ML20214Q668
| ML20214Q668 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Comanche Peak  |
| Issue date: | 12/01/1986 |
| From: | Gad R, Wooldridge R ROPES & GRAY, TEXAS UTILITIES ELECTRIC CO. (TU ELECTRIC), WORSHAM, FORSYTHE, SAMPELS & WOOLRIDGE (FORMERLY |
| To: | |
| References | |
| CON-#486-1739 OL, NUDOCS 8612050233 | |
| Download: ML20214Q668 (56) | |
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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 00LKETED k-NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION before the '86 DEC -4 All :32 ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD GFFli ta it >tJh 00CKEithL i~! Ni1
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In the Matter of )
TEXAS UTILITIES ELECTRIC
) Docket Nos. 50-445f)L
) 50-446 COMPANY et al. )
) (Application for an (Comanche Peak Steam Electric ) Operating License)
Station, Units 1 and 2) )
)
APPLICANTS' RESPONSE TO BOARD CONCERNS The Applicants submit herewith, for the information of the Board, the attached " Response to Board Concerns."
, Contained in this document are the responses of the Applicants (i) to the " concerns" expressed by the Board in the Board's " MEMORANDUM (Board Concerns)" dated June 26, 1986 (hereinafter " Concerns Memo"); (ii) to the " concerns" expressed and questions asked by the Board during the pre-hearing conference held in Dallas, Texas, on August 18 and 19, 1986; and (iii) to selected assertions made by CASE during that same pre-hearing conference. While this information is not, of course, being offered into evidence at this time, these responses are believed to contain i
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. information that may be of assistance to the Board.
Res ectfully submitted,
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k % _-- w Thomas G. Digpf,Jr. ~
R. K. Gad IIIV William S. Eggeling Kathryn A.-Selleck-i Ropes & Gray 225 Franklin Street Boston, Massachusetts 02110 (617) 423-6100 Robert A. Wooldridge Worsham, Forsythe, Samples
& Wooldridge Suite 3200 2001 Bryan Tower Dallas, Texas 75201
,!214) 979-3000 A t torneys for the Applicants b
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12/1/86 RESPONSE TO BOARD CONCERNS This paper sets forth the Applicants' responses (i) to the " concerns" expressed by the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board regarding the CPRT Program Plan expressed in the Board's " MEMORANDUM (Board Concerns)" dated June 26, 1986 (hereinafter " Concerns Memo"), and (ii) to the " concerns" expressed and questions asked by the Board during the pre-hearing conference held in Dallas, Texas, on August 18 and 19, 1986. In addition, responses are included to selected assertions made by CASE during that same pre-hearing conference.
Introduction Program Flexibility The CPRT Program has been designed to be flexible. It is flexible in that, as set forth in the several Action Plans, the breadth and depth of the required investigations depend in part on what is found during them. It is also flexible in that, as a result of the collective evaluation of results, additional investigations may be determined to be warranted. Finally, it is also flexible in that the SRT has from time to time revised the Program Plan, including the Action Plans, and it will continue to review the Program Plan to determine whether, based on findings in progress or comments made by others, or for any other
.' reason, additional revisions to the Program Plan are in order. It is, for these reasons, a virtual certainty that the Program Plan as it exists when the program has been completed and the results are offered into evidence will.be different from the Program Plan as it exists today. In fact, a proposed " Revision 4" to the Program Plan is presently expected to be approved and published in the near future.
The CPRT has been charged with a significant task, in that, in addition to providing a response to the specific issues to which certain Action Plans are addressed, the ultimate goal of the program is to provide the requisite
' assurance of adequacy of design and construction for essentially 100% of the safety-related aspects of the i
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facility.1 No claim has been made that, in its present form, the CPRT Program Plan is necessarily all that will be employed or required to achieve that goal. Nor have the Applicants made any claim that their case for licensing will rest entirely and exclusively on the results of the CPRT Program Plan implementation. A claim of completeness, rather, will be made only when the Applicants have offered their evidence.2 For these reasons, the Applicants respectfully suggest that the Board may be tending toward premature conclusions if the Board proposes to render judgment, at this time, about the adequacy of ongoing efforts to resolve the issues requiring resolution before the Operating License can be authorized.
Components of the Program Plan lIn design, the scope covers 100% of the safety-related design, exclusive of the design of the NSSS (but not exclusive of the NSSS/AE interface), and exclusive of certain " givens" that CPRT is prepared to defend. See CPRT Program Plan, Appendix A, 4 at n., 29 (section 3.2.5 of Attachment 4 to Appendix A). In construction, the scope includes 100% of the safety-related hardware. See Program Plan, Appendix B, at 7 (II.A.2). In testing, the scope includes 100% of the testing program applicable to the safety-related aspects of the facility. For ease of reference, this scope will be referred to as " essentially '
100%" or " essentially all" where the concept is to be referenced hereinafter. (For the difference between scope of coverage, on the one hand, and method'of investigation, on the other, please see infra at 6.)
alt is, of course, the Applicants' prerogative, as the party bearing the burden of proof, to determine what evidence they will offer and to defer offering evidence until they are satisfied that it is ready for proffer.
Until that evidence has been offered, there is no question regarding its sufficiency (or the sufficiency of the methods by which it is being gathered) before the Board.
For this reason, the Applicants respectfully submit that the Board cannot convene to litigate the programmatic adequacy of the CPRT program plan, pre-implementation, absent the Applicants' consent.
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0-The CPRT Program Plan acquired its present composition by an evolutionary process. Initially, CPRT's mission was limited to providing a technical response to the technical issues raised by the Staff's Technical Review Team ("TRT").
It is for this narrowly reason focussed as that they the are.3earlier Action Plans are as that, Later, today,the scope of the CPRT mission was broadened, so charged is notthe ultimate responsibility with which CPRT is limited in scope to the issues raised by the TRT (or any other External Source). It was for this reason that Action Plan VII.c (relating to construction) and the "self-initiated" aspects of the Design Adequacy Program (DSAPs VIII through XI) were adopted. Had it been known at the outset"that Action Plan VII.c. would eventually be performed, Action Plan I.a.4 (and a number of the other issue-specific action plans) probably would not have been issued. Nonetheless, a judgment was made at the time CPRT scope was expanded that the original action plans would be continued. One risk created by that decision is that some might perceive the function of the earlier action plans to be broader than was intended, i.e., to respond only to the specific TRT issue.
This perception, the Applicants suggest, lies behind some of the comments contained in the concerns Memo and during the pre-hearing conference.
Action Plan I.a.4 was not intended to address any 3Even as initially framed, the CPRT was a deeper investigation than would normally have been required or undertaken had the same concerns expressed in the TRT letters been in which Comanche Peak findsreceived outside of the particular atmosphere the specifics of the itself. In the normal course, vestigated by the applicant. concern advanced would have been in-If the applicant agreed that the concern was valid, further investigation ar..I remedial steps action would have been devised in the nature of a corrective program.
that it was invalid, Where suchaas review has of the concern occurred in thedemonstrated case of the concerns expressed as TRT item I.a.4, the applicant could have elected to proceed no further. Here, an investigation of a population of cable terminations was undertaken notwithstanding that the expressed TRT concerns did not survive a specific review. We believe this intensity of investigation should belie any concerns that the CPRT is not thorough. ,
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issues regarding the design of electrical circuits or design QA regarding electrical' circuits. Nor was that Action Plan intended to address any and all issues regarding the construction of electrical circuits or the QA/QC applied to that construction. Rather, Action Plan I'.' a . 4 wa s designed to address one specific hypothesis advanced by the TRT, namely that terminations were being systematically mislanded and " bought off" by QA/QC (either because of inspector qualifications or for other reasons)',
l resulting in circuits that would not function as designed.
j That hypothesis was tested in the most direct and.most-effective way, namely by re-inspection of terminations, and it was proved false to a very high degree of certainty.
' Testing that hypothesis was the purpose of the Action Plan.
To assess this-Action Plan based upon any'other criterion is not proper.
The Nature of the CPRT " Screen"
- It is not humanly possible for-the design and construction of a project of the magnitude and complexity of Comanche Peak to be done completely error-free. No more 1
is it possible for the implementation of the QA/QC program for the project to be completely arrne-free. Finelly, it y
t would not be possible to construct a re-inspection /re-analysis program such as CPRT so as to detect every error made during construction or QA/QC implementation and to have assurance that in fact every error had been detected.
These propositions are no more -- and no less -- true-for Comanche Peak than they are for every other nuclear power
- plant that has been constructed in the United States, or,
, for that matter, for every other substantial non-nuclear
- construction effort, such as a high-rise. building or a dam.
Absolute perfection of construction is not required, however, because of the diversities, redundancies and conservative margins that are engineered into a system such
, as Comanche Peak in implementation of the " defense in depth" philosophy. It is in the nature of things that only a fraction of the possible errors are'such that,'if j.
undetected and uncorrected, they would prevent the facility from operating in accorandance'with NRC regulations. .In addition, for construction deficiencies actually to~ impair 3 safety, there must be a simultaneous failure of F
construction and inspection and (if applicable) testing (and even then it must be hypothesized that all redundant and diverse components and systems also fail). It is accepted -- indeed, it is a fundamental precept of the l
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" defense in depth" philosophy -- that the design of a facility such as Comanche Peak is such that it can tolerate random failures of construction process or the inspection process without resulting in risk to the public.* It is the potential for systematic failures that is the focus of concern.
The CPRT was implemented in the face of allegations of widespread, systematic failures of the QA/QC process (and also, of necessity, of the construction and design processes, for, in the absence of construction or design failures, any failures of QA/QC are moot).5 CPRT is 4Given that a function of the " defense in depth" design philosophy is to provide margin that renders the facility capable of, tolerating errors, it is not required by that philosophy that no errors exist or that all errors be detected and corrected. That design philosophy builds in margins, some of which are included in the applicable codes and some of which in addition to code requirements.
Of necessity, it is not required that the entirety of the original (pre-construction) design margin be preserved; that is, the design philosophy that builds in margin so that it can be consumed does not require that none be consumed. It is, therefore, an invalid challenge (were the challenge to be made) that Comanche Peak may not be (or should not be) licensed because no assurance can be given that 100% of the original design margin has been preserved (so long as the margin inherent in Code requirements is preserved, which is a Design Adequacy Program commitment).
