ML20236B455
| ML20236B455 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Peach Bottom  |
| Issue date: | 03/08/1989 |
| From: | Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards |
| To: | |
| References | |
| ACRS-T-1720, NUDOCS 8903210099 | |
| Download: ML20236B455 (132) | |
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O UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS GE REACTOR PLANTS SUBCOMMITTEE )
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Meeting on the Peach Bottom )
Atomic Power Station Restart )
Morning Session Pages: 1 through 129 Place: Bethesda, Maryland Date: March 8, 1989
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- 1. . PUBLIC. NOTICE.BY.THE
- q p; # D '2' UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'S-3 ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR ~ SAFEGUARDS
- 4. March 8, 1989 5 l 6 \
1
'7 The contents of this stenographic transcript of:the-
.8 proceedings of the United States-Nuclear' Regulatory 9 ' Commissions Advisory Committee on Reactor l Safeguards '_ (ACRS) ,
10- as reported herein, is an uncorrected record of the discussions
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11~ recorded'at the meeting-held on the above date' 12 No member of the ACRS Staff and no participant at
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13 this meeting accepts 'any responsibility for errors or-
- 14. inaccuracies of statements or data contained in-this-
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15 transcript.- ,
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19-20 21 22 23 2 4.-
25-Heritage Reporting Corporation (202)628-4888
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lf UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY' COMMISSION
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. ADVISORY COMMITTEE ON REACTOR SAFEGUARDS GE. REACTOR PLANTS' SUBCOMMITTEE- )
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Meeting.on the Peach Bottom )
Atomic Power Station Restart ) ,
Wednesday, March 8, 1980 Room P-110,.Phillips Building 7920-Norfolk Avenue Bethesda, Maryland The meeting convened, pursuant to notice, at 8:30 a.m.
BEFORE: DR'. WILLIAM KERR, Chairman Professor of Nuclear Engineering :'
Director, Office of Energy Research University.of Michigan
.. . Ann Arbor, Michigan ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT: !
DR. FORREST J. REMICK Vice,Chairmanj ACRS Associate Vice-President for Research Professor of' Nuclear Engineering The Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pennsylvania MR. CHARLES J. WYLIE Retired Chief Engineer Electrical Division Duke Power Company Charlotte, North Carolina
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- / N V -2 ACRS MEMBERS PRESENT (Continued) :
(. DR. CHESTER P. SIESS Professor Emeritus of Civil Engineering ;
University of Illinois l Urbana, Illinois MR. CARLYLE MICHELSON Retired Principal Nuclear Engineer Tennessee. Valley Authority Knoxville, Tennessee, and Retired Director, Office.cor Analysis I
and Evaluation of Operational Data U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission ;
Washington, D.C.
ACRS COGNIZANT STAFF MEMBER:
i HERMAN ALDERMAN CONSULTANT:
I.- CATTON
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NEG STAFF PRESENTERS:
, MR. BOGER Ii MR. LINVILLE l MR. DURR MR. MARTIN ,
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. 3 1 EBQQRRRIEGE ,
() 2 DR. KERR: The meeting will come to order. .This 3 is a meeting.of the ACRS Subcommittee on Peach Bottom 4 restart.
5' My name is Kerr. I am Chairman of the, 6 Subcommittee. Other members of the Subcommittee in 7 attendance today are Mr. Remick,lir. Michelson, Mr. Wylie, 8 Mr Catton and we expect Mr. Siess. Mr. Herman Alderman is 9 the Cognizant ACRS Staff Member for this meeting.
10 The rules for participation in the meeting were 11 announced =as part of a Federal Register notice published on 12 February 22, 1988. The meeting is being conducted in 13 accordance with provisions of the Federal Advisory 14 Committee Act and the Government in the Sunshine Act.
I\ 15 We have received a written statement from Ms. Jean V
16 Ewing of the Peach Bottom Alliance, copies of which are 17 available to members of the subcommittee.
18 I would ask that each speaker, during our meeting, 19 identify himself or herself and use a microphone. I won't 20 attempt to review the history of the shutdown and proposed 21 startup of Units 2 and 3. I assume that the staff will 22 review that in some detail. I would point out that shutdown 23 occurred almost two years ago.
24 It does appear from all the documentation that has 25 been provided to us that the reasons for the original l Heritage Reporting Corporation es g (202) 628-4888 i
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I. 4 1 problem have been thoroughl'y investigated by. Phi 1adelphia 0 2 ,1eceric company, by Imeo and by ehe mRc seaf,, among.
-3 others.
4 The staff has also. concluded I think, and they 5 will speak to that I am aure in more detail, that the plant 6 . staff is ready'or at least almost ready ~for plant restart.
I have no reason to question generally the
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8 investigations that have occurred nor the conclusions that l
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9 have been reached so far as I-can understand.
10 I do however have some concerns about the future.
11' One of my concerns has to do with the way in which the staff 1
12 will be able'to ascertain once the plants are in operation i 13 that public health and safety are being adequately 1
14 protected.
j 15 The SER states that this will be determined by -
16 inspection. However, now criteria are given for determining. .
17 satisfactory performance of the organization nor so far as I
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- 18. know do such criteria exist.
19 Furthermore, I observe that although as noted by 20 the staff in the SER, prior to the shutdown -- for there
- 21. had been several citations issued to Philadelphia Electric 22 company -- there does not appear to have been any indication 23 prior'to the time the staff received information from a non-24 staff source that things were serious enough to warrant a-25 shutdown order. }
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s>. t h 5-1- .Indeed, there didn't appearito'be any indication I) 2 that'they-were nearly that serious, as far as I could see 3 from the. record. j 4 Of perhaps equal concern to me, although the 5 subcommittee meeting is not the correct forum for exploring' l
q 6 the issue in detail, is how we know that some of the~ )
7 situations do not exist'in other plants.
8 An examination of existing regulations might lead !
9 one to conclude that they were designed primarily for 10 licensing and not for operations. And indeed this may be .
i 11 one of the difficulties.of locating criteria for 12 ~ satisfactory performance. And indeed the so-called SALP 13 process could be interpreted as a response to at least what i
14 it appears to me is some lack of focusing on regulations j 15 that deal with operation.
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16 It is however, the staff's position that the SALP 17 is not for that purpose, it is not for determining i 18 compliance with regulations that exist or should exist but 19 rather serve some other purpose. And I note the SALP 20- ratings for this plant are available to us for a recent 21 period.
22 I also call your attention to a letter forwarded 23 to the ACRS by the Chairman of the Commission. This, and a 24 letter from Senator Mckulski, concerns a Councilwoman, 25' Barbara Risacher, if I am pronouncing the name correctly, Heritage Reporting Corporation rwg (202) 628-4888
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1 1 the staff has been asked to respond to concerns raised in J O2 ehae 1eeeer and I .eu1d assume ehey are prepared eo de so.
I 3 At the full committee meeting tomorrow we have )
l 4 scheduled a presentation on this issue e,nd I assume that at l 5 that meeting, meeting of the full committee scheduled for !
l 6 Thursday, Friday and Saturday, we will formulate comments in j 7 a report that will go to the Commission.
8 .At the~end of today's session, I will ask for your 9 recommendations concerning the content of tomorrow's 10 presentation as well as your comments concerning a draft of 11 a letter which I will attempt to prepare for consideration 12 by the full committee.
'13 Are there any comments from members of the 14 subcommittee at this point or do you have-any specific ,
15 questions that you would like to call to the attention of i 16 the staff?
17 (No response) 18 DR. KERR: I see no indication of any such and I 19 therefore will call upon Mr. Bruce Boger of the NRC staff to )
20 open the meeting. J 21 (Slide )
22 MR. BOGER: Good morning. My name is Bruce Boger 23 and I work in the Division of Reactor Projects in NRR here 24 in Headquarters.
25 I am here with several staff members of both Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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\ ). l 1 Headquarters and the Regional Office to discuss issues O
) (_ 2 related to the shutdown and restart of the Peach Bottom
'3 Atomic Power Station. .
L 4 This morning we will be discussing basic 5 information on the background of the shutdown, issues 6 involved in the shutdown and some of the licensee corrective e
7 actions in response to that.
8 Later this afternoon I believe the agenda shows 9 that we will discuss additional information on our i
10 inspection activities and other review activities related to 11 the restart.
12 With respect to the background of the shutdown, I 13 will start in June of 1986, but I will acknowledge that i i
14 prior to that time there was a previous history of i
15 enforcement actions and civil penalties. l 16 In June of 1986, there was a situation which 17 resulted in an out of sequence control rod withdrawal. 4 18 Basically the rod worth minimizer and the rod sequence
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19 control systems were bypassed without appropriate oversight, t 20 and it was done by senior reactor operators and it also 21 involved procedural noncompliance. ] >
22 This resulted in a management meeting or 23 enforcement conference with the licensee and ultimately 24 resulted in the civil penalty of $200,000. l 25 In June of the same year, we issued our SALP l
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1 report for the previous period and noted in it several'
() 2 management weaknesses. For example, there were instances of 3 procedural noncompliance in place and attitudo, personnel 4 errors and poor management oversight.
5 . Shortly thereafter, Region 1 initiated a 6 diagnostic team inspection to review the situation at Peach 7 Bottom and basically the diagnostic confirmed the results of 8 the SALP.
9 In August of that year, the Executive Director of 10 Operations' met with Senior PECO management to express 11 concerns that were developing and were confirmed in the SALP 12 and the diagnostics.
13 In response to that, the licensee produced the 14 Peach Bottom enhancement program which was a broad-based 15 program to address many issues, procedure revisions,
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16 improved radiological controls, additional on-shift 17 assistance.
18 In February of 1987, an additional civil penalty 19 was levied against the company for a dismissal of an 20 employee that was engaged in protected activities. That 21 actually took place a couple of years before then but the 22 civil penalty was issued in February of 1987.
23 Finally on March 31, 1987, after allegations were 24 confirmed by the NRC which resulted in our lacking 25 confidence that the facility would be operated in a manner Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 Y('s
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1 that the public health'and safety was reasonably. assured, we
$( ) 2 issued the shutdown order. Issues involved in the order 3 were-licensed operator and inattentiveness, licensed ,
4 supervision knowing and condoning the inattentiveness, and 5 plant management either knew or should have known about the 6- inattentiveness and failed to take adequate corrective 7 action.
8 At the time of the order, one unit was in 9 refueling and the other unit was operating the power. LThe 10 order required that the operating unit be shut down within 11 36 hours4.166667e-4 days <br />0.01 hours <br />5.952381e-5 weeks <br />1.3698e-5 months <br /> and maintained in the cold shutdown condition, both 12 units maintained in the cold shutdown condition until 13 approved by the NRC to restart. !
14 The order also included provisions for a short 15 term response, a 7K response, to identify those actions that
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16 would be taken to assure compliance regulations in the near i 17 term.
18 In addition it required a comprehensive plan for 19 safe facility operation to be provided to the regional 20 administrator.
21 In this comprehensive plan I would like to go 22 through the steps as we viewed it with respect to its 23 development. As I said, the shutdown was in March of 1987, 24 in August of 1987 PECO submitted the commitment to 25 excellence plan.
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'1 On August 11 the NRC established a panel of 2 Headquarters and Region I personnel to address the issues !
c 3 involved in the shutdown, develop the SER and formulate a 4 restart decision recommendation.
5 It also was intended to integrate licensing and 6 inspection activities and to raise issues promptly to higher 7 management. )
8 Not on the slide but perhaps relevant was a l 9 meeting on September 15 with the Commission and the )
i 10 licensee. In this meeting the Commission acknowledged that i
11 the corporate management must be held accountable for the (
12 issues that evolved at Peach Bottom.
l 13 September we held public meetings to receive j 14 comments from the public on the commitment to excellence 15 plan and in October we advised the licensee that we were i 16 deferring further review of that plan because we felt that 17 the plan failed to address corporate weaknesses.
18 At about the same time, the Philadelphia Electric ;
19 Company announced the corporate reorganization and as a 20 result of that submitted in November a revised part of the 21 plan that addressed corporate issues.
I 22 In February of 1988, the Philadelphia Electric 23 Company submitted the second portion of that plan which 24 addressed site issues.
i 25 About a month after that, the new PECO President Heritage Reporting Corporation m (202) 628-4888 V j
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11 1 and CEO, Mr. Paquette, and Executive Vice President-Nuclear
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$ 2 Mr.'McNeal, assumed their duties. -i i 3 This was followed in April with a revision to the 4 restart plan which reflected the new management philosophy. l 5 Basically this philosophy was that the primary role for l 1
6 quality rests with the line organization, with 7 accountability and followup required of the line 8 organization with quality assurance oversight of that 9 activity.
i 10 In May we held three more public meetings in the 11 vicinity of the plant to receive public comments. We also.
12 received comments from both Maryland and Pennsylvania on the 13 revised restart plan.
14 And finally, in October of 1988 we issued our l i 15 source evaluation report which essentially approved the PECO
(_/- 1' 16 plan and also included responses to the public comments that 17 we received in May.
18 DR. REMICK: Bruce, a question on the public 19 meetings that were held. I assume these were not hearings, 20 they were what, information meetings?
l 21 MR. BOGER: Basically we presented information at 22 the front end of the meeting and then accepted comments 23 afterwards. In the May meetings we did not attempt to
' 24 answer the concerns, we were more interested in bringing 25 information back to us. As we will talk about later on Heritage Reporting Corporation 3
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/ 1 today, we held-additional meetings last week in which we.
2 received comments and also tried to address the issues as we I
3 received'them. I will try and give you a flavor of what the 4 issues were later on.
L l 5 DR. REMICK: Thank you.
H 6 MR. BOGER: Just to give'you an idea what the 7 . panel'was like and how we integrated activities between the l 8 Region and Headquarters, the Chairman of the panel was Bill l
9 Kane who was the Director of Reactor Projects in Region I.
10 I was the Vice Chairman.- And we had several members of the 11 staff. Bill Regan from Human Factors Assessment Branch in 12 NRR; Ed Wenzinger, Chief-Projects Branch; Bob Gallo, Chief' 13 of an Operations Branch, Region I; Ron Bellamy from the 14 Radiological Protection and Emergency Preparedness Branch and Jim Linville who is a Chief of the Projects ~Section.
( '15 16 We~also had two very capable advisors to the 17 panel,' Tom Johnson who is the Senior Resident Inspector and 18 Bob Martin who is the NRR Project Manager. 1 19 As a result of the licensee's investigation and 20 evaluation process, several issues were identified that the ,
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. :21 licensee felt were issues related to the shutdown.
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.2 The operations staff was inattentive. This 23 included instances of sleeping, game playing, reading, j 24 horseplay. There was poor attention to detail, procedural l 25 compliance and a generally complacent attitude. j Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 Shift management knew of the inattentiveness, to 1
) 2 some degrees participated in it, and condoned it. Plant I
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'3 management knowledge.of the situation was unknown, whether' 41 the level that was known or the time it was known. In any-
-5 case, inadequate. action was taken when it was known.
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'6 There was a failure of the' quality assurance .)
-l 7 organization to identify the problem. Licensees had a lack :j l
8 of effectiveness in the corrective actions that it had 9 generated previously. There was also in general a lack'of 10 management involvement.
11 The licensee addressed.these issues and formulated 12 four root causes to address those issues.
13 One was inadequate leadership at Peach Bottom.
14 Another was the failure to initiate a timely licensed 15 A third was a station culture
( operator replacement program.
16 that had not adapted to the post-TMI changing nuclear 17 requirements. Jue finally, a failure of corporate 18 ! management to identify and take sufficient corrective 19 action.
20 I hate to go too far into this one because you 21 will receive 1 think information from the licensee and also 22 the staff later on on our SER with respect to what the 23 licensee actions were.
24 But in a nutshell, to address the leadership l 25 problem at Poach Bottom, new management personnel were Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 La ,
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-1 brought in, a corporate vice president was placed on site,
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(/ 2' a new station manager was brought in from Limerick where he l
3 had a successful operation and also new operations and shift 4 management personnel were added.
5 To address the corporate issues, PECO reorganized 6 into a nuclear dedicated organization in order to strengthen 7 communications and specify accountability in the line 8 organization.
9 There was, as I indicated, a vice president on 10 site and also an increased independent oversight from the 11 quality assurance and other oversight groups.
12 To address the cultural changes, the company .
i 13 revised several personnel policies and included performance 14 appraisals, strength and discipline policies, provided l 15 additional training to improve the team work and 16 communications of the site or the personnel at the site, and 1
17 also established new standards. They articulated in goals 18 and mission statements what was expected and also instituted 19 a policy of management by walking around to get the managers 20 out in the plant and looking more at their workspaces.
21 To address the operator resource issue, the 22 licensee added 11 new operators and moved to a six-shift l
l 23 operation which was intended to reduce the overtime 24 requirements.
25 In the future they plan to have additional RO on Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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'd 2 In addition, the plant staff management included l 3 the incorporation of a shift manager as the lead person on 4 shift.
5 That basically concludes the formal remarks that I
'l 6 had for this portion of the presentation.
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1 DR.-KERR: I noticed several times in the
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4 : 21 discussion'of the situation the-term cultural changes is
- 3. used. Can you tell me what is_ meant by cultural changes? !
4 MR. BOGER: -I'll try. I. guess it's one more'of 5 attitude. The culture would be the general attitudes'that !
6 people have. One of perhaps.a lack of respect for'those i
7 outside of one's organization. I guess I capture the ;
8 operators' culture as being one of a self centered group, a 9 group that was bent on operating the plant with maybe a lack i 10 of sensitivity for the needs of others in the organization.
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11 .The culture included a lack of trust between plant staff-and 12 ' headquarters with the home office, if you v111. j 13~ It's more of an attitude or a string of ~ attitudes l
14 put together.that established a culture that was just ,
15 resisting change.
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16 DR. KERR: I also noticed a great' deal made of 17 attitudinal changes and the staff feels that it has ;
t 18' validated methods of attitudinal measures which are 19 appropriate to determining the performance or expected 20 performance of reactor operators that have-been developed q 21 presumably since maybe TMI II or whatever.
22 MR. BOGER: I think that I can't say that we have t-23 a validated instrument that we use to score people on.
24 Basically what we try to do was to take a person that had 25 human factors or type expertise along with someone that had Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O 4 l
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h 17 3 1 operations' experience. And'between the two of-them- j 2: interview licensed personnel both after a short period i
I 3 training'and then later on.after more extensive team 4 training to see what differences were.obtained in; responses.
5 They tried to use the same questions'of protocol-U 6 with each individual.so they'd try to get a consistent set 7 of' answers. But one that -- we.were using our best 8 judgement rather than I guess what you would call a
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- 9. ' validated technique.
