ML20133C632
| ML20133C632 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Catawba, 05000000 |
| Issue date: | 11/09/1983 |
| From: | Stearns J DUKE POWER CO. |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20132B649 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA-84-722 NUDOCS 8507200542 | |
| Download: ML20133C632 (12) | |
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Af f idavit witness 3 -
L, i o 65 KEP_l mum; CO A'F.i D E NT.iti t t...s - '. : '~.- ;2 0 Fif n oe is Jeremiah B. (J.B.) Stearns. I n sutr itting this Affidavit freely and voluntarily to Mr. 'Jhcreas Devine, who has identified hinself-to me as the Legal Director of the Goverment Accountability Project of the Institute for Policy Studies. I a sttr-itting this ster:ent to share try corcerns over shoddj work: anship at the Catawba Nuclear Po.er Station, Units I arf. II, near Rock Hill, South Carolina. I am also conce ned abcrr. retalia-tion against those of us who challerced the poor workranship at this site.
Catawta is owned p-irarily by Dale.
I er Ccr=any.
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I have wrked for Dake Po.ier Ccroanf on off crier a lh-year pe-iod I
sirce March,1970, at both nu: lear and ccal p'=' C.; . le c._ ph w.m_ e
% In 1970 and 1971 I worked for Duke on ccal plants, at Fars5='l bN and sh:es Cw[ ek v.
irclu5ed Site E, actually a s. itchyard for electricity generated by nuclear powr; McGuire frcn Farch,1973-May,1975, and Catr ta frcn d'zj 1975 unti_1 June, 1951. Until mj work at Cata.6a, I had never been fi ed for disciplinary reasons. I ar. upset that Catrata had the worst constru~:icn practices of all five jc ven the wcrk on the coal plants cas &ne vitb. rcre care; but the focb flahts a e rot as tough a challenge sirce they a e r-h less crplex can 2,e nuclea- jobs.
I ar. 7.:alified to assess c=nstruction work ans';ip; I ham been doing
! it all mj life. My father and grandfather war,e in constru= ion an: I began
.- helping when I was 12. It has been Irj profession for at least 25sjears. I a . a carpenter ty trade and have constructed residential and cornercial buildings from hres to churses and s6cols. At Dake, I was a .carpen er until the riddle of mj tine at McGuire with the se=e jcb. At Duke, I was retitled
" builder." Builders are the first ones on the job and r a'.e the initial field concrete pours, install the rA s, Irake larer .fer s, and install sore 8507200542 850524 PDR FOIA I
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of the harci are. In order 'to om:dinate with the other crafts, we had to be familiar with all aspects of the job, ircluli.T the pipefitte. s- and electricians.
We used the torch. We also set anchor bolts, a o.3 other duties by the stru-tural steel. We had to rake with wood as well. In stort, we had to kro.: everytody's job, which left us well-info:=ed ahaut hw the work was being harxiled. .
7b put my criticisas in perspective, the standard of work was nra6 better at the hmes, hotel ahd churches I built ocr: pared to Catada. I kn w that a school or even a coal plant can't be ccc oared to a ntelear jcb, be.
that only rakes ne nore upset. A nuchr jcio is the tou;; hest cr.struction cb> ' ' e_ge . I believe it should receive the rest respe:t for cuality, not the .
least. To aggrevate ratters further, Cataba was the rost wasteful of all the jobs stere I worked. The other supervisors kept track of raterials and tried to eco.urize costs. AtC ataca, ranagenent arted as if there was a "blan.i check." I could rot estirate the total a:ount of ltrnber and raterials lost er u recesseily thrcun out. I only kro.: it was a routine wa y of doing wcch.
In May,1976, when I began work at Catada, rey initial duties were in the carter.ter shoo sere I helped build specialized for s. h5en the w hine building was excavated, we rade the first field peas cf concrete for the founia-ion. I first noticed unusual troile den additional c:ws ca e in fer design pours, and to install reirfom7t bars to st:vw en e the ccncrete abcve the foundation. Ihere was ccupetition bet e-( the crews to see who could
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install the rest reirforement bars the cuickest. The problem was that the rebars were rot spread eve.nly and therefore did rot ratch the spacing reguirments of the blueprints. Sc>aetines the last rebar would rave to be 1ccated cratside the cc: crete to ratch the spacin;; requirments. As a result, ,
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the foreran would just have us nove the rebars to fit inside the con =re'2.
