ML022740750
| ML022740750 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Davis Besse  |
| Issue date: | 08/22/2002 |
| From: | Bill Dean, Grobe J, Christine Lipa, Anthony Mendiola, Douglas Simpkins NRC/NRR/DLPM/LPD3, NRC/RGN-III |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Download: ML022740750 (108) | |
Text
1 1
2 3 U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION FIRST ENERGY NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY 4 PUBLIC MEETING 5
Meeting held on Tuesday, August 20, 2002, at 6 7:00 p.m. at the Oak Harbor High School, Oak Harbor, Ohio, taken by me, Marlene S. Rogers-Lewis, Stenotype 7 Reporter, and Notary Public, in and for the State of Ohio.
8 9
10 PANEL MEMBERS PRESENT:
11 U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 12 Jack Grobe, Chairman of the NRC oversight panel for Davis-Besse facility 13 William Dean, Vice Chairman, MC 0350 Panel 14 Christine Lipa, Branch Chief, Region 3 15 Anthony Mendiola, Section Chief PDIII-2, NRR 16 Douglas Simpkins, Resident Inspector -
17 Davis-Besse 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
2 1 MR. GROBE: Okay, I think were 2 getting ready to start here. Why dont you all find 3 a seat.
4 Good evening. My name is Jack Grobe. Im 5 the Chairman of the NRCs oversight panel for the 6 Davis-Besse facility.
7 Let me introduce the staff up here on the 8 stage and introduce the purpose of the meeting 9 tonight. On my far left is Tony Mandiola. Raise 10 your hand, Tony.
11 MR. MANDIOLA: (Indicating).
12 MR. GROBE: Thank you. Tony is a 13 supervisor in our licensing organization in 14 Washington, responsible for Davis-Besse licensing 15 coordination activities.
16 Also on my immediate left is Bill Dean.
17 Bills the Vice Chairman of this oversight panel, and 18 hes the Deputy Director of the Division of 19 Engineering and the Office of Nuclear Reactor 20 Regulation, which is an office in our headquarters 21 offices in the Washington D.C. area.
22 On my far right is Doug Simpkins. Doug is 23 the Resident Inspector at Davis-Besse. He works for 24 the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, but he works at 25 the Davis-Besse facility every day. Hes one of two MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
3 1 inspectors that are assigned full-time to the 2 facility.
3 On my immediate right is Christian Lipa.
4 Christine is the Branch Chief in our Chicago office 5 of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, responsible for 6 Davis-Besse, and Im also out of the Chicago office.
7 Sir, if you could put your sign down -- thank 8 you. I appreciate that we have folks with signs, if 9 you could not elevate them, Id appreciate that.
10 That gives people behind you an opportunity to 11 observe the meeting.
12 The purpose of the meeting tonight is a 13 continuation of our ongoing dialogue with the public 14 regarding Davis-Besse. We conducted a meeting this 15 afternoon from about two to 5:30 or 5:45 with the 16 Licensee and provided an opportunity for folks that 17 were able to attend this afternoon to ask us 18 questions or provide comments. Recognizing that not 19 everybody can attend a meeting during business hours, 20 we also have a second meeting in the evening for 21 those folks that couldnt make the afternoon meeting, 22 so Im glad that all of you came. The purpose, 23 again, of the meeting this evening is to provide you 24 just a little bit of background information, and then 25 give you an opportunity to ask questions, provide MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
4 1 comments. I think we have two opportunities. You 2 should have received, out in the foyer, copy of some 3 handouts that we have, as well as some question 4 cards. If you dont want to approach the microphone, 5 you can fill out a card and forward that card up and 6 we will answer the question that way.
7 Before we get started with questions and 8 comments, I want to ask Doug Simpkins and Christine 9 Lipa to give a little bit of background information 10 on nuclear power and what happened to Davis-Besse and 11 the activities of the NRCs oversight panel, so let 12 me turn it over to Doug and Christine.
13 MR. SIMPKINS: Hopefully everybody 14 got a handout when you came in today. This is the 15 large handout.
16 On this side that has the picture of the 17 containment it list the Barriers That Protect Public 18 Health and Safety. Im not going to read those to 19 you, but what I am going to do is Im going to direct 20 you to the drawing here in just a moment.
21 Over here I have a slide up here of -- from 22 our website which talks about a typical pressurized 23 water reactor. Now what happens is -- Christine, 24 Ill need to point.
25 MS. LIPA: Oh, okay.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
5 1 MR. SIMPKINS: The nuclear reaction 2 occurs right here in the reactor vessel. What that 3 does is it generates heat energy which is carrying 4 the pressurized water through pipes in a continuous 5 loop like this, (indicating), and as it does, it goes 6 through a steam generator here, and this steam 7 generator is a heat exchanger, kind of like the 8 radiator on your car, and what it does is it 9 transfers heat energy from this water over to this 10 water. The water in here is pressurized. The 11 water here is not, and so when this water on the 12 secondary side gets heated up, it turns to steam.
13 The steam comes out the top, the steam generator in 14 this picture, comes through pipes and then goes to a 15 turbine and turns the turbine. Once it turns the 16 turbine, this is attached to a shaft, which turns the 17 generator, and the generator is what, in turn, makes 18 the electricity. The steam continues down through 19 here and goes into whats called a condenser. The 20 condenser is cooled by water coming from the circ 21 water system, which is the cooling tower that 22 everybody sees, the 493 foot structure out at the 23 Davis-Besse site, so that water comes from the 24 cooling tower, comes in through here and continues 25 out. The water here does not mix with the water MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
6 1 over here, okay, so you have three cycles. You have 2 this cycle, you have this cycle, and you have this 3 cycle. They are all contained for themselves.
4 The reactor, since its pressurized, is a lot 5 like a pressure cooker that you might have at your 6 house. The part right here is the reactor head.
7 Next slide.
8 The reactor head is bolted to the rest of the 9 vessel. Weve taken that out, we wanted to show you 10 some important things about this. The reactor head 11 is about six inches thick of carbon steel, and you 12 control the nuclear reactions with control rods.
13 These control rods will raise and lower depending on 14 what your needs are for the reaction.
15 As they go through the head, they go through 16 a nozzle and allow the control rod to continue on 17 into the core. Next slide, please.
18 This is a picture of the nozzle, and the 19 control rod goes in through here and down into the 20 core. As it goes through the six inches of steel --
21 they had to seal it some how, so they put what they 22 call a J-groove weld right here. Well, when they 23 put -- my laser is going dead, when they put this in, 24 it had stresses in it, and, subsequently, developed 25 cracks over a period of time. Its an interesting MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
7 1 wide phenomenon unknown. What happens is the water 2 that can go through the cracks, can go up into here.
3 Now, the water thats inside the reactor has boric 4 acid in it. Boric acid is very similar to sodium 5 borate, which is borax in the store, but its very 6 pure. They call it -- they refer to it as boric 7 acid, so the boric acid comes in through here, can 8 get on the carbon steel. Its corrosive to carbon 9 steel, it can dissolve it away.
10 The inside layer here is stainless steel, 11 its about an eighth of an inch thick. Its called 12 cladding, and it is not dissolved away by boric acid.
13 Next slide.
14 This is an honest rendition of what the 15 cavity looks like. The control rod nozzle has been 16 removed here, and what had happened was the boric 17 acid leaking water came up through here and dissolved 18 over time this area here, so that it was left in with 19 a cavity. It did still have the thin layer of 20 cladding here, which is about an eighth of an inch 21 thick, which retained a function of being a pressure 22 barrier. Next slide.
23 This is a picture from the outside of the 24 reactor head. This area right here, these are 25 called weep holes, and this is a service structure, MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
8 1 which is kind of like a top hat on top the reactor 2 head, which is here. This head will continue out 3 this way. What you see here is boric acid coming 4 out of the weep holes from around the head in 5 different locations. This is boric acid. Normally 6 this is white, but, in this case, it actually is red 7 from oxides, and that was presumably from the 8 corrosion products from the head coming out through 9 these weep holes.
10 Now, on your diagram, you can see here that 11 youve got a containment structure all the way 12 around. The inside lining is a steel containment 13 vessel, and then you have the shield building around.
14 The shield building is concrete, reinforced with 15 steel rebar. You can see the reactor vessel on the 16 bottom of the steam generators as well.
17 To replace the head, theyre actually cutting 18 a hole in the concrete service structure, and then 19 will eventually cut a hole in the stainless steel 20 reactor vessel, containment vessel, as well, and they 21 will be able to get the old head out and the new head 22 in.
23 MS. LIPA: Okay, the next thing 24 we were going to do was talk about the -- our panel 25 here, and were called the 0350 panel which is based MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
9 1 on an inspection procedure, 0350 that we used to 2 guide our activities, and the first slide is 3 basically to update the public on what weve done 4 since the last public meeting, and what we have been 5 doing is monitoring the Licensees activities 6 associated with the vessel head replacement. As you 7 know, they got a new vessel head from Midland, and 8 theyre replacing the old one that had the corrosion 9 on it, and also they are preparing to open up the 10 containment to bring the new vessel head in and 11 remove the old one out.
12 The next bullet on this slide is we held an 13 AIT follow-up inspection which followed up on their 14 results of the AIT inspection which we exited on 15 April. That report has been issued, and then we 16 held an AIT follow-up inspection to come out and 17 determine which of those findings are violations of 18 regulatory requirements, so weve held the exit on 19 those with the Licensee, and weve given them the 20 examples. We have yet to finalize our conclusions 21 and issue our report. We estimate that to be the 22 middle of September.
23 The next slide is some other activities that 24 were doing as a result of the 0350 panel. Weve 25 determined that certain inspections will be MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
10 1 necessary. One of them weve completed is the 2 containment walkdown inspection Part 1, and that did 3 identify some problems with qualifications of the 4 plants inspectors, and as a result theyve gone back 5 and redone their inspections, and that report will be 6 available in the middle of September.
7 The next bullet is we had a meeting last week 8 in the Region 3 office to discuss the Licensees root 9 cause associated with management, organizational 10 effectiveness and human performance factors.
11 What the Licensee had done was they did a 12 root cause early on that they submitted to us in 13 April that addressed the technical factors as far as 14 the leaking through the nozzle and that boric acid 15 will corrode steel, which are known conditions, but 16 how this was allowed to occur at Davis-Besse is what 17 the second root cause focused on.
18 The next bullet -- the next slide. This is 19 just to let you know some upcoming activities that 20 the 0350 plans. Well be continuing to monitor the 21 activities associated with head replacement. We 22 have an inspector on site this week following the 23 activities with the opening the containment and 24 bringing in the new head, also reviewing the American 25 Society of Mechanical Engineering codes associated MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
11 1 with the new vessel head.
2 Also the second bullet will be evaluating the 3 root cause that they submitted. They plan to submit 4 that to us on the docket, which means they will be 5 mailing us a letter which means it will be available 6 publicly, and then also well be beginning the 7 management of human performance inspection, which 8 will focus on a really thorough review of how 9 thorough we believe the Licensees root cause was and 10 what corrective actions they have planned based on 11 that root cause and when theyre going to take those 12 actions.
13 And the next bullet, another one of our 14 upcoming inspections is a program effectiveness.
15 This is one of the Licensees Building Blocks that 16 they have determine that there are a number of their 17 programs that need to be reviewed for adequacy of the 18 station, and well be reviewing their progress and 19 looking at those programs and making those programs 20 better programs. Some of the examples are listed 21 here, the corrective action program, boric acid 22 corrosion control program and modification control 23 program.
24 Weve also stated Part 2 of the containment 25 walkdown inspections. As I mentioned earlier MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
12 1 because of some qualification problems early on, the 2 Licensee had to retrain individuals and pretty much 3 start their walkdowns in containment from scratch, so 4 we plan to continue reviewing what theyre finding 5 from those walkdowns, how they plan to prepare 6 confine that show some damage.
7 Thats it for that slide, and then theres a 8 few more here we can go through.
9 The next thing I wanted to talk to you about 10 that the 0350 panel has been working on is whats 11 called a restart check list, and we issued our 12 restart checks list on August 16th to the Licensee, 13 and this is also a publicly available document, and 14 it lists the items that are required prior to 15 restart, and Ill just go through a few of them to 16 give you a sense of what were trying to accomplish 17 with this restart check list.
18 Were trying to make sure that we understand 19 that the Licensee has come up with the root cause, 20 and that their review of that root cause is adequate.
21 Also, to make sure that all safety significant 22 structure systems and components are ready for safe 23 operation prior to restart, and also to make sure 24 that we understand what theyve done for reviews of 25 their programs such as boric acid, corrosion program MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
13 1 and root cause analysis are approved and that they 2 ensure safety, and thats really all I have on that.
3 Weve got a number of points there, and its 4 available on our website.
5 The next thing that I wanted to do is 6 summarize for you some of the items that we learned 7 when the Licensee came in last Thursday and shared 8 their root cause, and I just have five bullets that I 9 wanted to go through.
10 When the Licensee came into the Region 3 11 office last Thursday, they had -- no, I dont have a 12 slide on this. They presented to us their summary 13 of their root cause, and they went into how they had 14 these findings and what they have. Let me just share 15 a few points with you.
16 One of their conclusions was that there was a 17 focus on production established by management 18 combined with taking minimum actions to meet 19 regulatory requirements that resulted in the 20 acceptance of degraded conditions at the station.
21 They had one root cause with management 22 oversight where they determined that there was a less 23 than adequate nuclear safety focus and a production 24 focused combined with the minimum actions to meet 25 regulatory requirements.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
14 1 Also another root cause had to do with the 2 corrective action program. The Utilitys had a 3 corrective action program so that they can find and 4 fix programs, and this is something that we expected.
5 Its also required by regulations. They had a 6 program, and it was a sound program that they found 7 instances where they were not implementing that 8 program properly.
