Text

OI Interview Transcript of Witness, Pages 1-95
	ML061770493
Person / Time
Site:	Salem, Hope Creek
Issue date:	10/23/2003
From:	; NRC/OI
To:	;
References
	1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194, NRC-1191
	Download: ML061770493 (97)
	v • d • e

-Otticial luranscript o0 rroceeaings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION (Title: Interview of R"WR 5~. ~*. .~1g t ~... *-2~~ .' S..'-V f *r Docket Number: Location: 1-2003-051 F Hope Creek Nuclear Power Station Date: Thursday, October 23, 2003 Work Order No.: NRC-1 191 Pages 1-95 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island Avenue, N.W.Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 Information in this record was deleted in accordance with the Freedom of Informatlow Act, exemptions F'rA- W.r--/7/?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13". 14 15 16 17 18 20 21 22 23 24 25 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS INTERVIEW-------x IN THE MATTER OF: INTERVIEW OF (CLOSED)Docket No.1-2003-051F

x Thursday, October 23, 2003 NRC Resident's Office Salem Hope Creek The above-entitled interview was conducted at 2:05 p~m. ---.BEFORE: Special Agent EILEEN NEFF ALSO PRESENT: Scott Barber, Division of Reactor Products, NRC Region 1 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

o 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 2:05 p.m.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Today's date is 4 October 23, 2003. The time is approximately 2:05 p.m.5 The location is at the NRC Resident's Office at Salem 6 Hope Creek.7 Speaking is Special Agent Eileen Neff, NRC 8 Region 1, Office of Investigations.

Also present is 9 Scott Barber from the Division of Reactor Products, 10 also in Region 1.11 This interview is with' who is 12 a -P .... at Salem and is also in 13 the position of Before going on 14 the record, you had indicated that you understood the 15 nature of the interview today and that we're making --16 it's an inquiry regarding your assessment of the 17 safety culture here on site and if you had any 18 concerns to note regarding the safety conscious work 19 environment, that there are no particular violations 20 that we're discussing.

It's an overall assessment of 21 the safety culture.22 You also agreed to conduct the interview 23 under oath.24 Yes.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But prior to going on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 the record, what you raised was a point indicating 2 that recently, and this was in the past year, it was 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Your point in raising this issue up front ii was that you did not want that to be something that 12 was undisclosed that would later appear as though you 13 were biased in any way against the company. My 14 question for you is are you able to provide 15 information at this interview under oath from a 16 factual, truthful manner in regard to the company 17 policies that we'll be asking about, company 18 directives?

19 Absolutely.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At this point, can 21 you raise your right hand?22 sure.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you swear that the 24 information you provide at this interview is the 25 truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth so NEAL R. GROSS C(COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 wwwv.nealrgross.com 1 help you God?2 I do.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Thank you. L 4 would you just, if we can spell your last name for the 5 record, it's 6 Correct.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Date of birth and 8 Social Security Number?10 11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And again your 12 position is and 13 you had indicated that you were working here since (14 A 15 That's- correct.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have you always been 17 in the same position?18Yes, I have.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And how long have you 20 21 22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And in that role, can 23 you tell us how you function and what is it that you 24 do?25 My primary function is to NEALR./GROSS

-/COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS I 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 (3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12.13 14 15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and in terms of 16 raising concerns and these concerns would not be 17 particularly pressed by vacation schedules or is manpower, but in terms .of raising concerns of a safety 19 nature, do you have -- have you had experience with 20 doing that?21 There are a hundred guys in 22 the department, probably 99 percent of them have 23 concerns or claims with procedural guidance, tagging 24 evolution, (Inaudible) performed in the field, working 25 relationships.

All that is funnelled through one of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W. N *(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com T e vast majority 2 I'm (Inaudible) concerns of the company..

It's been 3 (Inaudible) complain about the company. Usually, it's 4 me, but sometimes it's one of the 6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.7 The vast majority of any kind 8 of concern concerning the operations of the plant.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. When you do 10 that, what kind of response do you get?11 jjDepending on the supervisors, 12 it's not (Inaudible), the supervisor as well as the 13 issue. I've had responses where work was stopped ( 14 immediately and concerns were addressed and satisfied 15 to the other end of the spectrum, got responses like 16 "leave it" and continue to work. If it's not a safety 17 issue, continue to work. We'll discuss it at the next 18 (Inaudible) meeting or the next 12-hour shift meeting, 19 so responses vary greatly (Inaudible).

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In terms of where you 21 would consider the safe operation of the plant, have 22 you ever had to raise a concern and have you ever been 23 dissatisfied with the response that you got, in that 24 you were still concerned for the safe operation of the 25 plant? )I 25 plant? NEAL R. GROSS ./ /COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 (._a -AJ Yes, Qn a few occasions.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: (Inaudible)

9) We'll talk about the one most recently, since it's most fresh in everybody's mind and that was the continued operation of Unit 1 with BF19 (Phonetic), the 24 BF19 stuck open for 15 hours1.736111e-4 days 0.00417 hours 2.480159e-5 weeks 5.7075e-6 months before we could declare a 303 and shut down.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In the past week or so?j3. Yes, within the past week or two. It's a fairly recent event.SPECIAL" AGENT NEFF: What happened?About 3 o'clock in the morning, the BF19 swapped to manual for automatic control in the control room.MR. BARBER: Do you rememberL (Phonetic)?

jJ I have it right here, somewhere.

NCO Unit Control Room, tried to take manual control of the BF19 to control level at (Inaudible) generator and it failed to respond, to input, manual input.MR. BARBER: And the 24 BF19 is the feed reg valve (Phonetic) for the 24 steam generator?Correct.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.neairgross.com

.o 1 MR. BARBER: And it has a remote control 2 in the control room that could be transferred from 3 automatic to manual?4 L7 jjYes.5 MR. BARBER: And that's what you're saying 6 went to manual?7 Yes.8 MR. BARBER: Okay.9 Anyway, it failed to respond 10 and it was the opinion of the NCO Unit Control Room at 11 the time, there were three, that the valve was 12 mechanically bound, so it failed to respond to 13 automatic input as well as manual input to the control 14 circuit.15 The supervision on at the time didn't want 16 to declare that the case because that would put us in 17 a 303 and would require a 1-hour shutdown and I 18 believe a subsequent 6-hour (Inaudible) cool down. So 19 what they did was --20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was they, the 21 supervisors?

22 71 Supervision that particular 23 night was (Phonetic) wash 24 25 MR. BARBER: Is .i-" the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W, (202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12.12 13 14 i5 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MYes.MR. BARBER: Okay, so the terms are used same as the synonymously?

'~Yes.MR. BARBER: Okay.And we restructure and names change.MR. BARBER: Okay.I still use those. That's the most recent.MR. BARBER: Okay.(.He was the supervisor of the (Inaudible).

He was involved.

And the immediate supervisor was -- it's a fairly new supervisor and I apologize for not knowing his name off the top of my head. (Inaudible)

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you want to go off the record so you can look through your records?j Yes, a quick break and I'll get you his name.(Off the record.)SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're back on the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCR 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.Y WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-370 IBERS A w/.1 www.nealrgross.com (202) 234-4433 1 record after a.brief break. It's you've 2 identified was the 3 Yes.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Involved in that.' So 5 you were explaining there were -- you had three NCOs 6 who had made the attempt to take this manual control 7 and the valve failed to respond and then they had the 8 opinion that this was, the valve was mechanically 9 bound. At that point now we have a difference of 10 opinion involving the Control Room Supervisor and the ii Operation Superintendent above him, as well as the 12 w wa 13 Yes. There were two opinions ( 14 here. The opinions of the NCOs and subsequently the 15 Controls Tech, all were of the opinion that the valve 16 was mechanically stuck. j7 (Inaudible) 17 supervisors, didn't want to commit to the valve being 18 mechanically stuck. instead, they chose to pursue a'19 controls failure.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Now when you say that 21 they didn't want to commit to that, how do you know 22 that, and why do you say that? Were you personally 23 present?24 .2 No, I was not. I was in the 25 field. As a matter of fact, I was the station at NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 the BF19 to man relief operator which, as it turns 2 out, was impossible for two reasons. One, the shift 3 misunderstood the operation of the valve and second, 4 that it turned out it was mechanically bound, so even 5 if it was a type of valve that would allow me to 6 manually jack it (Phonetic), it was physically stuck.7 I was put there.8 MR. BARBER: Was there any way to 9 mechanically operate -- let's say it was not stuck.10 Did you have a procedure or with Some direction or 11 guidance, was there a method to allow you to do that?12 No, the construction of the 13 valve was such that I cannot physically jack that 14 valve shut which is what my purpose was, standing by 15 (Inaudible).

16 MR. BARBER: And the normal method would 17 be some sort of hand wheel presumably, something like 18 that?19 There was a hand wheel in the 20 valve that allows you to limit how far the valve can 21 stroke shut because it will allow you to shut it.22 MR. BARBER: I see.23 It has to be done by the 24 control.25 MR. BARBER: And this is an operated NEAL R. GROSS 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com I 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21.22 23 24 25 MYes.MR. BARBER: And this is in the failure valve?(.mode?2e Yes. It's spring loaded, so it fails to close and that's an error.MR. BARBER: Okay. Can you comment on what the positioner was doing? Were you the one who reported that it was mechanically bound?]No, that was the opinion of the three operators from the control room because it failed to respond to manual input.MR. BARBER: How would they know that without some information from you?SN You would see a change in feed flow. You would see a change in the (Inaudible) level and later we did do local verification in the field from the valve position and felt --MR. BARBER: I guess what I'm asking is when you get in a situation where there's 7- you're getting early information and you don't have all the information, you can always have technical differences on what the nature of the problem is.Absolutely.

MR. BARBER: But, for example, had the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

(

1 operators attempted to manually say -- not manually, 2 to remotely, let's use the term "remotely", to 3 remotely stroke the valve either open or shut, using 4 a controller, and they had maybe some indication in 5 the control room that they weren't sure what it meant 6 and they asked you is the positioner doing something?

7 If you saw that the positioner was in fact not moving, 8 or attempting to be, it could in fact have been a 9 control problem, could it not?10 Possibly yes, that was 11 possible.12 MR. BARBER: Okay. All I'm trying to do 13 is understand why they were so quick to rule that out.14 .I'm not sure how quickly they 15 formed this opinion.16 MR. BARBER: Okay.17 j/ I don't remember what time it 18 was when I first became aware of it. I know that this 19 happened at 3 o'clock in the morning. I remember that 20 after the fact. I was stationed at the valve around 21 5 o'clock initially.

