ML20237K218
| ML20237K218 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Fermi  |
| Issue date: | 08/20/1985 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20237J518 | List:
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| References | |
| FOIA-86-245 NUDOCS 8708270101 | |
| Download: ML20237K218 (34) | |
Text
l' ORIGINAL' UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
., INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW
. OF GREGG OVERBECK l
1 l; .
l LOCATION: NEWPORT, MICHIGAN 1 - 32 PAGES:
DATE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1985 ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. I opeww -
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l' WRBeb 1 UNITED' STATES OF AMERICA l
l 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 Office of Investigations 4 ------------------------------------:
5 In the matter of: :
6 DETROIT EDISON COMPANY :
7 (Fermi Nuclear Power Station No. 2) :
8 :-----------------------------------:
9 Room 164, 10 Nuclear Operations Center, 11 Fermi-2 Nuclear Power Station, i
12 h Newport, Michigan.
0
, 13 ; Tuesday, 20 August 1985 14 ( ..
Investigative interview of 'GREGG OVERBECK was' l 15 conducted in closed conference beginning at 2:30 p.m., when 16 ! were present:
4 17 i JAMES N. KALKMAN, NRC Investigator k
18 CARL LANG, NRC Reactor Inspector
)
19 PETER MARQUARDT, Esq., Detroit Edison Company 20 l SUSAN BEALE, Esq., Detroit Edison Company i
21 22 23 24 I
l 25 l
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' 9 2 ' 01 el 2 WRBmpb 1 PROCEED INGS 2 MR. KALKMAN: For the record, this is an 3 interview of Gregg Overbeck, who is employed by Detroit i
4 Edison Company.
l 5 The location of the interview is in the Fermi II {
6 Nuclear Power Station, Newport, Michigan. Present in this l
7 interview are Mr. Overbec,;, Detroit Edison Company Counsel
)
l 8 Mr. Marquardt, and Ms. Beale, NRC Investigator James i 9 Kalkman, NRC Reactor Inspector Terrence Lang. l 10 The subject matter of this interview concerns the 11 reactor operator error which occurred at Fermi II Nuclear 12 Power Station on July 2nd, 1985.
- 13 j Will you please stand and raise your right hand.
14 Whereupon, 15 GREGG OVERBECK 16 lwascalledtothestand to testify as a witness, and, having 17 l been first duly sworn, was examined and testified as 18 follows:
19 EXAMINATION 20 BY MR. KALKMAN:
21 Q Mr. Overbeck, you stated in your earlier 22 interview that Mr. Preston brought the incident, the rod 23 pull error incident, to your attention.
24 A '. aat 's cor rect.
25 0 Is that correct?
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192'01 0'2 3 WRBmpb 1 A .Yes.
2 0 And that was by relating to you the facts 3 contained in the deviation' event report?
4 A That was by showing me the deviation event 5 report. l 6 Q And you either asked Mr. Preston or you read in l 7- the report that the reactor had not gone critical?
1 8 A Right.
9 .Geing back to the testimony here, I have said, i 10 and I still contend today, that I either asked him did the 11 reactor go critical and he pointed to what is in the DER.
12 That's what I remember. Or the other side of it-is I read l 13 that in the top statement; that says out of sequence run.
14 And at that time I think it said six rods and it turned out l
15 to be eleven.
l l 16 Q Did Mr. Preston advise you that the reactor 17 ,
engineer had logged that the reactor had'gone critical?
18 A At that time I'm not -- I don't recall when I 19 found out about that.
l 20 But I knew that by the CARB meeting at 12:30 that 21 I had a difference of opinion between my operations l 22 organization and my reactor engineering organization. And 23 the reactor engineering people, there was a log entry in one 24 of their logs that the reactor had gone critical. And 25 that's part of the reason why in the DER process I wanted to t
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~'92'01 03 4 WRBmpb 1 get another independent review.
2 Q' How did you become aware --
3 A I think I stated that somewhere in the a 4' transcript, that I was aware that there.was some 5 disagreement between the operators and my nuclear 6 engineering people.
7 Q That's correct.
8 How did you become aware of the difference of 1
9 opinion? l 10 A As best I can recall, the only time that I had an 11 opportunity was when Preston showed it to me. As he 12 related, he may have stated it to me or it could have j k 13 ., occurred after the SALP meeting coming back before the DER
\
14 / process.
I 15 , I could have talked - .You know, Preston.... I'm' I ti 16 l trying to remember whether he was in the SALP meeting or 17 not. I believe he was. And it's possible that after the 18 SALP meeting on our way back that it was discussed or 19 mentioned; I don't recall. l 20 0 But you went to the CARB meeting knowing that 21 there was some controversy?