5It is worth recalling -- not for the purpose of denigrating the contribution that such programs can make but only to point out that they do not have sine qua non status -- that for many years nuclear power plants were constructed without 10 C.F.R. Part 50, Appendix B QA/QC programs. This was possible because, in the final analysis, QA/QC neither constructs nor designs anything; it is, rather, just one more check in a process that includes -
multiple layers of checks. What is important, however, is the product, not just one portion of the process by which it was achieved. It is for this reason that CPRT focuses upon the hardware and the design, dnd that (apart from the specific TRT issues such as are investigated in Action Plan VII a.4) CPRT investigates QA/QC only to the extent that, as a possible root cause of found deficiencies, QA/QC O
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designed to test the hypothesis that such systematic j failures occurred. Where individual significant errors are detected, they are then pursued so that assurance that correction has been or will be implemented may be attained.
Where no such errors are detected, CPRT determines that the hypothesis is false.
During the course of the pre-hearing conference the term "100* re-inspection" was used, and the concept also appears in the Concerns Memo. However, it is not apparent to the Applicants that a critical distinction is being made between populations'and samples (i.e., between breadth and i depth). The population that CPRT is investigating (and about which it proposes to make a statement) extends to "1004" of the relevant construction or design activities.
It is not, however, necessary individually to inspect 100%
of the occurrences of the same activity in order to do so.
It is true that CPRT is not a "100% re-ins'pection" only in the sense that, at least in the first instance, populations are investigated through the use of sampling techniques.
It is not true, however, that the populations.that CPRT is investigating, and about which at the conclusion of the program it will make statements, aggregate to less than essentinlly 100% of the relevant activities.
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! The only relevant issue, therefore, is whether the sampling process employed by the CPRT is an adequate-screen for detection of the existence of deficiencies within a l given population. The Applicants believe that it is. If, as hypothesized, the breakdowns in both construction (or i design) and the QA/QC oversight thereof were pervasive and repetitive, then the Applicants believe there to be only an extremely remote possibility that such deficiencies could remain undetected. In the case of the issue-specific action plans in which Appendix D-type sampling is employed, each population is subjected to a screen that, at the i minimum, has a 95% confidence of detecting deficiencies that propagated through 5% or more of the population.e In failures may help to define the bounds of other potential i deficiencies.
i 6It should be understood that the "95/5" values are i but one statement of the resulting confidence; that which ;
obtains 95% confidence of detecting anything that 1 l
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Action Plan VII.c, each population is subjected'to an overlay of two such screens: one for the population at large and one for a sub-set of that population determined, on an engineering basis, to be'the more critical in terms of safety significance. In the design area, sampling is not statistically-based, but is done on the basis of such fine stratifications of homogeneity that, again, the existence of systematic errors and error-causing mechanisms of the sort hypothesized are highly unlikely to escape detection.
Wherever a population " passes," therefore, reasonable assurance has been provided that the hypothesis of a
. systematic simultaneous breakdown of both the construction (or design) process and the QA/QC process is false. Where a population " fails," on the other hand, sampling has essentially completed its task. At that point, the detected failure is examined in order to detect all of:the deficiencies that might have been produced by the same root cause; sampling is employed only for the purpose of testing for other deficiencies caused by other causes (or by the same root cause in a different population).
The Difference Between Process Reviews and Product Reviews A number of the comments and questions raised during the pre-hearing conference focussed on the extent to which CPRT will investigate and report upon specific aspects of
, the programmatic sufficiency of the CPSES construction QA program.
The CPRT investigations will yield a good deal of evidence concerning the CPSES construction QA program. A number of the TRT concerns, and hence of the CPRT Action Plans that respond to them, deal directly with specific programmatic aspects of the construction QA program. In addition, the review of the causes of found deficiencies
- propagated though at least 5% of the population has a i
correspondingly higher confidence of detecting a more pervasive phenomenon and a lower, but still significant, confidence of detecting a rarer phenomenon. To assert that the sampling approach diminishes in validity as the pervasiveness of deficiencies is hypothesized to increase is therefore backwards; the more pervasive the hypothesized effect, the higher the confidence that the sampling program will detect its presence.
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will lead to a review of the parts of that program.
Finally, the results of the hardware inspections themselves will reveal much about the adequacy of the construction QA program. By the time all of the Action Plans have been implemented and the results assessed, the Applicants believe that evidence will have been obtained that touches each of the IE 7riteria contained in 10 CFR, Part 50, Appendix B. '
.e CPRT Program Plan obviously contemplates that this information will be useful and helpful, and it calls for a collective evaluation of all of the evidence obtained about the programmatic sufficiency of the CPSES .
historical program. (See Program Plan, Appendix B at 12.)
Nonetheless, there is a fundamental difference between a program that tests the adequacy and acceptability of a facility and a program that singles out and tests only one aspect (such as QA/QC) of the process by which the facility was created. CPRT is the former. It is designed to lead to a conclusion that the CPSES facility is adequately designed and constructed and tested (and is therefore eligible to be licensed). It will establish reasonable assurance as to the absence of undetected, uncorrected safety significant deficiencies, either by determining that they never existed or that they have been found and t
are being fixed (i.e., appropriate corrective actions have been defined). In the process, much is expected to be learned about the adequacy of the original acceptance inspection program, but the purpose of the exercise will be accomplished whatever the ultimate verdict about that program might be.
Thus structured CPRT can, in fact, accomplish what a program that singled out and tested the adequacy of only the original inspection program cannot accomplish. A QA-Program-grounded assessment, for instance, would not test the hardware directly, nor could it assure global coverage of any indirect assessment of hardware. In addition, such a program would not (and could not) test the hypotheses of falsification of records or records unreliability, including any extent to which record reliability might be impaired by the hypothesized existence of harassment and intimidation of inspection personnel. A QA-Program-based assessment is critically dependent upon the accuracy of its determinations (or assumptions) about root cause (since investigations for possible generic implications are limited by those determinations or assumptions), while CPRT's global approach is tolerant both of any imprecisions in the root cause assessment process as well as of any 8-1
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situations in which no determination of root cause is ;
1 possible. Finally, should a "QA Program" program lead to a negative verdict on the adequacy of the original acceptance )
inspection program, nothing of utility would have been accomplished, because a hardware-based program like CPRT would then have to be engaged in order to provide the requisite reasonable assurance that CPRT provides directly.
The CPRT Program, therefore, addresses the critical safety and licensing issue directly. It does so more directly and more expeditiously..and it does so in a manner less dependent for its ultimate reliability on an ability to reconstruct with perfect accuracy the events of history.
It does so, therefore, more reliably than would a QA-Program based assessment.
Root Cause. Trending and Program Plan Appendix E A number of the comments and concerns responded to herein involve the function of the CPRT Program Plan Appendix E. We believe a review of the provisions of Appendix E in one place might facilitate a response. See Tr. 24468 ff. (8/19/86).
Appendix E of the Program Plan governs the classification of findings made during the implementation ,
of the self-initiated hardware assessment (Action Plan VII.c) and the Design Adequacy Program.
(Appendix E, insofar as it dictates the treatment of classified observations, also applies to the TRT-responsive Action Plans. However, the definition of a " deviation" in i
those action plans depends upon the acceptance criteria contained in the specific action plan.)
Under Appendix E, all hardware falls into one of three categories. In the first instance, hardware is either conforming to the design documents or it is not; in the !
latter case we have a deviation. Deviations are then sub-divided into those that are safety-significant (deficiencies) and those that are not. Deviations that are not safety-significant are assessed as possible trends. If a collection of deviations is determined to constitute a trend, it is further evaluated to determine whether or not it is adverse. A root cause investigation is undertaken in the case of all deficiencies and adverse trends.
The set of deficiencies and deviations (whether l
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determined to be an adverse trend or not) is then assessed i one more time, collectively, in the collective evaluation l for hardware.
Under Appendix E, all design activities fall into four categories. In the first instance, the activity was undertaken either with or without observed errors. Errors are further subdivided into those that result in a failure to meet design commitments (deviations) and those that do not (observations). Deviations are then further sub-divided into th that are safety-significant (deficiencies) ,ose and those that are not. Observations and deviations that are not safety-significant are assessed as possible trends. If a collection of observations or deviations is determined to constitute a trend, it is further evaluated to determine whether or not it is adverse. 3 root cause investigation is undertaken in.the case of all deficiencies and adverse trends.
The set of deficiencies, adverse trends, deviations and observations is then assessed one more time, collectively, in the collective evaluation of design adequacy.
There is, on the construction side, no such thing as a
" discrepancy,"
a failure of as-constructed hardware to meet the design documents that is not classified as a
" deviation."
The result of this process is that only those deviations (hardware or design) or observations (design) that are neither safety-significant nor adverse trends are not subjected to root cause evaluation.
We hope that this summary of Appendix E will be of assistance to the Board.
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Concerns Expressed in the Board Memorandum Concern:
"[T] hat the level of assurance of safety [that will be produced by implementation of the CPRT Program Plan] not be permitted to degrade below what would have occurred with full implementation of Appendix B for design and construction, with the proper interpretation of root cause, and with the appropriateness of samples in light of particular problems being addressed."7 Source:
Concerns Memo at I n.l.
Response
The Applicants are confident that the comparison (i.e., of the CPRT Program to " full implementation of Appendix B for design and construction") will be favorable, that is to say, that the. result of the CPRT program will be that the level of assurance of safety that will be produced by implementation of the Program Plan will be comparable to the level that may be hypothesized from an adequate Appendix B QA/QC program adequately administered. See Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, Units 1 and 2), ALAB-763, 18 NRC 571, 593 & n.86 (1984).
As noted in the " Introduction" above, it is neither possible nor required that construction be error-free; the same is true of a QA/QC program. However, it is possible, expected and required that the construction / inspection process be free ofproducts permit inadequate pervasive weaknesses that systematically (i.e., hardware containing safety-significant systematic errors are deficiencies) to be accepted. Such relatively more easily detected, however, because by definition they will occur, if at all. -
repetitively and with a pattern.
The CPRT sampling program, as noted above, is a screen through which it'is improbable that any reasonably systematic error can or will 7 Bracketed material inserted in quoted statements of concern reflect the interpretation that the Applicants have placed upon the quoted statement.
pass.
With respect to "the appropriateness of samples in light of particular problems being addressed," the Applicants point out that, where a deficiency has been j
detected with respect to one attribute in a population, stratified sampling or some other investigative technique is in fact performed in order to evaluate the pervasiveness of the deficiency in the balance of the population (not just.the sample), i.e., is it a random failure or does it appear repetitively?
