ML20238A173

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Transcript of Dl Jew Investigative Interview in Grandbury, Tx Re Region IV Regulation of Plant.Pp 1-14.Related Info Encl
ML20238A173
Person / Time
Site: Comanche Peak  Luminant icon.png
Issue date: 06/26/1986
From: Jew D
NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION IV)
To:
Shared Package
ML20237F760 List: ... further results
References
NUDOCS 8708200391
Download: ML20238A173 (16)
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( UlN11EU STATES {

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION I

IN THE MATTER OF: DOCKET NO:

INVESTIGATIVE INTERVIEW i

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  • LOCATION: GRANDBURY, TEXAS PAGES:

1- 14 DATE* THURSDAY, JUNE 26, 1986 r

AG-FEDERAL REPORTERS, INC.

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1 BEFORE THE 2 OFFICE OF INSPECTOR AND AUDITOR 3 Ni1 CLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4 ---------------x 5 Interview of:  :

6 DENNIS LEE JEW  :

7 ---------------x 8 Room 101 The Plantation Inn ~

9 Granbury, Texas 10 Thursday, June 26, 1986 )'

11 12 APPEARANCES:

13 For the Commission: j

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I4 GEORGE A. MULLEY, JR. )

Special Assistant to the Director 15 Office of Inspector and Auditor Nuclear Regulatory Commission 17 18 19 20 21 l 22 23 l

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2 1 Whereupon, 2 DENNIS-LEE JEW,- ,

3 having been duly sworn to tell the truth, the whole. truth 4- and nothing but the truth, was interviewed and answered as 5 follows:

1 6 MR. MULLEY: The time is 5:30 p.m.. The date is )

7 the 26th of June 1986. We'are in Room 101 of The Plantation 3 Inn, Granbury, Texas.

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9 . Present is Mr. Jew, who is an NRC consultant 10 at the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant; myself, George  ;

11 Mulley, Special Assistant to the Director, Office of 12 Inspector and Auditor, NRC; and the court reporter, Ms. Sandra ,

13 Harden. 3 a

I have asked Mr. Jew here to discuss informa-14 15 tion that he may have concerningR 'egion IV's regulation of 16 the Comanche Peak Nuclear Power Plant.

17 BY MR. MULLEY: i 18 0 Mr. Jew, before we start, would you give us a 19 resume of your background.

20 A For the past years--or nine years ago I started 21 out working with ITT Grinell as an engineer. What Grine11 22 does is pipe supports, piping, mechanical components, any-13 thing to do with piping. I have been involved in pipe stress, 24 the components like I say, pipe supports.

15 Well, as far as Grine11, that's basically what .

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! 2 From there in 1980 I went to work at. Yankee )

3 Atomic Electric Company, which is a utility for three operat-1 4 ing nuclear plants in Wilmington.

5 There I worked in the mechanical engineering ']

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6 group responsible, basically, for retrofit of the plant's 7 mechanical components, pipe supports,'the same type of deal.

3 I was there for a year and went back to Grinell. Did basicall'r 9 the same job I was doing.before with Grinell, only more responsibility.  !

10 11 Towards my latter stages at Grinell, I had 12 ten people working underneath me, doing the.same type of work 13 that I had done.,

14 In October of '84, I went to work for General 15 Dynamics, Quincy Shipbuilding. I was there for almost a l

16 year working in the structural analysis' department. They 1

17 decided to close down the shipyard. I got laid off.

18 I had a chance to come down here as a i

19 consultant, and I did last August. I've been down here l I

20 since.

21 0 So you came on site at Comanche Peak in August  ;

I 22 of '85; is that correct?

23 A. Yes.  ;

24 G Since coming on site, what areas have you i

25 been involved with? .I

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A. My main concerns are the mechanical discipline, 2 piping, valves. I have been involved in,some--what they call 3 structural type disciplines, like instrumentation supports, 4 HVAC duct' supports.