22 A Yes.
23 0 could you have obtained the information from 24 someone else other than Mr. Preston?
25 A It could have come from Harry Arora. He was a ACE. FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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~l 92 01 04 5 WRBmpb 1 reactor engineer. You know, his people could have reported 2 it to him. But I don't believe that I got it from him. I l 1
3 think it probably came from -- I believe it probably came 4 from Preston. I honestly don't remember.
5 0- Did you get any kind of a feeling from i 6 Mr. Preston that there was validity to the reactor i
7 engineers' analysis or judgment that the reactor had gone j 8 critical?
9 A No. I think -- Like I say, I don't remember 1
10 whether it was Preston that discussed it with me; I think it 11 was.
12 But what I can ' remember, my feelings: I got on
( 13 one side of the organization the operators who declared the 14 reactor critical or doing the rod pulls, and they have been 15 j trained -- quote -- to determine reactor criticality; and 16 the reactor engineering people on the other side who are not 17 ,
licensed and had not called the reactor critical.
I 18 l I believed what I had was a difference of opinion l 1
19 between a licensed operator -- several licensed operators l 20 versus an inexperienced reactor engineer, although when I l 21 got down to the DER process I wanted to make sure that I had 22 an independent review. And that's the reason why I gave the 1
23 initial review process determination back to the Reactor 24 Engineering people for them to prove to us that the reactor 25 was critical.
I i
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WRBmpb 1 BY MR. LA,NG:
l 2 Q On what side o. the argument was Leo Lessor?
3 A Leo Lessor did not get into the. conversation on 4 was the reactor critical or not until -- Oh, he was in the 1
5 CARB meeting . Or was he? I don't have an impression one 6 way or the other.
7 But I think the general conversation at the CARB 8 meeting was, ' Hey, we ought to review this thing.' And I 9 believe it was my suggestion, 'Get an independent review; 10 give it back to the Reactor Engineering people.' The i
11 operators were busy doing other things; give'it back to the 12 Reactor Engineering people to evaluate and come back and let
13 us know whether the reactor was critical or not. I believe 14 Leo supported that position.
15 BY MR. KALKMAN:
1 16 Q Did you ask Mr. Lessor at the CARB meeting to l
17 perform an investigation?
18 A No, It was not until after we had gotten through 19 -- we had gotten agreement that the reactor had gone 20 critical, that at that point it was the next staff meeting 21 which was on Saturday.
1 22 In other words, we got agreement on Friday 23 afternoon, late Friday afternoon. It was Saturday morning 24 -- It was probably Friday afternoon that I talked to Leo and 25 I said, ' Leo, now that we've got the reactor critical issue s
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'92'01 05 7 WRBmpb 1 in concrete, or we are confident that we,know that the 2 reactor did go critical, we still-have an out of sequence 3' rod pull event to evaluate, and for the. root cause. And'I 4 want to get that back. Now I want to elevate that up again 5 and get that to you.'-
6 And he agreed to take it on. And it in the staff 7 meeting on Saturday that I made that announcement, that Leo 8 is going to take over the evaluation of the out of sequence 9 rod pull.'
10 Q At the CARB meeting you assigned a disposition 11 date for the DER.
12 A Yes, seven days.
( 13 0 I think it was the 9th --
14 A Right, seven days.
15 ) Q -- of July.
il 16 That date was subsequently extended. Did you j 17 ! grant the extension? i 18 l{ A l Yes. l 19 0 Why did you do that? l 20 A Because Leo had not completed the evaluation 21 yet. And he came back to me and said, ' Hey, I'm not going j 22 to get this done by the 7th; I need more time in order to H l
23 talk with all the people that were involved.' Instead of 24 coming up with a root cause that we cannot support by facts, 1
i l 25 he wanted more time to talk to some more of the shift people l
1 i
1 l
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p 9 9 2 '01 0't 8 WRBmpb 1 and the people who were off on vacation. !!e wanted to talk j
2_ to those people.before he completed his evaluation. And I )
.. 3 said, 'Okay.'
4 Q So Mr. Lessor's investigation was. tied to the 5 close-out of the DER in addition to the Nuclear 1 6 Engineering--
7 A There were actually two issues here. One'was was 8 the reactor critical. And again, the only reason that was 9 an issue was I knew there was a question we were going to i 10 have to answer for everybody, and we had to make sure we had 11 our information correct.
12 After'that was beind us we.still had the 13 determination of root cause, why we got there in the first-(
14 place. And there were a lot of people involved and it was a l
15 f airly complex problem as Leo got into it, and he needed 16 more time.
I 17 It wasn't the close-out of the DER that was the j 18 extension, but it was more time needed to determine root l
19 cause. As a matter of f act, that DER is still not closed 20 because we are still in the process of taking corrective 21 action.
