office, which was formed to 13 coordinate all of the activities of the NRC staff,.
14 activities'in the region as well as in Headquarters, 15 that the need for the Special Projects Office was --
16 had passed. And so the Commission did direct that the j; 17 lead for the oversight, the inspection effort at I- 18 Millstone would return to the region.
.h 19 There are several aspects, though, of 20 that decision that are important to point out. First
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~~ 21 of all, Millstone, while it has returned to the region
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j -[,l 22 for the ' inspection lead, Millstone is still a special ib '23 project within'the region. I mean it is not like a 24 normal plant. The Inspector --
the Inspection t]
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS s.
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l l 1 directorate, .the people involved in inspection at 2 ' Millstone report directly to my office. Wayne Lanning .
p .3 reports directly to me. And that's not a normal' thing 4 .forna plant'.
'5 Secondly, for several important areas,
'6 the area of' Employee Concerns and the area of design 7 basis / licensing--basis ~ activities and reviews, those two 8 areas have remained the responsibility of people in.the 9 Headquarters Offices building and Gene Imbro'or the p
p 10 lead Senior Managers in the Headquarters Offices, those g: 11 remain in the Headquarters Offices.
' ('T c 12 Now, there's a lot of coordination that V
13 takes place -between my office or our office and the 14 region and the Headquarters. But1those two pieces -are
.15 at the Headquarters level. It's in part because of the
-16 importance that the Commission attaches to those two 17 very important projects. And so those are the two .
l-18 pieces that did not return directly to the region.
~19 We had spent a lot of agency resources Li 20 overseeing the Millstone recovery efforts. It's been Of s .21 difficult to count, to come up with an estimate. But
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-{ rough 22 some of our estimates this past week of the
!' '23 amount' of resources involved in oversight of Millstone 24 over the past year or so indicates that we have had the
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 equivalent of about 40 people, probably more.than that l 2 -- but I think it'n a conservative estimate to say that ,
I 4 l 3 we have had the. equivalent of about 40 people full-time j 4 dedicated to Millstone as Unit 3 has gone through its L 5 recovery effort and restart and as the activities on
~6 Unit 2 have proceeded. That's a very significant ;
7 commitment of resources. Again, it's significantly ,
L 8 beyond what we have spent at other plants.
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! .9 The fact that. the project 10 responsibility, that the ' lead for oversight has
[ 11 1 returned to the region, will not change appreciably the i
- ( } 12 level of effort that we will be putting into the 13 restart of Unit 2. We've learned from the efforts on ,
14 Unit 3. And so we're smarter. But,cin ' essence, the 15 level of effort would not'be reduced.significantly. It 16 will be commensurate with what we did on Unit 2. And 17 I'll talk in a moment a little bit more about some of.
'l 18 the kinds of inspections that we will- do as Unit 2 l
1 19 proceeds towards start-up.
L-l r. 20 But the other thing -to talk about, I LO l La 21 think, and what is important to convey to you, it's not
',l 22 just the number of resources that are important.
}- It's
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.23 how we do inspections. It's how we do our oversight 24 that is important. And my approach and what I've POST REPORTING SERVICE J HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 o
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10 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 learned over the years -- I used to be the Regional 2 Administrator in Chicago before I came to Philadelphia 3 two years ago.
4 To be effective, we have to be 5 aggressive in our inspections. I tell my Inspectors, I 6 tell the industry that I tell my . Inspectors that it's 7 their job to go find problems.
8 The- best plant has problems. The 9 nuclear power plants are complex machines. The 10 -technology really -- if you look at a lot of it, it's
{ 11 1960's technology. But it's complex. The 12 organizations are too complex to not have problems.
13 And so the important thing in this 14 business is, with the limited resources we have, to 15 have a strong focus on finding _ problems. Now, we have 16 to focus on what's important. And that's a very, very 17 important thing. We have to.have a sense of what's 18 most immediately --
what most immediately has the
,- 19 potential to impact safety. But nonetheless, the 20 important thing is to focus on problems.
O
- .--21 If we don't take that approach, we don't
.I 22 have a chance to catching problems at an
} early stage
! 23 before .they become big problems of the sort that
'24 existed here at Millotone. And I think it's important, 7Y D
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'l even as Millstone goes through recovery, for us to take l< '2 this approach to assure that, if there is back-sliding
- 3 'in some area,'that we pick that up early, at that point-l 4 where something can be done about it and, _again, it i 'S doesn't become a significant or a large problem again.
6 I mentioned that I've been here'two 7 times in the past month. This is my second. visit. I 8 .believe that, of course, the most --
the most l.
t-9 significant insights that we get on the performance of-
< 10 a plant is what'comes from the' folks sitting out there j_ 11 in the audience from the NRC, our Resident Inspectors
- 12 and the specialists that we send to the site. They're
-(G) 13 here all the time. They've got the technical expertise 14 that is required to dig very deeply into things, to 15 look beyond just the programs that licensees put in 16 place. It is the insights that come -- and, of course, 17 also from Gene Imbro and his people. It's the insights I
'!~ 18 that come from those inspections that really tell us i 19 what the story is at a plant.
20 But I have also found over the years O ~-
sa 21 that it-is important for senior managers like myself --
l-l} 22 and I have my. colleagues here from the Regional Office b- 23 -- to get out and talk to people. And a lot of what 24 we've done over the past two days is we've talked to a 2
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i 12 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS O:. OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 whole lot of people. And we've talked to people in the 2 control room, people in the field. We've talked to 3 . first-line supervisors across all of the~ organizations
'4 . inLthe plant.
5 And I have to .be careful because, you 6 'know, you can -- there's only so much .that you can do 7 in two days and even in several visits. With that "
8 caveat and that qualification,'let.me proceed to just ;
9 give you a few -- you know, my assessment of where I 10 think Millstone is from a: combination of' things; from 11 reading- the inspection reports that- my Inspectors E{
-12 product, from talking-to the_ Inspectors and then also
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13 from our visit.
14 -I think the first point -- and I was 15 here for a brief time two years- ago. I spent three 16 - days at the site at that time. And I think it's clear 17 that there is clearly improvement overall at Millstone.
lI. 18 And: I think the 'first thing to talk about is the' L,'- L19 management direction, the higher standards that have i '20 - been set and the.: openness that management has to the TO:
';* 21 raising of issues.
22
}? The past problems at Millstone ran deep.
!! - 23 Significant issues with design -- and I don't need to 24 .tell :you about these things or to spend much time on LO POST REPORTING SERV *.CE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 y ,-i9 7 g --,-y,. . y . , - . _ - , , . , , . _ , , ,..,-,m.,, y,,, , , . , , . , -
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13 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS-L_( . OCTOBER 6, 1998
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L 1 this. But just to recap briefly, significant issues' l-L 2 with_ design. The design was -not maintained properly, i
l 13 . Equipment' was. degraded. Not as bad as at some plants,
- 4 but- there was degraded equipment. And, very. !
f: 5 importantly, a number of the fundamental processes at
'6 thi's plant-that are important to assuring 'significant
[
7 margins of safety. Here. I'm referring to quality 8 assurance, to corrective' action 'and, very 9 significantly, to dealing with employee. concerns.
1 10 There were deep problems at this plant.
{ -11 So the company has been at it- for two 12 years,- at least since I was here last. And I think
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13 it's clear that there's an environment that is- l 14 conducive to raising problems. I think much of it is 15 evidenced by the problem-reporting process that exists.
-16 And if you just look at the numbers alone, there is a -
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!- 17 -
there~ is clearly a high-volume, low-threshold I l
O L 18 problem-reporting process at this plant.
L- _19 I think that decision-making is more l-[ t] 20 conservative. I'm going to talk in a moment about the NO- . -
l_=: 21 start-up. The start-up of the plant was pretty good.
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'22 It started up in July. The plant has operated
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[b 23 reasonably well. There were some shutdowns that
- 24 occurred after the start-up. These were shutdowns that
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i 14 l OC ER 1 were taken,.'I think, as a prudent -- as prudent steps 2 by the company. They were not required by NRC .
I 3 technical. ' specifications or requirements. -They l
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(. -4 involved largely equipment on the what- we call :the-5 balance of- plant, the steam plant, the part of the 6 plant that doesn't, you know '- that involves the use 7 ~f o steam to turn the turbine, the steam-plant, so 8 called.
9 These shutdowns were not out. of- line 10 with what I've seen at other plants that are coming out 11 of an extended outage.
It's very difficult, in fact, 12 it's impossible in some respects to full test that part
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.13 of the' plant when you're shut down. You have to have 14 . steam, you know, from the reactor to be able to test 15 those systems. And so it's not, you know, surprising 16 that there were some problems. ,
17 The company. dealt with those I- :18 forthrightly. I suppose they could have pushed to
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.19 continue to operate. But they made the right decision.
20 And I think that.gives evidence of a more conservative o;
21 decision-making approach.
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{ '22 The operators were quite deliberate in b 23 .their start-up. And there were a few wrinkles along 24 the way towards start-up. But by and large, the I
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.1 operators performed well.
- - 2 But now, having said that, I think it's 3 important for'the. licensee -- and I told them-this 1
It's important for us, the NRC, not .to become 4 today. I 5 complacent. Now it may . sound funny to talk about l' 6 complacency at Millstone'because of the large number of= j
.7 things that have to be accomplished and the number of l L i
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8 . problems that face the utility'in.this turnaround. But l
i l' 9 it's -- you know, it's important that they not declare .]
l 10 victory too soon. .There's a lot of work that has to be
!' .11 done yet. And I'm not referring just.to the Work that L
12 clearly has to be done before Unit.2 can restart. Gene 13 ;Imbro's going to talk about the status of tlie design j i
14 activities that have to be completed. And there's a j 15 lot there.
t l 16 But I'm also referring to the work on r
17 Unit 3, the deferred items that I'm sure you are aware L 18 of and I'm sure you've talked about in past meetings.
t 19 But, also, it's been my experience that a nuclear power ,
20 plant doesn't get to the kind of poor condition that 0-
- -21 Millstone came to overnight. It's years of low l-22 standards, years of living with problems, that create a ll
<h 23 situation like Millstone. And no one can reasonably 24 expect that you can take the kind of, again, complex POST REPORTING SERVICE l HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 ,
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'() OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 plant that a nuclear -- complex facility that a nuclear 2 power plant is and turn it around overnight.
3 Now, there are certain minimums that 4 have to be-met.. And, certainly, before Unit 3 started, 5 there had to be pretty high confidence that there was 6 adequate control of that reactor. But the design basis 7 issues that determined -- that had the potential to 8 impact on operability of equipment, those things had to 9 be completely resolved.
10 But if one looks at the long run,'if one g 11 looks at what would it take for Millstone to become a 12 top performer, to become excellent, to have this thing
({}.
13 be self-sustaining over the long run, there's more work 14 to do. I think the company understands this.
15 It will take a lot of hard work. You 16 know, it will take years, really, to get to the point 17 where this plant will be an excellent and top 18 performer. But it will take a lot of work for I. 19 Millstone to get to the point where they are -- can
-20 consider themselves in the top level of performance.
-0 .
- .21 You know, when you have low standards --
1 g> 22 and this is true in every problem plant case that I've k 23 seen -- you create hidden backlogs. Now, much of the 24 . hidden backlogs are material, have to do with
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- O- ocrossa e, 1998 1 equipment, have to do. with design. And there's- no l 2 shortcut;on those. You just.have to go and root it 3 out. It. takes an: immense discovery effort. And that's 4 what Millstone has been about.
5 But those-weaknesses create another kind 6 of backlog'and they have to do with processes, station 7 processes. .And here I'm referring to very practical )
8 things'. .How do you plan . work? .How do' you control ;
9 work? And Millstone, not .unlike other plants, is I i
10 attempting to get better in terms of their ability to 11 L- get a lot of work done, to plan. work effectively and 12 efficiently. These are things that go beyond the 13 minimums that are required. I want to make sure you 1
14 understand this. They go beyond the minimums that it 15 takes to. operate a . plant at an adequate level of 16 safety.
'17 But it's important that a plant like l
.I L 18 . Millstone not stop at the point where it's safe to I 19 operate because unless thare's a continuous effort to E:
20 improve, tuv . aany times in the past we've seen back-
-0.
- 21 sliding. And so it may seem odd for me to talk this l- 22 way, but -- and, again, with as much work as has to be l
'l 23 done, I came to this! station questioning is there the
[. 24 potential for the company -- is there the potential for
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<h OCTOBER 6, 1998 L -1 us to-declare victory too soon? My impression is -- !
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1 2 - and it's'a fairly -- I feel fairly confident of this -- l 3 that the company does grasp the need for this 1
4 : continuous improvement, that they do have a sense of i
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- 5 what remains and must be done over the long ha~ul to put I i-6 -- to reinforce and strengthen the margins of safety
,7 - that exist at this site and to become as they, you L
l' 8 know, say'they want .to be, and that is a strong, top 9 performer.
10 Now, .let me -- having said- -- having 11 covered that, let me just briefly talk about the
{
12 agency. I. got a question in a news conference 13 -yesterday on why should the public have confidence that 14 Region One is up to the task of overseeing this plant,
. 15 - with.the view that we didn't do the job I suppose we 16 should have done before. And that's aod question.
U 17 ' And I -- that's the question.you have to ask. ;
'l 18 And my answer was several things or L
1l: . 19 involved several things. First of all, I mean we've 20 learned a lot of lessons, not just out of Millstone.
- O .
a- 21 We've learned lessons regarding the Salem plant in New 1 b
22 Jersey. I could go on. There are a number of other
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'l 23 plants where we've learned lessons on -- and much of it l
24 . goes to the simple thing I talked about at the l
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6' 1998 q
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i 1 -beginning 'about being aggressive in looking for- l i
2 problems and getting those problems- surfaced in an :
3 effective way with the licensee.
4 But we've learned from that. We -- and
's 'this. is criticism that's. come. --
we're getting 6 criticism from a lot of sides.- I'm getting criticism 7 from ! interested cit'izens. We face, as the-industry 8 . faces, a challenge as the industry moves into a regime 9- of economic deregulation where they can no longer turn 10 -around and pass on the cost to the rate payer- where 1 11' they have to compete straight up with other sources of 112 energy. And so with these things in mind, the agency
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l 13 is going through the most fundamental reassessment of !
L '14 how we do business since Three Mile Island. It's that l
15 significant. ;
l l l 16 At problem plants, it's common to 17 suspend what we call our SALP process. The SALP l
18 process is the systematic assessment of licensee 19 performance. It's the process where we knit together I '20 all of the different activities that go on, the O
- . 21' Inspectors, the people in our Headquarters Offices'who
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-j 22 do licensing, the many people who are involved in 23 overseeing these plants, we periodically knit that L
24 together to -- and create a report card on plants.
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- (,f - OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 And we suspend that when we're in a 2 situation like Millstone because this has had such a --
3 that process- has .been superseded- by the enormous-l
( 4 attention that has been given to this facility by the 5 Commission itself. And I think you know that the 6 Commission is involved in this and, in fact, will have 7 to approve restart of Unit 2. I mean this Unit l2 will 8 not restart until the Commission has approved restart. >
9 But we have suspended that process and
=10 we have suspended that process which 'was formed after 11 Three Mile Island -- that' was a process that was.
12 established ~in the lessons learned following Three Mile
({J 13 Island. We have suspended that to devote the necessary 14 energy- to creating a more objective, more consistent 15 performance -assessment, inspection- and enforcement 16 approach.
'17 This effort involves really all of the I; 18 stakeholders. It very importantly involves the f'
19 industry. But it importantly involves interested 20 groups, public interest groups like the Union of
' O 21- Concerned Scientists.
l ' la t ! >
22 And so there's an ' intense [
Lg:.
1n l 2: 23 activity going on at the national level. There have
!: 24 been a number of meetings. There was a weeklong
.TO
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l 21 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
('s) t ' OCTOBER 6, 1998 1- meeting last week involving the parties that I just 2 mentioned. And so you should be away of this. 4 1
l 3 I'm straying a little bit from Wayne's 4 edict here to stick to Millstone, but I think it is :
l 5 important that you -- that I give you kind of a sense, l j
6 you know, of how the agency.is proceeding. We take
)
7 seriously our.public mandate. We. work for 'the public.
8 We owe the public -- you know, we need to be effective. 1 i
9 And, you know, what we're basically saying is to be R
10 effective, we need to reassess our processes. 'And I'm 11 sure that in future meetings as this unfolds, we'll be ;
(} 12 giving you information on this.
13 So, with that, Wayne, I guess it's time, 14 I guess, what, to ask questions? .
15 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: See if anybody has 1
16 any questions.
17 Susan. Glad to see you. I 18 MS. SUSAN PERRY LUXTON: Same here. Hi.
-19 Hi. Nice to see everybody. It's been a 20 while. I'm Susan Perry Luxton from Waterford, 21 Connecticut, Citizens Regulatory Commission. Nice to L w(:
- g_
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'22 see'you here in Waterford. Welcome to Waterford, Mr.
1
[h. 23 Miller. I 24 Let me give you some input on this new
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-1 SALP,- rethinking the SALP project. Okay? Or the 2 . process 1of assessing.the- plants. I think that in the I
-3 Citizens Regulatory. Commission -- we talked about it 4 the other night before this meeting was coming up. And
.5 we were thinking that we see one of the problems that 6 ,
occurred and we can only say with Region One before )
i
-7 1995 was there wasn't -- it doesn't seem to me -- and j 8 correct me if I'm wrong. Was there a criteria to shut )
i
-9 down'the plants so-that if problems arose and -- if too 10 many problems arose, there would be a criteria that the jg 11 NRC region people, working with Resident Inspectors, could use and'then they could say, "Okay.
'{][ 12 h T'ere's this 13 many problems" or "They have problems with these kinds 14 of. processes" or whatever at Millstone, then it should 15 be shut down.
16 Because it seems to me, looking over 17 some of the -- let's see --
things back and forth 18 between NRC and NU all those years before 1995, they r 11 9 had lots of times -- I even saw you on video and Mr.
20 Martin, Tom T. Martin, saying, "You better straighten O
a 21 up. You're not doing well on this and that and-such-I
.j '. 22 and-such or whatever", numerous times before 1995. And l 23 they were never shut down. Do you know what I mean? I
- 24 mean everybody knew they had problems. But why didn't LO i-POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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'l you ever shut them down in'a timely fashion? :
2 And I think -- my understanding is there
'was no criteria to shut down.
3 So that's input from us 4 ' to you saying maybe you= should get some criteria for
-5 shutdown. I 6 MR. MILLER: Well, my answer to that, if !
-7 - the '_ question is do we.have criteria, the answer is yes
, 't 8 and no. And what-I mean by that is that -- 1 1
9 MS. PERRY LUXTON: That sounds like a
-l 10 typical NRC answer. l 11 MR. MILLER: I know. Let me explain.
.: 12 The answer on the yes side is that there are, you know, 13 in our technical specifications very specific criteria
- 14 that if the margins of safety are reduced to the point 15 where -- and it's fairly detailed. And it can involve
- 16 one single piece of equipment. It can involve an J
. 17 accumulation of things. But with -- when certain 18 equipment is inoperable, then there are very specific
~ .~ 19 requirements and time frames for shutting a plant down.
20 And that's there. And that's the minimum level.
- o
~* - 21 That's the thing that's been established by the agency
- g.
-22 as the minimum margin of safety that we can tolerate.
- { '
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24 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS d) OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 don't quite reach that -stage, you know,cthere are 2 criteria to -- that spell out and give a formula that 3 if you add this problem and that problem; and another,
- 4 it's.-- you'know, we're going along here and you've got 5 to shut down.
6 MS. PERRY LUXTON: You agree, though, 7 that previous to the 1995 shutdown and NU shutting down l 8 Millstone 1 and then 2 and 3, you had come to this area 9 and said'to Millstone, "This is wrong. This is wrong."
10 And they had had problems for years before.. Correct?
11 MR. MILLER: And we did not at any time
() 12 conclude that,.you know,-on the basis of that that they 13 had to shut down and -- because there were -- there are 14 not criteria, there aren't criteria today.
15' MS. PERRY. LUXTON: So I'm saying maybe 16 there should --
~17 MR. MILLER: Will there -- yes. Will 18 there - -it would be nice if -- you know, the more we 1., 19 can make this objective, the easier it is for all of 20 us. But I think that -- you know, we don't want to --
0-
,==~ '21 I wouldn't want to mislead anybody. These are complex
- l:
E{; '22 machines. And- drawing up quantitative guidelines b .
23 that's beyond the level that we have now in our 24 . technical specifications would be a very difficult
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(~N MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 thing to do and, in some respects, even have it be 2 counterproductive to safety.
3 One of the things that the Commission is 4 emphasizing right now is the issue of risk. And that's 5 fairly well spelled out at each plant in the so-called 6 probablistic risk assessments. And we're emphasizing 7 and I think what will be brought into this new scheme, 8 whatever it is, is the requirement to invoke and to 9 look at the risk associated with not just single 10 problems but accumulation of problems.
g 11 Now, will that lead to a neat formula or
() 12 a set.of quantitative criteria? You want my personal 13 opinion? I'd say I doubt it, but we ought to try. We 14 ought to push it and we ought to look and see if we can 15 do it. I doubt that we'll come that far.
16 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Well, I'm not sure I 17 often understand what you mean by probablistic risk 18 assessment and all that stuff. But all I can remember 19 -- all -- when I listen to you and I listened to the 20 press conference on tape today and I heard you say o
< 21 yesterday the same kinds of things you said today, that
_0 l 22 what happened at Millstone was equipment was degraded.
'b 23 Their design basis documents were not properly 24 maintained for years and a number of the plant A
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-4 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.\ s OCTOBER 6,-1998 1 processes were flawed. Quality _ assurance, corrective 2 actions, employee concerns.
