ML20199C912
| ML20199C912 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crystal River  |
| Issue date: | 11/28/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20199C716 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA-97-313 2-94-036, 2-94-36, NUDOCS 9711200193 | |
| Download: ML20199C912 (87) | |
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@fficial Transcript of Procecdings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
In the matter of Interview of Gary Lee Boldt Docket Number: 2-94-036 Location: Crystal River, Florida Date: November 28,1995 l
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i Work Order Nc .: NRC-429 Pages 1-87 l
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NFAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
! , Court Reporters and Transcribers EXHIBIT / O-l 2394._.=036 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
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1 ;-UNITED STATES OF AMERICA '2 -
- 2- -NUCLEAR ~ REGULATORY COMMISSION- :
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'4 OFFICE-OF INVESTIGATIONS , , ,
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- 5. INTERVIEW-4 6 ----------------------------------X
-7 IN-THE MATTER.0F: ~r
.8 IINTERVIEW OF : Docket No.
9 GARY LEE BOLDT : 2-94-036 10 :
11 ----------------------------------x 12 Tuesday, November 28, 1995 13 14 Crystal River Plant
' 15 Administration Building 16' 15760 W. Power Line Street 17 Crystal River, Florida 18' 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 9:05 a.m.
21 'BEFORE:
22 JAMES D.'DOCKERY- Senior Investigator. >
. 2*a JIM VORSE. ' Senior Investigator-24 CURT-RAPP Reactor Engineer
. 25~
MAAWP Q p s- j rv .
2 1 APPEARANCES: ,
2 On Behalf of the Nuc' ear Regulat,ory Commission 3 JAMES DOCKERY, Senior _ Investigator 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations S 401 Marietta Street
-6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 i 7 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator 8 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 9 401 Marietta Street 10 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 11 CURT RAPP, Reactor Engineer 12 Region II NRC 13 401 Marietta Street 14 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 15 16 On Behalf of the Interviewee, David M. Czufin 17 MORRIS " SANDY" WEINBERG, JR., ESQUIRE 18 Corporate Counsel - Florida Power Corporation 19 101 East Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 314C 20 Tampa, Florida 33602 21 DANIEL F. STENGER, ESQUIRE 22 Corporate Counsel - Florida Power Corporation 23 1400 L Street, N.W.
24 Washington, D.C. 20005-3502
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=1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2" MR. DOCKERY: For'the record, today's date is 3-; November the 28th, 1995. ;The time is approximately 9:05' 4l a .m. - My name is Senior Investigator James D. Dockery, of 5: the NRC Office of-~ Investigations.
6 During this proceeding, which-is being recorded for transcription, the NRC Office of Investigations-will 8 conduct'an interview of Mr. Gary Boldt, The interview 9 pertains to Office of Investigations Investigation Number 10 2-94-036. The location of this interview is the 11 Administrative Building at the Crystal River Nuclear 12 Plant.
13 We have others in attendance here today - And I 14 would ask, starting with Mr. Rapp, that you identify
-15 yourself and your affiliation, please.
16 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp, R-A-P-P. And I-17 am-a reactor inspector in Region II, NRC.
18 MR. VORSE: My name-is Jim Vorse. I'm a Senior-19 Investigator with the Office of Investigations, Region II.
20 MR. STENGER: Dan Stenger, attorney with Winston
'21 & Strawn in Washington, D.C.
22 MR. WEINBERG: And I'm Sandy Weinberg, an 23 attorney with=Zuckerman, Spaeder. I'm out of the Tampa
, 24 office.-
25- MR. DOCKERY: And for the record, will you
4 l' explain to us who each of you represents.
2 MR. WEINBERG: Right. We reprecent Florida 3 Power. We've been asked by Mr. Boldt to be present for 4 the interview. And as one of the senior management people 5 at the company, he's asked that we be here.
6 My primary responsibility has been with regard to 7 your investigation, the OI investigation. Mr. Stenger has 8 been primarily working on the enforcement side. But there 9 seems to be a major overlap in all this so that Mr. Boldt 10 and the others that you're interviewing had asked that we 11 both be present, if it's okay with you.
12 MR. DOCKERY: W611, so we understand, your 13 client -- each of yco, your client is Florida Power 14 Company.
15 MR. WEINBERG: That's exactly right.
16 MR. STENGER: That's correct.
17 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Boldt, would you raise your 18 right hand, please.
19 THE WITNESS: (Complies.) Yes.
20 Whereupon, 21 GARY LEE BOLDT, 22 having-been first duly sworn by the Investigator, was 23 examined and testified as follows:
24 DIRECT EXAMINATION 25 MR. DOCKERY: Thank you. Would you state your
5 1 full name, please.
2 THE WITNESS: Gary Lee Boldt.
3 MR. DOCKERY: And for identification purposes, 4 your date of birth and Social Security number?
5 THE WITNESS: Date of birth is ,
6 % Social Security number is h 7 MR. DOCKERY: Okay, Mr. Boldt. Before we got on 8 the record here today Mr. Vorse and I identified ourselves 9 as investigators with the NRC Office of Investigation.
10 You understand who we are and why we're here?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Also, I gave you a copy of 13 the verbiage of Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United 14 States Code. And you indicated that you understand the 15 applicability of that here.
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Boldt, what is your position?
18 THE WITNESS: I'm Vice President of Nuclear 19 Production.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Is that an on-site position?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. I think you indicated that 23 you're aware of what it is we're here to discuss today, 24 that's the applicability of Curve 8, Operating Procedure 25 103B, and some evolutions, makeup tank evolutions that 7C [f'l
6
~1: were conductediin 1994 relating to that?
2 THE WITNESS - Yes. 'I understand-that.
3 - MR;-DOCKERY: -I may not characterize that-the 4 - best way, but I think you understand.
5 -THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.
6 MR. DOCKERY: The - Starting with some 7 evolutions that were conducted in September of 1994, when 8 did you become aware?
9 THE WITNESS: Probably the following week.
10 First -- Where I was when I first became aware was at an 11 EPRI Division Advisory Committee Meeting in Rochester, New 12- York.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Excuse me. Would you just spell 14 nut EPRI.
15 THE WITNESS: Define EPRI? EPRI stands for the 16- Electric Power Research Institute. It's an organization 17 of which most of the electric utilities of the country are 18 a memoer 'for purposes of combined research and development 19 work.
20 I was on the Division Advisory Committee.
21 Florida Power is a member on that committee. And I was 22 attending one of--those Division Advisory Committee 23: meetings. - They were heldTroughly once a quarter. This 124 one was in Rochester, New York.
25 I had called back -- I don!t recall a precise
_ _____.___________m _
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7:
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-1 date. : I would-estimate maybe-around September the lith.
2- I had called back to-the plant and talked to_the plant 3 - manager, just to get kind of a- basic. update, when he 4 -filled me-in on his knowledge of an evolution that-had 5 been performed by_the midnight crew on September the 5th, 6 I believe was the date.
-7 MR. DOCKERY: Let me-step back for a second. ,As-
-8 _vice president for nuclear production, what is your 9- primary responsibility here?
10 THE~ WITNESS; Well, at that time -- That 11- responsibility changes, has changed a'little bit over the 12 time from 1994--to today, 13 But at that time I was in charge of plant 14- oparations, which meant that the plant manager, which was 15- Bruce Hickle, reported to me. I was in charge of 16 training. And that was -- At that time the manager of 17 training was Larry Kelly.
18 I was in charge of scheduling of the plant, which 19 Brent Moore led at that point. I was in charge of outages 20 at the-plant.
The outage manager reported directly to m+.
21- That was Hoyt Koon.
22 And I was in charge of site support services.
23 And at that time the manager of site support was Ralph 24--Widell. Within site support are activities 3ike
.25 licensing, fire _ protection, emergency planning. ._
1 8
1 MR. DOCKERY: Did I understand you to say before 2 we began that you had been at one time or are currently 3 licensed?
CR *6 4 THE WITNESS: I had an SRO license in-etB- M 5 MR. DOCKERY: You did.
6 THE WITNESS: Yes.
7 MR. DOCKERY: From what -- During what period of 8 time?
9 THE WITNESS: A period of time of early 1982 to 10 late 1985.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Was that at Crystal River or 12 another --
2/6 13 THE WI1HESS: Yes. -No, Crystal River.
14 MR. DOCKERY: When you heard about the September 15 5th, 1594, evolution, what was your response to that? Did 16 you see a problem with it?
17 THE WITNESS: Yes. Well, the plant manager, of 18 course, explained it in his terms as he saw the situation.
19 And he was quite concerned about it.
20 MR. DOCKERY: In terms of a violation of 21 procedure or --
22 THE WITNESS: Well, it wasn't a lot of detail.
23 MR. DOCKERY: I see.
24 THE WITNESS: On the phone call I guess what it 25 struck me as first is a violation of what I'd call a
9 lt serious operating principal.
2 MR DOCKERY: A principal as opposed to a 3- procedure. Is that --
4 .THE WITNESS: Yeah. -I didn't have enough 5 information to judge on the issue of procedure at that 6 point.
7 MR. VORSE: Could you expand on t.e principal, 8 please, sir?
9 THE WITNESS: Well, it was explained to me that 10 an alarm was viotated and not responded to.
11 MR. DOCKERY: That alarm would have been the 12 annunciator?
13 THE WITNESS: It was in -- Well, I understood 14 that there'd be a annunciator alarm having to do with the 15 curve that was in that procedure, was in alarm and left in 16 alarm for some period of time without being promptly 17 responded to.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
19 THE WITNESS: And as a former SRO, that's 20 something that, whether by training principal, basic 21 beliefs, or whatever you want to understand, that when 22 alarms come in, you promptly respond to alarms.
23 MR. DOCKERY: But that's why it's significant to
-24 us that you, yourself, had been a licensed operator.
25 We're tending now towards some of the technical
10 1 questions. So, Curt?
2 MR. WEINBERG: Just so that you're clear, I 3 don't know if you picked up on it, but what Mr. Boldt was 4 -saying, I think, is that he was repeating what basically 5 was Mr. Hickle's reaction to that. If that --
6 MR. DOCKERY: The way it was characterized to 7- you?
8 MR. WEINBERG: Right. You need to respond.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah. Please respond.
10 THE WITNESS: Yeah. That's correct. The way it 11 was characterized to me by Bruce, 12 MR. RAPP: Let me interject here. You said that 13 Mr. Hickle told you that they had violated this principal 14 of not responding to the alarm --
15 THE WITNESS: He didn't use those --
16 MR. RAPP: -- or was that your conclusion?
17 THE WITNESS: He didn't use the words principal.
18 He told me that they had conducted an evolution in the 19 midnight shift. You know, he basically told me the 20 purpose of that evolution was to test the curve.
21 My recollection is he explained to me that the 22 tested data as. plotted went over the line into the 23 unacceptable region of the curve, an alarm occurred, and 24 that alarm was left unresponded to for some period of 25 time. And I don't recall that he mentioned the time
11 1 -- l period .
2 - MR . RAPP: Well, let me' characterize this._ What ,
- 3. -- When you found out about this, what bothered you-the -
4=.most about it?!
S- THE WITNESS:- Well, several things bothered me
'6 about_it. First, the-alarm-issue. But then when I heard 7 about the -- I'm not sure if it bothered me on the phone 8 or it bothered me after I had some time to reflect on:it. ,
9 I think what bothered me the most in this whole 10 -situation was the fact that we had a shift manager on 11 shift that wasn't communicated to.
12 Now,_that's kind of a non-safety issue, but in 13 terms of communication and getting approvals to have done 14 what was done, what was done was not an emergency type 15 situation, there was no need to have responded in an 16 impromptu fashion. That certainly could have been 17 communicated, approved, and planned, and scheduled.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Let's go-back to prior to 19 September of 1994. Were you aware of any issues in
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20 question about Curve 8?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes. Not necessarily about the 22 -curve itself. I was aware that we vere wrestling with an
.23 issue of:how to-establish the 25 s. . per kg in the 24L reactor' cooling system so that we would conform-to the 25- water-chemistry-requirement that was established at that L i i
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.1 12 1 time. ,
Could you characterize'for usfin
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2- MR DOCKERY:
3- some detail-what questions-arose?:
4 THE WITNESS: Well,11et me;go back a little --
5 maybe'a little bit farther in' history. We've had some 6 history of the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations, 7- which I'll refer to as INPO in the future, had come in and 8--done some evaluations. And one of their focus areas was 9-- chemistry;at the plant.
