ML20197G331

Limited Appearance Statement by Bp Garde.Certificate of Svc Encl

ML20197G331
Person / Time
Site:	Comanche Peak
Issue date:	03/19/1984
From:	Garde B GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT
To:
Shared Package
ML20197G337	List: ML20197G331 ML20211Q059 ML20211Q070 ML20211Q075 ML20211Q087 ML20211Q101 ML20211Q109 ML20211Q117
References
FOIA-86-133 NUDOCS 8404170596
Download: ML20197G331 (11)

Text

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR P.EGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AtlD LICENSING BOARD In the Matter of )

)

TEXAS UTILITIES GENERATING COMPANY,~ ) Docket Nos. 50-445 and et al ) 50-446

)

(Comanche Peak Steam Electric Station, )

Units 1 and 2) )

)

LIMITED APPEARANCE STATEMENT BILLIE PIRNER GARDE 5 My name is Billie Pirner Garde.

I am the Director of the Citizens Clinic of the Government Accountability Project (GAP).

The Government Accountability Project is a project of the Institute for Policy Studies, tlasington, D.C. The purpose of the program is to broaden the understanding of the vital role of public and corporate employees in preventing waste and corruption, to offer legal and strategic counsel to whistleblowers, to provide a unique legal education for law students, to bring meaningful and significant reform to the government workplace, and to expose government actions that are repressive, wateful or illegal, and that pose a threat to the health and safety of the American public. Presently, the Project provides a program of multi-level assistance for government employees who report illegal, wasteful, or improper actions by their agencies. GAP regularly monitors governmental reforms, l

offers expertise to Executive Branch offices and agencies, and responds to requests by Congress and state legislatures for analysis of legislation to make government more accountable to the publ Q Sf6 ll;;f

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LIMITED APPEARANCE STATEMENT O

OF BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 2 GAP's Citizens Clinic is a citizens training, consulting, and social activist prograin for local ' grassroots," public interest, community, and church groups. This program is designed to assist and direct citizen involvement. Its role is to provide a range of services to individuals or groups who begin to speak out about problems spawned by corporate or government ineptitude or mal feas.a nc e. The Clinic's focus is on assisting citizens to effectively use t(.eir First Amendment rights to expose or address significant issues.

The Clinic addresses health and safety concerns, consumer fraud, corporate '

" rip-offs," pollution, government misconduct, abuse or inaction, and the abridg-ment of individual rights that often accompanies the struggle of citizens to redress their grievances.

In recent years, GAP has been approached by a growing number of witnesses from nuclear power plants under construction across the nation. In keeping with its objectives, both the GAP Whistleblower Review Panel and the Citizens Clinic Review Board have directed staff to pursue aggressively the complaints and problems that nuclear workers bring forward.

GAP is not an " anti-nuclear" organization. Its objectives within the' nuclear industry are the elimination of the government's misconduct and inaction,

. the uncovering of facts that warrant closer scrutiny or regulatory action by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and monitoring of how the NRC deals with significant information provided by nuclear "whistleblowers." This Clinic assumes that nuclear-related issues are critically important to the public safety, and acts upon evidence that the NRC is doing an inadequate job regulating the nuclear industry that government created. Huclear whistleblowers, the central figures in our approach to nuclear-related work, are the vital O

v- o LIMITED APPEARANCE STATEMENT o -

0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 3 components in the struggle for safe energy and making the public aware of dangercus or questionable conditions.

GAP's involvement with Comanche Peak began a year ago when we learned of what happened to Mr. Charles Atchison at the Comanche Peak site. The details of Mr. Atchison's firing were familiar to us. We have heard hundreds of similar horror stories from nuclear workers--from management executives to document c15rks--across the c~ountry. What shocked us was the blatant disregard for Mr.

Atchison's rights by his employer, Brown & Root, and more specifically, the actions taken by the NRC staff to condone the company's wrongdoing and cover up its own flawed inspection. _.

In a letter which we filed with the Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Boardkwe protested the actions of the Regional Staff Inspector. Since that .

time, we have monitored both the NRC actions and those of Texas Utilities Generating Company (TUGCO) and Brown & Root at Comanche Peak. We have watched the fate of other workers who have also raised problems which they believed were a direct violation of approved construction procedures and 10 C.F.R. Part 50, Appendix B. ._

This Board is familiar with many of those workers and their allegations of flawed construction, violated vendor inspection procedures, inadequate design quality assurance'(QA), inaccurate design documentation, and pressure from management supervisors to approve faulty work and participation in unauthorized 1

work activities.

This Board is also familiar with the type of inspections conducted into many of those allegations, and the continuous series of report conclusions that

_ p 9 LIMITED APPEARANCE STATENrfiT

,- 0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 4 that summarily dismiss or narrow the concerns raised by the public " whistle-bl owers . " In reviewing these inspection reports over the past year, GAP has

conclused that the entire regional inspection program is flawed. We have proposed to Mr. Richard C. DeYoung, by separate letter today, that the Region IV inspection program be subjected to a rigorous review by an internal team of auditors and Inspection and Enforcement officials from other regions. We have found that Region IV is guilty of many of the generic defects GAP identified to the Congressional Subcommittee of Investigations during a June 20, 1983 hearing of the House Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs into the Investigation and Inspection Policies of the NRC.

