ML20238A526

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Partially Deleted Transcript of Unnamed Region IV Official 860410 Interview in Arlington,Tx Re Region IV Mgt of Regulatory Process at Plant
ML20238A526
Person / Time
Site: Comanche Peak  Luminant icon.png
Issue date: 04/10/1986
From:
NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION IV)
To:
Shared Package
ML20237F760 List: ... further results
References
NUDOCS 8708210001
Download: ML20238A526 (78)
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Text

{{#Wiki_filter:a 1 BEFORE THE 2 OFFICE OF INSPECTOR AND AUDITOR 1

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3 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 4

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Interview of: e 7 ______r________ j Room 671 Rodeway Inn 833 North Watson Road Arlington, Texas 10 'Itiursday, l 11 April 10, 1986 12 13 APPEARANCES: 1 5 i 14 For the Commission: 16 GEORGE A. MULLEY, JR. l Special Assistant to the Director 16 Office of Inspector and Auditor I Nuclear Regulatory Commission 17 g i. i i.

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- ~ - - ~ ~ 2 1 Whereupon, s g L 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: 6 MR. MULLEY: The time is 1:18 p.m. The date i 7 is April the 10th,1986, and we are in Room 671 of the 8 Arlington, Texas Rodeway Inn. ? e Present are Mr.' jfrom Region IV e-10 NRC, George Mulley from the NRC office of Inspector and 11 Auditor, and Sandra Harden who is the court report er. I have asked Mr./ _ p discuss information 12 13 that he may have concerning Region IV's management of the ( i 14 regulatory process of thit Comanche Peak nuclear power station. l i 15 BY MR. MULLEY: 16 Q Mr. j before we start, I would like you 17 to briefly give us a sketch of your previous experience and g 18 education. g t ) j 19 A okay. My name is I started i m s 20 out in the nuclear business in 1959 with the Navyc o...tw &A r 21 rked with the Navy through'1965 wl)

  • f 22 ent to' work for Virginia Electric Power Q gwink 23 Company in 1965 through 1975 in'the rations of Sur and 24 the North Anna Nuclear Power Statione y O. m g _

Both 25 stations are in Virginia. Fe g65-s 4 61 Tmd c e% to rTL p m%;& Mc, C C,. Th ] 4kwa Ossc o. )

3 1 In 1975, I went to work with the NRC in Region 2 III as a rea'ctor inspector and W progressed in Region III 3 from-- and progressed in Region II from reactor inspector 4 through section chief in quality assurance-of O.. v.11sy. 5 ne w section. I 6 During my stay in Region III, also I worked 7 three years in performance appraisal, pecial inspection l 8 group doing management type inspections around the country. 9 Also, for eighteen months, I was the project i to section chief of special projects for simmer Nuclear Power Plant ( li bi - ( U 3), 11 12 In 1984, I applied for and was accepted to a 13 position as chief reactor projects branch B in Region IV, (* 14 and I've been in Region IV since that time as a branch chief hPuntilrecently l is As of the 31st of March, I am now a section chief of project section B in thef to I e 17 branch. < ,t )Y k I work for Jim Gagliardo as of March the 31st 18 l j 19 of 1986. 4M k .1 al 2. = = - r r :. - 21 ojects branch chief, I also worked ejggg ps the acting 'I 22 chief of the Comanche Peak project. late fall of 1985, Tom Westerman 23 In the fall-- l 24 was selected as the chief of the Comanche Peak group, and I went to the full-time job as the branch chief 25 mun w o-- m 5 e

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4 L* MOM 1 in R::gion IV. 00 e 6 . e 4.A.kokecs C M cf & lu 0 M A<- h b w Av h 2 O okay, thank you. Okmb4 / 3 One of the first topics that 1 Trould like to t I 4 discuss is Region IV inspection report 84-32/11. I understand s -l l l 5 that y,ou were involved with that inspection report. I ( s A That's correct. The inspection was performed ) 1 7 in August through September of '84, at which time I was e involved in the comanche Peak project. _ - - > = -__m.. u. _e i, to And I was, in fact, the chief of reactor 11 projects branch 2-- or "B" at that time and was. intimately i 12 involved in the preparation of this inspection and also the 13 final documentation and the issuance of the. report from 14 Region IV ebruary the 15th,1985. 1 is Q What was the purpose of the inspection? Is A 9 i- ;::tig r.p.e - It was a combination CE W on program that **g"*11;," f *4**t?_ I' or 17 of a task force inspec g is est =':: Richard-but I had oicked up the Comanche j 19 Peak project prior to this report being issued. 20 The purpose of the report was to look at the 1, '8 quality assurance program and tius implementation in selected 21 1 22 areas at the Comanche Peak project. It was an effort that i' 23 was in parallel with the effort by the Technical Review Team %W 24 out of the NRC headquarters, h was being performed by 25 Mr. Noonan and his group. t s

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=.... 5 I We.' looked 'at the :j-- T **, we looked at 2 selected areas 'in the area of. quality assurance: audit I 3 evaluating the management of.that program, d some

program, design control,0some procurement activities ~

f I remember d 5 correctly. 6 O What were the findings of the inspection? ] 7 A Again, as documented in the inspection report, a we found a number of significant findings, and I'll-L'. 9

ry te ret.d them because I 5
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11 y found that the Texas Utility Company 12 had some inadequacies in their review of the status and 13 adequacy of the QA program. We could not,see how this had 14 been adequately accomplished. They failed to establish and 15 implement a system of comprehensive of planned and periodic 16 audits, as was required, and that included audits of safety-1 17 related activities and vendors associated with the project. j 18 There was a third finding that e concerned j 19 a certification of a vendor compliance inspector, which was 3 i 20 a severity level 5, was not considered a significant ] l ) 8 21 finding. h i 22 O The first findings that you discussed, what 23 severity level were they assigned? 24 A These both-- The two ' findings that I discussed 25 relative to the status and adequacy of the QA program and the i 'J. -.n...t p.9.,..... .e

..-.s..e.. i. 6 i I audit-- establishment and implementation of the audit 2 program were given a severity level 4 e 3 Q Do you consider these findings to be signifi-4 cant? i i 5 A I definitely consider the findings to be j 1 significant in this particular case because the quality and 6 the records of quality at Comanche Peak were placed in ques-7 tion by the efforts of the Technical Review Team out of s l Washington under the overview of Vince Noonan. 9 The failure to review the status and adequacy to of the QA program and the f ailure to implement and audit 33 program indicates that tne licensee did not have control of 12 his quality assuranca activities, nor was he assessing the t ) 33 adequacy of the activities if they were there. 34 15 By not performing audits and not performing 16 assessments, he then would not identify, at an early date, ) problems that would, at a later date, cost him an enormous 17 18 amount of money to recover, such as, purchasing from an / \\ unapproved vendorp not auditing procedures relative to safety-s 19 related activities uch as equipment setting by Westinghouse l l 20 i, l 21 or any other on-site contractor. 8 I ,y One of the specific findings in this report 22 23 was the f ailure for us to see where they had audited Westing-j l 24 house in 1977, '78, '79, '80, and '81 on site, even though i Q v4v;.gb w M O 25 they4Welse involved.in major equipment settings, since they f eeo.e ..e..-- o s.. e e. ..ome. me.. +. pye.

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l ..__...c 7 4 1 were the nuclear steam supply system group.and had an 2-engineering service group on site. 3 We felt that that was extremely significant 4 in that it involved the steam generators, the reactor coolant 1 5 pumps, and that type of equipment. - 6 Q Do you feel that the severity level 4 that was l 7 assigned to these violations was appropriate?' i 8 A As the manager at that time, I think it was appropriate in that.in the letter we specifically asked the 9 10 licensee to include the response to this, and we gave him 11 the choice that he could respond to~ this individually, 12 eparately or he could' respond to it as part of the Comanche 13 Peak review team. (_: 14 We knew the Comanche Peak review team-- or, I l I the TRT effort by the NRC was ongoing, and~ at that point, -i is l 16 we felt like these findings were a part of a very large i ! '{ 17 problem-- or, potential problem that had already been l 1s identified. g ) l j 19 If the ef fort of the TRT Comanche Peak response 'i 20 team showed that the-- that this was a very generic, i l i li 21 comprehensive, overall problem with the Comanche Peak manage- '. t 'E ment group of Texas Utilities, or TUGCO, which I think that 22 i 23 it would have-- or, it will show because they, in fact, 24 have the responsibility to -look at that, then the significance 25 of these particular findings will occur at that tire. = _ -... - g

l 8 4 ) + 9 The reason they weren't considered as a 2 severity level 3 or-higher severity level'was that the find-ings indicate a potential 82nd the significant potential wW 3 problems. However, the problems had not been identified or 5 were already identified by the TRT and,would be included in 6 the Comanche Peak response team action plans. 7 The Eignifiance of the finding, as I indicated 8 before, would be developed at a later date, probably 1986 ) (ld 6-Co 1 8 or 1987 depending on how quickly they get through the items. 10 0 During this inspection, did the inspectors 11 develop information to indicate that Region IV itself had been J 12 remiss in the conduct of their inspections at Comanche Peak, 13 that they had not conducted in-depth audits of TUGCO manage-( ~_' 14 ment for ten years? 15 A I think when you do an overview of the problems 16 at Comanche as a section chief or branch chief or manager [ 17 and you look at the types of findings that were being identi-g fled by the TRT and by $2-- by this QA inspection.;hich 18 -+he(84-32 /11 repor that we're talking about, I think one 19 if I 20 has to come to the conclusion, and I have come to that a 21 conclusion, that' the inspection program applied to Comanche ir 22 Peak was less than adequate and.less than appropriate. 23 I think-- I personally feel'that the reason t 24 the TRT and the' Comanche Peak response team exists today is 25 the licensee's attempt d the NRC has required the 7_

9 1 licensee..to'do this to recover the quality of Comanche 2 Peak which should have been verified during the ten years of 3 construction. It's an-expensive lesson in 1986 and '87. 4 Q We had-- cr, ' I had learned thrc.agh other 5 interviews that possibly Region IV had not conducted a specific audit thatlwas required by TUGCO management in going 6 -back.to the corporate offices and that the lack of this audit 7 8 made it very difficult for the NRC to verify whether or not 9 TUGCO was in compliance with Criteria 18. i a Do you recall any such corporate audit that 10 it the NRC had not performed? e tIi t f'"'# ""t-12 A -I i. 614 = ---- thO 13 b l it"- "-t review one by the senior resident inspector ( and myself in order to try to understand the status of the 14 y 15 inspection program at Comanche Peak, -.-l.ich . avu. in the 16 '84 '85 time frame, for two purposes:' To-- First off, to 17 establish the status of the inspection program, and then to 18 use that status to modify or tailor our inspection program j 19 of Unit 1 and Unit 2. to pick up any weak areas or noted weak 1 ii 20 areas. 5 J 21 The second purpose, other than.to---- in M 22 . :f fi;.ieno tal- -. wwst th. status and tailoring our 23 inspection program, was to provide input d this was the 24 thought at the time and I can't' respond because I'm no longer attached / M sne snougnt at une time --

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10 W to the Comanche Peak response team action plans in f 1 l 2 order that the licensee would appropriately ar.d fully address any safety concerns that we might have or that we might have 3 l potential concerns in that the NRC didn't inspect that area l 4 5 during the ten-year period. 6 As an example, ybe ^ re "a-net : - Sere l 7 was not, as you indicate, I J: all " I don't believe there was an extensive-f hd I don't have the details with me, 1 8 9 but I'll try to place it in perspectiv Wa F M there wasnc. an extensive 10 11 review of the Texas Utility C St n audit program, 12 management audit program, the management QA program by Region Ob There was someg nspections done, but they wouldn't be i 13 IV. (~ 14 what we'd call extensive or ade ate. f. 15 Out of that particular type of information, 16 we then planned to tailor or modify our inspection programs such that we could provide the most assurance of the quality 17 j 18 level of Comanche. ,y j 19 one of the things we looked for in this i 32/11 was the failure to adequately review the status and 'l 20 0 adequacy of the QA program. 21 Ir 22 One of the things em found, and to repeat the licensee-- ncither th;&.cen::: M Pow 'V s1 h:.::lf 1 23 myself, is that l 24 reviewed the status and adequacy of the QA program er th:t 25 _44 ue A4An*+ Ac it :: h didn't da it, " :; - b i :::: 4

i -l Q_ghfww \\ 1-concerns relative to the quality of.the plant based on that f' 'l 2.