10 DR. KERR: Thank you. Mr. Remick?
11 MR. REMICK: ~ Bruce, you indicated that there was a I 12 failure of the QA and ideally I don't question the' fact that
- 13. a QA organization you would hope would catch inattentiveness 14 and.perhaps poor attitude and so forth. But speaking in i
15 reality the way QA organizations are. generally set up, does
'16 the staff really expect a-QA' organization would catch 17 operators sleeping and attentiveness and that type of thing?
18 MR. BOGER: I think we'like to think in terms of 19 defense in depth. And of course the first line of defense 20 was the operating organization and their management chain.
21 We do expect that the quality assurance organization is a '!
22 layer of this defense in depth and it was there to see 23 things.
24 DR. KERR: Is your answer yes or no?
25 MR. BOGER: Yes. I Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 O
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. 1. . MR . REMICK: But do you think: QA organizations in ]
() 2- 'the' industry I'm' speaking in general nov'are structure, they
- 3. even sense that responsibility versus checking'somebody 4 signed and the proper forms are filled out and;that type of 5 thing.: Do you'really check that. type;of thing?'
6 MR. BOGER: I don't know-how to address that.1 IL ;
I 7 think that there's in general a more awareness of trying to-J Et be more operationally oriented, performance based if you I will, rather than compliance based, were alllthe forms 9
10 filled'out. More walking 1around~the plant and observing 11 people perform the work rather than reviewing the. paper work l
12 of that work later on.
13 DR. SIESS: Isn't that relatively new in the l 14 operational QA area or how long has that been going on to l 15' your knowledge?
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16 MR. BOGER: I'll bet that there were probably some 17 places where that was happening for a long time. I 18 DR. SIESS: Because the staff has just been 19 conducting schools to teach inspectors to do that. And if ;
i 20 it's been going on for very long I wonder why the -- l
- 21. MR. BOGER: There's certainly an additional focus 22 from the NRC side. I guess I would tend to believe that 23 there were some licensees performing their quality assurance c l
24 function in that role for quite a while. l 25 DR. SIESS: I think they would do it before the i
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19-1 NRC does-it.-
) 2 MR. BOGER: I think probably there are'some NRC 3- people that are-doing it too. It's a change in. attitude.
4 DR.LKERR: Indeed it seems to me that INPO in its 5 letter to'Mr. Paket of February 21, 1989, has some concerns 6 about a separate monitoring organization' called a QC or.what
- 7. 'you-will,-as an alternative to investing this responsibility.
8 in the liae organization.
9 MR.-BOGER: I think that was a 1988.
10 DR. KERR:- The one I have was dated February 21,- ,
11.. 1989, and it discusses an earlier letter but it certainly 12 doesn't' indicate any. change in attitude.
13 MR. BOGER: I think maybe the licensee could-14 address that for you but my understanding is that the
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commitment to excellence plan had in it on site quality _
16 assurance as more or less a policeman. With the new plan it l
17 took that role out~and emphasized the line responsibility. j 18 DR. KERR:- That is my interpretation as'well, but 19 it appears that you're saying that the QC organization' 20 should play this, I didn't call it a policeman's role, but a i 21 role on checking on operations on a regular basis.
22 MR. BOGER: Well, I think they have a role in the 23 oversight of the plant. Identifying issues.
24- DR. KERR: I don't disagree that you think that, 25 it just seems to me that this is -- I guess I'll have to Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 explore this at some point with INPO and this is probably j
?( I- 2 not the meeting to do that, but seems to me that they had 3- some reservations about that sort of set up. I would 4 personally have some reservations about it, but so be it. )
5 .Please continue. Oh,~you're finished.-
6- MR. BOGER: That was the end of my. .
7 DR. KERR: Are there further questions?
8 (no response) 9 DR..KERR: Next item. ,
10 (slide) 11 DR. KERR: Where is the slide that they asked for?
12 MR. MCNEILL: Good morning ladies and gentlemen. i 13 I am Corbin McNeill. I am the Executive Vice President, 14- Nuclear, for the Philadelphia Electric Company. I have been 15 with Philadelphia Electric nearly one year. I originally
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16 had come over on loan from my previcus employer, Public 17 Service Electric ar.d Gas, who are part owners or majority 18 owners along with Philadelphia Electric of the Peachbottom 19 station. Shortly after that I joined Philadelphia Electric 20 on a permanent basis. With me today to make presentations 21 are Dickinson Smith, on my right and the rear, who is the 22 Vice President of the Peachbottom Atomic Power station.
23 John Franz, who is the plant manager. John Cotton who is 24 the Operations Superintendent for Peachbottom. In the rear 25 behind you are Dave Woodrow who is a 20 year employee at Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 Peachbottom. He is a shift supervisor. Tony Wasong, who is llh 2 a 14 year PECO veteran and a shift manager. Also Mr. Joe' l 3 Kowalski, who is our Vice President of Nuclear Engineering, 4 Gram Leach who is the Vice President of our Limerick 5 generating station and David Helwig who is currently my 6 assistant, but who has been the general manager of quality 7 assurance in our revamped organization.
8 Our presentation today consists of an overview by 9 myself, following that we look at station management and 10 basically the four root causes which are station management, 11 operator staffing and training, the station culture, 12 corporate management and then there will be a short 13 discussion of the plant readiness for restart.
14 As did the NRC presenters, I'd like to give you a 15 short history of the significant events as viewed from the 16 company's standpoint. Obviously the shut down order of 17 March 31st was a very devastating event for the company and 18 in response to that the company put together a diagnostic 19 team from the management analysis corporation to help do a 20 diagnostic review of the root causes, and I'll discuss those 21 a little later.
22 There were some fits and starts in the early 23 months. As Mr. Boger indicated that there was an initial 24 plan submitted in August of 1987. In October of that year 25 the NRC cuspended its review of that holding that it was an Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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t 22 l 1 inadequate response. And in November of 1987 the company
( F 2 resubmitted a new restart plan in section-1 which dealt with q 3 the corporate issues.. )
4 In January of 1988 there is now the infamous INFO I l
5 letter that was made public which severely criticized the 6 ' company.and its management for its responses to INPO 7 identified deficiencies over a number of years prior to the 8 shut down. That action really resulted in the early !
9 retirement of the then president and subsequently Chairman 10 of the Boar of the company. In February, shortly after I 11 arrived, we submitted section 2 of the restart plan which 12 dealt with the station issues. I joined the company along 13 with a new Chairman, Mr. Joseph Paket in March of 1988. We 14 .immediately rescinded the restart plan, reviewed it, put our
-(' 15' own INPO motto on it, incorporated some of the 16 recommendations that Mr. Kerr had highlighted that came from 17 INFO with respect to that plan and were identified in their 18 January lith letter, and reissued or resubmitted that q 19 revised plan in April of 1988.
20 By September of that year we had completed all 138 21 action items that were contained in the restart plan, both 22 sections. In October action started to increase in 23 intensity. The tempo picked up, the NRC approved the 24 restart plan in an C2R, which I think they will discuss 25 later. There was a INPO evaluation of the plant and the Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888
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j 1 corporate organizations in September and October-and we {
f ) 2 received the evaluation from that. The NRC staff also 3 issued ---the region. issued its SALP report for the period i
4 of June, 1987.through July, 1988. And we, as the result of 5 items that we had identified and were somewhat highlighted 6 by INPO and the NRC, announced a restart' delay. We had been 7 planning on an end of year restart.
8 We announced that we would delay until'the second !
i 9 quarter of 1989, the restart, because we thought it would 10 take 14) time to complete the additional actions that we j i
11 thought were necessary.
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E12 In December, INPO reevaluated the operator I
13 performance in the simulator and indicated that our training i i
14 program was effective and satisfactory. Subsequently, the l 15
() NRC completed its evaluntion of the operators in the 16 simulator. INPO reevaluated several deficiencies that had 17 come up in the plan evaluation concerning management .
18 effectiveness in the station and found them to be
'l 19 satisfactory. The NRC completed-a security inspection, one 20 week dedicated security inspection after we had notified )
21- them that we thought that security was up to an acceptable 22 standard.
23 In February, just past, the NRC completed a two 24 week integrated assessment team inspection and we, as a 25 company, reached agreement with the Commonwealth of Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 Pennsylvania'on a number of issues that the Commonwealth had j
.i raised with respect to the restart ~ plan. And in.that
[t' ) 2
.3. agreement obtained their agreement to remove themselves from 4 licensing board hearings and from court intervention before ,
5 the Third Circuit: Court of Appeals.
6 As a part of that whole sequence, the company in 7 early, cn: actually in late 1987 announced, and in 1988
'S implemented the new nuclear organization with a dedicated 9 nuclear group that is shown here. I lead that group 10 reporting directly to the Chairman of the Board.. There are j i
11 basically two plant operating organizations, the Vice I
12 President of Limerick and the Vice President of Peachbottom 13 who are the site directors, and responsible for all the i
14 activitios that occur at those sites.
15 There is a Senior Vice President of Nuclear 16 Construction that is responsible for the compilation of i
17 Limerick 2, that will be back here I think, in two months, l 18 .cn on the agenda to go through the subcommittee and 19 committee meetings relative to the license issue and some ,
20 form. We expect to load fuel-this summer in Limerick 2.
21 Also we have the support organizations of nuclear 22 engineering and nuclear services. Nuclear services has the 23 corporate training oversight role. They are the licensing, 24 they have the nuclear group maintenance, mobile maintenance 25 force and they have the administration and implementation Heritage Reporting Corporation rs (202) 628-4888 Q
1
-['O -
25 1 resource management organizations. We have a time-quality-1 I 2 insurance organization that'has been reorganized. There 3 used to be three separate quality assurance-' organizations, 4 one for, nuclear engineering, one for construction, and one
$ for' operations.- They have now all been brought together 6 into one-organization reporting directly to me.
7 There are two' staff roles, one is a business j 8 manager, which will become effective in May of this year and l
9 might have a human resource organization in support of the 10 nuclear group.
11 MR. MICHELSON: Question.
12 MR. MCNEILL: Yes sir.
13 MR. MICHELSON: The nuclear engineering is all on !
14 site? !
15 MR. MCNEILL: No it is not. 'It is corporately 16; located, it's allowance of about 400 people. One of the 17 elements that goes along with this particular organizational 18 change is that the nuclear organization is being relocated 19 effective in late April, and through July to a single 20 . location which is about 20 minutes from our Limerick 21 generating station, and about one hour and 10 minutes from 22 our Peachbottom atomic power station. So they are moving 23 out of down town Philadelphia and closer to the sites.
24 We do maintain on the plant staffs, the technical 25 services organization of what are referred to as system Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
,/)
(s 26 1 engineers and'other engineering support people which number.
() 2 about 80 on each plant staff. These are the reactor 3 engineers, system engineers, some plant' performance, thermal 4 performance engineers. . We also, as an interim measure, 5 until the engineering department - .the engineering 6 department is undergoing an internal reorganization which 7 will be effective in July. And in order to compensate for 8 the reduction and attention that goes along with every 9 organization we are maintaining a staff of approximately 15 10 people at Peachbottom who are part of the engineering 11 department, but in fact are located at the station.
12 Likewise at Limerick, because of the construction i 13 of Limerick 2, there's a large amount of support from 14 Bechtel Corporation, you know the architect and engineer of 15 record for the station, and we maintain a significant amount 16 of Bechtel support out of an office that's located about 15 17 minutes from the Limerick station.
18 MR. MICHELSON: How much of the nuclear QA will be 19 on site and how much will not?
20 MR. MCNEILL: There will be approximately 40 to 50~
21- people at each location. Ten of which report to the General 22 Manager of Quality Assurance.
23 MR. MICHELSON: How many at the central location? h 24 MR. MCNEILL: There are, by my recollection, about 25 another 40, I guess, that are in that organization. The Heritage Reporting Corporation r~ss (202) 628-4888 V
i 27 1 whole organization is roughly 130 people and it's split about one third, one third, one third. We do vendor audits
(]) 2~
3- and some programmatic audits out of the corporate 4 headquarters, but most of the plant audits are done out of 5 the plact quality assurance.
I 6 MR. MICHELSON: Nuclear Review Board, is that i
7 headquarters?
8 MR. MCNEILL: That is at headquarters, it has a 9 full time Chairman, it has been meeting on a monthly basis.
10 It has, I believe, six ad hoc members from the organization
- 11. and three outside consultants.
12 MR. REMICK: Are any of those outside people from 13 other utilities? 1 14 MR. MCNEILL: No, they are not. They are all from
. 15 consulting organizations.
16 MR. REMICK: Didn't at one time Philadelphia 17 Electric and Pennsylvania Power and Light exchange members?
18 MR. MCNEILL: I believe that was in fact the case, 19- and that had stopped before I joined and I really have not i
20 asked that question. Because in the year that I've been, I j
21 think'I participated as an observer at three NRV meetings 22 and I obviously get the reports on a month to month basis.
23 And they are a very effective organization in their current 24 format and I see no need to change it right now. The whole 25 thrust of the Nuclear Review Board is much more inquisitive, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
.j i
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'1 critical,_and has expanded into operating areas'much.more' .
2- than they.had-in the past.
-3 4
5
'6 7,
8 j 9
10 11 ;
12 13 14
'15 16
-17 18
'19.
-20 I
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-22 i
23 24 l 1
25 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
j 29 E 'l MR. MCNEILL:- He resides on site as does the vice
( . .
'2 president at Limerick.
3 .MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
4 MR. MCNEILL: 'Are there any other questions in
.5 this particular area?-
6 DR. REMICK: You mentioned the-systems engineer.
J 7 Will'somebody~else be' covering the concept of l l
8 systems engineer? l 1
9 MR. MCNEILL: I do not think that we go'into that 10 in detail, but we would certainly at some point introduce 11 that concept.
12 As I indicated earlier, the company engaged the .
13 Management Analysis. Corporation to do a diagnostic !
l 14 evaluation and to help define the root causes of the l
'I' 15 shutdown. As Mr. Boger' indicated earlier, those were.four.
N ' i 16 in nature. The first was-the lack of adequate leadership l I
17 and management skills on the partiof senior management at 18 the plant. Secondly, the failure of the company to initiate 19 timely licensed operator replacement. And along with that L 20 is a lack of a flow-through career progression for licensed i 21 operators.
l 22 Basically, the company's policy up to that point l 23 was that you needed to be a degreed individual to move into l
24 management effectively, and most of our senior licensed-l 25 operators were non-degreed. Therefore, they had no career i l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 ;
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U 30 l' path'or-career' position'beyond the-senior shift-2- superintendents. And as we train additional people, we.are J ]) .-
3 moving in. fact to_ provide that: kind,of career opportunity.'
4 DR. REMICK: What was the result of that?-
5 MR. MCNEILL: Stagnation with'long periods of 6- time. Little visible. evidence to people that they would be 7 able to move out of the' shift work routine. 'And therefore, 8- they were locked into shift work ~for basically;their entire 9 career.
10 Add to that work rules that were conducive to 11 creating overtime, and overtime with short notification.
I 12 You had a lot of frustration in the personal lives of 13 individuals who found themselves being inconvenienced 14 significantly in their personal life and the frustration 15 that came from that, and the remotivation that was then 16' reflected in on.the job behaviors.
17 The third issue was that there had been a station 18 culture which had~its' roots in the fossil organization and 19 pre-TMI operations and had been isolated from the rest of .;
l20 the company significantly because of its location across the 21' river, the Susquehanna River. And that station culture had 22 not changed to adapt to the post-TMI requirements and the 23 INPO initiatives in terms of professionalism and constantly 24 improving plant performance.
25 DR. KERR: Excuse me.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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'1' BGt. MCNEILL: .Yes, sir. l
- 2 DR. KERR:- The'INPO letter to which'I referred-3- which referred to an earlier letter would indicate that INPO-4 -had been fairly critical, but prior to' shutdown-had INPO ,
1 5 been t critical of the operation:of the station?-
6 MR. MCNEILL: Yes, it had. In about six months,-
7 they had had their last' plant evaluation approximately six 8 months prior.to the shutdown which would have been toward i
'9 the October time frame in 1986. And there had been an 10 earlier evaluation in 1985, 1985 was I believe the first-11 year.that INPO developed its rating system which is not well-12 publicized. But the station was awarded a category.five
'13 rating which'is the lowest rating available to the facility.
14 And the company in response to that-had created a
() commitment to excellence plan, the Peach Bottom improvement '
.15 16 plan. And when INPO came in a year later in 1986, they had 17 seen enough improvement to give a category four rating but 18 still had significant concerns about the operation of the l 19 facility and particularly the leadership and management. _l l
20 And there were issues of operator attitude as opposed to i 21 behavioral problems. There were operator attitude problems.
22 But they were awarded a category four rating, and 23 some acknowledgement that improvement had occurred. It was 24 subsequent to the shutdown and the sequence of events >
25 subsequent to the shutdown that I think indicated to the NRC Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
M 32 j 1 an'd the industry leadership that the company's response to j
( 2 the' shutdown was inadequate. That they had taken the Peach-3 Bottom improvement program, gave it a different cover,'and.
4- submitted it as a commitment to excellence plan as the !
5 restart plan that had been required to be-submitted in the !
l 6 shutdown order. 'i 7 And it was through the observation of that series' 7
8 of events plus interactions that INPO had with the company.
E 9 INPO had provided a five man advisory team to the company, 10 and many of the recommendations that that advisory team was 11 providing to the company were not being accepted by the 12 company. .And that resulted in the very critical l
13 January 11, 1987 and 1988 letter that moved on toward l.
14 replacement of senior corporate management. ;
() 15 16 DR. KERR:
MR. MCNEILL:
Thank you.
And this final item is that 17 corporate management had failed to recognize the developing f l
18 severity of the problem at Peach Bottom and thus did not i 19 take sufficient corrective action. It was that latter part 20 I think and the failure to give proper input on a relative f 21 basis of that latter item that resulted in the NRC's- ,
l 22 termination of its review of the commitment to excellence j 23 and the restart plan that were submitted in August of 1987 l 24 that really set the stage for many of the changes that you 25 will see described today.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 0
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'l 3_, -33 . ,i 1 -Do you have any questions? Our' presentation now q e
( y' f
j 2 goes through'these four root causes and has various ;
l 3 presenters address those. Mr. Michelson. ]
1 4 MR. MICHELSON: I wanted to make sure that I 5 understood.
6 These four items were given as a part of the 7' consultant's final report?
8' MR. MCNEILL: Yes. What was in fact done was that )
9 there was a serious of interviews held throughout the 10 organization from management, and I mean from the chairman 11 of the board to the president to the plant' management to the 12 operators to maintenance supervisors. And from that
'13 process, a root cause analysis was developed that identified 14 these issues as the root cause of the problems at the I'N 15 station that resulted in the behaviors that resulted in the
\m/ '{
16 shutdown. l 17 MR. MICHELSON: And the name of the firm again?
