ML20199C929
| ML20199C929 | |
| 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 9711200198 | |
| Download: ML20199C929 (59) | |
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@fficial Tronocript of Pecocodings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l
Title:
In the matter of -
Interview of .
Paul Fleming Docket Number: 2-94-036 Location: Crystal River, Florida t
Date: November 28,1995 i Work Order No.: NRC-429 Pages 1-59 n
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l NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC. EXHIBIT //
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 nhode Island Avenue, N.W. PAG OF 6l PAGE(S) 2-94 0'36 Washington, D.C. 20005 l (202) 234-4433 m ,a ,,.., 1 t-
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.x 1 UNITED STATES OF;, AMERICA l 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
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'4. IOFFICE OF-. INVESTIGATIONS- -
- 5. INTERVIEW I
.6 -----~~-----------~~~---------~~~~x 7 IN 'IEE MA' ITER OF: :
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No.
- 9- PAUL FLEMING- 2 2-94-036 10 : r 11 ----------------------------------x ,
12 Tuesday, November 28, 1995 l 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 2:05.'p.m.
21 BEFORE:
22 JAMES D. DOCKERY Senior Investigator 2 3 :- -JIM VORSE. Senior Investigator
. 24' CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer
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2 1 APPEARANCES:
2 On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory--Commission 3 JAMES DOCKERY, Senior Investigator 4 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 5 401 Marietta Street 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 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, Paul Fleming 17 MORRIS " SANDY" WEINBERG, JR., ESQUIRE 18 Corporate Counsel - Florida Power Corporation 19 101 East Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 3140 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 I
1
1 3
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 MR. DOCKERY: For the record, today's date is 3 November 28th, 1995. The time is approximately 2:05 p.m.
4 My name is James D. Dockery. I'm a Senior 5 Investigator with the NRC Office of Investigations.
6 During this proceeding, which is being recorded 7- for transcription the NRC Office of Investigations will 8 conduct an interview of Mr. Paul Fleming. The interview 9 pertains to OI Investigation Number 2-94-036. The 10 location of this interview is the Administrative Building, 11 Crystal River Nuclear Plant.
12 We have others in attendance. And I would ask 13 them at this time to identify themselves, starting with 14 Mr. Rapp.
15 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp, R-A-P-P. I am 16 a' Reactor Engineer with Region II, NRC.
17 MR. VORSE: My name is Jim Vorse, V-O-R-S-E.
18 I'm a Senior Investigator with NRC Office of 19 Investigations, Atlanta, Georgia.
20 MR. STENGER: Dan Stenger. I'm an attorney with 21 Winston and Strawn in Washington, D.C.
22 MR. WEINBERG: I'm Sandy Weinberg with 23 Zuckerman, Spaeder in Tampa. And as we've said before 24 today, Mr. Stenger and I are here on behalf of Florida 25 Power.
O
4 1 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Mr. Fleming, would you .
l 2 raise your right hand.
3- THE WITNESS: (Complies.)
4 Whereupon, 6
5 PAUL VINCENT FLEMING, ;
6 having first been duly sworn by the Investigator, was J 7- examined and testified as follows:
8 DIRECT EXAMINATION 9 MR. DOCKERY: Thank you. Would you state your 10 full name, please.
11 THE WITNESS: Paul Vincent Fleming.
12 MR. DOCKERY: And your date of birth and Social
-d" 13 Security number?
14 THE WITNESS:
15 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Mr. Fleming, before w nt 16 on the record Mr. Vorse and I identified ourselves as 17 investigators with the NRC Office of Investigations.
18 And I also showed you a copy of Section 1001 of 19 Title 18 of the United States Code.
20 Would you acknowledge that you have read that 21 section and that you understand its appl ~icability here 22 today.
23 THE WITNESS: Yes, I've read it and I understand 24 it.
- 25 MR. DOCKERY: Thank you. Mr. Fleming, what is
/
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5 1 your current position?
2 THE WITNESS: l'm a Senior Nuclear Licensing 3 Engineer-for Florida Power Corporation.
4 MR. DOCKERY: And what was your position during 4
5 19947 6 THE WITNESS: The same.
7 MR. DOCKERY: I'm going to let Mr. Rapp start 8 off the -- with a few questions.
9 MR. RAPP: Okay. The involvement that you had 10 with the makeup tank evolution, it's been brought up 11 several times that -- by Rob Weiss that he discussed this 12 evolution with you.
13 Would you -- Could you give us kind of a synopsis 14 or a recount of the discussions you had with Mr. Weiss on 15 that issue?
16 THE WITNESS: Well, Rob -- The only one I know -
17 of for sure is that Rob Weiss brought to me some 18 information. And the o e is around the 5th or 5th. And 19 that information relate --
20 MR. WEINBERG: Of September 1994?
21 THE WITNESS: September 1994. That information 22 had to do with data they had collected and had compared to 23 a curve,- OP-103, Curve 8B, which represents a limit at 24 that time of pressure versus level in the makeup tank, l 25 He brought that to me and we discussed, you know, l
l
[
-6 1 what that meant. And my suggestion to him at that time 1
2 was to write a problem report to evaluate what ic meant. i 3 MR RAPP: Why did Mr. Weiss come to you with 4 this issue? Why didn't he just go ahead and write the 5 problem report?
6 THE WITNESS: Hell, that's a good question. I 7- had some dealings with the makeup tank issue back in 1988.
8 We were trying to raise the makeup tank hydrogen and it-9 was bouncing up against some limits that existed.
10 There was also some engineering work going on at 11 the time with Gilbert, and that dealt with hydrogen 12 binding the makeup pump, 13 So I was somewhat aware of, at least on a 14 periphery, of makeup tank operational challenges.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, by way of background, 16 I should have got to this sooner --
17 THE WITNESS: Right.
18 MR. DOCKERY: -- have you ever been a licensed 19 operator, reactor operator?
20 THE WITNESS: I was a senior reactor operator --
21 MR. DOCKERY: Okay, 22 THE WITNESS: -- for a couple years. And I was 23 also a reactor operator for many years. I held the 24 position of assistant shift supervisor for a couple years.
25 MR. DOCKERY: And are you degreed?
a 7
1 THE WITNESS: No , I'm not. Juld so to get to the 2 point of why did he bring it to me. Well, my background 3 is in the OP's. Rob Weiss also worked with me and for me 4 for a while.
5 And, you know, there was some professional 6 camaraderin there. And pretty much I dog things down 'til 7 they get done.
8 MR. RAPP: Is this the first time that you've 9 been aware of concerns with the makeup tank, except for 10 the issue in '88?
11 THE WITNESS: Well, there's -- You know, there's 12 a history to it. But I've bEen in and out of it. I was 13 mostly out of it et that tic;.e.
14 MR. RAPP: Had Rob discussed anything with you l
15 -- Rob Weiss, had he discussed anything with you prior to 16 this concerning the makeup tank?
17 THE WITNESS: Not tl'at I can recall. No.
18 MR. RAPP: here you aware of any time of -- that 19 there could have been a-potentially another evolution rhn 20 on the 4th, another --
21 THE WITNESS: You know, when Rob brought that 22 information down to me, I -- it was such a long time ago, 23 I can't give words, or anything like that -- he may have,
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24 in fact, discussed that they had either seen this before 25 or had done a test before.
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'l 'But I know that-he didn't give me any data like 2 he.gave me forlthe_Sth,~because that's what I acted cn. ;
So-there may have been--some-dialogue. But at best, it 4 would have. served to characterize;what I had in my hand,- -!
5 and that which.I' acted on. So --
6 MR. RAPP: When he gave.you this information --
7.;When Rob' Weiss gave you this information, what did you do 8- with it?
-9' THE WITNESS: Well, the first thing I did is +
10 look at it, obviously. .
11 . MR. RAPP: Right.
12- THE WITNESS: And I asked hd' to;put one curve 13 on top of the other. Because what he-handed to me pretty:
14 much was' raw stuff. Okay. So I said, why don't you go 15 write a problem report and document it such that one
. 16 curve's laying on top of the other and we'll take a look 17 at it and, you know, send it up through the normal problem 18 report corrective action kind of process. So he did that, 19 I guess, the next day, pretty much.-
20 MR. RAPP Did.you have any involvement in'the
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21- disposition of the problem report or getting the problem 22' report to the-appropriate --
- 23 THE WITNESS
- - No. Because the system pretty-24 much takes' care of that. You write a problem report -- ' I:
25 -mean, at:that -- We have changed-that system-to some 4
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-2' But I think back--then you' write a problem report-3 'and it winds up getting to the shift manager and/or shift supervisor to- determine reportability, _ operability.