22 O When was the first discussion that you.had with.
23 Mr. Lenart relating to the incident?
24 A As I stated before, I'm not sure when we 1 25 discussed it, whether it was on the evening of the 2nd. ;
t ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC. ,
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q 12 01 08' 9 WRBmpb 1 Bob and I,,the routine at that time was to 2 usually get together closa 'a the end of the day and recount !
3 what had gone on that day to make sure I knew what he was 4~ doing and that he understood what I was doing.
5 It may have -- I believe . it occurred on the 2nd.
l 6 I told him that I had assigned it to the out of sequersce rod 7 pool and it was assigned to Reactor Engineering for 8 evaluation of criticality.
9 He did get involved in the meeting on the 3rd 10 when Reactor Engineering came back and said 45 seconds --
11 the reactor was critical for a 45 second period. And we had.
12 a rather large discussion.
13 The outfall of that was to inform the resident so 14 he was involved, or so that we would know for a f act that he 15 was involved.
16 0 Did you advise Mr. Lenart of the controversy in 17 ! Reactor Engineering?
18 A I don' t remember if I advised him on the 2nd or 19 not.
20 Again, I'm not sure -- I'm not positive that we 21 had a discussion. But I know that he was~ aware of the 22 controversy on the 3rd because we had all the parties there 23 and it was flying back and forth pretty good about what is 24 criticality.
25 Q How many people attended the July 3rd meeting I
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WRBmpb 1 relating to the enginee' ring analysis?
2 A It's a tough question. It's hard to remember.
1 3 Maybe I can run through some names. j l 4 I'd say in the ballpark of about eight to ten j
- l 5 people. l 6 Q. Did any'of those people at the meeting express 7 their opinion that the reactor had gone critical?
i 8 A The Reactor Engineering people did. i 9 John Thrope, who initially went back to the i 1
10 computer model and came up with that K-effective was equal ~
11 to one in a 45-second period, based on the additional 12 reactivity that was added. I
. 13 It was at that time that I said, 'Show me the-
{
14 I charts.' And so we finally dragged out the charts and we 15 spent some time going over those charts. And I spent some 16 time up at the board drawing what I would expect the ;
17 , operator would see to declare the reactor critical.
]
18 One of the SRM charts had a missing piece in it, 19 and I said, 'He's going to be basing his decision on rod 20 pulls and time for subcritical multiplication and die-off 21 and t'he whole business.' And I said, 'I could tell that is 22 not a 45 second period, so to hell with your computer 23 model. It's nice and everything, but I want you to go back 24 and recalculate this thing as the operator.would with rods 25 being pulled.'
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~192 Ul 10' 11 WRBmpb 1 We got into some discussion about rod worth and 2 how much rod worth was in the rods that we were pulling.
I 3 You know, he was close to the end of the rod' pull and the 4 rod that was being pulled.
L l 5 I remember close to the end, when we had decided 6 that we were going to get Reactor Engineering to go back and 7 get out of the computer again the timing of the rod pulls 8 and then relay this thing out, Mr. Lessor -- and that's the.
9 only person I can...
i le I'll take one back. Mel Batch did agree with the ]
11 fact that we needed to go back and -- from Reactor 12 Engineering -- He was a reactor engineer with a*little more 13 experience. He agreed that we needed to go back and do as I 14 suggested, lay out the rod pulls'as the operator would see 15 them.
l 16 It was after that that I believe Leo said, 'You 17 ,
know, the issue here is -- you know, the real issue here is 18 the out of sequence rod pull. And if we were not critical, i l 19 we were damn close to it.' And I think he said his personal l i
20 opinion was that we probably were critical. ,
21 It was a discussion at that time, we'll, we needed 22 to make sure whether we were or weren't because we were 23 going to have to -- I said, 'You know, we're going to be ;
24 asked not only for ourselves as we're sitting here, but 25 we're going to have to be example that to everybody else I i
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? 01 11 j plus show documentation on how we made the calculation. We .
WRBmpb 1 2 need to go back and get that information, pull it out of the 3 computer and lay it down in detail so it can be seen.' 1 4 Q So there were differing opinions within Reactor -
5 Engineering or --
6 A They came in united; they left with differing l i
7 opinions, yes. Or they came in with one guy doing all the 8 talking.
9 You know, it's hard to tell. It's hard to tell 10 in that kind of a situation.
11 The feeling I got initially was they were 12 c'onvinced that the reactor was critical in a 45 second
,( 13 period. But, you know, j0st looking.at the charts you could 14 say, ' Hey, come'on now. That's garbage. There's no'way 15 that that's a 45 second period. So now let's sit down and 16 l talk about what is and what isn't.'
