ML20134K451
| ML20134K451 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Salem  |
| Issue date: | 02/08/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION I) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20134K135 | List: |
| References | |
| FOIA-96-351 NUDOCS 9702140033 | |
| Download: ML20134K451 (93) | |
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ATTACHMENT 10
.1 UNITED STATES NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION REGION 1
( ___
In re: PUBLIC SERVICE ELECTRIC AND GAS CO.
SALEM GENERATING STATION An Enforcement Conference was held before Loretta B. Devery, Registered Professional Reporter and Notary Public, at the offices of the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Region 1, 475 Allendale Road, King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, February 8, 1995, commencing at 10:00 A.M.
PRESENT:
WAYNE LANNING LEON ELIASON JOHN WHITE JOSEPH HAGAN KARLA SMITH, ESQ. FRANK THOMSON DANIEL HOLODY JEFF BENJAMIN SCOTT BARBER JOHN SUMMERS LENNY OLSHAN BOB BURRICELLI j MARK SATORIUS DAVE DODSON KEITH LOGAN MARK J. WETTERHAHN, ESQ.
KRIS MONROE ARTHUii H. DOMBY, ESQ.
LAWRENCE REITER WILLIAM BRIGGS, ESQ.
VINCENT POLIZZI ALL POINTS REPORTING 723 Erlen Road i Norristown, PA 19401 (610) 272-6731 JRG' N A _ l 0
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 9702140033 970211 PDR FOIA ;
ONEILL96-351 PDR I
1 k Gentlemen, my name is John 2 MR. WHITE:
3 White, United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
4 I'm the Chief of the Reactor Projects Section 2A, 5 Division of Reactor Projects. That is the section 6 that is responsible for the administration of 7 special activities at Salem and Hope Creek.
8 The purpose of this enforcement 9 today -- this is a closed enforcement conference 10 is to discuss the findings of our Office of 11 Investigations report of activities related to the 12 potential harassment and intimidation of employees 13 of PSE&G by members of the management staff at Salem 14 Nuclear Power Station.
15 Previously, on January lith, PSE&G, Mr.
16 Eliason and Mr. Reiter and Mr. Polizzi and Mr.
17 Vondra were provided a letter from NRC inviting them 18 to this enforcement conference and identifying the 19 incue that were going to be discussed.
20 Specifically, the matter that is up for 21 review today is that on December 3rd, 1992, two SRG 22 engineers attempted to process a safety issue in 23 accordance with your station procedures by 24 submitting an incident report to the then general ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 1 manager of Salem operations, Mr. Cal Vondra, and the 2 operations manager, Mr. Vince Polizzi. The incident !
3 report questioned the qualificatibn of commercial i 4 grade air pressure regulators which control ser" ire .
5 water flow to containment f an cooling units.
6 In conversLtions with the SRG !
7 engineers, the general manager, Mr. Vondra, with the 8 cooperation, and we believe the advice of Mr. ,
9 Polizzi, told the individuals to get out of his 10 office and threatened to have them removed from ,
11 site, an action that was interpreted by the SRG 12 engineers as harassing and intimidating.
i 13 Upon deliberat_un, Mr. Vondra wrote a l 14 memorandum to the General Manager of Quality 15 Assurance, Mr. Lawrence Reiter, requesting him to 16 have the engineers removed from any direct 17 involvement with the Salen station.
18 Subsequently, further apparent 19 discriminating action was directed against the 20 individuals when the General Manager of Quality 21 Assurance and Nuclear Safety Review, Mr. Reiter, 22 deliberated and took action to in some fashion 23 reprimand or counsel the individuals relative to 24 their submittal of the incident report and their ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I A
1 1 handling of the situation. ;
2 In conclusion, the NRC investigation 3 determined that information appears to support the 4 finding that the SRG engineers were harassed and 5 intimidated by various actions taken or directed by P
6 these former Salem senior managers.
I I 7 As we discussed in the letter, the i 8 purpose of this enforcement conference today is, now 9 that we have completed our investigation, is to give 10 the licensee first, and then the individuals later 11 on in the afternoon and Mr. Vondra later on on !
12 February 24th, an opportunity to understand the 13 NRC's understanding of this issue and how we 14 perceive the harassment and intimidation relative to 15 the regulatory requirements, and to allow the 16 licensee and those individuals an opportunity to 17 provide the information to the NRC that explains 18 their actions, provides any mitigation, mitigating 19 in f r,rmation that might pertain, allows the licensee 20 and his individuals an opportunity to discuss any 21 corrective actions that may have been taken since 1
22 that time, the resolution of these issues with the l 23 individuals and what the future plans are relative l 24 to the licensee relative to preventing any chilling ,
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 1 effect relative to this incident.
2 This meeting is transcribed. It is 3 closed to public participation. We have informed 4 Mr. Reiter and Mr. Polizzi that in the context of 5 our meeting with you today, with the licensee, that 6 if they are to be asked any questions and they 7 choose to answer those questions not in this forum, 8 that we will provide them another type of forum, 9 another place in which they can respond without the 10 presence of licensee representatives, if they are 11 here today.
12 With that, I'll entertain any questions 13 that you might have relative to protocol and 14 comments today. Let me take an opportunity to 15 introduce the NRC staff and then we can go around 16 the room. Mr. Dan Holody in the Regional 17 Representative for our Enforcement Coordinator here 18 in Region 1. Karla Smith is itegional Counsel, 19 Region 1. Scott Barber is Project Engineer, works 20 in my section. Mr. Lenny Olshan is the Project 21 Manager, Office of Nuclear Reactor Regulation. Mr.
22 Mark Satorius is a representative with the Office of 23 Enforcement. Mr. Wayne Lanning is my supervisor, my 24 boss, Deputy Director, Division of Reactor Projects.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
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l 1 1 Also here is Kristen Monroe, who is from the Office 2 of Investigations and was the lead 0.I. investigator 3 relative to this case. And Keith Logan, who is also l
4 a member of the Office of Investigations. I 5 If you take an opportunity and just 6 introduce yourselves so we're familiar with you, I 7 appreciate it, please.
8 MR. DOMBY: My name is Art Domby. I'm 2
9 with the law firm of Troutman Sanders in Atlanta, 10 Georgia, and I'm representing Mr. Reiter 11 individually.
12 MR. REITER: Larry Reiter.
13 MR. THOMSON: Frank Thomson, Manager, 14 Licensing and Regulations.
15 MR. ELIASON: Leon Eliason, President 16 and Chief Nuclear Office of the Nuclear Business 17 Unit for PSE&G.
18 MR. HAGAN: Joseph Hagan. I'm the Vice 19 President of Nuclear Operations.
20 MR. SUMMERS: John Summers. I am the 21 General Manager of Salem.
22 MR. BENJAMIN: I'm Jeff Benjamin, the 23 Director of Quality Assurance and Nuclear Safety 24 Review.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
2 1 MR. DODSON: Dave Dodson. I work in 2 Licensing and Regulations for Frank Thomson.
3 MR. BURRICELLI: Bob Burricelli, PSE&G.
4 MR. WETTERHAHN: Mark Wetterhahn "d*5 5 the law firm of Winston and Strawn.
6 MR. POLIZZI: Vince Polizzi, PSE&G. l 7 MR. BRIGGS: Bill Briggs, Mr. Polizzi's 8 attorney.
9 MR. WHITE: Gentlemen, do you have any 10 questions on our purpose here today and the protocol 11 and format? Our plan here today is to take as much 12 time as necessary. The hope is that relative to our 13 meeting with PSE&G that we will be able to do that 14 within the next couple of hours. Following that, we 15 will take a lunch break and then resume with 16 individual enforcement conferences, starting with 17 Mr. Reiter first and then Mr. Polizzi.
18 I'd like to do Mr. Reiter's conference, 19 if we can accommodate 1:30 for that, Mr. Reiter, and 20 I'm anticipating maybe an hour, an hour and a half 21 of that, followed by you, Mr. Polizzi.
22 If there are no questions, then !'ll 23 turn it over to your organization, Mr. Eliason.
24 MR. ELIASON: Okay, thank you, Mr.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
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' 1 White. Joe Hagan will provide our review of the 1
2 incident, the root causes, the corrective actions 3 and those issues. Before he does that, I'd like to i l
4 make a few opening comments.
5 We want to accomplish three things here 6 today from our perspective. One is to discuss our 7 assessment of the event and its root causes, to 8 demonstrate that appropriate corrective actions have 9 been taken to address the issues from the December 10 3rd event, and to talk about our ongoing actions 11 which we believe will continue to improve tiie l 12 environment for dispersing the information pursuant ;
i 13 to safety concerns.
14 Before I turn the presentation over to i 15 Mr. Hagan, let me first make a few key points on the 16 event of December 3rd and thereafter. Certain 17 department managers engaged in actions that were 18 harassment or intimidation or failed to respond. We 19 believe the Nuclear Department management's actions f 20 to address the issues between December 3rd and 21 January 27th were untimely and not effective. And I
22 once t t.e implications of the event were recognized, l
23 however, the Nuclear Department did initiate an 1
24 aggressive internal investigation to bring the issue )
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l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
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l 7 1 to closure and disclose any underlying issues that l
2 were associated with the event.
Ultimately, the root cause of this !
, 3 L
4 event was really management's failure to establish !
5 and enforce the uniform standards of performance !
4 6 relative to the treatment of all individuals engaged 7 in protected activities. We have come to these j i
8 basic conclusions. And this really completes my ,
9 opening discussion. :
i 10 And I'd like to now turn it over to Mr.
11 Hagan to review the event. Joe?
12 MR. HAGAN: What I'd like to do is 13 start with a brief summary of the synopsis of the 14 NRC findings in your letter to us and the apparent ,
15 violations. I won't take the t.me to read them. f 16 I'd like to go through a sequence of 17 events just for those people who may not be real 18 familiar with what happened. And we'll do that f 19 starting on December the 3rd, which took place the 20 initial discussion between the Operating Manager and 21 the Safety Review Engineers, and there were two 22 Safety Review Engineers. That dealt with the 23 incident report, the filing of an incident report 24 with the concern with some containment fan cooling l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 I
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? 1 unit regulators.
2 The discussion in the Ops Manager's 3 office really developed into a confrontation when 4 there were some discussions about adding some 5 additional information to tne incident report in 6 terms of what the cition was, or was there a 7 position ther the Safety Review Engineers had on 8 operability. That confrontation then spilled over i
O to the General Manager's office when the Ops Manager j 10 directed the Safety Review Engineers to follow him 11 to the General Manager's office where they were 12 going to have a discussion concerning the incident 13 report and really what it meant. I 14 The discussion in the General Manager's 15 office was held after the ops Manager briefed the 16 General Manager on what the concern was. And that 17 took I believe about 10 minutes or so.
18 The Safety Review Engineers were 19 brought into the office. There was a discussion 20 held in the office. Again, that really developed 21 into a confrontation and resulted with the plant 22 manager asking the Safety Review Engineers to leave 23 his office.
24 The Salem GM then initiated a contact ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l 2 1 with the General Manager of Quality Assurance and 2 Nuclear Safety Review to tell what had occurred and 3 to seek his assistance in follow-up. The General 4 Manager of QA/NSR, who I believe was in a SERT L !
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5 Hope Creek, which was our Significant Event Response 6 Team, our evaluation at Hope Creek, directed that he 7 wanted his people to do the management of the safety 8 review function itself on the island to due the 9 follow-up.