9 Another example in the root cause was 10 technical rigor. What they determined was that they 11 were not adequately reviewing conditions from a 12 technical prospective, and they were addressing the 13 symptoms more than the actual problem, and then there 14 were also some problems with program compliance, the 15 boric acid corrosion control procedure which is the 16 one that would have identified those red streaks that 17 you saw on the picture, it would have identified the 18 cause of that. It would have cleaned it off. It 19 would have evaluated what the condition of the metal 20 was underneath the boric acid. They did not follow 21 that procedure, so those were the findings that the 22 Licensee came in and share with us.
23 UNIDENTIFIED: I dont understand, 24 though, with all of these different regulations and 25 reports they have, hows come the NRC resident MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
15 1 inspector or anybody else in the NRC didnt pick up 2 on this before all this time went past?
3 MS. LIPA: Well, I appreciate 4 that you have a question. What were going to do is 5 finish up a few things here and then well turn it 6 over to public questions and answers, and youll be 7 available to come up here so that we can get your 8 question on the record, and then well address it at 9 that time. Okay? Thank you.
10 UNIDENTIFIED: That was a good 11 question.
12 MS. LIPA: Well, like I said, 13 well get to questions in a few minutes.
14 UNIDENTIFIED: How long have you 15 worked there, Doug, out of curiosity?
16 MS. LIPA: The -- if you could 17 just hold your questions for a few minutes, please.
18 The -- I think thats about all I wanted to cover as 19 an introduction.
20 I was going to go through a few more items 21 just for those of you that missed todays meeting, 22 just to let you know what we did during todays 23 meeting, which was about three hours long, was we 24 discussed with the Licensee the progress that theyre 25 making on their various Building Blocks, and we asked MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
16 1 them to give us an update, and we asked them 2 questions to make sure we better understood the 3 Building Blocks and the intent is that we planned 4 specific inspections for each of those Building 5 Blocks and then the results of those inspections will 6 be published in inspection reports, so thats kind of 7 the process from where were headed. Thats all I 8 had for a summary of todays activities.
9 MR. GROBE: Okay. Thanks, 10 Christine. Maam, why dont you come on down, and 11 you can sign in and everybody can hear your question, 12 use the microphone, and we can begin answering 13 questions.
14 As you come down, Id like to introduce a 15 couple more folks in the audience that work for 16 Nuclear Regulatory Commission; Roland Lickus. Raise 17 your hand, Roland.
18 MR. LICKUS: (Indicating).
19 MR. GROBE: Roland works out of 20 the Region 3 office in Chicago. Hes our State and 21 Govern affairs liaison.
22 Right behind him is Vika Mitlyng. Vika is a 23 Public Affairs Officer in the Region 3 office, and we 24 have John Johnson here. John is visiting from 25 Washington. Hes the Deputy Office Director from the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
17 1 office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation in Washington.
2 I think Ive hit -- oh, Nancy Keller, you may have 3 met -- there you go, Nancy. Nancy is our office 4 assistant here at the Resident Inspectors office, and 5 shes helping us with the logistics of this meeting.
6 Maam, please come down and approach the 7 microphone.
8 PROF. LINEBAUGH: This is time for 9 questions now?
10 MR. GROBE: Yeah.
11 PROF. LINEBAUGH: All right.
12 MR. GROBE: Hang on. Just relax.
13 PROF. LINEBAUGH: Do we line up for the 14 questions?
15 MR. GROBE: If you want to.
16 PROF. LINEBAUGH: What is the format for 17 this evenings meeting? You passed out an agenda --
18 MR. GROBE: Sir --
19 PROF. LINEBAUGH: -- but you didnt ask 20 us what we thought of the agenda, and we would like 21 to have some idea so we can have a public meeting in 22 a Democratic way, not being -- without experts over a 23 moat here like a castle up on a stage speaking down 24 to us when we have our questions --
25 MR. GROBE: Why dont you have a MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
18 1 seat, okay?
2 PROF. LINEBAUGH: Yes, I shall.
3 MR. GROBE: Thank you.
4 PROF. LINEBAUGH: But would you tell us 5 the format of this evenings meeting?
6 MR. GROBE: Yes, very good. What 7 I would like you to do, if it would be all right, is 8 come to the podium, and you can sign in so we have 9 your name, and we have a transcriber here this 10 evening. If you use the microphone, then everybody 11 in the audience can hear your question, and then 12 theyll also be able to hear our answer. I want to, 13 if we can, take this in a little bit of order, and, 14 maam, you asked a question earlier, so you can be 15 first, but what Id like to focus on is members of 16 the local community first that are living in this 17 community and local public officials or 18 representatives, public officials, and then any other 19 concerned citizens can come next and -- did I hit 20 them all?
21 MR. DEAN: (Nod indicating yes).
22 MR. GROBE: I think -- is that a 23 structure that is well understood, okay? And Id 24 like to ask everybody to show respect for one 25 another. Okay, go ahead, maam.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
19 1 MS. JOHNSTON: My name is Charlene 2 Johnston, and my question is with all the regulations 3 that the NRC has and all the quality assurance 4 programs that they have, why wasnt this problem 5 caught a long time ago? I mean, its a simple 6 question. Whats the simple answer?
7 MR. GROBE: It is a very good 8 question. The -- excuse me. I can tell you that 9 through the NRC inspection program, we have a 10 group -- what we refer to as our reactor oversight 11 process. It has a base line level of inspection at 12 every nuclear plant in the United States, and we did 13 not disclose this problem through that base line 14 inspection program. The --
15 MS. JOHNSTON: I mean, all the 16 reports that came that showed that there was rust 17 from the boric acid problem, all those reports that 18 were filtered to the NRC, I mean, who read those 19 reports and who didnt report on to that to the rest 20 of the NRC that there was a problem?
21 MR. GROBE: Yeah, there were no 22 reports received by us that this was going on.
23 MS. JOHNSTON: You dont require 24 any --
25 MR. GROBE: Can I answer your MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
20 1 question? Because our inspection program failed to 2 disclose this earlier, the top individual in the 3 Nuclear Regulatory Commission -- his title is the 4 Executive Director, put together a task force, and 5 the people on this task force are folks from all 6 different offices of the Nuclear Regulatory 7 Commission that dont have any relationship or 8 involvement in the activities at Davis-Besse -- the 9 individual that chairs it from our regional office in 10 Texas and theres an individual from our office of 11 research who is assisting him from --
12 MS. JOHNSTON: Yeah, I understand all 13 that --
14 MR. GROVE: Maam, please let 15 me --
16 MS. JOHNSTON: -- but whats the 17 answer to the question, I dont know the answer.
18 MR. GROBE: I dont have the 19 answer yet. The lessons that -- its referred to as 20 the Lessons Learned Task Force, and theyre scheduled 21 to complete their report at the end of September, and 22 I know that theyve completed all of their interviews 23 and background work that theyre doing and their 24 report is to due to be --
25 MS. JOHNSTON: I mean, Im not MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
21 1 talking about a future report, Im talking about 2 reports that would have been filed in years gone by 3 and the months that have gone by before it came out 4 that this was public. Why didnt the NRC know about 5 it before?
6 MR. GROBE: There were no reports 7 that were submitted that disclosed --
8 MS. JOHNSTON: And thats not 9 required, you know, from the Utility, thats not 10 required that they file reports with you about these 11 things?
12 MR. GROBE: Thats correct.
13 MS. JOHNSTON: Thats amazing, isnt 14 it?
15 MR. GROBE: The -- yeah, the 16 Licensee has what is called the corrective action --
17 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
18 MR. GROBE: The Licensee has what 19 is referred to as a corrective action program, and 20 when they identify a deficiency at the plant, they 21 document that in whats referred to as a condition 22 report. Thats the title that they use at 23 Davis-Besse, and they evaluate that condition and are 24 supposed to -- and they are required to fix it. In 25 this case, they did not do that, and they failed to MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
22 1 follow those requirements.
2 Are there any members of the local community 3 that have a question?
4 PROF. LINEBAUGH: Yes, yes, Im here at 5 the podium --
6 MR. GROBE: Good.
7 PROF. LINEBAUGH: -- showing courtesy 8 and respect by holding my tongue. You asked 9 earlier whether --
10 THE REPORTER: Your name?
11 PROF. LINEBAUGH: Yes, Im Dr. Peter 12 Linebaugh, Professor of History at the University of 13 Toledo on my way to New York downwind of Davis-Besse 14 speaking, and I regard myself very much as part of 15 the local community, have been for years and intend 16 to remain so for future years, hopefully without 17 mutation only if possible by shutting down 18 Davis-Besse. This is the only way to go. I think 19 we have had it out of the mans mouth --
20 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
21 PROF. LINEBAUGH: -- that he received 22 out of the Nuclear Regulatory Commissions mouth, he 23 confessed to the first question that they received no 24 reports from those who may hold the Licensee.
25 MR. GROBE: Excuse me, sir, could MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
23 1 you face the microphone, please?
2 PROF. LINEBAUGH: No, Im speaking to my 3 fellow citizens.
4 MR. GROBE: Well, then --
5 PROF. LINEBAUGH: You may listen.
6 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
7 PROF. LINEBAUGH: This is our meeting 8 and you are our guests.
9 MR. GROBE: Sir --
10 PROF. LINEBAUGH: From your own mouth 11 you have said youve come here to speak to the 12 public, and such as the public has been able to come, 13 we are here, and we are engaging in a dialogue, so 14 you can treat us also with respect as we do to you.
15 MR. GROBE: I was just trying to 16 be --
17 PROF. LINEBAUGH: Its very serious.
18 Since last November it has become clear that the NRC 19 has advocated its responsibility to the public, and I 20 am shocked, and I must vociferate with you. To come 21 here and to be shown technical slides of -- you know, 22 I know at the last minute is a bit difficult to get 23 everything just so-so up there, and I commend you for 24 your effort; however, the subject matter is not what 25 brings -- that you showed us is not what brings us MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
24 1 nor is it what we expect from the NRC.
2 In 1660, in the age of coal, when the City of 3 London burned down owing to a bakers fault, Sir 4 Christopher Wren did not invite some people in to 5 show slides about what was wrong with the oven, and, 6 now, that our City and our County and our locality 7 and our State is in grave danger, to have the 8 representatives of the Federal Government come here 9 and fail to recognize the serious danger that we have 10 been in, that our offspring is in, that other living 11 creatures are in, owing to a three-eighths inch 12 difference between us and what, Chernobyl, Three-Mile 13 Island, Armageddon? Not to address that question as 14 our common goal here tonight shows to me dereliction 15 of duty and an amidation of your responsibility to 16 the public, and I think the NRC should be ashamed to 17 have succumbed to the profiteering, graven, 18 humiliating actions of this FirstEnergy Corp.
19 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
20 MR. GROBE: I dont want anybody 21 to interpret my comments by any stretch as making 22 excuses for FirstEnergy, but I did want to explain a 23 design feature of every nuclear power plant, which 24 you may not appreciate.
25 Could you put up that slide of the -- that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
25 1 has containment and the reactor coolants -- that 2 there are actually --
3 UNIDENTIFIED: If the laser pen will 4 so work --
5 MR. GROBE: Im sorry.
6 UNIDENTIFIED: -- you know, were so 7 dependent on the technological fix here.
8 MR. GROBE: There are actually three 9 barriers to the release of radioactive materials in a 10 nuclear power plant.
11 The first barrier is the fuel itself, and the 12 fuel is comprised of a ceramic, inside a zirconium 13 alloy pen, and thats the first barrier to release 14 radioactive materials.
15 The second barrier is the reactor coolant 16 system or -- its referred to as the primary pressure 17 boundary, and youre exactly correct that the carbon 18 steel portion of that primary pressure boundary was 19 corroded away, and the remaining stainless steel was 20 never intended to retain pressure as a corrosive 21 inhibitor, but not an intended -- or designed to be a 22 pressure retaining boundary.
23 The third barrier is the containment 24 structure itself. The first barrier and the third 25 barrier were intact, so had the reactor coolant MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
26 1 system, primary pressure boundary breached, there 2 were still two barriers from the release of 3 radioactive material, but I appreciate your comments.
4 Thank you very much. Yes, sir?
5 UNIDENTIFIED: I think we have a --
6 set a little precedent here. Id like to follow it.
7 Mike Ferner had some statements to have --
8 THE REPORTER: Excuse me. Could I 9 get your name?
10 UNIDENTIFIED: Im speaking on behalf 11 of Mike Ferner.
12 THE REPORTER: Could I get your name?
13 UNIDENTIFIED: Mike Ferner had 14 comments that he wanted to make. Unfortunately, his 15 dad died, and he was unable to come, so Im going to 16 read his comments in his absence.
17 The Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant is too 18 dangerous to reopen for many reasons, and here are 19 three:
20 Negligent, derelict, reckless arrogance 21 masquerading as a maintenance program.
22 No. 2., a frightening history of razor-thin 23 escapes from catastrophic accidents, and not one, but 24 several. If Hollywood wants a real thriller, they 25 only need to contact FirstEnergy Corp. for a script.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
27 1 And, No. 3., a complete lack of any semblance 2 of Democratic control over the nuclear industry.
3 The first reason to keep Davis-Besse closed:
4 A Maintenance Masquerade:
5 Ask any technical expert or talk with John 6 Kiely in Toledo, a Ph.D. in structural engineering 7 who spent over six years designing the reactor 8 containment buildings for the Bechtel Corp. He will 9 tell you that when youre running a nuclear plant, 10 strict adherence to meticulous maintenance is your 11 guide to avoid catastrophe.
12 As John Kiely said in a news conference 13 recently, Clearly, Davis-Besse has not had that kind 14 of maintenance. And without it, all bets are off 15 that the containment building can withstand a major 16 accident.
