ML20199J185
| ML20199J185 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 12/15/1994 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20199J121 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-97-325 NUDOCS 9711280073 | |
| Download: ML20199J185 (106) | |
Text
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ,
2 NUCLEAR-REGULATORY COMMISSION ,
3 + +~ + + +
4 INTERVIEW --
5 -----------------------------x 6 IN THE MATTER OF: :
Docket No..
7 INTERVIEW OF :
8 CHANDRA LASHKARI : (not assigned) 9 :
10 -----------------------------x 11 Thursday, December 15, 1994
- 12. DRS Conference Room 13 475 Allendale Road -
14 King of Prussia, Pennsylvania ,
15 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 16 6:00 p.m.
17 BEFORE: -
18' KEITH LOGAN Investigator ,
C
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1 APPEARANCES:
2 On Behalf of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Corranission:
l 1
3 KEITH LOGAN, Investigator !
I 4 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Cor:unission 5 475 Allendale Road l 6 King of Prussia, Pennsylvania 19406- l 7 (610) 337-5345 i 0
8 Interviewee:
R CHANDRA LASHKARI 1 'h b ,
12 0: (302) 652-3900
[ .p.
i .
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-3 ;
, ?
-1 P .V O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2- -(6:07 p.m.)
-3 Whereuponi-
- 4 -CHANDRA-LASHKARI 5 was called as a %itness by the investigator and, having 6 been first c*aly sworn, was interviewed as follows:
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: My name'is Keith' Logan.
.9 I'm an investigator with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory-9 CommJ r,sion, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania. We're here P
10 today to discuss'two letters that you've written to the-11 NucleA ' hegulatory r'ommission on August 8th of 1994, the 12,- other one on December 4th, 1994, whe, rein you raise some 13 allegations about problems which exist at the Salam-Nuclear ,
~
14 ' Plant.
15 Would you please state your ful'1 name for the 16 record, spelling your#1ast name? f 17 MR. LASHKARI: MynameisChandra[Lashkari orCharles[? . Lashkari. f
~
18 A lot of people call me here 19 ,, Charles . '
o
- 20 INVESTIGATOR IDGAN
- And Lashkari is , spelled?
21 MR. LASHKARI: Lashkari is-L-A-S-H-K-A-R-I, 22 Lashkari"~' - ) .
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And, Mr. Lashkari, who are L
'24 you'emp1'oyed by?
[-
25 MR. LASHKARI: At present I'm employed by AMER ,
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4 11 IndustriG1 TcchnologiC3 in Wilmingt n, ~DelCwarc. Th2ir 2 address is 1000 South Madison Street,.Wilmington, Delaware 3
1980/.} yt~te [ i 4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And who were you formerly 5_ employed by, just prior to this current employment?
6 MR. LASHKARI:
N/MA-4f
'I p s employed by Public Service 7 Electric and Gas at Salem Nuclear Plant for last-10 years.
8' INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What positions have you 9 held at P$E&G7 10 MR. LASHKARI: When I joined PSE&G, I joined as .
11 a senior staff engineer, Grade 4 engineer, in Engineering 12 Department.
13 And about within a year, therc was a group we 14 formed called Systems Engineers. And I volunteered myself 15 to join that group. I went through about six to eight 16 months of training.
17 The training is very close to senior reactor 18 operator license training, but it is a certification of 19 system engineer which ,
they provide at the end of the 20 training. r .
21 And all of those who were successful, then they
- 22. joined-SyYtems Engin ring group in a' technical department 23 at Salem Nuclear Plant.
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what position did you 25 hold just prior to your resignation?
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1 MR. LASHKARI: It was tho ecm3 position es a 2 system engineer. I started in that original group of I
- l 3 s ystem engineers, and I still was system engineer, same 4 grade, at the time I was let go.
5 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I see. Were you fired, 6 terminated, suspended, or did you resign?
7 MR. LASHKARI: Initially I was terminated or 8 fired, but PSE&G asked if I give them the release and sign .
9 some piec~es of paper, ret' urn them. They will work that 10 n into resignation.
Okay.
11 l" V INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What is your 12, present residence?
13 MR. LASHKARI: My present residence i ,
W""
14 il 15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And your current phone 16 numbers,bothworkandhomephonenumbers?
17 MR. LASHKARI: Okay. My home phone number is 18 Work telephone is (302) 652-3900. -
19 INVESTIGATOR, LOGAN: And your current' employer
. 20 is not. aware of any of the allegations that you-have raised 21 with the NRC regarding events at Sclem Nuclear Plant. Is 22 thatcorNet? -
23 MR. LASHKARI: That is correct.
- 24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And you're appearing today 25 voluntarily?
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i MR.:LASHKARI - YCs. :
1
-2. INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -Thank you.
3' - MR. ._ LASHKARI : - Yes , I . am. - .
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -Mr. Lashkari, what is your l 5- educational background?.
-6 MR. LASHKARI: I did Bachelor of' Engineering ~in
. 7: mechanical engineering from India, one of the. oldest-
+-
8 institution in India. And then I did Macter's in. nuclear ;
9 engineering _from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, 10 Pennsylvania'. That was 1 11 . INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And you've also taken ,
~
12, professional-courses 7 t
, 13l MR. LASHKARI: -I have. And in 1978 I passed .
- 14. both , sections of the professional enginee . I have
. n- e - ' ~
fMjj-p.-y[ .
15 not kept up that license. I am in the prouess of looking 16 athowtoactivatethft' license.
17 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And while you were at the -
n 18 Salem Nuclear Plant, you also took courses there. Is that 19 correct?
24 MR. HKARI': Yes. I took a six t u ight 21 months' course'for system engineering. And, in addition to l'
22 thatiIt5bkrootcadedeterminationtraininganiimany,
~
So any training I could get in with d
23- many more trainings.
'24 management approval, I was able to get:in.
25 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Thank you.
7_
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- 7. I 1 Mr. Lachkcri, e.s I mentioned beforo wa w;nt en 2- the. record, I'm going to ask you several questions about 3 your first letter of August 8th, 1994 regarding the NRC 4 violations-at Salem Nuclear, Power Plant. Now, if there are
.5 other matters or other points that you would liks to 6 discuss that I. don't raicte with you during this interview, 7 pleasefeelfreetobringthosesubjectsupand,toaddress 8- any issues again on this record that you fec1 are necessary 4
9 that we don't'get into.
10 MR. LASHKARI: I'll do that.
11 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Thank you.
12 The first one I'd like to talk to you about was 13 Point 1 from your letter. That's on Page 2. And it talks 14 about the event of April 7th, 1994. Your summary caption --
15 at the bottom of that point says that " Salem management is 16 totally responsible icir not building the cooling tower and 17 resulting April 7 accidwit. Any firing of the low-level 18 employees by the managemerit is unwarwanted and should be 19 opposed the NRC." ,
20 MR. LASHKARI: I missed a "by the NEC."
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. .We kind of read 22 thatint(Itwhenwedeadit,too. I make. typographical 23 errors in my own typing, too.- I wouldn't worry about that.
- 24 Can you explain to me in as much detail as-25 possible now what you meen by that?
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, 1_- MR. LASHKARI Thic particular' paragraph !
2;: relates;to Salem and PSE&G', Public. Service Electric'and Gas ,
3- Company,.' management,?which related to not building the ,
14: cooling-towers for Salem. ~ originally they receiv.ed a e a ,. . w -
v ir -
5 10-year-:,, ir.innt to ope 3 ate Salem withouti cooling c
towers, with FE5M\Te6ft-IL1s a once-through cooling.
6-
- 7 And about last year.that permit was expiring.
8' And they needed a new permit. State-of New Jersey wanted them to bilild a cooling tower. The State of Delaware ,
10 wanted to build a cooling tower. .But PSEEG opposed based-
! 11 on that it will-cost _a lot of money.
And, basically, they 1-e
- 12. said if either states or federal government .vould insist on l 13- building a - cooling tower, Salem would be shut down foreycr.
14' Now, this particular event, April 7th event, 15 was caused by grass coming in through the intake structure i 16 and blocking the condensers completely, all of them, and 17 shutting off.the circulators,-they call them, circulating 18 water.pumpa, that were tripped on low suction pressure 19.' because once the prass, blocked the whole thing, the water-
- 20 was not coming in. So all circulators tripping 3t the same -
21 tine is a very unusual event for Salem or any other'PWR,
- 3
- 22- pressurized water retrctor.
23- - .
- Now, when we look at this particular event, 24-
^W-__ y r ht at that same s , which receives '
there is . tm~- b.: :&S r W gt-p 4-if
- 25 ~ the same amount of grass, that plant did not experience any i
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g H ' L - 9 .5 1 problems. On the cylisser at uvih ouiLe ?? lam h ched ,
2 So, basically, this grass type of an accidcnt .
3 is really not addressed in salem safety analysis.- They're 4 called UFSAR, final safety evaluation report. NRC has 5 copies of them. Salem has, you know, prepared them. But 6 this particular accident is really not addressed in their 7 Chapter 15 analysis. --
8 Now, I wa lS old that by the -- some of the a
-+f4H ?. -
Regionj.peopleherewhenIdiscussedthiswiththem,"What 10 is the difference between-this accident and a loss of power 11 to all circulators? They were tripped the same way with a 12, loss of power. And loss of power is. addressed in the 13 safety evaluation report," the big difference between this 14 event and loss of full power to all the circulators is that 15 loss of power to all circulators is supposed to happen very 16 rarely, maybe 10, 20,'or 30 years once.
17 Grass coming into the intake structure is an 18 event you can have two times a year. The grass just 19 accumulates at the bottom of this river.
And when it 20 becomes a high enough pile and the gasses accumulate, 21 decomposing the grass, all the grass becomes loose. And, 22 all. of aTudden, a bk, large amount of grass comes into 6ttt)SE S 23 the intake structure and eette,this an accident similar to 24 April 7th accident. [
25 So, basically, in the analyses, evaluation, of .
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10 1- tho Cecid:nt, th;y'look for two tcrms: ono, consequoneca; 2~ the other one is probability of happening. And multiply 3 those two, you get a not result, whether it's acceptable '
4 consequences or it's not.
5 - In this case the consequences of what is 6 already analyzed in UFSAR in this grass is the same.
7 Consequences are you trip all the circulators, and you need 8 to recover from that. However, the frequency change, a 9 ,
probability change, which makes it a lot more substantially 10 possible to happen, then that accident is really not ,
11 analyzed in FSAR.
12 Now, whenever you recover or you find an 13 accident which is not analyzed in our UFSAR j then you have '
Fit-f5 14 to go to NRC, tell them "We found a USQ we have a -
15 problem, and this is how we're going to address." The 16 plant should not start up until NRC has given provision 17 because UF' is an unresolved safety question, is a 18 requirement in the NRC regulations whenever you come across 19- USQ, the plant should not run or plant should not start.
- 20 The activities have to start, and you have to approach NRC, 21 Nuclear Regulatory Commission, to seek their permission how 22 youareV61ngtoaddNssthatsafetyconcer.;.
23 And the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will
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1 mitigato that particulcr cccid:nt which y:u hava come- ;
I 2 across. -
. 1 3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And was there a USQ in 4 this case? :
5 HR. LASHKARI: No. The company has never filed 6 a USQ with the NRC.
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN Should they have filed i
8 one?
9
'MR. LASHKARIt' in my opinion, they should have 10 because the probability of this is much more. And when I 11 presented this particular item, I understood that Region I 12, understood that probability of this is much more than the 13 loss of all power to the cir'culators. And that makes.t,his 14 accident or this event to be unanalyzed for Salem.
15 IliVESTIGATOR LOGAN And who did you present 16 this to?
17 !
MR. LASHKARI This was presented to Region I, 28 John White, and several other' resident inspectors in around 19 August loth at this location.
20 INV.1STIGATOR LOGAN Did you present- this issue 1.1 to anyone 1.t Salem?
22 -
MR. LASHbJtI: No, I did not... ,
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN Did you bring it to the 24 attention of' Salem management that this was an unresolved 25 safety question that they should be aware of and that they NEAL R. GROSS.
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2 M9 LASHKARI No, I did not. ,
3 IINESTIGATOR LOGAN: You mentioned also in this 4 first paragraph that you were " medically disabled the week 5 of April 7th and, therefore, could not be held accountable G for employees' actions initiating or mitigating the action 7 which took place that day." Were you in any way-held' 8 responsible for the April 7th accident?
9 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, if you really look 10 back how the Public Service Electric and Gas management 11 i went and made the presentations to the commissioners, Dr.
- 12. Selin, in Washington, D.C. and assured them that we should 13 be, or Public Service should be, allowed to start the Salem 14 after this accident, when you review all that, the 15 presentation and Dr. Selin's comments, basically it was -
16 felt that Salem has reached the end of their rope. Salem 17 mUst straighten out that. The people who make problems for 18 Salem, they should be fired. They should be removed, you 19 know, transferred, or wNtever Public Service would like to
.< 20 do, but you cannot continue to come back to NRC,rpromise 21 thingsi and not be able to deliver a safe operation, an 22 Oneventfuloperation)ofSalem.
- 23 So in this case, when they came back, basically 24 on or around July 17th, there was going to be a 8oard d/RE ;
25 meeting on P'?" 1"th er 19th. The Chairman asked for that gy'
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13 l 1 I chould gat cbout 50 to 60 n:mes.of oil tho prcblem peoplo .
. t 2 and they should be fired.
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Let me just stop 4 you right there. You said the Chairman asked for the names ;
5 of the problom people. Which Chairman and what problem 6 people?
[ ;
7 [ MR. IASHKARI This was' supposed to.be Mr; ;
8- Fhland,whoistheChairmanofPublicServiceElectricand i 9 Gas, who asked for the termination of people who would not I 10 do'their_ job correctly.
11 / M fn fact, .F land came down about two weeks ;
i 12,- Mfer" DrM (IJL7/ a 1%. He made a speech for one hour. I myself '
13 attended that speech. Every employee within the station was asked to attend that session, 14 g,,pf 15 And, basically, Mr. F land, whatever he said, 16 there was no problem dith that, that any one employee who 17 does not do his job correctly and causes the events-at 18 Balem, either he should fix his ways and get the training, 19 do whatever. , , ,
20 But if he continues to cause repeated, problems 21 with the safety of the plant and, you know, causes events :
22 to happefC ther thathrson should be removed for the of other people who are working or sincerely.
23' benefit 24 working.
25 And-I think basically I feel myself that it was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRGERS -
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1 tho right cpproach for tho company to c ntinuo to cpercto 2 safely the salem Nuclear Power Plant.
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN Okay.
4 MR. LASHKARI: However, I think they deviated 5 from that, instead of_ selecting those people who have .
6 caused all of these events at Salem to pick from $
7 supervisors. "Just give me any name you like.to get it
~
8 off." And the supervisor gave the names of the guys with 9 whom they were having some differences of opinion. ,
10 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Now, when you say you 11 think that was, what leads you to L teve that that's the 12, case?
13 MR.'LASHKARIt Because I talked to a ,
14 substantial number of these 60 people. I've looked at and -
d('(//-/A-W' 15 many of these people took time cause they had a cancer or 16 they had a major surgdry. Anyone who had a substantial 17 amount of time, the supervisor basically said that "I'm not 18 getting what I'm supposed'to get from this employee. So 19 you just take him away." '
i 20 That was not the intent of Dr. Selin or Mr.
