ML20206J060
| ML20206J060 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Peach Bottom  |
| Issue date: | 04/10/1987 |
| From: | NRC COMMISSION (OCM) |
| To: | |
| References | |
| REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8704160007 | |
| Download: ML20206J060 (53) | |
Text
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C UNITED STATES OF AMERICA .
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION l l
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Title:
Briefing on Status of Peach Bottom (Public Meeting)
Location: Washington, D. C.
Date: Friday, April 10, 1987
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Pages: 1 - 49 l
1 l
Ann Riley & Associates Court Reporters '
1625 i Street, N.W., Suite 921 ,
Washington, D.C. 20000 .
(202) 293-3950 . _
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1 D I SC LA I MER 2
3 4 .
5 6 This is an unofficial transcript of a meeting of the 7 United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission held on a 4/10/87 .. In the Commission's offica at 1717 H Street,
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9 'N.W., Washington, D.C. The meeting was open to public 10 attendance and observation. This transcript has not been 11 reviewed, corrected, or edited, and it may contain
/7 *
-(g 12 inaccuracies.
13 The transcript is intended solely for general 14 informational purposes. As provided by 10 CFR 9.103, it is 15 not part of the formal or informal record of decision of the 16 matters discussed. Expressions of opinion in this transcript 17 fdo not necessarily reflect final determination or beliefs. No i
18 pleading or other paper may be filed with the Commission in 19 any proceeding as the result of or addressed to any statement 20 or argument contained herein, except as the Commission may 21 authorire.
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24 25 i
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I 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA f- .
2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION '
3 ---
4 BRIEFING ON STATUS OF PEACH BOTTOM 5 ---
6 PUBLIC MEETING' 7 ---
8 Nuclear Regulatory Commission 9 Room 1130 10 1717 "H" Street, N.W.
11 ,
Washington, D.C.
12 13 Friday, April 10, 1987 14 15 The Commission met in open session, pursuant to i 16 notice, at 4:20 o' clock p.m., LANDO W. ZECH, Chairman of 17 the Commission, presiding.
j 18
- 19 COMMISSIONERS PRESENT
20 LANDO W. ZECH, Chairman of the Commission 21 THOMAS M. ROBERTS, Member of the Commission i 22 JAMES K. ASSELSTINE, Member of the Commission 23 FREDERICK M. BERNTHAL, Member of the Commission 2
24 KENNETH M. CARR, Member of the Commission
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- 2 1 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT COMMISSION TABLE:
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2 J. Hoyle 3 W. Parler 4 V. Stello 5 T. Murley 6 W. Kane
. 7 8 AUDIENCE SPEAKERS:
9 J. Taylor 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 ,
i i
3 1 PROCEEDINGS
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2 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Good afternoon, ladies and 3 gentlemen. We apologize for keeping you waiting. The purpose 4 of the meeting this afternoon is for the NRC staff to brief 5 the Commission concerning recent events and staff actions with 6 regard to the Philadelphia Electric Company's Peach Bottom 7 Atomic Power Station.
8 I would like to take this opportunity to reemphasize 9 the importance that we place on the professional conduct of 10 all aspects of nuclear power plant operations and the key role 11 played by the licensed operators who stand watch in the 12 control rooms of our nation's nuclear power plants.
13 This is a serious business and a demanding 4
14 technology. We believe that people in general and the licensed 15 operators in particular play an essential role in assuring the 16 protection of the public health and safety.
17 During the presentation, Mr. Stello, we would like 18 the staff to specifically address those actions being taken to 19 assure proper control room decorum in all our licensed plants 20 and to determine why this situation was not identified during 21 routine inspection of Peach Bottom's licensed operations.
22 I understand that copies of the slides to be used i 23 during the presentation are available in the rear of the 24 room. Do any of my fellow Commissioners have opening comments?
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, 25 [No response.] ,
i i
. 4 1 CHAIRMAN ZECH: If not, Mr. Stello, would you 2 proceed,please?
3 MR. STELLO: Yes. I won't go into the background of 4 how we got to where we were with the order. I think that is 5 adequate clear to everyone. There are two issues of the order 6 that have now come to pass, the first was obviously to shut 7 the facility down and they have complied with that 8 requirement. The were required to submit to us within seven 9 days some information which Dr. Murley will describe in a 10 moment and tell you about that and some other things.
11 The two issues that you asked me to address about 12 decorum in the control room and the ability of the NRC to do
, 13 this, I would like to address those first if I can in reverse 14 order.
15 It is very difficult for an NRC inspector to be able 16 to gain access to a facility and that not be made known to 17 just about everybody at the facility especially in the control 18 room. It is very, very hard for us to get access to the 19 plant and not have that fact be known. So we need to deal j 20 with that situation and we are looking at ways in which to 21 accomplish that including the possibility of changes to our 42 regulations.
23 I had raised to the commission earlier the issue of l
24 decorum in the control room and while I know the Commission 25 has responded to the issue I raised with th,em, I feel compelled
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. 5 1 after this issue to at least suggest and I will do so in 2 writing to the Commission that that issue needs further 3 consideration.
4 I think we perhaps need to develop some very specific 5 ideas about what kind of a rule we have that will make it clear 6 what we expect in the way of decorum in the control room in the 7 broadest possible sense from this kind of behavior of sleeping 8 operators which is obviously unacceptable all the way to making 9 sure that the control room is, in fact, run in a very 10 business-like and professional manner.
11 While we are not prepared to go into any specifics 12 today, I will be informing the commission on both issues at a 13 later time and, of course, the commission will have to reflect 14 on it and then we will go from there.
15 I don't have much more to say except to say that 16 there is still a great deal more to do before we are through 17 dealing with the issue at Peach Bottom. There is an awful lot i
18 more understanding of the issue and its ramifications before 19 we are going to be satisfied we truly understand all of what 20 happened and has been going on at the facility as well as to 21 decide whether the licensee when he submits his plan it is, in 22 fact, good enough to convince us that it is okay to restart 23 that facility.
j 24 I have no idea how long that is going to take and 25 until we are much further in on this is' sue,,I think it would j
- 6 l
1 be just pu're speculation to even raise that issue at this j I
2 time.
3 With that, I will ask Dr. Murley to go crisply 4 through the presentation.
5 CHAIRMAN ZECH: All right. Thank you. Dr. Murley, 6 proceed.
7 MR. MURLEY: With me is Bill Kane, the director of 8 projects in Region I. Just a bit of background because it is 9 important, I think, to set the tone that these events occurred 10 in at Peach Bottom.
11 [ SLIDE.]
12 MR. MURLEY: There has been a reactor on the Peach
, 13 Bottom site for many years, 20 years. Peach Bottom 1 was a 14 gas cooled reactor that was licensed in January 1967, shut i
15 down in 1972 or thereabouts. Peach Bottom 2 and 3 were 16 licensed in 1973 and 1974.
17 There are people that we are going to talk about 18 today, licensed operators, who held a license on unit 1 and go 19 back 20 years.
20 Last February and March we started to prepara a 21 draft SALP report for the previous year's period and my staff 22 at that time came to me and said that things don't look good 23 here at Pea'ch Bottom.
