ML20237L554
| ML20237L554 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Comanche Peak  |
| Issue date: | 07/22/1986 |
| From: | Johnson E NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION IV) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20237F760 | List:
|
| References | |
| NUDOCS 8708200258 | |
| Download: ML20237L554 (142) | |
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I g Uh11EU STATES l NUCLEAR REGULATOFY COMMISSION .
IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:
INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW i
1 O .
. I, LOCATION: ARLINGTON, TEXAS .
PAGES: 1- 138 i
DATE: TUESDAY, JULY 22, 1986 I I
l
/ 4 g AG-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.
C#istw 444 North CapitolStreet Nhington, D.C. 20001 2, 8708200258 B70819 (202) 347-3700 PDR ADOCK 05000445 G PDR mom mca *
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SWORN STATEMENT i i
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1 ERIC JOHNSON J
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l l1 July 22,~1986 1 l .NRC Region IV Headquarters l J Arlington, Texas l
9:45 a.m., C.D.T. .
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l TAKEN BY: George Mulley REPORTED EY: Trisha Sims and l R. Patrick Tate TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 .j .
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. l 1 EgiC, JOHNSON, l 2
3 being first duly'svorn by the notary., teifified as 4 follows:
5 6 EXAMINATION
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7 BY MR. MULLXJJ J 8 Q. We'll go on the record. The time is I 1: 1
-9 9:45 a.m. on July the'22nd, 1986. We're at the 10 headquarters of Region IV NRC in Arlington, 11 Texas, t
12 Present is Mr. Eric Johnson, who is the * -
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13 Director of the Division of Reactor Safety.and g' .,
14 'Projecta for Region IV, myself, George Mulley, 15 Assistant Director from investigations, Office of 16 Investigating Auditor, and Steve Goldberg who is a
, 17 technical advisor for the Office of Inspecting l 18 Auditor, and the court reporter, Trisha Sims.
19 We're here today to discuss with s ..
20 Mr. Johncon concerns that have been raised to the L
21 office of Investigating Auditor concerning the l 22 manager.ent of the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power i 23 Station.
1 24 I Mr. Johnson, before we begin, can you 25 give us a resume of your background and your
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.x 4 l' experience here at Region.. N7 :. ,'
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2 A. I graduated f r o m t iie U . ' S . Naval A q'a d *a my ,
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( 3 in 19677 served on active duty' for d e ig h t -y.e a r eg;.( n, r
. 4 nuclear submarines; quali2Aed both as an. operator y a,
5 for the nucle'ar propulsion plants and as"an \ <N 6 engineer officer for rtan a g ing nuclear operations $
/r Came to. work in Region Ii' in' 19 7 5, 7
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8 December of 1975, as a reactor i n a pe'c tio r . Worked. '
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1L 9 in that position until mid-1979 whqt I went'to the y 10 OECD Nuclear Energy Agency as an adr: nistrato[ of
? s 11 theNuclearSafetyDivision.} Served there two j e
12 years in Paris, France, on loan from the NRC,,. <
4 13 Returned to Region I in mid '81','tdok up ,
i 4 14 the job as reactor inspector until the next spring i
"$j 15 time when I was promoted or made director of(the q th 5 E~' !
16 1. investigation staff, investiga$tsn and'qenforo,ement :h
( ? e 17 staff, and then became enforcene.nt o f f i c e r wn'c'n OI 18 was f rmed. ,' ,
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- 19 Turned that job over in mid '83 and
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20 became technical assistant to the divis, ion
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21 Director in this division. 'Was%then made. branch
"% s.q 22 chief the following October. Served as branch
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j_ 23 chief until last fall when I was made4 d:p::t;;.-4 Y h +
24 director when u+e position was authorized and .e -
25 then made director in February of thi'e 4-ee t ye'ar. -
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.g .1 Q. During your tenure at R e g'i o n , I V , have you )
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r' 2 .,been involved with the Comanche Peak project?
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i' 3 A. b Invol ement wii:h Comanche 1 Peak h'als been -
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- 4 t~ on again off.again. There was a period of time I * '
!g.1 ,f , .h A"tIO I^% MMM .
3 ,5 when we only had one br anch , chief /, and I was that '
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\' B person. As a consequence, I had responsibility
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, 7' over all the plants in the region. J
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,8 l Thet/ lasted some' number of months. It s - 1
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9 seems .like six, seven months; and then, of course, i
=b.% T Was stkk Aou; -
10 Aad"4" 'm the acting direct'or ;.e.,iti a in u .T. .
]y 11 November when the sacumbant left,3 picked up.his -- i inc6 Ad 12 d u t i e s w h i'c h/ wewe r e ;.111 ;, r e direct oversight of. -
13 SA. Comanche Peak Task, Group, as we call it, j 14 that's based down at the site.
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[ 15 Q. Are you aware of any problems that some )
16 of the inspectors who have been,out at Comanche .
a 17 Peak have;had with, I guess you could say, j L
18 Region IV's management concerning inspection j 19 findings?-
l 20 Are you aware of any dissent by any of 21 the inspectors?
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22 A. Yes. I rean, that's an obvious question 1 I A6 (u.MM r
(;) 23 to answer. The/ reports that were coming-out-of
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24 there, of coursa, are pretty involved and have to I
, 25 required a great deal of effort +n puttml+g them I
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3 ,
._., y l' together. -
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2 They basically /f: 11 into three groups: ~~
3 Operations under Dennis Kelley; construction I under -
4 Shannon Phillips; and then the Comanche Peak 5 Response Team follow-up activities, and that's Ian 6 Barnes who is putting that together.
7 The problems that have been of'most 8 concern to us have'been the ones coming out of the Sidt ~
9 construction 44+t. Starting last November when I
. 10 had to take up duties as acting director, Tom-11 Westerman came to me and was explaining the ko aud Tow 12 difficulty /4&+1 had with these inspection reports, ~~
13 with the quality of the findings, with the quality 14 of the writingp( " ---
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15 I guess it was December of '85 he Nst.ussa.0 w;h of %a Movte k sttI-t r p t,. _
16 /br ught me a drafb'. He'd been discussing the w;% Sbnw fidlQt k SMth, mt 17 November SRI construction report /and was so 18 frustrated with it that I asked him to give me a 19 copy of the draft of that thing, that I'd like to 20 read it, which I did; and I made some comments on 21 the report, nt it back downhJ Shah fNIlIf bM -
j 22 I think you probably have that in the 23 records.
24 Q. What report number?
25 A. Whatever the November SP! report is.
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1 Q. That'would be 85/16/137 2 A. Right.
1 3 Q. Bere it is right here. -
4 A. This is a typed version. What I marked hadwrem .
up was /s crething ;ff the det a,etrix p r i n t e r, 5 ~~~
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6 Q. I guess just to establish, that is the j 7 inspection report that we're talking about?
8 A. Yes. That's 85/16-13. There were a 9 couple of items in the body of the report that I 10 regarded as just totally unacceptable. /Th:y het bs u:::hb4J1 11 o'verstated conclusions and technically wrong 5 A ----
12' . incomplete findings.
13 %L eM umdAOS.
One involved NAMCO switches that/were 14 indeterminate; and we were, I b e l i e ve', in the l
1 15 initial report, going'to cite them : :::: thing j l
16 for it.
I 17 And my comment on that was, "You 18 obviously lack some piece of information. Go get j
- - 19 that piece of information and make this teol'Mes A i 20 determined."
l- N.sw h gwen 21 Either/th;j'se acceptable and they remain 1
22 in the system and there's no violation, or they're i
23 not acceptable and we cite the licensee. We don't 24 cite them for some in-between thing of 'I don't l
25 know whether it's acceptable or not."
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ywsL 1 There was a / principal issue that woe 2
Q ' fW involv4es 50.55(e) reports /which- there was a L
3 citation offered up by the inspector for , failure*
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4 to' provide 3auditable trailAp::hr;-- 50.55(e)
%h wru1&. a.llew % is(m4tw fo jo 5 packages.A C e i = 0. t o one point, one place, and
'6 saybey, "Here it is. Here's all the 7 documentation."
8
'The licensee is required to maintain nadA .
9 records, but th;3 n; 7; ;- -- we/ require they be in a -- -
10 particular form that would make it convenient for I 11 inspection. ,
12 We had a meeting with the utility on that {
13 issue and quite frankly told them that at the end 14 of the' day before they got their license, we would l j 15 follow up on all these things. .
16 They had the choice of either making it l l
17 im M m 1 convenient :f the--by making our3 time efficient; 18 and thereby allowing us to get done quicker, 19 because when they were done, you know, there was 1 20 gbing to be some period of time whe"n we were still l 21 going to be arryin m W ;4 Al M u4L fu u on these acftivities,w h M i t Ac.nr%s.lca wt. wM kWe. % MW. b WA- '
22 If they made that time as short as '
l 23, possible, they obviously reached the licensing 24 decision point sooner. We've had similar 25 discussions with most of our licensees.
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1 50.55(e) reporting seems to be one of I
2 those things that over the construction period of 3
U c. W VMGQ a plantrusually bring 4mg peop,1eg in three er four ~~-
a 4 times to talk about what are the time frames for 5 evaluating, "ct '; n e w, what are the kinds of things 6 that we want to see reported, how should they be l
7 reported, interim reports, and all of thoseetur et N. d 8 details a l .- i"e
" c$e. ah'The
. regulation itself is fairly l
9 broad and just lays out the basic reporting l 10 requirements.
l w Les(V o4 b W 'S l 11 So, I wrote on that report [that I l 12 thought, number one, it was unsat. It needed to as (resw N
13 be rewritten. There weren't violations theref We I'D f** *
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14 had an indeterminate status left on what seemed to 15 be an important piece of equipment, and I was also j
16 disturbed that it gave the flavor that the senior 17 resident was not spending as much time looking at
'9 18 hardware items and ongoing construction activities j 19 as he was with records and records review.
20 The job of the SRI a t /(A. ha. site in 21 construction involves three major activities.
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22 a You've got to look at plans and procedures and the 23 underpinnings that are created to carry out the p1 24 work.A You've got to look at the work in progress, Nv4 25 and3you've got to look at the records that support
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1 that-thing. ,
q 2 If you start focusing too much in one of I
3 those areas, you're obviously letting ths.-other-
'4 . areas suffer; and we've gone't~hrough ---Tom had 5 gone through a big discussion with the senior !
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6 resident-for construction.on a1 previous report vaetons,i s ts M O#
7 that involvedArecords-vault, things like that M koldMNb f S;da i y b of. m $ot q % 4rac h . a 9 imes 8 Here we were into more records 4 you 9 _know. The only. hardware' item was a NAMCO switch,
' 10 and that'wasn't even made determinate.
11- So, I wrote on the report that-I thought' 12 the SRI should spend less-time apparently sitting 13 and looking at records and more time out in the i
14 field looking at what was going on. l l
15 You got a major construction effort 16 ongoing.- There's lots of things to do. !
17 Q. This was a draft report? !
l 18 A. Yes. So, we sent it back down to him and l
~19 asked him to make those things complete and to i 20 rewrite the other things which wer"en't violations.
21 Q. You really have said that Tom Westerman. ;
22 brought this report to your attention?
23 A. He brought it to my attention.that he was 24 having to deal with a very difficult report which 25 contained similar kinds of findings or similar
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?7 1 - characterizations of apparent findings.that he'had 2 to deal with in the previous. month's report and.
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3 th'at he was just virtua11y reaching the ehd of'his 4' rope.
4 5 He obviously needed support'from 6 management.
7 Q. Did he agree or did you. discuss with him 8 your conclusions after reviewing the draft report? l 9 A. No. I just gave it back to him and said
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l 10 to send this back down t'o the si'te. I-said, 'You 1
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11 can disagree if you wish" or I pr'obably.said rw%%% .'
12 something along that liner but th,at's my r :d4ne_
13 of it. .
14 Q. And the information on your conclusions 15 were drawn strictly from what.was written in.the <
16 draft report?
17 A. 'Yes, that's right. If there had been.--
bey --
18 I assume that there was3 information. If I wasn't 19' reading it correct,.or if I didn't understand what 20 , I was reading, somebody,would have gotten back to i
21 me; s 22 Q. (Dy'Mr. Goldberg) I had a couple of 23 things. Mr. Johnson, there are two issues and I 24 _ wonder if.they need a little bit of 25 clarification.
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1 One, you said that the SRI was not l 2 focusing broader,, didn't look at the other areas 3 that he's supposed to look at. Second arha was 4 the work he had done, what the quality of the work i
5 in terms of the findings. and the way it was 1 6 written and the technical input to those 7 findings. !
l 8 The report.you were looking at, were you j 9 critizing,him because'he was looking at the wrong
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10' things or were the things he was looking at, he 11 was coming up with things that you didn't agree 12 with him from 'a technical perspective? I'm not ]
1 13 sure what you meant when you were talking. j 14 A. There are two issues.
15 Q. There are two. issues there.
16 A. The first is the technical content of 17 what's there in the report. The 50.55(e) review 18 that was done, I believe, was almost totally done 19 by the consultant that was assigned over there, 20 McCleskey; and I can certainly understand that he l
21 wouldn't be as expert in 50.55(e) and reporting as 22 you would expect from an NRC inspector.
23 Certainly a senior resident should then 24 take those apparent findings and say, "No, this is 25 correct; and this is isn't correct." Especially a '
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I man who has already been a senior resident at 2 5^tther sitep,.has bee,n an NRC supervisor, was being W CA.
l 3 paid as a GS-15 mS/ e-eme s a ve pay situati!cn. --
4 Be should certainly have that kind of 5 p tFs p e c t i v e , and that's what we require; and 6 that's what we get out of the people that are 7 assigned to Ian Barnes. .
8 You have that one issue. The second j 9 issue was that this was a continuation of a previous mon t h/.
M yk1Opb wAs elmod h% op.
- 10 Now, we have a two-month period 11 where the SRI was not reporting that he was 12 looking at ongoing constr'uction activities.
l 13 They were beginning to pull cable, 14 electrical cable. That's a fairly important SMk h4M-15 activity. He/e^a*4""=A *n pursuekthat issue. --
16 In January, when I had an opportunity to wih The. 0%tlig 17 go down there for a mee ting /, we talked to them, 18 among other things, about 50.55(e) reporting,Awd 19 recent proposals to make 50.55(e) and Part 21 20 reports more compatible.
21 It's still an ongoing discussion, but
- 22. that's been a problem for licensees: How do I 23 deal with these two that are so similar but yet 24 have slightly different requirements?
resow %t&
25 I brought the/ branch chief down with me o
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IlAk O 1 End/:T'the branch chief of the project branch, j 2 which 0":ntually comanche Peak's activities a r e CV4dvik td5
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3 going to come back under the branch c, hie 6c' 4 Be wanted to get refamiliarized with the 1
5 plant. He'd been -- he'd done some work with the l 6- TRT'down at Comanche Peak.-
db H e / wee-t h e d i r e c t o r . o f !
7 the: training center at Chattanooga,; Georgia, and 8 had come back in October. I l
9 So, in January I asked him to down come 1 10 down with me to get an' opportunity to get around'
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11 the plant and see_what the' status was. 'We took --' l 12 in the morning, we got down there in the morning 13 and we took the senior resident for operations,
' 14 -Leu uim sai. as around the plant, through the 9hus \n ~'
J5 control room, other pfee-- cf-the aux 111ary -
16 building and lookdat what was. going on.
AN.kt 17 A I had a meeting with1Shannon Phillips 18 over a memo that he had prepared on Bisco fire
- 19 seals just before lunch, and then I went on to # hu.
- 20 fo.5T(e) af AM4 ameeting with the TUGCO f olks/.- Jim Gagliardo,4KL l
21 branch chief, went.around the plant with Shannon 22 .
that afternoon. .
23 Jim asked him some very. basic questions 24 that he asks when he goes and visits any of his I 25 plants, things like: What's the percent. complete l
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1 on Unitt II? Shannon didn't know~that. What's'the 2 status'of the we,1d.ing program?. He wasn't familiar
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L3 -with'the welding program. .
4 They visited various safety related rooms 5 in.the aux 111ary building. Shannon couldn't 6 what..the rooms were except by referring i d en ti f y$Tb's -
7 to his Ap+Be that he was carrying with him, 8 He didn't understand i
i didn't have a 9 comprehension of the importance of the equipment vadeus 10 in /bh*4 r o omh a n d a s a consequence, I can only 11 extend that and say if you don't understand that,6shmeq dc7 12 this is a safety injection pump and FIS safety'related j
13 and this is important, then are'you going to do 14 the inspections that are needed on that piece of 15 equipment to make sure that you're carrying out 16 the.25f 12 program properly? , g g.q 17 I was very disappointed./ You ought to 18 talk to Jim about that. Jim can give-you the !
19 direct input on that, but-that's the~ feedback I l 1
20 got from him.
21 I had a conversation with Shannon 22 following that meeting down at the site. He-23 .ca lled me like the next day, gave me a story 24 about, well, he didn't want to be inaccurate on 25 ~ the percent complete for the unit and so, you 4
e
l 1 know, he didn't want to say "about 72 percent."
1
'2 So, he gave me whatever it was, I w wik.ht< p %t 3 7 0. 4 3 pe r c e n t/. When we asked what pe r #=cE lad 4 complete 3wa[kk was/A+ 8'0,M.t#
85, 5;; 4. bn h e abait{44g.,s s' , fercent d no 15
-5 complete 44 a guess, depending upon how you want i
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6 to count it. ]
7 Q. You mentioned a memo-that you were !
8 discussing with him on Bisco. Was it this memo 9 that came out from Phillips through Westerman to G%h -
k 10 Gary 4eek? , j 11 Could that possibly have been the memo? ;
12 He wrote several memos on Bisco. That was one.
13 We have a few others. I have another one here, 14 and I have another one here.
15 A. We sent a memo forward. There were. ,
16 earlier drafts.
17 Q. Here's a memo you sent out to I&E.
18 A. Right. This would be the final version 19 that we asked him to prepare even though he still 20 didn't fully follow our instruction's. I just i 21 wanted the facts laid out. He was coming to L 22 conclusions which aren't necessarily supported by 23 the facts.
24 The original memo was going to be .from 25 Shannon Phillips as senior resident to inspector i-
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y 42<A 1 for Comanche Peak str.aight to Gary Eack, branch 2 chief at headquarters. .
3 'That's not the way you do bysineht. You ;
4 send it up through your management. It seems to 5 be a practice that he's come to use over"the 6 years, communicating around his management. That ..
A bMen wA d W broadA Mrd 7 , happened me 4 South Texas.with Bill SeidleAwho would, 8 regularly get calls',from Harry Thornbergfwho was 9 at I&E headquarters,tbat Shannon had called him on 10
%+ wd k issues, and thir ::s the first Bill seidle had ~~ i I
11 heard about it.
In iha
. 12 When Shannon was/:t 50 i::rch ,EQ section EvMe direder 13 here, sed to, again, get i ssues sent 14 4%skNA !
back to him from headquarters bbe4 Shannon had
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15 gone right around 16 Even o.n this issue of. findings in reports
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17 that in his opinion hadn't worked m646 the way he 18 would have liked br, he's failed to allow 19 management here in the region to deal with those.
20 He has not brought them to me. M=da't wMsd M km 21 cer: -- Tf he%sgeme happy with the way I was '
22 handling them, even if he had brought them to ne',
23 he could still go to the regional administrator.
24 That didn't occur.
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25 Theoriginal/memothatcameuptous i
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I requested an.OI investigation. You don't requ'est .
2 an OI investigation of the chief of the v e n d'o r' a n d 3 quality assurance branch. ,
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I brought that/ package over, ine'ludFng 5 the ..mv i mm d i o i. 19, like the next day,.'that 6 afternoon, 'whatever, within'a very short period.of AW 7 time; to Mark Emerson who .is .the/ allegations 8 coordinator an d Do n Dr is k o11~, w oT iuu 'qah.
9 I caught'them both together; and'I said, 10 "Here, read this. Do you see enough~information 11 here that would warrant initiating an OI 12 investigation?"
13 The answer was, "No. It looks like a '
_ a 'I h<ldLA h . xs 14 vendor problem. I-444 a s k Gary 4ae* to put Bisco -
15 WD down on the list for inspection and g%s h:::wo :::%Ohsome Ng%f*M
'W 16 of the things that we would_like inspected when-17 Vy:w&er M
- sed NN 4 seen occur at Comanche 2e there,Athat we've 18 Peak."
19 That's ultimately the thrust of what we fosdble 20 are'trying to get at here 3 +# (' eld N"dMC. MN A .
21 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) On-that' memo, did 22 Phillips --'are you aware of whether or not 23 Phillips received any instruction from Westerman 24 to write that directly to headquarters?
25 A. Say that again.
1 4
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1 18 l l
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1 Q. The memo that you were just talking about 2 'that'Phillips went and wrote directly.