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5 assessment, that kind of thing.
I 6 So it's got its.own course,-its.own life once it.
7 gets a number. !h) it pretty nmch should have.taken care 8 of itself.
9 MR. RAPP: All right. Did you know about the 10 problem report that was written earlier following the
-11 SP-630 refueling outage test?
12 .THE WITNESS: Right at that time it's hard to 13 say. But not.long after that, oh,- definitely. In fact, I 14- went back and got extensive files, built a bunch of files 15 on it.
16 And then --
17 MR. STENGER: I'm sorry. What time period are 18 we talkingrabout?'
19' MR. WEINBERG: Are you building the files after 20 the September 5thievolution?
21 THE WITNESS: Yeah. After September 5th; I had
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22 . virtually no files before that. I started building an 23' extensive file set later.on as we w'ere building corrective 24 actions and.that type of stuff.
12 5 MR. RAPP: How does Licensing'get involved with I
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1 these problem reports in terms of reportability or 2 licensee event reports?
3 THE WITNESS: Yeah. Looking back then, usually 4 when there's going to be -- especially if it's a complex 5 call to determine if it's design basis versus licensing 6 bacis, typically Licensing is called for anything in a 7 consulting mode.
8 And if it deals with EOP's, typically I've been 9 involved because of my background as accident management, 10 EOP's, that type of stuff.
11 MR. RAPP: Okay. Well, we'll -- Okay. We'll 12 move on to a different area here now.
13 Were you involved in the generation of the LER 14 that was eventually sent in to report this event?
15 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I know I -- I know I 16 reviewed it and I probably had some statements, you know, 17 some changes to it. But I have to look. But I'm pretty 18 sure I read it before, at least one or two different 19 drafts of it before it went out.
20 MR. RAPP: How many drafts are you aware of?
21 THE WITNESS: I don't know. But I know I had a 22 couple in my file.
23 MR. RAPP: So there was at least two different 24 revisions?
25 THE WITNESS: I would say at least.
. . _ . - _ . _ . . .~ _ ___ _ ._ _ . _ . _ . - -
1 11 1 MR. RAPP- At least._ Is.that-uncommonifor there 2 -to be --
3 . THE WITNESS: It's really -- It really is .
4 determined by-how complex th6 issue is. Some are cut and ,
5 dry. Some are a nightmare._
6 MR. VORSE. I'm not following you. Were you-7 involved in any sy with the interface between Operations--
8 and Engineering?
9 MR WEINBERG: At what point?
10 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
11 MR. - VORSE : Are you aware of*the conflict
-12 between-EngineeringSs evaluation of Curve 8 and 13 Operation's evaluation of Curve 87 14 THE WITNESS: Well, before that date I think I 15 may-have been somewhit aware. But act'ively engaged in 16 trying to deal with it, I don't think too much. I mean, I 17 might'have been to some extent, but not to any great 18 detail.
11 9 I know there was some -- I-feel'like I know there 20 was some conflicts, some rubs. But I wasn't really that 21 involved.
22 MR VORSE: How about Chemistry, wers you
~ 23 involved in Chemistry?
! 24 THE WITNESS: Now, when this -- I think it's a 25 bulletin or information'notica. I can't remember. But-i I
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12 1- it 's 83-23,- I think- is what it1 was . That characterized
-2 some problems, I think,-in-a Westinghouse plant that-deals 3 -- that dealt with. makeup pump hydrogen. binding.
4 :Now, that was -- They had a unique set of
. 6 circumstances. :But as'we were trying to bring our,
-shbunskn 6 hydrogen up, one of the crutches associated with that'was: ,
7- dealing with_that issue, could;it occur at CR3.
And from that point of view.I was brought in, at
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8-9 least at one meeting, possibly two, to discuss, you know,
- 10 what are we trying to accomplish here, we have chemistry
- c goals , -UCCS , normal running, that kind of stuff. And from 11 12 that. point of view it's fairly complex and I did get 13- involved with it.
14 MR. VORSE: What was driving this need for 15 hydrogen?
16 THE WITNESS: Well, it's -- There was some
.17 dircussion about an NGRC and-INPO. INPO, for instance, 18 had documented better plants' water chemistry was X. In 19 other words, if you_had such hydrogen overpressure and you 20- had such amount of hydrogen in your solution, then you 21 won't have an oxygen -- long term oxygen _ problem. And 22 _that results;in; premature degradation of~different steel
- 23- components-in'the-reactor system.
24 Okay. So1that was one thing pushing to get the 25- hydrogen out.
M And I think the limit at the time INPO was g.
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13 1 putting out was somewhere around 25 to 40-cc's per kg, and 2 we weren't operating anywhere near 40. And sometimes we'd 3 dip into 25. So we had to come up with a process and 4 means of getting the hydrogen back up there, which was --
5 It seemed reasonable, but we had to overcome the obstacles 6 to do that.
7 MR. DOCKERY: What time period was that?
8 THE WITNESS: Somewhere, I think, in '90.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Had this plant 1ad a problem with 10 water chemistry prior to that?
11 THE WITNESS: Not to my knowledge, no. And more 12 precisely, I don't know of anybody who has ever raid we 13 had a material problem, you know, like degradation of any 14 base metal or fuel problem. I mean, we just didn't have i
i 15 any identification problem like that.
16 MR. RAPP: You said earlier there were some 17 obstacles that had to be overcome. What obstacles were 18 those?
19 THE WITNc3S: Well, one dealt with the fact that 20 if we tried to bump up hydrogen pressure, it put you real 21 close to the then curve. Okay. And that meant, given the 22 system configuration that we had at the time witr a 23 relatively small system to introduce hydrogen into the 24 makeup tank, plus you had, you know, an orifice, there was 25 a lot of problems with just leaving a valve open.
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- 1 That
- meant-operators-had to-go.down into the !
'2' valve valley and bypass the regulatorLand introduce-
% 3 hydrogen that-way. And1for operators-that was considered T
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4 to be a work-around, f .d it_got to be a-pain. -
5 Now,.I don't know what the. frequency.of it was at l6 the' time _because I'm_not too sure if we had like a weeping 7
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porv or anything like that. If you-have that, you know, 8 ' you just basically lose your hydrogen, so you're going to 9 have to.make up often. But I know it became kind of a 10 concern, operational concerr. from that point of view.
11 But I think-the frequency -- You know, it's hard 12- to say. I don't think tha frequency was that great. That 13 was one obstacle.
14 And then we would have had to maintain operations-15 in a fairly small envelope. That was our single biggest 16 challenge.
17 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, when did you -- were 18 you last actively 1 censed and working as an operator in 19 any capacity?
20 THE WITNESS ~ . Let's see. Late -- I think late
--- 21 1989 Greg Halnon relieved me of my duties as assistant an'd
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22: ,I came off and started on an EOP project. Sometime in '
L23 '89, 24 MR. DOCKERY: Is it correct then to say that --
, 25- .7HE WITNESS: Or '90.
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- 1 _MR. DOCKERY:' - :you never operated using Curve.
2 Number-8_for.that particular: curve? .
3 THE WITNESS:l Well, I -- Yeah.- I know the curve 4 was there. Bu'. at that time that I was operating, - the 5 hydrogen overpressure concern wasn't: there.
6 I know--- In other words, we-didn't have to meet 7- that -- the upper level cc's per kg. Just_wasn't there.
8: -MR. RAPP: Ar a previous licensed SRO assistant 9 shift supervisor --
10 THE WITNESS: Right, 11 MR. RAPP: -- how would you evaluate -- or what 12 would-your evaluation be of what Dave Fields and his crew 13 did on September 5th?
14 THE WITNESS: Time out, please.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. We'll go off the record.
16 (Whereupon, a brief off-the-record discussion was 17 had, after which the proceedings resume as follows:)
18 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go back on the record.
19 And, Mr. Fleming, I remind you that you continue i 20 to be under oath here. And I'd ask that you acknowledge 21 that.
22- THE WITNESS: 1 acknowledge that.
- 23 MR. DOCKERYi Thank you.
24: THE WITNESS: All right. Restate your-25 questions.
9
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- 1. MR.- RAPP: Okay.- - As - a1 previous --licensed L 3RO -
2 looking at what-Dave Fields did or'the crew did on-the 13-. Sth, was that an acceptable - evolution' lor: them' to perform J4 Hor wasLit necessary for them-to get a test procedure, Si approved test procedure?