17 At that point there was some discussion and there 18 were a f ew of the members that had a little more experience, 19 and they started to waiver quite a bit and agreed that they 20 needed to go back and do some more evaluation.
21 It was Leo that kept forcing: ' Hey, listen, i f-22 the thing wasn't -- The issue is not whether it was critical 23 or not, the out of sequence rod pull. How did we mess that 24 up. And if you weren't critical you were damn close to it.'
I 25 And he said , 'And I think you probably were.' I think those j i
l i
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W RBmpb 1 were his -- you know, the way he felt about it. ,
2 O Okay.
3 Did you gather from the information batted around 4 at that meeting that the probability was that the reactor 5 did in fact go critical?
. 6 A No, I guess I was still -- I still believed that I l
7 the reactor probably was not critical, I personally.
8 BY MR. LANG:
I 9 Q Did you believe it or did you hope it? {
1 10 A Probably a little of.both.
11 To tell you the truth, I knew that whether it did 12 or didn't didn't make any dif ference as f ar as deportability 13 was concerned. It was still not reportable.
14 And what I really wanted to do is make sure -- If l 15 as an organization we said it was not critical, I would 16 expect you guys to come down and say, 'Show me the l
17 , calculations.' If we didn't do a thorough job and you did a 18 thorough job and found out the reactor was critical, I'd be 19 in a hell of a lot more mess than I am today. So I wanted 20 to make sure -- My main purpose was to make sure the 21 organizations really knew whether they'were critical or not 22 and could support it. Okay?
23 I guess we could always say we could call it 24 critical and err on the conservative side and be done with 25 it. But I really wanted the organization to understand ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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'92 01 13 14
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W RBmpb 1 whether they were or weren't. Without that supporting 2 documentation I didn't fell comfortable with calling the i 3 reactor critical.
4 BY MR. KALKMAN:
5 Q . How many of the people that attended the meeting i
6 do you think agreed with your opinion? i I
7 A Probably one reactor engineer, Mel Batch, I would 8 think.
9 And my opinion was that we needed to go back and le do some more evaluation because we hadn't done a thorough 11 job. It was Mel Batch. '
12 Q But you were also of the opinion that the reactor 13 did not go critical at that meeting? j
[
14 A Yes.
l 15 0 Were you expressing that by yourself, or did 16 other people at the meeting support your analysis?
17 ! A I don' t know.
18 0 were.you speaking for Operations?
19 A Was I speaking for Operations? No, I was 20 speaking for me. I wasn't speaking for Operations.
21 You know, I don't remember where Gene Preston 22 was, where his feelings were.
23 You know, it's hard for me to tell you what 24 somebody else said because I can remember pretty clearly -
25 exactly what I was saying, but I'm not sure that I could
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'1 WRBmpb 1 tell you what other people said. l 2 Leo Lessor was probably the only one of the bunch 3 that said, ' Hey, I think you were critical.' That one I
~4 remember.
5 Q Mr. Thorpe didn't --
6 A Well, Thorpe, yes. .But, you know, I'm trying to 7 say he lost his credibility when he told me he had a 45 8 second period based on the computer model. I knew-that l l
- 9 wasn't going to fly. I wanted him to get back and to get l \
l 10 the rod pulls out of the computer, put on the time mark and 11 put the times down, just as I would expect Region Three 12 people who come in and evaluate the thing would do the same 13 thing.
{
14 0 Do you think you adequately communicated the 15 substance of that July 3rd meeting to the NRC resident 16 inspector?
17 A Yes.
18 0 To include the controversy --
19 A Because there was a discussion at the end of our 20 meeting on the 3rd, 'Well, we've got to go tell the resident 21 inspector. What are we going to tell him? Are we going to 22 tell him it's critical or not critical?'
23 The decision was made, supported by Bob Lenart, 24 to tell him that the reactor was not critical but that we 25 still had a controversy between our Reactor Engineering ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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? 0l 15 16 W RBmpb 1 people and our operators and that we are going'to go back ,
t 2 and so some more evaluation. That's exactly what he was l 3 told.
4 Q Was that Mr . Lenart's directive, to tell the I
5 resident inspector that the reactor had not gone critical? i 6 Was that Detroit Edison's position at that time? !
1' 7 A Yes. We all agreed that that was Detroit 8 Edison's position at the time.
9 BY MR. LANG:
10 0 Why would you agree with that if Mr. Lessor was 11 saying it was critical and Reactor Engineering, that they 12 were saying that it was critical and --
13 A I believe Leo said he'd like to see all the --
14 You know, Leo agreed that without all the pulls put on a 15 piece of paper and the lines drawn in, he agreed that it 16 would be -- you know, that that all should be there for.a 17 !, complete review and that he wanted to see that. So I 18 believe that even in his mind, even though he thought, well, 19 if we weren't. critical we were real close to critical, but 20 he wanted to see that supporting documentation.
