ML20199C981
| ML20199C981 | |
| 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 9711200216 | |
| Download: ML20199C981 (97) | |
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@fflehot Transcript of Proccodings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
In the matter of Interview of .
--Phittip E. Saltsman tmh'f Docket Number: 2-94-036 t Location: Crystal River, Florida , ,
a;
~i " Date: November 29,1995 k
Work Order No.: NRC-429 Pages 1-97 O
y NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC. / 1 Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.
Wasliington, D.C 20005 EXHlBIT Ib 2-94-036 (202) 234-4433 PAGE__ / OF 99 PAGE(S) k"T
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97 12 g 6 971117 LIAW97-313 PDR
@fflokal Transcript of Preccadings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
In the matter of Interview of . ,
-Phiffip E. Saltsman YMllf W .
Docket Number: 2-94-036 Location: Crystal River, Florida ,
Date: November '29,1995 2
Work Order No.: NRC-429 Pages 1-97 O -
y NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC. /;
Court Reporters and Transcriberr 1323 Rhode Islani Avenue, N.W.
I',
Washington,1).C. 20005 EXHlBIT 2-94-036 (202) 234 4433 PAGE / OF 99 PAGE(S) i fb 7 [T.
~
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12 g 6 971117 i LIAW97-313 PDR 1
. .. . - - . - . -, . . . . . . - - . . ~ _ . ...- - -.
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.11 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA -
2' NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4
3 -- +++++
3 4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW .
. y 6 ------------~~----------~~~-------x 7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8' INTERVIEW OF- : Docket No.
9: PHILLIP E. SALTSMAN : 2-94-036 10 :
11: ----------------------------------x 12 Wednesday,-November 29, 1995 13 14 Crystal River Plant 15 Administration Building 16 15760 W. Power Line Street 17 Crystal River, Florida 18.
- 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 2:35 p.m.
' 21 - BEFORE:
22 JAMES DOCKSRY Senior Investigator 23 JIM VORSE. Senior Investigator 24 ,
CURT RAPP Reactor Engineer W
SCn'Pi on N ~ 10 ~ % '
-- 2 5 .
3Q &, W
- 1. APPEARANCES:1 2' On Behalf of the Nuclear Regulatory-Commission ,
t in JAMES:DOCKERY,-Senior Investigator _
i
- 4- -Region II 'NRC Office of Investigations-5 -401-Marietta Street _ ;
- 6. Atlanta; Georgia 30323 7 JAMES VORSE, Senior Investigator
.8 Region II .NRC Office of Investigations 9 401 Marietta-Street 10 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 11 CURT RAPP, Reactor Engineer 12 Region'II NRC o
13 401 Marietta Street 14 Atlanta,' Georgia 30323 15 16 On Behalf of the Interviewee, Phillip E. Saltsman 17 MORRIS " SANDY" WEINBERG, JR., ESQUIRE E18 - Corporate Counsel - Florida Power Corporation 19 '101 East Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 3140
- 10- Tampa, Florida 33602 211 DANIEL'F.-STENGER,! ESQUIRE 22- ' Corporate Counsel Florida: Power Corporation
- 23- :1400 L Street, N.W.
24 ' Washington, D.C. 20005-3502 25 g.
4 - - . , - , .,
_ - . . - ~ . - _ . - . .- . - . . - - . . . . . . . .
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1 P-R-0-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 2:35 p.m.
4 My name is James D.-Dockery. I'm a Senior Investigator 5 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. Phillip Saltsman. This
-9 interview pertains to OI investigation number 2-94-036.
10 The location of the interview is the Administration 11 Building at Crystal River Nuclear plant. There are others 12 in-attendance during this interview and I will ask them to 13 identify themselves, starting with you, Mr. Rapp.
14 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp, R-A-P-P. I am 15 .a Reactor Inspector with Region Il NRC in Atlanta, 16 Georgia. .
17f MR. VORSE: My name is Jim Vorse, V-O-R-S-E.
.18 I'm a Senior Investigator with the NRC Office of
-19 Investigations, Atlanta, Georgia.
20- MR. STENGER: Dan Stenger, attorney with Winston 21' -& Strawn,. Washington,.D.C.
22 'MR'. WEINBERG: I'm " Sandy" Weinberg from 23' Zuckerman, Spaeder in. Tampa. Mr. Stenger and I, as we've 24 explained to.Mr. Saltsman represent the company and not 25 him as an individual.
. .- .~ - . - - _ - . _ _ _
4 1 MR DOCKERY: Mr. Saltsman, would you raise your 2 right hand, please.
3 THE WITNESS: (Compiles.)
4 Whereupon, 5 PHILLIP E. SALTSMAN, 6 being first duly sworn by the Investigator, was examined 7 and testified as follows:
8 DIRECT EXAMINATION 9
MR. DOCKERY: Would you state for the record 10 your full name, please.
11 THE WITNESS: Phillip E. Saltsman. Do I need to 12 say the middle name?
13 MR. DOCKERY: Not necessarily.
14 THE WITNESS: Phillip E. Saltsman. My title is 15 Senior Nuclear Mechanical Engineer. And I'm a -- I'm in 16 Systems Engineering Group in Primary Systems.
17 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. For identification purposes 18 would you gin us your date of birth and your Social 19 Security number.
20 THE WITNESS: My Socia. Securit.y number, 21 O Born 22 MR DOCKERY: Mr~. Saltsman, before we went on 23 the record here today Mr. Vorse and I identified ourselves 24 to you as investigators with the NRC Office of 25 Investigations. Is that correct?
I-5 1 THE WITNESS: Yes, that's correct.
2 MR, DOCKERY: And I also provided you with the 3 verbiage from Section 1001 of Title 18 of the United 4 States Code and explained to you how that applies to this 5 proceeding. Is that correct?
6 THE WITNESS: That's correct.
7 MR. DOCKERY: As I'm sure you've been told, Mr.
8 Saltsman, what we'd like to discuss today is certain 9 events during 1994, primarily during 1994 that pertain to _
10 the Curve 8 of OP-103B, Does that make sense to you?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes, it does.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Can you tell me when you first 13 became aware of any concerns by Operations at this plant 14 about that curve.
15 IHE WITNESS: I first became aware of the 16 concerns when I was first taking up the makeup system.
17 I'd come over from Design Enginee ring into yyceam- kyfI*m5 N
18 EngineeringandthisoccurredearlyAugust5r'94. And T65--
19 there was a transition time between myself and Pat Hinman 20 because of some work that came up on the O makeup pump.
21 So I did not assume system responsibilities immediately.
22 But I did go with Pat to a meeting on August the 5th of 23 '94, specifically with regard to the makeup tank. And 24 that's where I first became aware that it was still an 25 ongoing issue.
6~
1 MR. DOCKERY: Who else attended that meeting on 12-LAugust 5th?
- 3 THE WITNESS: Well, myself and Pat Hinman.
4- There was' Bobby Pate-of Operations Group was there. To-5 tell you the truth it was-so long'ago I can't remember all 6 the attendees, but I.know'there was someone there that was 7;-knowledgeable of Appendix R considerations.
-8 MR. WEINBERG: Does this help as-far-as where d- _
9 the people would have come from?
10 THE. WITNESS: Well, like, for instance, myself sn s 11 and. Pat from Nuclear Plant Technical Support. SFr9TrI$SL_
, - 12 Terry Austin would have represented Site Nuclear 13 Engineering. And now that I think of it I recall him 14 being there. Chemistry --
15 MR. WEINBERG: So that would be= Design 16 -Engineering?
17 THE WITNESS: Design Engineering.
18 Chemistry, I forget who was there representing 19 Chemistry, but there was'a Chemistry representative there, our 25 20 because we -talked about 4L4HE cc's per kilogram, dissolved "TGS -
21 hydrogen requirement and-what -- how that came into play-22- in the overail-issue.
23 Operations, Bobby Pate represented Operations.
24 'And-the reason'I remember that is he noted at some point 25 that he perhaps wasn't the_best person to represent Ops.
l
' ~
7 1 That he wasn't as familiar with the issue as others, but 2< that-he would certainly communicate with them.
3 And that -- that's the only people I recall.
4 There were more people there than that. I just don't 5 recall everybody. It was a long time ago.
6 MR. DOCKERY: .Would you characterize the purpose 7- of that meeting.
8 THE WITNESS: The purpose of the meeting was to 9' discuss how we were going to resolve everyone's concerns 10 with regard to the makeup tank overpressure. -It was just 11 a general issue. Upper management wanted us to maintain 12 25 cc's per kilogram of dissolved hydrogen in the reactor 13 coolant system for general corrosion purposes. And to 14 meet that requirement presented Operations with 3et's just
-15' say a daily burden whereby they had to be fairly clever 16 when they made hydrogen adds so that they could accomplish 17 that, that level of dissolved hydrogen and yet meet the 18 requirements of the OP-103B Curve 8.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Is it fair to say that the
- 20 . hydrogen issue, the hydrogen concentration issue was bound 21 up with the-Curve 87 22 THE WITNESS: Oh yes. 0;. yes, they were --
.23 MR. DOCKERY:- You couldn't sa -- Is it fair to 24 say you couldn't separate one from the other?
25 THE WITNESS: Well, certainly if we -- We have
, .. . - - . . _ . - - . . ~ . . - - . . . _ - - - - . - . ~ --
- 8 ,
I 1 to-maintain a certain pressure'in the_ makeup tank to r
2 . accomplish that certainLlevel of dissolved hydrogen and 3 -that's.something-that we are being driven to do by 14 . technical concerns. They were well' documented out in the 5 industry. Excellent technical reasons for maintaining 6 that dissolved hydrogen content. But, certainly, getting L
7 to that pressure,-it's going to present us with a concere 8 if we have a curve that limits inw much precsure we can f
9 run'in that tank.
10 So that's true,-you'd be hard pressed to --
11 they're mutually _ exclusive.
They're imminent-y infimdeIfinvolved.
K$ _
12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. You had --- Do you recall 13 what had been done on the issue up to the time it was 14 turned over to you? At wh . point did you receive it?
15 THE WITNESS: I probably got involved in this
- 16 after we got out of the B makeup pump outage, which would 17 have ended on Labor Day of ' 94. Pretty much Pat Hinman 18 had-it to that point. Pat Hinman authored the September
- 19. 2nd letter. I read-it, consulted with him on it, may have 20 even recommended some_more new changes as such,;but-that 21- was Pat's-letterfand it-reflected this meeting. And t
22 pecple were consulted prior.to that letter coming out.
23 -But at~that point,:when the B makeup pump work
~ 24 was done, Pat more or less went to his job as shop 25 . engineer and;7 more or less full assumed his duties at ,
er a y y-e- -y,9 5 .= w w --y p-v--.-e i--.-.-- q- - .-
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9 l- -that point. And-that's when I-really started becoming-2 heavily involved in the makeup tank
-,_ 3 I'd been an OTA for two, two and a half, maybe 14- even three years. I forget how long. Probably more like 5 ~two years. And'I knew of th_s' issue when it first 6 surfaced. And then I sort-of lost track of it when I-was 7 in design engineering. And I recall when I was discussing
'8 it with dat, . prior to this August 5th-meeting, I was 9- surprised that it was still ongoing. You know, that's how 10 detached I'd gotten from it. So I was surprised that it
< 11 was-still an issue. And so I really have been uninvolved
,- 12 in it.
s.
13 And like I say, I feel like.I assumed primary
-14: responsibility, you know, two days after Labor Day.of '94.
- 15 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
16 THE WITNESS: I hope that answers the question.
17 It's-like I say, there nas a transition between myself and 18 Pat because of' makeup pump-work, And that's why it's a 19- little difficult to really draw a hard line.
- 20 MR. DOCKERY: I'm -- Curt, I'm sure, has some 21 technical questions that I:can't even ask, so I'll let you
'22. go ahead with that.
23 MR RAPP: Okay. You said that as an OTA you 24c were aware of some ongoing concerns or some concerns with 12 5 - ~ makeup tank overpressure' earlier.
10
-1 THE WITNESS: My last day on shift the subject 12 came up,-my last-day as an OTA betore I went to design-3 engineering. A question was asked to me by a board 4
W operator, he asked me if makeup tank pressure that we were 5; presently running, did-I feel like that clashed with our 6 enhanced design basis document. And when I looked at our 7 enhanced design basis document number and I compared that 8 with what we were showing on the control board I said, 9 well, yeah, there's a clash.
10 And the gut feeling I got was that my relief was 11 going to write a problem report. I don't recall who that .
12 was. And like I said, this would have been roughly two 13 years prior to this August 5th meeting, maybe a year and a d
14 -half. You know, it'd be hard to pinpoint the exact time, 15 I could probably dig it up in my files, but --
16 MF. RAPP: But say early '93?
17- THE WITNESS: -I'd hate to even-guess at that.
18 You know, sometime-you. lose track of time. I just feel
.19 like it was in.the 18-month to two year ball park prior to 20- this August 5th meeting.
, 21 So, -I was at.are that there was a push to maintain
- 22 a high level of dissolved hydrogen. But that was -- I was 23: only aware of it for.that one day and then:I.went to -
24 design engineering and I sort of lost track of the whole 1
. 25 thing.
L 11 1- MR. RAPP: What exactly was the conflict with 2 e the design basis document versus'the operation?e% Lan ce d r0 3 THE WITNESS: As I recall, the enhKHce design 4 basis document at that time gave me a pressure range in 9
5 the makeup tank of something like 12 to 15 psig. Juni at
-6 that time we were running something in excess of 15 psig.
7 Now, that in itself is not a problem. wa find 8 tnings in the SDBD that require revising on occasion.
9 That doesn't mean that you necessarily have a problem, but 10 it certainly maans that somebody needs to look at it.
11 And there was a. as I recall there was a proLiem c 12 report written. And I didn't get involved in that problem 13 report because I ceased being an OTA. Otherwise I would wvEhe n 14 have been involved in the corrective action plan and usiee e 15 in the licensee event re,nort and --
16 MR. WEINBERG: Thisi was not a Curve 8 issue was 17 it?
18 THE WITNESS: .No. No. No,-this had -- I didn't 19 even look at Curve 8.~ All I did was look at the pressure 20 I was reading on the gauge and, on the control board enAgned W '
21 gauge, and then I went and looked at the enk="ac design 22 basis-document.
23 MR. RAPP: This was yet still prior to the 24 directive to go to the 25 cc's per kg?
25 THE WITNESS: That I don't know. I -- I-have x-s
12 1 come_to-believe -- I didn't know anything about the 25 2 cc's per kilogram at that time, but when I first got'
. 3 involved in this issue, right around August the 5th or 4 shortly before, discussions with other people led me to
- 5. believe thae Operations had already sort cf had the heat 6 -put on them to start running the higher hydrogen level.