6 THE WITNESS: I'd have to say that they should 7 ha/e had some kind of test procedure-that had the benefit 8 of a review of a multi-disciplinary team and basically a
- 30.5 7 renena W 9 50/5^= knowledge.
10 MR. RAPP: Okay. And what would lead you to 11 that-conclusion?
12 THE WITNESS:- Well, for one thing -- Now, let me 13 characterize that even better. For me, even knowing what 14 1 know today, I would say that had they not operated 15 outside the envelope, had they not operated where clearly 16 it was unacceptable operating region, then it becomes 171-really gray.
18 I mean, even as an assistant shifter I probably 19 did_some type of tests,. small tests in which/it was very.
20 obvious there was no' nuclear safety concern but tests to 21- ascertain system conditions, for instance. Not
- 22 .necessarily the HPI system, but other systems, because 23 Lthere's a lotiof. systems _here.
Had they not: gone over that curve or had I been 25 .on shift and I'had - --and my plan was-not to go'over the
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17 1 curve, that's very hard to say. I'd say knowing what I 2 know about nuclear power, I might have. I might have done
-3 it without the benefit of a procedure, but the kind of 4 person that I currently am and was, I -- there's no doubt 5 in my mind I would have had the system engineer involved 6 because he's the guy that I want to see the data.
7 Now, to go over a pre-established limit, 8 regardless of what the limit is, I don't think I would 9 have ever done that without the benefit of a test or the 10 benefit of somebody who knows better.
11 MR. VOPSE: By the limit you'mean the 12 unacceptable side of the curve?
13 THE WITNESS: Yes, sir.
14 MR..RAPP: When you were on a shift --
15 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh.
16 MR. RAPP: And I realize it's been a substantial 17 period of time.
18 THE WITNESS: That's all right.
19 MR. RAPP: But do you recall performing 20 evolutions in which operating limits were violated as part 21 of the routina process of performing that evolution?
'22 THE WITNESS: Oh, I remember one case and it had 23 to do with the makeup tank. It just so happened I was at 24 that time adding hydrogen. I can't remember if I was the 25 SRO or the RO. But I know I was adding hydrogen and a
18 1 breaker popped open in the 500 switch yard.
2 Okay. And at the time we had a limitation on how 3 much energy we could process through a single transformer, 4 so we had two lines. Each line went throuDh a transformer 5 substation.
6 One breaket popped open. I was at a hundred 7 percent power and I knew I had to do something. It just 8 so happened while that thing came in, the makeup tank 9 hydrogen valve was still open, went past, you know, hit 10 the alarm, went just sky high.
11 And had to deal with that. After the smoke 12 cierred from that, I had to deal with that issue. But 13 Crom & test point of view, no. On a bad day, yes, ;
14 MR. RAPP: When you perform an evolution and as 15 part of that evolution yeu receive an alarm, what's the 16 reLponse for that particular alarm?
17 THE WITNESS: Well, we have annunciator response 18 proctdures, obviously. And unless you have it memorized, 19 you pick it up, look at it, and take whatever actions are 20 prescribed.
21 MR. RAPP Okay. Does that mean you have to 22 stop the evolution in progress and address the alarm?
23 THE WITNESS: I'd say pretty much, unless you 24 know the alarm was either false or of little or no 25 _cnsequence. In other words, what you're doing is more
19 1 significant or more -- has more consequence to dealing 2 with that. That's, you know, safety regards.
3 MR. RAPP: What if the alarm is -- I'm sorry to 4 interrupt. What if --
5 THE WITNESS: Go ahead.
6 MR. RAPP: What if the alarm is a direct result 7 of the evolution you're performing?
8 THE WITNESS: Well, is it proceduralized?
9 MR. RAPP Yes.
10 THE WITNESS: If the procedure -- That's a good 11 -- That's good. If the procedure addresses it, fine. In 12 other words, it was an expected result.
13 If it was an unexpected result, I'd stop and find 14 out what's going on. And then if I have no good solid 15 answers, I'm going to have to bring it right back, if I 16 can, bring whatever parameters out or whatever material 17 conditions degraded and take a look at them.
18 MR. RAPP: This next question is going to be 19 kind of broad. So give it your best shot and see if we 20 can narrow it down.
21 How are procedures -- In what manner are 22 procedures used at Crystal River?
23 THE WITNESS: Yeah. That's pretty broad. I've 24 been out of ops for a while. Okay? I know we've written 25 an AI to address dealing with the OP's, for instance,
20 ,
r 1 because the OP's have been an issue here, verbatim i
2 compliance, that kind of stuff. ;
r 3 We have, for instance, OP's that really should be t
4 done step by step, period. And, you know, if it -- for 4
5 one leason or-another what you're doing does not givo ycu ;
the expected results, you need to stop and find out why 6
7 and typically get with the shift supervisor to find out 8 what to do, especially if it's fairly complex and you 9 don't have the knowledge and skills to back out of it, for 10 instance.
11 But for the nost part this plant is a verbatim 12 compliance type organization.
13 MR. RAPP: All right. Given that verbatim e
14 compliance is the expectation, when you take a look at the 15 procedure that was used for the evolution, one part of the 16 procedure has you fill the makeup tank or add hydrogen.
17 All right. And it says, don't exceed or add hydrogen to 18 the limit specified by Curve 8, 103B.
19 The next section is the section for lowering 20 level or bleeding the makeup tank.
21 THE WITNESS: Right.
22 MR. RAPP: Do those two sections interact with each other or are they separate distinct evolutions?
23 24 - THE WITNESS: I'd have to look at the OP. I 25 think it's OP-402, operation of the makeup system. I'd W1'i**MWw'T ee F ^r7'T'- m-y y grW-3 m ?-- *-dem* -wTmT-p- '= -w-q- y n e-u-- y w gyerv ww -ee-reed -re---1-w-a-my-~ewr r -w -*"weww'-v"wTd-N'*vM-Pe
21 1 have to look to see if they've been sectionalized.
2 MR. RAPP: Okay.
3 THE WITNESS: Because obviously raising it you 4 have a certain expectation. Your expectation is you're 5 raising the water level in inventory. Lowering it, the 6 expectation is to lower. It seems to be somewhat i
7 divergent, but it could be the same thing.
8 MR. RAPP: Okay, I guess then the question 9 comes back, if you get a procedure that has these 10 different sections in it, they're sectienalized, as you 11 cay --
12 THE WITNESS: Right.
13 MR. RAPP: -- does that mean that the sections 14 are separate and distinct or that they interact with each 15 other, or that one precaution in Section A also applies to 16 Section B, C, D, E?
17 THE WITNESS: It depends -- All right. Well, 18 first is you get a limits and precautions that precede the 19 entire procedure.
20 MR. RAPP: Okay.
21 THE WITNESS: And then depending upon the i
22 purpose of the section, which is typically stated, you may 23 have significant notes or cautions relating only to that 24 section.
25 The relationship of one section to another -- I !
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22 1 guess the real -- the only clear-cut relationship is that 2 it deals with that particular system. That would be the 3 best way to characterize it. 1 4 MR. RAPP: Okay. So unless it's in the 5 precautions and limitations section in the front of the 6 procedure, that particular caution would not be applicable 7 to all sections of the procedure.
8 THE WITNESS: I'd have to say that's reasonable.
9 MR. RAPP: Okav. I've got to try to find my 10 notes. Here we go. Go ahead. If you have something, go 11 ahead.
MR. DOCKERY: Yaah. I just -- I have a couple 12 13 things.
14 Mr. Fleming, when Mr. Weiss came to you shortly 15 after the September 5th evolution, was there anything in 16 the data he provided you or the data that you pulled, the 17 information that you pulled to indicate that Curve Number 18 8 was a design basis curve?
19 THE WITNESS: ,
Not at that time, no.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Is it fair to say you had no idea ,
21 it was a desiga basis curve?
22 THE WITNESS: Not at that time. But I did find 23 out that it was.
24 MR. DOCKERY: How did you find that out?
25 THE WITNESS: Long story, but it bears
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23 2
testimony. It's a ec7 plex thing, j i MR. WEINBERG: This'in in direct response to the 3 question you asked Pat Beard today. And I think you'll l i
4 learn that Paul was really the instigator if-you get into
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5 that issue.
-6 MR. DOCKERY: Right. And that's fine. That's 7 what we need to know. ;
i 8 .)k THE WITNESS: Right. A while ago trying to work.