I continued to work on design pors at the ahliary building sich was safety-related. ne most severe prcblerns were at the auHlia:y building.
As one exa:ple, there were insufficient braces for the w laromd the decontamination pit. mis was contrary to stardard constru:-tion procedre, .,
whicti reguired either steel or wood X-brams frtrn the. bottcra to insure that the con = rete would be solid' when poced. Le br>~%g keeps the wall frtra bulging due to press e e s en the concrete is pc=ed. I ccriplained at the lack of bracing, but the forran told me'to mind my o,en busin es . ,
stay roay w'un the pour was rade. "he people on my crea- sa. that the wall mged out. be da age was fixed through expensive e- %, such as an entire crs to c'lp away the cc. crete and rake the walth ig ht.
Not all cf the problecs were fi>ed right away. To illustrate, there
. 'was honeyc:rbing cr holes in the corcrete by the exterior dognouse in Unit I.
he "dcchouse" is the stneture Wic:h covers the steam pipes as they enter ard leave the reactor. It happened either be::ause the concrete was too dry, was i. properly r" orated, or blocked by rab- in, the wrong location. Be 1
horeycrbs were in bunches, and many were a >1' foot in diere+ar. Se l
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forecan's i-itial reaction was to put fers back cver the honeforbs and literally c=ve- 6.em up. I watched the holae being crvered. I hope they were eventua.1p filled up with grout, but I crrot say. for see.
I found :,co basic causes for the sic;:pj emaldtf of work-incccpetent cr ur2lified supervisors, and scheduling pressu:e that drir.ated cuality c=nsiderations. Sw-isory jobs were fi%d at Catz ta ac=crding to whose relative ce budij you were. Nepotism and the buidy system are re substitme for 'e'.):perience and Emli fications. Tor e>% e, 1 Bill Blanton was the 'oreran fof 79
Q.U%+CWw:hril:
on thm walls that bulged. 'besign p:rrs are an advarced responsibility, but Blant.on had to learn the job frcrn the men s'.c wrked under him. If he was kno!1edgeable himself about do the w did rot give it aeay. He
.got the job frcrn his buddy, d . le, the y in\ fcreran at the McGuire Plant when they both worked theT Sirilarly, quality assurance (O.A.) and gaality control (O.C.) personnel were often hired off the street, My f
according to their cun conversations with us; often they had no experienm.
So"etines, I would intentionally install har&are wrong or put in a pipe sleeve backeards, just to test and see if the O.C. inspectors w:rald catch it.
hty never did. Although I would then go back and cc rect the problem, I was not left with mai con'ichree in the gaality of geality c=ntrol.
Tne scheduling pressure was so intense that we kidded hcre a cmputer rast cave set an unremtic pace without behg programed to alloe time for fixing ristakes. 'Ibe case of the wrong-sized doors in auxiH ary bui g illustrates hcw the scheduling pressure caused me to 1csc. respect for ma.agenent's judgnent. Additio ally, this exanple raises nere gaestiors about deviaticns between the approved design blueprints and the as-builtp < tica of the plant.
Qaite sirely, the si- of '% 6:crs did rot ratch the h: I _ris in the wall where
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we wcre s=oos/ri to hagthe doors. This often was because the steel blua-prints did not mats the door blueprints, kroen as "stfe& ales."
One day dring rid to late 1979, all four 6 c:s that I was assigned
- .t to install one day were a different size than the holes. For e.x= .yle, a door '.
wauld be bigger than the hole. I asked the fore an, Marshall ic.ite, hoe to install a four-foot' door in a three-fxt hole. He said we had to give the e.gi ,eers sme leseay. He said to just hang the doors in order to avoid l 4
trcrable and delays. I said we couldn't and explained that if you try to rake l l
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chicken salad out of chicken shit, it 6:es not taste verf good." Enen I left )
in 1981, the doors still had not been hung.
Tnese exa:Tples are just that. 'Ihere were trany instarces of poch a L work nanship all over the auxiliary building. Workers conTnmly walked on sensitive valves, instrunents, gauges, and other fragile ec,uipnent. ':here is no way to e.stinate the extent of & rage 'to har&are that was banged up after it had been irstalled.