4tdk 3 A. Proposed to write directly to Ga y Feet. ---
4 Q. Right. Are you aware of any instructions 5 that Westerman may have given him to write the i 6 memo in that fashion?
l 7 A. No, I'm.not aware of those; and Tom l 8 wouldn't have. That's not the way we do business, 9 and Tom is very careful about channeling' 10 information through management.
11 Q. As a result of this plant tour, did you l
12 discuss with Shannon his qualifications, his 13 experience in construction and whether or not he 14 should stay at the site?
15 A. No. No. i, told -- you mean in terms of I l 16 staying at the site? No, there was no discussion 17 about whether I felt he was qualified or not 18 qualified and should, therefore, be removed from 19 the si,te. .
20 '
I discussed the fact that I expected the 21 senior resident for construction to get out in the 22 plant and look at construction activities that l
l 23 were ongoing.
l 24 We have all sorts of people in the region 25 that can sit down and look over paper. If I've l
-1 :gotialguy there.living and working and his 2 day-to-day assignment is at the site, I want him p 3., to spend most-of his time-looking at, thin ~gs that l
4 were going on, the things we can't see'from the 5 regional office.
- 6 That's what the resident inspector is his I told 7 there f or , A the eyes and ears-of the NRC. ;
%t.
8 him to get out in'the plant and de that, that 4 9 there was a lot of electrical work going on. He 10 said, " Gee, I don't feel very comfortable on-11 electrical stuff." -
12 I said. "All right. Use Dennis Kelley.
13 He's an electrical engineer. He's at the site.
14 Be's the senior resident for operations. Ask him 15 to come over and give you a hand in what to look .
16 for. If you need-any other expertise that you l 17 don't feel comfortable-with, give us a holler.
i 18 We'll look around and get you whatever help is 19 needed. Get out there and start getting ,
20 knowledgeable about those things."
21 d. How many times or what would the split-l- 22 be, do you think, for the. resident inspector 23 between looking at quality assurance records, 24 things like that, and looking at. hardware?
I 25 A. If I take_the model of the operating-I t
20 ,
I plant, look at the inspection program that's l paa 2 defined for the senior resident,s resident l
3 inspector, in terms of observation versus;'those 1
4 other modulec that are routinely assigned to 5 region-based inspectors, in th; :::: cf the 1
6 operating plant it probably pushes 80 percent I
l 7 ob s e r va ti o n ,g4k hdahswalk down of the systems, monthly I l l
8 maintenance observations, surveillance 9 observations, control room observations, and tvtu*d"I9 -
4 IS !
10 20 percent of scae ovuL vf/ paper review.
1 11 For the senior resident of construction, l l 12 it's probably not much different from t, hat. I'd *
! 13 be surprised if it were less than two-thirds 1
14 observation an :ne-third paper, recognizing that
- 15 there are a lot more unique processes that go on :
I 16 and you're going to have to look at some of the 17 procedures that go along with that in addition to 18 the work in progress.
(dm b to Kt.
19 I would expect 3a daily tour, pick out 20 whatever important activities are going on, read 21 the 'pr oc edu r e for them and go out and observe 22 them.
23 Q. And do you feel by doing it this way, 24 that the resident will be able to make a judgment 25 concerning how things are --
it seems to me that i
i
, gi-
)
. 1 1 if he's only looking at a piece or two of
-2 hardware, how is he able to apply what he sees to 1
3 all the hardware he's.not looking at? I' .
4 A. We do an inspection by sampling. We've 5 got to look at activities that are going on right 6 now.
7 You cannot rely' totally on record review, l
8 totally.on just looking at plans and procedures; i
9 and the job of the SRI being assigned there is the 10 eys and ears of the NRC.
11 That has been defined by the b un p % q b t (5AT pNbu) 12 commissioners. So, that's what he's3 principally g ZsW l 13 there for. The 15 .10 p r o g r a m , the way it's 14 written for the . resident inspector, th:y ::y it's 15 clearly 80 percent being out there and looking at j 16 things that are going on and 20 percent are the 17 records.
18 You have all sorts of regional people 19 that go in and look at QA programs and look at the
.)
20 , records and look at maintenance and look at the 21 re$ords of completed maintenance; but those guys 22 just coming in for a week can't get that flavor of 23 the ongoing maintenance that the resident there Adb 24 can observe. The Le~fhe same kind of.thinggat the 25 construction site.
, i 22 -
j
-I
,o 1
I 1- Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) I think we're talking '
2 about the 25 712. program which is the construction I 3 pro' gram. There may be a slight difference > between <
'4 the two. [
i 5 In-the sense of this plant, which.is a l 6 little bit unique in,a sense because of its 7 history of where things were and what things were-l
'8 looked at over a time, is your judgment at all 9 influenced by the fac't that the modules that would 10 usually be covered which would be paper review may-11 or may not have been covered in the time frame 12 that they should have been and consequently how ;
!- 13 the resident's job and what he should look at may 14 have to be influenced by the modules.that were or 15 were not covered as well as it should have been in-16 the past?
17 A. Not at all. The senior resident 18 inspector for construction down there is in charge l l
19 of executing the 25 712 program on Unit II. '
l 20 Unit I is complete. It's finished, and.
21 they're now going.through a reverification because 22 there was obviously a quality assurance program 23 break-down pr:g: r "--=6d^un on the part of the. . - -
24 licensee. Otherwise, we wouldn't be there with 4stleW4 25 the CPRT3 activity.
C e
f u_________.______________ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ . _ _ _ . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . . . , _ _ _
L .
]
, j i
l 1 That activity is being followed up by Ian l-2 Barnes and the C.omanche Peak Task Group effort.
3 There's still a plant being built down thEre. I l
l 4 expect a senior resident for construction to be 5 out there observing that plant being built.
6 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) But isn't the sample ,
7 size that's being described in the module somewhat 8 influenced by the internal controls.and the I
9 strength of the internal controls,that the utility q
. 10 has on site?
11 In other words, the modules can't be i r
12 taken in a vacuum. You have to look at them in i 13 real time; and to some extent, isn't there some 14 interplay here between what the program'is 15 describing and what the actual condition of the i
16 plant is at the time? '
i 17 A. If you're asking me do I have the 18 authority to rewrite the 25f12 program, no.
1 19 Q. I didn't ask you that.
20 A. The lessons that are being learned from 21 Unit I in terms of the effect that quality 22 assurance deficiencies had on the plant and its 23 construction jand perhaps its design are being j
cfAT 24 reviewed under the activities of the 44ec. We're ---
25 following up on those.
i l' ., ,
24-tatt
- y i 1 As we find things in that, l we carry those 1
2 over to Unit II.. Those. inspections are going on I 3 right now. The other part that the senioI 4 resident'for construction down there is to carry 5 .out is to get out there and look a t . t h e re9N n*
L 6 construction activities that are going on in 7 Unit II.
8 The'1essons, the quality assurance stdt 9 lessons, that we're learning from the Unit I Jy44, 10 we carry over to the other side.of the house.
11 Cable tray support inspections were not done l 12 adequately on Unit I. There's some rework that l
~
13 needs to be done and inspection that needs to be l
14 done.1^5.M' N v 5M i A O N b ^Lb W N b N *
- l . hv4f1 i l 15 We went over3with a team. assigned by Ian ]
I 16 Barnes to carry those same lessons over to verify ]
17 that those deficiencies didn't exist in Unit II.
babam 4h feebltes and VMI .
18 Is there a relationship Yes, there's a l
l 19 relationship. That piece is b,eing carried out by l
20 the Comanche Peak Task Group. They're the ones 21 assigned to look at quality assurance problems,-
22 the loss of assurance that has occurred down I 23 there; and we have to reestablish that assurance ;
24 if there's ever to be a liscensing decision made.
25 We are going to carry these lessons.over
, i
. 2d
, 'S
.g I- '1' to the Unit II . bath u O MSN N"* ~
l cLtd.Mt occu.c t%Lu-l 2 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) Get back to the- j l
l 3 question I raised earlier, your comments.fou..were L
i 4 making on draft report of 85/16-13, were you at ;
5' all influenced by the fact that Mr. Phillips may 6 .have~been in'the wrong' area and should have been
.7 putting more emphasis in these other' areas in l 8 terms of how you were viewing the work he was .
i 9 doing or was it because -- you're bringing ~up most j 10 often in the. discussion we're having here where he i 11 should be and where he's not as opposed-to , '
12 findings that he hhd.
13 A. Because of the nature of this
- 14 investigation, I have not been permitted to deal 15 as manager with that issue; and I think.that's '
Mrght 16 depriving the NRC of aApiece of its. ability to get I 17 a job,done down there.
18 In the most recent report that'sAwritten, O ct 19 Mr. Phillips has managed to insert himself~over '
uc h % CPET ,
20 into one of the ISAP a r e a s/. The process should go T,f we 21 the other way. /We learn something f r o m I S AP s/essd. Mf51 ttu. fa.um wtr to W'd I.
22 You know what an ISAP is. I'm sure 23 that's already been explained.
It' covers a imphima 24 particular area. It's/ examined., They write a 25 results report. If there are lessons that come k__-______.______._____.______________________._____.______.__._ . . _ _ . _ _
, so .
1 out of that from Unit I weaknesses, we are going 4r n k d W1sA i 2 to carry'those over to-Unit II. We don't go/in 3 with quality assurance. records and all thit' stuff 4 a nd mu d dy t h e w a t e r h oddM te 'N.Y M O') W O vf M Wit I hk h W-5 We have people that are assigned to 6 follow the qualityfassurance records,that's~an 7' ISAP. Cliff Hale is working.on that thing. j r va+E, d 8 If I've-go't a resource over hereA I'd bc 9 ,4using that' resource effectively, not being l
10 redundant to the process over here in Unit I.
11 Let's get outitere and look at the things that are l 12 going on in Unit II. That's a plant that's being *
~
l 13 built. -
l*
14 Am I g'oing'to have to run the same kind L
15 of massive task force at the end because we don't l
l 16 look at this and don't look at that?
l 17 Q. Going back to the 50.55(e) issue, this 18 was an issue that Phillips brought back on the table, 85/16-13. I 19 Do I get a sense that you feel 20 that could be more thorough or probably covered q l
21 through these other-processes and that the 1 l
22 resident inspector should be off doing what he's I 23 charged to do=and these other people would be 24 doing --
l 25 A. The 50.55(e) issue was failure to provide ,
i i
i' .
I
, , w, .
3 1 ~ records i~n'a. form convenient to the inspector. ,
2 There will be a f'llow-up o on each of the 3 50.55(e)'s; and.that follow-up will ,i n cidd e '
4' looking at what the utility found wrong, what the 5 fix was for that, and was the fix implemented in
-)
6 the plant. j I
7 Q. Who would be doing the follow-up? l t
8 A. Now, the har singular issue on 50.55(e),
, 9 follow-up is part of.a routine 25 f12 program.
10 'There are still some open issues on. Unit I. ;
11 Th a t 's seen a small piece, and it doesn't conflict 12 or it's not redundant,necessarily,to +.he effort of l 13 the Comanche Peak Task Group. -
14 If there are things in doing an ISAP'that e W pM m6 m aPuWcular h 15 satisfy 350.55(eW I don't intend to inspect it 16 twice. We'll take credit for it just as you would 17 for a CAT team inspection or some other special' ]
d 18 inspection that satisfied requirements'for a ?
19 routine program.
20 Q. So, getting back to Phillips' original 21 finding on 50.55(e), was that within his scope to
.1 22 be looking at that area-or not?
23 A. I'm not --
24 Q. Back to the time when he had that 25 finding, should he have been in the area looking
, , 28 1 at'50.55(e) as an issue or not?
2 A. That's not --
I don't believe you're b-3 as' king an. appropriate questien. Is it in the -
4 larger scope of his job function? Yes, clearly.
5 Is the finding that h'e was trying to 6 portray an adequate finding? .No, it's not.
7 Records are not required to be held i~n a form that 8 make it convenient to audit.
. 9 Was he carrying out those things that he 10 should be carrying out? For several months he's 11 involved with the records vault and various 12 deficiencies in that. He's involved with
>k 13 50.55(e), not technical 3 issues involved in 14 50.55(e), whether they were implemented in the 15 field; but they didn't have the records here in a I
w M L dL N est. b 16 nice trail going through that3 1 ::n sit down at l 17 one location and just carry through on the thing. 1 18 That tells me that he's missed the point 19 on a big important piece of his job down there at I
20 Comanche Peak. I certainly wish that we weren't i (i.e.. ETA \Muke%M 21 going through'all of t hi s/. gI could deal with that ohwk, t
22 issue, and I could instruct the man to go out in i
23 the field and inspect hardware. l 24 Q. Let me give you one more example.
25 A. Let me continue. In January after my ;
l
y l
a <\
1 1
. discussion with him, obviously it must have had an 2 effect.
If you read the report for the next % d (f6/*d 3
- Mth, there was a great deal of inspect [on out in .
4 the field, looking at some welding that was going 5
on, looking at some emble twy terminations.
6 Q y .-
I though,t maybe I,got[the meshage sacross
- 7 to the individual,that there's three parts to his 8 job, and been' apparent 1'y neglecting.one S important part.
- 10 Q. Okay. .
,As I recall in the earlier
- 11. inspection report -- I don't know if you were 12 involved with 85/07-05 where he was looking a.t the '
.1 l 13 records area.' /
14 Be reviewed the area which was what is 15 the FSAR or Secti'on 17.1 description for records !
l 16 in the QA manual and in't,erms of the FSAR.
17 Do yod recall that issue?
You might 18 not. .
19 A. I'm not going to be able to speak to the 20 specifics on the issue, whether.it has validity or 21 does not have validity. I will say that k5/07-05 '
22 did receive a lot of attention from management.
23 It started with coming to .-
24 '
me and saying, " Gee, some of the things that Del 25 % % ec19td wesiw eF % N.pek Norman had 3 have been' changed.' 5 e
I e
e
\.
1_._.
1 .
I said, "That's interesting.
, Let's have 2 a meeting about.that.' '
We did.
3 Ian Barnes, Westerman, Ray Hall, myself, 4 '
sat down and went 5 through these issues. I.made the' admission that .
1 apparently we hadn't gotten back to
'7 thnt there were some things that weren't 8 DNtshms technically right l'n the report that'he,$ ended up 9 having to change. We' may not have gotten back to 10 hinko s%E MO N " *
- 11 ksk .
\ Apparently. Tom 4ee.had A quite a bit of
\ 12 an .sv4 kt.
\ discussion with him/ wasn't happy with the 13 interpretations that were made,, our expert code l 14 interpretations. sm I believe the issue was a 15 wktb d spool.Piecogarriv&at at the site with a stamp that -
l 16 said everything i's okay with the exception of the 17 y
hyrdro. Normally what you do is string all of the l 18 3 pieces together, the pi; , and byrdro the whole 1 pa 19 thinga an%s d the A ANI goes through and does his 20 inspection and then you certiffed6 it completely.
21
.It involves -- the particular wording in 22 the code revolves around whether you're talking 23 about a subassembly versus a system. It's that -
24 sort of thing.
25 Ian Barnes had reviewed that thing and as I
u ' ,, ,
FC emi - um-uma
. 31 + x, '
n a
L ,
3- 1 3 % . ,
1 a code expert said, "This i interpretation isn't- ,
2 right.". I think it- was an unresolved item that 3 got dropped out. . We later put o 4
contact vith Bob Bosnkekj who explained /to him -- ^~ !
\
5 Bob Bosnd.ck sits on the' ASME Code committee. He kg 6 is clearly the agency expert in that area. 75 7
Del still wanted something in writing
]
8 from Bob Bosnick; and my tromment to on that 9 was, you're an inst : tor. Mr. Bosnd.ck 1n ,
10 the agency experk in thM srea. k He has informed
\ '* f 11 you of the interpretation. Therefore, you've been )
12 informed. You now understand.'
s i
1
{
l 13 '
i Now, the appropriate thing is -- and It
$ i
- y' 14 aske -M to do this for he'. Again,
.{
15 because of this3 process, I haven't been able to 16 get back to him to make sure he is carrying that 17 i
out is -- to write to 1&E and suggest that they 18 add guidance to that particular module that Del
. 19 was dealing with which will define the i 20 requirements.
21 You've educated the individual 22 inspector. Now, let's educate the' rest of the NRC 23 inspectors. '
I 24 Apparently,.it was lacking because you, 25 had one individual who couldn't make the .
A M
'q
_x x--
k s
-t.
- j
.e .
I i !
t .= .
, 1 interpret.ation. So, we had quite a bit ~of !
2 discussion on that- revolving around. Del Norman's f
3 particular probled. ;-
l
, s 4 Subsequent to that, I got together a l 1
ws.%' )
3 , , , 5 bo'ard of people in the r e g i o n g ^ ' 'q d f- Bill --
1 1 t- 1 I 6 Seidle', JiniGagliardo, and myself; and I had Tom s AI 'c 7 Eesterman go through each cf the 3 reports that
'-A -"at"=A ~ )
8 .:pper ..tly had gone;through a number )
wWdA %WMR .Q 9 of..changeryandafors various reasons,s At wu , findingsg_were _ j er 10 changed, didpped,4r e w o r d e d ,q uet,3 to take us through -
, we 11 the evolution, what was the fin a l/, what's your i
12 thought process that.gets you from the original to -
13 the final versionj to make sure that we weren't 14 being frivoloca on this stuff, that we had a 1
5 u 15 technical basis for t h e s e g %e h i n ~ 's .
16 rneus We went through that3over the course of a 17 couple of afternoons and satisfied ourselves that AG that indeed we did have a technical basisk ud %f-*
l 1
l
'19 Our thinking was based in regulation and 20 requirements and'how these t h in g's de s-a Aut g l 21 inteeproted.,.
22 Q. ( It y M r . Mulley)' Since we're talking j l
23 about that inspectf.on report, at what point did i 24 you becoce involved with 07-05? !
25 A. I think it was! late February, the 25th or
%M M 7- ^ @
l .
l
y- .<
FAAAAdE Wehad.[ meeting 4around the 25th of I something.
2 February. I seem to recall it was the 25th.
3 Q.
pkA 'e:c it was already out? .
ie . ,
4 A. e it was already out. I probably - - - - --
5 signed the report as the. acting director. After i 6 it had gone through the chain of review with
.f.:~
7 Nr. Noonan and the lawyers in ELD, it comes back 8 down to the region for issuance, yo,u know.
9 After the report has been through that 10 far, you know, I signed it. There were no big red 11 marks on the thing that had warning bells, 'You 12 need to sit down with some ody on this because 13 there's still some questic about it.' ,
14 So, when rai' sed it to me 1 15 days later, I said, 'okay. Let's have a meeting's ,
l 16 and we scheduled one within a day or two of his i 1
17 conversation with me.
18 Q. Were you aware of any trend analysis that I 19 was conducted by Shannon Phillips involving going I c .-
20 back and looking at QA deficiencies by TUGCO that 21 was cited by NRC in trying to pick out whether 22 there was a trend that existed that maybe could -
23 account for some of the problems that the utility ,
24 was having with t,he QA program? .
25 A. I heard about that. I believe it's O
l I
3 .
I contained in 8'4-32.or was to have been contained.
2 There was also a memo that wrote to 3 me on the analysis of Comanche Peak ,and $nspection 4 reports and 766 and findings that had been done ,
ov4r !
5 4:ddse a y, e a r e a r lie r . .
6 5e finally got the memo to se beke in ..
7 January.
.~
I sent that to Tom. I said, "Take a 8 look at any of the', areas that may have been missed 9 and see if we need to, adjust the inspection j 10 program to go back and pick some of the stuff up.'
i
{
11 Therefore, there was some la et of trending in
{
1
, 12 that. ~
13 I think trending is very difficult to do 14 years after the fact because/ it depends'on -- I 15 think the trending that was done was not very -
16 precise. k 4%LitMS \
I t j u s t d r opp'e # bhee i nt o , ; - ~ ' : ; , o n e '
17 of the eighteen bins that are the QA criteria.
18 That doesn't get you to the. root cause of thevt*I*NH$-
19 bb6me. That gets you into a big block called
.20 records or a big block called failure to follow
\
I 21 procedure3 Ek.
22 It's not telling you why were those 23 deficiencies there, why did they occur. That kind 24 of analysis, you've got to do something more 25 like a -- I don't know if you're familiar with the a
1 technique of MORT, N-o-r-t. You've probably'been-2 through the training for that. .
3 You have to go through that. kind'of . . 4*k6t
- 0. int 4
to say, "Where is it that this is occurring 90X MN I ,
5 From what I understand when the report b 4 e. fu hAa A M e d .
6 went3wymmbbeme the, issue was raised somewhere in g 7 headquarters,whether,that was in an NRR review or 8 ELD review /.
T M4 M. . !
g 1 9
What is thiar thing telling us.h It 's ,
10 data, but there's no finding that can be drawn 11 from this thing. Thure's no c onclusion. It 12 doesn't help.
bamlowht What is it here for? I guessAit
. 13 e S bentually take out of the report3 aa&*l W N i am we @wasof i Ws tem. !