7 Conversations had led me to believe that perhaps there was 8 already a push underway to get the higher hydrogen.
9 Because otherwise, well, I guess in my mind why would they 10 be running that higher pressure? You know, their 11 procedural guidance would have been 12 to 15 pounds, e
, 12 something like that.
13 MR. RAPP: Let me go back and --
14' THE WITNESS: It'd be guesswork for me to try to 15 pin that down any more than that.
16 MR. RAPP: Okay. You said that you got the 17 impression or someone had mentioned that Operations had 18- had the heat put on them. Would you explain what you mean 4 19 by that statement.
20 THE WITNESS: That~there had been -- I guess 21 that was probably poor wording. There-had been a push on
-22 to-haveithe higher hydrogen level due to corrosion 23 concerns that had just been, let's just say generated 24 within the industry as a whole. There could be no other 25- reason I could think-of to run higher hydrogen but for
l 13 +
1 oxygen control and, therefore, better centrol of general 2 corrosion of the reactor coolant system wetteo perimeter.
3 MR. RAPP: You caid earlier that there was a 4 good technical reason for running this higher hydcogen, 5 Are you aware of the technical basis for that particular 6 spec on hydrogen concentration?
7 THE WITNESS: You mean as far as specifically 8 the 25 cc's per kilogram?
9 MR. RAPP: (Nods affirmatively.)
10 THE WITNESS: I haven't ever read a research 11 paper that got into a great deal of detail regarding what 12 specific damage mechanisms we might be better of f withj W[ IT N
13 regard to how the number of 25 cc's per kilogram was 14 arrived at versus, say, 50. I've never really read 15 anything that was that detailed.
16 Just say that we feel like -- let's just say in 17 general if you run the higher hydrogen then certainly 18 you're going to be able to scavenge oxygen as it gets 19 generated in the core region due to radiolysis. So you 20 just give yourself a batter cushion for -- for not having 21 the dissolved oxygen concern and the corrosion problems 22 that go with it.
23 I, myself, have not done a great deal of research 24 on that specifically, no.
25 MR. RAPP: Were you -- were you ever aware or
14 I were there ever conversations developed as to how this 25 2 -cc's per kg became the operational value?
. 3 THE WITNESS: _( Shakes head negatively.) Like I ,
4 said, I don't-recall. I know that I never really studied 5 .anything in the form of a research paper.
G MR. RAPP: Well, I'm not necessarily asking --
7 THE WITNESS: I think I felt like it was an EPRI E guideline and that it was -- it was adopted by the-b & W 9 ow'ners group au being a recommended good practice. That 10 was che impression that I'd been led to believe was true.
11 MR. RAPP: When was that B & W good practice
.. 12 made available to the different --
13 THE WITNESS: I have no idea.
14 MR. RAPP: -- plants?
15 THE WITNESS: I've not actually seen it myself.
16 MR. RAPP: Okay. Do you have an understanding 17 of the, I guess the management dynamics that went into the 18 decision to go to the 25 cc's per kg value?
19 1mE WITNESS: You mean as far as like a chain of 20' command, were there meetings at the upper management level 21 and such where it was decided that this would be something 22 that would be a good-thing-to do? -If there were meetings, 23 I?have no knowledge of them. I don't know exactly how the 24 word got from what point of origin to the control board o 25 operators,cor let's just say the control room, that we u
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1 will from this point on start maintaining 25 cc's per 2 kilogram of dissolved hydrogen. I don't know what 3- nequence of events took place for them to start getting 4 their, you know, their guidance to do that.
5 I do know that it was a strong -- a strong upper 6 management -- well, I don't even know how to say that.
7 Let's just say that they believed that it was a good thing 8 to do, so it was being -- it'was being pushed hard at the 9 time that I walked into this issue.
10 MR. VORSE: What led you to believe that?
11 THE WITNESS: Just general conversations between L, 12 individuals. Pat Hinman, the people that were at this 13 August 5th meeting, my discussions with individual 14 operators, just led me to believe that, you know, there 15 was a very very strong push by upper management to meet n y' 16 the25celkilogramdissolvedhydrogenguideline.
1Eb-17 MR. VORSE: Did anyone in the engineering group 18- express reservations about the accuracy of Curve 8 and 19 concern about this increase in hydrogen pressure,and what 20: effect it could have on Curve 8? I'm talking about 21- Engineering now, not Operations?
22- THE WITNESS. I don't recall anybody -- I don't 23 ' recall hearing anybody talk about the curve itself with 24 regard to the supposed accuracy or inaccuracy or any
- 25. technical problems with.the curve and the way it was i-
L 16-li_ derived. -I don't: recall any of that.
2 ~I know that myself and Pat Hinman=had discussed 3 the fact that !$fi)!f~~~-thattherewereoperatorsthat w
4- felt-like there were errors with the curve and possibly 5 the calculation used to generate the curve.
6 And I think Pat had accumulated some data during 7_ a surveillance procedure they ran during refueling outage-8 9R and they had looked at this data with that specific 9 point in mind, to sort of bounce it off the curve and-10 convince themselves whether there was or was not a problem 11 with the curve.
.- -12 And the consensus of opinion at that time by the 13 people that were involved was that there was no reason 14 based on that data to suspect that there was a problem 15 'with the curve. So there had been troubleshooting of 16 actual plant data.kEG ust felt like what we saw on the N
17 . plant data could be easily accounted for by a t-18 consideration of instrument error and instrument error 19- variation.
20 MR. VORSE:- Did you have any input into this, 21- this September 2nd memo?
- 22: THE WITNESS: I read the letter and I've got it 23 inLfront of me. I read the letter. I consulted with Pat 24' oniip and I may have rendered my opinion on a_ couple of 25: wording-changes--that I felt like he could make just for it-
I 17 1 to read better. But as far as the technical content, you 2 know, what Pat originally wrote is pretty much what 3 appears here in the final form.
- 4. MR. VORSE: In your mind was this issue 5 basically over as a result of this memo being written?
6 THE WITNESS: Well, I felt like once we got to 7 install the chain operator on makeup valve G4 and once we 8 got a chance to look at some more data during refueling 9 outage 10R, which we had already planned to do. We had 10 already planned to, you know, during the conduct of one of 11 >ur surveillance procedures te were going to co' ict
. 12 specific data points and we were going to once again 13 assessinourmingwhetherwefeltliketherewasany TES--
24 reason to believe that there was an error in the curve.
15 But other than that I felt like it was more or 16 less concluded. I knew that there was probably going to 17 be some procedural guidance needed for the use of the 18 chain operator on makeup valve 64. And I, you know, I 19 knew that there may be other actions that would emerge as 20 being necessary to do as we put that major corrective 21 action in place. I knew we were going to revisit the 22 Appendix R analysis.
23 You know, there were still some loose ends. But 24 I felt like we were well on our way to closing the issue, 25' yeah.
18 1 MR. WEINBERG: Could I ask one question now that 2 you've asked him --
3 MR. VORSE: (Nods affirmatively.)
4 MR. WEINBERG: What does this -- because this 5 has been asked h few times. What does it mean, what did 6 you take it to mean in this memo where it said, In 7 addition corrective action number eight of PR94-149 is 8 currently in progress to provide technical bases for the 9 BWST swapover point during this analysis rikeup tank 10 overpressure per Curve 8 will be re-evaluated?
~.1 THE WITNESS: Well, I felt like -- there was a 12 fellow named Matt Adams that was involved in the hydraulic 13 modeling of the makeup system, and one of the things that 14 we were going to do was to evaluate the BWST swapover 7F_L 15 point and see 4har-if it was in fact where it should be worsf- vn esY 16 based on his modeling and based on case flows, we*ca q 17 case instrument errortp d certainly if you evaluated f6f 6%
( 18 you needed to raise the swapover point.... at that time flq 19 we were looking at raising the swapover point, instead of 5 20 starting at five feet in the BWST we were looking at 4
.%wg,2
"' hey 21. starting at ten feet or 15 feet. We weren't sure which, kk 22 we nadn' t gott.en f ar enough along yet .
44 ,
CA: Curve ds,4] 23es 24 Certainly that would comple.tely change 8 of-OP-103B. That would move that curve up considerably
([T(a 4 A. 25 and provide them with considerably more operational DL
y . _ _
19-
- 1. maneuvering space.
2 So that was -- In my mind the_ single biggest
. 3 thing that we could do would be to raise that swapover 4 point, which-is something we were going to evaluate doing.
5 -And at that point we -- it was just a matter of figuring- >
6 out'whether we were-going to go to ten feet-or 15 feet. _
7 MR. WEINBERGi So would that suggest that the-8- issue was not totally closed out at that point?
9 THE WITNESS: Certainly. Certainly.
10- MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Saltsman, are you aware that 11 Curve 8 as it exists today has been revised since Curve 8
. 12 as it existed on September 2 of 1994?
13 THE WITNESS: I'.$b well aware of that.
At MR. DOCKERY:
Wb What occasioned that? What was 15 -the driving factor-behind changing that curve?
-16 THE WITNESS: Well, there was a -- as a result ,
- 17 of the evolution that was run by the operators there was a
, - 10 push to revisit this calculation earlier than we were O %
19 going,%S-in fact, getaroundtoi}gbecauseweweren't 20 through with the calculation, but there was -- there was 21 no-plan to immediately dissect it, 22 One-thing though, I sent a -- I sent an E-mail to g
23 one of the operators after I saw this problem report,
_. 24 noting to them that I looked through the calc and did not' 25 1see the Henry's: Law correlation for gas that's coming out
20 1 of solution with tank pressure variation. I did not sen 2 that factored into the calculation. And that that -- my 3 opinion was that that could account in some way for what 4 they were seeing, and combined with instrument error that 5 might -- that might account for the difference in their 4Q 6 data % the curve.
W 7 MR. DOCKERY: That has to do with the gas under 8 pressure?
9 THE WITNESS: Right.
10 MR. DOCKERY: How it reacts?
11 THE WITNESS: e makeup tank level dropped 12 during their evolution more dissolved gas would have been 13 coming out of solution and that would have had the effect 14 of holding the pressure up artificially.
15 And also, the test was not set up in what I would I
16 call a pure fashion anyway. We still had makeup pump l 17 recirculation flow going, and that was maintaining the 18 makeup tank in an elevated temperature relative to what 19 you'd see in a major loss of coolant accident.
20 So, in my mind I didn't really give that much 21 credence to their test data at the time because I did not 22 consider it to be -- to be pure. I considered it to be 23 tainted data. I didn't consider it to be representative 24 of what I would see in a large break.
25 But certainly based on the concerns of operators
21 1 and based on our previous experience in refueling outage 2 9R we were going to collect data during the p9rformance of 3 a regularly scheduled surveillance procedure on the makeup !
4 pumps. And we were going to track makeup tank level and I 5 pressure and try to get us some data that is more 1
6 representative of a LOCA. And we were going to revisit !
7 the calculation at that time if we felt there was a reason 8 to.
9 So, I mean, I think I got a little eff track 10 there, but there were things being factored in. I don't 11 know what else I can add to that other than --
12 MR. VORSE: Do you think that the operators -- I 13 know this is speculation on your part, but do you think 14 that they felt or do you believe that you gave them enough 15 of an impression that you weren't just, you know, putting 16 blinders on and that you -- you weren't just going to 17 force them -- not force them but cause them to have to 18 take prematuce action on their own just to prove a point?
19 Do you think you left communications open enough for them 20 to understand --
21 MR. WEINBERG: He means Systems Engineering.
22 MR. VORSE: Yes, Systems Engineering.
23 THE WITNESS: I -- If Operations didn't feel 24 like there was open communication it's hard for me to 25 imagine, because there had been enough base touching from
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- 22 1 Pat Hinman to individual operators to where it.'s hard for a f
2 me to believe that that's true. But I know that when $U g!
3 myself and Pat went to the control room prior to this g O*t we5
- 4 letter coming outhso that Pat could sort of -- he planned ,
I
'%5 - ik -(
to talk to at least two of the operators that had been, F 5
< l 6 let's just say, very vocal about this issue. j
~
g 1
~
- 7 MR. DOCKERY
- 'ho were those two operators?
y ,
j 8 THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce Willms 9 were two people that he specifically wanted to talk to.
a h4L y And, you know, e . one of the things that I'd pointed out 10 4
?
11 was, you know, I've got the makeup system now -- I forget -h 12 whether I was talking to one of them or both of them --
i 13 but certainly feel free to communicate with me on the d l 14 telephone, E-mail, et cetera, et cetera, and we'll sit-
.arough this. !
15 down and 9 IC And I know that I mentioned that we were not done That we were going to 1 17 with that, with that calculation. ]
r 18 look at data that we were going to arrive at during d 19 refueling outage 10R during our surveillance procedure on 20 the makeup pumps. That we were going to look at data, we were going to assess whether we feel like there is any ah 21 L
22 reason to believe there's an error in the curve. And _
23 then, of course, this corrective action of PR94-0149, the $ z 5
24 re-evaluation of the BWST swapover point was probably 25 going to result in raising the swapover peint, which 4 IE l
23 1 would, of course, result in raising that curve and giving 2 you more maneuvering room.
3 So, I felt like they were aware of that and I 4 felt like there was an open invitation for communication.
5 MR. RAPP: Who was this -- how was this raising 6 of BWST level which would in turn give us some more 7 maneuvering room operationally, how was that communicated, 8 or who was that commenicated to on the Operations side of 9 things?
10 THE WITNESS: Once again, this is remembering 11 from way way back, but --
12 MR. WEINBERG: You mean other than this memo 13 here which is to Hickle?
14 MR. RAPP: Certainly.
15 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.
16 THE WITNESS: It seems to me like that is 17 something that we discussed that day when we were in the 18 control room with those two operators. Now, as far as the 19 overall Operations Department, I know that this came out 20 at this meeting, the August 5th meeting, the discussion of 21 BWST swapover point possibly moving up to ;he ten foot or 22 15 foot level to initiate it as opposed to wait until five 23 feet.
24 MR. RAPP: So it was just a proposed action, it 25 wasn't --
'l 24 i
1 THE WITNESS: Right. Well, it's something you !
2 need to assess whether that's something you really want to 3 do because you -- there's maybe other things to consider 4 that would preclude you from -- from raising the swapover j 5- point beyond a certain point. And all that -- that has to 6 be carefully evaluated also. You can't take too lightly.
7 -how five feet was established originally. .That was 8 certainly something that was going to be done. That was a 9 corrective action-on the problem report.
10 MR. STENGER: Point of clarification. That was 11 a corrective action for the problem re' port written out of 12 the SP-630?
13 THE WITNESS: Right. The SP-630 run during 14 refueling outage 9R. That would have been the 94-0149 PR.
f 15 And I don't know this specifically but Pat Hinman told me 16 that he sat down with operators, and I dca't recall h3m 17 specifying who, and went throug.' those PR corrective 18 actions, and went through the test data and discussed why 19 we felt like the tv c data did not indicate that there was 20 an error with the curve.