21 F land. It is a miscommunication between top and the 22 as.a"1r bottom. Tt just.fil5(tred down to the supervisor.
23 Supervisor says "Just get it off this guy because I'm 24 supposed to give one name." -
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15 1 wh3 wasn't real)y holping him bec uco ho'o cick, y:u know, ,
2 six months in a year, he or she. And they were selected to 3 be terminated.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Let's go off the record 5 for a minute.
6 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the ,
7 record at 6126 p.m. and went back onrthe record e ,
8 at 6:27 p.m.) ,
9 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Mr. Lashkari, I'd like to 10 follow up on just one point that you made. You said you 11 didn't raise the Us0 issue to Salem management. Why didn't 12 you do that? .
13 MR. LASHKARI: This issue of cooling towers,has 14 been, you know, within PSE&G management for last two years 15 or more. My responsibilities in Salem related to the 36 a #/H24f reactor coolant system, which + e -- within the containment
-17 There is another system o c 1 ting water is system. That is the water which got blocked.
19 Now, if I myself was a responsible system i
, 20 engineerforcirculatingwatersystem,Idefinibe}ywould 21 have gone on gecord that ! Salem. management, shear me,out.. _ ,, m.
22 This"is mT opinion. Nhis is my recommendation that this 23 particularevedtcanrepeatitselfagainandagain. The 24 fix is, the correct fix is, for building of the cooling 25 tower." ,
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16 1 INVESTICATOR LOGAN: But y u'ro cwaro that' 2 individuals in management were considering this problem and ,
3 had been doing so for the past two years?
4 MR. LASHKARI: The Public Service management is 5 fully awarc of what cooling tower would do. And they know 6 fully well that if they were to have this cooling tower, 7 then Grass will not be a problem. ,
8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Second point, you 9 mentioned that there were people who were targeted with '
10 dismissal that were not individuals who were failing to do .
11 their job but were perhaps sick or infirm, for one reason
- 12. or another. And they wgfy targeted with being fired. Is 13 14 that the case?
MR. LASHKARI: Or they were beint in the W i y 45 g
15 superviso[s know, they were repeatedly coming to the i
16 supervisor w th a differeat approach than the supervisor 17 wants to take.
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: In other words, a 19 differing profese,ional. opinion?
- 20 MR. LASHKARI: Right, correct. C, 21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And were some of these 22 differin [ profession opinions related to safety issues?
23 MR. LASHKARI: That's correct.
24 IFVESTIGATOR LOGAN: .And who are some of these 25 individuals that were terminated for raising safety issues?
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87 1 MR. LASHKARI: Thereisaperson,Laczlo[j_ ,
' ' .5 2 Laszlo is his first name, and -- ,. .
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: L-A-S-L-0-W7 4 MR. LASHKARI: L-A-B-L-0. It's a East European 5 perhaps background and a Polish type of a name.
6 L-A-S-Z-L-O Illy, I-L-L-Y. And his home telephone number hb '
7 is It may be ... --
8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I'm sorry. What did you 9 saythepflonenumberwasagain?
10 MR. LASHKARI: It may b or it may
- } h
. 11 be 12*,
INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: .Who else?
13 MR. LASHKARI: That's me. And there . ara, many.-. . . - . . ,
14 others in the off-site safety review group. Off-site 15 safety review group has totally been eliminated from 16 general manager to the' manager to supervisor to engineer, 17 from four levels of management. ,
18 The whole group wa,s disbanded on that day.
i 19 There were the mapager and general manager, supervisor. I 20 can list the names. $ ,
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, couldn't there have 22 b'een'a 1 timate re n, legitimate business reason, why l 23 this group was eliminated other than retaliation for 24 raising problems with management?
25 MR. LASHKARI: Oh, I'm sure PSE&G, Public NEAL R. GROSS COURT RCPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER $ l Ae 0n Yo% .
18 1 S rvica Electric Cnd Gao, will try to ccy that, but -- i 2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, I'm not asking them ,
3 that, Mr. Lashkari. I'm asking you that.
4 HR. LASHKARI: Right, my perception of after 5 having talked to some of these people who were witL a the 6 same group and on the same date terminated. General 7 manager, who was Larry )( v ta ked to-him in 8 great detail. He has been in great pain for being 9 terminated or fired after more than 25 years of excellent 10 service for Public Service Electric and Gas.
11 , When you,have a different business needs and 14 then you are going to terminate a section or employees, if
. 13 employees have worked for you 10, 20 and -- years of . ,
excellent service, then the company owes a transfer into
~
14 15 something else. And if people have to be terminated, 16 retiredearly,orthibgslikethat,thereisabetterway 17 of sending them home than a 5 to 10 minutes' exit. People 18 were crying the way they were exited.
19 INVES,TIGATOR. LOGAN: And how did. this take
,,. 20 place? r 21 MR. LASHKARI: I know for myself that on 18th 22 ofJulyUntilabouthk30-3:45Iwasdoingmyjobonmy 23 desk. We had heard things in lunchtime on that day that 24 there were things going on in our department.
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19 1 me. At 3:45 my cer,ervic r came to my d: k. Ho CCked me-,
2 can I come with him. Then I knew probably I'm being slated 3 for this thing.
4 And then I entered the manager's office, and 5 manager just rr.sd to me what was written down on a piece of 6 paper. He said, "Your job is terminated, your -- because 7 you do not meet the expectations of your job."-- - -
8 Aftor more than 20 years in the industry, after 9 more than*10 years at PSEGG, after having done tremendous 10 amount of work in the reactor coolant system, which is 11 almost like half of the work anytime in any outage which 12, goes on at the plant, all kinds of excellent jobs which I 13 did for Public Service, it was five minutes where they said 14 I do not meet the expectations of my positions for business
- 15 needs of tomorrow or something like that. .
16 That piec5'of paper was given to me to sign, 17 and I was told I must exit right away. It took less than 18 10 minutes to leave that place.
4 19 INVESTIGATOR, LOGAN: Basically you put
'20 everything in a box and -- un, .
21 MR. LASHKARI: Yeah. I was told " Don't carry 22 theboxe's%causewekon'twantpeopletoseethatyou're 23 leaving. Just drop everything in your box. Leave the box.
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20 1 right cw2y without talking to cny:no, without c2u31ng cny 2 problems with the rest of the employees." ,
i 3 And they were all shocked, colleagues.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Very devastating 5 experience. Did you -- excuse me. Had you raised any 6 safety concerns with management prior to the time you 7 received your notice that you were being terminated?
8 MR. LASHKARI: Yes, I did. And that is, as I 9 stated ea'rlier, I was selected for this. I will start on 10 or around July 5th. It is Fourth of July long weekend, in 11 which Public Service Salem station, I think it was Unit 2, 12, wnich was having leak on the reactor coolant system. And 13 the leak wsu found to be a small leak, but the unit could 14 not be started unless that leak was fixed.
15 A clamp, temporary clamp with a temporary 16 ,
modification, it's cal' led, was put together on that job.
17 The job, all.the paperwork, indicated that clamp to be fu<
/
18 in place, fhatis,AmericanSocietyofMechanical /-1283 19 Engineers code for nuclear components, which governs the 20 rules for building of the components for nuclear-power 21 plants, that particular code was referenced on our 22 paperworf ) -
23 My verifier signed on. I signed. And my 24 supervisor signed off. Everyone was in agreement that this .
J 25 job,-these clamps, would be as ASME NEAL R. GROSS @
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21 1 Aftcr loto GvCning, oftcr cbout 7:00 Cr 8100 2 o' clock at that late evening of Friday, it was detected 3 that this vendor, who is supplying the clamp, is not ASME 4 stamp vendor. He could not supply. He could not make. He 5 could not put a stamp on this particular clamp.
6 So on next morning when I came in, my 7 supervisor just told me to go ahead and change. those B references to the ASME code. And I said "I disagree to do 9 that. I have a belief that this -- even until today I 10 believe that that particular clamp should have been ASME 3.
11 And a reference to that is that NRC from 12, Rockville came back to Salem, where we had installed on the 13 reactor head a clamp which was made with ASTM materials, 14 and they asked us to remove that clamp, give us three years 15 of permission to deviate from the ASME c ea 16 partoftheNRCsaysthatthatclamphastobeASMEfand 17 we went through an expense of 300,000-plus to replace those la clamps, I myself was not g'oing to change just, because my 19 supervisor was telling me from his home on a Saturday
?
20 morning to go ahead and change those because th.ts vendor 21 caunot make it.
22 . There are 'other vendors who can make it. The 23 government codes for the nuclear components, they are 24 dictated by the 10 CFR, Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
25 They are not to be changed lightly just because a ,
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22 1 particulOr v:nd:r cannst mako it.
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. You also talked ,
. 1 i
3 about that point in another place in your --
l 4 MR. LASHKARI: Yes. That is, I provide a 1
5 reference to that particular paragraph or point in my --
6 this letter later on.
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what, paragraph i~s 8 that?
9 Why don't.we go off the record for a minute.
10 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the 11 record at 6:40 p.m. and went back on the record 14 at 6:4b p.m.)
13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Go ahead, Mr. Lashkari.
14 MR. LASHKARI: Okay. What I was v.alking about 15 was on or about July 4th weekend, there was a leaking on W //~ll.- $ f 16 this reactor coolant pump. -It - en 4 ca hvel. The.t 17 particular leak was determined that it should be contained 18 before the start-up will continue, a temporary 19 modification, whi,ch was supposed to install.a clamp on this
, 20 particular leak. q .
21 And it was prepared by me. My counterpart of 22 thefotheEunit,reaobrcoolantsystemengineer, verified 23 that document. My supervisor signed off and approved that 24 document.
25- In this particular document to do that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISt.AND AVENVE, N W.
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23 j 1 installotion of tho temporcry raodification, we h:d 2 specified the clamp would be made in accordance with ASME, 3 American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Code Section 4 Later on that evening when the paperwork from 5 us was received by the vendor, he had already made the 6 clamp. The vendor came back at about 8:00 p.m. on Friday 7 evening saying that he's not authorized to ASME Code a
8 Section 3. He cannot make. He just has no certifications, 9 no stamps'to put on, as required by the code.
10 Now, I myself made the call at about 7: 00 or 11 8:00 p.m. on Friday evening to the chief engineer of that 12, particular company; that is, Leak Repair.in Texas. That -
13 chief engineer faxed me a statement saying that our clamps 14 are being made in accordance with ASME Code Section 3.
15 As it turned out, that chief engineer didn't 16 knowwhattheASME3cbewas,whattherequirementswere.
17 He basically.did not understand the implications of his 18 statement. Our --
19 INVESTIGATOR, LOGAN: What was his name?
., 20 MR. LASHKARI: I do not remember his-name, but 21 I was told at that time of my call that he was the chief ,
22 engineerY Texas headquarters of that Leak Repair Company.
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And who told you that?
24 HR. IASHKARI: The people at Leak Repair in 25 Texas. They told --
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24 1 I!NESTICATOR LOGAN: Th3t'o tha r;tme of tha 2 company?
3 MR. LASHKARI: The Leak Repair is the name of 4 the company.
5 I!WESTIGATOR LOGAN: Where in Texas are they?
6 Do you recall?
7 MR. LASHKARI: I have a recollection-it may be a Lubbock, Texas, but Leak Repair is a company which comes to 9 Salem very often. And the name of the company is probably 10 listed in many of the directories. They're leading leak 11 , repair or leak stoppers in the industry.
12 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Now, this is a different
. 13 situation than the boric acid caking in the pilot area of 14 the valve also --
15 MR. LASHKARI: Yeah, that is. That is 16 different.
17 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -- in July? Okay. That 18 is a different one.
19 MR. 1.ASHKARI* That is a different one. In
, 20 this particular event, we came very close to where my 21 supervisor was shouting on me on the telephone that "Go 22 ahead an Ido it." An[1ItoldhimthatIfeelvery 23 professionally uncomfortable in just doing whatever I'm 24 dictated to.
25 I felt- the doci' nents, which were already NEAL R; GROSS COUR1 REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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25 l
1 Opprcved, h:d ASME 3 in it. And if I woro to ch ngo end if 2 Nuclear Regulatory Commission were to come back and ,
3 investigate that matter, I myself would have been 4 responsible for changing that particular code.
5 I opposed it in that telephone conversation.
6 And he was very indignant. And I went on record telling 7 him that I will put a piece of paper' with this. document to oVE W//-t2.43' -
8 state why I felt it was incorrect to the ASME 3 and 9 the quality' assurance requirements which are in Nuclear 10 RegulatoryCommission10CFR50 appendix [iffC- [
11 They -- according to NRC regulations, anything 12, which-you build for reactor coolant system has to have the -
13 highest quality. And this particular outfit which was ,
14 supplying was industrial outfit.
15 They have -- no documentation was produced by 16 the vendor and even by'our own quality assurance people at 17 Salem, public Service quality assurance people, that this 18 vendor met the requirementis of Nuclear Regulatory 19 Commission 10 CFR, Appendix B. Basically,that appendix has 20 regulations regarding quality assurance program.- ,
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What was your supervisor s 22 name' thaMold you taMdo -- ,.
23 MR. IASHKARI His name was John Wiedeman. And 24 he was on telephone from his house, where he was pretty 25 much shouting on me to go ahead and do as he dictated that ,
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26 1 to be.
2 INVESTIGATCR LOGAN: And you think that this is .
3 the reason that you were singled out later?
4 MR. LASHKARI: I perfectly believe that this 5 particular was -- this incident was just about the last :
6 straw, where I opposed him so much and I went ahead. But I 7 will go on record to oppose my -- on -- I will go ahead and ,
a document my opposition to changing this code just because 9 the venddr doesn't qualify under t!.st. ,
10 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: So there were other 11 situations, too? _
12 MR. LASHKARI: Yes, there were many other 13 situations. .
14 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Can you give me some 15 examples of the other situations? -
16 MR. LASHKARI: There was another situation, 17 which is vary well-described here, about the issue.
18 That is pressurizer cc: a protection system. Q .SEO N f'd2ff
/
19 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Is that Paragraph 37
.- 20 MR. LASHKARI: The paragraph startery,ith the .
21 Paragraph 2, 22 INVESTI R LOGAN: I'm sorry. Paragraph 23 Number 2. Okay.
24 MR. LASHKARI: In this particular incident, 25 this paragraph relates to where I myself was supposed to -
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asnm must waewuovem n e emns nam namn -
,m,_ .- , , _ . . -
27 r
1 have accorupanied the licensing engineer to the control Room 2 and reported on an incident report and filed it with the .
L 3 control Room. And we had reviewed this particular incident !
4- report. I had made my comments.
5 This particular issue went on within the Public ,
6 Service various departments for more than a year. And it 7 finally was decided by Licensing Department of Public , ,
8 Service Riectric, various levels of management, supervisor, 9 manager, that it's about time that we must file an incident i 10 report on tlis, a report to the commission because if 11 Commission finds out, then we will be in a bad shape.
12, We were planning to go to the commission to 13 seek relief from that particular problem. And if we we.re
. 14 to go to the commission and tell them we have a problem, 15 then they would have asked us have we written an incident -
16 report.
17 .So in the final stage of this, an incident 18 report was written by Ken'Ogara. That is K-E-N, Ken, 19 Ogara, 0-G-A-R-As, He's the contract license engineer with 20 the Public Service Licensing D ,partment. p ;* -
21 This.particular incident report was being
-22 writtenTiIoraboutdpril21. On that day AIT; that is, 23 Augmented Inspection Teae, was at Salem. And then in the 24 final analysis,-where the licensing manager and mechanical 25 engineering manager along with quite a few number, 8 or 10, ,
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_ - . - ~ _ _ . . . _ . - - _ - - -
l 28 1 other ernployees sat down on late evening on that d:y.
t 2 And they basically stated -- and this is the ,
3 licensing manager -- that if they were to file this 4 incident report in the Control Room, nexti morning the ;
5 resident from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission will get 6 that incident report, &l-l2-V eteen-then in turn give that report to 7 theAITteam.hAITteamwastoreceivethisissue,willnot .