14 I j Q. Okay. From what I understand as a result I M.St.
l 15 of "'7: 2 and the problems that the inspection 16 discovered, that caused'the trend analysis and the 17 study to be done.
18 kthink, directed tnat to be 19 done, really two studies. One,,was directed by 20
'a~nd one was directed by Mr. Bangart.
21 One looked at at the NRC's performance in 22 inspecting QA. That was study.
23 Hunter's study, which I have e meno right here, is 24 a study of how the utility had performed. So, we 25 had really two distinct studies, o
i 1 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Is that the memo?
i 2 -
A. Yes. This is the memo. '
3 h. For the record, let me identify'That.
4 This memo was dated January 13, 1986, from 5
llllll toe. B. Johnson concerning NRC inspection .
, 6 program at Comanche Peak. .
7 This,,as you said, was intended to be put Tggftqg-8 in 07-05 and in the draft'. That was written up in sLI! .k 999, g, 9 44t af the one of the paragraphs and eventually taken .
Ag;% !
1
. ~- \
10 out.
11
. Do you k'now why -- apparently you weren't 12 :
involved in the deletion. .
13 A. No.
- 14 Q. Do you know why they ahentually decided i 15 to drop that paragraph out of the report? , >
16 A. I just gave you my understanding of it.
17 somewh,ere a question was raised in the review 18 chain, probably either in NRR or ELD, somewhere in 19
? headquarters, as to 'Why is this thing here? What
- l 20 is it telling us? , l 21 In order to draw an NRC conclusion from 22 data, you've got to have criteria. What caitoria .
23 did we have? I wouldn't have allowedgit 1b.M sm it h {t*g if it a d '" ;
24 come to me.
25 It's very appropriate data to present to
._ ,ses
_ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ - _ _ _ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ~ - - ~ ~ ~ ~ ' '
37-
. . i
. l
\ -
+
SRf l a &ekt Board and say, "Look over the long haul,
~
1 2 what's happened"; but I certainly would have 3
required an awful more work than just drb'pping 4
these things into their appropriate criteria
- 5 bins. I would want to know why, what were the M v & ktw L 6 underlying reasons f o r/ 44. ~~ i j
- 7 Q. The argument that the inspector performed i 8
this activity during the inspection period and, ,
i 9 therefore,,to document the fact that he had done
- 10' some work placed it in the inspection report, .{'
l 11 would that be a valid argument?
\-
12 A. It's an argument. Is it valid? We don't t 13 write reports that are log books of activities l 14 conducted. We write reports that state NRC's 1
j 15 findings and conclusions; and if I do work earl?
16 in the report period that says, " Gee, I may have a 17 problem in this area" and by the end of the I 1B reporting period I've gathered other information 19 i
which demonstrates that there is no problem, then I
- n. .
20 l
t don't have to write a report that says, " Gee, I 21 thought I saw something and then I looked harder '
22 and it went away."
- 23 We would just say, "I inspected in this 24 functional area and no violations or deviations-25 are identified."
.0 -
l
1 Certainly that's one of the reasons it 2 becomes historically difficult to interpret. data 3 and find out what was done. I know therejs been 4 discussions on and off, not just with this issue 5 but with other plants of, " Gee, how much r
l 6 inspection was done in an area," especially with ~
{ _
l 7 the 25jl2 program which has been a moving target 8 for several years.
l 9
We ran across some of the same difficulty 10 at Wolf Creek trying to determine, " Gee, why was a 11 module closed out at 80 percent? It's U ,t. W os dA\t M h h fed' M .
12 disappeared.f" Or, " Gee, I got th).s module that .
13 was 80 percent; and now it's 60 percent."
' The g% Attkuk -
14 scope and requirements 3 changed somejor you had a 15 module, say, for welding at one point in the 16 program and then suddenly it became two modules.
~
17 So, you're constantly having to deal 18 with: What do I inspect now to have my program l 19 done? Have I done enough previously that covers 2,0 the current requirements? -
21 On some things the window of opportunity 22 bee passed. You write it off
% 4 %
- t,or doWW something sd e 4else 23 to inspect i t,l a f t e r 3 hkis alreadya erected and look --
24 et it and kick the tires and see if you have got a 25 nice feeling about it and, you know, close the o
d2 1 thing.out.
2 You're not going to solve anything by 3 worrying over the thing. Move on. ,Go leek at 4 things that: are being d o n e nc4. ~~
5 'Q. 'so, in that regard, some of the$2.hings 6 suggested in this memo were no different then the 7 typical construction sites?
8 A. As'a matter of fact, I've had a little 9 analysis done of the. inspection history of the 10 number of hours in different functional areas, 11 safety related-welding, electrical, 12 'iinstrumentation,(bC i 13 The number of hours at Comanche Peak are 14 virtually the same as Wolf' Creek or River Bend mee 15 within a very small delta.
16 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) Do you have that data, 17 or do you have data comparing Comanche Peak with 18 the other four region sites?
19 A. I had data from Wolf Creek and. River j cMG 20 Bend, and the hours for abb6e don't stand out as !
21 being very much different.
22 I can probably gas reconstruct that if it --
23 becomes important. I don't think it is.
24 Q. One of the issues is the quality and 25 quantity of the twelve program what was covered by
40.
1 QA modules. i 2 A. That's a non-issue. That's totally a 3 non-issue. There has been a-quality, proffam 4
breakdown at Comanche Peak. That is why we had 5 the TRT. That's why we have the Comanche Peak has 6 response team plan. That44 been reviewed and 7 approved by NRC.
8
- ik k%qch\w TL U M $'h A It : :-; - ;:1 may have hired folks who are 9 good craftsmen and pee may have provided them with 10 good procedures and they may have done the work 11 according to those procedures, but you have other 12 elements out here. Are you sure that the work was 13 done properly? 0 C. Mk 3 W. M N " " ' -
m 14 Pieces of that "ill 5: deficient. It has -
15 cast a shadow over this thing. That's why we're.
16 going back over the ISAPs and DSAPs. It's going 17 to reestablish that assurance.
' J 18 Q. I think you misunderstood what I said. i I
l 19 meant the qualir.y and quantity of the NRC program 20 in the area of quality assurance ovbr the period '
l 21 of time after the CP was issued. That's the issue 22 I'm talking about.
23 A. Maybe we would have picked it up. Maybe 24 we wouldn't. That's hardly a question to worry 25 about at this point.
t .
[ ,
n t 1
, ,s l
.. 3- What needs to be done in order forithe i
g 2 NRC to gather the necessary information 4dt to'make. '
3 h }v qid<.h. C.Pft.T % ,
a 1.icensing decision for that plant.3 Right now '
4 let's get the CPRT. Let's make sure we don't-make-5 the same-mistakes on Unit II as may have' occurred l 6 on Unit I, and that's-the reason for carrying twclewmsleadk muk 7 o ve v, ++++, t h e n e e d < f o r completing the 25 12 f 8 program on Unit I I .-
9 Quality assurance issues are largely i
- s 10 being blanketed by this CPRT.
11 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Enclosure 5 to this memo 12 is information apparently that was.put together to 13 -show that the NRC inspection outfit at Comanche 14 Peak relative to quality assurance'between 1974 15 and '84 was weak; and then what it goes through is-16 various inspection modules or procedures and shows-17 various things that, you know, should have been 18 done that weren't or things that were closed on it 19 at 80 percent but only 20 percent could be i 20 documented, things likes that.
21 I'm sure you've seen this.
22 A. I asked Tom Westerman to have an analysis 23 run of this. Were there pieces that we had rissed -
s 24 that we should pick up? If we have, let's make 1
25 sure we' pick them up.
i l
I
. 42 I
1 He provided you with that, I-believe.
2 That's the response to-this kind of thing.
1 ~, .
l 3 Q. Okay. So, now.this work th'at he did, is -
4 this something that's a-formal response? If I 5 somebody later on, you know, locates this memo and l 6 comes back and asks the same. question I'm asking,-
7 you know, what was done, is.there something that 8 is in writing that says, you know --
- 9 A. That analysis. y 1
10 Q. Right. 'Okay. Other than that, what did 11' you do with this memo, if anything?
l 12 A.
had Well, most of that memo hee been overcome j -
13 by events. It was a year in' production at which 14 time the plant has moved-from, say,. struggling 15 along as a -- as what the utility thought was a 16 normal construction program to one that admitted-17 that the quality assurance program didn't do'the l
18 job to give them the necessary assurance.
19 The thing that happened in between was.
20 CPRT. So, most of that memo is - you can read it 21 and say, " Gee, they probably need some sort of 22 response plan."
23 Well, you pickup the.CPRT program plan; !
24 and it addresses those kinds of things.
25 Q. For example, Enclosure'2, once again the
,s . ..
l 1 title is NRC Inspection Program at CPS ES I and i
t l 2 II. 1 3
We have an overall QA between 1FJ4 4 through '84. It talks about various inspection 5 modules that were apparently n'ot conducted. How l 6 do we go back and redo these, or can we redo .
l l 7 these?
l l l 8 For example, the initial corporate office
(
9 QA program and implementation was done once in i i
10 1984 when apparently it should have been done much i
11 earlier. l i
12 A. Again, the 25f12 program has over the
~
I i
1
.13 years been a truly moving target. Some of the f
14 stuff you will never be able to go back and do. ,
1 l
15 Someth'ing like that corporate QA, you just pick up 16 aa& idgad W the module and go/te a '
... thing.
17 Q. The NRC missing something like that, l 18 would that contribute to'the weakness of the 19 licensee's QA program? For example, had we done 20 it in 1974 and said, " Hey, you've got to do this 21 and you've got to do that" and told the QA that 22 and the QA people in utility, would that have made l
l 23 for a stronger program?
I l 24 A. There's always that possibility. Is the 25 NRC a replacement for licensee's quality
- ce t
1 ' assurance? No, absolutely not. Absolutely not.
2 The best inspection that we can do is to 3 make sure that'they're doing all they can.f'and 4
even that's a very small sampling. . I
-5 Q. I guess it goes.back to if.we don't do-6 the inspection to make sure th'ey were doing all 7 they can --
8 A. That may have contributed to
, it.. We may 9 not have picked it up. There have been 10 weaknesses. The* quality assurance system didn't MM 11 remain intact for that plant. We/have CPRT 12 activities for that. -
13 Was that an unavoidable thing? Well, 14 probably it should have been an av'oidable thingi l 15 but that's water under the bridge now. Let's move !
.j 16 on from there.
17 Q. As fat' as the memo itself, was this 18 forwarded to anybody higher up than you? Did you 19 send it to the region administrator?
20 A. Are there any carbon copieh on there?
21 Q. No.
22 A. I didn't send it on up the line. I asked 23 Tom to deal with some of.those specifics. The 24 rest of it was largely overcome by events. I 25 mean, efforts being done in mid '84 are now being
. 4d
. i
.m ~
l I reported-to me in '86; and in between, we have had M ?qtM i 2 several SSERs issued a n d C P RT/ we+4. % , ]
I 3 Q. That's something.I'm not quite eGre I 1 4 understand. From what I was told, this was'done 5 subsequent to the inspection report 84/32-11, 6 A. It may have been as late as '84. .It was 7 over a year in getting to me, at which point most 8 of the data was, as I say, overcome by events.
9 The specific things on some of the inspections, I 10 asked Tom to take a look at it. If there were 11 or -
changes that we needed to make,,jadditions to the 12 , program, let's go do that.
~
13 Even at that, I didn't anticipate'it was -
14 ' going to be very much because the program is being 15 largely -- the inspection program down there is 16 going to be largely driven by the things that flow l 17 out of the CPRT.
l 18 All those lessons that are going to be 19 learned are going to be factored over into 20 Unit II.
21 Q. Bow many people do we have with 22 Mr. Phillips out at Unit II? .Who else is there to 23 help him with that inspection effort?
24 A. We've.been putting consultants and some 25 of the other folks onto Unit II. As we go and as
46 !
I we see things that are occurring in Unit I, we've 2 had in the past consultants assigned over to 3 Shannon Phillips when we had the money tE' pay for j i
4 those extra consultants.
5 We've used region-based inspectors down l
i 6 there. I asked him in the electrical area if he j 7 didn't feel comfortable to go at that point to 8
Dennis Kelley since there's not the same degree of 9 inspection activity going on in the Unit I side in 1
i 10 the operations area.' We are'quite willing to send j 11 other folks down in the region if they're needed.
12 Q. How many people do you have at Unit I 13 right now? Do you know?
14 A. Unit I, we've got one. That's Dennis 15 Kelley; and then we've got the CPRT activities, 16 the follow-up activities, and that's Ian Barnes, 17 three principal NRC inspectors and a number of 18 consultants. The number floats up and down. i r
19 Q. So, those other people other than Kelley j 1
20 are working on CPRT? l 21 A. Right, ISAPs and DSAPs. They're working l 22 principally in Unit I on the ISAPs. You've seen 23 the CPRT program plan. !
It's binder four or five i 24 inches thick.
l 25 Q. So, you actually just have Kelley there t i
1
1 at Unit I that is full-time?
2 A. We had Ward Smith until recently, but j 3 even Ward was working on.ISAPs that invo59ed i ,
4 preoperational testing associated with the CPRT 5 program. , ,
6 Q. Okay. So, Unit II, you have Phillips and ,
7 then his consultants?
8 A. And nd some ot.her folks that 9 have been down there-off and on.
10 Q. So, this is normal -- in other words, 11 Unit II has been given the normal amount of t
12 manpower?
13 A. It'will and up with more inspection 14 effort than the normal re' actor because there will 15 be a number of thing.s that we will have to go over 16 $Ma and carry over lessons from the Unit I e4% over -
17 to Unit II that normally we probably, you know, l 16 could cover with just a. fraction of the manpower 19 because we will haye had some sort of identified 20 , weakness in Unit I. .
21 see, to do a normal inspection,' you go in 22 and say, "i'm here to verify that everything is 23 okay.' That takea a certain amount of time. .
l 24 to !
If you go inAeed verify that everything )
R o.c.a.R.Wb 25 is okay3+irst you know you had a problem in its -
j
. l l
l
gg -
1
. I sister unit under the same~ general procedures and 2
management, et c,etera, et cetera, you're going to
' 4 3- be spending e lot more time inspecting to verify-4 that thin are oka Ttgo. wp+ bs <a (rvbh . y b' ma *4 h fft w u.ivd vu
- Nw d 5 Q. Phillips at Unit II has normal inspection.
6 activitie's, monthly inspection activities. Does 7 he have anything else'that he's responsible for- J i
8 other than that? ,
9 A. Not that I'm aware o f .- If there were 10 other things that got assigned to him, I would-11 take those other duties away: from him. He's the 12 senior resident for construction,h W M the 25 /12 13 program for Unit II, and some of the 50.55'(e) 14 follow-ups that are going to be residuals from 15 Unit I.
16 Q. Let me 'ask: Going back to 85/16-13, we 1
17 were talking about 50.55(e) findings that he had. ;
18 We talked about whether the utility is required to )
l l 19 keep records, you know, for the convenience of the '
- 20 NRC. .
l
- 21 What about the retrievability? Is the
.22 utility required to have these records readily i
)
')
23 retrievable?
24 A. Records are required to be retrievable.
t 25 We've adopted a process in the region that says, b
49 1
Qrd-Whif" "Look, we got to put some order into p the l 2 process of getting our reports out"; and the thing l
that we've adopted and generally been usi'69 as a
! 3 4 guideline is,you go to the exit interview and you A fu4H ual w 5 say you inspected /& hts area and you weren't given i ofch.inM,u.MIA
! 6 the records3 thatsverify completion.
""i
! 7 1618 I
Theref^re, thic -; '3 serious enough to 8 be a N WW wMAq violation) Therefero,4 1t's an apparent 9 violation. ;
l 10 y tu sg 'A tw h '
4 I m going to go back to the office ( and ---
11 this has happened to me when I was inspecting --
12 "If you find the appropri' ate stuff and get it down 13 to me before the report gets issued, then we take 14 that information into account in the report."
, 15 At the point that the report goes* final, 16 I'm not going to hold it up any further. I ' l l' 17 issue it. If you discover stuff afterwards, we 18 may have have to back off on the violation.
19 We certainly don't want.to be frivolous
.20 and --
say I completed my inspection. The guy may 21 says, "Here's the records you wanted."
22 You say, "No, my inspection is over." At 23 some point you have got to say, "Okay, licensee, 24 you had your opportunity to produce the 25 information. You may still demonstrate that you o
),
I were in compliance"; but, you know, l
2 administrative 1y we've got to move o.n and get the !
r 3 report out to the public. They're l'nterested in 4 what we're doing, too.
5 Q. What if, you know, several months go by?
I 6 For example, in this inspecti.on report they had to 7 get paperw~ork so they could look at the hardware 8 to see if, in fact, whatever had to be done was 9
done; and apparent 1y several months went by, and 10 they still hadn't'had the paperwork in the .
11 utility.
12 So, it turned out that some of the 13 hardware inspections could not be done because the s
14 utility couldn't retrieve the paperwork. It seems 15 to me, then, somewhere down the line you might be i I
(
16 able to find it. The concept of retrievability is 17 lost if it takes that amount of time. 1 IB Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) We went ahead and 19 pulled these 50.55(e)'s. They do 1,nvolve hardware 20 issues. Part of the problem seems to be not 21 necessarily just the paper, but rather does this 22 influence the ability to verify hardware.
23 A. The utility has --
because of this 24 protracted process of completing the hearings and 25 changes and reorganization that they've
g .,
n, ,
I experienced, they-have created some of the'ir own 2 difficulties in. keeping track of where all these 3 records are. - I'"
4 4 The responsibility for the 50.55(e) 5 follow-up and all has changed hands several '
6 times. That's one of the reasons we went.down in. i 7 Jan'uary to give them a good heart-to-heart on l
8 50.55(e) and our needs for getting the appropriate
! 9 records made available to us in an efficient 10 manner so we could finish those inspections.
11 In the context of these reports, I don't
- 12. believe we've ever been -- we haven't been totally
{ 13 happy with their records system. It is somewhat .
14 archaic and certainly confused because of the 15 extra requirements that have been put on the '
16 system with the ISAPs and things like that; but 17 they haven't demonstrated an inability to cough up 18 a record when you've gotten to the right person to 19 ask them.
20 It's an extremely complex organization -
21 that they have down there now. It's gone from 22 normalcy to almost idiocy with the CPRT and the Mr h 45 W tw W.u R M b ka 23 independent third-party reviewers,leed who has got 24 **^t @
- l the records and,where are t h e y a t A tA4e- t i me . __
25 Certainly at the end of the day, they've e
52 i
l 1 got to'have them all'and they'vefgot to be in.the 2 vault. -
3 i
,Q. I understand the issue tran'scends the-4 subject where you're talking to the right person.
l 5
As I understand-itL -- and correct me-if I'm j q 6' wrong -- it's the inability to go from a~50.55(e) ll 7 number-like a CP 85.12, for example, and to. pull !
8 out a package of a l'1 the non-conformance reports 9 or reports that are associated with that 50.55(e).
10 Is that your understanding? ,
11 A. That's my understanding of'what the 12 inspector ' wanted, and that's not a requirement.
13 The licensee is, for his own purpose, to~make sure ~
14 that he hasn't had something fall through'the 15 cracks and certainly to make our time more 16 efficientj is going to put together a road map and 17 going to have a file that says here's a 50.55(e).
18 Be's not going to include copies of all i l
19 those things, but it's going to say,.these 20 non-conformance reports apply and these. design 21 changes apply and these QC inspection records 22 apply.
23 Q. You say that's not required. Did.you 24 verify that with the plant procedure to ascertain i 25 in your mind that that's not a requirement? >
11
N) c ,
1 A. That's not a' requirement.for 50.'5(e).
5 l 2 Q. No plant procedural requirement?
3 A.
Wr&1 )
No, but I'm not/ an inspector. 4I> don't
- I 4 believe that was in the draft of that report.
5 Q. For your own mind, did you ask them to 6 pull the records for your pu'rposes to see .if it 1
l 7 was a, plant procedural requirement?
I 8 A. In January when we went down,-they talked 9 to us about revision from the 50.55(e) process 10 that they were instituting and that was -- that 11 seemed t'o be adequate steps that they were taking. l 12 Q. Did you at all look at any plant
~
- 13 procedures in this area yourself?
i-14 A. No. I think I glanced through one 15 dealing With the general policy for 50.55(e).
! 16 Q. Are you aware that the procedures are not 17 all consistent with reporting ~50.55(e) quality 18 assurance procedures that should be controlled in 19 Criterion VI of Appendix B?
20 A. In terms of what?
21 Q. Who does the reporting? Who is I
1 22 responsible for doing the reporting?