10 I think the plant had kind of prided itself on ,
, 111 having some-excellent chemistry,.and yet they found fault
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12 with perhaps some of the stability of chemical additives 13- in systems. For example, that instead of drawing nice scelg #W flat-lines, we were r:yi..g-some increases and decreases.
14 15 And, you know, they said that we should -- they 16 felt we should establish higher standards to maintain a-17 tighter control over those chemical parameters, and that 18 from time to time some of:the parameters were outside of 19 the specifications, and that we should try to minimize 120' that period-of time. I-think we fully understood that.
' 21 MR. DOCKERY: LLet me ask a question before we go 22 on. :Were any of the issues raised byf INPO of any concern 23: -to the-NRCrat'that time?~
24 - THE WITNESS: No. No. I don't think -- INPO
'25 has a charge'to report to the NRC anytning they thought 4
e o , . . , , w a -, - ,-y v -
-< -- - v -
I 13 1 were safety issues, also. No, nothing of that nature.
2 MR. DOCKERY: Go on.
3 THE WITNESS: So we -- I think we were a little 4 sensitized to making sure we were doing our best to keep 5 things within specification.
6 Sometime in the past, whether it was '93 or '94, 7 I don't recall when,-there was a change in the minimum 8 amount of dissolved hydrogen in our reactor coolant system 9 being recommended for the B & W plants. I think it 10- changed from 15 cc's per kg to 25 cc's per kg.
11 We were trying to put some emphasis on 12 maintaining the newer higner level in the system and we 13 were having quite a bit of discussion between Engineering 14 - ,The initial charge was actually given to the Chemistry 15_ Department. They're basically the ones that do the 16 monitoring of the dissolved hydrogen.
17 So we were talking mostly with the Chemistry 18 Department on, you know, what's it going to take to get 19 the cc's per kg up in the system. And they were working 20 with the Operations Department. And I think both were 21 working with the Engineering Departmenc to determine 22 whether or-not there were any constraints from the 23 engineering side that would keep us from being able to 24 accomplish that.
25 MR. RAPP: What --
. 14 1 THE WITNESS: We felt, by the way, this 25 cc's 2 per kg was a pretty important function to protect the 3 reactor cooling system and the fuel. So we' felt it was --
4 you know, it was an important issue. sg43 Co,s per bg 5 MR. Ri?P: What was the 25-kg'c pcr cc based on?
6 THE WITNESS: cc's per kg.
7 MR. RAPP: Excuse me. Excuse me.
8 THE WITNESS: It was -- I don't know if I could 9 tell you precisely the technical basis. It was provided 10 to us by B & W as a result of trying to provide better 11 protection for the reactor fuel.
12 B & W fuel had had -- in history had had some --
13 had a record of not performing as well as the boiling 14 water reactor fuel. PWR's in general seemed to have had 15 more leakers in their fuel than the boiling wster reactors 16 have.
17 And B & W -- All the B & W users had been working 18 closely with Babcock and Wilcox company to try to improve 19 on fuel performance. And this was an outcome of that.
20 MR. DOCKERY: How many cc's per kilogram -- I 21 may ask this awkwardly. I apologize. But what was the 22 target prior to that time?
23 THE WITNESS: I_believe it was 15 cc's per kg.
24 So it had changed from 15 to 25.
25 MR. DOCKERY: And the 25 was based on a
x .
15 1 recommendation by INPO or by who?
2 THE WITNESS: Babcock and Wilcox. To all the 3 Babcock and Wilcox owners.
4 MR. DOCKERY: So that was -- became something of 5 an industry-wide -- Or those -
6 THE WITNESS: For those plants --
7 MR. DOCKERY: Right.
8 THE WITNESS: -- for that vendor.
9 MR. VORSE: So when they made the recommendation 10 to go from 15 cc's to 25 cc's, was a new Curve 8 11 developed?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes.
13 MR. VORSE: The Curve 8 that was violated on 14 September Sch, was this that Curve 8?
15 THE WITNESS: To my knowledge, yes.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Curt, go ahead if you have 17 anything.
18 MR. RAPP: When you said that earlier that you 19 were aware of -- Did you say earlier that you were aware 20 of some operator concerns with the Curve 8?
21 THE WITNESS: Well, yeah. Oh, let me retrace 22 some stepa here. You asked me about organization.
23 Because there's been a change here and, you know, there's
-24 been some changes already.
25 At that time System Engineering -- In September
.= . , . . _ _ . - .
16 1 c1 1994 System Engineering reported to me. I think that 2 was true from sonetime late in 1993.
3 We had -- Maybe even earlier than that. We had 4 split System Engineering off from Design Engineering and
-5 made the System engineers the owners of their systems.
6 And that System Engineering organization reported to me.
7 So I was aware of the fact that System engineers 8 were trying to respond to the concerns of Chemistry and 9 respond to the concerns of Operation in a fashion in which 10 we could meet the requirements in -- all the requirements, 11 as well as the 25 cc's per kg.
12 MR. DOCKERY: how intimately involved in that?
13 THE WITNESS: Was I?
14 MR. DOCKERY: Yes.
15 THE WITNESS: That's several shades ef gray, I 16 guess, to drawing that. First of all, I had some really 17 good managers. You know, I'm in my 18th -- going on 18th 18 year with the Crystal River Plant. Bruce Hickle's worked 19 for me for 15 plus years, somewhere in that neighborhood.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah. If you would please 21 identify the managers you're referring to --
22 THE WITNESS: Bruce Hickle --
23 MR. DOCKERY: -- in your position.
24 THE WITNESS: Bruce Hickle was a plant manager 25 at that point in time, i
. . . _ - . . __ . . . - _ . _ _ _ . . _ _ _ . . _ . ~ . . . _ _ _ . . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ . . _ _. - _ . . ~ .
r 17 1 'MR. DOCKERY:- -Richt.
f 2 THE WITNESS: . And Bruce has - workec tor me in 3 other areas. Lone function, - by- the way, in which Bruce
~4 worked before he became' plant manager in part of his c -
15 development' was quality programs director, which-is an 6- area where Bruce has had-to raise safety concerns and be 7 very vocal about audit responses. So I have nothing but -i
-8 the utmost respect and trust for Bruce's . safety .
9 consciousness and willingness to bring issues to me.
10- Jerry Car.? bell was the-System Engineering manager 11 .at that time. Jerry is also a guy I brought f. rom fossil 12 operations when I was there. I spent three years away 13 from the nuclear plant during my career with Florida Power 4
14 Corporation. And I brought Jerry Campbell in because he 15 was rne of the highest integrity individuals I had seen in 16 the other organizations I had worked with and thought he'd' 17 be an asset to ours.
18 And in-fact, I think if you were to look at the 19 record of how System Engineering has performed from its 20 . inception to date, vou'd find that it's a very strong
-21 organization. So I had a lot of trust and respect for 22 Jerry Campbell and for his people.
23- And, you know, largely, if you look at our plant
- 24. record, this was a plant that did not perform well +a-
- 2 5 .-
t^d=y's pcrforming. At least plant performance, material AM
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1 condition-wise-is -- I'think is going.to prove to_be among 2: the-leaders.
-3 MR. DOCKERY:- Were there other managers that --
4 THE WITNESS: .Those_were -- Well, I-guess, you 5 know,'we shoul.11 include - 'There's Sarah Johnson, who was 6 a chemistry and radiation-protection manager at the time.
7 So chemistry reported-in through Sarah.
8- So Sarah would give us periodic feedback on how
-9 they wereLdoing in terms of getting the 25 cc's per kg 10 established.
11 Jerry and his system engineers. Mostly I was ion M 12 working communicative-wise with Bruce Hickle, Jerry 13 Campbell,-and Sarah Johnson.
14- MR. DOCKERY: Were-you familiar with which of 15 the shift operators -- who in1 operations was most closely-
-16 identified with raising this' issue? Did that level of 17 knowledge reach up to you?
18- THE WITNESS: No. I can't say that it-did. I 19-- mean, there were some names that came up. _But none that I L would say hadLstood out prior to this time.
21- -MR.-DOCKERY: How about the --
22- -THE-WITNESS: Now, let me clarify your question.
- 23 You're asking about before the evolution or after the 24 evolution?
25: MR.'DOCKERY: Before.
19 1 THE WITNESS: Before. None in specific stood 2 out.
3 MR. DOCKERY: Were you -- If you didn't know the 4 personalities involved, were you -- how aware were you of 5 the nature of the -- their concern?
6 THE WITNESS: By what was repeated back to me 7 from the various different managers and talking about it.
8 Basically, what we would do is we have a morning meeting.
9 I think at that time it occurred about 10:00 every day, 10 which was called the plan of the day meeting, or POD 11 meeting for short. I attend those meetings. As a matter meda3 466 12 of fact, that's where I was this,-- We had moved the time 13 to 8:30, so I was there this morning before coming here.
14 We would talk about these issues in the plan of 15 the day. So I would get feedback. Occasionally we might 16 have an engineer come in or an operator come in who had a 17 concern and they would raise their concern at that time.
18 And my recollection, I think we had System 19 engineers come in, you know, sometime prior to September 20 and give us updates. There were some -- There were some 21 memos written, to my recollection, from some of the System and atu 22 engineers to shifters n Chemistry on their proposed 23 resolution of the issue.
24 MR. DOCKERY: Would you' characterize for us what i
25 your understanding of Operation's concern-vas.
4 20-1- THE. WITNESS: I'm going to have to color _that a.
2: 'little-bit =with my belief. Now, first_of all, let me go-3- back a littic bit in history.
4: I-was also'the-operations manager here at the 5 time. After being licensed I was the Operations manager,
- 6 so allsthe Operations shifts-reported to me, as well'as 7 the-Maintenance Department, and Chemistry'and. Radiation 8 Protection. So all threelof those.
19 Actually, it was structured a lot like the plant 10 manager's job is structured today. At that. time we had an 11 Operations superintendent. -And pretty much a lot of the
-12 shifts and shift personnel were staffed similarly back i 13 then, which was in 1985, to the way they were staffed in 14 1994. ~ A lot of the same personalities were still there.
15 So I knew a number'of the people and how they respond to 16 various different issues.
17 I guess in -- Primarily in what I was hearing at 18 that ti.ie prior to the test I would say it was a lot of 119 differences of opinion between different shifts. Some 20 seemed to be okay with the issue. Some seemed not to be 21- okay with-the issue. Which, I guess, you know, if you 22 -want to talk about a bias, I guess you've had a bias of 23L that, some of those differences of opinion, which is why 24- we brought scheduling into such a big -- big player into 25 -the current operation of-the station, is to try-to iron
21 1 out some of those differences in opinions between the 2 various different shifts.
3 -MR. DOCKERY: Well, now, are these differences 4 in opinions or are they personality-differences?
5 THE WITNESS: Well, they can be both.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
7 THE WITNESS: But let me give you some examples.
8 One of the reasons the plant didn't operate very well is 9 as somebody, you know, trying to manage issues, manage 10 jobs to get accomplished, we would leave work at the end 11 of the working day with an expectation'of -- You know, I'm 12- kind of a visual person, so I think in pictures. But I 13 had kind of expectations lodged in my head about where the 34 plant was going to be in the morning when I came in.
15 And when I'd come back in, sometimes it wasn't ,
16 there. You know, those weren't realized. And then we'd 17 begin to probe and ask questions, and we'd find out that, 18 you know, one shift didn't feel comfortable doing 19 something that the other shift felt comfortable doing.
20 And so these differences were >ind of, you know, keeping 21 things from being accomplished.
22 Now, they weren't safety differences. They were 23 philoscphical-type differences between the operating
, 24 crews. So we basically established scheduling and we put 25 & shift manager on the crew who didn't rotate with these
22 1 crews. Okay. He rotates on a different rotation. To
.<WG 2 sort of bring -- For example, one crew might come in sn r Mn 3 say, the midnight shiftj and they won't have the benefit of 4 the discussion that occurred on the day shift or the swing 5 shift before that. So they would begin to ask more 6 questions. Okay. And then, you know, we'd have to 7 reinvent the wheel, basically, and explain to that crew 8 what was going on.