Concern:
' [T]he [CPRT Program Plan] is far less clear about how decisions will be made about expanding sample sizes in one area when partial or complete breakdowns of QA/QC are discovered elsewhere. For example, there appears to have been a breakdown of effective quality assurance with respect to the design of pipe supports."
"[I)t is not apparent that sampling of design in other parts of the plant according to the CPRT program's Appendix D is adequate."
Source:
d Concerns Memo at 2-3. (Footnote omitted.)
Response
The Applicants understand'this concern to address the extent to which, as an element of exploring potential generic implications of a deficiency found in one population, sampling in other populations may be performed i
for the purpose of determining whether the cause of the found deficiency was likely to be causing deficiencies in
, other areas.
The Board has correctly noted that the Program Plan purposely avoids making hard and fast rules on this question, for what is believed to be good reason. A priori it is not clear that a special sampling technique in the other population is required, since each population in Action Plan VII.c is already subject to a 95/5 sample (performed twice; see note 15, infra) for what is believed j to be all safety significant attributes, and because in the
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Design Adequacy Program each design activity is already subject to an investigation for any failures to conform to design criteria. Except in special casea, this would be expected to duplicate any extra population sampling that (in the absence of the global scope of Action Plan VII.c or of the Design Adequacy Program) might otherwise be required to bound potential generic implications.
With respect to pipe supports (the specific area referred to in the concern), there is of course no need of a separate investigative technique to bound the intra-population generic implications, since the redesign /
requalification effort is essentially 100%. With respect to other design activities, the Design Adequacy Program is an investigation that will determine whether deficitncies (as a result of whatever cause) exist; this fulfills any need for extra-population sampling to bound the effects of the identified deficiencies in the pipe support ~ area.
Nonetheless, the Program Plan recognizes the possibility that, depending upon what is determined or suspected to be the root cause of a found deficiency, or on the basis of the collective evaluations, additional investigations may be required. Such decisions will be made by the SRT and will be made on an ad hoc basis.
Concern:
"[W]e are at this time not even certain that Appli-cants intend to make a thorough inquiry into the root cause of the pipe support design breakdown. See SSER No. 13 at Appendix C, p. 1."
Source:
Concerns Memo at 3 & n.3.
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Response
The Applicants contend, and we believe the Board agrees, that root cause is a means to an end, namely the potential generic implications of a found deficiency (or, in the Board's words, "to what extent (if any] each of those causes may call into question other areas of design and design quality assurance"). There should be no room for doubt that the CPRT Program Plan has assumed the responsibility for assuring that the potential that any non-piping deficiencies caused by any design QA/QC failures l
e that occurred in the piping context has been tested. _See CPRT Program Plan, Appendix C, DSAP IX at 7: "the evaluation [ performed by CPRT] will address generic implications (if any) applicable outside the piping / pipe support discipline . . . ." Thus, not only will the piping be requalified (thus extirpating any and all errors that may have resulted from inadequacies of the original design or design QA), but also the implications of what happened in piping for other disciplines will have been captured.a Concern:
" Applicants . . .'do not plan to inquire into whether there were errors made in filing before this Board the technical materials that were part of Applicants [']_first Plan . . . ."
Source:
Concerns Memo at 4.
1 Response:
It is correct that the Applicants have not requested CPRT to make such inquiry. The reasons are as follows:
The Applicants intend to assess and then to demonstrate the present acceptability of the CPSES design and construction by inspection. With respect to CCPRT is essentially an investigative program.
Assuming the investigation reveals a systematic problem, then the necessity for a corrective action program to rectify the problem has been demonstrated. However, there is no a priori reason why one must complete the investigative phase before proceeding to a corrective action program where, for whatever reason, the utility has elected to proceed directly to global-scope corrective action. One implication of the Applicants' undertaking a "do-over" in any area, such as piping, therefore. is that there is no purpose to be served in lingering over the design deficiencies that might have existed in the superseded designs or in the process by which those old designs were created: in short if root cause is indeed one means to an end (e.g., finding all the bad pipe supports),
l there is no function for that means if the end has been otherwise satisfied.
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r construction, hardware will be inspected, to acceptance criteria determined by CPRT to be relevant and material to acceptability and which CPRT is prepared to defend (not necessarily to the acceptance criteria employed during original acceptance inspections). With respect.to design, current design documents will be inspected, again to CPRT's interpretation of the appropriate criteria.
(" Current design documents" means, in the case of areas of the plant to be redesigned or reanalyzed, such as piping and pipe supports, the redesigns or reanalyses. CPRT assessments are based either on third party work or work by others with third-party oversight.) CPRT's goal is to detect, with reasonable assurance, safety significant deficiencies and to establish a means of assuring that the found deficiencies, together with any other deficiencies produced by the same root cause, have been or will be corrected.
Implementation of this methodology will achieve CPRT's goal regardless of the skill or lack of skill that might have been employed in prior assessments of the same construction or of the same (or of different) designs by prior witnesses.
Indeed, the fact that a prior witness's assessment of-a particular area of design might, were it to be reviewed by CPRT, be determined to be deficient would add no useful information to the assessment, for the scope of CPRT's investigation could not be enlarged (it is already essentially 100% of the design of the safety significant aspects of the facility, minus certain " givens" that CPRT is prepared to defend). Neither would the depth of CPRT assessment be changed (it is already required to be of sufficient depth to provide reasonable assurance). If, on the other hand, such a review of the work of a prior witness led to the conclusion that the witness was competent and knowledgeable, or correct, CPRT could not (at least in the absence of a change in the Program Plan) relax its investigative efforts of the adequacy of the design itself.
That the review suggested would be meaningless is perhaps most convincingly so in the case adverted to by the Board, namely piping and pipe supports. Here the Project has already determined to engage in redesign / reanalysis efforts. This is effectively an abandonment of the prior efforts, designs.
and it renders moot the adequacy of the prior If the adequacy of prior designs is itself moot, then we are hardpressed to see the utility of assessing the adequacy of some prior assessment of those designs. Nei-I
ther has any impact upon the ultimate question of the f adequacy of the CPSES piping and pipe support designs and l analyses "now." I In addition, as a practical matter, the Board has already indicated its lack of acceptance of the testimony of some prior witnesses. Were the CFRT to review the testimony and conclude that it was accurate and reliable, and should have been accepted, the Applicants would then be in the position of having to convince the Board that its earlier conclusions were erroneous. There seems to be no point in undertaking this additional burden.
The suggested inquiry, therefore, is not one that will lead to evidence relevant or material to whether the Board should find Contention 5 resolved satisfactorily to permit authorization of an Operating License. .
Concern:
"We are also concerned about the potential importance of errors that Applicants have chosen not to trend."
. Source:
Concerns Memo at 4.
Response
Please see the discussion supra regarding CPRT Program Plan Appendix E. In the context of the CPRT Quality of Construction Program, all deviations are trended.
Concern:
"[The Applicants'] response to the Staff's findings that led to Results Report I.a.4 appears not to have dealt at all with the Staff's concern that QC inspectors may have improperly ' bought off' construction that did not match design."
Source:
Concerns Memo at 4.
Response
1
1 i
The Results Report for Action Plan I.a.4 addresses the Staff findings explicitly and concludes that five of the six were incorrect (that is to say, did not involve a mislanding such that the circuit would not function as it was designed to function) and the other was in a:non-safety (and hence non-QA'd) area. Likewise, the Staff did not appear to be expressing its own " concern" about buying off; the Staff was investigating someone else's concern, and the six " examples" were all that the Staff could find that might have tended to substantiate the concern. (The Staff's six examples were the result of an inspection of approximately 1600 terminations, albeit not drawn at random.)8 Moreover, in the response to the Board's 14 Questions on I.a.4, the Review Team Leader and Issue Coordinator stated:
"This Action Plan was prepared and published to respond to a specific technical concern raised by the NRC Staff's TRT. The TRT, investigating allegations to the effect that construction craft was mislanding conductors (i.e., connecting the conductors to improper terminals) and that QA was ' buying off' on the mislanded conductors, investigated the state of the installed conductors. Proof of the allegation would lie, if it were true, in the existence of mislanded conductors. The TRT inspected some 1600 terminations and found six (and only six) that appeared to be mislanded. At that point, however, the TRT stopped its investigation and posed the requirement to TUGCO that the matter be investigated further.
"The first thing done by the CPRT Electrical Review Team was to analyze-the six TRT-found terminations. Our analysis, which in set forth in the Action Plan Results Report, demonstrates that none of the six terminations was in fact mislanded so as to cause the associated circuit to function incorrectly. . . .
"We did not review QA/QC documentation. Such a
'In addition, the Applicants understand that the Staff performed inspections of a substantial number of terminations following the publication of the Results Report for Action Plan I.a.4 and found no deviations from the I.a.4 acceptance criteria.
i l
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,: l j review might have been required in order to assess the cause of a deviating termination, had the re-inspections found any deviations. No deviations were
, found. As is discussed in the Results Report, we believe that the alleged problem'. . . did not-occur."
i
" Answers to Board's 14 Questions (Memo; Proposed Memo of April 14, 1986) Regarding Action Plan Results Report I.a.4" filed 6/5/86, at 2-3.
The Board's1 assertion that CPRT in.this action plan
" appears not to have dealt at all with the Staff's concern that QC inspectors may have improperly 1' bought off' construction that did not match design" is not made more understandable to us by the suggestion that "the six examples Staff found might relate to one inspector or one supervisor whose work may not be fully represented in the sample Applicants took," since the conclusions in the
! Results Report do-not depend upon sampling to address the Staff's " examples." Each of the six " examples" (which were not examples at all but the universe of what the Staff
- questioned) was separately reviewed in depth and the results of that review are set forth in the Results Report.
j] None of the six terminations was found to deviate from the acceptance criteria. There was, therefore, no potential i for the random sampling to miss the Staff's " examples" or the work of any of the people associated with them.
i j More generally, any assertion that the work of any constituent in the construction / inspection process "may not
[have been} fully represented in the sample," is, taken j
literally, a rejection of the well-accepted principles of random sampling. Putting aside the fact that'in Action Plan I.a.4 the Staff's examples were, as noted above, reviewed specifically, the design of the-sampling program employed in Action Plan I.a.4 was such that, within j practical limits (in this case 95% confidence), the work of each constituent in the population was of-necessity equally
) represented'in the sample.
su The Applicants are left, therefore, with the
, impression that what may have prompted the Board's 4
expressed concern has to do with the " rolled leads" that 4
are discussed in the Results Report, and that this is the i
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1 i
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i
- basis for the hypothesis of " improper QA/QC activity."10 4
This could be so, however, only if the Board is saying that it rejects the acceptance criteria stated in the Action Plan itself, i.e., that a conductor landed differently than depicted in the design documents to which it was constructed must be treated as a " deviation" regardless of its potential for leading to a circuit that would not function as designed. So to require, we respectfully submit, is to lose sight of the purpose for which Action Plan I.a.4 was published, namely to respond to the specific TRT concern. That concern was limited to circuits that would not function because they had been mislanded.11 To our knowledge, the acceptance criteria of Action Plan I.a.4 have not been questioned by anyone, including the Staff, in the year or longer since their publication.