24 They talked about a complacent attitude at the site 25 and thee were several areas of poor perform,ance; security,
. 7 1 radiological protection and operations. At that time we
(' . .
2 decided then to do a diagnostic team inspection where we take 3 some of our very best people, senior resident inspectors from
- 4 other sites and from our own office, and send them in for 5 around-the-clock two week type of inspection.
f I
6 So we planned that for June. In April of 1986, 7 there was a senior management meeting that Vic Stallo led out j 8 in Region III where all the regions get together and the senor 9 office directors.
10 At that time I went over in detail the problems that
, 11 we were seeing at Peach Bottom and Vic instructed me then to ,
1 12 make it absolutely clear to senior Philadelphia Electric
! 13 Company management that they understood what our problems were 14 and that it was unmistakably clear to them which I did.
i 15 He also wanted a personal letter from him to the t
j 16 chief executive officer.
1 17' COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: When was that Tom that you 1 18 met with them and then sent the letter, the general time 19 frame?
I 20 MR. MURLEY: Last June. Why don't we put on the 21 first slide, please?
) 22 (SLIDE.]
I 23 MR. MURLEY: June 6th, we issued the SALP report. I i
j 24 went down a week later to their company headquarters in 25 Philadelphia and met with the president of,the company, John I
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8 1 Austin, the senior vice president and the vice president for
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2 production and stressed to them the problems that were outlined 3 in the SALP report.
4 We were, I think, about as clear as we can be. Let 5 me just read a couple of sentences. "A common cause of the 6 personnel errors appears to be inattention to detail resulting 7 from failure to either follow or consult the appropriate 8 procedure indicating a complacent attitude toward procedural 9 compliance." .
10 "Recent events associated with control rod withdrawal 11 errors during the startup are another indication of management 12 not effectively assuring that the responsibility and 13 accountability for proper operations are sufficiently 14 understood resulting in many instances in sloppy work practices 15 and a sense of complacency."
16 There are many such quotes like that in the SALP 17 report. I brought those personally to the attention of the 18 president and the vice presidents.
19 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Again, this was in June of 1986?
20 -
MR. MURLEY: This was June 13th, I met with them.
21 CHAIRMAN ZECH: All right, thank you.
22 MR. MURLEY: Vic Stello signed the letter out to the 23 Chairman, Lee Everett, on June 12, 1986 where he reiterated 24 those concerns and asked for a meeting. We had our SALP 25 management meeting with the utility on July,12th and on August l
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9 1 1st, there was a meeting in Bethesda' with Vic and me and 2 several members of the NRC staff, the chairman of the board, 3 the president, two vice presidents, several other managers and !
4 the plant manager came to Bethesda and we had a discussion.
5 In the meantime, we had done the diagnostic team 6 inspection from June 18th to July 3rd.
7: COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: That was in August when 8 those folks came to Bethesda?
9 MR. MURLEY: August lat. I think we were quite 10 blunt in expressing to them our concerns. These are my notes 11 that I have dug out from that meeting. They agreed that there-12 were problems at Peach Bottom.
They agreed that the focus is a 13 in the management area and they agreed that improvements must i
14 be made.
j 15 The general thrust of the company is that they have I
16 a solid organization at this site that needs to be shaped up.
17 They felt that no revolutionary changes were needed. They 18 said that it is hard to overestimate and this is by way of 19 mitigation, they said that it was hard to overestimate the 20 challenge to a normal organization management when two plants 21 are in an outage at the same plant which Peach Bottom 2 and 3 22 were for probably a year or year and a half before that torn 23 apart with 1,500 extra workers on the site.
24 They acknowledged that they failed that challenge 25 but they did not think that the overall management at the site i
. . 10 I 1
1 was inadequate. They thought they could solve it. They also 2 subsequent to that meeting undertook an enhancement program in 3 response to NRC as well as INPO proddings.
4 I should mention that INPO's findings at that time 5 were also that Peach Bottom was a problem plant. We began to 6 see some improvements over the past several months. The plant
. 7 was cleaned up. They were labelling it better and there were 8 some improvements in the security area.
9 Nonetheless we kept an enhanced inspection coverage.
10 We had three resident inspectors, I believe, and now we have 1
- 11 four, is that right, Bill?
12 MR. KANE: Three.
13 MR. MURLEY: Just three inspectors but several more 14 inspectors from the region are there most of the time and I 15 have been holding bi-monthly management reviews with the 16 senior vice president and his staff and that has been at the 17 site. We have had one in, I believe, it was in December and 18 one in February.
19 (SLIDE.]
20 MR. MURLEY: Briefly, the next slide I won't go into 21 the enforcement history in detail but will merely mention that 22 this is the poorest enforcement record in Region I. Over the 23 last four years, there have been six civil penalties and two 24 orders on the Peach Bottom facility.
25 What we have concluded is that the.re was a unique
1
, 11 1 culture at Peach Bottom where they felt that they were pioneers 2 in this nuclear business. They felt the old way of doing 3 business seemed to be good enough.
4 .
We sensed frequently that there was an arrogance l
, 5 that they knew the plant better than we did, better than 6 anyone else as a matter of fact, INPO, NRC or anyone else and i 7 one got the feeling that they tolerated NRC only because they .
i 8 had to.
i 9 There was an inbred organization in the plant.
10 Almost no new blood from outside Peach Bottom or indeed even j 11 outside Philadelphia Electric Company. The plant operations, 12 we concluded, depended really on individual knowledge and 13 informality rather than a strong program with good procedures.
14 In fact, their procedures were weak and the operators
! 15 frequently didn't follow the procedures.
i
) 16 In contrast to that site culture, we had what I i
j 17 would call professional relations with the corporate management
- 18 and a positive healthy attitude we saw at the Limerick site.
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19 In fact, that is one of the top plants in the region. ,
20 This was clear to me at least last year when we were I
1 21 having our discussions and the only conclusion I could come to l 22 then is that the management at the plant was the cause of this i
23 problem and that something had to be done and we made that
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24 quite clear in our meeting on August 1st in Bethesda.
! 25 So that kind of sets the stage" for,where were up
1 12 1 until the events of the last couple of weeks. So now I will
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2 move into t' hose.
3 on Tuesday, March 24th we received an anonymous call 4 alleging that Peach Bottom operators were in the habit of 5 sleeping on the back shift. The caller said that he had 6 personally observed it, that it usually took place in the 4:30 7 to 5:30 time frame in the morning. He said that you guys in 8 the NRC won't observe this because the guards will alert the 9 control room whenever NRC comes on site.
10 He was concerned about possible retribution and he 11 requested confidentiality which we granted him. He appeared 12 to be a highly credible alleger. On that basis I took action 13 to have NRC inspectors placed in the control room around the 14 clock. That was Tuesday morning March 24th until now.
15 I notified Vic Stallo and the managers back here in 16 headquarters and we set up with the office of Investigation an 17 interview for the following day with the gentleman. On 18 Wednesday, we did an initial interview and on Thursday we 19 completed the interview with a court reporter and therefore 20 had a transcript of the meeting.
