ML061770144

OI Interview Transcript of Witness, Pages 1-134

ML061770144
Person / Time
Site:	Salem, Hope Creek
Issue date:	01/21/2004
From:	NRC/OI
To:
References
1-2003-051F, FOIA/PA-2005-0194, NRC-1295
Download: ML061770144 (136)

Text

Title I:~:; 4'-~ ~: .~i~qJEI~ .a Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION Interview of (et Number: 1-2003-051 F tion: Salem, New Jersey Doc Loca Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Work Order No.:.71:i!!!ii NRC-1295 Pages 1-134 t~~~.. .. .... "...,.:'...

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..NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode N.W.Washin gtpD.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433 ,0formation in thiis record was deleted in accordance with the Fieedom of Infoirmatiotr-F'A.C .-.

1 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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS INTERVIEW IN THE MATTER OF: INTERVIEW OF:: Docket No. 1-2003-051F (CLOSED)---------------------------

x Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Salem Hope Creek Resident's Office The above-entitled interview was conducted at 8:12 p.m.BEFORE: Special Agent EILEEN NEFF Sr. Project Engineer SCOTT BARBER ALSO PRESENT: Chris Hernandez NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

2 1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 (8:12 p.m.)3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Today's date is 4 January 21st, 2004. The time is approximately 8:12 5 p.m. The location is the Salem Hope Creek Resident's 6 Office. Speaking is Special Agent Eileen Neff, U.S.7 N.R.C., Region 1, Office of Investigations.

Also 8 present from the Region 1 is Senior Project Engineer, 9 Scott Barber. This interview is being conducted with 10 t Hope Creek and also present at 11 §reuest is shop steward also NCO at Hope 12 Creek, Chris Hernandez.

13 Mr. Hernandez is present at t, 14 request; is that accurate?SThat is correct.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You asked him to be 17 present?18 ] That is correct.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, is there --20 were you told that you would have union 21 representation?

22 No, I was not.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so this is at 24 your request.25 j Correct. At" NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

3 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. The subject of 2 this interview is the safety conscious work 3 environment at Salem Hope Creek. The understanding is 4 that ' has worked at Hope Creek almost 5 exclusively with the exception of a six-week outage 6 assignment on the Salem side recently.7 Correct.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But pretty much it 9 would be on the Hope Creek side.10 That is correct.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that will be the 12 focus of this evening. The issues we've explained to.13 you, do not involve potential

-- specific potential 14 violations and as such, you are not the subject of any 15 investigation.

You're being approached more or less 16 as a witness for your assessment of the work 17 environment.

18 1 understand.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and also you 20 agreed to conduct the interview under oath.21 Correct.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, if you would 23 raise your right hand.24 II 25 I 4~NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 is 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Whereupon, was called as a witness and, having been first duly sworn, was examined and testified as follows: SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, thank you. For the record, if you would state your name and spell your last of birth, number?please.name, too.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and your date please.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And Social Security SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And home address, Now SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, could we get a summary of your education, please?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And what year?NEAL R. GROSS 41[COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS t 1323 RHODF Ii Aknl A 1 %A)-Yb-1 Five years ago, I'm not even 2 sure.3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So(4\5 , -Right.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And is that 7 the extent of it, "-,.8 ~correct.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, then, at that 10 point were you working?iiYes.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When did you first 13 start working in the nuclear industry?15 1IM 16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: AMand for how long?17Fo 18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so;19 Correct.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then what about 21 from 22 From on I've been here at 23 Hope Creek.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In in what 25 capacity were you hired?NEAL R. GROSS c, COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

6 2 3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Hope Creek?4 6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and then did 7 your position change at any time?8 10 11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So a 12 13Yes.14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 3/Okay, what year 15 was that then?16 About maybe.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 19 20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and then how 21 long did you stay in that position?22 U Until February 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and then you 24 became an- again?25 41Correct.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVF N W 7 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and have you 2 held the same position since?4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So almost two years.5 \ }Correct.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: AnT0 okay. Okay, 7 let's look at ( 'as an who have the shift 8 managers been that you've worked for in the past, go 9 back to 2000 or.so?10 The most recent was '11 0(phonetic).

At that time they weren't called 12 shift managers.

They were OS's, operating 13 superintendnts.

14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I know I messed that 15 up from site to site. Everyone says shift manager.16 It changes every year around 17 here. Before 18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is your 19 current 20 No, he's not. Current is 21 (phonetic).

22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, how long have 23 you been under Mm 24 .- Couple of weeks.25 'SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so very NEAL R. GROSS i, COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W. ,

a 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 recently.Yes. Before was JjgW (phonetic)

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How long under Approximately two years.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.V And then before him was.nd that -- I can't remember how long that was.It seemed forever.MR. HERNANDEZ:

Didn't we have -J We had SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:.1, Maggio". m .. yeah.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: They change around, it's hard to remember them.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yeah, I know, it's usually a task when I do something like this.L 73 Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And people cet concerned the best 'May or s recollect.

recently, that they're under oath and order of events,{ou can do. I can't put you on a Tuesday in omething like that but the best of your ion. So you think the order was * )ost prior t.4rn NEAL R. GROSS I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

9 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 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: An d then Andbefore it was SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: have been pretty brief then.and: ... ..was .again.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: for how long then?SPECAL~~ AGEAt least SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:$So must also I think before Okay, so you had two years.nd 01for how long total?Oh, I don't even know.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Briefly, or, I mean, do you --No, pretty significant, at least two years also.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: All right, let's see, so two years before that we're into '01.would be late '01, right?MR. HERNANDEZ:

CLowas the senior when I gotmy NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.('Y C1 10 011 Okay.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Which would be what 3 year then?4 MR. HERNANDEZ:

I think it was two years 5 ago.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But these have been 7 -- this has been --8o'was probably a 9 year, right.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so 11 an- ....have been the longest, it looks like, 12 for about two years each?13 Yes.14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.15 I'm not sure exactly how 16 accurate that is but, yeah, I would say that's pretty 17 close.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But maybe combined 19 might be in there, too.20 -Yes.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, all right, so 22 this is roughly going 2000 forward.23 Correct.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It must be covering 25 more than 2000, right? I mean, right there we added NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

ii 1 up to four years with -ý so 2 maybe you're back a little further than 2000.3 .Right, maybe '98, '99.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And really, 5 this is just -- it's to set us up for, you know, if 6 issues and incidents come up, I understand who you 7 were working for and -- at that time, so I'm trying to 8 follow who you've been with, if you've had continuity 9 with one individual or if you've been in different 10 places.11 / Definitely different places.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Okay, let's do 13 this. I'm going to start broadly, as I explained.

And 14 in terms of the safety conscious work environment, 15 issues that go into that and I'll put it this way, the 16 focus of some of the issues that go into that would be 17 people's ability to raise concerns on site, their 18 ability to do so comfortably and their response that 19 they get to that.20 Okay.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's one aspect of 22 it and it might be best if I break it down this way.23 We're focusing on nuclear safety obviously.

That's 24 the mission for the NRC, but sometimes we're seeing 25 issues that kind of cross a line and they may be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS I. (!1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

12 1 considered

-- it may be a little bit of both. It 2 might be industrial, it might be perceived nuclear 3 safety, it might be radiological, that type of thing.4 So in that context, in terms of how you 5 see yourself and your ability to raise concerns on 6 site and the response that you get to that, would you 7 say that you are able to do so?8 9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're comfortable 10 with that.11 Yes.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And would you say 13 that at any point in time that was any different?

14 INo.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have you always been, 16 you had a comfort level with being able to raise 17 concerns?18 Yes, yes.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. When you say 20 that, can you -- do you have examples of the kinds of 21 things that you've had to raise to management's 22 attention?

23 Sure, lowering the reactor 24 power to make sure we don't exceed 100 percent, that 25 would be one concern. It's been raised numerous times NEAL R. GROSS (4 -7e COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLANn AXvF m W 13 1 and they respond but not always the way you want them 2 to.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. That's leaving 4 me with a couple of questions, so let's get there.5 Before I get off your assessment, in terms of your 6 comfort level raising concerns, do you see that the 7 same way for other people, for your peers?8 I think so. What I --9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I'm not asking you to 10 speak for people. What I'm asking is in terms of what 11 you've observed when you're working, do you see people 12 raise concerns and don't hesitate to. If they have 13 them, do they speak them out?14 j Yes, they speak them out. I 15 mean, maybe sometimes they may think over it for a few 16 hours1.851852e-4 days <br />0.00444 hours <br />2.645503e-5 weeks <br />6.088e-6 months <br /> or maybe even a couple of days before they say 17 anything, but I don't know of anyone that's ever had 18 a concern that did not bring it up.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, what would be where would the hesitancy come in if they're 21 thinking over it for awhile?22 J Well, I think the hesitancy 23 the majority of the time is just their personal 24 comfort level. "Am I being silly, am I seeing this 25 wrong?" You know, they take the time to talk to other NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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 14 people, "Hey, what do you think about this", you know before they make basically an ass out of themself."Am I wrong here", you know, type thing.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: They want a sounding board kind of thing -Right, right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- before they make an issue out of something?

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.That's probably about the only thing I can think of.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in terms of how the concerns are received, and I know that you just said sometimes the reaction isn't, you know, what you were looking for but in terms of when people raise concerns --Okay.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- are you aware of any situation in which someone felt they raised a concern and they were treated harshly, had some sort of a negative reaction, pushed back? I hesitate to call it retaliation because people shy away from retaliation but in terms of adverse actions taken against somebody for having raised a concern, are you NEAL R. GROSS f fi COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.7(

15 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 aware of anything that says that's happened here?.. Yes, it does happen here.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It does happen here.I think it happens everywhere in the world. I think it's a normal human reaction and a response.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.I do it to my kids, so, yes, I would have to say yes to that question.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That's interesting.

In terms of -- let's get an example of where you see that happening.

I can give you my personal example. That's always the easiest. I dropped my some time ago and part of the reason for dropping that was that I felt at least the senior management at that time, the OS' were much more hesitant to take the conservative action because it was going to effect their pay. My example would be that one time we lost what's called the CMS computer, which does our heat balance calculations, which is really our most reliable, most accurate indication of reactor power. We lost that computer and so all we had to rely on was our hard wire indication from the nuclear instruments.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1 'Al')' PHrI" r- :: AIrI Ak /=\1l %A/I C, 16 1 Those can fluctuate up to five percent at 2 any given time.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.4 So the control room operators 5 in the control room at the time wanted to slightly 6 lower reactor power by approximately two percent just 7 to insure that they were not exceeding 100 percent 8 rate of power.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.10 ( And the OS at that time was 11 not willing to do that. He felt that it was not 12 necessary.

He felt that we were at steady state and 13 there was no need to do that and he called on other 14 OS', off-shift OS' at the time, to back his decision 15 up, so in other words, he had a sounding board, which 16 is fine, I have no problem with that, but afterwards, 17 notifications were written. People were treated 18 differently, including myself.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, let's get into 20 that. Where -- when did this occur, this incident 21 that you're talking about?22 .That was I want to say 23 December or January of 2002, so December of 2001 or 24 January of 2002 time frame.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So this was just NEAL R. GROSS i (f COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

17 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 before you dropped your 4then.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: December '01, January'02. Who's the -- who is the -- who were the players involved here? Who's the )SPECIAL The was SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.AMHis sounding board, at that time was the staff -- what's his name? J.iI (phonetic)

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and now, are you saying that this was presented to him, the control room crew was in unison on this?A A correct.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The CRS, the NCOs were --37 The CRS, the NCOs all three, there were two NCOs that were in the control room and there was a third one that was --I can't remember if he was doing work control or what he was doing. He may have been an EO that day, I'm not sure.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Which one were you? Were you one of the'That is correct. I can't remember if I sa I'm thinking I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS c "inA, At.I 1,- '1S.Ir\

18 1 was not the> ..I think I was the 2 at the t ime.3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Who was the 4 11goy-. .5:: I believe it was 6 (phonetic).

7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And the4 8 MeThe 9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How did you 10 get into this situation where you lost the computer?11 I can't remember the exact 12 details but there was notification written so we can 13 go back and find out.14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.15 But it had something to do 16 with, I think, a feedwater flow element.17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.18 J It was, yeah, too long ago 19 for me to remember the exact details.20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Were you 21 changing power at the time? Were you coming off or 22 going down to steady state?23 _ ) No, we were steady state.24 However, xenon (ph), if I recall was changing.

I 25 can't remember at the time. I mean, it was changing NEAL R. GROSS -7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS ci RH"F= II: Amnf AJF: N W 19 1 in the method. It was taking power go up and that's 2 why the NCOs were so concerned because power was 3 slowly drifting up and we were adjusting with the 4 recert to maintain power less than 100 percent.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So xenon 6 would have had -- for that to be the case, xenon would 7 have had to have been burned a lot.8 .Correct.9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.10 So it was slowing changing 11 and we were slowly tapping and that was our 12 justification to the OS, "Here, here's how often we've 13 been having to tap and yeah, we may have an hour 14 before we have to tap again but there's no way I can 15 tell from my hard wire", type thing.16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What was 17 your hard wire doing at the time?18 It was oscillating 19 approximately five percent, so hard wire could bounce 20 anywhere from, you know, 94 to --21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You said it 22 was maximum of five, but I mean, was it actually 23 moving that much or was it --24 J< Yeah, I would say hard wire 25 always moves that much.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

20 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is that right?2 Yes 3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So, when you say five 4 percent, is that like two and a half percent each way 5 or five percent each way?6 it' Right, on two and a half each 7 way.8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.9 I mean, not anything to put 10 you in oscillations.

11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But it --12 okay, so you're telling me --13 The normal noise on the 14 instruments.

15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- your 16 ERN's and what's going on with those.17 Right, correct.18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. Okay.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So now from what 20 you're observing, you all are in unison that you could 21 down-power.

22 Ys 23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And 24 comes in differently but he uses.il.'

as 25 his sounding board and comes back with -- what does he NEAL R. GROSS .! '7c-" COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 11 DUn 101 AKIrIr M l K %At 21 1 tell you?2 He comes back with, "We're 3 stable, power is not changing and we have other 4 indications of power", which we do. We have 5 megawatts.

You know, we have --6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Megawatts?