9 forakNrheatsystemoutage. You have cross-tie valves. I 10 And the concern at the time was do I have to declare one 11 train inoperable just because I'm work'ing on the cross-tie [
12 valve. In other words, in order to declare operability do 13 I have to have the cross-tie capability.
14 And in order to get to the root of that to answer i 15 OPS's question I had to find out all the accidents which, 16 for instance, that LPI and HPI were taking credit for.
17 And what I uncovered was there was a core flood i And it l 18 line break analysis that was performed for CR-3.
19 had its assumptions up front, you know. I forget what 20 code they used. But it assumed no LPI for~ core flood line
-21 break.
22 It did assume that you had one core flood tank 23- available, obviously, because this is a core flood.line
- 24 break-and for us core flood lines inject through the same 25- nozzles that the LPI does. So in the worst case I
s
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24 ;
1 conditions you basically would have one core flood tank 2 inject and worst case you only have one HPI pump available 3 and it would be injected.
4 When we were trying -- Wnen Engineering was ,
5 trying to characterize this as being design basis or not 6 design basis, I was kind of wrestling with all the LOCA 7 scenarios that, you know, historically was going through 8 my head.
9 And it just -- I happened upon recalling that.
10 Because I don't recall if it's written. I don't think ,
11 it's written in the FSAR or the enhanced design basis 12 document at the time.
13 So I did happen to know that I had a copy of it o
14 and I gave that to the then supervisor of nuclear 15 engineering and it was Brian Gutherman.
16 MR. DOCKERY: What was the last name again?
17 THE WITNESS: Brian Gutherman. He's my current 18 boss.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Gutherman.
20 THE WITNESS: Yes. I gave him that and that was 21 the piece of information that made this a design basis 22 issue.
23 MR. DOCKERY: To your knowledge, was there 24 anything -- any document in existence that identified that 25 curve as a design basis curve?
25 !
1- THE WITNESS: Not before then, not to my l 2 knowledge. .
)
3 MR. DOCKERY: Is there normally a marking on a ;
4- design basis curve that --
5 THE WITNESS: I don't think so. I mean, I -- ,
6 For instance, if I look at an 3PS set point curve, I:know I
7 there's a design basis behind it. And it probably 6
8 wouldn't take too much to go find out what that is. But 9 with a lot of different other system curves, no.
10 MR. RAPP: Let me ask this. As a previous 11 licensed SRO, the curves that are in 103B or other plant .
12 reference curves, do you expect those to be design basis 1 13 limits?
e >
14 THE WITNESS: I know there's going to be some 15 that are and some that aren't. And I can't tell you guys, 16 really, if there's a good methodology to determine which 17 ones definitely are and which ones aren't, unless you pose 18 a specific question.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Would you expect those that are to 20 be marked as such?
-21 THE WITNESS: Would I expect that? I'd like ,
- 32. that to be. I don't know if I can expect that.
23 -. MR. DOCKERY: Let me askLit another way. .Have 24 you ever -- Do you recall running across a curve or the 25 equivalent in an operating procedure where it was clearly-L
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26 1 marked as a design basis?
2 THE WITNESS: I don't recall.
3 MR. DOCKERY: Did that change the significance 4 of the September 5th event -- evolution, in your mind?
5 THE WITNESS: Well --
6 MR. WEINBERG: Did the -- You mean the issue of 7 design basis 8 MR. DOCKERY: Uh-huh.
9 THE WITNESS: From a reportability point of view 10 it certaini did because right then that made it pore
,, g+. -
12 MR. DOCKERY: Ms question about it.
13 THE WITNESS: Period.
14 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Let me ask you a general 15 question. Did Mr. Weiss and those who shared his concern, 16 did they have a valid concern regarding Curve 8, to be 17 specific?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, their concern was -- And Rob 19 and I have talked about it since then, Mr. Weiss. Their 20 concern was that we had a curve that didn't reflect system 21 performance, and that the curve had, you know, evolved 22 several times, 23 So from that point of view, you know, their 24 concern that they had less than accurate information 25 reflected in the curve, yeah, I'd say it's a reasonable r
{
N1 !
9 27 t 1 concern. ;
2 MR. DOCKERY: _ Would you characterize it as.a }
i 3 safety concern? ;
4 THE WITNESS: Safety concern.. I hate to be j i
5- vague, too. ;
i 6 MR. DOCKERY: Well, that's a pretty vague ,
7 question, so I understand. 3 i
8 THE WITNESS: It is. It really is because, you j 9 know, the LOCA scenario that leads you to making that- i 10, curve absolutely. binding is an incredible scenario. It's-
~
11 the core flood line break. It's a very short run of pipe,- ,
12 all things considered. You know, it's nailed down pretty 13 good. Seismically considered. It's not going to break, o
14 But I don't know if they knew that or not, you 15 know. So from that point of view it's -- HPI is what you ,
16 need to have to mitigate' accidents, period.
17 So if you just looked at it myopically only that 18 way,.then you could arrive that this has some safety
- 19. significance to it.
20 MR. RAPP: What was the basis for Curve 8? Why 21 did Curve 8 exist? ;
22 THE WITNESS: Again, to the best of my 1
2:I recollection, and I went back and researched that, I 24' believe B & W gave us the curve, the original curve. It 25 kind of was. handed with-this turnkey --
l
)
i;
28 1 MR. RAPP: Okay. So -- So why didn't they go 2 ahead and operate with 40 cc's per kg in the tank, the 3 makeup tank?
4 THE WITNESS: You want to rephrase that or --
5 MR. DOCKERY: No, it's fine.
6 MR. RAPP: Oh, it's fine.
7 THE WITNESS: Like I said, an information notice 8 came out, for one thing. And when it came out, you know, 9 again, this in a long time ago, this is '88 and '90 time 10 frame, but I know we evaluated what our configuration was 11 compared to how we were operating and we had to deal with 12 cc's per kg in solution versus overpressure. So we had c2 c/-s .
13 Gilbert do some count-s 14 Okay. And that pretty much put a cap along with 15 this Appendix R. I mean, this thing is fairly complex. A l
16 lot of things talking, Appendix R, hydrogen overpressure.
17 But boiling it all down we couldn't just operate 18 at 40, 40 pounds or even getting to 40 cc's per kg. Our 19 configuration wouldn't allow that considering the design 20 limitations.
21 MR. RAPP: What was the design limitation?
22 THE WITNESS: Well, like I said, one of them was 23 Appendix R.
24 MR. RAPP: Okay.
25 THE WITNESS: And aside from the fact that that t
. l i
i r
29 i 1 deals solely with a fire,~we-had -- we were designed to 2 later on -- this is not back, but this had to do with the t 3 Appendih R rule -- we had ta) deal with the failure, the i 4 smart failure of, for instance, the regulating valve, the ;
. ?
5 isolation valve to the regulating valve failing open.
6 Okay. So one thing we had to deal with was i t
7- making sure that set point was set right so that we could 8 mitigate a fire and not beat up a makeup pump. We had 9 that limitation, which was at the time something like 20 i 10 pounds. So that-right there limits you.
11 MR. RAPP: So the only safety issue then was 12 with the Appendix R. c 13 THE WITNESS: That was the big safety issue.
14 But again, the guys may have known something about -- They
-15 may have harbored some feelings-regarding HPI, period, j e
16 And even the problem report, and I'm sure you 17 guys ha*re a copy of it, deals with, you know, you've got 11 8 the makeup tank curve versus the BWST swapover point. You 19 know, all those things tie in. So it's Appendix R, BWST.
20 There's a lot of things that made this an engineering 21 nightmare. <
22 MR. RAPP: When this whole thing about 25 cc's
- 23. per,kg, this;INPO issue came about, how strongly was that 24- -communicated by management to the plant. staff? Was it 25 like, well, you know, INPO says we've got to do this or P
. . . . _ ~ . - - _ . . - . _ . . . . _ - , _ . - _ - - - . . . , _ . , , , , _ ~ . - , , - - . . . . _ , _ , _ . . - - ~
30 1 was it, you know, we've got to meet this, this is 2 important?
3 THE WITNESS: Well,-there was an expectation 4 that unless there was a good physical reason, physics 5 reason for not achieving it, then go achieve it. That's a ;
6 reasonable expectation. And that's what the expectation i t
7 was, i I
8 MR. RAPP: And who communicated that?
9 THE WITNESS: That was pretty much Pat Beard. l 10 MR. RAPP And that came from Pat Beard directly 11 to the staff or -- ;
12 THE WITNESS: Well, no. Down. I'm not too sure
-13 how it, you know, trickled down. But it's fairly clearly
, t 14 his expectation.