21 I don't think there was disagreement within the 22 group, that the course of action we were taking was wrong.
23 We all felt, I think everybody felt that was the right 24 course of action.
25 The question is when we came out of that meeting ACE FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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, ~192' 01 l'6 17 WRBmpb 1 we couldn't have hal.f the organization going out and saying l
l 2 it was critical and the other half going out and saying it i l )
3 was not critical. There had to be a meeting of the minds- I i
4 and a position taken on whether it wasn't. And I felt we I 5 did that.
6 We said the reactor was not critical but that 7 there was disagreement within the organization, and we were 8 continuing our evaluation to make sure it was. And that's 9 exactly what the resident was told.
10 0 But if Leo was saying that he thought it was 11 critical and Thorpe was saying ~ he thought .it was critical, 12 even though wrong in your mind, who was saying it wasn't?
13 A I was.
l 14 O Anybody else?
15 A I believe Preston probably was. And I believe 16 there was sufficient doubt on Mel Batch's part whether they 17 were or weren't. I believe he was a little on the,.'Oh, 18 yeah, that's right, the computer model. But we're pulling 19 real rods here out of a real core.'
20 I'm not sure where Bob Lenart stood on that 21 issue. I believe he thought i t was not critical.
l 22 BY MR. KALM1AN:
23 0 Do you know what computer models were used by I 24 Reactor Engineering?
i 25 A Ho.
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12 01 17 18 l, WRBmpb 1 Q Do you kno.w if they were -- if there was a DECO 2 program or a GE program?
3 A I don' t know that.
4 0 would that have riade a difference? Would you 5 give more credibility to GE's programs?
6 A No. I mean I don ' t. . .
7 You've got to understand that this is the first I 8 time the Reactor Engineering people have been in this kind I 9 of a situation; the first time I've been in that situation.
10 I wasn't about ready to hang my hat on a computer model. I 11 knew that the calculations were not that dif ficult because I 12 had done them before.
( 13 I knew from my previous experience in the Navy 14 that we could lay all those things out on the char t and 15 prove without a doubt whether the reactor was critical or i 16 l not just by putting time posts. And that's what I wanted to 17 see.
18 That's what I wanted to see. But I was only one 19 person in a meeting.
! 20 0 Was it fair to the resident inspector to tell him 21 that it was Detroit Edison's position that the reactor had 22 not gone critical?
23 A Was it fair.
24 0 Was he getting accurate information at that 25 point?
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92 02 01 19 WRBmpb 1 A Yes. -l 2 0 wouldn't it have been more logical to relate that i 3 Reactor Engineering is reviewing the matter, doing an 4 analysis; that there are some people, consultant people, 5 saying we did in fact go critical and the operation 6 department feels that the reactor did not go critical? But 7 just to lay the company line on them that we did not go ,
8 critical, isn't th't a a little misleading?
9 A I don ' t think so because what you describe is 10 what I'think was the gist of our meeting with him, was that 11 the reactor was in fact -- if it was not -- I know that I 12 told him what the company position is: An out of sequence i
13 rod pull, the reactor did not go critical, but it's under li further investigation.
15 But I also told him that we had disagreement 16 between our Reactor Engineering people and our operators.
17 ,
And that I specifically sent it back to Reactor Engineering 18 because they were using -- I don't know if I told him about 19 that, but I said I sent it back to Reactor Engineering to 20 lay it down exactly what happened to make sure that that was 21 the right choice.
22 I don' t think I mislead him. I don't think Gene 23 Preston and I mislead him.
24 0 You mean Mr. Parker?
25 A Right.
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92'02 0'2 20 WRBmpb 1 BY MR. LANG:
2 0 I have a question. Why didn't you choose -- When 3 you left that meeting why didn't you choose a company 1
4 position that you were not critical versus one that you were '
5 critical?
6 A Because there was disagreement within the group.
7 You know, I expected, I honestly expected Parker 1
8 to go down and talk to one guy. And he could have talked 9 with Thorpe and Thorpe said, 'Yes, I have a 45 second 10 period.' He could have gone out and talked to Aniol and 11 Aniol would have told him no, the reactor wasn't critical.
12 I mean I don't expect my people, who already have a position 13 that they felt during the course of the thing, to go back 14 later on and to say something other than, you know, to say 15 that they support the company position and to say that in 16 their own minds they know they said some other things and 17 they feel otherwise.
18 So I believe we were up front in the fact that we 19 stated the company position because we knew there was 20 , disagreement within the organization and that we had to go 21 back and do some more evaluation.