5 That's basically it. Conduit supports.

6 G How would you describe Region IV's inspection l

7 policy at Comanche Peak?

g A You mean like what's going on right now as far  !

9 as I am concerned with the CPRT?

10 0 Yes.

11 A Okay. Region IV, what they've done in my 12 case is they've assigned me certain tasks, cover certain

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13 disciplines within a CPRT. Then within those disciplines, I 14 I've been able to pretty much just do what I feel is 15 n'ecessary to cover the CPRT program adequately.

16 0 Has the Region told you to confine.your 17 inspections to the follow-up of the CPRT action plans and 18 to stay away from any new items, or don't reinspect any old 19 issues?

20 A No. What we do is-- The CPRT is my basic r

21 job. If during the course of my CPRT work, something comes 22 up-- I could be out in the plant and see something over 23 here, and I would pursue that, whether it's related to 24 what I'm doing or not.

25 If it's in another discipline--electrical--

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1 I may mention it,to somebody else.

2 But if it's in my discipline, I will just l

3 pursue it as far as--they've never stopped me from doing it.

4 0 Have they ever discouraged you from doing it 4 l

l 5 at all?

6 A No.

7 0 Have you ever perceived an attitude on the 8 part of Region IV to not find anything wrong at Comanche 9 Peak? ,

10 A No. As a. matter of fact, if you check the 11 reports, you know, we have found quite a bit wrong with it.

12 0 Have you ever perceived an attitude on the 13 part of Region IV to try to assist the licensee by handling 1

14 things in an informal manner instead of writing the viola-15 tion and have the licensee respond back in writing?

t 16 A I can't think of any cases where something 17 like that may have come up.

18 0 Has the Region steered away from looking at 19 quality assurance issues in favor of looking at quality 20 control' hardware issues that, you know, could be more easily 21 fixed?

22 A No, no. Like I say, we're pretty much able to 23 do whatever we want, whether it be hardware over here or 24 procedural over here. As a matter of fact, last month I- '-

l 25 did have a procedural violation against-- It was the CPRT l

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1 that it was agai.nst.

2 But the reason it was against the CPRT was 3 they should have picked this up, what the utility had missed.

4 They didn't pick it up.

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5 When I picked it up, I couldn't write a viola-6 tion against the utility because it was CPRT work. But in th'e 7 long run the utility does have to respond to this type of 8 stuff also.

9 .But, no, they've never.said, "Look at hard-10 ware," or "Look at procedures," or whatever.

11 0 Have you been involved very much in the quality 12 assurance issues out at Comanche Peak?

13 A Not that much. My background is more mechani-l 14 cal type, hardware type. I'm not a QA type at all.

15 0 Do you have any opinion on the adequacy of 16 the TUGCO QA program?

17 A When you say " technical QA program," do you 18 mean the utility's or--

19 0 The TUGCO. I'm sorry. The TUGCO QA program.

20 A I can't really say I have an opinion either 21 way. It's not like I feel it's bad or good or anything like 22 that. Maybe just in the course of my work, I've never been 23 able to come up with a feeling one way or the other.

24 0 Based on your experiences out at Comanche 25 Peak, do you believe that the NRC inspectors coming from

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7 I the Region or from NRR have the expertise to perform some of 2 the inspections that they perform? ,

3 A. Okay. As far as the NRR, there have been cases 4 where NRR consultants will come down to do a physical i

5 inspection on,.say, conduit supports. It's not like they're 1 6 not qualified or anything like that, but we've got more 7 experience in doing that type of stuff, just by being 8 involved for the past' year in that type of inspection.

9 So we would go out with NRR and perform the 10 inspection, NRR and a Region IV consultant. It's not like 4

l 11 they'r'e not qualified or anything, but we're just lending a 12 helping hand in this case. )

13 As far as the Region IV inspectors, I don't i l

14 see any reason why they wouldn't be qualified. It's not  ;

l 15 like I have gone with them and they have performed the actual l 16 inspections or anything like thst.