7 Electric, which is a 8 generator output.9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right.10 We have the hard wire APRM' s, 11 if there's going to be a significant change, we can 12 see it. We had total steam flow, you know, the other 13 basic things that go into the heat cycle, but nothing 14 that you can say, "Okay, power just changed" without 15 doing a calculation, without looking at everything.

16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Not an instantaneous.

17 Right, not an instantaneous 18 thing. If power were to jump up for some unknown 19 reason, loss of feedwater heating, whatever, that we 20 could not say, "Okay, we exceeded 102 percent power, 21 we exceeded 103 percent power", without doing long 22 calculations that would take hours.23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: The CSM 24 computer program you're describing, does that give you 25 instantaneous power?NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

22 1 Yes.2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, but 3 that's a computer calculation?

Does it give you like 4 different ones, like I don't know, a two-minute 5 average, a four-minute average --6 Yes it does.7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- a two-8 hour average or something like that?9 Yes, it can give you a --10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is that 11 always up or is that --12 Yes, it is always up and that 13 is what we log our tech spec number by, it's always 14 reactor power.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So how much 16 discussion did you have on the differences in that in 17 terms of they're saying, "Yeah, you might have lost 18 that but you have x, y and z that you can use". How 19 much discussion, what kind of a debate is going on?20 Is it a half hour or is it five minutes?21 Initial was probably a half 22 hour2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br /> and then he went to his sounding board and he was 23 probably gone a half hour. Then he brought his 24 sounding board back in with us and said, "Here's what 25 we're doing", and there was like a 10-minute NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

23 1 discussion, one-way discussion and, "This is what 2 we're doing, this is why, blah, blah, blah", and then 3 he --4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So an hour has passed 5 before he's come back with a decision.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What's his 8 instructions before he leaves? What does he tell you 9 to do?10 .Not to change the plant 11 parameters, to maintain --12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So just stay where 13 you are.14 Right, stay where you are.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. And he comes 16 back -- this is comes back and your 17 understanding is he consulutltd Did 18 he offer anything more than that?19 .Yes, they came back with 20 another computer point which was off of our Krenz 21 (phonetic) computer and I cannot remember what that 22 point was. I can go back and find it but he said it 23 was -- oh, it was first stage pressure, turbine first 24 stage pressure and they had some corresponding, 25 turbine first stage pressure this and this is what NEAL R. GROSS j-U / c COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

24 1 reactor power is. He says, "We're going by that 2 number. That is going to be our most reliable 3 indication of this time". And the NCO told him -- we 4 told him that that's fine; however, the Krenz computer 5 has a three-minute update time and it only will update 6 if it has a significant change.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So it's not -- what's 8 significant?

What -- is there a percentage?

9. Right, every point on the 10 computer has a different percentage and there's no way 1i that as an NCO or CRS that you could know what every 12 one of those is.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And it might be three 14 minutes behind..15 Right, it's definitely three 16 minutes behind, no doubt about that and there's got to 17 be a certain percent change which we don't know what 18 it is, and he did take that feedback and say, "Okay, 19 that's a good point, we'll do more investigation into 20 that point".21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This is after the 22 hour2.546296e-4 days <br />0.00611 hours <br />3.637566e-5 weeks <br />8.371e-6 months <br />'s discussion then he comes back with the 10-23 minute instruction.

24 J Oh, yes, right and--25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then it was under NEAL R. GROSS (2. i.COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

.1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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 25 consideration again, by I Not under consideration, under further investigation would be a better word, to get more information on that point from the reactor engineers and from the computer people.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.And then several days later, they came out with a new night order saying that if we lose the CMS, this is the action we're going to take and it discussed those points and the update times and that night order should be available somewhere but, however, what was very interesting about that night order was after upper management and the entire staff and the reactor engineers all evaluated, the first thing that night order said, "If you lose CSM, reduce reactor power by two percent", which was exactly what the NCOs and the CRS wanted to do.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And was it prescribing it for the exact same circumstances that you were facing?Yes, that's correct.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So how long from this incident and when the new orders came out?.I7 Several days, I want to say two days, maybe three days.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS J'Al' IQ1 n A%/= KIl %Atl 26 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so this is a 2 response to what you went through.3-4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, did 5 you feel somewhat vindicated then because is sounded 6 like that was what you were pushing for. You were 7 pushing for, "Hey, let's bump power back down a little 8 bit until we get to where we know we are and have some 9 comfort with where we're at"'. I mean, did you feel 10 vindicated or did you feel like, "Well, it seems like 11 management may not have heard us the first time, now 12 they're -- you know, they're hearing what our concerns 13 were because they're acknowledging in the night order 14 that that's the first action".1i-- Yeah, I was happy with the 16 night order entry saying, "This is what we're going to 17 do", and explaining the points better, but yeah, 18 specifically the reduction of two percent. I mean, 19 two percent is not a huge power change. I mean, it's 20 very minor, it's very conservative.

It puts you --21 gives you plenty of extra margin and sure, it's going 22 to cost the company a couple of bucks. Well, in the 23 long run it's going to save you money.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: In your mind, was the 25 two percent reduction, is that an adequate counter-NEAL R. GROSS i" COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

27 1 effect there? If they go down by two percent, is that 2 going to fix the problem where you are?3 It's not going to fix the 4 problem, it's not going to restore the CMS.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Not bring your CMS 6 back.7 It's going to reduce 8 everyone's stress level, we're not allowed to exceed 9 100 percent power.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right, the concern 11 being not going over power. Would that two percent 12 automatically get you there?13 Yes, that's an adequate 14 margin that we could have insured not to --15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, okay. Now, had 16 you been in this position before? Is this the first 17 time this came up?18 &O 1 It's the first time that I 19 was actually in the control room. We have lost the 20 CMS computer, especially when we first got it, 21 numerous times and had guidance to take conservative 22 action. This was just the only time that what they 23 did made no sense based on conservative decision 24 making.25 The other times we lost it, we had not NEAL R. GROSS 7.COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

28 1 problem tapping back on power or you know, getting 2 more help and --3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What was the time 4 frame from the other times to this time? Was it -- I 5 mean, are they closely connected or are they spread 6 out over --7 .,JRNAM1 Spread out over months, 8 periods of months.9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was this the 10 first time this occurred and these other times 11 occurred before and you were allowed to lower power or 12 what was the --13 .. .When I first became an*14 we were allowed to lower reactor power whenever we 15 wanted. Nil 16 you were in charge of the reactor. And if you felt 17 that you needed to lower recirc, you did. And no one 18 questioned you, you know. Okay, reactor operators 19 maintain -- it's his reactor. You were allowed to 20 scram the reactor if you were uncomfortable where it 21 was at.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When did that change?23 i2 That changed I want to say 24 three years ago but I'm not quite sure. They came out 25 with a bunch of new rules, "You will do a pregnant NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1igi PwHn; mI1 Lmn A%/;: m m 29 1 pause", is what they were calling it, "prior to taking 2 the mode switch to shutdown in an attempt to get the 3 CRS concurrent or permission".

They came out with 4 these hard cards and --5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there 6 something that drove that change or --7 I'm pretty sure it was IMPO 8 (phonetic) and we weren't playing the same as other 9 plants and other simulators across the country.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You weren't playing 11 the same?12 Right, we were under a lot of 13 scrutiny for our simulator performance at that time, 14 that we were what was called cowboys. That we did 15 whatever we wanted, there was no command and control 16 in the control room. So and their response to that 17 was to change our procedures, come up with these hard 18 cards so that everyone -- every reactor operator does 19 the exact same steps, says the exact same thing, so 20 you get consistency across the shifts.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.22 'That was the real purpose was 23 to get consistency across the shifts. Everyone does it 24 the same, everyone says the same thing, everyone looks 25 the same, IMPO is off our back, that type thing, but NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

30 1 somehow with that purpose, which there's nothing wrong 2 with that purpose, I agree. You know, if everyone 3 looks and sounds the same, you know, that's fine, I 4 have no problem with that. But with that, they'd roll 5 into a bunch of other things; alarm response protocol, 6 the exact things that you'll say, the exact things 7 that you'll do and what they wound up doing and on 8 purpose but I don't know why, was they took a lot of 9 control away from the reactor operator.10 And basically, they've made reactor 11 operators feel like, "You are no longer in charge of 12 the reactor. We will tell you what to do, when to do 13 it, how to say it, how to do it". And so now you have 14 problems where a reactor operator wants to take action 15 to lower recirc, scram the plant and specifically in 16 the case had and the bypass valve incident, and 17 he's waiting on someone to tell him to. And that is.18 why I gave up my license because they took control 19 away, from me as a and I told them 20 that I felt this plant's response to the IMPO event, 21 the standards, whatever they wanted to call it at the 22 time, was in the wrong direction.

That I did not feel 23 safe in the control room.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So this is early 25 2001?NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

31 1 2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: About three years ago 3 now, you say?4 )No, early 2002.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: 2002.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Not the incident but 8 the shift where you say that you think it was driven 9 by IMPO and wanting to go for shift consistency.

10 -_; I would say late 2001.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Late 2001.12 Right.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. Into 2002, so 14 by February of 2002, you want to give up your 15 .Correct.qS.16. SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you see -- did 17 -you .see.incidents there that caused you to think that 18 actions weren't taken quickly enough because they had 19 taken that authority from the reactor operators?

20. .. There was numerous things I 21 didn't like. That particular incident was probably 22 the worst by not allowing the reactor operator to 23 lower by two percent. Other things that you see are 24 -- I can give you some examples of-again 25 In case you haven't figured it out he's my worst(W NEAL R. GROSS 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE. ISLAND AVE., N.W.

32 1 my worst nightmare.

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I kind of got that 3 from your comment where you said it seemed like it was 4 forever when you were under him and he was about two 5 years like everybody else.6 Right, the other thing that 7 I really had a problem with him was that he had no 8 problem discussing his point of view for hours on end.9 And what I mean by that is he would come out and chew 10 the CRS' ass for two, three hours at a time non-stop.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Over?12. Over what -- stupid stuff, 13 the way paperwork was done, the way some error was 14 entered in the log and the CRS didn't catch it. The 15 senior had to catch it, petty things in my opinion.16 But hours on end and this guy is the CRS in charge of 17 the control room, in the control room, gets his ass 18 chewed for three hours at a time. Now, can you 19 imagine how that would upset a control room staff 20 trying to operate a nuclear reactor? It is a huge 21 distraction.

22 In this case 1 iwas useless 23 the rest of the day as a f 24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you 25 remember what the specific details were with that?NEAL R. GROSS / C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

33 1 This happened so often and 2 any detail you brought up would be it. I mean, log 3 readings, retest paperwork, I mean, just any type of 4 administrative function or it could be for some reason 5 he would just chew his ass for three hours for a 6 scenario that happened three weeks ago in the 7 simulator, that he just, you know, remembered 8 something that w didn't do right that he didn't 9 like.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But you're kind of 11 indicating that this is -- it's petty stuff, it's just 12 not worthy of a two, three-hour session with him to 13 correct that.14 Correct. And it certainly is 15 not .worthy of any session in the control room--16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To disrupt and 17 distract in the control room.18 --while he's on duty as CRS.19 Correct.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Why would an OS do 21 that? I mean, consistently, what would he gain by 22 doing that to his CRS?23 I can't answer that question.24 I don't know if it's a power trip. I don't know if 25 he's the type of person that needs a whipping boy.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8.9 10 11 12 13 14 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 34 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did he pick on one individual or was it --It was always'yes. Anyone else would fight back with him. I was --one of myý at that time was and I were on shift and he said crap to us.We had no problem -- and that's part of what I say, we had no problem bringing up issues. We had no problem with saying, "Hey, you're distracting me, beat it".SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Does this have something to do with the fact that you're union and represented and would be in a supervisory rank there?Yes, absoluteiy.

'did not control my pay scale. The union does.very much controls pay scale. So absolutely.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you don't necessarily have to take his input as harshly asr-- or too hard as Ntdoes.Right, but on the same aspect, if he tells me not to lower reactor power, I can't, type thing or else I'm -- you know, I'm still in the union but I'm outside the gate.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who writes your NEAL R. GROSS /-U 7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

35 1 performance appraisal?

2 3 ýbut once again, performance appraisals do not 4 effect my pay. So I don't care what they say in 5 there. I dont even care if they're wrong type thing.6 They have no effect on me as an individual.

And so 7 they can say, "Hey, 1 a pain in my ass, blah, 8 blah, blah", it doesn't effect my pay until the point, 9 you know, if I'm a screw-up, to where I'm doing things 10 wrong, well, then, yeah, they can eventually fire me 11 with performance appraisals, but I mean, no one that 12 I know was in that type of category.13 But just because I push or give feedback 14 they don't like, and even if that does show up in my 15 appraisal, it's not going to get me fired, do you know 16 what I mean?17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, yeah, I think 18 I understand you there. And before we get there 19 because you kind of opened a door that I want to 20 follow through on, I think Scott's got some follow-up 21 questions for you.22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah, 23 actually I just wanted the dynamic between 24 You know, the way you 25 described it is kind of sits passively by and NEAL R. GROSS AM I COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

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 36 is berating him over something that happened, some administrative issue or what have you. Does --did he do that with everyone?

I mean, was it just his way? Was he -- or was it that he --He would try to do it with the NCOs and the NCOs would tell him to pack sand. "I don't want to hear it".SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: What about other ', did other a ever fill in when wasn't there or whatever?jp(phonetic) was our othe .And occasionally he would get on and it would bother( butc7 Jwas just better at getting out of if, do you know what I mean? He had something else he had to do right now, he could talk about it later, to where --SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So he just kind of avoided it.Right.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did anybody take him on like head to head as far as other than like the NCOs? Did any of the CRS' say'you're wrong", or say, "No, this really isn't": ~~That was problem is that he would always say you're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

37 1 wrong, this is the way it happened".

He would always 2 argue with him to some degree saying, "No, I see your 3 point of view".4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Oh, I see.5 And that was what would make 6 the discussion go three hours. I mean, the 7 kind of guy to say, "Okay, okay, just chew my ass and 8 get it over with". No, I mean, would fight back, 9 but he would never tell him to go pack sand, "Get out 10 of my face", type thing.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And there was no 12 agreeing to disagree going on either.13 Right.14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It was back and 15 forth.16 Right.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And it would go on.18 Did anybody raise the issue at that point that, "Hey, 19 you're a major distraction in a place you shouldn't 20 be"? Did that come up at all?21 I know I did not raise the 22 issue because I know it would make it tougher onL 7 23 I know did not raise the issue because he knew 24 that it would effect him and his performance and his 25 appraisal that he had to find a way to deal with]hi7 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

(- / /1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

38 1 in his own way. I do believe --2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did 4 tell you 3 that?4 /No, I don't think so.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's a perception 6 that you had in the situation?