Two other points should be considered. First, the
" rolled leads" phenomenon is a rare occurrence. The fact that neither of the pairs of " rolled leads" showed up in the 95/1 sampling done for Action Plan I.a.4 (one was contained in the six Staff " findings," while the other was i
detected during the implementation of a different Action Plan (Action Plan I.a.2)) implies that " rolled leads" did i not and do not exist with frequency. The fact that only two pairs of rolled leads were detected among all of the terminations re-inspected by both CPRT and the Staff confirms the isolated nature of this phenomenon. Finally, the fact that the only terminations that are landed otherwise than strictly in accordance with the drawings are in circuits that maintain their designed function confirms I
the effectiveness of the testing program as yet another check in the process.
1 10The term " rolled leads" refers to the observation that the two conductors in a two-conductor cable in a circuit with no polarity requirements were found terminated
, with the leads reversed from what is shown on the drawings.
11As is discussed in Answers to Board's 14 Questions (Memo; Proposed Memo of April 14, 1986) Regarding Action Plan Results Report I.a.4" filed 6/5/86, at 22-23, the methodology of Action Plan I.a.4 was discussed with~the
- Staff after its publication of the TRT concern. Any contention to the effect that the methodology was not 4
responsive to the Staff's concern, given the Staff's manifest contemporaneous agreement that it was, is at best j an uphill struggle, i
I i
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Second, it must be remembered that there is also a population of cable terminations being inspected in Action Plan VII.c. Since that action plan is not limited to responding to a specific issue, the acceptance criteria are different, and a cable terminated differently than was shown on the construction drawing is a deviation, regardless of the effect of the termination upon circuit function. It will be tested for safety significance (using the stringent CPRT definition of that term) and, if so, pursued for root cause and generic implications. If the deviation is determined not to be safety significant, then it will be assessed as a possible adverse trend, using the definitions in CPRT Program Plan Appendix E. In addition, the rolled leads observed.during the implementation of Action Plans I.a.2 and I.a.4, though not deviations for purposes of those Action Plans, have been or will be referred to the Quality of Construction /QA/QC Review Team j Leader for his consideration.12
_____________________ 9 12While it-was not a part of the activity called for in the Action Plan, the Issue Coordinator for Action Plan I.a.4 did in fact review the QA/QC paperwork for the "whyrolled leads" in order to see what could be learned about-the leads were rolled. In each case, the-QA/QC documentation reflected that the conductors had been terminated in accordance with the drawings. In the case of one of the pairs, moreover, there is evidence from the physical state of the conductors themselves that the leads had been lifted after initial termination and then reversed when relanded. (The leads were trained from the cable bundle to the termination point in a fashion that showed 1 that initially the conductors had been reversed from the rolled condition in which they were observed in the field.)
The evidence leads the Issue coordinator to the conclusion j
that the leads were most likely rolled during the testing process, when they were lifted for the purpose of testing continuity'and function. At that time, we expect that the leads would have been lifted as a pair and would be the only unlanded leads, thus creating no possibility that the pair of conductors would be reterminated other than to the pair of terminals from which they had been lifted. The Issue Coordinator believes it a reasonable assumption that the testing engineer was aware of the non-polarity of the circuit he was testing -- and the fact, therefore,'that it i
was utterly irrelevant which conductor went back to which
. terminal -- and that he therefore reterminated the
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Concern:
"We are generally concerned that root causes in one area may affect the appropriateness of the sampling utilized by the CPRT in another area."
Source:
Concerns Memo at 5.
Response
As noted above, the "other" populations are subjected to the same Action Plan VII.c screen; if there is a systematic problem capable of causing an undetected deficiency in those other populations (whether or not caused by a root cause associated with a found deficiency in a different population), it will be detected. This screen is applied to what is believed to be a complete list of safety significant attributes associated with the other population. The screen for deviations, therefore, envelopes any more focussed and more limited screen for potential extra-population generic implications that might otherwise have been required were Action Plan VII.c not a part of the Program Plan.
Concern:
"We are uncertain concerning how deeply Applicants will pursue the question of breakdowns or failures with respect to QA/QC of Design and Construction. [There do not appear to be any DSAPs now planned for QA/QC for Design.
This causes concern that some external source issues will not be covered by Results Reports.] The handling of Results Report I.a.4 was not reassuring to us because it seemed to treat a suspected QA/QC failure as of insufficient importance t, o inquire further.
Source:
Concerns Memo at 5 & n.5.
conductors without referring to the drawing. Based on these conclusions, of course, there would be no negative implications (however minor) about the construction QA/QC process -- or about the existence of deficiencies.
-_ -- . .=
Response
The extent to which programmatic deviations reflected in detected design observations or design deviations will be pursued is set forth in some detail in Program Plan, Appendices A and E. As is noted above ("The Difference Between Process Reviews and Product Reviews"), the CPRT Program focuses on the products rather than the process.
If and to the extent that the products pass muster, CPRT does not intend to investigate the process in detail nor, given the global scope of the products investigation, is such necessary. There are no programmatic, issue-specific Action Plans among the DSAPs simply because all of~the design-related TRT issues are covered in ISAPs. To the
- extent that additional External Source issues may relate to design, it is a program commitment of the Design Adequacy i Program to capture the implication of all External Source Issues in one or another of the Action Plans. Program l Plan, Appendix A at 6. In addition, problems in the design process identified during implementation of the Design j Adequacy Program will be pursued, including action to preclude recurrence in the future, f
A We find the Board's assertion that "[the desults Report for Action Plan I.a.4} seemed to treat a suspected QA/QC failure as of insufficient importance to inquire further" difficult to respond to because it is not apparent
' to the Applicants what the " suspected QA/QC failure [s]" are that the Board intends to refer to. Please see note 12, supra, and the responses, infra, to the Board concerns stated at Tr. 24459 and Tr. 24459-60.
Concern:
"When there are no data concerning the inter-observer reliability in making observations of quality items, there is a concern about whether observations are being classified with sufficient certainty to satisfy the assumptions for statistical analysis. It is possible that this uncertainty introduces additional variance that is not
- accounted for."
Source:
Concerns Memo at 5-6.
Response
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If we understand this concern, it is asserting that the quantitative conclusions that would normally be drawn from CPRT Program Plan Appendix D-type sampling assume, contrary to human nature, absolute perfection on the part of the people performing the reinspections. It follows, if one assumes that such perfection is not attainable (or at least not demonstrable), that the precise quantitative value produced by any set of data is actually a bit less than theoretically assumed.
The Applicants agree with this assertion. The Applicants further agree that no credible claim to absolute perfection of the CPRT re-inspections can be made. It is for this reason that, although quantitative methods are being employed for procedural purposes, uniformity and rigor, nonetheless the Applicants have eschewed and continue to eschew assertion that the results of the CPRT investigations can or should be stated with quantitative precision. Nor do the Applicants believe that this principle in any way means that the results of its investigations will be less than " reasonable assurance."
First, as noted above, for years nuclear power plants were constructed with no 10 C.F.R., Part 50, Appendix B QA/QC program at all, and many other projects with a potential for risk to persons are constructed that way every day; no demonstration of " perfection" is required in order for inspection programs to yield significant additional assurance of the adequacy of construction. CPRT overlays its own inspections upon both the quality of the original construction and the quality of the original acceptance inspections. Second, it is eccepted among experts in the QA/QC fields that one of the causes of degraded inspector reliability is repetition. In the case of CPRT, however, the inspections are quite focussed and they are being done in the limelight of NRC Staff and public scrutiny. These factors tend to reduce the potential for inspector oversight. Third, as was described above, in the Action Plan VII.c populations not one but two "95/5" inspections are performed; this overlay further tends to increase the resulting quantitative level of assurance and to offset any uncertainty for undetectable 1
I
inspector reliability problems.13 Fourth, the inspections being performed by CPRT are themselves subjected to audit and surveillance, both by the NRC Staff and by the CPRT (and such programs have in fact detected and led to the correction of inspector reliability problems). Fifth, as also noted above, the standard of " safety significance" against which found deviations are measured is unusually 2
' constraining (see Program Plan at 7 & n.); fewer than all of the items classified by CPRT as " safety significant" for purposes of the Program Plan would actually prevent the facility from operating in conformance with NRC regulations, and this same phenomenon is equally applicable to any deviation that might escape the screen.
The bottom line, however, is that the Applicants do not expect CPRT to make a quantitative statement about safety, nor does it believe that any such quantitative
- statement could ever be proved or disproved. CPRT will, when the program has been completed, make a statement that j
there exists the same or greater " reasonable assurance" that (upon completion of any corrective action defined by
' CPRT) Comanche Peak has been designed and constructed free from the type of safety significant deficiency that would prevent regulations.
the facility from operating in conformance with NRC Given the intensity of the inspections, re-inspections, document reviews, surveillances, audits, procedural reviews, testing and other inputs into that
! process, the Applicants believe that that statement should be regarded as undeniable.
Concern:
"[We are concerned) about there not being a loss of safety margin below what is required by codes and by Applicants' commitments."
Source:
13As actually implemented, the second sample may include members of the population included in the first sample, to safety.
if those members qualify based on their importance As a result, the sum of the members drawn in both populations will vary between 60 and 120, and for this reason, the amount by which the resultant assurance exceeds 95/5 cannot be quantified. The point, however, is that there is some enhancement.
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Concerns Memo at 6. r
Response
please see our discussion supra at note 4. All margins required by applicable codes will be preserved, except to the extent that waivers or exceptions may have been approved by the Staff. Similarly the, benchmark for' design adequacy is currently applicable FSAR commitments (though, of course, the Applicants may propose', and the Staff may approve, FSAR amendments at any time during the life of the facility).