21 It was clear in reading the transcript with the 22 gentleman that his con =cience was bothering him. He felt that 23 he tried to get PECo management to address the problem. They 24 either wouldn't or couldn't. This had been going on for a 25 matter of a few months and because his ' cons.cience was bothering m
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. . 13 1 him, he ultimately called the NRC.
l 2 He told us of some other people -- !
3 MR. PARLER: I think you might just want to consider 4 getting to the issues rather than describing in any greater i
5 detail where you got the information from. I hate to interrupt 6 you but I say that with respect.
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7 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Thank you, i
j 8 MR. MURLEY: All right. Why don't we move on to 9 slide three then?
! 10 (SLIDE.]
l 11 MR. MURLEY: We talked with some other people who i
12 were in a position to observe behavior at Peach Bottom and 13 what emerged was a picture of extremely unprofessional behavior 1
- 14 in the control room. Let me explain how they are staffed 15 there.
16 There is a shift superintendent who is SRO licensed.
17 He is normally in an office outside the control' area. There is i
18 a shift supervisor in the control area. He is SRO lican'ed. s 19 ~ There is a chief operator, reactor RO licensed and then a unit 20 2 and a unit 3 operator. So on shift there are five licensed 3
i 21 people, four of whom are normall'y in the control room.
, 22 This unprofessional behavior was so widespread we 23 found that all of the operations staff had to know about it 24 and the shift superintendents and the shift supervisors !
i 25 obviously condoned it. I will give some ex,amples of the j
l h .. , . - . . . - - . . . - _ _
. 14 1 information that we received from these interviews.
2 Around Thanksgiving, 1986, last year, about two to I l
3 three o' clock in the morning there was a case when the three I 4 RO's-- -
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Bill, pardon me, excuse me.
6 I am concerned about the kind of detail that we are going into 7 here. ,
8 MR. PARLER: I am concerned also but I have to wait
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9 until I hear what he says before I interrupt him. My mind 10 does not work by mental telepathy. I think that you should 11 really stay away from as much detail as you can as to where 12 you got information from and then just summarize the 13 information, stay away from the source, talk about the 14 consequences, what you are doing, et cetera.
15 MR. MURLEY: Well, I kind of feel that I need to 16 tell you what we learned. I will not discuss the source.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Excuse me. I understand 18 that. There has been no name but now we are mentioning a i
19 specific date and time down to the hour. I don't think we 20 need to have that kind of detail. We certainly can tell what ,
21 happened.
22 MR. PARLER: You know, the " loose lips sink ships" 23 and all that sort of stuff.
24 [ Laughter.]
25 CHAIRMAN ZECH: I think the polnt ,is we just don't t
1
. 15 1 want to compromise the investigation.
2 MR. PARLER: That is what I meant.
3 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Nor do we want to compromise the l 4 confidentiality so that is the only reason for this discussion.
5 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: That's right. l 6 MR. PARLER: And if you give certain things without 7 mentioning names, people that know the rest of the background 8 can put pieces together and readily disclose names and you 9 want to avoid that. It is about as simple as that.
10 CHAIRMAN ZECH: It is very serious and we want to do 11 it properly. So that is what we are talking about. Proceed.
12 MR. MURLEY: There are several examples here. In 13 one case the three reactor operators wara observed to be all I
14 asleep.
15 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Wait a minute. All three 16 were asleep?
17 MR. MURLEY: Yes.
- 18 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Simultaneously?
19 MR. MURLEY: Yes, and the shift supervisor was --
20 CHAIRMAN ZECH: He is the fourth one?
21 MR. MURLEY: He is the fourth one.
22 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: He was an SRO.
23 MR. MURLEY: He l's an SRO. He was reading a magazine 24 at the time. There were several instances where a shift 25 supervisor or a shift superintendent was observed sleeping. ,
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1 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Tom, are there windows in 2 the shift superintendent's office or is the doorway such that l
3 from that office you can see what is going on out on the l
. 4 floor?
i 5 MR. KANE: Yes, you can.
6 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Please make the answers for the 7 record. I couldn't hear you. .
8 MR. KANE: Yes.
9 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Thank you.
10 MR. MURLEY: There is another instance where both 11 units, reactor operators and the chief operator were physically 12 outside the control area and only the shift supervisor was
', 13 present.
14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Inside the control area?
15 MR. MURLEY: Inside the control area, yes. There 16 were instances where the operators were gathered together 17 playing a video game on a personal computer which is in the 18 control area.
i 19 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Where was that?
i 20 MR. MURLEY: I believe it is around the shift 21 supervisor -- near the chief operator's desk.
22 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I take it the PC is in 4
23 there for business purposes?
24 4Gt. MURLEY: For technical reasons, yes.
l 25 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: And they,are just -- yes, i
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' 17 l 1 all right.
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2 MR. MURLEY: One more, there was another case where 3 the snift superintendent was asleep in his office at the same i
) 4 time the shift supervisor, the chief operator and the unit 2 l 5 operator were all asleep in their chairs. The unit 3 operator I
1 6 was not in the control area. He was in a room adjacent so i 7 there wa.s no -- .
j 8 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Nobody awake.
l 9 MR. MURLEY: -- licensed operator awake in the i
i 10 control room.
i
- 11 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS
- What was the status of the .
l 12 plant?
13 MR. MURLEY: The plant was operating and I don't l 14 know whether both were operating or not but at least one of 15 them was operating.
i 1
16 When we learned this information on Monday, that is 17 when we took the action to -- my staff and I unanimously j 18 agreed that this was not a safe operation and we drafted an 19 order. I had talked to Vic Stallo and the following day then 20 he signed the order shutting the plant down immediately.
21 At that time Bill Kane and I took the order to 22 Philadelphia and talked with Philadelphia Electric senior 23 officials, told them what we were doing, why we were doing l
24 it. We also learned in the investigati n that there was good 25 information, that these problems had be^en b,rought to the
, 18 1 attention of plant management over the last few months but 2 they did not or could not take effective action to correct the 3 situation. We do not know at what level.
4 I would like to talk a bit, I believe, about the 5 question of how this could happen. It has some broader-6 implications. A typical career path at Philadelphia Electric 7 for an operator, a licensed op'erator,' is like any other 8 plant. They are hired out of high school. They spend a few 9 years in the plant. There is a screening process. There is a 10 two to three year classroom and plant training and then they
]
11 take NRC RO's and they spend several years as an operator on f 12 the boards, go through some more training and then are ready 13 to take the NRC SRO exam.
14 Then they may spend several years as a shift i
15 supervisor and finally reach shift superintendent. That is 16 the career path in this operations crew but they can't really i f 17 rise any higher in the organization because they don't have 18 degrees.
i 1
19 So the operators then tend to identify more with
)) 20 their own group and not with plant management particularly the
, 21 shift superintendents so there develops there a loyalty to 22 their own group more than to management and it appears at 23 least in this case that there was an operations subculture 1 24 developed within the Peach Bottom culture which was itself not i
25 good to begin with. ~
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3 1 So we believe that we have seen there then.this 2 subculture which was characterized by complacency and an 3 overconfidence on the part of the operators. We don't think
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4 that they had proper respect for NRC regulations and for their j 5 own procedures and they seemed to even have contempt for i
l 6 anyone who didn't come from their own ranks even their own 7 management.
