ML21035A257
| ML21035A257 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Issue date: | 02/02/2021 |
| From: | NRC/OCIO |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML21035A252 | List: |
| References | |
| NRC-2021-000029 | |
| Download: ML21035A257 (128) | |
Text
Official Transcript of Proceedings NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
Predecisional Enforcement Conference RE Tennessee Valley Authority Docket Number: EA-19-092 Location: teleconference Date: Friday, July 24, 2020 Work Order No.: NRC-0998 Pages 1-127 NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
Court Reporters and Transcribers 1323 Rhode Island A venue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 (202) 234-4433
1 1 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 + + + + +
4 PRE-DECISIONAL ENFORCEMENT CONFERENCE 5 RE 6 TENNESSEE VALLEY AUTHORITY (TVA) 7 (DOCKET NO . EA-19-092) 8 + + + + +
9 FRIDAY 10 JULY 24, 2020 11 + + + + +
12 The conference was convened at 8:00 a . m.,
13 Kenneth O 'Brien , Region III I Deputy Regional 14 Administrator, presiding.
15 NRC STAFF PRESENT:
16 KENNETH O ' BRIEN , Region III, 17 Deputy Regional Administrator 18 ALEX ECHAVARRIA, Region II, 19 Office of Investigations 20 I AN GI FFORD, Office of Enforcement 21 JOE GILLESPIE , Attorney ,
22 Office of the General Counsel 23 NICK HILTON, Senior Enforcement Advisor, 24 Office of Enforcement, 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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2 1 CRAIG KONTZ , Region II ,
2 Office of I nvestigation s 3 MARK MI LLER , Region II, Director, 4 Division of Reactor Projects 5 MARCIA S I MON , Senior Attorney ,
6 Office of the General Counsel 7 ANDY SHUTTLEWORTH , Director, 8 Office of I nvestigations 9 SCOTT SPARKS , Region II ,
10 Senior Enforcemen t Spec i a l ist 11 12 ALSO PRESENT :
13 J IM BARSTOW , TVA , Vice President ,
14 Nuclear Regulatory Affairs 15 TIM RAUSCH, TVA , Chief Nuc l ear Officer 16 TRICIA ROELOFS, TVA, Director ,
17 Data Governance & Analytics 18 RANDY STAGGS , TVA , Director, Plant Support ,
19 Wat ts Bar Nuc l ear Plant 20 TONY WI LLIAMS, TVA, Site Vice President, 21 Watts Bar Nuclear Plant 22 BRENDAN HENNESSEY ,
23 Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman 24 MONICA HERNANDEZ ,
25 Pillsbu ry Wi nthrop Shaw P i ttman NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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3 1 TOM HILL , Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman 2 MICHAEL LEPRE, Pills b ury Winthrop Shaw Pittman 3 DAVID LEWIS , Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman 4 DREW NAVIKAS , Pillsbury Wi nthrop Shaw Pittman 5
6 HOWARD FELDMAN , Blank Rome 7 BARRY LEVINE , Blank Rome 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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4 1 CONTENTS 2 Opening Remarks 3 -- Director , Office of Enforcement 5 4 Enforcement Policy Overview . . . . . . . 6 5 Apparent Violation 6 Office of Enforcement Staff 7 7 External Presentation 32 8 Questions . . . 82 9 Closing Remarks 119 10 Adjourn 12 7 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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5 1 P R O C E E D I N G S 2 8:01 a.Ill.
3 MR. O' BRIEN: Good morning. I have it as 4 being 8:00 Eastern , 7:00 Central . This is Ken 5 O'Brien. Why don't we begin?
6 Today we will finish the third day of a 7 three-day predecisional enforcement conference with 8 the Tennessee Valley Authority relative to activities 9 at Watts Bar in 2015 and 2016 .
10 Before we begin, let me do some checks 11 here . Court reporter , can you hear me?
12 COURT REPORTER : Yes, Mr . Chair .
13 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you. Marcia?
14 MS. SIMON : I'm here.
15 MR. O'BRI EN: Nick?
16 MR. HILTON: Here.
17 MR. O'BRIEN: Scott?
18 MR. SPARKS: Yes, Ken.
19 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you . Mr. Rausch and 20 Mr. Barstow?
21 MR. BARSTOW: Yes, we are here with one 22 exception . Chris Rice is up at Watts Bar helping to 23 operate the station today, so everyone else is here.
24 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you very much, and 25 just a few opening comments and then I 'll turn i t back NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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6 1 over to you .
2 Again, this i s a predecisional enforc-e ment 3 conference to discuss the apparent violations that 4 were identified d u ring an Office of Investigations 5 review completed in May of 20 1 9 regarding activities 6 at the Tennessee Valley Authority ' s Watts Bar Nuclear 7 Plan t .
8 Today, I understand that you're planning 9 to discu ss your perspectives on four of the 12 10 apparent violations, having completed the other e i ght 11 previously . The apparent violations to be discussed 12 today would be 8 , 10 , 11, and 12.
13 In summary, these apparent violations 14 involved providing to the NRC information that was not 15 complete and accurate during a meeting with the NRC on 16 January 6, 2016 , maintaining in 2016, January 2016, as 17 a part of a Level II Corrective Action Program 18 evaluation , information acquired by the Commission ,
19 regul ations to be compl ete and accu rate that was not 20 complete and accurate in all material respects ,
21 providing to the NRC information that was not complete 22 and accurate during a meeting with the NRC on February 23 2, 2016, and providing information to the NRC that was 24 not complete and accurate during two telephone call s 25 with the NRC , and in a TVA spec i a l report, revi ew team NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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7 1 report submitted to the NRC in March of 2016.
2 At thi s point , I ' ll turn the meeting ove r 3 to you for your presentations. Thank you.
4 MR . BARSTOW: Thank you, Mr. O'Bri en .
5 Good morning , this is Jim Barstow at the hearing 6 today . Before we begin today ' s discussion , I would 7 like to reiterate our key concerns regarding Apparent 8 Violations 8 , 10, 11, and 12 .
9 As I've stated before , TVA is deeply 10 con cerned about the implications of these v i olations .
11 While the accusations on their face are very 12 trou bling , after an investigation int o them , it 13 becomes even more troubling that such significant 14 accu sations have been leveled given the lack of 15 evidence to s upport them.
16 TVA undertook a significant effort to 17 examine these issu es fo l lowing NRC ' s l et t er of March 18 9, 2020 providing TVA with the apparent violations.
19 Wi t h the exception of a shift manager that we've 20 already discussed, TVA has found no evidence that the 21 individuals named in the apparent violations provided 22 i ncomp l ete or i naccu rate information .
23 TVA has also been able to substantiate 24 that these individuals did anything that wou ld 25 con st i t u te del i berate misconduct. There is s i mp l y no NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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8 1 evidence available to TVA that supports the NRC' s 2 con c lusions that inte n t i onal v i o l at i ons o c cur red .
3 As you have heard during the first two 4 days of this PEC , a number of organizational failures 5 con tributed to the RHR event , and whi 1 e the 6 environment in 2015 may have contributed to poor 7 decision making , o u r employees did not intentionally 8 violate NRC requirements.
9 It is TVA ' s desire to move forward from 10 the events of 20 15 and to continue the progress we 11 have made since that time. We have completed 12 sign ifican t corrective actions relative to safety 13 culture issues in particular.
14 Let me be clear . TVA is committed to 15 timely , accurate, and complete commu nicat i on with the 16 NRC , but I believe that everyone can understand that 17 i nformation abou t events or t he company's 18 understanding of that information may change over 19 time .
20 We suspect that the NRC understands this 21 reality , especially since the Commission has 22 histor i cal ly mon i tored licensees whi l e issues and 23 their causes are still being investigated.
24 We expect the NRC to assess the ultimate 25 resul ts of o u r work , a nd view them from the context of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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9 1 the actual evidence as well as their safety 2 significance consistent with the established 3 regulatory framework.
4 With that, I will turn the presentation 5 over to our counsel for discussion of the Apparent 6 Violations 8, 10 , 11 , and 12.
7 MR. HILL: Thank you, Jim. As I will 8 discuss, TVA denies Apparent Violation 8. I will 9 first discuss how Apparent Violation 8 is predicated 10 on a backup slide having been presented at the January 11 6 meeting and characterized as providing the cause of 12 the November 11, 2 015 pressurizer level excursion, but 13 that predicate on which AV 8 entirely depends appears 14 to be incorrect.
15 Next, I will explain why the participants 16 in that meeting had no reason to discuss operator 17 concerns having been raised to the OCC managers 18 because they had no apparent awareness of any concerns 19 having been communicated to the OCC and no reason to 20 discuss OCC involvement in the decision to move 21 forward with the heatup on November 11, 2015 since 22 they were aware of no OCC impropriety causing the 23 November 11 events.
24 Finally, I will discuss the 25 appropriateness of facing a llegat ions of deliberate NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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10 1 misconduct on alleged omissions during an NRC 2 management site v isit similar to a drop-in meeting.
3 Let me turn to the first point, that 4 Apparent Violation 8 rests entirely on the allegation 5 that TVA presented a backup sl i de at the January 6 6 meeting with the bullets allegedly characterized 7 during the meeting as the cause of the November 11 ,
8 2015 pressurizer level excursion.
9 We have not found any basis for that 10 al l egation, and the evidence that we have reviewed 11 indicates that it is wrong, and if , as the evidence 12 available to TVA i ndicates , the slide was not 13 presented or described as the cause of the event, the 14 basis for any alleged omissions vanishes .
15 In short , Violation 8 appears to be based 16 on two false predicates. First , the quoted language 17 from Apparent Violation 8 comes from a TVA slide 18 entitled residual heat removal evolution.
19 This slide is part of a series of backup 20 slides which were not part of t h e slides that were 21 printed for presentation to the NRC and which, as 22 shown on the slide on your screen, were clearly 23 labeled backup slides.
24 As can be seen on the next slide , Mr.
25 ,..___
(b)(?)(C)
___. requested copi es of the presentation to be NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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11 1 printed for the January 6 meeting. He also requested 2 that the copies omit the backup slides consistent with 3 his ordinary practice.
4 A copy of the slides that were printed and 5 presented to the NRC have been provided to you as 6 Exhibit 60 of TVA 1 s written responses to the apparent 7 violations and they do not include the backup slides.
8 Second , as Misters l(b)(?)(C) I, l(b)(?)(C) 9 l(b)(?)(C) ~ and (b)(?)(C) stated in their PECs, none of them 10 recall the residual heat removal evolution backup 11 slide being presented to the NRC at the January 6 12 meeting, and they do not believe that it was 13 presented .
14 So , how did the NRC get this backup slide 15 and then include it in its allegation? Of course, it 16 is not marked backup slide on its face, so the NRC 17 would have had no way of knowing that i t was a backup 18 slide if it was just subsequently given to the NRC, 19 perhaps by the TVA OIG.
20 You' l l see what attendees say about 21 whether the backup slide was presented. What do their 22 notes say? Obviously there are many questions to be 23 asked and answered, questions that one hopes were 24 addressed before making an allegation of deliberate 25 misconduct against four individuals and TVA.
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12 1 Third, TVA' s notes from the January 6 2 meeting provide no indication that the backup slide or 3 the bullet points on it were discussed at the meeting.
4 These notes have been provided to you as Exhibit 59 of 5 TVA's written response to the apparent violations.
6 Further, as can be seen on the next s l ide, 7 on its face, the backup slide that is alleged to have 8 been presented at the January 6 meeting described the 9 bullet points quoted in the apparent violations as, 10 quote, insights, not causes as alleged by the NRC.