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. 1 Board Concerns Expressed and Questions Asked During the Pre-Hearing Conference Concern: ,
"Our . . . concern is whether we are correct in understanding that the CPRT report will not be directly covering the adequacy of QA/QC for pre-1985 design and construction. Is that basically correct?"
Source:
Pre-Uearing Conference, Tr. 24429 (8/18/86).
Rasponse:
We believe it is not correct.
Except in the case of certain of the TRT-responsive action plans, the CPRT goal is not to make a statement about the adequacy of the QA/QC process per se. As is set forth above, its goal is to make a statement about the as-designed, as-installed and as-tested products of the aggregate process by which they were created. That effort may require an evaluation of the effectivenesc of the QA/QC portion of the process, but such is done as a means to the stated end, not for its own sake. However, as is pointed out supra in "The Difference Between Process Reviews and Product Reviews" and infra in response to the concern expressed at Tr. 24434, implementation of the CPRT Progre.m Plan will generate a good deal of direct evidence about the adequacy of the CPSES QA/QC programs and the collective evaluations will make a statement about the adequacy of QA/QC based on the results of CPRT investigations.
Concern:
"[W]e . . . see no place where you will, for example, collect all of the instances of QA/QC failures in the design or in QA/QC failures in construction where those will all be collected and evaluated for root cause, as to whether there was a breakdown in the QA/QC program and if so, the extent of the breakdown. . . . [T]his is not a topic . . . that I find discussed at all [in the CPRT Program Plan).
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24431 (8/18/86).
Response
During the implementation of Action Plan VII.c, all instances in which a hardware deviation has been identified -- that is, a failure of the installed hardware to conform to design documents -- will be noted in the Results Report or the underlying, documentation. Where the deviations are safety significant (and therefore classified as " deficiencies"), an assessment of the QA/QC implications of the fact that a deficiency existed will be assessed.,
Where the deviation is not a deficiency, it will be assessed for its potential for being an adverse trend, as defined in Appendix E to the Program Plan, and, if so, then the QA/QC implications of these failures will also be assessed. As a result, the only place in which the possibility that a found deviation may have been caused by a QA/QC failure that will not be specifically investigated is where the deviation has been determined to be neither safety significant nor an adverse trend. The set of identified deviations will be assessed again during the collective evaluation process. Essentially the same process is employed in the Design Adequacy Program with respect to failures of the design effort to conform to applicable standards, codes and criteria.
The Applicants believe that this to be more than sufficient to demonstrate the " reasonable assurance" required for licensing. First, the deviations and observations for which a root cause assessment is not made have no potential for adversely affecting whether the state of the installed hardware (or of the final design) is such that it would prevent the facility from operating in conformance with NRC regulations. Rather, the potentially useful information that might be gleaned from a dissection of the circumstances leading to a deviation would be limited to situations in which, had the same failure occurred elsewhere, the result would likely have been an undetected deficiency. Tha't situation, however, is captured in the Appendix E definition of an adverse trend.
Concern:
"To what extent will you be giving a report card on your own QA/QC for design and to what extent will (you] be giving a report card on the QA/QC for construction with i
1 i
respect to the period before the CPRT started?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24434 (8/18/86).
Response
B, at To 12:
the extent set forth in the Program Plan, Appendix "A collective evaluation of the CPRT findings, observations the CPSES and conclusions that relate to the adequacy of 18: construction QA/QC program," and Appendix A, at "A final Design Adequacy Program Report documenting a Collective Evaluation related to the adequacy of the CPSES design program . . . ." which requires a statement regarding the adequacy of design QA.)
Concern:
"So let's be clear, if you take a sample and in that sample there were no hardware deficiencies of safety significance, you won't even be looking at whether 15 percent of the paper is ridiculous. There could be 15 percent of the paper which has glaring errors and not spotting visible things about.the plant. And if none of those visible things have safety significance, you won't even know that."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24434 (8/18/86).
Response
The quoted assertion is not quite an accurate statement of the Program Plan. We interpret " glaring errors" to refer to QA/QC documentation failing to record as "unsat" installed construction hardware that did not conform to instructions. So interpreted, the last sentence of the quoted concern would be accurate modified to if it were read "if none of those visible things have safety significance where found or the potential for being safety signi fi can t if replicated elsewhere, you won't investigate _the QA/QC process that led to them," in which case it would be accurate. The reason why the Applicants believe this to be adequate is because, in those circumstances, the QA/QC failures would produce no information likely to affect a judgment about the present
adequacy of the installed hardware. The " visible things" not spotted would, by hypothesis, have to be unrelated to safety.
Concern:
"[W] hen it comes to the paint QA/QC, will you be looking at whether or not the QA/QJ for paint was defective or are you satisfied that because the paint is now requalified another wty that it doesn't matter whether the whole paint program was ineffective?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24436 (8/18/86).
Response
As stated during the pre-hearing conference, the CPRT has no concern about the present adequacy of installed protective coatings, because those coatings are not safety related. However, the CPRT is concerned that the information available about QA/QC problems in the coatings area might lead to hardware deviations or deficiencies in other populations. There are two ways in which this concern is addressed. First, the Action Plan VII.c reinspections of other populations should detect the presence of deficiencies caused by such breakdowns, whether or not causally related to coatings. Second, the available information from the prior investigations and allegations regarding coatings was reviewed by the Quality of Construction Review Team Leader to determine whether it suggested Program Plan.
areas of investigation not already covered by the The results of this assessment will be a part of the program output.
Concern:
"And when you do that [ trace the QA/QC cause of any found deficiency], will you at that time also be looking at the management implications of the breakdown? . . . If you're going to look back to find out what the breakdown was, you'd want to look at the role management may have played in managing a program which didn't work; because I assume that if management has a problem in one area of the plant, you'd worry about whether the same management difficulties caused problems in other areas of the plant."
l 1
l l
1
. a.
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24437-38 (8/18/86).
Response: ,
The answer is yer: where a deficiency or adverse trend is found, the root cause of the deficiency or adverse trend will be investigated and, if possible, determined, including any " management" failures that may be a part of the root cause. However, this does not mean that CPRT automatically assumes that " management" is the root cause of all found deficiencies or adverse trends.
Concern:
"[W]e're concerned about . . . what l'f you didn't have these specific things [the TRT and other External Source issues] come up and therefore CPRT is not addressing them, how can you address them then in an adequate QA/QC program?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24439 (8/18/86).
Response
The portion of the quoted concern that starts with "therefore" is not accurate. The scope of the self-initiated investigations of construction and design is not determined by the nature or scope of the matters raised by others. Moreover, because it is believed that that scope is already essentially all-inclusive (i.e., covers essentially 100% of the safety-related construction and design activities), it is not apparent how unexpressed concerns could cause the scope to be enlarged.
Concern:
"[I]s [the 95/5 confidence level of detecting deviations] adequate in terms of the extent of the QA/QC breakdown?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24441 (8/18/86).
y , , -
Response
As stated above, the Applicants believe that its screen is fine enough to detect the phenomenon of concern, namely the sort of systematic combined failure of the construction and inspection process (or design and design review process) that would lead to deficiencies of a nature that would tend to prevent the facility from operating in conformance with NRC regulations. Such deficiencies would not be expected to be produced by random failures of parts of the process. They require, rather, a flaw of the nature of inadequate procedures, inadequate training or qualifications, or intentional conduct 14 of a nature capable of affecting multiple parts of the process. Such systematic weaknesses by definition tend to affect either the whole, or at least significant portions, of the items to which they are applied. As a result, it is not necessary to assess each constituent of the population in order to detect the presence or absence of such a problem -
- and once detected, the problem can then be further explored by additional means.
Concern:
"I would worry that if in other parts of the plant
[other than in respect of the fuel pool liner] there were ambiguities in the way the paper was to be filled out and the QC workers were willing to fill out things where the document wasn't all that clear, I would worry about the integrity of the QA/QC program. (If a class of QC people weren't doing their job,] I would worry about whether those same people elsewhere in the pJant would be trusted."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24444-45 (8/18/86).
Response
As is stated above, the CPRT investigations should detect precisely such failures in other populations, if they exist, whether or not causally related to the found 14Not necessarily conduct that was consciously wrongdoing but conduct that was intentionally undertaken, though the concept would include conscious wrongdoing.
i weaknesses, which were systematic in nature, of the process ,
employed in the construction and inspection of the fuel ;
pool liner.
Concern:
"[ Action Plan I.a.4 looked at whether the terminations
- met the action plan's acceptance criteria, but] [I.a.4] did not look at the possibility that the QA/QC supervisors let some items go by."
Source:
, Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24446 (8/18/86).
1
Response
Action Plan I.a.4 was designed to test a specific hypothesis, which it did. Testing that hypothesis did not require looking at "the possibility that the QA/QC supervisors let some items go by" beyond the extent to which this was, in fact, investigated (i.e., whether there was evidence of mislanded conductors that would result in circuits functioning improperly). 'For the purpose for which this stated concern is addressed, one should look to the re-inspections performed under Action Plan VII.c.
Concern:
"[I]f there's a document that shows the terminations as being a certain way and when you look at the plant the terminations are not that way and this happened a couple of
, times, but the connections don't pose a functional problem, if I understand that you didn't look at how it happened that the QA/QC paper didn't match the plant. And you still haven't, even though we asked you to. Or if you have
[ looked at it), you amended it and-didn't mention it."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24447 (8/18/86).
Response
The stated propositions are true'for Action Plan
-m&w m - v v-- --
I.a.4.25 They are not true for the investigation of terminations in connection with the populations of cables being investigated under Action Plan VII.c.
Concern:
"[T] hey [the rolled leads in Action Plan I.a.4] were discrepancies which they did not correspond to the drawing 100 percent, and therefore, the QA inspector passed something drawings.
that did not correspond exactly to the you're inspecting to
[T] hat's not one of the criteria that
. . . in either that ISAP or any other, and therefore it is my understanding that you're not, you do not have a program to look at historical adequacy of the QA/QC program. . . . And therefore, how can you conclude that the [VII.c] ISAP which looks at a small --at only a fraction of the plant, by no means 100 percent of the plant, how does one conclude that the --
that it's not a 100 percent reinspection, [VII.c] is not a 100 [ percent) --it's a sampled inspection, how do you conclude that a sampling [ plan] is adequate of the QA/QC program say, were just completely impossible?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24449 (8/18/86).