10 The General Manager directed the OM to 11 draft a letter to the GM-QA/NSR to ask him for the ;
I 12 SRG engineers to be removed from the Salem oversight 13 role. His purpose, as stated to me, was that he 14 felt that the SRG engineers would not be effective 15 in the relationship because of the confrontation 16 that had occurred, and he was asking for a 17 reassignment.
18 On the 4th of December, the next day, 19 the SRG engineers filed a quality concern, which is 20 in accordance with our process, anybody can file a l
21 quality concern. The Salem GM signed a letter that 22 he had asked the OM, OM being the Operations 23 Manager, to draft, but it was not transmitted. The l
24 letter was signed, but it was not transmitted on the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
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3 1 4th when it was signed. And I'll get to when it 2 actually was transmitted.
3 On the 14th, the Salem General Manager 4 provided a copy of the letter to the General Manager 5 QA/NSR to the Vice President of Nuclear Operations, 6 and he discussed the content of the letter and what 7 his concerns were. At that point in time, the VP 8 Nuclear Operations thought the letter had already 9 been sent, but as I said before, it had not been 10 transmitted.
11 On the 16th, the GM of QA/NSR met with 12 the plant manager, the Ops Manager and other Salem 13 managers to discuss what had happened and received 14 come feedback on the SRGs' performance. And he 15 really, at that time, provided his reenforcement of 16 the independent nature of the safety review 17 tunction, what the individuals were expected to do.
18 On the 18th, the Chief Nuclear Officer 19 received a copy of the letter from the Vice 20 President of Nuclear Operations. On the 21st of 21 December, the CNO reads the letter and requests 22 status from the GM of C.h/NSR. The GM-QA/NSR met 23 with the Salem Plant Manager and he also met with an 24 HR facilitator who was assigned to the Salem plant ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
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' 1 to discuss come of the options that he might have on 2 reaching a resolution. ,
3 The Salen GM on the 21st, he clarified 4 his request for reassignment of the SRG engineers to 5 the General Manager of QA/NSR. At that time, the 6 GM-QA/NSR told the General Manager that the request '
r 7 was inappropriate and would not be acted on. The 8 individuals would not be reassigned. ,
s 9 On the 22nd, the GM-QA/NSR received a ,
10 copy of the letter. He actually received a copy 11 from the CNO and responds to a request for status.
12 He indicates he's working with the Salem General 13 Manager to resolve the issues.
14 Following on the 30th, the GM-QA/NSR 15 receives the transmittal. So there's some confusion 16 on what happened, why the letter was delayed in the 17 mail. There's a couple reasons that we understand 18 may be possible. I can't tell you which one really 19 happened. But in any event, the letter was 20 transmitted, but it did not get to the destination I
21 until the 30th of December. But we had copies of l
22 the letter that were signed. So there was informal 23 distribution that actually occurred before the l l
I 24 letter was transmitted.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
f i
1 On the 6th of January, the General 2 Manager of QA/NSR provided response to the safety 3 concern to the SRG engineers. The SRG engineer was 4 not satisfied with the response tc his quality 5 concern. And on the 27th of January, he escalates 6 his quality concern. And the way the quality 7 concern was handed to the Senior Vice President of 8 the Business Unit, who's office is in Newark, our 9 main headquarters.
10 On the 28th of January, there's 11 conversation held and the CNO directs the General 12 Manager of Information Systems / External Affairs to 13 initiate a formal investigation. So he charters the 14 General Manager-Information Systems, which is 15 independent of the QA organization, to initiate a 16 formal investigation. And the CNO and the VP of 17 Nuclear Ops briefed the NRC Senior Resident 18 Inspector on what the issues are and what our plans 19 are.
20 Our assessraent of the December 3rd 21 event itself and the Nuclear Department actions to 22 resolve the issues between December 3rd and January 23 27th were not timely and not effective.
24 Once the implications of the events ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 1 were recognized, the CNO initiated an aggressive 2 internal investigation of the circumstances and 3 underlying issues associated with: the event. There 4 was a charter drafted that was approved by the 5 Senior Vice President and General Counsel on what 6 the investigation was to accomplish. Independent 7 task force operated under the General Manager of 8 Information Systems and External Affairs, 9 independent of Quality Assurance.
10 Altogether, there was 30 individuals 4
11 interviewed to establish the facts and relevant 12 information required to address the charter. It was 13 conducted between January 27th and April the 2nd, 14 the actual investigation.
15 The conclusions of the investigation 16 were that the SRG engineers' actions were consistent 17 with management expectations regarding the 18 identification and resolution of safety issues or 19 safety concerns, and that the two SRG engineers were 20 in fact harassed and intimidated by statements and 21 actions of the Ops Manager and the general manager 22 on December the 3rd.
23 With respect to the actions of the 24 Salen General Manager and the Ops Manager, the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
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, 1 4 1 actions were unprofessional and inappropriate. The 2 Ops Manager and the GM did harass and intimidate the 3 SRG engineers. We do not believe that these actions 4 were deliberate. The fact that the confrontation 5 did take place was evidence that there was the 6 harassment or intimidation did occur.
7 However, we did not conclude that it ,
8 was a deliberate intent to suppress a safety 9 concern. In fact, there was a lot of discussion, 10 subsequent discussion about the 50.7 issue or what ,
, 11 50.7 meant subsequent to the investigation. And the 12 conclusion that we drew or the opinion that the 13 Plant Manager and the Ops Manager had was that
} 14 unless the individuals were stopped or threatened to 15 not go to the NRC with the concern, then there was a
16 no -- there would not be intimidation. That's what i
17 their interpretation was.
) 18 With respect to the General Manager 19 QA/NSR,. the actions to resolve the situation were 20 not timely and not effective. And although a formal 21 reprimand was drafted for one of the SRG engineers, 22 It was not issued. And that was because of 23 subsequent discussions the GM-QA/NSR had with the 24 individuals. Although he drafted the counseling, it ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
4 1 was not delivered.
2 He did have some discussion with the 3 individual about some remarks that were made 4 concerning one of the processes, what we call the 5 DEF process. There were some conversations held 6 around the inappropriateness of that statement where 7 the individual had no confidence in the system and 8 would not use it. Within our system, as far as the 9 counseling or reprimand, that was not done within 10 our system as we define counsel and reprimand.
11 The root cause of the event was -- hole 12 MR. HOLODY: Could I interrupt you 13 before you go on to the root cause? I guess this 14 pretty much completed the description of the fact 15 f i r.J i n g . What was the -- what did you conclude was 16 the reason for the harassment and intimidation of 17 the engineers?
18 MR. HAGAN: Why were they --
19 MR. HOLODY: Why did they do what they 20 did to these two individuals?
21 MR. HAGAN: The actions that were taken 22 between -- actually it was a confrontation and an 23 argument that occurred between the managers and the 24 individuals was really the desire of the Ops Manager 1
1 1
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I 4 1 to have a statement or some discussion about what 2 the opinion was of the SRG engineers concerning ,
I 3 operability. And from that discussion, it was a I
4 technical discussion that dissolved into a 5 confrontation between one opinion and another 6 opinion and the ops Manager's desire to have some 7 statements written on the incident report or 8 supplied on the incident report that he thought was 9 had already been resolved.
10 And the issue about the argument, 11 instead of just saying -- our process would have 12 been to initiate the incident report and file it, 13 file the incident report and let the process take 14 its route. That would have been the expectat. ion.
15 The fact that there was an argument that occurred 16 was the intimidation itself about whether there 17 should have been anymore added. Should there have 18 been some information that was not there, that 19 should have been on the incident report, should not 20 have been in the conversation, should have been 21 filed with the shift and the incident report 22 progressed from there.
23 MR. HOLODY: I'm trying to understand 24 what you concluded in terms of why that argument ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
4 1 took place. Was it because the individual wanted an 2 operability determination, the General Manager and 3 the Ops Manager, and didn't get one? Was it 4 anything beyond that?
5 MR. HAGAN: I think what --
not --
I'm 6 giving my opinion of what it was, and this is my 7 opinion is that the Ops Manager, from the report 8 itself, the Ops Manager had asked for information 9 regarding the operability. When the SRG engineers 10 were hesitant to provide that so and they didn't 11 want to provide that information, they didn't think 12 it would be appropriate, it got off that issue into 13 an argument of well why not. The information is 14 here, we need to have that information to discuss 15 with the senior, the senior shift supervisor. When 16 it got to that point, it was an argument between the 17 two individuals.
18 MR. HOLODY: Do other individuals have, 19 you know, in the course of work, do people routinely 20 blow up at each other occasionally, routinely, 21 periodically?
22 MR. HAGAN: I would have to say that 23 there's occasion when people would have a discussion 24 or a difference of opinion. In the case of -- I ALL POINTS REPORTING (630) 272-6731
.s 4 1 won't call it an argument or a blowup.
2 MR. HOLODY: Do you ever have heated 3 discussions in the course of your work activities?
4 MR. HAGAN: I would --
5 MR. HOLODY: I'm not asking you 6 particularly, I'm asking any employee at the plant, 7 any manager with a subordinate, do you have heated 8 discussions at times?
9 MR. HAGAN: I would assume there would 10 be cases where there would be discussion on 11 technical issues or discussions, you know, involving 12 personnel issues.
13 MR. HOLODY: And if you have that type 14 of discussion, do you conclude that that's 15 harassment and intimidation when you have these 16 heated arguments? )
i 17 MR. HAGAN: Depending on what the 18 nature would be, what the nature of the argument 19 would be. !
20 MR. HOLODY: What in this particular 21 case would make this harassment / intimidation --
22 that's what I'm trying to understand -- in your 1 l
23 mind, as opposed to just a heated argument? l 24 MR. HAGAN: Well the fact that the i
^U ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
n1 6 1 individuals were attempting to file an incident 2 report, which is what the process tells them to do.
3 The fact that they were f ollowing: that process and 4 the argument interfered with that to the point where 5 they felt intimidated now to turn in the incident 6 report, that in fact is the intimidation.
7 MR. HOLODY: So your conclusion is 8 based on the fact that they were --
you accept the 9 fact that these individuals were raising what in 10 their minds were safety concerns, and this action, 11 this treatment that they received was because of 12 their raising of the safety concerns?
13 MR. HAGAN: As far as the safety -- the 14 raising of the safety concern itself, the fact that 15 they did not file the incident report and there was 16 an argument that ensued from that just because they i l
17 were filing the incident report, that argument 18 itself is the intimidation, yes. l l
19 MR. HOLODY: Did you conclude at all j 20 that they were attempting to discourage the use of 21 the safety report because it was required an 22 operability determination?
23 MR. HAGAN: No.
24 MR. HOLODY: That's all.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
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l 5 1 MR. LANNING: Mr. Hagan, just a couple 2 clarifications. The formal investigation that was 3 initiated on January the 28th, that's the one that's 4 documented April the 2nd; is that right? ;
5 MR. HAGAN: The answer is yes.
6 MR. LANNING: And some of the findings 7 that you've listed here are out of this report or 8 are they independent management findings?
9 MR. HAGAN: They're out of the report 10 itself.
11 MR. LANNING: So is it accurate that 12 PSE&G management has reviewed this report and accept 13 the findings and conclusions that are put forth in 14 this report?
15 MR. HAGAN: That's accurate.
16 MR. LANNING: None of your conclusions 17 really addressed senior managers above the General 18 Manager of the plant, that being the Chief Nuclear 19 officer and the VP for ops, I guess which are 20 addressed in the report.
