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OI Interview Transcript of Witness, Dated 02/12/2004, Pages 1-133
	ML061460293
Person / Time
Site:	Salem, Hope Creek
Issue date:	02/12/2004
From:	; NRC/OI
To:	;
References
	1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194, NRC-1341
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Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION

Title:

Interview Li I 1ý11ý Docket Number: 1-2003-051 F ecLi.~

Location: Salem, New Jersey Date: Thursday, February 12, 2004 Work Order No.: NRC-1341 Pages 1-133 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.

Court Reporters .nd Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20005 Information in this record WO 161l in accordance with theFreedom Of W011rl Act, exemptions (202) 234-4433 7 FOIA-

1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3

4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 -- ----------------------- x 7 IN THE MATTER OF:

8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No.

9 : 1-2002-051F 10 (Closed) i A- A- Ifi-A.

12 Thursday, February 12, 2004 13 14 Control Room, AOM Office 15 Hope Creek 16 17 18 The above-entitled interview was conducted 19 at 7:10 p.m.

20 21 BEFORE:

22 Special Agent EILEEN NEFF 23 24 ALSO PRESENT:

25 Scott Barber, Senior Project Engineer NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

2 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (7:10 p.m.)

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Today's date is 4 February 12, 2004. The time is approximately 7:10 5 p.m. Speaking is Special Agent Eileen Neff with NRC 6 Office of Investigations at Region I. Also present 7 from Region I, Division of Reactor Projects, is Senior 8 Project Engineer Scott Barber.

9 What follows is an interview ofA 10 11 That is correct.

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- who is currently 13 employed by PSG Nuclear as j It the Hope 14 Creek St tion. The interview is taking place ac ually 15 in t Hope 16 Creek.

17 The subject matter of this interview 18 concerns the safety conscious work environment at Hope 19 Creek an. is being interview as a witness in 20 this investigation.

21 It has been explained to you that you are 22 not the subject of any investigation. You were 23 approached for your assessment of the safety conscious 24 work environment. Specifically there are no potential 25 violations associated with that.

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-4"13 ~

011^1CQ Akin MIC Nil %A/

3 1 That is~correct, Eileen.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Please, would you 3 raise your right hand to be sworn in. Do you swear 4 that the testimony you are about to- provide is the 5 truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so 6 help you God?

7 m Yes, I do.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What I would like to 9 do is just get some identifying information for you, 10 please. Date of birth?

12 SPECIAL AGE1NT NEFF: And Social Security 13 number, please.

14 15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And a home address?

16 17 19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And the home 20 telephone number?

21 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Thank you. A brief 23 summary of your education, please.

24 . Brief summary, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

4 1 That's pretty much it.

2 3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When did you start 4 working?

J 5 I started working as a 16-6 year-old and I started working in nuclear power in the 7

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. At what 9 station in what capacity?

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 r the-time.they shut it down'.

17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Around or so?

24 J That is correct. I got a 25 I allowed it to in the early NEAL R. GROSS /1 /

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

5 1 '90s and then I **time frame and 2 went on shift I've been on shift since.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You were licensed at 4 Hope Creek in but then that 5 1 "" r That's correct.

6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In the early 7 Okay.

8 7jon-the Hope 9 Creek facility.

10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. So then you 12 A That is correct.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In what position?

14 J In

-15 16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. As 17 W.....-_._-then what has been your 18 §7 your chain of command there?

19 , Chain of command at the time 20 1 was Awam- twould have been the 21 followed by the followed by the 22 . nd then at the time 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So what's changed.

24 now, if anything?

25 \ Nothing really but in the NEAL R.GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS C.

1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

6 1 interim from '97 until now the position of ops Manager 2 was not filled. It was plant manager. Actually, it 3 was operations manager.

4 We have gone through so many 5 reorganizations that it's hard for me to remember when 6 the plant manager/ops manager was essentially the same 7 person. We had one site plant manager. We've had 8 plant managers for each site and we've gone back to 9 the specific plant managers for each site. My memory, 10 it escapes me with regards to --

Ii SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The back and forth.

12

The back and forth with 13 regards to reorganization.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about since 2001 15 then -- I mean, individually and by name who have you 16 been -- who has been in your chain of command?

17 -- Okay. Since I've been 18 promoted- to" rported to 19 *was the until, I believe, ".1 time 20 frame, at which time over the 21 position and [went to the 22 currently report toj.

23 Above 11at the time when I got 24 promoted towa 25 Qremained whe ook over. Then NEAL R. GROSS A COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS "i 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

7 1 just left the company, I would say, approximately four 2 to six months ago. That position has since been 3 fi edn is nlýnoth 4

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So both your 6 experience with an ops manager would then be under 7 then for any length of time?

8 As my only 9 experience up until when ame on board wa 10 11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: who?

12 M 13 He's been the ýV for approximately five 14 weeks, four weeks, that time period.

15 MR. BARBER: Do you know where he came 16 from?

17 He came fro, 18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. What I will 19 probably do is let's talk about in the broader sense 20 the safety conscious work environment.

21 Okay.

22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What I would like you 23 to consider would be -- I guess what we could do is 24 the three to four-year time frame. Part of the time 25 that you were a and you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

8 1 transitioned to 2 Correct.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's very broad.

4 It's a very broad topic but the focus would be in 5 terms of people's ability to raise concerns for the 6 safety conscious work environment, do you see -- in 7 your experience here does the environment from that 8 perspective, the ability to raise concern and have 9 them addressed, do you see-it having any strengths in 10 particular or any weaknesses in particular?

Ii 711 We're talking over the past 12 three years since I've begun th.-

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Why don,'t we go with 14 the 2001 when you were , to the present 15 unless there is some dramatic change before that that 16 you think would be relevant.

17 I would say within the 18 operations department it's pretty much been status quo 19 with regards to bringing up issues related to safety, 20 nuclear safety, personal safety, or those issues. I 21 feel for the last three years it's pretty much been 22 the same with regards to the ability of someone to 23 come forward, bring up an issue, and have it 24 understood and acted upon.

25 There are a couple what I consider NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

9 1 significant emotional events that occurred at Hope 2 Creek that changed some of that culture. One is a 3 *namede 4 M-Mmml 5 I can't remember the time frame but it was 6 4arly 2000. xgalmost lost his lift'iat made us 7 understand that our safety, our personal safety was 8 not where it needed to be so we took a giant step 9 forward there with regards to individual personal 10 safety on the job.

11 With regards to raising ontne related 12 to nuclear safety, within the operations department I 13 do not know or have been privy to any incident that I 14 felt was raised that was not acted upon. Some maybe 15 not in as timely a manner as I would have anticipated 16 but I feel from 2001 until this date that this is my 17 personal perception that people do feel free to come 18 forward with issues that concern them.

19 Now, before 2001 I know of one or two 20 examples where individuals brought up issues that for 21 one reason or another were not corrected in a timely 22 manner and this individual went to the QA department 23 to get things taken care of. But for the operations 24 department only I speak with regards to the safety 25 conscious environment.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBER

II 10 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In that incident that 2 you're talking about where the individual felt it 3 necessary to go to QA, what was the result there?

4 jThe end result was a win. It 5 was related to the service water system.

6 To try to make this simple, surveillance 7 testing our methology and how we were not doing it 8 properly and this type of thing. It came about that 9 some of his concerns were valid. From his viewpoint 10 he kept after it so that tells me he felt comfortable 11 coming forward. He just was not comfortable with the, 12 I guess, rate at which things were being performed.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What time frame was 14 this did you say?

15 I would say, Eileen, this was 16 '99 to 2000 time frame.

17 SPECIA AGENT NEFF: A little further back 18 then.

19 It's a little further back.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is the individual who 21 was involved in that still working here?

22 1 Yes, he is.

1i 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Does that individual /

24 continue to raise concerns?

25 Yes, he does.

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Ii 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Can you think of 2 examples?

3 1 -Yeah, shutdown cooling. He 4 just worked with engineering to improve our procedure 5 with regards to placing shutdown cooling services less 6 than a year ago so he is engaged but at the time he 7 was very emotional with regards to what he felt was 8 the lack of concern with his issue, i.e., yeah, we 9 were concerned. When I say we, I speak operations, 10 okay?

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who are we talking 12 about here?

13 His name is He's 14 a He's a very good 15 He brings up a lot of concerns and 16 there's a saying, "When talks, you better be 17 listening." That is probably the only incident that 18 I was a little bit .disappointed that I was part of 19 operations management with regards we had to actually 20 go outside the operations department and get a 21 solution. As a'"ij W- I guess you just want 22 me to ramble on here.

23 MR. BARBER: Let me ask a follow-up on the 24 raised a concern about the service water 25 surveillane,.

NEAL R. GROSS /1 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

12 1

2 MR. BARBER: What was the nature of his 3 concern? Was it something -- was it more an 4 administrative problem or was it something physically 5 about the test methodology and how engineering was 6 determining whether the pumps passed the surveillance 7 test with regards to pump curves and those types of 8 things.

9 Now, the specific specifics I can't quite 10 remember but those issues were finally addressed. As 11 a matter of fact, he got a boundary breaker award for 12 it.-- He was rewarded for his tenacity but it's a shame 13 that he had to actually go outside operations to get 14 the issue resolved.

15 MR. BARBER: When you said --

16 n other words, the management 17 team should have pursued that with whoever, right, as 18 opposed to what his perception was that was dragging 19 our feet.

20 MR. BARBER: Was he on your shift was he 21 on another shift?

22 .He was on another shift at the 23 time and then he became on 24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

25 And when he first raised the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

13 1 concern he was not on h . When I became a 2 on his shift, it got resolved and he was on 3 Then when I got promoted he came to so he's 4 worked R for quite as few years.

5 MR. BARBER: You said he's working on 6 another project now but did he personally raise any 7 issues to you that you had to pursue to satisfy him?

8 Oh, yeah. I mean, I can give 9 you many examples if I'm allowed to go to my notes and 10 things. The shutdown cooling issue was an incident 11 that I allowed my CRS and him to work with engineering 12 anto pursue the effects.

13 MR. BARBER: What was the nature of the 14 problem?

15 The nature was the way we 16 filled and vented the suction piping and the fact 17 that --

18 MR. BARBER: Water problems.

19. ] Okay. And then also what 20 happened is the way we are doing it. Some of the 21 water would flash to steam and we would have a void in 22 the piping and when we placed it in, we actually had 23 a reduction in level of 10 to 12 inches during the 24 evolution. The level went from like 35 inches down to 25 maybe 20 inches during the evolution.

NEAL R. GROSS fY COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

14

1 MR. BARBER: Did this happen like in the 2 last two or three months?

3 p=77'..This happened last outage.

4 MR. BARBER: Okay. I have some vague 5 recollection of that.

6 s O This happened in the spring 7 and then the procedure was fixed and it worked pretty 8 well. Unfortunately, we've had the opportunity to go 9 to shutdown cooling a few times this year, or last 10 year, with regards to our forced outages and it 11 appears that the fix is pretty concrete.

12 MR. BARBER: It's working well?

Yeah.

13 14 MR. BARBER: Was the nature of the problem 15 due to leaky valves? Was that part of the issue?

16 I don't believe that's it, 17 Scott. It was the methology with regards to how we 18 filled the suction pipe.

19 MR. BARBER: Okay. So he worked with your 20 control room supervisor who resolved that.

21 Wand myself empowered 22 him to work with engineering and he was happy with 23 that. He went and he did that.

24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That was in a second NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1*a mWnnf II ANmlnAVF NW

15 1 incident that he was pushing forward that he had 2 concerns about, right? The prior incident?

3 The prior incident he felt was 4 not being acted upon in a timely fashion.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you know why that 6 wasn't take care of sooner?

7 No, I don't. I'mnot privyto 8 those discussions at the time. I had just become a 9 and, I'm not going to lie to you, when you first 10 become a oyou are more worried about you have your 11 temporary driver's license and you're behind a car so 12 you're learning a little bit.

13 As I got more experience in those type of 14 things, I became more privy to some of the concerns 15 that had raised with regard to service water.

16 When I came on the shift, he had passion, you know.

17 I mean, he controlled passion and he was 18 very passionate with -the issue. The tenacity with 19 which he drove it to closure was very commendable.

20 The unfortunate piece is he had to drive it with 21 regards to where I felt ops management should have 22 been driving a little bit more. That is the only 23 incident that I'm aware of since I've been on shift 24 and that was '99/2000 time frame.

25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 2000 time frame NEAL R. GROSS -

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 13 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

16 1 forward then. So we're talking about this one 2 individual but do you see that across the board with 3 the Gnus and the NTOs? Do you see them having the 4 ability or that they practice that, that they raise 5 concerns and are comfortable in doing so?

6 Right now we're probably as 7 good as we've ever been with raising concerns. We 8 were not that good.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what point in 10 time?

11 I would say when I became 12 we were very -- the word I want to say 13 is narthogic. In other words, we allowed a lot of 14 things not to be fixed. We accepted them. We can 15 live with that. We can live with that. We can live 16 with that. Over the, I would say, last 12 to 18 17 months, at least, specifically the last six months 18 that mindset is rapidly becoming history with regards 19 to fixing the plant, bringing up concerns and those 20 type of things.

21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What you were willing 22 to live with?

23 Exactly. I am extremely happy 24 with my new management team with regards to issues 25 that they want fixed. I'll give you an example. The NEAL R. GROSS /' I I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS pi -1.,j

'191 PWrrlf: MI Afln AVI MlW

17 1 fuel leaker that we have, all indications showed that 2 we could have went the entire cycle and it wouldn't 3 have been that big an issue. Chemistry would have had 4 increased samples.

5 The management team said, "That's not what 6 we're going to do. We're going to take a heavy down 7, power." We spent three days trying to find this 8 leaker. That weekend it was extremely cold so 9 megawatts were being sold for an extremely high price 10 and the management team said, "No, we're going to find 11 this thing and we are going to suppress it because 12 it's the right thing to do."

13 I used that example with my shift to try 14 to see that, "Hey, the new management team wants to 15 fix that." We cannot fix everything right now. We've 16 got a lot to fix so let's prioritize. These guys --

17 they just moved the shift managers.

18 We just took over new shifts here over the 19 past four to six weeks and this shift does a good job 20 of letting me know what's bothering them because 21 through my years on shift via feedback my guys kept 22 telling me, MMwe know you're going after things 23 but you don't communicate to us what you're going 24 after."

25 So I make it a point right out of the NEAL R. GROSS D t I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS V pwt-aflla Q Ainf AV= ki AIN

18 1 chute, "These are the issues I'm going after today.

2 What is it, what's out there that is bothering you 3 that I haven't mentioned?" Every now and then I'll 4 get a hey. Like the river level recorder right now 5 has been inoperable for two weeks. I can't get it 6 operable and that's a big deal with one of my NCOs.

7 MR. BARBER: Is that a tech spec?

8 It is not tech spec because we 9 have the ability -- we have an operable recorder that 10 we use for DL26.

11 MR. BARBER: Okay, but --

12 itis a tech spec reading, 13 yes.

14 MR. BARBER: Okay.

15 So I'm extremely happy right 16 now with regards to the management team's attitude 17 toward fixing it. Now, I will tell you that was not 18 always the case. I have really seen the change since 19 has come on board. has done a real 20 good job of getting out introducing himself. He knows 21 guys by their first name. That was not the case in 22 the past.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: s here pretty 24 recently, isn't he?

25 'been here --

X NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

19 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: A lot less than six 2 months, right?

3 *l I wouldn't say a lot less.

4 He's been here a few months. I would say in the 5 neighborhood of three to six months.

6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. So when you 7 put the changes back to six months, what are you 8 attributing it to?

