ML20199C942
| ML20199C942 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crystal River  |
| Issue date: | 11/29/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20199C716 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA-97-313 2-94-036, 2-94-36, NUDOCS 9711200205 | |
| Download: ML20199C942 (97) | |
Text
. - .-- .
@fficle! Transcript of ProscCdings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
In the matter of Interview of .
Carl Bergstrom Docket Number: 2-94-036 Location: Crystal River, Florida
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Date: November 29,1995 Work Order Nc : . NRC-429 Pages 1-96 7
NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Couri Reporters and Transcribers 2-94 036 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W. NIE - - -
Washington, D.C. 20005
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(- 12 NUCLEAR' REGULATORY--COMMISSION-
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.4 OFFICE OF; INVESTIGATIONS'
~5~ INTERVIEW
.6 ---~~~~-- ------------------------x =
7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8' INTERVIEW OF : Docket No. ~i 9 CARL BERGSTRO o 5I : 2-94-036 10 :
11 ----------------------------------x 12 Wednesday, November 29, 1995 h
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 8:10 a.m.
21- BEFORE:
'22- ~ JAMES DOCKERY- . Senior Investigator 23 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator
'24- CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer keys'e& hk fucy, fm &'
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- 11 APPEARANCES:
2- On Behalf of the' Nuclear Regulatory Commission-- j 3 JAMES.DOCKERY, Senior Investigator 4'- Region-II NRC Office of Investigations 5-- 401 Marietta Street 6 Atlanta, Georgia-30323 7- JAMES VORSE, Senior Inu stigator -
8 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 9 401 Marietta Street 10 Atlanta, Georgia 30323
'll CURT RAPP, Reactor Engineer
- 12. Region II NRC 13 401 Marietta Street 14 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 15 16 On Behalf of the Interviewee, Carl Bergstrom 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
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 MR DOCKERY: For the record today's date is 3 November 29th, 1995. The time is approximately 8:10 a.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. Carl Bergstrom. This 9 interview pertains to OI Investigation number 2-94-036.
10 Location of the interview is the Adn..nistration building 11 of the Crystal River Nuclear Plant.
12 We have others in attendance at this interview 13 today and I'm going to ask them to identify ther..selves, 14 starting with Mr. Rapp.
15 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp, R-A-P-P, and 16 I'm a Reactor Engineer with Region II NRC in Atlanta, 17 Georgia.
18 MR. VORSE: My name is Jim Vorse. I'm an 19 Invertigator with the NRC Office of Investigations, Region 20 II, Atlanta.
21 MR. STENGER: Dan Stenger, attorney with Winston 22 & Strawn in Washington, D.C.
23 MR. WEINBERG: Sandy Weinberg, Zuckerman, 24 Spaeder in Tampa. And as we've stated.before in the other 25 interviews both Mr. Stenger and I represent Florida Power.
1 THE WITNESS: I'm Carl Bergstrom from Florida 2 Power Corporation and my title is the Manager of Nuclear 3 Ops. Support.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, would you raise 5 your right hand please, sir?
6 WHEREUPON, 7 CARL BERGSTROM, 8 having first been duly sworn by the Investigator, was 9 examined and testified as follows:
10 MR. DOCKERY: Thank you.
11 DIRECT EXAMINATION j 12 MR. DOCKERY: You've already stated your full
, 13 name for us. Would you, for identification purposes, 14 state your date of birth and Social Security number?
15 THE WITNESS: My date of birth is 16 O My Social Security number is 17 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, prior to going on 18 the record here today Mr. Vorse and I identified ourselves 19 as Investigators with the NRC Office of Investigations.
20 You understand who we are, is that correct?
21 THE WITNESS: Yes, I do.
22 MR. DOCKERY: And also I provided you with a 23 copy of Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United States Code 24 and you read that and acknowledged that you understood its 25 applicability here today?
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-5 -
I' did.-
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1 THE WITNESS:. Yes, 10 MR. DOCKERY: -Okay,-.thank you. 1 3' Mr. Bergstrom, the events that were -- we want to 4 discuss with you here-today took place primarily in-1994.
9 -
5 Could you tell us what your_ position was at-that time?
6 THE WITNESS: The entire year of 1994, I started 7 .the year as a shif t supervisor of one of the operating-8 shifts and maintained that until we entered into the-9 refuel outage. At that time I fulfilled the role, but my 10 title remained as a shift supervisor, I fulfilled the role 11 as a production coordinator for operations and coordinated 12 the activities for the outage. Upon the completion of the 13 refuel outage I mairtained my-title as a shift supervisor
(-' 14 until September the ist. At September the 1st then I ,
15 changed to manager of nuclear operations support. I 16 maintain my job position of coordinating skills but now 17 out of the refueling outage I now coordinate the 18 activities of operations day to day.
. 19 MR. DOCKERY: What was the approximate dates of 20 the -- that outage -- just roughly?
21 THE WITNESS: The outage was complete 22 approximately the first part of June.
23 MR. WEINBERG: Of '94?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, directing your-6
_ ..~ -. . . , . . _ - _. _ . . _ _ _ . _ . . _ _ . _ . _ . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . _ _ .
t 11 attention or! recollection to July-of 1994, we've--- you've 2- hadi an; opportunity to interview ---or to review'the notes 3 .from.an interview that-was dono of'you by-the --.a.
4 corporate investigator. It discunes your recollection of
- 5. a:possible July 22, 1994,.r. volution conducted by Bruct 6 Willms. Do you recall that?- >
7 THE WITNE3S: Yes, I do recall the-activity I 8 asked Bruce Willms to perform on the control board for-me, J 9 I don't have the exact date, but July is a pretty good 10 time = frame of when it-was done.
- 11 MR. DOCKERY: You say you as'ked him to perform ,
-12' something?
13 THE WITNESS: That's correct. Yes, I did.
14 MR, DOCKERY: Can you just describe that for us?
15 THE WITNESS: The plant was adjusting 16 concentration of boron in the RCS and part of-that 17- adjustment of the concentration is to adjust it in the 18 makeup tank as well. To be able to adjust the 19 concentration in.the makeup tank we had to do what's 20 - called a bleed to the RC bleed tank to lower the level'in 21 the makeup tank to be_able to. replenish the volume in the.
22 makeup tank'with a different concentration.
23 Beca'use this was an ongoing evolution I requested 241. Bruce Willms to do:some additional data collection while 25- we werellowering the level in the makeup tank as the
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1 routine. We were -- we' collected data off the level and 2' pressure off of MU-14-LIR, which_is the level strip chart 3 recorder on sia main control. board. We plotted those ,
4 against the OP-103 curve as it related to pressure and 5 level-in the-rank. What we were trying to achieve by 6 plotting it was to confirm or deny that the plotted points 7 would parallel the approved operating curve for the makeup 8 tank.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Was -- was your concern at that 10 time -- did it-involve the hydrogel level or --
11 THE WITNESS: My only -- nty -- the reason I was 12 driving to collect the data, because that was not normal, 13 is that there was -- because I was in a point of 14 . transition of being the coordinator for the outage and 15 then assuming my new duties as a manager, I wanted to get 16 a up-to-date status of where we stood with some 17 controversial issues, one of them being the makeup tank 18 curve.
19 MR DOCKERY: That's what we have come to refer 20 to'as. Curve 8, for simplicity's sake?
21 THE WITNESS: Okay. The controversy that lied 22 (sic) with the makeup tank curve is during the performance 23 of the outage surveillance testing we indicated that we 24 gas-bound one of-the makeup pumps and we were trying to 25 figure _out how we got the gas entrained into the makeup
1 pump. It meant that the prerequisite conditions for 2 establishing the makeup pump flow test could have been in 3 error and the operators were concerned that if they 4 continued to operate by maintaining a high hydrogen 5 concentration or high concen -- hydrogen pressure in the 6 makeup tank that it would cause them to go into a 7 unacceptable region for operating with the makeup tank and 8 result into the gas-binding and the inoperability of the 9 HPI pumps, makeup pumps.
10 The -- they had corresponded back and forth with 11 Engineering to resolve the issue. They had no resolution.
12 They had no deadline date for resolution. The point of 13 contacts were unclear. We had no game plan that I was 14 able to determine as being '.he manager. I was trying to 15 at least bring myself up to date on where we stood with 16 this and what kind of position management needed to help 17 achieve an end goal of this controversy.
18 This -- Earlier correspondence had said that the 19 curve was correct and that we weren't -- we would not see 20 the indications that we did, and this was a confirming 21 action on our point to say that the curves did not run 22 parallel. Or, in other words, would challenge the 23 operability curve of the makeup tank.
24 MR. DOCKERY: In more or less layman's terms, 25 because that's what I am, what did the data you directed r
- 1 .Mr. Willms to collect -- what conclusions did you reach 2 from that data?
3 THE WITNESS: Based on our data that we-4 collected and plotted points from a high level in the 5 makeup tank at a pressure -- a higher pressure to a lower 6 level in the makeup tank, we were able to achieve that the 7 plotted points did not run parallel to the makeup tank 8 curve. In other words, we theorized that the point that 9 if we had continued to lower the level in the makeup tank 10 we would have indeed have challenged the operating curve 11 of the makeup tank.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Well, would it be fair to say that 13 that curve was somehow inaccurate or invalid?
14 THE WITNESS: That was the basis of a follow-up 15 meeting to the data collection that we have was to say 16 that the engineering letters that : had seen from the 17 operators who had been following up on the issue, the --
18 their letters indicated that the curve was correct based 19 on Design Engineering in St. Pete. They continued to 20 pursue it because they felt that they weren't.
21 The results indicated to me also that I was now 22 falling more on their side, saying that it appears that 23 way to me as well. We -- we are not engineers. We can 24 only go based on the level of knowledge as we were 25 trained. Ard what was called a P1-V1 over T1 calculation
(
i
? 10 1 - did not prove that. the curve was -correct. And we were 3
2- _ told that we didn't understand the entire process behind. -
3 it. -There were references made te gasses coming out of 4 solution. Other references of things that we couldn't deal with, and that was the purpose of holding the meeting i 6 so that we'could clear that up.
7 MR. DOCKERY:- What was the outcome of that ,
8 meeting?
9- MR. WEINBERG: Can we establish just when the 10 meeting was?
11 MR. DOCKERY: Sure.
J22 MR . : WEINBERG : knen do you think?
13 THE_ WITNESS: I bought my -- I -- for the 14 purposes of organizing myself and my daily activities, I 15 maintain a day planaer. It does nothing more than collect ,
16_ information of meetings that I have gone to and action 17 items that I was pursuing on daily. I have those and I 18 have 1994 in front of me, and July 19th, this is my entry:
19 It says specifically, Pat Hinman,_H-I-N-M-A-N, Steve Roe, 20 R-O-E, Mark Van Sicklen, Bruce Willms. These were all in 21 attendance along with myself, disagree that the makeup 22 tank will empty. The curves don't prove that the gas 23 binding of the makeup pumps will. result. This is the 24 result.
25 You asked.where did we go from there? Pat, h
I
1 meaning Pat Hinman, will re-perform the P1-V1 calculation 2 by returning to St. Pete Engineering for calculations (he 3 believes the curves to be conservative). A word pneumatic 4 -- oh, okay. It says, all brainstorms making MUV-64 as a 5 pneumatically operated valve from the main control board.
6 And possible simulator performance.
7 So, to answer your question from my log entries 8 here, because my memory is not that great, the action item 9 was to re-perform the calculation P1-V1 for the makeup 10 tank by sending it back to St. Pete Engineering. And at 11 the same time we were pursing a long range goal of 12 reactivating the controlc for MUV-64 so that we could take 13 contingent actions from the main control board on the 14 lowering level of the makeup tank. And we were also 15 saying that we want to run this on the simulator. And if 16 the simulator will prove that we're also seeing this 17 instead of continuing to take data off of the operating 18 plant.
19 MR. WEINBERG: Well, we'll make a copy of this 20 if that's okay?
21 THE WITNESS: That's fine.
22 MR. DOCKERY: While we have that here and have 23 it out. The notes of your interview by the company 24 investigator indicate a possible, and I'm quoting, 25 "possible July 22, 1994 evolution".
.. - -. ~. - - . . _ - - . .- - - .- . -
12 1 -Can you -- would you check your notes and-see 2: - if-you have anything on or about July 22 that would 3 indicate --
4- THE WITNESS: No.
4 5 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
6 MR. WEINBERG: It must have been -- what shou --
7 it must have been before July 19th?
8 THE WITNESS: I -- I don't routinely go to a 9 different page to write on notes unless the page has been 10 filled and then I will sometimes-flip to a previous page
- 11. to find a spot to write on. But as yo'u look at the pages 12 there,-the pages'are not filled on the day of the 19th.
13 .MR. WEINBERG Think it would be 18th?
{-
14 THE WITNESS: No. You see that's -- that's a 15 different question now. All right. If you look -- okay.
16 To answer your question specifically, do I think that my 17 date is correct in my date planner? As well as I know, it 18 is. It leads me to believe it is because I look at
- 19 follow-up days, I don't_have any writing on the pages, so 20 there wasLcertainly enough room. And on -- if you look on 21 the 22nd of July, there's absolutely no writing there 22 whatsoever. But I --Land I indicate that I was on 23 vacation'that day, so I wasn't even at the plant. I took 24 off'on the 20th and from that point on I was gone.
251 So I'd say yes, it is on the-19th. The notes
13 1 that we provided you on earlier conversations indicate-2 possibly the 22nd'._ I'd say based onLwhat I have in the 3< day planner it,was probably on-the 19th and not the 22nd.
4= MR DOCKERY: To the best that you can recall, S- and it's been over a year, but do you think that the 6 meeting of the 19th, would that have been conducted the 7 same-date that Mr. Willms conducted the evolution or would 8 it have been sometime after Mr. Willms collected that 9 data?
10 THE WITNESS: I -- I really can't recall it. It 11 would not be unreasonable to expect to have the people 12 come up on tha same day that we ran it. My gut feeling is 13 that it was probably not performed on the same day.