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I 1 3 0 okay. Did you receive any resistance from-Region IV upper management when this report was issued? Do 4 5 you have any information that the senior resident inspector 6 who conducted the inspecti'on. received any adverse comments or ' s l 7 anything like that as a result of this report? 8 A As I recall, again, since I-was pers'onally 9 involved, the draft report came to me. As I recall, I went 10 to the site personally and worked with the senior resident-for about eight hoursj ot to take exception to his findings, 11 12 but to help put the findings together and make sure they were 13 in the proper perspective. 'k 14 In fact, I agreed fully with the findings and \\ b. actually the findings in thel} report, in some cases, were, 15 b q 16 let's say, a little more stringent than he had first presented .) ,~ ! $L 17 and naturally so, because I think the of fice management or 'g 18 supervisory overview has a larger perspective. I j 19 And in this particular case m.of his 20 findings, he was dealing with eene specifics east.af ter I J O d^ tid l. j 21 personally had reviewed Wrom a supervisory viewpoint and g 22 a management viewpoint at that time, I' felt that the findings a 1 23 had more significance. l i l 24 Out of those meetings with the senior resident j l. g 4 ..+.. n, .....x.. m

'9$1. _. 1 12' I cover letter to indicate to the licensee that we had had the l 2 particular. findings, and-we developed the letter that said '3 that these violations should be and may be answered as part 1 4 of the Comanche Peak response team. 5 You might note that, in fact, the licensee 6 has chosen, through correspondence,-to respond to the first 7 two items in the Comanche Peak response team action plan, 8 and for the third item, it was responded to separately. 9 And that's to the best of my recollection. 10 I did not receive Perre- 'ly, I did.ot l 11 =-ra. resistance to - the findings. I had made a suggestion 12 initially that the findings be.sent out with no severity t 13 level attached. And thig was my position because-

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( -(%M /da.Al ) ? 14 .sM&1 i that the indings were extremely significant. 15 The significance of the finding =uld E -- 16 would determine the severity level at a later date, and I 8. 17 personally felt that we should send the notice of violation [ 18 without a severity' level attached to be determined at the g i 19 completion of the review plan and depending on the hardware i 20 findings or the actual problems in the plant, then at that l i; 21 point, we would assign the-- we would assign the severity 22 level. l 23 Upper management did not choose to go that 24 direction, and, in fact, the report was issued with a i 25 severity level 4 attached with-- hopefully, I think, with i. ...g..., _e. 6

13 I the attitude 1that whether the severity levels were attached 2 then or whether. the response to this. report was handled in 3 the-- with the severity levels already attached, at the end 4 of the Comanche Peak response team review when the quality 6 level of the site was confirmed or the level was confirmed, 6 meaning the lack of or it was okay, the importance of.these. 7 findings would then, in fact, still come out. And I would a assume another enforcement package would be issued at the 9 termination of this particular activity that could, in fact, 10 issue those as repeat violations or violations of the same i 11 regulatory requirements with specific hardware deficiencies q i 12 noted at that time. And they would be issued as a 4 or a 3 j l (. 13 or a 2, depending on the significance during construction. i 14 0 At the end of 1985 when Mr. Westerman assumed 15 your position-- 16 A That was, like, October or so of 1985, I 17 believe. g !g 18 Q

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.j 19 Do you have any knowledge that he.made some i , {l 20 comments to Shannon Phillips, the senior resident in~spector, l i IIl 21 concerning this inspection report? Comments that were-- i l 4 22 you know, that were adverse to the findings that had been t j 23 written on the inspection report? I 24 A . No, I don't. -P-don't-- I have not-- 1 I i 25 Wall, if - - nts were maue, m uy wusan's made in fr?"* % ~ t n 4 6e. e + e ee a e 4.ei t e-y e ** m

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s 'i 14 1 d^='t hefe V au'=dga d +h= a - r.ts, me and-- You knewr t 2_ pm y r a n y m o r e __; n, 3 Q okay. 4 During this inspection, from what I understand, 5 the inspectors asked TUGCO to provide audit reports that they 6 .had done. I understand that one contract audit report--' Done 7 by MAC? ~ 8-A Done by MAC that's correct. 9 Q --was not provided and was provided at a later to date. 9 11 A During the' _1; A 84-3 /) ne of the things 12 that we asked for-- And again, I'm repeating. But we asked 13 for y,any information that the licensee had at his hand [ ( 14 'where he had, through some documented, preplanned program adhoeorotherwise,(specificallywe 15 or any kind of program, 16 asked for any audits that were put together or any reviews i 8 17 that were put together by in-house people or by contract 18 people-- And I can go to the details of 84-3 [and get those g to words. But we asked specifically-- And the fact of the matter is we asked-more than once) --for any inspection l 20 5 reports or outside reviews of the GA - us, G quality i 21 'I t 22 assurance program. 23 At the time we did the inspection, we reviewed 24 every piece of information that we had, and that included f 25 reviewing the NkC CAT, which is a construction assessment

I 15-4 pfL. J 1 team inspection or audit We reviewed a special inspection +tobbin 2 audit that w'as done by Region II...We reviewed report, which was an outside contractor of.one specific area 3 i of ' the quality assurance. program. And I don't remember, it' 4 5 was probably design er --r-e i.. m, M{ 1a_. sna T think 6 But id not provide da 7 thi r:: prd ely !and-and'=c=4=' e

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t --, ;;;,,3; y;;,10E any-or make any l s an7e-t er Septemr7 9 indication to us that they had an outside. audit report. It j was-a surprise to me personally, and I'm sure to a lot of ll 10 other people, that in 1985, sometime in that time frame,. that 11 the MAC report which had a letter addressed to Britain, 12 13 the president of TUGCO, I believe, or of Texas Utilities, that that report had been done in 1978 and had some substan-14 15 tial findings in it. It contained substantial findings, or what I would call significant findings that reflected on the j 16 \\ 8. overall quality assurance program, which is the area af the 17 j if,_.;;1,.r the NRC was interested in 18 w __ e: ;;;gy, ' j 19 during the 84-3 inspection. f 20 0 Do you feel it was inproper for TUGCo not to ] a provide this report when they 'were asked for. it by Region IV? j 21 2 e. 22 A Yes, I do feel it was improper. I think it , r was a report done by an outside contractor, not of financial-i i 23 -) i 24 matters, not of matters which I personally am not that interested in, but it was done as an assessment of ' the quality i 25 e w.... ,..,w.+=.4 ...w. e.- ye += =+*e=_

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l 16 assurance program related to the design and construction of I l 2 Comanche Peak. Certainly, it was improper. ) 3 0 Was any action taken by Region IV against the f utility for not providing this report when asked? 4 5 A I do not know of any action at this time, i 6 O Do you have any reason as to why no action was 7 taken? 8 A No,.I don't at this time. 4 ( t f' 9 Q Okay. Do you have anything further on this inspection 10 11 report that you would like to add? 12 A I don't believe so at this moment. Something 13 might-- you know, might come out that we can talk about, k 14 I'm hesitant to close the door on it, but if something else 1 15 comes up, I'll talk about it. 16 Q Okay. 17 A At this point, I feel fairly comfortable with '[ 18 what we've gone through. g t i 19 Q Okay. The second area l'd like to discuss 20 is inspection report 85-07/05. Could you summarize your s 21 involvement with that inspection report? I 22 A I L. -- ny involvement with 63-- And I'll~ '1 23,,A " ' 0 5, er.d th e t ' s j u s t - My involvement sith 85-07/05, 24 and it's a little dif ferent that 84-32. yt' { W In the ad=1^/' 84-32/11b)the report was 25 ,f '

.17 p 1 issued,M I was still involved with the project. ft j 2 In the 85-07/05, the inspection-- the plans, 3 the inspection plans, if you will, the preparation for the inspection a d h. *pma af-- in that time frame, I was 4 s involved specifically, myself and Doyle p.aiputt anj of course, @ Shannon Phillips and j I L 8 7 believe, was the other individual. We deve oped an inspection 8 plan to look at some specific items at r*==r he Peak, 9 again with the intent of giving us a better understanding of to the Comanche Peak project as a whole and to look at areas 11 where we felt weaknesses were noted through our reviews of if these weaknesses did exist, other information) and tsogs_. 12 13 to provide them to the Comanche Peak project such that they . (. 14 might verify that the quality did exist or establish the 15 qualit.y if it wasn't able to be verified or it did not exist. 18 physically. ,I l 17 That, I think, is the bottom line on the setting up(n w W." Auk)& n' gthe report. 18 g b j 19 The report was done during ' ' April through 20 June of '95. And as dicated, I was involved in the l C 85~. 21 Comanche Peak project through about October 1 22 The report was drafted, as we normally draf t 23 a report, free the site v

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24 to Regional supervision and management. And it was provided 26 by Doyle Runnicutt through me, and it went to typing. y l t.... A

18 In the-- T'11 indic:t;, a.jk, in the late 2 -summer-o f '05, in Other x;rde,.ca; time after Jun: cfter the reportwas finished-- and I wr. auld say, pronaoly, July, but 3 ~I just don't recell. 2;wL IL was 2.n tnat t.tme Irame. 5 Once the report was typed in draft, during 6 the Comanche Peak project time frame now, NRC h assigned 7 Vince Noonan as,-?mta "nqueLe t the project director. .So, l he's involved in all activities of the Comancite Peak project 8 o o and, as I understand it, at least in the concurrence of 10 activities. 11 So, all inspection reports are issued with 12 his concurrence 13 o make sure, again if I understand it proper-C. 14 ly, that the TRT activities, if you will, and the heari:ng 15 activities and the Region IV inspection activities all dove-16 tailed together. Basically, as a project director or manager, 17 that's his responsibility. q t, 1 l 18 The, report was draf ted in the f all-- or, j 19 early fall of '85. And, in fact, was reviewed in house t , 'e 20 and then sent to-- a copy was given to the project, Vince '4 lj 21 Noonan group, if you will, and for their review and con-t 22 currence. As normal, I would wait for thOir review and 23 24 concurrence through a contact. M f ter their review and then go aheed and finalize the letter witig 25 concurrence, .L a a \\ (

i. ? l l 19 l 1 any comments and the report with any comments and mail the I 2 I 4S-reportWm W 3 During the time that it was in review by the d l t nac been scuw *ni? NRC, r :-i:+ 1" k 1 ;, _ J.im, i 4 5 of,-site group,

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in October back to the reactor safety CQ (Mk h_ t tb Nd 't 7 branch .._cb c.tr _.e pr:j ec -- -. : 5., -- 6 by +' - t tL r.;;'d b 8 .gone t.e 1e nom i.e. aiety crancri. T+'- PMt a di"---at ~<1 WW 8 nanac:" It was the group the engineering support A 10r inspection program. o(+ a 11 After the October of 1985 time frame I s i 1 12 happened to have been involved in this report, 9 I kept my / 13 D neludir.g the draf t--S also, my secretary had a ) ,(. d 14 l copy of the draf t f--so that I might, in f ac t, be involved d. g n % k.p< h [ h I wouldn't be 15 in > concurrence At least, g 16 signing the report out because that would be done by Tom ) I 17 Westerman or Eric Johnson or whoever the director was at j g 18 that time Spy _I wanted to be involved to make sure that our findings were being addressed properly [ ecause the 19 q l 'f 20 findings were presented to me by the inspectors. i *, jj 21 I'll just say, that's the way I normally do 2r 22 business. i F-23 And then, gaf ter I had seen the report sent out I t 24 and I agreed with it and the way it was handled, then I would, I. 25 in fact, have no further questions. _ n..,...