11 Therefore, even if a copy of the backup 12 slide has been presented or was somehow obtained by 13 the NRC, it is hard to understand how or why the NRC 14 would switch TVA's chosen word insights with cause, 15 especially in the context of alleging deliberate 16 misconduct by TVA officials for providing inaccurate 17 or incomplete information.
18 The fact that Mr. l(b)(?)(C) I is the on-e now 19 alleged by the NRC to have presented the backup slide 20 is no surprise given that his name on the bottom left 21 of the backup slide is presented in small print, but 22 he told you that neither he nor anyone else presented 23 it, and TVA's notes do not reflect Mr. l(b)(?)(C) 24 speaking at all.
(b)(7)(C) 25 And indeed, Mr. .
l was clear during NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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13 1 his PEC that not only does he not recall the slide 2 being presented or discussed, but that he certainly 3 would not have characterized bullets specifically 4 labeled as insights as the cause of the event, 5 particularly as TVA had not yet investigated the 6 causes of the RHR event .
7 Further, the NRC 's allegation that TVA was 8 representing that it had determined the cause of the 9 event is inconsistent with the tenor of that meeting 10 as recalled by participants and as reflected in TVA's 11 notes that TVA still needed to evaluate the cause of 12 the event .
13 If, as the evidence available to TVA 14 indicates, the backup slide was not presented or did 15 not characterize the cause of the event, the NRC's 16 allegations that participants should have included 17 discussion of operator concerns a nd OCC involvement 18 become baseless.
19 If the cause of the event was not being 20 presented, there obviously would have been no reason 21 for any of the participants to be offering additional 22 views, but let me t urn to the second main point.
23 Even if the backup slide has been 24 presented , which does not seem to be case , and even if 25 it had been characterized as the cause of the event, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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14 1 which appears equally unlike l y , the participants would 2 no t have recognized any reason to interject some 3 discussion of operator concerns or OCC involvement.
4 They would not have done so because t hey 5 had no apparent awaren ess on January 6 , 2016 that MCR 6 operators had raised concerns with the OCC managers on 7 November 11, 2015 , a nd they woul d not have done so 8 because they were aware of absolutely no OCC 9 impropriety causing the November 11 events .
10 Before I continue discussing this 11 allegation , it is important to keep in context the 12 role of the OCC d u ring an outage . The OCC exists to 13 maintain the outage schedule and to coordinate plant 14 activities to support the operators in safely bringing 15 the p l ant back online .
16 To that end , the OCC includes a dedicated 17 ope r at i ons represen tat i ve , Mr . Spri nkle on Novembe r 18 11 , who was the single point of contact between the 19 OCC and t he control room . Having a single point of 20 contact redu ces distractions on the shift manager and 21 promotes effective communication between the control 22 room and the OCC .
23 In addition to the OCC operations 24 representative , the shift manager also receives 25 s upport d u r i ng an outage from the operat i ons NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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15 1 department leadership. During the November 2015 2 outage, Mr . 1(b)(?)(C) I and Mr l(b)(7)(C) lwere alternative 3 days and nights respectively to ensure a senior 4 operations department leader was onsite at all times.
5 Given this structure, the re would be 6 nothing unusual , indeed normal and necessary, in the 7 OCC operations representative or operations department 8 leadership communicating with the shift manager about 9 the plant's status and schedule adherence, nor would 10 there be anything unusual about the shift manager 11 communicating to the OCC operations representative 12 questions that he or other control room operators had 13 regarding plant operations and upcoming evolutions in 14 the schedule .
15 Given that background, I will now turn 16 back to the allegations in Apparent Violation 8. The 17 NRC alleges that Misters l(b)(?)(C) I, l(b)(7)(C) 18 and l(b)(?)(C) I had a legal obligation that they 19 deliberately chose to breach to inform the NRC at the 20 January 6 meeting that on November 11, 2015, the MCR 21 operators raised concerns to the OCC managers as to 22 their ability to control pressurizer water level 23 during heatup with normal letdown out of service.
24 While Mr. 1(b)(?)(C) I was aware that MCR 25 operators had questions on November 11, 2015, he NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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16 1 understood those questions had been answered, and 2 there is no evidence showing that any of the other 3 atoos (phonetic) were aware on November 11 or by 4 January 6 , 2016 that operators had raised concerns 5 with OCC managers as is alleged.
6 Mr ~(b)(7)(C) Iwas th~.....
(b_)(?_)(_C)_ _ _ _ ___.I on 7 November 11, 2015, but he was not a member of the OCC.
8 Based on his PEC testimony, Mr. l(b)(7)(C) I recalls 9 discussions with Mr . Johnson and other MCR operators 10 on November 11.
11 However, he recalls these discussions 12 be i ng normal, heal thy questioning and does not r -e call 13 anyone ultimately feeling uncomfortable with or 14 objecting to proceeding with the heatup.
15 Mr. l(b)(7)(C) recollection appears 16 consistent with the information that the TVA OIG 17 interview summaries indicate he conveyed in 2016 and 18 2017, as well as the notes of an interview by TVA's 19 root cause analysis t eam on February 16 , 2016 .
20 I won't quote those interview summaries 21 now , but relevant sections have been quoted in TVA's 22 written response to Apparent Violation 8. I'll now 23 turn to the allegations against Mr. l(b)(?)(C) 1-24 Mr .1(b)(7)(C) lwas on the night shift during 25 the forced outage on November 11, 2015 . Based on his NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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17 1 PEC statement, he has no recollection of operators 2 chall e nging the heatup sequence on Novemb er 11 ,
3 although he did recall some healthy discussion at some 4 point .
5 Mr
- l(b)(7)(C) Il eft the plant around 10 : 00 6 a.m. RHR was not removed from service until after 7 1 : 00 p . m. Fu rther, he does not believe that any 8 operator - indicated concerns had been raised when Mr.
9 ~fb_)_(7_)(_C_)_~l retu rned for his night shift on the evening 10 of November 1 1 .
11 Mr* l(b)(7)(C) ! statements in his PEC are 12 con sistent with the NRC ' s interview of him on Dec-ember 13 18 , 2015. We have provided Mr. ~l(_ b)_(7_)_(c_)_ ___,l interview 14 statements to you in TVA's written response to 15 Apparent Viol ation 8.
16 Furthermore , while Mr. 1(b)(?)(C) looked 17 into the November 11 events after the senior resident 18 inspector began asking questions in mid-December 2015 ,
19 we have not found any evidence that Mr . 1(b)(?)(C) 20 learned that operators had raised concerns to the OCC 21 as to their ability to control pressurizer water level 22 du ring normal heatup withou t normal l etdown in 23 service , or for that matter, that the OCC overrode any 24 s u ch concerns .
25 There are a couple of communicat i ons where NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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18 1 operators indicated that they had been uneasy 2 proceeding with the heatup, but none indicating that 3 the operators raised concerns to OCC managers.
4 I 'm not going to again go through the 5 emails and discussions that may be pertinent to this 6 regard , but they are identified and discussed in TVA's 7 written response to Apparent Violation 8, and I 8 discussed them yesterday with you in connection to 9 Apparent Violation 9.
10 I'll now turn to the allegations aga inst 11 Mr .l(b)(?)(C) I- Based on his PEC statements, Mr .1(b)(?)(C) 12 does not recall being aware on January the 6th, 2016 13 of operators having raised concerns to the OCC prior 14 to the RHR event .
15 Hi s recollection is consistent with his 16 testimony during his December 18, 2015 interview by 17 the NRC where Mr ,l(b)(7)(C) Istated that no one came to 18 him with concerns and that he does not know, quote ,
19 what they did in the OCC in terms of challenges, end 20 quote.
21 Additional quotes from Mr. l(b)(?)(C) 22 interviews have been provided to you in TVA's written 23 response to Apparent Violation 8. Further, TVA has 24 not found that Mr , l(b)(?)(C) Iwas aware on January 6, 25 2016 that operators had raised quest ions or concerns NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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19 1 with OCC managers .
2 F irst, none of the NRC transcripts or TVA 3 OI G interview summaries provided to TVA show that Mr.
4 l(b)(7)(C) I was aware on November 11 , 2015 of MCR 5 operators having raised concerns .
6 Second , TVA is not aware of Mrl(b)(?)(C) 7 subsequently learning on or before January 6 , 2016 8 that operators had raised any concerns to the OCC 9 prior to the RHR event .
10 While Mr !(b)(?)(C) l is described in TVA OI G 11 interview summaries as having recalled briefing Mr.
12 ~l(b_)_(7_)(_c_) _~l on November 11 about the plan to proceed with 13 a slow, controlled heat up, which , by the way, is 14 consistent with Mr l(b)(?)(C) Itestimony in his Dec-ember 15 1 8, 2015 NRC interview , there is no suggestion in 16 these interview summaries that Mr .l(b)(?)(C) Irelayed MCR 17 operators' q u estions or concerns to Mr . ,(b)(?)(C) 18 Mr. Sprinkle , the occ operations 19 representative , is also described in TVA OIG interview 20 s ummaries as having recalled a briefing on November 11 21 attended by Mr , l(b)(?)(C) ~ but the report expr-e ssly 22 states t h at Mr . Sprinkle did not , and I q u ote ,
23 specifically tell the OCC staff that he was 24 u ncomfortable with heating up u sing the excess 25 l etdown, nor did he te ll them that Johnson was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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20 1 uncomfortable .
2 Again, whi l e Mr. l(b)(7)(C) may have been 3 briefed on November 11 , 2015 of the plan to proceed 4 with a slow, controlled heatu p , the evidence available 5 does not suggest that Mr . l(b)(?)(C) I was aware on 6 November 11 or on January 6 , 2016 that operators had 7 raised a n y concerns to the OCC prior to the RHR event .
8 As for the allegations made against Mr.
9 (b)(?)(C) I TVA has not fou nd that Mr . l(b)(?)(C) was aware on 10 Jan uary 6 , 20 1 6 that operators had raised concerns on 11 November 11 , 2015.
12 Based on his PEC testimony, Mr .l(b)(?)(C) lctoes 13 not recall being aware on January 6, 2016 that 14 operators had raised concerns to the OCC prior to the 15 RHR event .
16 As further discussed in TVA' s written 17 respon se to Apparent Violation 8, none of the NRC 18 transcripts or TVA OIG interview summaries provided to 19 TVA support the allegation that operator concerns were 20 commun icated to Mr. l(b)(?)(C) I on November 11, 20 1 5, or 21 that he subsequently learned on or before January 5 ,
22 2016 that operators had raised any concern s to the OCC 23 prior to or during the RHR event.
24 To summarize t hese points , the NRC's 25 a llegation s of de liberate misconduct presume and infer NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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21 1 that the accused individuals were aware of information 2 and knew it to be material to the NRC's investigation, 3 but that is not a reasonable assumption because the 4 individuals were, as of January 6 , 2016, apparently 5 unaware either of any concerns having been raised with 6 OCC managers or any reason why that might be material, 7 and allegations of deliberate misconduct requiring by 8 the NRC itself a nearly criminal standard should never 9 be based on presumption and inference .
10 I will now move onto whether the 11 participants in the January 6 meeting should have 12 recognized some need to disclose any awareness of 13 improper OCC involvement in the decision to move 14 forward with the heatup .
15 The participants of the J anuary 6 meeting 16 were not aware of any OCC impropriety causing the RHR 17 event , and therefore would have not recognized a need 18 to discuss OCC involvement even if the backup slide 19 had been presented. Thus , the OCC was involved in 20 planning, scheduling, and supporting the heat up is 21 obvious and expected .
22 As I explained earlier, the purpose of the 23 OCC is to support the plant in moving safely and 24 efficient ly through the outage. There is nothing 25 wrong with that .