14 MR. RAPP: If you want to know the dates, we can 15 go back to the shift logs and --
16 MR. WEINBERG: I was going to say, I've got them 17 in the car. And-I've got the logs of that day. I just 18 don't know off the top of my head remember what day it 19 was. Sometime in July, I think it's in the middle of 20 July.
21 -THE WITNESS: Do you want an answer on why 22 there's a log entry on the 18th --
.23 MR. WEINBERG: Well, there is a makeup tank log 24 on the 18th --
-25 THE WITNESS: Right. I think if you flip
!(1
. _ _ . . _ _ _ _ -. ~ _ _ _ . _._ _ _ -. .
4 s
14 2 -11 through here you'11' find just about every single day.= You -
2- -flip 1anywhere in here you'll find hydrogen to the makeup.
3 tank.- The reason being-is it's not a record of the daily
'4 events, but what it does it 'eraphasizes that it was a point 5 of action for that day. Every single day hydrogen to the 6 . makeup. tank was.an issue to keep hydrogen. pressure up so-
~
- 7. that we met the concentration requirements of the RCS.
8 So, there's many references to hydrogen in the makeup tank 9 but not -- not.what you're asking.
10- MR. DOCKERY: Well, this is a significant issue.
11 THE WITNESS: Absolutely, every single day, 12 MR. DOCKERY: At that time, Mr. Bergstrom --
- 13 MR. WEINBERG: Well, when you say, this, this 14 thing, hydrogen, or this thing, the curve?
15 MR. DOCKERY: I have trouble separating them.
16 THE WITNESS: Okay. I -- all right. The issue 4
17 of hydrogen in the makeup tank was a daily issue. The E18 issue of the makeup tank curve was'not an elevated issue 19 .at.that point. In fact, that was the reason that I 20 requested the meeting is that it had been falling on the 21- back burner, so to speak, and chat I didn't see any 22 activityfand that I felt that I needed to get answers for 23 the supervisors that were now working for me on what was 24 -the status-of.the issue, how we -- .Because we had been 25 kicking this back and_forth with Engineering for some e
t.
15 1 time. And the shift supervisors even questioned, where do '
2 ve go with this?
3 MR. RAPP: Let me -- let me interrupt here for 4 one second. Did -- did Operations make it clear to 5 Engineering the significance of this curve, the safety 6 significance of this curve?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes, yes we did.
O MR. RAPP: And what was Engineering's response?
9 THE WITNESS: I don't know. I was not involved 10 with that. My involvement came about this time frame when 11 I started returning -- I can only guess what the response 12 was. I had two focal points for this issue at the time 13 and that was Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce Willms. They were 14 my two focal points. And the reason we had selected them 15 to be the foca) point to follow up on this issue is that 16 one or possibly both of them had performed SP-630 and had 17 seen the indications of voiding of the makeup pumps and 18 they had taken a vested interest in trying to resolve the 19 issue over why -- why we had gotten the voiding in the 20 makeup pumps. So they were pursuing that.
21 MR. RAPP: Okay. So Engineering undarstood that 22 there was a substantial safety issue involved here with 23 this curve?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes, it was. Yes, they did.
25 MR. RAPP: And yet they placed it as a low C
l l
. . . 16
-1 priority item in their overall processing of work? !
2 THE WITNESS: I would characterize what we had 3 was conditionally operable based on further reviews. In 4 other, words we were not dealing with something that was 5 clearly inoperable, it was something that was operable. I 6 We questioned the results that we were seeing. We did not 7 re-perform the SP 630 at that time because it's done 8 during the refueling outage.
9 We saw some indications of problems during it and 10 we questioned if the ECCS system, Emergency Core Cooling 11 System, was to be used for a LOCA would we have the same 12 indications or would we be challenging the operability of
{ 13 14 those pumps.
to drop.
We felt it was not an issue that we wanted We wanted to run to an end. We also felt the 15 pressure put on us daily to maintain the pressure high 16 which technically will move the operating point on that 17 curve closer to the operating limit curve.
18 MR. RAPPt Where was this pressure coming from 19 to maintain high pressure -- to maintain the elevated 20 -hydrogen concentration? i 21 THE WITNESS: The pressute that I dealt with on 3
22 a daily. basis was coming from the' chemistry results for 23 hydrogen concentration in the-RCS. The only way that you 24 got the hydrogen concentration into the RCS was to keep a 25 pressuze or-a gas bubble in-the makeup tank.
17 5
1 We were trying to meet the guidelines of-Crn! pb s INVA~
2 standard of 25 cc's per kg. And daily the managers 3 meeting would have a plot of where our hydrogen 4 concentration would be in the RCS, and if they had seen a 5 lowering trend in the hydrogen concentration the first 6 response would be is, are you keeping your pressure up 7 high enough in the makeup tank so that you can get a a corresponding increase of hydrogen in the RCS?
9 MR. RAPP Would this -- would they just come to 10 your office and bring th1s up to your attention or --
11 THE WITNESS: No, at that time the managers were 12 meeting in the tech support center at ten o' clock in the 13 morning. Managers meaning that you'd have the Operations
{ You'd have 14 manager there. You'd have the Plant Manager.
15 the shift managers. And you'd have Chemistry manager 16 there. So when a decreasing trend of the chemistry 17 parameter would bo indicated on the plan of the day the 18 question would come out as why are we seeing a lowering 19 pressure? And that would be going back to Operations and 20 say, make sure that your people are keeping the pressure 21 up high enough.
22 MR. RAPP: And who in that Operations management 23 chain was directing that?
24 THE WITNESS: Whoever went to the managers 25 meeting would end up returning that information back to
.= -. . - - - . - - - - . - - - - . . - ~ . - , - . - . - . -
18 i i
C i the shift supervisors.
2 MR. RAPP: But who typically would that have >
3 been? !
4 THE WITNESS: It was-shared responsibility !
5 between Greg Halnon and myself. Primarily Greg Halnon was 6 the manager of Ops and he would go to the meeting, but-7 whenever his schedule didn't-permit him to go to the 8- meetings, then I would-fill in.
9 MR. RAPP Okay.
10 THE WITNESS: The majority of the time it was 4 11 Greg and then I -- I was also exposed to that- pressure 12 from the managers' meeting, f 13 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, let me interrupt A
14 just a second. Who did you report to? Who was your ,
15 supervisor at that time?
16 THE WITNESS: At that time it was Greg Halnon 17 and it still remains that way.
18 MR. RAPP: Okay. And so Greg Halnon is your 19 supervisor, but at certain points in time you're acting in 20 his behalf or in his place at this meeting?
21 THE WITNESS: Right. We documented the - :the' 22 -sharing of the command role for operations and signature 23 authority and so forth to fill in for Greg.
24 MR. RAPP So that'you -- earlier you spoke of
- 25 pressure, where was that pressure coming from? Was it e
1 coming from someone above Greg Halnon?
2 THE WITNESS: It -- it was a shared prest are 3 imposed on -- we were all assuming the pressure for trying EPRC 4 to meet the GFM- guidelines. I feel it was shared by
- us a .u <
5 management, and I don't want to single out anybody in the 6 management meetings. It, was a conclusion that came out 7 and we did not -- that was onn of the messages we did not 8 want to go back to the individuals in the bargaining unit 9 and say, it was Greg that wanted to do it. It was -- it EMZ 10 was a management decision to try to meet the EF",I w dn.u #
11 guidelines at that time to keep the hydrogen concentration 12 up.
( 13 MR. DOCKERY: Who conducted the morning meeting
(
14 each day?
15 THE WITNESS: It was either held by the Nuclear 16 shift manager or the plant manager and whoever was filling 17 the plant manager's position.
18 MR. DOCKERY: And would you identify by name 19 cach --
20 THE WITNESS: Typically right now the plant 21 manager at that time and now is Bruce Hickle. Shared 22 responsibility, just like when Greg is not here, I fill in 23 for Greg -- shared for when Bruce was not here it would 24 have been Ron Davis.
25 MR. RAPP: Are you aware of where this
, _=_- . .. - - - . - . . . - - - .- .-. - - . - - . - - -
20 ;
r C 1 management decision came from to go to this increased t
l 2 hydrogen concentration?
3 THE WITNESS: Management decision was -- as it !
EPRT 's 4 was communicated to me was it was a 4WH44s standard that GbbavIf b 5 we wanted to achieve and that was for achieving the proper l; 6 chemistry parameters in the RCS. I 7 MR. RAPP: Okay, but --
8 MR. WEINBERG You mean what' individual -- ,
e 9 MR. RAPP: What individual --
1 10 MR. WEINBERG: -- at the company -- was there ;
11 any individual that you know at the company that sort of 12 spearheaded the effort to maintain these standards?
13 THE WITNESS: I -- I didn't question that. ;
14 MR WEINBERG: Are you an engineer?
15 THE WITNESS: No, I'm not.
16 MR. RAPP: You're not a degreed engineer.
17 Did -- when you presented this data to 18 Engineering on July 19th and they told you that basically 19 yoa didn't understand all of these intricacies involved 20 here. On an intuitive level or gut level how did you 21 respond to that or how did you feel about Engineering's 22 statements?
23 THE WITNESS: -One_of the. action _ items from this 24 ' meeting was that -- we seemed to have a friction between 25- Engineering and Operations at the time, that no one was
~
(:
1 yielding. The operators were strong in their opinion of 2 what was going to happen and engineering was strong in 3 their opinion. We all -- both-agreed that we would go 4 back and validate the data that we had collected. We 5 would validate our concerns and so forth.
6 But what we were dealing with here is that one 7 16rson was talking in an engineering language and the 8 other one was talking in an operator language. So one of 9 the action items from the meeting was to find someone that 10 could communicate clearly in both levels. And we, at that 11 time, appointed one of the operational technical 12 assistants who is a -- has an engineering background, Walt
{ 13 14 Neuman, to be our focal point.
Another problem with any kind of -- a technical 15 problem in the plant is when you're dealing with people 16 that are on rotating shift work. When you have a 17 question, not all the times are you going to be able to 18 communicate with that individual. And it's hard to --
19 especially on this complex issue to send a letter, a memo, 20 a note or even leave voice mail. I don't believe -- we 21 did have voice mail then, but to leave voice mail, you 22 know, the operators don't have a voice mail box. So 23 because of that we needed also a person that we could 24 focus-in on to communicate the issues of where we stood 25 with the status and so forth. We needed that person. We e
(: 1 felt the best person at that time to interface or mediate 2 between the two groups was this operations technical 3 assistant, Walt Neuman, who has an engineering background.
4 At that point Walt was going to have to leave 5 that meeting -- he wasn't even at the meeting. He was 6 going to have to go on a collection phase of all the 7 information to try to receive everything he could and try 8 to make sense of it and so forth. And from that point on 9 Walt did collect the information.
10 We also set a -- a deadline date for when we 11 wanted an answer. This was another problem that I felt 12 looking at it that we dic not set a realistic deadline.
13 We just said we want you to correct the problem, but we 14 never told him that we want an answer before such and such 15 a date. So we set a realis -- to the best of my 16 recollection the date that we used at that time was 17 November the 15th.
18 MR. WEINBERG: Was that a date that was 19 acceptable to Van Sicklen and Willms?
20 THE WITNESS: It was -- yeah, I felt everybody 21 that went away from that meeting was satisfied with the 22 November 15th, as long as we were communicating where we 23 stood with it. We weren't going to wait until November 24 the 1st to start acting on it. We wanted to start working 25 on it now, but November the 15th we needed some wrap up
7 r
1 date. ,
2 MR. RAPP: What -- if November 15th was the date 3 that everybody -- and I take that to mean Engineering as 4 well, correct?
5 THE WITNESS: Yes.
6 HR. RAPP: Agreed to --
7 THE WITNESS: Remember, we said that the action 8 item was going to be the recalculation of the P1-V1 9 calculation?
10 MR. RAPP: Uh-huh.
11 THE WITNESS: So when I say a deadline date, we 12 wanted that calculation done and back to us by then. They 13 said that there was not a problem with the curve. We 14 said, yes, we see a problem with the curve based on the 15 collection of data.
16 MR. RAPP: Then what was the purpose of the 17 September 2nd letter from Engineering saying this curve 18 was safe and conservative and there was no further 19 engineering need to evaluate it.
20 MR. DOCKERY: We need to establish that Mr.
21 Bergstrom $s familiar with that letter and that -- Sandy, 22 do you have a copy of that we could pull up?
23 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah.
24 MR. DOCKERY: I'd feel better if he had a chance 25 to look at it and review it.
l i
24 [
r 1 THE WITNESS: (Examining document.) I'm j 2 familiar with that letter, yes. I have a -- I was sent a .
3 copy of the letter. l 4 MR. VORSE: When, Mt. Bergstrom?
5 MR. WEINBERG: He's shown on it as having gotten l 5
6 a copy. ,
4 7 THE WITNESS: Yeah. I was sent a copy of the -- ;
C I did not retain a copy of this letter, to be honest with 9 you. The first time I became aware of this letter was 10 when we prepared to sit down with you last week, all i 11 right, and that was the time that I read the letter and so 12 forth. I recall that time.
r- 13 MR. RAPP: Were you the one or were you the .
s' 14 individual that gave this September 2nd letter to Mr.
15 Fields' shift on September 3rd or whatever date, prior to 16 the 5th?
17 THE WITNESS: I don't recall. I -- honestly, I 18 can't answer you and say I honestly didn't. I don't i 19 recall. Like I said, I didn't -- I wasn't aware -- I 20 didn't remember this letter until we sat'down last week on 21 the 22nd and reviewed the paperwork that we had. I 22 certainly know that on the September time frame there was '
23 not a resolution to it at that point.
-- 2 4 - MR.-DOCKERY: But let's try and get to it this 25 way. I mean.--I can' understand your recollection might.be
25 :
( 1 hazy, but having reviewed it, the letter, again, do you I
j
-2 recall at all what your reaction to it was at the time you ]
3 first received it? !
4 THE WITNESS: To me it was a preliminary letter, :
5 it was not a completion of reaching the goal of the P1-V1 !
calculation. It was just one more piece of information 6
7 that needed to go to the focal point, which was Walt 8 heuman, to digest exactly where we stood with it. There ,
9 were things that were discussed in this letter that were ;
10 long range goals.
11- MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Let me direct your ,
12 attention to the first paragraph and what I see is a pretty -- a somewhat unequivocal statement. The middle of
{ '
13 14 that paragraph, referring to Curve 8, I will quote, i 15 " Engineering believes this curve is accurate and ;
16 reasonably conservative to protect the high pressure l
17 injection pumps from hydrogen gas intrusion in the worst 18 case large break LOCA." Do you agree with that statement?
19 THE WITNESS: No.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Did you agree with it at the time?
- 21. THE WITNESS: No. l 22 MR. DOCKERY: Curve 8 as it existed at that time 23 ---I ---it's my understanding has been revised. Is there 24 a different curve in effect today?
25 THE WITNESS: Yes.
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26 !
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1 MR. DOCKERY: Who was wrong?
2 THE WITNESS: I don't lay the blame. I don't 3 know. So, just looking at the curves now you can see that ;
4 we're operating completely different then when we did j l
5 before.
. 6 MR. DOCKERY: Which means? l 7 THE WITNESS: There was -- which changes, we've
-8 now provided a conservative in there along with a -- in ,
9 other words, h dotted-line curve along with a solid line !
10 curve now. All right. We didn't have that before. We 11 changed the characteristics of as you view the curve where 12 you are. We've clearly stated our expectations of where 13 we expect you to operate on this curve when that curve 14 came out, the neu Curve 8. Things have changed from where !
15 we were at before.
16 MR. RAPP: Was that -- Is the previous Curve 8 17 indicated as a operating band or an operating range?-
18 THE WI1WESS I think we have a copy of it. I ,
19 don't believe that there was a -- there was nothing 20 labeled unacceptable region. I believe there was a right-21- hand-region that said acceptable, and there was a solid 22 line there.
- 23 MR. RAPP: What was the instruction to- the 24 operators, to the operating crews regarding_where to 25 operate on Curve 8?
,(
T e w4 4 nw -s e v ,.e,-%- . ,y., w...,- 9 w ww- ,,ww-~y-.--v-c. -,,c~ w - - - -m = . , - + w,s., v.... ,,,,w ww,c-,-- % --p, - . - - c- -- - - - -
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( 1 THE WITNESS: I can -- I can give you an answer 27 i i
2 based on my position as a shif t supervisor and how I 3 conducted operations on my shift previous to the refueling i
4 notage. Previous to the refueling outage there was an e 5 acceptable region as labeled and there was another point.
6 of the region that we didn't operate in. All right. We ;
7 did not purposely go over into that region. Those are my
{
8 personal standards and I expressed my personal standards- l 9 to the people that worked on my shift. [
10 MR. RAPP: So anywhere between the solid line 11 and to the right of that was the acceptable range as far 12 as your shift was concerned? I 13 THE WITNESS: -Well, that curve is drawn out
{
14 above the high level alarms and the low level alarms. All ;
15 right. So I can't say yes to your question, but if i 16 you -- if the question was rephrased to say to the right 17 of-that curve as long as you stay within the high level 18- alarms and the low level alarms, I agree with it, yes. ;
19 Understanding that you may achieve -- you may get a high 20 level alarm, and there's actions that you can take to i 21 respond to the high level alarm as driven by the 22 annunciator response. All right. So it's not an 23 immediate -- it is an immediate concern, however, it 24 doesn't -- it-gives me time to be able to respond to the 25 alarm and to take actions ~for it, i
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28 C 1 But to answer your question, no, I wouldn't 2 purposely go above the high or low level alarms so I don't 3 have everything to the right of that curve to be able to 4 operate in.
5 MR. RAPP: Okay. I was specifically talking 6 about hydrogen pressure, not necessarily level. But --
7 THE WITNESS: Well, it's a -- it's a two-axis 8 cu rve, so you're dealing with both at issue.
9 MR. RAPP Right. You said that the level 10 alarms were not immediate action alarms but you'd had time 11 to respond in there. What about the overpressure alarm or 12 the high pressure alarm, was that an immediate attention 13 or t.nmediate action --
14 THE WITNESS: It's annunciator response for the 15 operator to immediately perform that. And if you look at 16 the annunciator response, there are automatic actions, 17 immediate actions, operator actions involved with that, 18 and so forth. It is -- we don't acknowledge an alarm and 19 sit on the alarm. It was not one of those alarms. You 20 took an action when you received that alarm.
21 MR. RAPP: How are your alarms designated at 22 Crystal River in the control room?
23 THE WITNESS: There's many different levels of 24 alarms, from a level one all the way down to a level four 25 alarm where a level four alarm doesn't even illuminate a
0 1 window. A level one alarm could be backlit red 2 (phonetic), which is in, you know, a higher annunciator 3 alarm. Typically it would be something like a reactor 4 protection system alarm, a reactor trip alarm, a safety 5 system pump trip alarm or something like that, backlit 6 red.
7 MR RAPP: What was the high pressure alarm what 8 level was it?
9 THE WITNESS: I don't recall.
10 MR. RAPP Well, did it alarm on the annunciator 11 panel or --
12 THE WITNESS: Yes, it was not -- it was clearly 13 not a level four, it was something either level one or k
14 three. And I don't believe it was a level one, but I --
15 my memory is not that good. I have printed copies of the 16 annunciator responses right in front of me on the control 17 board, 18 MR. RAPP: But it was a lower level alarm, it 19 was not one that required a -- one that indicated 20 immediate attention was required?
21 MR. WEINBERG: He already said that it did 22 require immediate attention.
23 THE WITNESS: Right. I'm not saying it's --
24 MR. RAPP: Well, he said the ARP, the 25 annunciator response procedure. I'm talking about the r
Y 1 alarm indications themselves.
2 THE WITNESS: All alarm indications regardless 3 of whatever level they are require an immediate response.
4 MR. RAPP: Okay. How would you characterize ;
5 immediate response?
t 6 THE WITNESS: Are you asking me in a typical 7 time frame how long does it take for me to go over and !
8 press the button to acknowledge the a)< /m?
9 MR, RAPP: Well, let me phrase it this way. You 10 received an alarm, what are the actior.s that the operator 11 takes?
12 THE WITNESS: Yod receive alarm. You 13 acknowledge the alarm. You call out the alarm. You have 14 someone verify that the alarm came in behind you, one of 15 the two supervisors in the room. If it is not an 16 anticipated alarm or an alarm that is usual, you'll pull 17 the annunciator response. Each -- each alarm has its own 18 unique annunciator response sheet. On that annunciator 19 response sheet it enaracterizes the label of the alarm and 20 it tells you what operator response is required for the 21 alarm. And it tells you what device gives you the alarm.
22 MR. RAPP: Okay. Now you said something about 23 an expected or anticipated alarm. What's the difference 24 in the response for an expected or-anticipated alarm 25 versus one that's otherwise received?
y k
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31 !
1- THE WITNESC: It -- for instance I'm starting a j l
2 pump and that pump has a low discharge pressure alarm, all' 3 right. And if the alarm circuitry doesn't allow for a 4 time delay it would not be unusual to receive a low ;
5 discharge pressure upon starting the pump as the pump is -l 6 running up to speed. All right. When that alarm comes in :
I 7 it says low discharge pressure. The operator would call ;
8 out the alarm and say anticipated. All right. That would 9 be an anticipated alarm. ,
10 If I'm undergoing heater drain alignment on the 11 feed water condensate heaters out there at the time and I 12 have a nuisance alarm coming in and out, in and out, as .
.' 13 that alarm continues to go and the operator recognizes why :
14 that alarm is there and that actions are being taken 15 that's causing the alarm, he can explain it, but he would 16 also call out the alarm and call it as an anticipated 17 alarm.
18 MR. RAPP: Is that just a common practice that 19 you folks do here at Crystal River or is it that type of
.20 response proceduralized?
21 THE WITNESS: It's proceduralized. At that time i
22 it was in AI-500-conduct of operations. And it was a 23 operating standard for all shifts.
24 MR. RAPP: When an AI-500,- again,_ I may_be 25 challenging your -- your familiarity with AI-500, but --
- _ . . _ _ _ __ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ . _ . _ . ~_ .._ _ .. _ _ ... _-.. _ _ . _ .- _ . _ . .. _
l j
31 !
1 MR. WEINDERG: And you say as it was back then, i 2 is that what'you're asking?
l 3 MR. RAPP: Back then, yes, as it was back than.
4 In AI-500, that particular section that allows -- +
5 allows that type of response to an expected or anticipated 6 alarm, does it define or does it give the conditions under !
7 which you can use this allowance -- ;
8 THE WITNESS:. Yes, it does.
9 MR. RAPP: -- under what kind of plant !
I
' 10 condition?
11 THE WITNESS: It does.
12 MR. RAPP: What kind of plant conditions are 13 those?
14 THE WITNESS: I characterized one with starting l 15 a pump. Another characteristic would be if you're ,
16 performing a test and you anticipate getting an alarm, as ,
17 written in the procedure it says,-you will receive the 18 following alarm, that would be characterized as being an 19 anticipated alann. Call it out as being anticipated.
20 MR. RAPP: But those are the only two conditions [
t 21 that you're aware of for which that -- where you're 22 performingian evolution and the cause of the alarm or 23 you're performing a test and the procedure specifically
. 24 states'to expect this alarm?
25 THE WITNESS: Right. By my memory, yeah, that's-s ?
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i i
i 33 f* 1 about it.
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2 MR. RAPP: So, when --
3 MR. STENGER: It --
4 i*.R . RAPP : I'c sorry. t r
5 MR. STENGER: If I can just interrupt. When you !
! 6 say that are you referring to the test procedure for 7 running that test or some other procedure?
8 THE WITNESS 4 A te -- Generally a surveillance 9 procedure will give you a heads up that the actions that i 10 you're about to perform will provide alarm. And it'll 11 even give you the information to say, this alarm and this ;
12 alarm point, the title of it and so forth. And it's a 13 verification technique to insure that you got the expected L 14 response.
15 MR. RAPP When you directed Mr. Willms to 16 perform this bleed operation sometime prior to July 17 19th --
18 MR. WEINBERG: Can I -- I understood -- I just 19 want to make sure that it -- make it clear that the 20 direccion wasn't to perform the bleed, that-the direction 21 was as a result of the evolution that had to be done, 22- which was a bleed to plot information.
23 THE WITNESS: I was -- I was going to let you l
24 finish and then I'was going to correct your question.
25 MR. WEINBERG: Okay. "
l r
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.-. . - .-. - - - . - . .. . - - - ~.- .... .- - -. - - . - . . . . . - . -
l 34 C 1 THE WITNESS: But, yes --
2 MR. WEINBERG: Did I get it right? ,
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+
3 THE WITNESS: Yeah, and I'll explain --
4 MR. WEINBERG: -I don't understand what you just 5 said but I --
i 6 THE WITNESS: I'll explain that but go ahead 7 with your question and then I'll explain why --
8 MR. RAPP: Okay.
9 THE WITNESS: -- what, the subtle difference is.-
10 MR. RAPP: To perform this bleed operation as
'11 part of a routine evolution, better?
12 THE WITNESS: I didn't direct -- I think that 13 the point of contention here is that we didn't direct 14 Bruce -- I did not direct Bruce Willms to specifically 15 perform the evolution to achieve the data collection.
16 That evolution was being performed as part of the normal 17 operation of the plant. I was capitali:ing on the fact 18 that we were perfonning an evolution that would provide me 19 the data collection for what I was trying to understand.
20 MR. RAPP: Okay. I'll grant that for now. The.
21 question is is did you by the indications you were 22 observing cross over Curve 8 at any point during that 23 evolution?~
24 THE WITNESS: No. And my -- and my plot 25 indicated that on MU-14-LIR strip chart recorder gives me
.C
35 1 level and pressure, that I did not conduct my evolution to 2 the lef t of the curve. But it also did prove that where 3 my starting point was as I plotted my points, they did not 4 tall in parallel to that Curve 8 bend.
4 5 MR. RAPP: Did you receive the high level or, 6 excuse me, the high pressure alarm during that evolution?
7 THE WITNESS: I don't recall. If I did it would 8 have been at the onset of establishing the initial L conditions.
10 MR. RAPP What do you mean by establishing the 11 initial conditions?
12 THE WITNFSS: The first electing point before I 13 started lowering the level, as part of the -- stop for a 14 min' ate and let's go ahead and give me my first plotting 15 point on the curve. All right. How go about doing what 16 you weri, going to do. And then as he did that we plotted 27 some points.
18 So I would say -- I don't remember that we 19 started in alarm where I was having to e lutter my data 20 collection with actions required to mitigate an alarm. I 21 -- rcy recollet Lion of the events was that we'were in the 22 operating bands. I had no other actions required for it 23 was simply going to be lowering the level in the makeup 24 tank to prepare to adel water to it. Let's capitalize on 25 this evert and -- ano take some collection points as we go
e i
3G 1 down in the level.
-2 MR. RAPP: Okay. Following the S'/-630 evolution !
3 where you provided Engineering with data that said the 4 response does not mateF. Curve 8. !
5 THE WITNESS: Yes.- !
6 MR. RAPP: How did Engineering respond back to 7 that particular data set from PR-149, I believe it is? ;
8 1NE WITNESS: They felt that our data-collection 9 -was flawed but they couldn't explain why it was flawed.
10 MR. RAPP And what was Engineering's answer to 11 alleviate this' problem in the future? ' .
12- THE WITNESS: 'That was the reason for having the 13 meeting of July the 19th. Engineering's answer was that i 14 they couldn't explain it either but they would be -- they 15 would go back one more time to Design Engineering and have 16 them do.the P1-V1 calculation aghin, based on the fact 17 thatwhatwasonpaperdidn'trepresentwNatwashappening' j 18 in real life.
19 MR. RAPP: Are you aware of a memorandum that --
20 or not necessarily a memorandum but a -- what's referred 4
21 _to as a Speed Letter'was sent from Engineering to-the 22 Operations staff that said, MU makeup level recorder, was 23 it 41 --
24: THE WITNESS: Fourteen.