15 MR. RAPP: Where did you pick that up, I mean, ;
16 that that was the expectation?
17 THE WITNESS: At those meetings.
18 MR. RAPP: What meetings were those?
19 THE WITNESS: The meetings we dealt with post 20 8823. Somewhere in the '90 time frame. The meetings that 21 said, = hey, you got 8&23 to deal with, you've got Appendix 22 R, and you have the INPO guidelines on good water 23 chemistry. You had all these things developing into a 24 box.
25 MR. RAPP: So you were present at some of those
-. - - - . . _ _ . . . . . _ _ - . . . . . . _ . _ . ~ . _ __ - . . . ~ . _ . _ _ - . . _ - - _ - _ _ _ . . . - _ _ _ _ , _ , _m
i i
31 1 meeting that --
2 THE WITNESS: At least at two of them.
3 MR. RAPP: At two of them. Do you recall what 4 dates?
5 THE WITNESS: I think I've got some inforumtion 6 on that. Dates, no way.
7 MR. RAPP: Okay.
8 THE WITNESS: I'm thinking somewhere in the '90 9 time frame.
10 MR. RAPP: Let me put it this way. You said il that this was Pat Beard's expectation that you should meet 12 this 25 cc's per kg limit.
13 Was it put out as find me a way to do it type 14 thing or go back and see if it's reasonably achievable?
15 THE WITNESS: The latter. I mean, he wanted the 16 chemistry to be right. INPO set those guidelines and, you 17 know, B & W basically embraced them. So we should have --
18 We should try to achieve them, unless there's a reason why 19 we can't.
20 MR. RAPP: Did somebody from Chemistry -- I 21 don't know if they were present or not. But did someone 22 from Chemistry ever say that we don't need to do this, our 23 water chemistry is good enough, we're not having a problem i
24 with this corrosion issue?
25 THE WITNESS: No. What Chemistry did -- They l
l l
l l-
- - . =_ . . _ - . . - -- - .- .- .
32 1 did attend the meetings, at least tne two meetings I was 2 at. And their opinion was even though we haven't seen 3 anything, that doesn't mean that it's not there.
4 And we went -- We discussed that out at length.
5 I'm not a chemist by any means. But there -- 1 guess 6 there's some kind of a fudge factor that deals with you've 7 got an overpressure which means you're going to have-so 8 much hydrogen in the solution and as long as I have a good 9 margin there, I should scavenge all of the oxygen.
10 But there's no way for you to measure what's 11 happening in the core. We don't have a probe there. So, 12 you know, given the fact that today's technology at that 13 time was 2$ to 40 cc's per kg prevents you from having 14 those kind of concerns, then that was the direction we 15 were attempting to take.
16 MR, RAPP: Arc you aware of the concerns they 17 were trying to address, the basis for this 25 cc's per kg?
18 THE WITNESS: Other than the f'act that it dealt 19 with eroding base metals in the RCS, what specific metal, 20 what specific component, I'm not too sure.
21 MR DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, you made the 22 statement that your understanding of the philosophy of my 23 term regarding the 25 cc's per kilogram was that if it's 24 reasonably obtainable or if it's possible to obtain, in 25 your opinion, was it possible for this plant to attain
s
. 1 I
l 1
33 j t
1 that figure, that level? !
2 THE WITNESS: To achieve 25, yeah, I believe we ]
3 could have. And I think we even still do. To get 4 substantially higher than that, no, not without making ;
5 come either hardware changes or significant operational i
6 changes, significant, j 7 MR. DOCKERY: We have obviously interviewed a j i
8 number of witnesses regarding-this issue. And some of 9 whom, operators primarily, have indicated that they felt 10 there was some degree of antagonism, for lack of a better 11 term, between. Operations and Engineering.
12 Did-you notice anything like that during your j 13 time in Operations? , i But, !
14 THE WITNESS: That's a subjective area.
i, 15 yeah, I would have to say there was, to some extent, some 16 rub there.
17 MR. DOCKERY: In your opinion and to the extent 18 you know, did Operations -- was the onus more or less on l 19 Operhtions to somehow try and deal with -- I'm sorry. Not 20 Operations. With Engineering to deal or develop.an answer
- 21. to Operation's _ questions regarding curve 8?
22 THE WITNESS: You mean were they responsible to 23 do that? ?
24 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah. And I'm trying to establish 25 the evel of your knowledge and what was going on at that 4
s r
- . -. - --. .- - . . . . ~ . . . . . - = . _ - - - - - - _ _ .
4 :
I 34 1 time, i
2 THE WITNESS: You know, prior to that test -- l 3 It's hard for me to go back prior to the test, you know. j 4 MR. DOCKERY: I understand.
. i 5 THE WITNESS: Really hard. ,
6- MR. DOCKERY: I get the impression you may not ,
7 have been very deeply involved in anything that was going _
8 on regarding that issue. _;
9 THE WITNESS: Not before the test. Not too ;
10 much. ,
11 MR. DOCKERY: So when we say test, we're 12 referring to September the 5th.
13 THE WITNESS: 5th. That's right.
14 MR. DOCKERY: Did -- As best you can recall, how i 15 much did Mr. Weiss tell you about why he and others on ris :
16 shift felt it was necessary to conduct that evolution of P
17 September 5th?
18 THE WITNESS: Now, that's an important point.
19 As best as I can recall, as my memory serves me, Rob --
20 they were working the mids. They got a letter, I guess 21 either while they were in mids or just before they got on 22 mids, that said, hey --
23 MR. WEINBERG: You mean the midnight shift. 18 :
24 that what you mean by mid? i 25 THE WITNESS: The midnight shift, yes, 5
~
f
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35 1 MR. WEINBERG Okay, 2 THE WITNESS: And there was evidently some clock 3 ticking regarding the closure of the issue with regard to 4 the -- with regard to,the -- for the work that would be 5 done on the curve. That's not to say some other work 6 wasn't going to be done, but with respect to the curve 7 itself.
8 And, you know, as much as I can remember with 9 Rob's conversation, they felt that if they could get some 10 more pertinent data to make sure Engineering didn't pre --
11 wasn't predisposed to closing that out, you know, that 12 would be a good thing.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Did Mr. Weiss ever happen to show e
14 you a copy of that letter or memorandum?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes, he did, 16 MR. DOCKERY: Would you recognize it today if 17 you saw it?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes, I would.
19 MR. VORSE: Yeah, I'll pull it out.
20 THE WITNESS: (Examines document.) This is it.
21 September 2nd, 1994, NPTS 94-0429. That is it.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. I'm going to quote from 23 that first paragraph whi:h is in reference to Curve 8, 24 approximately the middle. "Sngineering believes this 25 curve is accurate and reasonably conservative to protect
i 36 l 1 the high pressure injection pumps from hydrogen gas ;
2- intrusion in the worst case large break LOCA." f 3 As -- Would that indicate to you that -- Check 4 that.
5 MR. VORSE: Do you agree with that?
6 THE WITNESS: Well -- l t
7 MR. STENGER: Okay. I mean, let Paul review the ;
i 8 memo.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Yes. Certainly.- If he'd like to 10 take and read the whole thing, if you feel more ;
11 comfortable.
12 MR. WEINBERG: Just take a quick glance.
13 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go off the record.
O 14 (Whereupon, a brief recess was taken at 2:51 15 p.m., after which the proceedings resume at 2:54 p.m. as 16 follows:)
17 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go back-on the record.
1 18 And, Mr. Fleming, I remind you'again that you >
- 19 continue to be under oath here. And I believe you've 20 acknowledged that.
12 1 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.
22 MR. DOCKERY: And you've just had an opportunity 23 to review the memorandum dated September 2nd, 1994,-to Mr.-
24- Hickle that we referred to earlier. l 25' Do you -- Let me preface that. Based on what you
_ ..-,.___m_,_.._.. - _ . _ _ _ . . . _ . _ _ .- - , . , - , .. _ _ - . - . _ ~ _ . . _ . _ _ _ - - .
37 1 testified to earlier, it sounds like you put a 2 considerable amount of work into studying this situation, 3 at least up to the puint that you were able to determine 4 that Curve Number 8 is a design basis curve. Is that a 5 fr.ir --
6 THE WITNESS: Since September 5th, yes, I have 7 put a considerable amount of effort into this.
8 MR DOCKERY: Okay. Do you agree with the 9 cor.P,ent af this memo?
1G THE WITNESS: You know. give --
11 MR. DOCKERY: And specifically I'm referring to 12 that statement in paragraph one, 13 THE WITNESS: In the first paragraph. Given 14 what they knew at that time -- We fou..d out some things 15 af teretards. But given what they knew at that time, I 16 would say it was probably okay.