17 But as far as, if I go out and perform the 18 inspection, I get stuck as to what I should do next, whether 19 I should pursue it from a procedural point of view or-from i

! 20 a hardware point of view.

21 They've been able to direct me as far as--

22 you should probably look at the procedures first and then 23 finish checking the hardware, just to save me some time, 24 you know. '

25 I may just go down a deadend street, whereas

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o I they may have been there before. They may say, "Do this 'i 2 first, then do that. It may be more beneficial."

3 0 Have you ever had an occasion to do an 4 inspection in an area that has already been inspected by an 5 NRC inspector and found problems with that area?

6 A When you say NRC inspections, Region IV?  !

7 0 Region IV or--I guess pretty much Region IV.

8 A I've never been involved in anything like that, 9 as far as my inspections following up a previous NRC 10 inspection.

11 All my inspections have been-- It has been 12 the first NRC inspection, the one that I'm performing.

13 Have you ever been instructed by anybody out 0

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( of the Region to not document your findings?

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16 0 Have you had any problems at all when you i 17 have prepared and drafted inspection reports with findings I8 and violations, in getting these reports through the Region 19 and getting them published?

  1. A When you say problem, you know, grammatical--

21 I may have trouble with punctuation as far as my English.

22 and sentence structure, so they may help me there.

23 But as far as the purpose of my findings, M they've never changed that at all.

25 It's my understanding that it takes quite a bit 0

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1 of time sometimes to get these reports out. )

2 A (Nodding head.) . -

3 Q. What is the reason for that?

4 A Probably a lot of reasons. One is the size j 5 'of the report itself. In the past an NRC inspector--

6 From what I understand, say, a Region IV inspector does an 7 inspection. He may be at a p'lant for a week. He may come 8 back into the office for a week and work on the report and 9 get it done. That could be it. {

l 10 Whereas, in our case, aside from the fact ]

i 11 that we issue reports once a month-- Besides the fact that l 1

1 12 the report span is a month, you've got six, seven, eight I I

13 people having inputs into these reports. j t

i 14 So once a consultant has his draft copy, it )

' l 15 has to get reviewed by the lead for grammatical type errors, i

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l 16 sentence structure. From there it may go into typing. From 17 there it has to come back to be reviewed by the consultant, 18 by the lead, to double check the typing.

19 From there Ian Barnes would check it also 20 for just general grammatical-- He's the one that's going to 21 put this whole report together. He may have three lead NRC 22 inspectors, each one covering their part.

13 But then it's going to go to Ian to put these l 24 three together. That takes time, besides going back to 25 typing, et cetera.

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  • 1 10 g From there it's going to go up for numerous.

2 signatures. I'm not even sure. But NRR , signs it)'I think, 3

INE in Washingt.on I think signs it; 'I'm not even sure who q 4 signs it. People in'the. Region have to sign'it.

5: O But none of-this is the result of arguing 6

over vi lations or'anything like that, trying to have the 7 Region d r o p violations and stuff like that--

1 g .L No.

9 0 --and inspectors'trying to keep the violations 10 1"?

11 A If anything, it could just be the way to word 32 it. We may have a v'iolation.. That's pretty.much outside-- l I

13 It's just a matter of how to word it in black and white when i

g4 I put it down on paper.

15 But as far as them trying to suppress a 16 violation, I have never come across it.

17 0 Do you know Shannon Phillips?

18 A Yeah.

19 0 What about Tom Westerman? ,

1 20 A Yeah..

21 0 Do you have any knowledge of any disagreements 22 that Phillips and Westerman have had concerning how the j 23 Region--the NRC should be doing its job out at Comanche l 24 Peak?

25 A I've never seen anything like that between the l

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- 11 1 two of them.