7 It's a perception.

I do two 8 believe a couple of NCOs may have taken it one step 9 higher which would have bee1, phonetic) at 10 that time.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Which would have been 12 what position?13 The I 14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.15 And I don't know what ever 16 became of that or what was said. I don't know any of 17 the details about that.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who would we ask 19 about that?20 I don't want to say at this 21 time without asking him if it's okay first.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're not sure if 23 they did take it to .Are we talking about 24 something that was documented or just a sidebar?25 Vetbal -sidebar, right;NEAL R. GROSS -i /1/COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

39 1 nothing documented.

The only documentation that I can 2 think of was one that with a notification 3 against or distracting the control room 4 operators with football talk at the time. It was 5 right after they wrote up the new standards, "You will 6 only talk to the CRS", and they came up with all these 7 new rules, change the entire world. You know, "This 8 is what you will do, this is what you won't do", and 9 weren't allowed to talk to INC techs any more that we 10 were doing surveillance.

We weren't allowed to answer 11 the phone, it had to go through the shift clerk and 12 then if it was really important, then the person could 13 talk to the NCO and that was one of the things. We 14 weren't allowed to have sidebars in the control room.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what point in time 16 was this?17 This was I would say January 18 of 2002, maybe December of 2001.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that was when the 20 shift consistency issue on the rule changes started?21 Right, all around the same 22 time, right.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did something prompt 24 that? Was there some sort of an incident where 25 somebody got distracted?

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

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 40 i -j There may have been and I don't recall. I don't really remember what prompted the change in the standards.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But it came out as part of this greater change that was going on.Rigtright.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so rn a notification about that, the football talk.JRight, it was --it must have been two days before they wrote out the new standards that he came down specifically to me in the control room and started talking football to me, right after saying that I could not even talk to my INC techs, I couldn't talk to my equipment operators unless it was really important and then he wants to come down and talk football.'

So, yes, I wrote a notification on him that night.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, how was that received?.1 Actually, he received it very well because he had no choice.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How is that?Once the notification is in the system there basically is no way to get rid of it, so he knew he had been told on. He knew he was wrong NEAL R. GROSS I I (COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

41 1 and he admitted to such.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How about with you 3 personally, any reaction to that, noticeable reaction 4 in terms of your relationship with him?5 ]Yeah, he left me alone for 6 awhile.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So was that a good 8 reaction?9 R Oh, absolutely. (Laughter) 10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, what happened 11 when that was over, when that honeymoon period was 12 over? What happened next?13 .I'm pretty sure we haven't 14 really spoke much since.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So this is all right 16 before you gave up your 17 FRight.18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was this 19 something you'd been thinking about for awhile, giving 20 up your[or was it something that's kind of on 21 the spur of the moment or -- I mean, how did you make 22 that decision?23 jThinking about it for awhile, 24 yeah, I would say three months. Over a three-month 25 time frame was what I was considering.

And it was all NEALR. GROSS ' I ' 0 4 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS V iq91%fl IHP I Amnf AVIF N W 42 1 at the start of taking the control away from the NCO, 2 the new standards, the way they dealt with them, 3 ..........

1 ......i ý the entire stressful 4 environment in the control room. So it was probably 5 over a three-month period that I was considering 6 giving up my0 7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Any of your 8 pehaers;hat were on different 9 shifts, you know, whether you saw them in turnover or 10 off shift or training or what have you, personal 11 friends, I mean did you ever talk to them about what 12 their interactions were like between the CRS and OS 13 and, you know, how they treated the rest of the shift?14 77 Absolutely.

I worked 15 overtime on numerous shifts and other guys from other 16 shifts worked overtime on our shift and we quite often 17 talked about what was the difference in their 18 standards versus what was the difference in our 19 standards, how their OS acted and they all knew how 20 cted and pretty much you wind up working 21 with every OS or Ops manager and you know them all.22 You know how they act. You know what they do, just 23 because you do work quite often --24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, what 25 kind of feedback were you getting when you were NEAL R. GROSS (COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

43 1 talking about those kinds of issues?2 There was two shifts that 3 absolutely no one wanted to work with. And that was 4hift and shift. No one 5 liked to work with --6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you had both of 7 them for a long period of time.8 Yes, no one liked working 9 with either one of those seniors at that time. And 10 that has changed now. I mean, you talk to people now 11 and pretty much anyone is willing to work with, 12 land still no one is willing to work with-, 13 14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What were the issues is withhen nobody wanted to work with him?16 What was he like?17 He had walked a union guy 18 off-site.

He was considered a back-stabber.

He would 19 talk, you know, fine to your face but then as soon as 20 you left, he would talk bad.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The union guy being 22 walked off-site, is -- what was the incident for that?23 We might have heard this one.24 .jIt was a union issue. And 25 Iif not sure I remember a lot of the details about it.NEAL R. GROSS "t ,7 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

44 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 It was basically

--SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is this with the historian program?S. Yes, it was the historian program but that was not why he walked off-site.

It had something to do with he -- the senior called him in his office and wanted to have a coaching and counseling type session. Well, the union guy asked for union representation, a shop steward and the OS denied him. So that got blown up into a huge balloon and he was walked off-site that night. I don't really know all the details. I wasn't there.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so we could go to the individual.

~Right.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Did that person, did they remain off-site or did they --.j(Yes, they were off-site, I want to say at least a month but I'm not sure on that time frame either.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you happen to know how they came back? I mean, was there some sort of arbitration or the union process, a grievance, any recollection of that?'JNo, I'm not sure. You'd have NEAL R. GROSS All COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

45 1 to ask him, himself.2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.3 4 I mean, it was definitely 4 union related. Whether it was an arbitration or not, 5 I can't remember.6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Could you shed some 8 light on that, 9 MR. HERNANDEZ:

That was right around --10 yeah, I can actually.

They had said that -- who was 11 that girl that was -- I can't remember her name.12 Anyway, they came in andýa(phonetic) was 13 involved in that and they were saying that -- even the 14 business agent said when we had a meeting over there 15 was there was no way, as getting his license 16 back. But that's when WANO (phonetic) was coming and 17 we had a bunch of off-shift rotations, people writing 18 tags and all that stuff that we were doing. And so 19 the union said, "Okay, then everybody's coming back on 20 shift, we're not doing any of that stuff any more, you 21 know, work together, write tags, help you with the 22 work, all that stuff".23 And that's when they put out the sign with 24 the company and union shaking hands for WANO. WANO 25 was coming and everything, so I think really the only NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

46 1 reason that it went away was the timing and they 2 wanted good union company relationships for WIANO and 3 the we were -- all the off-shift rotations were coming 4 back and that was going to cripple the work week and 5 everything.

6 And then magically they said, "Okay, if 7 work together, he can have his license 8 back".9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: .00f 10 (phonetic)?

11 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Yeah.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. All right, 13 going back a little bit,, ... .14 are they -- the problems that you're describing with 15 those two and their management style is a little 16 different from each other.17 Yes.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Well, how did -- if 19 now nobody minds working for or not as much, 20 what changed him?21 2 I think the fact thatuw 22 M Vcame back was a slap in his face. This is all 23 personal opinion here. It was a slap in his face, 24 "Okay, the company says I have backbone and I can 25 manage my shift the way I want but it's not true", NEAL R. GROSS i

• f COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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 47 type thing. "I really have no power. The power is above me and what they say goes".SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.-! So I think at that point, he gave up with trying to enforce their standards as detailed as they wanted.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Oh, did that come through in other ways like in terms of what communication and who you will phone call and stuff like that?Well, it didn't take long after I gave up -or all that shit to go out the window.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Oh, is that right?SYes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What caused that?)- I think there was just a lot of resistance from the NCOs saying, you know, "Hey, if I've got a problem in the plant, I'm going to talk to my equipment operator.

I'm going to talk to my INC tech. I am not going to go through a shift clerk.That's ridiculous.

If I need to sit down at the boards, I'm going to sit down for five minutes".

They wanted to take all of our chairs away. That was the initial roll-out.

And the reactor operator would NEAL R. GROSS -.COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERSISI AnI AVP N W 48 1 continuously walk for 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> straight around the 2 boards.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What would be the 4 point of putting a shift operator in there for you not 5 to be able to directly communicate with people when 6 you needed to?7 )There was no point to any of 8 these standards, other than it would make you look 9 really damned good. It would make you look very 10 military, very attentive, no distractions.

11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was this in 12 preparation for like the WANO visit or some other 13 visit? Was there an IMPO visit coming up or some 14 other --i5 I think it was -- I mean, 16 there were a lot of things that went into it. One of 17 them was QA type audits. QA says, "Okay, I stood in 18 the control room and watched your NCOs for two hours 19 and I only saw them scan the boards three times", or 20 whatever, and our procedure said that we would scan 21 the boards every two to three minutes. So, I mean, 22 it's like an internal audit. Then you had the IMPO 23 perceptions simulator and some more management 24 observations, that type thing and you know, shit rolls 25 downhill.

They get a couple of bad comments and they NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

49 1 try to see, well, what's going on. And then they just 2 come through, you know, the pendulum swings too far 3 one way type thing.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: No chairs, no phones..)Right, no chairs, no phones, 6 no food in the control room, no outside chatter, no 7 distractions, "You will continuously rove for 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> 8 straight".

So, I mean, it's just an exact -- an 9 extreme overkill and did we need improvement, yes.10 Could we have looked better, yes. I mean, there's no 11 doubt about that, but the extreme overkill and the 12 fact that they wouldn't listen to you saying, "If I 13 drive my car for 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> straight staring at the dash 14 board waiting for a light to come on, I'm going to 15 crash", you knQw.16 After 15 minutes of staring at the 17 consoles, it's like sitting in front of the computer, 18 you need to take your eyes off, need to look away type 19 thing. You need to, you know, refresh yourself, you 20 know. Twelve hours of doing something like that, you 21 know, three hours into your watch, you wouldn't see 22 reactor power if you've got 110 percent.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Sounds like a giant 24 inter-tap or something.

25 L 3 Right, but they wouldn't take NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 13.'3 RHnDF ISI ANfl AVF. N.W 50 1 that feedback at first and --2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How long did it take?3 , I think it took shortly after 4 I gave up my and they realized, "Okay, we're 5 pushing too hard. Maybe we've overdone some things".6 Their biggest concern at that time was how many other 7 F were about to give up their license.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that was a factor.9 Absolutely.

Did they come 10 out and say that? No.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's a pretty big 12 step, though, for somebody to go through that training 13 and then just say, "Here, keep it".14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Were you the 15 only one to do that?16 I was the only one to do it.17 There were several others considering doing it and I 18 still believe there are a couple left that would like 19 to do it. But it"s a huge financial step. That's 20 what holds most people back from going back to the EO 21 ranks.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The couple that are 23 left that still would like to do it are -- you're 24 talking present day.25 Yes NEAL R. GROSS f , COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

51 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What would cause 2 that?3 I'm not sure. I mean, you'd 4 have to talk to them individually but I mean, there's 5 just -- there's still a lot of stress in the control 6 room. There's still a lot of supervisors that are 7 good people, but they shouldn't be there. They're not 8 conservative and most of the time they try to be 9 conservative but the real problem is, is that all of 10 their paychecks is tied to power production.

All of 11 their bonuses, all of their raises is tied to power 12 production.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You made a comment 14 before. You said senior management hesitates to take 15 conservative action because it will effect their pay.16 -j Correct.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let's first describe 18 -- define for me senior management.

Is that OS level 19 or is that a different level? Who are you talking 20 about there?21 -I'm talking from a CRS and 22 up. Anything above a field supervisor, their pay is 23 based on megawatts output, their bonuses.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so all the way 25 through CRS --NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

52 1 ****break in audio****2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We took a brief 3 break, it's approximately 9:10 p.m. and where we left 4 off, you made a comment about senior management 5 hesitating to take conservative action because it 6 would effect their pay and we defined senior 7 management as CRS and above at that point.8 7 orrect.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Now, the first 10 question is, how do you know that? How do you know it 11 effects their pay, there's a direct connect there?12 1 iHow do I know, because I know 13 they get bonuses, quarterly bonuses, the same as we do 14 in the union and those bonuses -- I can't give you the 15 exact breakdown, it comes down in our e-mail 16 occasionally saying that how many first aid accidents, 17 basically the company's goals and I think they're on 18 the wall out here somewhere.

And power production is 19 one of those goals.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Like and OSHA 21 reportables and that type of thing?22 Right, right.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, power 24 production.

Capacity factor, is that what you're 25 talking about?NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ii 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 53:1 Capacity factor, yes. Total megawatts.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so the bonuses are awarded on -- in part based on that but when you say they would hesitate to take conservative action, what makes you say that? I mean, in terms of conservative action, what are you looking at?-)What they're looking at and this is mostly at the OS level that I've seen, is .that any time that they have to do anything to lower reactor power, they have to call the assistant Ops manager or manager or above and basically say, "Hey, this is what we've done, this is why we've done it".They have to justify any time they lower reactor power.Now, obviously, if it's a transient, a run-back or something that automatically lowers power for us, you know, there's nothing they can do about that. But when you're operating at 100 percent, and just because you feel uncomfortable because you can't see reactor power any more, basically to lower that power two percent in this environment, the deregulated environment, they basically need to get permission is what it comes down to.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So when did that NEAL R. GROSS ,t?) if COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHnnF IRI ANn AVF N W 54 1 start?2 1 That started shortly after 3 the energy was deregulated.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And you see that as 5 a direct effect?6 M Of deregulation, yes.7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was that 8 ever written down or ever spoken in either shift 9 turnover or some management briefing to your 10 knowledge?