17 MR. RAPP: Let me ask you this.
18 THE WITNESS: Okay.
19 MR. RAPP: The part there that is underlined, 20 large break in the LOCA. Are the high pressure injection 21 pumps credited in a large break LOCA?
22 THE WITNESS: I don't believe high pressure 23 injection was used in a large break LOCA analysis. I 24 don't believe we even looked at that.
25 MR. RAPP: So they're very narrow for -- Using
e 38 1 that accident only, then would be -- they could run any 2 kind of hydrogen pressure they wanted to in the event of 3 the worst case large break LOCA.
4 THE WITNESS: I suppose if you took it from that 5 perspective, you could draw that conclusion. I don't 6 think that's what they're stating there, but --
7 MR. RAPP: What's your belief then? What do you 8 think they're stating?
9 THE WITNESS: I think they thought, you know, 10 without penning the letter and talking to the guys, I 11 think they thought that if you covered it for the large 12 break LOCA case which hac a maximum draw-down and 13 everything, you've covered yourself for all the other 14 breaks on this.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, in your opinion, 16 would you have expected Engineering's analysis -- and 17 that's what I'll characterize this as, or a description of 18 their analysis of curve 8 -- to have reasonably determined 19 that it was a design basis?
20 THE WITNESS: You mean here or later?
21 MR DOCKERY: Here.
22 THE WITNESS: That's hard to say. And I don't 23 know if I can make that call.
24 MR. DOCKERY: That's fair. All right.
25 MR. VORSE: Mr. Fleming, do you believe that l
t I
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39 I there were avenues available to Mr. Weiss and Mr. Fields 2 -- You mentioned earlier that you would have conducted a 3 5059, perhaps, in hindsight.
4 But when we talked to Mr. Fields and Mr. Weiss, 5 they felt a certain amount of, I guess, frustration, would 6 be a good way to put it, that they just didn't feel that 7 people were listening to them, and they just essentially 8 took the acquired data for that-September 5th evolution to 9 show that Engineering was not correct, and then they say 10 that they didn't do it for that purpose, but they wanted 11- to plot some data.
12 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
13 MR. VORSE: Do you believe that had you been in 0
14 their situation, that you had avenues that you could have 15 -- other than what they felt they had to do that you could 16 have done?
17 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't want to say I'm a 10 different kind of guy. But I've walked into the senior 19 vice president's office before on issues, that if I don't 20 feel the issue is satisfactorily being re3olved and I feel 21 there's some significance to it, I'll walk right up the 22 chain.
23 And so I guess, you know, it's almost an unfair 24 question. But that's the way I am. You had an Operations 25 . manager, And, you know, I've gotten in Halnon's face
l i
I 40 -
1 before about different things until I'm satisfied that ,
4 I
either I'm wrong or I'm barking up, you know, the wrong 2
3 tree, or that there's going to be action taken. j 4 It's not just to my satisfaction. It's' to the f
1 5 satisfaction of the resolution of whatever issue-is out l 6 there.
7 So, yeah, I think they had an avenue and I think :
1 8 they could have probably pulled on Greg's tie and, you >
t 9 know, got his attention and said, don't close this out, I i
. 10 make sure this isn't closed out. They had that avenue. ;
11 That was definitely an option.
12 MR. RAPP: In your opinion, Greg Halnon was not ( ,
13 giving the operators' concerns due attention or -- :
J 14 THE WITNESS: And that -- I can't tell you that. ;
o%4&
7 15 I don' t know, because I don't know what kind of deH1rr 16, they had with Greg.
l 17 MR. RAPP: Well, earlier you said that you had :
18 to "get up in Halnon's face before". Have you had 19 difficulty -- l 20 THE WITNESS: Different issues. That's mostly
. t 12 1 because I'm dealing with -- for instance, right now I'm i 22 dBedd dealing with severe :: tier, of Nbnagement. I mean, that's ,
23 way.out there, i
24 And in order to pull resources together and, you l 25- know. work on this' kind of thing, sometimes I have to sit' !
i
l
. i 41 1 down and say, hey, look, you know, I know it looks=like f 2 this kind.of accident could never occur, but I need this, 3 this, and this to occur, you know, to make the whole plan i 4 .come together. Sometimes that's what it takes.
5 On issues of real importance I've never had a 6 problem with Greg.
7 MR. VORSE: And because of this whole situation '
8 with the termination of two very senior operators, is the .
9 attitude now that there's such a chilling effect out 10 thare?
11 And I'm talking about other operators. Have they 12 expressed to you a concern about, you know, such a 13 chilling effect as a result of this that they're reluctant 14 to bring anything forward that they're conce'rned about?
15 THE WITNESS: No. There's no -- That I know of, 16 there's no reluctance to bring anything out on the table.
17 I know their wrestling with, for instance, verbatim 18 compliance, especially in EOP. space. The --
l 19 MR. VORSE: What's EOP stand for? i 20 THE WITNESS: EOP stands for emergency operating 21 procedures. And the reason why it's a challenge there is l
l 22 because, for instance, the NRC develops scenarios that 23 typically takes.you outside the EOP's to try to exercise 24 your thinking process out there.
25 And it'becomesLvery difficult to act on your own i
n n---n,n- vmme.,ers.---4n-m.e-ve- y e-~y = o- 4
l t
42 !
I knowledge and skills without a guidel'ine. You can't write 2 EOP's for everything. So this has -- This has had 3 somewhat of an effect in that area, more than any that I l 4 know of. l 5 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, do you feel that 6 Engineering did an adequate job of addressing Operation's l 7 concerns regarding Curve 8, if nothing else had ever f 8 happened?
9 THE WI7WESS: Well, you're asking me for my 10 professional opinion --
11 MR. DOCKERY: Yes, sir, i'
12 THE WITNESS: -- and I'd have to say no.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Do you have an opinion on where .
14 the breakdown occurred? l c
15 THE WITNESS: For one thing, not being involved 16 in their -- you know, their day-to-day communication up to 17 that point -- Well, not exactly. Af ter that, to some 18 extent. But before that, knowing what I know now, yeah, )
19 there was a major breakdown in their communication because 20 they had done a surveillance that we wrote a problem is report about, i'
22 -- I guess you probably read about that. That was 23 _that' draw-down and_the check valve stuck _open. It looked 24 pretty weird.
25 MR. WWINBERG: You're talking about SP-630?
4
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43 1 THE WITNESS: Yes.
2 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.
3 THE WITNESS: And, you know, there was 4 professional disagreements there. Now, I happened on that 5 knowledge after September 5th. And there was differing 6 professional opinions.
7 And that -- To me, that cet the stage for a lot 8 of their problems.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Were there personalities involved?
10 THE WITNESS: Again, that's an opinion thing, 11 but, sure, there was some degree of personalities 12 involved.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Do you happen to know one way or 14 another whether or not Engineering, anybody in Engineering 15 ever pulled the calculation on which Curve Number 8 was 16 based?
17 THE WITNESS: When?
18 MR. WEINBERG: You mean prior to September 2nd?
19 MR. DOCKERY: Correct.
20 THE WITNESS: Prior to September 2nd.
21 MR. DOCKERY: I know that would be safter 22 acquired knowledge on your part.
23 THE WITNESS: I understand. I understand.
24 MR. WEINBERG: Prior to this.
25 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I'd say there's a really i
t i
44 ;
1- good probability, mostly because we had hired Gilbert -- }
t I'm pretty sure 'we hired Gilbert to take a look at the 3 curve in light of where we wanted to go, cc's per kg.
4 MR. DOCKERY: I'm sorry. Who is Gilbert? !
5 THE WITNESS: Gilbert --
6 MR. WEINBERG: Coronwealth.
7 THE WITNESSt Right. G.C,, Gilbert >
8- Commonwealth. ,
9 MR. WEINBERG: This was back in the late '80's i
10 or --
11 THE WITNESS: This is before that. Either '90 12 ---Late '80's, '90, or sumewhere around there. Because I 13 know somebody had to look at it. And there's at least two
- i 14 engineera that come to mind that were, you know,-
15 challenging Gilbert's results at that time. That gave 16- birth to a different pr.blem for us.