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22 1 Any theory that participants should have 2 interjected and identified OCC involvement as the 3 cause of the event necessarily requires that the 4 accused individuals knew that something about how the 5 OCC' s involvement in decision making had been imprope r 6 and contributed to the RHR event, otherwise, there 7 could be nothing to tell the NRC .
8 But the overwhelming weight of the 9 evidence does not support such an implication .
10 Rather, the evidence shows that the accused 11 individuals did not perceive on January 6 , 2016 that 12 anyone in the OCC had overstepped their bounds, 13 directed Mr. Johnson to proceed, or overrode any 14 communicated concerns.
15 I ndeed, as I have just discussed, other 16 than Mr. l(b)(7)(C) awareness of questions that he 17 perceived as normal and having been addressed, the 18 participants in the January 6 meeting had no apparent 19 awareness that operators had even raised concerns in 20 the control room.
21 To the extent the allegation against 22 Misters l(b)(?)(C) I,l(b)(7)(C) I,l(b){7)(C) I, I an~ (b)(7)(C) is that 23 they failed to explain to the NRC how mistakes by OCC 24 personnel on November 11 , 2015 had contributed to the 25 RHR event, that connection was not yet understood on NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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23 1 January 6 , 2016.
2 In the absence of an appar ent cau se 3 analysis or root cause analysis on January 6, TVA did 4 not have the benefit of the investigation or analysis 5 that was required to appreciate the role the OCC 6 played in the RHR event .
7 I' 11 again discu ss each accu sed indivictu al 8 separately with regard to this allegation. With 9 respect to Mr . l(b)(7)(C) Iand as previously discu ssed in 10 connection wi th TVA ' s response to Apparent Violat i on 11 9, TVA does not believe that Mr. l{b)(? )(C) I learned 12 throu gh emails or in-person discu ssions with operators 13 that the decision to move forward might have come from 14 the OCC as is alleged in the factual summary .
15 When Mr . l(b)(?)(C) !returned to the site for 16 the night shift on the evening of November 11 , 2015, 17 he recalls that n one of the operators indicated to him 18 that they had been directed to proceed with the heatup 19 on excess letdown over their objections .
20 Specific quotes from Mr. 7 (b_)_( _)(_C_
~l ) __ ~
21 interview with the NRC on December 18 , 2015 which 22 tou ch on this s u bject have been provided to you in 23 TVA ' s written response to Apparent Violation 8.
24 As Mr . l(b)(7)(C) I explained in his PEC 25 statement, he would have been a l armed if he had NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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24 1 learned that MCR operators did not want to proceed 2 with a n evolution, b ut were made to do it .
3 To the extent the NRC is alleging that Mr.
4 ~l (7_)(_
(b_)_ C)_ _~l 1earned that the occ , not the shift manager ,
5 made the dec i sion to move forward, TVA has not fou nd 6 evidence to support that allegation.
7 I will now go through the materials that 8 Mr_ ,(b)(7)(C) I may have seen prior to January 6, 2016 9 becau se they are laid o u t and discu ssed in TVA' s 10 written response to Apparent Vi o l at i on 8 .
11 Suffice it to say that none of the emails 12 or in-person discu ssions indicated to Mr . l(b)(7)(C) 13 that the shift manager had been inappropriately 14 displaced as the ultimate decision maker .
15 The OCC personnel were making p l annin g and 16 scheduling decisions with input from various managers, 17 i nclu d i ng Mr . Sprinkl e' s discu ssions wi th Mr . Johnson .
18 That is an OCC function.
19 Mr . Johnson , as shift manager , had the 20 responsibility in the control room to make the actual 21 decision whether the startup sequences could and 22 shoul d proceed .
23 As Mr. l(b)(7)(C) explained in his PEC 24 statement , he knew both Mr . Sprinkle and Mr . Johnson 25 were senior reactor operators , and he would have NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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25 1 expected them to faithfully discharge their 2 obligations as l icensees .
3 He had no reason to believe that the OCC 4 had infringed on the shift manager's prerogative to 5 con trol operation of the plant. Moreover , he would 6 have expected both Mr. Sprinkle and Mr. Johnson to 7 come to him directly with any concerns if the 8 responsibility and authority of the licensed operators 9 had been compromised .
10 Absent a di r ect statement from either 11 senior reactor operator that something so troubling 12 had occurred , he had no reason to assume that anything 13 improper had occurred.
14 I' 11 turn now to the allegations made 15 against Mr. l(b)(?)(C) 1- Mr. l(b)(?)(C) was aware of OCC 16 involvement in planning and scheduling on November 11, 17 2015 , but insofar as TVA can determine , he also did 18 not perceive the OCC' s involvement as overstepping its 19 bounds or as directing the MCR to proceed .
20 As reflected in TVA OIG interview 21 summaries , Mr. l(b)(?)(C) I believed that the OCC was 22 p ush ing to move forward , but, as I quote , did not feel 23 that there was any abnormal pushing to heatup in order 24 to remain on schedul e .
25 Further, the OIG interview summaries NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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26 1 reflect Mr . l(b)(?)(C) consistent view that the 2 decis i o n to proceed wa s Mr. Johns on 's dec i sion as the 3 shift manager.
4 For example, the summary of the TVA OIG's 5 Jun e 2016 interview says, and I q uote again, it was 6 clear to l(b)(?)(C) I that day that the decision was made 7 by Johnson , who was the shift manager. Additional 8
7 I
quotes from Mr. 1_(b_)_( _)_(c_)_ _ _ OI G interviews have been 9 provided to you in TVA ' s wri t ten response to Apparent 10 Vi olation 8.
11 The factual summary for this apparent 12 violation also alleges that Mr . l(b)(?)(C) Iwas dir-e ctly 13 involved in a discussion with Mr. Johnson on November 14 11 in which Mr . l(b)(7)(C) Iwanted Mr . Johnson to increase 15 the heatup rate, bu t that Mr. Johnson expressed 16 concerns and indicated that he did not want to 17 proceed .
18 As TVA explained in response to its 19 earlier discu ssion of Apparent Violation 4 , TVA has 20 not substantiated the NRC ' s u nsou rced allegation which 21 presumably relates to information obtained by the root 22 cau se ana l ys i s team from an a u x il iary operator .
23 Because this allegation was already 24 discu ssed in detail , I will not repeat that 25 discussion , but it is addressed in TVA ' s written NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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27 1 response to Apparent Violation 8 .
2 As we dis cussed yesterday , it seems 3 inconceivable that if the heatup had occurred because 4 M r.l...._ _ ____,Idirected or coerced Mr.
(b)(?)(C)
Johnson into do i ng 5 so , that Mr . John son woul d n ot have said so in his 6 2016 interviews when he was laying his actions off on 7 the OCC and Watts Bar senior management , and even 8 today in a statement that he submitted to the NRC , Mr.
9 Johnson makes no mention of Mr . l(b)(?)(C) ~
10 Based on Mr fb)(?)(C) recollection , his 11 interaction with Mr . Johnson was certainly within 12 appropriate b o unds for members of the operations 13 department to discuss whether and how to proceed with 14 an evolution .
15 Mr .l(b)(?)(C) Ihas ackn owl edged i n i ntervi ews 16 that he had some healthy challenges with Mr . Johnson, 17 but he has stated both i n his TVA OI G i nt erviews and 18 in his PEC testimony that he did not direct or coerce 19 Mr . Johnson , and that he understood from his 20 discussions that Mr . Johnson was prepared to move 21 forward.
22 Re l evant q uotes f r om Mr . l(b)(?)(C) OI G 23 interviews have been provided to you in TVA's written 24 response t o Apparent Violation 8 .
25 Fu rther, Mr .1(b)(?)(C) l was not a member of NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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28 1 the OCC , and in the numerous interviews conducted by 2 TVA OIG and in his statement responding to Apparent 3 Violation 9, Mr. Johnson never identified any 4 discussion with Mr. r bXn~) ~ but confirmed that any 5 such conversations were not coercive.
6 I' 11 turn now to the allegations made 7 against Mr . ... l(b_)_ I (7_)(_c )_ ..... and Mr. (b)(?)(C) . As senior plant 8 managers, Mr, l(b)(?)(C) Iand Mr. (b)(?)(C) would have been 9 aware of the OCC's functions .
10 The evidence does not, however, show that 11 either was aware of any OCC impropriety causing the 12 even ts of November 11 , or that either Mr. l(b)(?)(C) I or 13 Mr. (b)(?)(C) directed the decision to proceed with the 14 heatup.
15 It seems that Mr. l(b)(?)(C)
- - - - - ~ an I d M l(b)(?)
- r. ~cc~).___,
16 were likely briefed on the plan to heatup, but there 17 is no indication of which we are aware that they 18 directed it or had told anybody else to direct it, and 19 there is no indication that either Mr . 1(b)(?)(C) Ior Mr.
20 (b)(?)(C) recognized that the continued heatup might 21 result in an undesirable rise in the pressurizer 22 level.
23 The evidence I have laid out today does 24 not show that Misters l(b)(?)(C) I, l(b)(?)(C) I, l(b)(?)(C) ~ or 25 (b)(?)(C) made any of the alleged inaccurate statements or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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29 1 omissions during the NRC management meeting on January 2 6 , 2016.
3 I n any event , the alleged omissions really 4 are all predi cated on the , quote, insight s , listed on 5 a backup sl i de allegedly having been mischaracterized 6 by the NRC as the, quote , cause , of the events of 7 November 11 , 2015 , that operator concerns and OCC 8 involvement should have been disclosed to make a 9 discu ssion of cau se comple t e .
10 Whi l e TVA sees no evidence t h at the s lide 11 was presented , or even if presented , that TVA s ,e nior 12 management characterized the bullet points on i ns ights 13 as reflecting the causes of the event , neither of 14 which is s upported by the evidence available to TVA, 15 basing this apparent violat i on entirel y on such an 16 alleged mischaracterization at an NRC management 17 meeting is inappropriat e and wrong.
18 The NRC has alleged not only that TVA's 19 statements at the January 6 meetings were incomplete, 20 but that t h ey were deliberately incomplete. As 21 previously discussed, the NRC set a high bar for 22 allegations of deliberate misconduct, and correctly 23 so .
24 Accu sing l icensee's employees of 25 de l iberate omissions at an informal oral presentation NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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30 1 would only serve to chill communications with the NRC .
2 In thi s regard, as d i s cussed in detail in TVA ' s 3 written response to Apparent Violation 8, the January 4 6 meeting was an NRC management visit to a licensee 5 faci l ity similar to a n informal drop-in meetin g .
6 As the NRC ' s Management Directive 3. 5 7 Handbook explains , and I q uote , NRC ' s staff and 8 management from regional and headquarter's offices 9 visit a facility for various purposes , including , but 10 not limited to tours to enhan ce famil iarity with the 11 facility or operational events discussion of plant 12 issu es , and informal assessmen t of lic-e nsee 13 performance and monitoring, or assessing the 14 performance of NRC's subordinates .
15 Further , in expl aining why drop- in 16 meetings or similar management meetings with senior 17 managers at the region in which their facility is 18 located need not be open to the public, the handbook 19 states , and again I quote , these visits should be 20 limited to a general exchange of information not 21 directly related to any regulatory action or decision.
22 I ssua n ce of a meet i ng notice or summary may limit the 23 frank exchange of information and dissuade future 24 commu nications .
25 Consequ entl y , the NRC should recognize NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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31 1 that the January 6 meeting was an informal meeting to 2 further a frank exchange of information and was not 3 and should not be construed as one intended to 4 influence any regulatory action or decision.