25 MR. RAPP: Fourteen, excuse me. Was inaccurate 1
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i
+
37 l 1 and that-the plant should be operated by the computer 2 point? i 3 THE WITNESS: I was aware of a Speed Letter but 4 I don't know where it fell in the time line of what we're 4 5 discussing here. It did not fall on the day that we were 6 collecting our data. When I used MU-14-LIR I had all the i 7 confidence of what I was driving by, was what -- what the ,
8 operators drive by on a daily basis. And that was a good 9 instrumen' and I was to use that instrument to be able to 10 place the makeup tank in the correct condition for 11 operability.
12 MR. RAPP Are the --
- r' 13 THE WITNESS: I do remember a Speed Letter. A v.
14 Speed Letter did come out later on based on the fact as 15 saying that REDAS data points don't match up with MU '
16 LIR and that they were -- they showed the fact that we 17 would be closer to the curve and we should operate with 18 those as well, 19 MR. RAPP: Are the operators in the control room ,
20 generally aware of how much instrumentation error is 21 present in their indications?
22 THE WITNESS: No, they aren't. l 23 MR. RAPP: So this -- this level recorder could 24 have been-off by twc or three pcands as far as -- as far 25 as error goes?
(_
- L:
1 THE WITNESS: Yes.
2 MR. RAPP: But the operators would not have been 3 aware of that?
4 THE WITNESS: That's correct. We expect the 5 instruments that we're driving by on the control board to 6 be within tolerance and calibrated. If not, they're to 7 consider to be out of service and not used.
8 MR. RAPP: Is there a calibration frequency for 9 this level recorder?
10 THE WITNESS: I don't know. That would -- you'd 11 have to ask the Engineering staf f or the instrument and 12 controls people that. Again, we're making the assumption 13 that when we're operating the control board my indications 14 on the control board are operable within tolerance and 15 calibrated.
16 MR, RAPP: What was wrong with what Dave Fields 17 did on -- on the 5th?
18 THE WITNESS: You're asking me to make my own 19 personal opinion or --
20 MR. RAPP: You're --
21 THE WITNESS: -- a view of management?
22 MR. RAPP: -- you're a previous licensed SRO 23 shift supervisor. Yeah, I want your opinion.
24 THE-WITNESS: All right.
25 ME. DOCKERY: I'd be interested in both.
~
(:
1 THE WITNESS: Okay, I'll give you both and 2 you'll see a difference in them.
3 MR. DOCKERY: Fine.
4 THE WITNESS: Okay. First of all I represent 5 management. All right. Management's expectations are is 6 that we expect you to operate the plant in a safe, legal 7 condition. I felt that we had -- as management, we have 8 written procedures that tell you when you can and cannot 9 perform these evolutions that go over the boundaries of 10 what is now to be characterized as a test. We are to 11 operate these systems within normal limit set points. And 12 that the operating curve was a indication of where we 13 should be operating with the makeup tank.
14 There are many curves that go anywhere from 15 setting absolute limits te curves that provide a cross-16 reference indication of where you anticipate the 17 parameters to be. A curve showing two parameters being 18 able to plot the parameters on the axis you should be able 19 to cross-reference where you anticipate to be. All right.
20 So just because it was in an operating procedure doesn't 21 necessarily mean that it was a limiting curve. This is 22 management now.
23 All right. I felt that it was inappropriate for 24 Dave Fields' shift, and I hold the shift accountable, not 25 -- Dave is the responsible and accountable person for
(
t l'
40 1 leading that shift, along with Mr. Weiss. I hold that !
2 entire shift that was operating these parameters l
3 accountable for raising their hand to say this is not-4 : appropriate, we shouldn't be doing this.
5 And I -- I think -- my view is what they did was l 6 wrong. And they should not have purposely gone-to the I L
7 other side of the operating carve. You don't :
8 intentionally, to prove your point, force yourself into '
i 9 the operating curve. !
10 And the reason I -- Justification for that is l l
11 that we offered simulator performances. Wa offered to go 12 back to pen and paper and re-calculate these curves and so
-13 forth in lieu of driving the plant to prove our point. !
k !
14 And that was our corrective actions on July 19th when we 15 said this is our game plan, this is where we want to go 16 _ with this. It was not our intent for them to prove their 17 -point by actually placing the plant in that condition. ;
~18 Now, that's management's-view.
19 You had a question?
20 MR. DOCKERY: Oh,-I thought we'd gotten into I 21 Carl Bergstrom'n'-- '
22 THE WITNESS: No, we're not there.
23- MR.'DOCKERY: Okay, then continue.
-24' THE WITNESS: Okay. Now, this is' Carl Bergstrom-
.25 now, I represent management and I --'I uphold 4 1
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_ _ _ . -. ._ _._ _ - _ _ _ . _ . _ -. _ m _ _ _ _ _ . _ . . _ . ~. _ _ _ _ _
i 41 1 management's philosophy. However, I was a shift 2 supervisor at that time, during that time. I was in a [
i 3 point of transition at that point. I assumed my ,
4 responsibilities September the ist. All right. So, -
5 during that transition time getting my handhold on where 6 we stood as a shift supervisor -- I'm still thinking as a 7 shift supervisor at that point. I have -- I have a high
-8 level limit and a low level limit for that makeup tank.
)
9 Those are bases for operating that system. >
10 I don't have enough knowledge to know what it -
11 took to get there. I know the basi -- with my training I 12 understand what the basis is for those levels, but the 11 actual calculations, I have to take a lot of that on 14 faith. All right. I'm -- I have the faith that the 15 design engineer sat there and said as long as you're 16 operating within these levels of the raakeup tank, that's i 17 fine. But along with that faith shared now is that I 18 don't have the knowledge to say, well, I know they put 55 19 inches in there but I'm sure I can go down to 45 inches in 20 it. That -- I know that that is not a place that I need
- 21 to be-operating at. I need to be operating within those 22 limits. Ali right.- ,
23 . Also, again,- I'm now shif t supervisor, Carl 24 Bergstrom. All right. I have an operating curve there. ;
25' It's not a dotted.line there to say that this is where you !
- I b
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42 J
should operate or where you shouldn't. To me that was the
~
=1 :
2 same thing as a representation of a digital limit. A i 3 digital limit meaning 86 inches as being a high level. f I
4 All right. Because we're dealing with two different )
5 parameters and those parameters n . changing, that plotted ,
6 point on that change is now from 86 incher to whatever, as 7 based on the cther parameter.
8 My-feelings were is that you don't operate on the i 9 unlabeled to the left of that curve. That curv9 was made 10 there to say, you stay everything on the right of that [
11 curve, everything t.ill be fine. And that was the basis 12 for our calculation for huw everything operates and all r 13 that.
14 That was my philosophy that I passed along to all .
15 of my shift members to say, we're dealing with some 16 stressful times right now maintaining a hydrogen 17 concentration high in the makeup tank. All right. We're 18 going to maintain the concentration as high as practical 19 in the makeup tank to achieve the end result of increasing 20 the hydrogen concentration in the RCS. But I am not going ,
21 to force anybody to operate to the lef t of the curve in r 22 that unlabeled portion of the curve.
All right.
23- MR VORSE: - By the left-side you mean the 24 unacceptable side?
25 THE WITNESS: It was not labeled that way. All 4
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i 43 11 right. I inferred _-- personally I_ inferred it to be !
.2 - unacceptable.- _All right. But see, there is a semantical 3 _. point and I know that we're dealing with semantics at this 4- point to try to determine if:-- to what level was it 5 unacceptable. Does it mean that the guy as soon he hits 6 there is immediately doing something or is im like an
- 7. anticipated alarm saying, I know why-I'm there, give me a-8 few minutes and I'll get back over there, you know. This 9 is'-- this is the semantical point of view that we took, 10 And --
11 MR. RAPP: What would be the difference-in the 12 view point that, yeah, this is an expected alarm because 13 of the evolution I'm performing, and I'll' address it in a
-O 14 few minutes, as opposed to what was done on September 5th 15 where they were conducting an evolution, knew that the 16 alarm had come in occause of the evolution that was in 17 progress and said basically the same thing, we'll take 18 care of it when the evolution is completed?
19 THE WITNESS: The difference would be is you can 20- -- in light of today and how we operate and what should 21 have~besu c var to them at the time was that you could 22 probably do that with further reviews. All right. We're 23 not engineers we can't review the -- the basis for all of 24 this stuff,_but there are people that we could send it 25 through. 't would be the same thing as -- I don't operate
44 1 that system that way, you know, whatever that "X" system 2l is out there,.but I want -- I thir.k I can operate it Let's go ahead ard write a procedure for it.
~
3 another way.
4 Once we've written it for the writer's 9' tide let's sand it 5 ' through the engineering review and Phoevt r else has to 6 deal with this. Let's do some technic al reviews- and come 7 qualified reviews. And so in my opinAon those reviews 8 were not in place'to do what they were doing to go on the 9 other side of the curve.
10 Now I'm not saying that -- there are times that 11 you can go on the other side of the curve, but you've got 12 to have justification for why you do it. We go -- a lot 13 or our documents, we will do a -- what's called a e
14- deviation. We set standards in a procedure and say this 15 is what you're going to have. If you go fall outside of 16 those, then you have to go-for a deviation to have the-17 further reviews. That wasn't in place in.this.
18 MR. RAPP: What' format are the operating 19 procedures presented in-at Crystal River?
.20 THE WITNESS: You mean like a book --
21 MR. RAPP: Hard copy.
22 THE WITNESS: -- or something?
23' MR. RAPP: Hard copy. Well, like the EOPs are a 24 two-column format procedure.
25' THE WITNESS: Yes.
45 1 MR. RAPP: You have action, you know, or 2 ' anticipated-response and then correct --
3 THE WITNESS: Right.
4 THE WITNESS: -- contingency action. Are the --
5 THE WITNESS: Details, right.
6 MR. RAPP: -- operating procedures written .in 7 that -- that manner?
8 THE WITNESS: No, they're written in a narrative 9 form. We should have a copy here for you but it's -- it's 10 not written in the detail. The details are the procedures 11 themselves. You will perform this and then part of that 12 step tells you actions required to do it.
13 MR. RAPP: Okay. So, take for example, adding 14 hydrogen to the makeup tank. Then there would be a 15 procedure that says to add hydrogen to the makeup tank 16 here's all the steps that you do?
17 THE WITNESS: A single action with each step and 18 when yeu're dealing with the safety related system a 19 check-off-indicated by initial and date to indicate that 20 you've performed that step. So there's a logical order 21 that you follow.
22 MR. RAPP: Is a makeup tank a safety related 23 system?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
25 MR. RAPP: So there would be a check-off by each
l 46 1 -stepjin OP-402?
2 THE WITNESS: Yes.
3 -MR. RAPP: Okay.. =In OP-402"the-process.for adding hydrogen to the makeup-tank gives specific steps in 5 there?
6 THE WITNESS: Yes.
.7 MR. RAPP: -And then there's another part of the 8 procedure thatLtells-you how to raise of lower level in 9- the makeup tank --
10 THE WITNESS: Yes 11 MR. RAPP: -- correct?
12- THE WITNESS: Yes, that's. correct.
13 MR. RAPP: Are those two sections -- I'll say it c
14 this way. Are they interactics with each other? Do they 15 -- can you perform two sections at the same cime? Would 16 that be --
17 THE WITNESS: Yes.
18 MR. RAPPt. -Or better yet can you perform two --
19 the sections separately and apart from each other?
20' THE WITNESS: You can -- you can perform each 21 section separately, yes.
22 MR.iRAPP: .Is that the way it's normally handled 23' through OP-402 or other-procedures?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes.
c25 hR.-RAPP: -Okay. In the section for adding
. . ,_ _ .~ .__ _ . . . _ . . . - _ . _ . . . _ _ . . _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _
47 11" hydrogen to the makeup tank it says in there, don't exceed 2 the~ limit given by Curve-8 OP-103B?- --
3 THE WITNESS: Yes. .
4 MR. RAPP: Does it also say that same thing in 1 5 the-section for changing makeup tank leve3?
6- -THE WITNESS: I don't recall what it said back 7 in July or September time frame.- It=did not say that --
8 but what you got to understand now is our operating 9 -procedures have a driving section in the front of the 10 procedure that sets limits and precautions and set points.
11 MR. RAPP: Okay. Was Curve 8 --
12 THE WITNESS: All right. Which those are --
13- those are carried throughout. Those are understood values 14 that occur throughout the evolution'of the procedure.
15 MR. RAPP: Was Curve 8 mentioned in the 16 precautions limitation section of OP-402?
17 THE WITNESS: I don't recall. It should have 18 been. It's the basis --
19 MR. STENGER: We're asking --
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I don't know.
21 MR. STENGER: We're asking a lot of detailed 22 questions about a_ procedure that nobody seems to have in 23 front of them.
24 MR. RAPP: We could --
25 MR, STENGER: Would it be useful to get the
~
_ - . - . _ , . . . . . _.,-m._, _ . . - _ - - .
- - . . . - - . - . - _ - _ - . . ~ - . - - - _ - ~ - . - - - . - - _
v i
48 1 l procedure?
.2 MR. RAPP: We'can_get a copy of it, yes. Let's f
3 see if we can get it. Would it be beneficial to get you a 4 copy of the procedure?
5 THE WITNESS: .Oh, absolutely, yes.
6 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go off the record.
7 (Whereupon, a short recess ensued at 9:11 a.m.,
8 after_which the proceedings resumed at 9:21 a.m. as 9 follows:)
10 MR. DOCKERY: Back on the record. We have 11 located some documentation that will help Mr. Bergstrom.in 12 his testimony.
13 And, Mr. Bergstrom, I remind you that you 14 continue to be under' oath here and ask that you 15 acknowledge that verbally please?
16 THE WITNESS: I understand 7'm still under oath.
17 14R . RAPP: Okay, Let me clarify one thing 18 before we continue on here. What type of license do you 19 hold and what's the ststus of that license?
20 THE WITNESS: I carry a Senior Reactor Operator 4- '21 License. I've had it for years-and -- but it is in an 22 inactive sL',tus based on the fact.that I have done -- not 23 done my time-on shift. For my license to be reactivated 24: it would require just to hours of on-shift time in 25- parallel with an active license to reactivate my license.