8 let salem start.
V 9
At that time frame the maximum emphasis wa geti 10 the units started. So the statement was made by the 11 licensing manager and mechanical engineering manager that 12, if we were to file this incident report, then we will not 13 get a unit start for next four to six weeks. We will by 14 still shut down. That's several million dollars of, lose 15 for Public Service Electric and Gas.
16 Ifweverbfoundthatwewithdreworwedidnot 17 disclose what we knew at that time, then it will be a few 18 hundred thousand-dollar fine by Nuclear Regulatery 19 Commission. ' ~
g-20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And who said t. _., hat?
21 MR. IASMKARI: This was reported to me by the 22 EngineerTfig Departm d system engineer for.my sys' tem, but 23 the statement was made --
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Ken Ogara?
25 MR. LASHKARI: No. But Ken Ogara attended that NEAL R. GROSS CDURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER $
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29 1 meeting, but --
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, who was the person . ;
1 3 that told you the statement was made?
4 MR. LASNKARI Okay. The statement to me was ]
5 conveyed on telephone call by Mahesh Danak.
6 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN Spell that, please. j
+
7 MR. LASHKARI M- -H-E-S-H, Mahesh4? And Danak ,.
~8 is D-A-N-A-K. He's c herpartinEngineeringDepartment 9 to the saine level or same type of system as I'm within the 10 r.tation inside the fence. ,
11 -INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And he heard who make this .i 12 statement? ,
. 1 13 MR. LASHKARI: He heard. And he made that.
14 call, and he went over the whole issus. And as soon as I i 15 heard that, I went to my supervisor.
16 INVESTIGATOP. LOGAN: Well, wait a minute. You 17 said that Mr. Danak heard someone say that if they reported 18 to the NRC, it would mean an extended shutdown, as opposed 19 to.only being fined se.veral thousand dollars later if it
- 20 was discovered? c:o ,
21 MR. LASHKARI: That is correct. That is a 22 stat'emen7which was dnveyed to me, by-Mahesh panak to me, 23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And who did he hear make 24 that statement?
^
25 MR. LASHKARI: It was Thompson. I'm missing NEAL R. GROSS.
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30 1 his first name. Frank Thompson. He is the licensing 2 manager. -
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: So Danak heard Thompson, 4 the Licensing Manager, make that statement? And Danak, in 5 turn, telephoned you and told you that Thompson made that 6 statement?
7 MR. LASHKARI: That's correct. F ,
8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Go ahead.
9 MR. LASHKARI: That by itself and a statement 10 of that kind, an activity of that kind, is not permitted 11 -
where you are withholding from Nuclear Regulatory 12 Commission Augmented Team Inspection jam. They have a 13 ongoing investigation, and they should get all the facts 14 without restrictions such as these.
15 And I'm sure Nuclear Regulatory Commission has 16 regulations prohibiting any material information which is 17 withheld from the Commission in carrying out its functions..
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I'm sure it does, too. As 19 a matter of fact g it does.
. 20 Let me just find out a little bit nitir,e about .
21 this situation. Certainly it's importe nt that any time the .
22 imC'lookYat an iss , that there is full' disclosure of all 23 material facts related to that issue.
24 What was going on? What kind of a meeting was 25 this that Frank Thompson and Mahesh Danak were attending NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
p
- mm ,, . . . . . ~ , , _ . .......
31 [
1 that~ Thompson made this meeting.-- l s
2 MR. LASHKARI Okay. ,
i
-3 -
INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I'a sorry.
4 made this statement?
I 5 NR. IA8HKARI:
I'll explain to you very well. l 6 on that day, m or about April 21st, first thing in the i
. 7 morning I received by fax a draft of' incident report from 8 Ken Ogara. I reviewed it myself.
9 I made few comments, minor changes, sent him 10 back. And we had several conversations between me and Ken 11 ogara on that particular morning. And was -- arrangements 12, . were made that Ken will'come in on or about lunchtime, -
13 12:00 o' clock, and I will escort him, I will go with him, 14 to the-Control Room and this incident report will be 15' reported to the Control Room.
16 This particular issue had been going on for 17 more than a. year. Several times the licensing engineer, 18 Ken Ogara, and his supervisor felt that any more delays in 19 reporting this as,an incident report will be, bad for Public 20 service Electric and Gas. And there were many,;.many heated
, m. -
21 discussions between the Licensing Department, the
-22 dngiheerfflh.Departmed,whichis,again,partofEEPB, 23 Engineering and Plant Betterment, Department.
24 I myself was on the receiving end of this 25 particular incident report. Originallyj as you will see in
^
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32 1 the attachments, there is a incident report almost nine 2 months to a year earlier or maybe even earlier, which I ,
3 wrote, and I was going to report that particular same issue 4 reported to the control Room because we were already in 5 violation of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission rules and 6 regulations, but my supervisor said that "No. You do not
.7 file this. It's not your job. You turn over all-the .
8 papirwork to the Engineering Department and let them make a 9 long-term' assessment of the situation."
10 And that is what I did. I turted over all my 11 paperwork to Engineering Department, whiqh includes the 12, Licensing Department. And then we had several meetings on 13 the subject.
14 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Who is Ogara's supervisor?
15 Is that Thompson?
16 MR. LASHKARI: There is one more person in the 17 middle, Ken Qgara's supervisor. His name at this time I'm ,
18 at a loss to remember, but'between Ken Ogara as a licensing 19 engineer, there is a supe,rvisor and then there is a 20 manager. :.-
-6 21 The manager had been briefed by the supervisor.
22 ThehupefvlsorhimseLNwantedtoreportthis,andhejust 23 did not want the Nuclear Regulatory Commission wrcth that 24 why was thic issue delayed for so long.
25 INVESTIGATOR. LOGAN: So Ogara's supervisor NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIDERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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33 1- agreed with Ogara, and they both presented that to l
2 Thompson. And Thompson didn't agree with them when -- .
l l
3 MR. LASHKARI: Well, previous to that morning 4 Thompson had agreed. Otherwise the licensing enginaer will l l
5 pot write an incident report. The -- previous to that day j 6 Thompson had agreed to report this, i 7 And as it proceeded further on that"particular ,
8 day, it became a special day because AIT, Augmented l 9 Inspectioit Team, was in town there at the plant. And if it 10 was any other day, they would have filed that report, 11 incident report. ,
- 12. INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And,you said that several 13 months earlier you prepared a similar incident report and ,
14 it's one of the attachments to your letter. Which, 15 attachment is that?
- 16 MR. LASHKARI: Let me tr's to locate the 17 attachment. .This is Attachment 6.
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. It's Attachment 6.
19 It's de ced 1-31-9A, time ,4:00 p.m. , and it's signed by you.
,. 20 MR. LASHKARI: That's correct. I prpsented 21 this incident report to my supervisor. There is no place 22
- _pse gTM TT) SIGM WOT PRcCET>URE REQUlAES '
ffl5 AVFPDIK >
And your supervisor's 23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:
44 24 name, again, was?
25 HR. LASHKARI: John Wiedeman. .
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34 i
1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
2 MR. IASHKARI: John -- -
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Presented this to Mr.
4 Wiedeman. Then go ahead. What did he do't 5 MR. LASHKARI: He basically told me that 6 " Forget it. This can shut dows the present running units.
7 Let's have the whole issue go out to the Engineer ~ing and ,.
8 Plant Betterment Department," which is outside of fence, 9 "and let'the licensing people make a determination are we 10 in violation, are we in -- having problem with the plant .
Il not complying with the regulation." So the whole issue was
- 12. turned over to, including this incident report, turned over 13 to the Licensing Department. .
14 There were several meetings during that interim 15 period. There were various letters which were written, and 16 they're all attached here, which showe that e 17 Engineering and Plant , t ey det ned that 18 Salem was in violation of its own design basis and to get a 19 relief from the ts owne design basis, Salem was under
,, 20 regulations requir o go to the commission anC geek that 21 relief.
22 However, he person who handled that issue, 23 again Mahesh Danak, who wrote the letter to the station 24 that we have a problem, went ahead and took advantage of a 25 Copf case. Now,6c se gave relief to a particular AT .
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35 1 plant before.
2 And he also was reminded by me and Licencing .
3 Department that the case applicability is determined 4 by Nuclear Regulatory ommission. When it's not -- each 5 licensee is supposed to go to Nuclear Regulatory 6 Commission, not -- there is no blanket approval.
7' If they approve, Nuclear Regulatory: Commission 8 approves, a case, then every licensee can use it.
9 This was hot the case in this case. Particular licensee in 1
10 orida had a problem -- had the problem. And Nuclear
,11 Regulatory Commission approved that case used for 12, that licensee. Pj 13 For us to be at Salem to be covered by that ,
- (
14 case , it was a disc tion of Nuclear Regulatory 1T 15 Commission. And Nuclear Regulatory Commission did not like 16 givingthatpermissioNtomanymorelicensees.
17 . INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. And which 18 attachments were you referring to?
19 MR. kASHKARI,: There is a letter, and it's 20 Attachment -- it is Attachment 1A. It's time frame is 21 December 30, 1993 and -- ,
And that'.s from Howard 22 INVESTIGNORLOGAN:
23 Berrick --
24 MR. LASHKARI.: Right. That is --
25 INVESTIGATOR LOGANt -- to F. Schrarr?
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H 36
?. MR. IASHKARI: Right. Now, Howard Berrick is 2 the supervisor. Basically, his name is writton, but the .
3 letter is really written by Mahesh Danak, as you will seeldt 4 This letter was prepared by a contract employee 5 called,K1 and h th)nk that is my recollection.
6 She was a contract employee coming in from Westinghouse.
7 And she felt we had a problem. And?she went ,
8 ahead and analyzed in this particular letter that salem did 9 have a problem, but towards the end of the letter, they 10 said we have two options: that is, one, take advantage of 11 i this, the court case; or limit number of reactor coolant 1% pumps operating. Even with the two operating reactor 13 coolant pumps, it was indicated we still had problem. .
14 So basically when Licevaing reviewed this 15 letter, they agreed with me that an incident report is due, t
16 it should be prepared, it should be filed.
17 Ana that is why it waMdr daysafter 12-30-93 the 18
$/MY$
incident report was written and presented to my supervisor 19 to be presented t,o the.Cpntrol Room. But supervisors have
,, 20 a discretion, q .
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And that's the incident 22 repo'rttNtwejust ferred to earlier dated January 31, 23 '947 24 MR. LASHKARI: Etat is correct.
25 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Go ahead.
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~ ~ ' " '
37 1 MR. LASHKARI So in this case there was a ht 2 of work done. In fact, this particular issue got started .
3 by me because Vice President of Nuclear Operations, Stan 4 Labruna, he sent down a note saying that Salem System 5 Engineering should investigate this problem because he read 6 in one of these industry briefs, which he I guess revilarly 7 received, -- and that is my Attachment 4 -- where-it was .
8 reported that 1 m#,d e WW a 2 had problems related with this LTOP 9 system. '
f 10 LTOP and POPS, these are same systems, low 11 temperature pressure M /t-h- W far rrd pressume protection system.
12 That's LTOP. And some of the people at Salem, they call it 13 POPS, that pressurizer ressure rotection system.
- A -fi4 ff ..
14 However, in this particular case, when he read 15 tnis, he instructed his general manager worked for him; 16 that is, Cal Vondra, " Investigate."
17 cal Vondra sent it down to my manager, Mike ,
la Morroni, "Are we okay?"
19 And Igy manage,r sent it down to my supervisor,
, 20 John Wiedeman, "Have our system engineer contach the w E&PB 21 to see if we also have a problem." .
AndthatNswhatIdid.
22 I started working with 23 Engineering people, looking at this issue. Then we found 24 that Westinghouse has reported that to us as a problem.
25 Nuclear Regulatory Commission had issued a information NEAL R. GROSS 4lOURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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38 1 notice; that is, 93-58. A lot of other plants had reported 2 to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission what problems they .
3 had.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And that's the information 5 notice that's your Attachment 57 6 MR. LASHKARI That is correct.
It4tRfAfflk/iR 7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Go ahead.- So this :
f-8 issue re.'.ates to, whether it's LTOP or POPS relates to, at 9 low temperatures; that is, less than 312 degrees, that if 10 you pressurize, over-pressurize, the reactor, it can 11 rupture into pieces.
12, That is a concern for the carbon 443 steel or 13 alloy steel vessels, which generally can be brittle fai. lure 14 due to radiations which they receive over time during the 15 operation. And it constantly increases the fdl L 16 ductility temperature. And during nperation if u 17 over-pressuriza at those temperatures, you basically are 18 risking the potential for'a brittle failure of reactor 19 vessel. , ,
20 If you run into an event where at low-temp.
21 pressure you were prese.1rized, Nuclear Regulatory 22 DomAissitEi has reguldions as part of the technical 23 specification of the plants requiring a special report to 24 be submitted which will document that. Even after having .
25 all pressurized once or maybe more,'there is a still NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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39 1 margin. And reactor vessel will not rupturo into brittle 2 rupture._ ,
~$ This is a very significant safety-issue.
4 Westinghouse has worked on it several months and years.
P 5 NRC, Nuclear Regulatory Commission, has-worked on it.
6 salem has been delaying taking any actions on it for more
"=-'
'/ than two years. .
8 And this is one of those events or type of 9 problems which I ran into that my supervisor felt that I 10 was too conscious of the Nuclee.r Regulatory Commission 11 rules,-regulations, et cetera, and I was constantly writing 12, up incident reports'or safety proble,ms and not pretty much 13 tried to live with some of those things, which can allow 14 the power plant operation. From this --
15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And yev feel that these 16 two incidents were two incidents which management used 17 against you in terms of deciding who would be fired and who 1C would be retained?
19 MR.IpSHKARI: That's corrf:.ct. Basically it
, 20 was a supervisory selection. c ..
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Were there any.other 22 incident O here you N d raised ccncerns - -
23 MR. LASHKARI: Oh, yes. I have several of 24 these detailed. There were several other technical 25 specification, which .h a license to operate the facility. ,
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40 1 Any violation of technical-specification is a violation of 2 the license. That is not tolerated by Nuclear kegulatory- .
3 Commissian.
4 I had talked with my supervisor, showed him
~
5 where the problems were. Basically he didn't want to hear 6 those. Later on his explanati6n was that I was wrong and 7 he's right and there is no problem. ;
8 Then 1 said "Let me talk to Westingen;so 9 because Westinghouse is expert on these sections of the 10 technical specifications." Originally these technical .
11 specification sections were written by Westinghouse helping
. 11 out the licensee; that is, Public Service for Salem, 13 His attitude was " Don't even bother to go back 14 to Nuclear Regulatory Commission." But I felt my 15 obligation becatse number of months, number of days the .
s 16 problem goes unreported, that is a risk for my employer, 17 Public Service Electric and Gas.
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: So Mr. Wiedeman told you 19 not to go to the ERC with these concerns?
, 20 MR. LASHKARI: That'is correct. Thqge two 21 issues he basically told me that "They are not issues, and Al they'areToneofyou concern, although you are systems 23 they are your system." But he just did not believe that I et%=
l ,7 3; 24 was correct.