21 See, Pat felt like operators expected tnat any 22 time . they fred _r- do<une. makeup tank. level they were goingEto move Y-t
-23 point .by point parallel with the OP-103B Curve 8 and if 24 they"didn't, then there was' a problem with the cerve. And 25 Pat was trying to communicate to them that there's no
1 1
25 1 reason to'believe.that you're' going 1to move point by point
~
2 parallel-with.that curve as you drop level. J 3 And he just felt like what was happening was that 4- he-waa -alaying something to them technically and it 5~ wasn't registering or they were just unwilling to believe 6 it. But_in sat's opinion they had this -- they had this 7 idea, thiu belief that they should move parallel to that 8 curve point by point any time they dropped level.- And I 9 have no idea why they would expect to do that. And Pat 10 felt like he had communicated to them how he could account 11 for the behavior you see with instrument error variation.
ItC.
12 And he had, I guess he had somebody from JWe, I f 13 .know he talked about it with Steve Koleff, I don't
(
14 reuember who else he mentioned, but it was not just Pat 15 .that arrived at that conclusion.
16 -MR. VORSE: Should they -- if they didn't do the 17 point by point with the -- how high would-the hydrogen 18 level be?
19 THE WITNESS: I don't understand your' question.
20 MR. VORSE: Were they forced to do the point by 21 point? I'm not technical, I understand that, but --
22 .THE. WITNESS: Oh no, no, no. All they have to 23 do isEstay under that curve. That's all they have to-do.
24 .MR. VORSE: But if they stay under'the curve are
- 25. they still gett- 19theirhydrogenlevel$hkwaythey're w
r
!=
.. _ _ . . _ . _ ,. ~~. _ _ _ _ . . .
l 1
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26 i i supposed to be?
2 THE WITNESS: It depends onjwhat the tankilevel1 3' is at the time. They had a box that they were basically
'4 put in where if you were below a certain level you would-5 have to' exceed that curve to get that hydrogen Ni 6 concentration. Sotheyma.pfteN r.ts;r.-a level much higher than-
-7 the minimum that we are allowed to run at.
W ..
You know,-they.
, 8 would not be running near the low end. They would be l
L 9 running more --
10 MR. WEINBERG: But the issue you were talking _
.11 about was that -- is that Pat Hinman told you that tne 12' operators apparently'believe that when they dropped level-13 that -- that the curve should be followed in a parallel-14 fashion if you were to plot it.
15- THE WITNESS: Yeah.
16 MR, WEINBERG: But he didn't think that that was 17 necessarily the case.
18 THE WITNESS: Well, we know that that's not no 19 true, there's y-reason in the world why you should'have
- 20. that expectation. .And he felt like'he had communicated
-21 the technical reasons for why that expectation is 22- unrealistic. . And he just -- he just didn't' feel like it 23- was being-received or believed.
24 MR. RAPP: 'You said= instrument error was one 25~ factor or one reason. Were there other reasons that the h'
I
l 27 1 plant would not track Curve 8?
2 THE WITNESS: Well, Curve 8 is based on loss of wonY 3 coolant accident analysis where you use all the werse case 4 flows, w%v8 orse case instrument error. There's no reason to W w.rst 5 believethatwe'regoingtohavewogecaseinstrument _
6 error and there's no reason to believe that instrument 7 error will be a constant during the evolution.
8 There's no reason to believe that the evolution 9 will proceed exactly as assumed in the calculation. So --
10 and also, when they do level decreases cnd level increases 11 in a normal plant configuration, we have a hundred gallons 12 per minute of makeup pump recirc flow going and we don't 1; have a tank level that's dropping with no recirc flow 14 coming in. We don't have temperature being held 15 artificially high, 16 What they do in normal operation bears no 3
\',9M 17 resemblance to -- to a loss of coolant accident. So just KM 18 no reason to believe that you're going to move parallel 19 with that curve. There's -- I have no idea why anybody 20 would have that expectation.
21 MR. RAPP: Did the Operations folks ever talk to 22 -- talk to you or Pat Hinman or have any kind of 23 discussions with Engineering saying if the curve isn't 24 going to behave like this, then give us a curve that is so 25 that we can have some assurance that what we're doing is l
I
- .. - .. - - - - .. - . - . - .~. - .. ... . - - - _ . - . . - _ _ - . -
o r e 28 ]
- 1- within:the operational' boundaries? ' ored id they just say,_ y'
>bi 2 fix' Curve 8 and make it look'like the thnf? K 3 THE WITNESS: I'm.not really quite_sure how to 4 answer that. The only --1I mean, all-I've got prior _to 5_ August 5th on this is hearsay. So it's nothing.that I've
~
6- dit3ctly witnessed. Tut the only thing I can tell youLis-1 7 that their contention was that their observation of makeup-
'8 tank behavior when they_ djecmst_crer:c level, added hydrogen, -
ruifa[' %
9 retse-level to get their_25 cc's per kilogram, their data W
10 did not track point by point pare; T1 to the curve and 11 that led them to believe that there was an error in the 12 curve.
13 Pat Hinman's contention, based on consulting with 14 other engineers, not just himself, was that yehh, you 15 don't move point by point parallel with that curve but 16 there's no reason to believe that you should and there's 17 no reason to believe that there's an error in the curve 18 just based on that observation and that alone.
19 MR. RAPP: So, really, the bottom line becomes 20' that Curve 8 instead of being a really operational curve 21 was really a: design: curve --
221 THE WITNESS: Well, it's a --
23 M R,. . R A P P : -- that was being used as an 24 operational. curve?-
25 THE WITNESS: Well, it's a limit. It was a
- . --- .. . - - . - . .. - . - . - - . - . ~ -- . . . . . . . . .
29-
~
,- 11 limit based on loss!of coolant accident analysis that 2 _ protected high pressure injection. pumps that are~ aligned-3 to the makeup tank from being hydrogen bound during-a loss 4 of coolant accident - j i
5' And I felt like everyone that functioned in a 6-- control room capacity as an operator or shift supervisor 7 ~ would be knowledgeable of that. That it was based on 8 accident analysis and you should maintain makeup tank
.9 pressure less than the value on the curve at whatever 10
'of value er level you were at. And that way you could
%L.
11 protect-a makeup pump from being hydrogen bound during a
- 12- LOCA. I felt like that was something people should have 13- known.
' 1' 4 MR, RAPP: Which LOCA are we discussing?
15 THE WITNESS: Well, my understanding of the way L 16 the former curve, not the, you know, the existing curve, 17 I'm not real familiar with that calculation, but the pre-18 existing curve was based on-a large break loss of coolant 19 accident.
I 20 I'd have to guess -- I--- My guess would be the I
L 21 double-ended cold-leg guillotine: rupture, but J T S j u s t I ?'#
i: .
,ps_
22 judging based on the flow rates that are assumed in.that 23^ calculation. Because you have high flow on LPI, HPIj 24 building spray, 25 MR. RAPP: Are the HPI pumps credited during a l-
, ..-.i_ .:.. . - . . . . _- - . . _
30 l' large break double-ended guillotine shear of the reactor 1 2 coolant system?
3 THE WITNESS: The FSAR we.-- in the FSAR.we take 4 no credit for HPI during a large break loss ~of coolant 5 accident. However, there is a, what you -- I guess you 6 could call a large intermediate break or large small-7 break, or whatever, it doesn't really fall into the large 8 break category. But there'is a break that you could 9 experience on a core flood line that symptomatically would 10 br;have very similar to a large break, as far_as how fast 11 you lose pressure and how fast you get RB spray going.
12 And that -- that is a scenario that you have'to have HPI.
13 MR. RAPP: Are you aware of why you have to have 14 HPI for that scenario?
15 THE WITNESS: Well, it turns out that all you 16 have is one core flood tank and one train of HPI for that 17 particular scenario. Because this would be a break on the 18 'A'# core flood line downstream of the last check valve, and
, 19 Wthat would take out that train of LPI and that core flood 20 tank. And then the single failure would be the failure of 21 the opposite side diesel, which would be the "B" diesel -
generator.
23 So all you would have would be the B core-flood 24 tank and the A-train of HPI, and that would be it. And 25 that'swktweeventu'allyreported{"theoperator'sproblem W p-
31 1^ report 94-0267. That's why we eventually reported-2 ourselves as'being outside our design ~ basis was based on 3 that accident.
4- -:MR. RAPP: And when was that accident sequence?
5 When was it discovered that that accident sequence was a I
6 -limiting factor for Curve 8?
7 THE WITNESS: I believe that Paul Fleming came 8 up with that. And there's a NRC position paper. And 9 there was something in his file somewherg somebody that 10 he consulted with. But Paul Fleming was who I believe 11 brought that particular scenario to light.
12 At that time we were calling that problem report 13 a suspected design basis issue. And my own feeling, I 14 didn't know -- I didn't have knowledge of the core flood 15 line break scenario myself, So I did not at the time 16- consider us to have been outside the design basis because 17 I -- I know that we -- the FSAR takes no credit for HPI 18 during a large break LOCA. I mean, it's certainly -- it's 19 certainly a nice thing to do to save your high pressure 20 injection pumps if you can. And it's certainly a-good 21 financial and business and safety decision. But the FSAR 22' does not take credit for HPI in the large break LOCA. LPI ,
23 flow adequate.
24 But, anyway, when that came out that-is what we
- 25. eventually reported it on. .The core damage frequency for
_ m _ - _ _ _ . _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . . . _ _ . _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ . _ . _ . _ _ . _ _ ~ .-
-32 eWAb55~
that.eum" '=~something on the_ order of ten to-the minus_.
~
-1 2' eleven.
WSo it's not one of your more-credible events but ,
'3 it's -- it's certainly an event'that you have-to consider.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Saltsman, were-you at-all 5- surprised to find out that Curve 8 was a design basis 6 curve? ?
7 THE WITNESS:: Yeah, I was. I was surprised 8 because my feeling.had been that.it'really was an 91 operating _ limit and it was there to protect the makeup 10' pumps from being destroyed during an event where you 11 really don't need them. But that certainly it's 12 attractive to save them if you can.
- 13 I didn't know anything about the core flood line 14 break' scenario until later when I read the write-up on it, g 15 and when I discussed it with Licensing I agreed that yeah, that does make -- that does make that a design basis
~
16 17 issue. But I - =I was. surprised when I found that out, 18_ yeah.
-19 MR. WEINBERG: And the reason is_you were 20 focusing and I_ guess others were focusing on a large break 21 LOCA - -
22 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
23 MR. WEINBERG: -- situation where you knew that 24;_HPI wasn't called for?
25 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I was-focusing on what-I t
i f
33 1- believed to be the assumediacc'ident for the generation of -
<2 the original curve. I~ believed it to be the ccid-leg.
3 ' guillotine break. -And I knew it-to be a'large break-just ,
4 -based on the flow rates that were' assumed in the-original.
5 calculation.
6 MR. RAPP: When the September 2nd letter was 7 generated the statement is in there that it's safe and l 8 conservative for a' worse case large break LOCA.
9 MR. DOCKERY: It's in that first paragraph, I 10 believe.
11 MR. RAPP: In that paragraph there.
12 (Indicating.)
13 MR. WEINBERG: (Readings) Engineering believes 14 the curve is accurate and reasonably conservative protect 15 the high' pressure injection pumps from a hydrogen gas 16 intrusion in the worse case large break LOCA.
17 Which is essentially what I've just asked you, I
(- - 18 guess, 19 THE WITNESS: What I believe is being stated 20 there,'and-certainly.I was not involved in this, the 21 history of this item like Pat Hinman was, but what he's 22 ' basically saying is that based on his observations during-l- 23 the surveillance procedure performance that they ran
'24 during 9R on the makeup 2 pumps he believes that that data 25 indicated to-him that that. curve-was conservative to I
1
. - . , - ~- . - . . - .- - . -
341 1 protect the HPI pumps, but,certainly we weren't done-2 looking at the issue. We had a1 corrective action in.
3 PR94-0149- that was going to evaluate a higher swapover 4 point. .If we go to a higher swapover point that raises 5 the OP-103B Curve 8 and makes everybody's'iife easier.
6 But there was nothing that he-had seen on real .
1 7 plant data that indicated to him or.gave him reason to 8 believe that that curve was not conservative to protect i l
you from what it was designed to protect you from. i 9
10 MR.-RAPP: What about the data taken during the 11 per"ormance of SP-630?
12 THE WITNESS: That's what he was talking about, l
l, 13 SP-630 data. That was his actual plant data.
14 MR. RAPP: All right. That still does not
- 15 give --
16 THE WITNESS: That approximates a LOCA.
17 No, what Pat -- Pat even showed me the data that 18 he generated when they were doing the runs on the makeup 19 pumps,' he plotted makeup tank level and pressure'and ~
Tes -
20 watched those decreases. And he start -- they had \(TES-21 starting poing from different levels in the makeup tank.
lEJL_
22 And when he extrapolated those curves they all appeared to p 23 converge at the origin,-just by an. extrapolation. You
- 24. know, theydidn'trunthemallthewaydowntoaUkkh3 1evel-W 25 in the makeup tank. But you did ge urves. If you
, 4 1
'35 hI k started out at the h*f trgh level versus the lower level they
-1
. %S -
2 did appear to be moving.together. And-these are for 3 different, you know, different runs.
4 -MR.'RAPP: You got a' family of curves. l
.5 THE WITNESS: What you had was a family of 6 curves'that' appeared to be converging at_the low level of .
7 like zero. inches in a makeup tank. They appeared to be , ,
"E" - pongrecsllf.Afly l 8 converging b he drain point of being empT7b %'s, K L 9 And he extrapolated all of those and he even 10 discussed that with, I know, Mark Van Sicklen, or at leact 11 I know he told me that. Andtherewereotherf*Ibelis-- h 12 he said-pceple that he had discussed that with. But that
% S-13- he had observed behavior wher s you drop level'you
- b h But he really felt 14 will appear to move towards the curve.
15 like you were just converging towards it and that you 16 would not get there until you drained the tank. And 17 that's what his data had indicated. And they had l 18 explained that by a consideration of what they would expect to see instrument error do durin
~
19 evolutions.
L-20 So, based on that data he felt like the curve 21 .that was in place was conservative protect you from 22 what-it was designed to protect-you from. And that was-1 23- hydrogen binding the makeup _ pump _during a large break 24 LOCA. Yeah, heEfelt;1ike-you would move towards it_ hut L 25 you wouldn't get to it.
1 J
p 36
- 1' MR. RAPP: _Okay b3
-2 THE WITNESS: is data supported thatb f (3 $b
-4 MR. STENGER: Excuse me. Where did that data-5 come from? 'That was all from SP-630?
6 THE WITNESS: All from surveillance procedure 7- G30. Just following the procedure, you just control which 8- points you're gathering on what we call REDAS, which, you 9 know, we can gather different plant parameters on that.