I mean, how did you get -- did you just 11 make the connection on your own or did somebody come 12 up and directly say that?13 Clarify the question, 14 directly say what? What are we --15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: How do you know that 16 the OS level has to.go to the AOM level to reduce 17 power?18 they're in the same 19 room with us. We hear them pick up the phone.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you're saying that 21 since deregulation, the change in the procedure is 22 that the OS previously would have done it on their own 23 and after deregulation they have to go through the AOM 24 to do that?25 ,Right, the AOM and the -~ I NEAL R. GROSS( 1 ---]COURT REPORTERS AND TRA14SCRIBERS 1t193 RHOMl ISI AIn AVF NW 55 1 think the load dispatcher as well.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then I guess to 3 fully answer Scott's question would be, I mean, is 4 something like that a procedure that's documented or 5 is that just something that's sort of understood?

6 /1 think it's something that's 7 understood.

They have their OS meetings once a month 8 type thing and but, no, it's not written down anywhere 9 that I'm aware of.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was it told to you or 11 is this an observation?

Did an OS tell you that 12 that's the way it gets done?13 No, it's more of an 14 observation.

But then again, for some reason, I think 15 it has been told to me, but I can't recall when, 16 where, why type thing.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Can we just 19 stay on that? I want to stay with just the thought 20 about the deregulation for just a moment. Do you 21 remember when that was or when there was that change 22 because of the deregulation?

23 I'd say approximately two 24 years ago.25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

56 1 there -- was management at the station stable then or 2 were they also going through a transition?

Was there 3 -- I'll just tell you overtly while I'm asking the 4 question, is it possible that the change in the way 5 you were operating could be due to a management change 6 in addition to deregulation or do you feel like it was 7 just --8 ) I thought it was just 9 deregulation and the reason I say that is because ever 10 since I've been here for , management is 11 continuously in a state of flux of change.12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.13 )We've had more ops managers 14 than I have friends, you know, so --15 MR. HERNANDEZ:

That's not hard.16 Right. (Laughter)

The 17 reason I'm tying it to deregulation I guess is because 18 we have -- at training, we have what we call ops 19 management roll-outs, updates, you know, where,.usually 20 the AOM or the ops manager or above comes out and 21 talks to us.22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.23 1: And now ever since 24 deregulation, all they've come out with are these 25 charts on the board talking about capacity factor, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 123 RHHI F IRI ANf AVF N W 57 1 earnings per share for the company. It's all about 2 the dollar now. It's all about keeping the budget 3 down, keeping the capacity factor up, increasing the 4 megawatts output, increasing stockholders' share. It 5 didn't used to be that way. We used to be a much more 6 conservative company before deregulation.

7 Before deregulation I probably never heard 8 anyone in management say anything about earnings per 9 share of the company.10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And who is 11 the presenter of this information?

12 / It's usually the assistant 13 ops manager. Specifically, who's giving me more of 1'4 those lectures than anyone is probably 15 Before him it was hat used to give those 16 lectures.

When deregulation first happened, he's the 17 one that came out with those lectures.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At that time, VP ops?19 .J Right, and then, you know, 20 after he gives the initial presentation, then it kind 21 of rolls down to the ops, assistant ops manager, ops 22 manager, and they just keep rehashing type thing. So 23 I would say. M tarted it, then down t 24 and then certainlyl-j 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So starting about two NEAL R. GROSS -COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

58 1 years ago, early 2002?2 -.<Maybe two and a half years 3 ago. I'm pretty sure that started before all this --4 before the big change in standards started, so 5 probably two and a half years ago.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: When did you 8 say you got 10 12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, so, you 13 actually were licensed for quite awhile before you 14 gave up your license, so you probably saw a lot of as 15 you said, a number, a large number of ops managers 16 come and go.17 Yes, yes.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The deregulation 19 presentation you heard from , and the 20 successive ones you've heard from like ,and 21 others, you saidi.-iWDi did they -- I mean, is 22 there anything else other than the discussion about 23 the shareholder value and earnings per share, did they 24 talk about philosophies, operating philosophies or 25 other things? I mean, is it just facts and figures or NEAL R. GROSS /C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

59 1 did they say, "This is how we're going to do this"?2 .... Well, they do say, "This is 3 how we're going to do that" and what they called that 4 was the op standards. "This is the standards we're 5 going to follow, this is how we're going to look, this 6 is how we're going to talk". I've heard so many times 7 that it's not really what you do, it's how people 8 perceive that you do it. It's all about perception.

9 You have to look good. As long as you look good, no 10 one is bothering you type thing. I've had those 11 lectures and they're concerned, you know, with plant 12 safety, nuclear -- I'm not saying they're not because 13 they are. They are.14 I mean, obviously, if we exceed 110 15 percent power for two hours and not know it, the NRC 16 is taking our keys away and then there is no earnings 17 per share coming from the Hope Creek part. So I mean, 18 that concern is there. But in my opinion, the bigger 19 concern is maintaining 100 percent power, staying on 20 line, more the on-line maintenance, all these type 21 things to keep you on line longer, to keep the outages 22 short. And part of that's IMPO. I mean, there's no 23 doubt in my mind that IMPO is a huge push for capacity 24 factor, short outages.25 And in my opinion as a union guy, as a NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 13 RHnrfF: IRI Ain AVF M W 6O 1 hands-on worker, that -- it's not a good thing to be 2 pushed so far from so many different organizations.

3 If you have to have a long outage because you've got 4 to get some work done and replace some SRV's it's 5 going to take awhile, you replace -- you know, 6 whatever, do what you've got to do, because in the 7 long run, it's going to pay you more money, you know.8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Have you 9 ever heard -- you know, we talk in the abstract about 10 maybe being out in training and hear a presentation 11 and talk about your operating philosophy and rolling 12 out, how you're going to do practice operational 13 standards and what have you. Have you ever heard 14 that come up in the context of a plant situation where 15 something has happened in the plant, like for example 16 your situation where there was a loss of the CMS 17 computer, that you know, in the back of your mind 18 you're saying, I really want to drop power a couple 19 percent, I feel really good about it. If we could do 20 that, I'd feel a lot more comfortable.

21 But yet, you get an impression either 22 through something somebody says or you know, something 23 else, some discussion you overhear, that these 24 operational standards, these operational practices 25 that are coming out of the deregulation are driving NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE. N.W 61 1 the decisions in kind of what you -- I think you 2 mentioned as a non-conservative direction.

3 -7I think we don't fix a lot of 4 our problems, minor problems, you know, a little steam.5 leak, oil leaks, we blow those off every outage and 6 they come back and bite us for the plant scram. And 7 that is all based on money and time of the outage, 8 keeping the outages short, as little work as possible, 9 more maintenance on line, and the biggest part of it 10 is money. If it's going to cost us more money than 11 what we have in our budget this year, we're not going 12 to fix it. We can't just keep going back to corporate 13 and ask them for more money.14 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is that consistent?

15 Have you seen that been the same since you've been --16 you know, in the past six years or so?17 Since deregulation.

Before 18 deregulation, we could get all the money we wanted.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, until recent 20 months, too? Is it still the same way in your 21 opinion?22 -Oh, yes, absolutely.

23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is there any 24 problems that are in the power plant right now that 25 stand out in your mind that that are maybe more NEAL R. GROSS £(( 7C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

62 1 significant than others that really should be fixed 2 that aren't getting fixed?Well, I think we currently 4 have a drywall leakage problem that's going to bite us 5 real soon.6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.7 7E And we just had a short 8 outage. They went in and identified it so they could 9 up the limit to five and it gives them a little more 10 margin, but the fact is --11 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Up what 12 limit to five?13 Drywall leakage limit, 14 unidentified leakage versus identified leakage, a tech 15 spec --16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Isn't it 17 always five?18 , versus, it's identified 19 now, so you can to up to five. Four was unidentified 20 because we didn't know what it was.21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I thought 22 five unidentified is the limit.23 I'm not sure of the exact 24 limit but --25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Maybe we NEAL R. GROSS , -C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 13X3 RHnnF I5I ANf AVF H W 63 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 should as the --MR. HERNANDEZ:

You have to look at the abnormal, because there's the tech spec limit and then there's the administrative limits.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Oh, okay, so the administrative one could be lower.MR. HERNANDEZ:

It would definitely be lower.Right, yes, definitely lower, but anyway they went in and identified it. They know what it is and it would cost too much money to fix at this time, so go ahead and start the plant back up.MR. HERNANDEZ:

The identified is considerable more.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.MR. HERNANDEZ:

A higher limit.Li Higher limit, right, you can raise the limit.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah, that's like 25 percent then, isn't it?MR. HERNANDEZ:

That's what I was thinking.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: The item that was identified as leaking, do you know what that was? -r NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

64 1 I believe it's a couple 2 control rod drive mix. There as also a chill water 3 leak identified but they fixed that one, right? Yeah.4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: All right, 5 and the control rod drive, do you happen to know, I 6 mean, were you involved with the work party or --7 I was off on those days 8 as a matter of fact.9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, 10 because we hear a lot actually in the region. We 11 heard it was like 120 drops a minute, which isn't --12 No, it's not a lot.13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: That's not that doesn't equal the .7 gpm or whatever it was.15 Right, but I think there's 16 two of them that's leaking.17 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Yeah, there's a couple of 18 them and I heard one of them was 180. I'm not sure 19 what the exact numbers are.20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, all 21 right, so there's a kind of an example of something 22 that's like that. How about other things in the 23 plant? What about the MS20 valve?24 i .1 The steam leak?25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 132 RHnCnF II ANf AvF N W 65 1 I mean, sure, that can buy us 2 any time.3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Now, has 4 that been something that's been sitting for awhile or 5 is that a fairly recent issue?6 It's fairly recent but 7 they've had opportunities to fix it and didn't take 8 them. This last outage they could have fixed it but 9 they did not want to prolong the mini-outage.

10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Wasn't there 11 a leak seal repair attempted?

12 I believe it was attempted, 13 yes.14 MR. HERNANDEZ:

They shot goop a few 15 times. I don't know how many times. I know they were 16 getting worried that they were running out of the 17 amount of times they could shoot it.18 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, okay.19 But that's.typical for the 20 company. Go in, try to do a quick repair, wrap it up, 21 Band-Aid it, whatever it takes. If it doesn't work 22 we'll go on and eventually, we'll get to it, and which 23 they will. They will get to it and get it fixed, but 24 usually not before it takes them out. That's what 25 always gets me. And whenever you get taken out by the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 1I 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 66 plant, it's quite the challenge for the operator.

I mean, scrams are not that hard to deal with, but you're sitting there with 100 percent power, then you're scrambling an SIV closure or whatnot, it's always in the middle of the night, 3:00 o'clock in the morning, you know.And so, yeah, you get a little pissed off because, yeah, we knew about this problem. We knew it was going to be a problem. We didn't take the time to fix it right and now, here we are scrambling again.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: When those kind of issues are raised in that context, what kind of response do you get?-1 C'3Typically, we only raise them to our direct supervisors, the O type level. And for the most part, the feel the exact same way we, the @ do. There's a couple of that are not in the same group of feelings.

Thea are just as challenged as we are when we have scrams, you know.They don't want the plant to scram. They don't want this leak to become a problem. Typically they're our sounding board. 'We bitch to them and they say, "Yeah, you're right, you know, I feel the same way". And pretty much that's the end of it. Occasionally, you'll bitch to your senior and he'll say, "Yeah, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

67 1 we'll bring that -- raise that issue up and you know, 2 put it on our turnover sheet or whatever", and then 3 once every 10 weeks or whatever, when the system lapse 4 manager comes out, pretty much that's the only time 5 you get to talk to these guys, then you bitch to him, 6 "Why didn't you fix this, why didn't you fix this", 7 and he'll come back with the same response, "Well, we 8 have to look at budget. We have to look at this. We 9 have to" -- you know, and they do have to evaluate all 10 these things, right, but it's always the same answer 11 and basically it always comes down to, "We didn't want 12 to spend the time, we didn't want to spend the money.13 We'll get it later". That's what it comes down to.14 They don't say it in those exact words.15 They say it much nicer.16 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Risk analysis.17 .Risk analysis, you know, and 18 all kinds of --19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is there 20 other issues, other than the dry well leakage problem 21 in there that you can think of where they're offering 22 explanations as opposed to fixing it?23 I mean, we have other issues.24 We have diesel exhaust leaks, but I mean, most of the 25 issues we have are not going to take the plant out NEAL R. GROSS k\ -1c/COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.9. RHOr)F IS.qANf AVF. NW.

68 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 type issues.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.J Whereas, like the dry well leakage could and the steam leak could. But there's other issues that, I guess, border more on industrial safety than nuclear safety. And we've had diesel exhaust leaks forever and certainly had many hell raising discussions about those trying to get those fixed.MR. HERNANDEZ:

I hate to stop you.Instead of trying to remember them, if you go on the ops web page, they have the ops concerns list and operator's work-around list, and you see a whole list of the stuff that has been identified and when they're going to fix it or how they're going to fix it or how long it's going to take, so all that information there for you.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, thank you.Going back just a little bit, I wanted to clear up something that we talked about with that CMS issue on the power level. I think the way you presented it was that it had happened before and the down power occurred to help everybody in their comfort level on where you actually were.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

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 69 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Then this incident occurred which was -- we're putting it late 2001 or early 2002. And it was handled a little differently.Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And it was handled to the point where notification got written because there was such a discrepancy between shift management and what the crew wanted to do.Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Were there any other incidents like that, since that time? I know you said that there was -- what did you call it, the document that came out that changed it.j The.ops standards.-

.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The ops standards were changed and it reflected what you were saying should have been done in that incident.

Did it happen again?Well, the entry, yes.~.j SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did it happen again?Did they follow the standards if it did?I don't think that it did happen again. Of if it did, I wasn't on shift or I didn't recall, but I don't think so.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, but you had NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS " " 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

70 1 indicated

--2 I'm pretty sure only once.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: The one time that you 4 didn't down power for it.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And then the 7 correction came out after that to fix that?8 Correct.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When we were talking 10 about senior management hesitating to take 11 conservative action, period, hesitating to take 12 conservative action, you were talking about this 13 incident.

You're offering that as an example of it.14. JWell-, whenever I saythat, 15 I'm referring to the fact that they won't fix our 16 problems.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, that's what I'm 18 referring

--19 put things off and say 20 that it's too much money, "We don't have enough time, 21 we'll get to it later".22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So a little bit about 23 -- I mean, part of that is what we just talked about 24 in terms of these maintenance issues, here.25 definitely.

.. 4 /NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 411- CUnC 0 AKIM A~fC KI I P AI 71 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and then that 2 incident about the down-power.