Scre of the miscondu:t involved the pa,mrwork. Tnat helred c:eate the irpossible situations in the field. 1980, a In late 1979 cr e.arly&
y cn on topic within the cree involved an acticn by the senier, Iarry Smele, who had done work in the au>:immy building without first prepa-ing and cbtaining engineering approval for a Variation Notice (V.N.) . that bothered us was that Steels was not even counseled for this practice, which we all knew was ille:al. Prccedces repire that a worker get the V.N. approved befc e ta. pe-ing with the har&are.
I cb not knoe hw rearrj oSer insta ces where design controls broken deu-), but it was obvious to the crew that the syste a was not working. ) ,..
On Tnesday, March ;27,1980, an incident c>c: .:rred stich sig .iiicantly offected nTj career at Cata ie. I tripped and fell in t'e dark over a wheel-ba_~cu which was in a walkway where it shouldn't haw been. 'Ihe walk-rf was dark because tha lights had been out all week, des.ri.t.e m dailv re c = to the safety. office. I was seriously injured in the wrist, shou 1&r and collarbore. My collartene was separated, although I did not kro, that for sore tine. Tne doctors that Duke sent ne to did rot teil ne until Ji e 2 the. extent of mj injurr. Bf that tine, I was in excere pain and had done :
a diitiona1 darage to my wrist and shoul6er.
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&f Ortobe.r, I had to gorin -for surgery cn my wrist. I was forced to report back to work around manksgiving or be terminated, although mj hand was ctill so paralyzed that I had to drive cne-handed. I was also femally written 9 as guilty of two violations, for not reporting to wc:t earlier. In fact, not I had even been released frein the doctor's outpatient care and, cn tis _ : basis of an alleged telephone nessage from my swisor, that I had not reanved.
After returning to work, I was the focus of crntinued harassrent frcra Mr.
Steele, who also belittled my inju:y.
Most of the difficulties between Mr. Steele and re were personal and
. involved working canditicns. Se gist of the probism s'_s that I had been restricted to light work dring mj reeption, and Stee.le seered to resent it. Scre of the disputes agr_in involved the hardeare at Catrba. One instance concerned cutside doors en the back of the au>iliary building. Bose l
dcors had elaborate electronic seceity .1.ocks, but thef were not secure. _.No one had bothered to put in security hmges, so the pins on the doors could easily be pulled and rexned. Despite my repeated crrphints, nothing had i been done when I left in June,1981.
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Ej. April,1981, the presstre had becre so intense that I had to get {
1 help. I volu .ta-ily went to the E picrjee Relations Degrt er . to see Eddie Young for cou .seling. I re uested canfidentiality, to which 1 was entitled
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since I had co e for counseling without beirs ordered by the co panj. I told
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. 1 Mr. Young about the retaliation I was sufferire due to an injurr that was the - !
crrparf's fault; and about the diffic.:lties and retaha: ion faced by rv l 1
colleagm, Nola . Ecopingarner (Hoop), who had correctly challanged violations cf ry regulations. I also ccrplai ed about the effects of Mr. Steele's mis a aga ent and discrimination on erlcrjee norala, productivity, ard workranship in mj cre,e. Mr. Yotrg listened sy pathetically, reassured ne
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that everything was confidential ard said not to wrry about my jcb. He c:clained that I couldn't be fired sile I was being counseled.
I never should have trusted Mr. Young. In less than two weeks,.I was fired. Around a wee}c after the interview, I took a day off of tr: paid leave for dich I was entitled. ne next day, foreran, Parshall hhite, told -
ce to " cme on" and said I was out the gate. Pahall told the warehouse clerk to check wh . my tools were in the W because he was going to terrinate me. Tne clerk said it wouldn't be necessary. We got to the gate l
and Marshall said good-bye. I went straight to a public telephane and called in the nss to E6 die Young. He replied that he already knw I had been fired, which rade me suspect ny cr.fi6e.ntiality had been violated th ough discussions with Farshall about mf corplaint.
I appealed the disrissal through registered letters to Mr. Young, his supervisor, Joe Q3ulter, project manager, John Rop, and Dtke President r.
