ML20199C779

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Transcript of 960919 Interview of C Smith in Crystal River, Florida Re OI Rept 2-96-033.Pp 1-16.W/Certificate of Svc. Birth Date & Social Security Number Deleted
ML20199C779
Person / Time
Site: Crystal River Duke Energy icon.png
Issue date: 09/19/1996
From:
NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI)
To:
Shared Package
ML20199C716 List:
References
FOIA-97-313 2-96-033, 2-96-33, NUDOCS 9711200138
Download: ML20199C779 (16)
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. 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION s

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4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5- INTERVIEW 6 ---~~---------------~~~~---~~-----x 7 IN THE MATTER OF:  :

8 INTERVIEW OF  : Docket No.

9 CHRISTINE MARIE SMITH  : 2-96-033 10  :

11 ----------------------------------x 12 33 Wednesday, September 19, 1996 ,

14 15 Conference Room - Second Floor 16 Ccystal River Plant 17 15760 West Powerline Street 18 Crystal River, Florida 19 20 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 21 9:15 a.m. [M W n:_ c.,d M 22

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23 BEFORE:

24 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator

! 25 ggg 2 CASENO. 2- 96-033 .

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1 -APPEARANCES:

2 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission 3 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator 4 Region II NRC Office of-Investigations 5 401 Marietta Street 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 7- On Behalf of the Interviewee, Christine Smith 8 ROBERT ALEXANDER GLENN, ESQUIRE 9 MAC-A5A [*,

10 Post Office Box 14042 11 St. Petersburg, Florida 33733 12 13 -

. 14 15 16 17-18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25

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( l P-R-0-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 MR.-VORSE: For the record, today't date is 3 19 September 1996, and the time is 09:15. And I'm Special 4 Agent James Vorse of the NRC's Office of Investigation, and 5 I'll be conducting this interview.

6 During this proceeding, which is being recorded 7 for transcription, the NRC Office of Investigations will 8 conduct an interview of Christine Marie Smith. This 9 interview pertains to OI invest-gation number 2-96-033. _,

10 The location of the interview is the Administration 11 Building, the Crystal River Nuclear Plant, Crystal River, 12 Florida.

13 Atterdance in this interview are Corporate 14 Attorney Alex Glenn. And we'll go ahead and administer the 15 oath to Christine.

16 Whereupon, 17 CHRISTINE MARIE SMITH, 18 being first duly sworn by the Notary Public, was examined 19 and testified as follows:

20 MR. VORSE: Mr. Glenn, would you identify 21 yourself for the record, please.

22 HR. GLENN: Yes. My name is Alex Glenn. I'm 23 Corporate Counsel for Florida Power Corporation.

24 EXAMINATION 25- KR. VORSE: And Christine, would you, for the I

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I record, identify yourself by full name.

2 THE WITNESS: Christine Marie Smith and I'm a 3 Nuclear Operator at Florida Power Corporation's Crystal 4 River Unit III.

5 MR. VORSE: And your date of birth and Social 6 Security number, please.

7 THE WITNESS: Social 8 Security number: e 9 MR. VORSE: Okay. od read the 1001 statement 10 in the Title U.S. Code. Did you read tha*, and understand 11 it?

12 THE WITNESS: Yes, I have. I do understand.

13 MR. VORSE: Okay. And do you understand that 14 Mr. Glenn is representing botn the corporation and ;ou?

15 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do understand.

16 MR. VORSE: All right. Would you give me yuur 17 educational background, please.

18 THE WITNESS: High school education. I've had 19 some college courses. I do not have a college degree.

20 I've worked at Florida Power Corporation since 1988. I 21 started out as a turbine building operator and have worked 22 my way through the operator license program and received my 23 nuclear reactor operator's license in 1993.

24 MR. VORSE: Would you describe your duties in 25 the fuel handling area on the March 26th, 1996, when we had l- C Nl Ws

5 1 this fuel assembly placed on top of another? Would you

.2- describe-what you were doing.

  • 3 THE WITNESS: My duties'at the time, we were 4 refueling the core, we had defueled earlier in the outage 5- and at this point we were putting the fuel back in the 6 reactor.

7 I was working in the reactor building and 8 basica?.ly I was moving the fuel from the fuel transfer 9 carriages over and placing them in the reactor vessel.