} .-,...s 's 20 j(* l 1 The report was sent out in February, realizing. 2 that in October of '85 I no longer was associated directly. A 3 I had some people working on the project, but I was not t 4 associated directly with the project. So, between October (htfobh 5 and February, this report had gone through some reviewh and f 6' I don't know anything about those. I wasn't involved in i y those j ut when the report came outh*it was mailed, 8 l 9 and I was not involved in any changes that were mtde to'the 1 ] report) _T can'+ m :;n.d t; 2.:t. " t I did note that the 10 11 report was r*,1f ferent from that which was in the initial draf t 12 and that which I had exited on June the 21st in that time 13 frame with the utility. 14 at difference is the item thdt keyed 15 my questioning my management to get the right swers and\\ k C1W. get the basis % was not arguing, and I don't intend to I 16 b s 17 argue with a report being different than that of the draf t. { 18 What I asked for was the basis for the difference. ]) i 19 0 In what way was the final report and lthe draf t l 20 report different? ij 21 A There were a number of differences, but I i t r r 22 can-- I'll try to characterize them. And I nave, in fu t, 23 carried this to my management, to Eric Jo$mso s, as the division l 24 director for reactor safety and projects. i 25 What I would indicate is that there were ten ,j 1 .7 ....g.,_.._...... L

r > ,c o 9 '.'y . I ) h f 21 s 1 items of noncompliance in,the draft. And again, that'means- ~ i e 2 that there wera ten items. They could be formatted in any 3 way, as necessary. Meaning that it could be two iteras with-five examples, but there were ten. specific violations noted I 4 l M. ()A,p.dk LP'h 5 in C.a m. 6 When th0 t: went out, I saw that five of the items were reclassif.ied as ' unresolved ittma, an'd five of 7 i r 8 the items continued av violations. So, my question to my 9 management was to explain

uld wald th y crpicin to 10 me the difference that made them to go from viciations to 11 unresolved items.

12 Another difference that was significant was 13 two items in the report were missing. Now, these were t.he b._ 34 items that I checked. There are more deficiencies in this 15 report, after I did a'mose detailed review, than I actually 16 presented myself to my management.- And I can point out a ( 17 cddple others in here. 1 there were more ' deficiencies in your draf t-l d 18 Q so, g 4 19 So I can understand this. 'i[ 20 A. Right. 'aj 21 0 There were more deficiencies in your draf t . r 22 than you initially thought? Or....? We identified [ [s an example, I 23 A There were-+ 24 we identified ten specific deficiencies. 25 O Right. ig t' ,v...

22 I A When the draft went out-- I mean,.when the 2 report went out, the report went out with five of the ten 3 deficiencies identified as deficiencies or noncompliance. Two of the items went away as clear. In other words, they 4 5 were no longer deficiencies. Three of.the items were then 6 downgraded to unresolved. i S 7 0 Oh, okay. We still have the ten. 8 A Righ t. 9 Q Right. 10 A The. total was ten. 11 And I can talk about each one of those 12 specifically because they do need to be talked about specifi-13 cally. But again,. ith J.; , making sure that you realize EI took each one of these ~ 14 that-- nd it's important to me y 15 to my management and asked them to handle it. And it's up j 16 to them to do what they want to do with it. After I have 17 taken them to my management, I expect them to be able to ig respond to anybody as far as what they did and their basis for 18 i 19 it being okay pecause some of my comments to the management' i 20 21 were relative to the report handling and the way the inspec-

  • I 5*

22 tors-- the way the items were taken care of. And it has to 23 do with management of the items, not necessarily just the r l 24 technical part of the item. 25 0 Okay. Would you please go through the five

23 ) items that were downgraded from violations to. unresolved 1 or were deleted from the report, and if you could, explain 2 3 why you thought they were a violation and the basis that you received from your management as to why they were changed. 5 A All right. Give me a second to get my notes. 6 I have notes I made up to go through each of the items. 7 MR. MULLEY: Okay, why don't we take a short 8 break here? 9 THE WITNESS: Okay, I appreciate that. 10 (Whereupon, there was a brief recess in the i 11 proceedings.) 12 MR. MULLEY: On the record. 13 BY MR. MULLEY: 14 Q Would you be able to go through for us the 4 15 violations that were deleted or changed to unresolved items 16 in this inspection report 85-07/057 l [ 17 A I can go through the ones that I went through l with%fobth pection report, yes. 18 j 19 As I indicated earlier, the original report i had ten items that were considered to be of the violation i 20 s i 21 category. Ir 22 When the report came out and I reviewed the l an j 23 report, the discrepancies I noted included a violation-- l 24 apparent violation that had been issued against criterion 3, i 25 which was design control, and the subject 'was lack of 1 I v. .g.. --

l l 24 1 engineering documentation providing control over certain 2 activities. That item had been reclassified as an unresolved 3 item. The basis of this change to unresolved, I'm 5 not-- I can't respond to that. My concerns that were 6 presented.'to my management was asking for a basis for that t 7 change and what the plans were for followup and disposition 8 of that particular finding. 9 The finding was important because the criteria to and the-- regarding tolerances, levelness tolerances and 11 shoe and bracket clearances were not included in the specifi-pt* d.J 12 cation procedures-- included in a specification installation 6 A g j 13 procedures drawings relative to Unit 2 pressure vessel ( Comanche 14 Peak Statio installation. 's We reviewed the work package and the traveler 16 associated with that installation because the Unit 2 vessel I l installation was a question before the Staff, and we had not l 17 l 18 looked into that area. I could only respond as for the 3 el%v i a 19 basis by actually reading the section Ireport at this point. l f ' l 20 I think-- I guess what I'm saying is that l 21 you will have to discuss that specifically with the individu-t t 22 als involved. I was not given a specific answer to that 23 particular question. 24 0 As to why it was being changed. 25 A As to whether or not it was considered a ~7

I I - - - - - ~ - - - - - .- ~. .. = 25 1 documentation problem or whether or not there was more l 2 inspection effort had gone on and cleared the-item to the 3 point where they could call it unresolved. 4 0 Are you personally aware of any more inspection 5 effort? 6 A I am not personally aware of any, but, you know; l 7 I would not sit here and indicate to };3u that there wasn't any done becuase I had not been associated with the project 8 9 and there are people who could answer that question better to than I. 11 Another item relative to failure to take u w 'r L 12 corrective actions, which is an issue nonconformance

L m.p w

13 report, a9aie as rec assified as an unresolved item,ir. *=+ b 6v M AWedd &' hen discrepancies were identified with the clearances with 14 ,w 15 the shoes and brackets, with the construction traveler, as i l 16 it were, that Brown & Root was using to set the vessel, they 8 17 did not document those discrepancies. g 18 And again, I don't know the followup or the i i 19 basis for that. The. reclassification o' O. as unresolved. 1 i l 20 And that, again, was brought to the attention of management. .i l 21 Another item de'i-irr:y identified initially f - Q-_ ;;r_...g the f ailure to perform audits and surveillance k,' 22 23 of the reactor pressure vessel Unit 2 installation. 'In 24 order . ecause of the other discrepancies where they lacked, 25 maybe, what we would consider today strong procedural controls e

26- [ we asked the licensee if he had any information ;;p ;^? 2 that would support the activity,like d a QA surveillance 3 or audit tea the ine:tallation of the reactor pressure vessel of Unit 2. 5 Realizing that the setting of a reactor pressure 6 vessel happens to be one of the largest jobs outside of j pouring the containment buildings on site [ it's a 400-ton 7 8 uni and one would expect that the licensee would' pay 9 extremely close attention to that activity since the reactor pressurevesselissupposedtobeinplaceforforty' years] 10 11 J $hssik it was surprising to me - I h.= it n e .u p inng. 12 ,tr

that they had not had quality assurance in the area w

or had not had them% ~ ting against documented acceptance opera J 13 M MMN criteria verifying that q was being done properly The i 14 M q tw4 k.o,o y 15 documentation id g show that it wee 4 one entirely properly, j d 16 and the discrepancies that were noted had not had engineering i i 1 8 17 review and evaluation to show that the vessel was installed j 18 properly. 5 ,i 19 As of what I know today, the item still is 'Y ,j 20 deficient and needs to be followed up as an unresolved item, 21 or as a violation, it needs to be followed up by additional .I 22 inspection ef fort. 23 Again, this was brought to the attention of l 24 management. 25 Q Now, let me ask a question concerning 4

27 1 violations and unresolved items: If there is enough 2 information at hand.to show that a certain deficiency is a 3 violation, is it proper to change that to an unresolved item, 4 or should the violation be written? l 5 A That is a difficult question to answer, but 6 generally speaking, if the inspector who was in the field, 7 wrote the-- went out and performed the inspection had enough e information or lack of information in front of him against j i 9 the acceptance criteria which he had been provided, which, 10 in fact, he did have and he was using an inspection module 33 in specific areas which we had really directed him in a 12 particular area, I would say that it would be difficult to of 13 write a violation as identified by a journeyman inspection as s bbtwithstanding if, in fact, additional ( 34 an unresolved item information is brought out,-- 4$at is, in addition to what 15 the man had in the first place (#--he then could write it 16 as a clear item, or he could, in fact, agree that it be ,i 17 't reclassified as unresolved. 18 j 19 But again, that would be done by the inspector 20 himself. 3 (Whereupon, the proceedings were interrupted 21 I r 22 by a knock at the door. ) I 23 A So, I guess the bottom line is the basis for 24 reclassifying these as unresolved needs to be pursued. And 25 that's my opinion. I did attempt to pursue that. That's a

28 management item, and it needs to be pursued. I could not 1 2 specifically get the answer. 3 O At the time you prepared the draft inspection I 4 report and approved it, in your opinion, was there enough 5 information presented to support a violation? 6 A That's absolutely true. T +h 4 * '. tr.e i lu Lhe==- 7 I thir'. hw LLe--- Without a question, in the draf t as written l 8 and again with the inf ormation that's in the inspection 9 report, I think it's close whether or not the violation-- 10 or, whether or not it should be a violation or unresolved 11 item. I think it could go either way, and I think that 12 that's the inspector's and his supervisor's responsibility 13 to work that out to their mutual satisfaction. ( 14 I guess my problem is that, in this particular 15 case since the man came to me to discuss these things, then 1 4 16 they were my concerns also because they were my findings. i 17 It concerns me that they didn't work it out. g 18 0 As an unresolved item, is the licensee required y s l 19 to respond back? i l 20 A As an unresolved item, he does not have to l S respond at all. That's-- Again, I'm going to-- I would 21 I t 22 like to try to answer your question and not go out away from 23 the question. But, realize that an unresolved item, from 24 the' regulatory process then is not-- doesn't require it to 25 be included in the cover letter of the inspection report. m_.... .=

m7. ._= 29 1 And, therefore, the licensee's management is { 2 not made aware of this particular problem unless his people 1 3 bring it to his attention, which they normally don't. Or, 4 4 in my experience, they didn't or don't. 5 But it's even more important because the 6 unresolved items, then, are not brought to the attention of 7 the NRC management either. And when we do the SALP, which j is a systematic assessment of licensee performance, generally e i 9 the unresolved items, in the majority of the cases, is not 10 considered in the assessment of the licensee performance. 11 So, our own management also don't receive the i . nd-that might be represented by an unresolved 12 inf orma tion. 1 (_- 13 item. 14 The handling of unresolved items, to me, is 15 very, very critical, because if you carry something as unre-16 solved, the two management groups that can cause an item 8 ,i to be corrupted or cause a program to be altered or changed 17 'g such that the problem will go away or not be repeated, if 18 ,i 19 you will, may not ever be notified of that particular problem. t ,l 20 Q okay. Taking the findings concerning the I ij 21 installation of the reactor vessel that were documented in ] x t 22 that report, based on what you know or knew at the time, I i 23 what assurance does the NRC have or TUGCO have that the 24 vessel was installed properly? 25 A Based on the findings that I had,-- And again, '...........y-,.....m..___...., L