22 MR. BARBER: Five in the morning?23 Right. And I went out there 24 anyway, just because I was an interested operator.

I 25 was out there probably around 4. So there was NEAL R. GROSS 7JH(7-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 conflict and discussion at 12 o'clock, approximately 2 an hour before I became aware of the situation.

3 MR. BARBER: I see. Okay.4 CSo I guess it was in that hour 5 that the NCOs came to the conclusion that the valve 6 was mechanically stuck.7 MR. BARBER: So there was another operator 8 that was out before you?9 The duty operator was there as 10 well.11 MR. BARBER: I see. Was he there prior to 12 you arriving and was giving them information on the 13 valve performance?

Was there any kind of 14 communication to your knowledge?

15 16 W. ._ ho was up there.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The 18yes.19 MR. *BARBER: So did he say he was in 20 conversation at the control room or did he give you 21 any indication that would cause you to believe that he 22 had talked to that control room?23 No.24 MR. BARBER: How did you know there was a 25 problem at the valve? ,// 77 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.neafrgross.com v

(2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10.11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20.21 22 23 24 25°Well, the control contacted and (Inaudible) the valve. He was the first one to verify locally (Inaudible) was trying to open and close the valve. He was the first one to look at it.MR. BARBER: Okay. So there was an operator that was there that was providing some inf6rmation back to the control room on what the valve was doing and they were attempting to move it?ý1 -7 Yes.MR. BARBER: It just didn't happen to be you.correct.MR. BARBER: I've got you. And the name again was what?MR. BARBER:oky SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And did you say that that was within the first hour of when the problem was noticed?Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So between 3 a.m. and 4 a.m., he's at the site looking at the valve and then trying to manipulate it?SYes.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.2 MR. BARBER: Let's go back and pick up 3 your discussion.

There's the disagreement with the 4 three operators and you're starting to go to the 5 (Inaudible) supervisor, operation superintendent and 6 what they thought.7 Can you carry on from there?8 I got involved when I was 9 paged and. asked me to go to the BF19 and 10 stand by for the following instructions I received 11 from the control room in regards to manual operation.

12 I asked him why and he said it was failing to respond 13 to controller (Inaudible) in the control room and I 14 had a few questions for him so instead of going 15 directly to the valve, I went to the control room to 16 get a little bit of clarification about what is 17 expected of me at the valve itself and in the control 18 r6om, I spoke with/t" ' "- "r " 19 and that was when they informed me it failed to 20 respond and I was standing by to manually shut the 21 valve or to control (Inaudible) level.22 MR. BARBER: Okay.23 It was during that period in 24 the control room that I had an opportunity to speak 25 with the NCOs who let me know that they thought the.NEAL R. GROSS /] .COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 problem was mechanically bound and that put us in 303-- they were pushing for shutdown.MR. BARBER: Now did they say why they felt they were on 303?: "I guess they were relying on training and experience.

MR. BARBER: Do you have much knowledge of the tech specs yourself?MR. BARBER: Okay.I"1 .2 The tech specs are usually passed on to the NCOs or supervisor whenever an issue arises.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so at what point in time is though? Is it before you had the valve at 5 a.m.?MR. BARBER: You said you were that 4 because you were -- there's an interest out there before then, right?LI Right. I was at the valve, called, looked for and got direction of what my responsibilities would become upon (Inaudible) of the valve (Inaudible).

So between 4 and 5 and I was having the discussion with four of the supervisors and the NCOs. II --7 P / ý /C'-1-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Between 4 and 5.Okay. And then what happened?.The rest of the shift was pretty much uneventful.

I remained stationed at the 24 BF19, that they were able to control steam generator level by adjusting blowdown, so no control was necessary at the 24 BFl9.MR. BARBER: You couldn't have done it anyway.721 I couldn't have done it anyway, but that was all hindsight now. At the time, there was a belief that I could have done something.

MR. BARBER: Did you think you could do something?

j Say again?MR. BARBER: Did you think you could do something?

o 00, Yes, I thought I could manually (Inaudible).

MR. BARBER: Okay, using the handwheel?

MR. BARBER: Okay.I was under the same impression.

MR'. BARBER: Okay.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 7q/JC (202) 234-4433 www.nealrgross.com 1'2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 7 o the remainder of the shift was uneventful.

We continued to operate, maintain level with blowdown, the (Inaudible) and we all went home. It was the following night when we returned that we commenced (Inaudible) shutdown.

I guess it was around somewhere between 3 and 4 o'clock and the next afternoon, after we did all the trouble shooting and attempts to solve the problem that failed and then the company supervision finally agreed that yes, the valve was (Inaudible) and we shut the plant down. But it was about 15 hours1.736111e-4 days 0.00417 hours 2.480159e-5 weeks 5.7075e-6 months later from the initiating event (Inaudible) shutdown, around 1700 the following day.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And the company, you're saying company supervision raised% it, this mechanical valve?Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who was involved in that?wasn't there during the day.I (Inaudible) names, our AOMs, Ops Manager, I'm sure they were involved with the decision (Inaudible).

Called the plant manager. I'm sure there's a process.(Inaudible) team was called in, depending on what day of the week it is and what time of the day it is.It's different individuals who respond (Inaudible), NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 different technicians.

2 MR. BARBER: Was there, in fact, a TARP 3 (Phonetic) called out for that?4 I never heard that it was, but 5 we were so heavily manned for the Unit 2 outage, we 6 might very well have had all the people necessary to 7 get -- ordinarily a TARP team are operating in both 8 units -(Inaudible) and you initiate a TARP team to 9 address a problem. We just simply don't have the 10 manpower.

But since we were manned up with everybody 11 here for Unit 2 outage, it's quite possible that the 12 TARP team didn't have to be called in because they 13 were on the site for the Unit 2 outage.14 MR. BARBER: Okay.15 j So I don't know if the TARP 16 team --17 MR. BARBER: Okay.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And the 19 20 Phonetic).

21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Or-l 22 .(Phonetic).

23 So in terms of when the decision was 24 actually made and at what point and who was involved, 25 you don't know, it was at operations management level?.NEAL R. GROSS ýI .COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 13{" 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 j3Correct. (Inaudible)

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you have any further conversation with the NCOs who were involved in that, the initial call where they said they thought it was (Inaudible) valve?A M For the remainder of that shift, no, I was stationed at the valve. The following night, we asked that since then, yes, we've had conversation.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:. Okay, who are these people, can you name them?Sure.I'going to have to have a second and I can pull these names up.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you need a couple of minutes?.7Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, we'll take a brief break. It's 2:30.(Off the record.)SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're back on the record...

It's approximately 2:37 p.m. And you said you had the individuals involved.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: All NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com L--

1Yes.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.3 4 (Phonetic).

5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 6 7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Just like it sounds.9 MR. BARBER: Okay, one thing that I was 10 trying to-uhderstand is whenever you have a situation 11 where you have a technical problem, an equipment 12 problem in the plant, you will have differences of 13 opinion and the NRC kind of expects that.14 Absolutely.

15 MR. BARBER: That's understandable.

One 16 thing I was trying to understand and again, I know you 17 weren't necessarily involved with what went on in the 18 (Inaudible) firsthand, but you did hear it fairly soon 19 after it occurred was although the OS and the term 20 supervisor had a disagreement, I want to just kind of 21 explore --22 Say that again?23 MR. BARBER: A disagreement with the NCOs 24 as far as a course of action.25 That's right. 7, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 MR. BARBER: To take, -I wanted to explore 2 that a little more because if you had any knowledge as 3 to why there was a disagreement because one factor 4 could have been and I'm not going to say it was 5 because I don't know, but one factor could have been 6 we need to figure out if we need to take the action 7 for 303, we need to figure out how to safely shut down 8 the unit, because 'if the valve is, in fact, can't 9 rebound, this isn't a normal shutdown.10 :(Inaudible) challenges the 11 normal shutdown (Inaudible).

12 MR. BARBER: And by doing something rash, 13 you could actually make things less safe, than sitting 14 down and stepping back and saying what do we have, 15 maybe they didn't do a good job of articulating it, 16 maybe they couldn't describe the way they felt the way 17 they did, but maybe it was one of these things where 18 they said the plant is in an unusual alignment, it's 19 not in a normal shutdown alignment.

We need to think 20 about if we enter 303 what are the repercussions of 21 that are? We have to initiate action within an hour 22 which is what 303 says, but do we know what that 23 action is?24 You've got an hour to correct your line of 25 condition or take action to bring the plant to hot NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.neatrgross.com v

1 standby within six hours or within the next six to hot 2 shutdown or the next 24, cold shutdown.

It's very 3 prescriptive and there's no real wiggle room.4 -7 ~Right.5 MR. BARBER: So what I'm trying to 6 understand is, could that have been in the framework 7 of why they didn't want to proceed with entering 303?8 If it was, it wasn't -- I 9 understand with everything you said and I agree with 10 you 100 percent. Absolutely, there can be differences 11 of opinions and courses of action to take and I 12 realize that for BF19 being stuck, there's no normal 13 shutdown and it adds to the problem.14 But if they were constantly making the 15 decision that yes, a shutdown was required when the 16 problem was discovered or some short time frame 17 thereafterwards, it wasn't communicated to the crew 18 that the delay was because they were trying to 19 determine the safest course to take to get shutdown.20 What was related to the crew was they were convinced 21 it was physically stuck. It could have been a control 22 problem and the reason for the delay was they wanted 23 to pursue all of the courses of action to ensure it 24 wasn't a control action before having to say it was 25 stuck.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com w

1 MR. BARBER: Is that really unreasonable 2 though? If they really thought it was controls (3 problem, for whatever reason, would that have been an 4 reasonable course of action?5 C- >-I don't know that I can answer 6 you because of my knowledge of the digital control 7 circuit for the BF19 is very minimum as an 0 My 8 concern is that the NCOs involved have a very good 9 understanding of the circuit. The controls technician 10 has probably even a better understanding of the 11 circuit and when you have that much knowledge and 12 experience telling you that this is your problem, 13 should you question it? Absolutely.

Is there an 14 alternative?

Is (Inaudible) control circuit, even 15 though these groups of people are telling you no?16 Sure, it's a possibility.