I 8 There were cases that we learned in-this !
I j 9 investigation where they would -- memos that would come down 10 from senior management of the company would be treated with j 11 equal disdain and disrespect by the operations staff. .
! 12 So that then summarizes what we found and what we
) 13 did about it. I think there are some generic implications.
- 14 First, you have asked, Mr. Chairman, about the NRC staff i
15 actions and why NRC staff didn't catch this behavior.
j 16 All resident inspectors have standing guidance to i
17 spend 20 percent of their. time on the back shifts. They did
{
)i 18 that. Typically this is done early in the morning, six j 19 a.m. or later on in the evening, seven to eight p.m., that l 20 kind of time.
i 21 The guards at Peach Bottom as they do in most plants
{ 22 in Region I have standing instructions to notify the control 1
23 room when NRC comes on site on the back shift.
] I think it is 24 fair to say that we, our inspectors, never imagined that this i
i 25 kind of behavior was taking place at Pe~ach , Bottom even though e
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- 1 we knew and had clearly documented a generally poor attitude
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2 of complacency at the plant.
3 I believe what we have done here, namely taking I 4 immediate and forceful action will let all licensees and all
! 5' operators know that we just won't tolerate this kind of ,
l 6 behavior. That is the best thing we can do to prevent it. It j 7 was NRC pre'ssure, I believe, and our SALP reports and meetings 8 of the last year that led to the kind of climate and also our 9 general openness to allegations of this kind that led to
{ 10 ultimately uncovering it even though our NRC inspectors didn't 11 find it.
l 12 We don't believe that this goes on generally at u
13 other plants. Some of the information we learned at Peach 14 Bottom, we don't think, for example, goes on at Limerick. We l
15 are quite sure it doesn't and that is a plant that is also run
{ 16 by Philadelphia Electric Company.
17 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Although, Tom, with the 4
{ 18 weaknesses in the inspection program that you cited earlier i
, 19 how can you tell?
i 20 MR. MURLEY: I can't guarantee it. What I think we 21 can do effectively is pinpoint the kind of attitudes, poor 22 attitudes, that are endemic in a place like this.
4 I 23
\
COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: All right.
i 24 MR. MURLEY: There are some generic implications.
i '
l 25 Vic may want to add some thoughts. The~ day;that we issued the i
1
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1 order I called each of my fellow regional administrators, told 2 them of the situation, what had happened, and what was 3 generally behind it.
4 Bill Kane called division directors in other regions j 5 and also filled them in. We took special actions at Limerick.
i 6 We had the resident inspector go in on the midnight shift. We told the Philadelph'ai Electric Company management of-the 7
8 situation and they took special actions at Limerick as well.
9 We have called each licensee in Region I and told 10 them generally of the situation, of the order and that they 11 should discuss with their people the seriousness that we view,
{ 12 this matter. We are drafting an information notice and that i
13 should get out in the near future, I would guess.
i 14 Are there any other generic aspects, Vic?
1 j 15 MR. STELLO: No. I think what we ought to do is try
]
16 to spend some time in at least identifying the licensee 17 submittals.
18 MR. MURLEY: Yes. They were required by the order i
- 19 to send in a response within seven days that would tell us .
20 what they have done to make sure that the plant is safe in
! 21 this cold shut down condition. They have done that. There 22 are 11 actions that they have taken. I will group those I 23 roughly.
! 24 They have a 24-hour independent monitoring effort of l
l 25 the shift operations. These monitors Vill , report independent i
, ,It ' 22 r.
- 1 of the plant. They report to the QA hanager who reports to
/* , .
2 the vice president off site. They have required that more 3 work be done by the operations people on shift themselves.
4 They have to take readings every hour and log them in, that-
- 5 sort of thing.
6 They have had special management meetings with the l
7 operators. They have reassigned a person and they have made l 8 some human factors changes like changing the high back chairs i
j 9 with low back chairs in the control room.
l 10 MR. KANE: I just want to note for the record that
- 11 that coverage, the 24-hour coverage, that Tom spoke of goes .
l 12 into place April lith which is tomorrow.
i l 13 CHAIRMAN ZECH: All right.
1 14 MR. MURLEY: That summarizes my presentation. I 15 will be glad to respond to questions.
16 CHAIRMAN ZECH: All right. Thank you very much.
~
17 Questions from my fellow Commissioners. Commissioner Roberts.
1 i
18 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: No questions.
l 4
- 19 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Commissioner Asselstine. !
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I have a couple. Let me 21 start with a broad one. One of the things I did over the past j 22 week or so is look at the June 9, 1986 notice of violation 1
j 23 that you issued, Tom, for the problems in withdrawing the 4 .
i 24 control rods, the operator errors in withdrawing the control-25 rods out of sequence, identifying the ihct that they had W
e 1 6
)
, 23
- s 1 repeated opportunities to find that problem and not only did
, 2 they not find the problem but they overrode equipment thab 3 shouldhavetoldtamabouttheproblems,somethingthab '
4 resulted in a $200,000.00 fine.
5 When I looked at the Notice of Violation, it pretty 6 clearly states that there is a whole pattern of this activity 7 at this plant going back to 1983. In 1983, you had four ,
8 violations of containment integrity by non-licensed openators, 9 failure to follow procedures. "
10 In 1984, you had control operators violating tech 11 specs. In 1985, you had a sleeping incident that resulted in I
,i 12 an enforcement conference with the licensee and in 1986, you 13 had these personnel errors. '
's ,
14 It looks to me like there was this pattern of 15 behavior or conduct literally going back over several years 16 and that this most recent incident is more a symptom of a 17 basic problem at the plant than a problem in and of itself.
, 18 Am I right about that?
19 MR. MURLEY: Yes, I would say so.
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: One of the things that c -a l 21 troubles me a little bit is you talked about the efforts that a l
- 1 ,
22 you made dnd that Vic made last summer to try and bring this l l
23 to the attention of the senior management of the company and f I
24 you said you didn't think you had a problem with the senior 25 management of the company. The probleur was at the site.
l l
s .
24 1 I guess one of the things that disturbs me is the 2 vice president of the company sent you a letter or sent Jim 3 Taylor,a letter in July responding to the notice of violation 4 and this was after you had met with him, I think, and the 5 president. This was after Vic had sent a letter to them.-
6 This was a month before you had this big meeting in'Bethesda 7 and what does the vice president say?
8 He says, "We cannot agree that increased emphasis is 9 required to improve management involvement in order to assure 10 personnel performance nor do we see a pattern of inattention 11 to detail, failure to adhere to procedural requirements and a 12 general complacent attitude on the part of the staff" and he
.a
. 13 also says, "We do not believe that our staff has a complacent 14 attitude."
15 After all of this effort, after all of these 16 meetings, the letters, everything you have done to try to 17 bring this to the company's attention, the vice president of 18 the company says, " Hey, folks, there really isn't a problem 19 down there.," Now you rejected that. You' stuck with the 20 $200,000.00 fine. You didn't mitigate it. I think the staff 21 was absolutely right but I have to say that I have a problem 22 with the management of this company. Am I wrong about that?