49 1 MR. RAPP: All right. Going back to the earlier 2 question then, you have in front of you a copy of OP-402.
3 that was in effect during the September 5th time frame.
4 In the precautions limitations section is there anything 5 referencing Curve 8 of OP-103B?
6 THE WITNESS: This is not a complete copy of 7 OP-402. The limit and precaution section of OP-402 starts 8 at number 14, 15, 16, 17 limit precaution, so items one 9 through 13 are not here.
10 Looking at only 14, 15, 16, and 17, they don't 11 include Curve 8. I can't really give you a complete 12 answer until I can take a look at one through 13.
13 MR. RAPP: Okay. Maybe we can remedy that when 14 the procedure is located at document control system.
15 THE WITNESS: All right.
16 MR. RAPP: Let's -- let's turn then to the 17 section on hydrogen addition in that procedure, Is Curve ,
18 8 referenced in that particular section of the procedure?
19 THE WITNESS: (Examines document. ) Yes, it is.
20 In step 4.19.8 it says, establish hydrogen pressure in the N/A 21 makeup tank if desired, otherwise in INAF (phonetic) .
w.S a 20 M 22 Substep one says, refer to Curve 8 of OP-103B for the 23 maximum makeup tank overpressure.
24 MR. RAPP: Okay. So when -- when Mr. Fields' 25 crew added hydrogen to the makeup tank and stayed within
3 1
50 l
_1 ithatiparticular' requirement were they within the 3 2: procedural guidance'on September _Sth?-
.3- THE WITNESS: If they exceeded the curve of :
4' OP -- Curve 8.of OP-103B for maximum pressure they were !
5 outside of the guidance of the procedure. :
6 MR. RAPP: During the hydrogen add?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes.
8 MR. RAPP: Okay. Turn to the section then_on !
. 9- system bleed.
10 THE WITNESS: (Complies.)
11- MR. RAPP: Is Curve 8 of OP-103B referenced in 12 that section?
13 THE WITNESS: The system bleed section -- I'm 14 looking at four steps, 4.4.1 through 4.4.4, Curve 8 is not 15 mentioned.
16 MR. RAPP: Do the limitations in the hydrogen 17 addition portion of the procedure also apply to the system ,
18 bleed portion of-that procedure?
19- THE WITNESS: The specific procedural guidance 20 for makeup tank venting and gas addition or hydrogen 21 addition specifically talks _about if they are not carried 22 to the section of the system bleed section, I would say 23 they are not. However,.I have to judge that on the fact
- 24 that there is no limit precaution that's in overwriting R25 - over the antire procedure. I would expect that when we 4
4 e v- - + e, . , , , - ,- - ,
- , . . . - - . - - . - - . . - .- . . . - . . ~ ..
51
-1 .get the-full document, to find a reference in the limits 2 and precautions,L a reference _ to Curve ' 8. - That reference 1
3 in the limit'and precaution would carry through the entire 4 procedure .-
5 HMR . RAPP:- Okay. Let's make the assumption'that 6 that is not in the precautions and limitations section.
7 What constitutes -- what makes what was done on September 8 Sth a test?
9 THE WITNESS: The -- the position that the shift 10- was trying to achieve. Were they trying to perform this 11 to operate the_ plant or they - .were they trying to 12 perform this evolution to prove a point or to prove 13 anything, operability or something is working fine. The 14 distinct -- the difference as I see it is that if I am 15 having to adjust.the level in the makeup -- if I'm havit.g 16 to adjust a parameter in the plant, I have certain 17 operating guidance,-but if I fall outside of that 18' operating guidance I'm outside of the procedure, and that 19 constitutes a test.
20 MR. RAPP: Where did' Dave Fields fall outside 21 the guidance'of OP-402?
22 THE WITNESS: If he exceeded the maximum makeup 23 tank overpressure by_ adding gas addition, then he was 2
.4 outside the operating procedure as indicated by the AB.
25 section for gas addition.
. u 2D S;
4 k
52
-ll MR. RAPP: . Okay. It's ---based \ on the
- 2- informationLthatlwas_ gathered.during:that September 5th l 3 evolution the_ hydrogen addition.did'not exceed Curve-8. ;
4- The only time that Curve 8:was exceede'd was-during the -
5 system-bleed. Does-that change the response then to -- in-
. 6 that -- in that view?
7 THE WITNESS: With the assumption that it's not-8 in the limits and precautions. ,
9 MR. RAPP: .Yes.
10 THE WITNESS: Yes, it does.
11 'MR. RAPP: And how would that change it?
12 THE WITNESS: It would change it as the fact it ,
11 3 -didn't-violate the procedure based on the fact that the 14 section for the system bleeding of the makeup tank did not 15 include:that. All right. That's the technical view on l' 16 it,.however, I understand that this procedure is written 17 by operators and reviewed by plant staff. I would ,
18 certainly question-as a shift supervisor, saying is this
- 19. the intent? If I have it in one section and I don't have 20= it in another section _I, as a shift supervisor or 21- licensed operator would question am I missing this' step 22 ;when we: generated this procedure to begin with, was it
- 23. something that.was-overlooked.
24- MR. RAPP: What-level of review do these
. 25 _ procedures go through?
4 7 - n n-' s,.a ++ +-s.,
, -- , . - - , .,1 ..,-e-,a-- .
>n- . , . -
0 53 1 THE WITNESS: They go through technical reviews of 2 the licensed operators to review the actual actions 3 required in the labeling and -- and the -- to perform the 4 procedure. And then they go through a qualified review 5 where we base it against our writing standards for 6 procedures. And those qualified reviews include 7 operations and whatever is indicated on the procedure 8 revision change, which would generally also include 9 engineering.
10 MR. RAPP: Okay. Anti as part of that procedural 11 review process is there a document that's generated that 12 says that this procedure conforms to Crystal River plant 13 design or plant operating characteristics?
14 THE WITNESS: When this revision 75 came out for 15 the procedure, which is what I'm icoking at here, when 16 that revision to the revision 74 that was out there there 17 should be a procedure revision report PRR package, which 18 would include the levels of reviews and who signed the 19 reviews.
20 MR. RAPP: Are you -- are you aware or familiar 30.S9 21 with what's called g reviews?
M6Iz-w 11 22 THE WITNESS: Yes.
23 MR. RAPP: Are those done on operating 24 procedures?
25 THE WITNESS: Yes.
- - - - . -- . . . . .. . - . __ . - . . ~ . --- .. .- -
r F
54 1 MR. RAPP: -And what does a 5059 review entail?
2 THE WITNESS: It ensures that we're --
3' evaluation for the safe operation of the plant is 4 consistent and that it meets also the guidance of-the
- 5. FSAR.
6 MR. RAPP: So by this procedure being approved 7 it went through the 5059 process which said basically this ,
8 procedure -- that the operators use this procedure as 9 written'you will not violate design basis limits or put 10 the plant in a situation that is potentially un-analyzed?
11 THE WITNESS: That's correct' . And it also goes 12 through a plant review committee --
13 MR. RAPP: Okay.
14 THE WITNESS: --
for the final reviews.
15 MR. RAPP: Okay. So then what constitutes a 16 test?
17 MR. WEINBERG: I think he already answered that 18 -question.
19 MR. RAPP: Okay. Let me put it this way. Is 20 the --
21 MR. WEINBERG: Are you talking about in his 22 opinion or from a legal standing? He's not a lawyer so --
.23- MR. RAPP: I under --
24 MR. WEINBERG: --
from a legal point of view 25' or --
55
-1 MR. RAPP: No,Jno.-
~2 MR. WEINBERG: He explained'to you what he -- in 34 his mind what a test was istif somebody goes in and does 4 something not-for the operation of the plant but to prove 5 a point. That was his layman's description of what he 6 thought a test was. ,
7- MR. RAPP: Okay. Let me ask this. Do Crystal 8 River procedures then define what a test is or an 9 experiment?
10 THE WITNESS: At the time, no. Since then we've 11 expanded our position on what we constitute data 12 collecting, testing, and troubleshooting. There is a 13 troubleshooting procedure, which is a maintenance 14 procedure MP-531.
15 MR. RAPP: Okay. Do Crystal River procedures 16 define what a authorized or unauthorized ovolution is?
17 THE WITNESS: Without having AI-500 in front of 18 me I'd say no.
19 MR. RAPP: Are you aware of some mechanism that
-20 could have been used to determine whether additional 21 reviews, i.e. technical reviews or 5059 reviews were 22 .needed prior to doing the evolution on September 5th?
23 THE WITNESS;' If the operation of the system 24 outside of its original scope of the operating _ procedure would require 5059 review. All right. A change-in the en -sm+ , . , - ,,, e a . - , . - - - - - - o-
56
- 1. procedure and a~5059. review to say is what the change in 2 the procedure is it going to be contrary to the 5059.
3 MR. RAPP: Let me ask it this way then. Are you 4 aware or do you know of any like logical process or -- or 5 mechanistic process that a person can go through that 6 says, if I had this and this and this and this and this, 7 then I need to do a 5059 review, or if I have I have this 6 and this and this and this, then I don't need to do a 5059 9 review, I can use the procedures I have in hand that 10 they're adequate?
11 THE WITNESS: Well, we have our procedure change 12 procedure's administrative instructions that give us the 13 boundaries from when a 5059 review needs to be performed 14 or not.
15 MR. RAPP: Okay. Is that typically available to 16 the --
17 THE WITNESS: Yes.
18 MR. RAPP: -- operating crews?
19 THE WIT;iESS: Yes, it is.
20 MR. RAPP: And would they -- would they have 21 been known -- would they have known to look at that 22 procedure?
23 THE WITNESS: Yes. And the guidance -- like I 24 said, I don't have an AI-500 in front of me. AI-500 also 25 provides me guidance for when I'm outside of my scope of
57 l1 normal 1 operation.. l 2 MR. .RAPP- . When -- when you first_ presented this- l 3 information to Engineering and they said they'd review
.4 it --
5 MR. WEINBERG: You mean from the --
6~ HMR . RAPP: From the July --
7 THE WITNESS: -- July 19th meeting? $
8 MR. RAPP: The July 19th meeting, yes, thank 9 you.
10 The response I believe you said they told you was 11 they still believed the curve was accurate and 12 conservative. Hos did they explain the difference in the 13 -data?
14 THE WITNESS: They couldn't explain it. That's 15 why they said they were going to have to go back to St.
16 Pete Engineering to help them resolve why there was a 17 difference, what was seen versus what the curve 18 represented..
19 MR. RAFP: Okay. After -- when the September 20 2nd letter came out did Engineering have an explanation as 21 to the difference in the data at that time, the data you 22 . presented-on-July 19th?
23 THE WITNESS: No.
24 MR. WEINBERG: But,-just for fairness, I mean, 25 you'all -- Jim has-read in that July 19th letter or the
- .. . .. . . - _ . - _ _ ~ - .- - _- - - . . - - . . . -
h
.58 1- September l2nd letter those sentences,--yousknow, a number of timest but:if you go down a sentence it says that there 2
3 will be a corrective action.
Number 8 is currently in 4 -progress to provide technical-basis-for the_'BWST swapover >
- S point.- During this analysis makeup tank overpressure per 6 Curve'8'will be re-evaluated.
7 So I-think in fairness -- what-the memo does is 8 repeat the opinion expressed in Ju -- at the July meeting 9 that the curve was accurate-but it indicated that there 10- was going be a re-evaluation, which was consistent with --
- 11 it seems to me consistent with what. Carl was talking about 12- for this November deadline.
- 13 MR. RAPP: I understand what you're saying but
- 14 technical opinion though has to be based on some sort of 15 evaluation or some sort of -- it has to have to have some
. 16 sort of basis behind it.
17 MR. WEINBERG: Well, it says, believes the curve 18 -is accurate. It -- it --
19 MR. RAPP: Well, I can believe that the-sky is
- 20. falling, that doesn't nececsarily make it true.
21 MR. WEINBERG: Well, true. And that's sort-of 22 what -- I mean, I know I'm not testifying and you're not 23~ testifying, but that's sort of what I think Mr. Bergstrom 24 is trying to-explain is that that's what we discussed-with
. 25'.Engi eering'on the 19th. -You believe this. We believe-
~_ . . _ _ _ _ - . _ ,- , __.
59 1 that. What are you going to_do about it? They said'we're ;
- 2. going to go back'to Design Engineering in St.-Pete-to-get
'3 it re-evaluated. And this memo doesn't say anything other 4 than that. It'says that it's going to be re-evaluated.
5 THE WITNESS:-- Let me characterize it a different 6 way for the testimony. There's no one better that.can 7 tell you how your car drives than you do. All right. You
~
8 don't have es know exactly how that fuel injection system 9 workc on your car. All right. You know that you have to 10 maintain certain limits to be able to operate that vehicle 11- to keep it out of the red line and you know certain things 12 that you have to do. All right. But there's no one 13 better to tell you how it operates much the same way as if 14 you took it in to the garage and you said, there's 15 something wrong with this, and ' don't know what it is, I 16 just know that there's somethin; / ong. This is a pretty 17 close analogy to what we're dealing with here.
18 As an operator we -- we saw symptoms of a problem 19 here. We=didn't-know what was wrong. We're operators.
20 We're trained to understand our indications and how to 21 operate-the plant. However, the design of the plant, 22 there was a question there and we had training in heat 23 transfer and fluid flow to understand P1-V1-T1 versus 24 P2-V2-T2 calculations enough to be:able to say this is a 25 simple calculacion.
60 1 They're telli.ng us that it went well beyond that.
2 You car.'t just use that formula, you have to throw in 3 other variables along with that. We didn't understand 4 those variables. That was our position. We said, explain 5 the variables to us. And even then they said, well, you 6 -- it's really -- they didn't use these words but they 7 sure characterized it this way: It's above your head, you 8 know, give me someone that l' can deal with. And that's 9 why we brought Walt Neuman in on this.
10 MR. RAPP: All I'm trying to set up -- set up 11 here is that Engineering did not come back to you folks 12 and say, here's the explanation why Curve 8 is acceptable 13 and accurate and safe and conservative?
14 THE WITNESS: Right.
15 MR. RAPP: Okay.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, did - to your 17 knowledge did Engineering come up with some sort of 18 product by September the 30th, 1994, regarding Curve 8?