But I think they deserve --17 1 think their opinion warrants more attention than 18 what they were given.19 MR. BARBER: Okay.20 -7 5The perception of the crew was 21 their assessment of the situation was way off. It was 22 definitely a controls problem and for the next 15 23 hours2.662037e-4 days 0.00639 hours 3.80291e-5 weeks 8.7515e-6 months that's the direction we were headed. So if at 24 the same time there was some thinking that yes, these 25 guys are right, so we need 15 hours1.736111e-4 days 0.00417 hours 2.480159e-5 weeks 5.7075e-6 months to figure out how NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 U to shut down, to get the BF19 shut, that was (Inaudible).

MR. BARBER: Okay.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How much time did it take for the NCOs to come to their conclusion that it was a -- that the valve was mechanically bound? What kind of time frames were they dealing with when they came to that?] All I cantell youis that between 3:05 when it happened and the first time I entered the control room between 4 and 5, they were --the NCOs had formed that opinion.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So within the two hours?~Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So at 15 hours1.736111e-4 days 0.00417 hours 2.480159e-5 weeks 5.7075e-6 months later, management, Ops management is at the same conclusion, or at least is wiling to shut down at that point?MR. BARBER: I don't. know if the times are exact, but they're close to that. There may have been only 12 hours1.388889e-4 days 0.00333 hours 1.984127e-5 weeks 4.566e-6 months or 13 hours1.50463e-4 days 0.00361 hours 2.149471e-5 weeks 4.9465e-6 months later. They entered 303 at maybe 4 o'clock and then they have an hour to fix the end of the line condition and then started shutdown.) Right, right.NEAL R. GROSS7C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com I* .

1 MR. BARBER: And I think they did take 2 some time to try to lay out the proper method of 3 shutdown 4 5 Absolutely.

6 MR. BARBER: So it could be done safely, 7 and in fact, they may have -- there may have been some 8 discussions before that about how to do that, prior to 9 entering 303.10 f3 I don't have that information.

11 MR. BARBER: Right.12 Okay.13 MR. BARBER: But I understand.

I 14 understand your point. Your point was you felt the 15 delay was excessive based on the feedback you got from 16 the NCOs.17 Yes.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Any other concerns 19 related to this particular issue?20 27To the BFl9? Not really, no.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you had indicated 22 that there was more. When we were asking you about 23 concerns, you had regarding the safe operation of the 24 plants, you said I'll start with the most recent.25 What else? NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 c,7 C....- Well, yes, there are others.2 Individually, the BFl9. Yes, it's significant, but if 3 you look at it in conjunction with other concerns and 4 issues, then I think it carries a little more weight 5 than that. I won't say non-conservative decision 6 making, but we'll just call it pushing the envelope, 7 living out there on the edge of conservative decision 8 making to keep the plant on line.9 It hasn't always been that way. We talked 10 earlier about .had I seen an attitude about 11 conservative decision making and staying on line and 12 safety vary over the 'I've been 13 here, oh absolutely.

I think we've probably gone 360.14 When I first came here it was the middle of the 1000 15 day outage, where it was the beginning of the 1000 day 16 outage after .April 17th.17 And attitudes changed quite a bit.18 Conservative decision making was definitely encouraged 19 and taught and we trained that way and it wasn't --20 people's opinions or assessments of a situation like 21 the NCOs wouldn't have been treated like they were 22 last week, six or seven years ago. Does that make 23 sense?24 Six or seven years ago, I think our NCOs 25 would have been listened to more and their advice and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 their recommendations would have been heeded more than 2 they were two weeks ago. So I wasn't here April 17th.3 I came in just after that, but I don't know that our 4 attitude or our position is as bad as it was perceived 5 then and that it would have resulted in a 1000-day 6 shutdown, but like I said we're pushing the envelope.7 I think we're pushing the envelope again.8 So the BF19 is one, but all these are very 9 recent examples.10 MR. BARBER: Before we go on too far away 11 from that, did you get any feedback on anything that 12 happened during the day? When you were off-shift, you 13 said you left at 7 in the morning, which is your 14 normal shift end time, came back in and knew the plant 15 was in the midst of shutting down.16 Did you get any feedback on what occurred 17 during the day as far as how the decision was 18 eventually made to shut the unit down as far as was 19 there any kind of (Inaudible) committee review? Was 20 that, in fact, something that maybe potentially the OS 21 had contacted someone regarding that we wanted to have 22 this reviewed at SORT (Phonetic) before we made a 23 decision on how to progress?24 What I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get 25 some indication as to any knowledge you may have as to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 a desire for either additional reviews for 2 engineering, from operations management, from other 3 senior management, would that, to your knowledge, plan 4 -- what happened?5 JI don't know that, no.6 MR. BARBER: Okay. All right, then I 7 guess we'll move right on.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Basically what you're 9 indicating is that you were seeing a change from over 10 a period that was either back six or seven years ago.11 You had, I think the way you described it was going 12 360 or you were at a point where you see it pushing 13 the envelope regarding conservative decision making.14 At what point do you see that change coming about and 15 what do you attribute it to?16 I'm trying to think how long 17 ago it was, how long ago we had our 490-day -- we have 18 a 498-day run a couple days ago. (Inaudible) run 19 (Inaudible).

Probably I would say around that period 20 we had the unit flooding a valve and we were 21 performing better than we had in Salem or Hope Creek's 22 history and I think it's just a natural tendency that 23 if things are running well so we stop paying them so 24 much attention, we stop dumping so much money into 25 them because they're running well and so let's just NEAL R. GROSS / f/ .COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON.

D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 leave them alone and let them run. And I think we 2 became so proud of the long runs we were having for 3 the first time in a long time and the longest run in 4 history that we didn't pay attention to the past like 5 we did and so then we enter a cycle of let material 6 conditions and equipment degrade again and not wanting 7 to admit to that fact or let that be known, but 8 continue to have these great runs and these great 9 capacity factors.10 So we get there by -- we start 11 encountering problems because of that material 12 condition degrades somewhat, but we had to start 13 making decisions differently to keep the unit up and 14 running, so probably around that -- I would say around 15 that time frame.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Which would be month 17 and year? IC 18 Probably four years ago. You 19 probably start to see decisions being made differently 20 because there were -- who were not wanting to shut the 21 units down, we wanted to keep them up. We keep having 22 these great long runs, keep capacity factor high. And 23 material conditions continued to fade away, continued 24 to decline, so there were decisions that have to be 25 made to keep the units on line in the face of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 degrading fan equipment, naturally, become less and 2 less conservative and you move closer and closer 3 toward making poor decisions.

That can be expensive.

4 It gives you a chance of making a mistake, not 5 following things like you should. It just 6 (Inaudible).

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you have examples 8 of where that might have occurred when the units are 9 kept on line to a point where you would have said it 10 shouldn't have been done that way?11 Recently, we started up after 12 the hurricane, this is fairly recent as well. We 13 started up Unit 2 following the hurricane (Inaudible) 14 related to (Inaudible).

Starting up, we're bringing 15 up the secondary plant, within the fire range. I'm 16 not sure what power we were at. The 17 ..... (Phonetic), happened to notice 18 while he was out (Inaudible) on the plant, the main 19 steam isolation valves were shut (Inaudible)

NSRs.20 The turbine zone line rollers were making 21 electricity, but we're dumping cold reheat into them as 22 opposed to our heated advice team we get from the NSRs 23 for that whole cycle.24 MR. BARBER: You're talking about 25 (Inaudible)?

h I/ -) NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

o 1 L Correct.2 MR. BARBER: Okay.3 Soo calls the control room 4 and says hey, we're coming up in power. When are we 5 going to open the main steam train of NSRs. We're 6 already dumping steam in the lower pressure turbines 7 and they're like oh shit. It turned out a 8 (Inaudible), a procedure.was missed or signed off, 9 that that part of the start up procedure (Inaudible) 10 sign off was completed.

It had already opened them.11 So should we have shut down the unit at that point?12 I don't know. It depends how seriously you consider 13 loss of Configuration control of procedures not being 14 right and in fact, whose been dumping cold reheat into 15 the low pressure turbines.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How did it get signed 17 off, if it was --18 An error. I don't know. I 19 wasn't there. Just in the course of the procedure 20 shuffling in the unit back from a shutdown and it was 21 missed.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did this become some 23 sort of notification where more of an issue --24 j It became a notification.

I 25 have a copy of it here, somewhere.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 Other than it becoming -- it became a 2 notification.

We backed the unit down in power, 3 un-isolated the MSRs.4 MR. BARBER: Do you know what 5 approximately the power was when it happened?6 No, I don't. I'm sorry, I 7 don't.*8 MR. BARBER: Do you have the information 9 available?

10 I'm not sure if it's in the 11 notification or not. I can look for it real quick.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let's take a look at 13 it. We'll go off the record. It's approximately 4 14 2:55.15 (Off the record.)16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're back on the 17 record. You're indicating you just can't find that 18 notification right now. It's about 2:59 p.m.19 1 was actually down here that 20 week helping out and it was the week around the 15th 21 of September. (Inaudible)

The hurricane was coming, 22 it was like a Thursday night or something.

The plant 23 rep. was checking on the (Inaudible)

-- it would have 24 been the 16th or 17th.25 MR. BARBER: Right. (~( 7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com v

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13¶" .14 15 16 17 18 19.20 21 22 23 24 25 U:61 .n. I don't know off the top of my head, but I remember it was my shift and we started to turn back from our 7-day.MR. BARBER: Probably would have been the weekend of September 26th, 27th.E I No, I'm thinking it was the weekend of the 20th. I'm pretty sure I was here the week of the 15th. I think the hurricane was supposed to arrive near the site on the 18th which was Thursday.MR. BARBER: You shut down that weekend.113 And shutdown would have been like the 20th or 21st.MR. BARBER: Oh, I see. You're saying the actual -- the recent start up -- I got it.fl When we rolled back in from our 7-day, we were starting up on Friday, the 26th.MR. BARBER: Okay.That's possible.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So somewhere during that shift --: (Inaudible)

It was actually (Inaudible) start up. j (Phonetic), valves were shut, the course of action we followed was we reduced power, reopened the valve and then continued NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 7c 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

o 1 up with the start-up and notification was written and 2 (Inaudible) procedure.