17 All bets are off!! So much for FirstEnergy 18 Corporation and the NRCs faith in the containment 19 building that will always ensure that there is no 20 danger to the public; that we will be safe from the 21 deadly poisons created in that reactor.
22 Poor maintenance can cause a containment 23 building to fail, and let me tell you why it matters.
24 Weve heard about the hole rusted into 25 Davis-Besse head. Heres why we should care if 600 MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
28 1 degree water at 220 pounds pressure -- Im sorry, 2 2,200 pounds pressure comes screaming out of a hole 3 in the reactor vessel.
4 We would see the unraveling of a true nuclear 5 nightmare - what corporate and government spin 6 doctors politely call a loss of coolant accident that 7 could very plausibly lead to a breach of containment.
8 What happens next -- right here across 9 northern Ohio, Lake Erie and beyond, was last studied 10 by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in 1982 when the 11 NRC estimated the first year between 1,400 and 4,200 12 people will die from radiation sickness - an 13 incredibly nasty way to go, and 73,000 more people 14 will be injured and sickened from radiation exposure 15 over time; 16 10,000 people will die from radiation-induced 17 cancers; 18 An unknown number of people will contract 19 non-fatal cancers with chemotherapy, a regular part 20 of their lives; 21 84 billion dollars in property damage and 22 that would be 1980 dollars; 23 A 15-mile radius where deaths will occur; 24 And a 70-mile radius where injuries will 25 occur.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
29 1 Right here, friends. To the people of Oak 2 Harbor, Fremont, Cleveland and Toledo. To the many 3 species in nearby Sandusky Bay and Lake Erie. To 4 farmers and the land, and for many hundreds of years.
5 The second reason to keep Davis-Besse closed:
6 Brushes with Catastrophe: Lets highlight three 7 incidents.
8 In 1977 when the plant first opened at low 9 power, it had an accident exactly like the beginning 10 stages of Three-Mile Island.
11 1985, when according to the NRCs lack of --
12 and Im quoting now, "lack of attention to detail in 13 the care and plant equipment, the Licensees history 14 of performing maintenance and evaluating operating 15 experience in a superficial manner" caused the plant 16 to lose feedwater flow and come within 45 seconds of 17 uncovering a reactor core -- 1985.
18 1988 when a tornado struck Davis-Besse, 19 destroying electrical transmission equipment and 20 forcing an emergency shutdown. For two days 21 equipment problems frustrated efforts to keep the 22 reactor under control.
23 But whats worse than all of the above is the 24 third reason to keep Davis-Besse closed: That is the 25 lack of Democratic Control:
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
30 1 When our Government continues to promote and 2 subsidize nuclear power long after it has been proven 3 to be an unacceptable threat to the life on our 4 planet, no further proof is needed that we the people 5 do not control public policy.
6 Albert Einstein warned us that to the village 7 square we must carry the facts of atomic energy, and 8 from there it must come Americas voice. The father 9 of atomic age knew the decisions about nuclear power 10 were so grave that only -- the only way to make them 11 safely was with democracy. But self-governance has 12 not been our history. Private interests like the 13 nuclear industry -- assisted by their willing 14 handmaidens in Government -- have captured the very 15 means by which we are to promote the general welfare 16 and make a better life for all of us.
17 The robed agents of property sitting on the 18 Supreme Court have given corporations the same - and 19 more - Constitutional protections than flesh and 20 blood persons.
21 What does this mean in real life? It means 22 that in 1976 citizens in Ohio -- some of them here 23 today -- with a total budget of $30,000 could collect 24 a half-million signatures to place a nuclear 25 safeguards issue on the Ohio ballot. And utility MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
31 1 companies from around the country -- protected by the 2 First Amendment -- could pour in two million dollars 3 to defeat it.
4 It means that corporations have been granted 5 personhood, have Fourth Amendment protections against 6 unreasonable searches. This means no surprise 7 inspections on company property from OSHA or the NRC 8 -- regulatory agencies that were told are created to 9 protect us when, in fact, they serve their corporate 10 masters.
11 It means rights continually trump -- it means 12 property rights continually trump human rights.
13 Continually trump real persons ability to create a 14 better life and protect this planet from greedy 15 brutes.
16 It means that we must not only work to keep 17 Davis-Besse closed and work to protect the incomes 18 and jobs of Davis-Besse workers, we must also learn 19 our histories and develop new ways to strip 20 corporations of the rights they have usurped from us.
21 You have heard this elementary law of 22 physics: Two bodies cannot occupy the same space at 23 the same time. Just as that is impossible so, too, 24 is it too impossible for corporations to have rights 25 of persons and ours not be diminished; for MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
32 1 corporations to exercise free speech and not diminish 2 our rights.
3 Remembering Einsteins words: To the village 4 square, we must carry the facts of atomic energy; 5 from there must come Americas voice. He didnt say 6 from the NRC or from patronizing CEOs -- but from 7 the village square, from we the people, from whom all 8 political power in this nation is supposed to come.
9 In the coming months we will take the facts 10 from atomic energy, and I would add, the story of how 11 our rights were handed over to corporations -- to the 12 village square. From there must come Americas 13 voice. Mike Ferner.
14 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
15 MR. GROBE: Do you need a copy of 16 that? Were you able to --
17 THE REPORTER: Yes, if hes got an 18 extra copy.
19 MR. GROBE: Yeah, could you, sir, 20 do you have a copy of your letter?
21 UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
22 MR. GROBE: The transcriber had a 23 great amount of difficulty because you were facing 24 away and the microphone was a little bit --
25 UNIDENTIFIED: Yes.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
33 1 MR. GROBE: Do you have an extra 2 copy? That would be wonderful. I appreciate your 3 comments.
4 The one thing that you said that I would like 5 to reinforce is that the management and staff at the 6 Davis-Besse facility clearly did not meet our 7 expectations. They did not meet our regulatory 8 requirements and thats -- those performance 9 deficiencies are why the plant is shut down now, and 10 the role of the oversight panel is to make sure that 11 the -- if the plant restarts, that its in a save 12 condition when it restarts and we make a 13 recommendation to the senior managers and the 14 agencies and that decision is made by the regional 15 administrator in Chicago as well as the director of 16 the office Nuclear Reactor Regulation in Washington, 17 so I appreciate your comments.
18 Are there other members of the local 19 community here that have a comment?
20 MS. MUSER: Yeah, I have a 21 comment. My names Mary Jo Muser, and I have lived 22 in northern Ohio all my life, as have my three 23 children and now my four grandchildren. The 24 numerous safety problems at Davis-Besse, we all know 25 what they are from the hole in the head, rust MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
34 1 particles throughout the plant, workers going home 2 with radioactive particles on their clothing, and now 3 even a leaky containment building. Our sadly -- a 4 symptom of the nuclear industry that has a history of 5 poisoning our earth and its generations for at least 6 a quarter of a million years to come. From the 7 mining of the uranium itself which produces 180,000 8 metric tons of contaminated waste in one year for the 9 average plant to the radioactive gaseous air releases 10 during the normal operation of the nuclear power 11 plant, not to mention the scrapped fuel rods and 12 radioactive waste, etc., etc. The fact remains and 13 always will remain, there will never be any safe way 14 to dispose of this poison that continues to threaten 15 life on this planet, our home.
16 We have 50 years of leaky radioactive 17 unstable dump sites to prove this. How can the 18 public depend on the NRC, that in our not too distant 19 past allowed burial of nuclear waste in cardboard 20 boxes. How do we trust an industry that routinely 21 sells uranium to three aid as scrapped to be recycled 22 in consumer goods. How do we trust an industry that 23 puts short-term profit over life itself. What right 24 does the nuclear industry have to threaten that which 25 our creator has given us.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
35 1 It is time to address the fact that from its 2 very beginnings of the Manhattan Project to Hiroshima 3 to Chernobyl, Three-Mile Island, Indian Point and now 4 Davis-Besse that we have created mistakes time and 5 time again with long-term ramifications too massive 6 to fully understand. We will be long gone while 7 generations to come will be left -- if they survive 8 to deal with the problems in the form of nuclear 9 poison we leave behind. We must look to cleaner 10 energy for our planet. The earth is finite, and we 11 cannot afford to disregard this fact. There is no 12 way to get rid of the poison that this industry has 13 spread throughout the world and we have time bombs in 14 the form of spent fuel and radioactive waste 15 everywhere. This is our legacy for generations to 16 come. What a sad one it is.
17 There is something fundamentally and morally 18 wrong about this. We all know this deep down inside 19 at the very base of core of our human level. When I 20 look at my daughter raising her children to have 21 morals and a belief in a future, it makes my heart 22 heavy and I wonder how do I explain to them about 23 greed and the evil things that are done in the name 24 of profit. My question is how do I explain to them 25 why money is more important than the future or their MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
36 1 lives themselves. I implore you not to ignore the 2 warning signs again and again, but to learn from our 3 past mistakes. Lets work together as part of the 4 greater family called humanity and build a future as 5 safer, cleaner energy. Its time to put the dinosaur 6 of this nuclear nightmare to rest once and for all.
7 Thank you.
8 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
9 MR. WHITCOMB: Good evening. My 10 name is Howard Whitcomb. Im here tonight as a 11 resident of Oak Harbor. I have been a resident of 12 Oak Harbor since 1985.
13 I dont want to be rude to anyone, but my 14 comments are directed to the NRC based on what was 15 presented this afternoon.
16 Ive had an opportunity from 6:00 to 7:00 to 17 review FirstEnergys documentation to the best detail 18 that I could in that time frame. Ive reviewed my 19 notes, and I have several concerns, and if you dont 20 share the concerns, then I agree with the four folks 21 that have already presented their comments more 22 eloquently than I could do, but I think that in 23 essence the theme is, you folks, Im not sure what 24 youre doing as an entity.
25 This afternoon for the third time, I have MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
37 1 heard the COO of FirstEnergy state how great a 2 performer they were, okay? Nonsense. It took 3 years for this reactor vessel degradation to occur.
4 Now, you can hide behind the fact that the 5 machine operated, I can run my car at 6,000 RPM and 6 it will probably last until I run out of oil, and 7 thats exactly what happened. They ran this thing 8 until it couldnt run any longer. I take exception, 9 Mr. Simpkins, with your casual statement that a 10 three-eighths inch -- you said one-eight inch 11 stainless steel cladding acted as a pressure 12 boundary. That is not its design.
13 Second of all, I take exceptions with your 14 comments, Mr. Grobe, this specific accident has never 15 been analyzed. Period. We run the fuel 16 temperatures at 2,100 degrees. Melt down is at 17 2,250. Theres a very slight margin of error.
18 If there had been a rupture in that reactor 19 vessel head, there would have been no containment of 20 water in the reactor vessel. Everyone in this room 21 knows when you boil water at atmospheric at 212 22 degrees it turns to steam. What do you think is 23 going to happened at 600 degree water at 2,200 P.S.I.
24 all of a sudden exposed to the environment of 25 atmospheric conditions? It all turns to steam.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
38 1 You havent told the public about the safety relief 2 in the containment structure and how theyre going to 3 relieve, so dont sit there and tell us time and time 4 again how we had two other barriers of safety that 5 has never been analyzed. Period.
6 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
7 More troubling, however, and I am 8 disappointed in your panel because you didnt point 9 this out, and I had to point it out this afternoon, 10 and I dont know how many people were there, but Im 11 going to make an issue of it again.
12 This plant was shut down in March of this 13 year, we had all of these plans and this 14 implementation that was going to occur from 15 FirstEnergy. They march off smartly using 16 unqualified personnel, using inadequate procedures 17 and went and did all these inspections in the plant 18 but for the efforts of your, Mr. Holmberg. He 19 identified two violations in July, and now they have 20 to go back to square one and redo those inspections.
21 Well, you know what? Thats one example. What 22 other activities are going on in the plant to 23 inadequate criteria or with unqualified personal?
24 Second of all, Im very concerned about the 25 fact that theyve hired all of these outside MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
39 1 contractors to come and do these very technical 2 activities. When all these contractors leave the 3 site, whos left? We have had no assurance from 4 FirstEnergy that they have any plan whatsoever in 5 place to assure that this same thing isnt going to 6 happen again, and Ive got to tell you what I saw 7 today was weve got this restart activity and were 8 looking in the middle of October to be ready to start 9 this plant up. I havent heard anything yet coming 10 close to a root cause analysis. Im going to cite 11 what Mr. Pearce, the Vice President -- Vice President 12 of Oversight said today.
13 Root cause, FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating 14 Company, nuclear safety values, behaviors and 15 expectations were inadequate to enable oversight to 16 effect needed positive change in station operations.
17 The first word that comes to my mind when I 18 hear that is filibuster, okay? That has absolutely 19 no meaning and, furthermore, its not a root cause.
20 Its a symptom. The question is why were things 21 inadequate? Thats what we want to know. We want 22 to be assured that it isnt going to happen again.
23 The gentleman that cited Mr. Ferners letter 24 regarding Harold Dentons letter of August 14th, 25 1985, I have raised those issues prior to this MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
40 1 meeting. I got to say that if were relying on what 2 Harold Denton found and the NRC found back in 1985 as 3 the basis for the root cause analysis today, were 4 missing the boat. Youre missing the boat. Were 5 the residents of this community that have invested 6 our lives here. Were not going to stand up and 7 have another near miss, and to add a little more 8 detail to what was already provided, when there was 9 that loss of offsite power incident, the same 10 equipment that had failed on June 9th, 1985 failed 11 again in 1987.
12 Thirdly, in 1993, the auxiliary feedwater 13 system was found to be valved out of service, and 14 they were cited for it, and, I believe, Mr. Grobe, 15 you were involved with that citation.
16 Now, Davis-Besse has had a series of 17 problems, management, technical, mechanical failures, 18 electrical failures.
19 The biggest issue today before us is what are 20 they doing about the management issues? Changing 21 the faces isnt going to do it. Its a cultural 22 problem, and they have known about it for years, and 23 you have known about it for years; you 24 specifically, Mr. Grobe.