9 V. 9 I would say the management 10 team that was in place at the time.

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Senior management 12 then? The change out or other?

13 I would 14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what level?

15 Iwould say at the BP level 16 and down. As a you go to a lot of 17 meetings and a lot of the meeting you run. I want to 18 make sure I!use my words properly here. In the past 19 I've been in meetings where I felt some of my senior 20 management team were out of line with'-regards to the 21 way they spoke, two individuals. And I've even 22 witnessed, I hate to say verbal attacks, but 23 essentially that's what it was in an'office where the 24 door was open and everybody could hear it. I have to 25 question myself.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1ngi RHAAP I1 AmNf A%/I; Ki w

20 1 If an individual is taking a verbal attack 2 like that, how often or how free does he feel going in 3 there and telling this guy something is wrong because 4 he knows that's not what he wants to hear. As a 5 matter of fact, I told my peers, "If he ever speaks to 6 me like that, I'll call him for duty." That was to 7 the point with one of our senior lead people.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who are we talking 9 about here?

10 That was 11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To another senior 12 manager?

13 No, to superintendents.

14 Maintenance superintendents. I witnessed this. I did 15 not witness him -- on a rare occasion I would see him 16 doing it in a public form. He would take them in his 17 office and he wouldn't shut the door and you could 18 hear him. It was pretty abusive language and type of 19 things. That's all I'll say about that.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you see it have 21 an effect at that level,, the superintendent level for 22 approaching r for raising concerns to 23 him?

24 17 I never talked to the 25 individuals that I know were verbally assaulted --

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/

21 1 that's the words I use -- and ask them that specific 2 question. My perception is if I was treated like that 3 and allowed that to go on, yeah, I would be affected 4 with regards to where I would tell the gentleman 5 because --

6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because of the 7 impression it made on you?

8 Oh, yeah.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You just want to hear 10 that"didn,'t --

11

As a matter of fact, we were 12 in a meeting. It was the POD. It was back when it 13 was combined. He asked a question that was very close 14 to me. I had a lot of passion about it. I decided to 15 ask clarifying questions and not as much challenge him 16 as try to get what he was asking and he essentially 17 blew. me off. It got to the point that my boss kicked 18 me under the table and basically said, "Stop." I just 19 stopped.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What was the outcome?

-0 20 21 The outcome is I didn't get my 22 point across and I left the room. We had an issue 23 where a guy, two individuals the week before went up 24 on the reactor building roof where the H20 bottle 25 analyzers and replaced a regular.

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22 1 They came back the following week and we 2 had a lot of snow. They went up there because nobody 3 went up and did the cal on it and they were upset so 4 they were showing ownership. They came in and told 5 the boss they want to get it done. He said okay so 6 they went up. One of the individuals slipped and got 7 hurt. It was a lost-time accident. It was 8 unfortunate.

9 In hindsight it was not the right thing to 10 do but it got done. All I was trying to get the point 11 across was I agree that we shouldn't have done it and 12 it was a safety issue and we need to think about those 13 things in the future. What we can't lose is the fact 14 that we had two bargaining unit people come in and 15 have the ownership enough to step up and say, "Hey, we 16 want to finish this job and we want to get it done 17 right.

18 That's the point I was trying to get 19 across and I never got to make that point. Basically 20 there was a little positive to it. Unfortunately, the 21 individual hurt his back and he was out for a few 22 weeks.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was your -- are 24 you talking about your t that point? Was it p 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

-7 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

23 1 gave me a kick and 2 basically --

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Didn't want you to 4 continue?

5 1 thin realized if I 6 continued it was going to end up in a verbal assault.

7 That's not what I was trying to point out. I was just 8 trying to point out in front of the management team, 9 which everybody was there, "Hey, let's not lose 10 sight."

11 We had some people that were engaged and 12 they wanted to do the right thing. The decision 13 making process to get there may have been 14 questionable. Yet, we can fix that. What we don't 15 want to do is make these people feel like, "Are you 16 stupid?" That's not the message we want to send.

17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The maintenance 18 superintendent that you were talking about in this one 19 where you kind of observed this verbal abuse, do you 20 know what the issue was?

21 " f I can't remember the 22 specifics. I'm sure because we struggled in the past 23 few years with our maintenance departments, in other 24 words, fixing things right the first time, I'm sure it 25 was something that a tech spec piece of equipment that NEAL R. GROSS 1 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W

24 1 was out came back and wasn't fixed and we had to go 2 back after it. I'm sure it had something to do along 3 those lines.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was the 5 ..... ......

6 wlas the one that 7 I he ardj go to. On a couple of other occasions I 8 heard him screaming but I did not stick my head in to 9 see who was in the room. I just thought if that's the 10 way you are going to manage, fine, but close the door 11 because everybody and their grandma is going to be 12 watching that door when that individual walks out.

13 This is my perception.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The --

15 MR. BARBER: Let me ask a follow-up on 16 that.

17 J Yes, sir.

18 MR. BARBER: I know you don't remember the 19 details but do you remember if the nature of the issue 20 was Jbringing some concern about some 21 activity?

22 I don't know, Scott.

23 MR. BARBER: Okay. You don't know?

24 :1What I remember is it came 25 after the POD and there were some issues with regards NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.- N.W.

25 1 to Maintenance's ability to deliver the equipment.

2 MR. BARBER: Oh, okay.

3 *-, On time right the first time.

4 MR. BARBER: Okay.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We were talking about 6 your assessment at the operating level their ability 7 to raise concerns and to do so comfortably and maybe 8 how that's changed recently. What about at your level 9 with you and your peers and include in that the CRS.

10 You mean between the peers and 11 the CRS? Is that what you're talking about?

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: With you and your 13 lpeers and I would include the management 14 and CRS level. Do you see that ability to raise 15 concerns? Do they do so comfortably when they have 16 to?

17 I would say yes.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You were looking 19 radiological, nuclear, and personnel issues?

20 I would Say yes. I'm trying 21 to think. There was really only one issue that I 22 would consider my three years as a i "where 23 I felt the management team, I don't want to say didn't 24 listen, but made a decision that I wasn't in agreement 25 with. The unit was moved without what I thought was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

26 1 a solid justification.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Just once in the 3 three years?

4 Yes. When you told me I was 5 being interviewed, you naturally think of things. You 6 go back and the only time I ever felt that I did not 7 receive the support from the management team, the 8 operations management team, was during the start-up 9 last year -- I believe it was last year -- where we 10 had an oscillation on a No. 3 bypass valve.

11 The unit was -- in other words, we were 12 getting ready to sink the unit and end RF-ll which is 13 a milestone. We had some oscillation on No. 3 bypass 14 valve that we could see. I was acting as th' 15 w. My shift was in the control room. We had, 16 another shift manager who was the shift manager 17 directing --

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was that?

19 J His name was .He 20 was directing the actions of the control room and the 21 concern was brought up by the CRS and the NCOs to the 22 shift manager he had the same concerns. I had the 23 concetn. We called the office manager in and we were 24 basically overruled. He said, "I want the unit 25 sinked. Sink the unit without incident."

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

27 1 I felt we proceeded without what I would 2 consider good engineering justification because I 3 don't want to say we lucked out. What I'm saying is 4 that they gave us justification later but what I found 5 out it was in theory. We actually had to do a trouble 6 shooting plan and collect data during one of the other 7 forced outages to actually find out what was wrong, 8 what was causing the oscillation of the No. 3 bypass 9 valve. We fixed it and it was a win but at that time 10 I was a little disappointed that we decided to go 11 forward without engineering justification.

12 MR. BARBER: What was the nature of the 13 problem? If it was eventually fixed, that must have 14 been-- do you remember what the details were?

15 W.: A card replacement.

16 was th(j if you need specifics.-

17 MR. BARBER: So it was more of an INC type 18 problem?

19 Yeah, it was an INC type issue 20 and the logic of EAC with regards to bypass valve 21 control. What worried me is we actually saw that No.

22 3 would oscillatp to a close and the tube would start 23 coming down so that indicated to me we were actually 24 seeing pressure oscillations.

25 I was not extremely comfortable. I did NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1*91 RHnnp ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

28 1 not have to watch but I did tell "Yeah, 2 we need to get some kind of justification." We were 3 overruled and the unit was sinked. Fortunately it 4 sinked just fine and the oscillations were all right.

5 MR. BARBER: Normally wouldn't the plant 6 be at a point where the bypass valve switches would 7 all be closed when you're sinking?

8 . No. Once you sink they do 9 close.

10 MR. BARBER: Okay.

11

j So what we do is we pull--

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Excuse me one second.

13 (Whereupon, off the record.)

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: All right. We're 15 back on after about a one-minute break. It's 16 approximately 7:42.

17 MR. BARBER: We were just talking about 18 the bypass valve.

19 g " What we do is we pull control 20 rods until you get approximately four to five bypass 21 valves open. That gives you enough steam to roll the 22 turbine up above critical to where it's loaded enough 23 where you don't have to worry about vibrations. As we 24 are pulling the No. 3 bypass valve starts swinging.

25 You can actually see the other valves react.

NEAL R. GROSS Ui <

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

29 1 MR. BARBER: Were the other valves trying 2 to compensate? Is that what they were doing?

3 Yeah, they were compensating.

4 MR. BARBER: Okay. So 3 some sort of 5 oscillation. The other valves were trying to offset 6 it.

7 's correct..

8 MR. BARBER: All right.

9 And then at a later time we 10 got engineering justification on paper and the next 11 forced outage we saw the same oscillations but we had 12 a trouble shooter. I believe it was the second forced 13 outage. We got a trouble shooter together. I know it 14 was because I was extremely disappointed that we 15 didn't collect the data after I asked for it. I was 16 trying to remember.

17 That was the hurricane when we salted up 18 the insulators in the yard We came of f line for that.

19 I told them we needed to figure out this issue.

20 Somehow it slipped through the cracks. It's the 21 second forced outage that we collected the data and 22 then shortly thereafter we replaced the carbon.

23 MR. BARBER: The second one, was that the 24 one in December?

25 C No, no, no. We had --

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

30 1 MR. BARBER: The forced outage for the 2 hurricane was middle of September.

3 The second one was the steam 4 leak on the steam seal evaporator. We came down 5 voluntarily to fix it.

6 MR. BARBER: Wasn't that like the second 7 week in September?

~No.

8 9 MR. BARBER: When was that?

10 j* This was October. Then when 11 we came up it was a week later. I was on shift and we 12 had an ESC leak and we scrammed the unit from full 13 power on the E8C leak. Then the one in December was -

14 15 MK. BARBER: Steam leak?

16 N-o, the one in December was 17 related to an INC surveillance. It was in progress 18 and we took a two out of three logic trip on our 19 primary containment isolation system. We lost primary 20 containment instrument gas to our in-board MSIVs.

21 They started to drift closed. We took a half scram 22 and scrammed it.

23 MR. BARBER: I thought that was January.

24 Maybe it was. We've had so 25 many.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1i9x RHP1ofF IRI ANR AVF mW

~I( ~~

31 1 MR. BARBER: I know.

2 . Which one are you talking 3 about?

4 MR. BARBER: I was really just trying to 5 figure out the sequence. I was trying to follow your 6 logic. The problems they identify coming 7 out--

8 We're up to 11.

9 MR. BARBER: When was that? Do you 10 remember?

11 May-ish. May Ist time frame.

12 MR. BARBER: Okay. Right at the end of 13 that. If you had your druthers it would have been to 14 collect the data and maybe even fix it if you could 15 have fixed it at the time. That would have been your 16 druthers.

17 I felt the proper response at 18 that time would have been to get an engineering group 19 together and done a tech issue. Held the plant right 20 there where it was stable and allow engineering to 21 give us some type of technical basis on if it is safe 22 to proceed or not safe to proceed.

23 MR. BARBER: Okay.

24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What power were you 25 at where you stay stable?

NEAL R. GROSS I--

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

32 1 would say we were around 15 2 percent.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And did you say that 4 .was in agreement with you on that meaning 5 the engineering?

6 M1 was concerned also.

7 I'm not going to put words in", mouth. My 8 feeling based on his expression was he was not in 9 agreement but he did follow through with the order.

10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And this is from the 11 l 12 Direction was given by.thA 13 *1 t the time.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That would beC 16 17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was there some sort 18 of discussion surrounding that? I mean, were there 19 explanations offered for why you are going to move to.

20 You have two shift managers and a crew saying we need 21 to go one way and--

22 There was no technical 23 discussion.

24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: No explanations 25 offered?

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

,nnlln') 1- A A A"1 I.,. fll .... Sl -b l - - -

33 1 Other than, "I don't believe 2 it's a problem," type of discussion.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you were just 4 overruled kind of thing?

5 1M WKind of like being overruled.

6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When you said it was 7 sinked, what do you mean by that?

8 That's when you take the 9 turbine and generator and actually sink it to the grid 10 and the bypass valves that are carrying the steam load 11 now go to the generator out the grid as electricity 12 basically.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

14 JSo that 15 percent power was 15 steaming to the condenser. When you sink to the grid 16 those valves close and that steam now turns the 17 turbine against that torque on the grid and produces 18 electricity.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you said that it 20 was done, you didn't want to call it, luckily but it 21 sinked fine.

22 The unit sinked properly but 23 the NCO -- I'm telling you right now I had to follow 24 up with the aftermath and they were extremely upset 25 with that decision for many weeks.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS i19. RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

34 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That was what I was 2 wondering. What affect does a decision like that 3 have?

4 It had a lot of affect on that 5 shift because I had to pick up the pieces. In the 6 outage each shift manager is given a different role.

7 I was thee or the outage 8 and we had other shift managers that did the startup 9 and shutdown.

10 They focused on the training for startup 11 and shutdown while I'm working the outage in the 12 control room. Then when they take over, I roll into 13 like an outage ops manager position or assistant 14 outage manager type of deal where I'm trying to help 15 them.

16 I'm trying to take all the distractions 17 away from the control room and get them to the 18 organizations so they can be fixed. Minimize the 19 distractions in the control room is basically how I 20 would describe the function I was performing at the 21 tie.

22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What were the kinds 23 of concerns that you were hearing about? What were 24 the impressions that were made by the decisions that 25 were made?

NEAL R. GROSS K.

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS q*r Pwr~nnp IRI ANn AVE.. N.W.

35 1 . My NCOs discussed it with the 2 157 management eam and they felt that there was no 3 justification to go forward and they felt it was an 4 unsafe act.

5 MR. BARBER: Let me ask you a different 6 question from the standpoint of the circumstances that 7 presented themselves. Is it possible that 8 when he looked at the situation thought to himself 9 because of the way you were describing the No. 3 10 bypass is shutting down, and then presumably the other 11 bypass valves are opening. Basically they are sitting 12 there oscillating in some sort of pattern over maybe 13 some frequency. Is it possible he's thinking, "I 14 don't want to leave the plant in this condition 15 because to me it doesn't look stable and I don't like 16 what I see." His choice maybe in his own mind is, "I 17 can either go up or go down in power."

18 N w Sure.

19 MR. BARBER: Would that be reasonable?

20 Sure. That would be a 21 reasonable thought but that was not communicated.

22 MR. BARBER: Is it possible that he was, 23 in fact, thinking that?

24 There was no discussion. I 25 wasn't sure what he was thinking. There was a brief NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

On~l 'AA-A11 ACAUlkif-fMd r% I- -

36 1 discussion. The bottom line was the shift manager 2 went out and gave the order and the unit got sinked.

3 MR. BARBER: Okay.

4 Iwill 1 say this. Once the 5 order was given there was a little commotion. They 6 sinked the unit. There was no issues, "No, we're not 7 going to do it," boom, boom, boom. None of that 8 pushback. They just felt the decision was not proper 9 at the time and they felt they needed engineering to 10 give them some type of justification that the sink 11 would go flawlessly.