30 my inspectors and I briefed, and we briefed the licensee and 1 2 exited on this particular report. --I do not have a good 3 assurance or good feeling that-- And-- that the reactor 4 vessel has, in fact, been engineered in the position that it's l l ( 5 in. I don't think the NRC-~ And at that time, 6 7 I was representing the NRC. I don 't believe the NRC has a-- could say that they have assurance that the vessel was 8 At> ? 9 installe a d I don't believe the licensee could say that to either. Until some of these discrepancies are identified, brought forward, evaluated, and other actions taken to make 11 sure that they don't represent a generic problem with 12 mt3~CU% ovykwk h ePL k' installation of major equipment-dhv. 13 14 O Now, since these items were' listed as unre-15 solved, there's really, as f ar as I can see, no real pressure i to do these certain actions that yois think have to be done. i 16 17 A That is correct. It'll depend on the first-g 18 line supervisor requiring special inspections-- or, followup j g inspections to cause the unresolved item to be determined to .,f i 19 li 20 be item of noncompliance or clear, meaning acceptable. ,l 8 The-- And that would occur, hopefully, at i 21 ,i a later date, but in the near future. 22 By not writing a noncompliance item and having l 23 the utility respond to that noncompliance as lack of records l 24 25 or lack of data or lack of engineering, lack of corrective ...~.. ..........-,m .p., v ae ,.e , m.. .. w =....-~~e

... _ _. u. 31 action, as we were talking here in audits, the licensee is 2 not in the mode of getting that into the corrective action l 3 plan in which the NRC has specified that he would perform to assure the quality of Comanche Peak. Thv.'s the bottom line. 5 The other item about the reactor pressure 1 6 vessel-- And again, it will go without saying, but it's 7 here. The reason we chose the reactor vessel-- the Unit 2 i 8 reactor vessel is because it was an item in contention in the 8 hearing, and we could not, to my knowledge,-- Again, as far 10 as I could tell, the reactor vessel installation had not been 11 fully audited or addressed during the 19-- let's say, the 12 1984 time frame, and we wanted to look at it to see the 13 status. lC. 14 Based on the findings of the Technical Review C.NCtru i Team where there were inadequacies in the area of cedir.;, p ) 15 4 i 16 liner welds and other things, bolting and that type of thing, j l ,g 17 we wanted to make sure that the reactor vessel installation 18 did not have similar problems. i i ( ,j 19 I would indicate to you at this time, I don't Y 'j 20 know whether or not the problems are there. JJ l lj 21 Q Who was involved in changing these violations l r 1 t 22 to unresolved items? Who in Region IV? i 23 A Again, I'm speculating, but it would be the i l 24 supervision and management associated with the final review l \\ l 25 and approval of that inspection. l _f... ,i.

32 ) My assumption is, and this is only an assump-2 tion, is that each of the changes would have been cleared, 3 and clearly cleared, with the inspectors involved because we i d depend heavily on the inspector, him integrity and the way 5 he does his job and his technical *experties, then it would s have been cleared with him and he was in agreement with these [ 7 reclassifications. ~ e g s I would indicate to you that came g V 8 to me he waan 't entirely happy with the changes, and l 10 that's when I ed and tried to pursue them and get 11 the basis for the changes. 12 Q If you were to be told that, in fact, the i 13 inspector did not see the changes, how would that strike you? C. 14 A As a manager and a supervisor, I would be i 16 surprised. I mean, that would not be in accordance with my l 16 criteria of the way we do business and the way we're supposed 4I jg 17 to do business. I would be-- As a manager, I would be very a 18 unhappy with that. j g I

;l 10 Q

You will note on the cover sheet of this 20 inspection report on the dates that they were signed-the I j iJ 21 dates that the inspector signed the report are October the 'I 22 1st and October the 2nd of 1985. The report actually went 1 I 23 out and was signed-- i 24 A January 1986. I i l 25 0 --January the 28th, yes,1986 by Mr. Hunnicutt, I ~. ]

.-.....~. 33 l 1 and the cover letter is dated February the 3rd, 2 A And signed out by Mr. Johnson. 3 Q February the 3rd. So, there was a period l i l 4 there of about four months. l 5 A Yeah, I think the critical items are the l s inspector's signatures, if you will. And then, if you look 7 on the concurrence on the front page, the difference between 8 over on the right-hand-- Look on the right-hand side. You I see Noonan finally signed off on l[20 or/j 4? 9 j 10 0 Yeah. Well, he actually didn't sign this. j i 11 A No, it's by his representative Charlie (P onetically). That's what it says. And that's the h 12 13 way we had it set up to do. So, that's no-- I'm not l (l' 1 34 questioning that. I'm just saying the date on there-- What l I'm saying is: There's a lot of cases where this concurrence 15 i occurs, and that February the 3rd happens to be a mailing l 16 f 3 ) date. 37 g is Q Yeah. ] I j 19 A But that bottom-- the concurrence date is i I 20 really the important date, j j t i 8 O And it looks like everybody signed it on i 21 s o 2 i 22 January the 28th. However, as I go through here, I find l l 23 that H.S. Phillips, somebody signed for him. j b l 24 A I think you'll probably find that's Tom j l 25 Westerman's signature. i i l l i -.---.j l 1

l 34 1 O Right. 2 A For Phillips. 3 O Right. Because Westerman signed for himself. I 4 Johnson signed for himself. f 1 5 A Hunicutt signed. l 6 O Hunnicutt signed for himself. 7 A Now, see, as a matter of practice and policy, e one would immediately accept the fact-- I do.

This, 9

apparently, is a problem here. But I accept the fact that 10 when Tom Westerman signs for Phillips that Mr. Phillips i 11 concurs with that signature and they've done it by phone and/ 12 or some other method. I don't know that that happened, but 13 if they didn't concur, if it isn't with his full understanding, k 14 then that's where the problems are coming out. 15 I would indicate that we normal-- Well, a lot 16 of times we may have, like, on a report a supervisor signing 17 for an individual-- concurring for an individual. But g 18 again, it's the first-line supervisor's responsibility and g a j 19 then the second-line manager's responsibility to make sure i 20 that when, as in the case of the 84-32 report that I'm l 21 looking at, that when I sign that out that there are no 2* 22 disagreements within the section. 23 And if you don't do that as a supervisor and 24 manager, you're looking for a lot of grief in the future. There are dates in that 85-05/07 whichmakeq 25 ._y.-

35 one wonder,=just because'of-the difference in the dates. 3 2 g y,,, I think the inspector signed off on the report 3 A 4 as early as 10-85. 1 5 - Q Right, 10-1-85. I guess,that was my next question. As a 6 7 matter of practice, it'looks like we have a. couple of inspec-i the tors signing of f on a ' report on the 1st of October-- 8 8 cover sheet of the report. All the pages underneath get 10 changed. Why don't the inspectors resign? c As a matter of' practice because some inspectors 11 A are on other inspection trips, some inspectors are at the j 12 13 site, there are a lot of cases where the supervisor himself l {~ is responsible to make sure that, again, he's representing l 14 the individual, that there are no questions. 15 16 Now, that allows a supervisor to-- He could j i t { 17 subvert the system. Okay? 1 18 0 Yes. g s i 19 A If my supervisor did that, he would be I'j 20 reprimanded severely. You know, because, in fact, he has And. l { J taken a GS-13's,14 's findings and has changed them. j 21 r I 22 if that man disagrees with that, then it becomes obvious that the supervisor didn't follow through. adequately or 23 4 1 designated somebody else to do it and that individual let him 24 25 down. ..s.

- -... ~.. 36 1-I don't knew those answers. I do know that 2 that report ought to represent that signature. 3 0 Yes. 4 A I don't understand why, if a report was 5 substantially changed-- when the report was substantially changed, as it is, I don't understand why the dates were not 6 4 changed and it was not resigned by those individuals. 7 8 0 I guess as an indication of how substantially the report was changed, when these inspectors signed this e 10 report in October of '85, they were signing for certain 11 paragraphs. One of the paragraphs they signed for-- all of 12 these people signed for was paragraph 19. 13 A Okay. b 14 Q Now, if you go darough the report itself that 15 was finally sent out, there is no paragraph 19. 16 A I can respond to that, but ~ it's not the 19 17 that's important. It's the fact that paragraph 18 was taken ' i' 18 out and 19 became 18. And I think that ought t0 be pursued. y s j 19 Q Right. And there's an indication there of i just, you know, exactly how much this. report was changed. 20 21 A Well, and look at the cover letter. I'm I 22 trying to help. I know a lot more about it. On the cover letter, you'll find out that the areas inspected, including 23 l 24 a review of nonconformance. Okay? 25 0 Right.

37 ~ 1 A I think that's what the words are. Select 2 examination, all right. Action of the applicant on design 3 deficiencies and plant tours. 4 And in the report, and I'll give you a-- In 5 the report summary, which really identifies e paragraphs, s it says, ' status of review of violatiosy unresolved items." 7 And a trend analysis. s That no longer exists. So, there is a discrep-e ancy in the report summary and that which is in the report to details. And I can't respond to that. I just happen to know 11 that that existed when I looked at it. Therefore, the-- 12 I don't know what it indicates. 13 It indicates, I know, that the-- what was in 14 the draft is no longer thers. I'm not sure why it's not is there. I would not-- And I didn't ask _that specific gtion Is when I was reviewing this with-- 4theconcernstha g 17 d I had between myself and E w w 18 3g I wanted to point out, earlier you asked j 19 about the items of noncompliance, and I didn't want to get i 20 off of those. 21 We had item of noncompliance that by our 22 initial draft was-- -Item No. 9 was Criterion 8 material 23 traceability problem, and Item No. 10 was a Criterion 17 24 records problem. Both of those items were cleared. .They 25 actually became acceptable. e e

c-l: 38 1 l 1 And I took this to management, and I do have 2 an answer for those two that they gave me. The answer vcs ) 3 that subsequent inspection or subsequent provision of records j .i by the licensee subsequent to the inspection dates-- d l 5 In other words, obviously it was in the 1986 ] ) I l 6 time frame. 7 Q Right. J i 8 A January time frame. They actually brought additional information 9 to the inspector's attention to clear these two items. Okay_? to 11 And, by the way, I disagreed with that. It's okay, but there's no documentation in the record, and that 12 13 means in the inspection report. .'( l 14 Also, the inspection report period ended in-- the inspection report period ended in June of '85, and they 15 brought additional information in the late '85 or early '86 16 j! 17 to clear two items of noncompliance. And it's not reflected g 18 in this report. a ,i 19 The appropriate manner, by the way,-- And Icanhaveanopinion,bytheway[--isthattheseitems 20 l4 w.. 0 as 1+- e_ _ m =pli-21 will _= 4 '- ha t-be carried oud/w& -l pd they would be documented as closed in subserjuent 22 I 23 inspections by the NRC. 1 i What it does is it makes it-- It doesn't 24 i 25 make the record clear. It doesn't provide a clear record, i