19 THE WITNESS: Not that I recall, no. Again, at 20 that time -- I'm not -- I'm not sure that I would have 21 known it at that point because at that point I had Walt 22 Neuman in place of me, to try to focus in on what the 23 problem was.
24 MR. DOCKERY: As best you recall when did Curve 25 8 change? When was it altered or whatever is done to
61 11 those things?-
2- THE WITNESS:; Not too long after the September i
- 3. time-frame,-as we got into.further the-problem reportiover-4- the issue and-so forth. We had an action group together S to-look'at the curve specifically to say maybe it's not as-6 - conservative as it needs to- be, maybe we- need to put -
7 another margin of it in there.
8 MR.-DOCKERY: Well, in your' opinion did that -- -
9- the ultimate alteration of that curve, did it result from- _r 10 the July 19th meeting or from the September 5th evolution? ;
11 THE WITNESS: I -- it didn't come from the July
'12' 19th meeting. And I'm nor --
13 MR. DOCKEPY: - Okay.
14 THE WITNESS: -- I'm not ever; sure that it came 15 from the September-5th --
16 MR. DOCKERY: I don't want to ask you to 17 speculate further than that.
18 THE WITNESS: Okay, It did not come -- the July 19 the 19th meeting was more characterized as a kick-off,.
20 let's-get back on track,-let's focus in on the problem, 21 let's see if we can get a direction on how to fix this.
22 MR DUCKERY: I.get the sense, especially from L23 your. earlier: testimony, that this Curve 8 dilemma, for I 24 ' lack of a better term, is.something you felt pretty 25 strongly about?-
T
+ = , -rh,r--,--+ 4 a e -. -im- . , ,+ - --,e . - - -,-r- - - . v. - .-.
i 62 l' THELWITNESS: (Nods affirmatively.) And the-2 reason I felt strongly -- yes, you're -- that's correct,_I 3 felt strongly about it because what we're dealing with 4 'here in the basis for emergency core cooling system.
5 _These makeup pumps represent a lot of the actions that we 6 ~ want to see take place for emergency core cooling. And 7 that even though I was pulling at straws it seemed_as 8 there was a problem there on these HPI pumps, these makeup 9 pumps as characterized when we ran the SP-630. It had my 10 interest to the point where I was given the task as just a 11 point to be a reas -- let's make sure that we do this at 12 our next opportunity, which is the next refuel outage and 13 so forth.
14 MR. WEINBERG: So who gave you that task?
15 TH3 WITNESS: I think the outage manager at the 16 time, which was Hoyt Koon. Greg Halnon ended up assigning 17 me the interpretation contact for SP-630 to get with the-18 in-service inspection engineers to make sure that the 19 surveillance. was ready to go to be re-performed during the
'20 next refuel outage.
21 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know on a personal level, 22 and by personal I mean through interaction with Mr.
23 Fields, why he or his -- members of hisEcrew felt so 24- strongly, strongly enough that ultimately they jeopardized 25 their careers?
. _. _. _ . _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . . _ _ _ . _ ~ _ . _ _ .
63 1 .THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen'was deeply.. i involved with'the-SP-630 and the indications of that.
-3 Now, whether~ he was- the one that turned the switch on the 4 control-board or he was the one that had to go down to 5 : vent the makeup pump, I'm not clear on that. I know Mark 6 Van Sicklen's. actions at the time clearly said that
-- 7 there's a problem here,.I saw the problem. You can't/tell 8 pe, I didn't hear it third-hand, I saw something.
-9 MR. DOCKERY: I guess what I'm asking you, if 10 you ad any discussions that would -- that you.can recall, 11 why were they willing as of September the 5th, three days 12 after the September 2 memo, to take what has come to be --
- 13 it's come to seem rather drastic action?
14 THE WITNESS: I agree with you it was drastic 15 and I don't know why. Only that the time frame that we're 16 dealing with here was a span of time where we didn't have 7 a whole lot of plant staff here, there was not maintenance 18 on-going. It was a lag time. It wac Labor. Day weekend.
19' We had -- there was opportunity for them to reflection the 20 letter, to probably get themselves whipped into a frenzy, 21 that they thought that this isione avenue that we can go 22 to prove our point.
- 23 MR. DOCKERY: Were.you aware that Mr. Fields 24: requested that somebody retrieve the calculation that
- 25: Curve 8 was based on, and he reviewed it, and he does have d
64 1 something of an engineering background.
2 THE WITNESS: Yes.
3 MR. DOCKERY: I believe he's a degreed engineer.
4 And he claims that he immediately saw that there were some 5 assumptions that he questioned in that calculation. Were 6 you aware of that?
- / THE WITNESS: No , I wasn't.
8 MR. DOCKERY:- Wad anybody at that time during 9 that time frame aware that Curve 8 was a design basis 10 curve as opposed to an operating curve and administrative 11 curve?
12 THE WITNESS: I wasn't aware of it.
13- MR. DOCKERY: Would you --
14 THE WITNESS: And I don't think it was common 15 knowledge that I would have been made aware of it by 16 someone passing that information along to everybody.
17 MR. DOCKERY: Well, does -- does the fact that 18 it was a design basis curve make it in any way more 19 significant in your mind?
20 THE WITNESS: It changes it slightly. Instead 21 of an operating limit curve it now says this was the basis 22 on how we designed the system. In other words, this is a 23 bench mark or a starting point for how we expect the 24 system to operate.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Would you have expected that it
65.
1 somehow would have been identified as.a design basis' curve
-1 ;by Engineering?
3~ THE WITNESS: Especially withLall the meetings 4 that sne'd had, yes. Whether it had been graphically.
5' represented on the hard copy of the curve itself in the 6 _ book, maybe, maybe not, but certainly you would have had 7 someone bring it up and characterize it as such,.with all 8 the -- the meetings that we had leading up to this.
9 MR. RAPP: Are you aware of what makes, Curve 6 a 10 design basis limit?
11 THE WITNESS: No, I'm not.
12 MR. RAPP: The particular action scenario?
13 THE WITNESS: Why -- why it is there for the 14 large break LOCA or for a LOCA scenario?
15 MR. RAPP: Okay. What's your understanding --
16 THE WITNESS: That's the limit of my knowledge 17 on why. It's there. It's a bench mark. It's a starting 18 point for what I expect-the makeup tank not to go empty 19 and thereby transfer the gas that's in the makeup tank to 20_ the HPI pumps.
21 MR. RAPP: Okay. Let me pose this question to 22 you. Engineering-has said that in a large break LOCA the 23 =HPI pumpsiare of.no safety significance. Would you accept 24 that statement?
25- THE WITNESS: I don't know. I don't know. I --
. _661
,. 1 I -- there again, Im an operat'or, I'm not --
^
2' -MR._RAPP: Well, I'm asking'---
3 1THE WITNESS: -- going to-try7-- t 4 .MR. ;RAPP: ---you I'm asking you as a SRO shift :
5 supervisor-in.that capacity or in-that reference.- [
6 THE WITNESS: I'm expecting just like a.
7 instrument on the control board, that.this system'is 8 designed to fulfill its-function based on the-design basis ,
- 9 well before it comes to me to operate the system.- And 10 'that if I operate it the way that the basis of the -
11 starting point should be, then I shoul'd not fall into 12 pitfalls where the system becomes unavailable. All right.
13 We train with HPI pumps. We've used the HPI pumps on the
-o. -
14 simulator to -- to mitigate LOCA scenarios to provide 15 cooling for the core. I don't ever remember training on 16 no HPI pumps to say that they're not going to be there.
17 In most all scenarios when you're dealing with a loss of 18 coolant accident the HPI pumps are either entirely there 19- or reduced _in some capacity. You still have HPI pumps 20 that are available.
21- MR.-RAPP:. Eng!.neering also said that'in their
~22 'opinionLor their belief that the reason the difference 23 between the Curve 8 and the_ plotted response, either from 24 the July evolution or the September 5th. evolution,_ was 25: because-the Curve 8 response was. based on a set of points
- - _ m.. ., . _ . . _ _ . _ . _ . . . , . _ _ _
t i.
67 IS during a:LOCA scenario and-the data that-was taken was-2--based-on a^ normal controlled drain-down=of the makeup-
+
3 tank.- Would that_seem-to be a reasonable' explanation to j 3
4 you? <
5 THE WITNESS: That's the first' time-I've hear --
- 6- heard that. All'right. It did not come out in the July. .
7 -meeting when we asked that.' specific question. The answer a to the meeting then was let's send ~it back to Engineering.
9 So I have to^ wonder why, all of a sudden,.now they know 10 this w'en h July'when we.were trying to get a handle on this 11- they didn't know that.
- 12 MR. RAPP: -Well. let me ask you c: is then, do ,
=.
13 the physical properties of the makeup system change 14 between a normal drain-down and a LOCA situation?
. . 15 MR DOCKERY: Hold on just a second. Go ahead.
16 -- MR. RAPP: Do you want me to restate the 17 question?
18 THE WITNESS: Yeah, please MR. RAPP Do the physical properties of the --
20 of the makeup tank change between a normal drain-down
- 21. situation and a LOCA-situation where you have high 22 pressure injection?
~
23' THE-WITNESS: Not that I'm-aware of.
24 . MR'. RAPP: Okay. So it would be --
- 25: 'MR. STENGER: Are you asking about the system 4
ye-, ey - ,-i e, . . r- - c .r.- w , %--- ,-- -- ,--w,, w ,-,~w a- -- . - - - w e-v= -=
68-1 configuration?
2 --MR; RAPP: I'm asking about the-laws-of nature 3 and the-physical properties that_ govern _the response of 4 .the system.
5 THE WITNESS: Well, the -- my operator knowledge 6 tells me that I no longer rely on the-makeup tank to 7'. provide my suction ~ head to my HPI pumps. That for
'8 mitigation of a LOCA scenario I drive directly off.of the.
9 BWST, the borated water-storage tank. All right. So my
- 10. suctions from my BWST are going to ripen. All right. And 11 when you have 46 feet of water in a BWST it's going to 12 override whatever pressure is in the makeup tank. And the 13 fact that_you're going co -- you're recirculating back 14 those HPI pumps even while they're running it goes back to
. 15 the makeup tank to replenish whatever level in the makeup 16 tank.
)
17 MR. RAPP:- .Okay. Did Engineering ever tell you 18 about the limitations on Curve 8? f 19 MR. WEINBERG: What limitations are you talking 20 about?
i 21- MR.-RAPP: Any limitations.
22 THE' WITNESS: 'No.
' 23. MR._RAPP: Okay. Did Engineering explain to you 24 that:the basis for Curve 8-in a.swapover to BWST would be
-25' that the makeup tank would go empty and there would only se e M+w e- ?"ey 'e T-r-M ,
69 1 be approximately a 24-inch column of water in the suction 2 piping?
3 THE WITNESS: That came out with discussions 4 with Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce Willms as they were 5 receiving information back from Engineering. All right.
6 My training prior to this said that the makeup tank would 7 not go empty. All right. And that was Engineering's 8 point. Even though we were seeing it actually go empty on 9 the simulator, it was really not empty, it was dealing 10 with something that was off range of your level 11 instrumentation you were dealing with the level in the 12 cuction lines on there.
13 MR. RAPP: Okay. You mentioned the simulator.
14 You did some simulations?
15 THE WITNESS: We do our training on the 16 simulator to indicate large break LOCAs, small break LOCAs 17 and so forth both. ,
18 MR. RAPP: So that was just observation during 19 requal -- requal training or simulator training?
20 THE WITNESS: Right. And we -- remember we had 21 said that we were going to look at performances on the 22 simulator as a subsequent action to the July plotting of 23 the data, you know, where they said that you're not 24 considering it the same way we are.
25 MR. RAPP: Is the simulator you use here a
~ --
70 17 engineering. quality simulator.or a. training-quality ;
2 simulator?
3 THE WITNESS: I don't-understand the difference.
The difference would be the level of 4 MR. RAPP:
5 detail of modeling.
6 THE WITNESS: I understand the modeling of our 7 simulator to be -- to match up the plant performance. So i
8 .I would say based on the way you characterized it an 9 engineering model.
10 MR. RAPP: So it would --
11 THE WITNESS: I would expect to see exactly --
12 the simulator perform exactly as the plant would and that 13 if there were challenges to it, then we would have to go 14 back to the people who.had generated the software for the 15 simulator and say, why isn't it.
16 MR. RAPP: Was there any software -- excuse me 27- --
simulation modeling done of the SP-630 evolution --
18 THE WITNESS: Not that I --
19 MR. RAPP: -- to verify --
20- 'THE WITNESS: Not that I'm aware of, no.
'21 MR. RAPP: -- or validate?
22 THE WITNESS: No. Not that -- t'ertainly I can H2 3 ' answer-that one. We did not validate SP-630'on the 24 simulator,.
.25 MR. RAPP: Well, I'm not saying necessarily the f
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- 71 ,
1 SP 630 test procedure itself, I mean the - the response :
2 that was obtained during the performance of SP-630 in ;
3 what, March --
4 THE WITNESS: I wasn't --
S MR. RAPP -- that nature?
6 THE WITNESS: I wasn't -- right. I don't know I i 7 wasn't part of the generation of 630 when it was first l t
8 generated. And how ISI kngineering determined what the ;
9 prerequisite conditions were for SP-630, I wasn't involved l
- 10. With that.
11 MR. RAPP: Again, I may have misstated this. In i
12 March, I believe it was, you ran this SP-630 test as part 13 of the refueling outage surveillances and you got a 14 particular response based on this check valve that failed 15 to open. ;
10 THE WITNESS: Yes.
l 'i MR. 3 APP: Okay. Was there any -- was that data ;
18 taken over to the simulator and the same conditions run on t .
19 -. the simulator to validt.te the simulator response against 20 plant response for these conditions, that you're aware of? I 21 THE WITNESS: I -- not that I'tr aware of that I l 22 remember. ;
23 MR.-RAPP: Okay. Go-ahead. Do you have 24 something else?
25 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, I'm closing in on the end of f ;
- a. ~ . . . . ,-. . _;,- -.. . . , a . .........- ,,.. - .....- - - - - - , , . . . . , , , , - - , - . - ,
72 1 this hopefully. I'm sure you hope that too.