17 MR. WEINBERG I think what the question is, and i
18 you may not know the answer to it, do you know whether in !
19 . response to the issue raised by SP-630 and the -- by the l 20 problem report on SP-630'and the Curve 8 issue in December 21 of ' 94, whether anybody from Engineering went back and 22- looked at the calculations.
23 THE WITNESS: Yeah. .I don't know.
24 MR. DOCKERY: Did-you do that when you were 25 'looking at it?
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1 THE WITNESS:1 No. +
2 MR. DOCKERY: But that's not necessarily
- 3 significant, if I understand correctly, because you're not l 4 a degreed engineer._ j 5 THE WITNESS: Well, not only that.= I typically 6 get involved with reviewing them, to some extent, just for ;
7 checks and balances, if anything, you know. But I don't 8 typically pull up cales. Typically have engineers do j 9 that. !
10 MR. WEINBERG: If you go to his -- To put it in 11 context, that's his day timer for whatever that date is, 12 November the --
13 MR DOCKERY: 2nd, according to this.
14 MR. WEINBERG: -- 2nd. Yeah. That's -- He can :
15 show you. That's the entry of the day that he believes ,
16 that he discussed this design basis issue with Gutherman, i
17 He can go over that with you. I mean, he can read it.
18 MR DOCKERY: Okay. Yeah. You want to explain 11 9 to us what that entry means.
' 20 THE WITNESS: Oh, yes. That -- You wouldn't t 21 happen to have a copy, would you, the letter, the design 22 basis --
23 MR. WEINBERG:: I don't have the design basis
' 24 letter.
. 25 MR.-STENGER: Gutherman's memo? Gutherman's ;
1
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46-1 : memo? ,;
Gutherman wrote a memo that' 2- THE WITNESS - l Yeah. : ,
~3 said, this-is a-design-basis. And I gave him the- [
4 analysis.- And that-basically was it. ;
5 MR. WEINBERG:- Yes, we.do~have that.
6 THE WITNESS - I left him that.
7 - MR. WEINBERG: -Okay. t 8- .THEl WITNESS: Of course, that's different from, 9 .you know, a curve calc. That's a core flood tank memo.
10 MR..WEINBERG: This memo was written as a result 11 of what you-gave him?
12 THE WITNESS: Yoah. Yes.
13 MR. WEINBERG: Okay. That's that Attachment 6 e
14 that Pat Beard talked about.
15 MR. RAPP: Oh, this letter is to Ebneter?
16 MR WEINBERG - Well, yeah. That's it.
17 THE WITNESS: Yeah. But before it became part 18 of that package we published that in-house to say this is 19 or.is not aidesign-basis event. We'had a pretty hard time 20 looking at that, too, o
, 21 MR. WEINBERG: What. Paul's saying is that this 22- memo was written as L result of what he discussed with 23- Gutherman on November'the 2nd. Maybe you can_just explain 24~ to'them what that was.
25 THE WITNESS: I did that earlier. You want me r .
l I
l i.-
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- _ _, __ J
- 1.
47 l' toidolit again.
Yeah.__-:Maybe just;--
2 MR . -_ RAPP : -
3: 'THE WITNESS: -All right. Well, we were - .You 4 know, the problem reporting process requiree you to
-5 determine wheth o ot a. reportable event.' You 6 have to check-pr; fit bility and then reportability and 7 then-interim-corrective-actions knd the long term 8 corrective action. plan.
9 We were not sure at the time-that -- You know, I 10 had Weiss write that problem report. I wasn't too sure, 11 and neither was.anybody else, whether or not'this was a 12 design basis event, the fact that we were, you know, in 13 the unacceptable region of that curve, 14 So one'of_the things we had_to do is determine 15 whether or not it's a design basis issue. And like I said 16 earlier, Brian was penning the paper that was_ going to 17 make that document. And I was going through the -- in my 18 mind,-systematically, as best as I could, was there any 19 LOCA case for which I had to-have, you know, HPI, and if 20 so, how much.
21 .And this was that case where given the worst set 22 of circumstances, a diesel generator out. And, you know, t 23 and: I have to draw it up for you. - But if.you look there's
%M.k A 24 'a certain: logic-strength, one diesel out, the bent core 25: flood line breaks, you know, you had to have an HPI pump.
48 1 And so if you were operating on or to the left of
-2 that curve and that was your accident, that's it. When I 3 say that's it, what I mean is you'll have your draw-down 4 on your only HPI pump and if it's the HPI pump that was --
S happened to be the one running off the makeup tank at the 6 same time, it's going to be attached to the BWST by that 7 curve you could, you know, hydrogen bind your makeup pump 8 unless you took some pretty swift actions. And for us in 9 that case if it was the B makeup pump, you can't divorce 10 that from the makeup tank. It's got, you know, pretty 11 much hard pipe there.
12 So that would have told -- The result of that is 13 that you would hydrogen bind your only makeup pump.
14 MR. VORSE: And then what?
15 THE WITNESS: Well, then, you know, the long 16 drawn-out story is ultimately if you don't recover it or 17 some form of high pressure injection for chat accident, 18 I'd say there's a likely probability that you'll be in 19 inadequate core cooling conditions over some period of 20 time. -
21 And after that, conjectural. I know I could get 22 something going and the average SRO could. I could 23 recover a different HPI pump. But then you start telling 24 us of your' accident.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, if Mr. Weiss hadn't Y
49
-1 come totyou and asked-for_your-opinion.or. assistance.in
-2 -this matter,'would you'have been involved, become as.
3' deeply _ involved in this otherwise? Was it within your 4' normal purview?
5- THE WITNESS: . That's,a good question. If 6.'somehow the Engineering Group were to attach this to 1 7 EOP's, then definitely, yes. Absent that it's hard-to 8- say. You know, you all have-professional camaraderies and 9 guys-you typically go to who you know are, you know,
- 10 they're just the guys that.are on.
11 I like to think of myself that way. And some 12' guys -- You know, you just -- It depends.
13 MR. DOCKERY: So if Mr. Wejss hadn't come to
- 14. you, then the obverse of that is that you might never have ,
15 known anything_about this other than what was information 16 around the plant. Is that correct?
17 THE WITNESS: That's possible. I don't know if 18 it's real probable,.but it's possible.
19 MR. DOCKERY: In-your opinion as a former 20 reactor operator, senior reactor operator, was the 21 terminations of Mr. Weiss and Mr. Fields justified? -
22- THE WITNESS: I don't know enough to say _
23- anythingion that.
24 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know anything about the 25 September 4th evolution that was run?
50' i
1- THE-WITNESS: That's.the big wrestling' question-2 with me. And.the only thing I_can say on that is_I may 3- have -- Rob may have discussed, to some extent,-the' day he 4 brought me the data for the 5th he may have_said some 5 -things about a previous test.
6 But, you know, I can't recall literally even the 7 conversation that brought'me the data of the 5th, much 8 less anything else.
9 And certainly there was no -- You know, I'd have 10 to say I'm pretty sure I had no data for sure. I'm almost 11 positive about that. But I definitely had data for the L 12- 5th.
13 MR. RAPP: When Rob Weiss brought you this 14 information, did it ever cross your mind or have a thought 15 that, hey, this is a test, this.is an unapproved 16 evolution?
17 1GUE WITNESS: That's another good question. I'd
- 18 have to say right at that moment there may have been 19 something way in the back of my mind saying, Rob, how did 20 you get the data. Okay. And I may have even asked-the 21 . question. I don't know.
22 But I know I did ask that question not long after 23: that, though. Because, you know, when I first saw the 24 datai and I saw the one curve over the other curve, right 25 off the bat I'm saying, how could we justify being there.
u ,_ . -
1 51 1- That's-the -- I guess that's the-first thing that t
2 hit me.
3 MR. DOCKERY:l When you say, how can we justify 4 being there,-clarify that for us. What do you mean by 5 being there?
6 THE WITNESS: Throughout -- Having a history of 7 operating _in there as opposed to just, you know, going in
.8_ and coming out, because that can happen.
9 MR. WEINBERG: In other words, over a 30-minute JG period is what-you're talking about.
11 THE WITNESS: Oh, yes.
12 .MR. VORSE: 5:aying to the unacceptable side of 13 the curve.
14 MR. WEINBERG: Right. Staying there for any, L
15 you know, real length of time.
16 MR. VORSE: Did you -- When you discussed the 17 September 5th evolution, did Mr. Fields and Mr. Weiss,
'18 were they ever in a position where you think that they 19 should have told you about the September 4th evolution, 20 because you really were kind of conducting an 21 investigation, a technical investigation?