3 " " ; Right.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about anything 5 else in terms of on-shift operations, operability 6 decisions, that type of thing, had you see any 7 evidence of that elsewhere?

8 Not that I can think of at 9 this time.10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If not you 11 personally, had you heard of any incidents?

12 No.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. With the 14 changes that have been made,--you described the -ones 15 that were more administrative in nature and you said 16 they came right on the heels of when you gave up your 17 2 Did you want to reverse that decision or are 18 you comfortable.

where you are?19 1 am very comfortable where 20 I am, in control of my life.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Did you -- okay, did 22 you think about -- well, did you -- I mean, did you 23 regret that decision at all or did you stay 24 comfortable with that decision throughout?

25 The first year I regretted it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

12) W~nng M~I Ahfl &%/= KI %A/

72 1 a lot.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Money-wise?

Moy 1-wise it is a smack in 4 the face. Your entire family feels it, not just you.5 Sure there were some regrets with .that money-wise, but 6 as far as the decision, doing the right thing, being 7 much more comfortable with my job, enjoying my job, no 8 regrets whatsoever.

9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.10 And now that I'm adjusted to 11 the money difference, I will never go back t( I 12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is there something 13 they could do that would change your mind that way, 14 that would make you reconsider it?15 3-They would have to get rid of 16 a lot of supervisors.

17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is that the issue?18 Yes.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: At what level? Are 20 you looking at ops management or senior management?

21 j.*-00" Right, there's numerous CRS'22 that I think should not be in that position.

There's 23 numerous OS' that should not be in that position.

The 24 ops manager and the assistant ops managers, the 25 assistant ops manager I have a lot of respect for NEAL R. GROSS -COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS flLJPmunc:

101 A&IiM AtIc hi ih 73 1 right now. The one at the time that I quit, I had 2 absolutely no respect for and I'm glad to see that 3 he's gone. The ops manager, I'm glad to see that he's 4 gone.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Wait a minute now, 6 you lost me. The assistant ops manager is gone. He 7 quit?8 No, he was reassigned to the 9 outage group that was 10 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: was out 11 of operations then or at least shifted.12 7) Shifted, right. He's still 13 technically in operations and he could come back any 14 day but I am --.and took his place.15 been around a long time. He's been in a 16 couple other utilities.

He talks the company line, 17 you know, like he's supposed to, you know, megawatts 18 electric and earnings per share and it kind of ticks 19 me off once in awhile there but then again, so does 20 President Bush. You know, he pisses me off when he 21 talks about certain things, so you know, that's 22 natural is what I'm saying, you know.23 No problem there. I mean, he does talk 24 the company line, just like, you know, Bush talks the 25 American way and he wants to take away overtime.

I NEAL R. GROSS 1c , COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4 1n1 nU^M JL1 A &lr At IC kiAt 74 1 mean, he does talk the company line. I mean there's 2 certainly things that --3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: 4 No, Bush.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Oh, I thought you had 6 issues with overtime and 7 MR. HERNANDEZ:

No, we have issues with 8 overtime with George Bush.9 *George Bush, right.10 MR. HERNANDEZ:

There's a big push to take 11 away a lot of overtime but that's a different 12 conversation.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: This is going to get 14 to be about a five-hour interview if we start bringing 15 politics into it.16 Okay, along that line that you were 17 talking about, when you're saying CRS and OS, you're 18 saying you wouldn't work for them, you don't want to 19 see them there. Are we talking technically proficient 20 or are we talking leadership proficiency skills here?21 What is it that you see lacking?22 ]Technical, yes, Technically, 23 there's several that are lacking. No doubt in my 24 mind. People skills, there are several there lacking 25 and those aren't necessarily the same ones that are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 75 1 lacking in technical.

You know what I mean. But the 2 same with the OS'. Technically some of them shouldn't 3 be there. People skills, some of them shouldn't be 4 there.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Both technically and 6 leadership-wise.

7 CYes.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To a level that 9 challenged the safe operations of the plant when 10 you're saying technically proficient?

11 %p)Yeah, there's a couple of OS'12 that would -- in my opinion could challenge the 13 operation of the plant if they did not have a strong 14 CRS, yes.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So if you get a 16 couple of these people in combination, you've got the 17 potential for a disaster.18 C O M. Right, especially when you've 19 taken your control away from your NCOs.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where do you see that 21 happening?

22 What do you mean where do I 23 see it happening?

24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I mean, what shift 25 would you -- let me ask you this way; what incidents NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 76 1 would cause you to say that, technical proficiency, 2 would question any combination of these two? I mean, 3 that's a serious issue with an OS and a CRS on shift 4 that you're saying wouldn't know what to do.5I'm not telling you they 6 wouldn't know what to do. They all have been trained 7 to handle the casualties.

We have the EEOPs which you 8 can just go straight down and as long as you follow 9 them, I don't care how big of an idiot, you could be 10 a monkey in there and you will safely shut down the 11 plant.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.13 aw- So that from a technical 14 point of view, there I'm not saying that the reactor 15 is in jeopardy if you put two of these people 16 together.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, that's what I 18 want to get clear here.19 Okay, yeah, because 20 everything is written so detailed that a monkey could 21 to it, okay.22 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Where do you see the 23 potential for the problem then?24 ]The potential for the problem 25 is something that's out of the ordinary, for example, NEAL R. GROSS V IC_COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS tw~ P~-Unr- MI~ A~n~ AVP NW 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 77 you're in a refuel outage and the CRS and the OS have to make a decision you know, what to do to do something and there's just some there without the technical and the biggest reason is they're not coming up through the ranks of the company. They're hiring straight from off the street, from outside type things. They have very little --SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: On-site experience.,C- -va .W-1Right, no site experience, no-- some of them have no BWR experience.

I have to be very careful here and I know that. There's just some CRS' and some OS' that I would not trust to make a technically accurate decision.

That doesn't help you at all, does it?MR. HERNANDEZ:

It used to be normal to be an EO, CO and go to supervisor, that was --SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Go through the ranks.MR. HERNANDEZ:

Now, it's extremely rare that anyone would leave the union to go to supervisory.

So they hire people off the street that they might have -- some of them don't even have Navy nuclear experience but they make it through the training and everything and they're licensed and they're your boss but really they're more asking you what to do than telling you what to do. And they're NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 41'V3 O r~n 101 A1,1r A%#ý kVl~b 78 1 not really -- now, some of them are very good. Some 2 of them you feel like they're not really backing you 3 up. It's more like you're guiding them, you're 4 training them rather than them being a help, I think 5 is what you're trying to say.6 #0 1 Yes.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because they don't 8 have that plant experience.

9 ,jRight, I mean, the guy's, you 10 know, been here for seven or eight months, depending 11 on what we're talking about and I've been here W 12 and I was EO, CO and obviously, I'm going to 13 know more about the plant, how it really runs, than he 14 does. But that all .went. away in.the era. I 15 don't know if you're familiar with that, but when they 16 took away the overtime for the supervisors and 17 everything so nobody -- basically, nobody goes up.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You've no incentive 19 to.20 W Right, I feel.21 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Some guys still go. They 22 thinking maybe one day they'll get the day shift and 23 stuff. Every once in awhile you get a stray guy that 24 goes, but the vast majority of the classes that come 25 through if you look at it, there will be 90 percent NEAL R. GROSS 1C-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1311 RH(flF I~q ANN AVF N W 79 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 that are not OCS.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Consistently staying in the NCO.MR. HERNANDEZ:

Ninety percent of them are new supervisors and licensing class for NCOs, easy.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.MR. HERNANDEZ:

I think that's what you were trying to get at.# 0 Yes.MR. HERNANDEZ:

I don't want to put words in your mouth.~Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So are you -- when you're saying that you would have these concerns, is that first-hand experience?

Oh, absolutely.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and there is a number of these people that are on shift still?Yes, but that's more my personal opinion than it is based on any facts.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But these folks presumably have already passed the SR license exam, correct?C :1.1' Q_3 Yes, yes.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Including NEAL R. GROSS k "C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERSI5I AflB Ax tJM W j."

80 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 the simulator and GPM simulation; Correct.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: They did demonstrate some level of proficiency.

Yes.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So where is the hard spot?lLike I told you before, a monkey can follow that procedure and shut this reactor down.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're saying an unusual condition.

.An unusual condition, normal everyday operations which is what concerns me, is they have to make decisions.

On day shift today we lost a couple of chillers and the CRS has to make decisions to start another chiller, monitor drive -- these things aren't cookbook laid out, you know, in a procedure, I mean, there's abnormals, obviously, but you can be in numerous abnormals at the same time.When I say they aren't proficient, most of the CRS'that I don't trust would grab a high vac or a chiller trip abnormal which is your initiating clue, right?Personally, I don't give a shit about that chiller trap. I want to watch dry well pressure, dry NEAL R. GROSS ,c-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.. RHnnF IRI ANf AVF HW 81 1 well temperature.

You know, how is that chiller trip 2 effecting my plant and you should really be in those 3 abnormals.

With a priority, I mean, you should be in 4 the one that caused you to get there, but your 5 priorities should be drywall pressure, drywall 6 temperature and then the chiller trip, getting another 7 chiller started. You know, that's just an example.8 I guess more of a common sense approach or 9 more of a plant experience approach type thing. And 10 so, you know, you're going to have CRS' up there 11 looking in this book and, you know, saying, "Okay, 12 we'll need to get a chiller started".

Okay, chiller 13 starts are an everyday plant event. It would probably 14 take us two hours to do it, right? No rush to start 15 a chiller. You get a break, you check the oil level, 16 blah, blah, blah, up to two hours, right?17 Well, if you're stuck in that book and dry 18 well temperature and dry well temperature is going up 19 and you're not in that book, guess what, you're going 20 to be scram'd real soon because you're not paying 21 attention, because you don't have the common sense, 22 the technical expertise to know where you should be.23 I mean, there's no --there's nothing written down 24 that says, "Hey, you hit that alarm", even though that 25 means that chiller trip, you really should be looking NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS

1. RHnnF IRI ANn AVF N W 82 1 at this, you know. There's no procedure in the world 2 that's that detailed.

It just comes with experience 3 and technical expertise.

4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are you -- what about 5 your reactor operators in a scenario like that, what 6 are they doing?7-- would say -7 8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Ready to jump in, do 9 you think, or --10 -) Well, we have these standards 11 in place. So they have to do things a certain way.12 That means they have to look at that alarm. It's the 13 first thing they have to do. They have to announce 14 that alarm to the CRS, get is repeat back 15 acknowledgment.

Then they have to pick up the book 16 for that alarm, read what it says, tell the CRS. You 17 know, we have theses strict guidelines and standards 18 that we'd follow. In my day, the first thing I would 19 want to do is look at the alarm, acknowledge the 20 alarm. I could tell the CRS what it is, but 21 personally he's already frickin read the stupid ass 22 thing.23 And the first thing I'm going to do is go 24 look at travel, temperature and pressure, okay. Maybe 25 I haven't looked at them in five minutes. All right, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 83 1 I need to know what they are right now so I can 2 develop a trend, which way are they going, how fast 3 are they going.4 And then I would go back over see, okay, 5 this chiller tripped. I'd call my equipment operator.6 So, I mean, it's just -- it's shit like that that you 7 can't write into a standard, you can't write into a 8 procedure.

You know, it's just a common sense --9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Right.10 -- type thing and they took 11 that away from us.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let me ask you this.13 I'm digging in my bag for a list. It's usually handy.14 I had an ops list.15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How can 16 anything be handy in that stack of papers?17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I had an ops list.18 Probably back in my office. What percent, how many 19 CRS' do you have? I mean, I don't know without that 20 list handy. I mean, what's the pool of peopleand how 21 many --22 I.. Well, we have five sets --we 23 have what three per set now?24 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Three or four and we have 25 some --NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS.n-V nLJ^Mý nr I.-.I*, Asrý ..-A 84 1 That's 15 and we probably 2 have almost 15 off-shift, maybe not quite, 10 off-3 shift.4 MR. HERNANDEZ:

I don't three or four, I'd 5 be guessing.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So about 30 or so?7 About 30 or so.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What percent of that 9 do you have concerns with?10

• percent.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That many?12 13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about at the OS 14 level, I mean, you have five on shift and you have 15 several more in different functions.

16 Right, so probably just say 17 ballpark, what we have 10 0S'?18 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Yeah, now with the 19 reorganization, they change people's titles. I don't 20 know how many we have.21 And probably 20 percent of 22 that I'd have a problem with.23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So two or 24 three, something like that?25 Yeah.NEAL R. GROSS CCURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHnDE ISLAND AVE. N.W.

85 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: There are around 10 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 OS', right?i Right.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Well, we've done everything but name names.7 I'd prefer not to.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You going to go there? Are you going to help us out?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It doesn't mean there's a violation.

What it would do for the purpose of this inquiry, it would help us to focus, which is what we're looking for. If there's incidents, if there's problems, if there's -- a lot goes into the safety-conscious work environment.

If there's a perception out there that people are being led by people who haven't got a clue, then you'd want to hear where that's coming from, directly where that's coming from because it doesn't seem like -- it didn't seem like that's the true case for you right now anyway, at least as it stands now.I don't know if that's accurate, though, either.Let's say that Mr., knows who his weak links are. He's quite aware of it.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VVYI D.r'fnC" I11 Akif" AMIC Kl IM 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 86 He's heard complaints from equipment operators, NCOs.He knows who they are. If you want names, I would ask that you ask him.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in terms of these would be presumably tricky items to find documented, that type of thing, but is there anything that would point in that direction, exhibit that there's some issues there?SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How about plant problems, plant equipment issues, transients?

Is there anything that these knowledge deficiencies or problems --There are things written about them. In one case I can think of where there were tags left on some equipment a dry well, and there was a particular CRS that had the job assigned to the Eos. He gave the brief, told them exactly what to do.They got there, he said, "Hey, there's still tags on these two valves", you know. He said, "Oh, yeah, why don't you just -leave them there". Hello? So they did. They did what they were told. You know, they questioned it and they said, "No, that's normal", like he expected it. "Leave them there". They came out NEAL R. GROSS~~-4CWU~p I~ AIf tFIJ COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 87 1 and it wasn't, it wasn't expected.