22 Q Yes. But why did you chose non-critical versus l 23 critical? You could have still been up front and said, 'We 1
24 could have been critical but we're still investigating.'
25 A I don' t believe I am the sole source of that 1
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92'02 d3- 21 WRBmpb 1 decision. I agreed.with the decision. The decision was Bob 2 Lenart's.
l 3 BY MR. KALKMAN:
4 Q So if Mr. Parker contacted Reactor Engineering L 5 Mr. Arora, after the July 3rd meeting, he wou'ld have gotten 6 the -- if he asked Mr. Arora, 'Did you go critical','
7 Mr. Arora's response should have been, 'We did not go 8 critical but we are reviewing'?
9 A Right. That's what I would expect him to say.
10 In fact, anybody he would have talked with I would have l 11 expected him to say that.
12 I would have expected him, if he had spent more 13 time asking those people, you know, where is your 14 information, show mt what you've got, he would have gotten 15 -- he could have gotten a little more research on his own to
! 16 find out where the disagreement was.
17 Going back on the Reactor Engineering logs, it's 18 my understanding now that the reactor engineer was not in 19 the control room at the time that the. reactor -- that the 20 event went on. So what he got on his logs, I'm not sure 21 what his basis for that is. So I am already having trouble 22 with that as a credible source.
23 0 Do you know if the reactor engineer, Mr. Myers, 24 performed some type of analysis?
25 A I do not know that. I don't know whether he did
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'92 '02 04 22 WRBmpb 1 or not. ,
2 0 So that it's possible that the very information 3 you wanted from -- that you were requesting from the Reactor 4 Engineering group was already performed by Mr. Myers that' 5 evening when he reported in his log that the reactor had 6 gone critical? He may have looked at the charts and said 7 that --
8 A He may have -- The information -- I don' t know.
9 I'm the third or fourth party now. My information tells me-10 that the strip charts were never pulled back; that the log 11 entry occurred right at about the time this whole thing was 1
12 going on and that he could not have done an effective-13 evaluation. That was the root cause of the whole thing in 14 the first place was that we didn't stop and do an l l
15 evaluation.
1 16 0 You indicated in your last interview that when '
17 the final analysis surfaced and Nuclear Engineering stated 18 that the reactor had gone critical and it was accepted you i
19 didn't feel any obligation to report that final analysis to i I
20 the NRC, is that correct?
21 A Yes, I think I said something like that.
22 I also think I said -- I recall trying to go out 23 and call the resident's office to inform him but was not 24 able to get him because there was nobody there. Nobody 25 answered the phone. An'd that I thought that he was present ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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r 92'02 05 23 WRBmpb 1 in.the Saturday morning staff meeting where I made'the' 2 announcement for the whole staff to know. And particularly 3 the announcement that Leo Lessor. is going to continue on . in .
4 the evaluation and everybody is supporting him in that 5 activity.
6 0 That engineering analysis, though, changed the 7 company position --
8 A Yes.
9 0 -- 100 percent.
10 A Yes, it did. And I think that's an error on my 11 part. That's where I erred for sure.
12 0 Could the resident inspector have found out the
( 13 final analysis information from another source other than l 14 yourself?
i i 15 A Yes. l l
16 Q Any one of the individuals in Nuclear Engineering
( 17 or Reactor Engineering?
18 A It could have been any of those Reactor 19 Engineering individuals. It could have'been Leo Lessor 20 himself. There were a lot of them.
21 You know, he could also have come back and. asked 22 me to help, jog my memory that I hadn't told him. You.know, l 23 I may have been spoiled in the -- on how Steve DuPont did 24 business and started up the program, and Paul Byron had done 25 business. When he usually told him something and either i
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'92 02 06 24 WRBmpb 1 they asked a question or he told them to get something back 2 to him, and if they didn't do it they'd come back and remind 3 you and say, ' Hey, what's the story on this? What 4 happened?' 'Oh, I forgot; here's what happened.'
5 But there was quite a bit of activity going on on 6 that Friday and Saturday, both for me and for Mike Parker.
7 He was of f busy closing NRC open items, and there were other l
8 things going on at the plant. And I think we -- in 9 retrospect I think that's where I erred, in not getting back 10 to him.
11 0 Regardless of whether it was an error in 12 judgment, what I want to know is was there a conscious l 13 effort on your part not to notify the NRC of the final l
I ('
14 results?
15 A No, not knowingly. I did not knowingly not tell 16 them.
l 17 l 0 What makes you think that the resident inspector 18 was present at the July 6th meeting, the staff meeting?
l 19 A Because I remember seeing -- Well, I know that I 20 stated in here that I thought he was there. I believe now 21 that he probably was not.