22 When these -- I mean, that's probably not a good 23 way of saying.that, but you were --
- 24 THE WITNESS: Really, all-I act -- I acted on my 25 understanding of our problem reporting system. Okay. See i- -
l
.- -. ,, . ~ - - . - .
52 a problem, document it, and de t withiit,-you know. I 2 ;I;would sayffor completeness sake, especially,for 3- the engineering completeness sake, the fact that another 4=: test had been done, or evien tests, if they had data,-
5 reasonable data, all that should have been forwarded to 6 Engineering-for them to take a look at it, at least for-7 completeness r,ake.
8 MR. VORSE:- Are you aware of the data that they
. 9 did collect on the 4th?
u 10 THE WITNESS: Well, I understand now that they Eli had some data on the 4Lo, 12 -MR. VORSE: But you don't know specifically what 13 that data was?
14 THE WITNESS: No.
15 MR. WEINBERG: If I could interrupt for a 16 second. One of the areas that you had asked-earlier about 17 Paul's participation in the LER, and his answer was he may 18 have looked at a draft or two.
19 But in response to your question, and it will 20 come up later probably, he did specifically draft that 21 part of Beard's letter to Ebneter of December 2nd that-
" addressed the operators' conduct.
122
-23L And if you'ask him, he'll explain to you the 24'(participation of Rob Weiss and Dave Fields in that letter, 25 and'that-may be more pertinent to your question as to
53
-1 whether he thinks that'the' incident of-the 4th should have
.2 ~been brought up to him by Weiss and Fields.
3 But he did write that part.of the letter. :And.if 4 you don't.have the latter in-front of you, there's_a whole 5 section on this evolution of the 5th.
6 MR. DOCKERY: I recall reading it. Perhaps more 7 to the point,-does Mr. Fleming recall writing it?
8 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah.
9 THE WITNESS: Writing that part of the letter?
10 MR. DOCKERY: Yes.
11 THE WITNESS: I wrote--- I definitely wrote the 12 part of the letter that discussed the operations 13 evolution. In fact, I used the term evolution. I never 14 used the term test because, and this is an important
-15 concept, all tests are evolutions. Tests are a subset of 16 evolutions, but not all evolutions are tests.
1 *' So I mean, it wasn't that I was trying to be 18 witty or anything. At the time I didn't necessarily want 19 it to be characterized as a test. It was an evolution.
20 And, you know, that's it.
-21 And so what's the question.
22 MR. WEINBERG: I guess the question was, is --
23 if you'all are' interested, is the participation of. Weiss
,- 24 -and Fields in the preparation of this.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah. Okay, fine. I'd be l-p l
54
-1 interested. How did they participate?
2' THE WITNESS: Well, before I:could pen this I 3 _w ent to the control room and talked to them saying, look, 4- am I - =You-know, to the best of my recollection,'long 5 time-ago. I did go to the control room. I did obtain, 6 you-know, what -- Dave Fields had prepared some kind of a=
7 statement, a one-page thing that addressed, you know, why 8 :they did what they were doing and their methodology for 9 doing it, that-kind of thing.
11 0 And I had to get, you know,-times, that-kind of 11 -stuff. So I talked to them. And in fact, later on they 12- fax'd'me times and actions.- And I' basically just 13 integrated that into a letter.
14 MR. VORSE: When they did the times and actions, 15 they're talking about on the 5th.
16 THE WITNESS: From.the 5th. That's correct.
17 MR. VORSE: But not the 4th.
18 THE WITNESS: No. Didn't do that.
19 MR. WEINBERG: And they didn't say anything 20 about it.
21- THE WITNESS: No. It wasn't -- You know,-again, 22 to the best of my recollection, there was no conversation 23 .regarding any other tests when I was penning this part of 24' the' letter, other than the'5th.
- 25 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. In the long-aftermath and r- y ~ --,w ,
, ,. -,,--,n-w .ew-, , n -v, , -c-.. , ~',-.e
. g 4 t
i 55 l' the-fullness--of history since. September the 5th have you-2 ecome to know of any_other similar evolutions run by -- And-
- 3 I'm not referring to_the-4th now. At any other time _other -
4 shifts running. evolutions ~similar to this? i 5 THE WITNESS: So that I don't misspeak myself, 6 there_may have been a bleed performance, literally just a
-7 bleed well to the right of the curve. Again, it was to 8 perform a specific objective, not a test. Where the 9 operators had seen the performance of this system converge 10- on the curve.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Would you recall the time frame?
t 12 THE WITNESS: No. But I may have something on 13 it in my files.
-14 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know -- Was it also Mr.
15 Weiss end Mr. Fields' shift that -- Do you recall was it 16 the same group of --
17 THE WITNESS: I don't know.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Basically this, Mr. Fleming, did 19 anybody other than Mr. Weiss ever come to you and voice a 20 concern regarding Curve Number 8? Was it solely Mr.
21 Weiss' concern or did others share it with him?
22 THE WITNESS: I know others had shared-the 23 concern, whether'or not they voiced it to-me. But the-24 .only-one I.can definitely say voiced it to me was Weiss.
1 25 And I know when_I did go to the control room, at I
- --- 5 6 1 _least-aicouple-times, you know, to gain that information,-
l2- that kind of stuff,- Mark Van Sicklen also did share the
- 3. fact that, you know, the curve is not quite right. So he 4 was verbal about it, j 5 MR. DOCKERY: But that was well after the fact 6 of Septenber the 5th, or was it prior to that?
7 THE WITNESS: No. That was after the September 8 Sth. It was basically when I started walking to the 9 control room to get -- figure things out.
10 MR. DOCKERY: I don't believe-I have anything 11 else.
12 MR, VORSE: I can't think of anything.
13 MR. RAPP: Nothing. I think that's --
14 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Fleming, I -- let me ask you, 15- a lot of times we don't ask the questions that you might 16 anticipate we would ask or you might have answers that we.
17 don't anticipate that would be helpful to us.
18 At this time I'd like you to -- if there's 19 anything that_you think would be helpful in this matter 20 that we haven't discussed, I'd like you to bring it up.
21 And feel free to bring up anything that you think is 22 important.
23- THE WITNESS: I can only say that I've been working here 15-years, been involved with some very
~
24
- 25 challenging situations, real time and design basis time.
i o+ --
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57- [
- 1~ AndlI have got.-to admit--I have never been a. party to a 2 more-complex situation than this in my whole 20 plus years. t 3 involving-nuclear _ power, Navy or here. And --
- 4. MR.=DOCKERY: That's intoresting to me. What 5 makes this issue'so complex? Is it the technical nature 6- of it?
7 THE WITNESS: Yeah, It's mostly the-technical 8 nature of it. Because, you know, I know I'm on record and 9 stuff.
10 There's so many elements driving the design of 11 this.one system that's, you know, designed co maintain 12- normal makeup of water ' chemistry and it serves in the HPI i
' 13 capacity. It's a designer's nightmare. And it's a real 14 operational challenge.
15 And I'm not -- We're not operating unsafely, but _
16 it is a very difficult thing unless you, you know,
. 17 hardcore model this thing to get your hands around every 18 little piece of it, because, you know, the dynamic world, i
19 it's pretty tough and it's very easy-to uncover another P
20 little aspect.
21' You know, it's difficult. It's not like 22 designing of a single-component reactor for instance.
23 It's -- This has multiple things driving it, Appendix R, i
-24 .LOCA, and water chemistry.
25 I've never been a part of such a complex set.of
+
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58 1 eleme.nt s .
2 MR. DOCKSnY: Anything else you'd like to add?
3 THE WITNESS: No.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Before we go off the record then
-5 oftentimes we come up with other questions that we didn't 6 anticipate in advance or we didn't ask you here, or even 7 that this transcript might raise questions t'at n we should 8 have asked.
9 In which case through the legal counsel we'll be 10 contacting you and we'll arrange some simple way to ask 11 the question. Do you have any problem with that?
12 THE WITNESS: Not at all.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Do you also understand that, as 14 was stated at the beginning of this record, the two 15 gentlemen here represent -- the two attorneys who are in 16 attendance with you represent Florida Power and do not 17 necessarily represent you?
18 I want you to understand you have every right, if 19 you desire to, to speak to us privately without them 20 present.
21 THE WITNESS: I do understand that.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. If nobody else has 23 anything --
24 MR. WEINBERG: All right. The same 25 understanding _that he'll have a right to read and sign l