21 MR. HAGAN: The subsequent corrective 22 actions will.
23 MR. LANNING: I guess what I'm most 24 concerned about is the lack of action, the omission ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
6 1 of actions by most senior levels of management to 2 deal with this issue, their inactions to interject 3 themselves in a timely manner to insure that an 4 atmosphere of intimidation didn't prevail at the 5 site. And I didn't see that addressed in your 6 findings.
7 MR. HAGAN: That will be addressed in 8 the root cause and the corrective action section in 9 the presentation.
10 MR. LANNING: Okay.
11 MR. HAGAN: The fact that the --
it was 12 recognized from the CNO down the corporate action 13 and timely action was not taken, and those 14 individuals were in fact disciplined because of 15 their lack of effective follow-through.
16 MR. LANNING: So would you agree that 17 that active onission fostered a continuing situation 18 at the site probably that would indeed result in a 19 chilling effect?
20 MR. HAGAN: 11 0 , because of the 21 effective and aggressive actions and investigation 22 that we did take in the period from January, 23 February, March into April. I feel that the actions 24 that we took sent a very positive message to the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
5 1 organization on what was expected in terms of 2 raising safety concerns and how the management of 3 DSE&G and would handle the safety concerns.
4 MR. LANNING: Are you satisfied with 5 the actions that these senior managers --
their 6 response to the fact that these individuals were 7 being directed offsite? Are you satisfied that they 8 aggressively pursued the underlying reasons for that 9 and took appropriate action?
h For the investigation l 10 MR. HAGAN:
11 itse]f, yes.
12 MR. LANNING: When they first became 13 aware of the fact that there were two individuals 14 being requested to be reassigned --
15 MR. HAGAN: Yes. 4 l,
16 MR. LANNING: I would think that if l l
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l 17 that occurred, I would want to know the underlying 18 reasons for such a drastic action.
19 MR. HAGAN: Yes.
20 MR. LANNING: And I'm just wondering if 21 they pursued the underlying reasons for such an 22 action.
23 MR. HAGAN: And that was pursued during 24 the subsequent events --
investigation. In the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
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. i 6 1 month of December, we concluded that that was not 2 aggressively pursued.
3 MR. LANNING: Wasn't there a period of 4 two weeks there for which senior management had ,
5 knowledge of what was occurring and did not take any 6 positive action to resolve it?
7 MR. HAGAN: There was a period when the 8 CNO was first aware of the issue, it was brought up.
6 9 He went to the Genera.1 Manager of QA/NSR and 10 directed that that be resolved. He understood what i 11 the underlying issues were and he wanted to know 12 what actions that were being taken.
13 MR. WHITE: When did Mr. Miltenberger 14 first become aware of this situation? December 15 18th?
16 MR. HAGAN: The 18th, in the copy of i
17 the letter from our investigation, the copy of the la letter itself was stamped on the 18th. The 19 investigation shows that the CNO read the letter on l
20 the 21st.
I 21 MR. WHIT 3: And his involvement at that !
22 time, to what you understand from, I would guess 23 from your interviews with Mr. Miltenberger, what was l 24 his involvement then from the 18th on?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
6 1 MR. HAGAN: From the 18th on, he 2 direct -- actually from the 21st on, from the 21st J on, he directed the General Manager of Quality 4 Assurance and Nuclear Safety Review to get to the 5 underlying causes of what happened and to take the 6 action of advising him what action would be 7 appropriate to be taken.
8 MR. WHITE: And so they're reacting 9 to -- how was that direction proposed at that 10 meeting? How were they directed to do that?
11 MR. HAGAN: How was the General Manager 12 of QA/NSR directed to do that?
13 MR. WHITE: Yes.
14 MR. HAGAN: I believe it was verbal 15 direction.
16 MR. WHITE: And did they ever get back 17 to Mr. Miltenberger with a report as to how this --
18 what the situation was, what the causes and effects 19 were and how it was going to be resolved?
20 MR. HAGAN: I do not believe it was a l
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21 formal written report, because it was ongoing. But 22 there were periodic updates provided.
23 MR. REITER: If I can add to this 24 action on the I think it was the 21st, I received a ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
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6 1 copy of the Vondra memorandum from Miltenberger with 2 a handwritten note on it asking what was going on.
3 He was out. I left him a handwri:tten note that said ,
4 that was the first I had seen that letter, tolu olm 5 that I had been working with Mr. Vondra to try and t
- 6 resolve the issue, that I would not remove the 7 engineers from the site, that I felt that that was 8 inappropriate.
9 I left him a handwritten note because I 10 was out of the office for the next week and a half 11 and I knew he was going to be out also. And I 12 wanted to leave him something to indicate what was 13 happening.
14 MR. WHITE: So was --
it was either t
15 verbal or handwritten notes in the corner or 16 attached to the memorandum there?
17~ MR. REITER: It was a handwritten note 18 from Miltenberger on the top of Vondra's note, and 19 then a handwritten note from me back to him.
20 MR. LANNING: The other individual is 3 l
21 the then Vice President of Nuclear Operations, when 22 did he become aware of the issue?
23 MR. HAGAN: I believe that was on a 24 discussion that he had with the General Manager of l
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6 1 Salem on the 14th.
( 2 MR. LANNING: On the 14th. And what 3 actions did he take from the 14th until -- what 4 actions did he take in response to knowing that 5 information?
6 MR. HAGAN: To the best of my 7 knowledge, he directed the Plant Matager to work 8 with Mr. Reiter, the GM-QA/NSR to resolve the 9 differences that were --
that were involved with the .
10 event itself as far as what would be the appropriate 11 actions to take that had to be resolved between the 12 General Manager of the station and the General 13 Manager of QA/NSR. I believe that's the direction 14 that was given.
15 MR. LANNING: You may have to help me, 16 but it's my understanding that he in essence just 17 passed the memorandum on to the Chief Nuclear 18 Officer, and he took no actions in response to it.
19 In fact, your investigation concluded that he l
l 20 exercised poor judgment in abstaining from any 21 involvement with the resolution of the issues.
22 MR. HAGAN: There was not effective 23 action taken, that's true. That's what the report 24 concluded.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 I
. i l
l i
6 1 MR. LANNING: Well I guess the point is 2 he h ae) an opportunity to intervene and nip this in 3 the bud, so to speak.
4 MR. BURRICELLI: It's my understanding 5 that Mr. LaBruna, when he received a copy of the 6 letter from Mr. Vondra, believed that that letter 7 had already been issued to Mr. Reiter and the action 8 had been taken. And he thought, you know, he could 9 not influence that issue anymore because it was an 10 action that had already been completed. So he 11 passed it on to Mr. Miltenberger so that he would 12 have knowledge of at least the letter that had been 13 initiated and passed on the matter.
14 MR. WHITE: That's kind of important.
15 Is it not true that the quality assurance function 16 is separate and independent from the line function ,
l 17 at the site?
18 MR. HAGAN: The reporting relationship 19 is independent of the operations department, yes.
20 MR. WHITE: You indicate that Mr.
21 LaBruna received this letter and thought that the 22 action had already been taken. l 1
23 MR. BURRICELLI: What Mr. LaBruna had, 24 to my recollection, was a signed letter, a copy of 1
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 I l
6 1 the letter that he thought had been issued to Mr.
2 Reiter, and that that action had been consummated
.3 between Mr. Vondra and Mr. Reiter. And so he had 7
4 passed that on to Mr. Miltenberger for his 5 information.
6 MR. HAGAN: The action that you're 7 referring to, Bob, to clarify, the action that 8 you're referring to is the action of the transmittal 9 of the letter.
10 MR. BURRICELLI: That's correct.
11 MR. HAGAN: Not that the individuals 12 had been removed from their duties.
13 MR. WHITE: One more question. Is it 14 appropriate for a line function, an operations
. 15 function to request the independent quality 16 oversight function to remove individuals from the 17 site?
18 MR. HAGAN: No, that's not appropriate.
19 MR. WHITE: And from your review, was 20 there a bases why Mr. Vondra would reguest or nake 21 such a request?
22 MR. HAGAN: No.
23 MR. LANNING: Well I guess neither Mr.
24 LaBruna or Mr. Miltenberger recognized that it was ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
ea t
7 1 inappropriate for Vondra to make such a request.
2 MR. HAGAN: I believe in the actions 3 that were taken from the VP, the VP and the CNO for 4 Nuclear Operations, that the request was 5 inappropriate.
6 Again, you're asking my opinion what 7 actions they took and what they were thinking. Our a report analysis says that the action they took was 9 ineffective in resolving the issue. The fact of 10 whether they felt that was the right action or not, 11 in my opinion, is they thought that was the wrong 12 action and there was no basis for that. That's what 13 they were asking to be resolved.
14 MR. WHITE: Prior to this event, what 15 was the relationship between the SRG quality 1
16 assurance function and the Salem line function? !
l 17 MR. HAGAN: There was, if I can get 18 into my root cause here, John, we can cover some of l l
19 the questions you have. i 20 MR. HOLODY: Before you get to that, 21 Joe, I just want to back up to the SRG filing of the 22 incident report. Was it appropriate for him to use 23 that system?
24 MR. HAGAN: The incident report, yes. I l
1 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 7 1 MR. HOLODY: When he filed the incident 2 report, was it appropriate for him not to have an operability determination on there? l 3
4 MR. HAGAN: Yes. That's not a f 5 requirement of the incident report.
6 MR. HOLODY: But is it a requirement 7 that operations then do an operability analysis on t 8 that incident report?
9 MR. HAGAN: Yes, it is. And for 10 whatever information they need from the organization <
11 to make that operability determination.
12 MR. HOLODY: So after this occurred 13 when the engineers provided the report to 14 operations, this particular report, what would you 15 have expected to have occurred that day?
16 MR. HAGAN: What would I have expected 17 to occur if in fact they would have turned the 18 report in?
I 19 MR. HOLODY: When the report was l l
20 brought over to operations and given to operations, 21 what --
22 MR. HAGAN: The normal process would 23 be --
l 24 MR. HOLODY: What should have occurred ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
7 1 that day?
( That the senior would have 2 MR. HAGAN:
3 asked the individual to submit an~, incident report 4 for whatever further information he felt that he 5 would need or whatever information they might have.
6 That's normal for the senior supervisor to ask that 7 whatever else you may have that you may want to add 8 to the incident report for his knowledge. Then he 9 would have called the appropriate people that he 10 needed, if in fact he needed anybody to make an 11 operability determination, whether that was Systems 12 Engineering, whether it be Nuclear Engineering, 13 whether it be in his own ops management chain.
14 MR. HOLODY: So in this case, would you 15 have expected an operating determination would have 16 been made that same day by operations alone?
17 MR. HAGAN: Within a reasonable period 18 of time, yes, within a reasonable period of time.
19 MR. HOLODY: And that would have been 20 based on --
21 MR. HAGAN: Whatever the technical 22 concern or the technical implications would have 23 been on the piece of equipment.
24 MR. HOLODY: The Ops Manager had ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
^
an 7 1 discussions with another individual that particular 2 day that got -- I forget the name -- what was it, 3 Morroni?
4 MR. HAGAN: Mike Morroni was the 5 technical manager of the System Engineering / Station 6 Engineering.
7 MR. HOLODY: Would it have been 8 sufficient, just based on telephone discussions with 9 that individual or verbal discussions, to then write 10 on that incident report system is operable, okay, 11 based on discussions with this individual? Would 12 that have been an acceptable method of resolving 13 that incident report to come to an operability 14 conclusion?