25 Now its time to come clean and tell the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
41 1 story the way it should be. I dont understand why 2 as a member of the public I cant ask FirstEnergy 3 questions. You have done everything in your power 4 to isolate them from the public, and Im a member of 5 the public --
6 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
7 MR. WHITCOMB: And I have worked for 8 NRC. I have worked for Toledo Edison. Im a 9 nuclear qualified engineer in the Navy, and Im damn 10 proud of it, and I dont want a bunch of rhetoric 11 being thrown around trying to deceive the public that 12 everything is fine. Everything is not fine, sir.
13 Thank you.
14 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
15 MR. GROBE: Just a couple 16 comments, Howard.
17 I think youve attended every meeting we have 18 conducted here so you have a fairly detailed 19 knowledge of the issues that we have raised. I 20 couldnt agree with you more in simply replacing some 21 managers does not solve the problem, and its an 22 issue that we have reinforced over and over again at 23 these public meetings and was even discussed again 24 this afternoon and youre absolutely correct that 25 this is a cultural issue, the way the people at the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
42 1 plant thought about their responsibilities and made 2 decisions and that needs to be changed. I believe 3 that will be the pacing issue for restarting. I 4 dont know where you got the date of October, 5 whatever. Ive not seen a date published by us or 6 anybody else.
7 The challenge that FirstEnergy faces is 8 understanding how to change the cultural attitudes of 9 the people that work at the plant, and the plant 10 wont restart until the NRC is convinced that thats 11 occurred and that the plant can be operated safely.
12 Other questions or comments? Yes, sir?
13 MR. LODGE: My name is Terry Lodge, 14 Im from Toledo. The wrong part of the NRC is here 15 tonight. I think the five commissioners ought to 16 come out and listen to this anger and this knowledge, 17 this knowing perception of whats going on.
18 Theres a -- I have been to a number of these 19 hearings also, and I have been watching things on the 20 website, and I have been staying current in the 21 media. Theres incredible stories that are being 22 told now that are mainstream information. The story 23 of Davis-Besse and its regulators is a story of 24 dysfunction. Theres a putrefying dead animal in 25 the middle of the village square that people step MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
43 1 around quietly and whisper about cynically.
2 There are so many issues that arent being 3 discussed by the NRC and FirstEnergy. In the last 4 week we saw FirstEnergy admitting in the pages of our 5 newspapers to some probably criminal acts to 6 falsification of quality assurance records to not 7 doing inspections that were asserted to have been 8 done.
9 Tonight, today, even after those disclosures 10 we get to listen to the NRC have a civilized dialogue 11 on the stage, across a moat, safely separated from 12 the publics right to ask questions.
13 In the last couple of weeks we have seen 14 disclosures in our newspapers about how the five 15 appointed commissioners vetoed this. This is the 16 draft of the staff order that would have shut down 17 Davis-Besse on an emergency basis at the end of last 18 November.
19 In April, the Nuclear Information and 20 Resource Service under the Freedom of Information Act 21 requested this and other documents. The NRC has 22 released this and other documents to members of 23 Congress and to the press, but not to the people, not 24 to nears. Just in case you havent heard about it, 25 Im going to leave a copy with your Court Reporter.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
44 1 Id like to read you a statement made by 2 Richard Meserve, the Chair of the Nuclear Regulatory 3 Commission, presumably one of the commissioners who 4 led the charge to veto the Staffs science based 5 engineering based order to allow the Utility to 6 operate an additional 75 days.
7 In our newspapers out here in the Midwest, 8 the newspapers that somehow get their hands on the 9 publics information, we read that the commissioners 10 overrode highly qualified talented staff people of 11 the NRC whom we praise while we damn the 12 commissioners.
13 Richard Meserve in his confirmation statement 14 given in September 1999 to a Senate Committee on 15 Environment and Public Works said a couple of very 16 interesting things. Referring to the coming 17 deregulation of the electrical industry, he said 18 first and foremost, it reinforces the need for the 19 NRC to fulfill its obligation to demand safe 20 operations by Licensees. The NRC must assure that 21 the pressure to reduce costs -- pressures to reduce 22 costs do not become incentives to cut corners on 23 safety. I understand -- this is Mr. Meserve 24 talking -- I understand that the principal statutory 25 responsibility of the Commission is the protection of MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
45 1 the publics health and safety and of the 2 environment. The NRC must ensure that its Licensees 3 meet the agencys safety and environmental 4 requirements.
5 Yet interestingly when FirstEnergy, which is 6 an economically struggling large utility in the midst 7 of a de-regulating environment, when the NRC came 8 to the -- pardon me, when FirstEnergy came with its 9 spin masters and its public relations people and its 10 former staff legal director of the NRC is its special 11 legal consultant to meet last fall with the NRC, the 12 NRC bought hook, line and sinker the economic 13 troubles of the utility and placed them over what, I 14 guess, the chair understood in 1999, but had 15 forgotten in the interceding years. This is, as I 16 understand it, Mr. Meserve is a nuclear physicist and 17 a lawyer. What an interesting combination of skills 18 that he should be so ignorant.
19 He further said in his confirmation 20 statement, it is incumbent on the NRC to reach 21 decisions in appropriate ways. Decisions must be 22 fair and be perceived to be fair. They must be 23 appropriate for the particular task at hand, and they 24 must be efficient and timely. There should be no 25 slighting the significant role that Congress gave to MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
46 1 the public in NRC processes.
2 I notice that he didnt say the role of the 3 public after the fact carefully controlled managed as 4 to the opinions its allowed to voice.
5 The NRC staff and the regulated industry 6 benefit from public participation, he said, because 7 the public may often illuminate issues in ways that 8 would otherwise escape scrutiny. Moreover, the 9 American public will not accept the legitimacy of 10 decisions that derive from processes from which it 11 has been excluded.
12 Well, the public was excluded from a 13 disastrous decision making process last fall. The 14 public interest -- lets face it, the public interest 15 is a very distant second to the role that the NRC 16 commission sees itself as playing.
17 After reading the NRCs -- of the NRCs 18 sellout of the public interest, the first thing that 19 occurred to me was the NRC has no more credibility to 20 regulate the nuclear industry posed with the most 21 serious disaster in waiting since Three-Mile Island 22 with scientific and engineering opinion from its own 23 staff, the NRC ignored all of that and rolled over 24 capitulated to the whines of a Utility in economic 25 trouble. As a result, weak regulator that the NRC MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
47 1 ever was, it has no credibility with the public. It 2 has no credibility in this process, and if a complete 3 melt down of the NRCs credibility for its shabby 4 complicity with FirstEnergy werent enough, yesterday 5 I received a fax of a proposed ruling that the 6 Nuclear Regulatory Commission is making on the 2.206 7 petition that was filed by nears, Union of Concerned 8 Scientist and a dozen or so grass roots anti-nuclear 9 organizations. That petition called for a truly 10 independent panel, not a manual 0350, surely not the 11 so-called independent panel that the Utility has 12 pulled together. A truly independent panel is being 13 rejected by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Once 14 again, the putrefying elephant, the desiccating beast 15 that no one talks about is ruling the process. In 16 fact, one of the very reasons -- it is amazing, and I 17 will be filing comments just because its so 18 infuriating, one of the very reason a truly 19 independent panel is being shunned by the NRC is what 20 they call an independent panel put together by 21 FirstEnergy. It is amazing to me that -- that the 22 Commission still believes that anybody is going to 23 believe the truth, the value, the validity of any 24 pronouncements that are made. The NRC doesnt have 25 any credibility with anyone out here. Im here to MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
48 1 tell you that we in the Midwest are asking you to 2 take a message back to your bosses. I hope youll 3 take Mr. Meserves statement. I hope youll take 4 the message that we dont recognize the NRCs 5 credibility to regulate. We dont recognize the 6 objectivity, the purported objectivity that you 7 continually try to foist on us. We dont believe 8 that the NRC is serious about changing a 9 corporations culture, perhaps because it cant. It 10 was astounding last week, absolutely appalling.
11 FirstEnergy actually admits in so many words that for 12 the last three and a half years we put production 13 concerns ahead of safety. They put profit concerns 14 ahead of safety. Davis-Besse has a 25-year deep 15 management culture of putting profit ahead of public 16 safety and the NRC is completely complicit.
17 So the message is we arent here to lobby for 18 a better plant. We arent here to hear technical 19 explanations or to hear that you dont know yet what 20 the problem is. We believe we know very well what 21 the problem is. We believe that Davis-Besse is so 22 corroded and corrupted from a physical standpoint 23 that it must be shut down forever. We believe --
24 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
25 MR. LODGE: We believe that in the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
49 1 management culture faces will change, the culture 2 will always be to beat up the messenger who says, 3 guys, we should remove insulation from the reactor 4 head, it holds water, or, guys, we should cut holes 5 so we can inspect the reactor head better. Those 6 things somehow just dont get very high priority.
7 Guys, maybe we should tell the NRC that we have gone 8 from a monthly changing of filters because they get 9 so damn clogged with iron to every other day or maybe 10 the inspectors seen them. We dont know, do we?
11 Thats one of the lessons we havent learned yet.
12 Were here to say that were not going to 13 step around the putrefying dead elephant. Were not 14 going to give dignity and validity to the 15 dysfunctional game that the NRC is engaged in with 16 FirstEnergy against the public.
17 We are withdrawing our consent to you to pay 18 any regulatory attention and oversight to Davis-Besse 19 or indeed any nuclear power plant. We dont believe 20 you. We cant believe you. Were going to 21 consult -- we citizens, are going to consult among 22 ourselves, and were going to shut down this plant 23 forever.
24 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
25 MR. LODGE: Please take that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
50 1 message back to your bosses whether its the 2 appointed commissioners or the utility companies that 3 we know call the shots over your decision making.
4 Thank you.
5 THEREUPON, several members marched out 6 chanting, "Two, four, six, eight NRC cant regulate."
7 MR. KARDATZKE: I just had a couple 8 quick questions. I had three points. One is --
9 MR. GROBE: Why dont you wait 10 just a moment. I want to make sure I can hear you.
11 MR. KARDATZKE: My name is Merl 12 Kardatzke. I live on Graytown Road within 10 miles 13 of here -- of Davis-Besse more specifically, and I 14 had a question about the integrity of the fuel rods.
15 We see newspaper reports of contractors who 16 rotate through here, and then have been detected at 17 other locations because they have particles that they 18 have carried from this plant that were undetected 19 here and then detected elsewhere, and the story was 20 the detectors werent set at the right level here to 21 detect these particles, but this indicates that the 22 fuel rods themselves which would be the source of 23 this have been breaking down, and thats one of our 24 containment barriers --
25 MR. GROBE: Right, thats an MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
51 1 excellent question.
2 MR. KARDATZKE: -- that we count on.
3 MR. GROBE: Thats an excellent 4 question. Did you want me to answer that?
5 MR. KARDATZKE: Go ahead.
6 MR. GROBE: And then we can go on 7 with your other questions.
8 MR. KARDATZKE: Okay.
9 MR. GROBE: Just to give you a 10 sense of what the reactor core -- reactor core looks 11 like. There is well over a hundred fuel bundles and 12 each of those bundles contain well over a hundred 13 fuel pins, and as happens from time to time and this 14 is not unique to Davis-Besse, some of those pins 15 develop pin hole leaks and that did happen to 16 Davis-Besse during the past year -- actually the year 17 prior to them shutting down, so during the summer and 18 fall of last year. As a result of these very tiny 19 leaks in a few of the many fuel pins during the 20 reactor, you get a very small concentration of fuel 21 related radioactive materials. Theres a number of 22 different kinds of radioactive materials that are 23 found in the reactor. Some of them are graded 24 through whats called activation and those would 25 normally be metals like cobalts and iron and things MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
52 1 like that. Theres other radioactive materials that 2 are inside the fuel pins that are either thinning 3 products, its the outcome of splitting ahead of them 4 or actually with fuel itself through radiant material 5 and when you have one of these leaks in the fuel pin, 6 you can get some of these fission products or fuel 7 materials into the coolant and that happened at 8 Davis-Besse, and theres limits in the license on the 9 amount of activity that can be in the coolant, and 10 they did not exceed those limits. This is not unique 11 to Davis-Besse. When the reactor shut down, there is 12 some work that goes on inside the cooling system, and 13 the specific work was going on that these fellows 14 were involved in was inside the steam generators, and 15 Doug showed a picture of where the steam generators 16 are. There was some fuel related radionuclides 17 inside the steam generators, and they got onto the 18 clothing of those individuals, and through a variety 19 of mistakes, on the part of the company, some of 20 those particles got offsite. The radioactivity that 21 got offsite was significantly below any regulatory 22 limits, the -- significantly below anything that was 23 any danger to the public, but it was detectable, and 24 detectable radioactivity in the public because of 25 operation in the nuclear power plant is not something MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
53 1 that is -- that should happen, so the Utility --
2 FirstEnergy, after a number of discussions with us 3 followed up on this and found all of the locations 4 where radioactive materials was carried offsite and 5 collected it and disposed of it properly.
6 We completed an inspection a number of weeks 7 ago. Results of that inspection are still under 8 review, and I expect that report to be issued in the 9 next several weeks into this matter.
10 There were several violations of the 11 requirements. The specific detector -- excuse me, 12 that you were referring to is whats referred to as a 13 whole body counter. Its not a detector to prevent 14 the release of radioactivity. Its a specialized 15 detector to evaluate whether an individual has 16 radioactive materials inside them because theres the 17 possibility if youre a radiation worker in the plant 18 that you can inhale radioactive materials or ingest 19 them, so theres a detector thats designed to tell 20 whether or not that happened to evaluate the level.