It was wrong. So 2 there was a notification written.3 So, I mean, the documentation is there in 4 SAP, but you're not going to find names with it, do 5 you know what I mean. You're not going to find that 6 this was the supervisor who said, "No, leave the two 7 tags there, that's normal".8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It would be like a 9 tagging error notification.type of thing?---10 JRight. And so tracking down 11 the actual names of individuals who screwed up would 12 be very -- almost impossible.

13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So without going 14 through the operators on each shift and assuming 15 they're going to be as forthright as you apparently 16 are--17 SWell, what you can do is when 18 you find --19 SPECIALAGENT NEFF: -- we're not going to 20 get there.21 --notification, normally 22 what we try to do is the person that screwed up writes 23 the notification.

So if you see who the author is of 24 that notification, then that's who you go to is that 25 author. Most likely you're going to find that it's/NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 123 RHfnfF ISI ANf AVF N W 88 1 the guy that screwed up. But if it's not, he'll know 2 who did screw up.3 Like my last screw-up, "U'4 ýon myself. I left a fuel transfer pump 5 for a diesel running for six hours during my logs, and 6 so you would see the the notification was 7 me. And typically, that's the way it goes. It 8 doesn't always go that way, especially at the end of 9 the shift. If something happens at the end of the 10 shift, you know, then we do the fact finders, get all 11 our paperwork together and it may be the next shift 12 that actually writes the notification.

13 But typically the best way to find screw-14 ups is through the author of the notification.

15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Notifications.

Would 16 you have any .knowledge about performance appraisals?

17 .At the supervisory level?18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Uh-huh.19 No, I've never seen -- I know 20 they do them.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You wouldn't have any 22 basis to be able to compare them or say that part of 23 that becomes a factor in their appraisal overall, 24 notifications, screw-ups?

25 Oh, yes, I would say -- I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 417 DWI= IC1 A lMr AIr KI lAI 89 1 mean, I would assume that their appraisals are just 2 like my appraisals and that that type stuff would be 3 in there.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, I guess we're 5 looking at --6 The other way you could find 7 out who the screw-ups are is make the company provide 8 you with pay raises and you will find that the bottom 9 people on the pay raises are the ones that are 10 screwing up, the ones that are getting zero percent 11 pay raise.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Tagged to performance 13 appraisals?.

14 iffi Right.15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: One of the 16 things you said earlier and you even used -- I think 17 you mentioned your kids as an example, was, you know, 18 when Eileen asked about whether you've ever been 19 retaliated or in some way felt, some sort of 20 retribution or something for something you've done and 21 you said, "Well, everybody does".22 Right.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: We were talking 24 adverse actions, I think.25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Adverse NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISI AND AVF N.W.

90 1 actions. Have you ever -- have you ever felt that 2 maybe it went maybe a little bit too far, was unfair?3 ) No, I can't think of any case 4 where they went too far, it was unfair. I can give 5 you my example and, of course, there's no proof tied 6 to this. My first --7 first refuel outage after that I was 8 assigned to what's called the ECCS team for the entire 9 outage. The ECCS team is .the team that busts their 10 balls, does all the big core spray, RJR valves, all 11 the dry well work, you know, the hard work which you 12 typically assign your new guys to, the new young guys, 13 fresh with the company, you know, three or four years 14 or so, not one of your senior guys that's been around 15 for 16 It's idiot work, in other words. It's 17 just all grunt work. And so my first refuel outage I 18 was assigned to the ECCS team for the first time in 19 many years. I'm like, okay, no big deal. You know, 20 I can handle that. I can do that work. I can take 21 the pain. So I didn't complain to anybody, I didn't 22 say anything but I knew it, I knew in my head it's 23 okay. You know they're out, you know, to see if I can 24 really still be an EO, just to give me a little push, 25 make me work a little harder than what I should and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

91 1 typically, even the new guys you would only have on 2 OCCS for a couple of weeks, then you'd put them on 3 electrical for a couple of weeks or so and put them 4 back on ECCS.5 When I was no ECCS, I was the only one for 6 the entire outage. So, I'm like that's cool. Well, 7 something came up to where they needed an experienced 8 guy. So they pulled me off the ECCS team one night 9 and sent me to the boilers because steam seals were on 10 the boilers and the boilers were tripping.

So it was 11 like, great, I get a break. I'm cool with that, 12 right.13 One of the supervisors who was going over 14 to the boilers came out to talk to me. He said, "Hey, 15 how are you doing, you know, how are the boilers 16 going". And then he looks at me and he says, and you 17 know, just off the top of his head, he didn't mean to 18 say it, he says, "Why are you out here? They're not 19 supposed to give you the boilers". (Laughter)

Like, 20 "What do you mean by that comment"?21 "You were just supposed to do the ECCS the 22 whole outage". I said, "Why", and then he wouldn't 23 talk to me no more. That was pretty funny. That's 24 the type of retaliation that I seen. You know, make 25 the guy, you know, bust his balls. The same with my NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHnnfF IMI ANfn AVF N W 92 1 kids, all right, you caught me smoking in the living 2 room and I'm going to get in trouble with mom. Okay, 3 go clean your room, you know. That's what I see. I 4 don't see any, you know, trying to get fired or 5 anything like that.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Well, it sounds like 7 you handled it. How long did it go?. If the other 8 guys got to work it for a couple weeks, you got what, 9 10?10 it was five weeks.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Five? Five weeks 12 long? But you're kind of minimizing, you know, what 13 happened there and I guess what I'm wondering is do 14 you see it happening at a level if not with you, in a 15 way that would make people say, "I've got nothing to 16 say, I have no concerns to raise and I'm not putting 17 my neck out there any more"?18 Well, different people have 19 different personalities.

20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Understood.

Some of 21 this is your own internal --22 ..Right.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- whether you're 24 going to go forward with something or not.25 .Right.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

93 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But do you see a 2 response that -- from the company, from management and 3 we' ll just say CRS level and above, that would tend tp 4 discourage people or be of enough concern for somebody 5 not to bring forward concerns?6 I would say over-wide they 7 handle everyone pretty much the same. They can 8 discourage you from bringing up things by saying, 9 "You're a pain in my ass, go clean the diesels", you 10 know, but it's more of a natural response, you know, 11 a human response, not a company response.

Do you know 12 what I'm saying?13 They're not being told from their bosses, 14 "Hey, this guy is, you know, being a pain in the ass, 15 give him extra work", type thing.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Target him.17 Right, I don't see that 18 happening.

19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What do you see, it's 20 a tit for tat kind of thing?21 Right. But that's my 22 personality.

I mean, they can make me work for ECCS 23 for five weeks, you know, I don't give a shit.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Well, what happens if 25 -- I mean, you're -- \NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERSwR., l' IRI AMI'"f AVP M W 94 1 / Somebody with a different 2 personality would really take that personal.3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And I'll give you 4 that. It seems like your tolerance level for that 5 kind of thing is, you know, way up there, where 6 somebody else's might be --7 It takes a lot to piss me 8 off.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- less than -- okay, 10 all right, and that helps to understand from, you 11 know, what your perspective is on the whole thing.12 Right.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But after the ECCS 14 gig, what happened after that? Did you get something 15 else or did it go away or --16 IjiWell, no, because only during 17 outages are the supervisors actually in charge of the 18 EO's as far as assigning them jobs and then it goes 19 back to the NCO after the outage is over. So --20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're back on good 21 company?22 9 I'm back in good company, 23 right.24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so then what, 25 18 months goes by and--NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS vm pnn1 mif I Amfl A%/;= N w a Cz 1 _ -_Right, 18 months and everyone 2 would have forgotten about it by then so it's no big 3 deal, right.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So you were okay 5 since then?6 It ! Yeah.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Or are you perceiving 8 that kind of activity coming your way?9.J I still perceive it'a little 10 once in awhile but I'm not sure if it's real or if ii. it's just perceived because, you know, all right, I-12 know oesn't like me because I've put him 13 against the wall type thing. You know, I gave up 14 I made him look bad, you know. So maybe 15 he'll make a comment that I think, "Well, he said that 16 because I gave up 'but I think that's more 17 of a perception than it is a reality".18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It doesn't seem to 19 bother you.20 V-)g Right. Do I think the 21 company harasses anyone on a continuous basis? No.22 I mean, do they pick a guy out once in awhile that 23 pisses them off, you know, like the V_ & thing 24 and walk him off-site, yes, absolutely, sure. But I 25 think it's all short-lived, there's no long-term NEAL R. GROSS A ( ( (--COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1A93 RHOInF ISI ANJf AVF N W 96 1 target this guy type thing.2 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there do you think in that instance do you think there was 4 any intent to quote "teach the union a lesson"?5 Oh. sure there is, sure.6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean, he 7 just happened to be the person.8 4j0\Right.

9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But really 10 the malice was directed at the union or was it? I 11 mean, I'm just --12 I mean, it could have been.13 I don't know but, yeah, I would say they wanted to 14 teach the union a lesson and sometimes the union does 15 the same thing to them. You know, "Okay, we're 16 pulling all of our guys back to shift to teach you a 17 lesson". I mean, that's somewhat life, you know. The 18 same with my kids, "Okay, you're not getting ice cream 19 for that", you know. But as far as long-term targets, 20 I don't think so.21 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And has that been 22 pretty much consistently what you've observed in, you 23 know, let's say that past four, five, six years?24 Yes.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It's the same today NEAL R. GROSS >COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4131 OU^MC 101 AkI I C A %l lAi 97 1 as it ever was and --2 Yes 3 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- it's not a long-4 term thing. It might be some sort of little grudge 5 kind of thing, but--6O N: Right, that has not changed.7 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But you tagged it 8 more to an individual whether they would -- they would 9 see something like that and yet continue to raise an 10 issue, individually, whether they're -- you haven't 11 seen it to the point where people just shut down.12 .3 No.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Let me put it this 14 way; part of the safety conscious work environment is 15 one that allows people to function where if they see 16 something that causes them concern, they're free to 17 raise that issue and get an answer to it. Is that 18 what's happening here?19 [OWN J&D I feel the issues are being 20 raised and everyone is comfortable with raising the 21 issues. Most of the issues get resolved.

However, it 22 may take two, three, four years.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, it depends on 24 the priority it gets assigned then in terms of issues.25 --7Right, and the-- I think the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

98 1 company --2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: It took awhile didn't 3 it? I'm referring to the tape opening, not to your 4 answer. I wouldn't want to skew that on the record.5 That was a difficult tape to pop open. Okay, so from 6 what you see, that aspect of that functions.

People 7 can raise concerns and still move along and expect to 8 move along in -- you know, without --9 Well, when I say "people", 10 I'm referring to the union.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, your peers 12 then.13 Yes. I feel the CRS' are 14 under a different pressure than we are. That if they 15 are a pain in the ass, if they want to reduce reactor 16 power by two percent, I think they may be a little 17 more hesitant to take that up to their boss than what 18 the union is to take it to the CRS.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, now the reason 20 for that would be what we discussed before.21 Evaluations, power 22 production, earnings per share.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, tagging their 24 pay to conservative action type thing.25 J Right.NEAL R. GROSS "" COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS lA121 pwnn IQ1 &MIn A%/;= W W 99 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have -- in saying 2 that, have you seen any instances where you've seen 3 lower level management challenge upper level 4 management?

5 The case where I gave you 6 with the two percent power, w t 7 and he did want to lower power by two percent.8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.9 And in my opinion, the NCO 10 had the authority, he should have done it first. The 11 authority was taken away from him. The CRS should 12 have had the authority.

He wanted to do it, should 13 have done it, authority was taken away from him by the 14 OS. That's the only real example I can give you. I 15 can't think of anything else.16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Would you 17 say the pressure, the production pressure'under that 18 circumstance is excessive, in your judgment?19 Absolutely.

Two percent 20 power, in my opinion, is nice, slow, conservative, no 21 significant change.22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And one of 23 the things we've talked about, we've kind of -- we've 24 talked about it a lot through our discussion this 25 evening is that--U NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 11Y Wer~nr 1Q1 Aktfl A%/= KI AI 100 1 *** Audio interrupted***

2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Side 12, it's 3 approximately 9:56 p.m.4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: We were just 5 talking about the situation where there was a desire 6 to lower power and I was just recounting that talking 7 about the competitive environment, the deregulated 8 environment.

Do you think that that was a big player 9 in the push to maintain power at where it was as 10 opposed to lowering it that small amount or was it 11 that plus the bonuses or was there something else 12 there?13 ..... Well, the bonuses are part of 14 the deregulation.

It's a fallout from deregulation.

15 Their B bonus is tied to a power production and IMPO 16 indexes and how many safety instances you had on 17 shift. That all came out of the deregulation.

I would 18 say absolutely the lack of power reduction that day 19 was 100 percent tied to deregulation, their pay, 20 earnings per share.21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Have you 22 heard that come up in other instances besides this, 23 either through your firsthand knowledge or through 24 things you just heard about other issues that came up 25 in the plant?NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.1. RHrinF ISI ANn AVF N W 101 1 Well, I've heard 10,000 2 rumors. I hear them on a daily basis. They have no 3 facts. I'm only willing to talk about the facts that 4 I was there for, that I know to be facts.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, well, 6 how about you then? Do you have any other instances 7 where things like this had happened, whether it has to 8 do with, I mean, something very specific like this or 9 other things where there's opportunity to make a 10 decision one way or the other, and it seemed like it 11 was biased towards either keeping the plant up or not 12 reducing power as soon as it should have been or 13 delaying the shutdown or what have you?14 Well, the only other 15 situations I can give you is not fixing a problem 16 because it would cost too much money type thing.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: To go into the --18 .M To go into the dry well and 19 fix the leaks, to --20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You say that that 21 goes into your recognition that there's a failure to 22 take conservative action --23 Rgt 24 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- because of that.25 How about going back to this incident with the NEAL R. GROSS -7 " COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS dftVý flLJflflC US &I A~i^ %1- LI SAO 102 1 potential over-power event there, whenL 2 went back and forth with you, it took about an hour 3 and then you said a 10-minute discussion for him to 4 tell you what direction to go, in anywhere along that 5 line was he explaining why he was hesitant?

I know 6 you were having technical discussions in terms of what 7 you could read to see what your power level was.8 jRight. His explanation was 9 that we were currently at 100 percent when it 10 happened.

We've done nothing to change power.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.12 JSo, therefore, power should 13 not have changed. Therefore, we should not be in 14 violation.