10 MR. VORSE: Now would you describe in detail the 11 incident that occurred with the fuel assembly being dropped 12 into -- or lowered into R ten?

13 THE WITNESS: I'd been in the reactor building ,

14 probably close to four hours, it was the end of the day.

15 And I had been moving quite a few fuel assemblies that day 16 in rotating positions between spent fuel, tag board, and 17 this was my shift in the reactor building. And I had been

'18 following procedure. I would raise the fuel assembly out 19 of the upender and. report my tape readings, get 20 confirmation from the tag board, go to a location, get 21 confirmation I was in the correct location, and place the 22 fuel assembly in the vessel.

23 The two steps previous had been Romeo eight 24 position, Romeo nine position, real similar. And when I 25 got to this particular step it-was labeled RTR; to me it t

6 1 ' looked like zero one ttro.

2 And I'd picked up the fuel assembly -- this was a 3 core shuffle that we were doing at the time where we were 4 moving one fuel assembly from one spot in the core to 5 another spot in the core. And I had picked it up, called 6 out my tape readings, they were good, and told the tag 7 board that I'm going to be proceeding to Romeo ten. And he 8 said okay. And I proceeded to Romeo ten and then when I 9 had indexed over Romeo ten I called out, I am indexed over ,.

10 Romeo ten, ready to lower the fuel assembly. And tag board 11 replied, understand, you are indexed over, Romeo ten, go 12 ahead and lower the fuel assembly, 13 I lowered the assembly down and didn't get all .

14 the way down, got about half-way, and I got an underload.

we 15 The mast had gotten an underload, wh.ich,yt a lot -- it was l 16 fairly common with burnt assemblies. Sometimes they get 17 warped a little bit and you'll get an underload because 18 it's not going in straight. And common procedure is to

! 19 lift it up and try again.

20 I called out onto the headphones that I have an 21 underload. And I called out my tape readings, which it was I 22 evident to everybody that I was not all the way in the 23 core. And the refueling supervisor, Dave Jones, said, l 24 well, pick it up a couple of inches and try lowering again.

l l 25 I picked the fuel up a couple of more inches,

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( 1 tried going down'again. I got the underload again -- rhich 2 the underload causes the mast to stop lowering, it's an 3 interlock. I got the underload again. -I called out, I un 4 have the underload again, this is my EZ tape 2eading,14H6 5 insNe, we definitely are not in the core. And at this point 6 the tag board operator said, well, " neck your indexing.

7 And I replied, I'm indexed over Romeo ten.

8 And at this point he said, you're supposed to be 9 indexed over Oscar ten, not Romeo ton. And at this point I ,,

10 realized, oh no, I've read the move sheet wrong. And I 11 believe -- I can't remember the exact words, but I was 12 given permission to raise the fuel assembly back up.

13 I don't think there was a whole lot of .

I just mentioned something to the tag board 14 discussion.

15' operator about, we've both messed up hero,.yEY 4 :u, I had 16 called out Romeo ten, I was et Romeo ten, but for some 17 reason we must have misread the move sheet.

18 And at this point I proceeded, with permission, 19 to go over to Oscar ten, and given permission to lower the 20 assembly down in Oscar ten. And we placed it where it 21 belonged.

22 MR. VORSE: Who was the tag operator that you 23 were in communication with?

24 THE WITNESS: Jim Atkinson.

25 HR. VORSE: Was there any-discussion between you

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, . 8 1 and Mr. Jones regarding this incident?

2 THE WITNESS: It was either -- You talking 3 about at the time, af terwards?

4 MR. VOP.'E: After.

5 29E WITNESE: The only discussion we had, it was 6 a day or two later, I'm.not sure exactly which day. He was 7 the shifter in the control room at the time and I came in 8 and he said -- he basically told me, don't beat yourself up 9 about this, we all read the move sheet wrong, I was ,.

10 following a)ong with you, if you had called out anything 11 different than Romeo ten I would have stopped you because I 12 read it the same say. He said, it wasn't solely your 13 mistake, it was a mistake on all of us. So, you know, ,

14 please don't worry about it too much.