21 That detector is a fairly sophisticated device. It 22 has a very complicated computer analysis and the 23 specific isotopes, specific kinds of radioactive 24 material that these individuals were exposed to were 25 not the kinds of radioactive material that that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
54 1 detector was set up to detect, which was another 2 mistake on the part of the Licensee, so its -- its 3 not a pretty picture. I mean, a number of mistakes, 4 number of violations of the requirements and -- I 5 think I answered all of yours questions.
6 Do you have any other questions regarding the 7 particles?
8 MR. KARDATZKE: That was my question 9 concerning the particles, of course, it does reveal 10 the weakness of the -- with the clothes, but as far 11 as general safety, I understand, and -- but because 12 they left the site, it was revealed. It wouldnt 13 have been made public no matter how much particles 14 had occurred, had it been located on site, their 15 clothes disposed of or whatever.
16 MR. GROBE: Its -- it would have 17 only been revealed had we selected one of those 18 activities to review during one of our routine 19 inspections, but youre correct, had it not gotten 20 offsite and been detected at another nuclear power 21 plant, it may not have been detected.
22 MR. KARDATZKE: There was another 23 question that I had on the simplified view of the 24 containment building. Its -- it shows a missile 25 shield. Now, since its inside the containment, I MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
55 1 dont think that youre talking about a missile 2 coming inside here, youre talking about missiles 3 coming out of the reactor head; is that correct?
4 MR. GROBE: Actually, the word 5 missile is probably not a good choice of words, but 6 theres all sorts of missiles that can be created in 7 any kind of a factory situation. Any type of 8 rotating equipment if a part comes loose, it can 9 become what we call a missile because its thrown off 10 a piece of rotating equipment, like a motor or a 11 turbine, and these kinds of equipment, pieces of 12 equipment existed -- many industrial applications.
13 MR. KARDATZKE: This is immediately 14 above the reactor head.
15 MR. GROBE: Thats correct.
16 MR. KARDATZKE: And I understood that 17 there were some annular cracks -- there was one case 18 where there was an annular crack on there.
19 MR. GROBE: This particular 20 missile shield that youre looking at is intended to 21 protect the containment structure from a missile that 22 could be created below the missile shield. Most of 23 you probably have the picture of what hes talking 24 about, but its possible that the reactor coolant 25 system itself could create a missile piece of MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
56 1 equipment thats ejected and that shield is intended 2 to protect the containment structure itself in that 3 type of --
4 MR. KARDATZKE: For example, if one of 5 those nozzles --
6 MR. GROBE: Thats correct.
7 MR. KARDATZKE: -- if it broke down, 8 it would become a missile?
9 MR. GROBE: Thats correct.
10 MR. KARDATZKE: My third point was 11 this, with contractors rotating in and out 12 Davis-Besse doing -- responsible for the work either 13 because of the danger of too much exposure inside or 14 because of technical nature of the work, how do you 15 expect to have a culture build up here within a 16 facility when the people are just coming and going in 17 large measure?
18 MR. GROBE: Thats an excellent 19 question. Im going to use my words, these are not 20 FirstEnergy words, but what the company is doing is 21 bringing in people that have strong safety culture 22 and appropriate expertise, in a sense departnering 23 them, with their own workers. Many of the oversight 24 panels that were brought in, experienced individuals 25 or executives from other companies and an oversight MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
57 1 panel might contain several of those individuals and 2 several FirstEnergy people from Davis-Besse and a 3 couple of people from Perry and Beaver Valley, so 4 what theyre trying to do is bring in differing views 5 to cross-cultivate those views, and thats one of 6 their efforts to raise the awareness, their staff to 7 what their expectations are in the future.
8 In addition to that, the level of work effort 9 is more than a normal operating organization could 10 accomplish, so they need additional help in that 11 regard because of the level of effort that they are 12 going through right now.
13 MR. KARDATZKE: So a lot of the people 14 involved in a shutdown and restart are not part of 15 the normal operation of the facility?
16 MR. GROBE: No, no. Theres a 17 lot of people working at the site today, probably in 18 the order of 500 that are not part of the normal 19 operating organization at Davis-Besse. A number of 20 them come from Perry, Beaver Valley, D. C. Cook, 21 I cant -- I think Salem is one of the sites that 22 they mentioned earlier today. A number of them are 23 experienced nuclear workers, but theyre contractors.
24 They dont work for other utilities, and they have 25 unique expertise to do the kind of work that theyre MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
58 1 doing here at Davis-Besse. They may have had past 2 expertise in doing the specific kind of recovery 3 activities at problem plants in the past, and -- so 4 they need that kind of help.
5 In addition, theyre trying to capitalize on 6 having those people there, a cross-fertilizing with 7 their people. We have not yet seen the 8 comprehensive corrective action program that the 9 Licensee is going to use to try to change the culture 10 of their organization and how they are going to 11 monitor that change and how theyre going to measure 12 it. The Licensee just presented to us last Thursday 13 their root cause in this area, their evaluation of 14 what their problems are, and you heard earlier this 15 evening some of those. They concluded that their 16 organization put an inappropriate level of emphasis 17 on productivity instead of maintaining design safety 18 margins, so its -- thats a difficult issue to 19 address, and I expect in the next couple of weeks 20 were going to get a comprehensive plan on how they 21 are going to try to address that, and were going to 22 be monitoring their limitation. Were going to be 23 monitoring indicators both through our inspections as 24 well as watching what theyre doing of those 25 attitudes and behaviors changing, and that is the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
59 1 true root cause to this problem that occurred at 2 Davis-Besse. Its the people, the decisions they 3 made, and the way they did their job, and the NRC 4 needs to be convinced that thats change before this 5 plant restarts.
6 MR. KARDATZKE: Thank you.
7 MR. GROBE: Thank you.
8 MR. DEAN: I just want to take 9 the opportunity to say a few things. We try to 10 conduct this meeting and often have a dialogue with 11 people. We did have some people take the 12 opportunity to have a diatribe which makes it 13 difficult to have communication like we just did with 14 you, sir, but there were a couple of issues that were 15 raised that we did not have the opportunity to 16 address, and I think more importantly that we dont 17 let some disinformation or misinformation exist out 18 there regarding some of the things that have occurred 19 over the past year.
20 First of all, the issue that was raised 21 regarding the Commission vetoing or influencing 22 unduly the Staffs decision whether to issue an order 23 or not to shut down Davis-Besse, and just to 24 summarize briefly as we were dealing with the 25 industry-wide issues regarding cracking in these MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
60 1 nozzles and trying to develop the approach as to how 2 we would wrestle with this issue with all Licensees, 3 not just Davis-Besse. There were some concerns that 4 Davis-Besse had a potential susceptibility, that 5 concerned our staff, and we had several staff that 6 felt that perhaps the plant should be shut down 7 sooner than later, and we engaged in a -- in a fairly 8 significant dialogue over a period of time with staff 9 and management in the NRC regarding what decision we 10 should make, and one of the potential actions was to 11 issue an order, and we had prepared an order in case 12 we needed to issue that as a potential option.
13 What we ended up doing after discussion and 14 the staff was involved in this discussion with NRC 15 management was to develop a point in time where we 16 thought it was prudent for the Licensee to shut down 17 and the Licensee, in fact, shut down early because of 18 the NRCs actions, and, in fact, if you look at the 19 history of all of the things that have occurred over 20 the past couple years relative to the issue of 21 control rod nozzle cracking, because of the NRCs 22 influence really helped develop Davis-Besse shutting 23 down and finding the issue, so while it certainly 24 would have been a lot better for us to find that 25 issue earlier, and looking at things in retrospect, MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
61 1 there certainly were opportunities there to put the 2 pieces together that didnt happen, and thats one of 3 the things we did have to look at and do a 4 self-assessment of our own activities, and I think 5 Jack talked about that.
6 The other issue that I wanted to talk 7 about --
8 MR. GROBE: Before you go on to 9 that.
10 MR. DEAN: Yeah.
11 MR. GROBE: Its important that --
12 were a country governed by laws, and we all have to 13 follow those laws, and theres a number of -- nobody 14 is happy here. FirstEnergy certainly isnt happy.
15 The NRC is not satisfied with where it finds itself, 16 and we certainly have a lot of critics, no doubt 17 about that, but theres been far before -- long 18 before any of the critics came to the forefront, the 19 NRC initiated a variety of activities, and Congress, 20 quite frankly, initiated some activities to find out 21 the truth, and we had a number of folks here that 22 already believe they know the truth. I dont, and 23 our office investigations -- thats the part of the 24 agency that investigates our Licensees, is conducting 25 an investigation to find out why these things happen.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
62 1 Was there some ulterior motive or ill-attempt, or 2 were these just mistakes by Davis-Besse staff?
3 Our office of Inspector General -- thats the 4 group that investigates us initiated an investigation 5 into how the agency made these decisions, why they 6 made the decisions, and was there anything 7 inappropriate in the decision making process.
8 Theres laws that govern how we issue orders and when 9 we can issue orders, and it all goes through a 10 process. Congress is initiating investigation into 11 the agencys handling of these matters, so Im, quite 12 frankly, much more interested in waiting for the 13 truth of the facts, and those will come out over 14 time. Id like to have it all out, but the fact of 15 the matter is, it does take time. The investigation 16 of Davis-Besse will be done in a few months, and you 17 will be receiving those results through these 18 meetings and through our public documents and 19 Congress and the Inspector Generals investigation of 20 us. They will also be something that well be coming 21 to light over the next several months, I dont know 22 exactly when, but I just wanted to emphasize that the 23 NRC is not satisfied with our inspection programs, 24 and were certainly reviewing how we handled this 25 from an inspection point of view, how we handled our MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
63 1 internal decision making on whether or not to require 2 Davis-Besse to shut down or what we finally ended up 3 with, which was an earlier shutdown than what they 4 were planning, how we handled other generic issues, 5 what we call generic issues, or issues that effect 6 multiple plants. We have a number of reviews going 7 on, and, hopefully, we will get to the bottom of it 8 and prove and avoid this kind of situation in the 9 future.
10 MR. DEAN: And the other issue --
11 Im sorry, the other issue I wanted to raise or not 12 sit there in a line like a rotten egg, while some of 13 the speakers have impugned the credibility of the NRC 14 and some people may have that opinion, but the one 15 point that I do want to get across is that members of 16 the NRC, the five people up here and the inspectors 17 that we have at the plants across the country and in 18 the regions and our technical staff and headquarters 19 take our role and responsibility in terms of ensuring 20 public health and safety extremely seriously, and, 21 you know, personally, you know, I can share with you 22 that, you know, comments made like the NRCs in the 23 pocket of industry, and so on, so forth, are really, 24 you know, really painful to hear that because thats 25 probably the furthest thing from the truth. We have MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
64 1 a public trust to assure public health and safety.
2 We take that very seriously from the Resident 3 Inspectors all the way up to you the Senior 4 Management of the safety scene, the Commissioners, so 5 I just want to make sure that you fully understand 6 our dedication to that.
7 MR. GROBE: Yes, maam?
8 MS. CLEMENTE: I guess, I have a 9 couple of things. I want to first know -- I mean, I 10 understand that you believe and its very painful for 11 you for us to make accusations that we do not trust 12 you, but I want to know if you understand why we feel 13 that way?
14 MR. GROBE: Sure.
15 MS. CLEMENTE: Okay, because, I mean, 16 I have a few questions, Im a schoolteacher from 17 northern Ohio, and I teach my students to really 18 critically think and to look at all the sides and 19 research and to choose the best decision and the best 20 decision is paying particular attention to, you know, 21 not only what is good for themselves, but what is 22 good for the people surrounding them and what is good 23 for the environment, and the Davis-Besse situation 24 came to my attention and I have done a lot of 25 research. I have looked on a lot of sides, and I MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
65 1 really have come to the conclusion that pays 2 particular attention to the safety, to the people, to 3 the environment, and thats what the plant needs to 4 be shut down and the community is here tonight, were 5 very aware, I feel, and we are very passionate, I 6 feel, some are extremely passionate, which is great, 7 and I have three questions that are very concerning 8 to me.
9 One is, you had stated -- and I know that you 10 put a lot of blame on FirstEnergy, but I was looking 11 through E-mail correspondence between you and 12 FirstEnergy and you both agreed that there was 13 significant likelihood of leakage and destruction, so 14 I am -- I understand that there are laws to go 15 through, but there are times when you need to step 16 over those laws, and you need to step in and say this 17 is not safe, and I do not understand why you allowed 18 the plant to operate until February, why you kept, 19 you know, why you allowed it to continue when you 20 originally stated that it needed to be shut down, why 21 you allowed them to authorize that, so I would like 22 an answer to that.
23 MR. GROBE: Sure. You used a 24 word that is very interesting and thats the word 25 safe, and the definition of safe is different in each MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
66 1 of our minds and how we evaluate, what goes on day in 2 and day out. We make those judgments continually.
3 We have defined standards of safety and pressure 4 boundary leakage is not permitted. Is occurs from 5 time to time. If it occurs, the plant is shut down.
6 It was possible and you can argue likely that there 7 was some pressure boundary leakage at Davis-Besse, it 8 was not known that there was pressure boundary 9 leakage. The judgment that was made is should there 10 be pressure boundary leakage, what is the risk, and 11 thats how we evaluate safety. There are risk 12 standards. Were fairly scientific about how we 13 evaluate risks to the public and the risk to the 14 reactor for various situations, and the judgment that 15 was made was based on risk, and the conclusion was 16 that the risk was low, and thats why the plant was 17 allowed to continue operating until February.