3 MR. BARBER: Do you know what came out of 4 the notification?

Had you gotten any information on 5 what the corrective action was for that?6 1 No, it was much too soon for 7 that. That takes some time. We're just talking could 8 we roll from that and then just a couple of weeks 9 later, ripe for an outage? So I really don't expect 10 corrective action for that issue probably until some 11 time after the outage.12 MR. BARBER: All right. Is that an issue?13 The time it takes to --14 MR. BARBER: Well, it's not so much the 15 time because -- the time is fixed by your process, but 16 there's also, is there any acknowledgement that 17 there's other opportunities we could make the same 18 mistake and if they're going to occur before the time.19 frame starts? In other words, if you've got 30 days 20 to write an evaluation to address the underlying 21 issue, but what if you're doing another start up 22 within'the 30 days?23 Rgt 24 MR. BARBER: Shouldn't that be something 25 against factoring into --NEAL R. GROSS A-1 7C~COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com L 2 MR. BARBER: The corrective action 3 process?4 1f Yes, you're right.5 MR. BARBER: I mean even if it's just to 6 roll out and say hey, we had this problem about a 7 month ago where we forgot to line up the MSR 8 (Phonetic) properly and it was a sequencing or we got 9 too busy or whatever you know at that point, just roll 10 it out to the shift so that it's something more 11 attended to.12 11 You're absolutely right.13 Something like that should happen, but I don't know 14 that it's happened yet because I haven't heard 15 anything.16 MR. BARBER: Okay.17 JLike that rolled out in the 18 form of temporary (Inaudible) order- or just some 19 feedback on the shift meeting or something like that.20 I hadn't heard anything rolled out as a corrective 21 action or how we're going to keep that from happening 22 again.23 MR. BARBER: Okay.24 = Like I said, I really expect 25 it soon. NEAL R. GROSS -7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 MR. BARBER: Okay.2 JYes, recognizing the fact that 3 yes, we would be in attend situation before we had 4 that roll out.5 MR. BARBER: Okay.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who are the operators 7 involved in this?8 2 In the control room?9 ~~(Phonetic) was in the control room that day.10 I'm not sure who was in the control room that day.11 I can get you that information.

12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I'm just looking for 13 -- in terms of the notification and people involved.14 And who's the individual involved in this final?15 mK-m u .. , , 16 2 (Inaudible).

17 MR. BARBER: So he was assigned to the 18 (Inaudible)?

.19 Right.20 MR. BARBER: Should he had been signed off 21 on the same shift or (Inaudible)?

22 ) Just based on where we were in 23 the start up and the time of day when it was 24 discovered, because I remember it was late, it was 25 early afternoon.

I'm sure I remember that that should NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 have been a sign off that

4 ould have made. It 2 would have been made in the previous shift. We should 3 have been farther along in the start up than we were.4 MR.ARB: An last name?6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, did you have 7 some further concern on that?8 I just don't -- I just feel 9 like we should have and maybe we did and I'm just not 10 aware of it, but we couldn't have because we came down 11 to power, open the steam (Inaudible) and went right 12 back up again.13 I was concerned about the effects of the ( 14 not reheated steam getting pumped into the lower 15 pressure turbine and (Inaudible).

But my knowledge of 16 that is -- an engineer somewhere should be making that 17 determination, but I know we didn't look at that and 18 make a decision on the low pressure turbine bleeding 19 and the effect that might have resulted from dumping 20 the non-reheated low pressure steam into the low 21 pressure turbines.

We were down in power.22 (Inaudible) 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You would have 24 expected (Inaudible) assessment of a possible bleeding 25 problem before the start up began? .-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

o 1 Ys 2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's where you --3 _.I (Inaudible).

Is it a safety 4 (Inaudible), no, it's a company asset concern. Low 5 pressure turbines -- I just (Inaudible) bleeding 6 (Inaudible).

7 MR. BARBER: It is a configuration control 8 issue because compliance, there's a (Inaudible) 9 procedures, a step by step requirement for these kinds 10 of procedures and this got signed off and it shouldn't 11 have, so there's an error obviously.

12 As it turns out there was 13 another issue with the same start up and again it was 14 a main steam issue with the steam dumps, that's 15 probably a controls issue. The steam dumps were 16 operating erratically on the start up and our 17 procedure IOP3 directs us to --18 MR. BARBER: This is on the same start up?19 Yes.20 MR. BARBER: So-would this -- was this an 21 earlier problem?22 Yes.23 MR. BARBER: And it occurred before the 24 MSR problem?25 Yes.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234.4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 MR. BARBER: And that was on a Friday, the 2 26th, if I remember right?3 I want to make sure I get my 4 time and dates -- 9/26.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And the same numbers 6 you're indicating, you have a copy of the notification 7 there?8 Yes. As well as I have these 9 pages of procedures (Inaudible) also, but (Inaudible).

10 I have it in my pile.11 Our concern was that steam dumps weren't 12 operating properly on the start up until the NCOs were 13 directed to take manual control of the steam dump and 4 14 control temperature and pressure that way during the 15 start up, although the IOP tells you that the steam 16 dumps have to be in the automatic for start up. So 17 the fix was it's that delaying the start up a little 18 while.to control the opportunity to go look at the 19 control circuit for the steam dumps and determine why 20 they're acting erratically.

Instead, the decision is 21 made to put on an on the spot change in the procedure 22 to no longer require you to have to be automatic 23 control, to allow the start up to be manual and we 24 quickly shot two NCOs out of the training center, gave 25 them some quick training on the simulator for starting NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS p 1 -1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 the manual control because it's never been done 2 before. We haven't been trained that way. Brought 3 the guys back, continued to do the'start up manually 4 for cooling off steam dumps.5 MR. BARBER: Do you happen to know was 6 there a work around entered in the work around log for 7 this?8I don't know. I have a copy 9 of the notification

--10 [END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A; BEGIN TAPE 1, SIDE 11 B.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're, on Side B.13 It's approximately 3:06 p.m.14 Just ask your question again, Scott, in 15 case at the end it might cut off.16 MR. BARBER: I asked if this was entered 17 the work around log?18 .iIJ Definitely.

19 MR. BARBER: Okay.20 I had actually thought of that 21 too.22 MR. BARBER: I've done inspections of it, 23 so that's why --24 (Laughter.)

25 It sounds like a classic work around NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 because you had a situation where equipment is supposed to operate and it didn't operate properly and what happened was a procedural one, a work around.Right, exactly. We quickly tried to (Inaudible) to work with that work around.We changed procedure and continued to (Inaudible).

MR. BARBER: Okay.--To me, these are all examples of being more concerned with either keeping the unit on line like the BF19 or get the unit back on line as quickly as we can with the steam isolated SRs (Phonetic) or the steam dump (Phonetic) acting erratically.

To me, they're always (Inaudible).

I understand we're a business.

We're here to make money. We're here to make electricity, but like I said I think we're pushing the envelope.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you're offering your examples of. pushing the limit, but not conservative.

]Ri ght.MR. BARBER: Actually, this kind of sounds like a production over safety. It may not be nuclear safety, but it's hard to tell.# " ijjRight.MR. BARBER: But it's definitely a NEAL R. GROSS7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 production bent to it. Let's keeping continuing with 2 the start-up so we can maintain some schedule and 3 we'll try to do it right by doing the training and 4 (Inaudible) change, but then there's a question about 5 what stand-alone problem would (Inaudible) those?6 What happened with that as far as --7 § We continued with start-up 8 manually.9 MR. BARBER: And then what?10 We patted ourselves on the 11 back, good training.

And away we went. I don't know 12 what's happened with that since then.13 MR. BARBER: So you don't know whatever 14 the problem was with that has automatically been 15 fixed?.16 No, I don't know.17 MR. BARBER: Do you have any knowledge of 18 the nature, any more details about the nature of the 19 problem?20 Why they were acting 21 erratically?

22 MR. BARBER: No, what that meant. To say 23 they're operating erratically, it means different 24 things to different people. Does it mean that it 25 would pop open and all of a sudden and then close, NEAL R. GROSS(Il 7-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 does it mean they were opening in different sequence?2 What exactly does that mean? Can you give me any 3 details on that?4 -g I did witness firsthand two 5 different sets of steam dumps, (Inaudible) numbers, 6 steam dump on the west side of the turbine building 7 all the way north; and the steam dump in the middle of 8 the building on the east side. I was the primary 9 communicator during the start-up so I kind of had the 10 freedom to move about, look at the start-up, which is 11 what I usually do. I just happened to be out walking 12 around with all this stuff going on, and I saw the two 13 steam dumps, the two TI drag (Inaudible) stroke and 14 (Inaudible) open, shut, open, shut, open, shut, open, 15 shut, open, shut -- that's how those two out of all 16 the steam dumps were trying to control temperature and 17 pressure (Inaudible).

And I questioned them and I 18 showed it to a supervisor and said I'm not steam dump 19 heavy, it's a valve I look at when I'm making rounds 20 for leaks or any obvious problems, but it's 21 controlled, completely from the controller.

I really 22. don't know nothing in the (Inaudible) to do with that 23 valve other than it's something to look at and check 24 on a round. But as far as, I don't -- I never operate 25 it myself ..N R .R O S NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com v

1 I understand what it does and how it does 2 it and modes of control, but I never am involved with 3 it. So I questioned because I had never seen one of 4 those TC (Inaudible) do that before, cycle, cycle, 5 cycle, cycle, cycle. (Inaudible) 6 MR. BARBER: What was the comment that you 7 got back?8 It was kind of like, didn't 9 express (Inaudible).

So I thought well maybe there 10 was no concern, because that's normal, even though the 11 others weren't doing it. When I had the opportunity, 12 later, I questioned one of the NCOs, not.then because 13 it was into the startup. But later, when I had the 14 opportunity to ask an'NCO had exactly does the PTI 15 drive (Inaudible).

Should I be seeing that? No, you 16 shouldn't see it doing that. I'm not sure what's been 17 done since then.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You don't recall who 19 the supervisor was that you approached?

20 jJ No, I just happened to catch 21 one out of the corner of my eye. It was one of the 22 'Ops supervisors out in the field doing the same thing 23 I was doing, just watching evolution.

24 MR. BARBER: One thing I'm not clear on 25 and maybe you mentioned it earlier, if you did, I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS A 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., NW.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 apologize, but was there notification written on this 2 (Inaudible), is that what you had in front of you or 3 was it on something, some related --4 There is a notification 5 outstanding against the cycling of the steam dump and 6 it's related to this notification, but this 7 notification is specifically, this notification is 8 written from the control room and any indications they 9 saw, that it was acting erratic. I don't have --10 MR. BARBER: Okay, but in your mind is the 11 question you asked about, the CCI drag valve, do you 12 believe that to be covered under the same 13 notification?

Is it all part of the quote erratic 14 operation of the steam dumps?15Yes.16 MR. BARBER: Okay. So it's just another 17 symptom or observable indication of the same 18 underlying problem you believe.19 j Right.20 *MR. BARBER: I'm just trying to 21 understand.