L 25 I then was going to talk to Westinghouse NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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41 1 perc0n, tha lic;nSing cngincGr. And I did tsik to that 2 person at Westinghouse. He's the assigned licensing ~ .
3 engineer or the contact-person'for Public Service Electric 4 and Gas at Westinghouse.
5 He said for him to do any determination, even 6 if it's a'small' amount of time, I should basically write 7 down what the problem is, send him few pages of-attachments 8 from our specifications so that he can quickly take a look-9 at whether or not we have'that problem.
10 I made a fax -- and I have that fax with me 11 here today -- which I put'in on the fax machine. And I 12, dialed and dialed and dialed. And.it just never went 13 through. I dialed one more time. I left it for redial,and 14 left for home because I was in a car pool.
15 Somehow my supervisor came across to that fax 16 machine, picked up tho'se pieces of paper. And he wa.1 very 17 indignant. There is an attachment from my supervisor - The 9
18 last -- that is Attachment' 8. And he basically put that 19 fax page and a note from,him telling me "What are you
, 20 working on and why? Please provide an accountimJ of your 21 perception of your work assignment." .
22 '
Wh*fIsadthat,Iunderstoodthat,Johnwas 13 23 very angry n nie providing that little input to -
24 Westinghouse to' determine whether or not we have a problem 25 with our plant.
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42 1 INVESTIGATOR I'X;ANs And do you beva a copy of-2 that fax with you?
3 MR. LASHKARI: The copy of the fax? Yes.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Did you include it-with--
5 your letter?
6 MR. LASHKARI: No, I did not. I have that.
7 I've seen it yesterday. - = -
8 -INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, if you could give 9 that to me --
10 MR. LASHKARI: I will provide you a copy of 11 ,
that fax.
12 ,
INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -- before you leave?
13 Okay. ,
~
14 MR. LASHKARI: And I will also provide -- in 15 response to my supervisor of leaving that angry note, I 16 made up a list of all'of the jobs which I was doing for my 17 systems, my plant. I was not just wasting my time on this 18 safety problem.
19 I considered that to be my job,.taking care of 20 the license problem, the safety problems, the licensing 21 problems, with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. I 22 dropped tWe issue beEkuse of this' angry note.
23 He also left that left side of Attachment 8 and
-24 about those were the two issues which I was trying to fax 25 to Westinghouse, trying to make a determination with NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W.
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l 43 1: W:stinghouco thtt Salcm w23 ind ed hnving a prob 1cm. -
2 Those -- he wrote, you know,.that note.saying ,
3 "the secret agenda" and basically putting these on my desk 4 was indication to me that I',d better get in line. The 5 supervisor really didn't want me to continue to try to get 6 these problems resolved.
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I understand -this. It 8 says " Secret Agenda. RCS leak to TS from -- to issue 9 thermal p&per."
10 MR'. LASHKARI: " Thermal barrier."
11- INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: " Thermal barrier." I'm 12, sorry.
13 MR. LASHKARI: And the second issue is "PORV 14 went area 1.7 square inch versus 3.4 inches square of 15 Westinghouse fax." Now, that Westinghouse fax --
16 INVESTICATOR LOGAN: And who write this?
17 MR. LASHKARI: This is my supervisor, John 18 Wiedeman. His name appears on these both notes, and that
. 19 is Attachment 8. ..
~
, 20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I don't see hie- g ame on 21 this first note. -
22 MR. LAS I: Well, you see that. Maybe your 23 copy is not-vety good, but your --
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I see it's preprinted on
. 25 the bottom. Is that what you're referring to?
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,1= MR. LASHKARIt_WD11,7.thoso aro-mada,-pad 3,-for; each-person at Public. Service Electric and Gas.-
u
\
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: 'But I sen he'did' initial 4- the other:one. -
]
MR. ; IASHKARI :
5 Right. But, regardless of -
6 initial,.it is-his pad. He keeps that handy, and he keeps 7 on writing.all the messages:on his pad. This ds the way 8 people at Salem communicate. It doesn't really need a 9 signature'because you know who gave you this note from. ,
10 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I see. Okay. ,
- 11. ' MR. LASHICARI: So, basically, when he gave me
- 12. these two angry notes, I backed off.
13 -INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And he did give them both 14 to you?
15 MR. LASHKARI: He left it on my desk.- He gave e
16 me a message.
17 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:. Do you recognize the 18 handwriting on both of them as being his handwriting?-
19 MR. IfSHKARIt Yes, they are his handwriting.
, 20 I recognize them. Q m . _ _ _ 2 1 ~- -+ _After I got these notes, I reflected on the
+. L 22 sitdation. And I saiB I have done my job of bringing 'to my 23 supervisor. And-I'm-not going to go any further than this.
24 If he doesn't want me'to fax these problems and the Salem 25 wantsLto continue to violate its license, it's.his- -
t NEAL R. GROSS -
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w aa emp- m 5A,_ 4-m+2,1 4 .6Las+-Me.-K4 m~n,'a'6 n,A
-45 1- rc::ponsibility as wall. so I backed off.
~2 In about a month or two,:he somehow was' ,
- '3' communicating with the Westinghouse system engineer related 4 to some'other problem. At that time he asked Westinghouse 5l that "The problem related to the 'from,' you know, in' salem 6 technicalspecificationwhereitshouldhave'been'to,'_;b N 7 is-a typo? Somebody wrote down 'from.'" -a:-
l 8 Because of that "from," a different 9 interpretation was created for that flow leaving the 10 reactor coolant pump seal. That is, Number 1. seal leak 11 leaked out, in several instances performed to comply with 12, that particular technical specificat, ion. <
.13' And Salem was -- constantly for last 10-15 years was using a criteria to meet that s$dMEILLM everunce of 40 ,-f) 3 14 ~
15 gpm, the criteria being 40 gpm, 10 gpm from each reactor 16 coolant gump. And act'ual numbers in the plant are of the 17 order of one., one and a half gpm. So they added up 18 together. If they were only_four or five gpm, and the 19 limit is 45 gpm, they would never have a problem.
20 so when this particular problem was, picked up _
21 by an outside contractor, wher Salem procedures upgrade
.22 profact,*TDP it's caned, procedure upgrade project, PUP,_
23 .thea M+e ];:lre 4-n T ;;;.i A very large amount of
-24 contractors were brought in because Salem was constantly 25 having problems with its procedures.
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_ _ ~ . _ . _ _ _ _. ._ ___ _.____ _ . _ _ . _
-46 1
1- Wh2n thio ~particular contractor cnd myosif:
2' reviewed that-situation,-he had seen at North Anna and many
'~
-3_- other places that number-to'be meant to be:the seal-
- 4- injection flow
- Seal;injaction flow is between'6 and 13-5 gym. And it is in that ballpark of 10'gpm being supplied l 6 to each reactor coolant-pump. !
7 When you add those four reactor coolant ~ pump 8 flows, you're-very close to that limit or criteria d 0 LOCH 1-Id 9 gpm. Thdt 40 gpm is.used'in case.of a ,, r.c if you 10 have 40 gpm or greater flow in a normal plant operation and .
11 you get a reactor-c ' pt piping break or sone mejor-5 LOCd 12- accident laci.,. hat particular flows fron the reactor
-13 coolant will exceed the emergency cooling system iaximum
~
14 flows., which are specified in the license.
15 Now, I myself have been in the Control Room.
16 I've seen on occasions when those four pump seal injection 17 flows ware added together greater than 40 gpm.
18 I_immediately notified the senior that, even 19 though the procedure is not fixed yet, the license is not 20- fixed,- the technical specification is not fixed 7et, but I 21- know why the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has established, 22 why Westfiighouse has4stablished that 'particular limit of 23 40 gpm. And it applies to these four seal injection flowe.
24 Now, that particular problem I wanted to f 25 the license; that is,. technical specification, the NEAL R. GROSS
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47 1 procedures will be all fixed. Tho percon who dotceted 2 this, you know, in the PUP, procedure upgrade, procedure ,
3 writer, he was very frustrated when he 1 tit.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Who was that?
5 MR. LASHKARI: Howard. Howard. I'm not coming 6 up -- and this was a contractor brought in for a year or 7 two, a very competent person. The procedure upgrade 8 project manager at Salem will be able to provide the=name 9 of that persor' that is fi'rst name Howard who did most of 10 the reactor coolant system procedures. I may have the 11 name, and I'll try to call you back on that.
12 He received some of the memos from my 13 supervisor, John Wiedeman, stating an incorrect position 14 why that 40 gpm is there and there is no problem. And then 15 basically the procedures were again changed back to what .
16 they were for the last 10 or 15 years. The procedures were 17 not fixed. '
l 18 And at that time when I had brought this to his 19 attention that we need t,o fix this problem,. we had gone 20 back to our old ways. And we were continuing to violate 21- the intent behind those limitations in the Salem technical .
22 'specificNion. # -
{ 23 Now, on onst of the evenings at about -- after 24 work, about 5:30 or 6:00 o' clock, my supervisor, John
! 25 Wiedeman, came to my desk, my area. He said that he has l
l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 MHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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48 i I
1- had-a converestion with~ thio' particular expert in -
- I
-l
~2 Westinghouse. ,
-3 -INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Howard?~ ;
4 'MR. LASHKARI:- No.
- 5 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:. No._ This is Westinghou w ' ]
6 now.
i 7 'MR. LASHKARI: ' Westinghouse. - -
-8 . INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:_ This is not the 9 contracto'r.
10 MR. LASHKARI: Right.
11 . INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
12 MR. LASHKARI: He has had a conversation with-
.13 this particular person, and he has told that Charles .
14 Lashkari-is correct; that is, the limit has been put in f3r 15 that-reason.
16 INVESTIGAh0RLOGAN: And when did Wiedeman tell 17 y6u this?
- 18. MR. LASHKARI
- That is listed.in my letter _here 19 as an item. My r,ecollection is of the orde.r of somewhere 20 October '93. m-121 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what item number is
~
22 that? # -
23 ~ MR.- LASHKARI: That is Item Number 17. In.
- 24. trying-to understand this particular problem for the Salem 25 license I suggest,that you talk to Charlie Marshall.or-NEAL R.' GROSS COURT REPORTERS ANC' TRANSCRSERS -
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49 1 comeon3 in tGehnical.cido, cnd th:,y will bg able to chcw.
'2 you where exactly that "to" and "from," if such a strong .
3 word is there and then by putting in "from," they meant 4 "from" means something which is coming out of or coming 5 from.
6 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Do you know if Charlie 7 Marshall has looked at this issue? - -
8 MR. LASHKARI: I'm sure Charlie Marshall has 9 looked at this issue.
10 INVES Q ,ATOR LOGAN: But you don't know?
11 MR. LASHKARI: No, I do not.
12, INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. '
13 MR. LASHKARI: But someone else under John ,
This morning when I wanted the 14 White may have looked at.
15 status of these items, I was told by John White that 16 Charlie Marshall is not only resident working on, -- there 17 is a substan.tial amount of issues here -- he's using other 18 resources where he can get them because Charlie Marshall is 19 very busy with a regular resident, senior resident,
=20 inspector work there. -
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: All right. Were there any 22 other tecli spec violakions that you --
23 MR. LASHKARI: Yeah. I-was going to just 24 reference this particular one. He, my supervisor, John 25 Wiedeman, when he told me that I was right and he was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS :
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50
=1 wrong, th;n ha acked me th2t I:chould .not giva-in that 2 easy, that quick, I should persist and I should try to .
3~ continue to fight back and tell-him what'is wrong and needs
- 4- to be -- you know,Lneeds to change;his mind.
5 Now, I found it very, very difficult, John:
6- Wiedeman a very, very strong personality, almost like 7 military type of a person, very difficult if he makes up 8 his mind.
1 9 So on that day when he told me this, he also 10 told me something very important.- He said that he was ,
11- earlier harsh becaus_e his manager, his supervisor, who is s
1:t . my manager,-Mike Morroni, told him to keep a good rein or 13 control on me because he felt; that is, my manager, Mike 14 Morroni, that in 1992 both units'w re shut down, a major 15 shutdown,foremergencych ng systept problems.
16 They were emergency c ling system.
17 Testing wad . Numbers were added wrong. Pretty soon 18 when I was-pulling out these numbers from past test data, I 19 came across, whic,h was.a. violation of the license.
20 I had obligation, and I reported it to my.
21 supervisor, who immediately asked me-to write an incident 22 feport. ~ind A then bod units were shut down for more than 23- three to six months. There was a major disaster in.1992.
'24 There were -- lot of other problems were -
25 detected after the units.irere shut down. The manager felt NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRt8ERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N.W.
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I 51 1- that if I had not detected-that problem, we would be fine 2 in 1992, we would not have been shut down for six months. .
3- He felt that my supervisor, John.Wiedeman, should continue 4 to watch that I just don't k'eep on digging up problems.
5 And it was never my intent to dig. It was a 6 problem which I saw because somebody else was asking me at 7 Westinghouse. They needed numbers, and I was good contact 8 for that person.
9 I took time off, went in the reels and copied 10 pages a year or two, three, five years old. And it tcok me 11 extra work to service that particular person. And I wanted 12, to do that because he provided similar professional 13 support. Whatever I was doing, it _ was in the managemerit 14 needs at PSE&G in Salem.
15 So even if initially I re- have reported that 16 as a problem and the t$ nits were shut down for six months, I 17 do not have any regrets. It was my obligation. If I find 18 a problem, then it's my obligation to report it.
19 But I,was told by my supervisor c in that kind of 20 confidential conversation at the end of the day % at I 21 s'ould not be digging out the problems, and that is what we 22 feltheEdundmyfadobe,thatwhenhehimselfhadstated.
23 "There's no problem. And that's the end of the" -- my 24 involvement, why did I try to send that fax?
25 And basically I told him that "You're right now NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005 (202) 2344433
. - - - . . - . - , . . .. - . . . . . . . - . . . . . - ~ . - . - ...
52 t
seking.me.to c:nvinco you.--And:that little picco of-paper,
. ?1.-
2- having-gone'to Westinghouse --:and WestinghouseLcould have- :
In.one-day you=willLhave-changed'your mind.
.3 come;back.
l4- Butinow it's(six months later."
- - 5 lINVESTIGATORLLOGANt And'when did this 16 confession on-the part of your supervisor come down to you, f ..
7J the'one from Pt. int 177 When did he.tell you that you were 8 right and he was wrong? .
9 MR. LASHKARI: My recollection is that that.
10 conversation took place approximately end of '93.- This .
11 problem --
.12 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Wait, wait. Took place in 13- the.end of '93~, but your incident report is dated January 14 of '94.
15 MR. LASHKARI: That is a different incident 16 report.
17 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. So the whole thing 18 has been resolved, this wtiole situation was resolved, by 19 the time you had to then,do this incident report, which 20 your supervisor didn't accept? m
. 21 - MR. LASHKARI: No. That particu1Ar incident 22 feport yo6Irelookin/at, Attachment 6,thatisaperhaps 23 --
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: It's the same supervisor 25 that we're-dealing with?
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-li . MR~.- LASHKARI: ~ -That's correct, but --- -
f 2- INVESTIGATOR-LOGAN:. So on-_the one: hand, he's- ,
3 telling-you " Charlie, you're right. You should-have been-l 14 -- more forceful.
- You should have made me believe." And~then ,
5 within a month of the time he tells you that, you' write an _
6 incident report, and-he trashes-it? :
7 'MA.-LASHKARI: Right. - - -
-8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
]
[ 9 'MR.-LASHKARI:' This problem I -- that is, Item
) 10' Number 17, related to the violation of'the technical +
specification limitation of-40 gpm of seal injection flow, l 11~ _
i 12,- was turned over to a licensing engineer. My supervisor 13 felt that-this way may be better for me:because I will ,not 14 be tasked, looked at by my manager that'"Here is one more 15 problem I've caused for him." So he felt that transfer it 16 to Licensing and let thom take care of it.