15 And that was the last tir.e I talked to him about 16 the incident.

17 MR. VORSE: Do you know who wrote that anonymous 18 precursor?

19 THE WITNESS: No, I have no idea.

20 MR. VORSE: Do you know if Mr. Jones talked to 21 management about this before the precursor or after?

22 THE WITNESS: I have no idea.

23 MR. VORSE: Was there any discussion between you 24 and Mr. Jones, or.anyone else that was involved in this 25 inci -- I won't call it incident, this unfortunate mistake,

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( 1 about not telling management about-it?

2 THE WITNESS: No, there_definitel wasn't.

-3 MR. VORSE Do you -- Let me ask you this, 4 Christine. I know we're on the record, but --

5 THE WITNESS: Okay.

6 MR. VORSE

-- there's boon a lot of emotional 7 feelinga about the make-up tank issue. And, of course, 8

you're in there with the troops, you're not management. Is 9

the -- are people reluctant to report things now because of  ;;"

10 that make-up tank issue?

11 THE WITNESS I don't think because of the make-12 up tank issue.

I do believe that now because of sore 13 issues that have happened later, that mostly in the non 14 licensed operators there might be a reluctance to report 15 things, because it seems that what's been happening is when 16 they report something, even though they know they did their 17 job right and they swear that they didn't make a mistake 18 and something's found mispositioned, it seems to be going 19 backoto, well, you were the last one to sign off that this 20 was done, you must have made a mistake, you're getting 21 disciplined.

22 And I did just find out about something tnis 23 morning, that I had heerd that one of the non licensed 24

. operators

' had found a valve mispositioned sometime recently l _ 25' rA 44 and they just restored it to where-it "e,r ->

k eing and did not

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10 1- report it because they were afraid that management was 2 going to blame them for it.

  • 3 And it just came out this morning because of this 4 sabotage thing that came out with the penny in the lube 5 oil. They thought -- all of a sudden they realized that, 6 well, this might have major implications other than, you 7 know, maybe an operator made a mistake, maybe this was e something intentional, it better get reported. So it was 9 brought up in a meeting today. ,

10 But because of the make-up tank, I don't think 11 that has held anybody from reporting anything. It 12 definitely didn't prevent me from reporting anything. I 13 knew the fuel assembly thing needed to be reported and I 14 had it in my mind that management needed to know about it.

15 But by the time I got some time, you know, management was 16 already doing an investigation. And that satisfied in my 17 mind that if they're doing an investigation, they know 18 about it. So, you know, my duty has been done and I know 19 management is aware of it.

20 MR. VORSE: Has this ever happened before?

21 MR. GLENN: Well, what do you mean by this?

22 MR. VORSE: By this, I mean have you been 23 involved in another fuel assembly being lowered on top of 24 another fuel assembly?

25 THE WITNESS: I have never been involved in it

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{ 1 and I don't think it's happened the last outage, refuel 2

nine,butIhaveheardthatithashappenedNeforeinthe 3 past.

But never -- I've never been involved in one.

4 MR. VORSE: Twice now we've gotten anonymous 5 letters or anonymous precursors. One for the make-up tank 6 thing and one for this.

Do you feel reluctant, do you 7

think people need to remain anonymous when they report 8

things because they're afraid of some kind of either 9

retribution from their co-workers or retribution from -

10 ~ management?

11 THE WITNESS: I don't know. I don't know what 12 other people think. I've written a lot of precursor cards 13 since the make-up tank, and I sign my name to every one. I 14 feel that it's my duty to bring something up that I see and 15 whatever happens will happen. But I've never -- I've never 16 had anything come back on me for any precursor card that 17 I've written.-

18 MR. VORSE:

When this underload kicked in on 19 your fuel assembly on the 26th of March when we lowered on 20 R ten, did everything work okay? I mean, did it do what it 21 was supposed to do as far --

22 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes. Part of my job is 23 there's a load cell so I can monitor how much weight the 24 grapple is holding _and it stopped at the correct weight. I 25 believe it was 600 pounds. I'd have to look back.

It's

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. been six monthsiand I'm not that familiar.with theLexact 2 weights.: But at the time thatLwas something that was in my

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3 head,.the elevations I needed to be at, the weights I had-4- to be at. And the bridge operated correctly, in my mind.' l 5

MR. VORSE - So there's no -- so in your view -

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that situation that occurred with R ten and the fuel

, 7- assembly was really no different than any other underload, 8 -other than we inadvertently dropped or lowered something on

'9 top of another?