22 Okay.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's three issue on 24 the one start-up.25 W The BF19 problem. That was a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.neafrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 19 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 different

--SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The isolation valve problem, the steam dump and now the one with the erratic movement.* .. ~That was the steam dump.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Two issues, same problem.U Right. One was observed from the control room and then my observation in the field.MR. BARBER: Okay. That's what we're trying to understand.

Very good.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And again, you offered the examples of what you were seeing as ways that potentially the site is pushing the envelope and pushing it in terms of conservative decision making, but they're on the edge of that in order to keep the units on line.Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about anything else along those lines? Is there anything else related to this particular start-up, first of all, are there other incidents you'd like to talk about?FI think everything else in my pile is hours related.NEAL R. GROSS I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701

/ Q___(202) 234-4433 www.nealrgross.com 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: For this outage?2 Uh-huh.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It seems that 4 everything here is all very recent. Have you seen 5 this problem, this pushing the envelope prior to this 6 time?7 Yes, but all that stuff is put 8 away and I didn't get a chance to go through it. This 9 is stuff that I had on top of my pile that I haven't 10 looked at and done something with it, so that's why I 11 have it here.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This .is a recent 13 pile.14 15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How many times do you 16 think you've noted there's -- going to the edge on 17 this? How many incidents do you have?.18 .I don't have a good feel for 19 that. It feels like it's more and more lately, like 20 there's more and more scenarios

--21 MR. BARBER: Lately since you talked about 22 the Unit 2 record run. You said four years ago, 1999, 23 when you say "lately" do you mean in the last year or 24 so?25 Probably in the last year or NEAL R. GROSS) 7c COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 SO.MR. BARBER: Okay.0] I've seen it more and more frequently.

MR. BARBER: Okay. And can you attribute that to anything?

Is there anything, any change that would have occurred in that, whatever you felt like --You know, I don't know how to say it, but says , _let's go backwards.

I'll give you my opinion.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: (Phonetic)?

S'(Phonetic).

Seemed to be for the-short period of time he was thC -7 and maybe this was just his management style, he seemed to be comfortable staying back, out of the picture which is a good way to maintain a big picture of the department.

But he seemed to be content in letting NM. ]run things and make these kind of decisions.

I was in a lot of meetings with the three o and one of the other two. And never at the meetings had a position or made a decision or took a stand. It was always either doing that for him. Maybe that's the way he chose to run the department, but' Gsiever had anything for us NEAL R. GROSS pu )COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 other than I'll look into that and get.back to you.So it's an overseeing period and it was kind of like that unde tjjust prior to (Phonetic) also. kind of came and went in a short period of time.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This is 2002 some time?:_ Uh-huh. An;d* seemed to have the same, I won't say problem, but he seemed to run the department the same way. He seemed to have spent -- he had a lot less involvement than what I remember previous of like a" and (Inaudible) and (Inaudible) in the day to day operation of the department.

ofl, Jseemed to be spending the majority of their time in meetings around, so I don't know if there was a change in upper level management in the same time period that demanded more of their time spent away from the department.

We're seeing in the department more of our policies and training and just how we ran the department being left up to our AONs for the first time, as opposed to the Ops Manager dictating their policy. Their time and energy was demanded elsewhere.

That's probably (Inaudible).

I remember starting to see a lot of these issues come up and a lot of the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 m.nealrgross.com 1 decisions going in the direction we're headed now as 2 when many of our AONs first started making those 3 decisions.

It appeared to us anyway.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It was being pushed?5 -Right.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At that level.7 1. Rw _ ight.8 MR. BARBER: Was there a change in the way 9 managed? What you describe is sort of 10 engage/disengage style. It sounds like what you're 11 saying is more recently in that relative time frame he 12 was disengaged.

What I'm trying to get an 13 understanding of is was there a time when he was very 14 engaged or more engaged --15 No, was never engaged.16 MR. BARBER: So it was just his style 17 consistently throughout.

18 o Right.19 MR. BARBER: So it wasn't a change in the 20 way he managed?21 No. The change I'm referring 22 to is some time between 'because 23 was very disengaged also. So I don't know 24 what might have been changing in upper management 25 around that time frame, leaving andI NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 arriving.

But that seems like when we changed from a 2 very active to one that -- whose time is 3 spent elsewhere.

4 owas the first one --he came and 5 went and a lot of guys in the department never even 6 met the guy.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That remote.8 .* He was that removed from the 9 Department.

10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about fron*L 11 -(Phonetic) position?

Did you 12 have any first hand discussions with them on why their 13 decision making is any different in this time frame?14 p I can' t remember when 15 and first moved into the position.

I know 16 was a ome time ago. Moved out ofIend 17 has just recently come back. hasjust moved 18 into that position fromll hs on 19 from that 2 he's come up 20 through the ranks. I can't remember when he moved 21 into thatw I think it was during while I was out 22 last year. -I think I remember hearing that change in 23 the department when I was out. (Inaudible) 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So for the two of 25 them, you don't have anything to compare it to. It COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON.

D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 really would have been before seeing a change. It's just they're in a position that seems to be making the decisions that you question at some point, you questioned?

Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have we covered what you have to offer for recently now or do you have --Those three are things that were discussed.

That's what I have as far as notifications and concerns recently.

Unless you want to go back, unless you want to talk about a sore spot with operational (Inaudible) by supervision.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If it's a concern.I'm not sure. I doubt if it's a nuclear safety issue, but is the one, I7 is most guilty of this than the other supervisor.

F ]since he became, which (Inaudible), so it's been 10 years out in the field.MR. BARBER:. So he knows how to operate the equipment?MR. BARBER: Presumably.

He understands how the equipment operates?f0 "" Yes.MR. BARBER: He knows how to operate it.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS , *1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 What you need to do?2 7 jJi-Yes. So I don't know if it's 3 been a difficult transition for him into supervision 4 where he's not supposed to be touching equipment now 5 or maybe he misses that. I don't know what the 6 reasoning is, but since he's been a supervisor, he's 7 been written up and grieved for doing work in the 8 field, for manipulating a pressurizer valve and that 9 was probably two and a half, two years ago when he was 10 a supervisor.

11 MR. BARBER: What did he do there?12 4 He operated -- it's a while 13 back. I just remember an occasion where he operated 14 a pressurizer valve. What exactly he did with it, I 15 don't know.16 MR. BARBER: Meaning from the control room 17 or locally?18 A- Locally, in the field.19 MR. BARBER: So something had. to do with 20 the pressurizer.

21 Do you remember what the nature of the --22 why he was doing that?23 I don't know.24 MR. BARBER: Did he feel like he wanted 25 someone to do it, and they weren't doing it, so he NEAL R. GROSS A W 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 said I'll just go do it? Or was it he did it as an 2 expedient or don't you recall?3 .I don't recall.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But he was written 5 up?6 Yes. And I could pull that 7 up. I could go --8 MR. BARBER: That's okay, that's 9 background.

I just was trying to explore what your 10 knowledge was.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So at some level it 12 caused a problem because he was documented for doing 13 this?14 More recently there was the 15 MS43, the main (Inaudible) to the feed pump. He 16 (Inaudible) in the field (Inaudible).

I might have 17 that here somewhere, I'm not sure.18 Maybe a year ago. I might have that here.19 What happened there was there was a leak on the main 20 steam valve going to the feed pump on Unit 2 and 21 blowing steam pretty good. I wasn't here that day.22 All the information is what I received from the guys 23 when I came in. There was a notification written for 24 that one also.25 There was some decision about would we be NEAL R. GROSS 41/ -7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 better off with the valve open or shut. The nature of 2 the leak, I don't remember exactly what proponent on 3 the valve, it was (Inaudible) or where the leak was, 4 but there was a lot of discussion on whether or not 5 shutting the valve would make the leak worse or just 6 leaving it open was the best way to deal with it.7 And while all that discussion was going on 8 in the control room, *" went out in the field and 9 shut the valve himself. And (Inaudible).

10 MR. BARBER: Did you need (Inaudible) 11 cooperation?

What was the status of the unit at that 12 time? Was the unit running or wereyou hot behind the 13 stops?14 W-1 We were up and running. Btit 15 I'm sure, obviously, we had put ourself in a position 16 that we could -- we had to have lower power to allow 17 operation on a single feed pump preparing for -- it 18 le&ked for some time before -- the leak just continued 19 to grow and grow and grow and we're talking days. So 20 we had-set ourself up for taking some course of action 21 and not having that feed pump and it just got to a 22 point where I guess 9 finally made the 23 decision for us and about shutting the valve on his 24 own. That was an issue also. That was grieved also.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So the union NEAL R. GROSS /-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 responded to that?( 2 'It was a safety concern raised 3 for that because he just took, went up to a -- if 4 there was a genuine safety concern for that, because 5 here's just an individual, just forget who he is, but 6 here's an individual who just took it upon himself to 7 take a ladder, climb up to a valve that's blowing main 8 steam and then operate the valve with no protection, 9 no (Inaudible), no safety manual, no nothing. So it 10 was a genuine safety concern about that an 11 (Phonetic) calle" 12 and had a meeting about that. And it was such a 13 safety concern that the Union dropped the 50 grievance 14 about a e se we 15 were more concerned withl l attitude about safety 16 and just feeling like it was okay for him to go out 17 and crank a valve shut. It could have been done a lot 18 safer. So that was *the big thing that came out of 19 that.20 MR. BARBER: Okay.. The MS43s, is that the 21 main steam?22 Yes.23 MR. BARBER: Main supply. So it's not a -24 25 J Right, it's not like a NEAL R. GROSS .oV COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 vww.nealrgross.com 1 (Inaudible) supply that you can use for start-up, for 2 rolling the turbine and stuff like that.3 I guess very recently was the 4 4 (Inaudible) breaker. He tried to -- I am not sure 5 what he was trying to do, but they were having 6 problems with one of our circ. water (Inaudible) 7 breakers and there was a notification written up for 8 it having -- for contacts not being made up when it 9 was racked into position.

A bar wasn't rotating like 10 it should have and making enough contacts, make or 12 break or operable.

5 went out one day and 12 was the operator and they were 13 trying to get the contacts made up to make a 14 circulator available and ! used -- took like a 15 rail extension bar that you use for pulling the 16 breaker completely out of the cabinet and he was 17 trying wedge it in down beside the breaker, trying to 18 get the breaker to jimmy so that the bar inside the 19 breaker was rolled that last little bit and make that 20 contact up and then they would call the breaker up, 21 the circulator available.