15 MR. HAGAN: That information could be 16 provided, could be provided to the Operations 17 Supervisor, but it's the Operations Supervisor's 18 responsibility to make the operability 19 determination.
20 MR. HOLODY: And he judges then what 21 information or who he relies upon to make that 22 determination?
23 MR. HOLODY: As part of his license, 24 yes, it's his responsibility to make that ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 P
7 1 determination on operability.
2 MR. HOLODY: So that would have been an 3 acceptable approach, you're saying, for him to have 4 called Mr. Morroni, gotten the information that ne 5 felt was sufficient and then made that determination 6 that the system was operable?
7 MR. HAGAN: And documented that 8 determination for the basis of the operability on 9 the incident report. That's what normally would 10 happen, yec, the basis for the operability 11 determination.
12 MR. HOLODY: And if the two SRGs became 13 aware of that and disagreed with that, what would be 14 the next course of action?
15 MR. HAGAN: If they felt that the 16 operability determination was the wrong 8
17 determination? They would have --
they would 10 have -- the normal process would be to follow up 19 through their management chain and made that 20 understanding known of that opinion that they did 21 not agree with the operability determination.
22 MR. HOLODY: So if this nad taken a 23 different course, just speculating here, the Ops 24 Manager had taken the report, discussed it with the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
8 1 General Manager and they then just made a decision 2 that the system was operable --
3 MR. HAGAN: That's not their decision 4 to make.
5 MR. HOLODY: The Ops Manager?
6 MR. HAGAN: That's not his decision to 7 make.
8 MR. HOLODY: Who makes that?
9 MR. HAGAN: The Senior Shift 10 Supervisor.
11 MR. HOLODY: So if he had given that 12 information to the Senior Shift Supervisor, and the 13 Senior Shift Supervisor had made that decision and 14 the Safety Review Engineers disagreed with that, 15 then you would have expected them to immediately 16 take that up to their management?
17 MR. HAGAN: Yes, yes.
18 MR. HOLODY: And then their management 3
19 immediately discuss it with the Ops Manager's 20 management? l 21 MR. HAGAN: Wit- in a reasonable amount 22 of time, yes.
23 MR. HOLODY: And then you may have had 24 the same issue you had in this particular case, but ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
8 1 perhaps at a higher level?
2 MR. HAGAN: I don't know that. I mean 3 it wouldn't have been -- you'would have had a 4 difference of opinion.
5 MR. HOLODY: Was there ever any concern 6 here on anyone's part about not taking the plant 7 down?
8 MR. HAGAN: Anyone's concern here about 9 not taking the plant down?
10 MR. HOLODY: Not wanting to process 11 that incident report because it would have required 12 an operability determination.
13 MR. HAGAN: I believe those discussions 14 were held in the Ops Manager's office. There was 15 some discussion about what effect it would have on 16 the fan cooling units and on the plant. I believe 17 that occurred in the Ops Manager's Office.
18 MR. HOLODY: Was there any conclusion 19 on PSE&G's part that that was a factor in the 20 actions taken against these individuals?
21 MR. HAGAN: No. No.
22 MR. WHITE: In your investigation 23 report, you indicated that as this argument ensued 24 between Mr. Vondra and the SRG engineers, there was ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
Jo 0 1 one of the SRG engineers had indicated that he was 2 prepared to file a safety concern report, a safety 3 report. What is that report? What is the 4 consequence of such a report?
5 MR. HAGAN: The safety concerns program 6 itself is a program that's provided as an outlet 7 of -- as a means to raise any concern, whether it be 8 industrial safety or nuclear safety or radiological S safety, up in the management chain to quality 10 assurance as an independent organization. For an 11 answer that maybe someone didn't agree with and they 12 had gotten a reply or saw action taken that they 13 didn't agree with, that's an outlet provided to get 14 that information into the system.
15 MR. WHITE: So again the SRG engineers 16 were still within the confines of normally 17 established procedures, they filed an incident 18 report, they were not satisfied with the operability 19 decision.
20 MR. HAGAN: They could have filed a 21 safety concern, yes.
22 MR. WHITE: And they were prepared, or 23 at least it's indicated they were prepared to file a 24 safety concern report. And is there anything ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
9 1 personal about a safety concern report? Does it 2 personally indict any particular individual or is it i
4 3 just raising a safety concern?
4 MR. HAGAN: It's simply raising a l
5 safety concern.
6 MR. HOLODY: Do you get many in the 7 course of a year or a month?
l 8 MR. HAGAN: I couldn't give you the i
9 numbers. Jeff?
10 MR. BENJAMIN: In the last 13 months, l 11 we've had 39 total submitted. About 13 of those i
1 12 involved quality related, potentially safety related a
- 13 issues, yes.
14 MR. WHITE: I don't expect you to 4
15 answer on behalf of Mr. Vondra or Mr. Polizzi, but 2
4 16 the investigation report indicated that when the i 17~ individuals brought up the safety concern that there 1
18 was some feel that this was a personal attack on 19 those individuals. From your assessment as a 1 20 licensee rep, why would they feel that way? We will 21 pursue this of course with them, but what's your 22 assessment as to why they would feel this is a 23 personal indictment of their performance?
24 MR. HAGAN: I think the words that were ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
8 1 used in the investigation -- or the investigation 2 itself was threatening, and the individuals said 3 that they felt that they were threatened with the 4 individual filing a safety concern just by the way 5 in which it was said, I believe.
6 MR. WHITE: Is there any reason why 7 they should feel threatened? I mean a safety 8 concern -- if the safety concern is part of the 9 program, the filing of a safety concern, does that 10 threaten the manager, his team or the position of 11 the managers?
12 MR. HAGAN: Again, I can give you my 1
4 13 opinion, John. It's my opinion would be that the 14 threat would be applied, being that the individual 15 who said that, that the individual that they were 16 talking to did not have a proper safety perspective 17 there, being we are not taking the action we think 18 is appropriate, I'm going to be forced to file a 1
19 safety concern. That would be the only way I would 20 say that's .my opinion of why someone would feel 21 threatened.
22 MR. WHITE: Who would resolve'the 23 safety concekn? What organization would resolve a 24 safety concern and would come to a conclusion that l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 "!
8 1 either this is or is not an operability problem?
2 MR. HAGAN: The ultimate resolution 3 resides with Quality Assurance of Nuclear Safety.
4 How they do that is a process within itself, how the 5 resolution occurs. They have the ultimate 6 responsibility for that.
7 MR. BENJAMIN: In this particular case 8 since the quality concern involved some quality 9 assurance individuals, the process would require 10 that to be sent to another organization, Mr.
11 Burricelli's organization, for an independent cut on 12 it. He would be expected to draw in the appropriate 13 technical resources to resolve the technical issue 14 as well as to resolve the other issues of training 15 and quality concern. That's today. That was not in 5
16 place at the time. i 17 MR. WHITE: That's today?
18 MR. BENJAMIN: That came out of this.
19 MR. WHITE: What would have been the 20 situation back in '92?
21 MR. BENJAMIN: The General Manager of 22 Quality Assurance / Nuclear Safety Review handled it.
l 23 MR. WHITE: The reason that was 24 changed, I suppose, is because of the apparent l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
9 1 conflict of interest that was --
2 MR. BENJAMIN: The potential conflict 3 of interest. There was a recognition that that 4 would be a more effective way to deal with this, to 5 avoid that question.
6 MR. LANNING: In 1992, was there a 7 written procedure for review, processing and 8 disposition of incident reports?
9 MR. HAGAN: Yes.
10 MR. LANNING: So it was clear who had 11 the responsibility to determine operability of how 12 that report was to be processed?
13 MR. HAGAN: Yes. It's covered within 14 the procedure.
15 MR. LANNING: And that existed during 16 '92 and '93?
17 MR. HAGAN: That existed, but it's been 18 revised a number of *imes. But it was in existence 19 in 1992.
20 MR. LANNING: Okay.
21 MR. SATORIUS: I have one question too.
22 Trom the time that this memo was first drafted 23 around December 3rd or 4th until it finally 24 disappeared apparently, some'very senior people got ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
9 1 a chance to look at it. Were the SRG engineers 2 aware that this meno was penned? Were they aware 3 that this thing was floating around hanging over 4 their heads, so to speak?
5 MR. HAGAN: I believe our investigation 6 says yes, they were aware of it. They may not have 7 had c'. pies of it, they did not see it, but they were 8 aware of it.
9 MR. SATORIUS: Thank you.
10 MR. HAGAN: Okay, to continue now, 11 John --
12 MS. SMITH: I have a question about the i 13 investigation conclusions before you go on. You 14 indicated that the two engineers were harassed and i
1 15 intimidated by statements and actions of Salem ,
1 16 managers. What were those specific statements and 17 actions that you view as harassment and 4
18 intimidation?
19 MR. HAGAN: I don't have the exact 20 statements in my head right now to tell you what I mean that was the evaluation l 21 they were.
22 conclusion was that the actions that were taking 23 place and the way the individuals were handled 24 between in the Ops Manager's office and the General ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 Manager's office, they were in fact continually 2 harassed. I don't have the statement. I don't 3 think I could pin it down to a particular statement.
4 MR. HOLODY: Do you have anybody here 5 that worked on this investigation that would be able 6 to shed some light on that?
7 MR. HAGAN: Bob Burricelli was in 8 charge of the investigation, but I don't know 9 whether Bob could shed any light on the specific 10 statements or not.
11 MR. BURRICELLI: I would respond to 12 your question in this way: I believe that there 13 were certain things said and done in Mr. Polizzi's 14 office with Mr. Craig and Mr. Williams, and then 15 again in Mr. Vondra's office, that were harassing 1
16 and intimidating. ,
l 17 MS. SMITH: Do you remember what any of 18 those specific statements were?
19 MR. BURRICELLI: I would have to relate 20 to you what we were told in the investigation from 21 Mr. Williams and Mr. Craig. They felt that they j i
22 were intimidated by the statement that we don't do 23 things like that at Salem Generating Station in 24 regard to trying to give an incident report to the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
0 1 Operations Manager. Mr. Polizzi then at some point 2 had discussion, so-called, downstairs and set up a 3 meeting with Mr. Vondra. They all marched 4 downstairs to go to Mr. Vondra's office.
5 At some point in tine a comment was 6 made to them about a smile on their face, that they 7 better call the manager because they're in trouble, 8 at least that's what was reported to the 9 investigators by those two individuals. Then they 10 sat outside Mr. Vondra's office for a period of 10 11 or 15 minutes while there was a private meeting 12 between Mr. Vondra and Mr. Polizzi, and certainly 13 the statements in Mr. Vondra's office where he told 14 them to leave his office or he's going to have 15 security remove them.
16 MS. SMITH: Thank you.
17 MR. WHITE: I know you want to try and !
18 get along with this Joe. The H and I that the l
19 licensee --
harassment and intimidation that the !
l 20 licensee admits relative to actions or statements l 21 that were occurred in Mr. Vondra's office, what l
22 about the letter itself?
23 MR. HAGAN: The letter itself was 24 deemed to be a form of harassment or intimidation.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 i
i 4 1 The existence of the letter, which was thought to be 2 inappropriate, and the fact that it existed was 10 3 viewed to be as intimidating.
4 MR. WHITE: Was there in fact, outside 5 of the fact that the individuals felt harassed and 6 intimidated by the event that took place, was there 7 any action actually initiated against them during 8 the period of time that this was under review and 9 investigation? Did their work environment change?