22 The reason why I said I thought he was there is 23 because in every other -- in several of the other muetings 24 prior to that there was always someone there. So -- You 25 know, all those meetings run right together; they all look 1
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'92 02-07 25 7
WRBmpb 1 the same. All I could tell:you is I remember making the.
2 announcement, and I assumed that he was there.
3 BY MR. LANG: ,
4 Q Do you invite the NRC to your staf f meetings? =
5 A It's an open invitation.
6 Q Do the NRC, the residents here on site, do they 7 usually attend staff meetings?
8 A They had been attending them quite regularly up to the 100 percent license, and that's why I thought they.
9
)
i 10 were there on that particular day. And they have been i 11 attending regularly since then.
12 There may have been a couple of meetings right 13 there in the middle where they didn't attend, I guess.
14 Q Do you know if anybody attended on the 2nd, the 15 staf f meeting on the 2nd? i l
16 A I don't know. I can only tell you probably i 17 I because they had been.
18 But what Preston showed me was'at the end of the 19 meeting when everybody was getting up to go out. And it was 20 not part of the meeting; it was at the'very end. In fact it 21 was very close to being nine o' clock already and we had to ;
22 go from where we were at over to NOC.
2?
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O That's when Mr . Preston gave you the --
l 24 A The DER.
25 Q And it was not at the staff meeting-but ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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2 A Rig ht .
3 The staff meeting was in progress. After it was 4 over and we started to get up, before I could get out of my 5 chair he showed me that. He was sitting close to me. He 6 slid it over or handed it to me so that I could see it. It 7 was not discussed in the staff meeting. So there could have 8 been somebody there who would not have known it.
9 BY MR. KALKMAN:
10 0 Do you think it is coincidental that the shift 11 supervisor's log and the reactor operator's log do not 12 reflect the operator error on the 2nd?
13 A Do I think it is coincidental? I think the 14 answer to that question is yes', I think it is, because we 15 had a histor of very bad logs.
16 After that period of time we even got some places 17 where we got some events occurring on the plant that have 18 not been properly logged. So I think that is only 19 indicative of the f act that we were keeping very poor logs 20 as a rule. And it is a problem that we have taken some 21 action and have corrected in my opinion at this point.
22 But if you look at some of our logs at that 23 period of time, during that period of time on dif ferent 24 shifts they are cryptic, not full of a lot of good useful 25 information.
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g 97 02 09 27 WRBmpb 1 I find it particularly gross that there is no 2 mention at all of that sequence. But do I find it a 3 coincidence? I would say no.
4 0 Did you find the fact that there was no entry in 5 the shift supervisor's log or the reactor operators log 6 with the fact that the shift supervisor thought the entry 7 was --
8 A I find it very difficult to believe that my 9 nuclear shift supervisor was trying to hide the fact because 10 he wrote a DER. And I just can't understand if somebody who 11 was going to try to -- quote -- " cover up" what was doing on i
12 that he would write" a Deviation Event Report and tell
, 13 everybody that he had an out of sequence rod pull. I mean 14 that just doesn't make any sense. 1 '
15 And he did document it. He documented it on a 16 DER.
17 Q He documented an out of sequence rod pull?
18 A Yes. '
l 19 0 But he did not document the second issue.
1 20 A I believe the second issue -- in his mind the 21 reactor was not critical. He didn't pull the charts. He l
l 22 didn't even look at them. .
23 Q Wouldn't it have been logical to document that 24 Reactor Engineering reported that the reactor had gone 25 critical in a DER? '
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92 22 19 28-WRB.pb 1 A The DER probably could have -- certainly could 1
2 have and should have had lot more information on it. It had 1 3 incorrect information on it, as we later learned. You know, 4 I can... 1 5 It is difficult for me to -- You know, what we're 6 trying to get out of the DER process is'to document events..
7 We can come back later and evaluate them and put the meat on j 8 them. But ' ge t the event documented.
l 9 As far as I'm concerned he met that criteria by 10 getting it documented. But what he documented was.in 11 error. It had errors in it. It was in error in the fact 12 that he didn't have the right number of rods and it said,
-(
13 'We turned them to Position Zero-Zero,' when they went to 14 '0-4.' And it said it wasn't critical and it was critical.
15 And in the evaluation we learned all those things.
16 So the process worked. The event was 17 , documented. Maybe it wasn't documented in the log, but it 18 was documented on the DER. And the evaluation has since 19 pulled the information back out that was correct.
20 So I believe the whole process worked. It just 21 doesn't appear to work in the time frame that we would all 22 like to see it work, in a much shorter time frame. So we 23 have taken action to improve the logs.
24 BY MR. LANG:
25 0 What about the NSO's log? That had nothing in ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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12 02 11' 29 WRBmpb 1 there either. ,
l 2 A I know that.