22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That was a situation 23 that was written up?24 25 MR. BARBER: Is that the trunk operated NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS A-11 7 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9*0 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 switch?j;What's that?MR. BARBER: Is that the trunk operated switch?LI That's what I call it.MR. BARBER: Isn't that the name of the switch that was the permits for the circ. water breaker?Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How recently was that again?L7 J 7About in the last four months.MR. BARBER: So was he grieved on that also? How was that characterized?

.That was just an arbitration.

That wasn't grieved.MR. BARBER: Okay.L But the problem with that is you've got your running, around (Inaudible) manipulating equipment.

One of our concerns is it's sending the wrong message to those other supervisors, just --this one they did absolutely nothing about and nobody knows anything about this but myself and my supervisor that was involved and I decided (Inaudible) let it go. A ,i ft I I/cl_-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 www~neafrgross.comn 1 But on the shut down on Unit 2, we were 2 purging the RCDT (Phonetic) after the shutdown, 3 getting ready to tag it out, so we were purging it.4 A couple of operators in this area (Inaudible) were 5 down at the lower 4 panel, this is where the control 6 (Inaudible).

And one of them called me, (Inaudible) 7 called me up and said there's something really strange 8 just happened.

I said all right, what have you got?9 He said we're.venting, we're purging the RCDT with 10 nitrogen.

I said okay. He said I'm going to set up 11 the procedure where we initiate the first flow of 12 nitrogen in the RCDT and he said we got no flow. And 13 he said we called the control room and said hey, we're 14 having a nitrogen flow in the RCDT and they said they 15 would look into it and get back to us, hang out, we'll 16 check into it and all of a sudden now we have a 17 nitrogen flow. But we never heard from anybody. I'll 18 look into it. So I went and asked him and I found out 19 that rw ;_ i (l 20 running the evolution took it upon himself --21 initially, told me when I questioned him, I said 22 hey, how did you work around -- how did you get the 23 nitrogen problem fixed on your RCDT job? He said I 24 got an INC tech (Phonetic) and I had them adjust the 25 control. It's a regulator valve. He said I got an NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 7 1 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 wwvw.nealrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 INC tech to adjust the controller.

That's a pretty common problem. You can get an INC tech to do that.I said okay. I said hey, who was the INC tech who adjusted that for you? I was curious how it happened without the guys involved in the evolution knowing what was going on. He said I don't remember who the guy was. That's okay, I'll go down to the shop and ask around, see what they did to the regulator to make it work. It was obviously something that needed to be encompassed in the procedure, so next time we do this, the regulator is adjusted properly.

He called me again. Before I got down to the-shop he turned to......_. ...udIhaudible) got me to ask if we could just talk privately.

I had (Inaudible). (Inaudible) so I'm going to tell you.He said I operated the nitrogen valve. I didn't get a INC Tech. I just told the guys that's what happened so nobody would get bent out of shape. I said I appreciated his honesty; (Inaudible) and I let him know.MR. BARBER: I don't understand.

Why did he have to even do that to begin with?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: He did it after the call to the control room?NEAL R. GROSS 76 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 0-1ý.o 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: He went in when the 2 call came in? ., 3 He was informed.

He was 4 supervisor.

Instead of taking the time to get an INC 5 Tech, which during an outage, I don't know if one was 6 available or not and I don't know if that was an 7 issue, instead of getting an INC tech to do that, he 8 just went out in the field and adjusted the regulator 9 himself.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What procedures 21 weren't -- account for me what he should have been 12 doing in there? I understand he should have had an 13 INC tech, but what were the specific requirements, any 14 kind of 15 16 MR. BARBER: To follow up on what Eileen 17 is asking and maybe actually maybe it's just moving 18 back in time. Should the valve, the regulator valve, 19 should it have already been lined up so that when they 20 did the stuff, when the operators did the stuff in the 21 procedure that was called for to do the purge, it 22 should have just went smoothly, or was there, in fact, 23 a step that was missed? I think we're trying to 24 understand.

e7 25 §3 That I'm not clear on but we NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25.haven't got back to that yet.MR. BARBER: Okay.oo We haven't got back to that procedure.

It's either one or two things. Either there needs to be a step in the procedure that addresses changing a set point for that regulator for this particular evolution or there's a problem with that controller not maintaining pressure where it should have.MR. BARBER: Okay. So which of the two is it?jI don't know yet. I haven't had a chance to pursue that.MR. BARBER: Okay.i It's one of two.MR. BARBER: So the individual operator valve was (Inaudible)?

Okay.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What's his title?He was a CRS.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: He's a control room supervisor?

Have you seen that (Inaudible)?

~No.MR. BARBER: What would the impact have been, assuming you would have gotten an INC technician NEAL R. GROSS A I/ COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

.°w 1 2 3 (7 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 it out for maintenance.

MR. BARBER: maintenance activity?MR. BARBER: We were getting ready to tag Okay. So this was a normal to do it? Let's say it would have taken him some time to get a technician.

What's lost? Is it time? Is it a time pressure situation?Uh -huh.MR. BARBER: Was there a hold up in -- I'm trying to figure out where you simply were?"j.j We were purging the RCTD.MR. BARBER: What was the reason you were doing that?For the Okay.outage, yes.Was this a critical path job?FM No. It was just another evolution on the path for the schedule for that shell (Inaudible).

MR. BARBER: Okay. So there wasn't necessarily a significant impact if it was delayed for some period of time?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Anything else on that?All -7c.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 (202) 234-4433 www.neairgross.com 1 2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Recent event.3 Just an example we see a 4 giving (Inaudible).

5 MR. BARBER: So you think there's a 6 perception that maybe (Inaudible) saw that 7 does this and it's acceptable, so I'm going to 8 do it?9 It has to be. Maybe 10 it's just me, but if they're recorded three times with 11 /7 as the supervisor and manipulates a component and 12 granted, we're not privy to any kind of discipline or 13 action taken for supervisors, that's not our business.14 We just trust the company to resolve it. And I 15 understand that, but I think the guys need to see, the 16 union guys and the supervisors as well, need to see 17 something happen about a supervisor that continued to 18 operate that equipment.

If there's no repercussions, 19 then what's to discourage

-from operating a 20 piece of (Inaudible) equipment (Inaudible)?

21 MR. BARBER: How do you know there was no 22 23 24 25 disciplinary action?jF I'm saying I don't, but the company won t make us aware of anything happening.

MR. BARBER: Okay.NEAL R. GROSS 41// 'COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 P -0 7So you have to ask us to trust that something is. But if something is happening, why does it continue to happen with SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: There are three instances you're saying?~Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And there are new instances of somebody who hadn't seen it before.So something is happening and we're not privy to that information, but that's okay, I understand.

We're not privy to what other disciplines, how they're handled..

But I continue to see the same problem over and over and over. So whatever action is being taken, if any, (Inaudible).

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: These are concerns, the way you pointed it out, you said it may be that they're industrial safety risks, manipulating of the valve.In terms of safe operations of the plant, maybe not specifically for an individual safety, but for OSHA-type regulations, are you aware of any questionable manipulations in terms of that would be having a nuclear safety effect or an effect on the same operation of the plant?EOff the top of my head, NEAL R. GROSS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 nothing other than what we've already discussed.

I'll 2 leave that for somebody else to decide. (Inaudible)

(3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The incidents where 4 you see the push is toward non-conservative?

5 Right.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In order to --7 MR. BARBER: I'd like to go back to 8 something you said earlier and it's more of a process 9 question.

Earlier 'on, in the very beginning, you 10 talked about you had 12 12 13 MR. BARBER: You mentioned five shop 14 stewards, and 15 Right.16 MR. BARBER: I guess I'm curious to 17 understand why some of these issues don't go through 18 the normal process systems that are available, whether 19 it be notification system or -- there must be other 20 issues. Is there a labeling concern, there's probably 21 some labeling program you could submit changes to? A 22 lot of -- there's a lot of like smaller programs that 23 there's a problem you could use the program to submit 24 changes, procedure changes what have you.25 I mean there are problems that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 are handled that way. They are being utilized, other 2 means than grieving through our shop stewards.

But a 3 lot of times the guys come to the shop steward because 4 there's a question about whether or not it's 5 grievable.

So they come ' because we have a 6 contract and r 7 8 9 10 11 Usually, since once they've ve , 13 continue (Inaudible) department, whether we need to or 14 not. (Inaudible) 15 MR. BARBER: So you're acting as their 16 advocate?17 More than I have to, yes.18 It's just the way the relationship has become.19 MR. BARBER: Do you encourage individuals 20 when they have issues or concerns to -- to use 21 existing processes?

22 7Absolutely.

I encourage the 23 guys to go talk to their supervisors and if they're 24 uncomfortable doing that, take one of us with you, but 25 you're the one that raises the issue and discusses it NEAL R. GROSS A l7 -ýCOURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 with the supervisor. (Inaudible) 2 MR. BARBER: Do you think that other 3 "or other folks that / or 4 their concerns and issues, do you think they feel free 5 to write a notification on something?

Is that part of 6 the process? Do you need to (Inaudible) your 7 supervisor to approve something before you write a 8 notification or can you write it on your own?9 W We can write it on our own 10 absolutely.

11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do they typically do 12 that?13 Yes. Guys are pretty good on 14 writing notifications.

15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are you aware of any 16 hesitancy on the part of any of the people that you 17 work with to raise concerns freely through any of 18 these avenues, either -- if it's not coming to#19 but going to their supervisor, writing notification, 20 going to ECP, anything like that?21 j Yes, there's a handful of guys 22 out there that have that opinion..23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you know what the 24 basis is for it?25 Well, struck that NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 fear (Inaudible).

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, we talked about 3 that this morning?4JjRight, and --5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let me just capture 6 it and tell me if I'm accurate, but you were 7 indicating that in -j " 1i you 8 were routinely bringing issues to 9 .. ....... Ijil " jregarding the day 10 to day type of scheduling, I guess, and benefit type 11 of issues, so you would have to kind of hammer some 12 issues out with them.13 You were indicating before we got on the 14 record before that it came to your knowledge that 15 there was a comment made by (Phonetic) at 16 the time of' that the basis for that 17 decision, that your resented 18 itself. and .7said that they were going to 19 take that action in order to let the union know that 20 management was in charge and it wasn't the union that 21 was in charge and that; you were going to be made an 22 example of at-that point in time?23 Correct.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And this is what this 25 goes back to is that people saw you retaliated against COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 as part of raising regular varied issues on any type 2 of subject?3 Ys 4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you have anything 5 else you want to add to that and am I accurately 6 capturing that? It was one person told you that they 7 had hea (Phonetic) comment?9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Could we have that 10 individual's name?21 Do you have to?12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We can't do an 13 effective probe unless we can evaluate all of the 14 information.