39 t and I would indicate that that's really not the way to do l 1 l l 2 business. 3 0 How appropriate do you feel it is for a / licensee to take five or six months to retrieve records? 4 5 A It 's absolutely inappropriate. Retrievability, j J 6 by definition, is not that he can retrieve it in any amount 7 of time. Retrievability means that he has a system set up that makes a record retrievable in a reasonable amount of B i l 9 time. In this particular inspection, by the way, 10 si we gave them over a week-- in the range of a week to come up with records on major pieces of equipment, reactor coolant 12 13 piping and reactor vessel. The major pieces of equipment { 14 that were-- It wasn't like we were asking for a piece of 15 equipment that was a small item that they, maybe, didn't 16 17 pay that much attention to. '{. And the licensee could not, and did not even 18 j 19 at the exit-- And we did exit, And you look in.there, we i ii exited with Mr. Merrick who happened to be Unit 2 project ,i 20 a 21 manager with TUGCO. He did not, and could not, provide the lN 'Ir 22 records. I Not in the report necessarily, and we don't 23 24 normally document it as that-- Of course, we don't document I l l 25 the number directly sob the people directly that we ask for 1 1

40- &' - QGc-r$O', But we did go for piping records and reactor I t _ rec tir 2 vessel records. We went to the appropriate levels of manage-3 ment, including Mr. Purdy who was the quality assurance 'd manager for ASME piping N him w Sw s - Not that he knew a 5 where the records were, but that he was to get the people 6 together and rally the people together to get.us the records l 3 l 7 that we asked for.' 1 8 My understanding after the meeting with my 9 management was that, yeah, these records did show up three,. l 10 four, five months later. And' based on the records showing it up in that time frame, they, in fact, closed these two items 12 out. r I 13 As an example now, they-- by closing those I( i 14 two items out, they haven't addressed the fact that the 1 records weren 't retrievable in a timely fashion. 15 And to me, that, in fact,-is as important:as-- 16 ,8 since the records represent quality, as.the f act that maybe 37 i ~ 18 the records did not-- they were lost, they were misplaced, j j 19 they weren't in the proper storage so they weren't cataloged. ..:i l Part of the program requirements are that the 20 l l 21 licensee be provided-- that the licensee provide to.himself l j8 l

I 22 and to us, by the way,-

- We're doing this for him. I hope 23 everybody realizes that. --is that the records be provided 24 to represent the quality of-that site. I l 25 The-- Really, when you clear an item like -....,............. =

41 - And on material traceability, they cleared that item I that-- also by presenting records after the fact and actually 2 allowing the man to go to the field and look. at a-- I 3 apparently look underneath a hanger or something on a piece 4 And I can't of pipe and convincing the Anspector that-- 5 M1 (W e chw. question it once the inspector tells map But convincing the 6 inspector three months af ter the fact that the item he 7 8 inspected was okay.--. 5+ an item that can be answered, 9 but not necessarily by me. It's just that I have the concern 10 with things being handled that way. t 11 0 So, you think it would have been appropriate then for the licensee to be cited for nonretrievability of 12 13 records? 14 A In this particular case, I specifically supported the citation for lack of retrievable records and 15 .I notwithstanding that I do have some insight on the records 16 problem at Comanche Peak that made this particular citation 17 g 18 even more important because it represented-- our sample represented an additional problem or a further problem of a j 19 i (ack of records in the field, l 20 The TRT identified lack of records on bolting, f 21 t And all piping, liner plate welding, et cetera, et cetera. 22 And this is, is another example of records in the area-- 23 24 we have two cases that we looked at. We looked at the 25 reactor coolant piping. There's a lack of records there. I

u. 43 I site Tom Westerman assigned to put the report together. i 2 That would be the group, up to and including Tom's approval 1 3 of the report. Hunnicutt's, in this case. Tom Westerman's approval and Hunnicutt's' approval. And, in fact, Eric 4 f q 5 Johnson's final approval and the issuance of the letter, j 6 with the concurrence of Vince Noonan's group. 7 This signature represents-- Obviously, a _A manager has to assign a group of people, and Hern, ,7.. 33 {4 - B p happcns to be the individual assigned to the review 9 i f or him of Region IV inspection reports, I believe, at that to i 11 time. k That's the way I understood it. I'm not sure 12 i 1 13 that's the way it is today. l (. l 14 0 Okay. As I go through the concurrence here, 4 l 15 as it stood at the end of January of '86, we have Phillips, 16 then Hunnicutt, Westerman,-- 17 A Yes. ) g J IB Q --Johnson,-- I j 19 A Johnson. 0 --and then Noonan. I 20 a A Noonan, yeah. 21 ,e i I O Now, in October when the draf t went out, when i* 22 \\ you were still involved with Comanche Peak before you were 23 transferred back to the branch position, how was that l 24 concurrence done? 25 .. g. ., p. .o ' - - _ ~ _ _ _ _ _. _ _ _ _ _, _

44 9 s 1 A I'm not suro. I don't hava c-- But it would 2 be Phillips, probably Hunnicutt, Hunter-- And I'll use this y-- 3 as an example. And and probably Denise and Noonan. 4 Q

Okay, i

5 A 'that's the way it would have been in the i j s original concurrence _ packet. And we could verify that in j 7 the system, but that would be the difference. Basically, s Westerman took my place on the concurrence because,he became e the project director, and Eric Johnson, since Mr. \\ad -J 10 terminated 2-10 en 2:.uk d;;d re, then Eric became the 7 j 0 it acting director of reactor safety projects. 12 Q so, at the tiJoe the draft went out in October, i 13 which individuals had concurred in the draf t? k ! 1 14 A The original draf t, as it went out in October l i 4 l *. 15 Prior to whatever changes occurred, it was-- basically l 1s concurred and signed as indicated on the front page as I 17 indicated by each of these individuals. g t to Q Okay. The front page of the report. l fj 1s A That included Phillips, Runnicutt for '1 20 cummings who was the senior resident inspector at that time 23 of the inspection, D Norman who in fact-- I don't-- p '.) s ljJ 22 I'm not purporting to know why Phillips signed for-l -{ 23 but it was in the October '85 time frame. And then, it had s tj 24 been approved in October by Runnicutt, the supervisor. 25 So, when the concurrence is on front by r i ..n..

3. I 45 Shannon Phillips, basically it represented all triose people, 1 And then, Hunnicutt, that represented, at that time, the 2 1 i 1 2 approval. 4 And those dates on that concurrence, as I / 5 had lef t it when I changed projects, would represent-- it 5 probably was in the range of 10-2, the same as on the inspec-6 tion report. It might have been November or December, I 7 1 8 don't remember. But it was in that October time frame, I 8 believe. 10 0 So, based on that, it seems like the people who affected the changes would be Tom Westerman and Eric 11 12 Johnson. 13 A I think it would be these three right here. 1 ( l 14 It would be Westerman, Eric Johnson, and Noonan. ) 15 Q Okay. 16 A In other words, you know, you just have to 17 realize that, in fact, the project is Region IV project and 'j 18 NRR-- you know, NRC project, it would be done between those i 19 three people. t They couldn't change the report without his 20 21 concurrence-- i 22 O Right. 23 A --because he signed off on it as concurring h 24 with the changes. 25 So, I don't know. Again, I'm speculating.

...... ~.. 46 O Let's see. Would Noonan sian ~ of f on-- In 2 other words, he would see the draft report and then see the 3 final-- or would he just seen the final? d A He probably would see the draf t, and then he [ 5 would see the changed draft, and then he would see the final. 6 In other words, he would be-- I would not think that the 7 NR-- that we would-- Well, I think-- You can ask him 8 th at, but that would cause a lot of problems. In other words, 9 that's just not the way we do business. i J I'm sure that this concurrence represents that to he or his representative knew what was going on. Now, I'm 11 12 not sure they understood the basis of it. They may have taken the words of the people here (indicating). But, you 13 C. 14 know, that's something that will need to be asked. i 15 Q Did you personally have any conversations i witheitherOtstermanorJohnsonconcerningthedifferences 16 't between the draf t report and the final report? 17 I 18 A The first conversation I had with them was g af ter the report was issued on February the 3rd, and then i 19 i 20 I reviewed the report. And I set a meeting up with them in 21 the latter part of February in h In f act,-- 22 Well, the latter part of-- Yeah, the 25th of February of '86 we had a meeting to discuss this-- the differences. 23 24 That's the first conversation I had because 25 I had poted the ' differences. .... 7 ..,y..

] 47 1 Q so, they-- Even though ot th3 time of tho 2 inspection you were _ the man in charge, so to speak,- 3 A Yes. 4 0 --you had signed off on t32 draft report ~.y 5 indicating that you accepted the violations as was written [ s in the draft,-- y A. Yes. { s 0 -they made some very significant changes to ( t j g the report-- la jo A It appears that wy. j 3, Q --and didn 8 t take-the time to get your input-- A 'that 's true. 12 0 --until af ter the report went out., And you 33 i(:~ 14 found the discrepancies yourself. I t ) i is A They, at no time, asked my opinion or got my s 16 input. I, in fact,-- Like I said initially, because "of the i! lg 17 way I do business, it was my work. I verified my work after' is the report was issued and noted some substantial differences. j is Q Now, you were involved more or less as a 30 hands-on involvement with the inspectors in the inspection. 4 21 A I think, at that time, very much so because I 22 the inspection plan was developed 'and approved by Doyle and i 23 myself, and I'll indicate mostly by myself. So, Phillips m 24 and

tnd the crew--

And we can talk about the report, L 25 but they went out and did their individual sections of the ......n...,-- _.....7 ,, ' r.%, 9 - . _ vf.

.. - ~.. l I 48 1 inspection that were basically directed and concurred in by 2 Hunnicutt and myself, and mainly by me because I had a broader 3 overview of what the TRT-- and I was involved in the TRT 4 action plan drafts, and I had areas that I had specifically i 5 felt needed to be reviewed. 6 That's why we picked main coolant piping, which 7 is a substantial finding in here that has been altered, and e the way the hydro was performed en the main coolant system. 9 And also, we picked the setting of the Unit 2 i 10 reactor vessel because that was a contention item. ii 0 And in the development of the draf t report, 12 did you review with the inspectors their support for the violations? 13 '(. A I sure did. We actually got together and 34 15 reviewed at the time we exited with the licensee, because, as ) 1 i 16 usual, I would exit with the licensee and go through the l I 37 findings in general and then any specifics on the finding 18 itself. The licensee would direct his questions to the ig inspector. I don't purport to ever understand all the s I would like to think that I did, detaiIs of the inspection. 20 but if'it was in the area of electricjfk I would feel very 21 comfortable cr-I Q of'~operatio h But in the area of NDE or 22 23 welding or material traceability, then I would depend on 24 my journeymen inspectors to be able to support that. And '25 that's the way I do business.