10 f Did the scope of their work change? Did their 11 duties change? Did the climate around these 12 individuals change in any way?
13 MR. HAGAN: The climate question, I 14 don't think -- I can't answer, John, because that's 15 going to be how they perceived it. I don't know of 16 any special assignments that were made or not made.
17 I'm not' aware of those. I know our investigation 18 concluded that these people felt, both the 19 individuals felt they were being intimidated by the 20 existence of the letter, by the threat that was 21 imposed, that's what they felt.
22 MR. WHITE: Did they continue to do 23 safety review group activities at Salem even after l 24 this event?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
1
9 10 1 MR. HAGAN: Again, to the best of my k I don't know of any modification to 2 knowledge, yes.
3 their assignment.
4 MR. WHITE: Did they identify any 5 further issues outside of this particular matter 6 after this initial occurrence?
7 MR. HAGAN: Other than there was -- the 8 way the quality concern was handled, that was an 9 issue in itself that was raised by Mr. Williams.
10 The way -- the response to quality concerns, that's 11 an issue. Was there anything else that either one 12 as individuals raised? I don't know. As far as if 13 they reviewed something, they had some comments on 14 it, is that what you're asking?
15 MR. WHITE: Yeah.
16 MR. HAGAN: I don't know that.
17 MR. WHITE: To the best of your 18 knowledge then, and Frank, if you have information, 19 Mr. Thompson, if you have information on this, 20 please volunteer it, but the assignments, the duties 21 of the individuals, were they changed at all from 22 this point?
23 MR. THOMSON: I think, Joe, can I just 24 add a few? Joe was I think speaking more near terms ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
10 1 about December '92. Over the past year, as far as 2 Mr. Williams goes, in fact his assignment didn't 3 change. As far as one of the other individuals, 4 recently, August of '94, as part of a number of 5 other rotational developmental moves in the SRG G organization, he was moved over to the Hope Creek 7 SRG function. And also the supervisor of the group 8 as part of that, at his request, was reassigned, I 9 think it was about a year ago, to the Engineering 10 Projects Group.
11 MR. HAGAN: Are you talking near terms?
12 MR. WHITE: I was talking near terms, 13 in the vicinity of within the next six months for 14 point of reference. Were these individuals expected 15 or were they performing any differently from this 16 point on, from December 16th or 18th on, as they 17 normally would have been performing?
18 MR. HAGAN: As far as their job duties, 19 not that I'm aware of.
20 MR. REITER: John, if I can interject, 21 during that period of time there was no change to 22 their job duties, no change to their assignments.
23 They continued to do the normal safety review 24 functions. So there was no change at all.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
d 10 1 MR. WHITE: All right. Thank you.
2 MR. LANNING: Just one more question.
3 Did Messrs. Miltenberger or LaBruna receive any 4 counseling, letters of reprimand?
5 MR. ELIASON: We'll hit that, that will 6 be addressed.
7 MR. HAGAN: Yes. I'll cover them.
8 MR. LANNING: Are you going to explain 9 why?
10 MR. HAGAN: In the next couple of 11 pages.
12 MR. WHITE: Why don't you do it before 13 we stop you again.
14 MR. HAGAN: The root causes we talked 15 about was Public Service failed to set uniform 16 standards for who raised safety or quality concerns.
17 Contributing factors would be the confrontational 18 environment existed between certain Salem managers 19 and Safety Review Group personnel. That came from 20 our investigation. There was a confrontational 21 relationship that did exist.
22 Salem Operations Manager failed to 23 follow the standard process for incident report 24 evaluation and disposition, as we talked earlier.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
0 1 Ineffective training of management 2 personnel on safeguards afforded protected 3 activities.
4 Near term corrective actions that we 5 took was aggressive self-initiated internal 6 investigation undertaken to bring issue to the 7 resolution and identify the underlying issues and 8 causes. Periodic updates to the NRC on the 9 investigation results were provided.
10 Additional preliminary action taken 11 from the Nuclear Department management personnel 12- involved -- there were disciplinary actions taken.
13 All level management from the CNO to the line 14 managers received a form of --
appropriate form of 15 disciplinary action. It varied depending upon the 16 involvement of the individuals.
17 MR. WHITE: Are you prepared to discuss 13 specifically what that was? ,
1 19 MR. HAGAN: I'm prepared to discuss it l i
20 in -- yeah, l'n prepared to discuss it if you have 21 specific questions.
22 MR. WHITE: What was the action that 23 was assigned to Mr. Miltenberger?
24 MR. HAGAN: Mr. Miltenberger received a ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
.2 14 1 letter of reprimand, a disciplinary letter from the
( Senior Vice President of Electric, which was his 2
11 3 boss for his inactions, being ineffective, not 4 timely and inappropriate. Same was true for the l 5 Vice President of Nuclear Operations, and that was 6 issued from the CNO.
7 MR. WHITE: For the same reasons, not ,
8 timely and inappropriate?
9 MR. HAGAN: Yes, inappropriate actions.
10 MR. WHITE: So there was an expectation 11 from senior executive management in the corporation ;
12 that on this issue that these line managers had more 13 responsibility?
14 MR. HAGAN: Than what they fulfilled, 15 right.
l 16 MR. LANNING: Is there any significance 17 from whom these letters came from? One came from l
18 the CEO, one came from senior VP. f 39 MR. HAGAN: Their respective i 20 supervisor, the letter of disciplinary action came ;
21 from the individual's respective supervisor.
l 22 MR. BENJAMIN: Did you say CEO or CNO?
23 MR. LANNING: I thought he said CEO.
ALL. POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
s.
11 1 MR. LANNING: I'm sorry, I 2 misunderstood you. Good clarification.
3 MR. HAGAN: Any other questions with 4 disciplinary action? The CNO met with the SRG S engineers on February lith and on April 22nd and 6 reassured them that their actions were appropriate.
7 CNO issued a letter to the SRG 8 engineers reaffirming that their actions were 9 appropriate. Letters of apology were issued from 10 the station GM and the Ops Manager to the SRG 11 engineers.
12 MR. WHITE: I'd like to back up one 13 point, one more time back into contributing factors, 14 "A confrontational environment existed between 15 certain Salem managers and Safety Review Group 16 personnel," was that first revealed by your ,
17 investigation?
l 18 MR. HAGAN: Yes. Yes.
19 MR. WHITE: And I take it that 20 management, plant management was unaware of any 21 confrontational situation between SRG and line 22 management function before that?
23 MR. HAGAN: As far as our investigation 24 concluded, yeah, the station management was unaware.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (613) 272-6731
1 1 MR. WHITE: So this was a revelation 2 then that this confrontational attitude existed?
3 MR. HAGAN: I don't know whether I'd 4 call it a revelation, but it was a formal disclosure 5 that there was a confrontational relationship 6 between certain managers and certain people in SRG.
7 MR. WHITE: Prior to the investigation 8 report revealing this, was it the -- was there a 9 respect for the SRG function as it applied to the 10 Salem site and how those personnel perform their 11 duties and the findings that they made? Were their 12 findings considered important and relied upon by 13 Salem management prior to this event?
14 MR. HAGAN: I think we have to go back I
15 and look at the entire track record for SRG.
16 would say that the individuals who were in SRG since 17 the formation of SRG, there was a respect for SRG 18 and what they did. Some of the individuals that 19 were originally in the SRG were subsequently 20 promoted and moved. I think it became a function of 21 who in fact was in SRG at the time.
22 MR. LANNING: Well let's ask Mr.
23 Reiter. Did you have any knowledge of any 24 differences of opinion or confrontational atmosphere ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
6 31 1 between your organization and management? ,
( I was not aware that there 2 MR. REITER:
was an atmosphere as this is characterized here. I 3
4 did not directly supervise the Safety Review Group, 5 but I have to go based on feedback that I received 6 from the Plant General Manager, from Vondra, who on ,
7 several occasions called me or dropped me a note 8 indicating how pleased he was with some work that 9 they had done. So from my perspective, I was not 10 aware that there was any confrontational atmosphere 11 that existed.
12 MR. WHITE: All right. Please ,
13 continue.
14 MR. HAGAN: Near term corrective 15 actions, continuing, is the presentation to the f
16 Nuclear Department Managers on April 23rd, this was 17 done by the General Manager and the Ops Manager to 18 all the Nuclear Department management personnel, 19 managerial people.
20 CNO reaffirmed Public Service's 21 commitment to maintaining a work environment which 22 is conducive to filing safety concerns.
23 Emphasized that the action of the 24 Safety Review engineers were in accordance with the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
11 1 management expectations.
2 And reviewed the December 3rd event, 3 including sequence of events and management's 4 responsibility, the lessons learned and a summary of 5 the investigation report conclusions.
6 Salem OM and Plant Manager acknowledged 7 their actions were inappropriate, and this 8 presentation was given by the Ops Manager and the 9 General Manager and was a part of the disciplinary 10 action that was deemed to be appropriate. These 11 individuals delivered a lessons learned and 12 delivered the right message to their peers.
13 The presentation by the Manager of 14 Licensing and Regulation on employee rights and 15 responsibilities. The VP-NO reinforced expectations 16 for incident report processing, and that was --
I 17 was the VP-NO at that meeting.
18 Managers are required to roll-down that 19 information from April 23rd to all their employees.
20 That was a requirement that was documented. l l
21 I personally conducted a one-on-one :
r 12 22 follow-up with each of the Salem managers on the 23 roll-down of the April 23rd meeting and informating, 24 including discussion of the elements of ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
12 1 intimidation, k Near term corrective actions, the 2
3 letter issued by the CNO on April 26th to all 4 Nuclear Department employees re-emphasizing 5 employees should continue to pursue safety concerns.
6 And in fact there was an expectation that safety 7 concerns be pursued.
8 General Manager QA/NSR met with 9 employees to emphasize that the actions of the SRG 10 engineers were appropriate, and in particular that 11 escalation to senior management fully met 12 expectations and was consistent with safety concern 13 resolution process. And it was emphasized there 14 that they should not feel any hesitation about 15 raising a concern or what level the concern needed 16 to go.
17 General employee training was revised 18 to include elements of employee rights and 19 responsibilities.
20 The procedural revision in NAP-6, which 21 was the document we talked about earlier, was 22 revised to require the GM-IS&EA to investigate 23 quality concerns initiated by QA/NSR personnel.
24 MR. WHITE: Before you proceed there, 1
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
J
? 1 most of these corrective actions, in fact all these 2 corrective actions relative to citing responsibility 3 appear to place the burden largely on the Operations 4 Manager and General Manager. What was the 5 licensee's review and evaluation of the General 6 Manager of Quality Assurance and Nuclear Safety 7 Review?
8 MR. HAGAN: The resolution of the issue 9 itself was not handled effectively or in a timely 10 manner. That was the conclusion.
11 MR. WHITE: Was there any conclusion 12 that there was further harassment or intimidation by 13 any actions of the General Manager QA and Nuclear 14 Safety Review?
15 MR. HAGAN: We did not determine that 16 there was any further harassment by the General 17 Manager QA/NSR.
18 MR. WHITE: So the view of the licensee 19 is that the H and I that took place here was largely 20 caused by actions by Mr. Polizzi and Mr. Vondra and 21 not Mr. Reiter, is that correct, from your 22 assessment, the licensee's assessment?
23 MR. HAGAN: That's our assessment, yes.
24 MR. WHITE: And why do you exonerate l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
i 2 1 Mr. Reiter of any H and I, what is your basis?