9 By virtue of having a shift manager on shift, he 10 was able to carry over crew transitions, a lot of that 11 discussion, presentation, analysis if it was relevant.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Boldt, when did you become 13 aware that Curve 8 was an operating curve -- or was a 14 design basis curve?
15 THE WITNESS: I guess about the time everybody 16 else did, which was subsequent to the test. I don't think 17 I'd ever questioned -- I hadn't established in my mind 18 whether it was one or the other, you know, or one to the 19 exclusion of the other. To me, it didn't really make any 20 difference. A curve labeled unacceptable, to me, means 21 unacceptable.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. I have read and been 23 informed that that curve was -- which was found to be a 24 design basis curve, was only considered valil through 25 refueling number eight. Is that correct?
4
23 -
1 THE WITNESS - -I don't know. I don't have an 2 answer for you.
3 MR. DOCKERY: Do you have any recollection of 4 what refueling stage you would have been in in September 5 of 1994?
6 THE WITNESS: Well, let's see. Yeah. In-1994 7 we would have done 9R and we would have completed it on 8 June the 6th, 9 MR. RAPP: So you would have been in cycle ten?
10 THE WITNESS: We would have entered cycle ten, 11 correct.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Curt, why don't you go ahead with 13 any technical questions you have.
14 MR. RAPP: All right. Exactly what do you 4
15 remember as the concerns the operators had relating to 16 Curve 8?
17 THE WITNESS: Difficulty establishin~g the 18 pressure in the tank that was required. We rarely talked 19 to them on the topic of pressure. Most of our 20 communication dealt with the dissolved hydrogen.
21 You knov, to what action was going on behind the 22 scenes was between Chemistry and Engineering and 23 Operations to determine the techniques by which they could 24 establish that.
25 And most of the feedback dealt with difficulties
24 1 in establishing the makeup tank overpressure which 2 resulted in this dissolved hydrogen.
3 MR. RAPP: Was the decision to go to this 25 4 cc's per kg, was that driven by Chemistry saying, we've h 5 got too much dissolved oxygen, or was that being driven by 6 B & W saying, we're not going to award our fuel unless you 7 follow our chemistry spec, or --
! 8 THE WITNESS: I don't think anything was placed 9 in that strong of a communication. I think we all 10 understood that we wanted to have fewer fuel defects in 11 the system. We wantad to prolong the life of the reactor i
12 cooling system, that the dissolved hydrogen is very 13 important to doing that.
14 I guess what -- You know, maybe part of our 15 communication with the other B & W owners, that they did 16 not seem to be having problems establishing the 25 cc's ble sel M8 17 per kg, that made us somewhat Anas- as to why is it more 18 difficult for us to establish it than for otliers.
19 MR. RAPP: Were you having problems with 20 dissolved oxygen? Was there any chemistry report saying 21 that this was getting to be a -- like a real control
[ 22 problem?
23 THE WITNESS: No. But we had more fuel defects 24 than -- I mean, we were in parameters for, you know, 25 dissolved oxygen, as well. But we had more fuel defects
25 1 than we wanted to have, as the other B & W units had.
2 MR. RAPP: But you're -- Okay. What you're 3 saying then is that that was not uncommon to B & W 4 facilities, not just particularly at Crystal River.
5 THE WITNESS: To have a fair number of fuel 6 defects? .
7 MR= RAPP: Fuel detects.
8 THE WITNESS: Yeah. It was not uncommon. We 0 were not out of the norm.
10 MR. RAPP: Okay. Were you awate that the 11 operators were -- h.d some concern or had some question as 12 to whether or not Curve 8 was entirely representative of 13 the plant response?
14 THE WITNESS: Yes. The question -- I think we 15 had revised the curve once in an ef fort to resolve the 16 concerns. So we were working on a revision to the curve.
17 And I believe it had been revised once prior to the 18 September 5th case. Tnat's my recollection. I 19 MR. RA?P: Were you aware of the outcome of 20 SP-630, the safety injection full-flow test, that it was 21 ran durit.g the refueling operation?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes. But I'm not sure if I was 23 aware of that-prior'to or after September the 5th.
. 24 MR. RAPP: When the operators raised this 25 concern, Engineering sent back several letters to them 4
7
t 26 i 1 saying, look, we've reviewed this thing and it's safe and ;
2 conservative and it's an appropriate operating curve, go {
3 ahead and use it. .
4 Were you told or were-you involved in those 5 discussions at all as to what Engineering had reviewed or 6 had used to make that determination?
7 MR. WEINDERG: Are you talking about the 8 September 2nd memo?
9 MR. RAPP: Well, I'm talking about several memos 10 that were generated between .'.ike July 19th and September 11 2nd.
12 THE WITNESS: There was a revision of the curve, l 13 like I said, in my recollection. And I don't recall 14 having a detailed discussion of all the elements that went 15 into that curve.
16 I mean, off the top of my head I probably could 17 have come up with a couple of them. I don't think any of 18 us realized it was as complex an issue as it was until 19 after the -- the whole situation occurred.
20 Now, I mean, certainly on our -- on all of our 21 minds was vapor -- potential to vapor bind the makeup 22 pumpa.
23 MR. RAPP: Uh-huh. ,
24 THE WITNESS: And that was the chief concern
- 25 that'we had. And then, of course, the operating limits on
.c,,- .w.-# y- ,#.,..~ s #,4 --,4 ,.-w.v.-,w-.,m w- , . . ,.m., e m, ,,----.....c..,.i,v. ,-..n.49,.. r4,,,__n_. . , _ . . . - _ - - - _ , - - - - o w ., e- c-- w
27 1 the makeup tank, the high level limit and the low level 2 limit, in terms of remaining between those. And then the 3 pressure curve that follows that.
4 But all my -- My basic understanding of that
-S curve, and I guess that, you know, I was depending more on 6 training of some time ago in terms of operator training, 7 was to prevent vapor binding.
8 Subsequent to the evolution is when we learned 9 more about things like Appendix R and the control of the 10 pressure controller and the other concerns.
11 MR. RAPP Subsequent to the --
12 THE WITNESS: Subsequent to the evolution.
13 MR. RAPP: -- evolution.
14 THE WITNESS: Now, with respect to Appendix R.
15 Prior to the evolution I remember there was some 16 discussion about whether it could be placed in automatic 17 or not in automatic, or how to -- or whether the set point 18 was correct on that pressure crntroller.
19 And my recollection was that we continued to 20 operate it in manual. We basically made manual hydrogen 21- additions.
22 MR. RAPP: When this letter came out on 23 September 2nd that said, basically -- correct me if I'm
.24 wrang in this-characterization, but basically said, if you 25 don't provide us with any additional data, we're going to i
(
. - - . - . - - . - ~ = _ _ . - _ . _ - - - - . . - _ . _ _ _ - _ - . . - . - . - . - . _ . _ . . . -
28 -
1 close this issue, we consider this to be a -- t 2 MR, WEINBERG: Do you want him to look at it? P 3 MR RAPP: Fine. Sure. If you have it 4 available, yeah. I will give you a few minutes to review 5 that.
6 THE WITNESS: (Sxamines document.)
7 MR. WEINBERG: I figure he's going to ask some 8 more questions about it.
9 MR. RAPP: Yeah. Sure.
10 MR. WEINBERG. That's why I wanted him to look 11 at it.
12 MR. RAPP: We just didn't have it with us.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Let's go off the record.
14 (Whereupon, a brief recess was taken at 9:37 15 a.m., after which the proceedings resume at 9: 41 a.m. as 16 follows:)
17 MR DOCKERY: Let's go back on the record.
^
18 And, Mr. Bols;, I'd like to remind you that you 19 continue to be under oath here.
20 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
21 MR. DOCKERY: And acknowledge that, please.
22 THE WITNESS: Yes.
23 MR. DOCKERY: While we were off the record you I
24 had an opportunity to review a document. And would you 25 characterize that document for us for the re'ord, i
i i
- . _ . --. . - .- - . - - . . _ - . - - . . . . _ _ _ - ~ . - - .---
29 !
1 THE WITNESS: Well --
2 MR. DOCKERY: Just identify it for the record.
3 THE W7TNESS: Yeah. It's a Florida Power i 4 Corporation interoffice memorandum written to the plant ,
5 manager, Bruce Hickle, by the Sys tem Engineer for the l 6 makeup system at the time, which vas Pat Hinman, and co- I 7 signed by his supervisor, Jerry Campbell, the manager of 8 System Engineering and Plant Technical Support.
9 MR. DOCKERY: And were you familiar --
10 THE WITNESS: And it's dated September the 2nd.
11 MR DOCKFRY: Were you familiar with that 12- document prior to reading it here today?
13 THE WITNESS: Yes. But I think it should be 14 noted that I wasn't copied on this particular memo. I 15 became aware of it at -- I'm aware of the content of that 16 memo. When I became hware of it,, I don't recall. But it 17 was probably sometime substantially after September th:
18 2nd, since I wasn't directly copied on it.
19 MR. IU4PP : Okay. When the operators received 20 this memorandum, they were basically told, unless you have 21 more information, Engineering is going to close this 22 issue. All right. That's --
23 THE WITNESS: I don't know that to be a fa;t.
24 MR. RAPP: That's what they've told us. And 25 that's-also been collaborated by other people. Not
.----.,.-.,o.. -
1 30 1 necessarily the operators themselves, but other 2 individuals.
3 The point here is is when they were given that 4 memorandum that said, provide additional data or we're 5 going to close it, how is that being chara-terized to the 6 operators? Is that -- Is that being said to go ahead and 7 take some more data down here and give it to us, or what's 8 the intent of telling the operators that?
9 I mean, I don't --
10 THE WITNESS: I can only speculate --
12 THE WITNESS: -- since I didn't make that 13 communication. If you want me to give an opinion or --
14 MR. RAPP: Sure.
15 THE WITNESS: We probably used that vernacular 16 or terms in terms of other communications, You know, 7 17 think that's not so much encouragement to go take more 18 data as it is to say, you know -- First of all, let me 19 characterize the memo. Maybe that would nake my answer 20 more complete.
21 In scanning through this memo I would say, first 22 of all, it wasn't confrontational. It appeared to be in 23 an honest attempt to communicate on several different do AM Gou % f dd4 24 options and select, options.
j 25 And I think what -- basically, what they were
31 l
1 soliciting was feedback, you know, do you -- how do you j 2 feel about the various different options, if we don't hear !
3 anything, you know, from you in the future, I think we're l 4 going to close on this option and let it stand. I 5 1.think it was encouraging communication more 6 than it was encouraging somebody to do anything else.
7 MR. P. APP: When the -- The statement in here ic 8 that the curve will be re-evaluated and this action will 9 be completed by September 30th
.10 Phat is -- Are you aware of what that re-11 evaluation would havs entailed? Was that just an 12 engineering look at the calculatien --
13 THE WITNESS: Again, I'm speculating. I think 14 the best people to ask would be the engineers. But I
- would -- I suspect that they'll be evaluated based on 16 which one of these options that they're formul' ..g in the 17 letter. You know, they planned to take it ana . hey're 18 looking for feedback.
19 If we change the option, we may have to do a 20 different re-analysis than we would have to do if we went 21 down the line we're talking about.
22 MR. WEINBERG: Just so it's clear, I mean, you 23 will have an opportunity, I think, to interview Pat Hinman 24 and he can speak directly to that question.
25 MR. RAPP: Okay. Okay. A little different area l
L
. - - _ . .. .~. . _ - _ . - _ - - -. - .-- -
32 1 here. Wer? you present in some training that was given to 2 all the Operations staff concerning, I guess, basically 3 what's been termed empowerment?
4 THE WITNESS: Oh, absolutely.
5 MR. RAPP: Were you present? And what were 6 the --
7 THE WITNESS: Not certain. It was a five-day 8 course, If yeu're referring -- Let me characterize what :
9 believe you're referring to.
10 In 1993 we conducted a five-day training course ,
11 called leadership empowerment for managers and supervisory 12 employees.
13 In 1994 we followed that up with a two-day 14 training course for all other employees of all categories 15 called strategic partners.
16 We had some involvement, you know, certainly not 17 the entire five days with evar" " lass in 1993, nor the
'A 1A44 18 entire two days in every class ce
-- Matter & of fact, it 19
@ ' 4@
was -- our typical habit in the tirst course was to come 20 in and spend several hours during that period of time. We 21 might come in two or three of the days out of the five-day 22 course and talk on particular topics.