12 MR. BARBER: Would you have felt 13 comfortable leaving the unit there with the bypass 14 valve cycling like that?

15 4 At the time I felt comfortable 16 because the oscillations were not to the magnitude 17 that it was causing pressure oscillations in the 18 reactor. I would have briefed it up real quick and 19 said, "Hey, if we start seeing pressure oscillations 20 we're probably..." There were two ways we could have 21 attacked it if we were going to wait for engineering 22 is to go ahead and put the rods in and get it down to 23 where the third bypass valve is closed.

24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

25 j Get down to, say, 8 to 10 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.9. RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

37 1 percent, or remove the unit.

2 MR. BARBER: You could have done that but 3 you would have lost your ability to trouble shoot, 4 right? I mean, at some point you have to come back 5 and you're going to have to trouble shoot the problem.

6 iWhich we did.

7 MR. BARBER: Okay. Okay. Thanks.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was that a unique 9 situation? Had you ever seen anything like that 10 before?

11 NNo, that was the first time I 12 had ever seen anything like that. That was the first 13 time that I was ever disappointed that a decision like 14 that was made. I'm not saying this was typical of the 15 management team at the time or even I'm saying 16 that is the only thing that stands out in my three 17 years on shift where I felt 18 might have made a wrong decision in hindsight.

19 I could have stood up, too, and I didn't.

20 It wasn't from the fact I wasn't comfortable doing 21 that. It's just -- I don't know. Maybe it was part 22 of me saying let's get the unit on line and get the 23 outage over. I don't know. It was just the only time 24 in my three years that I've seen a decision within the 25 operations department that was questionable and did NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

38 1 cause a little bit of heartache.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: First and last time 3 then?

4 . To that magnitude, yeah.

5 MR. BARBER: What was the outfall under 6 shift? I mean, you said that you were dealing with it 7 for a period of time after that.

8 Well, the outfall -- I'll be 9 honest with you. The outfall is I had a very good 10 working relationship with them and that maintained.

11 The first thing they wanted to do was attac Iand 12 I said time out. I set them straight. had the 13 same concern and he was overruled.

14 I said, "I'm not going to sit here and 15 tell you that what he did was right, wrong, or 16 indifferent. I'm not saying I wouldn't have done the 17 same thing." As a matter of fact, I probably would 18 have done the same thing. That decision was made as 19 a management team and in hindsight could have been 20 OSAMA type of deal.

21 I stopped the verbal attack on 22 individually because it was not It was 23-. It was the whole department that had the 24 knowledge. They could have raised their hand and 25 said, "Wait a minute. Something's not right here.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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39 1 You're telling me to proceed and we don't know what 2 the problem is." That wasn't done. Now, was it 3 because somebody was afraid to raise that? I don't 4 know. I can't answer that. I don't believe so but 5 that's my perception.

6 MR. BARBER: How about you? Did you feel 7 afraid to raise the issue?

8 I did but I didn't. Like I 9 explained before, maybe it was the piece of me saying 10 it's been a long outage and it's time to get the unit 11 on line. That was a decision I wasn't proud of.

12 Could I have affected the outcome? Sure, I could 13 have. Did I? No, I didn't.

14 MR. BARBER: The way you describe things 15 is interesting because you're describing it from a 16 kind of ownership standpoint. You mentioned' 17 yourself, andA as being kind of the 18 management team involved. Have you always felt that 19 way? I mean have you always felt like when you are 20 reviewing a plant problem as a team or did you feel 21 the hierarchial structure more?

22 __ Within the ops I always felt 23 as a team but the outside organizations that we needed 24 I felt like I was pulling a rope for years. In the 25 last six months it's gotten better. Ownership has NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

me,....................... -InalT-

40 1 stepped up but at times I felt like I was the only guy 2 that cared outside the ops organization.

3 In other words, it was like I had to make 4 phone call after phone call trying to figure out 5 status of an issue type of deal as opposed to people 6 being onerous and giving me updates and those type of 7 things. My current management team says I will no 8 longer do that. If you're not getting that, you will 9 call who I would talk to.

10 I got that message so I make my 11 expectations clear and when they aren't met, I will 12 call now the engineering manager. I will now call 13 whoever I need to to say my expectations are not being 14 met. That was not always the case. Especially 15 dealing with engineering. It was at times painful.

16 MR. BARBER: Why did you think that was?

17 I mean, was there something either from an 18 organizational standpoint that didn't allow that 19 coordination?

20 It could have been 21 operational. It could have been methology. It could 22 have been leadership. It could have been all the 23 above. I couldn't put my finger on it. If I could, 24 I would have tried to fix it. Please don't think I've 25 being a victim here or making excuses but sometimes NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

41 1 you get into these situations, you probably know about 2 them, where the plant is in jeopardy and you're trying 3 to get closure and that's what you're focused on.

4 You're not really looking at why am I the guy having 5 to pull the rope.

6 MR. BARBER: What is the big difference 7 between ops and everybody else? You guys always have 8 a sense of urgency. No one else necessarily has to.

9 There is always a clock running somewhere. On the 10 engineering side of things, did you find that one 11 group gave you better support than others or was it 12 just --

13 Yes. I'm not going to lie to 14 you. There were four or five engineers that I abused.

15 When I say abused, I mean I went to them routinely on 16 issues because I knew if I went to this guy type of 17 deal There were four or five of them that were very 18 good engineers.

19 They had ops backgrounds some of them and 20 the type of deal they understood. When they got 21 engaged you knew you were going to get a decent 22 product. You may not get the right answer or the 23 answer you want to hear, but they will get engaged and 24 they will not be afraid to give you some kind of 25 answer.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

t9qmi qqA4*qR WARqI(NrTnKl n P on 7n3 .. . .

42 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It doesn't sound like 2 you had any problem with going to the people who you 3 refer to as the go-to type of people.

4 No, I didn't.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you see it that 6 way for your peers, too? Did they work things through 7 the same way that you did?

8 My perception is yes.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: There's a -- was 10 there any aspect to that in raising concerns and 11 having to keep going to engineering or whether you had 12 to go to maintenance or work management or wherever it 13 was you had to go that if you do so, you wouldn't be 14 seen as a team player?

15 Noll This was a conversation at a 16 lot of shift managers meetings with regards to ops 17 leads the station and this is what it looks like.

18 There's a lot of different interpretations with 19 regards to how do you make that happen. I think we 20 struggled for a long time. Every shift manager has a 21 different personality.

22 Some are more demanding than others. Some 23 can even be a little harsh. I try to treat people 24 with respect but I am firm. "Let me make sure you 25 understand. I need an answer by 4:00. If you can't NEAL R. GROSS 1 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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43 1 support that, let me know and I'll get you the help 2 you need."

3 The new management team has made it much 4 clearer to me with regards to what he expects me to do 5 with regards to showing ownership and leadership with 6 the station. We struggled with that for quite a few 7 years. What does it look like. What does it feel 8 like. What does it taste like.

9 Everybody did it a little bit different 10 and everybody felt that they were always pulling the 11 rope as opposed to, you know, being the guy standing 12 on the side coaching the guys that were giving them 13 thelfeedback they needed to hear to help you get to a 14 decision.

15 Then, naturally, if you are engaged in 16 that type of behavior, the time that you spend in the 17 control room monitoring your crew as well as the 18 station is reduced because you're worried about this 19 one individual. You're going to a meeting to a 20 meeting. You're checking in on the tech issues team.

21 "How are we doing? What do you need?" Boom, boom, 22 boom.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What were you driving 24 at? I mean, why would one management change so much?

25 Do you have any explanation for why it would be done NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4,)4 own ImI ahin a= w w

44 1 so differently and, I guess in your opinion, so 2 significantly at first to where you are now? What was 3 behind that?

4 (Whereupon, the end of Tape 1, Side A.)

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. We are on Side 6 B. It's approximately 8:01 p.m.

7 I believe it was -- I hate to 8 keep saying this but here in the past three to six 9 months the new management chain has made their 10 expectations known to not only the shift managers but ll the managers of the other departments and basically 12 told them that the shift managers would not be -- I 13 mean, they are me, right?

14 I tell you I want to get something done, 15 it's going to get done and you need to report to me.

16 Where in the past rarely did you get feedback with 17 regards to how you handle an issue whether it was 18 positive or negative. All it was concerned in-my eyes 19 was that the issue got solved and the plant may go on 20 the line. Or if we had to take the plant off the line 21 because of the issue, we took the plant off the line.

22 I can't even remember discussions with 23 regards to the shift manager's ability to get issues 24 solved. Now the team would cali or they would stop 25 and ask clarifying questions. Sometimes questions you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1 P9*

RW - IVI ANn AVE.. N.W. -7

45 1 didn't think of that would make you go and maybe 2 adjust if necessary the team that was looking into 3 issues.

4 I believe why it's clear now is the 5 expectations and the feedback that I'm getting from my 6 management team. I actually see them. In the past I 7 didn't see them that often. Now I see them all the 8 time and I get daily coachings with regards to my 9 leadership abilities. I was coached on my leadership 10 abilities on leading the manager's meeting. Coached 11 on plant startups. Constantly getting positive as well 12 as constructive coaching and that was not part of the 13 norm with the past regime.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Along those lines, 15 and before we get off that, I want to ask you some of 16 the information that has been developed -- and you 17 probably know we've talked to a large number of people 18 during this inquiry. Some of the information that has 19 been developed indicates that there was a value seen 20 in union individuals in that the more vocal ones could 21 in a safer way, more protective way, be more vocal 22 about concerns.

23 This would be in regard to equipment 24 performance issues that the union felt their value was 25 seen from the CRS and the shift manager level that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1*9- RHOnF ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

46 1 they had this protection. They could raise their 2 issues and not be put at risk for not being seen as a 3 team player.. Do you know -- I mean, can you way 4 anything that would feed into that?

5 . You mean that would support 6 that or not support it?

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where something like 8 that would be coming from. Were they used in that 9 manner?

10 Let me make sure I understand.

11 What you said was the bargaining unit individuals that 12 were a little bit more boisterous were looked at as 13 leaders with regards to the shift manager's CRS ranks 14 when they raised concerns. Is that what you're 15 saying?

16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's not necessarily 17 a leader but that there was value seen in these 18 individuals. At least the perception was that people 19 who look at that situation and they see the value in 20 having them be more vocal about these recurring 21 performance problems with equipment, as opposed to 22 having a CRS or SM, shift manager, raise it.

23 I understand your question.

24 Yes and no. Let me explain that. We have some vocal 25 union people that care about their jobs, and we have NEAL R. GROSS - I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

47 1 people that care about their jobs that are nonvocal, 2 and we have people, like in a lot of organizations, 3 come to work for a 40-hour pay check. In other words, 4 "The company owes me 40 hours4.62963e-4 days 0.0111 hours 6.613757e-5 weeks 1.522e-5 months . I don't earn 40 5 hours5.787037e-5 days 0.00139 hours 8.267196e-6 weeks 1.9025e-6 months ."

6 When I say yes and no, we have extremely 7 experienced NCOs, quite a few of them, and when they 8 speak up, the experienced CRSs and shift managers 9 listen. The inexperienced ones are intimidated. You 10 hear it in their language, "Man, what's wrong with him 11 today? Why is he speaking up?" He's challenging you 12 as a supervisor. "This is bothering him and what are 13 you going to do about it?"

14 I would say some of the ranks of shift 15 managers -- well, all the shift managers with maybe a 16 minor exception -- and the experienced CRSs look at 17 those people as, like I said before, "If he's speaking 18 up, we better listen. Something's not right here."

19 Other ones were like intimidated. Right?

20 So you have to question if they were 21 intimidated by that type of feedback. How did they 22 perceive that individual? "Grumpy. A pain in the 23 ass. What's wrong with him?" type of deal. Then you 24 ask yourself, "What did they do? What did that 25 concern?"

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

48 1 I contend probably not a whole lot. I 2 have seen that with regards to what you stated. But 3 on the whole I would say that is a pretty good 4 description of some of the more vocal bargaining unit 5 leaders. I call them leaders because even if they 6 lead negatively, they lead, right? It's my job as a 7 manager and a supervisor to focus that into positive 8 energy.

9 I try to do that all the time. I'm not 10 successful all the time. Sometimes it just doesn't 11 work. That's when you sit down and have a nice little 12 coaching session. I don't know if I answered your 13 question but my perception is for the most part they 14 are looked as leaders and they are listened to and 15 most concerns are followed through with.

16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To a certain extent 17 but it goes one step further in that do you see them 18 as being these vocals leaders being used by the shift 19 managers and the control room supervisors to voice 20 concerns fed through them?

21 In other words, CRSs feeding 22 their concerns to them?

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.

24 I have not seen that.

25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You haven't seen it?

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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49 1 Not me personally.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about your care 3 level?

4 ;* No, I have not seen it.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're not aware of 6 any?

7 _7 I haven't even seen anything 8 to make me think that. I would be real disappointed.

9 I mean, I'm not saying there aren't people out there 10 that might feel a little bit intimated. I would be 11 shocked. I would be disappointed if they were using 12 the bargaining unit to force their issues. I'm not 13 naive either. It's not that I wouldn't think that 14 might happen.

15 MR. BARBER: If you look at it from the 16 standpoint of a new control room supervisor, someone 17 who is, as you said early on, you know, you're just 18 trying to kind of find your way. I think you used the 19 analogy learner's permit or something.

20 iExactly.

21 MR. BARBER: Temporary license or 22 something like that. You get somebody who is in that 23 situation and they see something in the power plant 24 they don't like and maybe they were at NCO maybe 25 before they raised the issue, but they have the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVF- NW

50 1 protection of the union.

2 They have, that kind of shield, if you 3 will. Now when they step into the management ranks, 4 they don't have that protection. They may have issues 5 and they try to figure out how to bring them up in the 6 most effective manner for their circumstances.

7 1lhave not seen that happen.

8 MR. BARBER: Okay.

.9 We've had two guys that just 10 came from the bargaining unit to the CRS ranks. I 11 believe they are perceived as good CRSs and I have not 12 witnessed anything like that. I think they would feel 13 comfortable bringing anything up.

14 MR. BARBER: Okay. Very good. There were 15 a cover of issues that we had to cover, some technical 16 things I just wanted to ask about.

17 Okay.

18 MR. BARBER: You may have had some 19 involvement with them or not.

20 Okay.

21 MR. BARBER: One is when you actually 22 started talking about the bypass valve, there was 23 another problem or another issue with a No. 2 bypass 24 valve in March, 2003.

25 : This was the shutdown?

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

51 1 MR. BARBER: You were on a forced outage.

2 The plant was in a forced outage and there was a 3 problem with --

4 We were going to a forced 5 outage. The issue was trying to take the unit off 6 line with a No. 2 bypass valve partially stuck open.

7 MR. BARBER: Right.

8 And concerns over exceeding 9 our cool down and things like that.

10 MR. BARBER: Were you involved at all with 11 that either like on shift or --

12 7 I was the 13 MR. BARBER: Okay. All right. So what 14 can you tell me about the way that -- how that played 15 out from your view?

16 Sure.

17 MR. BARBER: Maybe give me a little 18 background from your point of view.

19 Certainly.

20 MR. BARBER: How did we get into this?

21 Well, the plant experienced an 22 issue with a No. 2 bypass valve. It was a bolt that 23 was in its seat and the valve was partially opened and 24 the decision to shut the unit down to fix it was made 25 which was the right decision.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE, N.W.

52 1 Unfortunately, to get the unit down we had 2 to do some things that aren't proceduralized so we had 3 to do an IPTE, develop a procedure, and bring the unit 4 down in an attempt not to exceed the cooling because 5 if the bypass valve stuck open there is a chance you 6 could exceed your cool down.

