ML20235Y963

Comments on Inadequacies in Board 870522 Recommended Decision on TMI-2 Leak Rate Rept Falsifications.Board Decision,If Allowed to Stand,Will Cause Further Erosion of Morale of All Operators

ML20235Y963
Person / Time
Site:	Three Mile Island
Issue date:	07/16/1987
From:	Aamodt M COMMITTEE ON HEALTH ASPECTS & MANAGEMENT OF NUCLEAR
To:	Murley T Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation
References
CON-#387-4059 LRP, NUDOCS 8707270128
Download: ML20235Y963 (3)

Text

- _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _

4c Committee on Health Aspects & NW WER Management of Nuclear Power FRCD. & UTIL PAC. [-[o_h _ _

180 Bear Cub Road, Box 652 l

Lake Placid, New York 12946 hr, ki 7

July 16, 1987 l Dr. Thomas Murley, Director Nuclear Reactor Regulation U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Qi '

Washington, D.C. 20555 l' " '

Dear Dr. Murley:

In his letter of June 22, 1987, Martin G. Malsch, Deputy General Counsel of the NRC, suggested that I contact the NRC Staff, rather than the Commissioners, concerning inadequacies in the Licensing Board's May 22, 1987 Recommended Decision on the TMI-2 leak rate report falsifi-cations prior to the accident.

I would greatly appreciate your attention to this matter, as well as your direction of my letter to staff directly responsible for the review of the Board's decision. I believe that the Board's decision is far more reachingi in terms of public health and safety, than the identification and removal from licensing of a few of the operators. It is particularly reprehensible that the operators on whom the Board has come down include the whistleblower and one who was particularly forthright after he dis-missed the GPU-selected attorneys.

The Board's decision, if allowed to stand, will cause further erosion of morale of operators everywhere. The clarion will be clear to keep quiet no matter how serious and persistent is the misoperation of nuclear facilities. It should already be clear to the NRC, from the memorandum the employees provided in the Leak Rate Proceeding, that they have little respect for the authority of the NRC, despite their licensing. Here I am referring to the January 23, 1987 Memorandum of Law of the Numerous Employees.

The Board has made scapegoats of a small group of operators. To do this, the Board had to set aside the testimony of a number of operators that the manipulation of tests, by the addition of hydrogen, was " common {

knowledge". The Board also set aside, incredibly, the unanimous testimony  !

of operations personnel that it was unwritten policy to discard all tests above the Jimit allowed for continued operation of the plant and report of all others, even negative leakage! In fact, the Board exonerated the i supervisor who order the operators to hid the high tests from the NRC before they were thrown away! l The board refused to consider the evidence which would have incul-pated top management. This is that Unit 2 was leaking excessively and increasingly with and from the RCS in a manner which precluded the reliable measurement of unidentified leakage (the leak rate test). Had j the Board look at that evidence (we compiled as a finding from the record) l in the form of a table and a graph of water additions to the Makeup Tank),

the Board would have been faced with clear evidence that the gross and changing leakage precluded the measurement of identified leakage -- and, therefore, the calculation of unidentified leakage. The Board would have been faced with evidence that top managers had to have known that leak rate test s could not have been reliably performed.

8707270128 870716 DR ADOCK0500g0 [j )

g

We are attaching our motion to the Board, which has been denied, for the arguments therein, and an NRC PNO of March 28, 1979 which states that the B steam generator was leaking prior to the accident. The leaki-ness of the steam generator and the gross and accelerating leakage in the reactor cicarly precluded the measurement of unidentified RCS leakage.

The Board's denial of our motion (July 10, 1987) was based on the Board's continued error. The Board will not acknowledge that the control room logs (our Attachment 2 to our February 2, 1987 findings) are on the record and that a graph of the water additions from those control room logs (our Attachment 3) is a finding. The Board continues to ignore the impact of that evidence by describing identified leakage ds 5 gpm, well within the 10 gpm limit, whereas the leakage was over 9 gpm and increasing. (Our graph was conservative in plotting only those water additions which were clearly visible on the logs.) The Board ignores the fact that the gross acceleration in RCS leakage and the kinds of leaks continued to preclude identification and quantification of leakage for the entire period of operation not just the period in January 1979, a focus of the Board's inquiry. Top managers, who testified that they were apprised on a daily basis of the plant status, could not have gone uninformed concerning the gross and accelerating leakage and the steam tube leakage. Since they were apprised, Herbein and Miller had to know, from their long and intimate involvement in nuclear power operation, that leak rate tests could not be reliably calculated.