Response
It is true that the rolled leads discussed in the Results the drawing Report for Action Plan I.a.4 "did not correspond to 100 percent ."
follow that, because conductors areIt found does not necessarily differently than as terminated "therefore, the QA shown on drawings when inspected today, inspector passed something that did not correspond exactly to the drawings. . . . " Please see the discussion in note 12, supra. It is also true that non-conformance to drawings regardless of circuit function was not part of the acceptance criteria for Action Plan I.a.4 (though it is for Action Plan VII.c); Action Plan I.a.4 was designed to address a specific concern and its acceptance criteria were established accordingly.
The thrust of this question, however, is whether the greater the breakdown assumed, for any reason, to have 15Except as noted in note 12, supra.
1
l occurred during implementation of the original acceptance inspection program, the less acceptable one must conclude that a sampling re-inspection program must be. Our 1 position is that, for the reasons set forth supra at note 6, precisely the reverse is true. The function of the sampling program is to screen for the existence of evidence that a population may have been affected by the sort of systematic failures that are grounds for concern. If so, further investigative techniques are employed. If the '
sampling re-inspection detects no evidence of such failures, however, the population is determined not to have been so affected. To hypothesize a greater breakdown in the historical programs is to di=inish the potential that a population could be so affected und still pass the screen, for any such hypothesis necessarily means that the frequency of deficiencies would be higher and the potential for their detection by a sampling program correspondingly higher. The existence of two isolated cases of drawing non-conformance of no potential adversely to affect circuit function or safety does not in any respect suggest the inadequacy of a screen based on sampling.
Concern:
"[W]ere the inspections that were made for [I.a.4] on those various terminals, to see if they're landed or not, made before or after there was voltage placed to the control system?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24454 (8/18/86).
Response
After.
Concern:
"Did they change anything between the time they put the voltage to [the circuits the terminals of which were sampled in I.a.4] and found out that something didn't work?"
l Source: '
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24455 (8/18/86).
1 l
Response
Information regarding the findings of the testing program for these circuits was not investigated during the implementation of Action Plan I.a.4. Therefore, assuming that indeed "they . . . found out that something didn't work," we do not know if changes were made before that was observed.
As is discussed above, if the construction process for something like Comanche Peak were perfect, then the QA/QC process would be moot. Similarly, if the design process plus either the. construction process or the QA/QC process were perfect, then the testing process would be moot. In the real world, however, testing is another screen and a part of the overall process that leads to the determination that the facility has been designed and built such that i t is capable of being operated in conformance with NRC regulations. As such, it is reasonable to expect that the testing process would reveal some construction failures, some design failures and perhaps also some QA/QC failures.
CPRT is evaluating the finished product of this complex of processes, however, and when no deficiencies or adverse trends have been found, there is no need to determine which of the many screens was responsible for finding any previous potential deficiencies (if any there were).
Concern:
"[T]here's no trending of discrepancies which might well be QA/QC errors."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24458 (8/18/86).
Response
l This assertion, at least in the context of Action Plan VII.c, is not accurate. In part, the difficulty stems from the fact that Action Plan VII.c does not use the term
" discrepancy." Neither does Program Plan Appendix E in the context of construction. )
Any failure of the hardware to conform to the drawings to which it was constructed is classified as a " deviation" for purposes of Action Plan VII.c. The deviation may be classified as a " deficiency" if it is " safety significant,"
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using the special definition of " safety significance" contained in Appendix E. Deviations not classified as deficiencies are then reviewed as possible trends in accordance with Appendix E for classification as adverse.
' The only deviations that would not be trended, therefore, are those that-do not meet the definition of a possible adverse trend; trending of this class is not. believed to be of any useful function.
Concern:
"Why doesn't [the drawing error with "EG"-space-digit in I.a.4] tell you anything about QA? Why didn't QA pick it up?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24459 (8/18/86).
Response
Ar we pointed out in our respons'es-to CASE's inter-rogatories (see " Answers to CASE Document Requests and Interrogatories on Results Report I.a.4" filed June 5, 1986, at 15), the digit that was missing on the drawing employed for purposes of the re-inspections was not a digit required to identify the cable, and the omission was incapable of causing any ambiguity with respect to the cable intended to be referred to, a fact that is consistent with the fact that the proper conductor was in fact landed on the proper terminal (if one assumes that the digit was also missing on the copy of the drawing actually'used for construction). Regardless of where or how often replicated (and, in fact, in all the samples examined by CPRT and all the samples examined by the Staff, this is the only known occurrence of the missing digit), such an omission was incapable of affecting proper interpretation of the drawing-(much less of affecting safety). An isolated _ discrepancy of this type is not pursued further.
Concern:
"I think there was another-[ example in I.a.4] where the drawing was subsequently changedLand nothing done in the field, thef changed the color coding or something like that."
Source:
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Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24459-60 (8/18/86).
Response
We believe that the intended reference is to cable E0110040, which is discussed in the Results Report at 2,
- 13. As indicated there, the conductor was properly landed on the correct terminal, and it was also constructed in accordance with the drawing as the drawing existed when the conductor was landed. As noted in the Results Report, "a subsequent drawing revision changed the color code of the conductor for no apparent reason. The drawing error was detected and corrected prior to the September 18, 1984, letter from the NRC to TUGCO." The assumption in the quoted concern that this anomalous post-construction drawing change was intended to result in some change in the field is not correct. The implication for construction QA/QC is zero.
Concern:
"Do you not agree with me~that there could be discrepancies which show differences between the component and the drawing which would indicate.a failure of QA/QC, but those are not necessarily deviations or deficiencies.
Just because there's something that doesn't correspond to the drawing, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's a safety significant discrepancy. . . . [T]here could be failures that the inspections could point up failures of QA/QC, but since they are not either deviations or deficiencies, there's no attempt to look for the root cause."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24460 (8/18/86).
Response
The Applicants cannot agre with the first quoted sentence (assuming the reference was to Action Plan VII.c) because the term discrepancy is not used in Action Plan VII.c. Any case where there is a " difference [] between the component and the drawing" is a deviation. Please also note that the terminology " safety significant discrerancy" is a term not used in Action' Plan VII.c and Prograr an Appendix E. It is, as is noted above, ' curate tha6 there is no investigation (or need therefor) or root enuse of
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deviations trends.
that are neither deficiencies nor adverse Concern:
"[T]he only ones I know of that you pursue are deviations and deficiencies and I understand what they are perfectly. And those are the only ones that I know you pursue and I don't know that you pursue any others . . . ."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24461 (8/18/86).
Response
Under Action Plan VII.c, there is nothing other than deviations and deficiencies.
Concern:
"You're not looking at QA/QC for design in the original sense. You're not caring whether they check it the first time."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24465-66 (8/18/86).
Response
Please see our response to the concern expressed 24434, supra.
The correctness of the second sentence of the quoted concern depends upon whether any discrepancies in the reviewed design are classified as observations, deviations or deficiencies under the Design Adequacy Program and Program Plan Appendix E. The CPRT does " car [e] whether they check it the first time" wherever an investigation of the root cause of deficiencies and adverse trends is conducted. In other cases, the Applicants believe that such information would be of little or no value in determining whether there is reasonable assurance that the final design of the facility is free of undetected and uncorrected safety significant deficiencies that would prevent it from operating in conformance with NRC regulations.
Concern:
Their contention is, is the root cause other than what you think it is then it has a wider implication for the degree to which you have to look at the plant and also may have wider implications of whether the management system has been changed sufficiently to correct the deficiencies that originally occurred."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24468 (8/18/86).
Response
We have some trouble interpreting what was intended to be flawed. concern, because the transcription appears to be the If the concern is that, because a determination of root cause might be flawed, the screen for potential extra population generic our response is that the implications might be misdirected, screen populations is, at least in the first for deficiencies instance, not in other dependent upon the determination of root cause with respect to findings inerror hypothesized any would other have population, and therefore the no effect.
If the concern is that, if the determination of root cause is flawed, the determination of corrective action might be flawed, our response is that the proposition is axiomatic.
It is not, however, the intention of CPRT to approve flawed assessments of root cause.
Concern:
"[Given the prior deficiencies in construction and design, should there be a concern) whether the judgment of your [CPRT's]
different areas engineers aboutishow much to look at in of the plant I
adequate.
was bad enough, maybe they got to Because if-it instead of just an engineering judgment of thelook at everything they're going to divide up." tasks that Source:
Pre-Hearing' Conference, Tr. 24471 (8/18/86).
Response
As is described more fully above, the Applicants do i not concur with this statement. A review of a sample of the (relatively small) populations constituting each Homogeneous Design Activity (HDA) is sufficient to determine whether any cause of deficiencies in other HDAs also caused discrepancies ia the HDA of interest. A review of 100% of the members of an HDA may, of course, be required if a deficiency or adverse trend were detected in the HDA. The validity of sampling as a screen is not sensitive to assumptions or conclusions about the existence of deficiencies in the population or the process by which is was created. See note 6, supra.
Concern:
"Do you see the possibility that if you're going to assert that the root cause of all the deficiencies you find is 'X',
that CASE has the opportunity in this litigation to prove instead that it is 'Y' which is that management consistently was not attending to information coming to it and that it was as a result of management inattention to information, in the plant."
that all of these discrepancies were existing i
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24625 (8/19/86).
Response
If the question is whether the intervenor might have the opportunity to attempt to prove that the CPRT's determination of the root cause of a given deficiency is something other than what CPRT has determined, we assume
, that the answer is yes. If the question is whether
" management" is a potential root cause of deficiencies, the question cannot be-answered without some definition of
" management" and probably also some specification of t context; nonetheless, the-Applicants can state that nothing has been categorically excluded from consideration as a possible root cause.
i Please see our response supra to the i concern at Tr. 24437-38.
However, we believe that the way this question has been framed, what the Board has described as "Y" is_not a 1
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root cause of any deficiency, which means that which caused the deficiency to come into existence. Rather, what the
' Board has defined'as "Y" is the reason why deficiencies, produced by some other root cause, were not previously detected in some fashion (in this case, by " management").
That issue does not go to the tracing of the causes of inadequate design or construction for the purpose of giving confidence that other deficiencies produced by those causes have been detected. There is a difference between root cause and ultimate responsibility; pursuit of the latter will not detect heretofore undetected deficiencies.
Concern:
"[A]re there another class of discrepancies which the intervenor's claiming, there's another class of discrepancies in which the CPRT is not looking at the root cause, and it is their position that the root cause, if you look there, particularly for the cases of failures of QA/QC, and that is not a primary mission of the CPRT, to look at the failures of QA/QC, then it's something that the CPRT for. is not doing, is what the intervenor is asking Is that correct?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24654 (8/19/86).