23 MR. MURLEY: No. I think in looking back you have l
24 to ask which is the'true view of management, this one or the 25 one that they were giving us when we met in Bethesda and it 1
I
.m , - -
1 !
t
! . 25 l \
1 appears that this one was, the one where they don't think they l l .
l 2 have a problem.
l 3 They clearly didn't take effective action to fix the 1
4 problem.
5 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: It sure seems to me not 6 only in the Notice of Violation but also in the SALP report 7 you were fairly blunt and direct about the nature of the 8 problem, that there is a fundamental weakness in the management 9 of this site and the way that plant has been operated and the 10 biggest problem really seems to be a problem of safety attitude 11 and that message didn't seem to be getting across despite all 12 the noise you were making.
13 I guess what I am wondering is if the company had i
14 done what they should have done when you raised these concerns, 15 shouldn't we have expected that this kind of a problem wouldn't 16 have occurred at all especially since we had a sleeping 17 incident in 1985 that you made an issue of?
18 MR. MURLEY: Yes, I agree.
19 MR. STELLO: Let me make at least a point to cut 20 that another way. It is hard to explain that the company has 21 a major problem because there is another facility, Limerick, 22 run by that same company and it is going fine.
23 I think what Tom has explained is at this facility 24 there seems to be on site a particularly difficult problem 25 that the corporate management has not b~een ,able to get
, 26 1 changed. I think they understand they have it, they are
( .
2 trying to do it. I think they have been unable to do so.
3 But then you can always say, "Well, they are 4 responsible anyway." That is true. But'there is clearly a 5 contrast where they have had people, in fact some of which 6 came from Peach Bottom up at Limerick, and a new team put 7 together and that corporate structure was able to get'a 8 successful operation.
9 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I will grant you that they 10 had a problem at this particular plant and I will accept the 11 notion that they didn't have the problem at Limerick. I guess 12 my concern is that when you brought the problem at Peach 13 Bottom to their attention, what you got from senior management 14 of the company was that there was not a problem and that gives 15 me a great deal of difficulty.
16 That seems to have been the response to the Notice 17 of Violation, that there really is not a problem.
18 MR. STELLO: When we had a meeting, it was clear to
! 19 me they knew they had a problem.
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Okay.
21 MR. STELLO: When you respond to notices of violation 22 and people respond with pieces of paper --
23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: So between and July and 24 August, you think, --
25 MR. STELLO: No, I don't think'so. I think it is l
s *
. 27 1 just the response that they put in defence of responding to a 2 Notice of Violation. I think when we met with them, I had the i
3 feeling that they clearly knew they h'ad a problem to deal with 4 and were trying and, in fact, there is some progress being 5 generally made.
6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I would assume that what 7 they will say in a letter in a public, I guess, sort of 8 public, quasi public record is sometimes different from what 9 they will c'onvey in a conference. Is that what you are 10 saying?
11 MR. STELLO: Yes.
12 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Commissioner Asselstine, anything 13 else?
14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: One other question. The 15 diagnostic team inspection that you mentioned, Tom, I guess 16 one question I had, that provided fairly extensive coverage.
17 MR. MURLEY: YEs.
18 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: It provided round-the-clock 19 coverage for what was it, for a week.
20 MR. MURLEY: June 18th to July 3rd, I think is 2i probably a couple of weeks.
22 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: All right, and at least '
23 for a portion of that period of time you had round-the-clock 24 coverage. Why do you think we didn't get some greater sense l
25 for the attitudes and the problems and I gu,ess one of the
, 28 1 questions I have is when you read some of the comments in the 2 Inspection Report, it seems to me that the company might well 3 have been lulled a little bit into a false sense of complacency 4 about how well things were going.
5 There are some critical comments and concerns but 6 there are also some positive things, in fact, positive things 7 precisely on the kind of question we are now focusing on, that 8 is attitudes of the operators and their performance in the 9 control room.
10 MR. MURLEY: Yes. I went to the site during this 11 team inspection and I talked with one our senior residents who.
12 is from another site, one of our best men and he said, "These 13 people are on their absolute best behavior." He said, "We are 14 not going to see an attitude problem here."
15 We highlight that in the report. We say, " Procedural 16 adherence and attention to detail during the review period were 17 strong in the area of operations which was in contrast to the 18 longer term observations during the SALP period." l 19 Then we go on to say some good things, "The operators 20 were knowledgeable, conscious of nuclear safety, had a positive 21 attitude and performed in a consistently professional manner" 22 which was true during the period we observed them.
23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: But apparently totally 24 inconsistent to the real behavior at the site. i 25 MR. MURLEY: Yes. When a Commissioner comes to the l
1
, 29 1 site, they are dressed up in a suit and tie and they are on r'
~
2 their best behavior and you can get a different of point.
3 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: They being the Commissioners?
4 (Laughter.]
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I just wanted to make sure 4
6 that we got the antecedent right here.
7 MR. KANE: I guess I would just like to make a point 8 in response to that. If you go back to the cover letter of 9 the report though we did focus on several factors which we 10 identified as what we considered to be weaknesses and those 11 are what we called underlying factors that inhibit improvements 12 to their overall performance.
13 If you will note in the third paragraph of that 14 letter we cite dependence on third parties to identify 15 problems. We talk about identified weaknesses will somehow be 16 resolved by corrective action plans without aggressive 17 follow-up and then finally the corrective action programs 18 being placed at too low a level.
19 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I don't disagree with l
20 that. You are absolutely right. There are some negatives ;
21 that were highlighted. I guess the biggest concern I had is 22 the things that were highlighted on the positive side
, i l 23 apparently are precisely the things that are real difficulties 24 at that site.
25 I don't know how you get aroun'd th,at.
t *
. 30 1 MR. MURLEY: That is the limitation of a team 2 inspection. Any outfit can pull itself together for a couple 3 of weeks and really show you a different side that doesn't.
4 show up if you observe them over a year to year and a half 5 period.
6 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: It strikes me that the
, 7 most serious asp 9ct about all of this really is the attitude 8 problem. There really seems to be a culture and an attitude 9 at this plant that is totally inconsistent with what we ought 10 to expect in terms of assuring safe operations at the plant.
11 It strikes me that is the biggest problem that has l 12 to be overcome not whether you can put hard seats in the 13 control room to mak9 it uncomfortable for operators to sleep.
14 You have to fix.that attitude problem. Am I wrong?
15 MR. MURLEY: I agree with that, yes, absolutely.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: It is hard to regulate -- we 17 don't have regulations on attitude unfortunately. It sounds 18 like TVA in some respects.
19 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes, in many respects it 20 does. One last point, I hope that the staff will try to look 21 at this question about how to compensate for this business of 22 warning the control room when inspectors are on the site or 23 those kinds of things or particularly ways to ensure that we I -
24 get truly effective inspection coverage including some coverage 25 at various time on the back shifts. ~
l l
. . - , _ - _ _ . , - _ ___ _ _ _ . _ . - - . _ , . .~ _ _ - . .