18 MS. CLEMENTE: I just -- its just 19 very, very hard for me to come to the conclusion that 20 the risk was low because --
21 MR. GROBE: I understand that.
22 MS. CLEMENTE: -- especially when 23 you came on across those other plants where there 24 were cracks that were not common. I think that that 25 definitely should have definitely alerted you that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
67 1 there is something else going on and that you should 2 look at this in a very, very more personal and pay 3 way more attention than I feel that you did, so I 4 feel that its very understandable for us, the 5 community, to not trust you at all and --
6 MR. GROBE: I understand.
7 MS. CLEMENTE: -- I think you really 8 need to take that into consideration when you make 9 your final decisions because if you dont take into 10 consideration what we say and what we think, I just 11 feel its going to be a grave mistake because if 12 something like this ever happens again, its going to 13 be horrendous.
14 MR. GROBE: Thats why were here 15 is to hear what --
16 MS. CLEMENTE: I hope thats why 17 youre here. I have a feeling and I felt that a 18 little bit why youre here is to more defend 19 yourselves and not admit that youre wrong.
20 MR. GROBE: I hope I didnt appear 21 defensive. I hope nobody up here appeared 22 defensive. Were here to listen and to learn and an 23 individual earlier -- Im not sure, it might have 24 been you, Howard, made the comment regarding the 25 stainless steel cladding was on the interior surface MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
68 1 of the reactor vessel. That cladding was never 2 designed to withstand pressure, its metal, so it 3 does, but thats not what its purpose was. Its 4 purpose was a corrosive prohibitor on the interior 5 surface, in fact, it did retain pressure and there 6 wasnt a leak of the reactor so there wasnt an 7 accident. The risk was higher, and because the six 8 and a half inches of steel wasnt there, but the --
9 but there wasnt an accident.
10 MS. CLEMENTE: I had spoke to someone 11 that they had brought up that they had helped design 12 the plant and that they had suggested that the entire 13 plant use stainless steel.
14 MR. GROBE: Uh huh, yeah, weve --
15 MS. CLEMENTE: Was that a 16 consideration to you or did you -- why did you decide 17 not to do that?
18 MR. GROBE: You know, weve talked 19 about a variety of different metals already this 20 evening. The fuel pins themselves are made out of 21 the zirconium alloy, its called zircalloy, the 22 reactor material itself and most of the piping is 23 made out of carbon steel. Some components are made 24 out of stainless steel. Each different application, 25 you choose the material thats best for that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
69 1 application based on its ductility and its corrosive 2 resistivity and -- theres a whole variety, and, of 3 course --
4 MS. CLEMENTE: I understand that, but 5 if someone came to you and said, I have the research, 6 I definitely can tell you that you need to use 7 stainless steel. I mean, I know that you probably 8 are not the specific person that he came to so Ill 9 just move on, but are you encouraging -- my other 10 question is, are you encouraging or are you looking 11 into having FirstEnergy shut the nuclear part down 12 and use the turbines or a nature of gas or something 13 like that? Are you at all even considering it?
14 Probably not cause youre a nuclear commission, 15 right?
16 MR. GROBE: Well, a steam turbine 17 and a gas turbine are two completely different 18 things. The gas turbine is more like a jet engine.
19 MS. CLEMENTE: So there is no 20 absolute way that they could possibly use any parts 21 of this plant for any other wave of electricity; is 22 that correct?
23 MR. GROBE: Im not sure. You 24 might be able to generate like little --
25 MR. DEAN: Coal.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
70 1 MR. GROBE: I dont know if you 2 could hear --
3 MS. CLEMENTE: For coal?
4 MR. GROBE: The only difference 5 essentially between a nuclear plant and a coal fired 6 electrical generating plant is the source of heat.
7 In a nuclear plant the source of heat is nuclear 8 reaction. In a coal plant, its burning coal, so one 9 could conceptualize that you could build a coal 10 burner at the site and pipe in the steam in that way, 11 but Im not sure that that would be cost effective.
12 MS. CLEMENTE: Uh huh. The other 13 question -- the last question I have is if an 14 accident were to happen, would you feel safe driving 15 10 miles to Sandusky because thats what the 16 evacuation plan says.
17 MR. GROBE: Its an interesting 18 question. I can tell you that the emergency plans, 19 the evacuation routes are something that got 20 thoroughly reviewed. By and large, those types of 21 reviews are not done by the NRC. They are done by 22 the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA.
23 MS. CLEMENTE: Uh huh.
24 MR. GROBE: But FEMA and the NRC 25 work closely together. We have a responsibility for MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
71 1 the plants site and monitoring radioactive 2 materials, and they have responsibility for 3 coordinating the State and overseeing the emergency 4 response offsite, but, again, you use that word, 5 safe. Is it as safe as normally driving down the 6 road? Well, probably not, because people -- they are 7 going to be more people on the road, and theyre 8 going to be driving maybe a little faster, so -- but 9 is it an adequate evacuation plan, I think it is, so 10 -- Im not sure how else to answer your question.
11 MS. CLEMENTE: I think we have to 12 discuss the term safe. I find that very, very hard 13 to believe that all of you think that that, or even 14 you, just you think that its an adequate evacuation 15 plan, 10 miles to drive to Sandusky for so many 16 people when youre talking, its a huge choice 17 attraction and not even the entire city of Oak Harbor 18 and Port Clinton would even fit into the auditorium 19 where you say that they should go.
20 MR. GROBE: You know, its -- I 21 just recently had the opportunity to review a 22 document that was written regarding the evacuation of 23 Lower Manhattan, September 11th of last year, and 24 many, many more people were evacuated from Lower 25 Manhattan than live anywhere near this plant, and it MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
72 1 was done with very little impact to the safety and 2 the public, so, again, these are judgments that you 3 have to make and decisions that have to be made based 4 on weighed risks, and the evacuation plan for this 5 area has been thoroughly reviewed and found 6 acceptable, and Id love to talk to you more about 7 this meeting because Im not sure Im convincing you, 8 but --
9 MS. CLEMENTE: No, youre not.
10 Youre definitely not.
11 MR. GROBE: And I appreciate that.
12 MS. CLEMENTE: Im extremely, 13 extremely concerned not only for the children, but 14 for the entire community. Im very, very concerned.
15 I havent been convinced that I should trust you.
16 All the articles that I have read have just 17 completely disappointed me, and I really wished that 18 you would have stepped in a lot further. I think 19 three-eights of an inch is extremely alarming. I 20 think cracks are alarming. I think the fact that it 21 exists is alarming and --
22 MR. GROBE: We couldnt be in 23 closer agreement on that point.
24 MS. CLEMENTE: Well, I guess Im just 25 saying that I need to see it. I mean, youre saying MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
73 1 a lot of things tonight, so Im just looking, and Im 2 asking to see it. I want to see some evidence that I 3 can trust you and that this community can as well.
4 MR. GROBE: The best thing would 5 be to continue coming to meetings if you can, 6 particularly the afternoon meetings and --
7 MS. CLEMENTE: Well, I teach, so --
8 MR. GROBE: I understand.
9 MS. CLEMENTE: I will be here at 10 night.
11 MR. GROBE: Okay.
12 UNIDENTIFIED: Get the head on it, 13 get her going.
14 MR. GROBE: Pardon me?
15 UNIDENTIFIED: Lets get the head on 16 it and get her going.
17 MR. GROBE: Okay. Can I ask a 18 question here? Weve been at it for about an hour 19 and 45 minutes, would it be appropriate to take about 20 a five minute break?
21 UNIDENTIFIED: Yeah.
22 MR. GROBE: Okay, lets take five 23 minutes if thats okay with you.
24 THEREUPON, a brief recess took place.
25 MR. GROBE: Yes, maam?
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
74 1 MS. BECK: My name is Meredith 2 Beck, I live in Port Clinton.
3 MR. GROBE: Could you turn the 4 microphone a little bit or stand closer to it?
5 MS. BECK: My name is Meredith 6 Beck. I live in Port Clinton. Im not affiliated 7 with any group and my question is -- its kind of a 8 loaded question, but I wondered if the NRC has ever 9 not granted a license to a nuclear power plant and 10 that that led then to shutting down a nuclear power 11 plant, and the underlying, underneath that, of 12 course, is, is there any history that when push comes 13 to shove the NRC can actually make us not do that?
14 Thank you.
15 MR. GROBE: I am not aware of a 16 situation where a utility continued to desire to 17 operate and the NRC didnt permit it. There have 18 been several situations where the NRC -- a plant was 19 in a shutdown condition and the NRC continued to 20 expect that it be meet appropriate safety 21 requirements and the Utility eventually decided that 22 it wasnt economically appropriate for them to 23 continue trying to meet those requirements and 24 decided on their own to shut down permanently, and 25 Im aware of a number of plants that are of that MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
75 1 nature. Oftentimes its not just a financial 2 situation, but its also a political decision. There 3 are a couple that come to mind that there is 4 states -- none in Ohio.
5 MS. BECK: Can you give us one 6 example?
7 MR. GROBE: Well, in the mid 90s, 8 the main Yankee plant had a variety of steam 9 generator problems, and eventually they decided to 10 shut down the plant permanently, and theres been a 11 couple other plants like that. There was a design 12 plant, Rancho --
13 MR. DEAN: Rancho Seco.
14 MR. GROBE: Thank you, I was 15 trying to think of that, Rancho Seco, Zion in 16 Illinois, Trojan in Oregon, so theres been a number 17 of times when Licensees have had performance problems 18 and have eventually decided not to restart the plant.
19 MS. BECK: Thank you.
20 MR. GROBE: Thank you for your 21 question. Yes, maam?
22 MS. LUEKE: Yeah, Im -- supposed 23 to sign in here?
24 THE REPORTER: Yes.
25 MS. LUEKE: -- Donna Lueke, and I MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
76 1 live in Marblehead, and I have been trying like 2 several of the other people to understand this whole 3 process and have been trying to read up as much as 4 possible and so I have accumulated a couple 5 questions, I believe, but -- and the one that comes 6 to me that I think is most important after hearing 7 everything youve had to say tonight and the other 8 people have had to say is that they are 9 investigations ongoing, there are criminal 10 proceedings ongoing, at this point or there is a 11 question of some legal actions being taken, as I 12 understand?
13 MR. GROBE: I can get into that a 14 little bit if youd like; is that your question?
15 MS. LUEKE: I guess I better 16 finish my thought.
17 MR. GROBE: Okay, go ahead.
18 MS. LUEKE: And then we can come 19 back to that, but at the very least there are a lot 20 of investigations going on right now about the whole 21 Davis-Besse situation. Your own internal 22 investigations are going on.
23 MR. GROBE: Internal, right.
24 MS. LUEKE: While all this is 25 going on things seem to those of us that live around MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
77 1 here to be proceeding unimpeded. The new head is 2 being put in place, and youre hearing about all the 3 great high tech things that are being used to put it 4 there, and is this process being continually 5 monitored by the NRC? And if all this is going on 6 and theyre talking about start ups at the -- at the 7 most Ive read -- the latest Ive read has been at 8 the end of the year, how will there be time for all 9 these processes to happen for us to find out what 10 went wrong in the first place, what is wrong with the 11 system, whats possibly wrong with the management at 12 the company, whats wrong internally with the NRC 13 process? The questions go on and on, and I dont 14 know -- I know enough about investigations to know 15 they dont happen overnight, nor should they, so how 16 is it happening that they are right now as we speak 17 cutting into this building and who decide -- did you 18 get to decide that that was okay, or was that all by 19 Davis-Besse?
20 MR. GROBE: Lots of questions.
21 MS. LUEKE: Yeah, I guess there 22 are.
23 MR. GROBE: Let me take them one 24 at a time? If I miss one, remind me.
25 MS. LUEKE: Okay.
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78 1 MR. GROBE: First let me talk a 2 little bit about your first question which was the 3 investigative process and the concept of criminal 4 proceedings. The NRC doesnt have the authority to 5 do criminal proceedings, engage in criminal 6 proceedings. If we issue fines or something like 7 that its whats referred to as a civil penalty, a 8 civil proceeding, but we have a close relationship 9 with the Department of Justice, and there are 10 criminal sanctions in the Atomic Energy Act and the 11 Energy of Format associated with deliberate 12 violations or requirements. Now, we dont handle 13 those proceedings, the Department of Justice does, so 14 if after the completion of the investigation of 15 Utility, we conclude that theres evidence of 16 deliberate wrong doing, we would share that with the 17 U.S. attorney, the appropriate U.S. attorney, I guess 18 that would probably be the guy in Cleveland for this 19 area, and he would make a judgment as to whether or 20 not the facts warranted prosecution and proceed.
21 These are all what ifs, okay? Likewise, our Office 22 of the Inspector General, if they concluded that I 23 cheated on my travel voucher and they decided that 24 they wanted to proceed, that would be a potential 25 criminal activity, and they would have a relationship MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
79 1 with the Department of Justice and could prosecute 2 from an internal investigation.
3 MS. LUEKE: That timings a little 4 different, though, when were looking at a public 5 safety consideration here.
6 MR. GROBE: Yeah, I was going to 7 get to your --
8 MS. LUEKE: We dont have the time 9 to allow this to proceed.
10 MR. GROBE: I can assure you we 11 have all the time in the world. This panel is not 12 schedule driven. This panel is safety driven, and 13 this plant wont restart unless were comfortable 14 based on our inspections that the plant can be safely 15 operated, and we would make a recommendation then to 16 the Senior Management of the agency, and I assure you 17 that they would solidly question us, and the plant 18 wouldnt restart unless we, indeed, found it to be 19 safe.
20 Now, activities would proceed, and were 21 continually inspecting. I dont think Mels here 22 tonight, but Mel Holmberg was on site today 23 inspecting. Doug Simpkins was on site today 24 inspecting. We have inspectors here all the time, 25 and a decision of what direction to proceed is the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
80 1 Licensees. The decision as to whether or not its 2 been done safely is our judgment, and we will make 3 that judgment as best we can and make a 4 recommendation to our Senior Management as to whether 5 we think the plant is ready to restart. If that 6 happens in December, thats fine; if it happens in 7 March, thats fine, as far as were concerned.
