ML20235W280

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Transcript of 840319 Closed Session in Washington,Dc Re Status of Pending Investigation on Plant.Pp 74-85
ML20235W280
Person / Time
Site: Diablo Canyon  Pacific Gas & Electric icon.png
Issue date: 03/19/1984
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NRC COMMISSION (OCM)
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References
FOIA-88-229, REF-10CFR9.7 NUDOCS 8903100574
Download: ML20235W280 (14)
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73

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,- ' UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

, NUCLEAR' REGULATORY COMMISSION

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STATUS OF PENDING TNVESTI'ATION G ON DIABLO CANYON i

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Closed Session 7

8 Nuclear Regulation Cornission 8

1717 H Street, N.W., Room 1130 '

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  • 10 g Monday, March 19, 1984 12 The Commission met'in' closed session,' pursuant to the Chairman's direction and notice, at 12:15 p.m. ,

g COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:

NUNZIO PALLADINO, Chairman of the Commission VICTOR GILINSKY, Member 16

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FREDERICK BERNTHAL, Member 17 STAFF AND PRESENTERS SEATED AT COMMISSION TABLE:

18 H.E. PLAINE 19 S. CHILK R. DIRCKS 20 J. MARTIN T. BISHOP 21 22 23

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I 24 25 1 8903100574 890301 PDR FOIA ~

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SCHNIEG88-229 PDR  ;,,

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. 1 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I suggest we get. started 2 and'we'll have to fill in Commissioner Gilinsky with' 3- .anything that he doesn't hear. Ben?

4 MR. HAYES: Thank you. What I propose'this 6 ' afternoon is just to give.you a' summary of'the OI involve-6 ment in the Diablo Canyon situation. As the' handout 7

indicates -- the handout by the staff on the breakdown of 8

allegations -- the Office of Investigations is involved in 8

16 of the allegations.

10 The most important one at our last briefing before 11 the Commission was an allegation involving Bostrom-Bergen, 12 if you remember, a vendor. We took 100 percent of our 13

. Region V resources, all two investigations,c.and'put them on I4 that particular case, and I think we've resolved it to a 15 point where I do not believe it will be a problem for the 16 staff in terms of criticality or what have you.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: What was the allegation on' 18 the Bostrom Bergen? l MR. HAYES: The Bostrom Bergen allegation involved 20 an inspector who stated that of the 2000 inspection reports 21 that he had completed, there was a false entry on each of 22 those at someplace along the line.

23 We, along with two inspectors and two investigators ,

24 have looked at the Bostrom Bergen situation and identified 25 '

1 15 safety-related items out of that universe of 2000 that werc' I

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' shipped to Diablo Canyon. I asked Mr. Martin to have one of 1.

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.his inspectors physically examine those particular items to 3.

.see where they are in the' plant,,are-they still in the yard

'4 or just what they are. This was as of last Wednesday 1and 6- I don't know the results of that particular' examination.'

6 MR. BISHOP: Those 15 items were all provided 7

to Unit 2. We've inspected all the items that were stocked 8

material;.that is, they were not subject-to fabrication by

.Bostrom Bergen; they just purchased the material. They 10 might have done some cutting but they did no welding on 11 them. We've inspected 14 of the 15 items and found that 12 they conformed to the right material, the right shape, the 13 right hole drillings. '

I4 The 15th item is a collection of 8 plate washers and as of a few nights ago, they hadn't located.where those plate washers were in Unit 2, but we were pursuing that.

But the 14 items that we did look at were found to 18 l conform with the requirements.

l MR. HAYES: A part of the Bostrom Bergen investi-gation touches on Medco, which is a subsidiary of Bostrom 21 Bergen. The officers of Bostrom Bergen formed Medco, which 22 is right down the street physically located from their 23 offices. And Medco actually did some fabrication for Bostrom 24 Bergen.

25 As of last Wednesday we've started to enncantrate

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pl-1 on that particular corporate entity, and I don't know what, 1

1 2 if anything, we've done there in the last 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br /> or so.-

3. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: What was the allegation there?