18 MR. MCNEILL: Management Analysis Corporation, l 19 MAC. They are fairly well known. They have done this work 20 for Niagara Mohawk, and they had done it for a number.of 21 other people who had organizational issues as opposed to [
22 technical issues that had to be addressed. They bring in~ ;
23 psychologists and management personnel who have operating ,
d 24 experience and understand organizational behaviors and 'j 25 organizational design and attempt to diagnose these issues.
i i
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1 DR. KERR: .Does your current organization have any
) .2 difficulty with these as root causes?
3 MR. MCNEILL: No. We have no problem with them as i
4 a matter of protecting the work that had been done prior to j 5 my arrival and prior to the Chairman's arrival in March of l I
6 1988. We did not go-back and redo.the root cause analysis.- i l
7 What we'have in fact done is in our attention to the program i 8 and in our revisions to the program, we have attempted to 9~ make sure that root cause four receives relatively more !
10 attention than it might otherwise have gotten. !
.11 In other words, if I'had to redo-this, I would 12 have put number four up as number one. But that is the way 13 that it came out of the original report. We could live with 14 that, and.we did not want to go back and redo another one.
Ih
\/
15 Because all of the documentary evidence that had been 16 collected to date would have been. called in play, and we f 17 would have gone back to first base, and we did not' 18 particularly care to do that. .But we have effectively 19 addressed root cause number four more.strongly than we have 20 all of the others.-
21 DR. KERR: Thank you.
22 MR. MCNEILL: I will call upon Mr. Dickinson Smith ;
i 23 to continue the presentation.
24 MR. SMITH: Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, my name is 25 Dick Smith and I am the vice president of Peach Bottom Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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35 i
1 : Atomic Power Station. I joined Philadelphia Electric
() 2 Company after the shutdown.- I had retired from the naval
~
3 service after 31 years of experience in the Navy primarily !
i'
.4 in.the nuclear submarine business. I retired as a rear I
5 admiral in August of 1986.
6 I joined' Philadelphia Electric after'the shutdown 7 order, and came on board at Peach Bottom as the plant
-8 manager in May of 1987. With the reorganization that fall, 9 I.was designated to be the site director as vice president -l 10 of the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station.
11 This morning I will discuss with you the'first of l 12 the four root causes. The first root cause, and there is an 13 error on this chart, is that there was a lack of adequate 14 personal leadership and management skills on the part of the 15
() senior management at the plant, on the part of the senior.
16 management of the plant.
17 DR. KERR: When you read that, it seemed to me 18 'that you pronounced the last word in the first line as 19 " personnel".
20 MR. SMITH: =" Personal", " Personal" is the correct 21 word.
22 DR. KERR: All right.
23 MR. SMITH: In analyzing this root cause, we came 24 up with these items under it. That the leadership skills 25 were inadequate to develop employee understanding of high Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
(
l l
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(') 36 1 nuclear standards. That the goals and expectations had not
)_2 .That the accountabilities been communicated effectively.
3 had not been clearly established. That there was poor 4 communications among the site groups and between the site !
5 and the off-site groups. And as a result of all of this, 6 there was poor morale at the station.
7 Now in-talking about the reorganization that had 8 been done at the station --
9 MR. MICHELSON: If you are going to leave the 10 slide, I have a question.
11 Was there any question about the leadership i
12 knowledge and understanding or just about their skill in 13 ' conveying this to others?
14 MR. SMITH: I do not think that there was ever any
(} 15 question about the technical knowledge of the people at the 16 station. l 17 MR. MICHELSON: Well, I am thinking of a little 1
18 more than just pure technical knowledge. It depends on how 1 19 you define technical.
20 But the only concern was that they were unable to 21 teach the other employees?
22 MR. SMITH: I would say that several of the senior 23 individuals at the plant did not have good leadership skills 24 themselves, and they did not present good role models, and 25 they were not able lead but they directed.
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.Q. , 37 l 1 Mr. Franz, who is our plant manager now in talking !
O v 2 about the cultural change will talk more about that. He is 3 really more qualified than I to answer it, because he was 4 here before. I have only come in since, and I have not 5 worked with many of these individuals.
6 I will start first by talking about the management 7 chain in the operation of the plant, that is extending from 8 the floor operators at the power station right on up to our 9 chairman of the board.
10 Prior to the shutdown shown here as the March of 11 1987 column, the operations chain from the floor operators 12 at Peach Bottom up through the chairman and chief executive 13 officer looked like this. Immediately after the shutdown, 14 the operations engineer was replaced. I came in, as I said, 15 in May and replaced the plant manager, recognizing at that 16 time the efforts that would be necessary for the restart and 17 the cumbersome nature of this organization. I reported ,
l 18 directly to the president of the company, Mr. Austin, for 19 all matters concerning restart of Peach Bottom.
20 Soon after the shutdown, we made the decision that !
21 we would replace the shift superintendents. At the station l
22 on each of six operating shifts, there was a shift j 23 superintendent with a senior reactor operator's license in 24 charge of each shift. And he had under him nominally two 25 shift supervisors who had senior reactor operator licenses, Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
1
$j 38 l' three reactor operators, and the necessary number of floor )
() 2 operators to operate the plant.
3 When the plant manager, and the superintendent of 4 operations, and OPS engineer was not present at the station, 5 the shift superintendent was the senior management of the 6 operations chain. We felt that the conditions that existed 7 at the station were such that we needed to replace the shift 8 . superintendent.
9 DR. REMICK: Do you happen to know how many of i
10 those people who were replaced were either Peach Bottom 1 11 personnel or.came up through the fossil ranks?
12 MR. SMITH: They were all experienced at Peach 13 Bottom 1. And I believe that they all were fossil before 14 Peach Bottom 1. The shift superintendents, they all had
~5 g 15 experience in our fossil organization before Peach Bottom 1 (V
16 and then came over to Peach Bottom 2 and 3.
17 MR. MICHELSON: When you say that they were 18 replaced, does that mean that they no longer work there?
19 MR. SMITH: No, sir. There were six of the shift 20 superintendents. Two of them have subsequently retired.
21 The other four are still in Philadelphia Electric Company's 22 employment and at the station. They have a great deal of 23 technical knowledge, and they have a tremendous amount of 24 experience that is very, very valuable. But we have taken 25 them out of the operations leadership role.
Heritage Reporting Corporation fs (202) 628-4888
39 1 MR.-MICHELSON: Now are'they in operations or in
(). 2 some.other role?
3 MR. SMITH: Two of them are working with 4 operations but not in the line organization of operations j 5 providing staff support. One of them is working in j 6 procedure development, and his technical knowledge is just 7 extremely valuable to us. So four of them are still at 8 Peach Bottom and providing a very good'aupport for us.
9 MR.-MCNEILL: If I might just interject if I could I 10 at this point. All of the personnel that currently.are 11 licensed at the station that had been there before shutdown 4
12 were subject to a retraining program that will be described 13 a little later this morning. And the NRC subsequently fined 14 those people or the Commission subsequently filed those
(?\ 15 people for violation of their licenses.
hJ) As a part of returning them to service in I
16 17 maintaining their license, they acknowledged that the 18 training program that we had put them through, the i 19 attitudinal adjustment program that we put them through, was 1 20 effective. We have the option but do not intend --
21 DR. KERR: Excuse me, who is the "they" who 22 acknowledged this?
23 MR. MCNEILL: The Commission in their order of 24 violation I guess it was.
25 DR. KERR: I thought for a minute that you were '
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11 .saying thatLthese people who had been trained acknowledged l2 that'it'was; effective.
-3 MR. MCNEILL: No. The Commission by virtue of the 4 fact that they only fined them and:did not withdraw or- ]
^
.j 5 revoke'their' licenses. They have indicated that there'is no L
-6 bar that theLCommission has to' returning them to full active 7 license status. However, we could:in fact have to put them.
13 through the equivalent training. program that we put the 9 operators who~are now licensed to operate'the plant. We do 10 not currently intend to do that..
11 DR. KERR: These are the four?.
12 MR. MCNEILL: The'four shift superintendents.
13 MR' SMITH:
. If I many interject, of the four shift 14 superintendents, one of them has.a very serious illness now.
]( } 15 The other three have gone through this retraining program.
16 Because they are working very closely with operations, we 17' wantedithem to have this same experience.
18 MR. MCNEILL: But we do not intend to return them 19 to licensed status.
20 MR. SMITH: I will talk more about the 21 replacements for the shift superintendents and the shift 22 managers, but turning now to the column on the right-hand 23 side with the retirements of Mr. Austin and Mr. Everett, and 24 with the reorganization that has occurred and the 25 restructuring that we have done in the company, this is the Heritage Reporting Corporation G (202) 628-4888
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'1 Lpresent operating chain from the chairman on down.to the
' .2 floor operators.
3- We still have the shift supervisors, and the 4' reactor operators, and floor operators. We have added a new. ,
5 . position called the floor operators.who are.the-most 6 experienced floor operators that we had who arelproviding.
7 some leadership, and di'rection, and coaching,.and counseling 8 to the other floor operators on each of the six shifts., d 9 DR. KERR:' Let me reveal my ignorance and ask you 10 what a floor operator is?
11 MR. SMITH: A floor operator is the generic term
'12 .that we use.for the people who are non-licensed operators 13 who operate the turbines, a non-licensed operator. It 14 happens to be our shorthand for that.
( 15 DR. KERR: All right.
16 MR. SMITH: I want to dwell for a few minutes on 17 the shift manager position. As I say, there is one shift 18 manager for each of the six shifts. And I would'also 19 comment here and Mr. Cotton will be elaborating on it that 20 we trained a seventh man as shitt manager through all of the 21 training programs such that we would have an available spare 22 if'you will, if there should happen to be some need to 23 replace one of the shift managers. The shift managers are
'24 degreed engineers who had a senior reactor operator license.
25 DR. REMICK: Excuse me, had or have?
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f 42' l1 .MR.; SMITH:
They still have. But~at the.. time of 2L :the selection, they had'the license. .They were at that time-4 .
3; 'in anLinactive. status, but they.were continuing with.their:
4 decertification training, but theyidid not have active 5 licenses at'that' time.
6 . To improve that operating, skill,.we used several'-
7 of them during the su'.nmer. as , shift supervisors in the 1-
~
8 control room gaining. experience before we put-them back in L 9 as-shift manager.
10- They all had plant experience ranging from a
- 11 . minimum of six.. years to a maximum of thirteen years. . And 12 that was Mr. Roson, and now he has his fourteenth year of-13 experience with Philadelphia Electric Company. . They were-14 selected based upon.their performance. records in their
'15' experience at Peach Bottom, based on their.past experience, 16 and based on their own indication-of whether or not'they.
17 wished to accept the, position, and based on reviews of them' 18 'by professional psyctfologists, and based on reviews of them-19 by myself and other management at the station.
'20 MR. MICHELSON: When you say fourteen years, do 21 yea mean fourteen nuclear experience?
l 22 MR. SMITH: Fourteen years of experience with 23 Philadelphia Electric. Most of them had all of that 24 experience at' Peach Bottom. So therefore, it was nuclear.
25 ~ Some of them had had some fossil experience prior to coming i
Heritage Reporting Corporation j (202) 628-4888 i t.
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a l' , to Peach Bottom.
< 2: .After they had been selected to be the shift' i
3 managers,.they went through a management training. program 4' and then were put on shift as the shift managers in I 5 ' October-of 1987. From that time until this, they'have- l 6 worked on the,same shift crew and have developed the team l 7 work and cooperation'ne'cessary on'that crew through the on 8 shift work that they do, plus.the extensive simulator 9 training that we have gone through since-then.
10 .As the shift manager, they are'the plant manager's 11 direct represen*M_ive on shift. They act for Mr. Franz when i 12 he and Mr. Cotton are not.available.- They coordinate all:
13 other site' group activities during their' shift. And this 14 has been very well accepted by the other groups, but the
() 15 shift manager is in fact the leader. He is in charge of 16- security, health physics, chemistry, and all of the other
- 17. support activities when the normal day work chain of command 18 are not present.
19 And it has been a gratifying tool as to how well 20 this has been accepted. Putting the shift managers on in 21 place of the shift superintendents, we feel have given us a H22 higher level of management authority on each shift. And 23 therefore, it has not helped us address the past problem 24 which the operators felt of isolation from management, 25 because the shift manager is indeed Philadelphia Electric Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 Company management. I fT(J 2 MR. MICHELSON: Is there always a shift manager on i l
3 site on.every shift?-
4 MR. SMITH: There is a shift manager on each !
l 5 shift. )
6 MR. MICHELSON: That is a different answer. On 7 site at all times. Whenever you are operating, is there a 1
8 shift manager on site? J 9 MR. SMITH: Whether the plant is operating or not 10 operating from the 26th of October until now, seven days a 11 week and 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day, the shift manager is on site, and 12 his normal position is in the control room. .
13 MR. MICHELSON: Now when he is unavailable, how do 14 you replace him?
es !
() 15 MR.. SMITH: We would replace him on a short-term I 16 basis by the others cooperatively taking over his position.
17 MR. MICHELSON: But you do not replace him by 18 moving somebody up temporarily to that position?
19 MR. SMITH: No. The qualification for shift 20 manager is distinct from the qualification of shift 21 supervisor.
22 MR. MICHELSON: Okay. Thank you.
23 MR. SMITH: I do, as I said earlier, have a 24 trained person that would come in in the case of a 25 long-term absence. And Mr. Cotton will talk more about the Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 training that we are doinglfor replacement in the longer
'2 term.
3 ,
We have clearly given these shift managers the r
4 authority to control shift operation. They are very clearly 5 in charge of each of the shifts. We have received very:
6 favorable comments from outside observers of the performance
~
7 of the shift. managers,'of the leadership that they are J 8 giving toLthe shifts, and the direction that they are 9 giving. I believe' that the staff here will comment on that, f
10' because it was brought.out during.the recent IATI as one of:
11 the most;significant strengths.at Peach Bottom which was the 12 performance and leadership of the shift manager, y
13 MR. MICHELSON: Is the shift manager a degreed l 14 person?.
- 15 MR. GMITH: Shift managers all have degrees ~in 16 . engineering.
17 MR. MICHELSON: Will that be a continuing 18 requirement?
19 MR. SMITH: The present requirement that we have 20 is that it be a degree in engineering or a related science.
l 21 We have not limited it'just to engineering. But we have j
.I 22 said that that person must be degreed. j l
23 MR. MICHELSON: I was wondering. You made the 24 point earlier that you are providing promotional routes for 25 operators and so forth. But apparently, the shift manager l
Heritage Reporting Corporation ,
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i V- 46 1 is.not'one of.those positione that a senior reactor operator L
- 2 could fill without a degree.
3 MR. SMITH: Not without a degree.- But we are 4 developing degree programs which some years down the pike )
5 would offer the reactor. operator then working his way up 6 through shift supervisor the opportunity to get.a degree, 7- and then he would be fully eligible to be a shift manager.
-8 But.for the present time, in the next several years and !
9 generations, we are sticking with degreed personnel. -
10 MR. MICHELSON: Is that the'first level at which a 11- degree'is required?
12 MR. SMITH: In the operations chain, yes. And we 13 are also making changes, and Mr. McNeill alluded to, that we 14 will open up other management positions for non-degreed
,. g
' 15 personnel.
16 MR. MCNEILL: Mr. Michelson, if I might. 'We have 17 in our restart plan described the shift manager as a degreed 18 position. At Limerick Station, we still have shift 19 superintendents who are not degreed. So we have a dichotomy 20 in the company as to how we treat-that equivalent position.
21 I believe that it is fair to say that we reserve
.22 the right in a reasonable pe-iod of time which I think is 23 maybe five years or so to come back and tell the staff that 24 we are going to change our commitment in that area, and we 25 may have a combination of degreed and non-degreed i
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} 2 MR..MICHELSON:. For Peach Bottom?
3- MR. MCNEILL: For both Peach' Bottom and Limerick.
4 We.may. tend to go in~the other direction for Limerick and 5 begin to work a few management degreed people in, because of 6 the management experience that they.get in that particular.
~7- role. -A lot of'that wi'11 depend upon the outcome of the 8 current policy or rulemaking'that is under review as to who 9 can qualify for a senior' license.
10 MR. MICHELSON: _Okay. Thank you.
11 DR.~REMICK: 'Along-that line, I have a question.
12- The Commissioners recently floated a proposed rule-for_
13 .public comment. One alternative was shift engineer or shift 14 manager.
()
15 Do you happen to know whether what-you now have at
-16 Peach Bottom would meet that?
17 MR. SMITH: Yes.
18 DR. REMICK: It does?
19 MR. SMITH: Yes. Unless you went all the way to 20 .part of the rule which says that everyone1with a senior l
21 license.
22 DR. REMICK: No , I am thinking of the second 23 alternative. !
24- MR. SMITH: Yes. We meet that right now.
25 DR. REMICK: All right.
t Heritage Reporting Corporation s (202) 628-4888 l
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1 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir, h gg 2 DR. REMICK: The other question is where you have 3 down at the bottom "have authority to control shift 4 operations", if you look now within the control room and if 5 these people have inactive licenses, where do you draw the 6 line?
7 MR. SMITH: No , sir. The licenses are fully 8 active.
9 DR. REMICK: Oh, they are fully active.
10 MR. SMITH: Perhaps I was not very clear. I was 11 saying that when we looked at who could we select for shift 12 managers, the population that we looked at was those degreed 13 engineers who had had a senior reactor operator license.
14 They were all inactive at that time. We activated all their 15 licenses through training in the summer of 1987, and we went 16 through management training and then put them on as shift 17 managers. The day that they step in as shift managers, they 18 have licenses.
19 DR. REMICK: Is that the intent then that they 20 would maintain an active license while they were in the 21 shift manager role?
22 MR. SMITH: They do maintain an active license as 23 a shift manager.
24 DR. REMICK: But that is a requirement?
25 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. They are there in the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
~
- y. ^ 49' 1 control room. Their office is'just on the outside.of the
( 12 controls area, and that is where they spend their time. How 3 they are. free to come into the administration building as 4 necessary to consult.with plant staff, as necessary to go to' d 5 planning meetings, et cetera.
6 But they are on call to'the control room and are-
~7 available to go back to the control room at all times. So /
'8 these are not office managers. These are shift managers.-
9 They are right out there with the people. And that is 10 really an important distinction. They are management within 11- the control room.
12- 'MR. MICHELSON:. I noticed you did not have a shift !
13 technical advisor.
14 MR. SMITH: ' I did not show it. Yes, sir, i
( 15 MR. MICHELSON: There is one?