.c 4 72 49 1 Q So, this raport, th2n, w:0 changad back at 2 the headquarters in Arlington, Texas by people who were not l 3 involved in ' the inspection at all. 4 A They were not involved in that particular 5 aspect of it. I can 't respond as to what the i did,,af tetr the 6 fact. 1-4 1 1 I 7 O And so-- 5 I t l i e A The basis for the changes. 9 Q And you ' don 't know the basis for thelchanges.- ( 1 l 10 A I do not -)uume the basis for the changes, i 11 except in the two cases where they said three months or so 12 af ter the fact the licensee brought records over and we 4 13 accepted those records. k-14 My inspector-- The. supervisor said, Here's 15 the records; accept them. And that 's' the wayv it was done., 16 I would not think that that was the clean e i jy way to operate. a 18 okay. You already mentioned the other item i that in the meeting that I had with my management on the f5r.h gg 'j of February. You mentioned the difference.h) the signature 20 ia d and dates on the report, and I did cover those with my 21 iI 22 management and indicated that, a t be st, ' that we r.meded tc[ < 23 be more careful and be more sensitive to the signature and.L l 24 approval' dates and make sure that they do represent the f act s of what we had actually done. s; o i ~y .y (, .e j

1 50. - t; 1 I could interprot-- I eculd rocd thio one - 2 way in a negative sense. And even if they,didn't intend it 3 as beLng negative, it could. show up that way. Therefore, to 4 me, it was not a good practics. 6' Q' What was their response to those comments? 4 A It's okay..No resconse. Basically, we do j l "I things the way we're going to do them and the way we want 7-- e to do them, and it's management's prerogative. 9 You knowg. I think it's just. indifference maybe. 10 ' so, I'm not being critical. ' You know, I'm' just saying that it was my feeling when I left. 12 The meeting we had inJthe ig elt as 13 an outsider. I felt like I was being-- and I 14 had the meeting with the other people, Tom Westerman, Eric [ ig Johnson, Ed Barnes. Immediately, we felt like we were on 18 the bad side of the table and they were on' the good side of ig the tabin. 37 18 Atter that, I felt very uncomfortable going j to. through'.the issues because I knew I wasn't going to get any-ao where. f f e / To carry it a little further, I got word that i 22 I was-- that Vince Noonan would like to talk with me. I 23 did, in idet, discuss it with him, indicating to him that I

24. ; <was considering taking the issues to my--

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I 1 .T f 51 i that was on a Friday. Probably a week and a half. It would 2 be a week an'd a half later on_ a Monday, I went to see Mr. 3 Martin and discuss these same issues, indicating to him that I felt he had a problem'in this particular area and that the I 1 5 reason-I gave him the basis-because I didn't feel like the ] findings were being handled to the satisfaction of the inspec-6 7 tors and that he was to cause that to be-- he was to review ( 8 that situation. l l 9 It was after. that that I got the memo that 10 says I have five days to put my -oncerns in writing. So, 11 I wasn't very happy with that either. j l 12 O Okay. We' earlier talked about an Item No. 18 13 that was deleted-- q k I 14 A Yes. 15 0 --completely from the inspection report. 16 A Yes. i ! 17 0 What did Item No. 18 have to deal with? '. g l 18 A Again, I'll try to make a long story short I is because there is no short story here. _ f 't But one of the things that a project director l 20 does, and that's what I was doing, is to review the licensee's j d 21 .., 1 22 program, his docket, the status of violations, unresolved I 'l items, deviations, and 50.55(el s, event reports. And if you '23 i 'k-24 do the event reports and the Part 21 reports, you've established the reportable items to the project that he has 25 'l 1 i

l 52 j given us, the NRC. If you review-- 1 2 And then we review-- And again, I say we 3 review those. And Shannon's good at this. He's a good 4 organizer. And then he reviewed-- We discussed status 5 of the violations that had been issued by Region IV, just j 6 7 generally. I didn't go into the specifics because I didn't ] have enough time, and I didn't feel like, as a manager, I s e needed it. 10 Secondly, we looked at the unresolved items, which generally an unresolved item is_ cited against a 11 criterion of Appendix B or some regulatory requirement. 12 l 13 Because even the-- The reason you're in there looking at I k a particular area is because there's a regulation you want { 14 1s to verify. i 16 So, what we did is we plotted those items 3. specifically to come up with a status of the licensee's { 17 l 18 events reports, 50. 55 (e) and then of the violations with l g I the idea, again, that this would be used to tailor the inspec-19 i i tion program and, if there were any areas in the TRT that l l 20 J j 21 weren't being looked at, that this indicated ought to be f 22 looked at, we were going to initiate special inspection g i l 23 ef forts in those areas. 24 I'll give you an example. This review showed l there-was a potential problem in the area of design control. 25 I E________________

53 1 The design control was specifically within thn ComInche Pesk 2 response team action plan. We didn't plan on doing anything l 3 special in that area, but there was a definite lack of inspection findings and/or a lot of unresolved itemsy d 4 5 they finally just went away n the area of procurement l 6 and approved vendors. 7 So, we, in fact, planned on performing I 8 additional inspection effort concerning vendors, procurement, 9 and safety-related equipment at Comanche Peak. And then, 10 with those findings, feed those into the response-- into 11 the quality verification program, the response team program. 12 But for some reason, a general overview of 13 those deficiency reports, violations, and that came out 14 of that report, disappeared. l 15 0 What reason? 16 A I don't know. I have no-- That was covered, 8 17 apparently, with supervisor and the inspector. I have no g 18 idea. y 5 j 19 Q Do you-- i 20 A 4 dr. ' t I de..'t-The information was .l l i4 l l 21 in there, and we discussed it at the exit with the licensee. .t!* 22 It was provided for his information so that he could assess 23 it. And I don 't really know why it ' would be taken out. i l 24 0 would this information cause problems for the 25 licensee?

54 l s 1 A It could id:ntify arens cf concern, and it i 2 could-- you know, in that one could construe that to a i 3 number of things. It might appear to be negative if you 4 looked at it relative to the NRC and that we knew about 5 certain. things and yet today we have those problems. And it l 8 also would indicate that-- It would provide a negative 7 indicator to the licensee that he, in fact, had been provided s these problems in the past and the problems still exist e today. to And so, I could see where someone might cen- ) 11 strue that in that fasion. I happen to not do that. I 12 happen to think that was data to cause'us to do our job 13 better. i !k 14 And let me continue. You indicated that I had amemofron( to Johnson dated January the 13th, '86. 15 16 Realize that this is in the time frams that the report was

I

', g 17 finally issued, and it was a culmination of that effort, 'Is I, in fact, issued to Eric Johnson a memo j 19 with enclosures that took that assessment done by Shannon, .i i '.ll 20 Phillips, and myself at that time-- And I'll indicate it jf 21 was done by us. It includes six enclosures, and each of 22 these enclosures provides a historical amount of information l 23 or the assessments of each individual area. This was pro-i 24 vided to him January the 13th. I have not-- I have not had 25 any feedback relative to that as of April the 10th, verbally

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55 i 4 1 or otherwise. I don't know what's been done-with it. 2 I wrote in the letter that this was provided 3 for his information, and it was provided for them to use as j d-they saw fit. I'm not saying that I should have gotten 5 something in writing, but as of this day, I haven't received 6 _any verbal-- or, it hasn't even been confirmed that I sent J 7 it to him. B Q Now, this is pretty much the substance of _ that 9 Item 18. 10 A This was the substance of the paragraph under 1 11 Item 18. From the-- Parts of it. There's more in here. 12 As an example, we reviewed the inspection (, program implemented at Comanche Peak Station in Enclosure 3. 13 14 That's none of the licensee's business. And so, this is 15 provided to Mr. Johnson to say: "In many instances, report 16 documentation was not adequate to demonstrate the ~ inspection 17 procedure was, in fact, inspected." ) 18 Now, that's what I would consider a weak area, g 1 i l 19 and then I would go back and-- I would consider that for I i 20 reinspection. Not that I would reinspect it, but I would q l e 21 consider that for reinspection. I 22 Percentage completion, there were some ques-23 tions relative to that, you know, that wasn't there. "The following areas may require additional 24 i 25 inspection ef fort because structual' steel supports"-- There's i 'I ... -, -...~.s,

56 report documentation that we looked at was weak.

Now, 2

Shannon looked it up, and Shannon provided me with the 3 documentation. And so, it was a coordinated effort. But it l 4 was a good effort. I'll stick up for Mr. Phillips. He gets 5 an "A" f or th is. 6 The reactor vessel, the module, additional 7 inspection needed. The reason is because that module probably l 8 was signed off at 20 percent enclosed. 1 9 We used that criteria that we inspected that to the inspection program be signed off and documented. And if 11 we found out that it was signed off at a very low level, up 12 to and including zero, or that the documentation didn 't i 13 support the-- It was signed off at a hundred-percent enclosed { [ [' and there was no documentation to support that signoff, 14 we I 15 didn 't-- we weren't criticizing people in the past. We i 16 weren't even going to question whether or not they did it. l 17 We were just going to repeat it just to make sure. g 18 And really, there was only one, two, three, s 19 four, five, six, seven areas here that really needed to be iij 20 looked at or considered for additional inspection. .-;j 21 It wasn't a big deal, but it certainly would

t

^ 22 be conservative, and it would seem to me like it would be 23 con s tructive. 24 Q At this stage, getting back to that, would it ~ 25 be possibic to do inspections to get these modules closed?

q l 57-l i 1 l' '(Whereupon, the-proceedings were' interrupted 2 by an incoming. telephone call.) i l I 3 A Your Llast. question relative to doing post-4 completion inspections or post inspections in the area. I 5 That's a very difficult question. In some cases, there's 1 I I no way to recover it, but there is-generally a way to expand j 6 1 4 7 the inspections, do more inspections, do more detailed 8 inspections. And, in fact, you can actually do concrete l 9 testing. 10 If you don't have the records to support 11 concrete structural strength, the test coupons, you can go 12 to the field and take core samples. l 13 If you don't have records to support the ( 14 compaction of the soils, you can go to the field and take i core drilling s and verify compaction. 15 16 Electrical separation, you can walk down L8 i 17 cables. 18 Yes. We won't be able to recover the modules exactly as they would have been done 'if-you had have been in 19 }s the field observing the activity, but a program can be written I 20 ? l$' 21 to re-establish quality. AlI 22 So, no, we wouldn't be able tor do the modules 23 as written, but we would be able to verify. quality 'in the 24 areas today. And that's what the verification or the ' quality 1 25 progran-- the quality-- They use Comanche Peak response 4 l ) i i

i i '58 1 team. And to me, that doesn 't-- That tells you what ituis. 2 They're responding to somebody told them'something is wrong.. 3 What I want to call.it is a quality confirmation program, d .They are going to be able to verify quality in 5 the areas that are identified. They'll either verify it, or .6 they'll tear it up and rebuild it. 7 O Well, I understand, for example, that one of i i e the modules that wasn't completely done had to do with the l 9 installation of the reactor vessel and some of the external i l 10 stuff. Now, that, I thought, had long been buried in concrete j 11 or whatever. I 12 A It's been set in concrete, but there are 13 methods to check clearances to reverify the way it's sitting, 14 to take measurements today in most cases. Now, there's some 15 cases where we wouldn't be able to get the data, but manage-16 ment would have to decide what was acceptable at this time. 17 I don't know of any-- generally, any quality 18 that couldn't be verified, up to and including you asked about 19 the vessel. 20 0 Right. j 21. A Say, that the problem was with the embeds. 22 In other words, steel embedded in concrete. Now, those kinds 23 of things give you a problem, but you could actually inE act, 24 hydraulically load those and verify that they are, f 25 capable of withstanding design loading. A very expensive i

l 59 evolution, but if an embed f ailed and a cable tray failed 1 1 2 during a seismic event and the core melted, management has 1 3 to decide what they want to do. And it can be done, up to and including loading equipment up to its design load some j 4 5 way. Tearing it apart and rebuilding it, that has been done. l 6 If it 's enough-- If it has enough safety significance, then 7 the NRC will have to decide, as a whole. That's why there 8 is a Comanche Peak project director under Vince Noonan, to 9 decide what needs to be done at Comanche Peak. 10 All I was doing, all our Region should be doing, 11 is to supplying him information, verifying that that which ] 12 they are doing is what they said they were going to do, give l 13 him any new information, and then assist in helping develop I s, 14 the-- and establish the quality. J ) I 15 TUGC0 says the plant's of quality nature. j 1 l 16 Okay, that 's fine. I would too if I had all that money l? 17 invested. It's our job to verify that quality for the public lg l 18 health and safety. We're not allowed to state whether or not g l l: l 19 the plant is of quality yet, except in the areas that we've 'ill 20 verified or that we've established that the licensee has l 21 verified. Because concrete testing happened to be done by ,i 22 them and us both, then we verified that for that particular 23 area, quality is there. 24 The thing that we didn't do, as an example, 25 was for overall concrete where there was a mixing blade

i 1 60 1~ question in the 85-05/07 report, we did not, in fact, 2 verify all concrete out at the site, or we did not verify, 3 based on the fact that there may be a generic problem with 4 concrete. We verified it, maybe, based on some false records. 5 And I understa.d that the Comanche Peak 6 response team action. plan' item number umpty-squat, you'll i 7 read.that, and you'll know exactly why they verified it. It l 8 was verified for a specific' case, and they took samples of J l 9 specific concrete. 10 And I'm not,saying that'that's not adequate 11 to verify the problem with the batch plant or' with the trucks, 12 but the licensee has to tell us that it was adequate or give 13 us additional testing that shows that it was adequate. s_ 14 O Okay. Getting to that issue of the concrete 15 verification and the truck mixer blades that was covered in 16 the last paragraph of the February 3rd, 1986 transmittal lI l: 17 letter concerning report no. 85-07/05, it talks about a l? l 18 violation in the report, violation 2C.