17 When I left on July 18th I had seen this i 18 particular licensing engiileer on or about July 5th-6th time 19 frame after that p rticular incident on the_ weekend, on the i-20- reactor coolant-clamp, m
-21. And I asked him "What is tne status?" Many, sany time'si I asked hbIh "What is the status of ,this issue?"
22-
~23 He basically kept on saying that "We're looking for a time 2'4 ' frame when both units are shut down. Then we want to
- 25- recognize it so that we just don't bring the units down." .
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54 )
4 .
1 So --
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What's this engineer's ,
3 name?
4 HR..LASHKARI: His name is Steve Manon, 5 M-A-N-0-N. He is a licensed senior reactor operator. He 6 knows seriousness of the situation. Still he has delayed, 7 delayed, and delayed, basically the basis that Westinghouse 8 is.still working on.
9 This thing doesn't need work more than one or 10- two hours, either by Westinghouse or by him. And that is 11 . the end of the thing. And you report it.
la You provide a revision to your technical 13 specification where you change the "from" to "to." You 14 change the procedures so that you measure what is going 15 into, going to, che reactor plant pump. And those are .
16 Flows 9, 10, 9, 10, G rands permanent. And you add them 17 together.
18 As long as they don't exceed 40 gallons per 19 minute, you're not violating the accident analysis. If at 20 any time -- if you're comparing them to anotherdlow the t 21' is one gpm, one and a half gpm, if they increase somehow
. 22 and you c[ci from, say 5 gallons per minute to 10 gallons 23 per minute, you still have met 40 gallons per minute limit, 24 but the seal injection flow could have gone up to 12 and 13 25 gallons per minute.
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55 1 Now, if one reactor coolant pump receives at- . -
2 13,'then other one should receive like_7 gallons per ,
l 3 minute. So that when you add them all for pumps closed, it 4 still is limited to 40 gallons per minute. And that is 5 still okay.- Your accident analysis is analyzed with a 6 combined flow going to all four reactor coolant pumps at 40 7 gallons per minute.
8 Now, the way the Salem is doing, -- and I saw 9 the plant' in the control room, where the seal injection 10 flows exceeded 40 gallons per minute. And basically at 11 that time they we e outside their accident analysis. If
- 12. the loc happen on that moment that day, their 13 flows would have been greater through these reactor coolant 14 pumpsealsstarvingwhatwentintothereytorcorefrom 15 the same ECCS pump. That wus a his. That was the 16 idea of this.
17 I have left Public Service Electric and Gas on 18 July 18th. This problem with the licensing engineer is 19 more than a year ,in his hands. And more, documentation 20 should be on the file with him, which will indicate which 21 exact date he received it from-the Salem station system
^
22 engineer,CharlesLadkari. '
23 And I would like to make one more point,.that I 24 may be lacking in some of the attachments, some of the 25 -documentation. That 10-minute exit did not help.
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56 1 T n-minuti exit just cbout did not cllow ma to pull out. .I 2 basically had few pieces of these papers which I was able ,
3_ to get that out through-a later on shipment by PSE&G.
^ '
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: All right. Were there any 5' other tech spec issues that you raised that labeled you as 6 someone who should be dismissed?
7 MR. LASHKARI: Well, the one very -serious- l 8 issue, as Attachment 8, the secret agenda, indicates; that 9 is, PORV v'ent area, 1.7 a square inch versus 3.4 a square 10 inch issue. That issue is discussed here in this list of 11 issues that I'm going to try to provide. That is Item 12 Number 10.
13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. .
~
14 MR. LASHKARI: Basically, on or about '87 to 15 '88-time frame, I received a memo by fax from the vendor, 16 Copes vulcan, which indicated that even though the valve; 17 that is, PORV valve; that is, power operator relief valves 18 in this particular system, reactor coolant system, their 19 area of flow is supposed,to be 3.14 a square inch. That 20 is, if you were to open Salem technical specification, you 21 would see that technical specification basically looking 22 for3.14'i'squareindb. -
23 Now, the time frame, the '70s, when some people 24 wrote this technical specification, either at NRC or at -
25 Westinghouse or at PSE&G, they refer to that it is a NEAL R, GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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57 1 two-inch nominal cizm wall,.two-inch nominal oizo, '
, p3 2_ basically _if you-take a two-inch, say, area-is by [our .
3 Dr . -- D's in this case two-inch. So that comes out to by-4 itself is a 3.14. And two2 is a four. Now, that four in 5 the' denominator four cancels out. And basically 3.14 comes 6 from a nominal size assumption of the valve. I 7 When the vendor informed that he has-inside the 8 valve, there is a plug and the plug lifting. height 9 determinet the area, basically it is an area which is a 10 function of how high the plug will lift. If it is only 11 half-inch lifting, then it is an area of cylinder which is 12, half-inch high by the diameter of th,e plug.
13 If this happens to be a smaller number, your 14 inlet and outlet of the valves and the pipe didn't come .
15 into it maybe two inch high D, but it really doesn't 16 matter. This is the dost restricting the plug inside the 17 valve.
18 So basically we found out that time that we 19 have valves at Salem at -- which have only 1.716 a square 20 inch. This is what was sent to me by copes vuloan, the 21 vendor.
22 '
" Later on/once this issue became formally 23 transferred to Engineering Department and Licensing 24 Department, they. started asking similar type of information 25 from the vendor. And next time the vendor sent a flow area ,
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^
i 58 1 of the order of 2.2 a square inch.
2 And my recollection is that when I called the ,
l AndthestatEd 3 vendor,:he defended that 2.2 a square inch. j 4 that this perhaps 1.7 was a mistake by whoever that 5 engineer was who communicated this.
6 For the lift of the plug, which is specified on 7 the Salem drawings, it would have been about 2.2 a square .
-8 inch. But, still, regardless, 2.2 or 1.7, it is less than
~
9 3.14. 3.14 is being violated in the-Salem technical 10 specification.
11 That particular problem we were able to'for a My supervisor was informed.
- 12. while operate. We were able 13 to operate with assumptions that both power operator relief 14 valves would open so that you would have a combined area 15 from both PORVs of greater than 3.14.( W
. h 16 So that is under normal M opeb,ation, you can 17 ensure that both are functional. However, in case of 18 nuclear industry standards, these systems are designed for 19 single failures. You can have any number of events in 20 which a one valve may fail to open. And if it:does, then 21 you have provided less flow area than is required by Salem 22 analysi [ '
23 In fact, Salem has had one power operator 24 *slief valve fail to open, all o Makimain 25 hth+n#n.
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. ?
- 1:; to:open'their power operator relief valvo and drop tha-
- 2 pressure on the-reactor coolant below the secondary side so ,
3 that reactor coolant will_not-continue to outflow through 4 this rupture, but they _ found:that both power operator
-5' relief valves'did not work.
~6 At Salem resident from NRC,-Steve:Pindale, is-7 very familiar with that issue. There.have been many, many incidents where both power' operator relief valves just-9 didn't open. It's basica'lly it's got a -rubber diaphragm.
10 Andfif rubber diaphragm tears or something happens, then.-
11 -- it's not able to lift-it open.
.12. - And we had in time frame '90;to '92 major- '
13 problems with rubber-diaphragms in these power operator.
14 relief valves until we were able to find a better-material
- 15 ~ and better maintenance and better procedures to address and 16 replace these every outage so that there is a better
-17 reliability of these valves to function when they are ,
18 required to function. ;
19 Lately. they 14 ave- not failed, but there is a record at Salem where these power operator relief-valves, 21 both of_them,-also have faile,d. One of them has failed.
22
- ' If'youwNetoreviewthetechnical 23- specification ~for these valves, it's got' Paragraphs A. If
. 24 one valve-fails to open, then you_would-use the other valve 25 or open-a 3.14 a: square inch opening.: ;
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60 1 Now, th3 n xt parcgrCph, it s3y3-il both of th3 2 power operator relief valve fail, then you've got an very ,
3 quick response. And it is asking for opening of 3.14 a
~~-
."'s4 4 square inch opening. And there is no 3.14 a square inch 5 opening.
6 There are basically three types of things which 7 can open and provide the relief of the pressure-in the 8 reactor coolant system. That is, three large six-inch 9 each, three' pressurizer safety valves. If you can somehow 10 open them, then you can blow down very quickly, very fast.
11 . But they're governed,by the spring. So there is no way the 12 operators have any actions to open them.
. 13 The second one is a power operator relief .
14 valve. That is what is being assumed in that particular 15 specification, saying if one fails, if both fail, then it 16 is really looking for'an action to open a -- open a vent 17 opening within size of 3.14 a square inch.
18 Now, when I want back to Westinghouse and I 19 stated this as a problem,, they said "We don.'-t care whether 20 you punch a hole in the reactor coolirn system piping. We 21 just feel that you need to open a 3.14 square inch 22 opening."" )' [
23 Out in the plant, the part option is opening 24~ the reactor head vent valves, but they have a very, very 25 small orifice. And their valve size may be one inch, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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61 1- tha crifica rcatricts th2 flow from them to be only 3/32nd-2 inch opening,: which.'cannot give-you even- a one-inch, square ,
3 inch, opening.
4 So right'now, as the present technical 5 specifications stand, Salem has a problem. And I've tried 6 to pcint that out to the management that that 3.14 square 7 inch technical specification as provided in'the Salem'is 8 unenforceable. It's not an action available to the 9 operators'.
10 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: You've also discussed this 11 with Mr. Marshall and Mr. White?
12 MR. LASHKARI: I have discussed this. And it 13 is as stated here in this letter. .
14 INVESTIGA;JR LOGAN: Okay. I want to go off 15 the record for a minute. -
16 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the 17 record at 7:53 p.m. and went back on the record 18 at 7:58 p.m.)
19 INVES,TIGATOR, LOGAN: Let's go op and talk about 20 Point 5 of your_ letter and talk about a tech spec viola. tion 21 by Engineering and Operations. Can you explain this one a 22 l'ittle biE, please, kint 5 on Page 57 -
.23- MR. LASHKARI: In this case we were having-the 24 leakage-on safety valves. And that leakage was more than 25 what our technical specifications would allow us to go on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCHIBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W.
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~- 62 line or, start to fix.- -
2 So it was.suggestedLthat maybe there-isfa ,_ 3
)
- 3 problem with one of the-supports. And we had: changed one 4 or two times those' safety valves. ,And they kept.on 5 leaking-feven, after being replaced.
6 Then.some of the plants have had -- and this-
.7-- was reported in the news from industry that a support when , ,
-8 it was wrong position which_did not provide enough support on the di'scharge side of the piping was putting undue loads 9- ,
10: on the valve. It' basically twisted somewhat the disc '
11 position. And'because of that support problem, the valve-
- 12. was found! leaking.
13 So the support group person, he decided -- at 14 about-6:00 or 7:00 o' clock, when-I was leaving myself the 15 plant, I ran into him at the guard house. He was going in
, 16 prepared with one or two more.other guys to go into the 17 plant, inside the containment, and check out his supports.
18 That being the case, he-briefed me on what he 19- was looking for or what'be was going to be doing. .And they 20: went on. When they made inspections of these stIpports, 21 they found that one of the pins,;which-is connected to this
~'
22' particular-support, s already pulled out halfway. This 23- is a pin'maybe of the diameter of, say, one-inch diameter, 24- which is going to allow the support to function as 25 designed.
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63 1 Now, cince this particulor pin was already out-2 halfway, it could also fall off-if:it was not inspected on ,
3 that day because ends of the supports is supposed to have
-4 clips or clamps. And that clump was missing. If the clamp 5 would be on this particular-pin, then the pin would-not 6 move inside this particular support, but thr.t pin was found 7 to be missing. - - -
8 At about 10:00 p.m. on that-day, a-call was 9 made, says "We have detected a problem with a 10 safety-related equipment. What we call that particular-11 safety valve, operable or not operable?"
12, The supervisor of the support group who that 13 person worked for was contacted. And at about 12:00 p.;n.
^
14 midnight, that particular engineering person made the call 15 to the station that that particular pin is a consumable 1,6 item. It's not a safety-related or it's not important 17 cnougit. So if it fell off, it really doesn't mean much.
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Who made that 19 determination? , , ,
20 MR. IASHKARI: That is a supervisor-in 21 Engineering and Plant Betterment who is in charge of 22 dupport gEoup. And N s name is Don Longo.-
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
24 MR. LASHKARI: Having made that decision, the 25 plant fixed, tried to fix, that clip. They did not find ,
NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCNBERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE N W.
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64 1 that clip eacily. But th;y ct 1030t moved th2t pin co.that 2 it was where it was supposed to be. ,
3 When I came in in the morning, I heard from the ,
4 P.1.anning Department that this became an issue overnight. I
-5 talked to the control Room and started working on the --
6 this is.almost after the weekedd. And there was 7 substantial amount of time had already passed.- -
8 When I looked at -- I was informed of this 9 issue at & bout 9: 00 a..m. in the morning. I went to the 10 Control Room and immediately told the senior supervisor who .
11 was in charge of running these units and making a 12, dete'rmination as to the operability that some issues in 13 some areas, titey don't understand. The operators and .
~~
14 senior operators, they depend on Engineering to make the 15 recommendations of their engineering background to let them 16 know where Engineering stood.
17 So I as the system engineer told him that in 18 this particular case, where this pin was found to be and 19 where this clip was missing, this could have.resulted in 20 the loss of that pin in case we had an earthquake.at that 21 moment in time.
'22 '
~
So in thed case, this particular support, this 23 particular valve,-should be declared inoperable. Now, if 24 you declare that inoperable, the unit can't stay in that 25 temperature. There is a 15 minutes' time allowed by the NE/.' R. GROSS CXXJRT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N.W.
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65 1- technical specification where within 15 minutes, it either 2 becomes operable, you fix the valve,.or you cool down. ,
3 Now, they were in more than 10-12 hours plus at that moment 4 in time.
S I was told to go back to the NT7966JH/FTM g f Who told you? I 6 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:
7 MR. LASHKARI: The senior shift supervisor.
8 He's a Greek. And I'm trying to -- MariGs is his last Well, Marids is his first name.
9 name. And it's always a 10 difficult last name. I'd rather not state that last --
11 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. What did he tell
- 12. you?
13 MR. LASHKARI: He told me that I should go and 14 talk to the night shift outage manager --
15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Who was that?
16 MR. LASHKARI: That was Richard Werdan.
17 - and I should go and talk to those guys 18 because they were-the contact with the outside engineering; 19 that is, Don Longo's group and everything was recorded by 20 them when what things were being received and basically 21 that outage shift manager was receiving instructions from 22 ingineerf[g,which1/thesupportgroupoutside.
23 Now, in this case I very much took this 24 position because I was chastised on.another occasion where 25 I had not acted because we in the Salem system engineering NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W.
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.. .-. . ~ . . .- - . . . . . . - - _ _ - . . ~ . - ..
)
66 1- grcup'within the station-do not-hava dctailo-~ofJths-2 suppo.c, responsibilities for the: support design stays with ,
- 3. - the' support group. '
i
~4 And in that particular case,-I went to the
-5 support group, did not get that support,'and made myself my
-6: engineering judgment that it was an equipment:which;was:
_7 operable.-
8' I was formally ~ reprimanded. And that may, in 9 fact, be'one of the reasons why_I was selected to-be 10 terminated on this:one.