Response
We believe it to be not correct. The term
" discrepancy" is not used in Action Plan VII.c, which we understand to be the context in which the quoted concern was expressed.
A root cause investigation is made in the case of all deviations deficiencies or possiblethat are determined adverse trends. No to be either additional root cause information is believed to be necessary to reach the required confidence about the condition of the installed hardware.
The claims to which this question refers, the Applicants respectfully suggest, are in fact a smokescreen created by taking Action Plc.; I.a.4 out of its context, divorced then attempting from the function it was intended to fill, and to generalize an omission in the CPRT Quality of Construction Program that does not exist.
Concern:
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"[I]s . . . not my understanding correct, that deviations which are failures to meet _ commitments, unless they're safety significant in addition, will not be looked at individually, only if there's an adverse trend?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, T r.. 24655 (8/19/86).
Response
Yes. Only in the case of a deviation that is neither a deficiency investigated for root cause.
nor a potential adverse trend will it.not be In addition, in the case of design deviations, definition of a corrective action by the-CPSES Project and CPRT concurrance therein is a require =ent.
Concern:
"Let's use ' deviations,' the deviations that are not in thenaelves independently [ safety) significant. Will you be collecting together the paper to look at it to see whether or not there's some kind of a trend?"
i Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24656 (8/19/86).
Response
Yes. Please see Program Plan, Appendix-E at 5-6 (section B.5).
Concern:
"Just to clarify for us, because there is an-ambiguity 1
about what you're trending, if you went out with a termination diagram and the diagram said that A wire goes 3
to A terminal and B wire goes to B terminal and they're reverse [d] and it has no safety significance at all, would the report that they are reversed by sent for trending?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24660 (8/19/86).
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Response
Yes.
While the failure of the termination to conform to design was not a failure of the Action Plan's acceptance criteria and therefore not a deviation under Action Plan I.a.4, such observations are forwarded to the Quality of Construction and QA/QC Review Team Leader for his collective evaluation. CPRT Program Plan, at 17 (section IV).
Concern:
"Your representation to me is that when the plant doesn't match the inspection documents that in some way it's going to get trended."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24668 (8/19/86).
Response
Wherever the plant doesn't meet the construction documents (i.e., the design drawings and specifications),
it will be assessed as a possible adverse trend and, if so, trended. If not, it will not be. Please see Program Plan, Appendix E, at 5-6 (section B.5). CPRT inspects hardware to the design, and we assume that the Board's use of the term " inspection documents" was intended to mean "the documents to which you are inspecting the hardware."
If the Board meant " inspection documents" to mean the record of the original QA/QC acceptance inspection, this will be identified only as a result of root.cause investigations and, therefore, only.in the case of deficiencies or adverse trends. CPRT sees no value to data regarding those cases in which QA/QC erroneously "unsat'd" conforming hardware.
Concern:
[ Deferred inquiry re: Appendix E and existence of
" discrepancies" on the construction side.]
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24468 ff. (8/19/86).
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l Please see " Root Cause, Trending and CPRT Program Plan Appendix E," supra.
l
Selected " Concerns" and Assertions Made by CASE During the Pre-Hearing Conference Note:
Certain assertions or statements made by CASE during the course of the same pre-hearing conference are related to questions or concerns raised by the Board but contain erroneous assertions. They have been selected for respense in this document in order to present the Board with correct information.
Statement:
"[T]he definition of the CPRT['] scope is, we're looking at outside allegations, allegations that come to us including outside in the sense of from a former worker or by a current worker who in some way or another has brought his matter to the attention of everyone."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24481 (8/18/86).
Response
This characterization of "the definition of the CPRT[s'] scope" is wrong. The scope of CPRT is not limited to matters within the set of External Source issues. The quoted assertion ignores the so-called self-initiated-studies, both in construction and design.
Statement:
"Did the failure of paper to properly deal with the problems associated with cable terminations give us any clues about whether or not the paper related to-[other items of hardware] was or was not properly completed?"
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24482 (8/18/86).
Response
While Action Plan I.a.4 was not designed to canvas the entirety of a hypothesized " failure of paper to properly 1 l
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a deal with the problems associated with cable terminations,"
as is described above, no such problems and no such failures were detected during the implementation of that Action Plan. In addition, nothing found as a result of the implementation of Action Plan I.a.4 suggests the existence of deviations or deficiencies elsewhere in the facility.
Statement:
"[During the implementation of Action Plan I.a.4, things] were marked ["U]nsatisfactory["] by somebody. And then later, they stopped calling it ["] unsatisfactory ["),
but they marked it as something else."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24482-83 (8/18/86).
Response
This assertion is false.
Attached is a list of all the places where a report of "Unsat" was returned by the inspectors performing the re-inspections. They aggregate 31.
One set of "Unsats" involved those conductors designated as spares, i.e., that were not intended to be landed on any terminal. In a number of cases, the conductor designated as " spare" was observed not to exit from the enclosed wireway containing the cable and therefore the end of the conductor was not visible to the inspector. In these cases, the inspector returned a report of "Unsat" with the notation of either " unable to locate" or "inside wireway." These conductors were removed from the sample as a matter of conservatism and to avoid any argument that since the inspector couldn't actually see the end of the conductor, they shouldn't be counted. In reality, the fact that the conductor did not exit the wireway is proof positive that the conductor was not landed to any terminal and, therefore, that it was not mislanded (these being designated spares). This set accounts for 17 of the unsats.
A second class of "Unsats" involved a report of either the conductor or the cable not being shown on the drawing )
1 to which the inspector had been instructed to compare the !
installed termination. Two reasons for this existed: R 1
1
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in some cases, conductors had been designated as " spares" and, since spares are not required to tns shown on drawings, they were not; in other cases, the population list. employed by CPRT contained minor typographical errors'(so that, while the drawing and cable properly matched each other, they did not match the instructions given to the inspector). Together these aggregate six of the "Unsats."
Two of the "Unsats" involved conductors, designated on the drawing as " blue," as to the insulation of which there was some question as to whether its color was blue enough.
See " Answers to CASE Document Requests and Interrogatories on Results Report I.a.4" filed June 5, 1986, at 12 (item (g)), 14 (item (m)), 19, 20, 21.
In three cases, the "Unsat" was returned with the notation "No tag." (Tagging of the cable was an inspection attribute (for identification purposes) for Action Plan I.a.4 though not relevant to the acceptance criteria.) In each case, the conductor was a designated spare, which is not required to be tagged. This accounted for three of the "Unsats."
In one case, the "Unsat" was returned with the notation "No conductor color on sample list." In this case, the instructions to the inspector failed to indicate which of the conductors in the cable was to be inspected; and the inspector was therefore unable to confirm a specific conductor. However, the inspector inspected all three of the conductors and found each satisfactory.
The last two "Unsats" involved one cable tagging error (of a landed conductor) and the drawing error involving the missing digit. The drawing error has been discussed above and the response.
cable tagging error is discussed in the following (Both are also discussed in the Results Report.)
Given the foregoing, we trust it is clear to the Board that there is no necessary connection between an inspection report containing the notation "Unsat" and the existence of a construction or QA/QC failure. The instructions given to inspectors are quite narrow, and where for reasons the inspector cannot complete his assignment, he will return an "Unsat." Moreover, as is demonstrated by the Working File for this Action Plan, each of the "Unsats" was referred to the Project for a response, and the CPRT was required to (and did, in fact) concur with each of the responses.
Consequently, any assertion that the "Unsats" are
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disregarded, or treated cavalierly, is also without foundation.
Statement:
P "Somebody was supposed to have written something down when they saw it and_they didn't [apparently during the original QA/QC acceptance inspections). Or somebody was supposed to have identified something that looked odd and they didn't."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24483 (8/18/86).
Response
In context we read this as asserting'that the described events occurred and were detected during the implementation of I.a.4. The assertion is false.
Of all the "Unsats" observed during the implementation of Action Plan I.a.4, only two instances occurred where something appeared to have been done improp'erly. One was the missing digit on the drawing described above. The second involved an anomaly in the number' appearing on the tag attached to a cable (which inspectors were instructed to verify even though tagging was not associated either with the TRT issue or with the acceptance criteria for the Action Plan). In this case, a cable prefix appeared to read "EC" rather than "EG." Given that "EC" is not a valid prefix, as well as that the prefix is not.necessary for cable identification, this error (if in fact-an error was made) was truly minor.
As noted in the answers to interrogatories (" Answers to CASE Document Requests and Interrogatories on Results-Report I.a.4" filed June 5, 1986, at 18), despite the fact that these two items were-not failures to meet the Action Plan's acceptance criteria, consideration was given'to referring these items to the Quality of Construction and QA/QC Review Team Leader for further consideration. "The result of that consideration was in the negative. In the case of the drawing error, it was'and is our opinion that the error was minor, probably not the result of any incorrect judgment on the part of anyone, and not;of'a ,
j potential to mislead or miscommunicate. Not only was the digit 'l' not present, but the balance of the digits were i j
l 48 -
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not shifted to the left, i.e., there was an obviously anomalous space in the cable number as it appeared on the-drawing. In the case of the tagging error, for the reasons set forth in the Results Report, the anomalous 'C' had no potential to mislead or to miscommunicate either." Id.
Statement:
"The [I.a.4] list of ["] unsatisfactory ["] items, boo-booes, turn out also not to have produced any NCRs. They also according to answers to interrogatories that we got from the Applicants, did not land on Mr. Hansel's desk.
They don't get trended."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24483 (8/18/86).
Response
The statements are correct. However, given the nature of the "Unsats," which the proponents of the quoted statement a,pparently do not understand, there was nothing to refer to Mr. Hansel (for the collective significance evaluation) and nothing to trend. However, the Board should be aware that NCRs were written on each of the pairs of rolled leuds (NCRs E-85-100123S (the rolled leads observed during the implementation of Action Plan I.a.2) and E-84-100503 (the rolled leads observed by the TRT)).
Statement:
"You can read (the Results Report for Action Plan I.a.4] in every Rev. that's ever come out on it and you can't find any even effort to investigate that question _[of whether mislanded misfunctional terminations were installed and not caught by QA/QC because of untrained or unqualified inspectors]."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24486 (8/18/86).