23 MR. RAPP: During the course of that training 24 what was the -- Well, what was the purpose of that 25 training? Let's just get to that.
. -l l
l l
33 1 THE WITNESS: Now, which course are we talking 2 about?
3 MR. RAPP: The empowerment and leadership 4 training.
S THE WITNESS: The leadership training, the five- ;
I 6 day course in 1993, what was the purpose of that?
7 MR. RAPP: Uh-huh.
8 THE WITNESS: The purpose of that was basically 9 to help us facilitate a more -- a change in culture that 10 was going to open up communication, allow some decision 11 making to be made at the lower levels'of the organization. i 12 MR. RAPP: Were there Jome expectations that 13 were put out --
14 THE WITNESS: Yes.
15 MR. RAPP: -- during these tra.ning -- What were 16 those expectations?
17 THE WITNESS: Well, they were labeled Pat's and 18 Gary's expectations. Ar$ there are copies of those around 19- here somewhere, knd Pat -- Pat Beard.
20 MR. RAPP: Uh-huh.
21 THE WITNESS: When I say Pat and Gary, it was 22 Pat Beard and Gary Boldt's expectations of managers and 23- supervisors.
24 MR. - RAPP: Do you remember what those
- 25. expectations were?
. \
34 l
1 THE WITNESS: Oh, there were five pages of l 2 expectations. They dealt with a wheel. There's a wheel 3 called empowerment, which is-five stages. And we 4 characterize expectations under each of those five stages.
5 MR. RAPP: Well, like broad terms. Can you ;
6 characterize it in broad terms?
7 THE WITNESS: Well, I'll -- Let me characterize 8 the five stages of the wheel.
9 MR. RAPP: Okay.
10 THE WITNESS: It starts with challenging the l 11 process. And my memory's probably going to fail me here.
12 But -- And I'll get -- Maybe I'll get them out of order.
13 That might be better.
14 It started with challenging the process, 15 inspiring a shared vision, encouraging the heart, which 16 means celebrating and recognition. And I don't recall the 17 others off the top of my head.
18 MR. RAPP: Okay. During that training was there 19 -- or this empowerment process, was there expectations put 4
20 out such as, den't accept the status quo, don't take no 21 for an answer --
22 THE WITNESS: That's what --
23 MR. RAPP: -- pursue --
24 THE WITNESE No, no, no. Not quite in that 25 fashion. I think -- First of all, let's not trust my
_ _ _ . ~ . -_
~ _, _- _ .--.
l 35 1 memcry. Let's take a look at what -- You know, we can 2 either break and take a look at the expectations, if I can 3 find a copy readily, if you want to do that in somo !
4 detail. But I'm not going to trust my memory to recall 5 the precise words.
6 MR. WEINBERG: But you were saying -- When he 7 said, don't accept no for an answer, you got a response to 8 that.
9 THE WITNPSS: Yeah. I certainly wouldn't say 10= that was the characterization, that don't accept no for an 11 answer.
12 I mean, people were encouraged to question 13 things. I taean, people weren't -- It wasn't a challenge, ,
14 you know, to people to basically keep questioning things 15 in, you know, ad infinitum.
16 Let me characterize. I think maybe now is 17 probably a good time, since we're on the topic of 18 leadership empowerment, let me go on the record with a 19 couple of other observations of leadership empowerment.
20 Both of the individuals that were involved in the 21 September 5th evolution attended leadership empowerment, 22 to my recollection.
23 MR. DOCKERY: Would you identify those 24 individuals --
25 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
I
. . , _ , . .. y . . s -- .
. , _ . _ .m._ ,_. - . _ _ , ,
36 1 MR. DOCKERY: -- for the record.
2 THE WITNESS: Let me say that one I definitely 3 recall. The other I suspect because he was a supervisor.
4 Whether I happened to attend his course or not.
S Dave Fields, who was a shift supervisor on 6 September the 5th, attended leadership empowerment l 7 training, j 8 I recall something else we were talking about.
9 You know, we would answer questions. We go over 10 expectations and then they would ask uo questions, you 11 know, to probe those things so that we could kind of flesh 12 out, you know, what the expectations were, so there were 13 some pretty clear understandings.
14 We alao opened the floor up for questions so that 15 the leaders and supervisors and managers had a chance to 16 ask management various questions about any topic, whether 17 it had to do with empowern.ent or not.
18 One of those issues was the existence of the 19 shift manager, which was a new position. I'm being a 20 little fuzzy on precisely when it was established. I 21 suspect late 1992.
22 And it was established -- I'm giving-you quite a 23 bit of history here. But it was estab31shed in response 24 to three reactor trips that occurred in the October- ,
25 November time frame of 1991. All three of those reactor
4 .
I 37 1 trips occurred or. the midnight shifts of two different
-tr.ps .dfh>
2 crews. Two out of the three sh4444 occurred on Dave 3 Fields' crew at midnight, on the midnight shift.
4 In response to those three evolutions at that 5 time -- I don't even recall -- For some reason I wasn't on 6 site. I had been assigned some temporary 6uty or was in a 7 class, or something. But because I wasn't at the site and 8 had been involved in the issues, my boss, Pat Beard, asked 9 me to come back and chair an investigation of the three 10 reactor trips, one of which, the last of which, which was 11 not on Dave Fields' shift --
We had a -- We went to --
12 ultimately went to an enforcement action with the Nuclear 13 Regulatory Commissinn 7n it.
14 So we investigated all three of these reactor 15 trips. I chaired it. And my position at that time was 16 vice president, nuclear production Bruce F.
. was a 17 member of that task force. At that time he was the 18 director of quality programs, not the plant manager. And 19 several other people were involved in this.
20 We looked at the various different reactor trips 21 and came up with a number of recommendations. And there 22 is a report written on those reactor trips. One of the 23 recommendations was to consider establishing this shift 24 manager. The reason for that was we felt that -- and I'm 25 going to use a term I'll call cockpit isolation occurred, i
38 1 that there was not a lot of communication outside the crew 2 on the problems that ultimately led to the reactor trips.
3 And on the third one, which was the more 4 significant of the three, something very fortunate, I 4
5 think a very important player, we happened to have an 6 extra -- we had an extra shift supervisor on shift. That 7 shif t supervisor came into the control room during the
)
8 sequence of that reactor trip and contributed 9 significantly to us adequately resolving that trip in the j 10 long term. I i
We felt that that invcivement from an extra level 11 12 of SRO on shift was something that was important to us to l
13 overcome this cockpit isolation. And so we established I 14 it. It tcok us nearly a year to do that, to get, you 15 know, sufficient people without hurting the organization 16 in some other area, We didn't hire from the outside. We 17 did it all inside.
18 So it was about October 1992 when we had this 19 position staffed seven days a week, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day. And 20 the purpose was, again, to provide the shift supervisor 21 some recourse. The intent was the shift supervisor would 22 pay attention to the panel and what was happening in the 23 controi center.
24 If he had a technical question, he'd call the 25 shift manager or -- to get assistance, the shift manager
39 1 would call the system manager, get him back to the plant, 2 get engineers back to the plant, call Bruce Hickle or 3 myself, whatever assistance was required to either answer 4 technical questions or what have you.
5 Now, during the course -- This is a long story 6 leading up to my answer regarding the empowerment 7 training.
8 During that course, and I don't know if it was 9 witnessed or not, we had been using as an example of why 10 we had shift managers, we had been referring back to the 11 three reactor trips because it .4ad stated in the report 12 that that was the reason we came up with it.
13 And I typically used what's called the NI-8 14 reactor trip, which we had -- NI-8 was a failed power 15 range indicator. Dave Fields was shutting down the plant 16 in response to that so we could repair NI-8 and found 17 himself 17 an LCO, limiting condition for operation 18 window, whereby he had to reset reactor trip set points.
19 And he had questioned, you know, why -- how was 20 the plant going to respond, We hadn't-shut down the plant 21 in that kind of configuration before. And when he 22 bypassed the next power range instrument in order to be 23 able to reset its reactor trip set point one channel at a 24 time, he wasn't sure how the plant was going to respond.
l awd C M f3 25 And he did use -- There were two 42ME technicians 1
40 r
1 that typically were on shift around the clock, but no 2 shift manager at that -- in 1991.
3 So Dave used his on-site resources. But he 4 didn't call anybody off-site to assist in that effort. As 5 a result -- And he didn't do a contingency plan. As a
.6 result -- And if he'd done a contingency plan, I think he 7 would have known -- I knew and I had -- my license had 8 lapsed at that point in time -- that if I'm wrong with 9 this decision, NI-8 supplies feed water and feed water is 10 going to go away. And I would have put feed water in hand 11 as a contingency action before I bypassed that first 12 ins t rument . Had that been done, the reactor never would 13 have tripped.
14 But they didn't do that and the reactor tripped 15 as a result of it.
16 So I had been usir.g this example in empowerment 17 training, without names. You know, I had mentioned thht, 18 you know, this was an example where the personnel on site 19 were used, but in the future our expectation is that, you 20 know, we're providing a shift manager, that's what he's 21 there for, is to get the-System engineer, who .aows that 22 system better than anybedy, out to discuss the issue.
23 Dave came up to me -- Well, he either rose his 24 hand sitting at the table -- I remember very vividly we 25- were sitting in a U-shaped format. Pat Beard and myself
1 41 ,
l' 1 were sitting in two chairs. He either -- In the center of 2 all that.
3 He either raised his hand then or he came up to 4 me during a break, and he said, you know, I'm getting a 1
S little bit sensitive to the NI-8 reactor trip being used ,
6 as an example as to why we have shift managers at the 7 plant today, 8 And, you know, there wasn't a whole lot more 9 comment, you know. And I said, well, you know, Dave, it's 10 always good to illustrate an issue with a real result.
11 There's certainly no intent to pick on your crew or any of 12 those three. But it's -- You know, it's one of the trips 13 that I think lends itself well to this example.
14 And that was about the end of it. But I walked 15 away with an implication that if anybody ought to 16 understand why we had shift managers and a need to use 17 them, it ought to be Dave Fields from that particular 18 communication, and was very sensitive to the fact that we 19 had them and to the fact that I commonly used that 20 illustration in meetings as one of the reasons why.
21 MR. RAPP: So the purpose of the shift manager 21 then was to oversee the shift supervisor's operation of 23 the plant?
24 THE WITNESS: Well, I wouldn't characterize it
- 25. quite like that. There has -- You know, it is a cultural
.= , -. - ,-. .
42 1 change. The shift supervisor had lots of authority, you 2 know, in the plant, and still does today.
3 It was not an intent -- And certainly there is 4 things, because by virtue of the license of the shift 5 supervisor, has full authority for making final decisions. !
6 What the intent was was on a normal -- on a non-7 emergency situation the purpose of the shift manager is to 8 facilitate accomplishing schedules through communicating 9 with the various different shifts of shift supervisors <
10 that come on during the course -- Shift supervisors 11 typically, by the way, rotate on eight-hour shifts. And 12 the shift managers typically rotate or. 12-hour shifts.
13 So there's overlap. So they were there to 14 facilitate that communication. If we were having problems 15 with communication, somebody didn't think 4+ was the right w&h3 d es C&c A#e-pr) .etc3 16 thing to do, then he,was to call other people out so we 17 could have the right discussions and communicate properly 18 to overcome whatever the issue was. That's his normal 19 duty, basically as a schedule facilitator and coordinator.
20 The shift supervisor doesn't work for him. He 21 doesn't work for the shif t supervisor. It's not a 22 reporting relationship. The shift manager actually works 23 for the Plant Manager and the shift supervisor works for 24 the Operations manager.
25 MR. WEINBERG: Could I interrupt for one second.
43 1 Earlier in his interview Gary Boldt indicated that one of 2 his major concerns was the shift manager. He's now sort 3 of explained it, why the shift manager wasn't consulted.
4 But that's what he meant when he said that eerlier, was 5 that why this crew, particularly Mr. Fields' crew, in 6 light of his history, had not consulted the shift manager 7 on that evening of the evolution.
8 THE WITNESS: Like I said, some of the shifters 9 felt like it was something of an erosion. Even though 10 there was no reporting responsibility, they didn't write 11 their performance evaluations and were not their 12 supervisors, they were facilitators.