11 ' . INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Why were you formally 12, reprimanded?
That particular case wac we were 4 .
13 MR. LASHKARI:
. 14 in the refueling outage on Unit 1. And there are two 15 ventilation fans which. provide the air to the fuel handling
-16 building.
17 Out of those two fans, a -- one of the worker 18 happens to flash his flashlight. And he saw a crack on one 1
19 -- of the legs. The,, leg is,an angle item, like one and a 20 half-inch by one and a half-inch. "~
2 11 There are about four legs. And one of these
- L.
legs had a crack a114.hrough, all.around. ~But even in the
~
22-23 - crack. position,Jthe weight of.that particular leg was still 24 being transferred to that lower portion and down.to the-L25 floor.
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67 1 Wh n I looked Ct that particulcr crcck cn that 2 leg, which is equipment support, I looked at that and ,
3 started dispositioning in the afternoon on a Friday because 4 I was informed close to like 9:00 o' clock. And as I 5 continued te work on that particular problem, at about 4:00 6 o' clock, 4:30, I was just not finished with because 7 Engineering has not responded to me.' - 4 8 so I left all that paperwork on my desk. And I 9 decided thati unless somebody calls me in on the weekend to 10 work on, I was going to come in and take care of that 11 prei,lem on -- paperwork problem on Monday morning.
12 And that is what I did. Monday I dispositioned -
1: completely. I inade the right drawings, the sketchew, and 14 all those instructions how to cut that section of the crack 15 and replace that section of the support.
16 When that particular issue was being discussed 17 in planning meeting on Monday morning that salem 18 maintenance would like to work today, so the fan should be 19 tagged -- and ths,t is generally done en any, piece of
, 20 equipment if it's going to be worked. They talk-in tho.se 21 morning meetings.
~
22 Now,ChadieMarshallwaspresentinthat 23 meeting. And he said, "Well, didn't you do yesterday and 24 day before -- from Saturday onwards, didn't you finish off
'25 ' your refueling?"
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68
- And peoplo CJid, CYCJ, va did th:t.
2 "Well, aren't you supposed to have the fan ,
3 working and operating? How do you know that it was 4 operable with that crack?"
5 Well, I basically provided the personal input 6 to him that in my engineering judgment, it was operating at 7 the time when we saw that crack and it continued to operate 8 during the entire duration of the rerueling An the weekend 9 and now we're ready to tag it and do the repairs. ,
10 He felt that "What if there was 1 seismic event 11 yesterday when you were doing the refueling ou a Saturday 12 and this particular little crack on one leg may be 13 deficient enough that the fan would have fillen off?" .
14 And, basicully, my response was that if that 15 would happen, you would have an earthquake and all kinds of
~
f 16 these things. Thenyouwouldhavetole@eftrefueling 17 anyway. p/$
Y 18 You know, it's not something which is totally 19 automatic. I mea,n, refugling is under a senior reactor 20 operator continuous control, so if you had earthquake of 21 that magnitud where a an could have fallen off, you would 22 then- , r ng. -
l 23 But that was not acceptable to my own manager.
1 24 He said that I did not exercise conservatively, I should ,-
25 have -- on that Friday morning when I came to the office, I 1
! NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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69 1 should have put a stop on the refueling and whatever would 2 take resources to fix that fan, it would have been lixed .
3 before refueling were to start, basically give me a formal 4 positive discipline type of a warning that I basically 5 risked Public Service Electric and Gas investment in the 6 Salem plant by allowing the refueling to continue.
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN And who was the~ ,
8 supervisor?
9 MR. LASHKARI: That manager was Mike Morroni.
10 Now, I presented to Mike Horroni that on Thursday morning, 11 when this problem was detected.
13 Friday morning planning meeting, at about 7:30 13 was attended by every departmen& tagineer or manager. .
14 There is a-very large group of people, people who were 15 higher than me. They discussed what will be done, what 16 should be done, and what is immediate priority.
17 All of those people, including the operating 18 engineer, the maintenance engineer, the outage manager, and 19 on and on, including an expert from my own depLrtment who 20 was attending, representing my department, my pEesent .
21 group, they all heard that there is a problem with this 22 fan,asballcrackhNbbeenfound. They said, "We will fix 23 this fan after " c refueling."
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Was Mike Horroni at that 25 meeting also?
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70 i 1 MR. LASHKARI: I'a n3t 100 perc:nt curo. Thio 2 --
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What was the date on this 4 meeting?
5 MR. LASHKARI: This is the raft.eling weekend of 6 Unit 1 and last refueling. The date can be obtained from 7 Salem o" Charlie Marshall. In fact, I have approximate 8 date of work order available, which may give you the date.
9 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
10 MR. IASHKARI: This is 11-23-93. I have a work .
11 order which I copied and I happen to ave with me which was 12 somebody wrote that "The rt bracket made of 13 channel- is cracked at the base on the inboard 91de. Ploase 14 repair as per attached engineering disposition." Ano --
15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: That's the work order to 16 fix the fan?
17 MR. LASHKARI: That's correct. That is the 18 same subject fan that is 12 fuel-handling building, 9 19 ventilation fuel , handling area exhaust fan. .
20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. e 21 MR. LASHKARI: Now, Mike Morroni, my manager,
. '22 he did n66 want to hehr. There were close-to 10 or_15 23 very, very responsible people who made that decision to do 24 that repair after the refueling is done. He did not want 25 to hear that under NRC's generic letter on operability the NEAL R. GROSS CUURT REPORTERS AND TMANSCRitERS 1373 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W (802) PM4433 . WASHMGTON. D.C. 30006 - (302) 2M4433
71 1 cngineering judgment 10 permitted in th:Co caccs wh ro it'a 2 very difficult to make any analysis or very clear-cut ,
3 determination.
4 In this particular case, there was not a single 5 piece of information related to the seismic report, seismic 6 analysis, kept in Salem in Technical Department, the 7 department where I worked. - - -
8 We ourselves were not really trained on the 9 seismic analysis. There was an area which constantly ,
10 whenever we asked, we were told that "That is an area you 11 will have to depend on, engineering people with very 12, specialized knowledge. You have to depend on their -
13 analysis and their view. If'you have a problem, you ca,11 14 them and get them to analyze the situation."
15 And in this particular case, finally a contact 16 was mado with that EngIineering Department. And after that 17 contact, it took them about three or four more days to --
18 by end of the week for them to determine that my 19 engineering judgment was,"Okay. The fan would havo 20 survived an earthquake, even with that crack." .-
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Was the letter taken back 22 once that'determinat&8n was made? -
23 MR. LASKKARI: Pardon?
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Was the reprimand letter 25 taken back?
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72 4 1 MR. LASHKARIS No, it was not. In fact, I was 2 told that better not happen one more time, thing like this. .
3 so using that approach because here I was 4 chastised for using engineering judgment of declaring this 5 squipment operable and then in stating so, that I was not 6 going to do that within such a short time on that pin 1 7 problem on the hangar, the safety valve. ,
8 5 As soon as that issue I cam up with, I went to 9 the control Room. And I said " elf, as system 10 engineer, my recommendation is for you to declare this 11 .
safety valve inoperable until the repair is done."
- 12. And I was told that there is a is minutes' .
13 action statement, they should have acted 10 hours1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br /> back,.
14 they're already in the 10 hours1.157407e-4 days <br />0.00278 hours <br />1.653439e-5 weeks <br />3.805e-6 months <br />' violation, so I'd better 15 go and talk to and do whatever I can to satisfy, but it's 16 too late for me to tell them my opinion of this. They 17 received the opinion of somebody who works during the 18 night. And they went ahead and used that to continue to 19 operate. ,, , .
. 20 At that time if you can consider a pin, if it's 21 not stopped by this clip, the pin can still fall back. And 22 Incased [anearthq/ake,that'particularsupportwillnot 23 have a -- basically they di1 repair on that particular job 24 in the afternoon after lunch.
25 I know exactly when the m intenance worker went s'
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73 1 into the containment. This is almost 16 to 20 hours2.314815e-4 days <br />0.00556 hours <br />3.306878e-5 weeks <br />7.61e-6 months <br /> later .
2 a -- ,
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Later than when?
4 MR. LASHKARIi Well, the problem was detected 4
5- at about 10:00 p.m. at night. And they are doing a final 6 putting in that clip at about 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. on daytime
~
7 the next day.
8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: So 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> after 9 discovery of the probleta?
10 MR. LASHKARI Right.
11 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Let's go to Point 16 on 1% Page 8. Your comment was "PSEEG delays in reporting the '
13 safety and license violations normally to the next day,,
~
14 morning, so that appropriate relief can be obtained from 1!i . the NRC. This practice is a willful-violation of NRC 16 regulations on the reporting requirements of 10 CFR."
17 MR. LASHKARI: Which point is that?
18 INVESTIGATOR 54GAN: Sixteen on.Page 8.
19 MR. W HKARI; Okay. Mine w9nt.-into the 9
-20 somehow. So I must have -- this says "PSEGG deteys in.
21 reporting the safety and license violations normally to
'22 next day ? N -
23 I heard myself this from the Licensing and my 24 supervisor on the ECCS reporting and few other times safety 25 problems where they felt that if-you do report to the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRAN90RSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W,
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74 .)
I cosmicsien et cbout 2:00, 3:00, 4:00 o' clock in tho ,
\
2 afternoon, most people at NRC,'they_'re going home. -And you ,
3 would not get a relief on-that evening. And you could end l 1
4 up shut down. I j
5' So it's-best to wait until'next-day so that the 6 staff is there, the-time is there for them to take their j 7 acts, grant'a relief. When I heard that, I felt-that that 8 itself is a violation.
9
" INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Who did you hear.that ,l 10 from*/ I 11 MR. LASHKARI: I heard-that'from Peter Ott, who
.- )
12, was.my supervisor at the time. In fact, on the ECCS -- -
13- INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Peter Ott'l , ;
14 MR. IASHKARI: Peter Ott, 0-T-T. ,
15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Peter Ott. .
16 MR.LASHKkRI: He's a -- at the present time a 17 licensed senior reactor operator. He used to be senior 18 reactor operator way back'. Then he transferred into our 19 Salem Technical Departme,nt as my supervisor. Basically he 20 knows the gravity of what this kind of delay means, 21 especially as a person who has had the license.
'22 '
~'
I.was' tob on the Eccs reporting tha nt
[*
23 go to th fternoon to licensing people and "Go over and 24 discuss. And let's report this tomorrow morning bscause at -
25 this time we're not going'to find any NRC person staying- .,
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75 !
I around to support us.a 2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: ECCS reporting, what do ,
3 those initials stand for?
4 MR. LASHKARI: Emergency code cooling, a 5 reporting of violations of the severances which were done 6 several years and months before several times for each of 7 the units. Those numbers when added together were coming 8 out in violation of what our technical specification 9 required'those number to be.
10 Basically reporting them on that afternoon at 11- 3:00 p.m. would have risked the shutdown. And in this case
- 12. basically they pushed, wanted until next day in the 13 morning. .
14 ' In the morning the general manager reviewed the ,
15 situation, the management. And then they reported to the .
16 Commission aid then also shut down.
17 -
INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what was the date on 18 that again?
19 MR. IASHKARIJ This will be approximately '92, 20 '91. In fact, the licensing person who I went:to see, he's 21 present here at NRC.
22 INVESTIGbORLOGAN: And what's his name?
23 MR. LASHKARI: Dave Vito.
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And he was the licensing 25 person that you spoke to at that time?
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5 76 ;
r
'l 'MR. LASHKARI Yeah. ;
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what was his position .
- t 3 then? I 4 MR. LASHKARI He was a Grade 5 senior engineer [
5 type as a licensing. .
6 INVESTIGATOR LOGANi Off the record for a
^"
.7 minute.
- i 8 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the }
t 9 record briefly at 8 24 p.m.)
10 INVESTIGATUR LOGAN And you indicated that -
-11 Dave Vito was an employee of Salem at that time. Is that' *
, -i 13 correct?
13 MR. LASHKARI That is my recollection. - ;
14 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Let's move on to
-15 Point 22. And it states that " Salem management clearly 16 lied about the readiness to start after April 7th incident 17 while my written advice; that's 'See system engineer,.' was 18 ignored." Can you explain this to me? i 19- MR. IJLSHKARI Yes. On April 7th event, I was 20 about three, four, five days off for my back pr6blem. So 21 after around April lith, I came back to work, on a Tuesday,
'22 sithadNtor'scartficatethatI'mokay'nowtocome'back
- 23. to work._ This was an issue in'the' morning presented by my
- 24 supervisor to determine whether or not the plant is ready 25 to go up.
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77 i 1 And, as I reviewed the next one hour all the i 2 equipment which failed and all kinds of things which ,
3 happened, power operator relief valv9 opened and closed l 1
4 about 220 times. And there were problems with the leaking 5 on the safety valves. All these things were written up by 6 the operating personnel, you know, senior shift supervisor 7 and shift supervisor. --
8 I was asked by those people to review some of 9 these thihgs, and I was also asked by my supervisor to 10 review the whole thing and make my own recommendation for a 11 start-up.
INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:
12, Your supervisor at that 13 time was? .
14 MR. LASHKARI: At that time on that day was 15 Acting Supervisor Jack Curham.
16 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Chad?
17 MR. LASHKARI: Jack. Jack Curham is 18 C-U-R-H-A-M.
19 INVESTIGATOR, LOGAN: Go ahead.
20 MR. LASHKARI: I made a brief recommendation 21 letter typed in my computer and basically told him that we
'22 must inveYtigate, lod at the condition of the,se valves 23 before we start up. There was a recommendation by my 24 counterpart, by him, to go on and get the units up and get 25 them started.
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78' 1 W3 both talked to cy cupervicer. And at th t 2 time I let him know why I felt that it was necessary to 3 examine the condition of these valves. It was not 4 appropriate after such a major transient on the system in I 5 the valves to proceed such quick start-up.
6 My written position to him basically was 7 ignored. And Salem management decided to start.. They went 8 to the Commission. And, fortunately, commission said "No.
I 9 We want you to open those valves and check and show us that 10 you don't have problem."
11 ,
And there were tremendous amount of problems 12, found with those alves. And in this particular case, thcy
~
13 were not ready to start the units. But they went ahead and ,
14 told the Commission that "We are ready."
15 In fact, even after Commission's telling us to 16 delay the start, open'the valves, check the valves, and 17 then we were shut down for months on this particular unit, 18 t'he April 7th trip. And these valves were -- internals 19 were replaced. You know, all kinds of work.was done, 20 fixed. And the safety valves were taken off, sont to the 21 Wylie Labs, refurbished, and brought back.
'22
- When theJbnits were started, we still had 23 plenty of leaks on the reactor coolant system. And we went 24 down again, replaced one valve, replaced some reactor head 25 vent valves. And then we still had leaks. That --
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79 1 INVESTIGATOR LOGANS Why were all of these -
2 valves leaking? .
3 MR. LASHKARI: Well, there was an investigation 4 done to looking into the safety valves, why were they 5 leaking, because, you know, it was repeat problem, that 6 particular outage.
7 What was found to be was some problem with the ,
8- way they were refurbished and tasted at Wylie Labs. There 9 is a --
10 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: They were refurbished 11 val /es?
Right.
- 12. MR. LASHKARI:
13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Why? .
14 MR. LASHKARI: These are regularly -- in a 15 refueling outage, they're sent out to them for open 16 internal, check. internals, put the new internals, you know, 17 polish them a little bit. That is called refurbishment.