. 31 1 Commissioner Bernthal and I were chatting briefly
- ~
2 before the start of the meeting, when you look at serious 3 operating events and acciden'ts, look when they happen. An 4 awful lot of them seem to happen on that back shift right when 5 these guys were dozing off and that is when you want operators 6 that are alert and attentive.
7 If this is a flaw in our inspection program, I would 8 urge the staff to try and look at ways to compensate for that 9 to the extent that we can.
10 MR. STELLO: It is already underway as we speak.
11 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: All right. That is all I 12 have. s 13 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Commissioner Bernthal. ,
14 COMMISSIONER BERNTHALt I am glad to hear you say it 15 is underway because to emphasize the point, will someone tell 16 me when Brown's Ferry occurred because I was trying to make a 17 blanket statement the other day and I wasn't sure whether I 18 was right.
19 MR. PARLER: March, 1975.
20 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: No, no, I need --
21 CO.MMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Hour of the day.
22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Hour of the day.
23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: It was when construction 24 was going on.
25 MR. STELLO: I think it was ddring the morning.
, j
. 32 1 MR. PARLER: During the day.
2 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: It was during the normal work l
3 day.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Perhaps with the exception l
l 5 then of Brown's Ferry, I believe that every single serious
, 6 incident including most notably Chernobyl and TMI that we have 7 had has been in the wee hours of the morning which leads me to 8 the next question.
9 Is there anything unusual about the shift cycles 10 that they hd at this plant either -- I can't name exactly what 11 the hours were. I know that we have at least one utility that 12 I believe runs 12-hour shifts and then sort of intensive
,- 13 on-shift and then longer periods of time off-shift and free.
14 Is there anything unusual about the shift cycles at' 15 this plant? In other words, are they asleep entirely because 16 of bad attitude?
17 -
MR. MURLEY: This is a pretty standard eight hour 18 shift rotational shift operation. They do work overtime 19 regularly but I don't think we have concluded that that was a 20 major problem or major cause of this but there is fairly
- J 21 regular use of overtime. They stay within the limits.
22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: How often are the shifts 23 rotated? Frequently? In other words, if you are on the 24 graveyard shift, how long do you stay on it?
~
l 25 MR. MURLEY: For a week.
l l
4
, - - - . , . _ , - _ - , - - - - , - , - - . - _ _ _ _ _ _,y.. e e -..
33 1 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: One week?
2 MR. MURLEY: Yes. They stay a week on the midnight 3 shift. Then they go a week on afternoon shift and then a week 4 on day shift and they are off.
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Is that typical?
6 MR. STELLO: It varies. I don't think you can say 7 that that is the way all of them do it. I,believe it is also 8 negotiable by unions.
9 MR. MURLEY: It is common.
10 MR. STELLO: It depends on the union.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: If that is typical or if we 12 don't know, I would like to see an analysis of how shifts are 13 rotated at all of our plants and a comparison. I cannot 14 believe from a human factors standpoint t. hat a one-week 15 rotation on that kind of shift makes very much human factors 16 sense. I would like to see any of us try that. One week on 17 graveyard and then suddenly you are shifted eight hours and 18 the reason I say that is that the standard for jet lag 19 adjustment as you know they say is one hour per day.
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Our two colleagues with 21 Navy experience may have some greater familiarity with shifts.
- 22 CHAIRMAN ZECH
- We have done a lot of that kind of 23 business.
24 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: It is different though, I 25 think, in that situation. This is not, believe me, when you l
. 34 1 are cooped up on a submarine and you ha've a family at home and 2 a house and you are out shopping for groceries and it is just j 3 different.
4 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.
5 MR. STELLO: We will do that.
6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Let's see. The other point 7 , that I would make is that it is true and Commissioner 8 Asselstine has pointed out that we have four years here and I 9 believe you said six civil penalties and two orders. If you 10 look at the SALP reports, there are not a lot there. They
~
11 aren't great but they aren't that bad.
12 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: No, they are not horrible.
13 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: That's right, that are not 14 bad.
i 15 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: They might have been 16 worse.
17 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: If you look at the 18 performance indicators, they don't show anything. If you read 19 what our diagnostic team inspection said and I am not going 20 cite chapter and verse but my staff was kind enough here to 21 give quote after quote that has nice comments about the place 22 but the one thing that shows up and it did show up at TVA and 23 by the way the Commission didn't catch that either and the
,- l 24 staff didn't catch it all that quickly was the fact that TVA !
l 25 had a pattern and a record of civil penalties and problems ,
i 1
I
. = _ _ .- . ,_ _ .. _ _
. . 35 1 but a lot of civil penalties over several years.
2 Somehow I begin to wonder if that isn't the best 3 performance indicator of all. We aren't all that bad at 4 stacking up the civil penalties. Do you have a problem or 5 maybe you should respond?
6 MR. STELLO: You do realize, we have had this plant 7 as one of the plants that we are concerned about.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I know.
9 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: They labelled it as a 10 problem plant last year.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I realize that. Is that 12 enough?
13 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Mr. Taylor wants to make a response.
L 14 MR. TAYLOR: Jim Taylor. Actually it was a pattern 15 of civil penalties at Browns Ferry, the severity of some of
-16 the operating events that put us on super guard on TVA and it 17 was an event-related situation with reactor vessel water 18 level, another civil penalty which sort of drew the line down 19 there and so it was a real pattern like that that made us stop 20 at Browns Ferry and say, " Wait, what is going on?"
r 21 ' COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I want you on the Hill with 1
22 us when we get hit over the head because we hadn't been 23 regulating TVA properly. i 24 MR. TAYLOR: Yes, sir.
25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I am not sure he will help l
l 1
- \
. 36 l 1 because the point is that this is a pattern over some years 2 and the question is --
3 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Well, that is what he was 4 saying. .
5 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: -- why does it take three or 6 four years, s
7 MR. MURLEY: But, Commissioner, I think it was 8 really the intense focus that we had put on this plant because 9 of all these things that lead to uncovering what we did now.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I am sorry, I don't agree 11 with that. I think we were lucky.
12 MR. MURLEY: I don't agree with you.
13 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: In this case, we were lucky.
14 MR. MURLEY: I don't agree with you.
15 MR. STELLO: What we don't really know is if we did 16 have this incident, this clearly is going to get the problem 17 corrected.-
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: , Yes, that I agree with.
19 MR. STELLO: I mean, enough is enough.
20 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Or the plant is not going 21 to run.
22 MR. STELLO: Well, that is a fix.
23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.
24 MR. STELLO: But would we have been able to fix it 25 with the continued efforts we had? We were pushing buttons.,
I l
1
4
, _ 37 1 We were seeing progress. Would it have come albeit maybe r' ,
2 slower, would it have? I don't know the answer and we will 3 never know it.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Yes, I agree with that.
5 MR. STELLO: But I don't know what more we can do 6 than say, "Look, we have a problem." I could not have said it 7 any plainer'to Tom and I,am confident that Tom went and made 8 it very clear to them. We have a problem. You have to get it 9 fixed. They put a program. They are trying and it at least 10 looks like they are moving in the right direction. Would that 11 have done it? I don't know but it is academic now.