EM. ell 10 And then we can plot them on either Lotus or im- elv r"ouTele ff 11 *ime when we run SPs or So he just, I mean, re"Y b 12 pts that System Engineering gets involved iny see that
-13 as an opportunity to just collect gobs of data and analyze 14 it and --
15 MR. STENGER: So, you were collecting data or 16 System Engineering was collecting data during the 17 performance of SP-630?
18 THE WITNESS: _ Specifically Pat Hinman was 19 collecting data during the performance of SP-630, which is 20 a procedure that we have to run every refueling outage.
21 It's a full flow test of each makeup pump.
22 MR. STENGER: And that's data at different 23 levels, makeup tank levels?
L
= 24 THE WITNESS: Yeah,k,.uey were different starting 25
%b points of; level when they would start one of the pump
_- ~ __ . _ _ __ _ __
37 1 runs.
2 MR. WEINBERG: So you could track the curve --
3 THE WITNESS: Now, keep in mind I wasn't there.
4 I wasn't there. Pat -- Pat just wanted to observe makeup S tank level versus pressure behavior during a rapid 6 decrease of makeup tank level. And certainly SP-6SO gives 7 you data that is more reliable, in cay opi 'on, or let's 8 just say it's more pure than that the operator's data 9 would have been because there's no recirc flow.
10 MR. RAPP: At least more closely approximates.
11 THE WITNESS: More closely approximates a LOCA, 12 MR. WEINBERG: Because there's no what?
13 THE WITNESS: Because there's no makeup pump 14 recirculation flow, there's no let down, you know, none of 15 that. I mean, they're basically just drawing down the 16 makeup tank and BWST with a single makeup pump at a high 17 flow rate, which is what we would see in a LOCA.
( 18 MR. DOCKERY- Mr. Saltsman, we've interviewed l
19 several operators wh, have testified that on the basis of 20 this September 2, 1994, metaarandum on this suhject they 21 felt that they had lost any chance of having that curve 22 changed.
23 Do you have any comment on that, why they would 24 feel that way when it's your testimony that this l
! 25- memorandum clearly indicates that the problem is still l
l l
m 38 1
1.- being studied? Do we have~a breakdown in' communications-2 here?'
3' THE-WITNESS: Well,.you could say -- you could
-1
- 4 -possibly say that or you could just say that there_may_
4 51-have.been oneLor more-people involved.that'just basical)y 6:,weren't_11stening. .
7 In my -- based on my exposure to it at-the' tail 8 :end of Pat Hinman's tenure as makeup system engineer it 9 seeined to me like there.was an open window. Now, it could 10 be that they may have thought that nobody was going.to go y 11 through that calculation with a fine tooth comb looking I
L 12 for technical errors. I could see how they could read i .
" 1T this letter and get that impression, but I can't see how l n ---
14 they could think that the issue of the curve was t 15 completely a done did deal when we've got a statement E
16 right here saying -- and I told them myself that it was 17 likely that we would go to 'a higher swapover point and I_ 18- that we could buy margin like that.
L 19 _If tney just read this first paragraph it should i-20 -be -- it seems to say that we're not done with this. And l-h ~21 *they knew that;we were going to run SP-630-again and they -
i.
^ 22 knew that we were going to grab data again and they knew J h .dered 3 in a. at 23 that we were going l to see if more ==t:-' fashion
%g. con %/W
> SL.
s s-
- 24 data. would: indicate an error with the curve,. I felt like 25' -they knew that. .
m - .- e . - . .
- . - . . . . - . . ~ . - - _ - . . - . . . . -
I i
39 1' But,.like I:said, I was only along when thereLwas 2L communication with a couple of individuals and-you I a; 3 lot of operators. I felt like there was one individual I
%\
4 that just seemedISi.ke his concerns were not being listened ;
.S~ to, W j 6 MR. DOCKERY: Who was that? !
7' THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen, and I don't 8 really know why he had that opinion, But, now, mine's 9 based on hearsay discussic.1s with Pat Hinman for the most 10 part and not with a whole lot of communication with Mark.
' ll The -communications got shut down real abruptly 12 once -- once this test got looked at, a little more 13 closely.
14 MR. DOCKERY: < hen you say test
-- when you say 15 test what are you referring to?
16 THE WITNESS: That'd be the operators evolution 17 that they conducted on the 4th and the 5th. Right after 18- -- about a week after that the communication was really 13 -not there any more for the most part because of what, you 20 know, what this eventually became in the way of an issue.
21 MR. RAPP: I:et me delve into one point then.
22 It's been brought about during these discussions 22 that you informed' Bruce Hickle outside of the plant that 24 potentially-this was a test. Correct?
. 25 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't think I used the e
,.. . . . . - . , - . . ~ . . _ - - . . - _ _ . - _ _ . , .-
40 1 word test. I just informed him that I felt like the way 2 it was done was inappropriate. That I didn't feel like 3 the right people had been consulted with on the front end.
'4 I didn't think that this was something that should have 5 been done by a group of individuals on their own on a 6 midnight shif t.
7 MR. RAPE: We've been -- there's been several 8 individuals state that the word test or experiment was 9 useu in that discussion. Is that correct?
10 THE WITNESS: Between myself and Bruce that day 11 at Kelly's Health Club, I don't recall using the word -- I
-12 don't recall using the word test. I might have, but I 13 don't recall using that. I just wan ad him to know that I 14 felt like that their actions were inappropriate.
15 MR. WEIFBERG: I think what you're referring to, 16 somebody had testified, if I remember correctly, that 17 Phil, he recalled, had written a memo, probably to Weiss 18 or Fields after that referring somehow to the 19 experimentally gathered data, or something like that.
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I did write a mcmo to Rob 21 Weiss. I recall early on I was -- I knew there was a 22 heated -- heated personality thing going on back and 23 forth. That there was -- there just seemed to be -- I 24 could sense that this was an issue that had L lot of 25 emption involved in it with di5ferent people.
~
4 11 ,
-1 And I'was -- I felt _like_one of my early on 2 rer,ponsibilities wasN ry to -- would be to try'to soothe-
%C s
3 come-of the_hard-feelings that I.could sense existed and l
._ l 4 to try to.get,.you know, some:of_the personality clashes 1
5 Lout _.of it and to get it back to a technical issue.- I 6 mean, I just perceived that that was -one of the things I j 7 :needed to do.
-B MR. DOCKERY: Could you elaborate on that
. 9. because, see, we have a dilenna here. We have a situation
~
l 10 that is very difficult for us to understand how it came -
11 about. And it may be a human situation as opposed to any 12- kind of technical situation. And I think you've just f, E13 touched on it, but I would ask you to identify the 14 personalities involved.-
L 15 MR. STENGER: Jim,_before Phil gets into that it 16 might be useful if Phil gave you some background on his
!- 17' _ ope-ations and training.
18 MR. VORSE: Yes. I was going to ask that. Do 19 .you have"a reactor operator license?
20- -THE WITNESS: No, I don't. I -- I was an OTA 21L here and I was in the training department for about four
-22 years. I did license operator training. And that was 12 3 what-I did before I got to Florida Power also. I've been I '24- involved in license operator training probably since about
'25: 1981. -Up until when I went to Design Engineering two L
L
= - - -
9- ,
42 1 years ago.
2 MR. WEINBERG: Could you explain the contact and-3 training that you've had with the principals that are 4 involved here, Weiss, Fields, Van Sicklen, you know, guys 5 like Stewart, guys like that.
6 THE WITNESS: I've had most of those guys in 7 front of me in a class room setting before where I was the 8 instructor and they were the student. But I was not 9 allowed to teach systems to licensed operators but I 10 taught fundamentals to them. Reactor theory, thermo, 11 fluid flow, heat transfer. This was back in -- I first 12 got here in '86 and I was in the training department for 13 about four years. So I've had -- almost everybody in 14 Operations I've had in front of me in a classroom before.
15 here may be some of the equipment operators now who 16 have come along later on. But most of the control rugvh
%k 17 operators I've had in front of me in a classroom.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Was there any animosity between 19 you and any of those operators?
20 THE WITNESS: No , I certainly didn't think so.
21 Also as an OTA I was on rotating shift with them. And we 22 didn't rotate on the same shift. We had our shifts offset 23 so that we could be exposed to all the crews. So I've 24- been on swinga, days, mids. I was -- I'm -- I was good 25 friencs with a number of operators.
l
. , . . - . -. ..~ -- ..-.-. - .- - ._.._. -- .
N' 43-.
- 14 So:- -iAnd-including the individuals that were 2 -most involved in this. _I was good friends.with several of 3- these people- .
4 MR..WEINBERG: Like? -
-j 5 THE WITNESS '- Well, myself and Mark.Sicklen.
6 Mark' Van Sicklen, we've been friends since probably the ;
7 very first year I was here.
~
8- - MR. "?CKERY: I'm left with the impression, 9 talking to the thousands of people it seema like we've' ;
10 talked to, that there was some friction somewhere.
11- Somebody was rubbing somebody the wrong way. Do.you_have:
12 .any insight-into that?
13 THE WITNESS: Like I said, I came tc realize '
14 early-on, early on that there -- this was an emotionally-I!
15 charged thing.- That there were a lot of -- that there l
16 were personality clashes.
17 When I talked to Bruce Hickle at Kelly's, the way
. 18- this-conversation came about was he asked me how the 19- makeup tank resolution was coming. And I told him, one of 20 the first things I told him, that-I felt like one of nor 21: bigger jobs was going to be to soothe some of the ruffled
-22 feathers and,J you-know, get some of the people calmed n23 _down, get the personaiity clashes moved-oue. of the way so 24 that we could.get t itLback to a technical issue. And he 25 wanted to know!what I meant by that.
4 .,-
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44
!* 11 And so I told him how in my opinion that problem 21 report,L94-0267,- and that evolution was a retaliation for 3 individuals _not liking _what this. letter said - And I told
-him that_was my opinica._. And I said to me that-was kind =
- j #er.J v.,
S- of~a,_you know, they didn't like tha -
- theyputthisfut.
S- $5 6 And I said,= for that_
matter, Bruce, I could write a 7 problem report.about the way they gathered their data.-
8 And~it seems to me like he said something like, 9 what do you mean by that? And I said, well, I consider it 10 . inappropriate to be spending 40 to 45 minutes outside'an 11 operating limit-that protects you from a loss of coolant
' 12 -- that's based on a-loss of coolant-accident analysis
- 13 without having the appropriate individuals involved in the
%b 14 up front planning, nuclear safety evaluation, t k<
WS-15 I forget the exact words, but that's how that 16 conversation started off, was me trying to convey to him 17 that I felt like there were a lot of ruffled feathers that 18 needed to be soothed out from the last two years or so of 19- this_. isst'e going back and forth and s versus them kind of w
20' mind set. Engineering versus. Operations. That's what I 21 felt like I'd walked into. And I wanted him to know that 22 I_ felt _that way. ,
23 MR. DOCKERY: That's the-way it's been_ described
- 24' to us, lqhn9 25: THE WITNESS: I didn't feel like-I hadhany. thing
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4 45 l' -to contribute to that.- I just-felt.like I was inheriting-i
- 2 :it.- - (Laughter; ) . And-that was.where it_was at.
I'm'sorry. When'did you'first_make
-3 .MR. RAPP: .
4L-any--- was this meeting or this discussion _with Bruce
- 5. Hickle the-first time that you had said that this-
- 6. evolution was inappropriate? ,
7 MR. WEINBERG: To Hickle, you_mean, or to 8 somebody else?
9 MR. RAPP:J To management.
10- THE WITNESS: _To management, yeah.
~
11 MR. WEINBERG: But not -- but he'd -- just~so >
12 it's clear, there had-been discussions with Pat Hinman that lue can tell you about. In other words, it's hard 14 sometimes-to know exactly where you're going, but just so 15 there's no misunderstanding after the fact, there are l
16 other -- there were conversations that Phil can tell you 17 about that he had responsive to your question prior to his 18 meeting with Bruce Hickle.
19 THE-WITNESS: The meeting with Bruce Hickle 20~ wasn't really a meeting, it was just a chance -- chance 21 running'into somebody in a casual setting off-site. I had not at that_ time decided what my follow-up was going to be
- 23 in the way of who I needed to talk'to. .I just knew I w s 24 going to talk to somebody.
-. 25- MR.HRAPP: Where was this memorandum written ,
P
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1- ~ where the: term experimentally obtained data _was used.
Do 2: ^ you remember when that was writt'en?-
]
I
- 3~ 'THE WITNESS
- Well, it's been pointed out to me 4- just in the.last little while that I -- there may be some- !
- l 5 of theJdatesJthat'I got wrong. I'm not convinced that 6- that's true But I did see the problem report the day I 7 -got back from taking my Labor Day holiday, and which would 8 have been'-- Labor Day would have been the 5th. And I 9 took the next day off because I had worked Labor Day while 10 we were getting the B makeup pump declared operable. So I 11 took the 6th off and I came in the 7th and that's when I 12 first saw the problem report, 13 And when I opened it to the data, which was I 14 think the third page of the problem report, the very first 15 thing that occurred to me was ho1 in the world did they 16- gather this data, because it had just instantly jumped out 17 at me that all the data was on the wrong side of the 18 curve. So that was an instant thing.
19 And-I discussed it with Pat Hinman very shortly 20 after I saw the problem report. I discussed my feelings 21 . with Pat. And at some-point Paul Fleming got involved.
22- But there.was an.E-nail message that I wrote either that 23 day or the.next day that probably referred-to that'as
~
24- experimentally gathered data, or data experimentally 25 arrived at, or whatever.
-- . . - ~ . . . - _ . . . . - . ~ . . . - . . - - - - . _ -. ,
j 471 l
- 11 MR. VORSE
- Was Mr. Halnon cc'd-on that? ]
~
2- THE WITNESS: I don't recal1. I could find that-
-3 out. I:save everything.
4 MR. RAPP ' Who did-you send that E-mail to?' ,
- t 25- THE WITNESS:L I think I sen,t,it to Rob l Weiss, Weymmy 6 becruse-RobWrisshadsent-meE-maip:4.h...~d me of a- !
VY 7- short term instruction-that they had issued 7: whare_
8 they were; going to run-pressure at something like 2,2 9- pounds below the existing curve, because that was their ww37 10 "~me. case-difference when they got down to the 55 inch h
'L1 level;theO2kecasedifferencetheyobservedwaslike
%- W And they were'wanting to know if they should 12 -2,2 pounds.
l- . .
13' extrapolate-that down to :oro. >
14 So it was at that point I-looked at the calc, I 15 noticed the Henry's Law correlation wasn't factored in. I .
16 wrote Rob an E-mail passing on tdur Henry's Law. And I may WW- -
17 have even mentioned:that I was going to discuss it with ,
1 -- 18 ' Design Engineering, hecause if it could have that error it 19 might have -- there may be some other omissions. And I
-20 didn't even know what-the impact of that one error.was.