18 So and --
19 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And does Wylie Labs do
, -20 their own refurbishment? '"-
21 MR. LASHKARI: No. Wylie does refurbishment 22 fbrclien5ssuchas lic Service and many other plants.
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: But, in other words, Salem 24 sent the valves to Wylie to have Wylie refurbish the .
25 valves?
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80 1 MR. LASHKARIS That's correct. We do that.
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And these are .
3 nuclear-grade valves?
l 4 MR. LASHKARI: Right. l 5 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And Wylie is authorized to l
6 do the refurbishment on the nuclear-grade valves? !
7 MR. LASHKARI: Well, let me just back off.
8 Wylie has arrangements with the crosby.
9 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: With who? ,
10 MR. LASHKARI: Crosby. Crosby is a-11 manufacturer of those safety valves.
12 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
13 MR. LASHKARI: So whe' you ship your valves.to 14 Wylie Labs, two things have to happen. One is open it, 15 examine it, see what problems are there, what scratches are o
16 there, polish them and get them all taken care of, put the 17 valves together, and then test them to make sure that the 18 set point has not moved up or down because the technical 1,9 specification is ,there. .
20 So Wylie is -- Labs is an expert in 3he 21 testing, their testing laboratory, testing place. Crosby
~22 1stheehrtinref[rbishmentbecauseit'istheirvalve.
23 But crosby comes into their shop as a consultant 24 contractor. And everything which is done by the Wylie -
25 Labs, it is done.under supervision of Crosby personnel, the NEAL H. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCHIBER$
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2 So that the crosby is involved in the 3 refurbishment process. And when Wylie puts it t.ogether, 4 tests it, if test shows okay, then the valve is sent back.
5 But what happens is many times when they put it on th'.,
6 stand and test'it, the set point is acceptable, found to be 7 acceptable, but there can be some small amount of leak.
8 To fix that leak, you know, if they open up and 9 do that refdrbishment again, then they again any have some 10 leak. So they don't want to open up the valve if it.'s a a
11 very small' amount of, leak. They have a procedure called 12 jack and lap. So in this particular, procedure, they jack 13 up and in place lap it and remove the jack. ,
14 ' That jack and lap process has been identified "
15 by Nuclear Regulatory Commission in other plants to be a 16 problem. Now, we at Salem were not aware that our valves 17 were being subjected to this jack and lap procedure. We 18 did not know. It was not'in our Salem-approved plan to 19 refurbish and test tihe valves.
. 20 An engineer who was sent because there were
'21 one, two, three start-ups where we failed to-sect these
^
22 valvesan'dthentreme8dousamountofresourceswerebeing
- 23 spent, he was sent down within the valves to the Wylie Labs
-24 and watch what exactly they're doing wrong.
25 And from his observations, he came up with this ,_
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82 1 particular problem in that process. And hopefully Salem 2 has fixed that problem because this particular problem was .
3 happening during June or July time frame, the weeks and the 4 months when I was terminated. I am not 100 percent sure 5 they have taken the right steps of having determined the 6 root cause of taking the steps *that it doesn't happen in 7 the future. ,.
8 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Was the NRC aware of this 9 problem,'to your knowledge?
10 MR. LASHKARI To my owlysge, I don't think .
b P
11 they are, but they are -
of t a jack / lap problem on the pressurizer safety valves, reactor coolant safety valves, 12, 13 generally in the industry because NRC has issued .
14 information notices on this particular -- Westinghouse has 15 issued problem reports on this jack and lap. .
16 INVESTIGA OR LOGAN: So the jack and lap 17 process is not approved, is not an approved method to 18 refurbish a valve?
19 MR. LASHKARI; Right, yeah. That may be a root 20 cause of Salem having so much problems with these safety 21 valves.
' ~
22 INVESTIGbRLOGAN: Are these high-pressured 23 valves or --
24 MR. LASHKARI: They are set points of 2,485, 25 very, very high pressure safety valves.
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l 1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Stainless steel? l 2 MR. LASHKARI: Yeu. The point is that '- .
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: When -- go ahead.
4 MR. LASHKARI: I was going to say that they're 5 trying to rush NRC in granting them the approval to start. ,
6 In the final stages of that approval, the submittal was ,
7 made almost like 12:00 o' clock in Rockville. 1:00 o' clock ,
8 they received the staff permission to start the units. I This particul'ar statement I'm making because I 9
10 read Senator Biden's letter. And he was able to track down 11 when exactly, what hour, that submittal was made to -- by
- 12. PSE&G to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission staff. And he 13 went on record to Chairman Selin', telling him that he. . !
14 doesn't believe that the staff could have reviewed all t.'n 15 things which they should have reviewed before granting the 16 pennission to start.
17 So in this case they did grant the permission, .
18 but the PSE&G management was not able to start that 19 particular unit fqr more than a month.
20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Because the valves fail? ,
21 MR. LASHKARI: Because of the valves, because
'~'
22 of many other probled, you know, which they had not really 23 done a very -- they shouldn't have even gone to the NRC 24 asking for permission to start until they themselves had 25 done enough -- several instances enough checking.
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81 l 1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Now, with reg 2rd to the l l
2 valve failures, was Salem aware of the problem with the .
i 3 valves-or did they simply make'a choice not to inspect the 1
4 valves to-identify a problem? ,
)
5 MR. LASHKARI: Well, the recordings which were 6 made on that night of April 7th showed the valve to be 7 chattering, opening and closing, closed 220 times' . It also ,
8 ahowed leakages coming and being detected, alarms going off 9 on all the other safety valves, other head vent valves.
10 There were all kinds of alarms coming on during this event.
4 II . When I reviewed that data -- and it's available la for -- because it's already being submitted to the AIT. It The valves were 13 clearly indicates that there is e problem.
14 causing problems if you start the units up.
15 - And that's what AIT team did. You know, they s
16 said, "If you've got so much problem here, you haven't 17 opened the valves, checked them. Why didn.'t you do that?"
18 And when they opened, they have very nice color photographs 19 which were submit,ted to the AIT, to the residents, showing 20 how bad these valves were. :-
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: So when the valves come 22 back fro 6~Wylie, is bereanysortofacertificationasto 23 --
24 MR. LASRKARI: They provide a report, having 25 done the certification and refurbishment report, every time NEAL R. GROSS COURT HEPORTERS AND TRANSCRISERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
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85 1 they work on the valves, our -- this details about jack-2 and lap procedure is not very clearly identified in those ,
3 reports.
4 And it was not until this particular time when 5 one of the system engineer from here, my counterpart -- and 6 his name is Bob Lemberger. He was sent to Wylie to just 7 watch 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br />, you know, whatever t'ime they worked, keep .
8 on watching what are they doing. And that is when he 9 noticed that they tried to do this jack and lap. And jack 10 and lap could have caused that leakage which the plants 11 were experiencing.
12, INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And there was an -
13 information notice that went out from the NRC -- ,
14 MR. LASHKARI: They have --
15 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -- how much prior to the 16 time that these valves failed.
17 FR. LASHKARI: I have seen one, two, three 18 years back things on the jack and lap. It's -- if you were 19 to search the datpbase, you will find Westinghouse reports 20 and NRC's information notices on the subject of y-jack and
/ 21 lap procedure.
22 And I ree811ect this so well because my 23 supervisor came to me because he was quizzed by his 24 supe; /isor, manager, that "Do we do jack and lap?" We at 25 that time talked to Wylie Labs, and they told us they don't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE. N W.
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86 i l
1 do that for us, that -- l1 2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: . Is that documented . .
3_ someplace?
4 MR. LASHKARI: No . - I just passed on what I 5 learned from Wylie Labs to my supervisor and since it was !
6 not stated on our traveler's -- or procedure. [
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: You mean the-con at ,. ,
8 you have with Wylie Labs?
9 MR. LASHKARI: Right, yeah. Somebody who was ,,
^ '
10 really looking into the contract at Wylie Labs basically 11 told, "No, it's not being done for your plant."
12 And after having detected this, that if it is 13 the root cause, this is something significant to the .
14 benefit of the other industry people, other plants, this 15 particular report should have been reported back to the 16 Commission, reported back to the industry so that other 17 plants do not run into.thi's problem.
18 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Are you awcre of whether 19 other plants use.,Wylie Ipbs? And if so, which ones?
20 MR. LASHKARI: A great number of --M think I 21 would say more than 60 to 70 percent people use Wylie Labs. I 22 thereis~o'thervendefs,WestinghouseWesternService 23 center. And there are few plants which, especially in the 1 24' California area', use that Western Service Center in -
25 California. But a great. majority of Eastern board plants, NEAL R. GROSS COURT MEPORTEMS AND TMANSCRWERS 1323 MHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N W ;
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87 1 they use Wylie Labs.
2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Is there anything else .
3 that you'd like to tell me about management lying with 4 regard to their readiness to restart after the April 7th 5 incident?
6 MR. LASHKARI I tried to write a few times 7 when Wylie Labs will report back to salem and I'would get ,
8 those reports because I was the reactor coolant system 9 enginner shere they would record as found set pointe.
10 And, basically, if that as found set point is 11 greater than one percent, it is a -- for Wylie a formal
- 12. kind of report to us as owner o. a client because we are --
13 ourselves could be in the violation of the technical .
14' specification limits, which are plus/minus one percent.
15 If you have a valve at 1.1 percent which you 16 just got and you put it as is and that is called as found 17 set' point, now, if the valve was still in the plant and you ,
18 had over-pressure event, than the valve would have opened 19 at greater than one percqnt plus or minus. .That is 20 violation of the technical specification.
21 I tried to write those in incident reports. I 22 do not hAv'e that witM me here. And they are in the files.
23 But my supervisor would not let me because his argument was 24 this one was already going through a corrective action out 25 at'Wylie Lab, "Why do you need to report." .
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88 1 And the reason why I thought it needs'to be 2 reported is because I've seen other people do that, other .
3 plants do that. And the several other plants do that.
4 Then NRC collects the data and issues an information notice 5 to all the utilities. And they all benefit from experience 6 at other plants.
7 Now, by withholding that information- and not .
8 reporting it, you know, although it's already collected at 9 Wylie Lab's by the time it comes back to your plant, but 10 they found data if you have found it out of respect, it is .
11 reportable to the commission. And then the commission uses 11 those reports to generate useful information for the --
- 13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And who was your .
14 supervisor who told you not to file these incident reports?
15 MR. LASHKARI: At that time it was Peter Ott.
16 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And he told you not to 17 file the incident reports because the problems at Wylie Lab 18 were being remedied by Salem?
19 MR. (ASHKARI,: Right.
20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: When -- '
21 MR. LASHKARI: That is Item Number 21 in my 22 letter heEe. '
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Now, when these 24 valves go out to Wylie Labs, they come out of the unit, go 25 out to Wylie Labs, and then come back and go back in the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER $
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89 ;
1 unit? !
2 MR LASHKARI So there isn't a series of ,
3 valves that is contained in a warehouse there to supplement !
4 or --
5 NR. LASHKARI: Salem has only one spare valve.
6 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: They have one spara valve?
7 NR. LASHKARI: Yeah. It's the - normally the ,.
8 practice is to remove your valves during the fueling.
9 outage.
10 Again, on that issue it's not mentioned here, 11 but I'd like to explain to you how serious that is.
12 Sometime last time when I was here John White asked me that 13 what did I do wrong which ma' de my manager so much against 14 me. And one of the issues which affected me in my 15 relationship with him was the practice of sending these .
16 safety valves for refurbishment and testing and resettrag 17 verification, every refueling outage.
18 When I joined ' salem in '86 time frame, I looked 19 at -- the code requires them. There are three valves on a ,
20 pressurizer. The code requires that you do thim-'
21 refurbishment and set point verification every five years, 22 ihreevalveseveryfkheyears, so you could d,o nothing ror 23 four. Fifth year you can do all of them or you stagger 24 such that your one and a half-year cycle take one valve .
25 this year, this outage, and the next 18 months later FSDd NELAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHOOE 19 LAND AVENUE, N W.
-. _I
9 90 1 the second one and third one the third. You're done for 4
2 four and a half year all the valves and met the code .
3 requirements.
4 However, these valves do not have any 5 isolation. You are taking big risks. And 12 the valve 6 starts leaking, just as it did during this start-up after 7 April 7th, you cannot tolerate any leak through'these' ,
8 valves. The untit has to come down. You shut down and take
~
9 these valves. get them fixed at Wylie, come back. You're 10 talking about 10 days minimum turnaround.
11 . INVMTIGATOR LOGAN: As opposed to having la spares, where you can do it the same day?
. 13 MR. LASHKARI Or you do that that every .
14 refueling outage, take all three valves, go back to Wylie 15 Labs, and look at what's the condition, see the -- what s
16 needs to be fixed in those valves, and retest them, 17 refu' lsh them, bring them back to the unit. Then you have 18 a lot more confidence that they will not leak.
19 Other,than.t at little problem with the jack 20 and lap, which they messed up, this is a wise thing. I 21 reviewed this in '86 time frame, when I came in into the 22 station. I reviewe with a group, somebody else who used 23 to be responsible for this. They told me that "The amount 24 of money, $20,000, peanuts, but you are getting a lot more 25 confidence and reliability of an 18-month run of your unit.
NEAL R. GJK)SS COURT REPORTEMS AND TRANSCRSERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE N W.
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1 So don't try.to doloy it cr mako it liko cvary fiva yeara 2 or so." ,
3 Having done that, that was my basis for 4 continuing to check these valves every 18 months.
5 I was asked by my supervisor; that is, Peter 6 ott, to make sure there is a recommended tas n the 7 computer system.
(%T)M#
Recommended %skmeansyoukeepondoing b .
8 it every period, you know, whatever the period is, in this 9 case every 18 months you send those valves and get them 10 checked out and refurbishment.
11 Now, in and around '92 to '93, one of the 12, outage managers felt there was for Unit 2 outage that I was -
13- re*1 conservative and "This is unnecessary work. It ca.n be 14 eliminated. And the code requires only five years. Why 15 are we doing this testing?"
16 I went ahead and responded to him, giving him 17 very detailed information, everything which I had, and then 18 tried to justify that it is good idea to continue to do 19 this 18-month basis. ,
20 He wrote us a letter. He didn't believe that.
21 He said, "I want a lot more justification. In the country
'22 sho l's doTng what? d d I want engineering-people outside 23 the fence, their recommendation, not just charlie I.ashkari 24 telling us that have to do it every 18 months."
25 So I went out to-the engineering people NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND THANSCRIBER$
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1 outside. And my supervisor would como every now and then ;
l 2 and say "Well, ' tid we hear from those guys?" ' And those -
.i 3 guys did not respond for quite some time. They were busy i I
4 with something else. Finally, when I received that, I put i
5 together in a day or two my recommendations, my letter out 6 to this outage manager; i 7 Somehow just about at that time' sales had a , ;
8 turbine accident in end of -- I think it was and of '92 !
l
, 9 where a turbine blew up. And so the outages started for us 10 about there or four months earlier, in october. And as the :
11 outages started, the_ refueling outage, this-particular-task .
12,' was still in limbo. And I basically again provided '
f 13 justification, all the support, all the letter, all the.
I 4
14 surveys of everyone in the country, how often they are 15 doing. I called almost every plant. ,
/ '
16 Jier gave to my manager. He took it to the
/,1) 17 general manager. He agreed that we should do this every i
18 refuelling outage, but he felt that we're coming too late.
19 Tooclosetothejobwhilewe'reintherefuelingoutage .
20 we're telling them something. g m- ,
21 Now, I told tha is refueling outage >
J22 itarted four months I rlier because it was blowing up of
.t 23' the turbine. -otherwise we would have had it responded much
-24 earlier. But basically my manager didn't like all of that. . ;
- 25' He just -- .