- 16. MR. SMITH: We have a shift technical advisor.
17 MR. MICHELSON: On each shift?
18 MR. SMITH: Yes.
l 19 MR. MICHELSON: Is that going to continue?
20 MR. SMITH: For the near-term, and I would say in 21 this category perhaps of perhaps the next five years while 22 we reanalyze the way that the long-term organization should 23 be. Of course, the degreed shift manager could replace that 24 requirement. But our present organization has a separate 25 shift technical advisor on each shift.
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'l MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
2 MR. SMITH: Turning then to the overall station 3 organization, this is the organization that presently j 4 exists. As you are looking at this,.the N indicates a new 5 position. We did not have a vice president at the station 1
6 before the shutdown and/or a new person to the station. The 1 7 N past a position means that that position did'not exist, 8 and the N past the person's name means that that person was
.9 not at Peach Bottom at the time of shutdown.
10 There is one error on this chart. Mr. Rainey 11 should have a N past his name. Mr. Rainey was not at the 12 station at the time of the shutdown. j 13 The previous organization that existed at our 14 generating stations was a very highly matrixed organization.
(T 15 When I came on board as the plant manager, I had two 16 superintendents that reported to me than were in charge of 17 operations and services. There were many other activities 18 at the station that were responsive to me and supportive of 19 our mission, but did not report directly to me.
20 The maintenance organization, the maintenance 21 craftsmen, reported to corporate headquarters. The nuclear 22 security group reported to corporate headquarters. The 23 emergency preparedness, corporate headquarters, and so on.
24 Many, taany activities reported to 23rd Street.
25 We made the determination in the fall of 1987 that Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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, '1- we needed to have a' site director who would be responsible -
- 2 - for all of the' activities at the site.
We designated that
-)
3 .as the' site vice president..
J 1
.4 Then we looked'at what the organization should be' i 5 under the site.vice president, and we tried.to establish an
.6' organization which would focus under the plant manager those 7 activities which he needed to be concerned with on-a_ day'to 8 day: basis, the.short-term activities to g'enerate. electrical 9 power safely. And we left these' activities which'I will 10 come back to under;the plant manager.
11 .. We took the activities which are necessary~for the-12 plant's operation but on a longer term basis and put them 13- under a projects manager. The planning'.and management of 14 t outages,.the reporting and scheduling'. The modifications to.
'15 . the plant and the warehousing and-supply of materials. . They
~
3 16- - are very necessary, but-on'a longer term basis..
17 We then looked at the items that take so much of a
~
18 plant manager's. time and are essential, but are not directly. l 19 concerned with the safe operation of a nuclear power plant.
The security l 20 - And we put those under the support manager.
21 force, personnel administration,. general plant 22 administration, budgeting, etcetera. And then.we also 23 brought in the training organization to report under the 24 umbrella of the site director.
25 So that left the plant manager with the technical Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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- /'s I Q '52 1 support that he needed. The operations, the maintenance
() 2 that is necessary, and plant services. Services at Peach 3 Bottom is radioactive 1 waste, radiation protection, and 4 chemistry. So those activities remain under the plant )
1 5 manager.
6 MR. MICHELSON: A question.
7 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir.
8 MR. MICHELSON: Mr. Cotton is the superintendent 9 of operations.
10 What position did he hold in the old organization?
11 MR. SMITH: I am going to go into that in some 12 detail, but he was previously the superintendent of 13 maintenance. I will go into the individuals here very 14 shortly.
] 15 Before I do talk about the individuals though, I 16 want to talk about the new positions at the station that 17 were unique to us. We have brought on board an 18 organizational development specialist to help us worry about 19 those types of issues, the teamwork, the organization, the l 20 relationships from one group to the other. And we are very 21 fortunate to have fulfilled this position within the last i
22 few weeks by Mr. Fontaine who brings in experience from L 23 another utility and is a professional in this area. ,
1.
l24 We have a superintendent of materials at the )
25 station. Before we just ran a warehouse. Now we have an ,
1 1
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53 1 . experienced man in this area who worries about'then r -
2 procurement of the right amount.of materials and the right 3 types of materials. We have our own personnel administrator 4 .which we did not have before to helpfboth management and the i
5 employees.with personnel issues ~ . And we do our'own
'6 budgeting'at the station and execute our'own budgets.
7 So there have been a number'of changes in.
8 activities that are conducted at the station as well as the 9 reorganization.
10 Now to talk about the individuals, to fill the
'11 positions then, we turn first to the people at Peach' Bottom 12 to see if there were appropriate people to fill these more 13 senior positions. We then turned to the rest of i
,,- 14 Philadelphia Electric Company to see if there were people i R
( -15 either at the Limerick Generat'ing Station or at other parts !
16 of Philadelphia Electric Company to fill these positions.
17 And then we turn to the rest of the nuclear power industry 18 to see if there were people available there.
19 The people that we have.on board in the senior 20 positions. As I have already mentioned, I came in with !
21 experience in the Navy with no other civilian nuclear power 22 experience. Mr. Powers was employed by Bechtel Power 23 Corporation and was working with Philadelphia Electric at 24 the Limerick Generating Station. He has a number of years 25 of experience throughout the country in a number of Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I
()
54 1 different contract organizations working with nuclear power.
(J- 2 .Mr. Meyers came to us from our Delaware station
'3 which is a fossil station where he was assistant 4 superintendent with a very fine record in operations and 5 administration.
6 Mr. Till, the training superintendent, I hired ,
7 from Illinois Power where he had former experience as a 8 training superintendent at that organization, and comes to 9 us from thirty years of Navy background prior to that time.
10' DR. REMICK: I' assume that somebody later will' 11 tell us about the distinction between the training there and 12 then corporate training?
13 MR. SMITH: We had not planned to go into that.
14 The two stations are in charge of their own training with l
() 15 strong, strong oversight from the corporate training 16 organization who helps standardize between the stations and 17 make sure that all of the things that need to be done are 18 being done properly. But we put the training at the 19 stations as the responsibility of that station vice 20 presidents.
21 We also have a maintenance training organization 22 for a location which is remote to the stations where a lot 23 of maintenance training is done, and that reports to the l 24 corporate training organization.
25 DR. REMICK: At some point I assume later on when l
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.1 you do talk about training that I would be interested in 2 l knowing if you have that strong corporate oversight how the-c{} '
3 on-site training organization relates to the plant needs,
-4' -whose training program.is it, is it corporate's or is'it.the:
5 plant's?
.6 MR, SMITH: I think that it al good point.
7 And John, do you feel that you are covering that, .
8 John Cotton? ]
9 MR. COTTON: I am not. l 10 MR. SMITH: Well, let me just say.off the cuff.
11 then that we have a very strong interface between operations
- 12. for example, Land it is also true between chemistry, health -
13 . physics,.and some of the other organizations, but operations 14 as a specific. point of concern has a very strong interface
- 15 between them and training. Training provides the training 16 that operations says that they need. Operations monitors 17 that training and provides feedback to the training 18- department that they are getting the training that they
.19 need.
20 The training department under Mr. Till are the 21 professionals in how to do the training, but the plant staff 22 says what training is necessary.
23 DR. REMICK: Do you try to rotate people from 24 . operations to training?
25 MR ~. SMITH: That is one of the areas where we are J Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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56-1 weak. Because of the fact that.we have not had sufficient
- ). 2 numbers of operators, there are very few plant experienced
.3 people in the training department. 'The people who have 4 plant experience in the training department unfortunately-5 got that experience at other than Peach Bottom. We have 6 broughtLthem in as contractors or subsequently hired them to 7 be.on our staff.
- i 8 That is one of the first areas where we vant to 9 move some of our plant experienced shift supervisors off to I
10 when the opportunity presents itself for them to have duties-11 other.than shift-duties. And we are just bringing on board 12 a new plant specific simulator. It is just a marvelous 13 place for our own experienced supervisors to be conducting. l 14 training, but right now we do not have enough people to make-() 15 16 that transfer. It is certainly a weak. area.
DR. REMICK: But you are giving attention that the 17 training programs are responsive to the operations' needs?
18 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir. Operations sets the needs. q 19 MR. MCNEILL: I might interject here two issues 20 that I think, Mr. Remick, that you are very familiar with on 21 accreditation. In the absence of having brought in new ;
22 corporate management of our training programs last fall, we 23 may have been put on probation. We made a dramatic recovery 24 in our accredited training programs, and are proceeding to 25 put ourselves in a position where we would at our Heritage' Reporting Corporation f~ (202) 628-4888
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. r]v - '57 1 accreditation review in June maintain our' accreditation,lbut.
2 :it h'as..taken a significant effort to do that.
~
'3 We had had let those programs degrade with time,.
4 and had not.provided strong. management. Mr. Till joined the 5 company roughly a year ago now. In fact, we' hire'd one of.
6 the, managers from;INPO itself who had hadfprevious , !
7 experience at Commonwealth Edison to come in and listen,.toL 8 come in and manage the corporate overview and coordination 9' of these training programs.
10 We in fact have three training' centers. No..have-11 the Peach Bottom training center, a Limerick training
-y 12 center, and a corporate maintenance training center where'we. .
H13 do the apprenticeship type of training for.all of the' L14 company. And it has taken a big effort to improve. 'We are l
15- undergoing.at Limerick our accreditation review this' week.
J} l 16 We are much better off there. But Peach' Bottom had left to i 17 degrade, and we have taken some actions to correct that.
18 And we do as a matter of-policy intend to staff 19 these training centers with Philadelphia Electric 20 experienced personnel, but it is going to take us some time 21 to in fact achieve that.
22 DR..REMICK: Thank you.
23 MR. SMITH: Turning then to the plant staff.
24 Mr. Franz had been, as has been mentioned earlier, the plant 25 manager at the Limerick generating station where he achieved Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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L 58 1- a notable record in operations before returning to Peach 2 Bottom. And you will hear from Mr. Franz shortly to discuss 3 with you his background and experience.
4 As superintendent of technical, we brought on 5 board Mr. Daebeler who was with the corporate organization 6 in nuclear and had many years of experience with l
7 Philadelphia Electric. Mr. Cotton, who will talk to you ;
i 8 next and will give you some of his background, had been at j 9 the Limerick generating station, and in 1986 had come down 10 to Peach Bottom as the maintenanus superintendent. It was 11 called services in those days. But he came down'into !
12 effectively this role.
13 After the shutdown,-it was determined that we ;
14 needed to replace the superintendent of operations, and
.15 Mr. Cotton was the obvious choice. He had had a senior 16 reactor. operator license at the Limerick generating station.
17 He went into a study program then at Peach Bottom to achieve 18 his license status at Peach Bottom. So Mr. Cotton is new to 19 this job, but he is not new to Peach Bottom in that he had a 20 year's experience at Peach Bottom before the shutdown.
21 Mr. Rainey was at the Limerick generating station 22 in maintenance related activities, and I brought him down 23 shortly after the shutdown to relieve Mr. Cotton so that 24 Mr. Cotton could move to that job. So Mr. Rainey had 25 experience with the company and at Limerick.
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.1 Mr.fLaQuia at the' time of-the shutdown was working' (
2 for the NRC'in Region I, and subsequent to the shutdown he i
3 joined our corporate organization in radiation protection.
4 And with the reorganization, he came out to Peach Bottom tof j 5 ' assist me at Peach Bottom.
6 Now if you go back over this chart.and you look at 7 the leadership positions, the senior positions, the j 8 superintendent, the managers and the vice president, there 9 are a total of fourteen such positions in the senior l
10 management at the pla..t. Of those fourteen, seven of us 11 were hired from outside Philadelphia Electric Company after 12 the shutdown.
13 MR. MICHELSON: Where does the QA come into this 14 organization?
I \- 15 MR. SMITH: The QA reports to the corporate-v 16 offices. .He does not report to me.
17 MR. MICHELSON: He does not report on site at all?
18 MR. SMITH: On' site, but they do not report to me.
.19 We have a very close relationship, a working professional 20 relationship, but we do not blur that line of 21 account ability . f 22 MR. MICHELSON: Sometimes people put a dotted line 23- in just to kind of show that QA is there.
24 But it does relate to you, but it reports directly 25 to somewhere else?
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60 1 1- -MR.. SMITH: Yes, sir. When I have my weekly
/~T ,2 senior staff meetings, the plant manager QA, or the manager
(.,/ .
1' 3 of QA at the station,_he comes to my staff. meetings to work 4 with us, but he does not-report to me.
5 MR. MICHELSON: Do you have any internal QA 6 operation, or does it depend entirely on corporate QA, is 7 there any kind of plant' quality control organization for i'
8 instance?
9 DR. KERR: Do you mean quality control or quality.
10 assurance?
11 MR. MICHELSON: Whatever. Some people call it one, 12 and some people call it another. '
13 MR. MCNEILL: Those two organizations -- well, let 14 me say that the manager of the Peach Bottom quality j (s 15 organization has a quality assurance audit function and a
\ss/ 16 quality control inspection function that work for him.
4 17 MR. MICHELSON: So none of your quality control 18 inspectors are within this?
- 19 MR. MCNEILL: That is correct. However, we are 20 moving in a direction of reducing the quality control- l 21 inspector role and increasing the line management quality 22 inspection role. For example, instead of having an 23 independent check point that involves a quality control 24 inspector, that could be a peer evaluator or a peer 25 inspector and/or if it is not a required independent Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
evaluation,'it,could be a foreman. ;
2 MR. MICHELSON:. Well, let me just ask it in:a
'3 little bit different manner.
'4 In the' case of materials,. welding and so forth, 5 .'where are your qualified inspectors?'
6 MR. MCNEILL: They are in the corporate nuclear
{
7 maintenance organization, what we call the in-service 8 inspection group. -We have inspectors in that particular
./
'9 group.
1
[ 10 MR. MICHELSON: And some of those are on site?
11 MR. MCNEILL: Yes. They come to site when 12 required. Plus we use contract. agents for some of that.
- 13. MR .- MICHELSON: You are doing welding all of the
.14' time. You have to.have somebody on site.
15 MR. SMITH: We have QC inspectors to inspect. t 16' MR. MCNEILL: We have.some people on site.
17 MR. SMITH: As Mr. McNeill mentioned earlier, 18 there are about forty people in~the quality organization at 19 the station, but none of them report directly to me.
l 20 MR. MICHELSON: I see.
21 MR. SMITH: As I was saying, of the fourteen 22 senior managers at the station, seven of us were hired from 23 outside Philadelphia Electric Company after the shutdown.
24 DR. REMICK: While we are on that QA/QC, the 25 independent safety engineering group reports to the QA l
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. 1 organization, is'that correct?
2 Mk. SMITH: Yes. And Mr.'McNeill,.I:believe.that
. )
3 'you-did mention ICIC in your discussion.- They are at the Latation,.but again they are an independent organization. .So_
i
,5 they do.'not report to me. l 6 Of the seven senior managers'at the station'who 4
7 were with Philadelphia Electric Company. prior to-the
- 8. shutdown, only three were at Peach Bottom at the time of 9 shutdown. And of those three, Mr. Cotton was clearly not:in
- 10 the operations chain. 'There had been a major change:in the
~ 11- senior management at the station.
12- For each of these positions, and it extends down q 13 to the positions below these, we have written position-14 descriptions that have very clear-accountabilities and very j i
15 clear job descriptions. We have communicated those l f
. 16 accountabilities clearly to the incumbent,'so they are ;
17 . knowledgeable of what they-are responsible-for.
18 We have for each of these organizational divisions !
i 19 clear goals for that group as well as a set of goals for the'
-20 station as a whole. And we have within those goals personal 21 goals for the incumbents that they are evaluated against.
22 Overall in response to the first root cause, the
- 23. . lack of adequate personal leadership and management skills, .J 24 we believe that we have assembled a strong management team' 25 at Peach Bottom. We believe that the organizational changes Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 625-4888 IDj-
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(.) 63 1 that we have made have given us much more focus management
( 2 direction and clear accountability. We think that we have a 3 well developed team that works well together and has 4 excellent open communications with each other and up and 5 down the chain of command.
6 Specifically, we have strengthened the line 7 management of operating activities. All of the managers int 8 he operations department from the chairman of the board down 9 through the shift manager are new since the shutdown. The 10 creation of the shift manager position has enhanced the 11 management of operating activities.
12 We have also increased the number of management 13 positions at the senior engineer level or above. Very 14 specifically, we have refocused the plant manager's
() 15 . organization such that he now focuses on day to day We have taken away from his responsibility 16 operations.
17 those things that he does not need to devote his attention 18 to generate electrical power safely. And we have increased 19 the number of senior managers who report to him, the number 20 of superintendents, from two to four, i j
21 And that sums up my discussion of root cause 22 number one. SWasequent to your questions, I will be ,
j 23 followed by Mr. Cotton who is the superintendent of I
24 operations who will discuss root cause number two.
25 DR. KERR: Mr. Smith, it is certainly clear that Heritage Reporting Corporation g (202) 628-4888 1
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1 significant changes in structure have been made. So far the ]
() 2 plant has not operated.
3 How does your organization expect to convince-4 itself after an operation has begun and is underway that 5 there has been a significant increase in quality, and in 6 competence, and in safety and whatever?
7 - MR. SMITH: Sir, I think that that is a very 8 reasonable question. Mr. Franz has extensive operating 9 experience at Peach Bottom from years past, and has 10 operating experience at Limerick and will be able to give us 11 that viewpoint from Limerick. And I will discuss later on ,
12 in.the morning the power ascension program that-we will be 13 going through which is a very deliberate step by step i 14 process taking the course of a number of months, during i
(~x 15 which one of the key things that we will be attempting to do !
16 and doing is to evaluate management's ability to run an 17 operating plant versus what we have been doing now, running 18 a shutdown plant. But it is going to take some experience 19 before we get to that point.
20 The replacement of the shift superintendents with 21 the shift managers has meant a loss of operating experience 22 among the shift managers. But the strength of your 23 operations really has been in our shift supervisors. And 24 those individuals are still on shift with their operating 25 experience. But it will take some time to reestablish Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 ourselves.
) 2 MR. MICHELSON: A question. You brought in a 3 management consultant who identified the four problem areas 4 that you are now discussing.
5 Have you considered bringing in a management 6 consultant now to verify that what you think is now good is 7 indeed good from an independent consultant's viewpoint?
8 MR. MCNEILL: If I could answer that, I would like i 9 to. We intend to do that early in 1990 after the operation 10 has been in its normal operating mode for a number of 11 months. So that I think that will get a fair appraisal of 12 the organization in situ that it would see during its normal 13 operating time frame.
14 MR. MICHELSON: Is that some kind of a commitment
() 15 16 that has been made?