3 So every time I hear how badly it had 4 deteriorated on so many different levels, I must admit 5 I get enraged as a member of the public who had no idea
'6 that' this was getting -- was degrading like that. You'
-7 know?- I trusted you and you weren't up to the job, for 8 whatever reason. And NU wasn't, either. And so when 9 you talk about risk,'I know the Union of- Concerned 10 Scientists 'has said during this shutdown that if it
{ :11 wasn't for the grace of God, this -- uere could have
( 12' 13 been- problems at agree with that.
Millstone.
But when Now, I know you don't you talk about risk, it's a 14 hard thing for us to take after everything that's 15 happened here.
16 MR. MILLER: Yes. And I think it's
'17 important that I tell you that I, from what I know --
18 'and I don't have all the background'on Millstone. I 19 can't say that I can speak with, you know, a whole lot 20 of-authority because I wasn't here for most of it.
.- 0 ;
- - 21 But things never'got to the point, in my
.- l .
{ 22 view, where the- margins of safety degraded to an l 23 unacceptable level at this facility. It's our job, 24- it's. our job -- and we've learned this time and time
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I OCTOBER 6, 1998 l- again.
1 'We.can't.Llet it get-that f a r .' And in this l 2 case, it'didn't. I'm not aware of any situation -- and someone'can
~
l 3 correct me here -- where things proceeded 4 to ;a level.'where their- equipment was inoperable and 5 that twas ~known and, yet, the -facility continued to 6 cperate in spite of that.
7 .The margins of safety are based, Susan -
t 8 - and I-think you know this -- in-the defense in depth; 9 ' concept.
10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I know that.
11 MR. MILLER: And so it's -- what - we
- 12 requ're'is.this defense in depth -- not just
(]} i in terms 13 of-the physical systems, but ~ to have robust' processes 14 and the like to assure that the margins of safety never 15 get' reduced below a point that's just not acceptable.
(16 It's not my impression that Millstone ever reached that 17 point.
,I 18 Now, it's our job.to complain. It's our 19 job to push and prod the licensee. And I did it today.
't 20 I talked about the things that -- you know, "I'll spot
.O
- = :21 you.- You've done these things. But here are the
~l.
g 1 22- things that we're' going to continue to press you on.
l 23 Here are the areas -where.you need to continue to work 24 and improve." That's our job. We have to do that.
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, 28 lfg MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 So, as I started, I talked about the 2 -problems here and they were deep-seated. And we can 3 all pick.our adjectives and argue over what they mean 4 exactly. Understand that's spoken as a regulator whose 5 job it is to push and pred. And I'm not sure-that.
6 helps you. But I don't want to have you 'from what I !
7 said at the beginning that this was clearly a case that 8 had -- where the level of. risk dropped clearly .below 9 what was acceptable and adequate. That's -- I'm'-just 10 giving you -- it's important that we communicate here j 11 and that I'm clear on that.
,.() ^12 I don't know, Wayne, what your thought 13 would bo, but --
14 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I know Wayne's l
- 15. thoughts. I'll let someone else --
16 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: We've answered 17 this question before, haven't we? :
k 18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Yes, we have. I 19 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: We have discussed
-20 this.
, a-a' 21 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I'd like to have some Ll j[ 22 questions later on about actual specific things that
!- 23 are happening at Millstone 3 and 2.
24 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: You bet.
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1 MR. MILLER: Thank.you, i
'2 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: -Okay. Anyone else I+
L3 have questions for Mr. Miller? Yes, Rosemary. l 4 MS. ROSEMARY BASSILAKIS: Good evening.
5 My name'is Rosemary Bassilakis. I'm with-the Citizens 6 Awareness Network. It's nice to- see you at the i
7 meeting. It's a fresh -- a fresh voice.is always good.
L-8 /And it's rather' validating that so many members of the
, .9 community did get involved. and did push and push for r-
, 10 -wanting, you-know, a better situation at Millstone.
- 11 And I think we'did the right thing.
L{
- { 12 But just a real general-question. And I L 13 don't, unfortunately, have any . specifics. But in !
l .
14 reading' over some of the inspection reports at ,
L 15 Millstone, there seems to be a lot of - enforcement !
16 discretion for violations. You. know? There will be i
17 -violations and violations piling up and there's --
b 18 Wayne, you're getting that look. And there's just a 19 lot of enforcement discretion and it' concerns me. And
- j. 20 I'm wondering why. And when is this big umbrella of O
La 21 the huge fine they had a year ago going to close? And I'!-
22 -- you know.
p, J'
i R- :23 MR. MILLER: Well, enforcement is an j 24 important tool in our arsenal. It is needed to really I ,( ),
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30 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
- OCTOBER 6, 1998 j 1 put'. teeth ~in what we do. I told you I-talked to the
-2 licensee today and I gave them praise for the things 3 that.they've done well and I exhorted them on-the areas 4 --
but'one of the --
when it comen to, you know, 5 compliance _with our minimum requirements and the like, 6 you know, we need something like enforcement to really
.7 get their attention.
8 But, by the same token,- one of the 9 behaviors that has to be encouraged --'and here's where 10 the plant had some real_ illness -- is in the area of 11 raising issues and getting problems identified. I
{
_ti 12 think you all know -- it shouldn't-be a surprise to you G
13 th at every plant has problems. People make mistakes.
.\
14 Equipment fails. Just, you know -- and our.whole 15 regulatory scheme is based upon having the defense in 16 depth ~to ---in recognition of that. .
l 17 But, importantly, there's got to be a 18 process where licensees identify their own problems.
19 There-are only so many -- as savvy as these folks are -
20 -
and these are really good engineers. There are only O
- 21 so many of them. And we're spot-checking. The p
22 licensee has to find- their own problems. And so it's 2; '23 important where a. licensee finds their own problems and 24 then, importantly, they fix it in a timely way for us
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t E 5 l 31 MEETING.RE: MILLSTONE UNITS T -
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'l to give them'a~ message through enforcement in the same 2 way we do when.they'.re not doing the right thing.
3 Land'the way we-do that -- and this11s an i 4 official, well-advertised feature of ~ our enfarcement. t
~
'5 policy -- is we use discretion. That's~the way of -- f a
~
6 otherwise, if we didn't do that, if we were to penalize ;
.7 licensees when they bare their soul, when they look l
8 inwardly -- and it's'often painful to do this. 'I mean i i
9 'I' don't.like.to have people' criticize me. I mean all !
10 of us are that way. 'It has to be: encouraged. And so. ;
.11 that's what's behind -- it's just as simple as.that. ;
f({
12 And so I often talk in the office about ;
13 show therets bad enforcement', there are bad LER's and j
-14 there are good LER's and there are some good -- there's ;
15 good enforcement. I think that's what you're seeing. ;
i 16
- You're seeing a company that is still in ' discovery and 17 doing much better at finding -- 'f 18 MS. BASSILAKIS: Still in discovery?
'.-" 19 MR. MILLER: Still in discovery. Every tl 20 plant's in discovery always. Always. And they're
.O
<*-: . :21 doing much better at finding their own problems. And a k- ..
22 we have to encourage that. And that's what that's
, [ {- ,
i :
~ 23 about.
l 12 4 MS. BASSILAKIS: Well, we're glad
.y u [
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 i 1 they're doing much better as well. We feel, you know,
'2 'a little bit better out-here in the community.
3 MR. MILLER: Good.
14 MS. BASSILAKIS: And so- I guess what 5 -you're saying is that when they do come up with these 6 -violations on their own and then correct- them in a 7 timely manner, that's when you use --
8 MR. MILLER: That's when we use 9 discretion.
10 _.MS . BASSILAKIS: --
enforcement
'{ 11 discretion.
. ,12 MR. MILLER: Right.
13 MS. BASSILAKIS: And usually not in-.
14 other situations.
15 MR. MILLER: That's right. No. If a ,
l 16 licensee -- they can fail in two ways. They can find I l
17 their own -- not find their own problems. Obviously, 18 that's - .we find it, we cite them and that's --
19 MS. BASSILAKIS: You'd be less inclined I
20 to'use enforcement discretion.
O-a -21 MR. MILLER: And if they find it and
'k 22 don't fix it -- and I've had cases where we've, in
[_
' :.g: ,
.r- 23 fact, issued civil penalties where a licensee found a 24 problem' and had that problem sit in a backlog that got L O'
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MEETING'RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 1- lost land. then it's a year later that. something i i
2 significant comes to. light. And even though-they fcund i n .3 it, weistill-fine them. 'I 1
4 .So it's got to be both, finding it and ?
'5 '
-fixing it.
-6 MS. BASSILAKIS: Okay. Thanks. _]
1
.7 MR. MILLER: Sure. ..
i 8 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Anyone else have f l
9 'any questions? Yes, sir. Ron?
11 0 MRm RON McKEOWN: Good evening - I'm Ron
- 11 McKeown-from Niantic, Friends of a Safe Millstone. I
-12 have. to agree'with-the speakers who spoke prior to me.
i
~- 13 It' would seem to me :that the continuum of informing .the 14 :public relative.to any. problems,: whether1it be done: i i
15 through a . score. card or' something,.would be -- would j l
16 give'us a lot.more confidence. I
'17 And NASA -- you know, I contacted NASA I
..18 the other day. And they have score cards. They call
' I. 19 them score cards. And they're a highly complex network 120 of machines as well. And it would seem to me before we
.o
! .*; -21 get to the point of penalties, watch . lists, that it
'22 would -be a really good procedure or policy to have a l lg{i 2 23 mechanism that the public could just. hear how their l 1
L 24 neighborhood nuclear facility is doing. And I think
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. ( )( OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 the' Llevel of Lconfidence that we would have. in a 2 heightened fashion would serve us all well.
3 And I think any rational person has some '
4 level of anxiety having a potentially' dangerous 5 facility nearb'y. And'I think that'that1 continuum is 6 really'long. And if we just had' simply routine -- and- -'
7 in plain English, it would help go a long way to 8 building confidence and informing the public, which I'm 9 assuming'is a high interest.
10 MR. MILLER: Just several things. First 11 of all,.I appreciate that comment. I appreciate the
('\
\_)
. 12 comments of others. And I.would encourage all of you l 13 to weigh.in and you will have opportunity to weigh in-
- 14 on the revisitation by the Commission of its processes.
15 It's easy to sit here and talk in 16 concept about how to do it. It's going to take a lot; 17 of wisdom to come up with something that is both, you I -18 know, more user-friendly, if you will. That's what
~I 19 you'.re really asking for.
20 MR. McKEONN: Right.
O s' 21 MR. MILLER: And also meaningful. And l-
}. '22 so it's going to take everybody contributing.
! 23 Having said thac --
so that's an 24 _ invitation. Jump in. Secondly, our best attempt and kJf)
POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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35 77 y MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS Js,/ ) OCTOBER 6,.1998- l 1 our way of'doing, at least telling our story- from our
.2 side used to be' the SALP is one:very -important piece,- ,
.3 -but~ 'it's-the inspection reports. We.have what we call' 4 'our : plant ; issues matrix. I'm not sure if you're 5 familiar with 1that. But every six months, we take i 6 every plant in the region and we look at'our so-called i
7 -PIN, . plant issues matrix, which are. all of the issues i i
8 that come from inspections and other insights gained j i
9 from the licensing office and so on, and we assess that l 1'O and we make judgments about where we ought to put our ,
g' 11 attention. ;
}{} 12 But that's -- that's something- you have 13 tx) really~ sit down and study. It's not - something 14 that's a quick -- you- know, what's the score? Among 15 other things, we're looking at the FAA. We've been in 16 touch with NASA- as -we are looking for a different 17 scheme. But I guess I completely appreciate what 18 you're saying and all of you. We're all looking for 19 something that's simple and easy to grab onto and I
20 that's continuous, c-
+ 21- MR. McKEOWN: And I would feel great, g
- ;g 22 being a local citizen, if somehow some user-friendly b ' 23 document made itself into the public that said " Local !
24 utility, you're doing a great job." That would feel ;
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- MILLSTONE UNITS I h OCTOBER 6,'1998-1 good. And, at the-same time ~, if they needed a kick in 2 -the' rear end,- I'd like to know that they're in that I
-3 phase-well before, you know,- I hear about watch lists 1 4 =and fines and -- that.'s not as important to me and I I 1
-5 don't' think .to most citizens as compared to just 6 knowing that -- the status.
7 MR. MILLER: One of the. things that 8 we're trying to do is to come up.with some indicators, 9 some thresl. olds that will distinguish the' plant that's
~10 < headed for w ouble or that is --
- 11 MR. McKEOWN: Good.
'12 MR. MILLER: --
dropping so that we can.
13 focus our attention there and less on'the plant that 14 are solid .and, you know,.you've got that feeling that 15 there's evidence, really, tnat the margins of safety 16 are ample. And -- because it's important that we have 17 that -- we can make that distinction because we have to 18 apply our resources -- they're very limited. We've got
< .- 19 to apply them where there's impending trouble.
20 MR. McKEOWN: Will the public have an OL . .
- -- 21 opportunity to give input into the path that you're l:.
22 going down relative to what your process may be in the f
l 23 interim?
.24 MR. MILLER: Absolutely. And we can I '10 POST REPORTING SERVICE
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37 n MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS (o).
s, . OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 give you -- I'm sure there are people here who can tell
- 2 .you when the next opportunity is. There is a meeting I 3 talked about last week. The staff will be preparing a 4 proposal. at this point and will be sending 'it to the a Commission. I feel certain that throughout that 6 process there will be opportunity. Certainly, public 7 interest groups --
I know Dave Lochbaum from the UCS 8 has been sitting in, has been involved in this We-can 9 get you information, though, on where the entry points 10 are on that.
11 MR. McKEOWN: Great. Thank you.
12 Appreciate it.
't
}
13 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. I did not.
14 see any other hands. I'm sorry. 'i 1
15 MR. JONATHAN MINEA: Hi. I'm Jonathan 16 Minea from Connecticut College. You said earlier this 17 evening that you felt that poor quality conditions with j 1
l 18 equipment occurs over time and does not occur
~I
- - '19 overnight. And as I've read the literature recently, 20 it would appear that quality -- one factor in creating o
- L 21 poor quality conditions is due to cuts in staff within I
22 the power -- within the utilities industry. And as
}.
! 23 utilities become deregulated and become more i 24 economically competitive, it seems that it would become POST REPORTING SERVICE
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38 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.- -; OCTOBER-6, 1998
'l . harder to meet-the goals of economic competitiveness 2 with.' safety issues. -And I was wondering if you could --
3 address that issue.
4' MR. MILLER: Yes. 'That's a very good 5 question. And that's -- we're all worried about that.
6 IL mean. because there's. the potential for that to
'7 -happen. I gave a lot- of' thought to this over the last 8 several years. I mean this has been coming for some
.9 time. . I mean this whole business of deregulation and -
10 - as'.-we looked at 'it real hard, what we found, very 11
}. curiously, is that in most respects -- and this is
- . 12 counter-intuitive. .But in most respects, moving from 13 an environment.where licensees could spend almost as
14 much as.they want - now, this wasn't entirely true.
15 They'could turn and pass to the rate payer all of their
,16 expenses. It led to some poor management and poor
-17 management practices. And, in fact, the specter of 40 18 having to compete, the specter of having to manage il' -
19 effectively, to have equipment that's reliable and b
E 20 doesn't cause the plant to come off line frequently, 0
= 21 has led to very significant improvement in the
, :I
};- 22 industry. And I.can give you example after example.
h..! 23 Now,.there are some areas where it's not 24 so obvious. Design is one area. Doing the things that O' POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
2 39
- ' MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 ;
~
- 1 it' takes to assure that equipment is consistent with I
~2 the. design and licensing basis -- and that's much of i
_3 what Millstone, of course, has been about. And we will- I 4 always have an: element in our inspection program look 5 at that to make sure that that's being.done properly. !
6 And so it is interesting that for the 7 most part, deregulation has led, in some respects even has been 8 more than NRC able to influence -- and I'm 9 going to be honest with you. In some respects, the 10 specter.of deregulation has caused and has motivated
{ 11 licensees in some instances more than we-have to do the 12 right thing by the plant, you know, manage equipment,
! 13 pay attention to_ their people, do good _ preventive 14 maintenance, have_ effective schemes for work control i 15 and work planning so you can get a lot of work done.
16 The number of people -- I don't think --
l '/ when I look back at it, from what_I know the number of l 18 people has not been an issue at Millstone. I mean I 1-19 don't think they suffered from a lack of number of f 20 people. They're much larger in size, certainly right
-a- 21- now, than they needed to be to recover and to unearth
-l~
g 22 that hidden backlog that I talked about. And then not k -23 only unearth it, but to fix it has taken, you know, a
'24 significant, you know, supplemental, you know, effort
(-
i p; y.
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- l T OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 'here. And a lot of people are on site. And so'we 2 understand that they're- going to over time be, you L know, 3 moving more in the direction of the normal
'4 licensee. And we'll watch that closely.
5 But you have to be careful. The
-6 deregulation by itself and even cutting staff 1
7 'necessarily is not a bad. thing. There are many 8 licensees who have made reductions in staff to become 9 more competitive. But when it's managed well, when 10 they define very clearly what people's tasks are and
'll they manage it well, it can have positive, not just l( 12 negative -- now, it can have negative effects. And 13 that's why there has to continue to be an NRC. And 14 that's why you have to continue to be skeptical.
15 MR. MINEA: Yes. Because one example 16 that comes'to mind -- I can't recall if this happened 17 at Millstone or not -- but doing maintenance work while 18 the reactors are on line. I believe I read previously
- 19 several years ago that they were trying to replace some 20 bolts'in a cooling line while the reactor while still '
O
-* 21 on line. And I was wondering -- and part of the l 1
j' 22 problem why they wanted to maintain the reactor on line b 23 was the fact that economically it would hurt the 24 Northeast Utilities too much to be off line --
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jr's= , MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS Ts ,) . OCTOBER 6, 1998 1
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1 MR. MILLER: That- wa a bad episode. I l 2 mean it's wellipublicized. What the good licensees do 3 is "they -- and it will take Millstone some time before 4 they can- get to this point. -There's a lot to do at 15 this station that- will only be done by brute force, 6 just clearing backlogs,. getting the- backlogs now and- {
7 restarting Unit 2. When they get past a lot;of that ,
8 reactive look-load, then they can begin to look more !
9 ahead, plan more.
10 The good licensees do real good outage 11 planning, so they get a lot of work done during the.
7l} ,
-12 outages, do a.real, real good job of planning the work
( ;
13 that's done on line~so that the. risk is significantly, i 14 that when they'go in and do work, they do it -- they're l
15 well coordinated, real good control, real good 1
=16 consideration for risk. And it turns out that's safer; 17 that equipment, when it's well maintained, a lot of 18 preventive maintenance -- you know, it's -- you see it I 19 time and time again. And they're out in the industry, E= 20 the best safety performers and most often the lowest-0-
4 4F 21 cost producers. So it -can be done. It has to be I
,.g- . 2:2 managed well.
.b 23 But there are also instances where 24 licensees in the interest -- in the ' mistaken notion, Y i POST REPORTING SERVICE . ~
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1 42 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(,): OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 - sort of -a short-term view of things, did .really dumb 2 things. And so we have to watch that. It's a 3 legitimate concern, i
4 MR. MINEA: Thank you.
5 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Thank you, Jon. i l
6 That was very-insightful questions. .Thank-you.
7 MR. MILLER: Thank you.
8 Yes, sir?
10 Mr. Miller, I -- yesterday was the first day I met you.
11 And I. heard you say that you were here two years-ago.
-[-
12 MR. MILLER: Yes.
(
13 MR. BESADE: One of the -things you l 14 mentioned that you --
a few minutes ago, that there 15 wasn't anything serious enough that maybe you should --
16 they should have -been shut down. I believe the 442 17 valve was a very important incident. You do understand I 18 what I'm talking about.
L-.l 19 MR. MILLER: Yes.
L ;lr 20 MR. BESADE: The 76 days that they ran
- IO
,-* 21 it --
l b. '
22 MR. MILLER: I went up and looked at
']
23 that. valve on ena of my previous tours. I've seen that 24 valve.
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[' Q OCTOBER 6, 1998 l'
1 MR. -BESADE: _Okay. :So- that they.
2 i improvised to keep going and making the dollar over our 3 ~ safety.and; the' people in this' area. .Also, I feel the.
4 same way about this present valve that you people let
~ '
5 them start up-with, this valve'that's - got the strong-6 back over the top of'it where the stem could blow out.
7 And that, to me, is improper.. That's -- I'm really not 8 happy with your decision to let them start under that.
9 The other thing is for the- past 20 10 years, the :NRC personnel who have been over there to g 11 take and oversee all of this are'the same ones that.
12 gave Shirley Jackson advice that it's- ready to start.
. . ',]
13 She listens to staff. I believe the staff was in error 14 .quite a' few times. But they're not going to bite the 15 hand that feeds them. They rely on the nukes for their
'16 existence.
17 .The other thing is, unless you can 18 correct me, the NRC personnel were- only on site for
-. 19 five years. The young fellows I saw that come over 20 there, they come over with maybe 30 percent experience co:
,- a . . 21 and the rest is on-the-job training. By the time they l;
- ge, 22 learn the ropes, they're transferred somewhere else, l 23 This, to me, doesn't sound like it's too smart a move.
24 On ' my last walk-down with Captain o POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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- .c MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS :
OCTOBER 6, 1998 -
.1 Mendenhall'.when the plant was owning at 40 percent, I 2 .w as. promised-thatthe temperatures would be up to 400
'3 degrees. I,was quite concerned about the double valves ]
4 in the turbine building as far as the whipping action 5 and the stress on the wells. And one of the wells just 6 let go down at CY that was being decontaminat'ed.