7 That was the whole premise in the Reader's 8 Digest version. I was off and called and told that 9 they needed my support. Okay? The plan was developed 10 probably the day before. It was taken out to training 11 by the shift that was on and run through. They went 12 through it. When I came in that night I had no idea 13 I was going to be the ........ iw 14 I walked in and they said, "You're the 15 . This is what we're doing." I said, 16 "Oh, wow. Okay." I was debriefed froll 17 with regards to what had been done. I reviewed the 18 procedure. as thp engineer. He was 19 a training instructor who was with the shift during 20 the training exercise.

21 My boss made it very clear to me. He 22 said, "Hey, this role, I don't want you in the ops 23 role. I want you to stand back from a safety 24 standpoint type of deal." I'm back in the shift 25 manager's office and they are doing the testing. We NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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53 1 had a little issue when we were reducing pressure.

2 The guys got on the RMs and it wasn't to 3 the point that they were sha, sha, sha. I mean, it 4 was methodical, peer checks, the whole works the way 5 we were trained. We stopped and we looked at what 6 happened.

7 We got the leadership team in this very 8 office, discussed it, and then we made a conference 9 call to thewho wa We 10 developed a plan to proceed and we proceeded and had 11 another issue, pressure protovation with the bypass 12 valves using the jack as opposed to other items.

13 I was a little surprised that we weren't 14 pushing control rods in. We were reducing pressure 15 with the bypass valves and I brought that concern up 16 in the first meeting so we were going to go ahead and 17 start pushing rods in and let the rods bring us down 18 nice and slow.

19 The other piece that I was a little upset 20 with that I verbalized at the time was why don't I 21 have any projections that if this plant scrams right 22 now, am I going to exceed my cool down. Surely 23 engineering can tell me, you know. I don't have a 24 degree. I'm not a rocket scientist but I bet you I 25 can come pretty close knowing what I know about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

54 1 thermodynamics, flow through one bypass valve kind of 2 deal.

3 Surely I should have some projection of 4 what engineering is telling me. If the plant scrams 5 am I going to exceed a cool down or not. We had 6 nothing. There was no other support. Ops grabbed us 7 by the -- the bull by the horns, developed the plan, a executed the plan, and there was very little help from 9 outside organizations.

10 MR. BARBER: Is this because it happened 11 over a weekend?

12 / could be. I wasn't privy 13 to the decision. I did tell, I said, "Why don't 14 we have some type of evaluation. I mean, engineering 15 should be helping us. They should be able to tell us 16 almost to the control rod where we are going to go.

17 Right? I told him, I said, q , we've got enough for 18 heat. I'll tell him right now we will not exceed our 19 cool down." He says, "Yeah." I said, "Engineering 20 could have told us that."

21 MR. BARBER: What was his reaction? What 22 was, reaction to that?

23 I can't remember. It might 24 have been, "Yeah, I understand," type of deal.

25 MR. BARBER: Acknowledged it?

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55 1 .Acknowledged it.

2 MR. BARBER: Okay.

3 1 mean, that was not a problem 4 but we had some issues there. It became an SER and 5 quite significant in the industry.

6 MR. BARBER: Did you - - what did you think 7 when you were told you were going to be the 8 W Did you feel like you were kind of put 9 behind the 8 ball? You were kind of coming in on your 10 day off and kind of pick up on this and you thought, 11 "This is a pretty complex issue.

12 At the time I didn't think 13 that. At the time I said, "Okay. This is what my 14 management team needs me to do." This is boom, boom, 15 boom. I reviewed the plan. Thought it was pretty 16 solid on paper.

17 MR. BARBER: Okay.

18 Unfortunately I didn't ask 19 clarifying questions which in hindsight I should have 20 asked a couple but I didn't. That's my own fault.

21 That's one of those badges that you wear proud and you 22 learn from. The next time an experience like that 23 happens, you do it a little different. After it was 24 over I thought I was set up. I didn't allow that to 25 show. I didn't vent that frustration. It thought I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

1 was set up a little bit with regards to walking in 2 cold and four hours later we're performing this 3 evolution.

4 MR. BARBER: Did you know of any concerns 5 that the shift that was exercising the procedure had 6 when they exercised the procedure?

7 1I did not know any concerns 8 when I walked in that control room. I went to the 9 briefing and the briefing was pretty clear. There was 10 some good clarifying questions and answers were given 11 and provided and the NCOs were pretty okay with the 12 answers provided. That event caused a lot of damage 13 with the bargaining unit and management relationship 14 also when it was all said and done.

15 The RO that was in that night wasn't at 16 the training. This is a guy that was doing the 17 control rods and all he did was, "Okay, power is going 18 up." He followed the RMs up and he got dequalified 19 and had to go.. That was quite emotional for him. He 20 felt -- I mean, you can sit down and really understand 21 some of his concerns. Now, whether he voiced those in 22 the right way or not, that's up to your decision.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who is that?

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1 a victim as much as I felt like I was set up a little 2 bit. I took ownership of my failure to ask clarifying 3 questions is where I thought I went wrong. I even 4 told one of my peers who was in as the 5 I said, 0old me not to 6 get involved with the ops piece. Could you as

7 why we're not shoving control runs?"

8 That question finally got asked after the 9 first protovation. It was obvious to me at the time 10 that there was a fundamental knowledge breakdown with 11 regards to taking pressure down with the bypass 12 valves. It isn't just putting rods in slowly and 13 allowing the negative reactivity with the rod 14 insertion to bring a unit down nice and slow and easy.

15 MR. BARBER: So they were kind of fighting 16 a battle they weren't going to win.

17 -No, I think the battle could 18 have been won. We didn't plan and we didn't execute.

19 MR. BARBER: Not without inserting the 20 control rods. I mean, the impression I'm getting is 21 they weren't really pushing a control rod. They were 22 just trying to bring it down and using the bypass 23 valves.

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1 steam jet air ejectors out and the vacuum pumps in 2 because they wanted to take that heavy steam load off 3 the steam jet air rejecters to help them in the event 4 of a scram or those type issues of exceeding cool 5 down. Steam jet air ejectors were heavy load so they 6 were trying to get down to actually remove them from 7 service and get the mechanical vacuum pumps in 8 service.

9 MR. BARBER: Okay. That aspect -- the 10 point that you brought up here about inserting the 11 control rods, there was two power protovations. The 12 first one you described as a relatively small one.

13 . "The first one was a bypass 14 jack. We went on the jack as opposed to pressure set 15 and this is my recollection. The reason we went on 16 the jack is it was quicker pressure set. It's one 17 pound per second to take it down. It takes a while.

18 You have to sit on the button and they wanted to use 19 the bypass jack to pop it open and control, those type 20 of things.

21 That caused a protovation with the way 22 that the bypass valve was open. Caused a level 23 protovation. The level went down. It was restored 24 where you put cold water in, low in power. You get 25 the little spike in power which is expected if you get NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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59 1 cold water in the ROs basically becaus e everybody was 2 concerned -- this is my perception -- o f exceeding the 3 cooldown rate.

4 If we scram the reactor rhen we see the 5 cool down rate, okay. They methodical ly followed the 6 power up with the RMs and followed it back down. In 7 hindsight that was not the correct de cision.

8 MR. BARBER: The point I wais trying to get 9 to is after you had the first minor iincident and you 10 were all discussing it.

11 Right.

12 MR. BARBER: You mentioned toqX W"Hey, 13 why don't you consider driving rods in?"

14 That's not hoiw it came out.

15 How it came out is we go on the ph one and I asked 16 I said, "I think we should be 9utting control 17 rods in." I'm 51 years old, old school . I don't like 18 to, how say we say, get into a confronitation with one

19. of my peers in a public setting.

20 When we were in here I dicIn't feel like, 21 we should be shoving rods." I felt that the 22 right way to do it is when we gotel on the phone, I 23 said, "I believe right now we shouild be shoving

,got on 24 control rods." He agreed with that. r 25 board.

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60 1 MR. BARBER: Okay.

2 But it was obvious because of 3 the time it took him to buy in and understand, I felt 4 there was a fundamental knowledge issue with that 5 suggestion. He even got up on the board and was 6 drawing some things to understand it. From a theory 7 standpoint I just got the perception he didn't 8 completely understand what that was doing for him.

9 MR. BARBER: Okay. But at some point he 10 said he did agree to that?

11 We all left the room and that 12 was the plan.

13 MR. BARBER: Okay. So when they went back 14 out and were manipulating the plan, was that, in fact, 15 being done? Were they driving control rods in?

16 I believe control rods were 17 driven and then we went to the bypass jack again and 18 that's when we took the second protovation.

19 MR. BARBER: You mean you went on pressure 20 set?

21 -No, we went through.

22 MR. BARBER: You had to be in either one 23 or the other, right?

24 )I'm trying to remember, Scott.

25 Bear with me here.

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61 1 MR. BARBER: Sure.

2 I can't remember if we went on 3 pressure set or the bypass. My instincts believe we 4 went back on the bypass jack and caused the second 5 protovation.

6 MR. BARBER: Okay. But with driving 7 control rods in?

8 l Yes.

9 MR. BARBER: So you felt like as far as 10 that recommendation, that was being listened to but 11 you did have a side comment that you did feel like 12

maybe fully understood why you were making the 13 recommendation.

14 A Correct.

15 MR. BARBER: And he had to work it out on 16 his own. Do you think that he fully understood what 17 that was going to buy him at the end of the 18 discussion?

19 Yes, I do. I was confident 20 that he was on board and completely understood it. We 21 went out and did another brief. When we left that 22 brief it was obvious to me that the NCOs were on 23 board, the CRS was on board.

24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

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62 1 feel set up? You said you felt set up.

2 . You walk in cold, you know, 3 and you are expecting to be t h which 4 I have experience at doing.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: They called you in 6 specifically, right?

7 . I was scheduled to come in as 8 an extra I was not given the assignment until I 9 walked in the door that night. I was not given a 10 curtesy call the day before or that type of thing or 11 maybe I could have, "Okay, what does that mean? Is 12 there anything I can review?" Those type of things.

13 I walked into it and the procedure was still being 14 written and had not been approved yet. It had been 15 worked in the simulator and was being revised when I 16 walked in the door. I took a turnover from the 17 dayshift in charge which was and 18 gave me a turnover. as the engineer 19 and that's when -I sat down with the procedure and read 20 it. Then I came in here and had discussions wit 21 He gave me what his expectations were. Then later in 22 the night we commenced the IPTE.

23 MR. BARBER: Let me ask you 24 I don't want anybody to think 25 that -- when I say I was set up, I just felt I wasn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ..

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63 1 given enough opportunity to maybe do a thorough 2 review. I don't think I'm being a victim here. I was 3 part of it.

4 MR. BARBER: Let me ask a follow-up to 5 this, the whole issue.

6 Sure.

7 MR. BARBER: The IPTE process.

8 Right.

9 MR. BARBER: If you're writing a new 10 procedure, do you have to do a verification validation 11 procedure normally if it's like this, in this case?

12 You have to at a minimum do a 13 table top for that, yeah.

14 MR. BARBER: Do you know why that wasn't 15 done for this case?

16 ( *. It was done. The IPTE was run 17 in the simulator.

18 MR. BARBER: But it wasn't done V&V. It 19 was done as -- we're training the crew on how to run 20 this --

21 IN That could be. I was not 22 privy to that. I do know it was run on the simulator 23 and I just assumed -- once again a bad assumption --

24 that it was being run for the crew for experience as 25 well as a validation.

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64 1 MR. BARBER: One of the things that has 2 come out just with discussions we've had is that I 3 think the expectation was if you had a complex 4 evolution, especially if it involves tight 5 coordination between a number of control room 6 operators, that you would, in fact, do a verification 7 validation and make sure it's even feasible. Then 8 once you worked through all the bugs, then the crew 9 that is actually going to do it you get them to kind 10 of come in fresh, run through the procedure, practice 11 it.

{ I agree.

12 13 MR. BARBER: And then maybe the next day 14 then execute it. In this case the crew that did it, 15 I think, ended up doing sort of a combination V&V and 16 training.

17 ..... I would agree with that 18 statement based on the feedback I got when I came in 19 that night as well as the comments I heard when we 20 reviewed the procedure with the crew. It was like, 21 "Wait a minute. This is what we said we wanted," and 22 those type of things. Scott, I would agree with that.

23 MR. BARBER: Okay. Did that come out in 24 the lessons learned that was done for the evolution?

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65 1 pull the verification for that or if there was a 2 report, would I see that, do you think?

3 Scan tell you a lot of things 4 that came out of that but I can't answer if a V&V, a 5 different crew runs it, I mean, the crew that's going 6 to do it, I can't answer that.

7 MR. BARBER: Well, not so much a different 8 one. They could be the same one but not in the same 9 time frame.

10 I can't answer that.

11 MR. BARBER: Okay. All right.

12 I would like to say yes but I 13 may be wrong and I'm under oath.

14 MR. BARBER: Okay. Did you have anything 15 else you wanted to share on that issue?

16 7 On that issue, no.

17 MR. BARBER: Okay. Let me ask about a 18 couple of other things that are on my list to talk 19 about. There was an issue related -- you probably 20 have some awareness of this -- related to a problem 21 with higher off-gas flow.

22 Yes.

M62 mo 23 MR. BARBER: It's a situation where -- I 24 mean, off-gas valves probably run anywhere from as low 25 as 15 SCFM to in the 40 to 50 range here.

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66 1 Tyical is mid to upper 20s.

2 We've been in the 30s to 40s.

3 MR. BARBER: Yeah. I think I looked at it 4 recently and we were in the low 40s. This actually 5 was up at the high end.

6 -2 We were above 75 SCFM.

7 MR. BARBER: Right. That's what I want to 8 ask you about. That 75, is that, to your recollection 9 or knowledge, is that a hard limit?

10 Procedurally it is written 11 down don't exceed 75 but we were slowly approaching 12 that and my recollection is engineering gave us an 13 evaluation that it was okay to operate above 75.

14 Whether that was right or wrong, I'm not going to sit 15 here and debate that but we had an evaluation.

16 Some things that I believe we missed, if 17 my recollection is correct, is how that affected the 18 RAD monitoring system when we increased the flow. I 19 believe we went in op on the pretreatment RMS system 20 and started pulling samples once we thought about 21 that.

22 MR. BARBER: Is that something you had to 23 -- was that in a procedure somewhere or is that 24 something you had to figure out?

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67 1 wasn't at the time.

2 MR. BARBER: How did that come about?

3 I'm not sure. Somebody 4 probably asked some type of clarifying question or 5 brought up a concern. "Hey, what's this doing? Let 6 me check with engineering." "Yeah, it affects it,"

7 type of deal. It's probably how it came out.

8 MR. BARBER: Was it just more of a cal 9 type thing? More of a cal issue that if it got too 10 high, it wasn't calibrating?

11 I can't answer why it affected 12 it. It probably has to do with the amount of flow 13 that is going through the instrument as well as the 14 sample pump.

15 MR. BARBER: Okay.

16 1I do know that the procedure 17 has been upgraded to get above 75 declare that 18 instrument inoperable which puts you into chemistry 19 sampling of the off-gas stream.

20 MR. BARBER: And how often do you have to 21 do the samples?

22 Don't quote me on this but I 23 would probably say every six hours -- four to six 24 hours2.777778e-4 days 0.00667 hours 3.968254e-5 weeks 9.132e-6 months .

25 MR. BARBER: That's the funny thing about F. *,NEAL R. GROSS -

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68 1 the way RMS works. You give up almost instant 2 monitoring or almost real-time monitoring for some 3 batch type process.