MR. MCNEILL: Only to myself and my boss.
17 MR. MICHELSON: It is not a part of the license?
18 MR. MCNEILL: It is not a part of any program that 19 we have started.
20 MR. MICHELSON: Because it appears logical that 21 you would like to get somebody else's view again to make 22 sure that everything is all right.
23 MR. MCNEILL: And that is my intention after we do 24 get this back to an operating organization.
25 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
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(-) 66 1 !Ms. KERR: This is in addition to the normal 6
(_I 2 oversight provided?
3 MR. MCNEILL: This would be a two week or 4 thereabouts review by some outside consultant not only of 5 the plant operating staff, but also ,its interfaces with the 6 corporate headquarters.
7 DR. REMICK: Have you had a recent INPO corporate !
8 review or is there one scheduled, do you know? -
9 MR. SMITH: They came in in September to the 10 plant, and then in early October of this past fall. In- j 11 early October to corporate and gave us the report in 12 mid-October. So they did a corporate review then. They did 13 a corporate management assistance visit in October of 14 1987. And they very clearly said in October of 1988 that there had been some very distinct changes and' improvements,
(} 15 16 and they made some positive comments about the things that 17 we had done.
18 And I think the fact that INPO has removed the i
19 category five rating but also not given us another category l 20 rating goes along with what you were saying, Mr. Chairman, 21 that we have demonstrated I believe our ability to control i
22 the plant in the shutdown condition, but we still have yet
~
23 to prove that this organization will do it in the operating 24 condition, and we are ready to do that.
25 DR. KERR: You are convinced that those Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 (d~-
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1 responsible:now recognize that-sleeping on shift 11s 2' una'cceptable?
'3 MR. SMITH:' Oh, there is.no~ question about that.-
4 .That we took care of quite easily.early-on. .But yes, there 5 Lis-no question about that. I think.that if you could come 16 into our control room at any time night or' day,: weekends or-7 holidays that you would find if not the most certainly one
~
8 of the most alert control rooms in this country. :These 9 ' people are' fully aware of their license responsibilities and'
, 10 . carry them out.
11 'MR. MCNEILL: Mr. Chairman, if I could, I.would-12, like to point'out that inattentiveness.and sleeping were P, a
,, '13 only a symptom of'a far, far deeper issue at this station.- '
'. j J 14 And we have gone about attempting ~and I think successfully' !
() 15~
'16
= changing the: behaviors of the operators. 'But our attention has been devoted much more so to1 changing the real-17 fundamental issues of why.that behavior developed.. And it J
- 18. is organizational, it is attitudinal, it is a broad issue of.
19 culture, it is support for.the station from'the corporate 20 -headquarters, and it is the. ability of the organization to 21 . communicate internally and externally. There are a lot of 22 other symptoms and behaviors that all show a pretty positive-23 sign. ,
i 24 I recognize the importance of operator behavior in i 25 the control room and that operator attitudes is very 1
Heritage Reporting Corporation f (202) 628-4888 i l h
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%) 68 l 1 critical to safety.in the safety culture, but that poor
. b_/ 2 behavior too years ago was only symptomatic of far deeper 3 problems.
4 DR. KERR: On another topic, can you tell me what 5 fraction of your system capacity is represented by the
- 6. operating or soon to be operating plants?
7 MR. MCNEILL: When Limerick-2 comes on line and 8 Peach Bottom is returned to service, our annual generation 9 of nuclear on an average year will be roughly 70 percent 10 nuclear.
11 DR. KERR: Thank you.
12 MR. SMITH: Gentlemen, I will turn now to i
13 Mr. Cotton, the superintendent of operations.
14 DR. KERR: Our schedule shows a break at 10:15.
I' 'N 15 Ferhaps this is a reasonably natural place to take fifteen' V
16 minutes, if that is okay. We will reconvene at 10:25.
I
(
17 (Whereupon, a recess was taken.)
1 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 L Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 9
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'i 1 DR.1KERR: May we reassemble? -l t
3-2 (Slide) 3 MR. COTTON: My name is John Cotton. I am the 4 superintend of operations at Peach Bottom Atom Power
-5 Station. I came to Philadelphia Electric from the U.S. Navy
'6 Nuclear Power Submarine Program. I have been with the 7 company for nearly 17 years; first as an engineer in the 8 quality assurance section of the Engineering Research 9 Department; then as the plant staff maintenance engineer at 10 Limerick generating station where I held a SRO license; and 11 then in April 1986, I transferred to Peach Bottom as the 12 superintendent of plant services.
13 I received my SRO license at Peach Bottom in j 14 November 1987, and then became the superinten6.nt of
)
f's :
t, ) 15 operations.
16 I will be discussing the corrective actions for 1 17 the second root cause of the March 1987 shutdown order, 18 which was failure to initiate a timely operator replacement-19 training program.
20 DR. KERR: Mr. Cotton, what does that statement 21 mean? Does it mean that they didn't have enough operators.
1 22 MR. COTTON: That was a result of failure to
]
23 initiate a timely replacement training program; yes, sir. I -
24 b(1>s'e there was also -- the effect also was we had 25 excessive overtime that was caused, or resulted from the i
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
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V 70-i failure to initiate a timely program. ,
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(hJ- 2 DR. KERR: So there was no training program.
3 There were operators out there that -- I mean there were 4 people who were applying who could have been trained, but i
5 there was no training program to train them? What's that 6- supposed to mean?
7 MR. COTTON: There was a'-- there is a replacement 0 course. It was not being implemented in a timely fashion to l 9 provide reserves of licensed operators.
10 DR. KERR: It existed but was not in operation, or 11 what?
12 MR. COTTON: It was in operation but at too low a 13 rate; yes, sir. The rate of production ~of licenses could 14 not keep up with the transfers, resignations. ;
-( ) 15 DR. KERR: How do you speed up that' rate, or is 16 that what you are going to tell us?
17 MR. COTTON: I will tell you that, sir. !
18 DR. KERR: Okay. Thank you.
19 MR. MICHELSON: I'm a little puzzled. I thought I i
20 heard earlier that this training program had some question 21 about it even being adequately accredited and so forth.
22 Was that a misunderstanding on my part?
23 MR. COTTON: The training program is accredited, 24 and we are currently going toward the --
a 25 MR. MICHELSON: I'm te king about at this time, at Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
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1? theLtime the.rootLcause determination was made. From l
~%; - .2 T(J reading..this,'it says the only problem you had an adequate u
3 trainings program. You just weren't running people through 4 it. :That's what I thought it.said.
5 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir, it does. !
6 MR. MICHELSON: So'the --
-7 MR. COTTON: The content of the program was 8 accredited.
9 MR. MICHELSON:. It is clear that it was adequate 10 then andlit's still adequate today, although I guess-you.
11 made a number of changes ~in it besides, and it's always been 12 accredited fully.
13 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir, from a content point of 14 view, that is not in question.
() 15 16 MR. MICHELSON:
MR. COTTON:
Okay.
It was the implementation.
17 MR. MICHELSON: That was what I was making sure I 18 understood. Thank you.
19 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir.
20 The second root cause had four. components which 21 really contributed to its being a problem. Not having a-22 timely replacement program resulted in insufficient reserves !
23 of licensed operators to compensate for transfers, 24 retirements and resignations. As the on-shift complement of
- 25 licensed operators decreased, the flexibility in making ;
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G k
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.1 - assignments decreased, overtime' hours increased, and there /{
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2l .was cartainly.no opportunity to relieve the. senior personnel 3' ofLtheir on-shift. responsibilities.
4- The excessive overtime resulted in'a negative 5 impact.on. family life'and a consequent lowering of morale:on 6 the job. 1 7 The. technical' specification requirements for-8 control on staffing continued to.be met. However, there
.9 .were sacrifices in that there was excessive overtime and j l
10 there was a decrease'in the supervision of floor operator.
11 activities.
12 So to recap here, the replacement training program 13 did not provide a strong base of nonlicensed operators for.
14 progression to the licensed positions, and did not take into 15 ~ account the'need to provide off-shift career progression 16' paths for the operators.
17 In order to reduce these, or remedy these 18 shortcomings, we first identified three. goals we wanted to-
- 19 achieve. The first of' these' goals is t6 increase the 20 selectivity and the hiring process for entry' level 1 people. 1 21 This would raise the probability that an incoming employee, 22 after progressing through four or five nonlicensed operator 23 stages and some five years at Philadelphia Electric Company 24 would be capable of obtaining a reactor operator's license. j i
'25 The second goals was to increase the overall j i
l Beritage Reporting Corporation 3 (202) 628-4888
., H 73 1 ' operator population. This would allow training-for
\f2 . progression-to the.next higher qualification. level without !
3 either sacrificing staffing levels'in the plant or relying 4~ on excessive overtime. ,
5 The final goal was to increase the probability 6 that a person entering this year-long. reactor' operator 7 license course would be' successful in' completing it.
8 DR. KERR: Can you give me an idea of what you did 9 to improve the selectivity?
10 MR.. COTTON: yes, sir. That's coming up right 11 ~here.
12 DR. KERR:. Oh, is it?
13 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir.
14 In order to achieve those goals, we undertook 15 several corrective actions. One, the personnel policies '
A 16 were reviewed and changed; and compensation for the entry . ')
i 17 - level hires was increased.
18 The earlier seniority policies, in conjunction j s
19 with the license training policy at that time, really 20 discouraged nonlicensed operators from declining to enter 21 the licensed training program even though they didn't feel 22 prepared at that time to enter the course. Declining to
-23 enter the course when offered was considered a failure. And 24 two failures resulted in a loss of opportunity for an j 25 operator to get a license and to advance in their career Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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-( ) 2- This forcing policy resulted in a higher-failure
- 3. rate and higher dropout rates after getting into the reactor-4 operator. cou rse than was appropriate._ So-the policy has 5 been revised to allow an operator to defer. An individual 6 'can, without detriment to his career or loss of progression 7 opportunity, he canLelect not to enter the license course 8 until he feels prepared to do so. So we get a candidate j 9 whose' attitude is right for entering the course.
10 We have added two screenings in the progression.
11 The previous entry level requiremer*:s did not provide
-12 assurance that a new employee had a high probability of 4 13- being'able to obtain license status. Therefore, the 14 attrition rates from our training programs were high.
3
('N 15- We raised the criteria for entry level hires to
- \ )
16l have two-year degrees or to have Navy experience.
17' DR. KERR: As compared'to what earlier?
18 MR. COTTON: A high school diploma, I believe, was 19 .the entry criteria.
20 We believe that this more stringent screen will be 21 . successful in raising the level of assurance that personnel 22' are capable of obtaining a license.
23 Secondly, to further assure the qualification of i
24 personnel who are really about to enter the lengthy reactor 1
25 operator license course, we added an additional screen in Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
. 75 1 the process. We recently provided the. theory portion of the reactor operator license course 1with a final exam to over 30
'( ) 2 3 ' potential reactor-operators candidates. Those who pass that 4 ,
course are then candidates for the remaining approximately
'5- 39 weeks.of the license course. And those who do not pass 6 would return to nonlicensed positions on shift.
7 To support an aggressive training program it is 8 necessary to increase the overall operator population and to 9 conduct an aggressive training program for the nonlicensed 10 positions.
11 DR. KERR: Back to this 39 week examination. Is l
12 that primarily a written exam or does it also involve l 13 examination of skills other than ability to write answers?.
14 MR. COTTON: This exam would come after the theory
( 15 portion of the reactor operator course which is on the order
\ .
16 of 13 weeks in duration, followed by a written-test which we 17 believe is closely modeled after the new NRC standard theory- !
18 exam.
19 DR. KERR: Do you have some reason to believe that 20 there is a high correlation between the ability to pass that 21 exam and the ability to be a good operator?
22 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir, I believe that is certainly 23 a component in it.
24 DR. KERR: I'm not so much interested in your 25 briefs as do you have other evidence that this correlation Heritage Reporting Corporation '
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- O ,e 1 exists? And I don't mean to belittle your beliefs.
l b 2 MR. COTTON: I believe you asked me if there was a 3 correlation between passing the reactor theory portion of 4 this course.
5 DR. KERR: Yes.
6 MR. COTTON: And does that individual become a 7 good reactor operator.
8 DR. KERR: Yes, sir. Do you have evidence other 9 than your own judgment -- and I am not in any sense trying 10 to belittle your judgment -- that there is such a high 11 correlation?
12 MR. COTTON: No , sir, I don't believe that taking 13 that singular segment from the overall training that we 14 provide a reactor operator and trying to correlate that with
() 15 16 success or failure on the job, I don't --
DR. KERR: Well, you are apparently rejecting 17 people who can't pass it.
18 MR. COTTON: Well, that is a necessary but not 19 sufficient criteria to go'through the course. I guess 20 historically we would say that operators have personnel 21 entering the reactor operator course have difficulty in 22 theory portion of that course, and perhaps less difficulty 23 with the systems and procedures portion of the license 24 course.
25 DR. KERR: And I know you have other problems Beritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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^ 77 1 right now to worry about',Lbut it seems to me that unless
) 2 that correlation is reasonable, you ought to give some 3 ' thought to trying_to persuade say the NRC or whoever that 4" that's-not really a good way_to select operators.. I don't 5 know whether it is or not.
6 I know a good many' operators who don't think it's 7 a good way to select operators.
8 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir.
9 DR. KERR: And I have known of some other people 10 in responsible positions who are convinced it isn't. But 11 maybe that's not a question for today. !
12 MR. COTTON: Well, I do believe that an i
13 understanding of the reactor theory and heat transfer, the !
14 kinds of things that we teach them in the course, are
(~N 15 necessary for understanding the value and the whys and w) 16 wherefores of some of the procedures; particularly in
- 17. accident situations, But whether you can correlate that to 18 a day-to-day operation, I certainly don't have -- l i
l 19 DR. KERR: One additional data point. We had at 20 one time a member of this committee who was convinced that 21 all prospective operators should be required to take a l 1
l l 22 mechanical aptitude examination.
23 Do you require a mechanical aptitude examination 24 of any kind in your operator selection process?
! 25 MR. COTTON: We have, and Dick may know more about Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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.78 I 1 this than:I do. We did provide an aptitude type test for 'l
! , 2 certain other reactor operators who entered a previous 3 reactor; operator training course. Now I don't know that we 11 actually been able to validate that.
5 MR. SMITH: When we hire, and this has-been true 6; for about three years. I'm not sure just exactly when we !
'i
-7 put it in, but we put in a screening test for new hires that
.8 would demonstrate this capability. The people who had been !
9 hired prior:to that time, however, were exempt from passing )
l 10 that particular test.
11 DR. KERR: Thank you. I 12 DR. REMICK: Would this be the POS test, by any ,
l 13 chance, from EEI? ,
1 14 MR. SMITH: Yes. ;
I
() 15 MR. COTTON: As I was noting, we need to operate 16 an aggressive nonlicensed operator training program and l 17 increase the overall population of the-operator work force.
18- In 1987'and 1988, for example, we hired a total of 19 38 helpers. That's the entry level position, and we have i
20 already trained and qualified all of those personnel to the j 21 auxiliary operator level which is a first progression step l
22 for them.
l 23 Some of those individuals have been further 24 qualified to the' assistant plant operator level. f i
25 The status of licensed operator staffing in March l l
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G i
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1 1987 and in March 1989 is shown here. I should note that
{} 2 3
prior to March 1987, there were period when there were fewer than the 16 reactor operators noted here who were actually 4 on shift trying to staff three positions per shift, and this 5 created excessive overtime, and with our inability to 6 qualify further licenses, we were unable to attain the sixth j 7 shift rotation that we have since attained. ;
i 8 Since March 1978, we list three of those 16 !
9 reactor operators and yet have attained a total of 24 10 reactor operators today, four per shift on a six-shift 11 basis, which exceeds the technical specification by one 12 license per shift. And we have seven operators in license 13 training right now.
14 Eight of the senior reactor operators shown here
,f
. 15 in March 1987 are no longer on shift; yet we have attairad V 16 our goal of three senior reactor operators per shift.
17 Again, on a six-shift team basis, and that's again one more ;
18 than is required by the technical specifications.
19 And we have seven shift manager candidates in 20 training right now for their SRO license.
21 Our program for the restart of Unit 2 recognizes 22 and accounts for 11 of those 24 reactor operator licenses 23 which are restricted licenses. There are activities that 24 are planned to fulfill the requirements to convert these 25 licenses from restricted to unrestricted status.
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.d.- 80 1 DR. KERR: Are you talking about licensed
() 2 operators?
3 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir, the ROs.
4 DR. KERR: I didn't know there was a restricted
- 5. status.
i 6 MR. COTTON: . They were issued licenses that were L 7 valid for cold shutdown' conditions pending.their --
S DR. KERR: Oh , okay.
9- MR. COTTON: -- getting sufficient-experience 10 above 20 percent power.
11 DR. KERR: Thank you.
'12 MR. COTTON: To summarize the license status, we 13 currently have sufficient unrestricted licenses for the 14 operation of one unit on a six-shift basis. By the <
f3 15 completion of the Unit 2 restart power program, we will have 16 more unrestricted licenses per shift than required by the 17 technical specifications for two-unit operation.
18' Another major portion of the root cause in this 19 area was licensed operator career opportunities. These 20 opportunities have been expanded as part of our corrective 21 action program. Several off-shift positions are available, 1 22 including the operation support superintendent, the i 1
I 23 electrical supervisor and a blocking coordinator. Other 24 positions would be available when we have the opportunity to 25 relieve the senior shift supervisors from their on-shift Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 l
- 3 i
'i 81 1 responsibilities.
() 2 There will be opportunities in training, quality 3 assurance, the operation support group, outage planning, 4 other site groups and even the corporate organization.
5 These positions will provide both permanent off-shift t 6 positions and-rotational off-shift positions for relief from 7 shift work.
8 In many cases the positions we hope to put these 9 individuals into will result in providing direct additional i 10 experienced help and support for shift functions.
11 In addition, we created the floor foreman position 12 for two major reasons. One was to provide increased i
13 attention to the floor operator activities; and second, we 14 wanted to provide an additional promotional opportunity for j rs 15 the nonlicensed operators.
5,,
16 Opportunities for shift personnel to enter degree 17 programs at the University of Maryland and/or at Widener 18 University are being finalized with those institutions. The 19 selected participants would receive company support in the 20 form of tuition aid or leave time, depending on the l l
I 21 requirements of the program as they are finalized.
22 DR. REMICK: Question.
23 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir.
24 DR. REMICK: Blocking coordinator, is that 25 somebody who handles the tagging procedures and things?
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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6 82 1 MR. COTTON: Yes,. sir.
2~ DR. REMICK: Is that what you mean? Okay.