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DS 1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: What's his name?
2 MR. LASHKARI: Mike Morroni. ,
3 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
4 MR. LASHKARI: He just went ahead and wrote me 5 up, saying that I didn't service my client that his outage 6 manager -- his needs anytime. And I give a time line, 7 which showed it was not on my desk more than a day or~two. ,.
8 As soon as I could take care of something else, 9 1 put it together. And up to the end, Esere that 10 particular issue was picked up by this new supervisor il coming in and old supervisor leaving, there was old 12 supervisor, Peter Ott, and the new superviser John 13 Wiedeman. That's what the issue they picked up. And then 14 they resolved that.
15 I had given my supervisor my recommendation 16 letter almost three months back. He sat on it. He just 17 wouldn't let it go. And I as basically made to suffer in 18 my rating for that year, showing that I was not very 19 responsive to my glient's needs.
20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. Is therranything 21 else that you can tell me about which would show that Salem
' ~
22 a'nd,inparticular,y$urmanagerwasretaliatingagainst 23 you for raising safety concerns other than we've discussed 24 tonight?
25 (Pause.) .
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94 1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Why don't we go off the ,
2 record while you take a couple of minutes to look at your .
3 notes?
4 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off the 5 record at 8:55 p.m. and went back on the record 6 at 8:56 p.m.)
~
7 INVEGTIGATOR LOGAN: Go ah ud, Mr.'fishkari. ,
8 MR. LASHKARI: This is also stated in my 9 letter. k'here was one other TMI action item which required 10 the plants to do the analysis of their pressurizer safety
,_ 11 valves, lifting and the subsequent blowing down of the 12- water loop seal through the discharge piping.
13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And what point is this in 14 your letter?
15 MR. LASHKARI: I don't seem to locate that 16 particular issue, but it's a very important safety issue 17 which I'll be willing to discuss with you here.
18 Basically the large amount of water which is 19 kept upstream of the safety valve, as that slug of water 20 moves through the valve and dawn in the piping,'*lt causes ,
21 havoc. It kind of destroys the supports.
. ~ -
, 22 Thiswas)analysistobedonea'ndsubmittedto 23 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission as a item related to the 24 post-THI analysis. It was a requirement that every 25 licensee do that.
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swm matt weeumnvw n n ennna twm mau
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95 i
r1D Wh2n Salem did that analycio and cubmitted,
- j
'2 it's almost:like 10-years-later. 'And(NRC'reall needed to- ,
]
3: close their. issue.c so they went aheadiand said-that""We're
-4 closing our file,"'but you go ahead and do the analysisifor ,
5' water discharge. case and use your own procedures to 61 document and all of-that and report us the results when
~
-7 you*ve done that. . . . . .
e 8 What they did when the water from-upstream, ;
- 9. which is a U-bend type of a filled-in loop seal, when that t
3 10- analysis was done, they found that that caused a lot of-11 problems with supports. And those support -- if one-support is destroyed, you take that support out in the .
13 analysis. Then the second one=goes. And the second one
~
14- comes out, and the third one goes.
15 That way your whole system of supports is no l 16 good. But the steam discharge through these valves and the
- 17. piping has got some certain amount of forces and actions on 18 the support. But a slug of water when it goes -- and it's-
. , g g's-7f 19 basically if it is very sub-W oled, means less temperature -
~
-20 taan the-saturation temperature, then that particular force
!- 21 is a-very large force.
22 - - salem detsrmined that they cannot meet tne code 23: requirements-and they have a problem. But replacing and 24 working on. the supports .is a. major project. They didn't 25 have the money, And when.they disclosed that and in that i NEAL R. GROSS' I '
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. 96 1- meeting'the. issue that if it is not, then we should r.atify 2: the Commission that we_have a problem with the supports. I
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3 was told that we will go ahead and document W . an j
- a 4 evaluation. -
5 I finally felt very uncomfortable at that time.
6 It's like-two years or three years we've gone in operation 7 withaknownproblemandnotpresentedtoouroNnSafety -
8 Committee, not gesented to the Nuclear Regulatory 9 Commission. I went and raised that issue with my 10 supervisor.
f [to talk to my
. 11 My supervisor arranged me 12' manager. We sat down, and I explained to him what is the 13 requirement, regulatory, in this case. It is reportabl'e 14 because we have a major roblem. If we were 1;o have a 15 b W,8 WlWWV safety valve IWft, we would %ase all the' supports. If we 16 don't e s'1pports, all the valves may not stay in 17 its closed position. And if it does not and if it falls 18 off, then you've got a major loci.
19 He understood. Then basically he said that NRC x
20 project manager, Jim Stone, is tware of the problem we haye 21 and he knows that we're trying to fix it. In six-month --
+ -.
) ,
22 whenever our outage is coming up, we will fix that problem.
.23 Basically I pointed out to my manager that a 24 project manager is not the total responsibility in the 25 Nuclear Regulatory Commission. He is a person who you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIDERS 1323 RHOLE ISLAND AVENUE, N W.
97 1 communi e with. But his understanding or knowledga le.
2 not enough. There are people who, other people who, 3 are supposed to be involved.
4 And I was told that there is no value added in 5 reporting at this-stage where we were working on one unit 6 and in the next refueling we will work on the other unit, 7 that we should go ahead and formally' report what problems 8 we have with analysis, what fixes we are providing. And 9 that par,ticular incident report mechtnism, which is the way 10 most problems get reported, to the control Room or to the 11 NRC, it was not allowed. In this case I was told not to 1R report something because our project manager within NRC '
13 knows something. .
14 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: ud who again told you not 15 to report it?
16 MR.LASHKkRI: This was my manager, Mike 17 Morroni, in a formal sit-down in hic office.
18 INVESTIGATOR Lc;1N: And the date?
19 MR. L,ASHKARI,: This is around 'P2.
20 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Beginning? End? Middle?
21 MR. LASHKARI: '93 sometime.
- ~
'22 INVESTIGdORLOGAN: '93 sometime?
23 MR. LASHKARI: Right.
24 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Is there anything else?
25 MR. LASHKARI: No. I'll just like to thank you 1
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.- 1 = both forLkeeping patience for:so-long.-
'2 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: :Okay._ Well,JI wouId;like= '
3' - tojust'gooveroneotherthingLwithlyou,Mr.Lashkari,and 14- that's.the-Decemberf4, '94-letter.-to the NRc.: :In_that_
L 5; letter, you made' note that_you received no progress report
. . -i
- 6. on'your complaint from Region I. Do you have some 7 informationnowontheprogressof-yourcompljiiitfrom e
!- 8- Region I?-
8 9 MR. LASHKARI: Well,:I did talk to John White 10 ,
today.
.. 11- INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: You did? -Okay. The -- -
MR. LASHKARI:'
' 12- I-still don't really have much 13 progress report on this because within 180 days, I'm *
~
supposed to file my g-ogfpAirJT the EEOC. And here it's 14 .
15' almost four or five mont already over~and --
16 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:- Well, you're not waiting 17- for our results in order to file?
18 MR. LASNKARI: I was so far, but --
19 -INVESIPIGATOR LOGAN: Please. Please don't.
20 MR. LASHKARI: -- I'm not going to Tait.any ,
, 21- more.
.. =
j<, . ,
22 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: No.
23- MR.2LASHKARI: Yeah. I'11 just go_ ahead and
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- 24- file-it and amend-it-later on.
- 25 . INVESTIGATOR IDGAN: And.certainly, you know, NEAL R. GROSS count necomns moin=sensens
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99 1 if.the Department of Labor or the EEOC wants to talk to us, 2 we'll be happy to work with them in any questions they may .
3 have.
4 You also indicated that you needed 15 minutes 5 of the Coolssiou : time to explain things to them.
t 6 MR. LASHKARI: Yeah. I --
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: The question-that I have ,
8 for you is that: With the knowledge that what we've 9 discussed here tonight will be made available to the 10 regional staff and to the Commission if they choose to look 11 at it before our report is done, is there something else that you would be telling them that you should be telling 12 13 me now so that I can get started on it? .
14 MR. LASHKARI: Yes. One of the things which I 15 was going to present to the Commission was the concluding 16 remarks Dr. Selin sai to Public Service Electric and Gas 17 presentation regarding what good things they have.done.
18 It was reported to most of the employees en 19 Salem -- it's cal, led " Nuclear Today" newspaper, which comes
. 20 out every day -- on May lith. What basically wgs reported 1 21 was that how good'the company is, how good the chairman and 22 Eheyhavebeen--sidceheretheyhavebeenworkingalot 23 and they have been funding a lot of problems to be taken
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24: care of. However, you do have a problem of our employees.
25
& btd And at that moment in time Mr. Fyrland thade up his mind to NEAL R. GROSS I l
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100 11 g0tLback.end--tako! care of thona perconnsl which have cauced 2; the; events. ,
, _3: :Now,Jimpetus for this.comingzin from-Dr. Seli6, 4 Dr. Selin mayfor may-not' realize how this was implemented. -
5 This :is :what _I7sas going to tell him in 15 minutes _'- time, -
6- that,.<instead of firing all the people in that -- Salem-7 management knows who those persons are who. make 1 mistakes _ on
-8 every event because-it is analyzed.- Every. person and every
-9 procedure'is looked at. And they know for each event who
- 10: was at fault. All those people who are at fault, they are ,
- 11 still working and drawing the salaries at PSEEG.
- 12 The guy in this case was five days off three 13 days _and two days after or about five, six deys-during the 14 April 7th event. He failed to be a person which would show 15 up as an action that PSE&G management took in preventing en 16 April 7th type of event in the future.
17- INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Was that you?
18- NR. LASHKARI: That was me. And it's just 19 totally unrelated,. And,,you know, that's what I was going 20 to present to him. r .
21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Well, I'm not saying that
'22 toushouTTn'tpursuedourrequesttoappearinfrontofthe ~
4 Commission, but-what I am saying is that, clearly, if 24 there's.something that needs to be addressed by us in'the
- 25'- region, then we'd like to know about that, too, so that the NEAL R. GROSS-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCREERS 1323 RHOOE ISLAND AVENUE. N W, ,
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1; 101 1- work _can proceed here as well as_ anyplace else it may have 2 to begin. .
3 MR. LASHKARI: Yeah.
4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: And that's my only point 5 for raising that issue with-you.
6 The letter also talks about "a criminal' 7 ooncealment of an NRC violation, which was being-deljvered 8 to the Salem control Room by responsible engineers as an 9 incident report." Is tha~t the incident report you and I --
10 MR. LASHKARI: That.is the incident report --
11 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -- discussed today --
12 MR. LASHKARI: Right, that's correct.
13 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: -- and is an attachment to 14 your letter to the NRC7 I believe it was Attachment --
l 15 MR. IASEKARI: No. Actuslly, this is not --
16 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: This is another one?
17 MR. LASHKARI: -- the same. There was an 18 incident report which was being prepared on or about April 19 21st by Licensing, Engineer Ken Ogara. He and I had
. - 20 reviewed that. r-;
1 21 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: It's the Ken Ogara one?
~
J22 MR.LASHbI: And that is differe,nt, --
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay.
24 MR. LASHKARI: -- different incident report, --
25 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I just wanted to make --
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4 102 ,
. l
!1- MR.-LASHKARIt- - _.but on tha_enma subjcet.
2 -- INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:' Okay.- So'that's the __
3- report that you're_ talking abouti? l
'I 4 MR.'LASHKARI: lThat:is the criminalIviolation, 5_ what I talk'about:in concealment _of material information-6 which NRC should have had.- -l
)
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I-just wanted.to make sure -
8 that I understood what-that was. And we have discussed 9- that one earlier in-this interview.
- 10. And I realize it's late, Mr. Lashkari, and I'll 11 ; try and be brief.
~
12 ,
The -- can we go off the record for_ a minute? -
13 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter went off t,he 14 record'at 9:10 p.m. and went back on the record 4
15 ,
'at 9:11 p.m.)
16 INVESTIGA$OR LOGAN: Mr. Lashkari, I notice 17 that the last point is that in ycar December 4th,1994 18 l'etter to Chairman Selin that you copied counsel for PSEEG,
- 19. .t.he Chairman of PSEEG on this letter. Did you also copy 20 them on-the earlier August letter that you sent to the NRC7
- 21 MR LASHKARI
- I have not copied the August a ;
'22 . l'ettert0~theNucleaMRegulatory' Commission,but---
23 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:- And'is it your intention
' 24 to provide the licensee in this case with a' copy of that U
25- letter?
I t
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103 1 MR. LASHKARI: Yes, it is my. intention that 2 when I meet Public Service management investigators, I will -
3 provide them full with all the attachments August 8th-4 letter. -
5 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Okay. And you indicated 6 to me as we spoke on an earlier break that you anticipate 7 that that will be a meeting with the .
[o'u'nsel?
8 )G1. LASHKARI: That is correct. Right now the 9 plans are Mr. Richard Fryling, who is the G g Counsel I
10 for Public Service Electric and Gas, is the top of the Law
.. 11 Department.
17 INV"0TIGATOR LOGAN: Your letter indicates Henry L. San Giacomo?
13 -
14 MR. LASHKARI: He's associate counsel. And he 15 has been in touch with me through my lawyer. So I copied 16 to Mr. Henry San Giacomo. But every letter which I send to 17 him, he alvays perhaps shows it to Mr. Richard Fryling, 18 such that the latest call yesterday I received from PSE&G, .
~
19 Peggy Royer Parisi, person in Human Resources, or HR, 20 Department, that Mr. Richard Fryling, the Gened51 Counsel f 21 and Bob Burricelli, the General Manager, External Affairs, v ~~ ,5 .
22 would like to meet me in some hotel room on Friday-or 23 Tuesday. I selected Tuesday.
24 And for Tueaday I'll have all the letters, 25 paperwork ready to give them a copy of.
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104
'1 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN:- Some hotel room? This 2- sounds very clandestine, Mr. Lashkari.
3 MR. LASHKARI: I don't know which hot 1. l
-1 4 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: I,see. l 5 MR. LASHKARI: So, you know, he said to me one !
6 of the hotel rooms.
7 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: You indicated'e'arlier that ;
8 you anticipated that this meeting would be a meeting that 9 was' recorded on the record and that you would ask for a .
10 copy of the transcript at that meeting and that you woad
,. 11 voluntarily provide-us with a copy of that. Is that 12 correct?
13 MR. LASHKARI: I will request. And if they can 14 meet my request to provide me a copy of the transcripts, 15 then I will provide the NRC.
16 INVESTIGATOR LOGAN: Thank you.
17 The -- that's all the questions I have for you 18 at this time. I will be in touch with you so that we mav 19 set a date so that you can go over this transcript and 20 ensure its accuracy. And I appreciate the houFis late. .
21 And I thank you for , coming by tonight.
, ~
) Thank you very much.
22 MR LASHKARI:
23 (Whereupon, the foregoing matter was concluded
(, p 4 wa an NEAL R. GROSS N COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSORIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVENUE, N.W. !
I .
l CERTIFICATE
, This is to certify that the attached .
F proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:
Name of Proceeding: INTERVIEW OF CHANDRA LhSNKARI Docket Number: NOT ASSIGNED Place of Proceeding: KING OF PRUSSIA, PENNSYLVANIA were held'as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to
. typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true. and u curate record of the foregoing proceedings. .
ki
, pt MIMI WEYER official Reporter Neal R. Gross and Co., Inc.
a 7
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