And that we have other indications of 15 power, that APRMs, et cetera, et cetera that we should 16 be using as operators to maintain 100 percent power.17 So that was his justification.

18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, was there any 19 mention at all in terms of this hesitating to take it 20 down one, two percent because you then wouldn't be at 21 full power? Was that coming from him at all?22 2 No, not those exact words, 23 but he just -- for some reason you had the feeling, I 24 don't know why, probably because it's the overall 25 management talks and expectations of maintaining

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

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 103 you know, they put those charts on there and those charts, they can show you a half a percent power that you weren't operating.

You know, you were at 99.5, for you know, two hours, you know, why? You see those charts.And I'm exaggerating slightly.

I'm exaggerating slightly but I'm just saying that when they put those screens on the board, you can see those little dips where you had a little down power, you know, and that's the detail, the graphs that they're giving us. That's what they want us to see. That's the picture they want us to see.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So that would be seen as something that would have to be explained.

SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You know, you went down, let's justify why.F Right, why were we at 99-1/2?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Have you ever been present for a situation like that where something had to be explained, like in training or in some other shift meeting or something where there was some discussion of, "Yeah, we have to describe why we were at slower power and we have to have a reason"?NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1191 PSH-Wf I.I AM \l AXi l W 104 1 Has that ever come up?2 .!Typically, when they have the 3 graphs, they already have the explanation.

They've 4 already done their research.

They know why power was 5 down.6 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is it really 7 that -- I mean, you're saying a half a percent. What's 8 the -- is it two percent or five percent or -- you 9 know, is it -- you know, if you have -- if you look at 10 like the operation of the plant over a year, you might 11 see, you know, maybe an outage. You might see a 12 couple of forced outages. You might see a plant trip.13 And then you might see some --14 i. Some rod swaps. Yeah.15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah, other 16 things and then you might see a bunch of other really 17 tiny stuff --18 Rgt 19 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- that 20 nobody pays attention to.21Righ 22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And what 23 you're telling me is that little tiny stuff that no 24 one pays attention to is being paid attention to.25 ..Yes, absolutely, yes.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS c/

105 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And is there 2 some attempt to say, you know, this was justified, it 3 was not justified, you know, it was a conservative, 4 not a conservative decision?

You know, there was no 5 reason for us to take this small down power? I mean, 6 is that kind of sentiment coming out?7 i"-"PaNW.

jMore of the sentiment is we 8 need to maintain 100 percent power as long as 9 possible, more on-line maintenance, just to get the 10 graph to be flat line across the top with the 11 exception of your 18-month outage. You know, that's 12 pretty much the goal, and that's what they're pushing 13 for, a nice flat 100 percent graph, come down, do your 14 outage as short as possible, come right back up, and 15 maintain 100 percent. And part of that is the IMPO 16 index. I mean, I think an organization such as IMPO 17 should not be pushing the capacity factor the way they 18 are. They should be much more into safe, reliable 19 operations.

20 I basically think that IMPO's against the 21 NRC. I mean, I know that's kind of a far stretch but 22 they are. They want you to maintain a capacity factor 23 of 98 percent. Now, can I understand that yeah, in 24 order to be a good plant, you have to run? Yes, I can 25 understand that but when all the plants, you know, are NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VAT PI-IrflF 1.Q1 Atn A%/;= MN W 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ii 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 106 so competitive the way they are, to whereas .1 percent could make you the number 1 plant versus, you know, number 3, that's excessive, right?I mean, if I treated my kids' report cards that way, they would hate me, you know. So, I mean, part of the problem is IMPO, or their capacity factor index.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. We were also previously we were talking about some of the people that were maybe easier to work with than others who were more difficult and you mentioned two of the who were more difficult and you said was one. I think you said -as the other one.At that time, yes. That is not the same at this time.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And then has changed.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And why do you think is still so difficult to work with?-2Can I sum it up in one word?SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: If you want.) .Stupid. Sorry. You can tell I don't like him.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERSMUt 101 Akirl AVIr' Ml IA, 107 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah.2 He is just the -- he can't 3 change, do you know what I mean? He can't -- he loves 4 feedback.

I've never seen any person in my life who 5 just loves feedback. "Tell me how I'm doing, how am 6 I doing, how am I doing"? "You suck", you know, "and 7 we've told you that before. You suck. We don't like 8 you. You know, you are too forceful in this, blah, 9 blah, blah", and you know, he takes the feedback.10 Incredible, he takes the feedback and says, "Okay, I 11 understand'.

And then that's the end of it right 12 there.13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: He asks for it but 14 doesn't act on it.15 Right. There's no change.16 He's exactly 100 percent and the very next day, he'll 17 ask you for your feedback again. I mean, personally, 18 I think, you know, maybe this guy needs to be in a --19 you know, a mental hospital somewhere, you know.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Seriously?

21 Some days I feel that way, 22 yes, yes. I think something is not quite right but 23 that's my personal opinion. I'm not a professional 24 psychologist. (Laughter) 25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about in terms NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 108 1 of how that would challenge the plant in terms of safe 2 operations for the plant? Are there issues there that 3 that would cause? I mean, if he's not thinking right.4 .You know, me working for him 5 as an with him as a senior, and the shit hit the 6 fan and we were in some type of a melt-down or et 7 cetera, et cetera, I wouldn't even listen to him. I 8 really wouldn't.

I would do what I had to do and what 9 I knew was right because I know the shit coming out of 10 his mouth is just not going to be right. That's my 11 personal opinion.12 And so when you have a work environment 13 like that, to where your NCOs are not going to listen 14 to your senior supervisor because they think he's an 15 idiot, you have a problem.16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Does it --17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Hypothetically

ý-18 MR. HERNANDEZ:

You need to clarify what 19 you said. Man, I mean, that's --20 I've gone over the edge, 21 right.22 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Right.23 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're hypothetically 24 -- that's a hypothetical.

25 iYes, yes.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1.3 RHr)F ISIANM AVE.. N.W.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 109 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If x happens, but have you seen situations where people are so uncomfortable with his direction that the control is not the OS', the control is on somebody else's hands when stuff goes abnormal?-- -I\No, I have never seen that in real life, no.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But you just don't think he can handle it.That's correct.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I want to explore that a little bit. I mean, I can't tell if what you're describing is mainly based on your personality difference or if there's a technical competency problem. And you sort of describe it as sort of maybe a potential technical competency issue.And not everything is as cookbook as the OP's as you pointed out. There may be some things that at face value may appear to be a lessor transient or what have you but, you know, as we found out with TMI, you know, not everything is large break local dependent.

SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You know, there are other things that could result in more complications and give something a lot more trouble in NEAL R. GROSS )COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS V211q' MWf'%n"M, I,* 1 l A1.111 & I .1Z N IN 110 1 the plant.2 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Let me just jump -- I 3 think my opinion of what he was saying, if I could try 4 and paraphrase it.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.6 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Is that if something was 7 happening andw. m was giving an order, you are also 8 licensed.

If the information he's giving you, you 9 know, you feel is incorrect, you have to make a 10 decision because you are also licensed to do what you 11 think is correct for the plant , or to just listen to 12 what your supervisor is saying even though you know it 13 was wrong or you talk to other people and try to get 14 other opinions into it to see what is the correct 15 decision.16 I think it was a flamboyant way of saying 17 that.18 3 Well, partially.

I'm not 19 saying the guy is technically incompetent.

He's not.20 In fact, he is a very smart guy, he really is. He 21 would be an excellent engineer.

But what I am saying 22 is his priorities aren't right.23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Is this 24 going to the people being able to figure out what's 25 important?

NEAL R. GROSS i COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1..3 RHnnF II ANn AVF NW 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 12 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 Iii* IRight, what's important and what you really should be looking at technically, the experience level type thing.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.* .° Okay, and SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Now, how long has he been --SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I mean, that's a pretty big discrepancy.

He's either smart or he's stupid.Right, I mean, I call him stupid because I say he has no common sense.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, he's engineer smart.Oh, he's definitely engineer smart. He's a pretty sharp guy. He's -- you know, there's no doubt about that. I mean, obviously, he can pass all the exams, you know, all the simulator.

It's just his priorities, his common sense type thing.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Dealing with people, things like that.Dealing with people, you know, what he really should be looking at. And his understanding of, for example, the two percent reduction in reactor power, everything that he told us NEAL R. GROSS p-COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS tqT:1 IQ1 akinM 112 1 to look at is delayed or it doesn't update, you know, 2 until like a three-percent change, you know.3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Could that 4 have been just kind of a hindsight way of justifying 5 wanting to keep the plant in power? I mean, that he 6 basically knew he didn't have an argument, so he just 7 forced one?8 (.j- because, like I say, he 9 went to a sounding board. I mean, he went to, 10 and asked him his opinion. So, I mean, if it was just 11 based on only 100 percent, you know, I don't want to 12 lose a nickel from my paycheck, I don't think he would 13 have gone to junless he went you 14 know, just to get someone to back him up. I don't 15 know. I don't know.16 I think that he knew the plant was stable.17 He knew nothing was going to happen to the plant if we 18 didn't touch it. And I think he just -- his priority 19 or his conservative decision in this case was, "Well, 20 why should I do something if I don't have to do 21 anything"?

You know, he was missing the common sense 22 approach that, you know, xenon is changing.

At any 23 time we could have a small feed water feeder transient 24 and not see it because you've taken away our 25 instantaneous update. 70..NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 113 He just wasn't looking at the big picture, the whole priority.

It was more of, well, you know, my car is running fine now, so why should I do maintenance to it type thing.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: You're saying why guess if your not over-power, when you can know you're not over-power.

• rdWhen you know you're not.When you can take a conservative action to basically no matter -- if you do take a little feedwater heat transient, you're not going to exceed 100 percent.You're not going to be writing notifications.

You're not going to be informing the NRC, "Hey, we went over 100 percent power because of this little excursion".

You know, why --SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there any -- I mean, you eluded to this kind of change in standards where you, you know, needed to get permission

-- well, the OS' needed to get permission from the AOM prior to rolling the power. Could that have fed into his decision making, that he didn't want to lower power becausehe didn't want to call the AOM at --LOOM Well, it was on the day shift. Everyone was there. He could have called NEAL R. GROSS C COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 4 DVr~ i IMn I dl AM IA KI Mat 7 114 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 anyone instantaneously.

SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, I mean, it may have been like kind of a black mark on his record. You know, he may have perceived it that way. It's like, you know, "I'm doing really well, my capacity factor is really high for my shift".Right, I think they all perceived it that way.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You know, and so I'm going to try and keep it here.I believe they all perceive it that way, but there's nothing written down.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, how about has there been instances that you can think of. --we talked a little bit about where there were -- the loss of the CMS computer but that maybe you talked to the shift where it happened and the shift manager said or the OS said, "Do you know what, I still don't care.I'm still going to lower power two percent".

Like preceded the guidance -- did the guidance just come out when your shift had it and it had never happened before or had it actually happened?jJ It had happened, not the exact same thing, but similar things had happened where we had lowered reactor power.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N W-I 115 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 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.There's -- up to this point, a NCO wanting to lower recirc was never an issue before deregulation.

It was never an issue. You can-- you can go up there and lower power, just to show somebody you could lower power, that's an exaggeration.

But I mean, an NCO never had an issue if he was uncomfortable.

He could lower reactor power. If he was uncomfortable, he could pace that bolt twist to shut down, you know, if he saw and APRM spike and you know, he thought it was a power oscillation.

Even if he's wrong, and he thought he saw the spike. He says, "Hey, I got an APRM oscillating, I'm going to twist a shut-down".

There was no required pregnant pause, you know. The reactor operator was in control of the reactor. He was the licensed guy responsible for the reactor.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.j And they took that away with deregulation.

And technically the CRS is also in control of the reactor. And they haven't really taken that away but they're trying like hell. They're trying like hell in my opinion.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 116 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What about we talked 2 about and we've asked you for instances where you see 3 evidence of this non-conservative decision making.4 What about in terms of things that you've witnessed, 5 have you seen any examples where a control room crew 6 would be willing to be more aggressive in certain 7 instances but senior management came in and goes the 8 other way? Have they done anything like that, senior 9 management?

10 That a control room crew 11 would like to be more aggressive than senior 12 management?

No, it's always exactly the opposite.13 Senior management has a schedule, especially during 14 start-ups and shut-downs.

And those schedules will 15 have everything broken down. You'll be at this power, 16 this pressure, this temperature at this time, blah, 17 blah, blah. And that's what senior management goes 18 by. The control room crew is the ones doing the 19 manips and they can never keep on that schedule.20 I've never seen a shut-down or start-up 21 where we were on schedule for the actual bringing the 22 plant down, bringing the plant up, and I've seen many 23 of OS push to maintain that schedule.

And I even 24 allowed an OS to push me once to maintain that 25 schedule and I wound up scramming the reactor. It was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

117 1 already scrammed but we were doing depressure

--2 depressurization and I actually scrammed the reactor 3 on low level because we were trying to meet the 4 depressurization schedule to be at this certain 5 pressure at a certain time and we were lowering 6 pressure too rapidly. We were within our cool-down 7 and heat-upraised, no problems there.8 Limit-wise, tech specs, the law and all 9 that crap we were fine. And which, you know, the 10 schedule takes that into account, well, you can be 11 here, you can be here, you know, blah, blah. But we 12 had never taken a plant down that fast. It is all 13 part of deregulation, shorter outages, blah, blah, 14 blah. So we're taking the plant down to pressure as 15 fast as we can and I'm on the by-pass valves. I'm the 16 one lowering the pressure.17 And my other NCO is over in the corner 18 trying to maintain level. We had a defective start-up 19 control valve, had it for years, slow to respond and 20 sluggish, sticks. So I'm lowering pressure pretty 21 rapidly, within limits though, and he's trying to 22 maintain level in the start-up control valve. Well, 23 level is lowering, level is lowering.