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~10' THE WITNESS: Yeah, it didn't seem to me any 11 different than if'the assembly went down a little bit off 1 12 and sat on the grid plate wrong in the bottom of the 13 vessel. To me that was -- and that happens sometimes. It 14 --

I never had any reason to think that anything was 15 damaged or anything like that.

16 MR. VORSE: Did you say_ s.nything to Mr. Jones 17 when you discovered that you were on top of another fuel -

18 assembly? Did you say anything to hiN?

- 19 -THE WITNESS: Well, the tag board brought up 20- when he said -- he said,-you're supposed to be in Oscar 21 ten, the tag board said that there's already a fuel 22- assembly in Romeo ten. And I beli4 eve as-I was lifting it 23

'up I was.able to look around and -- you can't really_see 24 from that bridge. You can't watch what's going on below

. 25 you, but-I'was able to look~around and I did look -- was s

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.able'to look down, I don't. remember if I stopped.and walked 2

around or how I -- but I did look and I did see a fuel )

4 3 assembly underneath there. And I don't remember what exact 4 words, but, you know, I_ feel confident that Mr. Jones knew 5

that-we had set a fuel assembly on another assembly. 1 6- MR. VORSE: Is there anything you want to add to 7

the record,. Christine, that I didn't think to ask you?

8 THE WITNESS: No, I can't think of anything.

9 MR. VORSE: Mr. Glenn?

-w 10 MR. GLENN: Just one or two questions.

11 Can you, or do you know the volume of precursor 12-cards that have been written between March of '96 when this 13 incident occurred and the present day? Has there been a 14 greater number of precursor cards written?

15 THE WITNESS: I have no idea. I know that 16 before the make-up tank issue I read a report that said 17 there were hardly any. And after the make-up tank there 18 was -- management stressed, you know, fill out these cards, 19 we want you to use these cards.

And then I know that there 20 was a big increase.

But I have no idea how many have been 21 written after the fuel assembly.

22 MR. GLENN:

Has that been a continued thing that 23 management has been stresring --

24 THE WITNESS: Yes, they have.

25 MR. GLENN: -- file precursor cards?

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ll. THE WITNESS: They've actually made it part of '

2 oursupervisors'goalsfortheyear,thateahhshiftthey 3 vant good -- a hundred good constructive precursor cards 4 for each shift. So all the way down the line.even our -

5 direct supervisors stress, you know, you find anything ,

6 write a card.

7 MR. GLENN: And has it also been the. position 8

that whether or not it's anonymous or you sign your name,

9. it doesn't matter, what matters is the card be filed? .,.,

10 THE WITNESS: That's what has been put out. It 11 doesn't matter, get the card out. If you feel 12 uncomfortable for any reason, sign anonymous but just get 13 the card out. That's the important thing is to get the 14 problem out in the open.

15 MR. GLENN: Do you think that management has 16 been genuine in its desire to get a number of precursor 17 cards filed and as much information about the plant as le possible?

19 THE WITNESS: Yes, I believe so. I've never 20 seen them do -- they haven't done any. kind of man hunts to 21 find out who is writing anonymous ones. They've never --

22 you know, I've never heard anybody go around asking, well, 13 who wrote this one, who wrote this one. No, it's never 24 been that.- It's'always been, well, the problem's out, 25 let's fix the problem.

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15 1 MR. VORSE: Okay. Once again, Ms. Smith, do you 2 have'anything that you want to add? '

3 'THE WITNESS: No, I do not.

4 MR.tVORSE: Okay. Then we'll conclude this 5 interview. The time is 09:36, still 19 September '96.

6 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at 7 9:36 o' clock a.m.)

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( 1 CERT 1FICATE 2

Thisistocertifythattheattachddproceedings 3

before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 4 the matter of 5

Name of Proceeding: Interview of Christine Smith 6

Docket Number (s): 2-96-033 7

Place of Proceeding: Crystal River Nuclear Plant 8

Crystal River, Florida 9

10 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 11' transcript thereof for the file of the United States 12 Nuclear Regulatory Commicsion taken by me and, thereafter 13 reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the 14 ..

court reportAng company, and that the transcript is a true 15 and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.

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- reggy S. Hay e -

20 of2icial Reporter 21 Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.

22 23 4

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