15 .That piece of information came 16 fro. &maw(Phonetic).

17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 7.18 L~i 19 71 Yes. Like I said, I had been 20 involved, our department has been involved withC l 21 because was mediating a lot of our meetings.22 between the new managementi how (Inaudible) problems.23 (Inaudible) 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so the time 25 frame for this would be when the decision was made, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 September/October of last year?Aftef my eer.m SPECIALAGENT NEFF: After yourMR. BARBER: So it was some time in October, presumably, later on in the month, after?9 I don't know. Actually, no.I got the information fro some time around my actually.MR: BARBER: So it was around the May time frame?10- Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. But was referring to the conversation that had had with back in the fall?Fm Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 2002.1J Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And can you give me that again, I know I have raised it, but I'd rather have it from you, what you were told.I was told that would use as an example to the unit that the company has the power, not the unit.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you're telling me COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 that you felt that that had to do with your routinely 2 having to challenge the company and them keeping to 3 the standards that were agreed to?4 'Yes.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And I guess you 6 really can't say this is just time and hours types of 7 things, it was a variety of issues and you just sort 8 of saw it, the kind of things that you would have to bring to (Phonetic) attention 10 ,i" Inaudible) attention?

11 The only thing I ever brought 12 to -- never anything directly to9 13 (Phonetic), my only discussions with him were 14 surrounding the logistics of moving Salem operations 15 to (Inaudible) schedule, different from the schedule 16 we're working now.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.18 3jHe would add, he's associated 19 with that. Hours worked, hours off.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Impact on overtime, 21 everything?

22 23 24 f 25 Right. All the logistics associated with that, all were issues I tried to work out with E ý ý,. I (Phonetic)" as well as (Inaudible).

There was a roomful of people at these NEAL R. GROSS I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 meetings.2 As far a Phonetic)

I 3 took numerous problems t nd whatever problems 4 got resolved at a lower level, I never had a problem 5 with continuing until I either. got the resolution I 6 was looking for or was convinced that it wasn't going 7 to go my way and I would concede. So when I had an 8 issue that wasn't resolved at the lower level and it 9 would eventually get to was always very 10 open about -- had a very good open door policy.11 He always invited myself anP(Phonetic) to 12 his weekly managers meetings so that we would be more 13 informed about where he was taking the company and the 14 ideas he has (Inaudible).

So he was always very 15 receptive to our input.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: q is sort of being 17 the , on the Hope Creek side?19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.20 But I don't think it was well 21 received.

He was brutally honest, but something about 22 it (Inaudible).

I toldýW p front and (Inaudible) 23 he was okay with that. I don't feel like he really 24 was. (Inaudible) 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Now the issues that* NEAL R. GROSS Al 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS All 7 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 you were bringing-t

/(Phonetic)

--2 It could be anything.

They 3 were usually plant equipment issues.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.5 The first issue I ever took to 6 J(Phonetic) was a scaffolding issue and 7 the issue was the amount of scaffolding remaining in 8 place over Salem. Scaffolding was erected for 9 whatever job, whatever evolution and then it was left 10 and (Inaudible) scaffolding somewhere else. So in our 11 non-outage periods, we had to climb across, through 12 and around scaffolding all over the plant because it 13 was just left in place and never taken down. So we 14 never could get our scaffolding concerns addressed at 15 a lower level, so that was the very first issue I ever 16 took tcWl It was always stuff like that, that 17 kind of issue, conditions at (Inaudible)

Park.18 Conditions like quality of life issues, like a locker 19 room, (Inaudible) mail boxes for the operators, all 20 those were issues I took t*21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you're indicating 22 that they weren't well received.

Were these issues, 23 did you get a response to it? Did the scaffolding 24 come down and the conditions in the locker rooms and 25 so forth? ý ( 'Ic>l NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON.

D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

.w (2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19.20 21 22 23 24 25 No. The scaffolding didn't come down. The locker rooms never changed. The mailboxes were never changed. Conditions at (Inaudible)

Park were never changed.MR. BARBER: Was there any acknowledgement or agreement that they would change or was it something like well, we'll look into it and consider it. What kind of response did you get?I hatetosaybut just a --what I would expect is just a company middle management response, just -- I hate to be cynical, but just key words, tricky phrases is .what I would get.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Meaning you didn't get a commitment and you didn't get a declination to help?I did get commitments.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You did.I did get commitments, but they were never followed through on them. I got commitments.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So response, it looked like he was going to for you, but it didn't happen?U ,Right. It never going back later with another issue.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 2344433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 that's your do something kept me from I was still A~ (&(wvm.neafrgross.com (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 persistent.

We would just move trom one issue to another. I still kept counting it as a problem.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And in these problems that you were bringing in the issues would any of that, do you see any of those issues as falling within the purview of the NRC in terms of regulatory matters?No. Nothing of that nature.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then when you're saying that it wasn't well received, up until the point where yo ..... ...004911 1othat you were in a problem zone here?Q I was kind of caught completely by surprise when the __ -________9but at the same time I wasn't only because I don't document or keep things well, so it's just my hearsay, but wouldW pet shit job, sure. It was always a job, it was arxm ,I job, so the fact that I got it, I could see where it could be argued whether it was being given to because it's anS job, so that's just my opinion.It's never been documented or verbalized or expressed.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It seemed like that's what happened to you on a more frequent basis as NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 wim.nealrgross.com 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 compared to the Absolutely.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that's what you were tracking in your mind. It's not documented?

JRight. But like I said it was never anything that was -- it wasn't a job.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Anythi g else?That continues to this day.and I both, we' re kept at the -- we' re kept away from -- take this for an example, the (Inaudible) outage. We were kept away from the outage as much as possible.

I'm always given things like (Inaudible).

There again, it's a job for an operator, but I get it.The BF19 launch (Phonetic)

--SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And the significance of that is what, it keeps you in a different area?Right, it keeps me away from all the evolutions, all the tagging, all the procedures going on. It keeps me occupied, legitimately, SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But on the periphery?

9 Right. I'll give you an example from yesterday.

Yesterday, I came to work at 7 o'clock. I was given a list of all the maintenance done on 22 (Inaudible), unit 2 outage. I was told to NEAL R. GROSS < C".COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON.

D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

.1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 go walk it down and check for leaks and then (Inaudible).

Perfectly good job, an excellent idea.Only the new catter (Phonetic) hadn't been filled and pressurized yet --[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE B; BEGIN TAPE 2, SIDE B.]SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're on Tape 2.It's approximately 3:55 p.m. If you want to just pick up where you were talking about you were walking --you spent a morning walking down something that wasn't pressurized?

I spent the morning walking down (Inaudible) looking for leaks that wasn't pressurized at the time. It was a pretty good opportunity to verify that this is work done by contractors.

They were being reassembled correctly and there were no discrepancies or problems.

So there was some benefit gained from it. But it kept me busy all morning.(MR. BARBER: Did you ask about that? I mean did you ask hey, the header is not pressurized yet. Why am I doing this?didn't know the header wasn't pressurized until I got into the field.MR. BARBER: Oh, okay.NEAL R. GROSS 4/f..COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.corn C

And as I could see the 2 (Inaudible) valve shut and the guy in the field with 3 the (Inaudible) still releasing the vents and drains, 4 you know it's not totally pressurized.

I continued 5 with the other job (Inaudible).

I did it until about 6 lunch time. Had lunch. After lunch, I was given unit 7 verification (Inaudible).

8 So I did the exact same thing that 9 afternoon that I did that morning, only in the morning 10 it was an inspection for leaks. In the afternoon, it 11 was a verification of the (Inaudible).

Busy work.12 Then the NO work keeps me somewhere.

If somebody 13 calls in sick, if a duty guy calls in sick, I get to 14 be (Inaudible).

It's not a bad deal. I get turnover 15 pay and I- get a duty, but it keeps me busy taking 16 (Inaudible) and tending to the equipment on that duty 17 and it keeps me out of the outage.18 I've had two (Inaudible) at the beginning 19 of the outage, (Inaudible) notifications.

Both of 20 them on tagging issues. I haven't had a job since.21 Since then they keep me busy doing stuff.22 MR. BARBER: Did you ask about that? Did 23 you know --24 Because like I said, it's just 25 my perception of things and there's nothing -- it's NEAL R.-GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 not just keeping me busy, it's stuff that needs to be 2 done, should be done. Does a leak test need to be (3 done on (Inaudible)?

Absolutely.

But we should have 4 done it, once it was pressurized, not all morning 5 while it was still being released and was being 6 tagged, right?7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is this the pattern 8 with any one supervisor or is this across the board 9 with the supervisors?

10 It's across the board. I 11 don't want to get of the RFP.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: From what you're 13 describing it may be all part of the same issue, 14 looking at whether or not people are able to raise 15 concerns.

What that leads me to is in these recent 16 events that you were able to discuss, when you were 17 seeing these problems and let's go back to being at 2 18 start-up when you saw three separate issues that were 19 described involving the mis-sign off in the procedure 20 and you questioned the steam dumps. Are these issues 21 that you raised at that point and I mean are keeping 22 track of notifications or are you asking these 23 questions while you're going through these issues?24 I asked these questions and I 25 keep track of the notification.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You do them both.2 I don't have the best filing 3 system in the world, but --4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But you're saying 5 that you're doing both?6 lYes.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And is this what 8 you're saying is contributing to keeping you on this 9 periphery?

10 Yes, that's my perception 11 anyway.12 MR. BARBER: You mentioned that was 13 also treated the same way?14 He gets the same kind of deal.15 MR. BARBER: Does he say anything?16 Yes, to me.17 MR. BARBER: Does he ever say anything to 18 the supervision?

19 I don't know that. I don't.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You don't what?21 I don't say anything to the 22 supervision about being kept in the periphery.

23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. But on the 24 event that you see them, when you're seeing this 25 pushing that makes you uncomfortable you're raising NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 issues there?2 Yes, I don't have a problem 3 raising issues or concerns.

I never had, never will.4 (Inaudible) 5 MR. BARBER: What about some of the others 6 that you advocate for. You talked about a few people 7 that felt uncomfortable about raising issues, but 8 you're not there. Are they going to take their issues 9 to other orare they just going to clam 10 up?11 It goes both ways. I've seen 12 both.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And do the #14 7push the way you do?15 No. But we're all different.