I .

4 MR.' HAYES: Well, we got into it. When we got 6 into Bostrom Bergen.and saw that they had shipped to what  !

l l 6 I call their sister plant materials.for fabrication purposes 7

to later be shipped to nuclear facilities, and we've identified 8 three or four nuclear facilities and one facility in Spain, 8 .that this particular vendor did business for. pnd we're now 10 concentrating on the Medco side of the Bostrom Bergen 11 organization.

12 And I don't have any results at this point, unless 13 Region V representatives know something as.of last Friday.

I4 MR. BISHOP: No.

15 MR. HAYES: Okay.

16 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: But what was the allegation?

17 That they did something wrong?

18 MR. HAYES: The welds. There's a general allega-I' tion that the welds from this particular entity were of 20 poor quality and there was no QA or QC,et cetera at Medco.

21 SO that's the area that we're concentrating on now.

22 There are other investigations ongoing in the 23 intimidation and harrassment area. Many of those particular 24 subjects have requested the Department of Labor to intervene.

25 We're not actively pursuing those cases pending the DOL l

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1 investigation.in hopes of conserving some of.the Commission's 2 resources to address other matters.

' c-3 Of the cases that we have open at this point, we -

4- have completed three or four of the investigations. We've 5 just not taken time to write them up physically and to.get 6 them in a report. stage. The bottom.line on those is the 7 allegations we proved were unfounded.

8 Of the existing allegations.before you --

8 Which were unfounded? The l' CHAIRMAN PALLADINO:

10 4, the 12 or part_of the 12?

11 Well, the 4 have been resolved and MR. HAYES:

12 are'on the chart as indicated there. We have resolved some 13 other investigations but we've not taken time to write up 14 our results formally at this point because our resources 15 We're trying are being used to investigate other matters.

16 to catch up on the weekends in writing the reports on weekends l 17 to catch up with investigative activity.

8 Ben, I'm confused, and I  !

COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL:

18 probably don't remember well enough the Medco affair. Is l the idea that they somehow fraudulently misrepresented their 21 I products? My question is why would you be purs uing a questior.

22 of the quality control and quality assurance unless there's i 1

23 some evidence that there was wrongdoing or faudulent 24 misrepresentation? Was that the point of it?

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78 1- .MR. HAYES: Yes. It. slops.over into both 2 - particular organizations are owned and operated'by the 3 same' individuals. :Actually, it's one corporation.~There is 4 some' speculation'that they spin off another corporate 5 entity'just to raise the prices because they're on a cost plus 6 or something. Thatis pure speculation. ,

7 The most important thing in my view, gentlemen, 8

from an OI standpoint, at least at this particular. point in 8

time is the most recent allegations concerning the potential 10 false statements by the Licensee to the Commission. And .

11 I believe you have before you a letter from the Government 12 Accountability Project making those particular allegations.

13 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Statements.about what?

'i 14 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: . They don't say.

I 15 MR. HAYES: I don't have a copy of it, Commissioner.  !

16 In fact, I just scanned it two hours ago in the Chairman's 1

17 office.

18 COMMISSIONER ASSLESTINE: The false statement'is 18 on the NSC audit, is what they say, regarding certain 20 specified items.

I 21 l MR. HAYES: What I propose to do, then, is to 22 immediately address those issues because I feel those are 23 probably very critical from an OI perspective, and the 24 staff's perspective. And as Region V representatives 25 stated, they are meeting today, if I'm not mistaken, with ,

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  • I some of these allegers,.and'I presumeLOI will'oe there to try 2 , to tie'down specifics on these allegations.

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3 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: If I understood Jack 4 correctly, the NSC made an audit of Pullman's internal audit l

6 and drew incorrect or possibly misleading conclusions.

  • Now, is that what'they're talking about or.are they talking 7

about that NSC tried to say something that wasn't true?

8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Well, they're going.to meet 8

with them tonight, so I don't think it's a very,useful way' 10 for us to spend our time, to try to predict what they're going to say.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: I agree.