21 ;But at that point I think I ---I think I probably 22 referred in that E-mail to their data as' experimentally
~23 arrived at data. -And at that point I was- trying not to --
24 .you'know,mygoalwaskindofNeepit -' the' personality 16Tr 25 clashesLfrom: escalating-even further.- So I didn't really t
c:
.-. _, s. . . . - - _ . . - . . . - . , . . - - . . _ ~ . - _ .- .-. __-
48 I say anything-in that E-mail in response to Rob about my 2 feelings towards how that data was gathered. At that 3 point I hadn't even decided how I was going to pursue that 4 concern.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Who was clashing? What -- what 6 personalities?
7 THE WITNESS: It'd be hard to say. Let's just 8 say that whoever had been involved in that from the 9 Operations end and whoever had been involved in that from l 10 the Engineering end, I felt like there was some 11 personality clashes going on.
12 I felt like - I felt like Mark Van Sicklen was 13 an individual that for whatever reason didn't seem to be 14 accepting what Pat was telling him. And whoever he would 15 be communicating with, I would have no idea, but certainly 16 he probably had people that probably agreed with him. And 17 I just felt like there were people that were real .
18 emotional about this. And I felt like Mark was one of 19 them.dFelt like Bruce (viby was one of tnem. And I felt like 20 N %
Pat was getting that way because of some of the things 21 that were being said about him or that hc was hearing was 22 being said about him.
23 MR. STENGER: So, when you said Pat and Bruce --
24 THE WITNESS: Pat Hinman.
25 MR. STENGER: Hinman?
r .
- -. -. . . . - - . . . . . , . _ - . . ~ . - . -- .- _- . . - -
,; y a __ __ . ._ _. . =.
~49-1 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I meant Pat Hinnan.
2' MR._ STENGER: And Bruce?
3~ THE WITNESS:- Bruce Willms. .Oh, I'm'sorry.
'4 MR.:DOCKERY: I keep -- _More and more I'm being 5 left with the impression that this whole thing was-a 6 grudge match of some kind. I mean,.two men -- two men got 7 . fired as a result of-all this.
8 MR. WEINBERG: A year later. I mean, there's a 9 lot- of water under the bridge between people arguing in 10 1994 and what happened in 1995, 11 MR. DOCKERY: As'a result of what we're looking i' 12 at, which arose from an event that occurred in September 13 of 1994, three days after the memorandum dated September 14 2, 1994, two senior operators were discharged.
15 Now, I don't mean to imply that they were-16 wrongfully discharged. But obviously there was a lot of 17 emotion-involved in this thing and you're touching on it.
-18 And I can see -- I can't see any other explanation. We
.19 can't seem to elicit any testimony that explains the depth 20 of this emotion.
21 MR. WEINBERG: But you-don't mean no other 22- explanation for why they were discharged, but other 23 explanation for_why people were not happy not happy with 24 one another.
25 .MR. DOCKERY: Yeah.
- r
~ n., .
l-
1 MR. RAPP: Except for the results.
2 MR. DOCKERY: We're touching the edges of this.
3 Nobody wants to really throw any mud, bot obviously 4 something bad was going on.
5 MR. WElNBERG: Well, maybe you should -- I mean, 6 one suggest. ion is, Pat har -- Pat. Phil has described to 7 you sort of the personality of Mark Van Sicklen. Maybe he 8 should describe to you his observation of the personality 9 c,f Pat Hinman as compared to the personality of Mark Van 10 Sicklen.
MR. DOCKEPV: That will be fine. I'll accept 12 that.
13 MR. WEINBERG: And you'll have a chance to see 14 Pat Hinman. But, you Know, could yoa describe the 15 difference between the two?
16 T*iE WITNESS: Well, keep in mind I've known Mark 17 for years and I didn't -- I knew Pat Hinman, I knew who he 18 was when I walked'mb a the Systems Engineering job. But I 19 W
had never spoke more than hi in the hallway. I really 20 didn't know him personally until I got exposed to him in 21 this.
22 MR DOCKERY: Mr. Saltsman, we're not asking you 23 here to riander a buddy, a long-time friend,
- 14. acquaintances, colleagues. That's not our point. But 25 we've got to come to understand this somehow. And I'm
51 1 more and more convinced that these personality conflicts 2 are a key factor.
3 Now, having said that, I'm going to ask you to go 4 aher.d and slander somebody.
5 THE WITNESS: Well, the only reason I wanted to G lay a little bit of groundwork is --
7 MR. RAPP: I don't think he's got to slander 8 anyone.
9 THE WITNoSS: -- when you talk to Pat Hinman I 10 think a lot of what you're wanting to know will come out, 11 because Pat is the guy with the most history on this from 12 the standpoint of how Engineering interfaced with 13 Operations and vice versa during the major part of this 14 issue.
15 When I walked in t issue was really ending and 16 a new issue was beginning, was being born from the 17 previous issue. So all I can tell you is if you've walked 18 into a room and there was a quiet hush, you kind of gather 19 your own opinion as to what you're walking into. And I'd 20 gathered an opinion for whatever reason. It's just based 21 on my own personal observations and as an instructor I've 22 become what I consider to be pretty good at reading where 23 people are coming from.
24 And I just gathered there was a lot of hostility 25 on the Operations end towards how they did or did not feel
I 52 1 their concerns were being addressed by Engineering. And 2 to talk to Pat Hinman, I have no idea why that hostility T mean 3 and animosity existed. -i iEAN, Pat is one of the more W Whereas Mark 4 Aaid back, easy-going guys you'll ever meet.
5 Van Sicklen, he's a very -- he's very bull-headed, you 6 know, it's hard to sway him from his opinion. It's hard 7 te sway him with regard to what he believes to be true.
8 It's hard to convince him anything otherwise. And that 9 gives you a clash right off the bat. Maybe he thought 10 like Pat wasn't buing aggressive enough. I could only 11 guess at that.
12 But in talking to Pat and talking to other people 13 that know Pat, in talking to Pat's supervisor, Pat bent 14 over backwards to communicate with individuals as to what 15 wasandwasn'toccurringandwherethisissuewappretty 16 much continuously. EI '
17 So, I -- without taking any sides on it I sensed 18 that there was hostility and I sensed it mostly at the 19 Operations end and I sensed it mostly from less than five 20 operators.
21 MR. RAPP: Let me ask this. It's been described 22 in a couple of individuals' statements that basically the 23 -- what they were being told by Pat Hinman was this is 24 over your head, we'll take care of it, you go back and 25 watch the boards and we'll let you know what the answer
i i
53 1 is. Is that true?
2 THE WITNESS: And that may have been their 3 perception. And I don't -- if you're telling me that 4 that's what you've gathered, I'm not going to say that I 5 know that's not true, because that could very well be 6 true.
7 MR. RAPP: Did Pat Hin --
8 THE WITNESS: I don't thin!: that it's 9 justifiable.
10 MR. RAPP: Did Pat Hinman ever take that 11 particular tone or demeanor in discussing this issue with 12 you?
13 THE WITNESS: If he -- Well, not with me --
14 MR. RAPP: I mean about the operators?
15 THE WITNESS: k4 that he -- All he felt was l
16 that for some reason or other there were a couple of w
17 operators, and you know, Bruce and Mark were the ones that 18 he continuously mentioned that just really he was unable 19 to satisfy. And he told me he'd just basically bent over 20 backwards. And that's what I got from Pat.
21 And just knowing Pat the way I do now I can't 22 imagine that ho actually would have said something like 23 that or would have conducted himself in-such a way that l 24 they would have drawn that conclusion.
25 MR. WEINBERG: Well, did he -- did he or you say I
l 1
54 1
that in the August 5th meeting or in the meeting af -- g 2 before delivering the September 2nd memo hat you (.
3 described? #
4 THE WITNESS:
. Certainly not. (Laughter) But I
~
5 can't even -- If they got that impression, I'm hard-6 pressed to figure out how they got it based on Pat's 7 behavior.
8 But, you know, I've seen a lot of mind sets in 9 being involved in training for many many years. So, I 7 10 mean, I've had people tell me that I said something in a 11 lecture that I know for a fact that I didn't say. So you 12 never know whether what somebody's hearing is what you're 13 saying.
, Some people block out what you're saying because 14 their mind set is so strong. And I'm not saying that 15 that's what Mark did, but I wouldn't just --
16 My impression of Pat Hinman is that I don't know 17 how in the world they -- they got that type of --
how he 18 could have given them that type of perception.
19 MR. DOC"ERY: Then do you know of some other 20 motive at work here?
21 THE WITNESS: No, I -- I really -- I don't know.
22 I can't think of anything. Maybe those people were 23 reading things into behavior, you know. Pat's pretty laid 24 back. You know, he's -- like I said, maybe he wasn't 25 being as aggressive as one or more individuals perceived
1 s 55 l
i he should be. I don't know.
- n. ;
2 MR DOCKERY: In trying to attain a solution to when you
'~ 3 what was perceived as the problem with Curve 8, 4 say be aggressive, that's --
Tile WITNESS: Yeah, as far as the Curve 8, if 5
6 you want to call it investigation. Their concerns ef % 7 7 Curve 8 was in error in some way, shape or form.
8 But Pat was basing his opinion on plant data and And we were looking 9 he was going to get some more data. .b 10 at the makeup system model and evaluating whether the S'o, you know, he felt 11 swapover point needed to be raised.
12 like he was doing all he needed to be doing at the time.
MR. DOCKERY: Do you have any idea at all why 13 14 there was so much passion about this Curve 8 issue?
Tile WITNESS:
I have some hearsay information --
15 MR. DOCKERY: We'll take it.
16
-- that it was was just a 17 THE WITNESS:
18 tremendous frustration to the operators because there was 19 not only daily burden but it was almoat a shiftly burden 20 to maintain the 25 cc per kilogram. It made life very 21 difficult for them, 22 They had to operate, probably in their opinion, And they -- they, you 23 uncomfortably close to that curve.
24 know, they certainly don't like to operate close to 25 operating limits. Particularly or es that are based on
56 1 accident analysis. And they were probably being --
2 there's drawings around that show what kind of maneuvering l l
3 room they had to meet the 25 cc's per kilogram, to stay s 4
below the high level limit, to stay above the low level 5
limit, to stay below the curve, and they were basically 6
squeezed into a little box of operating space.
7 And it was an operator burden and involved 8
operator work-around due to an Appendix R fire concern.
9 Most of what they did had to be done manually, with some 10 manipulation out in the field.
11 And so it was a burden and over a couple of years 12 I guess it gett frustrating.
13 MR. WEINBERG o Was there any doubt in your mind 14 that they understood the operators, that they were 15 required to stay below the curve?
16 THE WITNESS: Oh, tnere's no doubt in my mind 17 that they knew that they should not exceed the curve.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Phil, if I've understood your 19 testimony right, though, it doesn't sound to me like the 20 concern with working at or near that curve was universal, 21 say every shif t and everybody on every shif t. In that --
22 Is that fair?
23 THE WITNESS: When I heard of this issue, the 24 only people I heard as being really, let's just say 25 uptight with the makeup tank issue was Mark van Sicklen
57 1 and Bruce Hillms. I never heard anybody else's name l 2 mentioned.
3 And I was real surprised, I didn't know until 4 days after that problem report came out that Rob Weiss was S
the assistant shifter and that Jack Stewart was on shift.
6 And, you know, I didn't know until much later that 7
Christine Smith was on shift and Jim Atkinson. I -- The 8 only name I knew was Mark. And I knew -- I knew -- when I 9 saw that data I knew without even being told that he had 10 to have been on that shift.
11 MR. STENGER: Have you ever heard of Dave Fields 12 having a concern about this?
13 THE WITNESS: I never heard Dave Fields' name 14 mentioned by Pat Hinman or in any discussion I've been 15 involved with on the makeup tank. I never heard any names 16 that I can thini; of other than Mark Van Sicklon and Bruce 17 Willms.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Sandy, I think I've pre-empted 19 something you wanted to ask.
20 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah, if you'll give me a second 21 I was going to make a copy of a memo I found. And --
22 MR. DOCKERY: Why don't we take a break.
23 (Whereupon, a short recess was taken at 3: 45 24 p.m., after which the proceedings resumed at 3:55 p.m. as 25 follows:)
i I'
1 l
58 1 MR. DOCKERY: We're back on the record. Mr.
2 Saltsman, I'll remind you that you continue to be under 3 oath here.
4 THE WITNESS: (Hods affirmatively.)
5 MR. DOCKERY: While we were off the record we 6 were provided by counsel with a copy of an E-mail that you 7 generated on September the 12th, 1994, which makes 8 reference to the evolution conducted on September the 5th. ;
9 When did -- At the time of this E-mail, 9/12/94, 10 I would assume you knew nothing of any evolution conducted 11 on September the 4th, 1994. Is that correct?
12 THE WITNESS: I didn't know about the November 13 4th instance until af ter T had talked to Bruce Hickle.
14 4
And I ran to Bruce Hickle the af ternoon of the 12th 15 apparently.
lW I --
My earlier recollections had been that 16 I ran into him the afternoon of the 7th, because I knew it 17 was after a day off.
18 MR. VORSE: Excuse me, Mr. Saltsman, you said 19 November 4th. You meant September 4th?
20 MR. WEINBERG: He meant September 4th, right.
21 THE WITNESS: I'm sorry. September 4th.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Why don't you go ahead for us, if 23 you will, and characterize what your reasoning was in i
24 creating this E-mail.
25 THE WITNESS: Well, I was -- As I mentioned to
i 59 1
you earlier I was -- the two things that I was immediately 2
concerned with from the very first time I saw that problem 3 report was, number one, was the plant placed at risk or
. 4 'the high pressure injection pumps placed at risk. And l
S. once I became convinced that they had -- that there was no i 6 risk to the level safety of the plant my other concern on j
7 the front end was just the mind set of the crew in doing 8 the evolution. !
i 9 So, there was quite a bit of discussion that went 10 on between myself,; Pat Hinman, Paul Fleming prior to me 11 writing this E-mail. But as I told you earlier, one of 12 the things I was trying to do was to soothe the ruffled !
13 feathers, trying - tty biv to get past some of the hard ;
vs s 14 feelings, personality clashes, things I've discussed with 15 you earlier.
l 16 So while I didn't really want to -- I hadn't .
17 decided what'I was going to do in pursuing my concern with 18 what I considered to be inappropriate behavior at the time 19 I wrote this. I hadn't decided how I was going to deal 20 with that. But I was trying to say in a nice way that I '
21 want to be involved in things like this short term 22 instruction you issued. :
And what went unwritten was this 23 evolution that was conducted.
1.