.7 So as far as the metallurgy, it's there.
8 .The plants are getting older. And they should be x-
-9 rayed a. lot more often. What bothers me is when the 10 plant was built, the -- quite' 'a few of the x-rays were 11 falsified while the QC Department was snorting coke in
{. 1 12 the QC building. The NRC, when I mentioned to this
-13 earlier with Mr. Tony Cerne years ago, they weren't 14 ' interested in any problem that'was over five years old.
15 And at that time, the turbine building would fall down 16 and not be any danger to the public. Well, this also .
17 bothers me. There's high-pressure lines there, et )
18 cetera. The only one I should be concerned with is I 19 containment.
20 So, as I follow through on the
- O
= 21 containment, I want to find out what the proper
.l1
- { .22 occupational licenses should be. And I'm getting '
! 23 tossed back and forth for the past three years. Now I 24 find that the State of Connecticut also is very POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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l 45 MEETING-RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 politically involved as far as the --Department of l
l- 2 ' Consumer Protection under the present. Mark Shiffrin.
L '3 The local politicians in town, including one that's 4 fsitting behind me right now, have been also in-bed-with l-5 them. They don't move when I ask tnem to move. I give 6 them documentation. And what I have now is three years 7 of documentation on that little camera over there. And 8 . Shirley. Jackson has also received.the fruits of my 9 labor.
10 Right now, I want to hear just -- you j .11 ought to top me in on site. You was. in charge before.
{J 12 Now that they're downsizing with the NRC, both here and 13 CY, how can .the public feel free or at ease knowing 14 that all these other things.that took place are going-15 -to be any safer and we won't be back into the same ball 16 game as we were before? Because I've been over this in 17 '73, sir. I've seen it and I've run crews of 110 as a ;
18 union pipefitter. I saw the coverups. I saw these
'. . 19 other things. So I'm not just talking hearsay.
t 20 The thing is it's to the advantage of my O
a 21 opposition, whether it be the contractors union, all my b
- j. 22 witnesses are dying off, whether it be old age, cancer b .23 or whatever. And you have to -- with no proof, there's 24 no case. This much I realize. But, as I told you
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(~g MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(_) OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
1 earlier, I believe the OIG wants to talk to me and I'll 2 be more than glad to assist them on anything I can.
3 MR. MILLER: Well, you've mentioned a 4 number of things here. And I want to make sure --
5 you've talked to people before. I want to make sure i 6 that we are aware of specific things you may know about 7 that might be problems. And I'd like to meet with you 8 separately and talk to you about that. i i
9 But regarding credibility of the. region, ,
i 10 the agency, really I'm limited in what I can do or say l g 11 here to convince you. I mean you -- I respect your
'T 12 skepticism. Really, there's nothing I can say here --
(G 13 MR. BESADE: All right. I --
l 14 MR. MILLER: You have to watch and see 15 what we do here and --
l 16 MR. BESADE: All right. I've been to 17 Washington twice. I've talked to Dr. Shirley Jackson.
1 18 The part that bothers me is --
19 MR. MILLER: You have to watch and see l 20 what we do. You can't just go on what I tell you here.
-O
- 21 You have to see. And ultimately it's -- you know, it's 1
.g. 22 'the specific meetings that we have when we talk about b 23 the performance at that plant and we talk about the 24 issues. Either we've got a good story, you know, or we n
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3_). OCTOBER 6, 1998 q l
1 don't. And if we don't have a good story,.no one's I 2 going to save us. But I mean it's not -- I~can't give 3 you an answer here,-in other words, that will convince i 4 you one way or the other. You've got to look at what ;
5 we do. 'And ultimately,=it's going to be how the 1
6 licensee operates the plant that will tell the story.
1 1
7 MR. BESADE: I don't have any -- l s
8 MR. MILLER: I'm telling you that )
9 nothing I can say here today --
10 MR. BESADE: ik). No.
11 MR. MILLER: -- that will --
('h
\1
.12 MR. BESADE: I believe they're too long.
.l 13 And to have them bring in their PR people and whatever !
'14 and 4,000 signatures and plus the figureheads of the
)
15 different towns. They signed that, you know, Unit 3 16' should start. They had no business doing that until I i 17 they talked to their people. To me, this also upsets
'I 18 me. There's a lot of things that goes behind -- like 19 today you said you was at a meeting, you talked to NU.
20 I didn't see you at the meeting I was at. So this one O
p
= 21 here had to be behind closed doors with NU that you --
l~l :
22 MR. MILLER: No. I was in the plant e 23 talking to people, as I told you, in a --
24 MR. BESADE: Well, how come you weren't p ..
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- g- MEETING RE
- MILLSTONE UNITS l g_j : OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 --- -
2 MR. MILLER: In an inspection arena. )
3 .Just like my Inspectors are there all the time.
4 MR. BESADE: Okay.
5 -MR. ' MILLER: And this is in an i I
6 inspection context. It was in the process of. talking l l
7 and interviewing people. It's an inspection, 8 essentially. At the end of that inspection, I gave 1
9 feedback and I said basically, you know, "Here's where i 10 you're doing well and here's where you -- I think you g 11 need to continue to -- this isn't a courtesy. But what 12 I told'them is what I'm telling you now and what I said
'(~ {
L 13 at :the beginning of all this. And so that's the 14 context of that.
15 MR. BESADE: Sir, on this last five, 16 ten-minute walk-down, I went through. I saw a three-17 quarter inch nipple that required a three-quarter-inch l
18 carbon steel cap to be on top of it to be safe.
I-
$. 19 Otherwise, if a blank came down and hit that, 400-L -
20 degree steam could be going out to the atmosphere.
l:04 l
- 21- MR. MILLER: We're going to make sure --
l:l.
- 22 MR. BESADE: All your engineers that are
-l'-
b 12 3 sitting in the front row or ~ your Inspectors, not one 24 picks this- up. But they've got plenty of paperwork POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
49 fs . MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.,)
OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 they're looking for. Once they find a' problem, "Oh.
2 Well, we'll turn around and with a pad and a pencil 3 we'll take care of the problem." That doesn't make me 4 feel any safer. I don't know what it -does to the i i
5 general public. !
i 6 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Well, Joe, I hope 7 you agree with me that we've talked about most of these !
8 concerns previously. You may not agree with the answer 9 that you got. But you will have to agree that we have 10 been responsive to your questions, to your concerns, g 11 arranged for you to go to the site visit --
f'}
xs 12 MR. BESADE: Right. You said, "I owe 13 you." Yes.
14 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Yes. We've done 15 our best to be responsive to your questions and 16 concerns.
17 MR. BESADE: Right. When I asked you I 18 other things, "Oh, no. That's up to the licensee." So 19 you did a flip-flip 180 degrees, sir, a while back.
20 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Well, there's some O
- 21 things that --
1
.g 22 MR. BESADE: Mm-hmm.
-l 23 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: You know, I don't 24 control everything. You know?
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.( ) OCTOBER 6, 1998
- 1' MR. BESADE: Yes.
-2 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: There's- some 3 things-that'only the licensee can authorize and. permit 4 .and arrange --
5 .MR. BESADE . I've said this more than l . .
.6 once.- The licensee inside the permit of- that fence
-7 does whatever they please, whether it's legal according 8 to the State laws or anything else. They are God. And [
9 .nobody's held accountable, including you people. Right 10 from the very beginning from when we first got involved 11 with this,-nobody's been held accountable. -All~they do l-g 12 is- turn around and move them on. Somebody should be-l O('T 13 held. accountable,- whether it be a corporation or ;
14 something like .the organization you people'have. As
'15 Terry Spence said,.you can't put a corporation in 16 prison,. but you sure as hell can make the figureheads 17 and CEO's accountable. Nobody's been held accountable 18 in cluttening out people.
ones 19 All I know is they're still the 20 making the decision to start it up again and they're LO-
'a ' 21 the ones that have been at fault for the past 20-some-
- .I 22 odd years.
J l 23 MR. MILLER: Oh, I feel accountable and
- 24 zhold my people accountable. I'm held accountable. The l POST REPORTING SERVICE l' HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 t
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51 3/~g MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS 2
(_/ OCTOBER 6,-1998 i
.1 Inspector General, as you're aware, is independent of
.2 the' staff and.even- of the commission, reports directly 3 to Congress. There's .that check. And ultimately, 4 there's the Congress. And the Congress. is very 5 interested in what we're doing. ;
6 So I don't know that we can -- what I'm
.7 trying to say to you is that'there's anything more we i
8 can i say tonight. And you just.have to watch and see.
- 9 where Ewe go from where'and whether what I say is borne 10- out.by what we'do.
'11 MR. BESADE: No -- '
j 12 MR.. MILLER: I appreciate your comments.
13 Thank you.
14 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. I'm ready .
15 to move on to the next agenda item and that is'the 16 status of the Safety-Conscious Work Environment and Mr.
17 Bill Dean.
I 18 MR. WILLIAM DEAN: Thank you, Wayne.
.l-19 Good evening, everybody. As Wayne noted earlier, I've 20 replaced Phil McKee, who has retired, as the agency O.
<- 21 manager responsible for NRC's oversight of the <
1
'g 22 activities going. on relative to the Employee Concerns l 23 Program and Safety-Conscious Work Environment at i
24 Millstone.
10 POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800)'262-4102
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52 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
) OCTOBER'6,-1998 1 However, I'm not new to the Millstone
'2 situation. 'The previous four and a half years, I was 3 working. in'the office-of the Executive Director for 4 Operations as his liaison to Region One and, thus, I 5 followed very closely a lot of.the issues that emerged 6 relative to Millstone in the'mid-90's and their efforts 7 to try and recover over the past.several years. So I'm 8 pretty familiar with the background, what's occurred at
~9 Millstone.
.10 What I'd like to do tonight is update g 11 you .on some.of the recent activities that we have l
(~'I
.O 12 performed to assess the Employee Concerns Program or I
13 the. Safety-Conscious Work Environment at Millstone.
14 Since our last meeting -- I believe it 15 was in early : August.-- with the public, we have had an 16 NRC evaluation or- assessment of .ECP and SCWF at l 17 Millstone. And this was conducted the last week in 18 August. And we had a public exit several weeks ago I 19 which some of you may have attended. ;
l )
E 20 The final report on this evaluation ~ is o'
= 21 .j ust . about complete and we should release it either
' l.
22 -later this week or early next week at the latest. Some I-l- 23 of the findings that we had out of that evaluation I 24 indicate that there's continued progress in the
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- (~ MEETING RE
- MILLSTONE UNITS 3m)} OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 Employee Concerns Program and it's affecting us.
2 They continue'to be independent. They 3 continue to perform. thorough evaluations that are 4 unbiase'd. And'they continue to receive the resources
'S 'and management support they need to be the effective, 6 independent organization they have to be. to be 7 successful.
8 As far as the Safety-Conscious Work 9 Environment at Millstone, it continues to improve.
10 We've seen no' evidence of back-sliding, which was one
{ 11 of our concerns as Unit 3 entered an operational mode.
.{} -12 The vast majority of employees -are willing to raise
'13 concerns. ~The allegation rate the NRC has received is 14 much reduced from last year. Albeit, it is still high
-15 relative to-the rest of the nation.
16 Management has shown a continued 17 willingness and a capability to become involved to 18 resolve problems and concerns that have been raised at I. . 19 the site.
.20 Though this evaluation indicated
.O
- a. 21 continued improvement and progress, we intend to
[
(
{ 22 conduct another evaluation later this month. The h 23 purpose of this evaluation is to follow up on several 24 issues that we found during our evaluation that we
(
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i i I 54 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 still believe we need to assess.
2 One of the issues that we need to follow 3 up 'on is. the impending reorganization at Millstone.
4 That:has, obviously,.the potential to have a number.of 5 issues be raised if it's not handled properly. We did 6 find in our evaluation that the Northeast Utilities has 7 gone into -this reorganization in a very thorough 8 manner. And they are also utilizing the services of an
-9 outside professional organization with experience in
. 10 -these types. of reorganizations to help them with the 11 process.
() 12 However, we feel that it would be
- 13 prudent to' come back several months later to take a
.14 look and see how these things are going. So we intend 15 to do that.
,16 Another issue or issues that we intend 17 to follow up on is -- it's not realistic to expect that 18 an organization the size of Millstone and the 19 complexity of Millstone to not have issues emerge that l
t 20 relate to employee concerns. Some of you may be aware
. 0-
<- 21 that- there has been some recent issues with the Vice
- 1.
.g 22 President of Engineering Services at Millstone. These 5 23 type of issues will emerge and will continue to emerge.
24 It's important that Northeast Utilities follow up and POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L i
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' 55 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.} OCTOBER 6, J998.
- 1 dealiwith these? issues properly.
2 .-And-'so one'.of the things.that'we want to
'3 -- do later.with our evaluation this. month is- to take a i 4 lbok and see?how Northeast has handled some: of these 5 emerging. issues.
i 6 Another area .that-we're interested in I 7 'following'up on is the Employee Concerns Oversight 8 Panel. This organization's charter expired this month l
'9 and. they're in the process of reorganizing ECOP. We i
.10 think it's important- to see' how the organization l
~~ 11 incorporates-some of the functions that ECOP' performed
- O
, .12 .into. their overall. ECP and Safety-Conscious Work
- d. ;
'13 Environment. I
~14 A - final area that we feel we need-to p .15 look at is Northeast Utilities' plans for'long-term 16 oversight of ECP and SCWE. Obviously, they've overlaid 17 la lot of organizational and resource-intensive programs o-18 to elevate the environment at Millstone to make it one f.
19 where people feel that it's safe to raise concerns and 20 issues.
..o -
21 However, they have been assisted in this i*l-ig 22 by Little Harbor Consultants. Well, at some point
!. 23 Little Harbor Consultants is not going to be there.
24 And they need to establish programs that will allow
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56 MEETING RE:-MILLSTONE UNITS
3 At the time of our last evaluation, 4 Little Harbor -- 'I mean -- I'm sorry -- Northeast 5 Utilities had not'yet formulated these long-term plans.
6 So we need to come back and follow up and see what
'7 they've done in that area.
8 Those are the main issues we intend to i 9 follow up on later this month. There is one final note I 10 I'd like to make with respect to third-party oversight.
g 11 In. just a minute Mr. John Beck from Little Harbor will T
.()
.12- 'come- up and provide you some of his insights and his-
-13 observations over the past several months.
14 But. we have a Commission meeting coming 15 up in late November. And one of the issues that is l
16 still;out there,. as you may recall from our meeting 17 'with.the Commission in May where we discussed restart as 18 of Unit 3, was that we anticipated the need for Little
- ,19 Harbor -Consultants to be on-site for approximately j 20 another six months to help assure that the program
.;O ji 21 improvements we had seen would be sustained. I believe l
- 1
-22 our observations since that time have indicated that l s,}'
L :e 23 that-performance has been sustained. I 24 We expect at that Commission meeting in POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 I-4 .
1 1
l l
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57 j} MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L_/ OCTOBER 6, 1998 1
1 November, based on our observations of this past 2 evaluation, those of Litt 3 Harbor and then our 3 evaluation letter this month, to make a recommendation
! 4 to the Commission regarding continuation of the third-5 party oversight. So we expect that to be a key 6 decision or recommendation that we would make to the 7 Commission at that time.
l 8 I'd now like to introduce Mr. John Beck i 9 of Little Harbor Consultante who will update you on the 1
10 recent activities and assessment that they performed j 1
11 regarding Northeast Utilities.
() 12 MR. JOHN BECK: Thank you, Bill. Let me 13 just say that I'll cover very quickly the activities i
14 that we've had under way for the past couple of months. !
15 First, I'd describe it as a continuation of our day-to-16 day oversight activities of all those activities at 17 Millstone that we've been engaged in oversight from the 18 very beginning.
19 As everyone will recall, we have an ir 20 oversight plan. That oversight plan has a number of O
< 21 programmatic commitments that we have made from the 1
22 very beginning. And we are completing or finishing all l
! 23 of those commitments on the one-by-one basis over the 24 past few months.
%-)
POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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[..~ 58 f- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
-(,)S- OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 The results of the day-to-day oversight
! 2 activities, as well as. the programmatic commitments L 3 contained in the oversight plan are going to be covered 4 in our next quarterly. report, -which we expect to issue 5 probably within the next ten days. It's being written 6 as we speak. And it will give a detailed,-blow-by-blow l
, 7 account of what's transpired in this previous quarter 8 .as we have done in the past.
9 But to give you a quick summary of those 110 activities, one of our programmatic commitments was to 11 look- at every single ECP concern that related to 12 harassment, j} intimidation or discrimination or )
- 13 retaliation.
14 We have completed that activity and we 15 have seven items that we have turned over to 'the 16 company. and asked for specific responses to some 17 concerns we expressed. The company is working on 18 those. And I anticipate a response from the company
]
~19 very shortly in that regard. Whether or not it's
[
t .20 included in the next quarterly report, it will .
.Q.
- 21 .certainly be dealt with in detail in a meeting that's
. l-
]' 22 .yet to be announced but I understand is scheduled for 23 October 27. I'm sure there will be a public 24 announcement of that meeting between ourselves, the I POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN,'CT (800) 262-4102 l 1
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.,m _ . -
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- 59 i l' s. MEETING RE
- MILLSTONE UNITS
]
~
-OCTOBER 6, 1998 q L l i 1 . company and the NRC.
2 We've also. completed a- review of the i'
3 Corrective Action Program as it applies to. Unit 2. You
[: 4 might. recall.in the past our review of the Corrective 5 Action Program was limited to Unit 3. We've completed i 6 the.' Unit 2. aspects. I'can say that the
~
findings'in 7 'that regard were satisfactory and they'll be dealt with !;
8 in detail in that' quarterly report I mentioned a moment I
'9 ago.
l l
-10 We have completed a recent thorough )
.I 11 evaluation of the ECP program in general.
'g= That overall
{}. 12 evaluation shows, as the NRC indicated in their looks, 13 that the ECP program continues to be vigorous. It !
-14 continues to improve. They've made big strides in the .
15 past. And we've recognized those improvements in our 16 evaluation and our Windows that we've shared with
- 17. everyone. We did a recent Windows evaluation, by the 18 way, and it's reflected in the handouts at the back of
- 19 the room. There were no changes from the one that we 20 did in late August. So there's nothing new to
-O-4 21 describe, other than the fact that they've continued to l
} 22 maintain their practice at the level that we indicated
! 23 earlier, p
24 We will, as I said, have the public l
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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l :1 meeting at the end of October. And'that will give us !
2 an opportunity,to bring everyone, the company., the NRC.
3 ~ staff and the public, up to date on how things. stand at !
4 ' Millstone across the board. And we'll evaluate our
~
5 Windows at that' time and make that available.
l
'6 Mr. Dean mentioned that one of 'the ]
7 issues to be considered by the Commission itself in 8 November is -the~ question of third-party oversight at 1
9 Millstone and whether or not it should continue. I l
l 10 You might recall' in the Commission
{ 11 meeting in May this issue was a topic that I think ,
( .12 almost everyone commented on one way or another. Our J
13 view at. the time was that Little Harbor's third-party 14 oversight'at Millstone should cease when we no longer 15 make'a difference.
16 We've got a little bit more L 17 sophisticated since then and looked at it from -the I 18 . standpoint of:-our overall programmatic approach and El
,- 119 concluded-that when a six-month period transpires from
.20 -the time that we found conditions at Millstone
.o-
-a 21 ' sufficient,to justify. restart of the unit and all the
,!~
22 criteria that we evaluate do not degrade, that that's l }-
l 23 sufficient foundational basis for us to feel good about
- 24 saying we. don't make a significant difference any more.
~
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/3 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
> -- U OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 So far, they've maintained'that lack of I 2 degradation for imp _rovement and, if they. continue to do 3 'so for the next month,--then you'll hear from us at the 4 end of this' month along those' lines with a report. I'm
.1 5 not. making a prediction. I'm just simply saying that 6 that's the basis on which we ' feel- conditions at 7 Millstone are satisfactory.and no longer require our J
8 presence.
9 That's the end of my prepared remarks.
'10 MR. DEAN: Thank you, John.
11 We'11 entertain any questions at this 12 ' time. Susan?
.13 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Hi.
14 MR. DEAN: Hi, Susan.
15 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I had a couple of 16 questions. I wanted to ask about oversight. I had 17 read in the paper a couple of months ago that NU had 18 had an industry internal report by an industry 19 consultant or -- I don't --
20 MR. DEAN: JUMA.
O
.* 21 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Pardon?
-l
,.gl 22 MR. DEAN: JUMA. Joint Utilities 23 Management Association.
l 24 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right. Assessed POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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i 62 gg MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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-1 their oversight program and it was -- they were still
'2 having problems. Now, the reason I say this -- to ask 3 you what -- how it's going. For several months, six at 4 least, before they got- their restart in July, I.had 5 told the Commission, I had told the NRC at public 6 meetings that I was hearing from inside the plant that 7 the oversight --
performance of oversight was 8 dysfunctional. And NU and everyone and NRC told me 1 9 that they were doing a fantastic job and oversight was 10 doing nothing but improving.
g 11 So when I read in the paper that
(}
r 12 internal JUMA said that they were not-doing well, I was 13 really mad at you guys because .I told you that I was 14 hearing that it wasn't doing well and'you sat there and 15 looked at me and it was. And now it turns out the 16 industry themselves said they had some serious 17 problems. Now, come clean on this. How are they doing l- 18 now, Mr. Beck, or whoever?
Beck.