He's trying to 24 turn the start-up control valve and we take the second 25 scram, you know, twelve and a half, I went too low, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS VATAPW~n:

JQ AKdfl A%/;=K MI 118 1 tripped both reactor water clean-up pumps. It was a 2 nice little transient we had. And all that was based 3 on senior management wanting to meet the schedule of 4 depressurizing the reactor so we can get the head off, 5 so we can start to refuel.6 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: When did that occur?7 That was my last refuel 8 outage as so I don't know I'd have to go back 9 and look at the schedule but that was, I'm pretty sure 10 in the 2001 time frame.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So past the mid-point 12 there because you're thinking the effects of 13 deregulation kicked in after what, two and a half 14 years ago.152 Correct.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Your last refuel 17 outage as an-18 As an. >right, which was 19 the one before last.20 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Who were you working 21 for?22 That was 23 (phonetic) was the He was a They bring 24 in all the off-shift OS' and they come up with this 25 special outage schedule for them. He wasn't my normal NEAL R. GROSS ! 0 COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

119 1 shift manager. He was just a stand-in for the outage.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: What was the result 3 of that? I mean, did you have some sort of issues for 4 you as a result of that, I mean, remediation, any --5 You had to go to the 6 simulator and do the, you know, pressurization, watch 7 it again, you know, a typical training day type 8 mitigation.

You know, "What happened, what did you 9 see, what can we do to prevent it", type thing. But, 10 no, no retaliation of any sorts. I mean, that was 11 like a crew-wide event that happened, not a single 12 individual.

But that was just based on the push of 13 the schedule, "Be at this pressure at this time, this 14 pressure at this time, you know, get the plant shut 15 down, you know, within 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> so we can head off an 16 18.17 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And that's what 18 caused that.19 Right.20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So there was 21 no removal from licensed duties or anything of that 22 nature?23 No, no. I mean, the 24 notification that was written -- basically it was the 25 first time that we tried cooling the plant down asj NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

120 1 rapidly as we could within our limits. We had just 2 never done it before.3 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You mean 100 4 degrees an hour type stuff?5 -Right, the 90 degrees an hour 6 is our administrative limit. You know, we always 7 practice --8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: So you run 9 as close to that as possible.10 T M Right, we always practiced 11 trying to get as close to 90 as possible in the 12 simulator, but in the real world, you're lucky to get 13 40 or 50. This time we actually tried to get as close 14 to 90 or as the simulator as we could and within the 15 limits. And you can do it, but your other systems 16 can't handle it and we didn't know that.17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, could 18 it have handled it if the starter valve had worked 19 properly?20 W1___rOh, yes, absolutely.

21 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, so --22 ) The clean-up pumps, they 23 still trip on us on the pressure release and sometimes 24 now.25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Oh, you NEAL R. GROSS " COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1VV2 DUMIC M1 AMIM A110 M %A1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 121 mean, while the -- okay, that's just one of the normal oscillation signals.*JI10 Right, it shouldn't happen.I mean, there's a problem with the --MR. HERNANDEZ:

When you depressurize the differential flow is flashing so it thinks that you have a leak.PROI it thinks you have a leak, right.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: But the start-up valve that had the -- that was stuck and sluggish, you kind of indicated that had been a known problem. It had been that way for awhile.In fact, it was a known problem the entire time I was an SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So this would have been known at the time you're going into this move, right, this particular manipulation?

\ Yes, yes.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was that discussed or taken into account in any way?-. I do not believe so, no.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Was there a briefing done on how to do this because it was kind--NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.I' 122 1 'Well, the briefing for start-2 ups or shut-downs are done pretty much in the 3 simulator.

You pretty much go to the simulator.

You 4 do your briefs, you simulate the whole thing.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: The day 6 before type thing?7 Right, the day before. It 8 could be, you know, three days before, you know, 9 whenever they can get everybody together.10 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But I mean, 11 you would actually try to ramp the plant down with 12 that target, right?13 14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I mean, if 15 you wanted to run it at 90 --16 And of course, the simulator 17 doesn't have the start level control valve problem 18 because it's a simulator and yet you haven't been with 19 the start level control valve now for 18 months, so 20 it's pretty much in the back of your head. You've 21 forgotten about it, you know.22 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I have a 23 couple of other issues I have to ask you about. You 24 may not have any knowledge of them.25 )okayOkay.

NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS j 0Wrjn= IQ1 AknMIC 1I~ Md~R 123 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: But I just 2 want to find that out. There was a problem back in 3 March of 2003 with the turbine by-pass valve.4 Yes.5 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Were you 6 involved in that at all?'". .........a..nd no..wa 7 I was an and no, I was 8 not on shift that day.9 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, so 10 you're not familiar with or --11 arm Only the rumors and 12 discussions.

13 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, how 14 about the reactivity management event that kind of --15 2. Went with that?16 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- yeah, 17 went with that?18 (Samething, no involvement, 19 just stories and rumors.20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, how 21 about there was a diesel problem back in June. It had 22 to do -- it was kind of a maintenance problem. It had 23 to do with leakage from an inner cooler pump.24es 25 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Were you NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 124 1 involved with that at all?2 I believe I was, yes, on at 3 least one of the runs involving that leak.4 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, and 5 you were an " Eat the time?6 Ys 7 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Do you 8 remember much about how that went, how -- you know, 9 how the sequence of activity kind of played out?10 /.ýýý I remember having to quantify 11 the leakage and declare the diesel inop and we tagged 12 it out and they went in and fixed it. Is that the one 13 you're talking about?14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah, except 15 it wasn't quite that clean, but there were a lot of 16 other things that happened in between. I think the 17 leakage was discovered like on a Sunday or -- and then 18 there was a decision made to re-eval the leakage on a 19 Monday. It was deemed to be excessive.

There was an 20 operability called. The diesel was declared 21 inoperable and it started sending to our LCO and it 22 was like early in'the morning, like on a Monday. It 23 was like at 4:00 o'clock in the morning or 4:30 or 24 something.

25 And then there were -- let's see you've NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W 125 1 got 72 hours8.333333e-4 days <br />0.02 hours <br />1.190476e-4 weeks <br />2.7396e-5 months <br />, that takes you Tuesday, Wednesday, 2 Thursday, so Thursday at like 4:00 in the morning, the 3 LCO expired but there was some repair attempts that 4 were made. There were some shims that were installed 5 and there were --6 I think we're talking about 7 a different leak then.8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: That doesn't seem to 10 ring a bell with you.I1 12 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: And I'm just 13 trying to find out what you knew about it. Actually, 14 what I was going to get to, this is all really 15 background, but there was -- basically what happened 16 is, is normally you wouldn't get to the 72-hour thing.17 You know, you'd usually get if fixed within that time 18 frame.19 Right 20 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Well, in 21 this instance, the 72-hour point was exceeded.

And 22 you were in the -- the plant was in the 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br /> to --23 Twelve-hour shut-down, LCO.24 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah.25 Ri ht.REAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 126 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: I've heard 2 that exact wording but basically where you had to have 3 a clean-off line within 12 hours1.388889e-4 days <br />0.00333 hours <br />1.984127e-5 weeks <br />4.566e-6 months <br />. And you know, the 4 normal way to do that would-be in a controlled fashion 5 so you're not -- it's not, you know, I'll wait till 11 6 hours6.944444e-5 days <br />0.00167 hours <br />9.920635e-6 weeks <br />2.283e-6 months <br /> 55 minutes and -- you don't do that.7 ... .. .... Right.8 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: You work out 9 a plan, reactivity management plan and you just reduce 10 power over some period of time. There's some 11 allowance made to how long it takes, and I just 12 wondered if you have any knowledge about, you know --13No 14 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: -- any of 15 the time delays or anything along that lines.16 No.17 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay. How 18 about there was a problem, a fairly recent problem, 19 probably in the last couple months with 20 (phonetic) with qh-... V -(phonetic).Were you 21 involved in that at all?22 No.23 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No? All 24 right, let me think for a minute or two.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Do you want to think? p NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

127 1 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Yeah.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I have a question 3 going back on another issue just quickly, with that 4 stuck start-up valve and that issue going way back to 5 you think maybe late 2001, was that acknowledged that 6 -- I mean, you understood that that was due to 7 pressure to keep an outage schedule maintained.

8 Right.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Was that acknowledged 10 by management?

When you were doing your lessons 11 learned on that, was that in any way addressed or 12 handled or part of it?13: Yes, it was and I'm pretty 14 sure the outcome was, "Okay, we're going to continue 15 to do depressurization this way because it's the only 16 way we can minimize our down time. The rest of the 17 industry is coming down in this amount of time. We've 18 got to -- you know, got to get there. So the -- we're 19 going to fix the start-up level control valve, we're 20 going fix the direct water clean-up pump trip", and so 21 yeah, they acknowledge it was pressure driven, 22 schedule driven. "Here's the problems we found".23 It was more of a positive environment.

24 Here's the problems we found trying to do it, let's 25 see what we've got to do to get these fixed, so it NEAL R. GROSS p COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

128 1 doesn't happen next time.2 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And did it work that 3 way, did they get the start-up valve fixed?4 think it's fixed now.5 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Because I know by the 6 next outage --7 The next outage --8 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: -- you wouldn't have 9 been involved in that, directly involved in that.10 .!JRight, but I'm pretty sure it 11 was not fixed by the next outage.12 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Are you aware of --13 /. -- or at least start-up.

It 14 was not fixed that outage, during that outage. It was 15 still a problem during the start-up.16 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: During the start-up.17 1Right.18 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: I mean, were there 19 any incidents tagged to that or was it just something 20 that you had to work around, scrams or anything like 21 that?22 Well, we scramble in our 23 shut-down but we're already scrammed.

I mean, you're 24 just getting another signal which is just a lot of 25 paperwork and --NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

129 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, but on the 2 start-up did it cause a problem because it was still 3 not working.4 It causes a challenge I would 5 say, not really a scram or what it winds up doing is 6 having one guy tied up in that corner continuously and 7 creates a coordination problem, a distraction type 8 thing, because you've always got a guy there. He's 9 always got to know exactly what that guy is doing.10 It's got to be coordinated type thing.11 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, so you have to 12 have dedicated resources for it.13 31 think it has caused a half-14 scram on the IRM upscales.15 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Since or before this 16 issue?17 /Since. And I can't remember, 18 I'm pretty sure it did.19 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: So when did it get 20 fixed?21 4N Is it fixed?22 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Yeah, they're always 23 messing with it. I mean, it's just a sluggish valve.24 I don't know if you would ever call it really fixed.25 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Is it possible to fix NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

130 1 it?2 MR. HERNANDEZ:

I don't know.3 A, 'Io I'm sure if you replaced the 4 valve with a new design, but that would be a DCP and 5 a whole lot of money.6 MR. HERNANDEZ:

Right, I mean, I think --7 I mean, what we have -- I mean, it doesn't operate as 8 smoothly as you would like it. But the whole -- you 9 know, the whole thing is supposed to run on automatic.

10 After a scram, it can't do it. So you have a whole 11 set point set-down and the system -- you have to take 12 minor control of the --13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Any questions on 14 that?15 SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No, 16 actually, I know a lot about that unfortunately.

Have 17 you ever been in the control room when you felt that 18 there was some undue influence by any of the senior 19 managers, not so much the CRS' and OS now but AOM, OM, 20 plant manager, VP? I mean, have you ever been exposed 21 to something where there was some issue, some plant 22 problem, some, you know, discussion about a direction 23 to take and you've either been a party to the 24 discussion or overheard the discussion and it just --25 you know, somebody at a high level in the organization NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 131 says, "Well, I think we ought to do this and we ought to move ahead this way", and you're sitting there kind of scratching your head saying, "Gee, I don't understand that logic. It doesn't make any sense to me".W.Probably the closest thing to that I could say would be schedule pressure.

Quite often the AOM would come in and talk to the senior about where you are at in the schedule type thing and he's not really saying hurry up and get caught up but the pressure is there, you know, for him to come in and ask the OS, "Where are you at", and then the OS has to come down on the floor and ask you, "What pressure are we at", you know, "what is the delay", you know, "why aren't we where we're supposed to be".So other than the schedule pressure, I would say no.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, all right, is that only in outage related activity, primarily in outage?* 12 No, on line, you know, if we're getting behind on, you know, surveillance testing or pretty much anything.

They have some certain number they have to cut off. You know, if we have to be five minutes late for something

--MR. HERNANDEZ:

10:30.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.7 t 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 II 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 132 10:31 or something, it's pretty much 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day, seven days a week. It's more apparent in outages.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay, all right, so that's been.your only exposure to that?SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: How about outside 'the control room, like in the training environment or a briefing or any other setting, have you ever been exposed to something where you felt like the manager was kind of like pushing things in kind of a wrong direction?

No. I have very little contact with anyone above the OS level.SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: Okay.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay. I think we're getting pretty close to wrapping it up. But I guess before we do, what I'd like to throw out to you is if we haven't covered something, I mean, you hear the type of issues that we're exploring here. You see the kind of things that we're trying to get our arms around for a picture of, you know, how it works on site.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: If there is something NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.(1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 iI 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 133 that either we're not asking or we're missing and you can help us with that, I'd like to know that now.JI don't think so. In fact, I think some of the issues you're bringing up aren't even issues. I think you have more than what you should have. So no, there's nothing I can think of.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, and along with that, if you're aware of anyone that would be able to help us get this picture, either A, be willing or, 2, could contribute to this in any way, can you point us to anybody?I would say you need to talk to He'll talk to you.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF:.Rig ht.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Q4 , W" es.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, anybody else?I' I don't think so.SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, is there anything you would like to add at this point?SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Scott?SR. PROJECT ENGINEER BARBER: No. I'm good.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AAD TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

134 1 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, I just have a 2 couple of standard closing questions.

3 Okay.4 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Have I or any other 5 NRC representative offered you any promises of reward 6 or threatened you in any manner in exchange for your 7 information today?8 swim No.9 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: And we covered that 10 you have nothing further to add. Have you appeared 11 here freely and voluntarily?

12 Ys 13 SPECIAL AGENT NEFF: Okay, at this point 14 then, I can conclude the interview.

It is 15 approximately 10:30 and I have to thank you for a 16 large portion of your time, you and Chris. Thank you 17 very much both.18 (Whereupon, at 10:30 p.m. the above 19 entitled matter concluded.)

20 21 2 .2 23 24 7 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.

CERTIFICATE This is to certify that the attached proceedings before the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission in the matter of: Name of Proceeding:

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

Salem, NJ were held as herein appears, and that this is the original transcript thereof for the file of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission taken by me and, thereafter reduced to typewriting by me or under the direction of the court reporting company, and that the transcript is a true and accurate record of the foregoing proceedings as recorded on tape (s) provided by the NRC.Cin'dy Chapin Official Transcriber Neal R. Gross & Co., Inc.NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE.. N.W.