V .3 .MR. COTTON: Yesi sir. !
4 DR. KERR: -I'm glad you. asked that.- I thought 5 maybe that was a football coach.
-1 DR. REMICK:L I didn't want'you'to'have to'ask 6
7' about flooring.. 'ou
- took care of that. So I. thought I' 8 would.take care cd this one. .
I
~9 HR. CM' ON: We have recognized.the value of 10 career progression planning. This includes the' l '
11 opportunities'for permanent'off-shift positions,for the more' i'
12 sen'ior shift supervisors or SROs, and also includes 13 rotational off-shift positions for reactor operators as a 14 mechanism for relief to continuous shift work. .j 15 We have also recognized the impact that such
~
-16 career. mobility plans have on the number of personnel and-17- the training programs.- We are committed to preventing a l -18 return to the operator staffing shortfalls of the past.
19 We have met our goal of 24 reactor operators l 20 currently and the anticipated results'of our training plans 21 are shown here. This growth is necessary to permit training ;
22 for SRO licenses in order to release some of the senior 23- shift supervisors from their on-shift responsibilities, and 24 also to develop opportunities for the off-shift rotational 25 assignments for the reactor operators.
I!
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
.( j. 83 !
1 We believe our plan balances the needs to create 2 reactor operator licenses to staff the control room, and-to
}
3 provide relief from shift work for the senior SROs while 4 maintaining proper staffing of the nonlicensed positions in 1
5 an appropriate experience level in both the RO and the SRO 6 positions'in the control-room.
i 7 We have 12 SRO shift supervisors -- that's the SSV 8 column -- on shift at this time. And in combination with ;
i 9 the SRO shift managers, as I said before, this results in 10 one SRO per shift above the technical specification 11 requirements.
12 With receipt of four additional'SRO licenses in 13 the fall of 1990 as shown here under the SSV column, we will 14 have our first opportunity to relieve the senior and 15- experienced shift supervisors and give them off-shift career i
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- 16 opportunities.
17 DR. REMICK: Question. Earlier you indicated 18 there were seven SROs in training, but there you are 19 counting only four?
i 20 MR. COTTON: No, sir. The four indicates a 21 success from our current reactor operator license training 22 and then release of reactor operators to SRO training. So 23 these are upgrade licenses, not direct, licenses.
24 DR. REMICK: I see.
25 MR. SMITH: Previous number of seven was the staff Heritage Reporting Corporation
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1 ' engineers'that'are in training as candidates for the.next l k- '2 generation of shift managers'and/or.to augment the staff l
3 . strength.
4 MR. COTTON: And we also by coincidence have seven 5 operators in reactor operator training right now.
i -6 DR. REMICK:. Okay.
7 MR. . COTTON: In mid 1988,'we initiated our' 8 replacement program for the shift manager position. This- 3 9 program includes management development material as well as 10 the technical SRO license training' course. By the middle of .
11 this month we will have three fully qualified shift manager 12' replacements. And at the completion of the SRO course in i 13- late summer of this year, we will have nine fully qualified.
14' replacements. !
15 Our schedule for replacing the existing shift 16 managers begins after the Unit 2 restart and continues out i
17 into 1991. The engineers who will be relieved from that 18 shift manager. position will bring valuable experience back 4
19 to the plant staff and to the corporate organ'izations.
20 DR. KERR: You are going to be an obvious 21 candidate for rating by other utilities.
22 MR. MCNEILL: That does not occur much any more, l
,. 23 Mr. Kerr. That rating occurred principally during the 24 period of rapid growth of new plants coming on line, and the 25 INPO training process now really tends to develop most Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
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85 l' .'I don't think,1 to my.
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operators in the. utility organization.
p 21 knowledge I don't think we have lost by resignation more 3 ~than one SRO license in the company.in the last year.' .
4,_ LDR. REMICK: An area in'which I'think there-might i l
5 be rating is when DOE'comes out with their accreditation 6 order here very shortly.- The DOE facilities.are' going to
-7 have to establish, and'I think-it will be rating of i 8 utilities in general of training personnel. You can see. l 9 that coming.
10 MR. COTTON: In summary, we have clearly.
11 recognized the. adverse affects of. untimely replacement 12 training programs and insufficient staffing. We have 13' recognized the benefit of improved career progression-14 planning. We-have increased the operator. staffing 11evels 1.5 and have attained a significant increase in the number,of l 16 reactor' operator and senior reactor operators currently more-Y 17 -. than required by the. technical specifications.
2 +
18- We are continuing to implement-an' aggressive
-19 nonlicensed and' licensed operator training program to-meet'
~20 our goals-'of providing off-shift opportunities and our goal 21 of' reducing the use of overtime.
l
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22 I would now t introduce the plant manager, John 1'
2 23 Franz, who will address the third root cause.
I ,
'24 .DR. KERR: Any further questions?
- 25- DR. REMICK: Yes. I assume this is a place to ask Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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'21 correct?
d y ;3 lMR.[ COTTON: Yes, sir.
4 DR.-REMICK: Okay, I have several, if I.may.
5 You did indicate, I think, in' response to a
'l 6 questionLfrom Mr. Michelson that you do have a' separate STA. (
i 7 Now that is separate and not combined with the second SRO I
8 requirement; is that correct?
9 MR.LCOTTON: That's correct.
10 DR. REMICK: Is.that-your continuing philosophy ]
- 11 that you will maintain, at least for the immediate. future,.a 12 separate STA not. counted as a second SIU) or not the shift 13 manager? !
14 MR. COTTON: The STA is not a licensed position.
() 15 16 DR. REMICK:. Right. In your plant'it's-not licensed, the STA is not licensed in your plant; is that-l 17 right?. i 18 MR. COTTON: That's correct.
19 MR. MCNETLL: In'the future, I believe, we are 20 moving toward licensing the STAS and creating a-supervisory ,
21 position which would supervise maintenance, health physics 22 and the instrumentation and control activities that are on 23 the' shift basis, c
We have, for instance, three mechanics that we 25 keep on shift. We have two instrumentation technicians, and Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 1
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\_) 87 1 anywhere from two to six health physics technicians.
() 2 As a supervisory development and to.mak'e better 3 use of the STA individual, I believe that we will head 4 toward licensing those individuals, and then creating a l 5 shift manager, two shift supervisors who are involved in 6 plant operation, and then this third supervisor who fulfills 7 tha STA role in an accident condition, but also then has .I l
8 supervisory responsibilities for the maintenance activities ')
9 that will continue on on a shift-to-shift basis.
10 We have not solidified that plan. We have got to ;
11 get through this year, but we will be moving in that ;
12 direction in 1990. j!
13 DR. REMICK: Have the operators at Peach Bottom 14 developed their own code of conduct?
15 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir. We have a code of conduct I )'
1
\
! 16 type of statement. I believe Mr. Franz is going to talk 17 about it, but we call it the commitment to excellent 18 statement; yes, sir.
19 DR. REMICK: Oh, he is going to discuss that?
20 MR. FRANZ: I didn't have that on my agenda.
21 MR. COTTON: Oh, I'm sorry.
22 MR. FRANZ: But I brought one along with me if you 23 care to see it.
24 DR. REMICK: Okay.
25 MR. COTTON: This was developed by two operators Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888
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3' operations'at Limerick.- jI i
4 MR. .MICHELSON: - Can we make a copy of that and h
I 5 ' pass it around.
i j 6 DR. REMICK: I will pass it around, or.we could
]
.7 make.a copy.
8 'The Commission recently. issued a policy' statement i 9 ton code of conduct or~ code of operations or something. . Have ;
' 10. you looked to'see if this is consistent with the 11 Commission's policy statement, by any chance? )
i 12 MR. COTTON: I have not.done that yet, sir, but'I -
13 am aware of the' document.- ."
14 DR. REMICK: Could you tell me what is the current 15 size of your' training staff for Peach Bottom? I'm not
-16 thinking..now of the off-site corporate, but the on-site l
'17- training staff. l Y
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18 MR. COTTON: I'm really more familiar with just 19- .the operator segment of that. l 20 MR. FRANZ: I believe, sir, it's about 70, though t
21 I believe it's 76, . and I think we are somewhere near 70, ]
l 22 close to that.
23 MR. SMITH: And that includes training for other 24 than operators. It has chemistry and health physics, it has 25 the simulator staff.
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i 1 DR. IGGIut: 'Would the people who have been speaking- !
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- j. - 4 2G1. FRANZ: . John Franz.
4
//c 5 DR.'KERR .Someone in the back also gave some -f
/ 1 6 information, j h, , 1 7 MR.. SMITH:- I' am Dick Smith.
8' DR. KERR: Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was s
9 farther back than that. i l
10 DR. REMICK: That is basically for the' accredited 11 programs then? The 70 would cover all the accredited 12 programs, or not? j 13- MR. COTTON: Yes.
But does not include anything you I 14 DR.'REMICK:
h( 15 might have that's off-site corporate?
16 MR. COTTON: That woul'd not include the people who !
17 are at our Barbados training station or in the downtown 18 area.
19 DR. REMICK: Okay, fine.-
20 MR. COTTON: That's correct.
21 DR. REMICK: 'Are you having any problems with 22 maintaining active license versus inactive license because
'23 of the on-shift requirements to maintain an active license?
24 MR. COTTON: That presents a challenge to the 25 individual and in this case you're talking primarily staff Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 S
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' /N 2. -personnel that'are routinely assigned to the shift, it's an u :L) .
e _3' easy recordkeeping program to keep their license document 4 ' active.
5 For the staff engineer, it is. difficult to find- j 6 the time to conscientiously go over and stand a shift and;
~7 use your license. That's difficult.
- 8. DR. REMICK: Do you know how many. people you might' .]
9 'have in the inactive license status? ;
10 MR. COTTON: Yes, sir. Twelve.
I 11 DR.-REMICK: Twelve. j 12 MR. COTTON: Maybe 11; 11 right now.
13 DR. REMICK: Does that include inactive license in l 14 people in training, although you did indicate you don't have,
.15 many people, I guess, in training who had plant experience.
16 But do you have people in-training who have inactive
'17 license?
i 18 MR. COTTON: No , sir, we do not now.
19 DR. REMICK: None. -i 20 MR. COTTON: No.
21 'DR. REMICK: So who does your OGT signoffs for 22 licensed personnel? Is that plant personnel in operations?
23 MR. COTTON: OGT is done by the licensed personnel 24 on shift.
25 DR. REMICK: By the operation personnel, okay.
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(_/ 91 1- And what has -- I'm looking now mostly at licensed O)
(_ 2 personnel, but what has been your experience ~with your l 3 fitness for duty program? And a related question, does that 4 include random testing or not?
5 MR. COTTON: The drug program does include random 6 testing. I think I can say that this is right, that we have 7 tested every one on site last year. We are in a retesting 8 program now, and that retesting program does include random 9 second analyses.
10 MR. MCNEILL: And I can give you the results of 11 that. y 12 DR. REMICK: Yes, please.
13 MR. MCNEILL: There were roughly 1200 company 14 employees tested at Peach Bottom, and 22 or 2300, for a Ii NJ 15 total of about 3500 people. Two Philadelphia Electric 16 employees were identified by drug abuse in that testing.
17 Twenty-six contractors were identified.
18 DR. REMICK: Were any licensed personnel?
19 MR. MCNEILL: No licensed personnel.
20 DR. REMICK: No licensed personnel.
21 Do you have an alcohol program also currently?
22 MR. MCNEILL: We have an alcohol policy, but no 23 testing program.
24 DR. REMICK: No testing program, all right.
25 DR. KERR: Is attitudinal adjustment part of that Peritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
I 92 I
- 1. alcohol program?. l 2 .(Laughter )
3 DR. KERR: I withdraw the question.
L4' (Laughter.) -l 5- -DR. REMICK:. That's all the questions I'have, Mr. ;
-6; . Chairman.
7- MR. FRANZ: Good morning,' gentlemen.
8 MR. MCNEILL: If I could just interject one q 9 minute, John.
10 We also, the company has its ownjdrug dog patrol 11 force. -We have two drug dogs that we randomly run through 12 the station in addition to the screening program.
- 13 MR. FRANZ: Gentlemen, my name is John Franz. I.
14 am the current plant manager of. Peach Bottom,'and have been.
,15 there since January of 1988.
16 I can.with Philadelphia Electric Company in 17 September of ' 63, and I went down to Peach Bottom and 18 ' participated in the start up and commercial operation.of all 19 three units, Peach Bottom 1, the gas reactor; and Peach !
-20 Bottom 2 and 3 was assigned to Limerick in 1976,__and I was
-21 there until I came back to Peach Bottom in January of ' 88.
l-22 Last role at Limerick was that of plant manager.
23 I was senior reactor operator licensed on all 24 three Peach Bottom units, and on Unit 1 at Limerick. 'l 25 I would like to discuss with you today the third Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
4
(~~% . 93
% ,I 1 root cause or what we call the station cultural issue.
/"% 2 'As you know, the station culture which had its V
3 roots in pre-TMI operations and fossil operations had just 11 not adapted to the changing nuclear requirements.
5 Now when we analyze root cause 3 we see clearly 6 that the station philosophy was derived from a fossil power 7 plant operating background. In order for the Unit 1 staff 8 at the 40 megawatt HTGGR to expand and support the staffing 9 requirements needed for the larger BWR units, Peach Bottom 2 10 and 3, the Peach Bottom management and operations staff was 11 transferred largely from our fossil plants.
12 As a result, the organizational structure and the 13 management philosophy was typical of that of our fossil 14 plants.
~s 15 Another major issue with the Peach Bottom culture 16 was the inadequate response to the increasing scope and 17 complexity of the regulatory requirements and the high 18 standards that were imposed on our industry post-TMI. This 19 inadequate response was somewhat fueled by the technical 20 competence of the Peach Bottom staff, their early 21 operational successes and their belief in their own skills l l
22 and knowledge. l l
23 Lastly, there was an organizational unwillingness )
24 or inability to change and to adapt the PECO culture to the 25 newer standards required for nuclear excellence. )
i Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 9 l l
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WM 94-DR. KERR: -What' are'these newer. standards to which-
,4. 21- -
, $. 2 you refer? Are they new regulations or'--
3 MR..-FRANZ: - No, sir, they'are not.- I would say.
41 .they are not regulations. We had'a grand increase of 5
~
5' . regulation post-TMI,-but.thattis.not specifically, was not
{ ,
6 specifically the problem at Peach Bottom.
7 DR. KERR: Well, I see something called " newer g 8 standards" and I'm curious about what is being. referred to.
9 MR. FRANZ: The; standard, sir, of which I speak !
10 'are our own standards of behavior-that ferment:a' feeling of, U 11 or-a sense of professionalism 11n the' organization.
' 12. So the standards are those which are perceived 'l E13 - really by the regulatory bodies and by INPO and by the M 14 general public as those things'which make us appear to be
~
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. i
.15 professional in their eyes.
- . ( ])
.16 DR. KERR: -So they are sort of a phantasmagoric j
17 -accumulation of attitudes, perceptions, but nothing' written.
18 'down or formalized; is that?
lL 9 MR. FRANZ: They are all. behaviors. . They are all 20 observable behavior.which when put together I'll call an g 21= attitude or a series of attitude create a culture.
t 22' DR. KERR: Thank you.
' 23- MR. FRANZ: So our vision of change was just not 1
i 24 adequate. Some of the indicators of the poor culture at {
< l 25 Peach Bottom were things like inappropriate control room l l
l Heritage Reporting Corporation 1 (202) 628-4888 D 9 !
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%- 1 1 behavior, no. clear performance standards or' expectations of
('/)
2 the people, and communication barriers between functional -l 3 areas or work groups in the plant between operations and j
4 management.
5 Now, let me describe for a moment what I mean by a i
6 fossil power plant operating background.and how that is I 7' characterized.
8 .That's characterized by, in the fossil plants, a 9 reasonable lack of proceduralization and documentation. l 10 There is clearly in a fossil plant a lack of understanding i 11 of the necessity for having a good, clear and adequate 12 regulatory and outside agency relationships. And there is 13 clearly in the fossil plant a " keep the plant running" 1
14 . mentality. !
g ~q 15 So when you couple these items and this mentality V 16 with too few people and too much overtime, the end result is 17 very little problem analysis and a great deal of effort 18 expended just on keeping the plant on the line or getting it I 19 back on the line.
i 20 We also, in our previous culture, resorted to a 21 search for blame way of doing business which meant that we 1
22 concentrated our efforts on searching for the guilty and 23 punishing people when there was a problem in the plant )
1 24 rather than the current method of looking at a problem, 25 doing a root cause analysis and using team work to affect a l i Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 I!!h
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- 'v/ 96 1 good solution to the problem.
(3
(_) 2 The old culture was characterized by an observable-3 lack of professionalism. And by that I mean things like 4 inappropriate attire in the power plant, abusive language 5 between people, and certainly a great deal of personal 6 discourtesy. I prefer to call it the tell-arrogant style of 7 communication versus the ask-courteous style of 8 communication.
9 DR. KERR: It's that you now have a kinder, 10 gentler --
11 (Laughter.)
12 MR. FRANZ: Pardon me?
13 DR. KERR: You would say that you now have a 14 kinder, gentler regime?
() 15 MR. FRANZ: I would say that's absolutely true.
16 We absolutely have a kinder, gentler and I hope more 17 proficient and efficient regime.
18 MR. MCNEILL: If I could tell a little vignette at 19 this point.
20 I have been known to be emotional in some issues 21 of management when progress is not good enough. And at one 22 point in a meeting at Peach Bottom I had become very upset 23 and thrown a chair and broke it. And several months later, 24 this was in January, we were at a meeting to discuss I
25 progress. And one of the managers at the station said, here Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G
. _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ i
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. (.)/ 97 1 is a problem and we need your interposition to get this
() 2 solved.
3 And I said, I'm not going to do that. I am going 4 to force you people to resolve your own problems. And I
~
5 said, if I have to get involved too many times, my blood 6 pressure goes up, I get nervous and I throw chairs.- i 7 And Mr. Smith looked over at me and said, gee, a 8 new kinder, gentler Corbin. l l
9 (Laughter.)
10 DR. KERR: I am not in favor of arrogance 11 necessarily. I am just reminded that one of the more 12 successful nuclear power programs of which I am aware was 13 run by a very arrogant individual. So I don't -- well, 14 continue.
15 MR. MCNEILL: That was in a military environment,
[
16 also, .dr. Kerr.
17 MR. FRANZ: Exactly, exactly.
18 As I said, our style of communication was tell-19 arengant versus ask-courteous, and I will give you an 20 illustrative example of what I mean.
21 In the previous culture if we had a problem in the 22 power plant, say a pump was defective and needed to be 23 fixed, people would say things like, I want that pump fixed 24 today. Don't give me any excuses. I said get it done.