19 MR. BECK:
, 20 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Yes. Beck. Or it O
'*: 21 doesn't matter who.
ll1 i g: 22 A VOICE: Or whoever else can respond. '
Lb 23 MR. GENE IMBRO: What does that have to i 24 do with review of the Employee Concerns?
l rs '
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(_j. OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 MS.. PERRY .LUXTON: What does that have 2 to do with Employee Concerns?
'MR. IMBRO:
3 Yes.
4 MS, PERRY LUXTON: Well, I.--
5 MR. IMBRO: Well, it has --
6 MS. PERRY LUXTON: It does have to do 7 with. Employee Concerns.
8 MR. DEAN: It does have. With oversight 9 and --
10 MR. IMBRO: Talking about related to --
'. 11 MR. DEAN: I think Hub might want to
(} 12 address this' a little bit, too. But I'll weigh in a 13 little bit. The organization, Northeast Utilities at
'14 Millstone, as I mentioned earlier, continues to have 15 issues. Issues will continue to emerge.. And certainly 16 in the oversight organization, there have been some 17 issues in the past, i I 18 Millstone has maintained or has
.. l l- --
19 identified what they call -- have called focus areas.
20 I'm not sure what they call them now. They've changed
'to.
- ~21 the name of these things. But these are areas where lL j{ 22 there are -- whether you want to call them pockets of
- -l 23 unrest or where there are indications that there may be 24 some problems in either labor / management relationships O POST REPORTING SERVICE I HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
E 64 L
g MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 or some unrest among the employees in that group and --
2 MS, PERRY LUXTON: They existed before
._ 3 start-up.
- 4 MR. DEAN
- Yes.
- f. 5 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right. Is that what' 6 you're talking about?
7 -MR. DEAN: Yes.
8 MS. PERRY LUXTON: The oner that existed i 1
9 before' start-up.
10 MR. DEAN: Yes. Yes.
11 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Do they still exist 12 today?
13 MR. DEAN: They still have some now.
l 14 MS. PERRY LUXTON: And how many do they 15 have?
16 MR. DEAN: I would have to get back to 17 .you and let you know on that.
18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Well, Mr. Beck
-_ -19 probably knows, though.
20 Right, Mr. Beck? You probably know how
.O
- 21' many they have?
-l-
{ 22 .MR. BECK: No, I don't. Today I don't.
-l' 23 They've closed a lot of them. I don't have an exact
, 24 number at hand.
i ..
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<~3 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l
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! 1 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Mm-hmm.
2 MR. BECK: Certainly fewer than they had 3 prior to start-up.
4 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Mm-hmm.
5 MR. DEAN: So, anyway, this organization 6 that came in, JUMA, did a short look and utilized these 7 focus areas as groups to go talk to. So a lot of the 8 report is based on addressing these particular areas, 9 which included this group in Oversight.
10 MS. PERRY LUXTO'J : Okay. Well, let me 11 put it this way. Are you sat.isfied with the way the 12 oversight organization is functioning at Millstone 3 at
(~))
13 this time -- on site at this, time? I don't mean just 14 Millstone 3?
15 MR. DEAN: Yes.
l 16 MS, PERRY LUXTON: You are satisfied?
17 MR. DEAN: Yes. Absolutely.
! -18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Is it better l-
- 19 than it was in June?
20 MR. DEAN: I would say it's performing O.
! = 21 at least at the same level it was in June, which we l
j 22 thought was a very good level.
b 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
24 MR. MILLER: Let me just add -- you O POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
l ..
i 66 l
-)(
MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS-OCTOBER 6, 1998 L 1 - know, and I come at-this and-I pay a lot of attention '
2 to this. The oversight organization is adding value at 3 the site. And I picked that up a lot in my - two days
- l- 4 here. .And this is in talking to people in the plant.
5 There's respect for that organization. No organization 6 is perfect.. And as I mentioned at the beginning, I L
L 7 went out of my way to talk about areas where this i
8 company continues to need to work. !
9 'A big part of- the licensee doing what I 10 said earlier, and that is to keep this continuous cg. 11 improvement, is to be heavily engaged in self-12 assessment and,-importantly, getting outside parties to
{
13 comeLin.
14 Often -- and this is true even with NRC. ,
15 We come in from the outside. We come in -for a short i
16 period of time. And we don't profess to get it exactly 17 -r gi ht. We pass on criticism to them. I don't - - I _
'18 didn't study the JUMA report to know whether it was l
19 exactly correct or not. But my impression . was that 20 some of the things that they were talking about in
[ o-4 21 there reflected on the line organization as much as l:
[ 22 they did'in. oversight in the areas'that I talked about.
! 23 So, in other words, it was mainly good 24 - news for me to see that Northeast Utilities had this
- t. -
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67 l MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS (i OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
1 outside group come in and give them a hard look.
.2 I think my sense is that there are some 3 areas where oversight -- what I read in their report is 4 there are some areas of oversight that could do better.
5 But I mean in terms of where are they today, in terms 1
-6 of where they were in the past, I think it appears to 1 l
7 me it's clearly better. And'I can say that with some
,8 confidence that this is -- oversight is doing much l
9 better. '
10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Fine. Do you 11 understand my point?
(} 12 13 MR. MILLER: Oh, sure. If you --
1 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Do you understand i 14 that they told me for months that it was fine? Do you 15 understand that point?
16 MR. MILLER: Yes. But I think that --
-17 that's why I -- that's.why I told you at the beginning 18 you're not going to hear -- really, you can't talk 19 about any plants being perfect. And, you know, it's --
20 in some respects, this is a relative thing. Where do
.O 21 they stand -- certainly relative to where they were
- l I '
g 22 before, it's better. And --
k' -23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Thank you.
24 Mr. Amerine, the problem with the VP of
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<r I-l 68 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS g-4)
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I' 1 Engineering. I got a call from someone within the L 2 plant who wanted to make sure that we knew about that.
I j 3 How's that going? Are you following that, Mr. Beck?
4 Little Harbor?
5 MR. BECK: Yes, we are, on a day-to-day ,
6 basis.
7 MS. PERRY- LUXTON: Mm-hmm. .Any 8 resolution to that problem, like investigation?
l 9 MR. BECK: I understand -- excuse me.
t-10 I'm sorry I interrupted you. My understanding is that
'g 11 the report that the ECP organization is preparing under 12 the direction of Mr. Brothers is essentially finished
, V(~T 13 and in typing today. We have not seen that report. We 14 have been present at a number of meetings that had 15 discussed various aspects of the investigation that was 16 -ongoing.
17 And I have to say that I'm favorably
-18 Impressed with the intensity to which people are paying 19 attention to this issue, to the thoroughness of the !
. . 20 work that's being done by the ECP investigators, to the fo: -
21 openness with which they have presented their !
.l l
'g 22 preliminary observations and findings and rationales, l- 23 to what they characterized as a challenge board which l 24 was --
consisted of uninvolved ECP investigators, POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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69 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 people experienced in looking at things l'ike this to 2 scrub it and to challenge the various aspects that were 3 being presented and that that process has resulted, at 4 least in the. sessions ~that I was observing, in a much 5 better product. I haven't seen the end product yet.
6 -But I'was certainly encouraged by the process they were 7 following. And if you recall, one of our. primary i
8 obligations is to watch how they. handle problems when 9 they come up.
10 It's hard for me, but I didn't say a j g 11 ~ single- word in the course of a very long word one day 12 that broke up in the dark, dark evening hours, on 13 purpose, to let them go through what they were set out 14 .to do. And it was a very impressive activity. j 15 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Good. That's good 16 news. Thank you.
17 MR. BECK: Yes. ;
)
k 18 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Next? '
I 19
- MR. McKEOWN: I'm sorry.
20 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: No. Go ahead, O
!
- 21 Ron.
1 22 MR. McKEOWN: Mr. Beck, have a l }- I
.! 23 question regarding -- what month was it that Millstone 24 received its final acceptable criteria relative to the POST REPORTING SERVICE
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.1 yellow, green, red? What month was that?
f L 2 MR. BECK: You're talking about start-3 up?
i 4 3:R. McKEOWN: Yes.
5 MR.' BECK: Reaching the level that we 1.
6 . felt.they were acceptable for start-up? We did that 7 evaluation at the end of April and presented it to the 8 Commission, if I recall, on May 3.
9 MR. McKEOWN: Okay. So it's been about 10~ five months since that time period.
L 11 MR. BECK: That's correct. 1 12 MR. McKEOWN: About' that. We had a l
({'}
E 13 Friends of a Safe Millstone meeting last week with 14 active volunteers. And the issue of Little Harbor came 15_ up. And we had no magic wand on how long we thought I 16 they should last. However, the consensus we had was i
17 that any error should be on the side of public I
18 confidence, especially since there's a major t 19 reorganization being announced, being undertaken with 20 the trials, tribulations, concerns, anxieties that go l 0:
- 21' with that.
l~
j-g~ 22 It would appear that given the five
'h 23 months -- and November is next month -- that since 24 communication on this issue is to complicated, so hard
'O . POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l . .
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l 71 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS 1
[A.
OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 to really.get a handle on for the average person in the 2 -public, it would appear unless there were 'some 3 overriding cost or -- actually, I can't even'think of a
.4 criteria that would make one not err on the side 'of.
5 public confidence -- that just for public confidence 6 sake alone, 'a cushion .for public confidence would be 7 wa'rranted.
8 MR. MILLER: Yes. Ultimately it will be-9 the Commission that will decide, really. I mean Little 10 Harbor- is employed- by Millstone, I'm sure you know, 11 because.of an order by us. And the Commission is-in
~12 line to make the decision. But we take your comment
-13 and appreciate it.
14 -MR. McKEOWN: T'ank you.
15 MR. DEAN: Yes. Hub, I would like to 16 add one thing. :And that is -- and John referred back 17 to the May Commission meeting where there were comments 18 made. by the public that, you know, Little Harbor is
- q. 19 like :the training wheels. At some point they have to 20' come off. I believe it was Rosemary -- I think it
- o'
.a 21 might have been your statement. And, you know, that's l '. l - ,
I
- g- 22 the determination or recommendation that we'd make to l 23 the Commission whether we feel these training wheels, l
24 so to speak, are ready to come off and let the i
,.t i
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72
) CT ER 6 i
L 1 Commission make the decision. -
2 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Representative 3 Stillman? Welcome..
l 4 REPRESENTATIVE ANDREA STILLMAN: Thank l
i 5 you. Good evening. I'm Andrea- Stillman. I'm the 6 State Representative for Waterford and part of New I
l
'7 London, technically the 38th' District. And, obviously, l 8 I've been' very involved with this whole situation for
! 9 the last few years. But a couple of things have come
- , 10 to my attention and everybody else's,.obviously, over g' 'll thel last month or so that really concern me in >
( ( ), 12 reference to the fact that you're- closing the Special 13 Projects Office'and the Employee Concerns Program.
- 1 14 I feel very uncomfortable as a l
l 15 representative of the public- to know that you're.
16 winding down areas that I think the public still needs 17 to see are.you in operation. I mean Millstone 2 isn't llk 18 'even back on line yet. ,
l:l I -
19 And I feel compelled to say something l
,7 20 this. evening. It might not fit into this particular i:0 21 part of your agenda. But -- and-I didn't hear the end
,1; a g <
22 of your remarks, Mr. Miller, just now. You were not l 23 very close to the microphone. I didn't hear you in the i 24 back. So I didn't hear your full response to Ron l
() -
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 McKeown's question.
2 But I really --
I really do have 3 concerns that you're winding down. too soon. And I 4 really -would like to see you stay longer. Now, I 5 missed the first 20 minutes or so of your meeting. So ,
I 6 if I am in error, I would ask that you please address 7 that. And I apologize if that is the case. But maybe 8 you can clarify what is going on for me.
]
l 9 MR. MILLER: Right. I --
10' REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: Thank you.
MR. MILLER:
}. I'll hold this up close.
'll I 12 Well, the Special Projects Office was terminated and t' }
13 the -- as I mentioned at the beginning -- you probably !
14 missed this part --
the Commission made the 15 determination upon the completion of the .startup of l
16 Unit 3 with the completion of the significant work that 17 had to be done with respect to design on that unit, i l
! 18 with the- establishment of the patterns, if you will, I I
19 for an inspection program and a process for restart
. g_
t 20 that was established in the safe restart of Unit 3, the O
= 21 feeling was that the time where there needed to be this i
'l 22
..j special office, whose function it was -- if you -- it's i b 23 important that you understand the function was to 24 assure that agency resources were brought to bear on
~
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l-L 74 l MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
! OCTOBER 6, 1998 L
1 this plant, to assure that there =was adequate 2 coordination among the groups. '
l l ,. 3 You know, there are people here full-L 4 time on site. 'There are people in King-of-Prussia,.
L 5 Pennsylvania. There .are people in the Washington '
6 offices. And there are contractors across the country.
7 There's a large coordination effort.
8 But we've been at- this for about.two i 9 years now. And the feeling on the part of the i 1
10 Commission -was that there would not be significant, had made,
{ 11- that with the progress that been the 12' combination of that and .the patterns that had been
( }'
13 established, it was the time -- it was time to move
.14 this back into the regional alignment.
15 Now, we did not move it back into the 16 normal regional alignment. Wayne Lanning reports to me-17 -directly as_ opposed to reporting up through one of the I 18 divisions in my office. And it still has a very high
- . 19 level of attention. As I mentioned, the Commission
'. 20 directly will -- I don't have the authority, as I had
'O -
- 21 in the case of a recent plant -- the Salem plant that
..l
{ 22 was shut down for two years, I had the authority to b 23 approve restart of that plant. I do not have that in
[- 24 this case. That remains with the Commission. And we LLO
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. - _ ~ . ~ . - - - . _ - _ . -
i
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l 75 y ;ps MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
- 3j- OCTOBER 6, 1998' 1 must go back before the Commission and apprise the 2 Commission of the progress made and they will, I assure 3 you,'ask lots.of questions of us. We've got to make a 4 demonstration 'that this thing is safe because it's L 5 started up' again. So'that Commission involvement is l 6 ,still there.
7 And then, thirdly, resources. The' level L 8 of resources that are committed to the oversight of l '9 Unit 2 before it restarts are commensurate with those l
(- '
10 that were spent on Unit 3. Now, we've learned some L - 11 lessons on how to do things a little bit more l jfl 12 efficiently perhaps. But I think it's safe to say that >
%) j 13 they're virtually the same level as they were on Unit
-14 3, commensurate with what we did on Unit 3. That won't 15 change. And so that addresses the part of~the Special j 16 Projects Office. l 17 I think you talked about the Employee 18 Concerns Program. What.you're probably referring to is
.; 11 9 Mr. Beck's organization, Little Harbor. I appreciate
'20
- your comment. We'll take that comment into
.o , .
- ;21 consideration, along with others. And the Commission,
'l; 22 as Dean we, a Ll t a Bill said -- the staff, will make pt 23 : recommendation. But ultimately, the Commission will I
L 24 have a say.
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(, . OCTOBER 6, 1998' 1 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: I think one 2 thing'that the Commission doesn't understand -- and I -
r 3 - it's clear- to me that they made.a decision to pull <
~
L 4 back somewhat. Okay? In terms of the Special Projects 5 office because even though --
6 MR. MILLER: Yes. And maybe it was --'
7 . REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: --
the 8 resources are there, et ~ cetera --
9 14R . MILLER: -Right.
10 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: -- it's still 11 not technically a Special Projects Office on site, i V !
12
(}- Correct?
13 MR. MILLER: It's based upon the dem-- I 14 yes. That's' correct.
l 15 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: Okay.
- 16 MR. MILLER: It's based upon the ,
17 demonstration, the quantitative, you know, indicators 18 and the like.
- 19 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN
- Yes,.
20 MR. MILLER: It's based upon deed, .not O'
sa 21 just on, you know --
l ll; 22 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: But what I'm
(!> 23 saying to theLNRC is that in light'of the fact that the 24 community here is still not as trustful as you would f AV l
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77 73 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(_) OCTOBER 6, 1998 l l
1 like them. to be,, I think if .ycx2 look at'your -- at what 1
2 you can do to improve your public relations, you should 3 have thought of .that, the Commission should have 4 -thought of that before they made that decision.
5 I think in order to make the community 6 feel as though the NRC is truly paying attention now, 7 :whereas many of us thought that the NRC had dropped the 8 ball, some more strongly than others, but the fact is 9 that that wasn't something that the public needed to 10 hear right now, was that you were eliminating the g- 11 Special Projects Office and the way it performed up j{) 12 until now because you need the credibility. The public 13 needs to know that you've been listening to them these
.14 last couple or three years in terms of what is the 15 relationship. Is the NRC truly looking out for the 16 community?
17 And so I was really disturbed that you I 18 made that decision before- Unit 2 came back on line. I
- )'
'- 19 think it would have been wiser for the Commission to
'20 have made a decision like that after Unit 2 was up and
[O 21 running for six months and with feeling that it was a l*g.
22 comfortable time to do it. I think it was premature.
}-
! '13 And I wanted to share my concerns with you and my
-24 opinion on this'particular --
POST REPORTING SERVICE j HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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i 78 f3 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS I (_j OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 MR. MILLER: I respect that.
2 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: --
issue. And i
3 I thank you for letting me --
first of all, for 4 correcting some of my misconceptions. But, on the !
l 5 other hand -~
)
6 MR. MILLER: Sure. l l i 7 REPRESENTATIVE STILLMAN: -- for letting 8 me state what my concerns are. Thank you, i
9 MR. MILLER: Thank you very much.
10 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Mr. Markowicz. He 11 hasn't had a turn.
ih
\)
12 MR. JOHN MARKOWICZ: I'm John Markowicz.
13 I'm from Waterford, Connecticut. I just have a quick 14 technical question and it's specifically to a Little 15 Harbor issue but it may have some bearing on what 16 Andrea raised.
17 In the world of orders, is it possible 1 l 18 to relax an ordet and withdraw the consultant but not l
l 19 cancel the order? In other words, could you take a I- 20 position with the t commissioners that, specifically in O
l a 21 the case of Little Harbor, the order should be relaxed, l
j 22 the training wheels come off, but the order is not h 23 withdrawn or cancelled? In other words, Little Harbor 24 could come back subject to a recommendation from staff?
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79 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS tOl OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 Is:that possible in the space that we're talking about?-
2 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: -The --
-3 MR. MILLER: In principle, the' answer is 4 yes.
t 5 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Yes.
6 MR. MILLER: I mean we can -- we wrote 7 the order. We can- amend it. And I take that's 8 something we ought to consider.
9 MR. MARKOWICZ: That would be the 10 implication, yes.
11 MR. MILLER: Yes.
j} 12 MR. MARKOWICZ: Thank you.
~
13 MR. MILLER: And we'll consider that and 14 we'll make sure that that gets fed back. l l
15 MR. MARKOWICZ: Thank you.
16 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Thank you, John.
17 Rosemary?
! 18 MS, BASSILAKIS: That was a very good 19 -suggestion, one which we would definitely agree with.
120 And sort of as a follow-up, I was wondering whether or
.0 a .21 not there was- any discussion in the Commission so far 1
22 .w ith regard to Little Harbor coming back in four months l-
- h. 23 or six months and doing a re-evaluation. So I was 1
24 wondering if that has been talked about.
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80 l MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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1 MR. DEAN: The -- one of the points that 2 I .made, one of.the things that I want to follow up on 3 is what are Northeast Utilities' plans for lons-term
'4 oversight. And my understanding is it does include the 5 use .of an outside organization to come in and do 6 periodic audits of what they're doing. They're still
- 7 formulating those plans. But that certainly is 8 something that we would be looking for as part of their .
)
9 long-term oversight. l l
~ 10 MR. MILLER: In fact, I'm wondering if I 11 could ask either you or the other speaker a question 12 about what your thought was. Is it your thought that
{.
~13 the order should be amended to say that if things go l 14 smoothly, they, Little Harbor, would not need to come 15 'back, but,. if certain things happen, there would be the 16 specter of us invoking that again and directing the 17 company to bring them back? Or is it that -- is it
- l. 18 your idea that they would come back periodically on an I- 19 audit type of basis, like Mr. Dean said? Did you see 20 the -- let me just ask the previous speaker.
o-l* 21 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Mr. Markowicz.
-l.
g 22 MR. MILLER: Mr. Markowicz.
' !- 23 MR. 14ARKOWICZ : My question -- this is 24 John Markowir,z again. My question was rhetorical.
!o '
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l 81 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS T _
OCTOBER 6, 1998 i
1 MR. MILLER: Yes.
L 2 MR. MARKOWICZ: And I wasn't really t.
3 trying to necessarily tell you how to do your job.
4 .MR. MILLER: Right.
l 5 MR. MARKOWICZ: I was kind of leaving it n
6 to the discretion of the NRC to decide if conditions L
7 were such that Little Harbor should return and not 8 necessarily- say at a specific date they will return
- l. 9 because I think everybody has to be held accountable to f
E10 what the conditions are and, therefore, you ought to be g 11 a position --
L(} 12 MR. MILLER: Because,- I think, 'one of j
-13 the deciding -- one of the things that has to be 1 14 decided here is that it's bad for a licensee to have a 15 crutch in place for a long time. They'll never -- and l'
16 if that was your comment before, I think it'was a very 17 good comment.
I 18 I think it's bad policy to have orders o l .. : 19 out there for a long time. If I were to predict, _the 20 Commission -- well, the Commission very well may feel 0~
Ua 21 and staff may feel that it's best to end it now. We're i L1-22 still around. We're still going to be taking the l ;
! 23 pulse.
I 24 We can issue another order very quickly, POST REPORTING SERVICE I HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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82 rx MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(,) OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 if we need to, just as we did the first one. And so, 2 regardless of how we go, I -- clearly, there's anxiety 3 here. Everybody kind of feels that at some point 4 Little Harbor has to leave. Mr. Beck talked about his 5 being reserved and holding back. And I think that's 6 the kind of thing that has to happen. But, by the same 7 token, we all want to have something in the background 8 that, if it's needed, we can call upon it. And I think 9 that's your comment.