Response
This description of the Action Plan I.a.4 Results Report is not accurate. The Action Plan was an excellent i test of the hypothesis that mislanded misfunctional l
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terminations were installed and not rectified by QA/QC because of inspector training and qualification (or for any other reason). Implementation of the Action Plan is a convincing refutation of that allegation. The balance of the CPRT Program, including Action Plan VII.c, is an excellent test of the hypothesis that hardware deficiencies exist because of inadequate QA/QC inspector training or qualification anywhere in the plant. When completed, implementation of the program will provide either a convincing refutation of that hypothesis or convincing ..
evidence that any such deficiencies have been detected and corrected.
Statement:
"[Y]ou will see in those answers [to CASE's interrogatories on Results Report I.a.4] the specific instances in which it did not get to Mr. Hansel; there were no procedures that were used to do the reinvestigation; no written procedures, etc., etc."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24488 (8/18/86).
Response
With respect to whether matters "[got] to Mr. Hansel,"
which we interpret to refer to a reference for further consideration as possible trends, see our response to the concern noted at 24483. The assertion that the re-inspections were not performed to any procedures is false.
Statement:
"[T]here are management' people at Comanche Peak in positions of say, middle management authority, who make decisions, who tell, for instance, engineers what to do, to have those engineers sign off on documents. Those people's names will not necessarily ever appear on documents themselves. As far as we have seen, there is nothing in the Applicant's plan to address _possible problems which have been caused by this -- this type of middle management personnel."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24494 (8/18/86).
i l
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l
Response
The assertion that appears to be made by this statement is that ability to identify the potential root cause of deficiencies is required in order to have assurance that the deficiencies will be detected; further, that in the hypothesized case of an inherently undetectable root cause any deficiencies attributable to that root cause will escape detection. The assertion is erroneous because the power of the CPRT program to detect deficiencies is not dependent upon one's ability to hypothesize or identify root cause. Please see "The Difference Between Process Reviews and Product Reviews," supra.
Statement:
"Another aspect of that is that when you have someone who has been identified with say the pipe support problems, where there have [ admittedly] -- or hopefully admittedly --
been admitted that there are problems in the design of a pipe supports and the design QA of the pipe supports, who are then switched from, say pipe supports to cable tray supports. What kind of confidence level can we then have in that problem, in the cable tray support reinspection and so forth, or the correction of cable tray support
[ design)."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24495 (8/18/86).
Response
Please see our responses to the previous concern and to the following concern.
Statement: -
[Many of the NPS people who worked on the original piping and pipe support design effort were hired back by Stone & Webster for the requalification effort.)
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24498 (8/18/86).
, Response:
9
+ e Persons hired by SWEC to work on the piping and pipe support design effort who were previously employed by NPS are working to SWEC procedures, as concurred in by the CPRT (third party), and under the direct supervision of SWEC line supervisors and higher levels of SWEC management. The products produced by SWEC are subjected to the SWEC quality assurance procedures, and will also be subject to oversight by the CPRT (as set forth in DSAP IX). For these reasons, the Applicants believe that the number of previous NPS employees, whether many or few, is irrelevant to the ability of the SET to accomplish the tasks set forth in DSAP IX.
Statement:
" CASE's position, which we do not believe is being adequately addressed by the CPRT or by any agency which is looking at the plant at this time, is that the extent of the breakdown in design and design QA of the pipe supports clearly should warrant a one hundred percent review of the design and design QA, not just in the specific areas which CASE has raised and raised issues about such as cable tray supports, but also in other areas as well."
Source:
Pre-Hearing Conference, Tr. 24500 (8/18/86).
Response: !
Contrary to the assertion made, the review of design !
is not "just in the specific areas which CASE has raised and raised issues about." The scope of the design review, as noted above, extends to essentially 16 100% of the design of the safety-related aspects of the facility. For the purpose of detecting whether groups of homogeneous design activities reveal the existence of systematic breakdowns or failures, a review of each and every member of the population is not required. Should discrepancies be identified, further investigation as warranted will be undertaken.
i j
16Please see note 1, supra.
1 l
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~ > e RESULTS PEPORI I.R.4 SRMPLE CONDUCTORS: "UNSRTs" 09-26-06 RT 10:16 p.m. Page 1 DWG SH SRM Pr CABLE S COLOR T L SPRPE M V REMRPM RESPONSE 0172 27 20 EG 111111 WB U N SPRRE F LOCATED INSIDE WIPEWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0155 0 34 E0 109070 WB U N SPRPE F UNABLE TO LOCATE CONDUCTOR (H) CPP 17,671 0172 8 42 EG 123485 8 U N SPRPE F LOCATED INSIDE WIPEWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0151 0 46 E0 122014 WB U N SPHPE T NO ID IAG (J) CPP 17,671 0172 8 51 EG 015%4 WB U N SPRPE F LOCATED INSIDE WIPEWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0172 17 56 EG 145725 G UU T INCOPPECTLY 1RGGFD (G) CPP 17,671 0172 5 87 EG 111182 3LB U U SPRPE T CONOUCTOP HOT SHOWN ON DPRWING (M) CPP 17,671 0156 0 108 EG 015987 0 0 N SPRPE F UNHBLE TO LOCRTE CONOUCTOR (M) CPP 17,671 0172 2 117 EG 113500 R UU F CHDLE NOT SHOWN ON DPRWING (M) CPP 17,671 0140 0 125 EG 139799 G U N SPfiPE T NO ID TRG (J) CPP 17,671 0171 9 151 EG 110630 0 UU T CONDUCTOP HOT SHOWN ON DRAWING (H) CPP 17,671 0172 19 167 E0 110667 BL U N SPHPE T NU ID TAG (J) CPP 17,671 0172 27171 EG 110738 WB U N SPHPE F LOCRTED INSIDE WIREWRY (G) CPP 17,671 0155 0 175 E0 109754 WB U N SPRRE F UNABLE TO LOCATE CONDUCTOR CH) CPP 17,671 0172 5 177 EG 016018 BL U N SPRPE F LOCATED INSIDE WIREWAY (M) CPP 17,671 0172 11 185 EG 121930 G U U SPRRE F LOCATED INSIDE WIREWAY (M) CPP 17,671 0172 17 192 EG 120248 R UU T CABLE NUMBER WRONG ON DPRWING (G) CPP 17,671 0171 9 234 EG 110638 R UU T CONDUCTOR NOT SHOWN ON DRAWING (M) CPP 17,671 0172 10 246 E0 145329 0 U N SPRRE F LOCATED INSIDE WIREWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0172 13 254 E0 109976 WB U N SPARE F LOCRTEO.INSIDE WIREWRY (H) CPP 17,671
, 0172 17 259 EG 120248 G U N SPARE F LOCRTED INSIDE W1REWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0172 _1 261 E0 109230 WB U N SPRRE F LOCATED INSIDE WIREWAY (G) CPP 17,671 0172 7 290 E0 111268 BL UU .T INDETERMINATE RS TO COLOR (G) CPP 17,671 0171 9 295 EG 110631 G UU T CONDUCTOR NOT SHOWN OH OPRWING (M) CPP 17,671 0172 51 317 E0 113560 SPRRE U N SPRRE T NO CONOUCTOR COLOR ON SRHPLE LIST (G) CFP 17,671 0172 27 320 EG 111111 R U N SPRPE F LOCRTED INSIDE WIREWRY (G) CPP.17,671 0172 13 333 E0 111294 0 U N SPARE F UNROLE T0-LOCRTE CONDUCTOR (M) CPP 17,671 0175 4 335 E0 14629?. G U U SPRRE X F CONOUCTOR NOT SHOWN ON DRAWING (N) CPP 17,671 0172 13 336 E0 111294 8 U N SPRRE X F UNRRLE TO LOCATE CONDUCTOR (M) CPP 17,671
, '0174 1 337 EG 113293 BL UU T INDETERMINRTE AS TO COLOR (G) '
CPP 17,671 0172 13 342 ED 111290 9 U N SPAPE F UNOBLE TO LOCATE CONDUCTOR (H) CPP 17,671 TOTRLS - '
Printed 31 of the 391 records.
Records were selected as follows:
Tag = "U" OR Loc = "U" END
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CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE 16 DEC -4 All :32 I, Robert K. Gad III, one of the attorneys for the Applicants GFFl% O . J^1 herein, hereby certify that on December 1, 1986, I made @EEE(,fk[,ok",'
the within " Applicants' Response to Board Concerns", by mailing copies thereof, postage prepaid, to:
Peter B. Bloch,' Esquire Mr. James E. Cummins Chairman Resident Inspector.
Administrative Judge Comanche Peak S.E.S.
Atomic-Safety and Licensing c/o U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Board Commission U.S. Nuclear Regulatory P.O. Box 38 Commission Glen Rose, Texas 76043 Washington, D.C. 20555 Dr.~. Walter H. Jordan Nancy Williams Administrative Judge Cygna Energy Services, Inc.
881 W. Outer Drive 101 California Street, Suite 1000 Oak Ridge, Tennessee .37830 San Francisco, California 94111 Chairman Chairman Atomic Safety and Licensing Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Panel Board Panel U.S. Nuclear Regulatory U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 Washington, D.C. 20555 Stuart A. Treby, Esquire Mrs. Juanita Ellis Office of the Executive President, CASE Legal Director 1426 S. Polk Street ,
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory -Dallas, Texas 75224 Commission Washington, D.C. 20555
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Renea Hicks, Esquire Ellen Ginsberg, Esquire Assistant Attorney General Atomic Safety and Licensing Environmental Protection Division Board Panel P.O. Box 12548,' Capitol Station U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Austin, Texas 78711 Washington, D.C. 20555 Anthony Roisman, Esquire Mr. Lanny A. Sinkin Executive Director Christic Institute
- Trial. Lawyers for Public Justice 1324 North Capito} Street 2000 P Street, N.W., Suite 611 Washington, D.C. 20002 Washington, D.C. 20036 Dr. Kenneth A. McCollom Mr. Robert D. Martin Administrative Judge Regional Administrator 1107 West Knapp Region IV Stillwater, Oklahoma 74075 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Suite 1000 611 Ryan Plaza Drive Arlington, Texas 76011 Elizabeth B. Johnson Geary S. Mizuno, Esq.
i Administrative Judge Office of the Executive Oak Ridge National Laboratory Legal Director P.O. Box X, Building 3500 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830 Maryland National Bank Bldg.
Room 10105 7735 Old Georgetown Road Bethesda, Maryland 20814 Ms. Billie P. Garde Midwest Office 3424 N. Marcos Lane Appleton, Wisconsin 54911
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