2 Mr. Bergstrom, you -- early in your testimony you 3 mentioned that in discussion with the operators under your 4 supervision you told them, and to use your quote, thar 5 you - "these were stressful timeo". And you related that 6 to the necessity to -- perccived necessity to keep the 7 hydrogen level at a 25 cc per kilogram amount. Is that 8 correct?
9 THE WITNESS: That's correct.
10 MR DOCKERY: Is there any way to separate your 11 concerns over Curve 8 from the stress of having to operate 12 with 25 cc's por kilogram of hydrogen? And remember, I'm 13 a layman.
14 T}lE WITNESS: I understand.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Were they two separate issues or 16 were they somehow --
17 T {E WITNBSS: They were related -- they were 18 related but you have to set priorities for what you try --
19 what is the driving force here. The driving force being 20 the operation of the plant.
21 But we had people challenging the way that we 22 drive the plant by let's go ahead and put as much pressure 23 on the makeup tank as we can to get the desired results 24 for hydrogen in the RCS, And we have said that, yes, we 25 would keep the pressure up in the makeup tank. It meant
73 1 more of an effort on Operations to do it. In this case it 2 meant operating closer to that curve. But we were willing 3 to do it, but we also felt the stress placed on us as --
4 the constant attention of having to do that was always in 5 question daily whenever they saw a downward trend of the 6 hydrogen concentration in the RCS. '
7 MR. DOCKERY: Let me make sure I understand 8 then.
9 THE WITNESS: Right.
10 MR. DOCKERY: There was -- I understood you to 11 say that there is some inherent stress in operating close 12 to the curve. It is -- did I hear that correctly?
13 THE WITNESS: That's correct.
14 MR. DOCKERY: And that stress would be on the l 15 operators?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes.
17 MR. DOCKERY: And then what I understand you to 18 be saying is there was also -- it was stressful to be 19 constantly looked at, and that would seem to me to be 20 judged regarding whether or not you were maintaining that 21 level of hydrogen and that being looked at by managerent.
22 In that a fair --
23 THE h1TNESS: That's correct. That's correct.
24 MR. VORSE: Mr. Bergstrom, was it Chemistry 25 management looking at this or was it Operations management
s i
i 74 ;
I looking at this?
2 THE WITNESS: Chemistry established the trending 3 program that showed, graphically showed hydrogen i f
4 concentration in the RCS and related it back to the way
, . r 5 that we were performing our OP -- pressure in the makeup ;
i' 6 tank.
7 MR. VORSE: So my understanding is that. i 8 Chemistry was -- was constantly, not harassing but -- J 9 THE WITNESS: Well, no, they just -- i i
10 MR. VORSE -- reminding you -- !
11 THE WITNESS: Right.
12 MR. VORSE -- reminding you to maintain those 13 levels?
14 THE WITNESS: Yes. It was more at that level.
15 It was a constant reminder that when I'm seeing a lowering 16 of trend, I would check with Operations and make sure ,
17 .they're keeping the pressure up hiah enough.
18- We'd even had short term instructions to say that 19 this is what we want to do and this is the reason why we 20 want to do it, please do it.
21 But you got to understand that when you're 22 adjusting the levels in the makeup tank, if you're making !
23 a power change you're doing that adjustment often. As 24 _
you're making those adjustments you're having also to
6:
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75 1 you're going to have to send someone out in the field, so 2 you pull him away from that -- it gets to be a nuisance 3 after a while constantly. It would be like someone 4 checking the tire pressure in your car regardless of what 5 the driving conditions are. Make sure that you got it 6 within a certain, you know -- it was a nuisance.
7 MR VORSE: Did -- did anyone in Chemistry say 8 that we -- we don't like this but somebody above us is 9 telling us to make this happen?
10 Tile WITNESS: We asked the basis for why is it 11 so important to maintain 25 cc's per kg and the standard 12 that we were trying to achieve was the EPRI guidelines for 13 25 cc's per kg.
14 MR. RAPP: Did anyone ever explain to you what 15 the EPRI guidelines --
16 THE WITNESS: Dased on,pM'--
f wig u ti 17 MR. RAPP: -- were --
18 THE WITNESS: -- in the RCS and so forth, w ir u4r 19 MR. RAPP: Well, what was it to preclude?
20 Obviously you're doing this to preclude something.
21 MR. WEINBERG: Or to prevent, I mean, do you 22 understand what the 11' was supposed to do?
23 THE WITNESS: The H' was to drive the ph of the 24 RCS in one direction or another to maintain a, sn.w.es fat a la 25 certain parameter. All right.
I k
I 76 l 1 MR. RAPP: What's generally hydrogen added to 2 the RCS for? l 3 THE WITNESS: Scavenging the oxygen within the -
4 RCS. But a throw-out of that is the hydroxyl ions that 5 also are given off, which will adjust the ph. All right.
6 That's -- it's the primary reason.
7 MR. RAPP: Would it -- would it surprise you to [
t 8 know-that the EPRI study was based on preventing stress l t
9 corrosion cracking in reverse U bends? !
10 THE WITNESS: That's fine. NO , it wouldn't 11 su rpri s e me , bu t
- b .U. s fine.
12 MR. RAPP: Mtte -- what --
13 THE WITNESS: That's a little bit out of my 14- area. .
15 MR. RAPP: Okey. Do you have reverse U bends in F
16 reactor components, primary components, in this plant?
17 THE WITNESS: I'm not familiar with what a U 18 bend is.
19 MR. WEINBERG: There's a couple of things, if I :
20 could -- could I follow up on one thing?
21 MR. DOCKERY: (Nods affirmatively.) ,
22 MR. WEINBERG: Mr. Dockery asked you questions 12 3 - about stress and particularly_as it related to ---I think 24 you said'that there was an inherent stress in operating 25 closy to the curve. Now, was the stress that related to
t 77 1 that as a result of the understanding by the operators, 2 including yourself, that you were supposed to stay on the 3 right side of the curve and not go on the left side of the 4 curve or the unauthorized side of the curve? Is that the 5 stress?
6 THE WITNESS: The stress involved with that was 7 the fact that when you operate so closely to the curve at 8 a higher level if the level in the makeup tank were to 9 lower due to -- it's a daily occurrence just -- you're 10 going to have some leakage in the RCS. Not a whole lot, 11 but you're going to have some leakage just over a period 12 of time if you do nothing. And you're just to the right 13 of the curve. I mean, you're clearly in the right region 14 but you're right up against the curve that if you allow 15 the level to drop in the makeup tank what we were seeing 16 was the fact that you would cross over the line if you 17 didn't do something.
18 So the stress involved was the fact that it was 19 going to need constant attention, to prevent yourself from 20 turning your back to it you would end up in the other side 21 -- the other region of it.
22 MR. WEINBERG: So what I'm asking is was there a 23 cicar understanding as far as you could determine amongst 24 the operating crews that they were supposed to stay on the 25 authorized or right side of curve? Was that an
i 78 l
1- understanding? :
2 THE WITNESS: That was an understanding, yes.
3 MR. WEINBERG: And when you were asked . ese [
4 questions earlier about OP-402, you-remember those
- 5. questions you were asked -- f 6 THE WITNESS: Yes. ;
7 MR. WEINBERGs -- by Mr. Rapp, and whether curve 8 8 was actually'in the procedure with regard to bleeding 9 and feeding as opposed to H'. My question is was there 10 any -- as far as you-can recall was there any confusion 11 amongst the shitt supervisors as to whdther or not they >
12 were required to stay on the right side of the curve with 13 regard to the, you know, procedures concerning the makeup 14 tank?
15~ THE WITNESS: Not in my view. It was common 16 knowledge that you stayed on the right of the curve.-
17- MR. DOCKERYi Mr. Bergstrom, do you know af --
18 subsequent to July 19th are you aware of any other data- ,
19 that was gathered by Operation's shifts during normal 20 -evolutions or otherwise? ,
21 THE WITNESS: No,- I was not.
MR. DOCKERY: You then did not direct anybody to 23 gather'any data?
24 THE-WITNESS: No. I was not aware of the 25 September 5th_ incident until after it happened.
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79 1 MR. DOCKERY: As everybody now knows there was 2 also a September 4th --
3 THE WITNESS: I became aware of that the day 4 before we were ready to send people to OI, or the 5 enforcement conference in Atlanta.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, I don't think -- unless you 7 have something to tell us about that issue, September 4th, 8 I --
9 THE WITNESS: One of the things that I'm dealing '
10 with with your questions here is that I was purposely 11 shielded, maybe is a bad word, but kept from the details 12 of exactly what transpired on September the 5th so that I 13 could focus on the day-to-day operation of it. Greg 14 Halnon understood the details of it. When we went to, for 15 instance, a management review panel to review exactly what 16 had happened I purposely was not brought in on it so that 17 I could maintain a clear perspective on operating the 18 plant and not concentrate onto the problems that we would 19 have. In other words, to relieve Greg long enough that he 20 could concentrate on that and allow me to do Greg's job 21 during that time.
22 You're asking me -- sometimes on these subsequent 23 to the September -- I don't have all those details.
24 Honestly, I didn't get involved with that because they 25 purposely were trying to get me to manage the operations
80 1 during that time while Greg could concentrate on the 2 enforcement conference. And in the case of September the 3 4th I was -- it was revealed to me when Greg came back in 4 town on September or whenever. Before the enforcement 5 conference I didn't know.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Is it fair to say that anything 7 that you would know about the September 4th issue would be 8 hearsay?
9 THE WITNESS: Absolutely.
10 MR. DOCKERY: Then we don't need to get into it.
11 MR. WEINBERG: Many times over.
12 LR. DOCKERY: Yeah, I understand.
13 Jim, do you have anything?
14 MR. VORSE: I don't have anything. I think we 15 pretty well covered it.
16 MR. WEINBERG: I got --
I got one other question 17 if I can ask him since he's here and I think Mr. Bergstrom 18 is in a pretty interesting perspective.
19 Did you feel like in the summer of 1994 that you 20 were addressing the concerns raised by tne operators 21 regarding Curve 87 22 THE WITNESS: Actually, no, I was doing it more 23 of a self-centered interest. I was trying to find out --
24 I'd just gone through in the outage. And my perspective 25 of the outage was to coordinate. Now I was trying to
81 1 focus in on some of the details that were left over from 2 the outage so that I could effectively con -- perform my 3 new job, which was going to be the support manager. For 4 me to be able to support them I felt that that was one 5 need for support, it was an outstanding issue out there as 6 well as other issues.
7 MR. WEINBERG: Fine. And what I'm saying is is 8 't hat since you were now going into management and you'd be 9 dealing directly with the -- with the shift supervisors 10 and the operators did you feel like that what you were 11 doing was sort of your first effort from a management 12 perspective in addition to your -- to your selfish 13 concerns to address concerns that were -- that were being 14 raised by operators regarding Curve 8?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes, because it -- I had new tools 16 now I could utilize. I was no longer a shift supervisor, 17 I was more privy to the management meetings and go -- in 18 attending them and so forth. So I could start feeling the EPRI 19 driving forces of-EFn!-auidelines and so forth. I could
&c6 n 59s' 20 feel why -- why did I have to receive all this stuff as a 21 shift supervisor for all these months, now I'm starting to 22 ' feel, well, why is it trickling down to me?
23 MR. WEINBERG: Was -- was anyone --
24 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry to interrupt.
25 T!!C J111E55: -- was -- did -- I think that they a r. auM Loe'ubey'.
82 1 may have asked you this, but let me just ask. Did anybody 2 come to you on the 2nd or the 3rd or the 4th of September 3 now that you were in your new position as OPS manager and 4 say, you know, I've got these concerns with this September 5 2nd memo and we need to do something now. Did Van Sicklen 6 or Weiss or Fields come to you?
7 T}lE WITNESS: No.
8 MR. WEINBERG: Do you have any -- were you 9 accessible?
10 THE WITNESS: Answer that. (Examining 11 document.)
12 September 1st I was a shift supervisor f or swing 13 shift, filling in for a vacancy. The 2nd as well. Third, 14 4th, 5th, I was nff and came back to work on the 6th, 15 MR. WEINBERG: Was --
16 MR. DOCKERY: Let the record reflect that --
17 TIIE WITNESS: I looked in my day planner to come 18 up with that.
19 MR. WEINBERG: I take it a lot of people were 20 off during that weekend?
21 THE WITNESS: Labor Day weekend, yeah.
22 MR WEINBERG: All right. Was there -- as far 23- as -- in looking at this issue, and you had begun to look 24 at it in June, July, August, was there any emergency that 25 you know of that required the crew on September 4th and
. - -- _. = _. . - - - -.- - - - ... - - -.. - - - - .~. ..
t I
83 t t
i September 5th to do this evolution? l 2 THE WITNESS: No. i 3 MR. WEINBERG: Was there any reason that you can ;
4 think of why they would not have waited until the end of 5 the Labor Day weekend to raise the issue with you and Mr. !
6' Halnon or Mr. Hickle? l 7 THE WITNESS: No. Only that -- I've already 8 said that I thought that -- I can only guess why they 9 wanted to do it on that weekend is that during the week 10 there's very little opportunities to be able to look into 11 an issue further. When you're sitting out there for a 12 -three-day weekend there'c more of an opportunity to hash 13 it out. Now looking back at this thing now and knowing 14 the details of it it appears to me that they looked on one 15 day and kind of got their act together an$ then on the 16 second day they actually performed it. i 17 MR. WEINBERG And from your perspective as a 18 sapervisor -- leave your supervisor hat on and take your 19 management hat off, and at that time, early September, 20 1994, were Mr. Hickle and Mr. Halnon aware of the Curve 8 21 issue?