10 MR. MARKOWICZ: Well, I guess where I'm 11 coming from on this issue is the pending management
/~') 12 reorganization --
v 13 MR. MILLER: Yes.
14 MR. MARKOWICZ: -- and the implications 15 that that may have on the progress that is made on-both 16 ECP and on the SCWE. So having the order relaxed 17 during the period while the reorganization takes place f 18 or a final re-evaluation by staff and then a F
i 19 recommendation to terminate the order or to ask Little 20 Harbor to come back would be the environment in which O-a 21 my recommendation was made.
~k g 12 2 MR. MILLER: And I assure you we will be b 23 thinking about that as we decide for ourselves at the 24 staff level what to tell --
what to advise the -
e, ,
Ms POST REPORTING SERVICE l HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 ;
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83 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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. OCTOBER 6, 1998-1 1 Commission.- And the' Commission will have that on their l 2 minds ~ .- And that will be an explicit point of .
. 3 discussion, I'm sure, as we go to that meeting in !
4 . Novemb'er . j 5 MR..MARKOWICZ: And I think that's also )
l 6 from the perspective of what Andrea was ta'. king-about -l
~
7 and some- of the -earlier speakers; a public relations 8 issue relative to relaxing'the order vice cancelling it
.9 and re-imposing an order.
-10 MR.. MILLER: Sure. There's.the optics 11 and the public confidence aspect. I understand.
(} 12 MR. MARKOWICZ: .Thank you.
13 MS. BASSILAKIS: I was also- wondering 14 whether or. not Little Harbor is getting concerns from
~
15 Millstone employees and whether or not they're tending
" -16 to cp> ' to the Employee Concerns Program or to the NRC.
17 -I'm wondering whether or not they're coming to you with 18 their concerns or-whether or not they're using other 19 avenues. Obviously, they can't be directed to not go i 20 'to you. I imagine that's always an option while you're
- ' O*
21 'there.
I
-~22 MR. BECK: Yes, it is. And we continue J
! 23 to have some traffic. But it's considerably less than 24 it was earlier. And our practice has always been, when o POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 1
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- j. - MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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- OCTOBER 6,.1998
.1 somebody comes in and needs ' to talk to us about
-2 whatever it'may be, to encourage them to go -to the i
3 . company, go to ECP or to go to .the NRC and, in 4' particular, to encourage them to use the company 5 programs that have been put in place to deal with o
i
.6 -issues that they have that for whatever reason they 7 came to us first, for example.
8 'That enabled.us to perform our oversight
- j. 9 function .and-see how well'the company did. And it has l
- 10 worked, I think, pretty effectively in that context.
i.
L g- 11 As I said earlier, the amount of traffic we.get has 12
' diminished tremendously. And that's a good sign.
13 At the same time, we're watching ECP and 14 spot-checking files and the kind .of activity that 15 they're getting. And as Bill Dean .said earlier, that' 16 has also diminished, although it's still at a level 17 .that is perhaps higher than most other places in the 18 industry.
g1 19 But one of the observations we made in
.-- 20 the past and I -would reinforce tonight is that the i". ;O :
<5 21 nature of the issues that are going o the ECP are of
.'g.
j 22 . lesser significance than they may have been earlier on.
! '23 That's another' good sign. In o'.;her words, the quality l .
24 of problems that's arising have less and less direct
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 i
! 1 ' relevance to safety. They're. very important to the
-2 people.who bring them, but they still need to have that )
i 3 avenue available to them because they're taking
'4 advantage- of~it. But it's--- it's a healthy. process 5 that we see today.
6 MR. DEAN: Yes. And just in terms of -- 1
-7 I guess to give you an idea in terms of numbers, over 8 the summer the allegation rate, which is what the'NRC 9 receives -- there was -- I think August we received l 10 zero allegations. July we might have gotten one. And j -
11 I think September we got two, which is, of course, well 12 below historical levels of allegations.
)
13 Meanwhile, the licensee's -Employee J r
14 Concerns' Program has been averaging about 20 or so 15 concerns raised a month, of which I think you could 16 characterize in a broad sense perhaps one issue a month l 17 dealing with what we would consider to be a safety )
!- 18 issue. As John characterized them, the majority of the 19 issues tend to be of, in terms of safety significant, a h.
f 20 very low level.
,'o-a -21 MS. BASSILAKIS: My last question -- and
_ l-.
g 22 that's good. I mean we want to know that workers can
.h' 23 come forward and raise concerns because, you know, we 24 all know that this was the downfall of Millstone and
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l .
1 L 1 one .of the biggest problems. This is preventative 2 -maintenance as far:as'that goes. l
)
3 And I just want to get your- take, Mr. ,
i 4 Beck, on whether or not the- Employee Concerns Program j H '
o 5 is sort of stable'as far as staffing, whether or not l 6 there's. a changeover of staff. Like I know at one L 7 point there was a lot' of consultants. And if- there 8 still are, are they remaining and are they .self- -l 9 sufficient as far'as training one another if there is a- ,
l 10 changeover in staff?' I don't~ know how much Little l
g 11 : Harbor has been' involved with training new people in
! 12 the' Employee Concerns Program, if~at all.
-)
~13 MR. BECK: We have not. The staff is '
14 slightly smaller than it was earlier. It's still --
15 they still- have contractors- who work for them and I-
.16 think that's appropriate because, if you look down the 17 road a long way, they want to get to a point where the 18 Employee Concerns' Program, as long as it continues to
- p '19 exist and there's a need for it, that it be -- consist 20 of employees of the company and not contractors.
'O a 21 :That's--the ultimate goal. But they're not there yet. j
.z u g .-
.j.
. : 22 They still haveTa level of activity,that requires them
]
k' 2'3 to, I think,. intelligently size the group with a mix of 24 contractors and full-time employees.
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('s MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(_) OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
1 I didn't get into any details about the ]
2 recent scrub we did of the ECP program. But I did get 3 a take that it's getting better. And that's true l I
4 across the board. The quality of reports they're l l
5 writing, the timeliness with which they're responding I 6 to issues, the degree of customer satisfaction -- you 7 know, we used that phrase once upon a time -- is at an 8 all-time high level, I believe now. And all of these I
9 are good signs pointing toward a maturing program.
10 It's getting smaller. The demands are smaller. And g 11 all those are good signs that you should take some
(~S 12 measure of satisfaction in.
(_)
13 MS. BASSILAKIS: Thanks. )
i 14 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. I 15 MR. BESADE: Joe Besade of the CRC.
16 This is to Mr. Beck. Where is Billie Garde at this 17 time?
18 MR. BECK: She has another commitment.
.. ; _ 19 She's not here this week.
20 MR. BESADE: Oh. But she's still with O
~
21 Little Harbor?
g .22 MR. BECK: Yes.
Il 23 MR. BESADE: Okay. l l
24 MR. BECK: She's just not here right I ms POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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. ,f g - MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
. (,/ OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 now.
2 MR. BESADE: Okay. That's nice to hear.
L
-3 My thing, my question is why didn't 4 Little Harbor Consultants interview and listen to the 5 whistleblowers who were laid off'and terminated? From 6 what I've seen since you people have been aboard, you 7 only listen to the people on the inside who are still 8 employed, who will not come forward once they see what '
9 happens to the whistleblowers. And to get a real true 10 picture -- would you care to make a comment on that, 11 sir?
12 BECK: have
('} MR. I don't any exact 13 numbers in mind, Joe. But we talked to a lot of people 14 who are no longer at the site and who were not at the 15 site when we came on board, including you. So we l
16 haven't ignored the historical base of issues and we've 17 continued to talk with people who have left the company I 18 since we arrived on site. So it hasn't been ignored.
.l. -. 19 I mean I hope you appreciate at the same 20 time that what we're -- what our primary focus is is to O
1 21 oversee how- the company is dealing with issues today.
L*1.
22 Are they doing better than they did in the past when I
}.
lh -
23 .think everyone would admit that they did a very poor 24 job of listening to people, in fact, worse than a poor C POST REPORTING SERVICE l
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS '
- -( -
OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
- 1 job of ' paying; attention to people who.had concerns and
.l E
2 l problems. .l 3 So'. the primary- emphasis.has been what !
4 are you doing now? ~Are you.getting better than where i
5 lyou started? j
!l 6 MR. DEAN: 'And, Joe, I do have something I 7 to add with-respect to talking with people who have j 8 been terminated in the past. One of the initiating 9 events for the issuance of the order which resulted in 10 .the third-party oversight of Little Harbor Consultants g- 11- was a year-long effort- conducted by the NRC, the 12 Millstone independent review group, which did
({ p look^at 13 the historical-from the mid-80's up until --
4
.I
~14 MR. BESADE: The gentleman's name l
15 please?
16 MR. DEAN: John Hannon.
17 MR. BESADE: Okay. i I. 18 MR. DEAN: He was the team leader for 3 $ '19 that report. And they talked to a number of l 20 individuals who were previous employees of Millstone o: l
<1 21 that had been let go, laid off, fired, terminated,
)
.l .
22 whatever. So we did -- j
]{
l: 23 MR. BESADE: I was -- had namely Don !
i- i
!: 24 Delcore in mind and also a Walter Sibelkowski, who was l
P POST REPORTING SERVICE l HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
90 e MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(,m): ' OCTOBER 6, 1990 1 of the 109 that was laid off. It seems as though 2 there's -- this is -- the story's don't jibe between .
3 Mr. Steve Skates, who was in charge at the time at 4 Millstone, and Mr. Sibelkowski, who was the fellow who- ,
5 .took nine' years to get terminated by Mr. Don Miller,
'6 Jr. who informed me that he was proud to let me know f 7 that he got the gentleman. And now he got the 8 gentleman removed after all those years. Nine years it 9 took. I really believe that he had something to do 10 with my -- my future employment at the plant. But he's-11 not here to defend himself. So the issue nowLis part
- ( j 12 of the transcript and somebody can take.it from there, j 13 if.they wish, in the future.
14 I still cannot feel free or feel at ease ]
15 knowing that the majority of the people that are doing 16 the oversight here are being paid by the utility. And 17 in the back of my mind all I can hear is " Don't bite
.I -18 the hand that feeds you."
19 Mr. Beck, if you was to come out and 20 give a real terrible -- a real bad report on these l O-
= 21 people, you, sir, wouldn't get another job in your line l.
22 anywhere in the United States, just like these l-ji 23 whistleblowers who came forward. That's the way I'm I L
24 looking at it. You tell me if I'm in error.
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p 91' l ~>-s- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L .Q L
OCTOBER:6, 1998 1 MR. BECK: Well,. as was . mentioned ;
< .-2 earlier, Joe,t it wasn't until April of this . year that c 3 Little Harbor Consultants even gave Millstone a' clean,
-4 quote, unquote, report card relative to the' 12 5 attributes that they had identified as important ~to
- 6 establishing a safety-conscious work environment and an
-7 effective Employee Concerns Program. So that's --
t
! 8- what? -- .almost a year-plus that they were a very 9 strong' critic of activities- going on.in these areas.
10 So I do take a.little bit of an exception as to what i
- g. 11' you're saying.
12 MR. BESADE: Okay. I have one more
}
l 13 thing. And is it -- would'I be out of order when I ask >
14 what is the fee that Little Harbor is charging 15 Northeast for their services? .Yes. We'll give you a 16 minute. Please.
17 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: John --
1 18 MR. BECK: Let me -- let me just answer
- .. 19 that question. It's been asked a lot of times. Our 20 ' fee is what we would charge any other client and, in O
la 21 fact, have charged other clients at least that much or Ll' ;
j 22 more for services for the people that are involved on i 23 the team. So it's not more. It's not less. They're r 24 not getting a break. They're not getting gouged. It's b POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L
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_ MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l
- OCTOBER 6, 1998 r
[r 1 cour --;
2 MR. BESADE: Okay.
3 MR. BECK: -- our fee.
4 MR. BESADE: Let's get down to_the part l-5 ---
6 MR. BECK: Sure.
7 MR. BESADE: -- that we all understand, L 8 dollars. Is it-by the hour?- Contract?
l 9 MR.. BECK: :It 's for time spent.
~
11 0 MR. BESADE: For time spent.
-11 MR. BECK: By the hour, yes.
12 MR. BESADE: Okay. It's by the hour.
1
][
13 .R. BECK:
M That's right.
14 MR. BESADE: Would you care to disclose 15 that amount?
i-I '16 -MR.~ BECK: No. That's -- ,
l l 17 MR. BESADE: Okay, j 18 MR.' BECK: -- my private business. I 1
19 MR. BESADE: And now you --
okay.
20 That's your private business.
O-l*: 21 MR. BECK: Right, j il~ l
- g. 22 MR. BESADE: But you do have -- how many l
b 23 on your payroll at this' time or when you came on board? !
24 .MR. BECK: It depends on the issues that POST REPORTING SERVICE f- HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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-93 f MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 'have been_ looked at.' We bring people on site. or have 1 2 them doing work depending on the workload that exists,.
- 3 what needs to be looked at'. It's substantially less 4 today, for _ example, than- it was in. February when we 5 were-doing structured interviews and had eightaor nine l i
6 people involved;on a full-time basis. l 7 MR._BESADE: Okay. i 8 MR. BECK: Today it's substantially j
'9 reduced from that. :
'10 MR. BESADE: Three? Two? 1 11 MR. BECK: It depends.
l}
12 -MR. BESADE: Okay. You know, I'm used
{
13 to these high numbers now. I've been hanging out with j i
'14 you boys for three years. You know, 500 'an hour is j 15 peanuts. You know? And'when I ask for a transcript of l 16 .all -- oh, no. Mr. Lanning- says "We can't afford it."
17 Well, believe me, I don't buy this, either.
18 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Now, Joe, haven't i
L- 19 we been sending you a transcript?
- 20. MR. BESADE: Yes.
'O j .- d 21 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Thank you. )
[g; 22 MR. BESADE: But it's with great l i 23 reluctance. And I wouldn't have got it if you had 24 anything to say about. Mr. Travers is the one that ]
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94 ieg MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
[ i-s,/ OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 told you give it to me:and shut me up.
i' l- '2 Thank you,. gentlemen.
l 3 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: All right. Any
'4 'other questions for Little Harbor or Mr. Dean? Okay.
i
.5 Seeing none,:let's take a quick, five-minute break and
-6 let's-reconvene.a little before ten after 9:00.
-7 (RECESS) 8 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. .Are we 9 ready to begin?
10 MR. LARRY NICHOLSON: Yes.
l 11 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay.
Having
~
- 12 Egotten Mr. Nicholson's concurrence, Mr. Imbro?
{
f 13' MR. IMBRO: I'm Gene Imbro,-the Director 14 of ICAVP; oversight with the Office of Nuclear Reactor 15 Regulation. We have --
even though SPO has been 16 disbanded, we're still doing the same job we did prior 17 to, when we.were part of SPO. And we'll continue 18 .through the completion of the ICAVP for Unit 2.
19 I wanted to cover four areas tonight. I 2' O l wanted to quickly over -- I'll tell you what they are.
F <- 21 An overview of the inspection process in ICAVP. We did l]. .22 public exit meetings today. I wanted to give you --
g-b 23 the team leader's here. We're going to go -- give you
.24 a -brief synopsis of what those covered during the
, p(_s.-
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, OCTOBER 6, 1998 L1 inspection meetings and the results of the : inspection. '
2 fAnd I was going to talk about the ICAVP D.R status and 3 - then' talk a little bit about corrective action
-4 inspections. ,
5 In terms of the first item, overview of
-6 the ICAVP- inspection process, as you probably know --
7 .most of you have been here before. We've completed --
8 .we l l ,. right now 'we've- completed- four inspections,
^9 completed 'the Tier One in-scope, the Tier Three
-10 , inspection. These gentlemen here are-going to tell you 11 about the Tier- One in-scope and. the Tier Two.
- 12 inspection. And the only inspection that will remain L N(/ .-
L
.13 to b completed after -- from here on out is -look at l
'14 corrective'. actions. And the corrective action at this 15 point is not scheduled yet. And I think there's still l
16 work that needs to be done in the -area of corrective b
17 actions.
18 There's a lot of work yet to be done in
- 19 terms of agreement on defining what the issues are.
'20 There are still discussions between Parsons and NU and LO
! *: 21 also with NRC. So I think the issues have not yet L -l -
22 totally been defined yet as to what are confirmed DR's.
{
l '
23 And until that happens, corrective action can't 24 proceed. So the corrective action naturally has to
~
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. jm . . MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS Q- OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 wait until that piece of the work gets done. And then, 2 once the problems are agreed- upon or agreed to what 3 they are, .then the utility needs to go forward and do 4 corrective action and then we'll inspect at the end.
5 So the corrective action is'not going to be probably 6 for several months, I think, at this point.
7 With that, why don't I just give you a 8 brief introduction in terms of the inspections that 9 you're going to hear about? There are two team leaders 10 here, Rich McIntyre, who is sitting at the far end, and 11 next-to him, Jim Leuhman. And you know Jim has been 12 here.before.
13 Rich will go first. Rich led the Tier 14 .Two inspection. The Tier Two inspection -- the Tier 15 Two program was to look at characteristics that were 16 ' derived from the accident analyses and then to compare 17 those to the actual performance of plant hardware and 18 equipment to make sure that the equipment could perform I, 19 as assumed in the accident analyses.
20 As you will remember, the critical O
< 21 design characteristics were selected by Parsons and ,
l:
- g 22 approved by NRC. And the inspection, the Tier Two h- 23 inspection, as in the Tier One inspections, really 24 focused on assessing how Parsons completed their A
. ' %) -
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- 1 reviews and -whether:or- not-Parsons complied with the 2 . audit' plan'that was; approved by NRC.
- 3 So with that at-least - introduction into L4 the Tier Two --LI'll. talk about Tier One in a minute.
5 Why don't I turn-it over to Rich? And he'll give you l 6 a, you 'know, five-minute summary of the inspection
~7 results.
8 MR. RICH McINTYRE: As Gene mentioned, 9 our goal was to conduct an independent evaluation of .
10- the Tier Two accident ~ mitigation system functions of
- g. 11 the -- of systems as identified from Chapter.14 of the
(~Y 12 FSAR. Parsons did'a complete evaluation. And the ,
.\_/
13 NRC's Tier Two' scope consisted of a' thorough review of
~
14 the'important aspects of the systems and components'for 15 two of the Chapter 14 analyses that were. reviewed by
'16 Parsons in their Tier Two review.
l
. 17 The two accident scenarios that we !
~ 18 selected were the main steam line break, including the j 19 containment analysis, and the reactor coolant system I 20 analysis. And we also reviewed the small break loss of
- O +
- a 21 cooling accident.
! l-ig 22 MR. IMBRO: Okay. Thanks.
- h. 23 MR. McINTYRE: These accident scenarios l
24 were selected through a risk-informed review of I
e POST REPORTING SERVICE l l
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! I
l l 98 MEETING RE:-MILLSTONE UNITS
~
l' ' t-OCTOBER ~6,.1998 1 potential off-site impact and- the Millstone Unit 2 2 ' individual plant examination with the assistance of NRR
- l. 3 -Senior Reactor Analysts.
4 Overall, the resul'ts of the inspections, ,
'S overall, based on the review of a sample of 95 of about
.6 190 of the critical design characteristics'for those 7 two accidents, the team was able to validate that in L 8 most cases that the CDC's or the critical design 9 characteristics for the accident mitigation systems and 10 their components reviewed are capable of performing 11 their intended. safety functions and, therefore, are in g
!- .12 conformance with the Millstone Unit 2 design and 13 licensing basis.
14 Due to the fact that the revision to the i'
15 -analysis was ongoing, we weren't able to validate in 16 all cases that the technical information had been
'17 included into the FSAR, the technical specifications 18 and station procedures. But, based on the satisfactory
'19 results of the Tier Three inspection that Gene l .h:
[
f 20 mentioned had been completed, which was a configuration
,.0 21 management change process review, we do have reasonable
! Hl .
l.
22 assurance that this will be accomplished using the f
l l .23 present' change processes and procedures that cre in 24 place, m
POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
f i
99 L f g- MEETING'RE: MILLSTONE UNITS 4 j. OCTOBER 6,.1998 i-_ :1 We - did identify a couple of- specific 2 findings during the inspection performed the Millstone.
3 The first one dealt with the translation of the design l 4 ' basis, accident, technical type of information and to l
5 plant procedures. When we talk about the technical 6 information, that would be information that would come 7 out of the revised accident analysis and would be L
j 8 needed to be placed into the various types of 9 procedures, whether they be the emergency operating,-
10 the abnormal operating, surveillance, maintenance, the g- 11 1 end user would be able to use this information.
12 An example of that type of finding would
-( }
=13 be'where the main steam line break containment analysis l
-14 assumed that at power levels greater than 25 percent, l
be 15 the feed water regulating , bypass valves would
! 16 closed. The operating procedure on plant start-up does 17 not include a prohibition for using this bypass valve 18 greater than 25-percent power nor did we identify any l
i
.19 other applicable procedure with such a prohibition.
1 20 So in this case, we had several other 0-
!C 21 examples that we went over at the public exit meeting i ! l
'22 today. There was three or four where this was allowed ll h 23 to happen. We concluded that there was a process !
l 24 failure, a generic process failure, that allowed this h POST REPORTING SERVICE
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i MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
-_ OCTOBER 6, 1998 1- ztranslation,of this information not .to be adequately i i L 2 identified into'the procedures and that weaknesses l
, .3 - exist in-the-design control manual.