23 A. I think in their latest procedure that i
24 they were putting in plc.ce, it's going to be Goun%'d
- f 25 either CoecsTT or Beck. I'm not sure whether (L
~ . _ _ _ _ _ __m______ __m___._.____ _ . _ _
g . ed.M c td -
f-1 all those sub-tier procedures /- 'that once --
h 2 management had laid out this/yhAtw policy, I'm not sure ,_
tw vlivfoubrU 3
if all those 4got changed i.mmediately Or ug:tnet. '
i 4 Tom tells me that Counsel has adopted a -
5 program where he's going to send out a draft of W Mu 6 3 :::: tt i. .g.., and say, " Hey, comment on this thing and i b
7 start getting your procedures revised and get (S M t-8 ready to4revisekprocedures when I issue the final --
9 Y} N $ h. %
10 Q. So, you pretty much rely on the licensee 11 to either self-initiate to get them to. organize 12 and make their procedures more consistent?
i 13 A. I don't understand what you're driving 14 at.
15 Q. Based on the fact that you do,not have --
16 from what I understand, based upon what'I'm 17 listening to -- you mentioned Bill Couns'1. He 18 changed a procedure that is going to make it so !
l 19 that there will be a way of communicating 50.55(e) i 1
20 in a more organized way tb NRC. .
21 You then said they're going to go ahead 22 and make the changes to their procedures to make 23 things --
24 A. Once management sets a policy, all the 25 sub-tier procedures have to flow long those i
i 9
.-_-___---__-2
l e -
1 lines. They can decide to do things a number of 2 different ways, but they've got to do what they 3 finally decide on. ,,-
4 Q. From m'y understanding, though, there are 5 procedures that are inconsistent in this~ area and 6 that was --
7 A. There may be. That's a problem for 8 t' hem.
9 Q. For them, not for us necessarily?
10 A. As long as they report what i s b e i ng r<guittd h b t 11 reported, that's the key. That's the important 12 thing. The next l ~s : Are they following the 13 things that they say they're going to do?
l 14 If they don't, then, that's a' Iso a 15 problem. So, if there are inconsistencies, 16 they're going to have to deal with those.
17 If those inconsistencies cause 18 violations, that's a self-inflicted wound on their 19 part. It's always a problem when a licensee 20 doesn't do what he says he's going'to do j even if '
21 he does what meets the bottom line requirements 22 and regulations jbecause he's supposed to manage J
23 his operation.
{
24 He says, "I'm going to get to this end j 25 point. I can take one of several paths, and I l i
1 b
oo
,m -
I choose this path"; and if he follows an alternate 2
path, then, that's a problem because it's saying 3 somewhere in his system people a r e n ' .t doiing what 4 management has decided to do. It has to be dealt 5 with.
l 6 Q. What I understand is one of the findings l l
7 has to do with this very issue that was written '
8 back in the earlier inspection report. !
9 A. Which one?
10 Q. 85/16-13. 50.55(e) was one of the 11 findings that there was inconsistency of 12 procedures, and I believe the inspector wanted to '
13 create a non-compliance in that area.
14 It didn't turn out that way. That's the 15 reason for the question. -
16 A.
We went over that 4s ue. Tom's 17 wo.5 ttthL pre.swhis b o a r 4[(asd.eKrdt1(Ab understanding of itg ed F I said, we 18 were satisfied that his reasoning was adequate.
(
19 The issue that I was taking up was the -
(.l.e, biwa.Inkdn red. in u audible fUd, 20 inauditable trail /. It's just not a requirement.
w A f4t.
21 You can a me@< a violation if they don't report 22 things that are to be reported.
23 f Even then, if their process caused a I a.o b 24 review,and it's just a difference of opinion lo --
l 25 whether the NRC inspector feels it ought to be J
1 4
______________.__d
L q
l 1 reported j and the licensee thinks l'ts not 2 reportable, they.have probably-satisfied the 3
requirements of the reporting regulation-)0.55(e).
4 Q. (By Mr. Muiley) I guess I still go back 1 I
5 to a real hang up I have which goes back'to the j 6 fact that inspectors wanted to inspect this 7 information and over a several nonth period, they .
I 8 couldn't. !
9 It seems to'me that the inspectors should 10 have been able to go out there within a reasonable 1
11 amount of time and had those records for their 12 inspection, and apparently that didn't happen.
i 13 So, wouldn't that be a violation of s
l 14 Criterion V7 .
15 A. No. You can't make that leap)there 16 because, again, if all of this hadn't occurred, I 17 might be able to deal with some of those issues.
18 We haven't been able to deal with them sinceithe 1 19 January-February time frame.
20 Q. All this, meaning the investigation?
21 A. That's right.
22 Q. All right.
23 A. There have been cases where Tom has.gone de'ed 24 and asked for a record. W;'vc seen something in ~~--
25 his review of the report.
5 l
i
=y; ,
/- .,
- b 1 He said, " Gee, that's strange. I've
/ 2 never had problems getting that kind of '
. 1 3 information"; and it was made available tp him 4 within hours or days. l 5 Another case is where Ian Barnes went 6 over to get something. I think Ian Barnes even G.e. m c.et es xq )
7 asked the fellow who was assigned to ShannonAas 8 consultant, he said, "Did you go and ask this 9 fello 4ha- lI%t.4'4 G.vald h wh at.u -how c..b. Tm Brou ,
10 "No, I was told not to go and ask/bhis ---
11 fhm "
12 "That's the fellow you go to 'when you 13 want a record." If you go to a records clerk, s
14 you're not going to get the same answer. She may 15 say, "It's here somewhere in this log."
I 16 If you go to the individual and say, 17 " Hey, I got a 50.55(e). It involves this piece of )
18 equipment." l 19 "Yes. So-and-so is dealing with that. I 1
23 I'll get that record for you." Bang, it's there.
21 I would like to pursue that issue.
22 If our inspectors don't understand who to l
23 ask and how to get the information that they need 24 l'vt. i to conduct their business, then AF got a m a n a g e r i a l ---
25 problem.
o u____________._____________________________________
( '
59 t I l
1 The senior resident has been down there 2 for several years. You know I'm a little 3
he. MOwtl.tes h4d wb b c;o h En (tamb, i surprised / I would like to pursue that. '
f 4 Q. The issue was not that the utility didn't l l
5 have records that were not retrievable. The issue {
6 was that the inspectors weren't properly i 7 conducting their inspection or didn't know how? .
8 A. Didn't know how, didn't know who'to talk 9 to. We'll fix that. That's an easy pr.oblem.
1 10 Q. So, Ian Barnes is the one that eent and 11 developed this information; is that correct?
l 12 A.
I'm not sure whether it's on the .
13 particular 50.55(e) issue that you're talking
{ !
14 about, but it's on this thing of inability to get 15 at a record quickly.
16 Tom has also done some of that in hia 17 follow-up on these things, gone over and said, 18 " Gee, I don't understand this." They haven't been .
19 provided this information; and he goes and asks 20 for it, a r.d there it is. '
21 Q. I was under the impression it was the !
22 task force or something set up because the utility i
{
23 eventually said, "We can't get the stuff" or "It's !
i 24 going to take a long time to get !
it." I 25 A. E t.i^
Some of their 50.55(e) stuf because it's4 -- i 4
1"
_ _ _ _ _ _ 1
- .,.,y_._-___- _
I z
1 passed from hand to hand to hand.had f~ allen 2 through the cracks. They're going to have to deal 3 with that issue. They are dealing with it'in ,
4 terms o compliance.,
5 We're n.aking sure they're going'to get t
l 6
there,because thp plant..,is not going to be 7 authorized to load fuel until Mr. Martin writes a
\.
8 letter ~that says, 'As far as we know, this~ plant l 9 has beenLbuilt substantially in accordance with i
1 10 rsAh,"
11 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) You used the word 12 complianca,'and'ther'e are two ways of using the 13 term. You use"d it-in terms of its readiness to go 14 ahead for NOL. The o'ther way of using it is, no, 15 there is no non-compliance i n this crea. !
16 Are you familiar with any non-compliances s
17 that'have been writte'n.in' this arsa?
18 A. You're' going to have to help me on that.
! 19 Be more specific.
20 Q. In other words, has the rdgion written
- 22. any-non-compliances in the area o~f reporting urder.
22 50.55(e) Jand the way they are re' porting?
23 If they haven't, then'one can assume 24 they're in co$pliance with that area.
e .
25 A. No. No. That's not true because, again, l
i e ,
i g t
g ,
g ,* . + . ,
- mus mm , -m 1- our-inspection is one of sampling; and the
-2 concluding statement is no non-compliances er 3 deviations have.'been identified. ,.
l 4 Q. Then you would conclude that the utility !
5- is compliant in this area?
6 A. With reasonable assurance, assuming that 7 the inspection. program was carried out, thatLthe 8 inspeccion program.did indeed get to the 9 appropriate issues, recognizing the sampling 10 nature of it. There is reasonable assurance that I 11 they were compliant.
1 12 Q. Getting to another issue, you made the.
13 point that there are some areas that need to be I 14 strengthened; but the bottom line is the statement 15 {
that no deviations or non-compliances have been !
16 identified and, therefore, the plant ic in i
17 compliant. 3 !
-1 18 A. There may be a compliance issue buried'in 19 there. As I recall, it seemed like there was a 20 good issue concerning 50.55(e) that.was raised. .I 1
21 don't remember the specifics on the thing; but the !
22 issue of the audit trail for these - things, we've i 23- taken.a certain recognition of the fact that the 1 24 licensee has passed this activity from hand to !
25 hand and needs to go back and pull all that ~ stuff j
i
. j l 1 1 together because we're going to have to look at i
2 it. j k
3 Q. But still the' plant is in complignce in 4 this area?
l 5 A. Now, you're trying to put words in my !
6 mouth; and we're not going -- we're starting to 7 play a fine game of what is compliance in terms of '
8 enforcement and what is compliance in terms of 9 does it get the job done at the end of the day.
10 To give you an analogy to it -- and this 11 has happened to us. It happens from time to 12 time. It happens more often now that we have .
13 resident inspectors -- a specific example: A,
_ fm 14 50.55(e) report / ef one plant was being drafted. -
15 Our resident inspector had become aware of t'he 16 rooGW )
problem that was being discussed in this./tt iog; and l
17 r0 recognizkas that the utility was missing the l N v, m
\
18 point, that it was going off in a bh4e direction, l 19 "That's the failure. That's what needs to be !
h*
20 fix ed.t" g seat i l
' % qrM 21.
In his o wn r e vi e w a s /** w a s w a s 22 developing, he determined that, "No. You need to -
23 be moving over here into this other area. That's 1
24 where your failure is."
25 Because he was there at the time j talking
I to them, they did alter their approach.
2 Now, were they non-compliant? It's 3 certainly been an issue that has gotten a, lot of 4 attention with NRC.
5 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) You mentioned that some i
6 of these records had fallen through.the cracks or 7 may have fallen through.the cracks.
8 Is it possible that some of the record,s l
9 that the inspectors were trying to get were some 10 of the o n e s- t h a t had fallen through the cracks? ;
i 11 A. I don't know. I don't know if they were 12 dealing with those same specific things.
13 Q. (By M;. Goldberg) I guess when it comes 14 down to -- this may be the point that Steve is 15 making -- apparently there is a problem with the 16 re' cords and retrievability to the point that the 17 licensee got a task force together, and apparently 18 it is going to take a year to get it straight; but 19 we have an inspector and consultant that went out '
20 and identified the same thing, and they're saying, 21 "We can't get some of these records."
22 Is there anything written by NRC to 23 highlight the problem, to get it out in the open 24 that there is a problem? I guess that's my 25 question.
v, l
1 1 A. I have to look at the final report. As I 2
say, I think there was an issue; and I'm not going 3 to be able to deal with it right here and>now.
4 The bettom line in terms of records with what's 5 going on down there is that all the records are !
(
6 going to have to be chere at the end of the day. !
1 7 Is there a records problem? Yeah. They have a system that.s seek antiquidated.
8 The newer I 9 {
plants -- and I don't- regard this as one of the l 10 newer plants along the line of River Bend where I
11 they've gone to the computerized records i 1
12 tracking --
they've been much more successful in 13 tracking their required records, and that's one of i 14 the things these guys have to go back and do a l'ot 15 en % iddt.
of task force effort 4 1 16 Q. What makes the -- let's say eight months 17 down the road or a year down the road, the utility 18 decides they're not going to do their task 19 force. They say, " Screw it. It's costing too 20 much money. We don't have time. We're not going 21 to do it. We're going to let the. records stand 22 just the way they are.'
23 What causes the utility to live up to 24 their --
I guess right now it's a promise to do it 25 if we haven't written anything down identifying
I the problem. What causes them -- what motivates 2 them into action? ,
3 A. The whole licensing p r o c e s s , i s a;- - .
4 promise. You give a construction permit because i 5 they promise to build it in accordance with FSAR. 1 i
6 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) Could there be a l 7 short-term effect if there was some sort of !
8 requirement put on the licensee through corrective 9 acLion requirements that they had to execute over 10 a period of time in this area?
11 Wouldn't that be a lot more direct 12 between the NRC and the licensee or the NTOL j l
13 holder as opposed to, well, maybe, there may be a l 14 license held up at the end of the line, which'in 15 itsei'f causes problems because it may delay 16 everybody?
17 A. And we've told them that2 and in the issue we'vthalA 18 of 50.55(e),/"You can pay me now or pay me later" 19 kind of conversation. When you say you're done, vnK\ E0 lns i 20 you don't get the NRC to give you h' ave a li c e n s e/.
h WW- pq h ouu.c 21 NRC has it's licensing decision /, and that's some 4
22 U.E. he cifb tira. iAsut IS M.
-delta,gafter that.
23 Whether it's two weeks or two months, we 24 will go through our process of following'6pj and a
25 closing out all of our violations, unresolved
1 items, open items, the IE bulletins, the 50.55(e) 2 reports, all those things, making sure that
! 3 they've picked up on their master punch 1.l s t all '
l 4 the critical items that have been completed that l 5 might affect fuel load.
l 6 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) All the things that we 7 issue to the NTOL holder, the one that is very 8 specific is the corrective action, is that
~
9 correct, the one that has the timetable and talks 10 about what areas are weak? In the case of 11 unresolved items and open items, it's not that 12 clear?
13 A. You mean in tems of w.riting a violation?
14 Q. In terms of expecting the lice ~nsee --
to 15 have nim, understand in writing what he's expected 16 to do and what period of time he's expected to do 17 it.
18 A. But his own response maybe, "We have a 19 program; and at the time of fuel load, all of that 20 ~
stuff will be in place." He unders"tands perfectly 21' well that the unresolved items at the time of fuel 22 load will be resolved et the open items closed 23 out.
24 There's a place for those kinds'of 25 things, unresolved items and open items.
N aa
--T h : : e
I 1 are similarly officially recognized f- zu;s in the 2 inspection program.
3 Q. But neither of them require corrpctive 4' action on the part of the NTOL holder or licensee 1
5 because in one case it requires more work to be l 6 done by NRC and in the other case, it's an area 7 that needs to go out by the region to get it !
8 closed out.
9 A. No. Unresolved items may indeed require
- 1. 0 action on the part of the licensee depending upon 11 the circumstances.
i 12 Q. But it's not clear in the manual that I 12 they have to do something and they have to do it i
14 by a certain time as it is in the case of NOV.
15 A.
5M 4 bd5 mcdte We h ave b e en/j and Martin has a very strong 16 philosophy that you've got to tell them what needs i j
17 to be done in the report so they can accomplish 18 that. 1 i
19 You don't just say, "Here's something I 20 saw. Gee, I don't know what this deans right 3 21 now. I can't balance it one way or the other.
22 Therefore, it's unresolved."
23 That doesn't get to the heart, to the 24 corrective action. What is it that you'need?
25 Maybe it's an NRC action. Maybe you've read the I
~
1 code this way. . The licensee has said it's'not 2 that way. You've got to go to some expert, to the 3 a g 'e n c y . >~
4 Therefore, for the time period it takes 5 to gather tnat information, internally the thing 6- is unresolved. You state in the report the NRC 7 inspector will make appropriate contact with NRC 8 headquarters.
9 Q. I believe in most of the areas that we're 10 talking about here this mo'rning I'believe the !
11 notice was put on NRC to do more work, whether it' 12 was in the case of Mr. Phillips' talk to Boznd.ek -
13 on looking at the code or waiting for retrievable 14 ' records to come in or whatever or the case of the 15 records review?
16 A. I think that probably is largely accurate 17 because of the nature of.some of the findings.
18 There was one, for example, on reactor vessel 19 . placement. They didn't audit it; and, therefore, 20 it's a violation.
21 Well, that's an incomplete inspection.-
22 They're required to audit important areas. Now, i
l 23 what I would expect the inspector to say is, "I 24 found they di n't audit the reactor. vessel 25 placement" as "They didn't audit the steam l
- i. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ -
1 generator placement" A1 "They didn't audit the 2 placement of the reactor coolant pumps." All of 3
these are signif'icant areas involving spejial 4 processes. Therefore, not having audited any of 5 these things, they have failed in their 6 responsibility to audit I'mportant areas.
7 Therefore, that's a violation.
8 That's somewhat'the kind of thing where 9 you say, " Bey, I've got an incomplete inspection.
10 I've taken one fact, and I have widened it so .
11 broadly that you can't make a finding." It 12 h bed _
doesn't stand /and hold water.
i 13 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) You do consider 50.55(e) !
14 records to be required, don't.you? '
15 A. 50.55(e) is a reporting requirement which 16 will involve some quality assurance records in 17 support of it. You will have some records to go l
18 back to,
,fm- t.v.y GL I
19 On the switches /, you have got the 20 procurement documents for specifications. They do 21 meet the specifications for you to look in the 22 field and say, " Yeah. These are the new 23 switches."
! 24 The appropriate model number and serial 25 number is specified in those things.
I i
C__.____________.___-____-- - - - - - . - - - - - - - - - - -
)
1 (Short recess.) l l
2 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Getting back to the I i
3 draft inspection report, 16/13, that,you ?
4 reviewed. I have a copy here that you just !
l I
l 5 provided me. j 6
l What I would like to do is discuss your !
7 note to Shannon Phillips through Westerman. That !
8 is on the first page.
i 9 Could you take a look at the nott7 '
10 Describe for us the message that you were giving i
11 Phillips. gg $
) I 12 A. I had asked for.it/. Tom has expressed a 13 lot of frustration. Again, he'd just gone through
{
14 the previous month's report and findings and 15 having to work hours to get the tisin g technically {
16 correct for issuance; and he said, "Here, I've got 17 another one now."
18 I said, "Give it to me and let me take a 19 quick read through."
20 As you see, I focused on just paragraphs 21 three and four. I don't believe I much past SKW h,got 22 paragraph four other t h a n t o/. Maybe just flip i 23 through it and see what other issues had been 24 inspected.
25 Both of the paragraphs were unsat as a
l 1 product or a fellow who was a senior resident 2 inspector at the GS-14 level who had been in NRC 3 for as long as the several years that he.had been, 4
halbltA 4 and/an supervisor in W
/NRC.
5 Had this been a report given to.me from l
6 an entry level inspector who had been here for six 7
moiths or so, I certainly wouldn't have taken the >
8 same
@A beet.
NbM.Aca G-pf(cd5d (
I think theferitical elements --
l 9 describep-that. )
10 fbb[N WhfS would expect a GS-11 inspector to l
11 give you something that might require a good deal.
12 I of editing and work to put it in the right report i 1
13 format.
14 The comment then would have been, "Please 15 see me. Let's sit down and discuss it. You have 16 missed the point. You haven't done a complete 17 inspection here."
18 So, obviously I was much more terse. The 19 critical element for GS-14 in terms of writing is 20 that he write something that requires almost no i
21 editing by his management. That's just !
22 satisfactory.
AMIMd That just meets / requirements.
23.
- / satq I think injearlier discussion I/ wen. cver ,
24 !
that paragraph three deals with the 50.55(e) 25 issues, and the point I was making there was !
l l
________i
I records for the convenience of NRC are not 4er 2 required; and/ paragraph four, I discussed the Sw McJ .
i 3 N AM C O /rateet . y J
4 I made another comment here about IE l 5 Bulletin 79 14. There was apparently in'here a
/
6 lot of discussion as to what should have been in 7 the package; and my comment is, " Stick to the el 8 req'uirements. s j A M5f b b j 9 I fryte w a n ts .t o p r e a c h , we don't mind gme i 10 ht mW preaching to the licensee; but/q=m make it clear h e' S 11 that at this point y : '_ ' : deviating from what's i
l 12 %%unux l required in the compliance issues to what the/tes i i
13 ought to be doing to g'et better; and that's all I 14 right. I 15 It's okay for insppctors to offer that ento doesah 16 stuff up, but y+e der't offer it up in terms of 17 requirements.
18 The last statement, "I'm very concerned 19 that we can't seem to get better quality reports 20 in a first draft."
21 This had been the issue the previous 22 month that Tom had become so frustrated with; and 23 in my reading of it, it's not well written. It 24 seems to be incomplete in a number of areas, such 25 as the NAMCO switches; and I'm getting to the l
. as ,
l I
. I point here that we seem to be focusing on'a lot of 2 paper issues.