4.I had forgotten about that 5 incident. I mean, it wasn't that I forgot about it.

6 It's just that I forgot some of the concerns that were 7 brought up at the time with regard to it.

8 MR. BARBER: Do you remember any of it?

9 What I remember on my shift 10 was the NCOs were a little bit concerned. They didn't 11 feel the evaluation was complete, engineering 12 evaluation. They basically felt that we were keeping 13 the unit online to make money. What we need to 14 recognize is we engaged engineering. We were actively 15 pursuing leakage.

16 We had Maplewood Lab down here testing.

17 We had an idea the general area and those type of 18 things. It wasn't like we were sitting there 19 twiddling our thumbs. We had some efforts in progress 20 with regards to trying to discover where the leak was 21 and repair it. It turned out we needed to do some 22 heavy repairs with regards to -- I believe this was 23 before RF-1i because we repaired most of those leaks 24 during RF-11 if I'm not mistaken.

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69

- 1 of puzzled me about this, I think there was a lot of 2 angst. When the flow went above 75 there was a lot of 3 concern. One things that I haven't really heard much 4 about is what led up to that. I mean, obviously it 5 started from some value, whether it was 20 or 28 or 42 6 or 35, but some value in what you can consider some 7 normal range. My understanding was it wasn't an 8 instantaneous step change.

9 It was a slow rise over a 10 period of, I can't remember, a few days, couple days.

11 MR. BARBER: What I have not heard is why 12 there wasn't something done when the initial rise was 13 detected or whether there was some -- I don't 14 understand that because, I mean, I know that the 15 operators are aware of these things. Youprobably are 16 aware of them or the CRS is if you're not.

17 These kinds of issues are out there. I 18 mean, that's part of why we have operators so that 19 they can monitor trends. What I got was there was no 20 action taken until it exceeded the limit. I don't 21 understand that. Could you shed any light on that?

22 I'm not sure I totally agree 23 with that statement to say nothing was done.

24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

25.I do know for a fact that we

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70 1 were shooting on a regular basis helium trying to 2 figure out where the leak was. If my recollection is 3 correct, it was the northwest corner, north side of 4 the condenser where we were taking our heaviest hits.

5 MR. BARBER: Okay.

6 I cannot recall when the 7 engineering evaluation with regards to can we exceed 8 75 or not, when that got started. I do know we had an 9 evaluation that said it was okay to operate above 75.

10 Now, did that get started when we were at 70 or 76 as 11 opposed to, "Hey we jumped up to 42?" I can't answer 12 that. I can't remember.

13 MR. BARBER: I was actually thinking more 14 of the power plant. My instinct would be not to go 15 get engineering. My instinct would be let's go find 16 the leak.

17 That was actively being 18 engaged. I know that for a fact.

19 MR. BARBER: Do you believe it was being 20 engaged early on like when it first started treading 21 above normal?

22 Can't answer that.

23 MR. BARBER: That's not the impression I 24 have. The impression I got is the station took 25 action.

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71 1 *Here's what I remember. We 2 developed a trouble shooting plan. Those things 3 typically take a while. Engineering got involved with 4 maintenance in the Maplewood Labs. We developed a 5 trouble shooting plan. Based on some data we gathered 6 off historian and things like that, we tried to 7 strategically identify where we wanted to go first, 8 areas of high concern around the turbine.

9 MR. BARBER: Okay.

10 That plan was then executed.

11 It didn't happen. I know it didn't happen. Okay. We 12 jumped from 28 to 34, 36, 38. It didn't happen then.

13 It probably happened once we got over the 40 14 threshold, up in there.

15 MR. BARBER: Okay.

16 From that standpoint I agree 17 that it could have been a little more timely but to 18 say nothing was being done until we exceeded 75 is not 19 correct.

20 MR. BARBER: Okay. In your perception 21 there was, in fact, something taking place earlier on.

22 There was definitely some leak 23 detection going on before we exceeded 75. Now, was it 24 timely? I don't remember. I can't remember exactly 25 when it got instigated. I mean, it got --

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72 1 MR. BARBER: Did anybody ever express 2 their concern with you directly as far as operating 3 above --

4 I have a couple crusty old 5 veterans and they were under their breath say, 6 "Thanks." It was just like verbal shots, you know.

7 They didn't come to me with, "Hey., this is unsafe, 8 boom, boom, boom, boom." Nobody came to me like that.

9 MR. BARBER: Have you overheard anybody 10 talk about the situation in the context that basically 11 engineering will give us a new number every time we 12 ask them for it?

13 T Are you asking me if I heard 14 that said? Yes.

15 MR. BARBER: Did you react to that if you 16 heard that, or did you not react? What was the 17 context? Did you agree with it?

18 I don't remember. I'm not 19 going to sit here and say at times I hadn't thought 20 that. I would like to think I said, "Wait a minute, 21 guys." I can't remember if I did that or not.

22 MR. BARBER: I mean, could you understand 23 how someone might be disappointed --

24 Absolutely 25 MR. BARBER: -- if that happened?

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73 1 Absolutely. Absolutely.

2 MR. BARBER: That may be similar to the 3 circumstance you talked about where -- /raised 4 an issue where he felt like he wasn't getting the 5 station to kind of respond. This could be viewed as 6 a similar type of circumstance.

7 -0! I agree.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Had you seen 9 something like that happen before where if X is the 10 value you exceeded, then you just raise the limit?

11 Go on with the next question 12 and I'll think. I'm sure there's a couple instances 13 out there and I'll try to remember them. Well, 14 drywall floor gain leakage. We kept raising that 15 value when we had the issue with the recert seal. We 16 kept raising it and raising it when we might shut the 17 unit down.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What time frame is 19 this?

20 It's before RF-11 so it had to 21 be 2002/2003 time frame.

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74 1 different?

2 We've had a couple seal 3 issues. I'm trying to remember what the last issue 4 was. I believe it was we thought it was the seal 5 because of the pressures and we did get in and find a 6 chill water leak.

7 I believe that was the one where we were 8 I won't say constantly moving, but the decision making 9 process the number changed. As two and three days 10 went on and it got closer and closer they would jump 11 it up. Engineering would come in and give us another 12 evaluation type of deal.

13 It was based on, if I remember properly --

14 correctly, the seal as opposed to the chill water 15 because we didn't know about it. The-evaluation was 16 based on seal leakage, how it affects the recert pump, 17 how good are we up to those type of things. We were 18 looking at pressures on the seals, inner and outer 19 seal, leak off and those type of things.

20 MR. BARBER: Okay.

21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The tolerance was 22 being raised as you went along?

23 The tolerance to take an 24 action to shutthe unit down was raised at least once, 25 if not twice, during that time frame.

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75 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that's what stood 2 to be gained by that, by raising the tolerance so the 3 unit didn't have to shut down?

4 . If I remember properly, it was 5 a critical time of the year. It was in the summer 6 months.

7 MR. BARBER: Is that a sort of standard 8 way of dealing with things from engineering or is that 9 -- I mean, is that a standard practice or is it just 10 certain things that are easily qualifiable?

11* Here's what I think, right?

12 Engineering does what they are asked. If there is a 13 stand, it's plant management, ops management is asking 14 engineering, "I need you to evaluate this and let me 15 know what the drop depth is. I just remembered 16 another good one, was the diesel water leak. That was 17 another one we dropped the ball on.

18 MR. BARBER: That was in June 2003?

19 I believe it was. I declared 20 it inop and tagged it down on 150 drops per minute 21 which was in previous evaluation. Quite frankly, I 22 was told by my management team, "We support your 23 decision but it was the wrong decision. Because you 24 didn't get engineering involved, that leakage could 25 have been much more and we could have been just fine.

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76 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Wait, how does that 2 work? How do they support your decision and criticize 3 it at the same time? How does that work?

4 My management team tells me, 5 "We're behind you. We stand behind your decisions."

6 But they reserved the right to question whether it was 7 a right or wrong decision. In other words, "We agree 8 we need to shut the unit down and fix this jacket 9 water leak."

10 Then they come back and, in this 11 particular case, I was coached, "You should have 12 gotten engineering involved days earlier." Myself or 13 one of my peers should have gotten engineering 14 engaged. It just wasn't part of our culture at the 15 time. Why is 150 drops per minute where we declare 16 in-op? In other words, I used a past evaluation to 17 make my decision on a Sunday afternoon. It was a 18 Sunday afternoon.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You could have had an 20 updated engineering evaluation is what they were 21 looking for.

22 Right.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where the tolerance 24 might have been higher than 150?

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77 1 back is engineering said we could have went up to --

2 I can't remember the number -- 190 drops per minute.

3 It's not that they didn't want to go after it and fix 4 it but they felt like doing it on a Sunday morning, 5 72-hour LCO. I'm concerned about getting this thing 6 ready to go and get it working and meet the LCO time 7 so I had to shut the unit down.

8 Those are the things that are going 9 through my mind so I make the phone call and say, 10 "This thing is going to be tagged and jacket water is 11 going to be drained and ready to go next shift." The 12 organization energized. We came in and we had a 13 successful.

14 The feedback I got was a decision should 15 have been made after engineering did another 16 evaluation. Then we could have took it off in a more 17 controlled fashion and then planned and everything 18 else as opposed to jumping through hoops. That's the 19 feedback I got.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So the support that 21 you got was that they didn't overrule you on that?

22 They supported entering the LCO?

23 Yes, they did at the time 24 based on the information. As a matter of fact, I got 25 a one-on-one coaching and then at the shift manager's NEAL R. GROSS

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78 1 meeting he stood up in front of the other shift 2 managers and said, "I would have made the same 3 decision at the time with what was in front of me. If 4 we have to learn from this, this is what I want to 5 learn. We need to get engineering engaged sooner.

6 What is the real limit type of deal. That was the 7 discussion.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was that,R SPECIAL AGEN 9

10 was the one that 11 gave me the coaching.

12 MR. BARBER: Were you okay with that?

13 *Yeah, I was fine with that.

14 I didn't take it personally. He listened to me and I 15 said, "I just want to make sure you understand that my 16 decision was based on this, this, this, and this." He 17 said, "I got that and I supported that decision at the 18 time but here's what I want in the future."

19 MR. BARBER: You said that occurred on a 20 Sunday. What was your shift schedule that week? Did 21 you get a lot of days off in the middle of the week?

22 Yeah, that was my fourth day.

23 When you work a Sunday day shift -- if I remember 24 correctly, it was our last day. We worked Thursday, 25 Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and we were coming back NEAL R. GROSS ý / I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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79 1 on Thursday.

2 MR, BARBER: All right. So basically you 3 made the call. Were you gone or did you get called 4 back in?

5 I did not get called back in.

6 MR. BARBER: Okay.

7 My call was made early on and 8 I made a phone call to the management team and the 9 work management team. I said, "I need people to work 10 this thing next shift." I directed my CRS work 11 control to get it tagged.

12 MR. BARBER: Okay.

13 W Let's get jacket water drained 14 down. That took us about, if I remember correctly, 15 around 12 hours1.388889e-4 days 0.00333 hours 1.984127e-5 weeks 4.566e-6 months from the time I gave the order until 16 it was completed. It was ready to be worked that 17 night.

18 MR. BARBER: Did you have the opportunity 19 to review the previous engineering evaluation?

20 Yes, I did. I didn't make the 21 decision. What happened is we had a known leak on 22 this and we barred the diesels and when we barred it, 23 the leak became worse.

24 MR. BARBER: Okay.

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80 1 up and says, "Hey, this jacket water leak is 2 really bad." I get my maintenance superintenclent, my 3 CRS out of work control. I said, "Get down ti iere and 4 quantify it." He gets down and comes bac}c and I 5 believe it was - b* t the time and 6 and they both said it's around 150 dr *ops per 7 minute or 155 drops per minute.

8 MR. BARBER: Okay.

9 W, We got some pass on t his and 10 my STA found a past evaluations that had been closed.

11 There was a crack in one of the diesels earliej: and we 12 found that and I believe it was like 150 dr ops per 13 minute.

14 MR. BARBER: Did you read it bef ore you 15 made the call?

16 Yes, I did.

17 MR. BARBER: Do you remember what it was 18 based on?

19 It was based on the abi lity of 20 an operator to give jacket water up to thEB tank.

21 That's what it was based on.

22 MR. BARBER: How long a period of time?

23 I think it was seven days.

24 MR. BARBER: Do you know what ezided up 25 happening with that?

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-- -- 81 1 The one before that?

2 MR. BARBER: The one that happened all the 3 way at thE_ very end of the time clock.

4 No, I don't.

5 MR. BARBER: Okay. It got changed to one 6 day.

7 I'm not saying I didn't read 8 i~t, . I'm saying I just don't remember.

9 .MR. BARBER: I know you read it because 10 you just told me and proved to me you read it. The 11 people who read it knew it was based on seven days.

- Yeah.

12 13 MR. BARBER: The thing that was 14 interesting about that, though, was -- maybe my memory 15 is not right on this but I didn't remember the time of 16 discovery was Sunday but I thought the actual 17 declaration was on Monday because I thought the clock 18 expired on Thursday morning.

19 I would challenge you on that 20 decision. I specifically remember this was a Sunday.

21 MR. BARBER: You remember it was on a 22 Sunday? So 72 hours irould be Monday, Tuesday, 23 Wednesday.

24 That is my recollection. I'm 25 99 percent sure we made the call on a Sunday. The NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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U ý 1 time0 made the call was a Sunday afternoon.

2 MR. BARBER: I was thinking it might have 3 been Sunday night into Monday morning because I 4 thought it expired like 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning.

5 I know I was working Sunday 6 and I believe it was day shift. That's what I'll tell 7 you.

8 MR. BARBER: Okay. Unfortunately, you 9 weren't really around for the attempted repair.

10 That's' correct.

11 MR. BARBER: So made the call and I 12 think you've given us as much as you are going to give 13 us on that. When you came back in did you get a 14 briefing on what-had happened with the situation?

15 I believe I did. They 16 replaced the seal on the jacket water pump. They 17 found, if I'm not mistaken, some type of erosion.

18 It's coming back to me here. There was an issue with 19 the seal and this was a long-standing grit sand 20 material in the jacket water that was causing this.

21 MR. BARBER: I think some of the initial 22 work wasn't conclusive. Let's just put it that way.

23 I think eventually what was determined was that the 24 problem -- I think the problem originally was from the 25 inner cooler side of the pump but they are on a common NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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83 1 shaft. You have the inner cooler on one end and the 2 jacket water on the other. I think the problem is 3 actually with the jacket water so all the attention 4 was being paid to the inner cooler side of the pump.

5 There were some shims that --

6 -That could be corrected.

7 MR. BARBER: Yeah, they were putting shims 8 in. So you don't really have any insight to share on 9 what your thoughts were on that?

10 No.

11 MR. BARBER: Okay.

12 j None that I recollect.

13 MR. BARBER: Okay.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The coaching that-15 got on this incident in terms of the call that, 16 made there, was it limited to the diesel jacket water 17 leaks in the future or was it about operability calls 18 in general?

19 .That was about -- the 20 was about getting the organization energized to 21 establish true values. In other words, every one of 22 us knew that this thing had a jacket water leak. We 23 didn't push anybody to say, "When do I need to take it 24 out of service?" That wasn't the mind set or the 25 culture at the time.

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84 1 That's what the was about. In 2 the future I would expect when you know of a problem, 3 you get the organization engaged to give you the line 4 in the sand as opposed to hitting the line in the sand 5 and then making without any help from the 6 organization. Do you understand what I'm saying?

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Um-hum. So it would 8 apply --

9 A=4als not, the 10 wrong call on the diesel." The was, "In the 11 future I expect you..." I said, "I got it."

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In terms of 13 operability calls and coaching or feedback that you 14 got on operability calls, had you been given any 15 direction about the calls or what you would base your 16 call on that you questioned or objected to at any 17 point?