12 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: That's right. Look, Tom, 13 the only point I would make is that specifically on this i
14 incident I think -- lucky is not the right word to use -- but 15 we could have gone a long time and never have been informed of 16 this particular incident and then I think Vic is correct, we 17 would have gone a long time convincing the company, it would 18 appear, that they did have a serious problem down there. I 1
19 don't know. You have been closer to it than I have.
20 MR. STELLO: Or on the other hand, we would have I
21 gotten tired and taken more drastic actions. I 22 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Well, maybe, but that, too, 23 would have taken a long time.
24 MR. STELLO: Enoughtogetthe[rattentionwhichwe 25 can either try if we are satisfied if it is moving; if not, we ,
l l
l
. . 38 1 can always take more action. But lot me tell you what the 2 frustration is. I have sat at this table so many times with 3 frustration for myself and I can remember going back with 4 Zimmer, Marble Hill, and it is always well, if you now look at 5 it, could you have found it out sooner. The answer is always 6 yes in retrospect.
7 CONMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I agree with that.
8 MR. STELLO: We are trying very hard. We are 9 looking at these plants. We are identifying them but I will 10 tell you now for the next time --
11 [ Laughter.)
12 MR. STELLO: -- will be could you have done it 13 sooner? It is a frustration. The answer is, yes, I guess 14 so, but I really don't know how.
15 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Vic, I would say in this 16 case the staff did find the root cause of the problem and they 17 found it long before this individual event. The problem in 18 this case is not operators sleeping in the control room. That 19 is a symptom of the broader problem and I would give the 20 staff credit.
~
21 I think that the staff identified the broader 22 problem in the SALP report and I think that is is rooted in 23 this series of strong enforcement actions based upon poor 24 regulatory performance by this licensee. The problem is lousy 25 management of that plant and bad safety attitudes by the ,
. 39 1 people at that plant.
- I 2 That is the problem and the staff did identify 3 that. I give you credit for that.
4 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: But you can't read that SALP i
5 report and say, "We have to close that plant down."
, 6 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: That's right. No, you j . s 7 can't. ,
8 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I am not being critical of 9 the staff.
10 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: The SALP report should 11 have been tougher, I think.
12 MR. STELLO: That may be true.
13 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: What was that?
j 14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I think the SALP report i
15 should have been tougher myself.
j 16 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Yes, that is hindsight.
i 17 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.
18 MR. STELLO: The difficulty is every time I play a 19 Morning Morning Quarterback, I always win. It is awfully hard 20 to say based on what we knew, should we have been doing more 21 than we were doing. Again, I say I know feel, yes we should i 22 but my view of the company and the attitude that was there 23 based on what I heard that we found out was completely 24 different than the view that I got of everything else, a major 25 difference. -
_- - . - , - - , , , - . - - - , . , , . . - - . - - , - - , - - . - . , ,n-- - - - - . - , . , , - , - . - - - - . _ . , - , - - - - - - , . - - , _ - - - - - , , - - , - , -.-v - - - -
t
. 40 1 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Look, the only point I am 2 trying to make here is that I am struck by the language that 3 you are using here and I wrote down a couple of words, Tom.
4 " Cultural problem, they tolerated the NRC, they believed in 5 the old ways rather than recognizing where this industry has 6 to find itself in the next few years, the pattern of civil 7 penalties and enforcement actions," there is one v,ery large 8 utility and even the guy that has been hired to set it right, 9 Admiral Whita, used words very, very much like this, that we 10 have a cultural problem down here and I can almost guarantee 11 you that in my judgement at least I think he is right.
. 12 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Are you taking about the 13 geographic region? I might take offense at this.
14 (Laughter.]
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Speaking of the power plant 16 operations, Tom.
17 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I am teasing. I know.
18 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I am part of that culture 19 myself.
i l
20 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Transplanted.
i 21 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: You are right and I am just 1
22 struck by the similarities. This is a microcosm because we 23 had a huge situation down thete.
1 24 MR. MURLEY: I have used that same language across i i
25 the table from the senior management of the, company. Believe
. . 41 1 me, I did.
2 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Yes.
3 MR. STELLO: So did it.
4 MR. MURLEY: And they didn't take effective action 5 on it. There is another element, I think, that I haven't 6 talked about too much. They are a very paternalistic company.
7 They don't want to remove people. -
8 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Right.
9 MR. MURLEY: One vice president told me in his 38 10 years in the company he has never seen a person removed for 11 cause. They will patch around a problem. They will do 12 everything they can to save a soul. These are almost exact 13 quotes and that is where the weakness is that once they have a 14 problem, they cannot deal with it effectively, take effective 15 personnel actions.
16 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: One other comment here 17 troubles me and it is getting late, so I will quick soon.
4 18 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: I thought you were going to 19 succeed Victor as the person who joined me in short meetings.
20 [ Laughter.]
21 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Well, as long as we are 1
22 going to do this on Friday afternoon, we might as well prove 23 my long standing point here 24 How is it that guards alert the control room as soon 25 as an NRC walks through the gate? I can so,rt of understand
, 42 1 why guards on duty should make a generic announcement, " Alien 2 person on site" or something like that.
3 MR. MURLEY: Because tha shift superintendent, if 4 somebody shows up in the control room and he doesn't know it,.
5 he will call that guard up and chew him up one side and down 6 the other even if it is his own management that shows up 7
unannounced.. .
8 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: And there is nothing wrong 9 with that.
10 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: There is nothing wrong with 11 that?
12 COMMISSIONER ROBERTS: Don't you think the shift 13 superintendent ought to know who is authorized to be in the 14 control room or not?
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Now that is different 16 question.
17 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: That is a different 18 question.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: At least in most control 20 rooms I have been to and I can't remember whether they are all 21 in this country or in other countries, the gatekeeper is at 22 the door to the control room. Control room people don't get 23 tipped off outside the plant when NRC or maybe the president 24 ofthecompanyorsomeoneelseisonhibway. That doesn't 25 seem quite right to me. I agree that people should not be
0 43 1 waking into the control room but there usually is a window on 2 the door of tlhe control room as well and I suspect you could 3 tell if people or three of them at a time are asleep.
4 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.
5 MR. STELLO: The short answer is I am not sure we 6 know why but I am convinced that we are going to find a way to 7 fix it.
8 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: That is really a problem 9 endemic to regulation, I think, whether it is mine safety 10 inspectors.
11 MR. STELLO: I think we will fix it.
12 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Or meat inspectors or OSHA 13 inspectors, when you walk in the front gate.
14 MR. STELLO: I think we will fix it.
15 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Last question. Did INPO 16 pick any of this up? Do we know?
17 MR. STELLO: I asked the question and the answer is 18 no.
~
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: We don't know or they 1
20 didn't?
l
)
21 MR. STELLO: They did not and I said, "How come?" and 22 he said that he thinks they have the same problem we do.
23 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Just the sleeping part or 24 the poor attitude part.
1 25 MR. STELLO: The sleeping part I am talking about. '
l 1
l
. 44 ,
l l
1 I asked him the question about sleeping and he said that he i 2 thinks they. have basically the same problem when they got i 3 their team there.
4 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: What about the rest of it?
5 Sleeping is an incident. t 6 MR. STELLO: Tom already said they did not consider 7 this to be a very good plant either.
8 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Oh, I see. I am sorry.