13 During an emergency type situation their primary 14 purpose was at that time -- later on we also made them 15 shift technical advisors, these shift managers became 16 shift technical advisors -- but their primary purpose was 17 to provide assistance to the shift supervisor in 18 responding to the emergency condition at the plant by 19 calling out additional resources.
20 Today some of the vernacular we like to -- I like 21 to conceive of this thing as a 747 in the air. And -- But 22 that 747 doesn't have a cockpit crew of four or five, 23 whatever the proper crew is for a 747
- pWhm #3 24 And basically in 'anton if you took a photograph pbub 44 25 in m,ontam, you'd see, in our case, 710 other employees in
i i
44 )
1 that cockpit with those people. That's our expectation 44 #*D l 2 that we're in the cockpit with you, shift supervisor and 3 crew, and that if you'll communicate with us, we're going 4 to respond in the plant to do whatever is necessary to get 5 a safe response.
6 MR. RAPP: When would a shift supervisor consult 7 with the shift manager, under what conditions?
8 THE WITNESS: Just about anything. I mean, the 9 guy's there with him seven days a week, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day. I 10 mean, my expectations would be that they'd be as 21 knowledgeable about what's going on in that control center 12 as they are, particularly if it's something unusual.
13 I mean, any routine operation the shift 14 supervisor's got to use his judgment. I mean, there's 15 just no way we can get past that, about what he passes on 16 to the shift manager or not.
17 And I mean, giving you some full disclosure, 18 yeah, because of this erosion they saw of their authority 19 when this position was initially established, there were 20 probably some respect issues going back and forth between 21 certain shift managers and certain shift supervisors, 22 although my understanding of the shift manager on duty the 23 night of September the 5th and the 4th, subsequently, as 24 we found out --
25 MR. WEINBERG: You need to identify who he was.
.. . . . .__ _ _ _ _ ~ -- -. - .. -
l 1
45 1 THE WITNESS: Was Bill Marshall. Bill Marshall, 2 if anybody ought to have been respected amongst the shift 3 supervisors it should have been Bill Marshall. Let me 4 explain that, 5 Part of the respect that operators, I always say 6 -- And that includes myself. Okay, I was an SRO. But I 7 was never J shift supervisor. And I trained. I passed my 8 NRC exams and went through basically everything that an 9 operator has to, but I was never a shd f t supervisor.
10 Many of the shift managers also were senior 11 reactor operator licensed, but they, tco, had never stood 12 the duty as shift supervisor. So that created a little 13 bit of a questioning of, you know, their capability as 14 operators.
8/4 15 One difference. Bill Marshall wasomat -- was for 16 years a shift supervisor. Grew up as a -- Started at the 17 lowest level of plant operator, went all the way up 18 througn shif, supervisor. Prior to being shift manager he 19 was the Operations superintendent. So every single one of 20 the shift supervisors reported to Bill Marshall . And 21 about every report I've ever gotten about how they felt 22 about Bill Marshall was that every operator respected 23 Bill. They liked him. They respected him.
24 And here's the -- That guy, he happens to be the 25 shift manager on this shift when these evolutions are
i 46 1 performed, and he wasn't communicated to, to my 2 understanding. I -- You know, I don't understand. ,
3 I feel in my own viewpoint that we probably had 4 one of the most sensitized crews as the one we had. We 5 had one of the most respected shift managers on shift. He 6 certainly was there to help that crew, and why he wasn't 7 communicated to, the only answer I got, and I -- believe 8 me, I asked the question, the only answers that I got --
9 And I didn't -- I'll also need to clarify that. I did not 10 ask Dave Fields or a member of the crew why they didn't.
11 I asked the management who asked those people.
12 MR. DC KERY: What was the answer?
13 THE WITNESS: The answer was that we didn't have C
14 time, it was spontaneous. And quite frankly, I took that 15 to be a pretty off-the-cuff poor answer. That was in 16 response to the September 5th event. ,
17 When I became aware of the September 4th event, 18 my response was similar to a newspaper article you might 19 read in the paper where the victim was accidentally 20 stabbed five times, you know. You did the evolution 21 twice. It's not spontaneous and it's not -- You know, 22 there was plenty of time. If it was not an emergency 23 situation, it should have been communicated.
24 MR. VORSE: Well, let me ask you this, please, 25 Mr. Boldt.. If Fields and Weiss in that midnight shift of
47 i September 5th had gone to the shift manager --
2 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
3 MR VORSE -- and said, hay, this is what we're 4 going to do, what typically --
4 5 THE WITNESS: Well, I think it would depend on 6 how they communicated. I've thought -- I've done a lot of 7 thinking about this issue. Let me give you an example 8 about how people might respond differently and how 9 management might respond differently, depending upon what 10 was communicated. I'm going to use an analogy, because I 11 was thinking about chis, you know, some weeks, months ago, 12 what have you.
13 I happened to be driving past Tire Kingdom and I
. i 14 was thinking about the worker that might come into the !
15 manager of the Tire Kingdom and he might say that, you and Afb l 16 know, I've just discovered a way de tools in which we're 17 going to be able to remove tiros and replace tires on 18 these vehicles in 50 percent of the time that we're 19 currently being given.
20 Having been responded to or having that much 21 information, I suspect that that manager might reward that 22 individual and thank him for his questioning attitude and 23 innovative techniques, and et cetera, et cetera.
24 Some months later he might discover that the 25 technique was experimented or found out by that particular
48 l 1 employee because he had been stealing tires off the cars 2 throughout the community for the last six months, and I (V.e sspervlws.) #16 3 suspect his, response might be quite a bit different.
4 So what's communicated makes a hell of a lot of '
i 5 difference in terms of what the response is. l 6 What would I have expected Bill Marshall's 7 response to be? I think the best guy to ask is probably 8 Bill Marshall. My expectation of Bill Marshall would b3ve 9 been that he would have -- I know Bill would have looked 10 at it in detail. That's the way I feel about Bill. And 11 I've worked with him for a lot of years. He would have 12 sat down and looked at the various different procedures, 13 in effect, determined whether in his viewpoint those 14 procedures governed what they did or did not do.
15 And I don't think that's so much of a material 16 issue here, by the way. The issue -- Primarily what was 17 done in that shift was a bleed and feed operation.
18 They're bleeding and feeding the plant today. You know, 19 any day they're capable of doing that using those 20 particular procedures.
21 So doing a bleed and feed operation is within the 22 control of the shift supervisor. And we may argue for --
23 I don't -- 1ersonally, I would have written different 24 procedures because the intent of the procedure was to 25 perform a bleed and feed. It was not to verify operating l
L
l l
l 49 1 curves. And as soon as the intent by which those 2 procedural steps were used, another procedure should have 50.54 48 5D.5'4 M B 3 been written, and more importantly, a 6459, 10 CFR EO99 j 4 safety evaluation should have been performed to see that 5 those steps satisfied any unresolved safety questions that 6 might heve arisen.
I 7 Also, the -- Now, where I get into this, the 8 chief problem, again, is not the use of a particular OP 9 for the steps that they performed, but the fact that they 10 went into the. unacceptable range of that curve.
11 Now, would they have communicated their intent to 12 do that to Bill Marshall? I don't know. You Know, they 13 might have said, hey, we're going to do a bleed and feed adjw6f* A's 14 operation, we're going to apply pressure. And Bill 15 Marshall might assume that, well, we're going to do that 16 inside the operating curves. And, you know, if he took it 17 like I would have taken it, the intent issue, and gone 20.59 M O 18 through the 9059 evaluation, he could only answer for 19 himself.
20 But whtther they used that procedure or did a sv.59 4 21 special procedure, did a separate 6059 evaluation, the 22 problem was they got an annunciator alarm. There is a 23 procedure up there that tells them what to do. And you 24 don't wait 35 minutes to respond to an annunciator alarm.
25 I don't care what procedure you have. I don't -- You
'50 1 know, you have enough training and background as an SRO to 2 know that you believe your instruments and your reactor 3 annunciators.
4 MR. RAPP: What's the AI-500 requirement for 5 responding to expected alarms?
6 THE WITNESS: Respond. Use the AR to respond to 7 the expected alarms. There is a procedure written for 8 each alarm panel that has procedurel steps in it.
9 MR. RA'/P Doesn't AI-500 specifically state 10 that if the alarm is expected as a result of the 11 evolution, you don't need to take action?
12 THE WITNESS: Yes, it does state that.
13 MR. RAPP: Okay.
14 THE WITNESS: As a matter of fact. But what's e y e b ^ a d d (b 15 your expected iatent? Again, is an alarm expcYt -- When I 16 turn off a pump, I expect to get the motor stopped alarm.
17 okay. There's no safety gaestion in that case.
18 When I turn off two makeup -- When I turn off all 19 the makeup pumps, I'll get an alarm for each one. That's 20 a problem. Okay. Got the same level alarms. Again, 21 judgment has to enter here as to what's -- You know, you 22 expect an alarm to occur as a natural recourse of what you 23 do and not -- no safety question would be involved.
24 I don't expect an alarm and I certainly would not mf dia 25 -- If I got low pressure in the tank, because 4 intention
l l
51 !
ml o MMyr- !
1 -- You know, I could have -- If I turn off the makeupg j 4d mWil y A (cuda r y dr u * '
2 pumps, I'll get a low feed water alarm x Is that an g l 3 expected alarm I'm not going to respond to? Hell, no. I i a
4 mean, that's not the way you operate that power plant.
5 And that was never the intent of what AI-500 said.
6 Basically, AI-500 was used in that statement as 7 primarily used by any operator in that control center, to 8 do a controlled shutdown of the unit and regular alarms 9 that-come in, you know, those that are expected he's not 10 expected to correct. That's part of the evolution that 11 he's doing in a normal shutdown. It's expected. It's 12 normal.
13 It's not expected in non-normal, because I did 14 something that's -- that I never should have done to the 15 plant in the first place.
16 MR. RAPP: Well, the night of September 4th and 17 Sth, prior to Curve 8 being identified as a design basis 18 limit --
19 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
20 MR. RAPP -- wouldn't it have been reasonable 21 to have the operator look at that and say, oh, that's just 22 an expected alarm as part of the feed and bleed or part of 23 the --
24 THE WITNESS: Not to me.
25 MR. RAPP: --
the hydrogen add?
52 1 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not. Absolutely not. -
2 MR. RAPP: So then it would have been 3 anacceptacle to --
4 THE WITNESS: If it says unacceptable and you 5 don't know why, if there -- you know, I don't care if you 6 call it -- call it what you will, and I forget the term 7 you're using, if you're using -- you're not using design 8 basis, you're using operator -- What was the term that you 9 used?
10 MR. RAPP: Operating limit.
11 THE WITNESS: Operating limit. Operating limit, 12 the word limit sure means something to me. I mean, I can 13 look it up in a dictionary, but limit means limit. It c
14 doesn't mean optional.
15 MR. RAPP: So --
16 THE WITNESS: Whether it's the design basis or 17 operating limit, or whatever the basis for the curve is.
18 I guess -- You know, I guess what's troubled me to some 19 extent is people said, well, they didn't know it was a 20 design basis. I'm not sure they knew it was an operating 21 limit. I'm not sure anybody's asked them that question.
I2 I'm not sure they knew what the-basis for that curve was.
23- And I can answer frankly that I'm not sure I knew 24 the full basis of that particular curve, but I know one 25 thing ao an operator,.you don't go into an unacceptable
r 53 6
1 region or cross the limit or cross the design basis and 2 .o t respond.
3 MR. DOCKERY: You raised an important issue that i
4 may be the crux of the matter here. And this does have to .
h 5 do with your expectations.
5 Is it fair to say you were the senior manager on 7 site during that period of time?
l i
9 THE WITNESS: Yes.
)-
9 MR. DOCKERY: You mentioned some history 10 regarding Mr. Fields. Did you ha e any reason to question k 11 his competence or his judgment or ability prior to 12 September 1994? ,
13 THE WI1 NESS: Not --
No. I wouldn't say his 14 competence. We watch him -- We watched him closely in the .
E
- 15 simulator several timer.. I mean, his crew. We watched 16 the 'rew perform. I don't think we felt that anything was 17 unsafe.
