ML20211M178

Summarizes Concerns with Chilling Effect & Overtime Abuses at Commonwealth Edison,Byron Station.Request That Ltr Be Made Part of Permanent Record of 990527 Meeting

ML20211M178
Person / Time
Site:	Byron
Issue date:	05/25/1999
From:	Quigley B COMMONWEALTH EDISON CO.
To:	Grobe J NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION III)
Shared Package
ML20211M141	List: ML20211M137 ML20211M161 ML20211M178
References
NUDOCS 9909090056
Download: ML20211M178 (35)

Text

F l Enclosure 2 I

< . I f

May 25,1999 l Jack Grobe l Director, Division of Reactor Safety

, U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Region III 801 Warrenville Rd.

Lisle, IL 60532-4251 l

l

Subject:

' Comed's Responses to Chilling Effect and Overtime Concerns l  !

Dear Mr. Grobe,

This letter summarizes concerns with a chilling effect and, overtime abuses at Comed's Byron Station. As a member of the public, I request that this letter be made part of the permanent record of the meeting on 5/27/99.

Chilling Effect Comments The corrective actions from Comed's chilling effect investigation have not been fully i effective - this should be no surprise since the corrective actions were without substance.

The corrective actions only dealt with symptomatic fixes since Comed said that there was i no need to determine the true root cause of the problem with the work environment. ,

I Evidence of the failure of the corrective actions is found in the following two examples.

The handling of multiple concerns since the beginning of 1999 on the quality of operator j training shows that Comed either does not understand or does not care about the cause  !

and effect relationship between ignoring concerns and employees going to the NRC. '

Concerns raised by some licensed operators regarding the startup of Byron Unit I with  !

l loose parts in the Reactor Coolant System were met with written and verbal comments l i

I that made it clear that k>me management wished they would just shut up. The operator -

comments were dismissed as 'editoria!'. Based on my experience, Comed's working i l definition of an editorial comment is a comment that is both tme and troublesome.  ;

Why did Comed's Nuclear Oversight Organization (which fulfills the 10 CFR 50 Quality I Assurance role and is required by regulations to be independent from line management) fail to. correct the long-standing problems with the work environment despite multiple chances to do so? I have seen no evidence that Comed even attempted to find out why.

Comed's only action acknowledging Nuclear Oversight's role was a feeble letter to the l

Nuclear Oversight auditors which basically said 'do better next time'. NRC Inspection Procedure 40500 on Corrective Actions has criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of Nuclear Oversight - what role will the current problems play in the next inspection in this .

area?

MAY 2 5 1999 i

99o9090056 99o902 PDR P ADOCK 05000454 PDR _

m A February 1999 Byron Issues report prepared at the request of Oliver Kingsley stated that 3 people had made 10 allegations to the NRC in 1998. What is the purpose of presenting this information to the president of the Nuclear Generation Group? A noble purpose would be to ask the allegers what was wrong with the Comed internal processes that caused them to go to the NRC. This has not occurred in the 3 months since the report was published. What other purposes exist? Since you can't fire a whistleblower until you know who he is, identification would be a logical first step.

Between May 18 and May 20,1999 Comed conducted another investigation into why people were going to outside agencies. The interview list for this investigation looked odd to say the least. Given that the company made the effort to find out who has been going to the NRC why didn't the 3 people whose identities were known in the February 1999 Byron Issues report get' interviewed? Is it so Comed can come to this meeting today and -

say 'We looked and didn't find anything'?

l Senior Reactor Operators have been among the more vocal and critical ofissues at Byron.

A potential employer recently notified 3 SRO's that their job interviews were cancelled.

Some believe that Comed contacted the prospective employer and requested that they not hire any more Comed employees, especially those from Byron. Aside from the poor management practice of failing to recognize that competition applies to employees as well as customers, does this constitute illegal blacklisting since it punishes the vocal and critical SRO group?