Bill lee. Only Jchn Rogers responded, and he rejected ry protest wit.6ut discussing it f=ther. Bere is no doit in nrj mind that mj initiative in a,:groading the Erpl ryee Relations Departrent for a ccrli63.tial intervied
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i cost ne my jco. -
I was ha-dly alone. Mr. Devine asked re tc studj the 24-page transc-ipt of a Septe.-ber 23, 1983, interviea with cne cf q cscrkers, Nolan Richard Hccpinsarner (Hoop) . I wo:ked with H:op for around a year
, dring 1978-79, on the scaffold crw in the at5: ilia $y building. Overall, I am di_ actly fariliar with around 75 percent of the contents of Hoop's interview, and the rest indirectly through disemsicns with other workers. With one ex ption, everything Hoop said in the interview was acetrate, to the best of sj kn:uledge and belief. De cnly statement he rade that I would challenge t /2 a(79;
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oo=rred on page eight of the interview. . While Ibop was right about the farts he discussed, I do not believe that the turbine building was ntx: lear safety-related. Tne a=uracy of Itop's interview is consistent with his general rA Mility. He was scretines difficult to get along with. I didn't like him nyself- as a pe_s n . , but ytra c:rald take to the tank abcrat 95 percent of Q1at he said. He suffered badly on the job'for.heing right about the wrong things, sucf) as the nuclear safety and worker safety issues he kept bringing tp. Belcw I will disctss additional 6etails for wttich I have kro ledge about isstns raised in his interview. I also want to c:r.fim scre of the utst i portant peints he rade. In scne areas, he had barely gotten started talking about the relevant inforration.
'First, an page one, I arree that Socp was transferred to the cooling to,7e.r for cccp124.ing to the E and Departrent of Taw about safety worker 1
safety and ra . age ent negligence with respect to construction procedures. In l l ,
I . l fact, I cra.: heard a ccaversation anong the fore an, general fore':an, an$ lead l ren in Ho p's c:w. Be,f said Ecop was being sent to the cooling tcwe.r, stiere it w: rod be Fra9. Contrell's job to oet rid of hi:n. Eis was also the comenly accepted e.>pla ation with2n the cre,cs. Ecop's treatrent was no sec et. In far , the general foreran, Tsooert E. McDcuell, and the c-aft 1
stperintent, Jchn Scrugg, held repeated special reetings with variots c=ws l to tell us the latest on stat was hacoe.-dng to Hocp, such as the vcricus charges ra6e against him and attecpts to fire hir.. Tne nessage was ch to all of us: if you try to r,-t n es like Eccp did, the sa.e thing will ha,:pe . to ycn. Pecple cui Y or are ter.d a.ted all the tine. There weren't special neetmgs to discuss their stories and p:tble s. Pa agecent rade' the i
reprisals against Ho:p inporta .t to all of .us. 'I52y rede him an exanple.
In gerezal, builders are sent to the coc2ing trwer for punishnent. It was
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I kn:wn on-site as the " penal colony." 'Ihose who rade saves were sent there to be isolated.
Onpage] Hoop discussed the NE open confere ce. I can c5nfirm that Hoop and Terry d spoke with the KE. Hoop told ne that he and" Terry -
were going. I also agree with the points he r2% to the NE, sumarized on page four. Jdterwards., Hocp ex:ressed. disappoint:nent that the NE hadn't said tu6. .
Around the sa.e general tir:e, H:cp asked ne to go to the NE with him.
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I der-Uned. I e>plained to him, "bxp, I kn:w you're right, and so 6 es every-one else, but it won't accrp21sh anything for us to stir in troile. 'Ihe Kr is 'already boucht off here." Now I am scr:y I did not back Fim at the tire, alfpus I still feel the sane about the IE.
. I can ocnfinn that H:cp p:inted out w- ongfoing to Messrs. Pelfrey, IL"twall, and Sc-uggs, as discussed on page four. I can a2so confinn that as Lm. ; as he :7.ised proble s, they ware cn his case. '"ney cussed at him, told him to mind his cwn business, and to stop talking to other workers, the IE, and CEG about the issues. Hoop talked alout this a litt1s.
on page five of his intar.tew.
' C . page five, Hoop st:rarized his 1950 discussiens with Mr. .v.1xell.
He was right again. To prcrd6e further e.xclanation, scaffcids rcratinely
- rested on and .ere stpr:ed trj cable. trays, d.ich cou'd weaken the trays and led to cable leing pushed out of the tray. Scaffolds also laid cn th ee-ind f
pipes, and cable trays. I do not kncu hcw m.d. the pipes and tnist ets we.re we.ake.ed in the process.