5 According to the accused individuals , none 6 was prepared to or intended to speak to the causation 7 of the November 11 , 2015 events, an issue that TVA had 8 not yet investigated, but had initiated an apparent 9 cause analysis just the day before on January 5 .
10 It is thus unfair to accuse them of 11 intentionally, knowingly omitting to mention facts 12 that were only later understood to be significant in 13 light of formal causal analyses.
14 Additionally, in the context of 10 CFR 15 50.9, the NRC has recognized that it is prudent to 16 apply a different standard to oral communications than 17 to written communications .
18 Indeed, the NRC stated that, and I quote ,
19 the Commission recognizes that oral information may in 20 some situations be inherently less reliable than 21 written submittals because of the absence of an 22 opportunity for reflection and management review .
23 Accordingly, even if the backup slide was 24 presented to the NRC, contrary to all of the evidence ,
25 and even if the insights on the slide were somehow NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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32 1 characterized during the discussion as the cause of 2 the event, also contrary to all of the evidence and 3 which seems extremely dubious, charging four 4 individuals with deliberate misconduct all predicated 5 on a bullet on that slide being mischaracterized is 6 inconsistent with the deliberate misconduct rule.
7 The slide itself , if it was indeed 8 presented, was clearly labeled as providing insights, 9 not causes .
10 There appears to have been universal 11 recognition at the meeting that TVA had not yet 12 iden tified the cau ses of the RHR event, and there is 13 no evidence of which TVA is aware that would lead TVA 14 to conclude that any of its employees deliberately 15 withheld information from the NRC on January 6, 2016.
16 This concludes TVA' s presentation relating 17 to Apparen t Violation 8 , and I will now turn it over 18 to my colleague, Monica Hernandez, to discuss Apparent 19 Violations 10 and 11 , which do share some 20 commonalities with Apparent Violation 8. Thank you.
21 MS. HERNANDEZ: Thank you, Tom. Apparent 22 Violations 10 and 11 are premised on information in 23 TVA ' s Level II Corrective Action Program evaluation, 24 also referred to as the apparent cau se analysis or ACA 25 for short, being allegedly incomplete and inaccurate .
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33 1 I will first discuss Apparent Violation 10 2 which TVA denies. I will explai n TVA ' s pos ition that 3 the ACA report was complete and accurate in all 4 material respects when submitted, and that it 5 accurately reported the conclusions that the ACA team 6 had reached based on the information TVA had collected 7 as of the time the report was completed .
8 Next, I will explain that as a result of 9 this investigation , the ACA team learned that there 10 appeared to be a causal production over safety issue 11 and thus recommended a full root cause analysis or RCA 12 for short .
13 As such , it is not reasonable to view the 14 ACA report as incomplete or inaccurate simply becau se 15 there were issues that it did not reach which were 16 issues the RCA was expected to examine.
17 Lastly, I will discuss why the evidence 18 does not support an allegation that the two TVA 19 employees accused of deliberate miscondu ct, Mr ~(b)(?)(C) I 20 and Mr . l(b)(?)(C) I, intentionally submitted information 21 that was incomplete or inaccurate .
22 Let me tur n to the fi r st point , that the 23 ACA report was complete and accurate in all material 24 respects when submitted . First , the ACA report was 25 not i ncomplete or i naccurate as the NRC alleges in NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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34 1 failing to state that the MCR operators raised 2 concerns with the OCC staff regarding removing RHR 3 from service and continuing the heatup using only 4 excess letdown.
5 The ACA report explicitly states , and I 6 quote , interviews with OCC personnel indicated that 7 the s hif t's concerns with securing RHR and commencing 8 the heatup on excess letdown were not communicated 9 effectively beyond the OCC ops representative , end 10 q uote.
11 That statement in the report discloses 12 that t here were shift concerns and t hat they were 13 communicated to the OCC operations representative.
14 This statement not only accu rately reflects the 15 information that was gathered by the ACA team, but 16 also appears supported by the weight of the evidence .
17 In this r egard , the shift manager, Mr .
18 Johnson, prepared a written statement on January 15 ,
19 2016 which states , quote, I didn't have concrete 20 evidence or OE that excess letdown would not be able 21 to maintain pressurizer level , so I didn ' t feel 22 comfortable p ushing back on the senior managers i n the 23 OCC, and refusing to raise RCS temp any more until 24 normal letdown was back . I did have several 25 conversations with Bill Sprinkle, ops rep in the OCC ,
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35 1 and voiced my concern, end quote.
2 This statement did not refer to any 3 concerns raised either than by Mr. Johnson to Mr.
4 Sprinkle, and it indicates that Mr. Johnson was not 5 comfortable pushing back due to a lack of concrete 6 evidence or operating expense that excess letdown 7 would not be able to maintain pressurizer level .
8 Most of the interviews with Mr. Johnson by 9 the ACA team do not appear to make any further mention 10 of operators raising concerns or having any specific 11 communications with the OCC or management regarding 12 the heatup .
13 A copy of the ACA team's interview notes 14 have been provided to you as Exhibit 3 2 on TVA' s 15 written response to the apparent violations.
16 Statements from the unit supervisor , Mr.
17 l(b)(7)(C) and operator at the controls, Mr .
18 Blankenship, indicate that concerns were communicated 19 to Mr. Johnson , but also indicate that they were 20 unaware of what Mr. Johnson actually said to the OCC.
21 These statements have also been provided to you as 22 Exhibits 33 and 32 respectively .
23 In addition, the ACA team's notes of its 24 interview with Mr. Sprinkle do not reflect his having 25 communicated Mr . Johnson's concerns or other members NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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36 1 of the OCC, excuse me, do not reflect his having 2 communicated Mr. Johnson's concerns to other members 3 of the OCC or senior management. Rather, those notes 4 state that the decision to continue with the heatup 5 was, quote, a decision of ops , end quote .
6 The ACA team's understanding that Mr.
7 Sprinkle did not communicate Mr. Johnson 's concerns to 8 other members of the OCC is consistent with a 9 statement that Mr. Sprinkle provided to the TVA OIG 10 shortly after the ACA report was finalized.
11 The TVA OIG interview summary of Mr.
12 Sprinkle states on the morning of November 11 , 2015, 13 Mr. Sprinkle met with the OCC staff, but then at that 14 meeting, quote, Mr. Sprinkle did not specifically tell 15 the OCC staff that he was uncomfortable with heating 16 up using the excess letdown , nor did he tell them that 17 Johnson was uncomfortable, end quote.
18 The summary also states that, quote, in 19 hindsight , Sprinkle wishes he had done a better job 20 expressing his and Johnson ' s concerns, end quote.
21 Additionally, the ACA team interviewed the 22 ~l (b_)(_?)_
( c_J _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___,I' who had been on d uty 23 during the day shift on November 11. The team's notes 24 of that interview do not reflect that Mr. (b)(?)(C) was 25 aware of the operators or Mr. Johnson having raised NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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37 1 concerns. Again, these notes have been provided to 2 you as Exhibit 32 .
3 Reflecting what the ACA team had learned 4 from Mr. Sprinkle and Mr. (b)(7)(C) the ACA r -e port 5 accurately stated that interviews with OCC personnel 6 indicated that the shift ' s concerns with continuing 7 with the heatup on only excess letdown were not 8 communicated effectively beyond the OCC office 9 representative, Mr. Sprinkle . Again , this stat-e ment 10 acknowledges that shift concerns were communicated to 11 the OCC operations representative.
12 Further, as Mr . Hill discussed in response 13 to Apparent Violation 8, TVA has not identified 14 evidence leading to the conclusion that MCR operators 15 raised con cerns with other members of the OCC staff.
16 Summaries of interviews by TVA OIG of the l(b)(7)(C) 17 I, Mr. l(b)(7)(C) I, do show that Mr .
l(b)(7)(C) occ, 18 I, who was not a member of the had 19 discu ssions with Mr. Johnson and MCR operators on 20 November 11, 2015, but those interview summaries do 21 not indicate that Mr. l(b)(?)(C) communicated any 22 operator concerns to the OCC .
23 As Mr. Hill also discussed, TVA has not 24 identified evidence leading to the conclusion that 25 operator concerns were commun i cated to the l(b)(?)(C) I NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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38 1 l(b)(?)(C) ~ Mr l(b)(?)(C) I, ..... - )(_c)_ _ _ _ _ _ _I, Mr .
or l(b-)(7 2 l.(b)(?)(C) I. o n Novemb e r 1 1 , 2015 .
3 On balance, information collected through 4 the ACA team's investigation and interviews s upport 5 the ACA report ' s findings that there was ineffective 6 communication of any concerns to the OCC beyond Mr.
7 Sprinkle, and thu s, that the OCC , other than Mr .
8 Sprinkle, was unaware of MCR operator concerns.
9 Accordingly , the ACA report did not state 10 that operators raised concerns with the OCC staff 11 beyond Mr. Sprinkle because that went against the 12 team ' s fi n dings . To state otherwise wou ld have made 13 the ACA report inaccurate.
14 Second , the ACA report was not incomplete 15 or inaccurate as the NRC a l leges in failing to state 16 that the OCC was involved in discussions and decision 17 making on November 11 , and influenced the MCR staff to 18 proceed with the heatup.
19 The ACA team was presented with no 20 evidence that led them to conclude that OCC personnel 21 directed the MCR staff to proceed with the heatup on 22 on l y exc ess l e t down or that the l eve l of OCC 23 involvement in scheduling or operations discussion was 24 abnormal or inappropriate .
25 The ACA team ' s find i ngs are consistent NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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39 1 with TVA ' s understanding. That is of January 21 ,
2 2016 , the date t he ACA rep ort was finalize d, TVA 3 management had no apparent appreciation that OCC 4 involvement caused or contributed to the decision 5 making of the MCR staff on November 11 .
6 As Mr . Hill discussed in response to 7 Apparent Violation 8 , while there was awareness that 8 the plan to proceed with a slow , controlled heat up had 9 been discu ssed and briefed in the OCC and was 10 reported, there does not appear to have been any 11 recognition that the OCC ' s involvement was unusual , or 12 that the OCC had directed Mr . Johnson to proceed , or 13 overridden any communicated concerns.
14 Indeed , as I explained , the OCC , other 15 than Mr. Sprinkle, appears to have had no apparent 16 awareness that operators had raised concerns .
17 The notes of t h e ACA team ' s interviews do 18 not reflect Mr . Johnson identifying anyone directing 19 him to proceed. Instead , the notes reflect Mr .
20 Johnson explaining that he acted out of fear of 21 retaliation , which the ACA team included in the 22 repor t , and which prompted in part the recommendat i on 23 to perform a full root cause evaluation.
24 Fu rther , Mr . Joh nson's Janu ary 15 , 2016 25 written statemen t onl y i dentif i ed discu ssions with Mr .
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40 1 Sprinkle , and included no statement that he was 2 directed by Mr. Sprinkle or anyone e lse. Mr.
3 Johnson ' s written statement has been provided to you 4 as Exhibit 68.
5 The ACA team ' s notes from the interview of 6 Mr. Sprinkle also do not indicate that he gave any 7 direction to Mr. Johnson. Instead , as I previously 8 stated, the notes say, quote, this was a decision by 9 ops , end q uote.
10 The statements Mr. Sprinkle gave during 11 his December 18, 2015 interview with the NRC also 12 reflect mutual agreement to proceed with the heatup 13 and not direction by the OCC. Relevant quotes from 14 Mr. Sprinkle ' s interview have been provided to you in 15 TVA's written response to Apparent Violation 10.