8 Were not driven by financial condition of the 9 company or by anything else. Were driven by safety.
10 MS. LUEKE: But yet youre a 11 nuclear agency, so, therefore, your job is dependent 12 on the industry, so then decisions that are made, and 13 Im sorry, I missed the question that was asked just 14 before me, so obviously youre not going to decide to 15 shut down a nuclear power plant, its not in your --
16 I understood that you said its not in your scope to 17 maybe that decision, but Im assuming you could make 18 that recommendation --
19 MR. GROBE: Yeah --
20 MS. LUEKE: -- for a safety 21 reason, but, you know, weve got FirstEnergy who has 22 their obvious financial self-interest because theyre 23 a corporation and thats what they do. Nuclear 24 Regulatory Commission regulates the nuclear industry, 25 so youre focused only on that.
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81 1 MR. GROBE: Yeah, the -- I must 2 have misspoke if I gave you the impression that its 3 not within our purview to shut a plant down.
4 Absolutely, we have the authority to shut a plant 5 down if its unsafe. The young lady before you 6 asked whether or not we had ever not allowed a plant 7 to restart that wanted to restart, and I dont know 8 of any time when a plant that desired to restart 9 could not get to the level of safety that was 10 appropriate to allow them to restart.
11 MS. LUEKE: Is that ruled out? I 12 mean, is -- are you already -- do you have that 13 prejudice? Im just asking --
14 MR. GROBE: No.
15 MS. LUEKE: -- Im not trying to 16 be -- I mean, is that within the realm? The spectrum 17 is start it tomorrow, never start it.
18 Are you willing to look at far as never 19 restart this plant?
20 MR. GROBE: Again, were not 21 schedule driven. Were not schedule driven, and let 22 me just give you a sense. I have been involved in 23 four of these, and its -- I dont want to be 24 involved in anymore. One of them the plant was shut 25 down about eight months. The one that was the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
82 1 longest was almost three years before they actually 2 got to the level of performance that the agency 3 concluded that the plant was safe to restart, so it 4 doesnt have anything to do with scheduling, and it 5 doesnt have anything to do with a desire on our part 6 to restart a plant. It only has to do with whether 7 or not the plant is safe, and safe is defined as 8 meeting our regulations.
9 MS. LUEKE: Would you completely 10 rule out saying this isnt salvageable? Theres so 11 much trouble here, theres so much management 12 problems here, there is such a structural problem 13 here? Do you rule that out completely?
14 MR. GROBE: Ive seen plants with 15 much more significant problems than what Davis-Besse 16 has achieve restart.
17 MS. LUEKE: Thats scary. I 18 guess Im not feeling -- like the person before me, 19 Im just not feeling very comfortable with it.
20 MR. GROBE: I appreciate that.
21 MS. LUEKE: And I know youre not 22 either.
23 MR. GROBE: The person -- a few 24 people ago used the concept of trust --
25 MS. LUEKE: Yeah.
MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
83 1 MR. GROBE: And trust is a -- what 2 I call a soft issue. Its -- you need to redevelop, 3 if youve lost trust in us, you need to redevelop 4 trust, and the only way to do that is to watch and to 5 listen and to see what motivates us, and I can assure 6 you that I personally am motivated by making sure 7 that this plant doesnt restart unless its safe.
8 Now, the only way for you to gain confidence 9 in that -- I cant just tell you that, is for you to 10 watch and listen, and we are providing just 11 tremendous opportunities for you to gain access to 12 what we do. Were transcribing all of these 13 meetings. All of these transcripts are on the 14 website. Theres a special section in our website 15 just for Davis-Besse, and its -- its well organized 16 and easy to get through. Theres a ton of 17 information there, and please pay attention to that, 18 and if youre concerned -- if you continue to be 19 concerned, come back and talk to us more about that.
20 MS. LUEKE: Okay. The oversight 21 committee thats examining the NRC at this point, is 22 that from within the NRC or are there any outside --
23 MR. GROBE: Theres three separate 24 activities that Im aware of. We have a group 25 called the Lessons Learned Task Force, which was MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
84 1 chartered by the Executive Director to look at our 2 programs and processes and to try to find out what 3 structurally within the agency might have contributed 4 to us not seeing this or what performance problems 5 might have existed that contributed to this.
6 Second is our Office of Inspector General, 7 thats our internal -- the folks that investigate us 8 is doing an investigation and the -- which committee 9 is it? Committee of --
10 MS. LIPA: House --
11 MR. DEAN: Energy & Commerce.
12 MR. GROBE: -- house Energy &
13 Commerce Committee is conducting an investigation of 14 this whole matter.
15 MS. LUEKE: So that is an external 16 committee?
17 MR. GROBE: Yeah, the Inspector 18 General does not report to the NRC, he reports to 19 Congress, so hes also external.
20 MS. LUEKE: I think that perhaps 21 may need to be emphasized to people who have at this 22 point lost trust.
23 MR. GROBE: Uh huh. Well, I mean, 24 youre --
25 MS. LUEKE: That --
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85 1 MR. GROBE: -- an individual 2 thats interested in listening.
3 MS. LUEKE: Uh huh.
4 MR. GROBE: There were some people 5 here this evening that had already made up their 6 mind. They werent interested in waiting for the 7 facts.
8 MS. LUEKE: Well, I understand 9 their frustration also because youre talking about 10 inherent problems, a company that wants to make 11 money, a regulatory agency thats dependent on the 12 nuclear industry, I mean, thats what you do for a 13 living, and thats where your focus is, and so what I 14 think a lot of us are saying is where, except for in 15 a forum like this is a voice of the public interest?
16 Where is the big picture interest that doesnt 17 include nuclear energy that may not -- that may look 18 at the options? Maybe a coal plant, I mean, that 19 doesnt sound very good to me because of the inherent 20 problems with the pollution with coal plants, 21 although, I hear that thats been improved, but is 22 anyone looking at those other options?
23 MR. GROBE: Well, those are 24 decisions that the Utility would make. Those are 25 financial decisions.
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86 1 MS. LUEKE: Thats not very 2 comforting. This is a Utility that has mismanaged 3 for their shareholders, whos mismanaged the safety, 4 and that doesnt inspire much confidence, and we have 5 no options. I checked to see since deregulation, 6 there are other energy companies available, I checked 7 on every one. None of them are available to those of 8 us consumers. They are either only for commercial 9 or industrial, or theyre -- the list that was sent 10 or theyre not operational yet, so this is what we 11 are facing.
12 MR. GROBE: Those in the audience 13 that have has much gray hair as I do will recall that 14 originally when the Government set up how it was 15 going to oversee nuclear energy, the use of nuclear 16 energy and created the atomic energy commission, and 17 the atomic energy commission had two roles; one was 18 to promote the safeness of the atom, and some of us 19 may be able to recall all those little quotes that 20 went along with that and also to regulate it, and 21 Congress saw to it that that seemed to be a conflict 22 of interest, so it separated the responsibility for 23 safety and the responsibility for production and 24 encouraging the develop of nuclear energy, and 25 originally it was Nuclear Regulatory Commission and MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
87 1 the energy -- ERDA, Energy Research and Development 2 Administration, and then that was combined and it 3 became what we know today as the Department of 4 Energy. The NRC and the Department of Energy have 5 two completely different roles. I appreciate your 6 observation that Im a Nuclear Engineer, and we have 7 a variety of different expertises up here working 8 nuclear power. Those are probably the kind of people 9 youd want involved overseeing the safety with 10 nuclear power.
11 MS. LUEKE: Certainly.
12 MR. GROBE: But our only focus and 13 our only mission is to protect the health and safety 14 of the public and the environment, and thats all 15 were interested in. I can get work.
16 MS. LUEKE: Yeah, I want to 17 believe you, I really do, Id like it a lot better, 18 but would you listen to what were saying and at 19 least consider the possibilities of the other 20 options?
21 MR. GROBE: Again --
22 MS. LUEKE: I know its not your 23 job, but will you take them --
24 MR. GROBE: I didnt speak clearly 25 earlier. Whether a utility chooses the different MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
88 1 options, is their decision. Its not anything that 2 we would be influenced on. If FirstEnergy chose to 3 build a coal burner right next to the containment 4 building and pipe it into the turbine building, 5 thats their decision, and that would be fine with 6 me, you know, then we have a decommission issue not a 7 ready for operations issue, but thats their 8 decision, thats not ours. Our responsibility is to 9 make sure that if there is going to be nuclear power, 10 that its safe.
11 MS. LUEKE: I understand that; 12 however, they have to satisfy you.
13 MR. GROBE: Right.
14 MS. LUEKE: You do have that 15 power.
16 MR. GROBE: Right.
17 MS. LUEKE: And if you will, lets 18 say, admittedly in the past there has been error on 19 the side of the corporation or at least the 20 appearance of that, whether its true or not, we 21 still dont know until all these investigations 22 happen.
23 MR. GROBE: Uh huh.
24 MS. LUEKE: So if the error has 25 been on the side of that in the physics of the MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
89 1 pendulum, would you open up the other side of your 2 mind --
3 MR. GROBE: Thats an excellent 4 question.
5 MS. LUEKE: -- is what Im asking?
6 MR. GROBE: If, in fact, theres a 7 spectrum of how violations -- thats what we deal 8 with, violations, theres a spectrum of how 9 violations come to be, and were all human beings and 10 we make mistakes, and occasionally people who work in 11 nuclear power plants make mistakes and they violate 12 requirements. In legal terms thats called 13 negligence, but thats just a normal mistake, 14 oversight, type of thing.
15 The other kind of violation is what we refer 16 to as willful, and the most interest type of willful 17 violation is referred to as deliberate, and what that 18 means is that a person knowingly and cognitively made 19 a decision for some ulterior motive to violate 20 requirements, whether it was profit or to save time, 21 whatever it might be, and thats called a deliberate 22 violation, and so youve got negligence on this end, 23 deliberate on this end, and then in the middle 24 theres this kind of nebulous thing, which is called 25 careless disregard, and its also considered a MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
90 1 willful violation, and what that means is that the 2 person is knowledgeable and should have been more 3 careful, but they carelessly disregarded their 4 responsibilities, so careless disregard and 5 deliberate are all part of what we call willful.
6 If its concluded that these violations were 7 willful, that puts it into a little bit different 8 light, and thats something that would precipitate 9 additional consideration. I cant speculate on --
10 Im getting into speculation land, and I dont want 11 to speculate on anything specific, but it would 12 certainly result in different thoughts and different 13 actions on the part of the agency, so that 14 investigation will be completed before restart, and 15 we will know whether or not these violations were 16 willful or whether they were just errors and 17 oversights.
18 MS. LUEKE: I guess the other 19 questions I have are minor and I can address them in 20 another way.
21 MR. GROBE: Okay.
22 MS. LUEKE: But that one, I think, 23 is really the big one, and I think I hear it from a 24 lot of people, so our charge to you is to -- all of 25 you here and those -- anybody from the Nuclear MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
91 1 Regulatory Commission is to, please, open your mind 2 in the other direction, and do I need to restate 3 that?
4 MR. GROBE: No. I understand.
5 MS. LUEKE: I guess I beat that 6 horse, but, thank you, and I think thats all we can 7 ask of you, and not only do we ask it of you, but we 8 require it of you.
9 MR. GROBE: And I think thats 10 fair. Thank you.
11 Other questions or comments? Yes, sir?
12 MR. DOUGLAS: My name is Jim 13 Douglas. I live on Duff Washington Road, about a 14 mile from Davis-Besse front door. I was there before 15 they came, and I have watched the plant my whole 16 life.
17 I believe that Davis-Besse does not even know 18 the root cause of what caused the corrosion on the 19 top of their head -- their vessel.
20 Im a plant engineer, Im a chemical 21 engineer, retired, and they have not come up with one 22 decent answer as to why the head eroded like it did, 23 and I dont want to get into great many arguments 24 about this, but since Im dealing with the Nuclear 25 Regulatory Commission tonight and not Davis-Besse MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
92 1 supervision, I would like to ask a couple of 2 questions of you, and you have half answered some of 3 my questions in stating just how responsibly you feel 4 about the safety and security in the plant in the 5 protection of John Q. Public, namely me. I live 6 down the street, okay? And Im convinced you guys 7 are very, very serious about it, but one thing I have 8 not heard -- I did read in the paper, I should say, 9 that the NRC is considering letting them start back 10 up after repairs, proper repairs and proper 11 reformation of supervision that -- and also to apply 12 a great -- Im sure, a pretty sizable fine for all of 13 the infractions and the sloppy supervision that has 14 been in that plant, and there has to be just about no 15 other way to say it than the supervision has been 16 very, very poor technically in Davis-Besse.
17 However, I am wondering if you people on the 18 NRC realize the implications of putting these several 19 million dollar fines against Davis-Besse for the 20 infractions that they have had, and Im certainly 21 here to ask you not to put the dollar fines against 22 Davis-Besse for the simple reason, they are a public 23 utility, and they havent got a nickel to their name, 24 period. John Q. Public pays all their bills, so if 25 you fine them, youre fining John Q. Public; whether MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
93 1 you like to believe it that way or not, that is true.
2 However, there is a type of fine -- and I 3 dont know whether you people are -- its within your 4 power to do it, but if you were to give them a fine 5 because of poor supervision of the plant in the 6 nature of all supervision will be docked 10% on their 7 salary, there is a fine that will make supervision 8 sit up and take notice, and they will -- they will 9 damn well sharpen up in a great big hurry, but to 10 fine them with just a big lump of money is a first 11 class joke because Davis-Besse supervision is just 12 laughing up their sleeve at you and at us because 13 they get all their money from John Q. Public. Thats 14 all there is to it, so it does no good, in my book, 15 to fine them, but what will do some good is to hurt 16 supervision and to get at them, make them sharpen up.