25 That's hardly conducive to good team work.
i Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
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4,_./ 98-l' The present philosophy just uses a different
() 2 style, and we would get the right people together, discuss
-3 the problem with the pump and ask for suggestions on how we
- 4. .could best accommodate the schedule of getting it fixed 5 today. So I would say it's a much lower key environment and 6 certainly better for getting people on the right track and 7- on the~ team.
8 DR. KERR: It can't last.
9 (Laughter.)
10 MR. FRANZ: Realizing that the station culture 11 affected or embraced an improper value system, we needed to 12 address several areas in order to effect cultural change.
13 First, we needed to identify those cultural values 14 to'which we believed we should be committed, and we needed' j
} 15 to communicate those values to the employee' body.
16 Second, we needed to engage in intensive 17 management training and team-building activities.
18 Thirdly, we needed to engage in employee training 19 to make sure that they understood the values system and we 20 needed to solicit their commitment to the organizational 21 values.
22 Lastly, we had to change management policies, 23 programs and control systems to support the new values and 24 culture.
1 25 In identifying our values, we started at the top Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G
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1 with our vision, and we believe our vision is t'o be j
() 2 recognized as a leader in the nuclear power industry.
3 Follow that with our mission, which is to provide safe, 4 economical and reliable power to our customers. We then set 5 about. developing our values. There were 50, approximately 6 50 people from the top of the nuclear group who sat in a 7 conference room for two' days or longer and actuallg debated 8 what we perceived our values should be.
9 And the ones on the screen are the values that we 10 believed were most important to us: safety, quality, a 11 dynamic business focus, people, team work and integrity. We 12 came up with a flyer with appropriate definition of what 13 each means, and submitted it to all the people, reviewed it 14 with the people, and are doing everything to get people's !
'S
/ 15 commitment to that value system.
'A 16 MR.-MICHELSON: Could we have a copy of that 17 flyer?
18 MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir, you certainly main.
19 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
20 MR. FRANZ: The values are the bounding framework 21 upon which the new culture is based. We are leading by 22 these values. There are five primary themes associated with 23 the new culture.
24 Individuals are clearly held accountable for their 25 own performance. We do yearly performance appraisals as the Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
100 1 measure taken to ensure that people are held accountable j i
l (r x) 2 against very specific performance standards, i
=3 An individual is held responsible for the safety ,
j i
4 and assurance of quality. We are practicing a "do'it right 5 the first time" philosophy at Peach Bottom, and that's 6 implemented by proper planning, attention to detail and a 7 dedication to quality.
i
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8 Team work, coupled with open and candid 9' communications are really essential elements in the desired 10' and implementing new culture. We believe we have now 11 achieved reasonably good team work and open communications 12 within each work area in the plant, between work areas in 13' the plant, and also with outside agencies.
14 Perhaps the most important is using the values in 15 the new culture to strive for excellence in all aspects of 16 our operational organization.
17 To make the cultural change a reality, we took a 18 number of steps. We established nuclear group objectives as 19 a single set of objectives for focusing our efforts. We 20 developed a statement of philosophy for assurance of 21 quality.
22 Now, assurance of quality was a little difficult 23 terminology and not well understood at Peach Bottom. But we 24 wrote it down, clearly disseminated it all the employee 25 body, and it's a good document. It cites a clear, it cites Heritage Reporting Corporation 77 (202) 628-4888 Y)
L i.s. !
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'fNL d 101 1 a clear commitment from the management of the organization n.
D V 2 .to the employee body of what we commit to the assurance'of 3 quality, and it asks for the same kind of a commitment back
,4 .from.the employee body to commit to the same assurance that 5 we have.
6 There is a statement issued by'the site vice 7 president, Mr. Smith, stating safety and quality are 8 priorities in all work tetivities. And only after safety.
9 and quality are met, then cost and schedule are considered.
10 We have had several all-hands meetings to share 11 the management philosophy and ideology necessary to. create ,
a 12 the long-term cultural change that we are trying to achieve. )
1 13 We have had periodic, many, many periodic off-site meetings l 14 have been held for one day or more in some cases, to talk
() 15 over team work issues and develop a better vision in 16 culture.
17 In the plant, we have had inter group meetings 18 which are just too numerous to mention, to develop team work 19 among the groups.
20 We have management working closely with 21 orcianizational development personnel. We have our own 22 organizational development person at the site to help the 23 line management with human resource issues.
1 24 For team-building activities, again they are l 25 extremely numerous. I will cite a few. Mr. McNeill has a Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 4
-. 102 1: monthly management meeting that has people from all
() 2 disciplines and all parts of the nuclear group organization 3 at which we do our self-assessment of our performance 4 against our own standards and INPO standards, NRC standards, ;
5 and use it as a vehicle to communicate all the' issues which 6 -are of import across the nuclear group,-and use it also as a 7 team-building session.
8 Mr. Smith has a weekly site vice presidents 9 meeting that he uses in the same fashion. I hold a 10 bi-weekly site supervisors meeting which is a meeting for 11 all supervision on the site, including vendors. And its ..
12 primary purpose is just for information sharing, and it 13 generally includes some structured team-building activity.
14 Shift managers hold weekly meetings with their shift crews.
( ) 15 LSo we just have a great number of team-building and i
16 communication meetings periodically.
17 The bottom line of all this is enhanced 18 communication and a greater feeling of participation by'the ,
19 employees.
20 Tell it to the vice president. This is a unique '
21 communicative vehicle whereby each employee on the site is 22 capable of writing or addressing a concern or question l
23 directly to Mr. Smith, and he answers it specifically to 24 that individual and all the answers are generally published 25 in a site periodic newsletter.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G
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103 1 Peach Bottom TEAM. TEAM stands for "Together k 2 Employees and Management". It's a group of about 40 people 3 in the power plant from all the different work areas that 4 get together routinely and their purpose is to determine how 5 better we can improve plant productivity and how we can 6 better improve plant morale.
7 Last year we had an organizational survey with a 8 feedback process, and one thing we were pleased to learn is 9 that the perception of the employee body is that the new 10 management is in a listening mode. We are not finished with 11 that one yet. We still have more work to do. But we felt 12 it was a good start.
13 We also realize that open and candid
'14 communications with regulatory agencies and auditors is jg 15 vital to our success in creating a new and better culture.
16 Another part of the cultural change is reduced 17 overtime, particularly for shift crews. There is an 18 administrative mechanism currently in place for limiting 19 shift crew overtime and that is going to be enhanced to even 20 further limit it in the near future.
21 Changes in management policies and practices are 22 necessary and visible means of promoting long-term cultural 23 change. We have made modifications to the hiring and 24 compensation practices such that we have been able to hire 25 about 30 non-entry level people at Peach Bottom into a Heritago Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
() 104 1 variety of jobs.
)
{} 2 For supervisory promotion, we are in the process of developing a sophisticated selection technology called 3
4 assessment center technology which will basically scrutinize 5 and determine, pre-determine the ability of an individual to 6 be a future supervisor before they are put into the 7 supervisory selection pool.
8 Discipline policy has been revised to ensure that 9 the severity of the discipline matches the requirement for 10 the higher standards in our industry. Grievance resolution 11 used to be an extremely cumbersome process. Now it's been 12 simplified and streamlined to address employee concerns l 13 quickly.
14 We have years face-to-face performance interview g- 15 appraisals required for each individual. The purpose is to V 16 assure that the individual knows the performance 17 expectations and that clearly whether they are being met or 18 not.
19 We have a site' nuclear personnel specialist 20 position established and filled to help the line mar.agement 21 with personnel issues and human relations issues.
- 22 We have a fitness for duty program, and all 23 supervision have been trained in its proper implementation.
24 We also have a very comprehensive drug and alcohol program 25 and policy which has been reviewed and accepted by the f
I Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
/' l 105 'l
'l employee body and it's aimed at eliminating both of these as
<~s.
() 2 problems at our facility.
3 We have an excellent guiding document for 4 operators which was developed between the operations 5 management and the operators themselves. .The ops manual' 6 done participatively; an extremely good guiding document 7 that sets the standards for operations at Peach Bottom. It 8 outlines a whole litany of expectations on such things as i
9 operator attentiveness, performance of duties,. procedural :;
10 adherence and professional behavior.
11 DR. REMICK: Question.
12 MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir.
13 DR. REMICK: Your grievance resolution reminds me.
. ;14 You do have a bargaining unit at the plant; is that correct?
I) 15 MR. FRANZ: We are a non-union company but we have V
16 an in-house, an in-company group called the Independent 17 Group Association which functions somewhat like a union.
18 DR. REMICK: I see. And what levels of personnel, 19 particularly in the operations area, would be in that?
20 MR. FRANZ: Up through the control opero. tor in the 21 control room. A reactor operator in the control room would 22 be in the bargaining unit. A shift supervisor or shift
! 23 manager would not.
24 DR. REMICK: Okay, thank you.
25 MR. MCNEILL: I would point out that that is -- 1 Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
l
-O 106 v
1 this is an issue under company-wide review right now. That r~s 2 definition is not clearly defined through the company, and !
(_)
3 we are moving toward better definition and establishment of 4 is management and what is -- who is in this IGA or 5 Independent Group Association.
6 MR. FRANZ: Following procedures is clearly 7 another foundation of operational excellence, and we have 8 taken several steps to ensure procedural compliance. We 9 have revised an upgraded all of the operating procedures 10 with the operators participating in their review and 11 development. They have been human factored, and we have 12 done this to ensure that we have good procedures, we have 13 credibility with the operators, and that they will 14 absolutely follow them.
,_ 15 We have improved the procedures management and l 16 control processes in several ways, including good temporary l
17 change mechanism and permanent change mechanism to j l 18 procedures so we can expediently address operator concerns l
19 on procedures.
20 We have also addressed their attitudinal factors, i
21 the operators' attitudinal factors with regard to procedure 22 compliance in licensed c;.zrator or nonlicensed operator 23 training.
24 Procedure compliance is also part of the yearly 25 performance appraisal of personnel at the plant.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 lllI l
(f 107 O
l]I 2 attitudina fa ?
L S 101. FRANZ: What it,means is that~the operators, 4 in my perception,-didn't have a great. deal of faith in the 5 operating procedures at Peach Bottom,Lto. follow them to the 1 6 letter. They were used as guiding documents rather than as
-7 strict adherence to. -And I believeLthat was due to the way 8 ~they were written. Some technical inaccuracies not properly l 9 Ehuman factored, so the procedures, in my view, did not have 10 good operator credibility. So the operator's attitude was, i
11 hey, I can't' follow it exactly, because it's not written 12 properly for me to do so.
13 DR. KERR: Okay. So part of the attitudinal n
14 adjustment involved revising'the procedures?
(]) 15 MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir, to make them technically i 16 correct.
17 DR. KERR: Okay.
18 MR.. FRANZ: And we did it in participation with Y 19 the operators to be sure that they would be happy with the 20 procedures.
21 DR. KERR: In that case, the operator's attitude 22 was valid, and you changed-the procedures perhaps more than-
- 23 the attitude.
1 1 L 24 MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir. Their attitude was valid.
l L 25 The procedures were not proper for their adherence.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G
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(- '108 j 1 DR. KERR: Okay.
/~S
(_) 2 MR. FRANZ: Now that we have made.them just as 3 good as they can possibly be, we are saying, now we want it 4 complied with to the letter, and we have streamlined the 1
5 processes such that if he comes to a step where he is unable 6 to accommodate it, he can get a rapid change with the right 7 authorization, i
8 DR. KERR: Thank you.
9 DR. REMICK: A question be' ' you leave that on 10 the procedure. Because of the tremendous emphasis there has 11 been on training in recent years, in some areas some plants,. 1 12 some facilities people have developed outstanding training 13 materials and with desktop publishing, you know, they are 14 putting graphics into the training materials and putting ;
() 15' learning objectives, internal objectives and all these l 16 things.
17 And then after the trainee steps into the plant, f 18 he is faced with the old procedures that are dry type of 19 things. Sometimes they have been copied so many times they 20 are even hard to read and so forth. And there is a positive 21 relationship when you go from training into the plant that 22 there is not a cultural change there in how information is 23 presented.
24 Have you looked at your plant from the standpoint 25 of procedures? Maybe that's a human factors consideration.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l G t
() 109 1 But seeing that there is a flow when somebody goes from s
lll 2 training and the type of materials he has there to help him 3 learn, go into the plant, that there is a consistency.
4 Perhaps a use of graphics in helping him understand carrying 5 out procedures.
6 Has that possibly been looked at? And I realize, 7 I don't think there are'too many places in the country that 8 has.
9 MR. COTTON: I can't say that we have really --
10 DR. KERR: Would you be willing to the microphone.
11 MR. COTTON: I don't believe that we have really 12 addressed that specific aspect yet.
13 MR. MCNEILL: Let me try. In some areas where the 14 industry has moved in that direction such as flow charted 15 emergency procedures, there is good correlation between the 16 training and the material that is used in the plant.
17 As a part of redrafting our system operating 18 procedures, our alarm response cards, and in the new 19 maintenance procedures, we have invoked the human factors 20 criteria of writer's guides that have been promulgated 21 through INPO.
22 Now I think where we might not meet your 23 expectation is on the front end. I'm not sure that we have 24 set the stage in the training programs through the elaborate 25 use of graphics. What I think we do is that the plant Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
-s
) 110 1 procedures comply with the recently, in over the last n
(_) 2 several years, evolutionary drafting of procedures. I'm 3 not-sure that we are that sophisticated in the training i
4 environment that we have developed that kind of flow-through 5 expectation from one to the other.
6 DR. REMICK: I think you know what I mean, and we 7 go to great lengths.to train people and realizing that it's 8 helpful to have graphics right there with them so that they 9 can understand the systems that they are being talked about 10 and so forth. But sometimes when we go over to the plant, 11 we just have straight forward written procedures and haven't i 12 followed through with those same graphics.
i 13 MR. MCNEILL: No, they are'not as well done. For 14 instance, many of you I'm sure are familiar with hydraulic
(} 15 control units in boiling water reactors there, the piston, 16 cylinder, gas arrangement in valving that controls the 17 control rods.
18 Our procedures for the maintenance of those, 19 disassembly and replacement of 0-rings, have broken down j 20 part assembly diagrams on them. They are copies out of 21 manuals and they do deteriorate with time. We have not yet 22 converted those into the more graphical types of 23 computerized projections that are available now.
24 We will be doing that in about three years.
25 DR. REMICK: Thank you.
Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 i
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(_/ 111 1 MR. MICHELSON: Have you completed converting all l ym
(_) 2 your emergency procedures ever to the BWR guidelines for 3- symptom-based?
i 4 MR. FRANZ: Yes. We have all the EPGs in Rev. 3 5 and currently are planning to go to Rev. 4.
6 MR. MICHELSON: Well, are they all symptom-based !
7 now?
8 MR. FRANZ: Are they all symptom-based.
9 Yes, yes, all the trip procedures are symptom-10 based.
0 11 MR. MICHELSON: Okay, thank you. l 12 DR. KERR: Are you convinced that system-based 13 procedures are the way to go?
14 MR. FRANZ: You may want two answers, Mr. Cotton -
t 15' and I.
~~)=
16 I would say yes. I am clearly convinced. When I 17 took my own training in symptom-based procedures, I thought 18 it helped immensely to clarify, to clarify the situation for 19 me much easier through a flow diagram with small writing 20 rather than through verbiage. So I think they are excellent l
21 procedures.
22 MR. COTTON: I would agree. I think they are a 23 substantial improvement over text and event-oriented 24 procedures with less information for the operator to deal 25 with. He can handle a much wider range of off-normal events Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 l
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\_ ' ' 112 1 than he can with the event-type procedures.
n
(_) 2 .DR. KERR: At one time there was a great deal of ,
l 3 emphasis, particularly just after TMI 2, given to the need 'l 4 to train operators so that they would better understand the 5 plant and its normal and abnormal behavior. It seems to me 6 the formulation of symptom-based procedures says you don't 7 really need to understand the plant in order to know what's 8 going on. You simply look at symptoms, instrument readings l 9 and so on. And, therefore, it seems to me there is some 1
10 contradiction here. Maybe this is not the place to explore l t
11 it, and maybe I am misinterpreting what's going on. !
12 MR. COTTON: I think you could fall to that line l
13 of reasoning. But I think in' order to use the symptom-based 14 procedures effectively, you still need to understand the ]
(~)
~~
15 plant and its parameters in order to move through the 16 symptom-based procedures with any facility at all.
17 DR. KERR: Okay. You are telling me, I think, 18 that any operator who understand the plant doesn't used the 19 symptom-based procedures unless he thinks he understand 20 enough about what is going on that they make sense.
21 MR. COTTON: Well, sir, I think they are written 22 so that you can follow them, but not easily. You need not }
l 23 understand the plant exactly to go through the flow charts But you cannot do it well I 24 for the symptom-based procedures.
25 and probably not with the speed that's necessary to respond !
Heritage Reporting Corporation f (202) 628-4888 l A
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1 to a transient if you don't understand the principles of'the 2 plant.
3 DR. KERR: Thank you.
4 MR. MICHELSON: Are your emergency procedures laid l 5 out in fold-out type flow charts?
- 6. MR. COTTON: Not fold-out, sir.
3 7 MR. MICHELSON: They are just eight and a half by 8 11 or --
9 MR. MCNEILL: No, on large boards, see-through 10 plastic boards.
11 MR. MICHELSON: With overlays you mean? You 12 unfold them?
13 MR. MCNEILL: No, they are large enough so 14 that -- they are like maybe -- at Peach Bottom they are on llll 15 the order of 10 large boards.
16 MR. MICHELSON: Okay, so as you branch out to the 17 particular -- through the particular --
18 MR. MCNEILL: Bring another board up and put it 19 up.
20 MR. MICHELSON: -- bring another board up and
'21 start watching.
22 MR. MCNEILL: That is correct.
23 MR. MICHELSON: Okay, okay. Thank you.
24 MR. FRANZ: Mr. Chairman, I would say that the 25 written text procedures and the symptomatic procedures are Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
+ .,
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j j, L1 absolutely complementary. And.I think, to say it theLway I.
, 2 think the'other folks were trying to say, you have to know-3 the textual procedure, you~have to understand clearly the-i 4 textual procedure before you are sufficiently smartlenough' ]
5 about the plant to be able to use a symptom-based procedure.
6 But the symptom-based is hierarchial and I think easier'once i 7 you get there.
8 .DR. KERR: So I think you are telling me:if you 9 really understand what's going on, you can use.those l t
10 symptom-based procedures. I
\
11 MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir. If you are an SRO, yes, or 12 an RO. If you are licensed, you can understand them, q
.i 13 MR. MCNEILL: And it is an easier format to truly 1 14 use in the plant.for rapid response.