4 The Millstone; engineering staff agreed 5 -that there was a problem or a potential weakness.- They i l
6 wrote a-condition report and were evaluating -- and are 7 evaluating this to determine its importance and the 8 depth. We talked about that today at-the public exit ;
9 meeting.
i 10 That's really the most significant 11' finding that we-had with the Tier Two as ~it related to 12 the design and licensing basis. We had .some other 13 l issues. with compliance but they really weren't tied' l
jL 14 into the u. sign-and licensing basis.
1
.15 As far as the second part of the 16 inspection. when-we went down to Parsons' power, we i 17 -determined that they had -- the review that they had i 18 performed was in accordance with their audit plan,
' ::' 19 their inspection procedures. And we concluded that 4
20 they'had done a comprehensive, thorough and critical O-l:< 21 review as evidenced --
you've been reading their l
22 discrepancy reports. You know the results of their ll}
Ll 23 work.
24 And in most cases or I should say in all
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I cases,. they.were ' aware' of the -- had ' identified the l L 2 same type.of findings that our inspection team had done 3 and had -- either were in the process of writing ,
1
{- 4 discrepancy reports, had written them or came to l
5 similar conclusions as our inspection did.
l
\
l 6 And that's really all I had. i 7 MR. IMBRO: Okay. Yes. Thanks, Rich.
8 Oh , we'll have questions in a minute.
l 9 But let me let Jim go through his. Jim was the team l
! 10 leader for the Tier One in-scope inspection. And the l gj 11 Tier One in-scope inspection was our look at- a system e
12 that .w as reviewed by Parsons using essentially the-
~}
L 13 enervescent supply methodology, if you will, and also 14 to do our own sort of independent critical assessment l
-15 and then compare our results with the findings that i
16 Parsons had. And so Jim led that effort. And we l i
17 focused for this inspection on the Hollingsley review I' 18 water system. 1 I
19 MR. JIM LEUHMAN: Yes. As Gene said, we l
20 performed a review of the auxiliary feed water system.
O
<- 21' And on a pressurized water reactor like Unit 2, the
[! ~
- l 22 auxiliary feed water system basically is a system that
/b 23 makes up water to the secondary side of the steam f 24 generator as water is boiled off. During normal plant l fs
.Q l- POST REPORTING SERVICE f HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 1
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r 102 n MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS Q OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 operations, the ' main. feed water system resupplies the
'2 steam generator. But either during startup or shhtdown 3 conditions when the main feed pumps are not available ;
. l 4 or during accident conditions, that make-up to the ;
5 steam generators which ultimately removes heat from the 6 reactor is provided by the auxiliary feed system. And 7 in pressurized water- reactors, the auxiliary feed 8 system is a very risk-significant system. So we chose 9 that system as the -one to perform our safety system
'10 functional inspection on.
g 11 After we finished our inspection at the 12 plant, as the Tier Two team did, we went to Parsons and
.13 then compared our findings with the types of findings 14 .they had. The results of our on-site inspection, we 15 had one significant finding. And that was that'in the ;
16 licensee's -- the licensee has a TRM, which is a
'17 -technical requirements manual, and-that either gives
- 18 tech specification interpretations, provides further 19 clarification of technical specifications or sets out
'20 technical requirements that aren't covered by the --
! O
-*- 21 specifically by the technical specifications.
< l ig 22 We identified one technical or TRM entry L23 for the auxiliary feed system that we felt was contrary 24 to the plant design. And that was the fact that they POST REPORTn4G SERVICE HAMDEN, CT s800) 262-4102 j i
103 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS I ). OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 had a TRM entry that allowed taking one feed flow path, 2 the flow path for auxiliary _ feed to one of the two 3 steam generators, out for up to 72 hours. At'most 4 plants, at combustion engineering plants like Unit 2, 5 the typical auxiliary feed water configuration is that 6 there is at least two auxiliary feed water flow paths 7 to each steam generator and, therefore, you could take 8 out one or the other path to that generator and still 9 have another path to that steam generator.
10 However, in the Millstone design, there
- g 11 is a single path to each steam generator. So by )
- 1 h 12 removing that flow path, if you had an accident which !
(~'/
x_ . l 13 caused the other steam generator to be not available, J 14 in other words, a steam rupture in the other steam 15 generator, and then auxiliary feed water was to 16 initiate, with that flow path isolated as allowed by 17 the TRM and the accident in the other generator there :
18 would be no flow path for auxiliary feed to an intact
- 19 steam generator.
20 This TRM requirement that the licensee O
a 21 had had existed since about 1995, in other words, pre-g 22 shutdown. and not -- our concern was twofold. One was l 23 the faulty -- what we considered the faulty technical 24 evaluation of the original TRM entry, but also the fact p
\._./
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. L (:p ,f 1 ;that the' licensee's configuration management program l 2 failed to identify this TRM requirement and it's lack 3 of'a safety evaluation.
4 At the -- we discussed that with the 5 licensee at the exit meeting today and we've classified 6 Lt his finding as an apparent violation. And right now, l
7 we're in the process of consulting with our 8 Headquarters offices to determine what our
-9 determination of the potential severity level of this $
10 finding is. and what . corrective action we're going to '
,g 11 ~ require from the licensee.
() - 12 MR. IMBRO: -Thank you.
13 MR. LEUHMAN: I guess the last thing I 14 would add -- I sort.of left it out -- was when we did 15 our review of Parsons, similar to the finding of the 16 Tier Two team, we found Parsons' review of this system 17 to be very. comprehensive. We found most of their 18 findings were very similar to our findings. We found
.. 19 good agreement. In the few cases where there wasn't ,
20 agreement between the findings, we felt confident that t .o; L *; -21 we understood the reasons that they didn't have similar l:
gf 22 findings to ours. But, like I said, those were --
.! '23 Lthere were very few of those. And overall, we felt 24 .that they did a very thorough job in reviewing the I
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~ MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS.
-( OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 - auxiliaryLfeed water system.
'2 'MR. IMBRO: ' Thanks.
3 i
, -MR. LEUHMAN: -That's it.
4 MR . - IMBRO: Any. questions on the two ,
5 inspections? The reports are not out yet. But they 6 will be,'I'll say, in the next month.
7 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Jim?' I wanted to ask 8 Jim. When you say --
9 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Come use the mike 10 please.
. 11 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I wanted to ask you
{} . 12
- 13 about?that auxiliary feed water. problem that you just talked about. You said itLwas an apparent violation.
. 14 Is it a DR?.
15 MR. LEUHMAN: No. No, it was not. This 16 was not ;1dentified by -- this particular finding was 17 not identified by Parsons.
18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Oh.
I .
19 MR. LEUHMAN: It was only identified by
. 20 our team, l O-ha
. 21- MS. PERRY LUXTON: Oh , so Parsons missed t
l.
g 22 this. They missed this?
l 23 MR. LEUHMAN: They did -- well, they did i
24 -- they looked, they reviewed this part of the TRM, but LO ~
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106 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS j h OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
1 they didn't -
they did not, .in fact, identify the 2 concern that we identified. And --
3 A VOICE: 'They missed it.
4 MS, PERRY LUXTON: They missed it then.
5 MR. LEUHMAN: They --
6 MS. PERRY LUXTON: And so did NU, 7 though.- You're saying NU did, too? l 8 A VOICE: That's right. !
l 9 MR. LEUHMAN: Yes. NU clearly missed 10 it. And --
11 MS. PERRY LUXTON: And so did Parsons.
12 MR. LEUHMAN: Parsons. Parsons also did 13 miss it. And we interviewed - -we had a member of the 14 team specifically interview the person that did the TRM l
15 review of Parsons. 'And we questioned them as to why
.16 they didn't pick this up.
17 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Is that the first
! 18 time this has happened in the ICAVP that -- I don't t
19 think it's the first time. Is it, Mr. Imbro?
20 MR. LEUHMAN: No.
, 'O
- 21 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Both the utility and
-l:
.g 22 the third-party oversight missed something. Wasn't l- 23 there-one of those at Millstone 3?
l l- 24 MR. IMBRO: I'm not sure if -- yes.
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L
OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 They may have been-- -
2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I mean there was the 3 RSS.
'4 MR. LEUHMAN: Yes. In our out-of-scope 5 inspection -- excuse me. In our -- well, it was the )
6 .out-of-scope 1 inspection, which was actually we were ,
7 reviewing -the charting system. But the crossover l 8 piping to the RSS, the air entering. the system, we ,
I 9 identified that there was air pockets in the crossover )
! i 10 piping. And that'was not picked up by Sargent & Lundy,
]
g 11 the independent contractor for Unit 3.
< 12 MS, PERRY LUXTON: I'm glad you'found'
'13 that. Okay.
14 Now, do I ask him about DR's,. Mr . Imbro, j 15 or do'I have to wait for another time?
16 MR. IMBRO: No. I was going to talk
'17 about'the RS in a minute.
l' 18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
7
- l-19 MR. IMBRO
- But let me -- let me add to
$f 20 what Jim said on the -- I mean certainly the licensee O --
- 21 is going to take corrective action. We don't know l ll g; 12 2 exactly what that is yet. I mean that's certainly a b 23 concern that's been reviewed, this TRM, as part of CMP 24 and they're concerned that this was missed, and then i
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a l' 108 f : . j- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS i OCTOBER 6, 1998 j ..
- l look at
- this particular- area.
And, you know, I think l 2 it's an issue where you need to .do kind of a multi-1 ;
l H
. 3 discipline look at things. I;think if you look at this '
, -4 with an' operational bent, you know, it_looks okay. But l L l l 5 if~you look at it.from.an engineering perspective, then I l i 6 you understand, you know, that this is a problem here. .
'7 Now, I think that Parsons, as I 8 understand, also looked at -- had an operator look at 9 -the tech spec interpretation, which woul'd be sort of a )
10 normal thing that you'd expect them to do. But when we !
11 hats'on, if
~
came in and sort of looked at it with:both
{:
( 12 you will,Iwe found that, you know, there's a potential l 13 issue here. ;
l l 14 So what we've asked Parsons to do is to 15 ago back-and re-look at the parts. of the TRM that'are
~
i 16 applicable to the scope of systems in there, also with 17 kind- of-a different focus and see whether or not there 1 18 are other issues. The licensee is going to do the same l .
- 19 thing.
20 So I think the one thing that we told
,y F< 21 the licensee today was -- I mean to us it seems like l
l
}. 22 this is just common thread here and -- in terms of the I ll 23 -- from the both inspections. And that's the fact that 24 there doesn't- seem to be as good a -- as Rich said, POST REPORTING SERVICE l' HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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f3 . MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
('_) OCTODER 6, 1998 1 it's sort-of a ' weakness in the process of translating 2 information from the accident analysis and the ;
3 assumptions-in-the accident' analysis that are made into ,
i
!~ 4 the way the plant operates vis-a-vis procedures. l 5 And so, you know, they're -- they're :
l 6 diverse groups. I mean you have these analysts, high-7 powered analysts on one side that really have.no clue 8 as to how the plant operates in the sense -- in terms 9 of, you know, manipulating things and procedures, and 10 on the operation- side, you have people that are i.
11 wonderful operators but they don't necessarily L( 12 understand how all the accidents are analyzed and what 13 the assumptions are. And, you. know, there's a 14 recognition on our part that there's a weakness here.
15 And I think the licensee appreciates that, too; that ,
i
[
16 there needs to be better appreciation for operations on 17 how --
how the accidents are analyzed and the l l
I 18 assumptions and conditions that are set in those ;
I l 19 analyses. And vice versa from the analysts' side; that i 20 when they come to find issues such as this, that they
, o l L< 21 need to be able to communicate with the operations I
- 0 you know, g 22 staff or the other plant entities so that,
! 23 all the requirements mesh.
24 MR. LEUHMAN: The one thing I would add I
POST REPORTING SERVICE RAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 l
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 to what ~ Gene-said is we feel that this is a particular 2 problem for Unit 2 rather than Unit 3. I mean that's 3 one of'the -questions we ask ourselves. If there is ;
- i. 4 this weakness, does it affect Unit 3 as well as Unit 2?
5 Juld I think that we came to the 16 conclusion that it's really more of a Unit 2 specific 7 issue, given- the vintage of the Unit 2 design,.which 8 relies on a lot more on manual operations of various 9 systems. There's not as much redundancy in some of the
.i :
10 systems as is the: case with auxiliary feed water. Like
} 11 12 I said in my remarks, the auxiliary feed water system, for instance, on Unit 3 has multiple flow paths to each
~) .
l
. 13 steam generator.where that doesn't exist on Unit 2.
k 14 So I think when we ask ourselves this 15 question about this weakness, we did go back and say, 16 "Well, is this an issue for Unit 3 as well as Unit 2?"
l 17 And'we feel that it's more particularly an issue for 18 Unit 2, given a somewhat older design and, you know, it
- 19 has, you know, probably a little bit, to use.Mr.
20 Miller's terminology, a little bit less defense in
^
O-
- 21 depth as far as, you know, the -- in the case of the I
{ _22 aux feed system, a single flow path to each steam b 23 _ generator.
, 24 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Mr. Imbro?
3
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L ?1 MR. IMBRO: Sure. Please.
2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: What's-the mechanism ,
'3 ' for them-to make ~that mesh between- the operators and
'4 the, you~know, book and the'--
5 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Well, that's La good 16 question. And I think what they_ mean'to do and what- H
,7 they need to think about is to -- the inside control-8 manual,_ I guess, is really, I think to me,- essential,
- 9 an essential document where those things._should come-
- 10 -together - -And so the-analysts have to understand that
, 11 when the. assumptions that they're' making in making the 12 accident ' analysis work. are different than previously
}l 113 assumed, that~those things - - they have to be -- they I
14 have to be made aware -- and the whole -- the plan is j
]
15 - very. complex and,1as Mr'. Miller pointed out, there are
.16 a lot of entities doing different things. There really 17 is -- communications is really the key to: success here.
'I- 18 I mean -- as a lot of other endeavors.
El
'19 And so I think that the groups need to
- .20 be aware of the -- that the information that they have O..
= ;21 and generate is used by different groups and they need l
j- 22 to understand how it's used by different groups and
! 23 they need to be able to communicate back and forth.
24 MS. PERRY LUXTON: You mean engineers POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 g put- g '+1lP+rg g +e O-e t y -ma-me -f 9 g- s t--r- q Ie74ex--- e- ty'- ,W g.'
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( 111 i L s MEETING RE: . MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
4 t- I I 1 MR, IMBRO: ;
Sure. Please.
i
-2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: What's the mechanism I
3 for them'to make that mesh between the operators and )
i- 4 the,:you know, book and the -- l l
, 5 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Well, that's a good i f -~
l L 6 question. And I think what they mean to do.and what 7 'they need.to think about is to -- the inside control I i
- . 8 manual, I guess, is really, I think to me, essential, l'
9 an essential' document. where those things should come 10 together. And so the. analysts have to understand that i;
11 when the assumptions that they're making in making the l}
12 accident analysis work are different than previously
(~~NL)L ;
l l 13 assumed, that those things -- they have to-be - - they I i
14- have to be made. aware -- and the whole -- the plan is i
- l. -15 very complex and, as Mr. Miller pointed out, there are
.16 a, lot of entities doing different things. There really l 17 is -- communications is really the key to success here.
18 I mean -- as a lot of other endeavors.
19 And so I think that the groups need to 20 be aware of the -- that the information that they have l
< 21 and generate is used by different groups and they need
, < g' g' 22 to understand how it's used by different groups and l~ '23 they need to be able to communicate back and forth. ,
24 MS. PERRY LUXTON: You mean engineers L'
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112 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ,
OCTOBER-6, 1998 l
1 communicating with operators?.
. 2 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Exactly.
3 MS. . PERRY LUXTON: And engineers going 4 down and!seeing what cperators -- or something like'--
'5 MR. IMBRO: And even engineers 6 ' communicating with other engineers because the folks ;
7 . that do .the' accident analyses are a very specialized l 8 ' group of :. people . They're not even tne people that !
l 9 .actually.do the plant design changes, for example. )
_ i 10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. ;
l 11 MR. IMBRO: I mean they -- I mean it's a
' very specialized skill that'they have. I
. 12 i- 1,3 MS. PERRY LUXTON: So will you monitor
-14 how NU is going to solve this?
15 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Yes.
ll 16 MS. PERRY LUXTON: And'what mechanisms --
17 MR..IMBRO: Yes. Certainly. Yes, we 18 will. Of course.
19 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
'20 MR. MILLER: This- is a challenge at
,p.
j.a 21 every plant.
l 'l
- 22 MS. PERRY LUXTON: At every plant?
-{
b 23 MR. MILLER: At every plant. And it
- 24 goes back to what I said at the beginning about the LO POST REPORTING SERVICE E HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L.:
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.,)
l - (~ , MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 complexityL of this. There are so 'many different 2 : specialty . groups. And, in fact, when you're an 3 inspector - and : Gene and I and Mr. McIntyre go way 4 back. And having done these inspections for many l
-5 years, one of the areas that we always'look at is at 6 the -interface. Interfaces are where the potential i
- 7. problems are. -And I said earlier about -- l l
8 MS. PERRY. LUXTON: What do you mean at 1 9 the interface?-
10 MR. MILLER: Interface between groups.
{ .11 MS. PERRY LUZTON: Oh. Okay.
12 MR. . MILLER: Just exactly what you're 7("J-11 3 talking about.
l 14 MS, PERRY LUXTON: You mean the I
- 15. communication between those groups.
16 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
17 MR. MILLER: Right. And we look for
')
I- 18 problems. And that's one place where we always were
.4-l- 19 trained to look. And I think that what I've seen here, 20 honestly, is that I-was impressed at how much impact g
- < 21 this' need that this company has had to go through this L l-
- { 22 very tedious process of the last two years, the impact 23 that has had in terms of raising sensitivity on the jf_ .24 part of people around the station, on the need to have )
- 9-w ;
.d
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1 . engineering involvement, in the ordering of spare l l
2 parts, .in just all. facets. of what goes on. I see i 3 l improvement,- you know, without a whole lot of, .you 4 know, prodding in this area. This kept coming up. And 5 I'was impressed by that. More so-than I see at most 1
6 -plants, honestly, at this plant.
So -- I L .7 MS.' PERRY LUXTON: Good.
t 8 MR. McINTYRE: One thing I would add'is l 9 .that we did the Tier Three inspection and we looked
'10 into- this area and how they translate the technical
{ 11 information, say, from plant modifications. And in 12 that end-of it, Lit was very good. We had no findings
{~
13 where that type of.information didn't make it to the 14 appropriate procedures. But as. Gene said, this is a 15 specialized --
the accident. analysis / safety analysis !
\
16 group,. that was the real hole. Under the regular i
'17 modifications:and' licensing basis when we reviewed all !
'l : 1'8 the Tier-Three processes, there was no problem in that
.19 area. So it is very specific to this, the safety
'20 analysis, this type of information, into the -- those
,O
( 21 type of procedures.
I
}l 22 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Can I ask just 23 kind of a. stupid question here?
! .. b; 24 MR. IMBRO: No questions are -- please.
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-MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l ' (,)
OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Accident analysis.
2 Do you mean that the operators are dealing with --
3 could we pull the operators into this and say that 4 they're dealing with different scenarios, accident 5 scenarios?
6 MR. IMBRO: Well, it's the same 7 scenario. I mean in some sense the' operators don't 8 necessarily understand the accident analysis and maybe 9 they don't have to. But their procedures should be 10 consistent with the' assumptions in the accident
! ' 11 analysis, that if it tells them to turn on two pumps --
j 12 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
}
13 MR. IMBRO: But they need.to -- if the 14 accident analysis says we need two pumps to make this a 15 success --
16 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. And you're 17 saying --
- l. 18 MR. IMBRO: --
then they need to know
'l-4 19 that --
1 ~20 MS, PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
O:
a: 21 MR. IMBRO: --
and it has to be 22 reflected in their procedures.
}-
!- 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: And you're saying the l 24 procedures didn't reflect properly --
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'l .MR. IMBRO: That's exactly '- -
2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: YeF1 Yes. f
-3 MR. IMBRO: That 's r.".ght .
'4 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. I got it. ;
5 Okay.
6 MR. IMBRO: John?
l 7 MR. MARKOWICZ: John- Markowicz, 8 Waterford, Connecticut. Gene, maybe you could explain 9 to Susan the number of analyses that are being redone l l
'10 and, therefore, that it provisits an opportunity for 11 the company in real time to take the new data and then 12 go back? And also maybe touch on where the analysis is
{}
~13 being dote, like it's in Berlin, it's contractors --
14 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
15 MR. MARKOWICZ: That would help maybe to.
16 understand --
17 MR. IMBRO: Yes. I could do that, i
'I 18 That's a good point, too. As a part of this extended l"
l'9 shutdown -- and the licensee has gone back and as part
.2M) of the CMP looked at the accident' analyses and they O
- 21 found that there were areas where it probably warranted
-l 22 the -- the accident analyses didn't reflect the plant
')-
!!~ .23 as well as it should and probably lost control of those 24 sort of configuration control issues applied to POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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- 1 accident analysis ,as.to'the rest of the plant. l 1
2 So, in going through, I think there are I
~
3 some 29, you know, hypothetical accidents .that are on-4 logs in the'FSAR, those of, you know, consequence. And 5 as;a result of CMP, I want to -say the' licensee went 6 .through and'had totally reanalyzed 16 of the 29. And 7 some of this was done in-house, but the --. as John 8 points out, the group -- the group is a remote group.
9 They're located'in New Britain as opposed to being on 10 site. So that adds to the communications problem.
. 11- And, also, ~ some of the accidents.are -
.{}l 12 analyzed by contractor, Seamans in this case. And-13 Seamans has found, I-think, the small and large grade 14 lump analyses and maybe some of the others. I think
' 15 some are analyzed. in-house and some- are analyzed g E16 'outside.