9 MR. STELLO: Tom made that point earlier. I was 10 answering the narrow question.
11 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Thank you.
12 CKAIRMAN ZECH: Commissioner Carr.
13 COMMISSIONER CARR: In the same report when your 14 diagnostic team went down there that said their attitude 15 toward nuclear safety was good in that same paragraph you
, 16 mention the fact that they have an information tag system that 17 doesn't have any serial numbers and they can't locate the tags I 4
18 and therefore correction of a significant problem may be l 1
19 overlooked.
20 Further on down in the same page as that there is an 21 attitude comment on the plant paging system that caught my 22 eye. "The other deficiency involves abuse of the paging 1
l 23 system to include such childish acts as making obscene sounds, 24 playing music and using the tones associated with each digit 25 to sound out nursery rhymes. The licensee has been aware of I
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45 CJ 1 the paging system deficiencies for some time but has not r . .
2 implemented effective changes to correct them."
3 My experience with attitude is if you will tolerate 4 a little, you will tolerate a lot. So while you read this 5 report and ,say that it is not really that bad, the attitude is 6 all through it.
t 7 MR. KANE: Yes, it is. ,
8 COMMISSIONER CARR: Their unwillingness or a lack of 9 being capable to correct it is apparent. I agree with you.
10 If it hadn't been this, it would have been something else that 11 we would have had to shut it down for because they weren't 12 going in the right direction.
4 13 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.
14 COMMISSIONER CARR: That is all I have.
15 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Let me just say that I think that i 16 the Region has certainly done a good job in a very difficult 17 area of evaluating performance and I think you have done what l
! 18 you could to get their attention, the plant management and I
19 senior people.
20 I guess the important thing that I get out of all of 21 this is we cannot regulate attitude. We cannot regulate 1
22 dedication to performance. We cannot regulate respect. There 23 are certain things we can't regulate and there are certain i 24 thingswereallydorelyonthelicense[,theindustry,to 25 handle. -
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,' 46 i 1 We can have all the regulations in the world but if
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2 the licensee will tolerate poor attitude and doesn't straighten '
I 3 out the problems, it makes our task extremely difficult. l 4 So what we have to try to do is, of course, identify 5 organizations that don't have the right attitude and perhaps 6 just be one heck of a lot tougher on them. Perhaps you could
- 7 say in hindsight, "Well, we saw some of this" but I think from 8 my judgement Region I handled it extremely well. Hindsight 9 always makes us brilliant but i think we should learn perhaps 10
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a lesson from here if we can, not that it is easy but to say j
11 that one of the most important things from this episode at least in my judgment is those things we cannot regulate are 12 13 extremely important and attitude is probably on the top of 14 the list.
15 So when we see attitude of disrespect, of surliness, 16 of disdain, those kinds of things, perhaps we should recognize 17 that there may be other things behind that attitude that we 18 can't find, can't see, are very difficult to see.
I 19 So we do count on the licensee. We do count on the
, 20 industry for quality, for excellence and for a dedication and i
21 an attitude and the respect that we simply can't regulate but 22 we can perhaps try to identify.
23 I think we are dealing with a very serious matter
- 24 here. We certainly at this Commission must have our confidence l 25 restored in this licensee or we are not goi,ng to restart the
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- 47 1 plant until we do.
2 I don't know how long that is going to be but we are 3 dealing not only with an operator problem and certainly we are 4 dealing with that kind of a problem with people who would 5 sleep on watch and it looks like it has been going on for a 6 period of time but we are dealing with management, too.
7 We can't manage that plant. That is the licensee's 8 responsibility so to me, we are dealing with a very serious 9 problem and to think that we can regulate management attitude 10 is just not proper in my view but we can try to recognize it 11 and where we see this kind of an attitude, an unresponsiveness, 1
12 then I think perhaps we should try to treat it more seriously 13 than we have in the past.
14 But I think the staff acted properly. I commend
- 15 Mr. Stallo for prompt action and the plant is shut down. It i
) 16 is in a safe condition. We certainly do not intend to restart
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17 it until we have the confidence that it can be operated 18 safely.
19 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: Lando, if I can interject 20 here, I think you have made the point that I was really trying 21 to make. My intent was not and I believe the record will show 22 was not to be critical necessarily of staff who did carry on 23 enforcement actions and did levy fines and whatnot over some
- 24 period of time. -
l 25 It might be that the enemy -is us, ,in fact, that the _
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. 48 1 Commission, too, should look more seriously when we see a 2 pattern like that developing and when we hear from staff or 1
J 3 even seen in the record that there does appear to be a cultural 4 problem as we have been saying, it really is what you just put .
5 in another way. Maybe we ought to be a little more attentive.
6 It is hard to write a regulation about culture but 7 somehow we have to try and do that better. ,
8 CHAIRMAN ZECH: Commissioner Carr.
! 9 COMMISSIONER CARR: Yes. I would like to make one
- 10 more comment and that is that I believe the majority of the 11 operators out there are good, dedicated, awake operators and 12 these guys have laid a bum rap on them from my mind.
13 CHAIRMAN ZECH: I agree with that and I might just 14 say that many of us have visited a lot of plants around the 15 country. I think it is an important point to make.
16 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: I agree.
17 CHAIRMAN ZECH: I have been frankly impressed by our 18 operators. Every where I go I sense a real dedication to 19 safety of operations and a real sincere feeling for public t
20 health and safety and also a real competence and a commitment !
21 to safety. So I agree. That is a very important point that 22 Commissioner Carr has made.
23 I think these particular opera ors have let down a 24 lot of their colleagues not only this Commission and the staff 25 and the region, they have let down the Amer,ican people, they
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- 49 )
I have let down their own colleagues out there that are very I I
2 decided and competent operators. It is a very important ,
3 point.
4 Are there any other comments before we adjourn?
5 MR. PARLER: Mr. Chairman, would you permit me to 6 say for the record that the cautions that I. expressed earlier 7 to the witness were given for the sole purpose of assuring i
8 that this agency and the government are able to carry out its 9 responsibilities fully in this matter. I 10 They were given for no other purpose and they were 11 given completely consistent with applicable law.
i 12 CHAIRMAN ZECH: I appreciate that.
13 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I think there is a legal 14 reason for what he just said but I am not sure.
15 [ Laughter.]
- 16 CHAIRMAN ZECH: I am sure there is. . We stand 17 adjourned.
18 [Wheieupon, the meeting of the Commission was 19 adjourned at 5:30 o' clock p.m., to reconvene at the Call of 20 the Chair.]
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REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE 3
4 This is to certify that the attached events of a 5 meeting of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission entitled: !
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6 7 TI"LE OF MEETING: Briefing on Status of Peach Bottom 8 PLACE OF MEETING: Washington, D.C.
9 DATE OF MEETING: ' '
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11 were held as herein appears, and that this is the original 12 transcript thereof for the file of the commission ta' ken 13 1
(~ stenographically by me, thereafter reduced to typewriting by 14 me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and 15 that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the 16 foregoing events. ,
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20 21 22 Ann Riley & Associates, Ltd.
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