2 MR. HAGAN: The basis is that Mr.
3 Reiter took action to -- although we have determined 4 it was not timely or effective, he was actively 5 pursuing resolution. He did not take any action 6 against the individuals, did not --
in fact did not 7 feel that their actions were inappropriate, and did 8 not pursue any further action against the 9 individuals, short of the counseling or the coaching 10 session that he had drafted up. And that was in 11 reference to the statement made by the Quality 12 Engineer about the process, the DEF process, which 13 was felt to be an inappropriate statement from the 14 Quality Assurance Engineer. Because if it's a 15 problem with the system, you shouldn't tell people 16 you're not going to use that system.
17 MR. WHITE: His perspective was that 18 this took too much time, it was too lengthy? I l
19 MR. HAGAN: That was his opinion, it 20 was too lengthy, it didn't work and he wasn't going 21 to use it. That was the comment that was made. !
22 MR. LANNING: Are the corrective 23 actions you just addressed, are they the result of 24 the recommendations in your task force report?
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 I
12 1 MR. HAGAN: Yes, they are. And there's 2 additional ongoing actions.
3 MR. LANNING: Regarding the 4 recommendations in the task force report, did 5 management adopt all of those or some of those?
6 MR. HAGAN: I think the recommendations 7 were adopted, parts were adopted -- a large part 8 were adopted. There may be some variations to it, 9 but in large part, it was acted on. And there were 10 some other actions that were taken that are not in 11 the recommendations.
12 MR. LANNING: You not only addressed 13 the recommendations in the task force's report, you 14 went beyond that and did additional things?
15 MR. HAGAN: What we felt would be 16 appropriate. The ongoing actions to improve the 17 environment, current actions of the Nuclear Business 18 Unit directed at providing for continued improvement 19 in the safety / quality concerns reporting environment 20 at Salem and Hope Creek are focused in the following 21 areas:
22 Improved communications and feedback 23 and formation of the Employee Concern Group. And 24 the improved communications feedback, I mean it's ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 ,
1 1 our expectation that the management is responsive to (2 2 safety concerns, concerns from a technical nature or 3 a personal nature, the management organization 4 responds to those and resolves them accordingly. If 5 that doesn't work, they're still concerned, then we 6 have, I'll call the outlets.
7 Formation of Employee Concern Group, 8 that's to provide a means for any individual to 9 pursue a concern he or she may have and get what a 10 they consider a timely resolution.
11 Management / supervisory training, that's 12 ongoing. It's been formulated, it's ongoing as far 1
I 13 as supervisory training and how to handle the 14 conf rontatictu;, how to handle the resolution of l l
15 concerns.
16 And the assessment and measuring tools 17 themselves, as far as the surveys that we do, asking !
13 l 18 people how do you feel, I mean are you free to bring l 19 up safety concerns, do you have any concerns that we 20 should know about and your ability to raise that l
21 issue or resolve an issue. l 22 The indications are that the 23 environment has improved. Again, that's our 24 assessment of how the process is used, the daily Ld3 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
13 I re-enforcemert of the expectation for incident 2 reports, that things get into our system so we can 3 do a timely follow-up.
4 At this time, I'd like to ask Jeff 5 Benjamin -- Jeff is our Director of Quality 6 Assurance / Nuclear Safety Review, to make some 7 comments on what he's seen. Jeff, as you know, has 8 been with us for about a month now.
9 MR. BENJAMIN: Closer to six weeks now.
10 MR. WHITE: I hate to interrupt, but 11 since we're making a break here, I'd just like to 12 get into a couple things. Relative to the CNO, 13 Chief Nuclear Officer, and the Vice President of 14 Operations and the General Manager of Quality 15 Assurance / Nuclear Safety Review, their actions were 16 seen as being untimely and ineffective, consequently 17 ineffective relative to the resolution of this 18 issue.
19 MR. HAGAN: And inappropriate.
20 MR. WHITE: What was the cause of that?
I 21 Why was it untimely? What was it about this issue 22 that didn't permit or allow the individuals to 23 vigorously pursue resolution of this particular 24 matter?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
MR. HAGAN: I couldn't -- I don't know l 11 1
( 2 what there was, if anything in particular, to this 3 incident that would prevent them from doing that.
4 The fact was that they didn't, they didn't take the 5 action, the aggressive action that we felt should 6 have been taken in this particular case.
MR. WHITE: Was it ineffectiveness, 7
8 overall ineffectiveness?
9 MR. HAGAN: In this particular case, 10 they did not respond the way we felt that they 11 should have responded.
12 MR. WHITE: I take it at this point 13 that you expect that the personnel in these {
14 positions will respond differently, more vigorously 15 in similar situations?
16 MR. HAGAN: Yes.
i 17 MR. WHITE: Relative to disciplinary 18 action, could you identify what the disciplinary 19 action was that was applied to Mr. Polizzi and Mr.
20 Vondra and Mr. Reiter, if that's appropriate?
21 MR. HAGAN: In terms of Mr. Polizzi, 22 Mr. Polizzi was given a decision making leave, which i
23 is the last step of our process, where the 24 individual is given the order to prepare a ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
13 1 performance improvement plan which is designed to
(~ 2 convince us why they should retain their employment 3 with PSE&G. Thet was given to bo.th Mr. Vondra and 4 Mr. Polizzi.
5 Mr. Polizzi was removed from his job as 6 the Operations Manager. He was given the 7 opportunity to develop the performance improvement 8 plan. He was also given the opportunity to pursue 9 an assignment for PSE&G with an organization outside 10 of the Nuclear Department itself.
Il MR. WHITE: Was that non-voluntary?
12 MR. HAGAN: What he was given was the 13 option, and I gave him the option, of pursuing that.
14 And if that did not work, my direction was, to Mr.
15 Polizzi, was I didn't know what his next option was.
16 That was an option that he had to pursue.
17 MS. SMITH: So he didn't ask for that 18 assignment?
19 MR. HAGAN: He had no -- he did not ask 20 for that assignment. He had no choice at the time 21 in my office. Now he had expressed an interest --
22 he and a number of other people had expressed an interest earlier, months earlier about the j 23 i
24 possibility of such assignment.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l
l
13 1 Also, Mr. Polizzi was also removed from k our plans for succession plan. They were, both the 2
3 Plant Manager and Mr. Polizzi, were required to give 4 the presentation to the Business Unit Managers to 5 explain what happened, what they did wrong in a 6 public meeting with their peers.
7 As far as Mr. Vondra's overall 8 performance, he was told that this was not in 9 accordance with the expectations of a Plant Manager, 10 and this would be incorporated in his performance 11 packet or performance assessment and would probably 12 result in his removal as Plant Manager.
13 MR. WHITE: He was told that?
14 MR. HAGAN: He was told that.
15 MR. WHITE: When was he actually 16 removed?
17 MR. HAGAN: February.
18 MR. WHITE: February '94?
19 MR. THOMSON: February '94.
20 MR. HAGAN: '94.
21 MR. LANNING: Were any of these 22 individuals previously involved in any similar 23 activities?
24 MR. HAGAN: Not that I have knowledge l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
f l ~s 1 of.
2 MR. WHITE: Mr. Vondra's removal, was 3 that largely due to this incident?
4 MR. HAGAN: I wouldn't say it was 5 largely due to it, John. It was a major factor in 6 the decision to remove him as Plant Manager, because ,
7 we did not s6e the sustained improvement we felt was 8 appropriate for that position.
9 MR. WHITE: Anything else on Vondra?
, 10 MR. HAGAN: No. ,
J3 MR. WHITE: How about Mr. Reiter?
12 MR. HAGAN: Mr. Reiter, now Mr.
13 Reiter's disciplinary action was not handled by me, 14 so I'll give you what I know is that Mr. Rei.er was 15 actually removed from his position prior to che 14 16 conclusion of this report. He was also given a 17 disciplinary letter for ineffective and untimely or 4 18 inappropriate action.
19 MR. WHITE: Was he removed from that j 20 position because of this event? Was he removed from 21 his position as General Manager of Quality 22 Assurance / Nuclear Safety Review because of this 23 eve; f?
24 MR. HAGAN: I cannot say that that's in ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
14 1 fact what happened. I was not part of that 2 decision. I do have knowledge from conversations 3 that I had with the CNO at the time that it played a 4 major part. I cannot say that that's as a direct 5 result of this event that that's what was done.
6 MR. REITER: I can tell you that when I 7 was given a different assignment, this was not 8 identified to me as a contributing factor.
9 MR. OLSHAN: The confrontational 10 environment that existed at this time and before 11 then, did that extend before this incident there?
12 Were nore people involved in the confrontational 1.1 environment?
14 MR. HAGAN: Mostly it involved the 15 NSRs.
16 MR. OLSHAN: It was those people? i i
17 MR. HAGAN: Yes. l I
18 MR. WHITE: Before I leave Mr. Reiter, 19 I'd like to be clear on what the disciplinary action 20 was. He was removed from the position and j 21 reassigned?
22 MR. HAGAN: When Larry made the 23 comment, I was not involved in the decision making 24 process. I know he was given a disciplinary letter 1
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
14 1 in his file for ineffective and inappropriate action
( 2 in regards to this issue.
3 MS. SMITH: Do you know who was 4 involved in his disciplinary action? You said you 5 weren't. But do you know who was?
6 MR. HAGAN: Mr. Miltenberger.
7 MR. WHITE: Mr. Reiter was subsequently 8 terminated from employment from PSE&G, and did that 9 have anything to do with this event?
10 MR. HAGAN: That would be again an 11 inference on my part. I did not participate in that 12 decision, so I can't tell you.
13 MR. LANNING: Any other managers below 14 Mr. Reiter receive any kind of personnel action?
15 MR. HAGAN: Within the QA/NSR 16 organization, yes, the individual who was the 17 Manager of Nuclear Safety Review was also issued a la disciplinary letter for ineffective and 19 inappropriate handling of the issue. His name would l
20 be Liden.
21 MR. LANNING: How about the Manager of 22 the SRG?
23 MS. SMITH: Did you say what kind of 24 action was taken against Liden? j ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
- 1 I
14 1 MR. HAGAN: A disciplinary letter was
( 2 issued to Mr. Liden. Below Mr. Liden, I do not have 3 any knowledge of any disciplinary action was taken 4 against anybody below Mr. Liden.
5 MR. BURRICELLI: The SRG reported to 6 Mr. Liden.
7 Mk. HOLODY: I had a question on the 8 last discussion before the disciplinary discussion, 9 the ongoing actions to improve the environment. You 10 may have mentioned this and I missed it. When was 11 the Employee Concern Group formed?
12 MR. BENJAMIN: I'll handle that one.
13 Just yesterday I named a manager for that group.
14 And it's part of our organizational effectiveness 15 review, which is ongoing. That is being added as a 16 separate function and a dedicated group to handle 17 these types of issues. So the answer is it's IP ongoing and the manager was named yesterday.
19 MR. HOLODY: So it's not in place yet?
20 MR. BENJAMIN: Correct. We haven't 21 made all of the changes to totally effect that into 22 our organization. He starts on Monday.
23 MR. HOLODY: And you're going to talk 24 about what you have envisioned for this progran and ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
us 1 14 1 how it's going to run?
2 MR. BENJAMIN: Yes. We can do that now 3 or --
4 MR. HOLODY: Sure.
5- MR. LANNING: Before you get to that, 6 I'd like to pursue the conclusion that the 7 environment has improved. Can you give me specific 8 indicators?