3 The SRI sheuld be out inspe (Fck- rurck.) c t i n d' '
4 hardware. The next-month,gthe report that was l .
5 written demonstrated.that he had gotten out in the-l l
6 field and looked at some of the things. I 7 encouraged that.
8 Again, the previous. discussion'on there 9 are several important elements in the SRI's. job 10 and one of the most important is looking at the i 11 work that's in progress.
12 Q. Page 3-1, you had written initials "BS' 13 next to a portion of the report. What was your
(
- l 14 problem with that section of the report?
15 A. That ties in with paragraph three, "Most ,
I l 16 of the apparent violations cited are not 17 violations. Records for the convenience'of the 18 NRC are not required" and we'Vkot here this '--
l 19 unresolved item or talking about the previous 20 unresolved item that he was going.to make a d .
21 violation, I think, involving complete files which-22 did not have a complete audit trail with respect 23 to corrective action taken to complete reportable 24 itemsj and with respect to non-reportable files 25 which do not have enough information to enable and "f
_.. #-ire{> /
Quok]pt_ /
.c
~
tl 1 in order to review. y CV0k
)
M ocjind bcth, 2 Q. You need to slow down. -
3 A. It's poorly written in one ,respict. The 4
comment is that this is basic BS in the sense of 5 the kind of stuff you Lind out in the cow pasture'.
6 Q. On.page 3-3, you have a note "do not use i
j 7 this term unless you can define it" and you have B an arrow pointing down to " objective evidence."
l 9 A. That's a catch word that I've noted that i 10 Shannon uses and it is certainly l regularly, Wa. t M 11 leading to a judgmentAfile -list contained no 12 objective evidence of corrective action. What did '
13 the file contain?
{ What did the file not contain?
14 What information was he provided with, and what 15 wasn't he provided?
16 Don't use the generic term " objective 17 evidence". I can't go back to the licensee and j
18 say, "Show me the objective evidence for that 19 ' thing . "
20 I want to be able to go an'*d say show me I 21 this.tecord and this record either satisfies me 22 that he did what he said he was going to do or .)
1 23 it's incomplete and he didn't do what he said he j 24 was going to do. i 25 So, that was simply the reason for that.
_ _ - - - . - - _ - _ - - _ - - - - - - - - _ a
l' I was trying to get him to write better.
~
2 Wig' h drake. N R We're3 -- _r; judgments on what he 1 3 presents t: ;;; and if we get a lot of th s kind o f$infet.e4h g e= = _ u $ wAM;i'
% ~6 h M w ktaffr idph.
4 : m0.'.
s t w e.
, . What does it mean j 5 in this instance involving this thing that he was 6 looking at?
7 Q. Is this criticism by you in this report, 8 would you consider it to be harsh?
i 9 A. Harsh? Necessary? It's certainly .
- t. i 10 <necessary. Is it harsh?
h be levied 0$cdnst f*k"fth 0+
It's not harshador a
. 11 GS-14. '
l 12 Q. This is the first time that you yourself I 13 had gotten involved with feedback to Phillips?
l 14 A. (Witness nods head affirmatively.)
i 15 Q. Previous to that time, at least from my 16 understanding. Westerman had been dealing --
tskaAm WAD 17 A. Wea had w little y There was a 13 ttle 18 contact.
l 19 -
Q. So, right off the get-go fror. a division i 20 director, his first feedback is this?
l
[ 21 /L. Yes. "It's feedback and for a GS-14 22 level, I think it ought to open his eyes up. !
kv4 23 " Gee, you're right. I3got to get better at 24 writing these things, or it's going to be I
25 reflected in my appraisal."
i d
~
. . a 1 Q. The criticism you're basing this on is 2 not on Phillips personally, but criticism to a 3 person of a GS-14 rank regardless of who $t was?
, j 4 A. Exactly. As a matter of fact,-I did not 5 even keep a copy of this. This wasn't going to be 6 reappearing at the time of a If he got j U.ppraisal.t.ofky- %hLnhdsM '
7 better the first time oug[, yeah, you can give the 8 guy some strong guidance. Let him take it and' i 9 learn from it. I.f bE kE8- ;b CPb'dW WkSdi 10 ctN.thJ If there was a second one/, I probably 11 would have kept a copy and said, " Hey, I told him' 12 about this. He didn't take any action. I'm going ,
13 to keep a copy so we can reflect it in the J
14 appraisal "
15 So, the purp.coe wasn't to create some !
~
16 dossier or anything like that because I didn't 17 Sky wu+%the.wd i even keep a copy of this.A - ; t i .- ; : f-learn 18 from it.
19 Q. Were you satisfied with the way the final 20 inspection reports went on? -
21 cA. I signed the final inspection report.
22 Q. I don't have a copy of the final 23 inspection report on me. I got a copy of what 24 appears to be the final draft with your signature )
25 box. So, I assume that you did.
i l
i l
r . .
l 1 A. If I was in the office, you know, I know 2 I signed it outi otherwise it would have beer. done 3 by the deputy. .
V 4 Q. But as far.as at least from what you can 5 recall there was --
there were no unresolved i
I 6 problems with the report? I 7 A. I wouldn't say we were exactly happy wi,th 8 it. We weren't unhappy. It had gone through the 9 ' reviews. These were.necessary down at the site.
- 10. Kob Technically, Tom was new unhappy. Was he totally i
11 delighted? I don't know. Are you ever delighted' I
12 with something you haven't produced yburself? i 13 I signed a lot of memos that I probably 14 would have said differently, but it got the 15 message across and it went through the reviews up >
i 16 in the headquarters, reviews that were necessary 17 there. So, it was releaseable.
18 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) So, it met the 19 standard of quality that was required for-it to go l 20 out the door?
I 21 A. It certainly met the minimum standards.
22 It certainly went through a number.of revisions to i 23 get it to that point, more than were necessary.
24 Q. Are we talking about the quality of the 25 writing, or are we also talking about technical i
O j
-l
~
, l
! I judgments that were made?
2 A. We're talking both, the quality of the 2
3 writing. It's not clear at points. , It t.a m b l e s ;
4 and.the technical judgments, the file contained no i
5 objective evidence of corrective action. What I 6 didn't it contain? What did it contain?
7 when we write violations, you have to 8 have a clear chain through what specifically is a Whsf ts ,
9 requirement. 2d/necessary, how were thi YhA 10 requirements implemented in the licensee's I 11 procedural guidance? What was observed, and why 12 M
is that contrary to that requirement? TheseAhav @e 13 to be defensible reports. NRC is making findings.
14 Q. We had two issues. I'd like to start 15 with the issue prior to NAMCO, which was the Bisco 16 issue.
17 Mr. Johnson, did you get involved in the 18 Bisco fire seal issues and when did you get into 19 it? I'd like, if you could, to give us some 20 information on that issue from what'~you recall. !
I 21 A. Sometime, it must have-been late December 22 or January, Tom Westerman gave me a memo, copy of 23 a memo, that was offered up from Shannon to Gary 24 M i 444A which talked about a Bisco fire seal that had 25 M at one point passed a test. A ANI had observed the o
1 SL test Ja, issued the certification for the thing. ,
2 Sometime later, they went back to find l
I 3 those records. The records weren't available.
4 There had been some shift of offices by Bisco in
! 5 the interim'because they had had a fire in their 6 facility in their office area.
! 7 There'was a bunch of back-u I
8 induled with Ot Newto b % mt M _
documentationAvid re which included letters 9 from Bisco saying, " Gee, sometime we must have 10 lost the records, misplaced them, whatever." ~
11 The thrust of the memo was not so much l
.2 aimed at the technical problems, were these fire 13 seals adequate to do the job; but more like, gee, l
14 Bisco must have falsified something or destroyed f
35 the recor'ds or something like that.
16 That just wasn't a conclusion that one 17 could arrive at based on the documentation.
18 That's why I had the conversation with Mark c
19 Emerson and Don Dristell concerning that. --
20 I said, " Read this. Is th'is the kind of 21 thing that OI takes under its wings and say, 'This 22 is ours now?.
23 They said there wasn't sufficient l
24 information. I went back down to the site in 25 January. I had the meeting with Shannon and
l l
1 pointed those things out to him and said, "Look, 1
l 2 we have an issue here. This issue needs to be 3 pu'rsued by the vendor branch. We w i,11 priepare a 4
memo from this division to the vendor branch I l
5 pointing this out and say, 'You need to schedule 6 an inspection.'".
7 If in that inspection additional 8 information is developed which calls into question 9 I wrongdoing, then, obviously an OI investigation 1
1 10 has to be initiated. I 11 Ch hcb NotR~
We didn't have the information/that was '
12 going to require somebody going and talking to -
13 crn cm 01 iAvesNuk ,
BiscoA i 14 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) Going back, I l
15 understand the genesis of the issue stems from an 1
16 inspection that occurred at the point of l 17 Mr. Phillips' consultants where he went in and 18 looked' at the fire penetration seals as far as 19 being in compliance with IEEE-634 and ASTME 119, 20 which I understand the NTOL holder'is committed to '
21 Section 9.5.1.5.3 of the PSAR.
22 As I understand it, a deficiency report 23 was written by the plant personnel; and yet it 24 didn't produce 50.55(e). In other words, the ANI 25 withdrawal, the American Nuclear Insurers
l i
1 withdrawax, of the certification waich was noted 2 in the deficiency report, material deficiency 3 report, when the consultant to Mr. Phillips noted
- c' 4 that in his inspection, I believe th'e finding was 5 a failure to follow 50.55(e).
t l 6 Is that what you remember it to be?
j 7 A. I wasn't focusing on that issue.
[
8 Q. You were not?
9 A. I had the memo in front of me and the 10 issues were,being dealt with from the memo and the 11 concern was how to get_that information 12 T M SW M M l characterized properly.A :.'t---characterize what i
13 we don't know. Characterize what we do know.
14 Put it 'in the lap of the vendor branch 1
15 for follow up, which they routinely do when we 16 have vendor-related concerns; and, of course, ran l i
17 it through our organization here since someone on I l
18 my staff, in this case Mr. Phillips, said he-4 19 thought an OI investigation was warranted to 20 determine whether that was warranted.
21 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) Yo.ur involvement in i
22 the issue more or less came from the interface 23 that Region IV has back up the chain with-IE, 24 particularly the vendor branch? :
25 A. Right.
f 1 Q. As opposed to where the problem 2 originated from and what corrective action or lack 3 thereof the licensee NTOL holder was g o i n;9 t o .
4 perform?
5 A. It had proceeded from an inspection and kn((
6 gone past that issue.
7 Q. Your major area was in the area of the ,
t 8 referral of the issue up to the vendor branches, l
9 generic implications.of the other people as far as l
' l 10 ' Bisco being a big supplier of fire penetration l 11 seals?
i 12 -
A. : asked what was being done at the site, j
w o.5 W L i t l 13 andA t h a t/Ga s apparently being dealt with. l 14 Mr. Phillips said it was being dealt with 15 adequately, whatever- technical fix needed to be 16 um kd4 made or not made or whatever to the fires sealsAwu.fge4 i,
17 Therefore, the obvious next question is, 18' hey, how about everybody else? Are there other ,
19 fixes that need to be made out there? l 20 Q. I do understand there is a'n issue back at 21 the site that may be a problem and that is whether 22 it should have been taken from non-compliance to i
23 an unresolved item in the sense that this issue we 24 talked about earlier, whether, in fact, the NTOL 25 holder should have reported it as 50.55(e) or Part l
l
l 1 21 and found it to be a problem, . irrespective of .
l 1
2 the fact whether the test does meet the three-hour {
3 fir.e requirement or not; but rather therdewas this f 1 issue that the NTOL holder found a3d whether, in )
5 fact, it is reportable under 50.55(e) or'Part 21. l 6 A. I didn't pursue that particular item.
7 Q. Right. -
8 A. I don't even recall whether that wqs one b u.h ow ad. t4 d iCc dft ot e D J. '
9 of the items our boardAconsidered. We did go 10 through all of them. I don't remember whether ~
l 11 that was particularly one or not.
12 Q. Okay.
~
13 A. Of course, again, the issue with 50.55(e) 14 is, o n e' , if he put it into a system and it got l 15 reviewed through a reasonable process and he '
16 arrived at the decision that it wasn't reportable, 1
I 17 he very likely has met his obligations.
18 I think the guidance IE manual says if 1
1 19 you get a lot of those kinds of things, you better 20 go sit down with the fellow and gethim calibrated l
21 on the NRC's view of what the threshold is and 22 what his view of the threshold is. Let's get 23 those things on the same plane.
24 Q. I think you're correct in stating that 25 the threshold or deportability is what really the u_____-______________________-__ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ - _ _ _ __
i 1 question of what we're talking about, whether it 2 meets the standard or not.
3 Getting back, though, to the -f 4 communication between the inspector, the SRI, I I
5 guess what you're talking about is having him go I l
6 directly outside the chain of command.
7 A. That was one. issue. There was something 8 else in there where he suggested there was a ]
}
9 Part 21 violation involved, and Part 21 wasn't 10 even in effect at the time that the.back-up 11 documentation that he was pointing to was written', '
1N d w a.1'.r.
12 4 the 1976 time frame. That's not a (l. 13 Part 21/.
$OW Part.21 came in, like, '78.
14 Q. Although it may have been applicable to 15 Comanche Peak and TUGCO when they found it to be a l
16 problem to report under Part'217 17 A. It may have been. l 18 Q. I'm' going to go to the NAMCO switches.
19 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Going back to this
! 20 letter, were you aware or did anybody te)2 you
~
21 that initially the letter was written to 22 Mr. Westerman concerning the Bisco seals and that 23 Mr. Westerman sent it back ,to Shannon and told l
24 Shannon to direct it to headquarters?
25 A. No. It was characterized to me this is l
l I ;
i
' ~
y1 .
1 what Shannon'has issued, has offered up something 2 straight to headquarters. I said, " Gee, we don't
(
3 do'that.' ;,.
4 Q. I guess there are two versions of the 5 letter. The first letter went up to' Tom. Tom 6 sent it back and instructed him to redo it; but 7 this time go directly to headquarters. That is 8 point that I was making 9 A. If that indeed is a fact, that still' i
l
. 10 wouldn't be appropriate. It should be - #a 11 request for vendor inspeccion should go up through 12 at least a branch chief, a branch' chief kind of l 13 thing, more appropriately from the: division.
l i 14 -
Q. I guess going back to the criticism of 15 Phillips as to write directly to headquarters, he 16 may have been acting under instructions?
17 A. I didn't make that as a major point that 18 was touched on. If he had given me feedback at 19 the point, "This is how I was told to do it,' I (
20 would have said, " Gee, I'll deal with that. 'We'll i
21 get Tom onboard on this, too."
22 Q. )
(By Mr. Goldberg) Going back to the-
}
1 23, NAMCO switch area, I believe the switch issue that 24 was an issue in the inspection report. 85/16-13, I 25 believe yois had some comments on that.
i
q l
1 Tha't's the section on the action of the .
2 IE bulletin 79.14 -- I'm sorry -- it's IEB 79-28.
1 3 You used the term " indeterminate." ,I gatIher from )
r 4 your discussion -- we.had discussions earlier this i 5 morning and you made a point about the ne"ed for 6 the inspector to do additional work. -3 7 'I'd like to hear if you could elaborate a 8 little bit more on that issue. ,
9 A. In reading this report, that's page 4-4 (L
10 in the draft, the bottom linegLh., ! rea dawn _
j t is 4 1 11- which - w. thisA indeterminate because4the l 12 misidentification of switches as described above, '
13 it is neither clear that all switches have been 14 replaced nor that the replacements are as 15 recorded.
16 My comments was, "Go find out." He's 17 making it a violation as failure to identify and 18 control parts installed in the RER system as a j i
19 violation of 10 CFR, Part 50, Appendix B, 20 Criterion VIII. '
21 You know, let's go find out if we have 22 faulty equipment out there. Let's identify it.
i AS j 23 Let's not leave itAneither clear that all switches 24 have been replaced nor that the replacements are 25 as reported. That's an incomplete inspection i
I o
l 1
j r.
GI r
1 element.
2 Q, Okay. .I s it a problem in a generic
,r 3 sense? The word indeterminate being'it's either a 4 determinate to be qualified or a determinate to be 5 unqualified that's causing a problem, or"is it 6 where you think you could stay within determinate,
~
0 7 but you want to see more work done?
8 I tell you, indeterminate is a tero 9
that's used in the definition of non-conformance. l i
10 If a quality-item is either unacceptable or 11 indete'rminate, then,-in fact,',it's non-conforming 12 from the definition in the code.
13 Also, it is used quite. frequently in 1
' )
1 14 Region III-inspections. There's a propensity to -
15 use that term involving Part 21 miterial where 1 j
16 you're not sure what the pedigree or not sure if 17 there is a quality program around for that 18 material.
1 19 1 To help me understand what you're saying, {
.. 1 1
20 your problem is that the fellow should have done ,
21 more work or is it also a problem a little bit in 22 the communication where the word indeterminate is 23 not an appropriate term?
24 A. There shouldn't have been any problem 25 because -- I'm not sure. I may have_used the word .
L____.________-- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - - - - _ _ _ _ - _ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
'D
~
{ ]
- i
[ 9 .. - -
a 1 indeterminate in por; discussion; but clearly in .
\
2 ' writing thic,'we're citing them for a potential I 3 underlying hardware problem on NAMCO switphes. ,
4 Find out if there's a hardware problem or 5 .not. That certain?.'y doesn't use the word
,:6 ! indeterminate and should guide him to say, " Gee, I o i
7 haven't> pro'vided information here which gets to j l i 8 the ques' tion that's being asked by management.
9 Sowething is incomplete.? l 1
10 Q. So, the-key is inconiteteness in the J i
11- inspection itselCl 12 A. Yes. ,
l
)
13 Q. In other wordst going the next step.and 14 determining whether, in fact, hardware problems do 1
15 exist in the plant.
10 A. The use of the word indeterminate is very 17 slippery. If .you're dealing truly with the status 18 of the equipment, maybe it's appropriate. If 4 i
19 ' youtre trying to cover an incomplete inspection, 4 1
(
20 1t's not appropriate. "
l 21- Q. So, in other words, if we still came down 1 02 after'more work was done --
I'm doing a l
1
- 2 3. hypothetic.nl.now if I could with you -- and you l i
24 vent and looked at even more switches or look to !
J 25 l where the switches were and found the safety
- i V .
e
.l I function becomes not clear -- I don't want to use 2 the word indeterminate --
it may not be a safety L le
- l 3 function, a particular system, an RHR train or 7 4 something, could he still use the word 5 indeterminate?
, 6 Would it still be a possible term that's 7 used not to cover up an incomplete inspection, but 8 rather, in fact, where you're not sure whether you
.s 9 have an acceptable or unacceptable switch in a i
10 system?
11 A. I still think it would be loose wording.-
12 It would be more appropriate to describe what it 3adgas... ,
13 is. A The procurement specification that was issued 14 by the company requires this switch to be operable i
'15 over this temperature range, and the documents l i
16 that accompany these switches which are now 17 installed at the plant say it covers a narrower ;
18 range. Therefore, it appears that these switches 19 may not meet the required temperature ranger and,
\
20 therefore, what is their quality?
21 Well, the quality issue becomes not 22 determined; but the way you.put it in the report 23 would '-
describe the facts. ,,,
24 Q. Now, there's another element.in this and 25 that goes back to the issue itself which is the
i o
1 improper identification of either of the NAMCO
[
2 switches.
3 Would you expect the inspec, tor 36 ,
l 4 determine the consequences of that improp'r e 5 identification, to determine whether or not, i n.
! 6 fact, the misidentification is causing an l
1 i
7 ' additional problem or not?
i j
8 Are you expecting the inspector to 9
determine not just the paper problem.but to go and l 10 look at the hardware to.see, in fact, there is a 11 safety problem / more significant safety problem?
12 A. As .a. general rule, the inspector has to !
1 13 get to the issue of' significance, what is the 14 impact. You may have observed some welding 15 practice that is not appr,opriate and if you 16 observe that out in~the turbine building and it's !
17 only in the turbine building as you discover 18 through, you know, further inspection, you may 19 want to leave it there or let the licensee know, 20 " Bey, I'm going to be watching for Ehe same kind 21 of thing in safety-related welding."
i 22 If the issue is safely related, it 23 immediately becomes enforcement. It's moves into 24 enforcement's space.
25 Q. But, again, I gather from the
i i
. I' Conversation, you would preferred the inspector'to i
2 go further prior to writing it up. Is that correct?
3 ,
'{
4 A. No. Judging from the fact that 'they were 1
5 in the RER system, I was satisfied that they .
6 probably had some relation to safety. Were they l 7 on the Q list? Some licensees broadly define 1 8 their Q list just by systems. Others get down to 1 9 the function of the switches.
Tkd Ms wn 10 The issue wasA 1 :tir;'*h44 not clear. 1 11 Maybe it was just a problem the way he wrote it.