17 So. it's a kind of a complex -- we have i 18 multiple . groups doing the work and both are remote
- l: -
19 locations. Seamans is in Washington state and, of
' 20 -course, the NU folks are up in New Britain. 'So --
'l0.
t a >
21 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I understand.
I!h g; 22 MR. IMBRO: So, again, the
! 23 communications is certainly a challenge here.
b 24 Let me move on to the DR status. Susan POST REPORTING SERVICE
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l' l 118
.s
( MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 asked about that before. There's a handout in the f ~2 back. Do you have that? I'11 wait until you-get that 3 and:then we can talk about it.
4 Okay. Right now, Parsons -- and this 5 information is approximately a week old. I didn't have 6 the latest information which. was available today in 1
7 order to make this little chart. So these numbers are j 8 roughly about the same.
9 In terms of preliminary DR's, they're up
~10 to about 800, 752 valid DR's, which you understand, I g 11 think, what that means. Those are issues that Parsons, 12 after their own internal examination, felt they still 13 should go forward with these. And that's when they 14 talk about -- so there's 752 valids.
15 By significance level or initial 16 preliminary significance level -- and I guess that's 17 important piece -- this lists the words of initial and l 18 preliminary. There were five Level l's that were 19 written by Parsons. Now, three of the five basically 20 were determined in discussion between Parsons and NU to
.o:
'4 21 be Level 3's. You know, you understand that --
g-22 remember, the Level 1 criteria was both transfer l
! 23 system, performance, AP function. Upon further review, 24 it turns out that th i.s was not the case. So three of I
O POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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l l4 119 desg MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 I 1 the-five were downgraded to Level 3's.
Two of the five 2 are u: resolved.- And.in our process, unresolved means- l l , 1 3 that. -excuse. me -- there was a disagreement between 1
4 . Parsons and NU. They couldn't reach ' agreement, l .
l '5 essentially. And-these were referred'to NRC. So there )
6 are two' issues now that are under staff review. One L7 ' issue involves the . emergency diesel generator, fuel 8 hold storage tank. That's a buried. tank that's out in' I 9 the' yard in-the plant. And the other issue involves L
J10 the enclosure. building and it has to do with single
-11 failure, potential single failure issue.
}
12 So, again, the issue here, I think -- I 1( J..
13 think the key thing to remember is, first of all, this 14 is a plant that's 20-some years old. The design was-15 completed probably back in the early 70's or , in some 16 . cases, the late 60's probably. So the standards then !
17 and the way it was licensed is different than it would I- 18 be for Unit' 3. -
So I mean the issue here is essentially l 19 do they meet the licensing basis. And I think that's
- }- i ;
ef 120 the question that there's disagreement on and that's no-E a. 21 what we're going to try and we will decide.
g ,-.
, :{
{
22 So there was one Level 2. And that was L! 23 an issue where'there was tank supports. They had these L_ 24 small accumulator tanks that are basically held in )
l Y) POST REPORTING SERVICE
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(_g) OCTOBER 6, 1298 1 place with a strap. And essentially taking credit for 2 the tightness of the strap, the friction, in a sense, 3 to hold the tank up. It turns out that that's not --
4 _that's not permitted by the design codes. Design code 5 doesn't allow for friction. So this is something where 6 initially it was thought it would be a Level 2. It was 7 decided that there wasn't an issue where there was a 8 performance issue at the system or a trade couldn't 1
9 perform a safety function. But it was a licensing !
l 10 basic issue. So for that view it's been changed to a i
, 11 Level 3. l l
12 Those are the major, at least the major 13 ones that.are concern to us. But there's still, as you 14 can see here, a large number of Level 3's and a large 15 number of preliminary Level 4's. And right now, in
-16 terms of closure, 367 as I have on the chart are closed I l
17 out of the 752. It was 297 confirmed, which means 18 there's actually a problem. Either it's a minor I, 19 problem, a Level 4, or licensing / design basis issue, a 20 Level 3. And on the bottom it shows the -- at least O.
< 21 the hard count, 13 Level 3's, 284 Level 4's.
k 22 So I think the particular -- to go back J.
lh- 23 to what I said before about timeliness of corrective l
- 24 action -- timing is probably a better way to say it.
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- h. . OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 The timing 'of our corrective action inspection really 2 depends on the resolution of the Level 3's. And then 3 once. they're resolved then.the licensee needs to do l
~4 their corrective ~ actions and then we're going to look '
5 at the corrective actions. So that's -- the corrective
-6 action inspection will be.done, but it's probably going. :
7 to be months from now. I ,mean I would -- I would say l
~8 December / January,.maybe --
in that time frame, maybe _
9 :later -
l 10 Let me cover one more issue that I think 11 .is important in terms of ICAVP. And.this really
'12 affects directly The Commission
{- corrective action.
l 13 directed us to go back -- this was in August -- and i L
14 also in staff requirements memorandum in June, to go I
.)
- l. 15 back and look at the.ICAVP that was done on Unit 3 and i
/
16 -see-whether or not there were any deficiencies there or-17 anything we could-take credit for that could be applied i M. 18 to Unit 2 to make the process more efficient. And so f~-
I 19 we looked at that, of course.
~
'20 Recognizing that the discovery -- the-
' m o :.
L:<E 21 enforcement is essentially done looking at things. I L[l-
.22 mean they're trying to resolve the issues that have
[ .] ~
! 23 been raised. But they're done looking at things now.
24 So.I mean it's -- so any changes that we could possibly lO POST REPORTING SERVICE -
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- 1 .make to- the program in terms of doing it more 2 efficiently have to be confined to what was left to do.
3 And what was left to do was really the look at 4 corrective actions. In our mind, that was a big piece 5 of work that'was left.
6 And so we thought --
we thought. about i' 7 that and we thought about the conclusion that we 8 reached on -- before the start-up of Unit '3. We had 9 done 4500 inspections on corrective actions. We had 10 done OSTI. And basically we concluded prior to the '
g 11 restart of Unit 3 that the corrective action program, j) 12 while.not perfect, was certainly acceptable to allow 13 restart.
14 And so, based on that, we thought that 15 one of the ways that we could use to make the process 16 work was to allow for a sampling in the corrective
, 17 action program. If you remember what we did on Unit 3, I 18 we looked at -- we had Sargent & Lundy to look at all 1--
-19 corrective actions and we looked at all corrective
-g..
I 20 actions as-well in terms of the implementation. 4
. 0 .-
f* :21 Now, for Unit 2 we're going to do I
g.. 22 something a little different. And we may get the b 23 whole. But at least we're going to start out first
.24 with a sample and we're going to -- we're going to O POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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! 123
! (g MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(,) - 1 OCTOBER 6, 1998 I choose the sample. Again, we're going to -- I think l
p 2 we're going to -- we're going to screen -- NRC is going 3 to screen all the Level 3 DR's and the -- have already 4 screened some of the corrective' actions that have come >
5 out of CMP. And we're going to ask NU and Parsons --
6 Parsons, . essentially, I should say, to look at a sample l .7 of these and we'll- select, based on , first of all, 8 'using some risk-informed --
risk information, risk 9 insights and also in terms of looking at the corrective i
j 10 action will be the complexity of it, whether it's g- 11 something that's -- something that's relatively simple 12 to fix, you know, to look at that. But if there's
{}
13 something that involves a fair amount of design work or 14 multi-disciplined kind of an effort in design space,
- 15 we're probably going to look at those types of things.
16 What we will do, though, is we will 17 establish up front. criteria for sample expansion. And I 18 so you will know that, you know, success criterias, if
'l,
=19 you'will, for the sample we take -- right now we're 20 . thinking about using kind of a sequential sampling io
,. *' 21 approach where we select a sample. And the sample came
- 1:
22 out 'okay at the'first cut. We'd done what the sample
}{
[$L 23 had -- had, say, one Level 3. What we're using as a
\
l 24 clinical basis is whether or not Parsons' review POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L
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i 124
,-- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS t,,_) OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 generates any additional licensing / design basis issues i
2 in terms of Level 3 DR's.
3 So if there were no additional Level 3 -
4 - if there was one -- no Level 3 DR's with the first 5 sample, we'd say it's okay. We would not look further.
6 If there are -- if there's one Level 3 DR, we'd expand 7 the' sample again. Parsons would look at more and, if 8 they found no additional sample and Level 3 errors, l 9 then we'd declare that the process is acceptable. And 10 if they found another level -- it's a little bit of a l g 11 complicated process. But the idea, I mean, from a
{} 12 statistical standpoint --
we talked to our 13 statisticians at NRC and I thiak it gives us a l 14 reasonable -- a reasonably high confidence level doing 15 it this way.
16 But, anyway, the bottom line is that 17 there's two -- if they find -- in Parson's look if I 18 there's two Level 3 DR's that are generated that are 1
19 confirmed, then we expand the sample 100 percent.
i
. 20 So that's the approach we're going to O
a 21 use. We're going to give NU essentially credit for the I
g- 22 fact that they have an acceptable corrective action b 23 program for now as a going-in basis. You know, if you 24 look at this through our sample approach, if we start
(-
^
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l l
l L 125 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.-( )' OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 tx) find RS, we're going to expand the sample to 2 everything. ,
3 So -- but, again, we, you know, will l
l 4 . spell ouc -- we'll spell .out the criteria. for. sample
- 5 expansion up. front ex) .that everybody knows what it.is l
6 and then there's no question about whether or not --
r 7 -A VOICE: Then we're (Inaudible)'.
8 MR. IMBRO: Certainly. You know it..
- 9 It's in the --
10 A VOICE: Didn't last long. ;
11' MR. IMBRO: Anyway, that -- I think l} l 12 that's the primary change. And I just wanted to-make l(])
l 13 sure that the public was aware of that we propose that
- 14 'to the Commission.
15 MR. MARKOWICZ: Okay. So that's --I 11 6 think that's kind of where we stand on ICAVP at this
, 17 point. And if there are any questions, I'll -- yes.
! 18 Geri?
19 MS. GERI WINSLOW: Hi. I'm Geri Winslow ij r '20 from Waterford, Connecticut. -And I just have a couple O
D
<: 21 of quick questions. One, I don't know how many systems
.l: '
,} 22 out of how many systems are being looked at at Unit 2?
'!) 23 .MR. IMBRO: Okay. Yes. I think in Unit j 24 2 it's 11 of 63.
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MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS Q OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
I 1 ,
MS. ' WINSLOW: And-'they're- risk and L-
! 2 safety only, those 60? '
3 MR. IMBRO: 63 were maintenance,~ Group 1 i 4 ~and Group 2. Yes, risk and/or safety;related.
5 MS. WINSLOW: Okay. Okay. And then, so l
6 you're saying the criteria for Unit 2 would be the same ;
1 7 as Unit 3. Is the' criteria the same as far -as j l
p 8 expanding.the scope? j 1
9 MR. IMBRO: No,-no. What I said was --
-10 MS. WINSLOW: I know what you just said.
11- But I'm asking.a separate question.
(} 12 MR. IMBRO: 'I'm sorry. '
13 MS. WINSLOW: Is the criteria the same 14 for expanding the scope or is that already finished, 15 the ICAVP?
H16 MR. IMBRO: The ICAVP for Unit 3 is L 17 finished.
.18 MS. WINSLOW: Unit 2, is it the same as 19 it was for Unit 3?
20 MR. IMBRO: Well, that's what I was
, o-21 trying to . explain to you. Maybe I'm missing the l
'l 22 .uestion.
q But --
b 23. CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Is the scope --
24 MR. IMBRO: It's a scope expansion --
f
< NJ .
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127 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
-E{ OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Scope expansion 2 question.
3 MR. IMBRO: Oh, yes. Yes. Oh. Yes.
4 I'm sorry. Yes, yes. The same. The January 30 letter l .-
5 is still ; applicable, yes. Excuse me. I didn't 6 understand where you were going.
7 MS. WINSLOW. But these five Level l's 8 now have been downgraded to something different?
9 A VOICE: Two have.
10 MR. IMBRO: _Two are still under
- g. 11 consideration. Three have.
12 MS.. WINSLOW: Okay. So if any of them -
L{]}
13 - if any of those two are Level l's, would that expand 14 the scope?
15 MR. IMBRO: Yes.
16 MS. WINSLOW: That would. Okay.
17 MR. IMBRO: And you'd certainly -- yes.
! 18 I mean it's all spelled out in the January 30 letter.
i 19 MS, WINSLOW: Okay. So that's all the h-
't 20 same, i.O' Fa 21' MR. IMBRO: That's all the same.
l
- {
22 MS. WINSLOW: Okay. That's all I wanted b 23 to know. Thank you.
24 MR. IMBRO: Okay.
)
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i 128 q MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 9
l 1 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Any other-
!' 2 . questions on ICAVP?- Joe?
i 3 MR. BESADE: I think Geri might have j 1
L 4 just asked one of them. And maybe you~ought to give me I l i
- 5 the correct ---let's see. The amount of the safety-
)
6 significant systems on Unit 2 you said is 63 and 11?
7 MR. IMBRO:
Right. 63 that --
it's a l
L 8 ' combination of risk-significant and/or safety related.
f 1 l
9 All those 63 are not safety related. Some are safety
~10 related and not risk-significant. 'Some are risk-11 significant and not -- it's complicated.
12 MR. BESADE: I know complicated. But 13 complicated to try to explain it to a layman like 14 myself there and so that we all understand it. We
-15 don't want to hear complications.
16 MR. IMBRO: Basically there's 63 systems 17 and :he 63 systems are either safety related or they're !
l 18 risk-significant.
I -
19 MR. BESADE: Okay. The amount of the
-20 systems the NRC is looking into on their own without --
- o.
a 21 that are different from Parsons?
, -l-
g _22 MR. IMBRO: Yes. Parsons looked at 11 k 23 of 63 and we looked at two.
j _24 MR. BESADE: You ' re looking at. two.
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129 r~s MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
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.1 MR. IMBRO: One -- one- that was-looked 2 at by Parsons.- That's the auxiliary feed water system.
3 And one that Parsons did not- look at, the. building 4 codes cooling water system.
5 MR. BESADE: It seems to me .that, you-6 knoE- 'the vintage of Unit 2, with the specs that they 7 used so they could build that one compared to the specs 8 they used to build Unit _3, -locally if .there was
.c 9 something in our' local, small building codes, 10 everything might have to be brought up to' code. l
- j 11 It seems to me that being Unit 2 and
(]y 12 what tookl place with'the construction also over there 13 with their'QC and who knows what went on -- I was over 14 there on the last two years of it. But that should be 15 .also gone. thoroughly -- maybe you fellows, if you have 16 that many engineers over here, get them out there in 17 the' field and let them do a little more snooping and 3 18 make sure that that one is --
t ;
, '19 MR. IMBRO: They do that.
I 20 MR. BESADE: They do that? Well, I Jo-C 21 'think you better -get them some clean eyeglasses or l.1 22 something and forget some of the paperwork. But --
]
'b 23 . well,. it's getting long in the hour of the day, so 24 maybe I better take and -- let's see. What.else have l- .
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! cr~ MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l ( OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
l 1 we got here? Okay.
1 1
2 The update cx1 Parsons' systems, :you j 3 already gave me that answer. I think that's it for me L 4 for a little while.
! 5 MR. IMBRO: All right. Thank you.
6 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Yes, Susan?
. 7' MS. PERRY LUXTON: I'd like to talk 8 about-the dispositioning of the DR's between Parsons 9 and NU.
10 MR. IMBRO: Okay.
Lg 11 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I remember that -- I 12
- {}_ was looking through one of the DR's the other day and I 13 noticed it had something to do with HIPSY -- like 1
! 14 HIPSY-DIPSY, whatever it is. You know. And NU had --
15 it was HIPSY and another one, but I can't remember what 16 the other IPSY thing is.
17 A VOICE: LIPSY.
18 MS, PERRY LUXTON: LIPSY. HIPSY and l
l.
I .19 LIPSY, yes. That's what it is. And it was about
.t' 20 teflon.
,/O'
- 21 MR. IMBRO: You're getting good at the N . (.
gL 22 acronyms.
b 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Teflon. That had i -24 teflon lining of something. And that was the problem.
POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L
131 l
g MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS y) OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 And NU was supposed to justify putting the teflon on, I 2 think it was. And they were going to tell Parsons why 3 they were justifying that. And they gave all other 4 information around but exactly what Parsons wanted.
5 So it reminded me when I briefly read it 6 that that's what happened with Sargent & Lundy and 7 Millstone 3, is that NU had a hard time giving the J 8 outside contract.or exactly what they needed. So there j 9 was this problem with communication and dispositioning 10 the DR's. Is that any better or is that getting better J g 11 or what -- I noticed it so --
e 12 MR. IMBRO: Yes. It's a difficult, you 13 know,m process that was set for --
you know, with 14 independence in mind as a prime feature. And so when 15 you have to communicate by writing things down -- and 16 engineers probably don't --
were not known for being 17 writers. You know, as far as that, it's hard to 18 communicate that kind of information in writing.
19 So I think in our sense -- and we listen 20 to a lot of the interchange, in fact, all the 0
a 21 interchange actually. I mean there's many times that
.h
- g. 22 we can see the passage, you know, Parsons is saying lb 23 this and the utility is understanding something else j 24 and has a -- it takes a while for them to finally come i
(~
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132 i
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() OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 together. And I think it's just a difficulty in I 1
2 communication. I 3 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. So it's not a i 4 problem then, i 5 MR. IMBRO: No, it's not a -- I mean 6 it's a problem in that, you know, it's making it longer 7 than it probably would have otherwise, but, you know, 8 it's not -- it's not -- I mean it's something that's 9 going to be worked through.
10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Thanks.
11 MR. IMBRO: Sure.
f~') 12 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. I think x_-
13 we're all done. Aren't we? Independent Corrective ,
l 14 Action --
15 MS. BASSILAKIS: We're all done for the i l
16 night?
i 17 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: No, no. '
19 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: We're through with Ir 20 this topic. We'd like to move on to an update of some o
a 21 recent guidance the Commission issued on the use of l
22 potassium iodide. And Bill Dean will give us a status.
l l 23 MR. DEAN: I just want to spend a few )
l t 24 minutes updating you on the Commission's recent l
(~a l
<> l POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 1
t 133 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
. 7 l
( OCTOBER 6, 1998 i
p 1 activities related to potassium iodide. The reason we 2 weren't included in the agenda for this meeting is that 3 several. weeks ago Mr. McKeown and the Friends of a Safe 1 Millstone was attempting to facilitate a round-table 5 discussion that would include members from CRC and CAN 6 and state and local officials, as well. as NRC 7 representatives, to talk about potassium iodide.
8 And let me talk about what potassium 9 iodide is first. If taken in a timely manner, 10 potassium iodide would block- the thyroid's uptake of lg 11 any airborne radioactive iodine that may be released in
] ~12 a severe radiological accident. This could help 13 prevent thyroid cancer and other- thyroid conditions, 14 especially in children.
15 The intent of using potassium iodide 16 'would'be to supplement other protective actions which 17 are considered to be much more effective, in
! 18 particular, evacuation or sheltering, because those two l 1 19 protective actions, of course, protect the whole body,
'20 whereas potassium iodide would only affect one organ, l 0.
l'<a 21 that being.the thyroid. I l' i l 22 However, the Commission believes that i b 23 state and local decision-makers may find that potassium 24 iodide is a' reasonable and prudent measure for specific l
O POST REPORTING SERVICE l
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134 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS y-)
( OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 local conditions.
2 Now, the government's policy statement l
3 on the use of potassium iodide has not yet been L 4 finalized. Okay? There's been a lot of activity over 5 the last several years dealing with this issue. And 6 it's been under the auspices of the Federal 7 Radiological Preparedness Coordinating Committee which 8 is a committee that's chaired by FEMA, the Federal 9 Emergency Management Agency.
10 From an historical perspective, back in 11 the early 80's the Federal policy was developed on the
(~)
\_/
12 use of KI, which basically recommended stockpiling and 13 distribution of KI for use by emergency workers and 14 institutionalized people only, not for the general 15 public. And the consideration for the general public 16 was that there was no cost benefit in doing so.
17 As I mentioned, this issue has been 18 revisited over the past several years, particularly in 19 light of Chernobyl and some of the things that have
- 20 been found out of the studies in Chernobyl. And the O-a 21 NRC's Commissioners directed the NRC staff to formulate
-l-22 rule-making that would require the consideration of KI l
b 23 as a supplement to evacuation and sheltering. And, in 24 fact, there are a number of states that have taken it
(~h
%)
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. 135 f MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS-1 OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 upon themselves already; before this policy statement 2 was reconsidered to stockpile or have KI available for-
~3 distribution.
4 But.what this change in policy does now, 5 it putsfit in the hands of the- state and local 6 officials to consider KI, the use of KI, for. their
, j l,
.7 particular states. .l i
8 In support of this policy statement or- )
9 < policy determination, back in August the -NRC issued a h l
10 guidance document' for public comment. In light of the
{ 11 public comments.that have been received, as well as the
{}'
12 Commission's desire to incorporate more information so-13 that the state .and local officials can make a more
! 14 informed decision about whether to sto'ckpile and
'15 distribute KI, they've asked the' staff to withdraw that. j 16 document and include more information, including 1 l- 17 addressing comments made by the public. So this
,I 18 guidance document.will, be withdrawn and probably be
- l -
19 reissued early next year. That's kind of a tentative
! 20 date.