MR. MARTIN: You see, the NSC audit' encompassed 14 several dozen items. The one we discussed was just one of 15 4 them. It may be that they're complaining about other items. ]

16 I just don't know until we talk to them.

17 I must say we didn't rely on anything PG&E or 18 I Pullman told us, very much. We went and looked at stuff i 19 ourselves. So it may not make a lot of difference, but we 20 won't know until we look at it.

21 I MR. HAYES: One thing I had done in an attempt to 1 22 resolve these issues as quickly as possible is that we have l 23 detailed two of our staff from Region II to Region V to work 24 on the Diablo Canyon investigations. But I guess I've  ;

25 surfaced it because I'm to the point where we have no --

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very few people left:to.put into the breach, as.it were'.with ,

2 '

Comanche Peak and Waterford and Diablo Canyon and some of 3

.these.

4 I' guess what I'm suggesting to you gentlemen 5

is how are you going to provide.the product in a timely

, fashion? We cannot physically do it.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: .On what?

MR. . HAYES:- Well, when we start working at-9 Waterford and we start getting more involved in Comanche Peak --

11 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: How many. people do you have ?

. 17 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: But on what are you not going 13 to provide product? On Diablo Canyon?

14 MR. HAYES: No. 'On Diablo Canyon I've taken 15 ~

staff from RegionII and detailed them to Region V. But 16 remaining staff in II is working on Grand Gulf'and Catawba.

17 That's two investigators left. Region IV, we really haven't 18 .

gotten deeply involved in Waterford yet, but we had just a 19 tremendous amount of wrongdoing allegations that Harold and 20 Darrell and we got involved in.

21 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Out of the 219 there were I 22 16 that came over to you, and you show that none of them, l

23 at least out of the 16, relate to or have an impact on 24 criticality and up to 5 percent.  ;

25 MR. HAYES: Well, that's the staff -- I l

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. CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Except for possibly this 2 I material false statement.

3 MR. HAYES: That's correct.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Which is not in the 219.

MR. HAYES: That's correct. We have a total of 6

38 people, 37 at this point -- I have one vacancy, I'm 7

transferring --

8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Weren't we going to add 9

to that, or wasn't the number going to be greater?

10 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Yes. We have a hold on that 11 pending the submittal of the OI versus IE report to Bevel 12 and that just went in.

13  !

COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I think't'here'll be an . I 14 opportunity to make a case this week.

15 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Well, we can try.

16 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: A hold pending approval 17 of the committee, or what?

18 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes. Mr. Bevel has 19 put a hold on it.

20 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Have we made a request?

21 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Several times. We even put 22 in a reprogramming request.

23 4 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: So we're waiting for a 24 response from the committee.

25 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Well, we just got the thing ir .

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, COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:

Right. But at this point 1 i

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"we're waiting for.a response from the committee. -)

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3 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Yes.

4 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: .I even forget what the-a numbers were, but I.think for --

6 MR. DIRCKS: 42 I think. You wanted,to.go from.

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, L38 to 42.

o CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: We had 11 eventually additional.

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MR. DIRCKS: Yes, you were going up. And the' 11 immediate' request was to reprogram. m 12 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Yes, that was about a year 13 ago.

I 14 MR. HAYES: Right now, for us to meet our needs,  !

15 ,

and by the time it takes me to find qualified competent .s 9j 16 individuals, you know, we're talking three to six months to fill 10 slots around the country where we need those 18 people.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: We had asked for four and l 20 then permission to go up to the -- by the end of this year 21 to be up to the level that we had for next year, which I 22 believe was 11 more. i 1

23 MR. HAYES: I think there was 49 total.

24 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: 49 total, yes.

25 COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: I was just going to say 1

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that this week ^1s clearly the time to make.the point, that

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Tif we want to change our policy on what we're" expected'to do r 2 2 3 t in'these matters, that's one thing., But.if we intend to, l 67 .

4 and Congress intends for us,-to' carry policiei out; then ~l 5' we ought to make the point that we're going to have'to-have 6 the' people to.do'it. .