9 MR. BENJAMIN: I was prepared to talk a 10 little bit about that. I obviously was not here 11 when thic happened; however, after reading the 12 report, at least two questions came to my mind 13 relative to those events and how they may have --
14 how they may impact today's environment.
15 One question I had was whether or not 16 these events had, the term I used, dampened the 17 enthusiasm of my organizations in performing their 18 job to the best of their capabilities.
19 Another question I had was whether or not 20 those events had some residual impact on the 21 relationship between my organizations and the line 22 organizations.
23 In order to answer that, I interviewed 24 the individuals within the NSR organizations, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 l
l l
)
- \
\
14 1 including their supervisors, over the past week and i
2 a half. I structured some questions basically to 3 engage in dialogue to try to get a flavor for their 4 feeling for what the environment is today.
5 Generally speaking, the environment is 6 good. I should rephrase that a little bit. The 7 interface between the current SRG group and Salem is 8 generally good and greatly improved over the past.
9 That was a very consistent theme in my interviews.
10 I consistently was hearing that this event was 11 viewed as a watershed event, if you want to call it 12 that, and that great improvements have occurred 13 since then in terms of the interface, a lot of that 14 involving the receptiveness of the line 15 organizations for the issues that would be brought 16 forward.
17 In addition, the enthusiasm of the NSR 18 groups, including the SRG groups, appears to be 19 generally good in that there is an appropriate level 20 of enthusiasm to identify and pursue concerns.
21 In the case of those individuals who 22 expressed that they may still have some dampened 23 enthusiasm, I have now undertaken actions to work 24 with them to restore their confidence through new i
1 ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
35 1 actions on the QA management teams, partly to try to 2 give them that level of confidence that they will be 3 supported and that they will in fact be a valuable 4 contributing part of our team.
5 I wrap each discussion up with a 6 discussion of expectations for identifying and 7 pursuing concerns. And I included in that our 8 organization's responsibility for packaging and 9 communicating concerns in an effective way. And I 10 don't want that to be lost in any of these 11 discussions. We do have an obligation to package 12 and communicate these concerns in an effective way 13 so that line management can take the appropriate 14 actions. That is a summary of my interviews with 15 the NSR folks.
16 MR. WHITE: Are there any people that 17 were involved in SRG back in '92 when this event was 18 occurring still in the SRG today?
19 MR. BENJAMIN: Yes. Yes.
20 Relative to this Employee Concerns i
21 Group, there are three major challenges that I see 1 22 right out of the gates. One is to establish the 23 proper level of confidence within the Nuclear l
24 Business Unit that this was a viable and a ;
l ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
,o 1 l
5 1 responsive and effective program.
The second is this group will be !
2 3 responsible for clarifying or in other cases 4 re-emphasizing what our expectations are for proper 5 issue resolution, and that includes the appropriate !
6 role of supervision and management to address the 7 issue. And in the case where that is not effective 8 or where the individuals involved don't feel that's 9 working well, to layout what the alternatives are, 30 including the Quality Concerns Program.
11 The final piece will be additional and l 12 ongoing training relative to 50.7 protections and
, 13 other training relative to again the handling and 14 pursuit of concerns. The final piece of course will 35 be to generate some effective performance indicators 16 to ensure that we have some feel for how well this 17 program is working. Those will be the initial 18 challenges for this group as we get on with it. And 19 I will have a dedicated manager with resources 1
20 assigned to him to de that. I think that's i
21 consistent with what you'll find at other utilities. l 22 Right now the way it's structured is 1
1 23 you get a concern in and existing managers with l 24 other duties will be responsible for investigating l
i ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 l 1
I
15 1 and pursuing the concern. I felt it's more 2 effective to have that dedicated resource to do 3 that.
4 MR. HOLODY: You say currently or prior 5 to the adoption of this program, existing managers 6 would deal with the issues as they arose?
7 MR. BENJAMIN: For example, the concern 8 would come in to the GM-QA/NSR. He has collateral 9 duties. It would also be his responsibility, or 10 other managers who had their own responsibilities, 11 to perform these investigations. That's being 12 fixed.
13 MR. HAGAN: The other thing I want to 14 do is give an opportunity for John Summers, the 15 present General Manager of Salem, to give his 16 perspective.
17 MR. LANNING: Before we do that, let me 18 just understand a couple things. In your interviews 19 with individuals, did you pursue the question of 20 whether or not there was some form of hostility 21 between the SRG and the Salem plant management?
22 MR. BENJAMIN: In the past or in the 23 present?
24 MR. LANNING: In the past.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
5 1 MR. BENJAMIN: I did not try to dredge 2 up all the past history.
3 MR. LANNING: So you really didn't 4 assess what the environment was previously?
5 MR. BENJAMIN: That was not my intent.
6 My intent was to establish where we are today.
7 MR. LANNING: How do you conclude that 8 the environment has improved?
9 MR. BENJAMIN: Part of my conclusion is 10 that consistently in the discussions there was a 11 trending that was expressed to me by the individuals 12 when they were to characterize to me where the 13 environment was today as compared to the past.
14 MR. LANNING: There seems to me to be a 15 difference in what you're concluding and what was 16 found in the task force findings. The task force 17 tinding essentially implicated this hostile and 18 confrontational relationship exists at the Salen 19 facility between Salem station management and t'h e 20 SRG. Your conclusion is that it only existed 21 between certain management and personnel of the SRG.
22 I view those two things differently, unless the two 23 individuals is all that comprised the SRG.
24 MR. BENJAMIN: Can I clarify that?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
15 1 MR. LANNING: Yeah. Let me understand 2 that.
3 MR. BENJAMIN: The letter from Mr.
4 Doherty to Mr. Martin, dated June 18th, 1993, if you 16 5 have the letter, it states that Mr. Martin's letter 6 incorrectly states that the investigation equated 7 that a confrontational and hostile environment 8 existed between the involved Salem site managers.
9 It goes on to say that the conclusion at the end of lo the report was intended to refer to several 11 individuals collectively, and primarily one 12 individual who to varying degrees were responsible 13 for creating this adverse environment as more 14 specifically discussed in the body of the report.
15 This conclusion did not include the 16 Salen station manager. That's basically the gist of 17 that.
18 MR. WHITE: What individuals do you 19 think that are being focused on there?
20 MR. BENJAMIN: I'll have to let 21 somebody else focus on that. I just recall that 22 point being addressed.
23 MR. HAGAN: I'm sorry, I didn't hear 24 your question.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
c 1 0 l
'6 1 MR. WHITE: What specific individuals 2 are referred to there?
3 MR. HAGAN: The ops Manager. Any other 4 questions, or is it okay if John gives his 5 perspective?
6 MR. SUMMERS: Several weeks ago I met 7 with my managers and asked them what do they 8 perceive the environment is related to safety 9 concerns. And as discussed with the managers, it's 10 well-known what has occurred, and opportunities 11 today exist for surfacing safety concerns. So from 12 that, and that was just a short discussion, I went 13 and interviewed the Operations Manager independent 14 of that meeting. We talked about the environment 15 open to station perscnnel and independents for 16 surfacing safety concerns today, and I asked why.
17 One of the reasons is the knowledge of 18 what occurred increased awareness of that 19 occurrence, and the fact that it was wrong. And 20 also with the training that occurred then and the 21 additional enhancements to improve the knowledge of 22 the people who worked at the stations related to 23 this.
24 I also interviewed the Onsite Safety ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
6 1 Engineer. Similar questions to ask him, his opinion 2 of the environment at the Salem station today. He 3 took me back in time and he said if you went for the 4 overall environment over the past several years, 5 it's improved. In fact, he perceived that several 6 years ago if he were the Onsite Safety Engineer, he 7 wasn't sure he could succeed. Today he perceives as 8 he works as the Onsite Safety Engineer, he can 9 succeed at Salen station.
10 He said several years ago you may find 11 people who would say, or they were asked why are you 12 bringing this up. He didn't see that as the way 13 we're doing business today. Although he did note wo 14 still have opportunities to improve the function.
15 I guess the last thing I'll talk about 16 is I'm talking to all the station personnel. I'm l I
17 addressing things such as communications related to 18 my expectations. One of the things I've l
19 established, and I've probably talked to about 25 20 percent at least of the personnel, most of the Ops 21 Manager's crews, I only have one crew left to talk 22 to. Several of the station groups I already have 23 discussed with them my expectations. And one 24 specifically related to communications is the fact ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
1 i
I 16 1 that I have an open door policy. From 7 to 7: 45, l
2 that's an approximate time every morning where I'll 3 open my door. Actually they don't have to pass by 4 the secretary. And I firmly believe in the chain of 5 command, firmly believe it in. But sometimes people 6 don't believe the chain of command works for them.
7 So they have the opportunity to come down to my 8 doorway shoulder co shoulder with me against their 9 chain of command if it's not working and describe to 10 me what needs to be fixed. That's not just safety 11 concerns, but safety concerns is certainly one of 12 those things.
i I personally believe that line !
13 l
14 management has a responsibility for surfacing up our j i
15 safety concerns. That's a line function. And we 16 also have to resolve that too. Then I also believe i
17 that in our barrier defense, if you optimize the I
18 safety defense in depth, we've got to rely on the 19 ones we don't catch, that the independent groups l
20 have to catch those and back us up. And they also )
21 must be heard to again optimize our deiense again in j 22 depth. And I think there has to be a true liaison 23 between Jeff's groups and the operations to insure 24 that again we optimize our defense in depth.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
,v 16 1 MR. HAGAN: If I can go to the summary, 2 the self-initiated internal investigation of the 3 eve.it was conducted by independent task force with 4 strong management support. ,
l 5 Public Service was proactive in 6 communicating issues to NRC, including periodic 7 updates on results of Public Service's 8 investigation.
9 While harassment and intimidation did 10 occur, our investigation concluded that the three 11 PSE&G managers did not engage in deliberate 12 misconduct. As I talked about earlier, we discussed 13 with them what their interpretation was, what did 14 they feel did occur and did not occur. If they felt l
15 that they essentially prevented people from going to 16 the NRC, that in fact would be a discriminatory I
17 action. And they did not do that. They did not )
l 18 deliberately violate any regulation.
19 The SRG engineers' actions were in 20 accordance with management expectations for pursuing 21 resolution of safety concerns. And that's been 17 22 positively enforced throughout the organization.
23 The adverse action, there was no 24 adverse action taken against the SRG engineers, ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
bu l
1 although we recognize the existence of the letter l l
(17 2 itself, the fact that this all occurred, the 6
3 individuals may feel, probably do that the actions j i
4 that were taken -- there were actions taken against 5 them. Within our system there was no action taken 6 other than the reenforcement of the positive nature 7 of their behavior.
8 Disciplinary action was taken to 9 address inappropriate management actions on and 10 subsequent to December 3rd.
11 Comprehensive corrective actions were 12 taken to. address the specific issues resulting from i 13 this event, and including again the reassurance of 14 the SRG position and the SRG engineers and their 15 behavior.
16 Nuclear Business Unit management is 17 committed to improvement to ensure an environment 18 exists where employees are free to raise safety 19 concerns. And that's an ongoing effort, as Jeff and 20 John both said. We don't think we're there yet, we 21 don't see a finish line yet. We're constantly 22 trying to make that improvement and we're constantly 23 staying attentive so that people feel they have not 24 only the right but the responsibility, and that's
/
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
c.
7 1 what's expected of them. That concludes my 2 presentation.