! OR 12 1 And so in. light of all that, the NRC --
Jla 22 I . talked to Mr. McKeown and informed him that it
}
lb I23 probably would~not be a good time right.now, until that p 24 guidance document' is formalized and the policy h
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136 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
(_g-)3 -OCTOBER 6, 1998
'l statement' is finally issued, to have such a round-table 2 discussion. So we -didn't want to- participate in 3 something. like that until things got finalized. So we 4 wanted to use this-opportunity in front of the public 5 to be able to get that out there so. you Lwould.
6 understand where we are with KI and, you know, that it
.7 will be an issue that will.be forthcoming. But this is 8 probably not'the right time to discuss it in -a public. ;
9 forum.
10 And that's really all I have. Is there g 11 1 any questions-I could answer? I'd be more than happy 12 to.
13 John?
14 MR. MARKOWICZ: John Markowicz, 15 Waterford, Connecticut. Bill, could you explain the 16 relationship between what the NRC is doing and this 17 -FEMA running committee?
! 18 MR. DEAN: The NRC is part of that I .
19 committee. We are a participant in that committee, l: 20- along with FEMA and Health and Human Services and some o.
- 21 other government agencies. The NRC's' role is basically ti.
-22 to endorse -- this committee established some guidance,
- l '
23 revised guidance, a year or so ago. The Commission 24 reviewed it and decided to agree with and endorse the O.
M POST REPORTING SERVICE I HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L --- _ ..
137 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 position taken by the committee. And so that's when 2 they directed the staff to develop the rule-making that 3 would incorporate this and basically provide guidance 4 to the states on the use of KI.
5 MR. MARKOWICZ: So it's possible, 6 because FEMA's responsibilities extend beyond 7 commercial nuclear power plants --
8 MR. DEAN: Exactly.
9 MR. MARKOWICZ: -- they extend to other 10 untoward events?
11 MR. DEAN: In fact --
that's a good O
G 12 point you raise. Part of the policy statement also 13 includes Federal stockpiling in certain metropolitan 14 locations to deal with not nuclear power plant events 15 but terrorist activities where perhaps you could have a 16 nuclear detonation or toxic nerve gas or something like 17 that, where perhaps you would have a centralized
, 18 location in major metropolitan areas for chis for 19 limited distribution.
20 MR. MARKOWICZ: Would it be safe to O
- 21 conclude then that FEMA may or may not have the same l
g 22 position on KI that the NRC might have? Would there be l 23 -- because of the scenarios, perhaps, principally?
24 MR. DEAN: No. This -- the guidance --
POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L.. . . . .
I 138 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 the policy statement that's going to be issued.will be 1 2 ' issued by the Coordinating Committee under the auspices
-3 of FEMA. It will not be issued by the NRC.
l- 4 MR'. MARKOWICZ: I understand. ~ Thank -
L 5 you.
! 6 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay. Any other 7 questions for Mr. Dean?
8 We were scheduled to take-a break. I l
9 want to oropose, if the stenographer is okay, we just 10 continue on and try to wrap it up.
lL
-g 11 So let's go into the general question-( - 12 and-answer session. So who would like to be first?
13 Rosemary?
14 MS. BASSILAKIS: I want to revisit just ,
15 briefly an issue with Millstone Unit i spent fuel pool l- .
16 . with' regard to the dislodged fuel assemblies that are L '17 in the pool or -- I don't know if they're assemblies or ,
18 if they're rods themselves. You'll recall about a
- 19 year, a year and a half ago, this issue came up where 20 there might.have been wrenches or who knows what in O~
- 21 there that was causing them to be mis-seated or not
.:l l -j 22 seated properly. And at the time, NU did some a:g.
12, 23 calculations to prove that it's okay for now but it 24 needed to get revisited when there was no longer a L
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l 139 A MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS V OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 connection between the reactor vessel and the fuel pool 1 L 2 because there was concern about kicking up debris and
,3 that'getting into.the system and then etching, clatting 4 or whatever.
5 So'I'm wondering what's the status now l 6 that'the reactor is going to be permanently shut down.
7 You 'know, that's no longer a concern. So whether or' ;
8 not this is going to be looked at -- and I also thought
=9 -- you know, they just had cameras down there because 10 ~ of a hoist being stuck'or something or other. And I j- 11 was wondering whether or not they killed two birds with-12 one ' stone and took a look at:what was going on down 13 there.
14 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: As far as I'know, 15 they have not attempted to remove any of that debris 16 that's in theLbottom of the spent fuel pool.
17 MS. BASSILAKIS: It's not just in the 18 bottom.of the pool. I mean it's where the rods are
,;. 19 seated.
L '20 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Well --
-o-
- 21 MS. BASSILAKIS: We're not talking about I-22 = sludge --
r: . 23 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Yes. The thing l
i- ..
24- that you remember, there was some fuel rods that were POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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l) 140 l', MEETING RE: MILLSTONE. UNITS.
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 l
1 noti completely ~ seated into~ the racks. .And that's i 2 because there wasysomething underneath them to preclude
-3 that. .j i
4 MS. BASSILAKIS: Right. ~l 5 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: As far as'I know -
t . . .
6 -
residents need to . help me there -- they have not l 7 . attempted.to clean up that pool yet.
l 8 MR. ~ PAUL CATALDO: They. haven't .
I 1 9 attempted toLclean it up and they committed to clean up
-10 that pool. .So : hey haven't gotten -- it's still an i
' 1
{ 11-12
'open item. ;
l (' MS. BASSILAKIS: .Okay.
l J
13 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: That's. Paul 14 Cataldo, our Resident Inspector.
L
-15 MS. BASSILAKIS: Thanks.
16 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Any other j L 17 questions?'
l 1 18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I'd like to talk 19 about the backlog. How are they doing? Are they --
20 are they closing the backlog in'a timely manner on Unit i O l
-*. 21. 3? Wouldn't they have about 3,000 things or something Lh <
Of' 22 to do? How are they doing on that curve of -- l 12 3 MR. MILLER: I looked at that and I
. 24 spent some time -- I can't give you exact numbers. But o POST REPORTING SERVICE i
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h 141 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
() OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 .the trend -- if you look at the items that were open at 2 the time of the Commission meeting and at the restart 3 of'the unit,? the trend on those items is steadily down.
'4 .Now, they've made a commitment to deferred items coming 5 out.of that -- you know, out of the CMP and design
- . 6 reviews, to resolve those and disposition those one way 7 or another by.the end of the next refueling outage.
8 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right.
9 'MR. MILLER: It appears as though 10 they're making progress on that. Now, they -- they ;
s
. 11 will- 'always have a backlog. They continue to have new g
. \,m)Y 12 thingr added at all times. We talked. earlier about how i~
( - 13 problems, you know, and issues are always arising at 14 ' plants.
15 MS. PERRY LUXTON: 'Mm-hmm.
l
[ 16 MR. MILLER: And so they will have to L
l- 17 not only resolve those issues, but on an ongoing basis 18 address issues that arise.
19 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right. But the
! ~ l-
- i. f 20 commitment they made was for the deferred items, the 10 .
a 21 ones tha t --
g:
,. l - 22 MR. MILLER: Yes. To disposition, q
!: 12 3 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right.
24 MR. MILLER: Now, some of those are POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (300) 262-4102 e ;
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142 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
'q,r . OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 things that may result in some changes to procedures, 2 possibly, or changes to the plant. Some. of those 3 . items, it's my understanding -- and I. don't know the 4 details. of it . - But some of those are very minor.
5 They're like things that Gene had talked-about earlier.
6 And so some of them may be judged to be really
'7 insignificant. And some are' double-counted, that sort 8 of thing. So it's a combination of things, Susan. j l-9 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Right. But they did 1
10 ' defer.them un'til after restart -- !
l 11 Yes.
MR. MILLER:
12 MS. PERRY LUXTON: -- and they committed j- 13 to have them finished by the.end of the outage.
l,.. 14' MR. MILLER: Disposition in one way --
- j. 15 MS. PERRY' LUXTON: Dispositi'oned.
16 Right.
l- 17 MR. MILLER: Right. That's a key word. ;
18 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Oh. Dispositioned
- )!
l 19 means they're not necessarily -- what does disposition ,
.. - 20 mean?
'0:
- L 21 MR. MILLER: Disposition means that they
- l
{ .22 will -- for the things that need to be fixed, will be
'h 23 fixed. For the things that - - -
24 MS. PERRY LUXTON: The minor --
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OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 MR. MILLER: Things that are not of 2 ' consequence or that are, you know, double-counting --
3 you know, there'sla lot of things that can happen to 4 those items.
5 MS. PERRY LUXTON: .Okay.
6 MR. MILLER: But we'll look carefully at, 7 that. I mean 'we're -- that's something we'll -- '
8 '
Resident Inspectors -- Mr. Cerne is nodding his head.
l 9 That's something we'll watch carefully.
10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Okay. Good. I
- 11 Now,.the-next question I had was about ~ -- I was looking 12 at a Licensee Event Report the.other day. And I forgot.
-13 it at -home. But it was about -- I believe it was the 14 'RSS system'and I believe it was on Unit 3. And it said I l .15 that two trains were down because -- cn shut off or l -
16 something because one had blown fuses and the other one ! L 17 was being repaired at the time. And so they were both 18 out. Now, I guess the question I have is this is a
]
I 19 significant back-- this is a backup situation or like - 20 - why would two trains be down at the same time? Why bO .
- Ha 21 .would-they be doing maintenance work -- do you know I L.l- '
l 3
- g. 22 what I mean? Shouldn't -- one should always be there.
-h 23 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Yes. I l
m t.
.4 understand. l POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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' MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS lV. OCTOBER 6, 1998 ;
1 .MR.-TONY CERNE: Yes. l 2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Two shouldn't be
?
'3 down. Or am I wrong on that? I 4 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: I'm sorry. Tony? j 5 MR. CERNE: Yes. Basically --
6 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Tony Cerne, Senior q 7 Resident-Inspector. 8 MR. CERNE: They do on-line maintenance i 9 and they do it in a risk posture where they look' ahead j 10 to see what they're taking out of service to determine. j 11 what else can't be taken out of service and they7 12 protect, for example, the other train. 13 MS. PERRY LUXTON: All right. 14 MR. CERNE: So when you say redundancy. ! 15 that's what you're talking about, two trains of 16 equipment. In this case, RSS was out of service. It i 17 was planned for about a 13-hour outage, which is, I 18 again, a risk posture they felt they could do. And
-l-19 like Mr. Miller said, this keeps the equipment more 20 viable when you really need it. So on-line maintenance O. + 21 is not necessarily a bad thing as long as you look at ~l: l 22 it from a risk perspective. )
l k 23 in this case, they had it out of 24 service. On the other train, there was an electrical POST REPORTING SERVICE
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i ,. 145 E . MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS ( OCTOBER 6, 1998-t 1 piece' of- equipm6nt which blew a fuse. That would have 2 caused ~-- and. they had to do some logic- here and they 3 .tooki1the conservative ; position'that- that would have .[
.4 : caused-the possibility that if you lost off-site power i
? l
>5 and- had an _ accident., that this piece of electrical i i
- . 6 equipment-would have delayed or caused something out.of l 7 the ordinary to happen with the other train of RSS to 8 start. -So it~wasn't a case wherelthe other RSS piece-9 of equipment was unavailable or broken or anything like
, 10 that. But .what they call the cascading - of ~t he g 11 technical specification where - you not only have- 'the j{} :12 equipment, you also have the power, .the ventilation, o '13 anything that might support the equipment, taking that l
'14 conservative assessment, they decidtd- to call both ,
! 15 pieces ,of equipment inoperable,- enter the appropriate p 16 .technica1' specification, start shutting the. plant.down. L 17 They - were able to restore the original piece of l i I 18 aquipment that was taken out for preventive L'I -19 maintenance, exit that technical specification and only i 4 l j.
- E- 20 be under the auspices of the technical specification '
<O- I' 21 for one train out of service. And they eventually l *l '
lL
- }--{ iM! restored the piece of equipment, was the inverter.
((!L '23 They restored it-and are no< monitoring it to see j i :J - l' } , 124 whether the fuse problem is something that they f-POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102
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I 146 fn- MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS c(_) OCTOBER 6, '1998. 1 understand a little bit. 2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Oh. Good. Okay. j
'3 Well,.that sounds good then. Because I was thinking --
.4 I was going to come down on on-line maintenance on this 1
.5 ono. .But you're saying -- what you're.saying is that I i 6 shoul'dn't, that they did the right thing on this one.
7 MR. CERNE: They did the right thing. I i 8 mean :you can always question how many challenges a-9 plant has. In this particular case, they responded to 10 the challenge properly. Now, whether. they put j { 11 themselves in exactly the best posture with this 1 12 inverter problem at the same time as.the RSS. problem, 1 13 that's something we're looking at and they're looking
'14 .at. But, clearly, the operators responded u 15 conservatively to -the challenge they were presented 16 with at the time it happened.
17 MS. PERRY 1UXTON: Okay. The question I' 18 is did it have to happen at all, though? Right? Is j
. 19 that ;he question? Did'it have to happen at all? i
'20 MR. CERNE: The question, did it have to LO:
La -21 happen at all, is a question at all times when i .! .
..j- 22 equipment breaks. That's true.
l ,e 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. I don't know. 24 After two years, it's still hard to understand this
~
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I 147 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS OCTOBER 6, 1998
'l stuff. Three. years. Okay.
2 Let's see. Did I have any more 3 questions?' I did. I had one more question. -And that
.4 was'-our. State legislators -. no. Actually, our 5 Senators about a month ago or so wrote a letter, all of 6 them jointly wrote a letter to the NRC because they 7 were concerned about the Office of Investigations 8 investigations of discrimination and all that' business 9 with the spent fuel pool situation with Mr. Galatis and-10 Mr. Bettencourt which originally began. this .whole 11 thing. And they came up with no . harassment and 12 . intimidation.
. -13 I have two questions on'that.. One is
'14 how could that possibly happen if we know that the NRC 15 must have.-- well, that.'s what Little Harbor even was -
[ 16 - that's why the order came out for Little Harbor to 11 even be on site, is that there had been evidence of 18 harassment and intimidation for quite a while and the
- l. 19 culture was really poor. So I can't understand how the
- 20 OI could have found nothing in regard to
'O a- 21. discrimination. ,g. -
.g. 22 MR'. MILLER: I can understand why you b .23 would ask that question. It's a logical question to 24 ask. And I think the best answer to that really is one POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i
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-148 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS g-)s g_ ' OCTOBER 6, 1998
'l that may not satisfy you here tonight but ultimately, 2 hopefully, it -willland that is that that has been 3 referred.to'our Office of Inspector Gener&l'.
4 These are complex cases. You know, 5 they've been examined very, very carefully. A lot of 6 people were talked to. I can't comment, obviously, on 7 investigations and specific investigations. But
'8 suffice it to say that, you know, a lot of people were 9 talked to over a period of time. And to make a 10' judgment on that is going to take the kind of, you g 11 know, scrutiny.that the IG can best give this.
f~T 12 MS '. . PERRY LUXTON: 'Okay. That's a good U-l- 13 answer. ! !- 14 MR. MILLER: And I think that the IG L 15 will at some point speak. And the Chairman has told 16 the Congressional delegation that as soon as that 17 investigation is cane, that is the investigation by the
! 18 IG, she will get back to the Congressional delegation L 'I 19 and I'm sure you'll hear about that right away.
Lj~ r 20 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Great. Okay. lo-
<- 21 And that just brings to mind another question. As I l !.
-g 22 was saying that, it reminded me. In June of 1990-- I b' '23 think it was 1998. Correct me if I'm wrong. It might
.24 'have been 1997 where the motor-operatcd valve
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149 MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS l: )- OCTOBER 6, 1998' 1 discrimination- problems at NU -- okay. I think I just 2 . answered my own question. But maybe I didn't. 3 NU found that- -- admitted 4 . discrimination. Then there was.an investigation with 5 the NRC. Recently in the paper over the summer, tht're
.6 was an. article saying that the NRC had finished their i
7 investigation and they were referring it to some kind 8 gof enforcement action, I thought. Is that right? Was 9 there going to be enforcement action on that? Because 10 I know that the two engineers ended up -leaving g 11 Millstone.
-(} 12 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Okay.
13 MS. PERRY LUXTON: But was there going i 14 ~to be enforcement action on that? 15 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: There is pending 16 enforcement of action -- 1 17 MS, PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
! 18 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: -- concerning --
El. 19 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I thought I heard 20 something like that. .=Oi
*- 121 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: -- the results of 1
-g 22 the OI investigation.
~!' 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay.
-24 MR. MILLER: But the aspects -- and I t
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. MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS E,
4( j OCTOBER 6, 1998 l' think it's_very important that everybody understand ,
..2 ..that issues -- we've got very. strict rules-regarding 3 allegations and_ investigations. And it limits us very 4 significantly in- what we can comment on, what we can-
.5 say.--
6 MS.-PERRY LUXTON: To the public, you 7- mean? To the public? 8 MR. MILLER: Right. I mean -- and it's i 9 all there-in our manual that lays out the procedures 10 that we 'have to follow. And so, you know, this is '
} 11 something that's still being looked at. And as l
12 conclusions'are drawn ultimately, just as in the case L 13 of the' letters that were-sent out on the previous 14 investigations, that you'll learn what our conclusions j 15 are. 1 16 I, off the top of my head, can't recall l 17 exactly how much we can sry or not say. But just -- we I 18 have to be very careful in this arena. You can l-19 appreciate that. l L 20 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Mm-hmm. I can. And j
.O.
,a 21 %nother-' thing I wanted to say, I wanted to give you a l-l 22 little bit more input about the original question that l
- [
b : 23 you had -- that I mentioned about criteria for shutdown 24 and just the input about there's no more SALP now. j- POST REPORTING SERVICE j HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 i i 's
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,r MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS-(' ,
. OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 MR. MILLER: Yes?
2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I was thinking maybe
.3 -a good thing to do would be on a yearly basis to have 4 some . kind of a - considering this was a normal plant, 5 considering that we weren't. at Millstone, we got the 6 normal plant mode again -- to have a public meeting 7 w
.ith the community just to update them on the utility ,
8 in their midst and say -- 9 MR. MILLER: I want to say that's a very >
'10 good idea. And that's not going to be just humoring 11 you,. too, because I neglected to say that- when the
, 12 Commission authorized. the staff suspending the SALP
'13 process, they directed the staff to --
is it on a 14 . yearly basis?
-15 A VOICE: Yes.
l 16 MR. MILLER: I believe it's on a yearly y 17 basis, in fact, to have a meeting in the area of the 18 plant to, in fact, talk about the plant and the f.L '19 performance. And if we don't still have a written
. 20 report in -- but the same level of detail, talk openly (O' <- 21 and talk to the public about what we see. And I should I;.l. ]
,J 22 have mentioned that. j l~ 23 ' MS. PERRY LUXTON: Oh, good. And every i
- j. ..
24 plant in the country, you're scying? ~ POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 L
'i 152 f-s MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS L. OCTOBER 6, 1998 L 1 MR. MILLER: Every plant -- 2 MS. PERRY LUXTON: That's wonderful.
'3 MR. MILLER: ' -- in the country will have 4 it.
5 MS. PERRY LUXTON: The region people 6 would do that? 7 MR. . MILLER: Regional people and 8 Headquarters people, as well as' appropriate, will be 9 involved in that. 10 MS. PERRY LUXTON: Okay. Well, I must , g' 11 say this has been the best meeting that we've had in a 12 long. time. And I really appreciate you and especially ( '} l 13 you and Mr. Dean, every -- I know the other people. 14 But you and Mr. Dean, I really feel that you treated us 15 with respect and treated us as if we were intelligent
.16 and, you know, you weren't patronizing. And I just )
l 17 feel so good about this meeting, as Good as I can about , 18 your meetings. And I want to thank you for that.
'19 MR. MILLER: Well, I admire the 20 questions. And you certainly have done a lot of l1' 0 a 21 homework here. I guess what I especially admire -- and
, : l. g- 23 this applies to everybody -- your stamina.
! 23 MS. PERRY LUXTON: I know.
24 MR. MILLER: I understand this is -- POST REPORTING SERVICE HAMDEN, CT (800) 262-4102 4
(' 153 l :. MEETING RE: MILLSTONE UNITS
.s )' OCTOBER 6, 1998 1 -MS. PERRY'LUXTON: Well, you haven't 2 seen.anything.
i
.3 MR. MILLER: I understand if we end this i 4 meeting now --
5 MS. PERRY'LUXTON: .This is early. 6 - MR. MILLER: -- this is going to be 1 7 early. ) 8 MS, PERRY LUXTON: This is early.
'9 MR. MILLER: Appreciate it very much.
10 CHAIRPERSON LANNING: Thank you. 11 Are there other questions? Okay. If l 12 not, I. bid you goodnight and chank you for coming. . l"_)i
\
13 i L 14 (Whereupon, the meeting was concluded at [ 15 10:15 P.M.) i L .16 , I ,: ' l! . L CL l ol* - l .' 'i .
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CERTIFICATE
'I,' Paul Landman, a Notary Public in and for the State of Connecticut, and President of Post Reporting Service, Inc., do hereby certify that, to the best i.
of my knowledge, the foregoing record is a correct and verbatim transcription of the audio recording made of the proceeding hereinbefore set forth. I further certify that neither the audio operator nor I are attorney or counsel for, nor directly related to or employed by any of the parties to the action dnd/or proceeding in which this action is taken; and further, that neither l the audio operator nor I are a relative or employee of any attorney or counsel l- employed by the parties thereto, or financially interested in any way in the l . , ,3 outcome of this action or proceeding. i In witness whereof I have hereunto set my hand and do so attest to the above, this 21stday of oct . ,198 On A ,_AA Ve:- . ll ~ 7auYtandman, President i0-la !. I . T POST REPORTING SERVICE i {} 1-800-262-4102 J
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