i ll 19 A

And that was one of the violations that did ) li 20 remain, if I'm correct. Okay, go ahead. i 21 O And it assigns it a severity levelLnumber 5. 22 And then it says, however, on the letter that, "No reply 23 to violation 2C is required." 24 Is this appropriate? l 1 25 A I haven't reviewed it-in detail. I don't l 1 l l I

l '61 j i 1 1' ' believe that in that particular case it's appropriate because-l 2 I know' what the finding was. I don't believe it was appro-priate because the mixing blade problem affected all the-- 3 p could have af fected a large number of concrete trucks over a 4 5 large period of time. it Thc reason they needed to respond to that, 6 is' that they needed to evaluate that the test i 7-would seem, in fact, addressed l program that was performed on concrete had, 8 the' impact of not having adequately verified the concrete i 9 1 l concrete l mixing blades, which is a requirement of the code-- to 1 11 code, over an extended period of time. 1 i In the notice of violation as it was written 12 13 in the draf t, it would require that the licensee address the corrective steps which had been teken and the results achieved l 14 That means that he has to assess the situation as it af fected 15 I' 16 immediate site and the immediate-- -and.the past constructed site and to assure that the quality of the item, in this l 17 I l L 18 case the concrete, is, in fact, still valid. The licensee might have to say, we have to 19 do additional concrete boring, testing dynamic-- static 20 21 dynamic testing. We may have tx) take concrete out and put ) !} - it. it back in today because there's no way of verif ying 22 But by not requiring a response, my assumption 23 24 is that, in the report, that those kinds of items were 25 discussed with the licensee, and the licensee-- snd we

62 1 1 received the appropriate response to our inquisition, i 2 I believe-- I think I can say that that's not l 3 in the report. l 1 4 Q It says on the cover letter-- To defend the 1 f act khat no response is needed, 5 it says that "Since the NR l 6 procedures have been revised to provide documented inspection I j 7 of truck mixer blades, there was no abnormal blade wear i 8 identified as a result of blade inspection, and there have 9 been consistent concrete strength and uniformity tests, 10 no reply to violation of Point 2C is required. " 11 That doesn't seem to address adequately the 12 historical problem that we're faced with now. 13 A I don't-- By looking at that, I don't know I 14 that the test reports would substantiate that kind of state-15 ment. The licensee needs to determine that and needs to tell i 16 u s th a t. And th at 's wha t the response would do. 1 17 We have had some special testing done, and 18 there are test coupons performed at the site. But the 19 licensee needs to review those and make sure that they are 20 inclusive of this particular problem. And they would answer 21 that particular safety concern. 22 The inspector has a concern in that area, 23 and it may be valid. It should be pursued. 24 0 Okay. Well, to summarize Inspection Report 25 85-07/05, the changes that were made to the inspection

63-1 report, tha changos that. were mada betwasn your draf t.ond 2 the final report that went mat were made without your ~ s 3 knowledge. 4 A I had not-- There was no questions asked to 5 me. To my knowledge, that's true. I did not know that a changes were made. 7 Q And you didn't. discover the changes until some a time -later when you were reviewing the report? 9 A Again, when I did finally receive the report-- 10 And I don 't know the exact date. It wa s in - the-- 'probably 11 in the mid-February- -cr, the second weeks in February by the 12 time I got the report from my secretary. Then I specifically 13 reviewed the report in certain areas-- 14 And again, what I thought as critical areas. 15 --and noted the dif ferences. And at that time, 16 I commenced to-- I think around February the 21st, with 17 Eric Johnson verbally and ending up in a meeting in his _ office 18 on the 25th of February. 19 Q Were you given this report officially? 20 A The report was provided to me as the chief of f 21 the reactor safety branch, not to me as jIthink 22 that's officially. But. it wasn 't provided to me as me being 23 part of the inspection team. I think-maybe that's true. It 24 was provided to me generically the same as any other inspec-25 tion report would be provi,ded to the chief of the reactor

64-1 asfaty brcnch'. 2 O Just for information purposes. 1 3 A Yes. It's for-- because'the chief.of the 4 reactor safety branch has some responsibilities relative to 5 review of inspection report. findings, generic issues, that 1 6 type of thing. So, we stay cognizant as a branch of work j 7 going on. ] e Secondly, a person in this particular report, -) l e as an example,-- This or other reports.. l 10 happens to im.out of the engineering branch. I require my l ti section' chief, and that's what you'll find I did, I think, 12 in this case. I usually put my section chief's name up here, ~ 13 and then he's to review work for co,nsistency 14 and adequacy. Because. he has to provide at least' the 15 appraisal with the man he's working for now's input. So, 16 it's very important to look at the guy's work. l 17 In this case, again, there was one engineering is support inspector on there, and diat's-- you know, that's to the-- that would be our normal procedure. j 20 (Whereupon, off-the-record discussion was 21 held.) 22 BY MR. MULLEY: 23 Q Do you have some other' areas that you. would j ~ 24 like to discuss? .1 25 A .Right. I wanted to put two items on~the record, ) f

b 4 42 1 And we looked at setting of the reactor vessel, and there's 2 a lack of records there. 3 And so, it makes it very important that the j i d licensee include the review of records in these two areas in 5 his quality verification program. And.as it sits right now, 1 e since that item was cleared, that particular item wouldn't 7 be the catalyst to have that happen which, in fact, I felt 8 like it should have been. e Q Now, we earlier alluded to the people involved to in the overall review of this report as changing. Who, at 11 that time-- What individuals were involved in reviewing this { 12 report af ter you were pulled off the Comanche Peak project? 13 Who replaced you and was responsible for reviewing this 'k 14 report? l 16 A Well, I think the c;1earest path of that is I to that in October when Tom Westerman took over the review path, { I i 17 Doyle Hunnicutt and I basically left at the same time. He g 1 te ended up in the safety branch and then in reactor projects. ,g is And I'd have to look at the specific dates. But basically, l 20 Tom Westerman took over the project, and he worked for Eric ' 7 l 21 Johnson. Mr./ had left, and I don't know the 1 l l.l j i 22 date.- But he had left and Eric then became acting director 23 or director at that time. 24 Then the process would be the inspector, the l l 25 senior resident, the-- ever who the project manager of the l

6L 1 and they're just items to make sure that the record is clear. 2 During the inspection at Comanche during the i 3 85-07/05 time frame, we had identified twc items. And we i i 4 actually classified them as unresolved because we needed 5 clarification from headquarters, and those two items were 6 removed from the report. One was noted as clear, and that 7 had to do with a discrepancy between the commitments to the 8 ASME code and the FSAR and the actual purchase information on j 9 the reacter coolant system piping. 10 And at the time of the inspection, the purchase 11 documentation and the FSAR did not agree, or there was a 12 discrepancy. And the-- It needed to be clarified, or it 13 needed to be straightened out. 14 Subsequent to the inspection, I believe like 15 in December of 1985 after we brought it to the licensee's 16 attention, they made a-- they issued a change to the FSAR ll 17 correcting the situation, and we attempted to follow up on 18 the basis for that change and weren 't able to, to get a 19 basis for that. 20 That needed to be looked at further. It may l l j 21 be appropriate, but the written basis for it wasn't easily 22 found by the inspector. 23 The other item was that-- concerned the 24 method of hydro of the reactor coolant system boundary-- l l 25 piping boundary-- reactor coolant system boundary piping.

66 1 We noted that the hydrostatic testing of the piping was done 2 at the site as a-- and included in the main hydro reactor l 3 coolant system in the late '70 time frame. 4 The piping subassemblies were fabricated in 5 the '76 '77 time frame. l 6 The Code and our review of the Code indicated t 7 that the hydrost.atic testing of the piping subassembly should 8 be done by the piping manufacturer when, in fact, it was 9 actually performed by the piping assembler, Brown & Root, in j 10 the late-70 time frame. 11 We. saw this as a questionable practice and 12 weren't really attempting to get a-- to say that we were l 13 right or wrong or that we were the experts. But we had 14 carried that as unresolved to provide in writing to NRR, 15 the Staff, the question and let that be clarified as it nor-16 mally would be on any question that the inspection force comes I 8 17 up with. 18 y That particular finding, unresolved item, was 19 removed from the report. Therefore, the question was not r l 20 going to be asked. l 21 When this was discussed with my management, i 22 the answer was that that practice is industry practice and 23 it's okay. Therefore, why bother to ask. 24 And that response was not considered adequate 25 by myself because we asked the question: Was it indu stry

@7 4 And practice to perform hydrostatic tests in this manner? i 2 the answer was: Yes, it's industry practice. l 3 And then we asked the question: Was it in u accordance with ASME Code and could they indicate to us where 4 5 it was? And they said: Well, it's industry practice. l Therefore, we did not have an answer. 6 l 7 When I took this to my management, which I l !l 8 did in a meeting in late February,-- 9 O Who is the management you're talking about? ] 10 A I went to Eric Johnson, and during the meeting in his of fice with Westerman and Johnson, we discussed this it issue. And I was-- And we discussed the need to carry it 12 as unresolved in the inspection report as is normal practice 33 with the NRC until we get an answer from the Staff. And if 1 l 14 the answer agreed with the way the licensee was doing the 15 then the hydrostatic testing and we were provided guidance, 16 unresolved item would go away as an acceptable practice. 17 18 Then we'd have in writing the way they could be performing i t j l 19 main hydrostatic testing. \\ 20 If, in fact, the NRC said that the way they 21 were doing business was not acceptable to the NRC and the 22 ASME Code, then, in fact, their main hydrostatic testing of l l 23 Comanche Peak Unit I was unacceptable-- it would be 24 unacceptable. That was the question. 25 When I brought that question to Mr. Westerman

68 1 and Mr. Johnson, Mr. Johnson, in fcct, indicated that I 2 should put those in writing in a memo to him and ask head-3 quarters' guidance in both areas regarding the discrepancy 4 between the FSAR and the purchase documentation for the ~ l 5 piping and the method of hydrostatic testing. ( I l 6 And. those two particular memos are in draf t l l 7 to be sent to the appropriate director in headquarters for -i f a resolution of those issues. But both of those issues, as it i 9 were, are no longer in that 85-07/05 report. l 10 0 So, from what I understand, you're actually i 33 following up on these items to get answers-- 12 A Yes. I 13 0 --except there's no track record to show the t 14 public or anybody else that there was ever a question. 15 A That's correct. 16 0 So, the item is, in fact, unresolved. l 17 A The item, in fact, is unresolved pending our 'g 1 d is clarification of the issue with' headquarters, but it has not y l 5 j 19 been, and as far as I know-in my future dealings, it will not ii 20 be, with the practice that, if you find an issue at a plant, a 'd you carry it unresolved at that plant tn' th:2 yr - until 21 m

i r

it's resolved. That's not considered as ::: ;;;ld 77 cfthose one had indicated to me, holding the licensee hostage. ) 23 l types of words. 24 25 That, in fact, is doing the business that O E m.., ..e.