16 As I stated earlier , the ACA team also 17 interviewed Mr . Hough, the OCC manager, but notes of 18 that interview also do not reflect any directions from 19 the OCC. Indeed , shortly after the ACA was issued ,
20 Mr. Johnson corroborated having received no direction 21 from the OCC.
22 Notes of an interview by the RCA team of 23 Mr. Johnson on February 11, 2016 state that, quote, 24 the interviewee indicated that there were discu ssions 25 with the OCC ops rep. The interviewee also indicated NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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41 1 that there was no discussion with any OCC management 2 di r e c t l y eithe r in t he OCC or in the MCR , end q u ote .
3 Further , when asked whether he had talked 4 to any senior management before the decis i on was made 5 to proceed , Mr . J ohnson said no .
6 Moreover , as explained in response to 7 Apparent Violations 4 and 8 , TVA has not found any 8 evidence to substantiate the allegation that the OCC 9 or senior management directed Mr. Johnson to proceed ,
10 recogni zed that there had been any objections, or 11 understood that the action was non-conservative.
12 TVA has not found any evidence suggesting 13 that the OCC overstepped its bounds or directed the 14 MCR to proceed .
15 In sum, in the absence of any 16 determination of a degraded work environment which had 17 n ot yet been i nvestigated , the ACA team viewed the 18 decision to proceed with the heatup on only excess 19 le t down as properl y residing wi t h Mr . Johnson and 20 attr i b u ted to h im the responsibility for not having 21 objected to it.
22 Neither the ACA team n o r Mistersl(b)(?)(C) I,
_ ___,I' or ____
23 l....(b_)(?)(C) (b)(?)(C) would have viewed discussions in the 24 OCC as having overridden Mr . Johnson ' s decision making 25 respon sibili ty or as havi ng effectu ated the decision NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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42 1 reserved to the licensed operators to move the plan .
2 The ACA team 's view was al s o t h at while it 3 is the OCC ' s job to encourage operators to adhere to 4 the schedu le , the responsibility to validate 5 assumption s and informat i on lies with the MCR .
6 Nevertheless , it is important to note that 7 the ACA report ' s conclusions fault s the OCC ' s staff 8 for not recognizing or challenging the non -
9 con servative decision to continue heatup on excess 10 l etdown .
11 The ACA report also states that risks were 12 not properly evalu ated and managed by the MCR or the 13 occ. Accordingly, although the ACA report did not 14 come to the u ltimate conclusion that the RCA did after 15 further i nvestigat i o n and review , the ACA report 16 certainly did not exonerate the OCC.
17 Moving onto my second po i nt , it appears 18 that Apparent Violation 10 faults the ACA for not 19 reflecting determinations made by the RCA ,
20 determinations that had not been made when the ACA was 21 finalized.
22 The NRC should not fault the ACA report 23 for not looking deeply into the safety culture aspects 24 that may have impacted the events of November 11 , 2015 25 because that was not the ACA ' s i ntent and because the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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43 1 ACA team responsibly and correctly recognized that a 2 f ull root cause analysis was needed .
3 Early in the ACA investigation , the team 4 learned that Mr. Johnson feared retaliation , which may 5 have influenced his decision to p r oceed with the 6 heatup on only excess letdown .
7 Specifically, as document ed in the ACA 8 report , the team found that, quote, shift manager felt 9 uncomfortable not proceeding based on concerns with 10 reprisal.
11 While instances were referenced in the 12 interview with t h e SM related to punitive measures 13 taken against personnel within the operations 14 organization related to job performance deficiencies ,
15 intervi ews with other shift managers did not indicate 16 similar fear of reprisal for stopping activities due 17 to concerns for nuclear safety, end q uote .
18 The ACA team also received feedback on the 19 report by the l(b)(7)(C) 20 l....__________________________,'I (b)(7)(C) which 21 recommends that there was a production over safety 22 i ssu e . Mr . ~l(b-)(-7)-(C_)_ __,l letter has been provided to you 23 as Exhibit 70 .
24 Thus, as a result of these and other 25 safety culture issu es warranting f urther review, the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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44 1 ACA recommended a full root cause analysis. In fact, 2 the RCA report states, quote, the team that performed 3 the Level II evaluation provided the recommendation 4 that a root cau se analysis should be performed to 5 determine the root causes of the event and to develop 6 corrective actions to preclude repetition , end quote.
7 The RCA also states, quote, the 8 recommendation from that effort was that a root cause 9 evaluation should be performed to fully understand the 10 breakdowns that occurred at Watts Bar that preceded 11 the shift manager's decision to remove RHR from 12 service with a plan in an abnormal alignment , end 13 quote.
14 Again , the ACA was intended to foc u s on 15 the immediate cause of the November 1 1, 2015 events 16 and to gather information quickly, not to dig deeply 17 into the root cause.
18 Accordingly, the ACA report was complete 19 and accurate in reporting its findings and conclusions 20 and covered the subject matters it was intended to 21 examine.
22 It is not reasonable to view the ACA 23 report as incomplete or inaccurate simply because 24 there were issues that it did not reach, especially 25 when i t expressly recommended that these i ssues need NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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45 1 to be addressed further.
2 Rather, the ACA must be viewed as a r -e sult 3 of the review with the level of effort appropriate 4 with that expected or an apparent cau se evaluat i on ,
5 and identifies apparen t and contributing causes , not 6 root causes of events.
7 The ACA must also be viewed as a re s ult of 8 the review that identified what was apparent to the 9 team at the time, and speci f ically recommended f u rther 10 inqu iry as was communicated to the NRC .
11 Furthermore , in promulgating 10 CFR 12 Section 50 . 9, the Commission emphasized that being 13 forthright in communications is essential if the NRC 14 is to fulfill its responsibilities .
15 However , appl ying Sect i on 50. 9 to apparent 16 cause analysis, you will have the chilling effect of 17 disincentivizing lice ns ee personnel involved in such 18 analysis from expressing their perceptions or of 19 apparent and contributing causes out of fear of being 20 accu sed of providing allegedl y incomplete or 21 inaccurate information if a later , more thorough 22 analysis comes to a different conclusion or if an NRC 23 reviewer has different opinions .
24 As for my l ast point , the evidence 25 provi ded shows that the two TVA empl oyees involved ,
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46 1 Mr.~ mm'n7 and Mr. ____ (b)(7)(C) ,
did not intentionally submit 2 informa tion to TVA t hat was incomplete or inaccurate.
3 After initiating the ACA review on January 12, 2016, 4 the ACA team spent the weekend looking into the events 5 of November 11 .
6 In l(b)(?)(C) I, Mf b)(7)(C) r ma i led Mr l(b)(7)(C) 7 and Mr j(b)(7)(C) Ia copy of the draft ACA r -e port 8 stating, quote, I 9
10 (b)(?)(C) 11 12 13 end quote.
14 This email was not sent for an improper 15 means, but rather because the ACA team had been 16 working all weekend on the evaluation which was still 17 a work in progress, and Mr!(b)(7)(C)~ anted to ensure that 18 the team was getting to the bottom of the November 11 19 events .
20 As I Mr ~(b)(?)(C) explained during his PEC 21 testimony , he also wanted to get Mr l(b)(7)(C) Iand Mr.
22 l~-_____
(b )(7)(C) Ii nput on the draft report as they were very 23 experienced senior managers and he was interested in 24 their views whether the ACA was adequately responding 25 to the NRC staff's con cerns .
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47 1 Moreover, at that time, Mr. l(b)(?)(C) Iwas 2 ~ thus it 3 would have been reasonable for Mr!~~~(?) Ito believe that 4 Mr l(b)(7)(C) l would have to ultimately approve the ACA 5 report . As such , it seems appropriate that Mr!~~)57) I 6 would seek input from senior leadership, especially 7 from the chair of the approving committee .
8 The following day , on Monday, January 18, 9 2016 , Mrj(b)(?)(C)~ent another email to Mr l(b)(7)(C) land Mr.
10 l(b)(?)(C) Iattaching an updated draft of the ACA report 11 and stating , review culture aspects.
12 In response , Mrl(b)(7)(C) !quot ed a section of 13 the draft report which referenced discussion X.11 of 14 the culture aspect ' s section of the ACA report. This 15 secti on of the report was c h anged between the draft 16 and the final.
17 The n ext slide of today's presentation 18 shows Mr l(b)(?)(C) p roposed language and the language 19 of discussion X . 11 result ing after Mr .1(b)(?)(C) 20 proposal .
21 As you can see , Mr l(b)(7)(C) proposed 22 l a nguage was not adopted in the fina l draft, and the 23 red lines showing changes between the drafts has also 24 been provided to you in TVA' s written response to 25 Apparent Violation 10 .
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48 1 Based on TVA ' s investigation , TVA 2 understands t hat this change was propos ed i n orde r t o 3 make discussion X .11 consistent with the discussion of 4 safety conscious work environment which states t hat 5 the shift ' s concerns were not commun icated effectively 6 beyond the OCC ops representative.
7 Specifically, TVA understands t h e decision 8 had been made to remove reference to the OCC as making 9 decisions related to plant operations becau se it was 10 the ACA team ' s correct unde r standing that operational 11 decisions are reserved for the MCR , not the OCC.
12 Since the MCR operat ors were the only ones 13 with the authority to make decisions related to 14 controlling the plant , M~(b)(7)(C) ~elieved the ACA shou ld 15 reflect t hat reality. Accordingly, Mr (b)(?)(C) esponded 16 to M~(b)(?)(C) email by telling him that he had 17 a l ready made the change .
18 As such , Mr ~(b)(7)(C) ! response actually 19 reflects that Mr l{b)(?)(C) lhad effectuated no changes in 20 the final ACA report . A copy of Mr l(b)(?)(C) lemail was 21 provided to you as Exhibit 74 .
22 Moreover , as you can see on this sl i de ,
23 the changes made to discussion X.11 did not limit that 24 discu ssion to the control room. Rat her, the 25 discussion was changed to state that underlying NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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49 1 assumptions were not chal l enged without attributing 2 this fai lure to either the MCR or the OCC .
3 I mportantly , what the draft version and 4 the final version of discussion X.11 refer the reader 5 to H .11, which remained unchanged between versions and 6 clearly places responsibili t ies on both the MCR and 7 the OCC .
8 MS. HERNANDEZ: H.11 states quote, when 9 associated with performing 1-SI-0905 with the plant 10 access s l ide down in Mode 4, were not properl y 11 validated and managed by the main control room or OCC, 12 end q uote.
13 That statement was also included in the 14 body of the ACA report . The ACA team made other 15 chan ges in the report to align with the team's 16 understanding.
17 But, the OCC does not have decision mak ing 18 capabilities when it comes to operating the plant.
19 That t he NCR operators are the individuals requi red to 20 validate their assumpt i ons a n d information.
21 That validation of assumptions and 22 info rmat ion occurs in the MCR and not in the OCC. And 23 to accurately assure that the OCC was extricated with 24 fau lt . Those changes are discussed in detail in TVA's 25 respon se to Apparent Violation 10 .
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50 1 Thus, while the ACA report actuated the 2 decision making to the MCR because that was the 3 responsibility of the licensed operators , it fell to 4 the OCC staff for not only failing to recognize and 5 challenge the lack of assertive decision making, but 6 also for not properly evaluating and managing the risk 7 associated with performing 1-SI-0905 with plant access 8 slide down in Mode 4.
9 10 (b)(?)(C) _.
To summarize this point, Mr l(b)(?)(C) land Mr.
provided comments to the draft ACA report, because 11 they believed as drafted, an original statement 12 conflicted with another statement in the stakeholder 13 aspect of the report. Their comments were also meant 14 to align the ACA with the team's conclusions .