7 We certainly tried to make CHAIRMAN PAiLADINO:

8 the point, but I agree. -3 8 This isn't the forum COMMISSIONER'BERNTHAL:  ;

10 to discuss, but that's the worst kind of way to try'and~

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II achieve the objective of changing policies, it seems to ,

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12 me, and we ought to say so.

I8 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: That'.s.right.

14 Changing what policy?

COMMISSIONER GILINSKY:

15 . Apparently,.the policy COMMISSIONER BERNTHAL: J 16 of what investigations we're to carry out and with what l

' 17 degree of --

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Bevel really I.think doesn't 18 believe we ought to have an Office of Investigations. He's -

basically said so. He thinks that if we didn't have the l

21 Office of Investigations maybe we wouldn't have so many 1 22 y investigations. 1 23 l i

COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: There's no such thing l

24 l as wrongdoing.

CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Well, I don't know that he j l

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. went that far.

2 (Laughter.)

3 7,m just trying to give you a shorthand version of his 4

thinking, as I understand it.

5 Do you have more?

i MR. HAYES: No, sir, that's where we are on 7

. Diablo Canyon.

8 COMMISSIONER GILINSKY: Thank you very much.

9 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Jack has a comment.

10 MR. MARTIN: The only comment I have is on the 11 intimidation question, which we have a couple of paragraphs 12 on that in the document coming down to you. This is one that 13 I got interested in sometime back because'-there is quite 14 a bit in the newspapers and the different groups make quite 15 an issue that there's a widespread paranoia at the site.

16 And during the course of the inspection, we've 17 asked each of the inspectors to go interview 10 or 12 workers

' 18 at random, private or on the site, and all in all, we've 19 had maybe 250 structured interviews of people together with N

several hundred other contacts that weren't by any means 21 structured interviews but -- and as we said, having these 22 1

40 people in the lunch room and everywhere else, you can l

23 imagine, all over the site, I think our perspective in the 24 aggregate is that we certainly don't see any widespread r 25 I paranoia or any policy written or otherwise on the part of

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these contractors to' intimidate their~ employees'.

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l There certainly are'eight or so people.who fe'el-1

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very strongly that they have'been-improperly leaned on, rand

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.whether they have'or haven't I don't know. We'll have to

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l wait and see what DOL and Mr. Hayes say. 'But'I think our-6 -

perspective is there~seem to be some people feeling very 7 .

strongly about it, but we do not see a widespread paranoia g 8 ,

at that-site yet.

9 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Are.you investigating these 10 i intimidations? )

11 MR. HAYES: We have open investigations but we~

12 are standing down during the DOL investigations. We just 13 ..

don't have the resources to look'at them all. -

14 COMMISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Is Labor pursuing it 15 aggressively?

16 MR. HAYES: Yes,.t. hey are.

17 MR. MARTIN: They have made preliminary 18 findings on four so far --

19 COM.YISSIONER ASSELSTINE: Which substantiated 20 some of them at least.

21 MR. MARTIN: Two didn't, and I guess they have 22 to go to hearing, you know.

23 CHAIRMAN PALLADINO: Any other questions, commentsi 24 Thank you very much.

25 (Whereupon, at 12:34 p.m., the meeting was adjourned.)

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, .g .

, CERTIFICATE OF PROCEEDINGS  !

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This is.to certify that the attached proceedings.before the

, MRC COMMISSION t-In the matter of: Status of Pending Investigation on-

  • Diablo Canyon - Closed Session I

, Date of Proceeding: Monday,' March 19, 1984

., Place of Proceeding: Washington, D.C. ,

were held as herein appears, and that this is the original

, transcript for the file of the Commission.

10 Suzanne Young si --

Official Reporter - Typed i 12 j

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sa _ _ : :t HQ OfficidG Reporter'- Signature is 16 l

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21 22 23 24 I  !

23 TAYLCE ASSOCIATES REGISTERCO PROFESSION AL REPORTERS NCRFOLK. VIDGINIA

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