12 4 But, like I said, I hadn't decided how I was 25 going-to deal with that at that point. So that didn't
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60 ;
b 1 enter into this discussion... hut thatYissue b short term
'K b
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2 instruction also wi ut consulting me or Pat Hinman, and E==ll>
3' the purpose of thisVwas just to say I wish you wouldn't do j that any more, W i 4_ t 5 MR. DOCKERY: Well, on its face it's a very !
l 6 positive -- !
l 7 MR. V0RSE: You read between the lines and l 8 you'll see what -- very well what he's trying to say, ,
9 MR. DOCKERY: -- communication. l 10 THE WITNESS: I was trying to be positive about .
- 11 this whole thing because I felt like one of the number one 7 12 things I had to overcome was what I perceived to be a lot .
i b
13 of hard feelings, O <
14 MR. WEINBERG: Well, did you believe that the 15 operators should have consulted with Engineering before 16 doing the evolution? ,
17 THE WITNESS: Most certainly.
l- 18 MR. WEINBERG: And why is that?
L
- 19 THE WITNESS
- Because I feel like Operations
- 20 should be involved any time you're looking at --
l 21 MR.-WEINBERG: You mean Engineering?
22 - THE WITNESS: I'm sorry, Engineering should be :
L . -
-- 23 involved any time you're looking at going outside'of a 24- plant. operating limit.
25 MR. DOCKERY: And that's a very -- seems to be a f
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61 ,
1 very reasonable expectation. And at the same time we have 2 various people in Operations saying that they ir, effect 3 felt that Engineering had abandoned the problem.
4 THE WITNESS: And I don't know why they would ;
5 believe that, but if you tell me that they do believe that 6 I don't know that that's not a true statement. I mean, 7 they may very well believe that, I just don't know why 8 they did.
9 I do know though that they know that I'd taken 10 over the system, and I was personal friends with a lot of 11 these people. You would think that they would have sought 12 to have established a new rapport with the new person
, 13 coming in and to try to maybe get of f on a dif ferent foot.
I o 14 MR. DOCKERY: I find the timing of that 15 potentially very significant. I'm going to assume that 16 your taking over ownership of this issue at just this 17 particular time did not drive them to take, let's say, 18 precipitous action in conducting that September 5th 19 evolution.
20 That being the case, the other thing I conclude 21 is, well, Hinmar., who had had the problem, had been 22 dealing'with the problem up till then is now going to be l
23 out of it, is leaving the problem. Do you r.ense there was 24 any attempt on their part to somehow try and jam Hinman?
25 Take one last shot at Hinman?
- , ,, L_ , .- -,.- ..._-. ,-, . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _
62 1
1 THE WITNESS: I don't know. I'd like to think i 2 that there wasn't any type of a motive along that line, 3 but I don't know that that's definitely true.
4 MR. WEINDERG: The thought crossed your mind 5 back then; is that right? l 6 THE WITNESS: I -- Actually I don't think it 7 had. I really don't. I felt like that there were people 8 that werenk-- My personal opinion, for what it's worth, V%
9 when I saw that problem report was that I sensed that 10 there was a dissatisfaction on what this letter was going 11 to say when we talked to those two individuals before this 12 letter came out. And when I saw that problem report I ,
13 felt like that was sort of a retaliation for this.
14 And it didn't make sense to me. It wasn't what I 15 consider real sensible retaliatioit, but then I hadn't been 16 involved in the issue for the previous two years like all 17 these individuals had. I apparently wasn't up on how deep 18 it really ran.
19 MR. WEINBERG: I think that's what he may have 20 meant by the question about jamming Hinman for the last 21 time.
22 THE WITNESS: You mean discrediting him? Is 23 that --
l 24 MR, DOCKERY: Yes. I probably shouldn't have l 25 used a street term there, but what I was -- let's -- a l
l
--- . -- ~ .-- - . . . - . . . - . . - - - - _ . ._..- - - - . - . - . - .
l 63 1 retaliatory motive against Hinman.
2 THE WITNESS: Well, that would be conjecture on 3 my part. .I -- That thought didn't really cross my mind !
as much as that they just dier:pr'tede/ dis re s 4- nL;d Engineering's
'W s i
5 position and they wanted to discredit that position. I'm 6 not sure whether they -- you_could trace it back 7 personally to Pat as opposed to the content. [
8 MR. DOCKERY: That's fair enough. Maybe I'm 9- reading too much into the personality aspect of it, but I ,
10 assure you that the Operations people have assured us that 11 they felt that this, the contents of this memorandum 12 spelled the end of Engineering's dealing with what they 13 perceived as the problem.
14 THE WITNESS: And there's no doubt in my mind 15 that somebody felt like they were at a desperate point to 16 knowingly' violate an operating limit. That indicates a 17 bit of desperation to me. And I guess I couldn't -
18 understand how this could lead to that problem report _in :
19 .the first place.
20 MR. DOCKERY: By this, you're indicating the 21 September 2 -- ,
. 22 THE WITNESS: September 2nd letter. To me it
- 23 seems_to say_ point _ blank that we're not done with'this yet
- 24 and this is what we're going to be doing in the future.
'25 And the same -- you know, this issue is not closed. And 5
?
?
2
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. n----,a-- - - - - - - , - - > > > ~ ~ ~ ~ -~ -
I 64 1 1 that we think that we're on the road to closing it.
2 That's what this memo says to me. !
3 MR. DOCKERY: It's taken us a long time to get 4 to it, I-think, but we have finally developed some !
5 testimony that yes, there was clearly a human personality 6 component involved here. Do you agree with that? -
- 7 THE WITNESS: Yes, I would agree with that. And 8 I think you'll be able to resolve a lot of that when you ;
9 talk to Pat, because he and I have had at length f 10 discussions about the human aspect.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Is there anything else before we 12 - go on about this human aspect that you can relate to us 13 I now? I don't want to beat it to death but I sure would 14 like for us to obtain any observations that you have on 15 the matter.
16 THE WITNESS: There's nothing else that I can 17 think of to say that I haven't already said. !
18 MR. DOCKERY: Did you come to know subsequent to $
19 the events of the 5th of September of ' 94 of any other 20 data. collected during evolutions similar to this?
= 21 MR. WEINBERG Are you talking about September
- 22 4th?
, 23' MR. DOCKERY: No, no, I'm not, I'm sorry. I 24 don't mean September 4th, I'm simply referring to any data f 25 that you were aware of that was gathered during July 1994. ,
- s. m* N- ,- e w- --~s -,--s-rw-rn--.- e,,--,-..-,w,-w-m.. ,,,,,-,w-m.e.4.,,,e-wwN r g. n-,. , , , ..,.,,-,-,,.,,,.7,..,.,.e: , . . + ,-r---Nnse, - ~ ,e.<--
65 1 THE WITNESS: No.
2 MR. DOCKERY: And that was -- that data was 3 actually collected during a normal evolution and it was 4 collected at the request of another manager. Was that --
5 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I've never heard anything 6 about that prior to when -- I guess it would be -- I don't 7 even know the date right now. Much later on, when Pat 8 Hinman informed me that the second evolution was going to 9 become an issue. And then I understood that people pulled 10 up all kinds of data from June, July, August, just to see 11 if it had been done even rt. ore than twice.
12 The thing is, if you look at the way REDAS puts 13 that data out, REDAS being our system of gathering 14 different parameters, if you look at makeup tank level 15 versus pressure variation for a lot of their normal 16 hydrogen adds back on the June, July time frame, they look 17 identical to what the data gathered during the evolutionIs AML TdC.
18 going to look like. The only way you can really tell a 19 difference is to look at it extremely closely and be very 20 knowledgeable of the OP-103 Curve 8 or to just go ahead
?1 and superimpose the data. Just plot the data on the 22 OP-103B Curve 8 and see how it stacks up relative to ic.
23 But if you notice the normal hydrogen adds you 24 can see yourself moving completely underneath the curve; 25 whereas in their two evolutions on the 4th and the 5th all
- - .- . . . _ ~ . - . - . - - . .
i l
l
-66. j 1 - the data points are above the curve. But you can't just l 2' see that just glancing at the data printout. You have to f 3 superimpose that, you have to plot that data on the curve, !
yeJ<o
- 4 or else see got to be real f amiliar with the numbers.- ;
WV 5 So, I don't doubt that people pulled up some data ;
6 in July and thought that the evolution had been run even l 7 more than twice, because an old hydrogen add looked.like i A
8 an evolution except that'you did not violate the curve.
9 MR. DOCKERY: I want to come to the end of this, !
10 or at.least the questions that I can think to ask. But 11 for a simple person =like me, there's something can be j 12 right or it can be wrong. I realize there's various- l 13 shades in between, but Curve 8 was in existence in one 14 form in September of 1992. There --
15 THE WITNESS: Four --
16 MR. DOCKERY: I'm sorry, 1994. There is a 17 diff erent - Curve 8 in ef fect today. '
18 THE WITNESS: True, 19 MR. DOCKERY: Which one is right? ,
20 THE WITNESS: Well, clearly the one that was in i 21 effect had technical errors.- The primary technical error !
22 was a discrepancy between the emergency operating 23 procedure and the calculation. The calculation had you 24 starting swapover from the BWST to the RB sump at five 25 feet of.BWST level.- The EOP -- now, l[ may have these ;
I 1
i 67 ,
1 . kwards, it's been a long time. The EOP may have you --
l 2 .I think it had'you starting at five feet, the swapover, ;
-3 whereas the calculation assumed you-were done with [
4 swapover by five feet. That's a major difference. !
-5 Now, if you want to look at the single biggest !
6 parameter shif t in the curve from an error standpoint, j 7 that would be it. The Henry's Law correlation made very 8 little difference in the curve, but certainly that was a f
-9 technical error. That correlation should be incitaded in j 10 the calc. The partial pressure of the water vapor, that 11 was certainly an error.
12 But there's conservatism built in to any ,
' 13 calculation or any engineering calculation that is -
0 14 supposed to give you some comfort that, you know, yeah, 15 there'serrorsMhuldoccur AAnd margins could be in 1ssr- ytss .
- 16 question or could be brought-in question at some point.
17 But if #Ebgot-enoughoverallconservatismbuiltinin '
i 18 terms =of defense in depth you should still have a 19 conservative calculation.
20 And no calculation can be assumed to be 21 bulletproof and absolutely perfect. But the rest of the 22 analysis is extremely conservative. High flow rates, wonih i 23 -
e: M: case instrument error.
24 But anyway, to answer your question, I.got a 25 little off track.there,-there were technical errors in the i
P w -- = e, , m.> +,- ,w.-. .s,. ,.-,w, ,,,,...,,,,,,,,i_.-..,. e.,-m,.- _.%,._.,._,.,.%-u,,emy _,-,.p., .m. ,,w-,%,_w..,,wyy.wy-s
68 1 calc that generated the curve that was in existence on 2 September 2nd of '94. -
Those technical errors have been -
3 corrected. And in doing so we found a-number of other 4 discrepancies, one of which was the swapover point Ikpe !
TEL I 5- discrepancy between what the E0P said and what the Falc j 6 assumed. :
7 And then when we got to really looking we found {
8 that there was a vortexing concern with the high pressure !
9- injection pumps, which caused us to have-to raise the 10 swapover point. Whether we had deduced that we needed to !
11 or-not, that forced us to raise it all by itself.
12 There was -- You know, let's just say that there 13 were some other things that were found in correcting that 14 curve that also came into play. ,
15 MR. DOCKERY: Is it fair to say that the !
16 operators who voiced a concern about the adequacy of curve 17 8 had a valid concern?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, it's hard for me to say that i
19 they didn't have a valid concern when their stated concern 20 was that that curve had -- there was some error in that l 21 ocu rve . And we've shown that there was error in the curve.
22 But I-just-don't-know what they were basing it on. !
23 Everything Fat told me indicated that they were ;
i L 24 basing-it on the way_they would observe makeup tank ;
L 25 pressure to move toward that curve as opposed to parallel ,
f ,
i i
69 l 1 with it, as they did a normal level decrease to add j i
2 hydrogen, to then press up the gas space and get their 25 j 3 cc's per kilogram.
4 How, if they were basing it purely on the 5 behavior of their observations in the control room, the 6 fact that they didn't move point by point parallel with 7 that curve, Pat Hinman felt like he had explained that and 8 he had taken a lot of data during SP-630 and had run it by ItC 9 mare chan just himself.(gr)Had utilized -FNe type engineering
%& YGL 10 expert.fae, And we did not -- the position is there's no
?1 twFson that you -- you're not going to move point by point I? parallel to the new curve either.
13 MR DOCKERY: Well --
14 THE WITNESS: What they were basing, I mean, 15 they wound up being correct. There 'ere errors in the 16 curve , but why they suspected there to be errors in the 17 curve was not a reason to suspect the errors.
la MR. WEINBERG: You mean they were right for the 19 wrong reasons?
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah, they were right for the 21 wrong reason. I mean, they wound up being right, but in 22 my opinion Pat Hinman had what looked to be a perfectly 23 valio explanation for what they were observing and he 24 backed it up with SP-630 data and consultation with people 25 that were knowledgeable of instrument error analysis.
70 1 MR. DOCKERY: How would you respond to my 2 assertion that Dave Fields testified that he obtained a 3 copy of the calculations that that Curve 8 was based on 4 and based on his engineering background, limited though it 5 may have been, felt that there were incorrect assumptions 6 in that calculation?
7 THE WITNESS: I never heard that.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, that is his testimony to us 9 under oath.
10 THE WITNESS: Well, I tell you what, from all my 11 discussions with Pat Hinman the only thing that -- well, 12 let's just say I can't know this for sure, but just based 13 on my discussions with him, it -- the only impression I 14 got that they were basing their statements on, they being 15 the operators, was the observation of makeup tank level 16 and pressure behavior during their hydrogen add 17 evolutions; their normal hydrogen adds.
TES, -
18 The fact that they did not move point by point 19 parallel to that curve, and that in f act on more than one 20 MS occasion during the level decreasesthey'd actually gotten 21 high pressure alarm 4$ when they had started out with a 22 Tsc e margin to the curve of, you know, a noticeable margin.
o k rw, 23 And then they drop level and get the high pressure curve, Kb 24 you know, clearly you're moving towards tr.e curve as you 25 drop level,
71 I 1 But I never heard anybody talk about a concern l
2 -being raised based on somebody scrutinizing the l 3 calculation and suspecting some errors, some assumptions _
4 to be invalid. I never heard that. ;
5 MR. DOCKERY: I don't want to mislead you. That !
6 was not done until after the September 2 memorandum was t
7 generated. But I'm struck by two things regarding any j t
8 analysis, the ongoing analysis of Curve 8 being done by i
9- Engineering, and that is, in whatever analysis was 4
10 conducted during approximately, I think we've established 11 at least an eight month period, it was never determined by !
12 Engineering to be a design basis curve. And the 13 calculations upon which it was based, which Mr. Fields 14 said he thought there was some erroneous assumptions, I 15 don't know that Engineering ever looked and made the same L
-- the same' observation.
16 .
17 Maybe you know different. If something's being
- 10 analyzed, to me it needs to be scrutinized pretty closely.