17 You guys are all docked 10%, President on down, 18 thats it, because of your lousy operation of the 19 plant and because of your lousy attitude toward the 20 safety of John Q. Public, thats what youre suppose 21 to correct.
22 MR. GROBE: Thats a very 23 creative --
24 MR. DOUGLAS: Its a very creative 25 suggestion, yes, it is.
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94 1 MR. GROBE: It is, and, 2 unfortunately, its not within my legal authority.
3 MR. DOUGLAS: However, you can 4 suggest it, I believe.
5 MR. GROBE: Well, Im not sure it 6 would be appropriate, quite frankly, for me to 7 suggest it. Again --
8 MR. DOUGLAS: Well, theres where we 9 differ.
10 MR. GROBE: Okay. I understand.
11 MR. DOUGLAS: I believe it is quite 12 appropriate because supervision at Davis-Besse has 13 been absolutely disgusting and appalling, and I have 14 been there since Davis-Besse started, long before 15 they started and even today I am still living there.
16 I hope they do start back up. I am not of the 17 opinion of many of the people here. We dont need a 18 dead horse around our neck in the electric company 19 because all its going to do is up the electric rates 20 again. I dont want that.
21 MR. GROBE: Let me just lay out 22 some landscape for you of what is within my authority 23 or the NRCs authority and what our policies are.
24 Its within our authorities to level fines, 25 but the fines are against the company.
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95 1 MR. DOUGLAS: Oh, please dont.
2 Yes, I --
3 MR. GROBE: I understand your 4 position, these are issues that have been discussed 5 extensively, and as a result of that we only use 6 fines in situations where there are willful 7 violations or something that is not related to 8 nuclear safety directly; for example, if the company 9 chose to discriminate somebody for raising a safety 10 concern, thats related to nuclear safety, but its 11 not a hardware type issue, that would be covered 12 under our civil penalty process, or if the company 13 deliberately or willfully violated requirements, that 14 would be covered under our civil penalty process.
15 All other violations dont have associated within 16 them fines, so its -- its -- theres a very fine 17 line between our authority and the responsibilities 18 of the company to run the business and your 19 suggestion crosses that border. Its not within our 20 purview to tell the company how to run the business, 21 and I, quite frankly, have no idea what they may or 22 may not have done with salaries or benefits or 23 bonuses or anything of that nature.
24 MR. DOUGLAS: I am not concerned 25 with those details either.
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96 1 MR. GROBE: But -- so we have the 2 authority, if there was a willful violation to take 3 action against individuals, civil action, not 4 criminal action. The Department of Justice has the 5 ability to take criminal action, and we have done 6 that, and those types of actions include banning an 7 individual from working in the nuclear industry for a 8 period of time, those types of actions, so if we end 9 up finding ourselves in a situation where there is a 10 willful violation, those are the types of things that 11 we will consider in dealing with that, but I 12 appreciate your suggestion.
13 We have about, I think, 10 more minutes, and 14 if you have another question, sir, thats fine, and 15 if there is other folks that have questions, I need 16 to get to their questions, too.
17 MR. DOUGLAS: Okay. Ill leave it 18 go at that. Thank you.
19 MR. GROBE: Thank you very much.
20 Yes, maam?
21 MS. KRAMER: Can you hear me?
22 MR. GROBE: Yes.
23 MS. KRAMER: I know Im really 24 short. I and a few others here tonight we work for a 25 non-profit environmental organization where its our MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
97 1 job to communicate with hundreds of our members on a 2 daily basis.
3 MR. GROBE: Could you get a little 4 closer to the microphone?
5 MS. KRAMER: Sure. Is that better?
6 MR. GROBE: Yeah.
7 MS. KRAMER: Did you hear that 8 first part?
9 MR. GROBE: I did.
10 MS. KRAMER: Okay. Through our 11 conversations, we inform our members about the 12 problems with Davis-Besse and FirstEnergys inability 13 to operate the power plant safely.
14 What is your definition of safety?
15 MR. GROBE: Thats a good 16 question. I can -- I can tell you the range of 17 level of risk that a plant in the United States 18 normally operates, and your head might start swimming 19 because Im going to be talking about very strange 20 numbers, but a normal plant in the United States 21 operates at a risk of around 10 to the minus fifth, 22 10 to the minus seventh, probability of a core damage 23 accident, and what that means is that one in 100,000 24 to one in 10 million is the probability in a given 25 year that that plant would have a core damage MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
98 1 accident.
2 Now, a core damage accident doesnt use any 3 radioactive materials because you have the reactor 4 containment building. You have it -- the way in 5 which plants are designed is that you have multiple 6 barriers and each of those barriers has redundant 7 counter parts, so you have multiple levels of safety 8 and redundancy, and usually diversity, you have 9 different kinds of systems, so theres -- excuse me, 10 so the -- the risk of -- we talk of safety in terms 11 of risk, the risk is extraordinarily low if you 12 compare that to day-to-day risks, and theres a lot 13 of interesting books out that compare these types of 14 risks; driving a car or walking in the street, living 15 in your home, breathing in L.A., and various 16 different kinds of risks.
17 We categorize violations by looking at the 18 incremental increase in risk caused by that 19 violation, and we give them colors -- green, white, 20 yellow, red; and a green violation would be something 21 between 10 to minus six, 10 to minus seven. White 22 would be 10 to minus six, 10 to minus five and 23 onwards by an order of magnitude, so a red violation 24 would be something that caused an incremental 25 increase in risk on the order of 1 in 10,000, still MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
99 1 an extraordinarily small probability of anything 2 untoward happening. So, thats how we deal with it, 3 and how we define safety or how we evaluate it. The 4 definition of safety is contained in our regulations.
5 If you operate within the regulations, then by 6 definition a plant is safe. I dont know if that 7 helped.
8 MS. KRAMER: Again, thank you.
9 MR. GROBE: Okay, thank you.
10 Yes, sir?
11 MR. VASSELLO: My name is Vincent 12 Vassello, and Ive worked at Davis-Besse for about 12 13 years now. After working about six years, I decided 14 I wanted to improve my odds of living, and I moved 15 closer to the plant. I feel that I have a much safer 16 time working at the plant than I do driving back and 17 forth to work on Route 2.
18 Im very confident in the design of the 19 plant, and that I have my family living here, and 20 thats about what I wanted to say.
21 MR. GROBE: Thank you, Vincent.
22 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
23 MR. GROBE: Its important --
24 weve talked about speculating, quite frankly, and a 25 wide variety of issues this evening. Its important MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
100 1 to remember that by and large the vast majority of 2 the people that work at Davis-Besse are well meaning, 3 caring people that live in this community.
4 Some decisions have been made at Davis-Besse 5 that were not appropriate, and were trying to find 6 out why that happened, and the Company is trying to 7 find out why that --
8 UNIDENTIFIED: How about if they 9 didnt know?
10 MR. GROBE: And if thats the 11 answer, thats fine.
12 UNIDENTIFIED: How about if the 13 people that are getting rid of everybody, but how 14 about the people that didnt know? Theyre innocent.
15 MR. GROBE: There was --
16 UNIDENTIFIED: Thats one of the 17 safest plants in the world. By none of them. Look 18 at the radiation over there. Its the best. That 19 plant is clean. These people aint never been in 20 one. They sit and scream and holler. Davis-Besse is 21 a good clean plant out of any of them. If thats 22 the safest --
23 MR. GROBE: Lets not get into 24 a -- maam, do you have a question?
25 MS. MUSER: Real quick. You were MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
101 1 talking about the risk factors, one in -- what did 2 you say, 10,000, 100,000, something like that?
3 MR. GROBE: If you look at the --
4 what is referred to as the base line risk of an 5 operating reactor, each one is different because 6 theyre all designed differently.
7 MS. MUSER: So they are pretty 8 small numbers --
9 MR. GROBE: It ranges 10 to minus 10 five to 10 minus seven, which is --
11 MS. MUSER: It kind of brings to 12 mind like the lottery. Odds are not that great, but 13 every now and then, somebody does hit. I dont feel 14 real confident about that. I think that really 15 needs to be looked at a little more closely, and 16 things need to be changed there.
17 MR. GROBE: Appreciate your 18 comment. Thank you. Yes, sir?
19 MR. MATHERLY: My name is Greg 20 Matherly. Ive worked out at Davis-Besse for four 21 and a half years, been in the nuclear industry for 22 18. I have been sitting back there deciding whether 23 I was going to get up and speak or not, and I decided 24 I had to.
25 First of all, Ive got several comments I MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
102 1 want to make. They were talking about contractors 2 coming in and working. For eight years of my life I 3 was a contractor. I went to 34 plants in the United 4 States, 17 plants around the world. I can tell you 5 that what these people do up here -- well, first of 6 all, nuclear industry whether we like it or not, its 7 here. Look at the Presidents most recent energy 8 plan. It calls for more nuclear power plants.
9 Whether were for it or not, I think we have to 10 accept it as a reality. Everybody wants energy, 11 energy is a need that we all desire. Weve got to 12 come up with a way of producing it.
13 I have been to plants in other countries 14 where the Governments running the plants, and it 15 scares me. Ive worked in utilities here in the 16 United States, and I feel safe because of the people 17 that were sitting up there on that platform. They 18 keep an oversight of the utility that is trying to 19 make money and making sure that the public is safe.
20 As an operator out at Davis-Besse, I take my 21 job very seriously. Just like Vince said, whenever 22 I first started working here, I lived in Toledo. In 23 the two years that I lived in Toledo prior to moving 24 closer to the plant, I was involved in three head-on 25 accidents, none of which were my fault, yet Ive MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
103 1 never walked away from the plant with any kind of 2 injury in the four years that Ive worked there. I 3 moved my family there, and first and foremost, Im a 4 family man. I take my children very seriously, and I 5 would never put them in a situation where I felt like 6 they were in danger. I take each and every person 7 out here health and safety very personal. Right 8 now, Im working on getting my reactor operators 9 license, and I take that as a very important and very 10 distinguished thing because I am safe, Im keeping 11 you guys safe. Thats what my job would be and I 12 take that very seriously.
13 I know I have different opinions that some of 14 the other people that were here tonight, but I just 15 want you to know -- and Im not an eloquent speaker, 16 but I just want everybody to know that, yes, mistakes 17 were made. Thats for people to decide what the 18 problems were and get to the bottom of it, and the 19 attitude at the plant is like I have not seen it in 20 the last four years that I have worked there. Not to 21 say the attitude was bad before, because Im not 22 saying that at all, but we understand and each person 23 is internalizing what happened, and until we have 24 their trust, theyre not going to let us start up, so 25 I guess what Im saying is I take my job very MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
104 1 seriously. Everybody that I work with takes their 2 job very seriously. I have talked to my neighbors.
3 They understand that we take our jobs seriously, and 4 I know we have the job now of convincing you guys 5 that we take our job seriously. Your safety is 6 depended on us, and thats a very big responsibility 7 that I feel that I carry, and I want you to know that 8 as for me, Im going to take you as the public as 9 first and foremost. Thank you.
10 THEREUPON, the audience began to applaud.
11 MR. GROBE: Thank you.
12 Anybody else that has a question or a 13 comment?
14 (NO RESPONSE).
15 Well, that looks like it. I appreciate --
16 oh, yes, maam?
17 MS. BECK: Just thanks for having 18 these hearings and for giving everybody an 19 opportunity to speak.
20 MR. GROBE: Well, thank you for 21 that.
22 MS. BECK: We appreciate it.
23 MR. GROBE: I appreciate you all 24 coming out and being interested enough in whats 25 going on to -- to actually find out whats going on, MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
105 1 and I encourage you, like I said before, our website, 2 most of you Im sure have access to computers, but 3 WWW.NRC.GOV. Its easy to find, and in the upper 4 right-hand corner of the first page that comes up 5 talks about Davis-Besse, and you click on that, and 6 theres a number of links, and theres just a 7 tremendous amount of information. Its updated 8 almost daily with additional information, so please 9 gain access to that. Feel free to call Vika. Wish 10 you had to get -- Vikas our Public Affairs officer, 11 one of them, in Region 3, and she always has access 12 to us if she cant answer your question, and please 13 keep coming. We value your input. Thats why we do 14 these meetings and appreciate you coming out tonight.
15 Thank you very much.
16 (BRIEF PAUSE).
17 One final comment, we do -- were always 18 interested in improving. There are forms in the 19 back theyre called feedback forms. Theyre postage 20 paid. If you could take an opportunity to fill one 21 out with your thoughts on the conduct of this meeting 22 or whether we can improve the type of meeting or 23 whatever. Please take an opportunity to fill out one 24 of those forms and mail it back to us.
25 And, finally, Id like to thank Mr. Stucker, MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
106 1 just sitting up there operating the mics and Oak 2 Harbor High School for making this facility -- even 3 though it does have a moat -- for making this 4 facility available to us. Thank you.
5 6
7 THEREUPON, the hearing was adjourned.
8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900
107 1 CERTIFICATE 2 STATE OF OHIO )
) ss.
3 COUNTY OF HURON )
4 I, Marlene S. Rogers-Lewis, Stenotype Reporter 5 and Notary Public, within and for the State aforesaid, duly commissioned and qualified, do hereby 6 certify that the foregoing, consisting of 106 pages, was taken by me in stenotype and was reduced to 7 writing by me by means of Computer-Aided Transcription; that the foregoing is a true and 8 complete transcript of the proceedings held in that room on the 20th day of August, 2002 before the U.S.
9 Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
I also further certify that I was present in 10 the room during all of the proceedings.
11 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand 12 and seal of office at Wakeman, Ohio this day of
, 2002.
13 14 15 Marlene S. Rogers-Lewis Notary Public 16 3922 Court Road Wakeman, OH 44889 17 My commission expires 4/29/04 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MARLENE S. ROGERS-LEWIS & ASSOC. REPORTERS (419) 929-0505 (888) 799-3900