3 MR. SATORIUS: I jus.t had one question, 4 and that was in your look back through your task 5 force. Were there any precursors that you 6 discovered that might have indicated a precursor, I 7 mean safety concerns filed, performance appraisals 8 that would have indicated that the managers that 9 were involved in this incident were previously 10 involved with SRG engineers and others in a 11 confrontational manner?
12 MR. HAGAN: I believe the investigation 13 itself, our investigation has, in the report, that 14 from the results of that intensive investigation we 15 did, there was at least one occasion where an 16 engineer report was mishandled by one of the 17' involved people.
18 MR. SATORIUS: Thank you.
19 MR. OLSHAN: When I asked earlier about 20 the confrontational environment, you said it was 21 limited to the individuals who partook in this event 22 at December 3rd, and yet you talk about an overall 23 improvement. So I guess the environment at that 24 time, maybe it wasn't confrontational, but it wasn't l
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
I 17 1 exactly the best. How would you characterize it? !
i
{ 2 MR. HAGAN: If the fact that this even I
3 occurred is evidence to me that it is not where it l
4 needed to be. And that's what our efforts were 5 directed at is to get that environment where it 6 needs to be in terms of people feeling absolutely 7 tree to raise safety concerns. Not only free, but 8 it's their responsibility to do so. That it's 9 management's responsibility to insure their handling 10 of this in the normal line function, as John puts 11 it. i 12 MR. OLSHAN: So the environment with
! 13 regard to other people wasn't confrontational, but 14 yet it was stiffling to raising safety concern.
15 MR. HAGAN: I wouldn't call it l
16 stiffling, but we want to make sure the environment 17 is such that we actually encourage and reinforce 18 behavior when the concerns are brought up.
19 MR. BENJAMIN: Just to clarify, I 20 didn't get a real sense from the people I talked to 21 that they would have characterized it as stiffling.
22 They do again characterize it as greatly improved.
23 1 didn't try to nail down exactly how bad it was. I 24 felt we did an investigation that covered that.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
OJ l
17 1 MR. LANNING: When Mr. Summers 2 indicated in his discussions with staff that in 3 years past they would have been questioned if they 4 brought back concerns, is that essentially what you 5 indicated?
6 MR. SUMMERS: Yes, sir. That's one 7 individual, but that's a true statement.
8 MR. LANNING: Have you given any 9 thought to getting an independent organization to 10 come in and asses your atmosphere?
11 MR. ELIASON: Wayne, let me address it 12 a little bit. When I came in here in October, this 13 is one of the issues that came to my attention 14 because this stuff was going on. And I've done 15 three things from my own perspective that I thought 16 were necessary. One is I sat down and wrote a l 17 letter fairly early to everybody in the Business 18 Unit, addressed individually to everybody in the 19 Business Unit, basically encouraged them or 20 encouraging them to raise safety concerns and (
21 committing to them that any concerns that were 22 raised would be dealt with straightforward and that 23 we would respect any issues that came up. That 24 letter came out from me to everybody in the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
l l
)7 1 organization. ,
l g
2 The second thing that I did was I also 3 wrote a letter to the organization and everybody in j 4 the organization defining the roles of what I call 5 self-assessment by the organization. I don't know 6 whether you got a copy of that or not. But I was 7 very clear in that letter on how I expected the 8 organization to raise the issues and assess itself.
9 John talked about the line response, 10 but I also put in that letter that I expect that the 11 oversight groups would not only give us assessment 12 from compliance, but I expected them to look at our 13 performance also. As part of that I also raised the 14 issue again, saying that the individuals, every 18 15 individual in the organization is -- had a basic 16 responsibility to raise these issues and not to hold 17 them back.
18 Another thing that I did was in order 19 to give what I call the organization a chance to 20 vent, is 1 opened, you know, a communication where 1 21 ask the CNO -- I don't know whether you heard about 22 that -- but anybody onsite can write me a note, 23 either sign it or not sign it. And I've committed 24 to them that I'll address whatever issue it is. And ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
i e
9 1 it can be anonymous or not anonymous. So they have 2 direct access to me now if they have a safety 3 concern, an industrial concern, whatever issue that 4 is. And I will guarantee that I will respond to 5 that. If they write it anonymously, I'll respond to 6 it to through the newsletter.
7 I think that we had no leadership in 8 the Quality Assurance organization. I was frankly 9 appalled when I saw that. And I directed 10 immediately we go out and we make sure that we 11 filled that organization. That's Jeff Benjamin. I 12 said I wanted to get somebody in that organization 13 that I believe has the' technical clout and the 14 willpower to give us better self-assessment.
15 One of the first things I talked to 16 Jeff about was making sure we began this Employee 17 Concerns Program. I want to give the organization a 18 chance to use these processes that I've pv. '. n 19 place. And we will assess ourselves so that we do 20 believe we're getting the information. I felt we 21 needed to give them a chance first.
22 I've made it very clear to the line 23 management and the QA organization how I expect the 24 organizations to function together and that I will ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
st 18 1 not tolerate these kinds of things. I've also 2 voiced several times that I expect people to raise 3 the issues to my level if they can't be addressed at 4 a lower level. So that's kind of where we're at 5 right now.
6 MR. LANNING: Can you share with us 7 what your assessment is today? Have you had people 8 respond to it.
9 MR. ELIASON: In fact I asked yesterday 10 as to how many in the last two weeks. I think I've 11 had 43 different issues have come to me, and not one 12 has been raised as a safety issue. A lot of them 13 have been more administrative issues, why are we 14 doing this or why are we doing that. But that's --
15 we keep a record of that so you can easily see what 16 we're seeing. But there's been no safety issues 17 raised to me through that process. l 18 MR. SUMMERS: Can I make one comment 19 also? In the end of February, first two weeks'of 20 March, we will have 28 people at the station 21 independently evaluate us on how we do business.
22 One of the things that we have the right to do with 23 that team is to ask for specific focus, to look in I 24 given areas, what we think that we may not have the ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731 1
ai 18 1 best picture on, we have that right to ask that, and k
2 I have that right to ask that. And it's one of the 3 things that I ' I '. be loc .ng at to. consider from 4 their team manager what can they look at to benefit 5 the station.
6 MR. WHITE: Do you have any other 7 closing remarks?
8 MR. ELIASON: No. I think that pretty 9 much sums up.
10 MR. LANNING: Just a comment. I 11 appreciate your candidness and frankness. This is a 12 difficult meeting. I think we made some progress.
13 MR. HOLODY: Wayne, I'd suggest before 14 we conclude that we take about five minutes.
15 MR. LANNING: Amor, ourselves?
16 MR. HOLODY: If they want to use the ;
17 restrooms or something, just about five minutes.
1 18 MR. LANNING: Okay. '
19 (Brief recess.) f 20 MR. WHITE: We're back on the record 21 again. And I think we just have a couple of 22 follow-up questions from Ms. Smith.
23 MS. SMITH: Does the company admit or 24 deny that it violated 50.7, 10 CFR 50.7?
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
8 1 MR. HAGAN: The company admits that the 2 individuals were harassed and intimidated by the 3 actions that were taken by members of management.
4 MS. SMITH: Are you claiming that they 5 were harassed and intimidated because they raised 6 safety concerns?
7 MR. HAGAN: Because they raised safety 8 concerns? The individuals were harassed and 9 intimidated by the way in which they were not 10 allowed to pursue the filing of the incident report.
11 I mean the incident report itself could have been 12 other than a safety concern. If the same actions by 13 management would have been applied, it still would 14 have been intimidating and harassing.
15 MR. HOLODY: Are you describing how 16 they were harassed and intimidated? I guess the 17 question is were they harassed and intimidated for 18 raising safety concerno. Did they violate 50.7?
19 Does the company admit or deny that they violated 20 the regulations of 50.7? I think that's your 21 question.
22 MS. SMITH: That was the (; u stion.
23 MR. HAGAN: I think the individuals --
24 the company position is that the individuals were ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
a.
l
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l 18 1 harassed and intimidated. In this particular case, 2 it was raising a safety concern. So if you look at i
3 the instant case, you say in this particular case, 4 yeah, they were raising a safety concern.
5 MS. SMITH: Through the incident report 6 that they tried to file?
19 7 MR. HAGAN: Right. And what I'm saying 8 from our review is if any other incident had been --
9 any other case has been raised, whether it was a 10 safety concern or not, it still would have been 11 harassment and intimidation.
12 MS. SMITH: But in this case, they were t 13 trying to raise a safety concern and they did raise 14 a safety concern; is that correct?
15 MR. HAGAN: Yes, they did. That's 16 correct.
17 MS. SMITH: So then is your conclusion 18 that the company did violate 50.7?
19 MR. HAGAN: It is our conclusion that 20 with the way 50.7 is written that we violated 50.7.
21 The way it is written, the way this was handled in 22 this particular case, that was our conclusion.
23 MS. SMITH: Thank you.
MR. WHITE: Any other questions? Dan, 24 i
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
av l 1 1 can you just take a few minutes and address the (9 2 protocol for enforcement?
3 MR. HOLODY: Sure. We have these 4 meetings whenever we have violations that rise --
5 potentially could rise to a severi,y level 1, 2 or 6 3. And our fundamental concern is that the issue 7 gets appropriately aired, you get an opportunity to 8 provide your views. And probably the most important 9 thing is that we hear from you, you understand why 10 this happened and you've addressed, put mechanisms 11 in place for insuring it doesn't occur again and 12 appropriate corrective actions are taken.
! 13 What we will do is take into 14 consideration what you told us today. We'll also be 15 having conferences with three of the individuals, 16 individual conferences, subsequent to this. And 17 we'll look at the findings in our investigation 18 report as well as the findings in your own 19 investigation and come up with a decision on what we 20 feel is the appropriate enforcement action that 21 needs to be taken in this case.
22 We basically have three options with 23 respect to the company. We can issue a notice of 24 violation for the apparent violation, we can issue a
_ _m ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
3.
1 civil penalty, or we can issue some type of an order
(' o 2 that somehow could be restrictive.
i 3 Whatever action we do take,.we normally i
4 get back to you within about a month. These kinds 5 of issues that involve investigative matters 6 sometimes take longer, so I'm not going to guarantee 7 that we will be getting back to you in a month, 8 although it's feasible.
9 If we happen to issue a civil penalty 10 or an order, there will be a press release 11 associated with that. If we issue simply a notice 12 of violation or were to take no action at all, there 13 would not be a press release associated with that.
14 You have an opportunity to respond in writing, as 15 you well know, put down in writing what your 16 position is. Any questions on the process?
17 MR. WHITE: Gentlemen, we appreciate 18 you participating in this meeting with us today.
19 It's been very helpful to us as the regulatory 20 authority in this matter.
21 Relative to protocol for the rest of 22 the day, our plan is to meet with Mr. Reiter at 1:30 23 in this office. And Mr. Polizzi, I think we'd be 24 ready for you about 3:00, if you can accommodate ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731
19 1 that, please. With that, the meeting is adjourned.
l'P 2 Thank you very much.
3 (Proceedings closed.)
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CERTIFICATION I, Loretta B. Devery, do hereby certify th.t the testimony and proceedings in the foregoing matter, taken on February 8, 1995, are contained fully and accurately in the stenographic notes taken by me and that it is a true and correct transcript of the same.
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LORETTA B. DEVERY d, R !
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" '"' i The foregoing certification of this transcript does not apply to any reproduction of the l
same by any means unless under the direct control l
l and/or supervision of the certifying reporter.
I.
ALL POINTS REPORTING (610) 272-6731