18 I'm not sure I understand the 19 question.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At any point in time 21 did you as a Mget some sort of guidance 22 on making operability calls from your management that 23 you objected to?

24 I would say no. As a matter 25 of fact, I would say -- I could give you a few NEAL R. GROSS t COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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85 1 examples of where I felt it was still operable and my 2 management teams said, "Well, we're going to make it 3 inoperable." That was two or three years ago. The 4 culture has changed and the coachings have been 5 received --

6 (Whereupon, the end of Tape 1, Side B.)

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 8:46 approximately we 8 are back on. Tape 2, Side A.

9 What we were talking about were 10 operability calls. I had questioned you in terms of 11 did you get direction from your management that you 12 had objected to and you had pointed out that at a 13 point in time you were given direction that would be, 14 I guess, more conservative than where you were.

15 Yeah.

16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And that was at a 17 point, you said, two to three years ago.

18 I would say since I've been on 19 shift my operability calls have been -- I've probably 20 been -- the coachings that I got was that I was 21 probably a little bit to the nonconservative side as 22 opposed to the conservative side. That has changed, 23 the coachings and feedback, little pain here and 24 there. I believe I'm on the conservative side now.

25 I can't remember any time that my management team NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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86 1 said, you're wrong. It's operable." I just 2 don't remember.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When your decisions 4 were -- when you were over here and management was on 5 a more conservative side on these calls, who was that 6 that you were dealing with, the individual?

7 Usually it was 8 0 gnpMM;M He would ask the clarifying 9 questions that would make me think a little bit 10 differently. It usually ended with us in agreement 11 that it was either operable or inoperable.

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are these situations 13 -- in your experience, have senior management had 14 input in these situations to your knowledge?

15 I would say yes, but typically 16 the way it goes is I deal with the\ and the>O 17 says, "I'll get back to you." He'll make the calls to 18 the ops manager, plant manager., whoever he needs to 19 with regards to those type of issues. That typically 20 does not occur for operability calls as much as it 21 does with, for example, 75 SCFM water we want to take 22 the unit type of deal.

23 operability calls are typically made 24 before you make the call or they are typically 25 complete when you're done talking. Rarely have I been NEAL R. GROSS J COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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87 1 involved with the OPS manager with regards to 2 operability. I've been involved with the ops 3 managemeht team declaring something operable, right?

4 In other words, it was out for maintenance or 5 something and we brought it back and it's not quite 6 where it should be but now it is type of deal.

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

8 UI've had a lot of discussions 9 in a room like this with the management team. But as 10 far as declaring an inop, it's rare. I don't even 11 remember a time that I have been overruled. I have 12 been coached on maybe a jump too soon or things like 13 that.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We've had some 15 indication that there was this shift manager meeting 16 about a year ago in early 2003 at which ..

17 through .delivered a message that said that 18 you needed to build in more time and have a better 19 understanding of the design basis before making the 20 calls. Do you recall something like that?

21 Yes. It was pretty much he 22 was challenging did we truly understand the design 23 basis before we make these calls. Are we truly 24 looking at the FSAR. Are we truly looking at vendor 25 documents and those type of things before we make NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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88 1 these calls. I would say in some cases we weren't and 2 some cases we were but the message was start thinking 3 that way.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How was the message 5 received by the shift managers?

6 I don't remember. I don't 7 remember me personally taking -- I would remember if 8 it was not received well.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

10 I remember those messages. If 11 I don't remember, it's typically --

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's not something 13 that made a big.impression then?

14 .No, not in my perception.

15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Or that you objected 16 to.

17 No, I didn't object to it. I 18 talked to my shift and engaged my STA in doing a 19 little bit more of that for me and he delivered.

20 MR. BARBER: Is there any kind of 21 fundamental obstacles in being able to do that? What 22 I mean is just logistical issues like the documents we 23 are to review are in somebody's office. A library 24 that is locked after hours. I mean, are those --

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89 1 is almost impossible. I would say I'm weak retrieving 2 information in SAP but I'm smart enough to know that's 3 not what they pay me to do. They pay my people to 4 know that and I go to the NCOs that know how to call 5 up a vendor print or I go to my STA that knows how to 6 call up a CD document type of deal. I get them to get 7 that for me. I would say it's not hard. It is 8 cumbersome at times. That would be my response.

9 MR. BARBER: When you're in an issue like 10 that and trying to make an operability decision, and 11 let's say you're not restoring something but you are 12 making a decision whether to take something out or not 13 and declare it inoperable. What do you use -- this is 14 kind of a little bit open-ended question. It's more 15 of a judgment question but do you have like something 16 you try to do as far as from a timely standpoint of 17 when you want to have a decision?

18 I mean, let's say it's a diesel. There 19 some problem with the diesel and let's say it's not 20 jacket water but something else. That's normally a 21 72-hour LCO, right? It could be maybe longer for some 22 reasons but let's say it's a 72-hour LCO and some 23 problem comes up. When do you want to have them 24 answered? I mean, is it one minute or five minutes, 25 half hour, three hours?

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90 1 A lot of your diesel calls are 2 pretty straightforward. Some are not. I don't say I 3 need an answer in two hours. I need justification why 4 this thing is operable. I worry about two things, 5 operability and common mode failure. That's what I 6 worry about on diesels.

7 To say that I need am answer in 20 8 minutes, I don't do that. I'm not saying that I 9 haven't said, "Hey, this is important. I need to know 10 somebody in the shift." I've done that but with 11 regards to perability, I've tried to get engineering, 12 my STA, and my SROs involved with regards is it or is 13 not?

14 Typically, I hate to use this, you have a 15 gut feeling where this is going to end up. If my gut 16 feels bad, I'll go ahead and make the inoperability 17 call and follow up with the evaluation and then 18 energize the organization. "Hey, this is what I've 19 got. This is where I'm at." "Did you think of this?"

20 "No, I didn't. Thank you."

21 But I do make engineers -- I do make my 22 shift understand that time is of the essence and there 23 is always time pressure at the stations and how you 24 react to it gets you in trouble. Stay engaged. Don't 25 be wondering off shooting shit with somebody about NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 0 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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91 1 yesterday's game. Stay engaged. We need to get to 2 the bottom of this and figure it out. No, I do not 3 typically say I need an answer in 60 minutes type of 4 thing.

5 MR. BARBER: When you have engaged 6 engineering, especially if it's after hours, how do 7 you deal with that? How do you manage that? Do they 8 have resources available at their house?

9 No, no. We have engineers on 10 around the clock. I have a shift engineer on around 11 the clock.

12 MR. BARBER: You mean the STA?

13 No. I have a shift engineer.

14 MR. BARBER: Okay. What's their role?

1.5 Their role is to support the 16 shift as requested. If they are not requested, they 17 have other duties that they may be working on for 18 their boss or things like that. I know who my shift 19 engineer is and I routinely call him. As a matter of 20 fact, he's engaged tonight on the recovery of the AK-21 403. 17is on tonight.

22 MR. BARBER: Okay. Is that a new position 23 or has that been around for a long time?

24 .:. It's been around for a few 25 years. The coverage is from 6:00 until 2:30 or 3:00.

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92 1 There's a two to three-hour window there. They work 2 10-hour shifts.

3 MR. BARBER: Okay. Instead of 12?

4 I think they work like 6:00 to 5 10 1/2 hours. That's 4:30 and then 4:00 to 2:30. I 6 think it's 2:30 to 6:00 a.m. I do not have coverage, 7 unless they are engaged. I've seen many guys stay 8 until 6:00 a.m. supporting the shift on issues that 9 when I say, "Hey, we cannot lose momentum on this."

10 It never got pushed back or anything. Yes, they do 11 have resources at home to get into the internal 12 website.

13 MR. BARBER: That really goes back to my 14 original question about logistical problems and trying 15 to get answers.

16 I just frustrated when I feel 17 we're hitting a wall, you know? For example, some of 18 the engineers, I think these are kids right out of 19 college, 24, 25 years old. Great. I mean, they will 20 do anything for you but you've got to bring them up to 21 speed and there is a frustration factor there.

22 I'm looking to get some answers and it 23 just doesn't happen maybe as fast as I'm used to with 24 some of my go-to guys that I'm used to. I just try to 25 make sure, "You've got to let me know if you hit NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ..

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1 roadblocks because I can clear the roadblocks."

2 That's pretty much how my conversation goes with the 3 guys that I would consider kind of new engineers.

4 MR. BARBER: What kind of feedback do you 5 get from those folks when you tell them, "Hey, I'll 6 move the roadblocks if you run into any."

7 I usually get a positive 8 response.

9 MR. BARBER: Okay. Do they actually call 10 you back? Have you ever gotten a situation where they 11 have said, "I'm trying to do this and I need this or 12 need that?"

13 Oh, yeah. I make the call.

14 We use them a lot for trouble shooters. We use them 15 a lot for operability calls. We've had them engaged 16 the last two nights on chillers.

17 MR. BARBER: Do you know if Salems had the 18 same -- do they have the same role?

19 20 MR. BARBER: Do you recall what the nexus.

21 or genesis of that was?

22 No, I don't.

23 MR. BARBER: You say it's been a couple of 24 years?

25 I've had a shift engineer for NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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94 1 at least two if not three years. The whole time I've 2 been on shift as a 3 MR. BARBER: Okay. But it's not the STA.

4 It is not the STA. That is 5 correct. We have nonlicensed STAs here now. That 6 happened within the last couple years. We used to 7 have the SRO/STA. We no longer have that. We have 8 individual STAs whose job is to monitor critical plant 9 parameters and to support the shift managers as 10 requested with regards to operability calls and those 11 type of things.

12 MR. BARBER: They have to go through a 13 training program?

14 Oh, yeah. It's about a nine 15 to 12 months. As a matter of fact, not all of them 16 but a majority of them are limited SROs.

17 MR. BARBER: Okay. Thanks.

18 Eileen.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yeah. I have another 20 issue. It's an entirely different topic. We are 21 going to go back. There was a diesel exhaust problem.

22 This is 2003. You are aware of it probably. People 23 were getting sick.

24 That's correct.

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95 1 issues surrounding how to work that, how to do the 2 testing.

3 : That's correct.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Using STBA, the suba 5 gear to go in there.

6 It was my shift that did the 7 first run with the STBAs.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Our understanding is 9 there was an investigation done internally.

10 That's correct.

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In regard to 12 addressing some of the fallout from the incident. Can 13 you just describe we know pretty much the technical 14 details of what the problems were and what you were 15 faced with but from what that left the shift with, 16 what kind of problems were you faced with, if any, 17 that you saw?

18 Sure. I'll start from ground 19 zero. We experienced exhaust leaks and it wasn't 20 until we had a couple of people show some side effects 21 from those exhaust leaks that any real safety concerns 22 were brought up. We started monitoring on diesel 23 runs. We had site protection involved and one diesel, 24 I believe it was bravo, in particular, the leak was 25 getting pretty bad.

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96 1 We had one more run to do before we were 2 going to take it out of service and fix it. The whole 3 premise was it was a pretty extensive outage. There 4 was a lot of work. We need to plan it and get the 5 parts in so we can do it within the LCR window. The 6 management team felt that we could do another run.

7 The bargaining unit balked and it just 8 happened to be my shift so I said, "Okay. No problem.

9 Let's address this." I got the safety reps involved.

10 I got my union steward involved. I came over and sat 11 down wit -I We had a nice long meeting. The 12 readings we were getting did not support any serious 13 type health hazards at the time.

14 We offered. We said, "If you want to wear 15 SCBAs we can support that. It was not a requirement.

16 Well, unfortunately, this is my perception, after that 17 meeting another union steward outside operations got 18 involved that didn't truly understand everything up to 19 the point they came in. Extremely volatile and 20 really, really disruptive to what I felt was progress 21 being made with regards to should we or should we not 22 run this thing and the decision.

23 Then that followed up with -- well, I 24 don't know what happened but the rumors were flying 25 that told the union leader on site that, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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97 1 "You will run that diesel and you will wear scuba,"

2 type of deal. I don't know if that's true or not.

3 That's what got out into the work force.

4 I tried to get an answer so I could 5 squelch the rumor. I could not get an answer. The 6 bottom line was my shift agreed that they would run 7 the diesel and they felt as far as SCBAs they would 8 wear them. The diesel was run with the SCBAs on. The 9 outfall was pretty tough.

10 It was hard to convince various people 11 within the bargaining unit that we were concerned 12 about their safety. We were going to fix the diesel, 13 so on and so forth. No, we didn't make them go in 14 with SCBAs. Yes, site protection had data that 15 supported that the environment wouldn't kill you, 16 those type of things.

17 We had readings. We had plans and a brief 18 of who could go in and how long they could be in and 19 those type of things. It was just real tough 20 convincing them otherwise. The outfall was management 21 doesn't care about personal safety, when in hindsight 22 we were extremely concerned. We were really trying to 23 do the right thing and the bargaining unit agreed to 24 do the diesel. That's my recollection of that whole 25 day. It was a very tough day.

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98 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It seems from what I 2 was reviewing problems were exacerbated by the use of 3 the term insubordination. You would be considered 4 insubordinate if you refused the work.

5 :. That term was never used in 6 our discussions. Our discussions were extremely -- I 7 remember- and I saying, "Okay, what do we 8 gotta do to get this diesel running?" The people in 9 that room came up with great suggestions. We listed 10 them on the board. We said we would do whatever.

11 They listed them up and the next meeting came back and 12 we had another union steward come in that got 13 involved.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The one that got 15 volatile?

16 When I say volatile, he was 17 frustrated. He was not unprofessional but he was loud 18 and he was demanding. He basically said, "There no 19 way are we going to run this diesel with these SCBAs 20 on." To me he was not privy with all the discussions 21 that led up to that. My feeling from that discussion 22 is he had the impression that we ordered our guys to 23 do it with SCBAs when, in fact, we offered it as an 24 added piece of protection if that's what they wanted 25 to do.

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1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When you say the word 2 insubordinate was not used in our discussions, who are 3 you including in those discussions?

4 I heard that was a 5 9iscussion. Don't know if there is any truth 6 to that.

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Not yours with*

8 and'but you had heard about that?

9 You weren't present for it?

10 ! I was not present for that.

11 There was rumors flying rampant that whole day and the 12 next week that theysenior VPhad a discussion 13 with the bargaining unit representative, senior union 14 representative on site. I can't remember who it was 15 at the time. He basically said, "You will run them.

16 If not, you are insubordinate." I don't know if 17 that's true or not but that rumor was out there.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So in terms of what 19 this incident did for the shift, and you're indicating 20 there was some difficulty in overcoming some of the 21 impressions that left, what was done? What did the 22 company do to address it?

23 We took the diesel out like 24 two weeks later and it fixed the leak.

25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

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100 1 We have increased out 2 monitoring. We have a lot of things that -- as a 3 matter of fact, you don't do a diesel run without 4 somebody down there monitoring the environment type of 5 deal. Engineering is down there all the time out 6 looking for leaks, evaluating leaks, those type of 7 things. From that I think we've heightened our 8 awareness with regards to leakage and the monitoring 9 that we do for leakage with regards to the atmosphere, 10 personal safety.

11 That wasn't always part of the culture.

12 "Oh, it's an exhaust leak." You know? It kind of 13 like go back with the incident. Every guy 14 that was an NEO of the station did the job that'OW 15 did but not one person brought up a concern 16 with regards to safety. Then the unfortunate accident 17 happened. Everybody felt like crap.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is he the individual 19 with the head injury and he almost died?