1 3 Q That's an additional log that had nothing in
{
4 there. I 5 Q 'Two logs. NSS, NSO. The only one that had it 6 was the Reactor Engineering log, to my' knowledge, and that 7 was changed.
8 Q Don' t you ' find that not only it was -- If you 9 just regarded the criticality and just looked at the out of 10 sequence rod pull, wouldn't you expect even that to be 11 logged?
12 A Yes, I would expect it to be logged. I told you 13 . already that I thought it was gross that t.he event was.not 14 logged.
15 The question is do I think he was trying to cover 16 it up. And I'm saying if I was covering up I wouldn't have 17 , wrote a DER.
18 0 Do they generally log calls that they make to the 19 operating engineer in the middle of the night?
20 A To my knowledge, reading the logs, I do not see 21 those being logged. We are in the course now of trying to 22 encourage that they do document who they call. Either there 23 or on the DER there is a place for who was called, who was 24 contacted, to put down there who they did call. That is all 25 corrective action since then.
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'92 42 12 30 WRBmpb 1 The only thing I could say is that he may have ;
?
2 wrote the DER because Preston told him to. write a DER. And l 3 that was the other thing. He called Preston and Preston 4 told him to write a' DER and so he did. But.... I don' t 5 know. '
i 6 At that time I was experiencing problems'just 7 getting our events, DERs written. I had encouraged Preston l 8 that, for, example, on the reactor hatch-scrams, to do a-9 surveillance test to write a DER. So I was trying to get' j l 1.0 all events reported such that later on we can determine what i 11 was_significant and what were not significant.
12 Maybe that's what triggered Preston to say to 13 write a DER. It may be that the only reason he wrote one 14 was because he was told to. But I think in your line of I
15 questioning you're going to have to ask him what was going i
, l I
16 through his head. '
17 BY MR. KALKMAN:
18 Q Would you have reported the out of sequence rod 3 19 pull incident to the resident inspector if there hadn't been 20 controversy over the criticality of the reactor?
l 21 A Yes, because I consider it to be significant, or )
22 a serious event.
23 0 Why didn't you report it on the 2nd at the CARB 24 meeting?
25 A That's a good question. I don't know why.
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W RBmpb 1 You have ,to understand, Byron's mode -- You know, 2 informing the NRC was one of courtesy because it is not 3 reportable. i 4 On the 2nd after the CARB meeting -- It had been , -
5 Byron's custom to walk through the offices. And it tss at 6 those times that I said, 'Here, Paul, here are the t ings we 7 have done,' you know, that I know via CARB or by bt r ag 8 reported to me.' And he picks them up at staff meetings.
9 So we were not very formal in how we communicated 10 to the resident inspector. There wasn't a mechanism or 11 anything where I could say I'm going-to make a mental note 12 and call him.
13 I could answer your question by, yes, at the 14 first opportb.ity I saw Byron I would have told him about 15 it. It wasn't immediately run out and tell him now that we 16 did this because we had other events gcing'on all the time.
17 It was a series of things, a series of events, some more 18 significant than others. So we don't call him every time 19 something happens in the plant.
20 0 But what elevated the issue to the threshold of 21 making some type o( notification to the NRC?
22 A I think clearly the fact whether t'he reactor was ~
23 critical or not critical. The more we got into it --
24 Q And that was the element that --
25 A The more we got into this thing, the more we did ACE-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
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32 WRBmpb 1 the evaluation, the more we found out,-boy, we really-l 2 blundered here.- We didn't make a simple mistake, we made a 3 big mistake. i 4 You know, I think you have to go through some of 5 that and create your own awareness that you have a serious
! 6 problem that stimulates you to say, 'Well, I had better tell 7 the NRC what the hell is going on here.' We would rather be 8 in a mode of us telling you what our problems are rather 9 than you coming back and telling us, 'Well, I've heard this 10 somewhere, so what's going on'?
11 The bottom line is that I believe we did a very 12 poor job of informing the NRC. l l
13 Mr. Overbeck, have I or any other NRC
( Q 14 representative here threatened you in any manner or offered 15 you any rewards in returr. for your statement?
1 16 A No.
l 17 , O Have you given this statement freely and 18 voluntarily?
19 A Yes.
20 0 Is there anything further you care ~to add for the 21 record?
22 A Nothing.
23 Q All right. Thank you.
24 (Whereupon, at 3:17 p.m., the interview 25 was concluded.)
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t l
This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION in the matter of:
NAME OF PROCEEDING: INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW OF GREGG OVERBECK l l l l
1 DOCKE" NO.:
PLACE: NEWPORT, MICHIGAN DATE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 20, 1985 l
were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatery CW asion.
4Kitt) / $4)U t m zo) /
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