19 Now, maybe I'm. making assumption that is technically 20 incorrect.
21 MR. WEINBERG: Well, do you know? I mean, do 22 you have any -- who actually looked at the calculation and 23 whether they were -- they were considering the assumptions 24 or not?
- 23 THE WITNESS . 'I don't know that anybody ever L
t
,,-n. e-,eg,+,,- ,w-'
9 discussions with Pat, his entire thrust was trying to !
10 explain to them why there is no reason to expect that you 11- should move point by point parallel to that curve. And'it r 12E does not mean that that curve doesn't protect you from 4
13 - what it's supposed to-protect you from.
io .
14 And-then his SP-630 data suggested that even 15 though you'd be moving towards it you wouldn't get there. ,
16 Even if you drained the tank you would -- all these,.the i
17 data he generated for the different pump runs appeared to ;
l, 18 converge. ,
19 So, I don't know what else to say. If somebody 20 revisited the calc, I don, know when that might have.
t
. 21 happened. But as far as the technical errors, the Henry's
- 22 Law correlation, the partial pressure of the water vapor, ,
- 23. and-then, of course, the discrepancy between what the EOP j 24 said and what the cale' assumption said regarding swapover, '
25-Lyou know, two of those are technical errors and one of~ >
l i i
,-, , ,a..n..,,, - -.n ,--,-,,:~_,-.-...,..--..n,, . , - - - . . . - . , , . _ - - _ - . ..,...-w_-- . - . . -
i 73 1 those is just improper screening or comparison or :
2 whatever, you know. The cale in my mind, there's no way 4 3 of -- I don't see how in the world the EOP could say !
4 something different than the cale did with regards to 5 swapover, but it did.
6 And there were a number of people that could have 7 noticed that and nobody did. I was one of the people that 8 could have-noticed that. Anybody that had ever -- that ;
9 was involved in this could have noticed that. I !
10 understand the control room operators had looked at the 11 calculation prior to a lot of this happening because they .
12 had made the observation at some point that ideal gas 13 behavior was utilized in the calculation that generated
- i 14 the curve. So they had obviously. looked at the cale in my 15 opinion. And I never heard any of them question the 16 assumptions.
17 And I felt reasonably sure that they had looked 18 at the calc because you can find E-mail from those guys on 19 this time frame, the September 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th 20 time frame, right in there where they all mentioned that 21 the cale assumes ideal gas behavior 4%nd that's -- we V
22 feel like that's inappropriate to treat this as that.
23 And this memo -- where's that memo that I had.
24 (Examining documents.) . No, this is -- It would have been 25 an earlier memo. The one that I refereuce in here where I r
\
l
.- n . ---c - - - , + , - - - -- , . .-,,na ..n,, . n-,. , - - . . , , , - ~ - - , - , < , - -,-
74 1 talk about --
2 MR. STENGER: Henry's Law?
3 THE WITNESS: I said, "In my previous 4 E-mail correspondence to you in which I cited Henry's Law 5 as something that needs to be factored into," I was 6 responding to an E-mail from him where he stated that he 7 felt like the biggest problem was using the ideal gas law 8 model. And I told him that I didn't feel like that was so 9 much the problem as the Henry's Law correlation. And then 10 in the back of my mind I was thinking, well, if we got an 11 error like that maybe there's something else.
12 I felt reasonably sure at that point that 13 somebody was going to be revisiting that calc, but I just 14 didn't -- I didn't know when it was going to happen. But 15 I felt reasonab eysure that it would be a corrective 16 action in the problem report.
17 Anyway, I hope I answered your question.
l 18 MR. STENGER: Do you happen to know whether 19 looking at the calc was there specifi: corrective action 20 on the problem report, which is94-149?
21 THE WITNESS: I'd have to go look. I don't 22 recall. The corrective action plan has changed so much
, 23 since the-original one came out that --
I could find that
! 24 information, but I don't know off the top of my head. I l 25 don't recall.
4
75 ,
1 MR. WEINBERG: Do you have some more stuff? j
-i 2 There's a couple of things I just wanted to get on the i 3 record before ---
4 MR. DOCKERY: I don't have anything else. .
5 MR. WEINBERG: Okay. Given his statement that's ,
6 previously been furnished to you there was a couple of 7 things I just wanted to establish.
8 There did come a point in time when you learned ;
9 shortly after the September 5th evolution that there had 10 been a similar evolution by the same crew on September '
11 4th, right?
12 THE WITNESS: Yeah, and it was after I had 13 talked to Bruce Hickle at Kelly's, e
14 MR. WEINBERG: So it would be after the 12th or ,
15 13th.
16 THE WITNESS: It would have been early the next 17- week, but af;er I talked to Bruce. '
18 MR. WEINBERG: And the person that --
Was the 19 way you discovered it was with Pat Hinman going back and 20 looking at REDAS dath?
21 THE WITNESS: Pat Hinman brought it to my 22 attention. . He had pulled up several days of data and then 23 he had noticed that there was a very similar looking set 24- of data the day before, and he plotted them both against 25 OP-103B Curve 8.-
. - - .. . - - - _ - . - - .-..--.n - . . - - _ . - _ . -..
76 j 1 MR. WEINBERG So he actually. plotted it?
-2 THE WITNESS: Yeah, he actually showed me data I 3 points with those two evolutions -- well, with that 4 evolution superimposed on the 103B Curve 8. He wouldn't ,
5 have had to draw tha other one because that was documented 6 in the problem report. So. '
7 MR. WEINBER3: Right. And the graph that he 8 drew, I think you indicated earlier but in response to 9 -another question, it indicated that all the plots were on 10 the unauthorized side of the curve?
11 THE WITNESS: Yeah, the -- I don't recall that 12 every single data point was on the wrong side of the curve 13 on that September 4th evolution, but certainly the vast 14 majority of them were. They may not have started 15 precisely on the curve like they did the next day when
- 16 they ran the same evolution.
17 MR. WEINBERG: And again, do you --
18 MR VORSE: Did you give us a date when this 19 discussion with Hinman occurred? Did you give us a date ;
t 20 on --
21 THE WITNESS: Well, I know it was after I talked 20 to Bruce, because when I talked to Bruce at Kelly's, which 23 -- and I -- I don't seem to know-exactly which day that 24 was, :but it appears like I talked to Bruce the af ternoon 25 of the 12th. [
u--+-- ,., .3 ,.,~+<v,- y , . . . , e.-y,,w r. ,.r,,*._.,,,_y~,v , - -ww. -.-rse r ,cy- ._..m.. m., .mi. w ,. ,- v- w.,-
i 77 1 MR. STENGER: Of September of 19947 2 THE WITNESS: Of September of 1994. I would 3 have found out about the second test either the next day 4 or the day after that or the day after that.
5 MR. STENGER: All right --
6 THE WITNESS: I found out sometime during that 7 week.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
9 MR WEINBERG: Now, when -- And you and Pat 10 Hinnan had some discussion about whether there was any 11 significance for there to be a second evolution. Is that 12 right?
13 THE WITNESS: No, we talked about what did it 14 mean to us, did we have a concern with it. You know, was 15 it relevant, I guess, would be a better way to put it.
16 MR. WEINBERG: And was your conclusion that 17 since it was -- using your words before -- less severe, 18 that is less on the -- less --
19 THE WITNESS: It was a lesser violation, 20 MR. WEINBERG: Since it was a lesser violation, 21 from your perspective it wasn't all that relevant?
22 THE WITNESS: I felt like the problem report 23 data bounded the data from the 4th. We had the worse case 24 data documented in a problem report. And like I told you, 25 therewastwoconcernsIhad*wass3IIf there a risk to the IlE E+
i 1
78 TG 5- .
1 level afety of the plant or makeup pumps. And then my 2 .seccnd concern was the mind set of the crew.
3 And at that point I, you know, I -- we -- I'd 4 pretty much become convinced that there had been no risk 5 to the makeup pumpa or the_ plant. I war- concerned with !
6 the mind set, and that concern was being very very 7 adequately addressed at that time because there was severe 8 reprimanding rakireg place at that time. And so my concern 9 with the mind set of the crew in conducting the evolution 10 without consulting Engineering or Licensing and doing it 11 on their own on a midnight, that concern in my mind was 12 being adequately addressed. So I really didn't consider 13 the second test to be particularly relevant.
14 MR. WEINBERG: If you had you would have raised 15 it with Bruce Hickle or Greg Halnon or somebody it.ke that?
16 THE WITNESS: Certainly. And in fact -- in 17 fact, if I'd been talked to previously and somebody had 18 asked me, to your knowledge has this been done before, I'd 19 say, well yeah, it was done the day before. But I guess I 20 just kinda felt like that would be something that would 21 come out.
22 And myself, I had a technical concern and then I 23 had a concern with the inappropriate behavior of the crew.
24 And, you know, both of my concerns were being addressed.
25 I had a PR that captured worse data and the operators were
79 1 being more severely reprimanded than I'd even expected.
2 MR. STENGER: Phil, did you have any concern the 3 data from Septenber 4th should have been reflected in the 4 problem report too?
5 THE WITNESS: Well, you know, hindsight's 90/20, 6 I -- At the time I didn't, but there's been various times 7 where I look back on it and thought, well, you know, I 8 really should have written a problem report on that. But, 9 you know, a lot of that's juct second guessing yourself.
10 At the time, that thought didn't occur to me, no.
11 Didn't occur to me that --
I didn't consider it to be 12 particularly relevant, because I had a violation of an 13 operating limit on the 4th, then I had a -- but I had a 14 more severe violation that was documented in the problem rk 15 report that was going to h ddressed with a corrective DS' 16 action plan. So my technical concern was being addressed 17 by PR94-0267.
18 The only other concern I ha-, was just the mind 19 set of the crew in doing something like that on their een 20 withour consulting anybody or involving anybody else. And 21 based on the hearsay I was given there was severe 22 reprimand taking place.
23 MR. STENGER: You did not have a concern that 24 the crew had come forward with selective data, that is, 25 data that supported their position?
80 1 THE WITNESS: Well, I myself personally didn't 2 have that opinion, but I know Pat Hinman had mentioned to 3 me on a couple of occasions that he felt like that. And 4 this sort of illustrates the personality aspects involved 5 here. He had a belief that they generated the data on the 6 5th because they didn't feel like the data on the 4th was 7 severe enough. Didn't feel like it was a severe enough 8 violation, it didn't drive home the point as well.
9 And in my mind I kind of -- I guess I tend to be 10 kind of -- I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.
11 And I don't tend to read in ulterior motives. I just felt 12 like they may have been checking to see if they'd get 13 repeatable results.
14 I noticed that the evolution they ran on the 4th 15 didn't seem to start out precisely on the curve at the 16 high level limit like they did the second day. So I 17 thought, well, maybe they just made a greater effort to 18 fix the starting point.
19 But in my mind I think I just thought they were 20 looking for whether they would get repeatable results.
21 MR. RAPP: The information that we received or 22 was told initially about the reason they ran the second 23 test, the test on the 5th was that the data they received 24 on the 4th was not conclusive. That's to say that they 25 represented as zigzagging back and forth the limit, you
- ~ -. . ~ . . - . - . . - .- - - . - - - - . .
81 i 1- really couldn't_get a smooth. data set out of it.
2 Would-that be an accurate representation of where 3 that-data appeared to you? i 4- THE WITNESS: Well, that -- that -- As I-5 recall, that's something me and Pat -- myself and Pat
-6 Hinman talked about, the fact that their data, it did seem 7 like it was diverging for-awhile and then it'seemed like 8 it was coming back. And then there was a couple of what I 9 recall to be fairly abrupt. points that you didn't see on 10 the data on the 5th. So, if somebody said that I would --
11' my recollection is that that would be exaggerated but 12 basically true. I_mean, there wasn't a lot of zigzag type 13- behavior, but it-wasn't continuously diverging from the 14 limit' curve like the data on the 5th does.
15 MR. DOCKER": They characterized it us being 16 scattered.
17 'THE WITNESS: Well, scatter would imply to me 18 that there were data _ points on the acceptable side _of the L
19 curve and on the unacceptable side, and that wasn't so.
20 That's what-I would call scattered data, is that some of 21- it -- some of-it-would seem to indicate that you weren't f
L 22 _having a_ tendency to diverge-from the limit curve. And in I 23- fact-their overall data indicated that you would have a 24 tendency to diverge from the curve.
a5 25 But it wasn't as consistent with the data on the Mb
(
82 1 Sth and it wasn't as severe a violation and there were a 2 couple of points where it seemed to be -- the distance 3 between them seemed to be coming together as opposed to 4 spreading.
5 MR. WEINBERG: But if it.had been by itself and 6 that was what you had looked at it would ave concerned 7 you because the data was on the unacceptable --
w-8 THE WITNESS: If it was all by itself and that 9 was being what they had documented on the PR, I would have 10 had the exact same concerns with it as I did with the data 11 that they took on the 5th and documented. Because my 12 concern was how can you justify violating an operating 13 limit knowingly and staying there for 40 or 10 minutes and 14 nobody was ever consulted in the way of technical 15 consultation or licensing.
16 MR. STENGER: Phil, you said that it was 17 important that they have someone -- the crew have someone 18 stationed to vent the tank when the test was run on the 19 5th. Did you assume that there was someone stationed on 20 the 4th to vent the tank as well?
21 THE WITNESS: When I heard about the evolution 22 on the 4th I assumed that they had placed the same 23 concingent actions in place as they had -- as I had heard 24 they had on the 5th.
25 See, I have no first-hand information that there
83 1 was actually an operator stationed in the Aux Building at 2 the vent header. I don't have first-hand knowledge of 3 that. But that is what was surmised. I don't know 4 whether I heard that from Paul Fleming, because he was the 5 guy that discussed it with the operators. I don't recall t 6 who I heard it from, but the information I received that 7 did away with my concern about whether they placed the 8 plant or the makeup pumps at risk was that there was an 9 individual stationed at the vent header ready to vent the 10 makeup tank at a moment's notice, and that would afford 11 you protection in the same way the curve does.
12 MR. WEINBERG: What if they hadn't of done that?
13 THE WITNESS: If they hadn't of done that I 14 would have been much more concerned about the, you know, 15 the safety aspects than I was.
16 MR. STENGER: Was it -- If they did not post 17 someone down in the Aux Building to vent in the event of a 18 LOCA on the board --
19 THE WITNESS: Keep in mind they can do that from 20 the control room also. But if you really want to be Gloully) 21 conservative you have somebody ready to vent in case you TES 22 have a failure of the solenoid. You know, Appendix R 23 assumes a hot short and lenoid fails full open, so, you W
24 know, the contingency of that is to have somebody ready to 25 do it manually.
84 1 MR. STENGER: And if someone were-not, on the 2 4th of September of 1994, if someone were not in the Aux 2 Building that were going to do it from the control room, e
4 now is the 4th a bigger issue than the 5th in your mind?