16 I mean we all have different personalities.

We all 17 handle things different.

We all see different

-- we 18 all see things differently as concerns, although that 19 shouldn't be the case because we're all working at the 20 same standard, right, the same set of guys buying 21 these same procedures.

It's just human nature we see 22 things differently.

We see some things as problems, 23 some things as not. So another would push 24 something or not push something that I would or 25 wouldn't.

I don't push everything that comes to me.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS Cl 1323 RHODE ISLT ND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com Ii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 I'll discuss it with another jor one of the senior operators and make a decision.

I'll let the guy know it's something we should push or shouldn't push or we should handle it this way or that way or that's okay, that's how things are done, that's okay.A lot of times new guys will ask questions about something they're doing for the first time and they're not sure what it is. And should they go to their supervisor and ask questions?

Absolutely, but I'm not going to discourage them from coming to and asking the same question.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In terms of issues that impact the safe operations of the plant, do you think those are issues that are getting raised when they need to?..Yes, I think so, yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You think so. Can you think of any instances where somebody would say they didn't raise a concern for fear --A nuclear safety concern?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.* ~ Not off the top of my head, no.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com (202) 234-4433 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 I. 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You indicated you also had some other issues akin to what you gave us today, you have another file, I think, right?I've got a -SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I know you went back to September of 2002 when we started talking about --17 There's tagging issues here and procedure issues here, but none of them are really nuclear safety related. Unless you want to give it as an example, I'll try to relate it to how you would respond or how we would handle an issue that might be nuclear safety related, but I would hope (Inaudible).

MR. BARBER: Is it your sense that most of the NEOs are frustrated with the way they're treated by their supervisor?

Absolutely, the vast majority.MR. BARBER: Why is that, do you think?I think the biggest problem is not being listened to. A lot of the NEOs, there's a lot of knowledge, a lot of background with the department, but unfortunately, I think for the most part, usually NEOs are just thought of as just NEOs.So their input isn't utilized.

Like, for example, we hire a lot of Navy nukes here. I was a/j coming in. And their backgrounds are grossly under-NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 utilized.

It's interesting.

All the Navy nukes were 2 brought in at a higher pay step because of our (3 background and we're paid more, but they don't let us 4 do more or provide more input or given more 5 responsibility.

6 MR. BARBER: Is there a presumption that 7 if you do have a better background, more experience, 8 more knowledge, more capability, more talent, that 9 you'll proceed up sooner in the organization?

You'll 10 be the next NCO or the next CRS or next Shift Manager 11 or what have you and that's where you get your 12 benefit? Or is it that in some way you see that that 13 background should have been elevated in some way in 14 the NEO ranks?15 ] You bring a Navy nuke in here 16 that's operated a power plant, is familiar with a 17 tagging process and testing of equipment and log 18 taking is just basic knowledge of pump logs and how 19 systems operate, interact.

A TWR is what we have on 20 the submarines.

Itis a lot smaller, so they come in 21 with all this background, things -- the pumps here are 22 just bigger. The valves here are a little larger.23 Things have a slightly different take. You've got a 24 guy with all that knowledge and that background, he's 25 not given any more responsibility, he's not listened NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 to any more, his advice isn't taken any more than 2 somebody that was hired from Salem High School. We're (3 paid more because of that background, but we're not --4 I'm saying there's an opportunity there to utilize 5 background of NEOs and that's something that 6 discourages the NEOs. Their recommendations aren't --7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what level, from 8 what level are they not?9All.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Why do you think that 11 is?12 I don't know. That's a good 13 question.

That's something that frustrates me, 14 anyway. And we've voiced that opinion in many, many 15 meetings.16 MR. BARBER: Do the NCOs feel the same 17 way?18 they do, but not to the 19 extent of the NEOs, the NRC license carries a lot of 20 weight, so they're listened to more, but I think the 21 (Inaudible)

--22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: There were three 23 there that you pointed out weren't paid much attention 24 to.25 Do you know what? One thing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 that's interesting and I don't have the (Inaudible) to 2 be able to sit there and look through an entire work 3 chart, but I would imagine that a number of people 4 that are in higher positions in the organization may, 5 at one time, been NEOs or NCOs or --6 MR. BARBER: So is it that once they get 7 to a certain level they forget --8 1 Absolutely.

9 MR. BARBER: They forget totally that they 10 were ever an NEO or a control room operator and now 11 I'm in management, I'm going to think totally 12 differently and I'm going to treat people totally 13 differently than I would have liked to have been 14 treated when I was in that position?15 Unfortunately that's the case.16 Not all the time, but that is the case in some of the 17 supervision that came up through the ranks. They're 18 just too far removed from -- things have changed a 19 lot.20 MR. BARBER: Is it possible that they're 21 under different pressures or pressures you don't see 22 or understand?

23 who?24 MR. BARBER: Has anybody ever confided in 25 you like somebody who has been maybe a long time NEAL R. GROSS/)k 76 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

.friend that maybe has moved up ahead of you and said 2 you know, I'm under a lot of pressure.

This person 3 told me to do this, this person told me to do that.4 I know, I understand your point, but we can't do it.5 Have you ever gotten anything like that?6 -7..-

Yes, and those guys try to 7 advocate their support of our input, but the people 8 who do do that, the supervisor who do do that aren't 9 at a high enough position to make that happen.10 Take a CRS that came up through the ranks, 11 went from the field, into the control room and now 12 CRS. There's a handful of them that remember what it 13 was like to be an NEO and they understand our position 14 and our input and they try to push things for us, but 15 at the CRS level they don't have that kind of power or 16 authority.

I mean their input is nothing more than 17 input to the OS, to the AOM to the general manager.18 I mean depending on the issue you have to get to a 19 certain level before that decision can be made on 20 whatever input. So it's very seldom, if-ever, at the 21 CRS level.22 MR. BARBER: So the kinds of things that 23 you must be raising or getting feedback on are they 24 more like high level policy issues? I'm trying to 25 understand.

Why would something

-- there must be some NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.neairgross.com 1 things that could be made at various levels of the 2 organization or maybe not. Maybe there's something 3 very different about this station as opposed to other 4 stations where -- are all the decisions made at the 5 general manager or plant manager level or are they --6 is there some things that the shift can make decisions 7 on on their own?8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25:M mMaybe this will answer your question, when "Jwas leaving, I asked him why he came, he moved his family here, bought a home, he had a It was a lot for that individual to make the move to DSE&G for such a short period. It wasn't like he was some single guy hopping from job to job. I mean he had a lot of responsibility.

So I thought it would take an awful lot for an individual like that to come and go to this area so quickly. So I asked him before he left why are you leaving after making the move and with your family here? He said, three people run this department and I'm not one of them.I said what do you mean? He said this department is run by (Inaudible), (Inaudible).

He said I will not be who can't run my own department.

So at what level do you have to go to get NEAL R. GROSS /COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS A 7 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON.

D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 a decision?

Apparently,-

when was 2 around, you had to go above the Ops Manager.3 MR. BARBER: Did that get fed back out to 4 the rest of the department?

5 J I fed it out to the 6 department.

I don't know if it was fed out by any 7 other means or by any other --8 MR. BARBER: So you discussed it with your 9 peers?10 Yes.11 MR. BARBER: And what was their reaction 12 to that?13 i7Not surprised.

The guys who 14 had been around saw that.15 MR. BARBER: So what I think I heard you 16 say was he was the He was talking 17 about he had no autonomy and that the\...18 19 WN 20 21 22 23 24 ( 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And.and they were the only ones given "decision making power" in the organization for Operations?

COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 wvw.nealrgross.com 1 Yes.2 MR. BARBER: And it was meaningful in any 3 way, I'm guessing.4 QRight, right.5 MR. BARBER: Other than very minor things?6 7 MR. BARBER: Did he say why that was or 8 did he give you any -- I mean that's kind of a 9 frustration type comment, but did he say why he felt 10 that was or give you any indication as to why that --11 7 No, he didn't.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was there any 13 particular event that prompted him cutting off from 14 here in getting that frustrated?

15 I don't remember.

any one 16 specific event. First thing I think it was just a 17 culmination of beating his head against the wall for 18 so long he finally just saying (Inaudible).

19 I can't pinpoint a specific event that led 20 him to --21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's a question for 22 him?23 .Right, right.24 SPECIAL AGENT'NEFF:

Anything further?25 Let me just go off the record for a second. It's NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com 1 about 4:14.2 (Off the record.)3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We're back on the 4 record. I should make a point, it's 4:30 p.m.5 approximately and what you were doing is just 6 reviewing your documentation, at least with what you 7 have brought with you today. If you come across 8 something that you see falls into the line of 9 questioning, that we've completed, then you'll contact 10 me and add that to the record?11 Yes.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And if we have any 13 further questions, then we'll contact you. One point 14 I wanted to make with you was in regard to your 15 consideration of your 17 18 I wanted to make sure that you understood the 19 Office of Investigations and the NRC addresses 20 allegations that.involve potential violations of the 21 employee protection statute in that if you believed 22 you've raised a concern of a regulatory nature and 23 then having done so you've been retaliated against for 24 doing that, you would make that allegation and I'll 25 give you the appropriate office and number and that's NEAL R. GROSS IC COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 ,vmneaIrgross.com 1 where 01 will investigate those potential violations 2 for wrong doing.(3 I just wanted to be sure that you were 4 clear on that. You've also indicated to me at this 5 point that that's not the allegation you're making, 6 but we're leaving it with you that you understand the 7 circumstances if that's the way you want to go, you 8 have the information to do so. That's understood.

9 The other point is in closing have I or 10 any other NRC representative offered you any promises 11 of reward or threatened you in any manner in exchange 12 for your information today?13 No.14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have you appeared 15 here freely and voluntarily?

16 Yes.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And if you want to 18 cover anything else that we might need at a later time 19 in terms of any incidents that you're just not 20 thinking of right now, at this point we'll close.21 It's approximately 4:32 p.m. And I thank you for your 22 time.23 YouIre welcome.24 upon, at 4:32 p.m., the interview 2 5 w a s c o n c l u d e d .) N RO COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nucle'dr Regulatory Commission in the matter of: Name of Proceeding:

Interview of /Docket Number: 1-2003-051F Location:

Hope Creek Nuclear Power Station 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.FrancescV Zook Official Transcriber Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.(202) 234-4433 WASHINGTON, D.C. 20005-3701 www.nealrgross.com

ML061770493

Text

Navigation menu

Search