L.-.: -l 69' we 're supposed to be doing, verifying that the plant is, I 2 in fact, constructed in accordance with the FASR and ASME-l 3 . Code. 4 Q Well, isn't the unresolved item a way of tracking and making sure that something does get followed 5 6 through with? o 7 A If you don't carry it as an unresolved item, a there are items in the Region which could -fall through the 9 cracks. And Region IV-- Mr. Martin, as an exanple, has, in 10 fact, initiated an action item track system which never. existed in Region IV to track anything we sent to headquarters 11 12 for a position. But that's really-- And that's good to have 13 that because it makes us ask headquarters: What have you ,{ 14 done to this? And if they.say they're going to do something in 30 days, we're going to keep asking them and we're going 15 i .16 to track them. 8 17 The issue, really, is the fact that the lg

lg 18 qualified inspector at Comanche Peak--

We had two specific s i 19 technical-- administrative, technical. quality assurance .a [f program questions from his inspection at Comanche Peak. And 20 i ~ - i 21 when you go to look for those, you won't find them. They i r 22 have been purged. l 23 Q And,- if it comes back from headquarters that, ~ 24 in fact, this is a violation of the ASME Code-- If it comes back as a violation, then we would 25 A

l 70 I I f have to completely reinitiate the issue generally. l 2 O And there's nothing there to cause you to do f 3 that. 4 A Ee7 unle:: L o '-- You knov, there's nothing j l 5 to follow up on. 6 In the report itself, by the way, the FSAR discrepancy has been deemed acceptable by the management. 7 8 Yet, that still exists-- the question still exists. It's 9 a clear item. They didn't purge all of it; they just purged I l 10 part of it. It's still there. It's wrong. Okay? j And then the item on the performance of the j 11 12 hydro, that was cleared. And the performance of the hydro-l ( 13 static testing has been deemed acceptable. j ( 14 And if, in fact, headquarters comes back in f either of those two cases and says it's unacceptable, then, 15 t 16 in fact, it's just-- we've made a mistake. 17 But that's the reason to carry it unresolved, i g 18 so that-- Because, really, it wasn't acceptable to me and g 19 the Staf f at that time, the inspection staff, when we com- 'i 20 pleted the inspection, and I don't know the basis for it l f 21 being acceptable. In fact, as far as I know, it's still u 22 unacceptable. 23 Until I get a response from these memos at 4 i l 24 some time in the future, I'm still not going to personally f 25 feel comfortable with those items. I l

71 1 O Why couldn't somebody from the Region or 2 headquarters contact the ASME people directly and ask them 3 for an interpretation of that particular code? 4 A There's a protocol, you know,.for doing that 5 kind of thing. 6 Informally, I have a man on my staff that's 7 a member of ASME for 32 years-- excuse me, for 25 years. 8 He, in f act, did call ASME, and it's not acceptable. 9 Now, for that reason alone, I had one more 10 point on the curve at least to ask the question. Now, it 11 may be acceptable to Staff and there may'be a basis, but I 12 could not-- myself and my inspectors could not find a basis. 13 It's been accepted, as far as I know, right C. 14 now because it's industry practice. And I don't know what i 15 tha t me an s. I don't know what industry prae(N.,I don't know 16 what the definition of that is. Just because'everybody's doing it wrong, it's okay? I l 17 g 1B Q Seems like, to me, it's-- y t i 19 A I'm sorry. I don't operate in that ballpark. i i l 2c That's not the right-- Not that there's anything wrong, J 21 but that's just not the right basis. The ASME Code is the t 8 8 22 basis, and that was our acceptance criteria. If everybody 23 speeds, then all.of a sudden, it's okay to speed. I' don't 24 buy that. 25 0 Right, you're still breaking the law. ..,.7

72 1 A I wanted to make sure that's on the record 1 knowing that. I have been told to take care of it by my 2 l management, but we are taking' care of it outside of the i 3 i inspection report, which is not the normal way of doing. 4 5 business. And that's what I want to make sure.- I don't recall that ever happening to me before, and I certainly 6 7 would not require ' an inspector to do it. 1 And, therefore, I obviously can't agree fully-- 8 9 I'm not disagreeing. I'm just saying I can't agree fully ) 10 with the way we're handling it. And I think that's something that ought to be on the record and let management look at 11 12 it. 13 Q In your opinion, does there seem to be in j k_ Region IV a tendency to be either an impartial regulator, a 14 pro-licensee regulator, or a regulator who is anti-licensee, 15 16 I guess is one way of putting it. Which way do you think-8 17 Region IV-- l 18 A I don ' t think that we ' re objective. In l Region IV,- I think that we tend to be pro-licensee. I j 19 l l k think upper level management that I've talked to in Region I-20 Not Paul Ne, And I'm not' being 21 IV, meaning Bob Martin critical. I'm just saying Bob Martin tries to be objective.- 22 23 I know Bob. I've worked with him before. And'I'm giving j 24 you my opinion. I don't know whether he's objective or not, I I but he appears to be objective. .l 25 -l i i i 9.* a e

j' '73 1 1 There are people below him'that don't seem 2 to be objective as they should bee-A ,.,L td. I've had guys make excuses to me why the licensees can't meet the '3 4 regulations. In fact, I carried that. to Mr. Johnson and indicated that'I was tired of everytime I bring an issue up 5 6 that people make excuses for the licensee. ,l 'i . If the licensee doesn't want to operate these 7 plants in accordance with the regulations, then they shouldn't 8 bW 8 be operating. Or should be doing something different. to But I don't want to hear the fact that: they f, 11 don't have enough money because, in fact, their license says i they have enough money or they wouldn't have had the plant .i 12 13 in the first place. c 14 I don't want to hear that they don't have qualified poeple or that they don't have a training program 15 because they've committed to all of these things in detail in 16 3 } 17 some cases. Now, don't get me wrong. 'If they don't have l l 18 l j 19 a training program-- Oh, I'd like to see, personally,-- l i l i 20 Again, a personal opinion. --is that they show me how they're , s 5 meeting their commitments and a schedule for getting " ""-- 21 i to meet the regulations in full, a-Loner meeting of t=ple , r 22 23 .tj e m - _ 24 I'm having trouble with thatiin this Region. 25 Therefore, my definition of the objectivity means the : .a- ...m

/ 4 ..e. .....e p 'm s T 1 difficulty when you bring up iscuno of getting that issua 4 i 2 handled, whether it's on environmental qualification or ) ( 3 training of personnel or followup of items of noncompliance. j l I'm speaking somewhat generically, but it's really an overall 4 5 problem, not related to Cominche Peak but related tobpC[ 6 Comanche Peak is just part c 2 it. a ST-k l 7 Q Talking about, for example, inspection 07/05, s what level do you feel these violations get dropped or changed 4 j to unresolved and where, without basis, things get done? t. g 10 A I really don't know. If I had been involved, ] o 11 I would know, but I'm not sure. Talking with.Eric and l 12 Westerman; +hou he+b-Z,.N Jonnson and Tom Westermcm e1.n the t'1hbtLLE.*fL 5 Y> l 1 y' --21 phey were both aware of it. t 13 meeting l 14 Now, I don't know what the means. You know, l I .S 15 who briefed who or who did what. But, yw kuv.,

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I 16 I'm not sure I could separate the knowledge level I dian'+-- 3 i 17 that each of them had. Tom, obviously, may have been more I t 18 knowledgeable than Eric, but I can't say. s-j 19 Q You have been with, Region IV since 19.... L 20 A July the 8th, 1984. I came down.here from i 21 Region III f:om a section chief to a branch chief position. i l r 22 Q Okay. Do you know-- Have you noticed any I 23 change in regulation philosophy in Region IV in the two I 24 years you've been down here? Has it been pretty much consis-25 tent for the two years? ..a., e. . e eene gesum nome en ee eme me e.ooe +e.

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..n 75 I think it's besn pretty much consistant. '1 A And then you ask a leading question like-- 2 You didn't ask me whether or not it was good, bad, or 3 7. But I didn't see a change. d indifferent. i Md you can ask me what that means, but I 3 5 6 ~ didn't.see a change. I have personally had difficulty from x the day I got here with what I consider basic regulatory 7 a type pursuits. Ana A...AA-r s.ason, we in megson av-- L 9 _ F: .m._ I don't think so. to You.know, it may be me, I'm not sure. But for some reason, Region IV has trouble addressing the 11 [ And the bigger the issue, the less likely it is to 12 issues. We sometimes find ourselves addressing. little - be addressed. 13 (- issues and being happy, when the big issues are. sort of, you 34 know, left out. 15 I've always tried to address big issues. l l 16 Some people don't believe that, and I think that's because l 17 18 they don't understand the issues. J N Sut again, that's my opinion. Nobody's ever j to si that I was wrong. So,'when they tell me-I'm told me that, I 20 ,a At n:;ir wrong, then I will readily accept the criticism. L g Ij 21 -!7 157~Ee"3'- And I'm not saying that Regions III, II, and IM l In r 22 M O NPO-W' The reason that Brown's Ferry.Q_ b A - 'TVA is mayberthat-the 23 NRC has that problem, not just Region IV. 1 24 So, I'm really not'trying to say Region IV 25 I l .j

~ 3 1 76 I 3 / .1 as much as just say enerically. Region III, had that prob 1cm s' And because they end up with plants-- dknd j 2 to some extent. you can go back and review plants like Zim:ier having trouble 3 operating, and Braidwood.[pknna+4 erilyt, the same kind of 4 J operation generally as Comanche Peak. 5 And Zimmer, in a situation such that the 6 i ~ J 7 little power company lost. It's all the same, yggg 7t could have been Waterford here, as well as/it is Comanche l B r, f 9 Peak. .1 { i f [ Is there anything that you would like to adk 10 0 l 1 before we conclude this interview? 11 Well, I guess I'd like to say that I appreciate 12 A you calling me and asking my opinion, my input, my knowledge 13 L..- 14 of the f acts and getting this on the rdecrd. 15 And I'm here fr_;-- yon Knowg cf my own free / 16 will. 'I 17 I have concerns. My concerns are as a super- .= 8 visor and a manager with the NRC, not just Region IV;but with 18 l g in that the way the findings have' been handled in f i s i 19 the NRC, these cases that I've described-- or tried to dascribe, the i l 20 1 l way management's handling findings could have, in fact, J j 21 22 and may have, in fact, directly affected the safety of the .j l 23 plant. In this case, Comanche Peak. And that particular j s! area, I think, neefs to be reviewed.by the NRC upper level i 24 t management, or by somebody, and some corrective action may 25 /

7 l w I 77 1 be in 'ordar. 2 1 unruvi-- I won't indicate r.y position in 3 Region IV. The rir:ord will show that, and that can be 4 reviewed by manag uent. I think somebody could look at that 5

also, i

i 6 As I indicated to you before, I came to l 7 Region in '84 as a branch chief. I am now a section chief. l e And I'll leave the rest.out. But I th. ink there are specific reasons for i 9 10 that, and I t.hink somebody should look at that. It's not 11 something that I can sit and talk about very easily. But I 12 would appreciate somebody looking at that from a constructive 13 standpoint, and that would be the only reason I would mention ( I 14 that. i 15 I think taat's all today. l f 0 May,. dank you. 1 16 g 17 Ome reu pon, at 3:55 p.m., the proceedings 18 were concluded.) .I y 10 1 20 4 j 21 t 22 f N 23 24 l _______________~_'s - ~ ~ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ - - _ _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ - _ _ - _ _ _ _ _. _ _ _w_-_

. -.. ~.. a 78 t 1 REPORTER'S CERTIFICATE l 8 i I 3 I hereby certify that the proceedings herein 4 are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken by f" U" 5 ne during the sworn interview ofjL ,.. r _ _ _.J... '. on April 8 10, 1986, commencing at 1:18 p.m., and that tW'is a true t, 7 and accurate transcript of the same. l 1 e l a,1LL Sandra Entden i i to moporter j j 11 % comunission arpires's 6-4-89 12 \\ i ! 'i( 13 5 I i i { 14 i k i 15 e i se t llE l 17 1 se I i l !I II !l E _! i ei -l l s i 22 ..l aI-as 4 m 1 25 i I l . - ~ _ _ ~ ~ _ ~ _ _ ____ - - - - - - -}}

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