In short, Region IV is plagued with a quality assurance breakdown of its own inspections:

A. In its approach to whistleblowers, Reaion IV has:

v1. violated the confidentiality of whistleblowers, either directly or indirectly; narrowly defined issues raised by whistleblowers and failed to 2.

inspect beyond hardware examples the witness was able to ,,

identify specifically;

3. failed to record interviews or take affidavits, particularly

! on the most signficant issues being raised by whistleblowers; v4. failed to include affidavits in the public reports when the statements contradicted the NRC's party-line on the problems at nuclear plants;

5. failed to keep pace with new whistlebir ner allegations in a timely manner;

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LIMITED APPEARANCE STATE T ,

(- 0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 5 B. In its approach to utilities, Region IV has:

6. conducted closed-door meetings with utility and contractor executives when investigating whistleblower allegations; L 7. provided advance warning to utilities about where and when Region IV was going to inspect hardware;

8. relied on industry's technical conclusions without disclosure

. of supporti g data and calculations for evaluation of whistle-blower allegations;

9. offered advance, informal review of decisions to the targets of Revion IV investigations and inspections, thereby permitting utilities to escape accountability through informal, often-unenforced commitments "not to do it again;"

10. reviewed and informally approved licensee practices before approved by corporate officials w1th QA responsibilities, thereby undercutting the employees who tried to carry out their duties objectively despite the pressure of management urgings that "it's all right with Region IV, so why are you holding things up?"

C. In its approach to the public, the NPI has:

11. attempted, as a knee-jerk reaction, to discredit critics--whether whistleblowers, anti-nuclear organizations, or simply interested and concerned citizens--by questioning their raotivations, patrio-tism, integrity, and technical competence to raise questions about public health and safety; e

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- LIMITED APPEARANCE STATEMENT 0F BILLIE FIRNER GARDE Page 6 v 12. destroyed drafts of reports, significant tape recordings, created secret files, failed to admit the existence of documents requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), and given confiden-tiality to utility executives in order to prevent the public from learning how inspection findings were covered up.

Unfortunately, the result of this re~gional QA breakdown has been to make the Bo'ard's job much more difficult. Well-established agency case law prevents the Board from leaving contested matters to the staff for resolution. Therefore, the inadequate staff effort has changed this Board's role to much more than is the usual in operating license _ cases. We compliment this Paard on its diligence and patience.

Today, we have taken steps which we hope will improve the situation which the Board has been faced with throughout this hearing. We have filed a petition with the Commissioners, pursuant to 10 C.F.R. 2.206, requesting the following:

1. Require a comprehensive management audit of TUGC0 officials by an independent management auditing firm to assess the cause of the ' continuing inability of TUGC0 and its contractors to impleinent an acceptable design and construction program for the Comanche Peak site that meets the requirements of 10 C.F.R. 50, Appendix B.

2. Require,an independent design and construction verification pro-gram (IDVCP) to assess the integrity of the Comanche Peak site QA program. -

3. Suspend the Comanche Peak Construction Permit until the comple-ti.on of the special NRC inspection and IDVCP, and an analysis of

P.

LIMITEDAPPEARANCESTATb*hT U 0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 7 the results of those inspections which should include public participation to determine the appropriateness of further audit or other requirements.

We have attached a copy of that Petition to this Statement for your review.

As you will note, part of our request is for an IDVCP to be accomplished in co,njunction with the NRC special inspection team--hopefully, during an immediate Stop Work Order.

We have compared the current TUGC0 proposal and its methodology with that of two other audits with which GAP has been directly involved. TUGC0's proposal falls far short of both. GAP suggests that the Board consider the following observations in its review of any proposal for a Comanche Peak audit:

1. Independence and competence as outlined in the letter from Chairman Nunzio Palladino to Congressmen Dingell and Ottinger, February 1, 1982, regarding the audit of the Diablo Canyon facility. (This criteria has been further developed for situations parallel to Comanche Peak at the William H. Zimmer Nuclear Power Plant and the Midland Nuclear ~ Power Plant.)

- 2. Public participation in the develocment of the methodoloav. Both Midland and Zimmer independent audits incorporated several sets of meetings with the utility, the NRC, the third-party reviewers, and the public. Those meetings produced a rigorous and healthy audit methodology and protocol, which are now setting the standard for third-party audits at other plants--unfortunately, only when the public demands it.

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LIMTTEDAPPEARAt:CESTATL.hT

- 0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Page 8

3. Detailed methodolocy and protocol which will prevent any opportun-

.ity for skepticism or rejection of the results and conclusions of a third-party audit or the design and construction verification.

This must, at a minim'um, include a commitment by the independent auditor to not engage in pre-notification of the utility, (or the fiRC), about the specific components that will be inspected or the documents and design packages which will be reviewed. Further, the company must commit to strict adherence to the protocol to avoid any questions about the validity of the end product.