15 As such, it was the intent of both Mr.
16 l(b)(?)(C) Iand M (b)(?)(C) to make the ACA report as complete 17 and accurate as possible, not the opposite . And their 18 comments certainly did not absolve the OCC of 19 responsibility .
20 I n any event , any alleged incomplete or 21 inaccurate statement made in the ACA r -e port 22 attributable to M~(b)(?)(C) pr Mr l(b)(?)(C) !would have been 23 an honest mistake, based on their understanding at the 24 time the ACA report was written.
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51 1 a high bar for allegations of deliberate misconduct .
2 TVA ha s n ot seen a n y evidence that M (b)(?)(C) o r Mr .
3 (b)(?)(C) were aware that during the events of November 11 4 MCR operator concerns regarding continuing to heat up 5 with only access s lide down were effectively 6 communicated to the OCC beyond Mr. Sprinkle as the ACA 7 report d isclosed . Or that the OCC directed the MCR 8 operators to proceed with the heat up.
9 Additionally , TVA has not seen any 10 eviden ce that M~(b)(?)(C) lor Mr l(b)(?)(C) !be l ieved that the 11 OCC can make operational decisions . Or that the OCC 12 cou ld override a shift man ager ' s decision making 13 responsibility.
14 As such, TVA sees no basis to conclude 15 that Mr {b)(?)(C) r Mr ,l(b)(?)(C) I de liberately submitted 16 incomplete or inaccurate information to TVA . I will 17 n ow move o n to Apparent Viol at i on 11 .
18 In Apparent Violation 11, the NRC alleges 19 that during a Febru ary 2 , 2016 non-public drop - in 20 meet i ng with NRC managers, TVA management presented a 21 slide addressing the ACA for the November 11, 2015 22 even ts .
23 This slide contains statements that the 24 NRC acknowledges are consistent with statements in the 25 fi n a l ACA report. In other words, the apparent --
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52 1 Apparent Violation 11 is redundant to Apparent 2 Vi olat i on 10 .
3 It asserts that the slide regarding the 4 resu lts of the apparent cau se of the November 11 5 even ts was incomplete and i naccurate for the exact 6 same reasons that the NRC alleges with respect to 7 Apparent Violation 10 .
8 The NRC does not allege any difference in 9 the state of TVA's knowledge be t ween the issuance of 10 the ACA r eport o n Jan uary 21 , 2016 and the February 2 ,
11 2016 meeting . TVA respectfully submits in citing TVA 12 for a second allegedly willful violation b ecaus e of 13 presentation slide, repeated conclusions in the ACA 14 report is u nwarranted .
15 Because Apparen t Violat i on 1 1 is redundant 16 with Apparent Violation 10, I will not repeat my 17 statements from Apparent Violation 10 . But I wil l 18 summarize some points.
19 First , for the reasons I discuss in 20 response with Apparent Violation 10, the ACA report 21 was not incomplete or inaccurate. The report not only 22 accurate l y reflects the information that was gathered 23 by the ACA team , but it was supported by the weight of 24 the evidence .
25 Accordi ngly , the parti c i pants at a J anuary NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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53 1 2, 2016 drop - in meeting , including Mr. 1~~;7) I, Mr.
2 l(b)(7)(C) Iand Mr (b)(?)(C) , had no basis to state that MCR 3 operators raised concerns with the OCC staff either at 4 the meeting or thereafter.
5 Second , for the reasons I discussed in 6 response to Apparent Violat ion 10, the ACA report 7 reflected the ACA team 's ult imate findings regarding 8 what they believed at the time the report was made, 9 were the apparent and contributing cau ses for the 10 November 11 , 2015 even ts.
11 Thus , the changes that were made to the 12 ACA report during its drafting, were made to align the 13 report with the ACA teams ' understanding of the 14 events . Accordingly , the presenters at the February 15 2 meeting had no reason to discuss changes that had 16 been made in drafting.
17 Additionally, it bears repeating that the 18 ACA did not absolve the OCC from responsibility. In 19 discu ssing the safety filter aspects , it specifically 20 stated that quote, risk associated with performing l-21 SI-0905 with the plant access slide down in Mode 4 ,
22 were not properly evaluated and managed by the main 23 control room or OCC, end quote.
24 Third, as I previously discussed , the ACA 25 team recognized that there were further issues to NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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54 1 examine , including the shift manager's disclosure that 2 he had acted out of fear of retaliation, and therefore 3 recommended a full group cross evaluation.
4 As can be seen on the next slide , which is 5 a slide at issue in Apparent Violation 11, during the 6 February 2, 2016 drop - in meeting , TVA personnel 7 explicitly informed the NRC that TVA was conducting an 8 RCA to further understand the event of November 11, 9 2015 .
10 This slide states quote, apparent cost 11 analysis complete. Root cost in progress , end quote.
12 In fact , the following slide of the February 2 13 presentation, which is also the second slide of 14 today's presentation, states other actions taken or in 15 progress quote, initiated root cost analysis to 16 validate other factors associated with decision making 17 and critical thinking, including extent of cost and 18 condition, end quote.
19 As such, the NRC knew at the Febru ary 2 ,
20 2016 meeting that TVA had not yet reached final 21 determinations as to the causes of the November 11, 22 2015 events.
23 For these reasons it is unreasonable for 24 the NRC to view the February 2, 2016 slide as 25 incomplete or inaccurate, simply because there were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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55 1 issues that the ACA did not reach, issues that would 2 be f u rther analyzed in a forthcoming RCA .
3 It is particularl y unreasonable to do so 4 based on a drop-in meeting that was presented, that 5 was presenting only a high level summary of the ACA.
6 I would also like to point out that the February 2, 7 2016 non-public drop-in meeting was an informal 8 meeting with NRC management.
9 And as the NRC's management directive3.5 10 pamphlet explains senior executives of a licensee may 11 request the opportunity to have a drop-in visit or 12 similar management meetings with the EDO or with other 13 senior managers at agency headquarters.
14 Further, in explaining why drop - in 15 meetings for senior managers at the agency 16 headquarters may not be open to the public, the 17 Handbook states quote, these visits should be limited 18 to a general exchange of information not directly 19 related to any regulatory action or decision.
20 I ssuance of a meeting notice or summary, be limited to 21 a frank exchange of information and dissuade future 22 communications , end q uote .
23 Accordingly the NRC recognized, should 24 recognize that the February 2 non-public drop-in 25 meeting was an informal meeting to further a frank NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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56 1 exchange of information. And was not , and should not 2 be construed as one intended to advise any 3 irregularity action or decision.
4 Applying 10 CFR Section 50.9 to informal 5 discussion s regarding apparent cost evaluations such 6 as the February 2 drop - in meeting with the ACA for the 7 events of November 11 was discussed, would have the 8 chilling effect of incentivizing licensees from 9 sharing views of the apparent cause of an event .
10 Out of concern that any mention or bullet 11 point might not be considered sufficiently elaborate 12 at the NRC , or o ut of fear that discussing the results 13 of an apparent cause evaluation would be characterized 14 as separate violations for the complete inaccuracy 15 rule i n which the meeting participants are complacent 16 if the NRC staff later disagrees with the results of 17 the evaluation .
18 This can also have the chilling effect of 19 incentivizing licensees from having fut u re drop - in 20 meetings and communications with the NRC, which TVA 21 understands it is not the intent of the NRC. That 22 being said, I will now briefly discuss the de l iberate 23 allegations brought against Messrs J(b)(?)(C) I __ and (b)(?)(C) 24 l~~r) ~
25 TVA does not believe that the evidence NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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57 1 shows that any allegedly inaccurate statement or 2 omission by these individuals occurred during the 3 February 2 meeting.
4 Specifically, TVA has not in any evidence 5 that as of February 2, 2016 these men were aware that 6 the events of November 11 , 2015 or their subsequent 7 communications about it involved NCR operators raising 8 concerns to the OCC beyond Mr. Sprinkle as the ACA 9 report disclosed about the decision to proceed with 10 the plant heat up the only access slide down, or that 11 the OCC directed the NCR operators to proceed with the 12 heat up.
13 Thus, neither Messrs. l(b)(?)(C) I, (b)(?)(C) , or 14 ~~r) ad any evidence that led them to believe that the 15 l evel of OCC involvement in planning, scheduling, or 16 operations discussion was abnormal or improper. And 17 thus something that should have been discussed during 18 the informal drop-in meeting on February 2.
19 TVA also has not seen any evidence that 20 these men believe the OCC could have -- could make 21 operational decisions , or that the OCC could override 22 the shift manager's decision making responsibility.
23 Furthermore , it is not -- it does not seem 24 reasonable to assume that the prior draft of the ACA 25 report was more accurate than the final version, which NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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58 1 went through a formal process before being finalized.
2 As such, it would not have been reasonable 3 for the accused individuals to have informed the NRC 4 during the February 2 meeting of previous draft 5 statements in the ACA report, which were ultimately 6 determined to be inaccurate by the ACA team.
7 While a later and more thorough analysis, 8 the RCA came to a different conclusion then the ACA, 9 basing this Apparent Violation entirely on later 10 findings, findings that were not yet available as of 11 February 2, 2016 is wrong.
12 The NRC has alleged not only that TVA 13 statements that the February 2, 2016 drop-in meeting 14 were incomplete , but that they were deliberately 15 incomplete. And was previously -- as was previously 16 discussed, the NRC has set a high bar for allegations 17 of deliberate misconduct .
18 Accusing licensee employees of 19 deliberately omitting at an informal oral presentation 20 would only serve to chill communications to the NRC.
21 As I've previously explained, the NRC should recognize 22 that the February 2 non-public drop-in meeting was an 23 informal meeting to further a frank exchange of 24 information, and was not and should not be construed 25 as one intended to influence any regulatory action or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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59 1 decision .
2 According to the TVA summary notes of the 3 February 2 meeting, which has been provided to you as 4 Exhibit 75 , the discussion regarding the ACA was only 5 quote, a high leve l summary of the results, end quote, 6 not a deep dive into the ACA or the RCA.
7 Furthermore, as we previously saw, the 8 cite discussing the ACA explicitly stated that an RCA 9 had been initiated quote, to evaluate other factors 10 associated with decision making and critical thinking, 11 including extent of cause and condition, end quote.
12 It is thus unfair to accuse TVA personnel of 13 intentionally, knowingly , or knowingly omitting facts 14 that were only later understood to be significant in 15 light of an RCA.
16 The standard for deliberate omissions from 17 informal oral presentations to the NRC -- excuse me .
18 If the standard for deliberate omissions from informal 19 oral presentations to the NRC is slow enough to 20 capture what happened at the February 2, 2016 drop-in 21 meeting between TVA and NRC Region II management, then 22 it is a barrier to a free and frank exchange of 23 information between licensees and the agency.
24 Licensees should feel free to share what 25 they know to the best of their understanding without NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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60 1 fear that in retrospect it will appear that additional 2 information might have been u nderstood to be relevant .
3 That concludes TVA ' s presentation leading 4 to Apparent Violations 10 and 11 . I will now turn it 5 over to Jim Barstow.
6 MR. BARSTOW : Thank you , Ms. Hernandez.
7 As you have heard from Mr. Hill and Ms. Hernandez, 8 there is simply no evidence, at least that was 9 available to TVA , indicating that TVA employees 10 provided the NRC with inaccurate or incomplete 11 information as alleged in Apparent Violations 8 , 10, 12 and 11, mu ch less did they do so intentionally .
13 A common element among all of these 14 apparent violations is that TVA was working earnestly 15 to provide the NRC with up to date information on an 16 ongoing basis as the information evolved while TVA 17 employees condu cted their reviews and obtained 18 information over time.
19 They did not have all the information 20 right away. And in some instances, the information 21 they had was understandably supplemented or a new 22 perception was developed as the review progressed .