We request that the Board's clearly improper decision be addressed by a reopening of the hearing to develop the issue of the leakiness of Unit 2 as it effected the operators' ability to quantify identified leaks and managements' perceptions. At this reopened hearing, the Board's other errors -- that should be an embarrassment to the NRC -- could also be addressed. for instance:

the Board's refusal to allow the appearance of a former Met Ed executive Lawrence Lawyer, despite his responsibility for leak rate I

tes;ing and his willingness to appear, the Board's failure to call GPU engineer Morck, who had responsibility for revising the leak rate test procedure, knew about the gross leaks in the RCS in order to undertake the revision in mid-March 1979 that resulted in the Technical Notice of Change, and biased the procedure to under estimate unidentified leakage, the Board's refusal, upon the motion of GPU attorneys, to incorporate j the addendum to the Office of Investigations' report into the record.

l In addition, the reopening should address the relationship of the gross leakage of the RCS to the course of the 1979 accident. The NRC has never considered that relationship although requested to do so by one of its investigators, Harold Ornstein, in 1979. It is now clearly apparent that the character of pre-accident RCS leakage would have obscured the leakage from the stuck-open PORV when water was being injected by the high pressure system, causing the termination of the injection.

l

V The reopening should address the total abbrogation of the licensee's i duty to surveill steam tube leakage and failure to close the plant with i a leaking B Steam Generator, as was discovered by the NRC inspectors on the day of the accident and then, evidently hid kc ,,

We trust that you will not go along with the kind of inappropriate address of this important issue, the leak rate falsifications, that has characterized the NRC's behavior over the past nine years. (We would exclude the Appeal Board in that characterization.) For instance, we would find an NRC response that gross leakage was within allowable limits to be totally unresponsive. This would not take into account the rate of change in gross leakage and the physical impossibility, which two employees described, of the quantification of identified leaks. i We would also request some personal relief. The Board unfairly denigrtated our participation in the Leak Rate Proc' ceding in a foot-note on the next to last page. The Board has now softened its char-acterization of our participation, however, that is not enough. The NRC owes us more than to allow our work to be called " disruptive".

We provided about 50 different responses in the Leak Rate Proceeding to specific Board requests. The board stated its specific interest in receiving our findings of fact in an order, late in the hearing, when the motion of GPU counsel for our dismissal was denied.

It is incredible that the Board would chose to singularly discredit us. We were the only member of the public who exhibited enough faith in the restricted hearing to participate at all. We did it at our own expense and faithfully for over a year, despite serious family illnesses.

Why is a party's objections to the conduct of another party, when carefully developed and documented, an attack rather than an opinion?

In every instance our opinions were backed by solid evidence. It was our opinion that the counsel who drafted an agreement in 1981 would still be sufficiently acquainted with it so that his misrepresentation of it to prevent questioning of his client was a clear case of fraud. Further, in our so-called three attacks on counsel, we were, in each case, defend-ing our selves from their unbased criticisms. It is unfortunate for the public that the lawyers, particularly GPU lawyers, are en a pedestal not shared by the public.

In closing, I would bring your attention to the enclosed brief concerning another issue and one in which you expressed your interest in January 1986 during the debate in Massachusetts. The brief concerns the health problems of TMI area residents and describes the NRC's deceptive presentations to the U.S. Supreme Court. I am also enclosing an abstract of our study which is being prepared for scientific publicag-tion. I would appreciate your response on these matters.

Our very best wishes for your effective pursuit of your director-ship of NRR.

Sincerely your ,

,1, .t

'Marj oile M. Aamodt h.(h CC: Licensing Board, Commission., Parties.

t