As an organization, we have participated in numerous similar meetings, molding and shaping methodologies for vendor audits,100 percent reinspections, QA implementation reviews, and other variations on that theme. We have assisted the agency in the current program on special independent audits at five sites across the country. We urge the Board to request the assistance of the fiRC staff personnel who have developed a similar broad base of experience in these types of audits to provide technical assistance in the review of the audit proposal.

We also request thc opportunity to submit our comments on the company's proposals.

GAP has only begun a preliminary investigation. We do not anticipate that our own preliminary investigation will be finished for another 60 days. We have submitted to the Office of Investigation (01), affidavits from workers and former workers, who have concerns about the plant and its ultimate. safety. These wit-nesses have requested confidentiality. Therefore, we refer the Board to the August,1983, Statement of Consideration which provides the established methods by which this Board can receive access to the information and affidavits which are submitted to the fiRC OI office. .

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~ LIMITED APPEARANCE STATD..adT V' '

? 0F BILLIE PIRNER GARDE Paga 9 Comanche Feak is a troubled project. Our level of knowledge is limited to the facts on .the public record, embellished by the experiences of those workers with whom we have the opportunity to speak. Many of these witnesses have an understandable apprehension of entering the operating license hearing as witnesses.

They do not trust the regional NRC personnel either. We have explained to these witnesses that each organization--corporate, government, or volunteer--is made up of. good and bad people, of competent and incompetent professionals. We believe that there is a commitment on the part of this Board to get to the extent and the j course of the problems. We sincerely hope the Board succeeds.

Dated this 19th day _of March,1984.

N C_C c, tu b 4 Billie Pirner Garde 1/This letter was treated by the Appeals Board as an Amicus Curiae and not allowed into the record as "on timely." .

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD

.' n the Matter of )

)

TE\AS UTILITIES GENERATING COMPANY, ) Docket Nos. 50-445 and

) 50-446 er al.

)

(ComancM Peak Steam Electric Station, )

Units i and 2) ) -

)

CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE By my signature below, I hereby certify that true and correct copies of the Go sernment Accountability Project (GAP's) Petition tb the Nuclear Regulatory Commission pursuant to 10 C.F.R. E.206, and the Limited Appearance Statement of

. Billie Pirner Garde March , 1984, have been sent to the names listed below this 19th day of

.by first class mail, or by hand-delivery where indicated by asterisk.

• Administrative Judge Peter B. Bloch

• Geary S. Mizuno, Esquire U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Office of Executive Legal Director 4350 East-West Highway, 4th Floor U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Bethesda, Maryland 20814 Maryland National Bank Building 7735 Old Georgetown Road, Room 10105 j ,

• Dr. Kenneth A. McColiom, Dean Bethesda, Maryland 20814' Division of Engineering, Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Fanel Architecture and Technology Oklahoma State University U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Wa shington, D.C. 20555 Stillwater, Oklahoma 74074

• Dr. Walter H. Jordan Alan S. Rosenthal Esquire, Chairman Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Soar 881 West Outer Drive U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37830 Washington, D.C. 20555 1

• Nicholas S. Reynolds Esquire Dr. W. Reed Johnson, Member Bishop, Liberman, Cook, Furcell Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Boar

& Reynolds U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 1200 - 17th Street, Northwest Washin ton, D.C. 20555 Washington, D.C. 20036

I'* ,

h CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE _

• • Honorable Chairman Nunzio Palladino Thomas S. Moore, Esquire, Member U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Board Washington, D.C. 20555 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 ** Honorable Victor Gilinsky U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Atomic Safety and Licensing Appeal Panel Washington, D.C. ,20555 U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Washington, D.C. 20555 ** Honorable James Asseltine U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Docketing and Service Station Washiggton, D.C.

20555 (3 co' pies)

Office of the Secretary ** Honorable Thomas Roberts U;S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Comission Washington, D.C. 20565 Washington, D.C. 20555

• • Honorable Frederick Bernthal sta t ttor e eneral U.S. Nuclea,r Regulatory Commission Environmental Protection Division Washington, D.C. 20555

' Supreme Court Building -

Austin, Texas 78711 John Collins Regional Administrator, Region IV U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 611 Ryan Plaza Drive, Suite 1000 Arlington, Texas 76011 .

Dr. David H. Boltz 2012 South Polk

• Dallas, Texas 75224 Lanny A. Sinkin

! 114 West 7th, Suite 220 Austin, Texas 78701 -.

R. J. Gary l

l Executive Vice President Texas Utilities Generating Company 2001 Bryan Tocer .

Dallas, Texas 75201

• Mrs. Juanita Ellis, President

. Citizens Associations for Sound Energy 1426 South Polk Dallas, Texas 75224

• Rob Hager. Esquire Cristic Institute -

1324 North Capitol Washington, D.C. 20001 BIL{.1E PIRNER GARDE-

• Hand-delivered March 20, 1984. Government Accountability Project

• • Hand-delivered March 19, 1984.

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