MR. FRANZ: I would like to. discuss with you
-)] ) . 15 16 gentlemen some of the completed cultural training that we 17 have done. I won't mention all of the training either for 18 the operators or for the managers. But I have selected a l I
19 couple to mention. l 20 The first one is for SROs and reactor operators.
1 21 It was a six-week course given for them for "The People, The ]
22 Foundation of Excellence", and that was given to all the 23 people who are still licensed and were licensed at Peach l l
f 24 Bottom at the time of the shutdown. I
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-25 For the new shift managers, they were given a E .
L J Heritage Reporting Corporation l (202) 628-4888 9
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- 115 1 course a little shorter in managing for excellence. All 2 nonlicensed operators, or 67 nonlicensed operators have been 3 given a course in personal effectiveness. And down under 4 managerial training, there was a course called " Management 5 for Change" which was a three-day course given for about the 6 top 100 or so, or 150 people in the nuclear group which 7 geared our mindsets to be able to cope with change, complete 8 change in the operation of the organization, and taught us 9 how to deal with change as well as how to help the employee i
10 body deal with positive change in the organization. 1 11 MR. MICHELSON: Who taught these courses?
12 MR. FRANZ: "The People, The Foundation of a 13 Excellence" and " Managing for Excellence" and personal 14 effectiveness were taught, to the best of my knowledge, by a 15 combination of outside consultants and people from 16 Philadelphia Electric Company who are in the human resources 17 development side of our business.
18 MR. MICHELSON: They are sort of headquarters 19 people, I guess.
20 MR. FRANZ: Yes, they are headquarters people.
21 DR. KERR: Mr. McNeill, is it planned that thjs 22 sort of thing will also eventually be done at Limerick?
/ 23 MR. MCNEILL: Some of that has been done. The 24 managing organizational change has been completed, and some )
l 25 of the PFE and MFE courses have been done at Limerick
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( 116 3 1 already. So that most of the programs are'being spread not h h. 2 just through Peach Bottom and Limerick, but through the 3 corporate support organizations where they are appropriate 4 for that level of individualism. There is a difference 5 here. Some of these are for professional type of people, 6 and some of them are for exempt or non-exempt categories of 7 hourly works. But where appropriate, we are doing that.
8 DR. KERR: I just didn't want to find a situation 9 in which the people at Limerick would feel completely left 10 out of this revolutionary --
11 MR. MCNEILL: They don't, and I will have a little 12 bit to say about that when I come up for my next 13 presentation.
14 DR. KERR: Okay.
15 MR. WYLIE: Are you going to address, when you
()
16 make that presentation, why Limerick didn't have the same 17 problems?
18 MR. MCNEILL: Yes, I am specifically.
19 MR. WYLIE: And what the lessons learned from 20 Peach Bottom are being incorporated into Limerick?
21 MR. MCNEILL: Yes.
22 DR. KERR: We are going to let you talk, Mr.
23 Franz, eventually.
24 MR. FRANZ: Thank you, sir.
25 Gentleman, there was a philosophy that was common Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1 to many of these courses that.were.given. And the- ,
. 2 ' philosophy really was to help people to get a certain 3 . personal insight'into what they are and.a sense of self-4 awareness. There was a great deal on interpersonal 5 processes, how people relate to othersiin their peer group.
6 There was a great thrust towards team' development, very much 7 needed in our organizat~ ion and keyed on during these 8 sources. There was also a thrust towards inter-group 9 processes and.how groups shoul'd interrelate and work i
10 together.
11 Each course was somewhat singularly targeted.to
'12 its target population, and each was aimed at changing the 13 behaviors of the participants.
14 The one last one I would like to mention l's the
() 15 16 SRO, RO license responsibilities. Not only was there a course for the people who had been at Peach Bottom at the 17 time of the shutdown, but that philosophy was significantly 18 advanced in the minds of'the operators through the t
19- individual enforcement conferences held with the NRC. So 20 that I am absolutely convinced that each operator at Peach l
l 21 Bottom who was there at the time of the shutdown and is !
i 22 still licensed clearly understand that he holds a public f
23 trust.
24 DR. REMICK: Just an observation. I notice where L 25 you have SRO, RO and shift managers. I'm surprised you 1
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h 118 1 don't have STA.
)
Does that tell me something about your view about h llh 2 3 the STA function? ,,
4 MR. SMITH: I would comment that the training, 5 "The People, The Foundation of Excellence" was also attended 6 by the shift technical advisors. But we have limited this 7 discussion to really the license training.
8 DR. REMICK: I see. But how about team training 9 and license responsibilities. It seems to me an STA has a 10 role there.
11 MR. SMITH: The team training at the simulator, 12 the team shift training has always included the shift 13 technical advisors, yes, sir; yes, sir.
14 And the license responsibilities, Mr. Cotton, I 15 don't know if they sat in on that session or not.
g 16 MR. COTTON: I believe some did, Dick.
17 MR. SMITH: That was specifically what your 18 responsibilities are as a holder of an NRC license.
19 DR. REMICK: I see.
20 MR. SMITH: But those -- the basic interpersonal 21 skills training was given to the STAS, and they are involved 22 every time in the team training, the shift team training.
23 DR. REMICK: So the license responsibilities was 24 basically your responsibilities in SRO and RO, not 25 necessarily the corporate responsibility hold a NRC license Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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119 1 to operate the facility; is that --
2 'MR. FRANZ: Yes, sir,'it was clearly individual.
i 3 DR. REMICK:- I see.
4 MR. FRANZ:- The responsibility of.the' individual ,
f 5 to the public and to the government.
1 6 MR. MCNEILL: That came out'of the lesson learned j l
7 when our operators were the first major. set of personal ,j 8- operators who received some sanction'in terms of fines for 9 their behaviors prior to the shutdown.
10 MR. FRANZ: Before the-licensed operators were
- 11. retrained, there was an attitude assessment done'on each. .
12 The purpose was to determine'the potential for each of these 13 operators.after the shutdown, to change their attitudes and
-14 behaviors.to rise to the new value system,:if you will. As
- 15 part of that. determination, the then plant manager, Mr.
16 Smith, met with each operator specifically and individually 17 and interviewed them.
18 As well, there was a psychologist who was hired in 19 as a consultant to performed an assessment of each of these-20 individuals with regard to their ability to be retrained and 21 to determine if any should not be retrained.
22 When all this data was put together, those people 23 who were accepted were retrained the course I previously 24 mentioned, "The People, The Foundation of Excellence".
25 MR. MICHELSON: On the first bullet, was that done 1
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"() 2 MR. SMITH: Yes, and that's the point we were i
3 trying to make, is that the overall interviews and reviews 4 by the psychologist and by me were to determine their 5 potential. But that was one of the specific inputs from the 6 psychologist was potential.
7 MR. MICHELSON: Then were the psychologists for 8 the first bullet outsiders?
9 MR. SMITH: Yes, they were hired from an outside 10 firm. And after the training program, they also 11 reinterviewed the candidates and gave comments back to me as 12' to what their feelings were after the training program.
13 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
14 DR. KERR: Presumably it wasn't important that an 15 operator be able to change his attitude alone, but to be
{)
16- able to change it in the right direction.
17 MR. SMITH: Yes, sir.
18 DR. KERR: This implies that one knows what i 19 attitude is appropriate for a good operator, and would seem 20 to imply that one ought to use this same psychological 21 examination for all operators or operator candidates.
22 Do you plan to do that?
23 MR. SMITH: I think that your first point that one t
24 of the things we had not done was to establish what the 25 attitudes were that we were anticipated. We hadn't given Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888 G
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O( / - 121 1 the proper expectations,'and that was certainly a part of !
I) 2 it.
3 We'are in the development, in the nonlicensed 4 training and the continuing licensed training, this is 5 certainly being taught as part of it;_yes, sir.
6 DR. KERR: No, but' presumably the psychologist !
7 examined these people to see whether they were capable of 1 8 adapting to whatever attitude it is that a successful 9 operator should have. l 10 I'm saying that if a psychologist can identify 11 that, it would seem to me it would be appropriate to test 12 for this same sort of identification to be used in the 13 operator selection process.
14 MR. MCNEILL: I will not make a commitment to
'( 15 that. I-will have to take that under consideration.
16 DR. KERR: I guess I am a little skeptical that it 17 can be done. But if it can be done --
18 MR. MCNEILL: Well, let me tell you what my gauge i
19 is, and I came after much of this work had been done. In 20 -other words, these operators went through this process in 21 'the fall and winter of 1987-88, and I did not arrive until 22 February.
23 But I try and make an analogy here, although it's 24 somewhat broad, that says that the changes that'we were 25 making in attitudes at Peach Bottom were somewhat akin to
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I 122' 1 the segregation in the South of years ago, and that I h .
I 2 really, the true change and attitude is not as important as 3 the behavioral changes. j 4 We set about changing the behaviors of people in 5 the South vis-a-vis racism and segregation. We have not yet 6 changed some people's attitudes in the south. Whereas what 7 we want is we feel that we changed the behaviors of our 8 operators and have gotten gradual attitude change. And as 9 the success of their behavior changes becomes apparent to 10 them, they will have a truer attitudinal adjustment and 11 acceptance of that new criteria or standard. And out of 12 that comes a true new attitude.
13 And I feel that we can measure behavioral changes.
14 We can monitor behavioral changes on the part of the lll 15 operators, and what comes along after that will naturally 16 occur. And that's why I'm not sure that I want to rely on 17 psychologists per se. I want to see behaviors, performance 18 and things of that nature, and I believe that the attitudes 19 will flow out of that.
20 Now in this case, we had to look for a commitment 21 to change. And I think that was the attitude -- we had to 22 have these people really believe that what they had done 23 previously was wrong, and that they were going to change 24 their behaviors, and that's what this process tried to 25 evaluate.
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.)
1 DR. KERR: When I grew up in the South, we would 2 characterize that as repentance.
3' (Laughter.)-
4 MR. MCNEILL: I believe there was some' element of 5' repentance in this process.
6 DR. KERR: Repentance and maybe even confession.
- 7. Okay.
8 MR. MICHELSON: Are any of your operators members 9' of a collective' bargaining unit? !
10 MR. MCNEILL: Not a recognized collective 11 bargaining unit. As we mentioned' earlier, we have an 12 Independent Group. Association, j
'13 MR. MICHELSON: Yes, that was --
14 MR. MCNEILL: Which is a company union, but is not 15 recognized.under National Labor Relations law. But do i ?
16 not -- it has in large measure functioned as a union. !
-17 MR. MICHELSON: It is a collective bargaining unit .
l 18 for the. operators as well as -- '
i 19 MR. MCNEILL: Yes, as well as other non-exempt 20 personnel.
21 DR. KERR: It seems to me with all of this team j l
22 building you are doing, a union becomes sort of irrelevant ]
I 23 with everybody part of the same team. 1 24 MR. MICHELSON: To establish wages and working 25 conditions.
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q l Sm. MCNEILL: .You are right. And.we are -- let me l
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- 2 say that it is my. desire that in fact the. employees become 3 more affiliated with their job and company, and less with 4 their association, but that.will come with time..
'5 MR. MICHELSON: Did the association, the fact that j
.i 6 ~ they were members of an association'give you any particular. j 7 difficulties in the process of doing some of this?
8 MR. MCNEILL: Let me ask Mr. Smith.
9- MR. SMITH: No , it did not. !
l 10 MR. MCNEILL: There have been some other. _f l
11 difficulties with some other work practice changes that we 12 have tried'to invoke, though, but not --
13 MR. MICHELSON: But not with this particular 1 14 process.
15 MR. MCNEILL: Not with this particular process.
r( )
16 MR. MICHELSON: Okay, thank you.
17 DR. KERR: Mr. Franz, I want to warn you that any 18 time you observe.a.very small opening in conversation,-you E 19 should interjects right away and keep going.
20 MR. FRANZ: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, I will 21 remember that. ,
i 22, We will reenforce the behavioral and attitudinal C 23 changes achieved through' follow-on and follow-up training.
24 Some of the examples are listed in the slide. Specifically, 25 operators will attend a three-day course titled ,
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'1' " Interaction", the purpose of which is really to reenforce IO the ski 11s that.ehey have 41 ready 1 earned through 2 The
.3 ' People,J the L Foundation ' of . Exce11ence" .
-4 Additiona11y, it is p1anned that they'wi11'go to:
i 5 regularly schedulud oae-day sessions on application focus 6 -and skill building sessions which wi11 be interpersonal ~an'd:
7 interactive..
8 For supervisory personnel, we are p1anning~right 9 now three coursee: employr.o relations, which'is a four-day 10 course for' supervisory and managerial personnel; on. company-11 po11cies, discipline, counse1ing, se1ection, promotion and 12- all'those' issues related to human re1ations and labor 13 relations.
14 There is a four-day. course on interaction ,
(} 15 ~ management'which will teach people'how to interact with 16 their peers and' subordinates in a whole variety of- '!
-t 17 situations. 'And there is interaction management support 18 which is specifica11y for managers so that they know how to 19 support the folks who are taking the interaction management 20 training.
21 MR.'MICHELSON: How long are those courses?
22 MR. FRANZ: The interaction management is four-23- day. The employee relations is four-day. The interaction
, 24 management support, I am not sure.
25 Kathy says it's two days.
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4 1 126 1 MR. MICHELSON: Thank you.
n) ( . 2 DR. CATTON: Are these on-time.only, or are you 3 going to-do it.on a periodic basis?
.4 MR. FRANZ: 'These specific courses are a one-time 5 .only. I think the plan is'to do them periodically as 6 supervisors change.
7 DR. CATTON:- 'It seems to me-you ought to --'I took 8- .a stress r. eduction course once. It lasted a month.
9 MR. MCNEILL: Kathy, would you care to comment on i 10 this? This is Kathy Cooke, who is the nuclear group 11 organizational development specialist, manager.
12 MS. COOKE: Good morning. The interaction 13 management training program, as well as the other two 14 programs listed on this slide and to which John Franz has
() 15 referred to, are a part of the nuclear group's ongoing 16 supervisory and management development program. We are in a 17 start up mode.right now. We are implementing or have begun !
18 to. implement these programs this year.
19 As we continue with the program, there is no doubt i
20 in my mind that through needs analysis we will continue to 21- . identify additional segments so that a supervisor or manager 22 does not just get a one shot in tne arm training deal and 23 then that's it until their next career opportunity, i 24 MR. FRANZ: We realize that cultural change is 25 absolutely a long-term process and it's going to require Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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<1' ~ continuous reinforcement'and commitment at all levels of'the ,
.2- organization.
3: We also believe that PeachEBottom culture'has l4 improved and continues to impr've. o Some of the indicators 5 are: listed on the slide that we.would use,-to determine the 6 satisfactory change of the value system and' culture at Peach 7 Bottom. - And.let me mention just a couple.
8 We were pleased with the NRC'and'the_ integrated.
l 9 assessment team-inspection. Some of the commentary from. !
10 that inspection was very positive'recently.with. regard to 11 shift manager leadership-specifically. And good inter- and 12 intra-shift communications; openness of management; the i i
- 13. questioning attitude by the shift crews; all very positive, 14 at-least to us very positive indicators.
. 15 Another one, good housekeeping or plant 16 housekeeping. LPeach Bottom at the moment is in' excellent
-17 housekeeping, and we plan to keep it that way. One's work 18 place, if it's clean, shows a sense of pride and 19 : professionalist where you work, and we think that's a very 20 important indicator.
21 Professionalism, certainly that's observable 22 through changes in dress, language and courtesy throughout 23 the entire employee body. i 24 In conclusion, I believe that the culture and the q 25 value system at Peach Bottom has moved satisfactorily Heritage Reporting Corporation (202) 628-4888
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1- ' forward:in'a" positive direction such that we are more than
,- O: 2 su m cione righe new ee suppere safe operaeien of eh<,
~3 facility.
4- Thank you.. ~ Questions,: gentlemen? ;
5 DR. KERR: Further questions?
6 Mr. Remick.
7 DR.'REMICK: You mention dress. Just out of' ,
8- curiosity, have the operators or has management established _.
1 9 any kind of.a dress code for licensed personnel at the 10 plant? l
- 11. MR. FRANZ: The operators, the operators have 12- agreed:and enjoy wearing dress slacks in the control room 13 now. -These are control room personnel or supervisory-14 -personnel. They wear dress slacks and they wear either r 15 white or blue shirts, and many of them have elected to wear 16 a tie. They are enhancing their own sense of self-image.
17 DR. REMICK: But they have established those 18 themselves, that code basically.
19 MR. FRANZ: They_have established that code 20 themselves. We have had discussions with them to solicit 1 21 their support in that.
22 DR. REMICK: I see. )
23 MR. FRANZ: But they support that. It's not a 24 mandatory "you must".
25 DR. REMICK: So you don't see jeans in the control l
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1 room'at Peach . Bottom.any..:more. }
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2 MR. FRANZ: No,. sir, you certainly will not..
3,j
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i 3 Other questions? l 4 Mr. McNeill, the executive vice president of 5 nuclear, will address root cause 4.
6 MR. MCNEILL:- I would suggest, Mr. Kerr, that if i
7 you want to maintain your' schedule, it's going to take me i 8 'about 40 minutes to'go through this. It's 10 minutes from 9 the designated lunch break right now. At your pleasure, we 10 can continue, or we.can take a break now. _!
11 DR. KERR: I think that's a good suggestion. I 12 suggest that we recess until 10 minutes until one.
- 13. (Whereupon, at 11:50 a.m., the meeting was 14 recessed,-to resume at 12:50 p.m., this same day, Wednesday, .i 15 March 8, 1989.)
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17 i
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19 20 21 22 i
23.
24 25 Heritage Reporting Corporation A (202) 628-4888
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CERTIFICATE 2-J3 Thislis-to certify that the attached proceedings before.the R q.
4- . United States: Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter 5 of: GE REACTOR' PLANTS SUBCOMMITTEE MEETING-ON THE PEACH BOTTOM ATOMIC POWER !
6 , Name: STATION RESTART ~
7 i
8 Docket Number
- 9 Place: Bethesda,' Maryland i
10 Date: March 8, 1989 .!
11 were held as herein appears, and that this is ' the . original:
12 transcript thereof for'the file of the United States ~ Nuclear:
13 Regulatory-Commission takenLstenographically by me and,. l a
14 thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the
() 15' direction of the court reporting company, and that the 16 transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing j 17 proceedings.
18 /s/ O G^^' b C }
l JOAN ROSE 19 (Signature typed) : _
20 Official Reporter 21 Heritage Reporting Corporation
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