2 O Have you heard secondhand ,information?

3 A All I've heard secondhand is what I may have 4 heard from another consultant that this might be about 1

5 Tom and Shannon Phillips may have a disagreement.

6 But that's all I know. What they disagree {

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7 over, I really have no idea.'

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8 0 Have you ever been approached by any TUGCO 9 or licensee employees with concerns that they wanted to give 10 to the NRC7 f 11 A As far as allegations or anything like that?

12 No, I never have. 'l

' l 13 0 Do you have any knowledge of any of the other ,

14 consultants or anybody else being approached with concerns 15 and then trying to get the concerns, and the NRC doesn't j 16 want to hear them? l 17 A Not that I can think of. j 18 G Nothing at all?

19 A po, 20 g were you aware of information that involved II Bahnson and TUGCO only going to inspect HVAC supports in 12 Unit 1 Diesel Generator Building, that these supports had 23 really been engineered to death, and they were going to use 24 the results of this inspection to justify not inspecting 25 the--

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12 1 A The only way I'm aware of that--and I am 2 invo1Ved in HVAC supports--but my initial, involvement was 3' the Unit 2 inspection back in February. Now, there's a .

l 4 program going on right this day where Bahnson--I guess what 5 you said. They're going to inspect the diesel generator and 6 the control room, and from there they plan on basing the I 7 rest of the plant on these two rooms.

8 All I know is that's what they plan on doing; 9 as far as'how they're going to do it, why, I really haven't i

10 gotten into that. )

11 As far as the HVAC's, my involvement now is l'2 more from a technical end of it. CCL-does the reanalysis of 13 the EgAC supports. ,

14 I may follow what CCL'is doing from a techni-15 cal point of view. But as far as the programmatic type, I'm 16, not really that involved.

17 0 Another area that came up was that the NRC 18 had met with TUGCO on May 6th to discuss HVAC inspections, and 19 that TUGCO told the NRC of the Bahnson and ERC inspections 20 that were supposed to be done separately and independently.

21 Apparently, the NRC had no problems with the 22 f/et that although these were supposed to be done independently, 23 they had been done together.

24 Are you aware of anything like that?

15 A Could you ask the question again? I missed a

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i n May.of 1986 the NRC nad met with TUGCO, 'l l j l

4 . and) they discussed HVAC inspections. Apparently,'TUGCO told j

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5 the, NRC that Balnsoa and ERC--

l 6 A ERC, that's what I missed.

1 l 7 O They weEe doing inspections jointly that wure 8 supposed to be done independently and separately, and the 9 NRC apparently--the NRL just shrugged it off as not being 10 a problem. , ,

11 Are you- -

12 A I'm not aware of that. But fron my point of' 13 view it would be. That shouldn't' happen. ERC shou.1d be 4 14 strictly independent of th6 utility.

15 0 So to summarize then, is it correct to say 16 that Region IV has given you the latitude and the freedom to 3

I li') go out and inspect and' develop and then accurately document l 18 your findings?

19 A Yes.' They have never hindered me in any way.

20 We're pretty much to do what we want out there and then 21 come time to document it, they would help us as far as 22 the grammatical--and just trying to put our thoughts on 23 paper so that when it goes out in a report, people will 1

24 understand what we're trying to say.

25 Do you have anything to add?

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14 I l A. Not really. Other than, you know, they do  !

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2 let us do whatever we want. Maybe they lpt us do too much, 3 I don't know. I don't think it really affects or hinders our i

4 job performance in following the CPRT.

5 But I have no complaints about the way that

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6 they handle us--or hinder us, whatever ...

7 0 okay.

8 (Interview concluded at 5:45 p.m.)

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1 . REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE 2 .

3 I hereby certify that the proceedings herein 4 are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by me 5 during the sworn interview of DENNIS LEE JEW on June 26, 1986, 6 commencing at the hour of 5:30 p.m., and that this is a true .

7 and accurate transcript of the same.

8 9 L, Sandra Harden 10 Reporter i

l 11 My Commission expires,: 6-4-89.

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