He. wa.s (Mes% tu dk.
12 AY;L':r citir.; them for a potential hardware r
s 13 problem. Find,out if there's a hardware problem wu S p esehb.
14 or nota It may be simply expanding on what was 15 alt ady known in the field notes and rewriting , )
16 that to demonstrate that'there was indeed this 1 17 extra work that was done.
i 18 Q. When you do follow-up on IE bulletins, 19 which this is a follow-up, I would imagine 20 bulletins which are very difficult"to get out of 21 the agency in the first place, as you probably 22 know, that the likely scenario was that the 23 bulletin would stem from a hardware problem that 24 was discovered at someplace or some plant and 25 that, in fact, when you do follow up on the
1 bulletin, there is this potential that if it's not 2 done correctly that this. plant would suffer 1
3 through the same problem that the plant resolved'
, l 4 the came from bulletin.
5 In other words, there probably'Is this 6 correlation here and then -- I just don't know- l l
7 exactly in this region how you view the follow up 8 of IE bulletins.
9 Is this something that you'are' expecting 10 more of the-inspector to do or is what he did 11 sufficient? I gather you expected more from him 12 than this.
13 A. If you're going to write a violation, 14 yeah, let's pin it down to what was the failure, 15 not a potential hardware problem. It seems to me 16 that there was little additional work that would Mr.L5*9 b hka. (9&cMdrsf t-85-16/id 17 have been n erde that complete, and this4as it 18 stands was not a satisfactory product out of a 19 senior resident.
20 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Was that' work _ eventually 21 done in this report?
22 A. I don't recall what the final version 23 said on that particular issue.
24 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) The key of it is we 25 don't have the final r e p' o r t ; but it ended up being f
an unresolved item which doesn't lend itself to 1
2 that little additional work.
3 It seem's based'on wha: you're saying what' I
4 would have been preferable is to have somebody 5 communicate back to the inspector to do X, Y and 3 i
6 '
Zr and then we have a resolution as opposed to 7 maintaining it as an unresolved item. t l
1 8 .Am I reading you right or wrong when I 9 say that? In other words, why not get that little 10 work done now as opposed to drawing this out --
11 A. Any'further.
3
.12 Q. Yes. .
13 A. That would have been real slick to get 14 that done at that point. Are we not tracking that 15 item? We a r'e tracking that item. !
. 1 16 Q. So, in retrospect, would you say that if l 17 you have your rathers now as oppo' sed to then, you 18 might have asked that little additional work to be 19 done and get this item?
20 A. Apparently.
lu M WMM M m N (ntM.-..
I said, " Find.-out if there's 21 a hardware problem or not."
1 22 Q. We don't have a final report. So, I 23 don't know exactly how'it came out, but I believe 24 L
it came out as an unresolved item which wee 25 released several weeks later. There was a l
k
1
. . j i
-1 report. You just showed him the report. Here it 2 is.. Okay. Here it is.
3 A. If they can come back and say, "We can't, q 4 account for it. We have to replace those' parts" !
5 there's probably a violation out of the thing.
6 Q. But it gets back to the issue at hand 8
7 thought Could t;his have been accomplished more 8 simply by having the inspector do the additional 9 work on the spot and-getting this resolved sooner?
10 A. I don't know what -- maybe there was
%bL N.lltLaw, wwlkksvt. gs%{
11 going to be a delay,/ "I can get you that 11 information. It's going to take a week" or 13 whatnot.
14 As I saide ifggishadbeenless
, as if was M twg wtwo cg A g of the l
15 potentia 14 d"-' '- -
- n:t cleez kind of thing, 16 2
b"t left ::, yem k u w w ,)7 v a ne n U A SAT s coa u t t t o ;. t,5 e(m
. 17 qualification of these switches because the 18 a two(
paperwork wasn't available, the +eet we might take --
19 today would be " send it as a violation."
20 They may come back and say", "I'm sorry, ,
l 21 gentlemen, we didn't give you this information 22 before. It clearly meets the specifications." We 23 have to withdraw our violation; and, you know, 24 that's what we would do today.
25 Again, the specifics on how much
i 1 additional information, et cetera, is this l 2 appropriate, we put the burden on_the licensee.
3 Q. Let me_just make one last question and !
'4 I'll be finished. It seems in our discussion 5 we've had, my understanding of the issue,' it isn't ;
6 so much a documentation issue on these particular 7 two switches as it is to take the switches and ')
8 track them through to see if it's a safety, 9 function to determine whether it's an' integrated q 10 status or not. Did they really do the upgrade or 11 not? .
12 In other words, there's a bit of hardware 13 now to look at. In other words, it would be --
I
'i 14 think from what I'm listening to you very 15' carefully -- the real job is for the. inspector t o, 16 go from the potential problem of documentation and' 17 move right into the hardware to see if, in fact,
)
18 the hardware is faulty here or not as opposed to 19 asking the licensee to come up with more l
20 documentation. -
21 Am I misinterpreting what you're saying?
22 A. The final close-out for the bulletin 23 would be to do some field work out there to take a 24 look at the switches. In this case, make sure 25 they're identified and they tracked back through
_ _ . _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _J
l I the documentation. So, it is, again, going to 2 hinge around the documentation, )
3 For some IE bulletins it is You
- simp lle. l l
4 look for the white spool instead of the black b t4 > k 5 spool. awe ha(d)those issues with GE relays and s ola.,u ids 6 c e l e r. c i d s and all. That's a pretty easy 7 inspection item to follow up on.
'I 8 Q. There's still more documentation in your 9 your mind that might have to be checked to 10 determine whether or not this issue is a problem i
11 or not? i 12 A. Yeah. But this was months and months 13 ago.
J 14 Q. I'm just tracking to possibly being able .
15 to do something more sooner when this was about to l
16 the point where it was going to get a resolution 17 on the part of the inspector and up through 18 management as opposed to hanging on to it for the 1
1 19 length of time it takes to get an unreso]ved item
]
20 processed and back to the region and t' hen finally 21 closed out in some form or not.
' 1 i
1 22 I gather --
I was keying off one of your j
23 points where you made back to your comment where !
i 24 you might have, I guess, had in the back of your '
1 25 mir* the possibility of the inspector going back i i
1
1 out and du.ng the additional work ,n the spot.
2 A. Find out if there's a hardware problem or 3, not. He's got something in'his notes that he, q
e 4 .hasn't worded properly. He hasn't ampliMiedon 5 the thing. 2 6 Q. It seemed like you had.the expectation --
7 and. correct me if I'm wrong --
that he was going 8 to go out there and do this additional work.
9 A. I had the' expectation that he would 10 address this issue.
11 Q. Within the confines of this inspection 12 report? !
13 A .. Might'be appropriate to not address it, !
14 to say look the inspection period has ended. I've ,
15 got this issue here that I need to do some more 16 work on. We're now in a new inspection month. I 17 take my notes for that, set it aside, get this )
18 report out, go out and on do whatever follow-up !
19 'might be necessary and document it in the next 20 inspection. That routinely happens.
21 QF. This period covers November 1st of '85.
22 So, what you're saying that~the next inspection 23 report would be the followin~g period which will 24 commence on December 1st and go for approximately 25 a month and there's an oppor,tunity then to
1 follow-up on something like this?.
2 A. Yeah. I think most inspectors would 3 prefer to demonstrate in their writtenr[ ports ,
4 that they're being thorough and complete and all, 5 and.we routinely will.have items that pop up at 6
the end of a period and the fellow wil1, you know, 7 keep it'in his pocket and say, *0kay. I'll get 8
hdgh nar! ?^5%%%d.%d wg he Lov.s/t
- Mk.
into,thatAritF.::t - 1. 2 .. , something that says, 9
- s. p bb'd gee, I got down this far and I could have/some 10 jnHW
_ i f f i : l t ;- out there and I've got to do more work 11 f
and all."-
12 "Th. hd w% si 4e AJust get all the info, put it down and 13 make it nice and crisp. It becomes nice, crisp 14 containable information. You don't have to go 1 tAATW' 15 back to thisAreport and pick up the trail and4 jump.
W n 16 0\kw W ahead to thisAone to/fm what's the final chapter. "
17 Q. The bottom line being in your mind this 18 inspection report covering this period, l 't was not 19 sufficient information to go one step and develop i 20 it as a violation. In your mind, is I understand i 21 i t , **mo r e wo r k had to be done?
22 A.
Not with what was written here. I didn't ;
23 regard that as a complete inspection. We're ,
i 24 talking about a potential problem. If he had the 25 information, just hadn't included'it, then that's t
_-- ---_--u_ .___.:.____-_-__m - . - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . - -
I 1 casy. The next revision amplifies on that point 1 2 and we know how to resolve the thing. i i
3 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) i Going back to the Bisco i
i
}
4 seals, Phillips initially wanted a refer'ral made i
5 to OI. Whatever happened to that concept? Was OI
. i 6 ever involved in that?
7 A. Yeah. As I said, I took the report over 8 to Mark Emerson who was our allegations cc
! 9 coordinator and Don Driskell, the investigator 10
~
from the OI's field office and said, "Here, based
! 11 on this package, read through that. Is that the l 12 kind of thing that warrants an OI investigation -
13 now or is there additional information that needs ;
I 14 .to be developed?"
i 15 They very clearly said, "There's no ,
1 16 wrongdoing here based on the information I see in 17 front of me"; and that's where you get into the 18 follow-up inspections at Bisco based on the 19 initial facts contained in that memo might reveal 20 that there was a potential OI issue,.
21 Q. So, was ever any.information developed 22 that answered OI?
23 E
A. That's up ing-- I got a call from Phil 24 M.
McKeeA That's been several weeks now. .They're 25 dealing with the thingf and they're dealing with
1 the technical issues. A piece of it is~ going over 2
to NRR and the vendor program branch for follow-up 3 inspection there. ,
f ,
4 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) I guess in your 5 mind -- let me go back to what George's question 6 is -- the OI follow-up to that issue would come 7 only after the boys back in Washington had a crack 8 at this to see what the issues are. In other 9 words, you didn't see the need to get OI involved 10 early on? If they had to be involved, it would be 11 afttr? .
' .12 %.
Nvg I asked /'bhe question. I went to the OI 13 investigator and I said, "Bere, is this the kind {
14 of thing that when indgy you t'ead-it that you 'll l 15 say there's wrongdoing here, and this is an OI 16 investigation?"
17 Bad that occurred, we would put it in the 18 allegation tracking system. We would have made !
19 the referral to OI and they would have involved 20 the vendor branch for technical exp'ertise if they 21 needed it.
22 Q. (By Mr. Mulley) Didn't Phillips' raise 23 the question though of whether there was a problem 24 of certification and the records that -~ what I 25 understand, Bisco was claiming that records of e
1 certification were destroyed in the fire had, in 2 fact, occurred after the fire?
3 A. That was the issut that he was rying to l
l 4
infer from the back of documentation. I had all LO 5 of that. I gave that to' Don Driskell. I. said, ---
6 " Based on the information you see here, in your i
7 reading of this, what does this suggest?" '
l 8 And it certainly could suggest that "We l 9 had records at one point. There was a fire in our i
l 10 offices at some time. We're now several years
~
l 11 later. We go back to find th,ose records for ANI, 12 and we can't find them." '
13 Q. I was under the impression that the tests 14 that*were done, the records that were developed, 15 were developed subsequent to the fire. -
16- A. I didn't get that out of the reading of to 17 that and neither did Drisbell.
18 Q. I'll have to review that again.
19 Q. (By Mr. Goldberg) It still turns on the 10 issue on the deportability on the part of the 21 utility when he discovered the problem whether 22 something.should have been reported at that time 23 when the ANI ,c certification was withdrawn. That's 24 really -- that's where it a33 c o n.e s together from 25 the utility perspective.
o
)
~
gp -
102 1 AFTERNOON SESSION
- 2 JULY 22, 1986 3 Thereupon, '
4 ERIC JOHNSON l 5 resumed the stand and,.having been first duly cautioned and "
! 6 1
sworn, testified further upon his oath as follows:
7 EXAMINATION j 8 i Sy Mr. Mulley:
1 9 Q Has Phillips ever come to yo'u and discussed with 10 you some of'the problems he was having with, you know, Tom 11 Westerman, or anybody else for that matter?
l 12 A The only conversation that we had related to the
, ) \
s 13 January 18th trip down there add he called back the next 14 day to follow up on that, explaining his reasons for not 15 betag able to describe the percent complete of the plant, 16 and just the conversation just revolved around that one i 17 issue.
18 Q Had he just come back from a vacation when that.
19 plant tour took place; do you recall?
20 A He had been in and out of the o fice', but again 21 we weren't looking for great precision, som3 thing.that j 22 would have been, ;- '
-, he would have generally had 23 knowledge of, y===b===, "It's.about '70 percent; if you 24 want more preciseness than that, I'll, ; :_ ' . . , get you a 25 'better number. %ss=demuw , 'I,t ' s t h e k i n d o f t h i n g t h a t j u s t 1
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (113) 222-7177
= -_
103
. i 1 would be common knowledge, i i
2 O So pretty much the assessment was he'didn't know 3 his way around the plant when it got to -- 9 St.
4 A A Didn't know his way around the plant, couldn't 5 identify, ;: _ '- :: , where he was in the plant; managed-to 6 get he and Jim lost; Jim had to find his way out at the 7 end,' , '
- _, "I think if we go up this ladder, you now, l
8 we'll be back out to the reactor building," and sure i
9 enough -- of course, ,- '
_ , Jim had been at the plant 10 ,with the TRT effort, ,__m_r, like a year before that. \
11 But I think as I said before, you probably need
' l 12 to have a short conversation with Jim on what went on;-- ndArsn3 ---
( 13 their plant tour.
14 Q Okay. And you have not had any direct 15 discussions with Phillips concerning the way he's, you i 16 know, documenting his inspections and preparing' draft 17 inspection reports?
18 N No, not other than the 85-16/13 report, that l
19 would have been the only direct contact, and..even that was 20 through Tom. -
21 And again, y: _ ' - , g :t ;f-thog,had this 22 investigation not otherwise interrupted, ;- - ' .__r, ih 11 23 management's ability to do/the job, y' - ;w,/certainly 24 would have been conducting those, having those 25 conversations.
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 t
. 104 1 Q How long has shannon worked for you or has been, 2
has he been your responsibility?
3 A well, through, you mean at Comanche Pe li, through 4 that chain?
5 0 Yeah, so where you're actually, you know, 6
reviewing his reports and signing off on his work and
[!
7 approving it, that type of thing. -
' .~_ )
8 A Since November when I took over acting director
- 9 of the division. .
10 Q okay. So before'that, if'he sent up a repor't --
11 I guess, from what 3 understand, shannon went on to .
12 Comanche Peak in'ths middle of '84. .
13 A I think th t's right.
14 Q So for that! year., year or 18 months, whatever it 15
. was, if he sent a report up through the headquarters, you i 16 wouldn't get involved in actually reviewing the report; do 17 I have that correct? 1 l
18 A That's right.
l It was, supposed to have gone 19 throug before that, and prior to that it would have 20 been, you know, as the branch chief.
21 Q so this is really starting to become your first )
22 hands on contact with his work product, then?
23 A That's true. Yes. Now, I an aware that he has 24 had other interactions wi.th folks here on -- particularly 25
'on the issue of writing ability when he was in the vendor TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
j Lus l 1 . branch, he and and it : : t s had a -
2 particularly bloody session about the inability to get out a decent written product.
~
3 Now the slant on the '"may have
- 4 M ht.w4at w '
been morepsupervisorylevel, but nonetheless, supervisors 5
also responsible for the quality of the written product.
6 -
And the thrustj as it's been related to me, and g
I is ;
7 you have to verify that, wasAvery curious Une; it was not ~
~
8
'so much "I hear what you're saying, why haven't you told me
\
9 this before; you know, why do we have to come down to this 10 ' kind of confrontation," by,,t "No one has ever told me this
- I 11 before, and therefore, it can't be true jand if you are .
12 telling me this, then nhe fault lies with you and not with
- j 13 me." \ !
14 I think that's -- it'says something interesting l 15 about the man.
The reaction to these kinds of things, I eI* '
16 think, is part of that pattern rather g than surfacing them(prob a 4"h
, 17 up through the processes that are allowed or encouraged by 18 the agency, open door, go talk to anyone you wish, use the i 19 differing professional opinion approach; 9 : 1 1 J.... he 20 didn't choose to use any of those, chose to go'around'his 21 management and deprive them of the capability of dealing 22 with the issuesp I think says something interesting.
23 '
And again, I think it's part of past pattern, as 24 w% MSM wn,) .
I mentioned beforep t south Texas, Harry Thornburg and IE
^
25 Headquarters would regularly get information transmitted to l
TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 l.
l
. suu I
him that Bill Seidle didn't know about. And Bill was A S 't 2 supervisor at the time. And experience with 3
Shanno,nworkinginthevendorbranchwasmu,chthf'same.
4 Q Do you think that the reason that he di'dn't'go 5 through his management with his concerns was that he felt 6 that it would, he was up, you know, against a dead end and -
.p_
7 that, you know, wouldn't do him any good;'was there any ~
~
8 reason for him to feel'that way?
9 A .That's -- well,.I can't get into the mind of the 10 fellow. -
i 11 Q rros your perspective.
12 M
someh wish I Would.
A I would say as a 13 professional,havinghisap\ parent qualifications and 1
14 experience with the NRC, that he has a positive 15 professional obligation to work through the system.
, d del -
16 There's just not an . excuse for/that.g -
17 The NRC has created a very strong program for 18 differing professional opinions; if he felt, if anyone '
19 feels that it's going to be used against them, I think '
20 they're making a big mistake. You can go"right to y talk to, 21 u,, . , '. :. : fer r- * *rrrr ;;; : rtra ; ; :;;rrrt ef th:t, 22 bA Lando sek, I'm sure would give you a very positive straight 23 minustg h b Po pegcast forward response to that, that/$h just wouldn't be
- 24 tolerated, that th:=, _khere will be differences /mitivos. .
- we deal 25 hd d with a lot of judgmental issues,/ won't be tolerated to play TATE REPORTING SERVI,CE, (713) 222-7177
107 S .
1 those kind of ulterior games with them. We'll just deal I
- s %m i A R wq _ s -
2 wi th th e3 s t r a i gh t f o rwa r cy rstnres .
wve .
3 BobMartiri;curregionaladministraq6r, j won't 4 back away from any of those. Put it down on paper, let's i
5 get it processed, get it reviewed; no problem. Now we'll 6 get the thing resolved. If management has made a decision 7 that's flawed, we'll get that corrected. If the technical, !
8 M; issue ~ or the technical point of view he is wq <
9 AM by the individual /, well, we'll get that squared away. ~
10 You know, we have judgments and a lot of times i
11 judgments aren't totally right, totally wrong, there's, you 12 know, there's some middle ground. We can work through 13 those things.
a I
14 Q Is there any stigma attached to submitting a DPO?
l 15 A Not within this region. .
16 (By Mr. Goldberg)
Q Has that been a popular 17 technique; have tbere been many DPO's written in this 18 region?
19 A I know of one that was written. The process is 20 there; we have looked at it recently, we hatisfied 21 ourselves that it's an appropriate process; I wish the Fdrq 22, pseensa were perhaps more positively stated.
23 It talks about DPO's in terms of, you know, being 24 an available avenue, and I think it probably could be even is 25 more strongly worded, that it is the avenue, it's the way TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 i
108 1 of putting issues out.on the table so they can be looked at ]
i 2 and that there is a positive professional obligation to use i
3 that system. And -- but that's how -- thatshob,we 'i 4 approach it within this region.
( 5 Q (By Mr. Mulley) The one that you.had, how did~
r ,
6 that turn out?
7 A I can't speak, you know, I can't speak to the-8 details on that. I think Glen Madsen wrote it but Glen, I 9 think was, he had been a branch chief; he was made a 10 section chief in the vendor branch and when they moved', he 11 stayed here so he took a downgrade to an inspector. But 12 that had little to do with the DPO issue. There were other
. 13 strong issues involved.
14 But you know the folks to talk to this would be, 15 well, like John Collins, who was key in making that L
16 !
J decision. '
l 17 Q You had mentioned that Westercan had gome to you 18 before 85-16/13 with problems he was having.
! 19 A Well, he was keeping me cut in to what was going 20 on down there, thathewashavingtoconthnd, to deal with 21 these findings; he, you know, had outlined them for me.
22 And, ya" 'mrr, the difficulty 16 getting these things -
23 resolved, in making Shannon understand what, ; ~ 'E- , what 6 24 are these things, adequate findings, inadequate findings, 25 ,; ;---'r " , how should the NRC deal ~with these things.
1 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 e
L 109 1 Q So he discussed some of the findings with you on 2 these previous inspection reports?