22 THE WITNESS: Absolutely not.
23 MR WEINBERG: Were --
24 THE WITNESS: I mean, no, let me take that back.
25- They were aware of the Curve 8 issue much in the same
l 84 r
1 manner as I was because I shared my views with Greg Halnon 2 in the July 19 meeting and so forth so that he knew that l 3 there was an-ongoing thing. It was a collective decision l 4 to let's go ahead and get Walt Neuman, because Walt Neuman [
i 5 worked for Greg Halnon, so it wasn't my position to say ,
6 we'll just grab Walt. It was something that we -- we 7 decided that Walt Neuman was probably the best one for it. [
8 But as far as focusing in on just September 4th, ;
9 Sth time frame or that weekend time frame,-we were not 10 aware that we were prepared to challenge the curve by ,
11 whatever evolution. ,
12 MR. WEINBERG Well, what I really meant by it 13 was was Mr. Halnon accessible to the operators and the 14 shift supervisors?
15 THE WITNESS: Daily.
16 MR. WEINBERG: And was he sympathetic to their .
17 concerns?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes, yes, he was in my opinion.
19 MR. RAPP: Okay. Would Mr. Halnon have been 20 accessible to Dave Fields on the midnight shift of -
21 September 4th, 5th?
22 THE WITNESS: Not on the weekends, no. I think 23~ the last time -- well, let's see, Mr. tields was on mid 24- whift the last time that Mr. Halnen would have had an '
25 opportunity to see him, would have been a week or two L
P
85 1 prior to that, because the way our rotation works is that- j 2 you have -- if he takes mid shift on Saturday morning, so j
-3 like at the stroke of midnight on Saturday morning he's on f 4 shift. So that means he comes in Friday night. He had 5 Thursday and Friday off. He had just completed' swing l 6 shift on Wednesday afternoon.-
7 And I don't believe that Greg has an opportunity l 8 to go up there'and interface with the-shift supervisors on
- 9 swing shift. . But he makes it a habit of going up there 10 and talking with the
- mid-shift shift supervisors in the j 11 morning. So he can -- he can go up there and see the guy 12 at seven o' clock in the mnrning, the outgoing shifter and j
, r 13 the oncoming shifter, talk to them, because he prepares 14 himstlf to go to the management meeting. So I think his l
15 earliest opportunity to meet with Mr. Fields at that point 16 was not during the weekend but the Tuesday after Labor 17 Day --
18 MR. WEINBERG: And in --
19 THE WITNESSr - - because Greg also took the day 20 off.
21 MR. WEINBERG: And in his absence, that is , in 22 Mr. Halnon's absence that weekend, who would-have been_the
- 23 person lif there had-been some emergency, although you've 24 already said that you didn't think there was. Who would 25 have been the person above Mr. Fields that1Mr. Fjelds +
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i 86 $
1 would have talked to on-site? Shift manager? l 2 -THE WITNESS: Shif t manager is on-site at all 3 times so -- the opportu -- and it's. clear to everybody to l 4 understand that management is represented -- the higher !
5 levels of the plant management is represented by the shift ,
6 manager. And this is something that we look back on now 7 and question was he aware of it and why wasn't he, you 8 know.
i 9 MR. RAPP: Is the shift manager routinely l
10 consulted for normal evolutions?
'll THE WITNESS: No.
12 MR. RAPP: So if Dave Fields --
13 THE WITNESS: If he considered it to be a normal 14 evolution --
15 MR. RAPP: -- evolution --
16 THE WITNESS: -- that would be one explanation.
17 MR RAPP: Then it would not be unusual --
18 THE WITNESS: Why bother the shift manager, 19 we're going to just operate the plant like we normally do. <
20 MR. RAPP: Do you think Dave Fields' judgement 21 was adequate overall, not just focussing on the 4th or the ,
22 5th but I mean in general terms?
23 THE WITNESS: That would be my-personal opinion.-
24 MR. RAPP: Yes, that would be.
25 THE WITNESS:- All right.. My personal opinion-is w --y. y..y.-
p' e r y-s gm w++ gg-y y g-- -ey-9 s ,. w. pw_.%mg*r,..y-4y. u mya, yq,-- .-u7 ..,-
87 i i that I felt that Dave Fields was probably driven by 2 someone that was more pushy on this problem than he should 3 have allowed. He should have said, the line is clearly 4 drawn on what we're allowed to do and I feel that we're on 5 the wrong side of that line.
6 Unfortunately I think he was campaigned heavily 7 by the individual and ended up being resp nsible for 8 something that maybe he didn't initiate.
9 MR. DOCKERY: '4ho is that individual, please?
10 THE WITNESS: In my, again, my personal opinion 11 is Mark Van Sicklen. Just in dealing with Mark.
12 One thing I would like to put on the record also 13 is that Bruce Willms probably had more reason for me to 14 have to deal with the July 19 meeting to initiate the data 15 collection for the Joly 19 meeting than anything. Because 16 we started out this situation where Bruce Willms and Mark 17 Van Sicklen had a vested interest in trying to clear up 18 this problem. And it got to the point where Bruce -- when 19 I questioned him about it he says, I give up, I, you know, 20 I beat my head against the wall. I'm not going to do 21 anything. And I said, well, I can understand but I'm not 22 convinced yet with what you're telling me that I think we 23 ought to. So Bruce had already given up on the thing.
24 MR. DOCKERY: Why?
25 THE WITNESS: Because I felt he -- he was
88 1 labeled as an operator, you don't understand the 2 engineering principles behind it it's beyond you.
3 And -- and he just -- he wasn't getting the response that 4 he expected to. And I felt, well, maybe we're not giving 5 Bruce Willms enough of the tools to get his answer. So G that's why I involved Druce with it, you know. It was not 7 -- it was not a convenient choice, but because Bruce was 8 on the control board at the time, it was -- Bruce was 9 probably receptive to my request for plotting data because 10 it got him back into again where he wanted to be before.
11 MR. DOCKERY: All right. Very quickly. Are you I
12 describing some degree of animosity between Operations and 13 Engineering?
14 MR. WEINBERG: Back then, you mean?
15 MR. DOCKERY: Yes, back then.
16 THE WITNESS: I hate to characterize it that way 17 because I know that looking back at this thing now as 18 things have happened, people want to label it is that you 19 got your engineering group over here and your operating 20 group there and it's so important that we do work 21 together. And I could see examples of where they were 22 working together on this thing. I don't really want to 23 characterize it that way but there was certainly friction, 24 much in the same way as if I work with you I'm going to 25 have friction from time to time where you're -- you're
i 89 1 committed to one view and I'm committed to another view 2 and -- and -- But you have to recognize when you have 3 that friction and that's the point where you need to bring 4 in a mediator and I thought that's what we were doing in ,
5 July.
6 MR. STENGER: One quick thing. We ought to make ,
7 sure -- let's see if we've got OP-402 and just clear up 8 the one question about the precautions and the --
9 MR. WEINBERG: Carl will be around. You're not 10 going anywhere today, right?
11 THE WITNESS: (Nods affirmatively.)
12 MR. STENGER: You are going somewhere today?
13 MR. WEINBERG: Well, let's see what we got.
14 Let's take a ten minute break --
15 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go off the record.
16 (Whereupon, a short recess ensued at 10:16 a.m.,
17 after which the proceedings resume at 10:25 a.m. as 18 follows:)
19 MR. DOCKERY: Back on the record. And, Mr.
20 Bergstrom, I remind you that you continue to be under oath 21 here.
22 THE WITNESS: I understand I'm still under oath.
23 MR DOCKERY: While we were off the record we 24 collected up some documents. We recuived a copy of a page 25 from your day planner for September the 19th, 1994 --
r-90 1- THE WITNESS: No, that's July 2 9th. -
2 MR. DOCKERY: July the 19th, *94. And you 3 discovered some other entries in your day planner that you 4 think might be significant, and if I understand correctly 5 you've agreed to provide us with a copy of those after we 6 go off the records is that correct?
7- THE WITNESS: Yes.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Rather than rcad them into the 9 record, since we'll have the -- a hard copy of them, would 10 you just characterize what --
11 THE WITNESS: The char -- earlier questioning 12 asked me what kind of stress was involved or what kind of 13 pressures were involved with the operators to maintain the 14 makeup tank prossure high. This entry was on July the 15 7th. The page that I'll make a copy does not have a date 16 on there, but just indicating where I've inserted it into 17 my day planner by punching holes in it and so forth it 18 falls into what typically would be a summary of a -- of 19 events:that had transpired after someone had been gone for 20 a length of time.
. 21 This -- this is not' dated, but the entry just 22 -. talks about how Chemistry is -- is sendinguREDAS or ,
23 computer printouts to everybody to document Ops's failure ,
24 to maintain the pressure high, so, in other words , it was 25 a cautionary to nake sure you keep you nakeup tank i
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91 1 pressure up high enough, big brother is watching.
2 MR. RAPP: What do you mean by everybody?
3 THE WITNESS: Not my comment.
4 b' RAPP: But what do you -- what do you 1
5 suppose or what do you --
6 THE WITNESS: I suppose that the -- what was 7 intended -- and the way I received that was that if I 8 don't keep the makeup tank pressure up high, then I can 9 expect to get a phone call from someone superior to me to 10 say, why aren't you doing it. All right. Which would be 11 the management meeting was what we discussed earlier.
12 That would be one form of -- or anybody else that would 13 pick up the plan of the day that would be looking at the 14 chemistry trend.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, I believe you 16 stated earlier that you don't recall who you received that 17 from, those notes? ,
18 THE WITNESS: EJG, and that's-E-nie Gallion. Is Gd It to 9r 19 another shift supervisor.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Was there another issue we had to 21 deal with before concluding the interview?
22 MR. RAPP: Oh , that's correct. We now have that 23 full copy of OP-402 and if you just take a look at the 24 precautions and limitation sect'.on there?
25 THE WITNESS: Okay. I have Rev 75 of OP-402,
7 92 1 which was the Rev that was being used at that time.
2 Looking at the entire limits and precaution, there is not 3~ a statement in there that say to maintain makeup tank 4 pressure per Curve 8, or there is no reference to even 5 Curve 8 in the limits and precautions. However, the set 6 point section does include the high pressure alarm will
- r emulate Curve 8 of OP-103B.
8 MR. RAPP Okay. When you conduct an evolution 9 are there other evolutions or other processes that 10 generate alarms as you normally folic w the procedure?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes.
12 MR. RAPP So it would not be unusual then to 13 receive an alarm while performing a normal evolution per 14 the procedure?
15 THE WITNESS: Absolutely, that's correct.
16 MR. RAPP Is an alarm considered a plant limit?
17 THE WITNESS: An alarm is considered to be an 18 alarm. In other words, a device to tell you that 19 something has changed and that recognition of the change 20 needs to be made in either-an action or a notification or 21 something.
22 MR. RAPP Let me rephrase it then. Is an alarm 23 an indication you've exceeded a-plant limit?
24 THE WITNESS: No, it's not, not ne66.T 1arily. It 25 can be, and I'm sure that that has us dealing with w,.y e
r 93 t
1 assign certain levels of severities to alarms. We 2 discussed level one through four. However, an alarm does 3 not necessarily tell you that you've exceeded a limit.
4 MR. STENGER: Can I just follow up in that -- on 5 this particular issue is the fact that Curve 8 is 6 referenced in the set point section, does that mean that 7 the Curve 8 limits are the set point for high pressure, or 8 what does that mean?
9 THE WITNESS: It says emulate, it does not say ;
10 that it is the set point. It should emulate or follow the 11 Curve 8. All right.
12 MR. RAPP: Per various levels, then you'd get a 13 sliding pressure alarms.
14 THE WITNESS: I would expect -- my standard 15 would be that if I received that alarm, is to verify by 16 the operating curve where that was on the alarm. All 17 right. Just simply the alarm doesn't give me the 18 information. I also have to look at that pressure versus 19 where I stand with the level. In other words, the other 20 axis of the curve to look at.
21 MR. RAPP: What -- what instrument would you use 22 to verify the alarm?
23 THE WITNESS: The annunciator response and the 24 operating curve, OP-103B, Curve 8.
25 MR. RAPP:- Okay. What instrument is driving
r 94 1 that alarm? Or is that alarm being driven?
2 THE WITNESS: MU-14-LIR. Right next to -- you 3 asked me -- I don't know what the instrument number is, 4 it's right next to MU-14-LIR, makeup tank pressure.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Do we have anything else?
6 MR. RAPP: No. Okay, that's all then.
7 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Bergstrom, you've been a very 8 good witness here today. Obviously you were more involved 9 in -- in the issue we're looking at then we anticipated.
10- Thtt's why this has taken so long. Thank you. I want you 11 to have the opportunity if there's anything you'd like to 12 add to your testimony,, anything we didn't ask you that 13 you feel should be addressed, to do so at this time if you 14 feel inclined?
15 THE WITNESS: You've asked me some personal 16 opinions and that -- those are driven by my personal 17 opinions. I hope I've answered all your questions and 18 been able to distinguish the difference between my 19 personal opinion, my ethics, and those of what I'm to 20 portray as management. I am part of management. I assume 21 the responsibility and accountability just as much as 22 management, so I'm part of that team. I just hope that when this gets hashed out-I effectively did that.
24 I don't have anything to add. I.think you've 25 covered everything.
Y 95 1 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Mr. Bergstrom, I want you 2 to understand that the two attorneys who are in attendance 3 here_today, as they have characterized, represent Florida 4 Power Company and they don't necessarily represent you.
5 And I want you to understand-that you have a very clear 6 right to discuss with us anything you'd like to, outside 7 of their presence. Do you understand that?
8 THE WITNESS: I understand that and I have 9 nothing to say that we haven't already covered. I hope I 10 -didn't run on too much. I know he took what, 20 pages of
'11 notes there.
12 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah, but that's just -- not 13 exactly --
,_ f 14 THE WITNESS: All right.-
15 MR. WEINBERG: --
taking notes on other stuff.
16 THE WITNESS: Okay. All right. No , I --
17 there's nothing that I -- I have that I would shield from 18 them. And I -- everything I got -- and I don' t considet 19 needing a personal attorney or anything like that. That's 20 fine.
21 MR. DOCKERY: We thank you very much.
22 MR. WEINBERG: We're done. We just want to have 23l the right to read and review it for this and all the other 24_ depositions.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Oh, yes, we will accommodate that, i
96 1 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.
2 MR. DOCKERY: With that we'll go off the record.
3 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at 4 10:30 o' clock a.m.)
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