.. Qa paos nine, Exp discussed his, protest about ca: ten steel and stai .less steel pipes laid directly cn tcp of each other. Tne rule is to avoid direct contact. Hocp is right that na agenent b:tke tie rule. I also
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' This first test showed up, if I am not mistaken, with 30-some laminations in this piece of pipe. That would be roughly six feet in length and the prepped rface would be bout two inches wide.
O Some were ar long as an inc an inch and a half and some were a2 short as one-eighth of an inch. Unfortunately, my theory had .
come.true. It was, in fact, just a rotten piece of pipe. Were it -
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my plant, I would have taken that piece of , ipe out of there.
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CP-8 8 was the procedure I was c u;;;p::'ko use to try to fix those laminations. However, CP-88 had nothing to do with the stubs of pipe that were welded in the containment wall. CP-88 was only
( for the metal that the containment wall was built out of.
l I k
' now how bad the lamination problem was because I would ask the PT man how the testing was going. Once he put the developer en the pipe and the bleedthrough started showing up, he called me and told me he wanted me to look at the wall. Be told me he had n5ver coen anything like it in his life, and I agreed. I thought ouite probably that Tech Support would say we were going to cut a piece out of the containment w 1, do away with this stub, weld a stub of
%W goo d pipe inte a Z_ _...x.d d put this back into hhe. containment I
wall, then make a 100 percent x-ray weld and that would be the end l of it. But that is not what h:appened.
l Instead, the foreman decided to just keep fixing it. Although
,' I did not actually work on getting these ladinations out, I know j that CP-88 was used,. and several welders I knew worked to get these laminations removed. I would ask the workers, Rcy Brady, for in-s tance., at the end of the day, . how it went that day anc he would O
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u r yu m- ce n-because I helped build the covers to correct'the prob 1m. We had to build covers twice because the first cover was just plastic and did not hold.
I believe that cne of the najor causes of the problecs at Cata.ha was chorn and intoleran for workers who challenged shoddy constncticn practices. Se resent. ent was especially obvious if you skipped a level in ,
the chain-of-ccr:nand and went cre.r scneone's head. ' It was futile anyway, because ranagers always backed the supervisor, foreman, or lead ran whcse decision was challenged. It did not ratter who was right or wrcrg. You did as you were told, and your incediate superv2sor was alwaj s right. In ny ex:erience, there vere no excepticns to this pattern. I never accorplished change for the bettar by identifying prslens. I c.dy created prcble.s for nyself. his enviro:rcent caused us to lose Itspect for ranagers and losered norale. It also helps explain why so rarry workers scr#.t counsa14ng fror.
- Exployee Belations before we knew it was a trap.
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Be ris anagaTent and icw nerale catsed waste and missie" a ong the e.pl:yees. Su p-isingly, ranaga. rent did not seem to care.
For exmple, workers spent long periods without anything to% s.ile waiting for ratarials ;
to arrive that were not there due to inaccurate. sched",g. . Mr. Devine j inferred re that at t'.e Zimer plant, m:kers race belt brkles out of 1
.c= lear grach steel stile they Wre kill'ng tire and sold the builes at 440-S50 a piers. Well, the sa e kind of belt bd.les ware all over Casha and went for the sme price.
Tre IGC was no scluticn. Panage. ent had co x r.icated with us indirectly not to talk with the IGO. ' iou had to co throx;5 ctrnpa.7y channels l l
l first and not talk to the NRC directly. We did not tnist the NFC any.:ay l bedbse the prcbirrs on-site w2re so cbvious that only blind NRC inspectors would have any excuse for rissing them. then Hocp went +w the NBC, I told A of 79
t several of their inspectors that they were fo::tunate to have B::cp on their side ncw, helping them to Nnd t.hings. 'Ihey gave tre a dirty lock and walked a my without a w=rd. ,
I have read the above 12-page statenent, and it is true, accurate, and c:r:plete to the best of my kncule6ge and believe.
s kOiTRi B. SIUJtis 9c.
state of O@( )
) ss.
Dr.Of of )
on this day of tbveroer,1983, the said JUta2Mi B. SENS, app == ed before re, the L *. signed Notan.f Ptblic, and adriculedged the ,
the atese and foregoing A"46avit is true and correct to his best infor:2 tion,
.bs-ledge and belief.
,t .,~tl wr-sqmc y itj CcrTussion D_.res: p h ,/@
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