23 But they made sure that the NRC knew what 24 they knew at the time they were providing information 25 to the NRC. These alleged violations all occurred NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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61 1 within a relatively short period of time while TVA was 2 trying to understand what exactly had happened on 3 November 11 , 2015, and perhaps more importantly, how 4 it happened.
5 Obviously, t he NRC wants to encourage a 6 free flow of information on an ongoing basis.
7 Licensees should not be concerned that they need to 8 withhold information from t he NRC until they have 9 reached final and conclusive determination, out of 10 fear that the NRC may pursue a violation for providing 11 information that in retrospect once the investigation 12 is complete, could potentially be construed as 13 inaccurate or incomplete.
14 Further, it should be, and is indeed a 15 high standard that must be met to show that an 16 individual deliberately provided the NRC with 17 incomplete or inaccurate information. This is a very 18 serious allegation. And in these cases , there is 19 simply no evidence apparent to TVA that supports such 20 allegations.
21 That concludes our comments on Apparent 22 Violations 8, 10 and 11 . And I believe the agenda 23 calls for a break now, Mr. O 'Brien, if you wanted to 24 take that agenda break.
25 MR. 0 ' BRIEN: Mr. Bars tow, you are reading NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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62 1 my mind exactly. What I would like to do is take a 2 break from now until 32 minutes after the hour if 3 that's okay with everybody.
4 And we'll return then and discuss AV 12.
5 I s that good with you, Mr. Barstow?
6 MR. BARSTOW: Yes. It is, Mr. O'Brien.
7 Thank you .
8 MR. O' BRIEN: Thank you. We're off the 9 record and will be back at 32 minutes after the hour.
10 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 11 went off the record at 9: 18 a. m. and 12 resumed at 9:33 a .m. )
13 MR. 0' BRIEN: Thank you, we' re back on the 14 record then. Mr. Barstow, if you'd like to continue 15 with AV l2?
16 MR. BARSTOW: Yes. Thank you, Mr .
17 O'Brien . I'd now ask Mr. Lewis to discuss Adverse 18 Violation 12.
19 MR. LEWIS: Thank you, Jim . We will now 20 present this. TVA denies Apparent Violation 12, which 21 relates to information that TVA's _l(b_)_(7_)_(c_)_ _ _ _ _ __
l...._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __.I provided (b)(7)(C) through the 23 creation of talking points and through the submission 24 of the report of the Special Review Team, SRT for 25 short .
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63 1 As I will discuss, it is evident that the 2 talking points and questions were not incompl ete or 3 inaccurate in any material respect. Likewise, the 4 evidence shows that the SRT report was not incomplete 5 or inaccurate i n any material respect .
6 First , I will show that Mr 1(b)(7)(C) !talking 7 points stated that the NRC had come to the same 8 critical conclusion, conclusion singular, as the NRC, 9 that there was a degraded work environment in the 10 operations department at Watts Bar.
11 That was accurate contrary to being 12 Apparent Violation, the talking point did not refer to 13 conclusions plural. What is inaccurate here is the 14 NRC' s quotation, not Mr l(b)(?)(C) Ibullet point . And the 15 NRC's inaccurate quotat i on changes the meaning .
16 Second , I will explain that the report of 17 the Employee Concerns Program, ECP for short, and the 18 SRT report, were reasonably described as independent.
19 Third , I will explain that Mr ~(b)(7)(C) 20 informal talking points were intended to communicate 21 that the ECP and SRT teams had completed their 22 invest i gations and had reached the same conclusion as 23 the NRC, nothing, nothing more. This message too, was 24 accu rate .
25 Fourth , I will explain that the SRT was NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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64 1 formed for the primary purpose of evaluating safety 2 cultu re issues at Watts Bar and supporting s -e nior 3 leadership in addressing any safety culture issues 4 that were identified .
5 I will also explain that forming the SRT 6 reflected TVA's desire to show the NRC that i t was 7 fully understanding and responding to those 8 challenges, which is no different from virtually any 9 other regulatory interaction with the NRC, and not 10 something that would n eed to be or would be expected 11 to be stated.
12 Lastly, I will discuss that the Apparent 13 Violation does not raise material issues. And that 14 TVA has not identified any intent by Mr .l(b)(7)(C) Ito 15 deliberately provide to the NRC, deliberately provide 16 the NRC with incomplete or inaccurate information 17 through h is talking points or through the SRT report .
18 As you can see on the screen, these are 19 the bullet points in question. The f undamental point 20 that Mr jCb)(?)(C) !was making in these talking points is 21 that TVA had reached the same conclusion as the NRC, 22 that there was a degraded work environment in the 23 operations department at Watts Bar.
24 And both the ECP team and the SRT team had 25 reached this conclusion . I f you look at A, the NRC NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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65 1 conclusion there is about degraded work environment.
2 This message was accurate. The SRT 3 report, link to my - - so, let me turn to my first 4 point.
(b)(7)(C) 5 Mr . .l informal talking points 6 communicated that TVA had come to the same conclusion 7 as the NRC . That there was a degraded work 8 environment in the operations department at Watts Bar.
9 Apparent Violation 2 misquotes Mr ,l(b)(?)(C) Italking 10 poin t.
11 It alleges that the l(b ...._)(?_)(_c)_ _ _ _ _ _ ___.
12 indicated to the NRC that quote, the two reports had 13 reached the same conclusions, plural, as those of the 14 NRC . When in fact , as of March 12 , 2016 , there were 15 significant differences between the conclusions in the 16 SRT report and the ECP report. And between the SRT 17 report and the NRC conclusions that had been conveyed 18 to TVA on March 11, 2016, end quote.
19 The talking point did not refer to 20 conclusions, plural. It 's surprising that the NRC 21 would allege that the talking points were inaccurate, 22 and then base that allegation on an inaccurate quote .
23 Contrary to the Apparent Violation, Mr.
24 l(b)(?)(C) Italking points did not state or commu nicate 25 that the ECP report and the SRT report had come to all NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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66 1 of the same conclusions in every regard as the NRC, or 2 that there were no differences between the wording of 3 the two reports.
4 The talking point referred only to one 5 overarching conclusion that was the same as the NRC's, 6 that there was a degraded work environment in the 7 operations department at Watts Bar . It is therefore 8 clear from the talking points that Mr .!(b)(?)(C) only I 9 intended to convey that TVA through the work of its 10 ECP and SRT teams had both reached the conclusion that 11 there was a degraded work environment consistent with 12 the NRC , not that the reports had all reached the same 13 conclusions in every regard as the NRC.
14 The ECP report and the SRT report were 15 also reasonably described as independent. The NRC's 16 dispute with this characterization ascribes a meeting 17 of independent that was neither stated nor implied .
18 I First, as Mr!(b)(?)(C) explained in his PEC, 19 the ECP and SRT teams were independent. And that they 20 were largely comprised of indivictuals external to 21 Watts Bar Unit 1. The ECP investigation was conducted 22 by ou tside consultants.
23 In fact, the ECP report states quote, to 24 ensu re independence the investigation was conducted by 25 a team o f two individuals external to TVA, l_(b_J(_7l_(C_J_ _ __,
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67 1 and l(b)(?)(C) I, end quote . On its face it's 2 described as independent.
3 Similarly, the members of the SRT were, 4 with the exception of the site licensing director, 5 external to Unit 1, with corporate personnel, a 6 manager from another plant and an outside consultant.
7 I As Mr l(b)(?)(C) stated in his PEC , from its 8 formulation, the SRT review team was crafted as an 9 independent effort by TVA senior leadership.
10 The SRT was designed to have 11 organizational independence from site leadership, 12 operational senior leadership, and the state employee 13 concerns program. The staffing of the SRT reflected 14 this independence.
15 I n fact, in describing its composition, 16 the SRT report specifically states quote , an 17 independent, i n terdisciplinary team was formed to 18 evaluate the overarching question, end quote. So, it 19 too on its face is described as independent .
20 Second, while the SRT team considered the 21 ECP report as one of its input, there was no overlap 22 in the membership of the two teams.
23 Third, as Mr l(b)(?)(C) Iexplained during his 24 PEC , the SRT did not in any way direct or influence 25 the ECP report ' s findings. There was no collusion NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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68 1 between the investigations.
2 This aspect of the Apparent Violation 3 appears to be based on a misinterpretation that 4 independent meant that the two reports were developed 5 in complete isolation from each other.
6 However, this was never the intended 7 meaning of ._l(b_)_(?-)(_c_)_ ____.I talking points, nor would it 8 have made sense for Mr. (b)(?)(C) to have made such an 9 assertion given that the SRT report would describe its 10 use of the ECP investigation report.
11 This brings me to my third point, that 12 there was no material inaccuracy in stating the two 13 reports had been completed. The Apparent Violation 14 seizes on the wording, the two reports had been 15 completed in reaching the conclusion that a degraded 16 work environment in the operations department existed.
17 As he has explained, . Mr .l(b )(7)(C)
_____ Iuse of the 18 word completed in his informal talking points was 19 intended to convey that TVA had completed the ECP 20 investigation and the SRT investigation. And that 21 both teams had come to their conclusion regarding the 22 degraded work environment .
23 He did not intend to convey that the 24 reports themselves had been finalized and signed. Mr.
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69 1 was supported by contemporaneous correspondence .
2 With respect to the ECP report, the main 3 investigation report had in fact been completed . It 4 was dated March 1, 2016 and is marked as revised on 5 March 8, 2016.
6 As can be seen on the screen, an email 7 l. .
from the (b_)(?_)(_Cl_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ __,
8 to Mr. I~~{?) I on March 8 stated quote , attached is the 9 fi n al investigation report drafted by the 10 invest igation team, e nd quote.
11 As can be seen here, Mr. (b)(?)(C) also 12 received an email message from the l~(b_)(-7)-(C_) _ _ _ _ _ __,,
13 on l(b)(?)(C) I, stating attached is the final executive 14 summary. While there were some s ubsequent changes to 15 the ECP execut1' ve summary, Mr li£L_J mm'7n understood when he 16 prepared his talking points that it was complet-e .
17 As could be seen now on your screen, on 18 the evening Of ..... l(b)(?)(C)
---~' I I Mr l(b)(?)(C) sent an email to 19 TVA' s .... l(b-)(7_l(_c )_ _ _ _ _ _ ___,I and others .... c)_ _ _ __,I l(b-)(?_)(_
20 l(b)(?)(C) that is described as quote, i (b)(?)(C) ~
21 ....
l(b_)(?_)(_C)_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _.I' end quote .
22 It is true that in that message he stated 23 quote, in light of today ' s information from Region II 24 regarding issuance of a chilling effect letter next 25 week, the report will need to be revised to reflect NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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70 1 emphasis on some of the problem areas. The team is 2 reflecting o n this over t he weekend , end q uote .
3 As Mr ~ explained in his PEC while at 4 this point he recognized some editorial changes to the 5 report were like l y still needed, under no 6 circumstances did he expect any of the subsequent 7 editorial changes to modify the f u ndamental 8 completions of that effort.
9 In summary, when Mr. (b)(?)(C) drafted the 10 tal k ing points, he understood that the ECP and SRT 11 investigations had been needed, and that they had 12 reached their conclu sions even thou gh some editorial 13 work on the SRT report remained , such as emphasizing 14 important points .
15 I mportantly, Mr l(b)(?)(C) pnderstood that the 16 two reports had reached the conclusion which did not 17 chan ge that there was a degraded work e nv i ronment in 18 the operations department, which was the issue that he 19 u nderstood the NRC was interested in .