18 I think -- The only nagging feeling we had is 19 that whether he communicated well or not. I think, you 20 know, there's 2: Jays been kind of a feeling that he's more '
21 confrontational, maybe, than some others and may not a
22 communicate as well.
23 Mk. DOCKERY: Mr. Boldt, would you characterize 24 the issue of Curve 8 --
25 THE WITNESS: Let me go back and -- There have
54 1 been a few other issues that have turned up with Dave.
2 And I don't recall whether they were before or after. But 3 certainly the 1991 reactor trips were.
4 But I remember getting a call from Al Gibson from 5 Region II regarding Dave's signing off on work requests, 6 some post-maintenance tests rs being completed which were 7 not yet performed. We probed that issue. It wasn't an 8 issue of -- you know, of trying to intentionally falsify a 9 document. There's been some -- There's been a practice in 10 some cases where we're coming up out of refueling outage 11 and there's a regularly scheduled surveillance that's k ,g-12 going to perform the post-maintenance tesc.
'" There have been cases where the work request has 13 ,
I 14 been closed out because it's a scheduled evolution, and 15 then that test is subsequently performed ar.d married with 16 the package.
17 But that was the issue when we looked at it.
18 Now, that was not a good practice, as a rule, not a good 19 standard. There was no reason to have to close out the tu work orders. So that issue had come up regarding Dave's 21 judgment and it was kind of in the back of our minds.
22 MR. DOC::ERY : But characterize in general your 23 feeling about Mr. Fields. Was he competent? Was he --
24 MR. WEINBERG: You're talking about prior to --
25 MR. DOCKERY: Prior to September the 5th.
t 55 1 THE WITNESS: Yes. Dave was competent. Yes.
2 He was -- You will find that, you know, we had -- we had 3 had some discussions,-verbal only, about competence. We 4 were always talking about the competencies of the crews 5 and the crew mix.
6- As a result of the 1991 reactor trips,.for 7 example, we made it a requirement for the Operations 8 manager to review those crew mixes. So they looked at the 9 va; !ous dif ferent personality mixed, *he capability 10 strengths and weaknesses of individuals in balancing those 11 crews. So we were constantly talking about people, 12 One of the things that we had recognized -- And 13 by 1994 the plant had come a long way in terms of 14 improvements. You know, and certainly the shift 15 supervisors and the shift operators had a lot to do with 16 that, also.
17 Yet. I think wc had some feelings and we had had 18 some discussions that if we're going to continue to 19 improve this plant and become, you know, among the top ten 20 plants, then we're -- to make some of those changes 'e're 21 probably going to have to make.,some further changes in 22 persornel.
23 And there were various -- Not because they were 24 incompetent, but because they had been on shift for long 25 periods of time and they were going to be difficult to
56 1 make cultural changes, that we had talked about several 2 individuals and had some objectives, you know, looking at 3 getting some of those paople off shift.
4 And one of them had been removed, I think, prior 5 to the September time frame, a gentleman named [ M S dlllb which provided some evidence that that evolution was -
7 occurring, you know, over a period of time because we 8 couldn't -- neither desired, nor saw the need to nake some 9 type of a rapid change-out which could actually cause a 10 decrease in performance.
11 MR. WEINBERG: And was Fields going to be one of 12 them?
13 THE WITNESS: And Fields was one of those, yeah.
14 MR. DOCKERY: This entire issue regarding the 15 Curve Number 8, and generally everything we're discussing 16 here today, do you consider it a potential safety issue?
17 Did it have safer 7 ramifications?
18 THE WITNESS: Going into the unacceptable area 19 of the curve, you bet. It had potential -- Now, the only 20 -- There's a slight difference here, though, on what they 21 did and how the plant actually operates, you know, in the 22 emergency situation.
23 What they did was they performed an evolution 24 where they basically drew down the makeup pump with the shut sf/5 25 BWST suction -t-r+p - -
't f t's /// '
57 1 MR. DOCKERY: I'm really not asking about the 2 event itself. I'm talking about the issue of the 3 questioning --
4 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
5 MR. DOCKERY: -- of Curve 8, its accuracy?
6 THE WITNESS: Yeah. It was a safety issue.
7 'MR. DOCKERY: Thank you.
8- THE WITNESS: Okay.
9 MR. DOCKERY: As a former operator, senior lo operator, licensed yourself, what would have been your 11 expectation of management had you raised the issue 12 regarding Curve 8 as Mr. Fields or those under his control 13 did?
14 THE NITNESS: Okay. Let me understand. Had 15 management have raised the issue?
16 MR. DOCKERY: No, no.
17 THE WITNESS: If the --
18 MR. DOCKERY: What -- Based on yotr sckground 19 as a licensed senior reactor operator, I'm asking you to 20 put yourself in the position of the operators at that --
21 prior to September the 4th.
22 TH*d WITNESS: Sure.
23- MR. DOCKERY: What would have been your 24 expectation as an operator had you raised the issue of the ,
1 25 accuracy, questionable ccuracy of Curve 8? j l
2 l
. k 58 1 THE WITNESS: I'm still not sure I'm clear. Let 2 me try to rephrase it --
3 MR. DOCKERY: Sure.
4 THE WITNESS: -- and we'll go from there.
$ If I had -- If I was an operator on shift or the 6 shift supervisor, for example, and I had this concern and 7 had communicated it, what did -- Well, first of all --
- 8 MR. DOCKERY: Correct.
S THE WITNESS: My first expectation would be for 10 myself, okay, and that is to communicate it properly. I 11 mean, I would have to make sure that I communicated it to 12 the proper level of managemeit. You know, I would work 13 through my chain of command.
14 If I was the shift supervisor, the first person I 15 would have communicated my concern to would have been my 16 boss, which would have been the Operations Manager.
17 Depending upon the response that I got and my level of 18 concern remaining from that, I would have taken it the 19 next level up to his boss, to the Plant Manager.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Now --
21 THE WITNERS: And then how would I expect them 22 to respond to it. Is that your question?
23 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah. Actually, you can probably 24 answer two questions here, both. What would your 25 expectation be as an operator in their position, and also
)
I
_. ~ . - _ _ _ . _ _ _ _
l 59 1 as_the senior manager of this plant?
2 THE WITNESS: Or.ce raised to my level or the 3 plant manager's level, I.would ex,nect that we would get 4- personally involved in the issue and establish -- The 5 right thing to do would have been to establish the 6 appropriate tests to verify the data.
7 MR. DOCKERY: In retrospect, what would you say 8 today about the accuracy or the validity of that curve, 9 Curve 8, as it existed in September of 1994?
10 THE WITNESS: It was in error. And my 11 understanding, it was in error to the degree of 1.7 pounds 12 per square inch.
13 MR. DOCKERY: What were the potential 14 consequences of continuing to operate the plant using that 15 curve?
16 THE WITNESS: Well, as long as they stayed 17 inside the curve boundary by a specific margin, there 18 would have been none at that point.
19 Hau they operated up to the curve and on the 20 alarm, there is the potential that in certain scenarios to 21 vapor bind two of the makeup pumps. And because the --
22 You know, the safety analysis for the plant's based on 23 single failure,-you'd have to assume that the third make-24 up pump failed and you wouldn't have high pressure 25 injection.
i 60 1 MR. DOCKERY: Who specifically did you expect to 2 respond to the concerns raised by Operations regarding ,
3 Curve 8?
4 THE KITNESS: Well, I would expect their 5 immediate management to be the first to respond to it, to 6 carry the issue. Most importantly, because they're -- you 7 know, they're a primary representative of their people, I 8 would have expected the operation -- Well, I guess maybe 9 there's one other important thing to say here.
10 The Operations manager at that time, Greg Halnon, 11 was formerly the System Engineering manager. He had that 12 job before Operations manager. So Greg, you know, knew 13 the System engineers. He knew how System Engineering 14 works. He should have been able to communicate very well 15 betweer them.
16 I guess I didn't get a lot of feedback that Greg 17 was dissatisfied, you know, with the communication that he 18 had gotten.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Referring again to the 20 September 2, 1994, memorandum --
21 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
22 MR. DOCKERY: -- to Mr. Hickle, it would appear 23 to me, my reading of this is that Engineering had 24 considered the issue, and to quote, " Engineering believes 25 this curve is accurate and reasonably conservative to
61 1 protect the high pressure injection pumps from hydrogen 2 gas intrusion in the worst case large break LOCA."
3 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Comment on the accuracy of that 3 statement.
6 THE WITNESS: Well, I'd have to say it was 7 7 inaccurate, in hindsight.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. That being the case, I 9 think it's pretty well established that the calculations 10 that were used -- I think the licensee event report 11 concluded that the calculations regarding -- that were 12 used to calculate Curve 8 were -- the e?sumptions, let's 13 say, were incorrect. Is that a fair -- You may be able to 14 say that better than I am.
15 THE WITNESS: Well, the assumptions were 16 incorrect. They were all -- All of the issues were not 17 included.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. The -- Which made Curve 8 19 non-conservative?
20 THE '"'TNESS: Yes.
21 MR. DOCKERY: We mentioned this' earlier. You 22 stated that you weren't aware of it, but I believe it has
-23 been established that that curve was considered valid only 24 through refueling cycle number eight.
25 You're not familiar with that --
l l
l
l .
62 3
1 THE WITNESS: You've made that statement. I 2 don't --
3 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Also, the curve was 4 determined sc.bsequent to the events of September 4th and 5 5th to be a design basis curve.
6 Do you know that to be the case?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes. But I didn't know it to be P 8 the case prior 1o. I mean, as far as -- As f.; as I was 9 concerned, ic was design basis curve or whatever, it 10 didn't matter to me.
11 MR. DOCKERY: I think it's pretty well 12 established that nobody knew that it was a dasign basis.
13 It took everybody by surprise.
14 THE WITNESS: I don't know that it's been as 15 well established, though, that people didn't know the 16 basis. I'm more convinced personally that I'm not sure 17 people knew the basis. They didn't know it was an 18 operating limit or not, you know, not an operating limit 19 or not a design basis. They didn't know one or the other.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Is that s ome thir _~ , as a 21 senior manager of this plant, you would have expected 22 Engineering to discover in the course of dealing with 23 issues --
24 THE WITNESS: I would expect Engineering to 25 know.
63 1 MR. DOCKERY: What happened?
2 THE WITNESS: You mean why -- Did they know it 3 was or not? I don't know if they knew it was or not. I 4 really don't.
S MR. DOCKERY: Well, I see at least three issues 6 here. Dave Fields has testified to us that he had an 7 engineering background, had actually been an engineer in 8 the employ of this company.
9 THE WITNESS: But Dave was never a design 10 engineer employee.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Well --
12 THE WITNESS: Dave is a welding engineer by 13 degree.
14 MR. DOCKERY: He -- His testimony was, though, 15 that he was able to -- he L:cually pulled the 16 calculations.
17 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
18 MR. DOCKERY: And based on those calculations, 19 he felt that the assumptions were incorrect.
20 Hould you have expected Engineering to go back to 21 the calculations for Curve B in their --
22 THE WITNESS: Certainly. Yes.
23 MR. DOCKERY: Would you have expected them to do 24 that prior to generating the September 2nd --
25 THE WITNESS: Yes.
1
[
64 1 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know if that was done?
2 THE WITNFSS: I don't know.
3 MR. DOCKERY: But that would have been your 4 expectation?
5 THE WITNESS: Yes.
6 MR. DOCKERY: After --
7 MR. WEINBERG: Could I ask one question?
8 MR. DOCKERY: Sure.
9 MR. WEIFBERG: Would the expectations be for 10 Design Engineering to do that or for Systems Engineering 11 to do that?
12 THE WITNESS: Well, System Engineering is 13 responsible for the overall performance. But Design -- It 14 would have had to have coordinated with Design to be able 15 to would that.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Who was responsible? Give me 17 names?
18 THE WITNESS: Who is? The System engineer was 19 responsible. That was Pat Hinman at that time.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. But you say that al so 21 Design should have been notified or should have been 22 coordinated with?
23 THE WITNESS: Well, yeah. The way the system 24 manager functions is like a plant manager. There are 25 things in maintenance, operations, engineering design, and
l 65 ,
1 other areas that he had to coordinate.
2 But he's still responsible. He's the one that's 3 accountable, the single point who is accountable for the 4 accuracy, operation, maintenance, and every other aspect 5 of his system like the plant manager is for the entire 6 plant.