The rise in the number of allegations at Byron is significant:

1996 5 1997 11 1998 18 (3 still open) 1999 8 (through 4/30/99)

Also noteworthy is the ' quality' of Byron's allegations - For the 4-year period of 1995-1998, 42.9 % of Byron's allegations were substantiated by the NRC while the national '

average for the same period was 37.2%. -Not only is the number increasing, real problems are being identified that Comed failed to deal with. Eight allegations so far in 1999 puts Byron in 4th place behind St. Lucie (16), Millstone (13) and San Onofre (10). Comed has finally achieved top quartile performance, but in the wrong quartile.

Allegations to OSHA have also accelerated at Byron, hard numbers are not available but I

.would estimate 3 so far this year. Why doesn't the NRC include the number of OSHA allegations when it evaluates the health of a licensee's safety conscious work environment?

The NRC fequested tha't Comed conduct an independent investigation. Instead, Comed brought in Winston & Strawn, a ' law firm that frequently' represents Comed. The company's web page says 'We have defended licensees and contractors against numerous whistleblower claims'. During a debrief on 1/15/99, the attomey would not provide some 2

L.

4 i-information to personnel interviewed for the investigation since it was " attorney-client" material not subject to third-party disclosure. The independence of the investigation warrants review.

The investigation resulted in over 2,000 pages of transcribed testimony, a report of about 200 pages but less than a 10-page response to the NRC. Is the NRC basing its decision solely on this meeting and previous correspondence? A more informed decision could be reached by reviewing the source materials.

The NRC has a_ role in Byron's declining performance. Why did it take over 4 years to even begin to address this issue? Missed opportunities include a chilling effect allegation in 1995 (RIII-95-A-0020) and a harassment complaint filed in 1996 by a Senior Reactor Operator after concerns were raised regarding fire protection issues and the effectiveness of the corrective action program (RIII-96-A-0142). The current case is not particularly timely either - over a year has passed since the concern was first brought to the NRC's attention.

Why didn't the NRC's corrective action inspections under IP 40500 detect that Comed's corrective action program frequently failed to resolve issues? A partial answer may be in the NRC allowing inspections to do ' double duty'. The 1996 Corrective Actions inspection took credit for the investigation into the 1995 chilling effect complaint. The 1998 corrective action inspection used the results of a team inspection in the engineering area to meet the requirements ofIP 40500. The problem here was that it solely focused on engineering corrective actions, despite information that showed problems existed in other areas.

A conflict exists between an April 14, 1999 letter regarding Allegation Rill-98-A-0105 and the wording of the subject of this meeting. The letter says the NRC concluded that the concern of a chilled environment was substantiated since the environment was not always conducive to the open raising ofissues. This conflicts with the wording of the notice for the current meeting which only discusses a ' potential' chilling effect; it appears that Region III is straddling the fence.

Implicit in the NRC's new program for monitoring licensee performance is a reliance on a licensee's corrective action program and their quality assurance program. Given that these were deficient in the current case and the NRC took 4 years to get around to dealing with it, what reasonable assurances does the public have that problems like those at Byron will not occur again at Byron or at other licensees?

Byron Station's environment is not conducive the open raising of issues and Comed's corrective actions are without substance therefore NRC must step in and take action.

Overtime Comments Frustration with Comed's refusal to address the overtime issues in the Operating Department at Byron caused the issue to escalate to the national level. My comments I

l ,

i I here are limited to Byron's responses to the NRC. Generic issues with overtime are being  !

l pursued in other venues.

I The metric selected by Comed to respond to initial NRC. questions was the average number of paid hours. This misrepresents the hours worked by management, since some are forced to work uncompensated hours. The payroll records don't always include the ,

forced hours, therefore the hours worked by management are understated. The NRC  !

. noted this same logical flaw in D.C. Cook's tracking of overtime (See Inspection Report 50-315/99004). Also used was the average number of hours, this is a misuse of statistics ,

~

since it is not the average operator that is going make a mistake but the one working 50%

over the average. Another odd statement was that the operations department personnel l had increased from 152 in 1995 to 172 in 1998, this partially appears to be increases in l staff members who do not operate the power plant. This statement puzzled many

operators since we haven't seen these 20 extra people. Did Comed average in staff l members with low overtime to bring the numbers down?

l I have left out some details to protect the privacy of those involved. If further m

• formation is needed I can be reached at:

l l

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