20 That's correct. Then after a 21 one or two week, "Okay, *I Iis going to be fine," it 22 got into, "Management doesn't care about our safety.

23 They are making us do these type of jobs." In 24 reality, the culture allowed that to happen.

25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When was that?

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101 1 . This had to be '99/2000 time 2 frame. Actually, I would say 2000/2001 maybe.

3 MR. BARBER: What was the issue?

4 Service water sluce gates and 5 we have this big tool. It takes forever to move one 6 of those things. What you do is you use the garbage 7 can as a prop. He lost the machine and he bent over 8 and the machine kicked on him and hit him right up 9 side his head. It knocked him out. He came to in a 10 pool of blood and the service water pages had 11 routinely never worked.

12 Like 30 days before we fixed all the pages 13 at the service water structure. If we hadn't, 14 everybody pretty much agrees he wouldn't have made it.

15 He got on the page, called for help and we got him out 16 of there. We medivaced him to Christian and we were 17 successful in saving his life. It was very, very 18 emotional. It was a significantly emotional event at 19 Hope Creek.

20 MR. BARBER: Was there any long-term

21. health effects?

22 He's back to work. I haven't 23 sat down -- I mean, I went over and saw him twice.

24 He's at work so I have to assume that physically --

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102 1 discussion.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's all I have.

3 MR. BARBER: Okay. I think we pretty much 4 covered everything that I had as far as technical 5 issues.

6 If you have any questions, 7 feel free to contact me by telephone and we can maybe 8 do it over the phone.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I have one more. I'm 10 not quite finished but I think soon.

11 12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You had some 13 questions toward the end but I have one more technical 14 incident. I don't know if you were on for this or 15 part of this. Scott might be able to help me with the 16 technical description. I'm going back to about 17 September of 2003.

18 There was a start-up and there were 19 minimal numbers of nuclear instruments available with 20 an additional, we've been hearingabout, five control 21 rods that were withdrawing at excessive speeds. Do 22 you recall a situation like this? A start-up 23 situation like this?

24 There were two start-ups in 25 that time frame. I've got to remember which one.

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103 1 Could you be more specific? Could you follow up with 2 a question?

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What I'm wondering 4 was were you on shift for either one of these?

5** ..

Yes.

6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

7 As a matter of fact, all three 8 start-ups last year I was very fortunate to be 9 involved with all three.

10 MR. BARBER: Fortunate?

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Were they all three 12 in conditions like this?

13 ,We had excessive route speeds.

14 We had a lot of issues with our LPRMs but I'm not sure 15 where your questioning is going.

16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What I'm wondering is 17 during these start-ups did you have concerns with what 18 was available to you and the condition of your 19 equipment? Did you have any concerns with going 20 forward with the start-up?

21 I had issues but not what I 22 would consider concerns. The issues were with the 23 SRMs, the operability of the SRMs during the initial 24 part of the start-up and the availability. Tech spec 25 says we start up with three but management told us NEAL R. GROSS U COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS I 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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1 that we would start up with four and one of them 2 started acting up erratically and giving us periodic 3 alarms. We declared it inop and we started up with 4 three SRMs.

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So your minimum?

6 *At the time we were at the 7 minimum required. We met tech spec requirements. We 8 kind of backed off what we said on the one start-up.

9 Then after that I can't remember if there was a little 10 backlash or not but every start-up since we have four 11 SRMs operable and it was painful at one time to get 12 one. I believe it was delta SRM that was giving us a 13 lot of problems and it was real painful to get that 14 thing up. We did hold the start-up up for that.

15 MR. BARBER: Wasn't there actually a 16 start-up in September, it might have been from the 17 hurricane, where there was significant number of NIs 18 that were integrated status?

19 All I remember is the SRM 20 issue and the number that were inop. It challenged 21 the operability of the monitor for above 30 percent 22 operation with regards to being about to give you a 23 true monitor around the area.

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105 1 were considered operable but one of them was spiking.

2 The fourth one was considered inop. The third one was 3 spiking.

4 The one start-up we have three 5 SRMs.

6 MR. BARBER: Six of eight IRMs were 7 operating which means two were inop.

8 I don't remember the two IRMs 9 inop. I do remember the issue with SRMs.

10 MR. BARBER: There were like 12 or 16 11 LPRMs.

12 I remember at least 12 and I 1.

13 thought there was like 14. I don't remember the two 14 IRM issues.

15 MR. BARBER: And then type of control rods 16 were listed as having excessive rod speeds.

17 Correct.

18 MR. BARBER: And then there were 19 miscellaneous secondary issues to kind of go along 20 with the start-up.

21 Yeah. There were some issues 22 there. The troubled rods, the excessive speed rods we 23 built into the pull sheet to where they occurred late 24 in the start-up or early in the start-up where they 25 did not affect anything with regards to criticality.

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106 1 It wasn't that we didn't know about them or thought 2 about them.

3 I know reactor engineering and fuels came 4 up with a plan to keep them out of the critical area 5 when they were getting close to criticality and the 6 pole up through criticality. I do remember one SRM 7 went off and I do remember a couple of the other ones 8 exhibiting behaviors that was close to but I don't 9 remember IRMs. I do know for a fact that we've had up 10 to 16. I believe at the time there were 14 IRMs that 11 were considered inoperable.

12 MR. BARBER: If one of your operators had 13 come up to you and said, "Hey, I don't feel 14 comfortable starting the unit up under these 15 conditions. Even though you said we meet minimal tech 16 specs, I really don't think -- I think with the 17 numbers and types of equipment I just don't feel 18 comfortable doing that."

19 What would I have done?

20 MR. BARBER: Yes.

21 I would have got him and my 22 management team, sat down, and tried to come to an 23 agreement are we doing the right thing or not. Either 24 make him understand why we believe it's the right 25 thing or maybe we're not doing the right thing.

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107 1 I just had an issue with LPRMs here during 2 a power suppression test. I walked in for that and I 3 had four LPRMs out of 16 in the four-run display that A were red stripe. Something was wrong with that. I 5 said, "No, that's unsafe. I've got 25 percent of my

.6 LPRMs that are ring around the rods that are pulling 7 their own set." I said, "I want them fixed."

8 They fixed them and they held up. I don't 9 recollect anybody coming to me and saying they felt it 10 was not the right thing to do to continue on. That's 11 what I remember about that.

12 MR. BARBER: You've talked about the last 13 six months that the station was kind of behaving in a 14 different manner.

15 That's my perception.

16 MR. BARBER: More of a push to fix the 17 long-standing equipment.

18 I can give you multiple 19 examples of where I think we fixed things in the past 20 we would have questioned it. And whether we would or 21 would not, I just get a feeling some we would and some 22 we wouldn't.

23 MR. BARBER: Okay. I have a couple other 24 kind of last minute follow-up questions I want to ask 25 you related to the overall discussion, if you will.

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108 1 Sure.

2 MR. BARBER: One of the things we've heard 3 throughout the review is that there are external 4 factors that influence the way the plants are being 5 managed and what is important and what's not. Just 6 some general how the organization behaves. One of the 7 themes that keeps coming up is economic deregulation 8 of the utility industry and operating in a competitive 9 environment and how that's kind of changed things.

10 The paradigm has shifted. Instead of 11 asking why something is safe, the question is why 12 can't we do that. I was interested in your viewpoint 13 of whether you feel that has been the case, if you 14 noticed the change and, if so, what extent has it

15. affected operations and what kind of feedback have you 16 gotten and what do you see yourself?

17 ..Until the last couple of years 18 we did not do a good job internally of explaining our 19 decisions with regards to why or why not. Now we try 20 to explain in better detail the why or why nots, i.e.,

21 "Okay, I got that the turbine building ventilation fan 22 is just bugging the crap out of you. I got that it 23 bothers you that you've got to go up there twice a 24 shift but I'm not going to shut the unit..."

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109 1 competitive business to make money. If you own this 2 business, would you allow a guy to go up there twice 3 a shift and monitor something or would you shut the 4 unit off to fix it? The decision sometimes is based 5 on economics, but if safety comes into play, the 6 decision should always be conservative and take the 7 unit off line if you have to to fix it.

8 I think the management team is doing a 9 better job of explaining to the people -- the 10 bargaining unit, for the most part, of why those 11 decisions are made. What is driving that? I hate to 12 go back. The same thing was done with the power 13 suppression testing. We're doing this because it's 14 the right thing to do.

15 We can make it to September. All our 16 projections show that. That's not right. That's not 17 the right thing to do. I would say to you naturally 18 decisions are made on economics but there's no doubt 19 in my mind that drives a lot of our decisions. We are

20. doing a better job of explaining that now. We didn't 21 do a good job in the past. I just told you right now 22 the management team that is in place supports fixing 23 plant equipment.

24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what point did you 25 improve communications on the decision making?

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110 1 Swouldsay after RF-11 which 2 would have been last spring.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: May of '03?

4 We took a focus on it. We 5 talked about it as a shift management team, the office 6 of the shift managers and the OMs, and said, "You know 7 what? We don't sell. We don't pound our chest. We 8 are very good at recognizing bad decisions and when 9 the plant goes, but we don't pound our chest. We 10 don't advertise that. We do good things."

11 Everybody had a nice little sheet of what 12 got fixed and why it got fixed and those type of 13 things. Some things didn't get fixed and naturally 14 they are just waiting to pounce on you. But this 15 thing, of course, it didn't and here's why. We had 16 the reason where before sometimes I didn't have the 17 reasons.

18 When a guy has a question and the shift 19 manager can't tell him why we didn't fix it, it 20 doesn't go over that well. He doesn't know and he's 21 driving the boat? What's going on here?" We've done 22 a much better job of communicating internally on whys 23 and why nots and developing what I call pound-chest 24 documents. It makes it easier for me to deliver 25 messages.

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11 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was the decision 2 making in the past the same as it is now as you see it 3 with -- is it just that the communication of the 4 .decision making is improved or was the decision making 5 -- as you said, if economics goes into it when it 6 becomes safety as an issue, safety wins, was that the 7 decision making in the past?

8 MI would say current versus 9 past. Current is more safety conscious than the past.

10 That's my perception. I'm not saying we were unsafe.

11 I'm saying economics allowed us to make decisions, 12 weigh more in the decisions than they maybe do now.

13 I think we lost safety to overweigh our decisions now.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Safety factors weigh is heavier.

16 Exactly. Plant operating the 17 way it's designed as opposed to we can put a Band-Aid 18 here. We can do a temp log or we can live without 19 that, that type of thing, until the next scheduled 20 outage or those type of things.

21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you see that 22 change in the six months or so that 23 been on site? He's been there longer than that now.

24 I' Ill be honest with you. This 25 is confidential, right? I couldn't pick NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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112 1 out of a lineup and I'm ow".

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

3 1 have never seen him in the 4 control room. Never. That disturbs me. I put that 5 on my synergy survey. It's hard for me to determine 6 if we are leading the right way when I don't see my 7 leaders in the control environment.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.

9 And that's the perception I 10 have. The perception of is we know all 11 about his vacations because he writes nice e-mails 12 about how he unpacks boxes and things like that.

13 That's the perception out there right now. He does 14 not -have a good repore with Hope Creek operations 15 bargaining unit. I can tell you that.

16 , on the other hand, has been a 17 breath of fresh air. I have seen him more in the 18 control room in the past two weeks than I've seen my 19 entire management team over the past two years.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So he's the 21 individual that you -are attributing the heavier 22 emphasis on safety and the decision making?

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113 1 often either. When I approached him with it, it was 2 obvious to me that was not his intention.

3 He said I did that on purpose."

4 I said, "Well, I understand." He said, "I'll hay 5 to set his standard and make sure he had that station 6 going in the right direction before I came over. I 7 didn't want anybody interpreting that I was over there 8 to undermine anything he was trying to do."

9 He says, "I'm comfortable now that' 10 got the station where he needs it. aboard so 11 you'll be seeing a lot more of me." I'm going to hold 12 him to that. If I don't see him here in the next 13 month, I'll shoot him an e-mail." I think highly of 14 ight now. It's been three or four months.

15 I've never had an individual give me the coachings he 16 gives me. He does it very professionally.

17 I've made mistakes and he's given me brief 18 feedback with regards to how we can improve that in 19 the future. Something we never had before. That's 20 part of it and he gives that to the bargaining unit.

21 He goes up in the ready room, He knows their first 22 names.

23 If people don't think that means 24 something, just go ask that bargaining unit what they of ti.. .... He is setting the right example.

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114 1 I think he's turned the attitude towards senior 2 management at this station with regards to we got the 3 right guy in a position that will listen.

4 He can be tough. He can be tough. He's 5 demanding. He demands excellence. ' I 6 told you, it's not that I don't respect him, I just 7 don't know him. I never had the opportunity.

8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I'm just looking for 9 where you attribute the changes to and where you're 10 talking about communicating better and where the 11 emphasis is.

12__3\ attribute the changes to 13 really helped here in the past three or four months 14 but I thought the ball got started even sooner than 15 that from the ops standpoint wheno* took over for 16 ' Not that

was a bad guy but there was 17 just some changes that I noted with regards to 18 ownership and leadership and those type of things.

19 . SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So going back, he 20 took over forrg or for 21 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So at the llevel.

23 Ys 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. That's over a 25 year ago then.

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1 *. Yeah, I would say the past 2 year we've been improving our communications to our 3 people with regards to wins and losses. We have 4 losses, too. They need to understand what the losses 5 were about. I didn't want to get into it. All 6 kidding aside, I can pick( lout of a lineup because 7 I on the e-mails he sends me but I've 8 never had the opportunity to see him in the control 9 environment which to me -- I'm not saying he hasn't 10 been here. He's been on site over a year and I've 11 never seen him. I work days quite a bit. I've never 12 been to a meeting with him.

13 MR. BARBER: Is that a big change from the 14 past practice?

15 was here quite often. He 16 would come over and do his political tours. That's 17 what I call them. He needs to do those. He needs to 18 get out and talk to the people. He would come over 19 and come in to see how you were doing, ask you 20 questions, go in the control room and talk to the 21 NCOs. We have a couple NCOs I'm afraid if 0,would 22 walk in, they would ask him some very uncomfortable 23 questions. Professional but uncomfortable.

24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Along the lines of 25 what do you mean, interaction from the NCOs?

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116 1 They might say, it's a 2 pleasure to see you. You finally figured out how to 3 get here," or something, you know.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because he doesn't 5 have a relationship with the bargaining unit?

6 M N That's my perception.

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are you familiar with 8 the letter that the NRC issued in late January?

9 "This year?

10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.

Ii

Yes.

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How did that strike 13 you in terms of were you in agreement with it? Did 14 you disagree with it? How did you take it?

15 . Initially my response was, "I 16 can't believe this," because I didn't think that 17 environment existed. I don't think I'm in denial. I 18 don't think I'm part of the problem. Then I started 19 second-guessing myself.

20 Maybe I am part of the problem. Then I 21 started thinking about all the times that people would 22 come to me with issues. But my first reaction was, 23 "What are they talking about? I don't see this."

24 That was my first reaction. I had time to digest it 25 and have some discussions wite anf and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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117 1 I think I understand the letter a little bit 2 more. I understand it much more after our discussion 3 here with regards to the perceptions and why that 4 letter was sent.

5 For example, for the diesel issue I felt 6 we listened to their concerns. We did everything we 7 could to get the concerns on the table and address the 8 concerns. Maybe I don't truly understand or have 9 really given it much thought with the perception 10 somebody has. I do have the right perception when II people are getting screamed at and things like that.

12 The diesel thing did drag out so I can understand 13 their perception with regards to management is not 14 listening and not paying attention.