7 MR. DOCKERY: Do you conclude from your reading 8 of the September 2, 1994, memo -- and refer to it again if 9 you need to -- that this is pretty much a statement that 10 we've looked into this issue and we find there is not an 11 issue?
12 THE WI1HESS: Yeah. I would conclude that, you 13 know, and I did conclude from the subsequent reading of 14 that memo that they had looked at the issues -- I mean, I 15 drew the implication they had looked at all the issues, 16 including the operators, given them due attention, could 17 find no validity to that, and basically wrote this down in 18 that fashion to explain that.
19 MR. DOCKERY: And I believe you testified that 20 as we know today this -- the assertions in this memorandum 21 are incorrect.
22 THE NITNESS: Yes.
23 MR. DOCKERY: Is it fair to say that something 24 broke dosn here?
25 THE WITNESS: The communication broke down,
66 1 certainly.
2 -MR. DOCKERY: -Well, actually, I think I look at 3 it as more of a communication ~. The communication is quite 4 clear.
5 THE WITNESS: No, no. I don't mean that 6 communication. I mean, communication with the 7 interphasing departments required to make that particular 8 statement.
9 MR. RAPP: How important or how much emphasta 10 was put on achieving this 25 cc's per kg spec?
11 THE WITNESS: I'm not sure how to gauge that.
12 You know, not -- I don't think more than, really, any 13 other aspect. I mean, it was a chemistry -- It was an 14 important chemistry issue. We recognized that something 15 was -- there wasn't going to be any type of immediate 16 failure. It certainly wasn't treated like a -- entering a 17 limiting condition fer operation, or something like that, 18 MR. RAPP: Was it ever characterized or implied 19 that if this 25 cc's per kg was not met, that individuals 20 responsible would pay for it?
21 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not. I mean, have I 22 ever communicated such a-message or heard such a message?
23 Absolutely not. I think there is enough_of a history in 24 terms of the way it was responded to and achieved that it 25: took guite a period of time to achieve that. You know, it
67 1 wasn: an edict to do it now, or, you know, or something ,
2 those lines.
3 MR. VORSE: Let me ask it another way. Did 4 anyone from Engineering, Chemistry, or Operations come to 5 you and say, look, this is wrong, this 25 cc's per kg is 6 making Curve 8 inaccurate or it's unsafe or we're very 7 concerned about this, and your response would be, I don't 8 care, I want 25 cc's? -
9 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not People came to me 10 and said that the 25 cc's for kg was difficult, is 11 difficult to achieve.
12 MR. RAPP: Who?
13 THE WITNESS: Nobody ever -- I don't even 14 remember.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Well, what discipline were those 16 people?
17 THE WITNESS: I don't recall. The forum in 4 18 which this would have been communicated would have been ,
P 19 like in a 10:00 o' clock meeting, ,
20 Several times it had came up that, you know, we 21 can achieve it, but it's difficult to achieve, you know, r
l 22 that we have to go through some extraordinary steps in l
23 order to be able to achieve it.
24 But I hadn't -- It hadn't been communicated to me
-25 that --
anything about the operating curve, you-know,
68 1 except in this particular forum. There was a question 2 about the operating curve. The folks had looked into it.
3 I think that there had been one revision made to the curve 4 prior to that.
5 So the impliention was that because there had 6 been a change in the curve -- again, I'm going on 7 recollection -- had been made, the implication was that we a considered the issues and we had, you know, resolved it 9 and made some changes.
10 MR. WEINBERG: When you say difficult, you mean 11 sort of a pain in the rear end difficult?
12 THE WITNESS: Yaah. Yeah.
13 MR. VORSE: Would you consider the curve as it 14 existed on September 5th as -- under certain conditions as 15 unsafe?
16 In other words, if you had -- it was unsafe 17 compared to what it is now if you had certain -- like a 18 loss of conlant accident and burned out the pumps, and 19 things of this nature?
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah. The curve -- If you 21 operated in certain areas of that particular curve or 22 close to the limit curve, even in the acceptable area,
- 23. under the analysis it would have been unsafe, You had the 24 potential to loss all the makeup pumps.
25 MR. WEINBERG: If there had been a LOCA.
e - , . , , , . , . - -
69 1 THE WITNESS: If there had been a loss of 2 coolant accident. But in normal operation was it unsafe?
3 No.
4 MR. RAPP: What was the direction for the shifts 5 to operate, with what hydrogen pressure?
6 THE WITNESS: Above 25 cc's per kg to meet tre 7 minimum limit.
9 MR. RAPP: And where would that put them on 9 Curve 8?
10 THE WITNESS: It would put them up in a triangle 11 up near the top of the curve, 12 MR. RAPP: On tile curve or just near the top of 13 it, or was it a 1.7 triangle --
14 THE WITNESS: There's a triangular area. They 15 just needed to stay inside that area. Not operate on the 16 curve. I mean, that doesn't leave you much room. I don't 17 think too many people would operate on the curve, even if 18 instructed to do so. You can't maintain an operation 19 there in any one point. You know, operation moves around.
20 You stay inside the area.
21- MR. RAPP: Was that triangular area defined on 22 Curve 8?
23 THE WITNESS: I don't know if it was defined at 24 that point in. time or not. I don't recall.
25 MR. RAPP: So there was --
l l
a 1 THE WITNESS: I don't believe it was.- As a-I
- 2 matter of fact, the'first time.I became' aware of the l
3- triangular area, IEthink,-was in response to this event.
4 --You know, that. kind offshowed us ---You know, that was --
5 Actually, that's the first time anybocy -- I believe -
6 _anybody_ever: communicated to_me_that there actually was a 7 triangle in which they were trying to control things, ;
8 MR. RAPP: So then the operators, unless it was' 9 communicated _through some sort of like staading order or 10 something of this nature, they would have no other clue or 11 no other indicator as to what this triangular area would 12 have ceen prior to the re-analysis of Curve 8?
13 .THE WITNESS: Yeah. I-don't know. I don't knoe 14 what was established between them and the Engineering or 15 the Operations manager with respect to that area.
16 MR. VORSE: Do you think that the firing of Mr.
17 Fields and Mr. Weiss.in this instance was appropriate?
11 8 THE WITNESS: Absolutely.
19 MR. VORSE: Why?
20 THE WITNESS: Well,1it wasn't -- You'll notice 2
21- -that our_ response to_the incident was not te the first 22- incident. .We-were aware of the September-the 5th
~23 -incident,7youLknow, sometime late in 1994, a response'over 24 a period of; time.
- 2 5 -' :First of.all', it was not-immediately removed from
71 1 shift.- There was -- It was questioned. Matter of fact, 2 sometime -- sometime in December of 1994 I signed a letter 3 to the NRC to continue Dave Fields' license. Every -- I 4 don't remember what the period is, every six years.
5 It just so happens that after the Sepre;ber 4th, 6 that particular letter came due for Dave Fields.
7 MR. STENGER: You mean the 5th?
THE WITNESS: And -- Pardon?
9 MR. STENGER: I believe you said September 4th.
10 Did you mean the 5th?
11 THE WITNESS: September 5th. Yeah. The only 12 knowledge we had at that time of any events was September 13 the 5th.
0 14 So when I saw that letter, actually, at that 15 point in time having -- the September 5th event having 16 occurred, 1 quectioned why I should renew Dave Fields' 17 license.
18 And I remember having some lengthy discussion 19 with the plant manager, Bruce Hickle, on thaw particular 20 issue. I was very inclined just not to sign the letter 21 and let his license expire.
22 I think -- My general feeling is that I think 23 Bruce kind of felt the same way. He went and talked with 24 Greg Halnon a little bit about it. Later on he came back 25- and said, listen, there are some things that Dave can do
o 72 1- for us using his experience and capabilities in a licensed 2 capacity, not on shift.
3 It had been our intent to take Cave off shift.
4 It had becn prior to that. As I mentioned earlier, there 5 are a number of shifters we were looking at in terms of 6 making some cultural improvements in the unit to 7 eventually move off shift into other different rolec.
8 So, you know, now seemed like a good time. And I 9 was convinced by the plant manager that we'll renew his 10 license and keep him in some other duties.
11 So over the period of time from December and 12 sometime after December we took Dave off shift. . was 13 never fired at that point. I think we felt that there l 14 were a number of issues of judgment, the September -- or i
15 the October-November 1991 reactor trips, this particular 16 evolution, the phone call we had from Al Gibson about the 17 work requests, and others that, you know, judgment wasn't 18 good. And so we needed to get him -- We needed to get him 19 out of shift work. So we were moving in that direction.
20 It wasn't until we became aware -- And again, 21 like I said, one of the things that really troubled me was 22 this issue of cockpit isolation and not informing the 23 shitt manager.
24 Then as time went on and the September 4th 25 evolution became apparent, then it became the issue of
73 1 a -- you know, like that analogy I used earlier, where I 2 accidentally stabbed the victim five times, you know, that 3 became an integrity issue. And that was it. I mean, 4 that's the issue that caused this to happen.
5 MR. WEINBERG: Integrity in the sense of?
6 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't think he was ,
7 straight front-up with us in terms of why they didn't use 8 the shift manager.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Boldt --
10 THE WITNESS: Particularly the shift manager 11 that was on shift at that time.
12 MR. WEINBERG: And disclosing the incident, the 13 evolution to him first?
14 THE WITNESS: In disclosing the September 5th 15 evolution before it was done. But in disclosing the 16 September 4th evolution.
17 There was more information that sort of came out.
18 It was -- You know, my recollection was that the data 19 taken on the September 4th didn't necessarily support 20 their conclusion well, Hence, the decision to run the 21 September 5th event.
22 That being the case also tended to imply an issue 23 of integrity in that, well, gee, we're only going to share 24 with management and others the data that supports the 25 decision we want, not any data that might cloud the issue.
1 74 1 MR. DOCKERY: Discuss, if you will, any 2 potential integrity ramifications of the September 2, 3 -1994, memorandum that seems to imply, we've looked at this 4 issue and we find no problem? ,'
5 THE WITNESS: I don't --
6 MR. DOCKERY: Do you see an integrity issue 7 there?
8 THE WITNESS: No, I don't. Integrity, to me, 9 means some form of less than honesty and less -- You know, 10 in the case of that, I mean -- And again, those are only 11 words on a piece of paper. I haven't really pursued that 12 issue in-depth, an integrity issue with those engineers.
13 But I can -- I guess I can understand, being an 14 engineer -- And I have worked on design issues. I worked 1- for Bectel Power Corporation designing nuclear power 16 plants -- where on a very complex issue it's difficult for 17 any single individual or even two individuals to ensure 18 that there's not an error being made. I mean, you know, 19 it happens.
20 I mean, we wouldn't have had a Challenger 21 disaster, you know, if that potential isn't there.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Was this issue that complex?
23- THE WITNESS: The issue here was very complex.
24 It had so many different limitations and ramifications. I 25 mean, if it wasn't that complex, we wouldn't still be, you
75 1_ know, dealing with the closure of this issue.
2 (Whereupon, the proceedings resume on tapa number' 3 -two as follows:)
4 THE WITNESS: Do you want me to -- May I 5 continue on that particular --
6 MR. DOCKERY: Yes.
7 THE WITNESS: -- particular answer?
8 Also, I've never had -- You know, I don't have an 9 isst'e of any prior reason to question those particular 10 individuals in terms of their integrity or intent to try 11 to do a good job or anything.
12 MR. DOCKERY: And that's not a.t all what I was 13 implying. But if I were to convey to my management that I 14 had looked at an issue --
15 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
16 MR. DOCKERY: -- I think there would be an 17 expectation that I would do whatever was necessary to find 18 out about that issue, and then to generate something 19 saying, we have no problem here.
20 And clearly there was a problem.
21 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
22 MR. DOCKERY: It was a fairly apparent problem.
23 And some fairly obvious --
24 THE WITNESS: Well, that's the conclusion.
25 You're asking -- I can't verify that-it was a fairly
, . . ~ . - - . ... - .- . . . . . . - . - - . . . - -
4
. 1,:
i 761 1 2 apparent _-- -
. Okay;-
~
2 MR. DOCKERY:
.3 lTHE WITNESS: I mean, I don't -- +
'4 -MR. DOCKERY: What abou".-the fact that it was a ;
5. design' basis?-
6- THE-WITNESS:- I-won'tLnecessarily accept that on 7' face value.