3 A Yeah, in a very general sense. '
4 Q Was Phillips involved in an,' way in the input of 5 these discussions?
6 A No.
t 7 Q When Westerman was discussing these things, I 8 guess he was coming forward with his point of view. Were 9 you able to make an independent assessment of the findings 10 based on what you were provided, you know, as to whether or 11 not it should be a finding, it shouldn't be a finding? i 12 It seems to me looking at it, you know, you've
.. 13 got Tom coming in disagreeing that this should be a 14 finding; he's going to present to you, why he doesn't think 15 this should be a finding.
t -
16 You've got Phillips' argument as to why it should i 17 be a finding naturally, that you're not hearing. Based on 18 what you, what was presented to you, do you feel you'd be 1,9 able to make a decision as to whether or not Tom is right 20 and it shouldn't be a finding? -
21 A Well, Tom was dealing with those. The substance 22 of findings was related to me and, ,_- '
--r, I could see .
23 the issue that they were dealing with, ug 24 thi SkAm N" PWb If it had been known; and I think Tom was misled ,cctved\d k wgg 25 by that, he walked away from a number of those discussions, TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
~ 110 I
i 1 with, "I'll take care of that." And not recognizing that' 2 someone is keeping book on all these things, and is then 3 going to say, "We'll take care of that, '
._f{ we'll use 4 another forum to approach these things."
5 Had that, , --
_ flavor been known, we would ]
i 6
have dealt with it in a much different fashion. We would 7 have dealt with it much more collegially, "Come in, sit 8 down."
l l
9 I know the tech.nique that the PAT team uses when 10 they do team inspections is a peer review. Takes away a l 11 lot of the threat process that the individual' inspector, 12 . -_, he can't say that management took these issues t
13 and dealt with them differently,m ; . - , from what I would l
14 have done. 1 15 His peers are sitting around the table and 16 saying, "Well, this issue that you've laid on the table is 17 not a good issue."
l l
And I think that's a very strong, very 'l 18 strong mechanism. l 19 We don't, can't use, ;- '
- ., it identically in 20 'this process.
l I did, after the meeting in February, where 21 we discussed the 85-07/05 differences. I approached Jim 22 Partlow and approached Vince Noonan to see if they wouldn't 23 provide some assistance when we had issues in contention 24 like that that we could kick it up to some bbbe=& Mek party.
25 And they both agreed that we would do that. '
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73Rr On the IE side that kind of got swept up in b re d s.W q y e II l 2 this other process we are using nowd where we just take the l 3 report end ship it up to them and take another cdpy and we t
4 mark up what our view is on the various findings'and ship
. 5 that up and let them prepare the final. report.
6 Q So at the time, then, you didn't think it was 7 necessary to get a hold of Phillips personally?
8 A Had no indication that he had -- I knew he was 9 upset about us going down there and he read something more 10 into it than certainly was intended to be. I thought that 11 a strange reaction.
12 But'that he , felt that we weren't dealing fairly
- l 13 with at least issues, that he still had some thing, a thorn 14 under his saddle. Not at all.
4 I
2 15 Q (By Mr. Goldberg) One issue we understood there 16 was going to be some memo sent up to Washington, involving l 17 the record storage issue. I understand Mr. Westerman had j 18 prepared his side of the story and Mr. Phillips prepared 19 his side of the story, and I don't believe it left your i
20 desk.
- 21 A It's still, yeah, it's still in there. And Y
22 that's just been swept up with, you know, with a lot of 23 other things and what we can do and what we're 24 constrained not to do for this investigation, iti s kind of 25 ' languished, it's in final form, in there.
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- 1. Q (By Mr. Mulley) Do you recall after the walk 2'
through with Mr. Gagliardo, the following day, having a 3 telephone conversation with Phillips, and tellin "him.that 4 you just r'ead his resume, his construction experience was l
l 5 very thin, but that you guessed you'd leave him down there' 6 since he was already there at the site?
7 A No, that's not true. I did not read'his resume.
8 I said I was'avare of what his background, generally, was.
t <
9 And because he got on to the issue of didn't feel very 10 comfortable in the electrical area and that's where a lot j
.]
11 of the work was going to be, a lot of the important work I l 12 that was upcoming in Unit 2, and that's, as you recall from i
13 the earlier discussion, when I suggested he get a hold of ]
I 14 Dennis Kelly, get Dennis to help him out on that.
l Dennis 15 is an electrical engineer, that I also have talked to Tom 16 over the past weeks an'd months about using, when we've got )
17 any slack time in what's going on with the CPTG follow up '
18 activities that we shift some of those guys over to the 19 Unit 2 side. We can have a couple of those guys working (
20 elect'rical inspection effort on Unit 2. -
21 Q okay. Let me ask you a question concerning~the 22 Region's policy regafding draft reports. What is the 23 policy concerning retention of draft reports?
24 A Draft reports should not be maintained unless 25 'there is a reason to maintain them. Once a report is TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222,-7177
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113 I
written and goes final, the inspector should get rid of all 2 hits drafts; it's going to become a burden, storage, a 3 burden for FOIA, it justcreatesawholeunneceksaryrange 4 of problems.
5 If there's an issue that warrants the report 6 being maintained, then the inspector is to document what o.wl Th dea.O that issue is, and we'll maintain that3in the public, 7
8 document room. The inspectors are not encouraged to 9 maintain their own independent files of draftE. i 10 Q If the inspector feels that his report has been 11 changed and that to protect himself, he likes to keep a' 12 draft in case somebody comes back'later on and criticizes 13 the report,, what's the Region's position with something 14 like that, how is that handle ?
15 A The. inspector signs off on th'at report, he is.
16 happy with it. Those differences of opinion have to be 17 worked out before that time.. We're' developing a more 18 formalized approach for that, whichNillinvolveeither, i
19 you know, the inspector is happy, the report goes out the 20 way it gets resolved and the drafts are disposed of; the i
21 inspector is not happy and the issue is"one that needs to j 22 be looked at more closely; you can take that issue out of 23 Sual+uk the report and set it aside and #--- ; - _ '- , the piece
.+ w 9 t 24 that everybody agrees to, and deal with the other issue; 3
25 ' the inspector can refuse to sign the report and issue a TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 i
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, 114
. y
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1 differing professional' opinion, you know, a whole range of l l
2 options that prevent the circumvention of the process of i 3 dealing with issues'. That's what we're here for.,.
l I 4 Get them up on to the table so that everybody
[
5 knows what they are and then you can start talking them l i
a i 6 through. Don't say that, ps, I'm happy or I don't 7
n tr eraNL A want to see that report anymore; and - then/ r" m", ;xT 8
N spnu; m mqrAdk 7ru separate set of books on the thing / That runs l 9 counter, I think, to what we're supposed to be doing.
10 Q By not signing a report, is that a viable option' l
11 that's open to an inspector? Is that something that is 12 exercised at all?
13 That's come up a couple of times.
! 14 A I don't know. We've looked -- I don't recall l
l 15 that we've had a lot of occasion to come across that.
l int l 16 The4-- as a matter of fact, we're looking at what is the 17 inspection report; does it need to be signed, I mean we've 18 got some very practical considerations especially with 19 resident inspectors, reports come down here and 55/20, you .--
1 l LM h M Pac j
i 20 know, they go through/ the management review and[: py% % Wh is up i
t 21 in Nebraska, how do you get him t'o sign the report. )
22 Reports are NRC documents and represent --
j 23' ultimately represent; management decisions, and we're .
24 looking into where signing of reports proceeds from. It's 25 'not part of the manual chapter, the IE manual chapter on 1
f' !
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3:
- -115 l '
. i inspections and'perhaps it's just suitable to list-the 1 .
i 1
4 j
2 individuals that participated'in the inspection'like we i 3
would list consultants that provide input or, y e now, ,
4 something along that line, and then management signs the' 'l i
5 report out. &
, j j
t 6 0 Well, I guess the point I'm driving at is I d
7 realistically, if the inspector disagrees about what the l l
8 report says, thentheonlyoptionopen,toifimifhecan't; 9
keep his drafts to protect himself is the DPO, I guess that H i
l' 10 would be the best option available? '
/ ; > 'i 11 A And a DPO is a whole'rhnge of things i there; 12 -it's, "I want to talk to the regional administrate r;" you ~ a 13 know, "I want to talk to someone else in the NP.C about this 14 thing."
y-15 certainly if an inspector,said, "I disagree with ri ,{-
16 what you've done in this report, and :^
- uJ therefore,- i
> I 17 l
i I
can't sign because a technical issue has gone away or \
j
! 18 hasn't been treated properly and all," we/would certainly in th r% k i
-q j 19 he deal 4$$ with that very~ forthrightly. I ----
I 20 Q We've talked about the' fact that, you.know, 1
- 21 ,
Shannon didn't use the mane.gement that was set up, he 22 didn't go through his management, that's why we're.
! 23 involved, he circumvented. ,
24 I guess his problems, at least from what'I can 25 see, had been going on for several months. Was management t.
.a TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 h 's
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~ - .. . . . . . . . . .. . . .
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116 1
aware of these problems, first; did they know'he had f
l 2 problems and then,.given those couple of months, what was 3 done, you know, to try to~ resolve.them with him?
l 4 I know-Tom was' going back, but other than that, 5 you know, from what I understand, a lot of the discussions i
6 that'he had with Tom, consultant overheard one five-hour 7 %esskon,andIhaven'tverifiedthatitwasafive-heur-8 session, however I'm sa'ying, that characterized them as a 9 badgering session.
10 So I guess, it seems to me, that tlut Region was 11 aware;that there were problems with this inspector out 12 there; I don't know who was right and who was wrong, but 13 there were problems.
14 And I guess the questior is what action did the 15 Region take to get this guy, you know -- -
16 A Turned around, counsel'ed.
, 17 Q Whatever, to get him straight, either correct him 18 or be corrected.
I 19 A Yeah, I think you have to probably ask the 20 question what would the Region have done f per,mitted to 21 carry out it's management responsibilities. And that would 22 be entirely different'from what, you know,Ifrom what we wds't -
13 Mr k N tb ,
4 c4e44 do and what we have done.
24 We've been, you know, because of some of the
~
25 other constrain,ts that have been placed on us, the -- and TATr SEPORTING SERVICE, (713) 122-7177 O
u
117 l 1 because we're dealing with November, that that time frame 2 of getting the backlog of these reports out, you know, 2 .
85-07/05, the October, November reports, al,1thafi s t
4 occurring around this November, December time frame.
I I
5 And at first we said, "Okay, we have technical l
1 6 issues," now Shannon has had technical issues in the past i 7 on other projects, like Waterford, working for Jay Harrison !
down there where he would come in with a fact, and to him',cs%) !
8 9 that fact meant a whole range of illness out there that ;
10 other people didn't view the same way.
11 And so you work on Shannon, you work on him; he i 12 has a unique perspective for regulation and what is '
Gm. h Amt 13 reasonable corrective action. For exampl the3 mixer l
W g ms pg g (r l
14 blades; on the cement Weeh/. pt 6501 His reasonable -oG) e, corrective Tht 15 action would have been, "btility must look at every l
16 inspection that might be called out in the entire range of 17 all their construction activities and make sure that
' j 18 q they're documenting and, you know, have all of those, you i 19 know, those things in place." And is that really the 20 reasonable corrective action? "
- 21 Shannon had a long conversation with Bob Martin WbA 22 on that. And during that conversation Bob related to es-At 23 thettherewasawhole--(whiletheyweretalking)-a: ^
2 24 h shift what Shannon viewed as the corrective action Cum %t W<<< Wule :)
25 that would be required for that thing 4 all the way from,
, TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
118 -
1 "Make sure they get it in place, the procedure for, you 4 %(hhh4 2 know, for documenting cement mixer blades $" to, you know, 3
5Ando4 m W. Iht .
that original / # they had to go look at everythipi3. *
,%~ -
% studiaw,(iludiup 4 - fq(5v 2n acolclon to I v c. a.
1 *"** M N U9 , M hud Mit.v Vu.(eg wtft not
! 5 f.as+s 1rcout which the N C has made some ' u d y mu n i, r--- '
b i A. IN bt h WM C4crtk iN M,s4d 6
U4e iauus( l'c sa 3 fr*e
( cfrtdNt cwNm y the tacts are canivo11As do.ved h hv. intSh- W4 'bd 7 th ^1 ' .= -- Axxe cney alon't auo2u unc teaccos pi e aue 8 res;;l plac--- %
l 9 Now, the finding that proceeds out of that, is 10 that's a violation. That's where you get into thi s fMA, 11 soy more extreme view of what regulation,i: :11 :.L - .
12 fd One3 of the conversation I had with Shannon in 13 January, one piece of that was, that I wanted to impress 0
14 upon him that as an inspector, he was to articulate 15 findings in such a manner as they could be dealt with and 16 fixed. And I said topfurther that, I'm not expecting 17 inspectors not to find problems; I am expecting them to 18
% findO a, th: p:;b1:::
wLg. ;;d be able to talk about those problems 19 A so that when corrective actions are taken by the utility 20 ttret we know we fixed the problem. -
WM 21 So youp: 1' '=he M N,a M ,
problem, a given problem emd--
j 22 you don't say, "I found this thing and therefore everything 23 In O (44.
could be wron96"/you don't know when you fixed e_verything ;
24 and you don't know when you've gotten to the could be.
(N. say Smiwhy Pechm) 25 You've got to examine that thingfand did TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 i
119 1 this thing occur, what is the piece of their process that 2 was faulty in this so that we can get corrective action 3 that's going to fix that. '
T.pg,t.h a perIriath k Q 4 And Shannon's( he writing in the reports,/his 5 other articulations in thes:e issues, indicated th'a t he 6 wasn't able to focus on that.
! 7 Now, some of these, some of these findings, of (Skaand 8 course, were generated by consultants and he Awould take f 9 them and run with them, "I have this fact, and everybody l
l 10 .look at this fact, this means something to me."
l '
11 You had, you know, to. reel him in. Say, "What 12 does that mean; let's look at it?"
. 13 I'm not surprised that Tom had to spend a great 14 deal of e f f o rt/; en geNiAj that's M % ft.[tuf3 w hy I started getting involved in j 15 some of this process. And it was then,+it quickly, .
l 16 es......_11, got out of hand.
17 Q Yeah, because we didn't get involved until pretty i
18 much end of March, OIA meaning "we," didn't get involved i
19 until the end of March on the thing and apparently like you 20 said, there had been problems, you know, with him around 21 NovembAr, or at least they started to surface.
22 disuaulwib en k A' Well, we.have the November report / .;e .;;re h n '
23 U.a. MEEr; we were down there in January. -Mm -
24 M 4 mSerru::
,very; M h vthi: q %'.b.M % % t tr vuit u thk h "*
l' A ' ' '
- ;;, thi; -. ;;.i ___ __ _u__,f
. ,\ ', ', 2 : . wa. % \ n K y44, 25 (And the February, March report,ghas just now been hMcdAdhd Sbr % wao yk TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177' M Ib h N
% trek akCe* awn.m.
120 1 completed.
2 So you know we didn't have those kinds of, you 3 know, "Here'smyviewofcertainfactsand'findib.gs," ]
4 that's just now b3en typed up in final version.
L 5 Q okay, yeah, because the --
1 6 A So there's,a lack of opportunity there, for that 1
7 interaction.
l 8 Q I guess I'm still not sure I understand. He's '
l 9 going to Tom, you know, he's having arguments or l l
10 discussions, whatever word you wanted to use, concerning 11 the findings; Tom feels that there's some sort of a . 1 12 recalibration has to take place, this guy is off base.
' l i
13 And other than, you'know, the confrontations he 14 was having with' Tom, that would seem to be about the end of 15 the action that was taken against Phillips or to try to get 16 him corrected. You know, we have a problem with the way 17 he's writing.
18 I don't understand why somebody didn't sit, 19 'actually sit him down, say this is the way we want you to 20 write your reports or you're getting too much verbiage, or 21 like yesterday, we were given an example of where the guy 22 said the same thing four and five times over and over and 23 over again. And trying to get to the, you know --
24 A I am trying to give some direction here. In my 25 Tsadb telephone conversation with him,fget out and lo.ok at " '
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121 1 hardware. l And my meeting with him in January, get out and 2
look at the activities that are going on; you can't 3
continue to focus solely on paper issues, especif1lywhen 4
many of those issues are also dealing in the same arena l 5 that the program plan is dealing in. '
l 6 We've got a program to carry out on Unit 2 l j
7 inspecting hardware. And the February, March report, 8
indicates that he did get out in the plant, did start 4
9 looking at some hardware stuff.
10 Q I guess what you were saying is that you don't k j
11 feel Shannon did the right thing by going around I
{
12 :
management, that he had an obligation to let management i l 13 resolve his problems.
)
14 I And I guess the point I was saying, the problems 15 started to come up in November, he came to OIA at the end i I
16 !
of March; what could the management have done to solve the 17 problems?
18 You know, the management, wasn't like there was, 19 it was a secret, that ,everybody thought Shannon was down 20 there, a real content inspector and he's just doing his job 21 and all of a sudden, out of the clear blue sky,',you know, 22 we knew there were problems, there had been confrontations.
23 And I guess the, you know, what could have management have 24 done?
25 A 1
Well, after the January session there, we were, TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
i 122 1 Tom told me, he said, "He's awfully agitated, you know, 2 back off give him a little breathing room, I think he's got 3
themessagethatweexpectbetterwrittenr.eport[outof ;
4 him. We expect, get out in the plant to look at some of i
5 those hardware activities."
WL Lgoc 6 Se that was end of January. A Got fee (, you know, l 16 Mr-vg iah N . j 7 started getting some feedback 3 that he is getting out tSerel, 6'th( l 1
8 he's, 7 u 6. w, he's telling everybody he's out there i
i
! 9 walking around making his daily tours. Ahd then you're !
l i 10 ' '
into the end of March.
11 MR. MULLEY: Did you want to get into some of the 12 inspections?
13 Q (By Mr. Goldberg) I'd like to go back to earlier 4
14 discussion we had, Mr. Johnson, having to do with the 15 coverage of the inspection program.
l 16 As I told you earlier, we had done some work last l 17 week on 25.12 program specifically looking at the various 18 modules of 25.12 program. Let me pull that out. And we 19 noticed that there was quite a bit of an evolution in that 20 25.12 program. But we also noticed there~were some modules 21 that either were not covered or if they were covered, they 22 were covered rather superficially and I want to go over 23 them with you in terms of, A, if you had knowledge that 24 these modules were covered or not covered and, B, if they 25 weren't covered, what correc'ive t action within the Region TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
_ - _ _ _ . . _ _ = _
e 123 l
.1 you had planned ~to take. There are six of them and, from 2 the numbers would you know what they are or do you want.me 3 to read you'the f.itles? .
[
4 A Yeah, what are the titles?
l 5 Q The first one is 35020, which is the contractor
- 6. surveillance; it's a module in whi.:h you look at the QA j
i 7 programs from the various, like Chicago Bridge & Iron; I 8 Stone & Webster, et cetera; the modules that come in on
\
9 QA/QC, where QC comes into play here. 1 10 It looks as though there was a -- there was a 1
11 some work done there but not.very much. J It was I think of 12 a neighborhood of a few hours, given to that module ~back in l m 13 the '70s time frame. And then, then it trailed off and l
14 nothing was done.
i 15 Now, it is an,as-required module so it doesn't 16 necessarily have to be one that's done on a certain routine 17 period of time.
Do you know anything about that particular 18 module. I'm just going to go down the list and see what 19 you know about each module.
?O A No. But let's -- you made a go6d-statement s n \
- 27. there, it's as required.
22 Q I'm going to give you what the frequency is and 23 I'll tell you what happened. Because you probably don't 24 have the information I do.
25 The second one is management of QA activities, a-TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
124 1
that's the one we talked about a little bit this morning, 2 that's going to the corporate office and reviewing the QA 3 activities like at TUGco. It's 35060. Now, it &me into 4 effect in July first 1980. It supposedly should have been
+
l l
5 doen once every 18 months and then it got into a change in 6 September 15th, of 1981, it went into a priority one, two 7 and three scheme. And then changed back in March 30th, l
8 1984.
9 Now, as we understand it, this module was not
~
10 done until 1983.or 1984. And however, even in the -- it 11 appears reading the 25.12 program, it should have been done I 12 at least when the module came into being because. it 13 required to be done during a -- say from July 1st 1980 at 14 least until December 31st, 1981, and even when the program 15 changed, it shpuld have been done according to the prior in
- 16 the second and fourth year after the CP was issued.
17 So what I'd like to do is ask you, A, do you know 18 about this particular area; B, if it wasn't covered until 19 '84 what consequences it may have on the program, that kind 20 of thing. Anything in specific you'd want'to comment on 21 that?