15 MR. BARBER: There's other things that 16 potentially feed into that. I mean, one of the things 17 we've heard is that this is a cultural thing. It's an 18 organizational issue. The station doesn't keep spare 19 parts. It's just not viewed as economically 20 responsible.

21 The goal is to take spares, critical and 22 otherwise, and send them back to wholesale or send 23 them back to the manufacturer. It's like just-in-time 24 maintenance. If we need something, we'll order it.

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118 1 not, that some of the gaskets for the exhaust piping 2 that was replaced would normally have been critical 3 spare and it was unavailable.

4 That's a true statement.

5 MR. BARBER: I for the life of me don't 6 understand that. I can't understand why something 7 that is a nominal value item has to be sent back to a 8 wholesaler or back to a manufacturer. I figure we've 9 paid too much tax on it.

10 We spent weeks and weeks 11 planning and getting parts. It got to the point where 12 we had to get one more run in or we would have to shut 13 the unit down because it was a monthly surveillance.

14 It wasn't for another six or seven weeks that the 15 outage was coming.

16, MR. BARBER: That's an organizational 17 issue that I think maybe someone ought to take a look 18 at.

19 *. Like the issue we have right 20 now with our timers. We don't have spare timers on 21 the shelf. We had to order them.

22 MR. BARBER: I heard the No. 4 CID problem 23 was caused by not having the right bolt. We needed a 24 certain size and-had one a little bit too long.

25 o Exactly.

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119 1 MR. BARBER: I don't know how you live 2 with that. It's got to be frustrating from time to 3 time. Poor maintenance is in there. They are saying, 4 "Hey, we'll try to do what we can but we need the 5 right stuff to fix it."

6 I can take you in the control 7 room right now and show you two extremely large winds 8 that if we could get the parts we could fix them but 9 we don't have the parts yet. We had a battery room 10 duct heater that burned up on us. We had to 11 manufacturer a brand new one. That's taken weeks and 12 weeks and weeks.

13 I got a new MAC channel in the back of the 14 control room that is blinking so bad we had to get a 15 tech spec reading on it. This is the coaching I got 16 that this thing is blinking. My guys are saying, 17 "What if it goes?" I said, "If it goes, we've got to 18 get clean up out of service and isolate it." I said, 19 "Holy moly, I don't thinkA 1,would appreciate that."

20 I got engineering involved and it took me a week to 21 get a trouble shooting plan on how to get a reading 22 for delta flow if that monitor were to go out.

23 MR. BARBER: Well, if you get a clean up, 24 you're going to get in trouble on tech specs.

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120 1 time before we would take the unit off the line.

2 MR. BARBER: Yeah. Some of these things 3 don't have a viable end point either. You get 4 yourself in the wrong loop you may not ever get out.

5 It will be very torturous.

6 I told one of my peers, I 7 said, "I can't even imagine calling at home and 8 saying I had to isolate cleanup because I lost a 9 computer screen. That's a discussion I don't think I 10 want to have with him at 2:00 in the morning."

11 MR. BARBER: Right. So that spares issue 12 is a real issue then. Isn't it?

13 Yeah. Spare part is an issue.

14 MR. BARBER: Is anyone looking at that 15 that you are aware of?

16 I believe there's a level one.

17 I don't know if it's done or not. The guy to talk to 18 if you need to follow up would be, 19 MR. BARBER: Okay. We were talking about 20 the letter and we got a little sidetracked.

21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I think we covered 22 that unless you've got anything to add.

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121 1 there, get the bottom off and fix them. I completely 2 understand that. I'm on board.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You see the kind of 4 concerns, the kind of issues that we are exploring 5 here. We've taken up a good bit of your time. What 6 I would like to know is if you have any concerns that 7 we either haven' t asked you about, haven't covered, or 8 that you have that you would like to talk about in 9 terms of the safe operations of the plant. Is there 10 something that we haven't hit on?

11 jThere's one item that bothers 12 me but I'm not going to get into it because it would 13 sound like a pet peeve of mine.

14 MR. BARBER: What is it? You know I had 15 to ask.

16 I'm a little frustrated with 17 the perception of Hope Creek operations and people 18 outside the department believe there is a cultural 19 issue with reactivity management. That bothers me.

20 Our QA department wrote a pretty scathing letter to 21 the senior VP indicating this.. I read the letter and 22 I took it personally.

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122 1 letter states basically we did a follow-up on 2 announced assessment of reactivity issues related to 3 procedural compliance identified in the second 4 quarter.

5 This was early fourth quarter. then a 6 letter comes out the end of January this year that 7 basically says, "You need to check the cultural 8 behaviors of your crews at Hope Creek with regards to 9 reactivity management." What bothers me is, one, if 10 that's a true statement, that affects safety and that 11 was not reported in a prompt and timely fashion.

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're saying the 13 second quarter of 2003 was the issue?

14 The letter to the senior VP.

15 I can only go on what was in the letter. I believe 16 they are talking about probably the assessment of --

17 MR. BARBER: March?

18 March. okay.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So it was --

20 To me you go in and do an 21 unannounced assessment two quarters later of a concern 22 you had, I have to ask myself how big is the concern?

23 Then if your assessment indicated that you did have a 24 concern, why did it take you until the end of January 25 to report it.

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123 1 (Whereupon, the end of Tape 2, Side A.)

2 It's a cultural issue with 3 reactivity. If you truly believe, that needs to be 4 reported promptly and timely. That affects safety, 5 nuclear safety. That wasn't done in my opinion. Then 6 I went back and I looked at every report that was done 7 in the year 2003 and there was nothing in any report 8 that indicated anything with regards to reactivity, 9 cultural issues related to procedural compliance.

10 There was not one comment. As a matter of fact, there 12 was two negative comments. One was an SRO did a peer 12 check on a research pump tank.

13 The other was the subcritical event that 14 occurred in September with regards to we put the SRMs 15 back in but we really didn't have procedural guidance 16 to do that. We did that based on knowledge. Those 17 were the only two things we had. Now, do I think it's 18 wrong to go after it? No, I don't. I fully support 19 that..

20 What bothers me is I've got an 21 organization that is supposed to be a watchdog and 22 they are not, in my opinion, reporting it if that is 23 their true perception in a timely and prompt condition 24 and they give me no concrete examples to go back and 25 recalibrate my performance so I can assure it doesn't NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

124 1 happen and it erases that perception. It's eating at 2 me a little bit right now.

3 MR. BARBER: Have you talked to anyone 4 about that?

5 I talked to my boss and I 6 talked to I'll be quite frank with you.

7 The subcriticality event occurred whelw 8 in the control room. I won't get into specifics but 9 we got up to around 140 pounds. We can't go above 150 10 unless RICCI is operable. We had a little issue so I 11 told them to quit pulling control rods.

12 We got RICCI operable but in the meantime 13 it started cooling off a little bit. We went 14 subcritical. We got down in range four or five of the 15 IRMs. The SRMs can be pulled at range 3 or above. I 16 directed them to put the SRMs in because I felt we may 17 get down there and I don't want to violate anything, 18 nor do I want an unmonitored core. There was nothing 19 in our procedure that goes over.

20 If you go critical and something causes 21 delay, there was nothing that was concrete and tells 22 you what to do exactly. What we did is we recognized 23 as a group. I called everybody in the room. jz 24 7°KT_11ý1was in the room. We had a great discussion.

25 Reactor engineering was in there. Everybody. We NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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125 1 briefed it.

2 We got RICCIJ operable and we pulled 3 control rods one notch and we went critical again. We 4 anticipated it. We expected it. The pole was in 5 accordance with the IOP, yet the feedback I get from 6 QA is we did reactivity manipulations without 7 procedural guidance and that's the perception that's 8 out there right now of and there is 9 nothing further from the truth.

10 The rod pull was in accordance with the 11 IOP. I put the NIs in and I didn't have guidance but 12 it was the right thing to do. I said I acted on 13 knowledge and expertise which it was. Everybody was 14 in agreement. was in there, yet that's 15 what I get from the QA report and the feedback. That 16 bothers me. It bothers me.

17 I talked to about it and he 18 said, "Think about it. Do you really want to say 19 something?" I said, "Well, this week I wrote a letter 20 to my boss and I've got an appointment to talk to him 21 about it." I have not had official talks but --

22 MR. BARBER: When you're saying boss, you 23 meanli,ý-

24 Yeah 25 MR. BARBER: Isn't your boss, too?

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126 1 Yeah, he is. I sent a copy to 2 him. -w knows how I feel. We've had this discussion 3 before and I sent a copy t . It basically 4 went through what I told you. I did some leg work and 5 I want to erase this perception. I want to be 6 successful. I want the station to succeed. When I go 7 and look at the reports on areas that I need to 8 improve upon or the department improve upon, there are 9 no concrete examples. If QA truly did believe this, 10 why wasn't it reported in a prompt and timely fashion?

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did the letter allude 12 to more than just the one incident?

13 I can get you a copy of the 14 letter if you want it. It basically was not specific.

15 It just said based on some concerns with reactivity 16 issues second quarter of 2003. We did an unscheduled 17 in early fourth quarter of 2003 and the next thing you 18 know there's a letter on desk that 19 says, "You have cultural issues with reactivity 20 management and procedural compliance," which is pretty 21 scathing.

22 It basigally says they are moving 23 reactivity controls without procedural guidance.

24 That's unsafe. If they believe that, I should be 25 fired. Right? NG NEAL R. GROSS l^ /

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127 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right.

2 MR. BARBER: You obviously don't feel that 3 way about it. You felt like you were justified in 4 what you did.

5 Here's what I did. In 6 hindsight I could have done on the spot change to 7 procedure in hindsight. But at the time I felt the 8 decisions were -- I was told the decisions were 9 concrete. We did the right thing but QA says I didn't 10 have procedures to tell me exactly what to do. Well, 11 you are absolutely right.

12 The procedure says it now. It tells me 13 - exactly what to do. I took the E valve. I took it 14 personal to fix everything and everything is fixed.

15 I got one item left open controlling pressure with a 16 bypass jack because we're coming up which would never 17 have put me -- I could open by bypass valves and kept 18 pulling rods. I would have stayed at 100 pounds. I 19 would have stayed to the condenser.

20 MR. BARBER: You mean pressure set?

21 Pressure set doesn't pick up 22 the 150. I want to use the bypass jack and manually 23 open.

24 MR. BARBER: I see what you're saying.

25 I have a bypass valve and just NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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128 1 sit and continue to pull rods. We didn't have that 2 guidance. We are going to have it. Now if the 3 reactors were to go subcritical, it tells you what to 4 do at the NIs. It tells you what the low form is and 5 those type of things. To recommence the rod pull was 6 20 to 30 minutes long looking at everything.

7 We asked questions, "Is there a trouble 8 rod in the area of excessive speed?" "No. We looked 9 at everything." was privy to all these 10 discussions. The way I get feedback is through a QA 11 letter that says we moved reactivity without 12 procedural guidance which is pretty disturbing to me.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was that feedback 14 directly to you or was that shared with your shift or 15 where does that go?

16 i You mean the feedback in that 17 letter?

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The QA letter.

19 .. I talked to the shift with 20 regards to our performance and said it did not meet 21 expectations. I did not in any way, shape, or form 22 tell them that we moved reactivity without procedures.

23 I said, "Hey, we allowed ourselves to do resource 24 manning to get into a situation to where we allowed 25 the reactor to go subcritical. That's not what we NEAL R. GROSS ,

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129 1 want to do." I said I applaud the crew's tenacity in 2 doing all this. I basically relayed wha< old me.

3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right.

4 I put a little appraisal note 5 in their files and put one in my own file in regards 6 to our performance that it did not meet expectations 7 and this was discussed. About a week later I'm being 8 interviewed about operating the reactor without 9 procedure. I told the QA, I said, "Listen, the only 10 thing I did was put the SRMs without procedural 11 guidance. Everything else I had procedural guidance."

12 That's not the way they saw it. I took it a little 13 personal.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What kind of guidance 15 are you getting from your management in terms of how 16 to correct the perception?

17 I have no specifics yet.

18 That's what my letter was about.

19 MR. BARBER: You said you talked to 20 about it. Did he share any insights with you?

21 , Well, the discussion. was, 22 you need to back off a little bit and think 23 about this." He said, "I think you're taking it too 24 personally." I said, W I did not do reactivity 25 controls without a procedure." He said, "I know NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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130 1 that." I said, "Well, you know what's bothering me is 2 I've got a senior VP whose perception of 3 is I'm a fricking cowboy and that's the perception I 4 want him to have." That's what bothers me.

5 MR. BARBER: Well, isn't the case really 6 that you may have let the reactor go subcritical, but 7 it's not the whole picture because the part about the 8 briefing, it sounds like that wasn't accounted for.

9 It wasn't the whole picture. It was only part of the 10 picture.

11 I 'm not sure I get your point.

12 MR. BARBER: Well, I mean, I think part of 13 QC's point, or QA's point isn't it that that 14 particular aspect you said you could make an on the 15 spot change for it and you didn't'.

16 That's correct.

17 MR. BARBER: So that's a valid point but 18 they jumped to a conclusion that is only based on that 19 one bit of information. What I'm saying is there's a 20 counter piece which is the piece that you shared with 21 us about the briefing and who was involved and what 22 kind of questions were asked and answered.

~Right.

23 24 MR. BARBER: So I think what your point is 25 is it's not a balanced view of what happened.

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1 *Exactly. Exactly. I love my 2 job. 95 percent of time I've got the best job on the 3 island. Of course, the downside is 5 percent of the 4 time I've got the worse job on the island, right? I 5 want to retire here. I want to retire as a 6

7 I think I'm good at what I do and it 8 bothers me that I may have a senior leader out there 9 that has a perception of that is not totally 10 true. Not totally true. When we had our discussion 11 at the meeting, it was not the time or 12 place for me to correct what he was saying. I will 13 set up an interview with him in the near future to sit 14 down and talk to him about some of my concerns.

15 talked to me and I just want to 16 make sure everybody understands. It's real easy to 17 read that thing and think that I'm a cowboy. What 18 bothers me more is as in the room and if 19 that was the case, I would have thought the plant 20 manager would have said, "What are you doing?" He 21 didn't. He was on board with that decision. Enough.

22 You sucked me into that one.

23 ISPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I have a follow-up to 24 that. Are there any outstanding issues that are not 25 being addressed that are of concern to you?

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132 1 *No.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Aside from that one.

3 We'll get to the bottom of 4 that one. The issues that bother me are plant 5 equipment issues. The real issues that bother me on 6 my shift things are being done but in some cases not 7 at the pace that I would like. I also understand it's 8 a check and balance type thing. The NUMAC thing I 9 told you about.

10 That's scheduled to go out the end of the 11 month. The heater the end of the month. Those are 12 items that bug me because they bug my guys because it 13 causes us to do temporary logs and things like that.

14 It gets back to what you said. The reason it's the 15 end of the month is parts.

16 Unresolved issues. I'm assuming you're 17 talking safety concerns and things like that. No.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Nothing?

19 No.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you have anything 21 else, Scott?

22 MR. BARBER: No.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If you have nothing 24 else to add, , then I just have a few closing 25 questions for you.

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133 2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have I or any other 3 NRC representative offered you any promises of reward 4 or threatened you in any manner in exchange for 5 today's information?

6 0No.

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have you appeared 8 here freely and voluntarily?

.9 Yes, I have.

10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I have to thank you 11 for your time. It is approximately 9:46 p.m. and 12 we'll go off the record. Thank you.

13 Thank you.

14 (Whereupon, at 9:46 p.m. the interview was 15 concluded.)

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CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of:

Name of Proceeding: Interview of Docket Number: 1-2003-051F Location: Salem, NJ were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting. company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings as recorded on tape(s) provided by the NRC.

u adl Official Transcriber Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.

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