5 Is it more important? ,
6 THE WITNESS: That's an interesting question. I 7 never really thought about that. I guess I just kinda had 8 the assumption I was -- I was believing that the hearsay 9 I heard was accurate, that somebody was there for the 10 evolution on the 5th. And I guess I just assumed that 11 they had done it exactly the same on the 4th, which would 12 mean there was somebody in the vent area.
13 MR. WEINBERG: Well, just assume though that 14 they --
15 THE WITNESS: But assuming that they didn't have 16 somebody there?
17 MR. WEINBERG: -- didn't have somebody on the 18 4th. Does that make it, in your mind, a bigger safety 19 event than the 5th?
20 THE WITNESS: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it would.
21 MR. WEINBERG: That what you were looking for?
22 MR. VORSE: Is that, I mean, a major safety 23 event or just a lictle safety event?
l l 24 THE WITNESS: -Well, given the probability of the l 25 particular accident occurring that would get you into a d
85 1 situation of concern, you know, given that that's a very 2 low probability event, and given that this was a very we in#e 3 short duration. You know, +'e're taking an entire train of-W 4 safe guards out of service to do system outages for as 5 many as 50 or 60 hours6.944444e-4 days <br />0.0167 hours <br />9.920635e-5 weeks <br />2.283e-5 months <br />, and during that time you're not 6 covered for a single failure of the opposite train. But 7 it's a short term duration and 40 minutes is very short 8 term compared to 72-hour action statements, 9
b So, I would have had safety concern but I'm not
'YE&-
10 sure that I would have been -- I wouldn't have felt like 11 there was any tremendous risk taken be'cause of the short l
12 time frame, being only 40 minutes outside the curve and I l
13 believe the curve to be very conservatively arrived at. I 14 mean, I would have been more concerr.ed, but I don't think 15 that I would have -- I don't think that I would have been, 16 you know, tremendously alarmed. I would have just -- I 17 think I would have brought that test out if I had known 18 that.
19 MR. WEINBERG: But it seemed to make you more 20 comfortable and others more comfortable that they had 21 taken the precautions that they said they took.
22 THE WITNESS: They had assessed what that curve 23 protects you from, they had taken n contingency action to 24 provide you with protection during the time that they 25 would be outside the curve. And that made me feel like t
I i
_ . - -- . -- - - . = . _ -- - .- ,. . - . .-
86 1 there was never any risk whatsoever to the makeup pumps if 2 .the limiting accident would have occurred right then.
3 MR. RAPP: ' How f ar over the Curve 8 did you have 4 -to be in order ~for the high-pressure injections pumps to 5 essentially be inoperable? Orf unable to fulfill their 6 safety functions?
7 THE WITNESS: I would have no idea. I'm not 8 knowledgeable enough of the margins built into the calc.
9 I think a safe assumption-is that if you're over
-10 it at all you need to immediately get under it.
11 MR. RAPP: So in the case of where an operator 12 does a formal hydrogen add and is .6 pounds over the curve 13 and the high pressure alarm is in and the operator says, 14 well, it's only .6 pounds over the curve, that's okay, 15 I'll just wait until it bleeds itself down. Is that an 16 acceptable --
17 THE WITNESS: I don't think they should -- No ,
l -18 in my mind, and the alarm response guideline is clear on 19 this, that you'd immediately restore that parameter.
20 MR. RAPP: Is that what the ARP says, is l 21 immediately?
22 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't know that the word 23 immediately is there, but if it isn't it should be. But I 24 don't'know, Idon't*EYatitis. And I don't know what the W
25 alarm response was.at the time from the standpoint of
87 1 immediately,. but I feel reasonably sure that it said 2 restore parameter to-within normal.
3: MR. RAPP: Well, that would be -- that would be 4 what any alarm response would say. I mean, that's kind of 5 a generic.
6 MR. STENGER: Why don't we get that alarm 7 response procedure and just kind of clear this up once and 8 for all.
9 THE WITNESS: It seemed like I -- it seemed like 10 I looked at i t and I felt good about -- when I looked at 11 it I felt like there should be immediate action to lower 12 pressure anytime you get that alarm. I know that was my l, 13 gut feel when I read it, when I dug it up about a year and 14 a half ago, or, you know, sometime close to this I dug out 15 the ARP.
16 MR. RAPP: Are you positive that this makeup 17 tank vent valve can be operated from the control room?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, I know they can -- I know --
19 When I say I know, it seems to me that the makeup tank can 20 be vented by utilizing a control board switch.
21 MR. RAPP: Okay. Because all the operators 22 consistently have told us that they have to go into a 23- contaminated area, dress out, go into a contaminated area 24 and manually open this vent, manually vent the makeup tank 25 to the waste gas decay system.
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88 1: THE-WITNESS:- Well, without knowing what other 2 things they might_have in place in terms of other 3 operational concerns and considerations, that could very 4.1well be a true statement.
5 There's a lot of things that they do that they 6 get stuck into doing that I may or may not_know
?sE_-
7 about.- And I;-- If they said that, I don't know that 8 - that's not a true statement at the time.
-9 But it seems to me like there is a control board 10 switch that can be utilized provided you're not in a fire
' 11 situation that gives you z hot short that takes that 12 solonoid open.
13 MR. RAPP: Okay.
14 THE WITNESS: But I don't know whether that was 15 a philosophy of theirs'to be able to do that at the time
- 16 .or not.
17 My biggest concern with the technical aspects was
/iscussisoS 18 alleviated when I was told that in di cusa;r.g with the TES-19 shift there was a person dispatched to the vent header-n 20 that was ready to vent the tank.
21 MR. WEINBERG: And one other thing I wanted to
-22 poi -- clear up. You indicated, Phil, that at some time 23' before-the September 2nd, 1994, memo was officially sent 24 to Hickle at Operations, that you and Pat Hinman actually-u 25 went and. talked to operators, is that right, about the L
+-- - - ,.
l 1
89 1 memo?
2 THE WITNESS: Sometime prior to this, yeah.
3 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah. And the operators you 4 talked to included Van Sicklen and Willms?
5 THE WITNESS: Mark Van Sicklen and Bruce Willms 6 were the two people that Pat really wanted to talk to and 7 I basically tagged along with Pat when he went to the 8 control room to talk to those two guys. Because he and I 9 had been working on the B makeup pump and we were still in 10 the B makeup pump outage, but he had a deadline to get 11 this letter out. And before he put it out he wanted to 12 just kind of make a courtesy call on these guys and get 13 some last bit of feedback from them. He had not yet, you t 14 know, actually done the final typing and signed it.
1 15 MR. WEINBERG: Did he tell them essentially what l 16 he was going to recommend?
17 THE WITNESS: He told them about the chain wheel 18 operator and he - 44ere.
t was a number of other things, 19 items discussed in general I don't remember.
20 I know that the big thing was to -- was to 21 discuss the chain wheel operator and the, you know, the 22 need to proceduralize its use.
23 MR. WEINBERG: Was it a confrontational meeting?
24 THE WITNESS: I didn't think so, no.
l 25 MR. WEINBERG: Did he tell them that they had --
l
90 1 they just weren't going to address the Curve B issue?
2- THE WITNESS: No. No.
3 MR. VORSE: Did Mr. Hinman relay the concept 4 that this thing was still very much open and there wasn't 5 any -- See, the operators kind of claim that there was no 6 hope, that it was over and they were going to have to --
7 they were going to have to do it on their own because they 8 just weren't getting any support out of Engineering, and 9 like I say, just no hope.
10 Did Mr. Hinman ever give them -- Did you get the 11 impression that there was no hope?
12 THE WITNESS: No. Now, you got to remember, I 13 just walked into it fresh and this had been going on 1
14 between those individuals for a year and a half, two 15 years. So.
16 MR. STENGER: Did you guys have --
17 THE WITNESS: And my impression from that one 18 meeting, and that wasn't really a meeting, but my 1
19 impression from that one encounter wherein myself and Pat 20 went to the control room, mainly to calk to just those two 21 individuals, I don't see how they got that impression l
'22 based purely on that meeting.
l 23 MR. STENGER: Did you have a draft of that 24 letter with you for that meeting to show to them?
25 THE WITNESS: I don't think so. I don't think
7..
91 1 there was a. draft of the letter. I think Pat just.
~
2- discussed the technical-aspects of its I-don't.think that- :
3' he had-a draft of it. .He might'have, but I don't think he 4,
4 did . : That's not my. recollection.
5 And I know one thing Pat had said to me one time, 6 .and chis probably will~be something important to bring up 7 with-Pat. The SP-630 data that I keep talking about that 8 Pat pulled during the 9R refueling outage and that he ;
9 ' examined in great detail himself and involved other 10 engineers that were knowledgeable of instrument error, ,
-11 that particular data, Pat had taken that data and that
! 12 problem report corrective action plan, and he'd taken it 13 up to show it and discuss this specifically with Mark Van
. o.
14 Sicklen, and to tell-Mark about how that, the data and his 15 discussions with other engineers, particularly Steve 16 Koleff and people knowledgeable of instrument error, had 17 indicated that once again he wanted to drive home the 18 point that there's no reason you should expect yourself to 19 move point by point parallel with that curve. That curve 20 'is a. limit curve, it's based on the calc. The calc has m n.+-
, 21- wa*** case conditions, assumptions. There was no reason Tsc- :
g 22 to believe ~4+M real behavior should parallel that curve.
23-w And he said that basically when he handed that 24- problem report to Mark and all that data and discussion of 25 the data, and he'said that Mark just basically looked at
92 l' it and tossed it aside, ,
2 So,-you know, that might be something you might 3 want to bring up to him is that particular encounter.
4 Because Pat was getting immensely frustrated because, you 5 know, all we hear from the Operations side is that they 6 didn't feel like their concerns were being listened to.
7- Pat didn't feel like his answers to their-concerns were 8 being listened to.
9 Now, he wasn't talking to Operations as a group, 10 he was communicating with the individuals who seemed to 11 have the most concern. And hindsight, perhaps this is 12- something -- In hindsight it would have been nice to have l- 13 polled everybody in Operations to see how many people l c 14 thought this was an issue. Because I'm not sure there 15 would have been very many.
16 MR. RAPP: I've got one thing --
17 MR WEINBERG: Just so you know, by the way, 18 Greg's back and so he's ready to go whenever you are.
19 MR. RAPPt Yes. Earlier you said that this 20 hydrogen issue was being pushed pretty heavy. And I may 21 have asked this or it may have-already been brought out, 22 but I want to' bring-it up again just so make sure that-23 we've got it.
24 Do you -- Do you know of like any discussions 25- with? Pat Hinman or other individuals in the plant of where l:
l-
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93 1 this push was coming from for this higher hydrogen 2 concentration? Not necessarily the technical issue but 3 the management?
4 MR. WEINBERG: You mean what person?
5 MR. RAPP: What person or persons in management 6 that was pushing for it?
7 THE WITNESS: That's very easy to answer. When 8 I walked into this issue '. was told -- because my response if 9 to 25 cc's per kilogram is e've never had a general N
corrosion problem here, why do I have reason to believe 10 11 that I need to run higher hydrogen concentration? You T G>-
12 know, all plants are not equal. And I was told that it 13 was basically a Pat Beard edict that we shall run 25 cc's pr kih
- KC-14 of dissolved hydrogen and that was not a negotiable thing.
15 Now, that's what I was told by people that were 16 involved in the issue across the board, which would be Pat 17 Hinman, any of the individuals in this meeting. And --
18 MR. WEINBERG: And you mean the August 5th 19 meeting?
20 THE WITNESS: The August 5th meeting. And, in 21 fact, Pat told me many times operators had said let's just 22 lower the 25 cc's per kilogram, let's go to 20, let's go
( Hbmaa) 23 to 15. And PatYhad -- That is one thing that if they say T55 24 they were hitting a stone wall on the 25 cc's per 25 kilogram, yeah, they were reaching and hitting a stone
94 '
(Wn-a)
- 1 wall on that because Pat said he had to tell them many-16S -
2 L times that#I've followed up on that, I've pursued that and Y
.3 - that is_not negotiablei we shall' meet the.25 cc's per 4 ; kilogram and:that's all there is to it # And you should ,
" M '
just quit-saying why don't we do this and this and this S
6 _and just work with the basic up front assumption that you 7 are going to-meet 25 cc's-per kilogram and everything has 8 to work around that.
9- MR. DOCKERY: Is -- ,
i
- 10 MR. RAPP: Did -- oh, go ahead.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Is it povsible in your mind or 12 based on your observations that the Operations people were -
13 blaming Engineering or particularly Mr. Hinman for that 25
- 14 cc figure?
^
15 THE WITNESS: Well, it kind of seems like it.
- 16 s MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
17 THE WITNESS: I don't know that to be true, but 18 .it kind of seems like they were expecting that he would be 19 able to do something about that. And he was trying to 20 telate to them that that was a non negotiable item.
_ 21 MR. RAPP: Who -- Did Mr. Hinman say who he was 22 Ltalking to or who he was getting this from that it was non 23 negotiable?
24 THE WITNESS: He might have, but I don't -- I 25- don't recall -- t
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i l
95 1 MR. RAPP: Okay.
2 THE WIT!iESS: -- but I tell you what, in my 3 limited conversations after that I came to be under the 4 opinion that that was a non negotiable thing also.
5 MR. RAPP: And how did you arrive at that?
6 THE WITNESS: I don't remember who all I talked 7 to, but whoever I did talk to that's the impression I got.
8 And in fairness to Pat Beard, I'm not -- I'm not 9 aware of anybody ever going up to Pat and laying out why 10 exactly the 25 cc's per kilogram posed us such a problem.
11 I'm not aware that anybody ever went and pointed out to 12 him what the challenges were.
13 So, in all fairness to him, a lot of people may 14 be assuming that was an inflexible edict when in fact it 15 wasn't. He doesn't strike me as that kind of guy, so I --
16 my assumption would be that he would have probably been 17 agreeable to discussing that. But I don't know that to be 18 true.
19 MR. RAPP: Okay. That's all.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Saltsman, you mentioned 21 carlier that you hadn't been talked to yet, you've 22 certainly been talked to today. We appreciate your 23 observations and your assistance.
24 Before we go off the record, is there anything we 25 didn't ask you that you feel you should bring up or that
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f- !
1 C.E R T I.F I C A'T E
.2 This .s to certify that the attached proceedings 3 before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission'in 4 the matter of:
5 Name of Proceeding: Interview of Phillip Saltsman ;
6 Docket Number (s): 2-94-036 7 -Place.of Proceeding: Crystal River, Florida 8
9 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 10 transcript thereof for the file of the United States 11 Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter 12 reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the
. 13 court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true 14 and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings.
15
^16 frA B- ,
M 17 ggy S. May 18 Official Reporter 19 Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
l 20 21 22 23 24-25 l
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