8 MR. DOCKERY: - Fair _enough.
9 THE-WITNESS: The fact that it was a design- .
10 basis should have been known.
- 11 But again, I'in not - - .I mean, you know, other people are using that as the crux or the reason as to why-
~
12 13 it was'okay to do something with the curve or not. I take 14 that as an invalid response. Whether it was design basis
- 15. or not, I don't believe the authority existed to do that.
4 16 MR. DOCKERY: - I guess I'm not looking at it that
. 17 way.
- 18. THE WITNESS: Yeah.
l
'19 MR. DOOKERY: I'm considering it was a matter of
- 20 suf fi ciency in J rosponding.
2 11 THE1 WITNESS: Sure. .Sure.
22- MR. DOCKERY: And--- i 23 IMR.:WEINBERG': Sufficiency of_?
- 24. MR.-DOCKERY: - The-: sufficiency of looking into
^
L25 the-issue,: defining _theLissue,. determining everything_that y' g-P' gy - mur - - me=pr'+ w y g- m
- g ,y--l- - -
c 77 r - 1: .could be -- reasonably be known about it.
2' MR. WEINBERG: But that's not integrity. That's 3 competence,-I guess.
4 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir. Right.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Precisely-my point. But if it's 6 not a matter --
- 7. THE WITNESS: Yeah. I know -- I've never taken 8 it to be an issue of integrity. But competence, yes.
9 Completeness, thoroughness, yes.
10 There was another System engineer that came on 11 board. Matter of fact, it was that engineer that happened 12 .o report the issue to Bruce Hickle. The second engineer c
13 was Phil Saltsman. And Phil had also looked in these 14 issues.
15 So, you know, I've got kind of two people tending 16 to corroborat- . this is a -- you know, the issue is 17 . resolved. Phil was upset by the fact that the shift 18 didn't inform him they were going-to take data so that he
-19 could attend and be involved in the evolution, which I 20 think would be a reasonable expectation, certainly would 21 be one of mine.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Well, clearly you anticipated what
- 23 -I was leading up to. And that is a matter of if not 24L integrity, a matter of competence.
25' THE WITNESS: (Nods affirmatively.)
E. s *
~ - . . _ - _ _ - . . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ - _ _ _ , _ . . _ . _ . . _ . _ _
4 i
b i
t 78
^
'l MR. DOCKERY: Has this --
~2 THE WITNESS: But again, with foreknowledge, here-I've-got two; individuals, both System engineers
~3 4 having: made - some changeover in _ responsibility: for _this -
5 -- systemi basically telling me that, you know, they've 6 looked at-the issue and.they-feel that it's resolved.
=7_=They're telling me through their management.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Given the fact of this' memorandum, 9 that being the September 2nd, 1994, memorandum, what would 10 Lyou have expected Mr. Fields and the members of his shift 11: to do to --
THE WITNESS: Given this --
-- 13 EMR . DOCKERY: -- given this memorandum.
14 MR. WEINBERG: You mean after having received it 15 on or about September 2nd --
16- MR. DOCKERY: Yes.
17 MR. WEINBERG: -- what should they have done?
18 MR. DOCKERY: What his expectations would have 19 been.
20 THE WITNESS: My expectation, if they-didn't
- 21 . agree with that_particular memorandum --
22- MR. DOCKERY: Yes.
- 23 .THE= WITNESS:- -- was that they would have
~ 24: communicatedithat appropriately. And they could have communicated that to_the_-- Again, they could have-
- n l
l l
-l
-79 1 communicated that to the Operations manager, and then he 2- could have taken it back to them.
3 But if that -- If they didn't get that response 4 before they would do anything, then they should have 5 raised it to higher levels of management. They should 6 have come to the plant manager, and if they didn't-like 7 that response, then they should have come to me with the 8 issue.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Curt, do you have any more?
10 MR. RAPP: When -- Or how did you find out about 11 the September 4th event?
12 THE WITNESS: And by the way, if they didn't 13 like my response, they should have taken it to Pat Beard, 14 MR. RAPP: How did you find out about the 15 September 4th event or evolution?
16 THE WITNESS: Bruce Hickle, again. And I --
17 What I remember Bruce telling me is that he wss speaking 18 with Dave Fields -- I understand that this came about in 19 several ways. I'm telling you I think there was a 20 communication that t- . red. I've heard several different 21 things subsequent to this as to how the communicativn came.
22 about. ,
- 23 But the way I first heard of it was that Bruce
( 24 Hickle, the plant manager, came to me and said that he had 25 been talking to Dave Fields. And I think we were getting l
l l
s - -
i 80 1 ready to go to the enforcement meeting regarding the 2 September.5th event at that time.
'3 And-Dave had said something in that, did you know 4 that we had conducted this same evolution on September the 5 4th. And Bruce was not aware of that.
6 Juld that Dave had also -- Bruce related that Dave 7 had also used t?4e words, well, I guess that now I've told 8 you, I'm going to have to tell the NRC. And Bruce called 9 the NRC at that point and told them that he did it. He 10 knew Bruce was going to tell the NRC.
11 MR. RAPP: So, I mean, there was -- Dave Fields 12 volunteered this information or Brur-13 THE WITNESS: ify -- Thdr.>a the way it was 14 communicated to me, yes.
15 MR. RAPP: So then the issue of trying to -- the 16 integrity issue, I guess, of not being fully forthright on 17 this somewhat pales in this light because now he's being 18 forthright and coming forward with the September 4th 19 event.
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Eleven months later, yeah.
-21 I don't think it's very forthright to answer questions 22 back in -- you know, in September or October or December 23 of 1994 as to why you didn't use the shift manager, you 24 know, to get responses like it was a spontaneous --
25 MR. RAPP- Weli, let's -- Lec's get back to the
4 81 1 shift manager issue. When does the shift manager have to 2 be consulted?
3 THE WITNESS: Well, let me -- I didn't finish 4 the answer that I -- Like I said, I-- this was the way I 4
b became aware of it.
6 MR. RAPP: Okay.
7 THE WITNESS: I understood that subsequent to 8 that that there was an employee concern by an employee at 9 that time, subsequently who has identified himself, that 10 he was aware that there was this September 4th --
MR. RAPP:
11 Who was that?
-){,
12 THE WITNESS: { q @ And I think that
(
13 that was reported to Bruce Hickle or somebody else. And I 14 became aware of it. I don t remember from what avenue.
15 So there was that. There were two avenues right 16 around the same time that wire occurring.
17 MR. RAPP: Going back to the shift manager 18 aspect then, when does a shift manager have to be 19 consulted?
20 THE WITNESS: Any type of unusual situation 21 that's occurring on the shift he should be consulted. He 22 should -- Routine information. He should be involved in 23 routine evolutions on the plant.
24 He should -- You know, issues involving schedule 25 he has to be involved. Anything that's unusual that would i
l a s# l Jg gs.' l 7C-/if-
82 1 require the approval of the plant manager. He's the plant 2 manager's representative on site.
3 And I would say that, you know, certainly if 4 you're about to do something that moves into a labeled 5 area of a curve called unacceptable, he should be 6 informed.
7 MR. RAPP: When -- Let's say that there is an 8 operation of adding hydrogen to the makeup tank.
9 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
10 MR. RAPP: Which is fairly routine.
11 THE WITNESS: Yes.
12 MR. RAPP: Does the shift manager have to be 13 included in that evolution?
14 THE WITNESS: He doesn't have to be, no. If we 15 were adding for some -- at a frequency that was unusual, I 16 would expect him to be notified.
17 It's the same kind of things you'd notify the 18 plant manager for. And those are defined in AI-500.
19 There's a limit -- There's a list of those particular 20 things.
21 But again, you use your judgment in when you 22 would inform higher management of various different things 23 that are to be done on shift, either in maintenance or in 24 operations or in chemistry or radiation protection.
25 MR. RAPP: How useful is AI-500?
83 1 THE WITNESS: AI-500 is a good procedure. It's 2- a useful procedure.- It's stood for -- stood the test of 3 time for long periods of time.
4 But it's'like anything else, you know. I 5 remember -- You know, some people continue to feel that 6 every time somebody exercises a judgment issue you can fix 7 that by n'aking a revision of a procedure like AI-500.
8 It comes with a certain evolution.and performance 9 where sometimes with people's judgment you have to change 10 the individual rather than the procedure if they 11 constantly have judgmental problems.
12 And there's no way -- There's no way that I think 13 we can write any procedure that's going to cover all 14 potential cases and issues and judgmental type decisions 15 that people have to make. You deal with that on both 16 levels.
17 I mean, a procedure is a defensive in-depth 18 posture. But you've got to depend on people's judgment.
19 You've got to depend on them having in'their mind what's 20 the right thing to do and doing that. And particularly 21 including talxing to others.
22 You know, I mean, this is not a five-crew 23 operation seven days a week, 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day. As far as 2:4 I'm concerned, it's a 710-people operation.
25 MR DOCKERY: Could we go off the record,
84 1 please?
2 (Whereupon, a brief' recess was taken at 10:46 3 a.m., after which the proceedings resume as follows:)
4 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go back on the. record, 5 please. And, Mr. Boldt, I remind you that you continue to 6 be under oath here today.
7 THE WITNESS: Yes.
8 MR. DOCKERY: I have no further questions.
9 MR, STENGER: Well, that makes it easy.
10 MR. RAPP: Let me ask one question here that has 11 been discussed. The -- There was L statement made during 12 our previous interviews that chere was a meeting, a senior 13 management meeting in which evidently you folks hold 14 quarterly, or something of that nature, routinely.
15 THE WITNESS: We have lots of senior management 16 meetings.
17 MR. RAPP: Okay.
18 THE WITNESS: So I'm not sure which you're 19 referring to.
20 MR. RAPP: Well, this was a routine -- This was 21 a routine senior management meeting at which this 25 kg's 22 per cc was discussed and that there was some reluctance by 23 certain shifts to operate with-the appropriate hydrogen 24 overpressure.
.25 And supposedly at this meeting it was stated by
l 85 1 Mr. Beard that if these-operators were not going to meet
'2 the 25 kg's per cc, identify them and fire them.
3 Were you present at a meeting in which that kind 4 of statement was made? Maybe not exactly that verbatim ;
5- statement, but that type of statement?
6 THE WITNESS: No. No. I wouldn't --
Knowing 7 Mr. Beard, that's not his style. He'd never make a 8 statement like that. I've never heard him make a 9 statement like that on any topic.
10 MR. DOCKERY: Obviously that's based on an 11 allegation that we have heard from elsewhere or a claim 12 that's been made by somebody, 13 Do you recall any statements similar to that that
\
14 could have been misconstrued as saying that?
15 THE WITNESS: No. No. I mean, and the only 16 . thing I can say is Pat Beard's probably the primary person 17 responsible for today why we have an employee concerns 18 program. You know, he established it. It reports
- > directly to him. So.it's a vehicle whereby people can 20 make anonymous statements.
21 I mean, certainly his expectation would have been 22 that --
and which he's explained numerous times to all of 23 us, that if anybody has any problem they don't feel 24 comfortable with bringing to him, they can take it to that 25 -- through that vehicle, which existed at that time.
86 1 So --
2 MR. DOCKERY: So you don't think anybody could 13 _have come-away from a meeting believing that to be Mr.
4 Beard's_ expectation?
5 THE WITNESS: I don't -- All I can speak for is 6 myself.- I've never come away with -- from a meeting with 7 Mr. Beard with that impression.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Certainly that's all we ask is 9 what you would --
10- MR. WEINBERG: When you say a senior management 11 meeting, would that be a meeting with operators, or were 12 you just talking with senior management?
13 MR. RAPP: No. I'm talking about senior 14 managers, department managers, things of that sort.
15- MR. WEINBERG: Is that it?
16 MR. RAPP: That's all.
17 MR. WEINBERG: Great. Let me go get --
18 MR. DOCKERY: Before we go off the record, Mr.
19 Boldt, is there anything that you were prepared to respond 20 to that we didn't ask you or that you feel needs to be 21 brought up?
22 THE WITNESS: No. I had a chance to get into 23 everything I felt I needed to get on the record, 24 MR. DOCKERY: Is there anything you'd like to 25 add?- Because this is your forum, also?