I 22 A I think it has little impact on the program l
{
23 because of the CPRT activities as we discussed earlier. I 24 There's, you know, there's been a defacto deficiency in the i 1
25 QA program, that's why we're into what we're doing down l i
i TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (7'13) 222-7177 l
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[. l i 125 And many of these issues, 5-1 there. ,br, of course, fall 2 right in that squarely in that arena. That's why you've 3
gotastogobackandestablishsomeasurancebyfother 4 mechanisms than the, ;r ' -
than the ongoing 5 surveillance or audits that TUGCO was apparently not l 6 effectively carrying out.
l 7 And there's a second element to that, that about 8 the '80, '82 time frame, in that era and I can't speak a.cd d AtL6 ,
9 specifically to dates, we also hadathe hearings; we had I 10 hearings going on, on Comanche Peak. And much of what we 11 were able to accomplish was being driven by the need to 12 meet demands of the hearing.
13 The legal staff was giving us long laundry lists .
14 of things that needed to be looked at, reinspected,
, 15 inspected, whatever, to meet the staff testimony for the j i
16 hearing process.
17 l ri one point, and this has been a number of years '
18 ago kwhen I wasn't even wrue in sthisI had job)6t-c t: intedcess a l 19 discussion with Bob Taylor /, and he said something along, 20 ::jb: .; ::: k-a t u=e *k e enfer:ca:nt iffic::, *har fme-a '
TR.11M4 ibli fvr-21 A period of about 18 months, he was able to do little else
,22 k2ws cd cPtc than to react to what was being imposed on we down4here4 by 23 either ELD or necessary follow up on allegations that, you 24 know, that had some impact; can't just ignore these
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25 allegations. Somebody's alleging that something got done TATE REPORTING SERVICE, ('713) 222-7177
126 1 wrong, you have to run to the ball and see if there's 2 something done wrong. And so the routine program, I can
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1 3 imagine there were some holes in it. But Ithinh,those 4 holes are probably over-plugged by t e CPRT.
5 Q Have you detected anything specifically'y by not 6 covering this particular procedure on a timely basis which 7 might have contributed to a QA breakdown at TUGCO?
8 A No, ultimately only TUGCO could have contributed 9 to TUGCO's breakdown in QA. The ability of the NRC to i
10 detect that, again, probably there are, there are probably 11 a lot of things we could have detected. Would we -- would 12 this plant be up and operating today? That certainly was !
l 13 TUGCO's responsibility, TUGCO's responsibility to develop 14 the QA program and to implement it and to make sure the end 1
15 product quality was all right.
1 16 Q Before we go on to the next one, I had a follow 17 up question to what you said. You were talking about 18 over-plugging a module or two that may have not been done 19 earlier by these new programs that the NRC has.
20 Has anyone sat down and on a piece of paper or 21 two, put together what is going on or has been going on in 22 terms of CAT inspections or the TRT program, where you can 23 take credit for specific modules or specific portions of 24 modules and.do a audit or what have you of the entire 25 program -- 25.12 program and ascertain whether the program TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
'. 127 l
1 I
1 in fact, has been covered or not?
l 2 A Before the plant reaches licensing decision, l 3 ve'11 have to make that judoment. The memo that sas sent * '
o 4
- to me from Darwin Hunter, I sent down to Tom to take a look 5 at any of the apparent things that indicated be missing and j 6 see if we need to adjust our program, or are we going to
( 7 adequately cover it via other mechanisms.
8 I feel pretty confident that because the power of l ,
9 those other mechanisms, they're broad, we've got mere t
10 people, more inspector hours per month down there than you 11 usually have at a plant in a six month period, certainly, 12 almost a year period, for some act.ivitieshD w<. *At y% b 13 C.hua., cd1 pred ins ph% m.
Q Brings us to the next module, which is 35061, in 14 depth QA inspection. It was first required in July 1st, 15 1980, as an annual inspection and then in '81, it got ,
16 changed in priorities and it was one per area and then got 17 back to become an annual inspection requirement in March 18 30th, of 1984.
, i.
19 in this area we understand tnree '.hings are going 20 on. One, it's not clear all the critical areas have been
! 21 co'vered under this inspection such as civil, structural, 22 electrical, piping, et cetera; two, what areas were covered a 23 were covered rather lightly and three, it may not have been i 24 covered on annual -- this module may not have been run on i 25 an annual basis. Is this something you could comment on?
l TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 4
k; -
128' 1 A I don't have any particular comment on that.
2 That's not to say we're not interested in that. Again'I I '
3 think, ypAMpgen, previous comments somewhat apply - vb1 .j 4
was i Our inspectio'n programfb eing driven lar'gely by r
l f
5 1 the need to supply information to the hearing board, follow 6 up on allegations. If we had done that module r -ruid - :
7 -hovw uww
- ;; would we have precluded the' need for the 8 CPRT program?
i i Probably not.
I 9 0 .What you're saying, you're sort of forward 10 fitting'on this, if it didn't get covered earlier, you're 11 t'rying to work on it now through this CPRT effort and so .
12 on?
13 A l Well, the CPRT effort preceded from the TRT 14 f program which, ,;_ ' ; , s, i m . o f _ _ _ _ . . ... , chi:P-was an 15 l
intensive effort to look at allegations; that's exactly ;
16 i what we had been doing, one of the reasons why we weren't
{
)
17 doing some of the routine program. l' And out of that wt wert 18 developing a certain pattern that, .:.--se( maybe 7-- .
19 alotoftheallegationswerenotwellfounded)hatthere 20 cdiqdON th.t Wut su.Wkah4 l
were enough A sf th:2 that showed that we have a problem eu a. !
l 21 here; therg/ h;; h;;.; deficiency in QA.
22 !
l So I think you get N to the same g*5 Ou 23 result.
But the TRT back in/'83 time frame, Back in '80, 24 ii '.;d, or '81, if we had done that module, would we
! 25 'have turned all that around? '
I doubt it, because the, you TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
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129 l 1
know, those seeds were already imbedded in the pr'ocess,.
2 We might be a year ahead of ourselves, but I woulbe-think we3 hed p::bably about, :t ;b:ut th 3
g;;:,p':u'ncu, I 4 at about the same state, eight folks' working full-time on 5 follow up on a massive recovery plan.
6 Q Okay. The next one is, I'm just going down the 7 1 list here so bare with me for a moment because these were 8 th,e six QA modules in' contention. You may repeat yourself, f1 9 but just for the the record I want to go down the list.
10 Procurement receiving and storage, which is l l
11 module 35065, it became effective on July 1st, 1980; it was 12 supposed to be done annually after the CP and then got into '
/, 13 a priority stage similar to 35060, and then it became l 14 annual again on March 30th, of '84. l l
15 l l Now, we understand for this module, it first got 16 covered again in 84-26 and was not covered earlier. And
, 17 again the question is, your knowledge about it, by not )
18 being covered, what it might have uncovered earlier and a 19 how is it being covered today in the TRT efforts?
20 A 4\d4 w'N w There's a specific ISAP on procurement. A 'Ariting i 21 i procurement specifications and properly receiving and A, jicagir A Sa 3 uct h % m 22 inspecting materiakt t2sme/das part of the civil penalty 23 asul M TShy
- package on electrical penetration assemblies,Aprobably 24 could be laid at the feet of that. I don't believe we E?A W M i A 25 et+ttri might have picked thoser up' specifically in /inimmt. module p s 7s h.
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'130 1 Again we would have just gone in and done some sampling 2 here or there.
3 ni se mecnanism, navan iv e6 ud Ms Qr dM McQin el!dviMu. b% d t h,a t=jor eNW'J i 4 ble -hi 2 4was found not by applying any. sort of inspection 5 aimed at procurement, but by one of the inspectors walking 6 throughtheplant,andkewasdealingwithsomeelectrical 7 issues and started looking at thesepenetrations)andgot 8 into it f romt:at /s%t.
end, OWL not f rom some f ront end QA program i% M 0%,
9 Ter procurement. He got'into it from the hardware end and 10 that's why it's important to be out there with where the 11 hardware is. Ih.cd-5 W Lvt Of awSICChbt M E^ k 12 fe A% Q hh of Us MAJt Okay. Let me to go the next one. We're almost 13 finished. Review of the QA manual which is 35100, and it's 14 required to be each inspection -- inspection per 15 discipline, and I think this more or less is an insp'ection 16 to follow up on the QA manual, make sure the manual is 17 correct in each area.
18 As I understand it, thishasbeen,ikwascovered 19 rather superficially earlier on and didn't get picked up 20 and the question now is, you know, again,"the extensiveness 21 of the Reg' ion IV involvement; maybe Region IV is relying on 22 the -- <
23 A What was the --
24 Q -- QAB and I&E to'do this, I don't know. But 25 basically it's the review of the program, the QA program to TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
131 1
make sure the QA program and QA manual are working well and 2
i to some degree implementation of the QA requirements. From l 3
what I understand on this one, i t wa s , a ga in , wd'ge t 766 4
data which is imperfect data, which you might want to talk 5
about 766 data, but according to the 766 data, the only 6 work that was done was back in '78, 78-20 and 78-23 and it 7 was rather slight coverage; and also according to.what we i i
8 understand, the applicant is revising its QA manual so the l 9
adequacy of the earlier NRC inspections may be open to l
10 question. So the question is how is the Region covering it l 11 now and how are they recovering from what may be not '
t l 12 covering it too much in the past. .
13 A Well, I think the CPRT revolves around 1
t 14 implementation of the QA program. You -- apparently they j
! 15 had all the program elements, because that, you know,'the l i
16 QA plan gets reviewed as part of the licensing process, 17 17.1, in the PSAR. So all the right words were there. l 18 This probably would have confirmed that all the l I
19 right words were there, and we're down to an implementation 20 thing.
In addition of course is one of the elements of the 21 NRC's efforts and this has been to go back and look at the 22 QA program and was it in -- this was a review that's been 23 completed, it was late last year /L=-
w9 wso k-x .. r.; by I&E -- l 24
% wtet h adduw wkh was Ab uw> the program that was in place3 adequate or was it 25 program failure that got us to where we are today. And we l
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v 132 1 see, you know, it's not the program per se, it's how that
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l 2 program has been put into practice &d ku tratAt4L urcesd shhw, l i 3 Q Okay. Let me to go the last one. Mid-term QA j l
l 4 inspection, 35200. That was done-back in 78-20,'and 78-23, l
40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br /> were attributable to it.
5 And the question there 6 was, 40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br /> didn't appear to'be a very strong amount of l
l 7 effort; and two, not many findings and it was rather light 8 in coverage. And again,,do you feel knowledge of this 9 module and how it's being compensated by the program that's 10 now in place? ,
11 A If you draw the analogous ~ situation to an 12 operating reactor, the annual QA review is 40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br /> to t
13 accomplish the required inspections u'nder 25 /15 program so iA 14 I think 40 hours4.62963e-4 days <br />0.0111 hours <br />6.613757e-5 weeks <br />1.522e-5 months <br />, certainly l978 g space, when we had a whole 15 lot fewer inspectors, would have been probably considered 16 to be quite adequate for that thing.
17 r
And again, theissue,youknow,(hepeatanswer M g
l 18 f rom previous /,%b0
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that's why we're here where we are.today, 19 that QA envelope has been punctured, and this utility has-20 to demonstrate that they have the assurance that_the plant 21 was designed properly and put together properly. And 22 they've got to have-to use some other means.
1 23 Q So in summation, if we look at the six and then 24 go back to what you said earlier, it appears, maybe I will ,
25 'let you talk a little bit more than I, but it appears that TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
i 133 1
you are geing to -- you have these new programs in place 2
and you are going to determins where things got picked up l
l 3
with these new programs and how they compensate for the 1 4
25.12 programs specifically the QA modules, where they're 5
being picked up now, is that the gist of what you're hg bu 6 saying? y mpn Y #
- i - .
7 gJegg, ACT Atttikun T A We're gojag to make sure a -- we're/doing to do a j 8-line by line audit to' demonstrate that we.can take a credit I
9 for this particular module with these particular items. I f
10 I'm not sure we're going to have that kind of, you now, d J
l 11 line by line cross check on the thingh M But certainly the 12 qu.iru-w j envelope of quality assurance 3 cent;i ed, 7--
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13 l specified in the SSER's, seven th rough eleven t 1-3 f be-*e- {
wit) W. INpu.ha, #
14 ammeA And the CPRT program, encompasses the quality .)
t l 15 l
! assurance aspects that are going to be covered by that. We 16 i
just have to go through and make sure there aren't any 17 other major hits that we've taken.
18 Q when you write your letter to NRR, hopefully l 19 soon, on the readiness of the plant to get an OL, how are l 20 you going to then write that letter if yo'u aren't in this
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21 line by line check; in other words, how will you be able to 22 verify, verify is the right word, that in fact a 25.12 23 program has been successfully completed without an audit
+
24 trail of how it was completed.
3 25 A well, we're never, for any of the plants that TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 I
134' 1
have been built, we've never fully completed the 25712 ----
2 program, partly because nobody knows what that is at any 3
given moment, you know, ithaschangedrequiremep,ts,have 4
changed; you left a module at 60 percent that's suddenly 5
disappeared g as a requirement f or you get the priority one, i 6
. two, three, or you have these as-required modules that may )
1 7 or may not come into play. 1 8
So the best you can do at the end is to say c-9 tm mm the applicant has built the plant substantially, 10 that's a key word, substantia 11yj in accordance with the )
11 FSAR; the inspection program has been reasonably executed,- 1 Giu. Oms u.)
12 and we're satisfied that he's/got the appropriate staffing 13 and qualifications to put this plant into operation, y=at i 14 l tagw- with the appropriate equipment that's going to be '
15 required. ,
16 Q I don't think " fully." is what I was dwelling on.
17 I was dwelling on the documentation, that the regional I j
18 .
administrator will have at his disposal do defend the word i 19 " adequately and substantially." '
20 A Well, we will be issuing a series of'94300 i i
21 letters, if we start seeing some light at the end of the 22 i tunnel, start, I think you're right the first one, 90 days 23 1 prior to OL issuance and then it gets updated every 30 days 24 4- '
and then you issue one very close to the OL issuance which i 25 will pick up all of the, any of the necessary license TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177 j .- ;
1 135
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conditions that are going to have to be satisfied. '
2 Q But do you envision, going back to the issue and 1 e
3 this will be my last question, that somebody wou d sit down l
4 I and make an attempt or try to determine what the program is i
5 now, what one can take credit for and how the 25.12 program 6 was completed at .this site.
7 A The concept you've laid out, it is exactly what 8 we're going to try to do;. Is it going to work in specific 9
instance because of the changes that have taken place in a --
10 25,/12 program? You know, where do you fix what's the 25 /12 ~- I 11 program; that you have to define first.
12 .
So we'll look at the scope of t'he thing and we'll 13 say, "Have we looked at enough welding? Gee, we've done l 14 i these ISAPs and you know we're sati'sfied with the welding 15 programs." '
i 16 See we're going to make decisions on broad pieces
.17 of how that plant was built through the ISAPs; we will have 18 to make a determination of welding is okay, that 19 procurement is okay, that we've got -- the audits are 20 covered. There may be some things we'll be adding to those 21 programs, ftn,14mpk based on what we're finding out;3perhaps Brown &
22 ttu. # m d A dh so hdh.
Root audits need to be dropped into/ that ISAY6 take a look DNNh* d 23 b at those audits and see where/ ger, by perhaps failing to 24 audit accurately or adequately, yes.may have added to the 25 problems and have seu created other problems that/y%dMM ou da*"+
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know about. All those bbet generic aspects, the -- what are 2
the terms in the re.sults reports, the safety significance 3 of the findings m& h k look.48. Ak. -
4 Q Okay. l
! 5"i !
5 A l Vv. .. w,Ayou've found "X," what does "X" mean; 1
i 6 is there also a "Y" and a "Z" f
out there that are likewise i 7
l inadequate because of your inadequacy here in treating "X."
8 0 (By Mr. Mulley) Let me ask you.one more i
l 9 question, and I don't know if you were involved in this or 10 not. But it goes,back to the inspection report No.
11 84-32/11.
12 Apparently when Phillips went out to the utility,
(_ 13 he asked them for any previous inspections done of, you 14 know, their QA, inspections they had-done on themselves or 15 had caused to be d'one, you know, by consultants.
16 Apparently they didn't give him several reports 17 or one report that was done by Mac. I And later on, this j 18 report surfaced through disclosure, I think it was at the 19 time. Are you familiar with that issue at all?
3 20 A !
I am familiar with the -- yeah,'we're' dealing l 21 with the enforcement aspects of the MAC Report. Now we've 22 got a -- there's an investigation of that and the 23 circumstances surrounding, surrounding the MAC Report.
24 0 That's my question.
Is oI doing an investigation 25 of that, and why it wasn't released when we asked for it TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713j 222-7177
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137 1 and all that?
2 A Yes, they,are.
3 Q AndI'veprobablyaskedthisquestionhiveother ,
i 4
times, but Phillips never came to you to voice his concerns 5 with the problems he was having with Tom Westerman.- Is l
6 that correct?
7 A That's correct. He never said "I've got these l
8 issues that I feel that the people down at site, Ian !
9
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Barnes, Tom Westerman, are not approaching properly and we 10 need to get these things aired out." Had they been,.we 11 would have dealt with it, probably would have put into 1%A.
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12 place9 /4 mechanism I outlined in talking to Jim Partlow 13 (
and to Vince Noonan, much earlier and let's say let's have 14 an independent review. I want -- we want to remove )
! 15 personalities out of this thing. I could see that there !
l 16 was a personality interplay. )
We don't have a great many {
17 people down here that you can, you know, do an infinite 18 rearrangement of personality patterns, you know, of !
19 reporting chains and all so that everybody is happy with j
20 who they report to and who reports to them.
Wt.' W ivw'es got to Wed 21 erst with the cards we were dealt.
22 MR.,MULLEY: Let's go off the record for a
, 23' minute.
24 (Discussion off the record.)
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25 MR. MULLEY: That's all that I had. Unless you TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
138 i have something that you'd like to add at this time, we can 2 close the interview. '
3 THE WITNESS: Okay, thank you very muc . I have 4 nothing further to add at this time. !
5 (Statement recessed at 3:20 p.m. C.D.T.)
6 7
1 bvc abd dDNowd in fneNh o*
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24 25 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 222-7177
3 39 l
1 THE STATE OF TEXAS:
2 COUNTY OF HARRIS:
3 '
'e
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4 We, R. Patrick Tate and Trisha Sims, Court Reporter, t ;
5 and Notaries Public in and for the State of Texas, certify ,
6 that the facts as stated in the caption hereto are true; 7 8that the proceedings indicated were had before us, and the !
I !
8 l same were thereafter reduced to typewriting by us cr under i 9 our direction.
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10 We further certify that the above and foregoing j 11 transcript as set forth in typewriting is a full, true and l I
12 i correct transcript of the proceedings had at the time
,.- j 13 indicated. .
l 14 i l
In testimony whereof, witness our hands, this l 15 23rd day of July, 1986. I l
16 17 h .
(j" e. IC n Trisha Sims,CSR W. Patrick Tate, CSR 18 Notary Public in and for ;
Notary Public in and for the State of Texas the State of Texas 19 Commission Expires: My Commission Expires: 10-27-89 20 1
21 22 23 24 25 TATE REPORTING SERVICE, (713) 22.2-7177
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1 ADDENDLW TO TESTIMONY OF E. H. JOHNSON -
1
- 1. Reference page 36 line 3. "
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I believe that something was misunderstood regarding the relationship 4
between the trend analysis that was prer;4 red for I.R. '84-32 and the memo from -Io me dated January 13, 1986. It was never intended
{
, that th memo would be part of I.R. 84-32. The point I was making
\
was that one , section of the memo contained the.same trend analysis that was included in the original version of 84-32.
- 2. Does a licensee' have to respond in writing to an unresolved item?
flo. If the NRC has.enough information to cite a licensee for an item
- then he must respond in writing stating among other things, his corrective -
action. If the item found by the inspector is not a violation or sufficient information is not available to determine that it is an apparent violation, then it is not appropriate to cite.a licensee e
just to elicit a written response.
i -
5 There will be cases where the inspector has observed an apparent violation and presents this apparent finding to the licensee at the exit interview cnd for which the licensee states that he has additional information which' will demonstrate that there is not a violation. In Region'IV, we have adopted the following policy to handle cases like this. The inspector
%Wx;;
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- =,
. l Addendum to Testin.ony of E. H. Johnson j
, I 1 will tell the licensee that he should get the information to the inspector as soon as possible. If the ir:teention arrives prior to the reportbeingfinalized,l,+.willbetokenintoaccount. Otherwise the issue will stand as an apparent violation, and the licensee must respond and make his argun;ent that it is not a violation. If the new information ,
demonstrates that the item is not a violation then the NRC will withdraw i 1
its citat-'on.
1 i i
1
- 3. How are unresolved items and open items taken into account in evaluating licensee performance? .
o A broad range of information is considered in evaluating. licensee performance. Enforcement history is only one of six criteria used to evaluate each functional ared. Resolution of technical issues and responsiveness to NRC initiatives are two others and would each encompass many of the issues contained in open items or unresolved items.
Enforcement activity is only required to be contained as an attachment to the report under the section on " supporting data." j t
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