20 Before turning to the allegation and the 21 purpose of the SRT report was not disclosed, let me 22 briefl y address the allegation t h at an attempt to 23 subsequently make the SRT report consistent with the 24 conclusions of the ECP report and NRC changes were 25 made to the March 11 version of the SRT report .
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71 1 Mrl(b)(7)(C) !bullet point never said that 2 there were no order differences between the two TVA 3 reports. But only said that they had both reached the 4 same conclusion as the NRC that a degraded work 5 environmen t in the operations department existed .
6 Nothing more .
7 So the attempt to identify differ-e nces 8 between the two reports is irrelevant to the accuracy 9 of the bullet point. Moreover, none of the changes 10 alter the fundamental conclusion already reached by 11 the SRT team that a degraded work environment in the 12 operations department existed .
13 As can be seen here on this slide now, the 14 March 1.1 version of the SRT report explicitly 15 con cluded in Sections 1 and Sections 5, and I 'm just 16 showing Section 5 here , but the same statement is in 17 Sect ion 1, that there was a chilling effect of the 18 operations department and a degraded work environment, 19 which was consistent with the ECP report.
20 As discussed in detail in TVA's written 21 response to Apparent Violation 12 , those additions 22 that the NRC points to were innocuous . And appear to 23 have been intended to improve the report's accuracy 24 and clarity .
25 Turning to my fourth point, addressing the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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72 1 NRC's allegations that the SRT report failed to 2 acknowledge that the SRT was formed to influence the 3 NRC not to take additional regulatory action. The NRC 4 basis this allegation on M~ (b)(7)(C) ! proposed agenda 5 for a strategy session by senior leadership on 6 February 26 , 2016 before the SRT was formed .
7 Mrl(b)(7)(C) Ihowever, did not form the SRT.
8 As he explained in his PEC, TVA's senior leadership 9 recognized the need to have an independent r *e view 10 which determined that employees across t h e site at 11 Watts Bar were reluctant to raise nuclear safety 12 concerns, and if so, to determine the extent of the 13 condition .
14 The team was also expected to develop a 15 set of recommendations for TVA l eadership to 16 successfully address the violation. But even if Mr.
17 _ _...Iagenda is attributed to the SRT, l....(b_)(7)(C) without regard 18 to any of the intent ions of senior leadership, it 19 would not support the alleged incompleteness of the 20 report.
21 The primary objective that Mr .1(b)(7)(C) 22 proposed was to address TVA identified challenges at 23 Watts Bar. That M~ (b)(?)(C) ~ a , ....
(b-)(-7)-(C_)_ _ _ _ _ _ _____,
24 l(b)(?)(C) Ia lso proposed communicating those 25 actions to the NRC in a manner that would convince the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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73 1 NRC that no further regulatory action is needed, is 2 unremarkable .
3 What licensee would not do this? It would 4 always be the case as part of addressing safety 5 culture concerns at TVA or any other licensee will 6 seek to demonstrate to the NRC that they understand 7 such safety culture concerns.
8 And that they are taking actions to 9 address them . Where generally it's understood that 10 licensee efforts to address regulatory concerns should 11 and will naturally have the effect of influencing the 12 NRC .
13 It ' s implicit that when a licensee takes 14 action to address issues, that the licensee is in part 15 seeking to show the NRC that it ' s capable of handling 16 the issues itself. And it does not need further 17 regulatory actions imposed by the NRC .
18 In fact, the NRC' s allegations' manual 19 states that the NRC staff should counter balance the 20 perceived need for the issuance of doing a reg letter 21 for a determination as to whether the licensee is 22 taking timely and effective remedial actions that the 23 NRC anticipates will enhance a safety conscious work 24 environment in a timely manner.
25 As a result, it was reasonable for Mr .
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74 1 (b)(?)(C) to expect that he did not need to explain to the 2 NRC that TVA was seeking to avoid and have regulatory 3 action by doing its own investigation, coming to its 4 own conclusions , and taking its own effective 5 corrective action.
6 If the SRT report is determined to be 7 materially incomplete by not indicating that TVA was 8 taking actions to address identified challenges in a 9 manner that it hoped would obviate further NRC 10 regulatory response, then virtually every submission 11 by a licensee to the NRC, or even any int,e rnal 12 response to a condit ion adverse to quality, would be 13 materially incomplete unless it proclaims the NRC's 14 desired response .
15 For example, every response to a notice of 16 violation would be incomplete unless the response 17 included some banner stating this response is 18 submitted with the objective of influencing the NRC's 19 enforcement decision.
20 A finding by the NRC that a submission of 21 information to the NRC without a direct statement that 22 it's intended to influence the NRC would set a new and 23 ill-advised precedent.
24 Turning to my last point. There is not 25 one writ of evidence thatl(b)(?)(C) I intended to make or NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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75 1 cause any incomplete or inaccurate statement .
2 The Apparent Violat i on assert s that Mr .
3 (b)(?)(C) was aware that the information in the talking 4 points was incomplete and i naccu rate . But t hat 5 assertion merely assumes that Mtj(b)(?)(C) lintended the 6 talking points to be understood as the apparent 7 violation n ow seeks to constru e them .
8 As already discussed, the NRC's 9 interpretation of those talking points is not 10 reason able . And i ndeed in one instance is based on 11 inaccurately quoting the talking point .
12 And the assumption that Mr l(b)(?)(C) li n t -e nded 13 to communicate more than the talking points indicate, 14 is entirely u nsupport ed .
15 Certai n l y , there i s no evidence that Mr .
16 (b)(?)(C) deliberately at tempted to conceal from the NRC 17 the des ire when the SRT was formed to convince the NRC 18 that TVA was addressing the identified concerns such 19 that f u rther regu latory action would be u nnecessary .
20 As a nuc l ear executive whose career 21 include~-(b_)_ (7_)(_c )_ _ _ _ _ __ he expected that the NRC 22 wou ld understand this . Moreover , the alleged 23 inaccuracies or omissions, even if they are viewed as 24 s u ch , are tru ly immaterial.
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76 1 after the NRC issued its chilling effect letter. So ,
2 any objective to convince the NRC not to do so, no 3 longer existed.
4 Furthe r , the desire of every lic-e nsee 5 facing a degraded work environment and NRC scrutiny to 6 address those issues in a matter to satisfy the NRC is 7 so self-evident that admitting this , to state this 8 could not possibly affect the NRC decision making.
9 Similarly , crippling over whether the 10 talking points should have said the investigations 11 were complete instead of the reports being complete, 12 had no impact on the communicated message t hat TVA had 13 determined that there was a degraded work environment 14 in the operations department.
15 That the two reports were formally issued 16 about a week later, made no difference to the message 17 or NRC decision . Why would they NRC have cared that 18 the two reports were dated about a week later where 19 both investigations had concluded that a degraded 20 environment existed in the operations department?
21 Did the date on which the reports were 22 issued make a material difference? Obviously not .
23 And why would it matter if Mr. (b)(?)(C) had stated, by the 24 way, the SRT team considered the ECP team's 25 conclusions as one of its inputs .
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77 1 As TVA has previously explained, it is 2 appropriately -- it's an appropriately high bar that 3 the NRC must meet to show that Mr l(b)(?)(C) r eliberately 4 provided inaccurate information .
5 In applying the deliberate misconduct 6 standards , the NRC has not shown that Mr l(b)(?)(C) I 7 intentionally acted i n a wrongful manner, because he 8 did not do so.
9 That concludes o ur presentation relating 10 to Apparent Violation 12. I will now t urn it back 11 over to Jim Barstow.
12 MR. BARSTOW : Thank you, Mr. Lewis. As 13 Mr. Lewis explained, Mr .1(b)(?)(C) actions did not 14 violate NRC requ irements .
15 Mr J(b)(?)(C) !provided the then .... l (b-)(7-)(C
_l _ _ _____,
16 l....._ _ _ _Iwith informal (b)(7)(C) talking points that he thought 17 the (b)(l)(C) could use during a call with the NRC' s 18 Executive Director of Operations.
19 In drafting these talking points, Mr l(b)(?)(C) 20 was focused on accomplishing t h e goal inherent in any 21 set of talking points, to convey the main points of 22 interest. In this case, there was really one main 23 point that Mr ~(b)(?)(C) r as trying to convey, that recent 24 investigations determined there was a degraded work 25 environment in operations at Watts Bar .
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78 1 Mr *l(b)(7)(C) !talking points were complete 2 and ac cu rat e . Th is much i s particularly clear when 3 you consider Mr j(b)(?)(C) ~ ntent on drafting.
4 Both the Employee Concerns Program 5 i nvestigation and the Special Review Team 6 investigations had been completed, which allowed TVA 7 to come to the conclusion that there was a degraded 8 work environment. This conclusion was consistent with 9 the NRC ' s assessment .
10 The fact that there were some non-11 substantive , nonmaterial changes to the language of 12 the Special Review Team report before it was submitted 13 to the NRC , is frankly beside the point. TVA has 14 provided a more detailed explanation of why the 15 chan ges were inn ocuous i n our written response .
16 Additionally , Mr. l(b)(?)(C) I rightfully 17 characterized the two i nvestigations as independent .
18 TVA had obtained outside consultants to conduct the 19 ECP investigation in order to ensu re independence .
20 And the personnel on the Special Review Team were 21 largely independent to Watts Bar with one exception.
22 Perhaps most con cerning i s the f i nding , is 23 that finding a violation here would set a troubling 24 precedent that each time a licensee commu nicates with 25 the NRC wi th the hope that t h e NRC wi l l be i nfluenced NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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79 1 by the communication, they must expressly state they 2 intend to try to influence the NRC .
3 It' s hard to see why such a disclaimer 4 would be required nearly as in - - in nearly -e very 5 communication. To determine when the NRC and the 6 licensees communicate with each other one of the 7 purposes is almost always to influence one another, 8 even where there ' s an exchange of information.
9 TVA's review has produced no indication 10 that Mr (b)(?)(C) cted with any intent to provide the NRC 11 with inaccurate or incomplete information. With that, 12 and as we close with this group of Apparent 13 Violations, I want to summarize and highlight some big 14 picture concerns that TVA has with Apparent Violations 15 8, 10, ll and 12.
16 TVA ' s investigation into these Apparent 17 Violations found no evidence that its employees 18 provided the NRC with incomplete or inaccurate 19 information . For us , this concludes and raises the 20 question of how the NRC arrives at its conclusions.
21 TVA has found that the information 22 communicated by our employees was complete and 23 accurate based on what they knew at the time. We 24 believe the Apparent Violations draw a conclusion on 25 the basis of retrospective assessments and a faulty NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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80 1 premise that there was a coordinated and concerted 2 effort within the company to mislead the NRC.
3 Again, TVA vehemently denies that there 4 were ever any such efforts . And after our extensive 5 inves tigation over the past four months, we have found 6 no actual evidence of such an effort.
7 TVA is also concerned, because of the 8 Apparent Violations rely on information that the NRC 9 presumes TVA managers knew, even though the more 10 thorough analysis designed to obtain that knowledge 11 had not yet been completed.
12 Presumed knowledge is not a reasonable 13 basis for issuing violation. And it certainly not a 14 basis for concluding that individuals intentionally 15 provided incomplete or inaccurate information .
16 We hope that the NRC will consider the 17 information that has been presented today as well as 18 in our written submission in reaching a reasonable 19 decision regarding the disposition of these apparent 20 violations.
21 Absent such a disposition by the staff ,
22 TVA strongly believes that when presented with the 23 evidence , a neutral arbiter would come to the same 24 conclusions as TVA .
25 That completes our comments on Apparent NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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81 1 Violation 12.
2 MR. O'BRIEN : Thank you, Mr. Barstow . I 3 think that completes the presentations that you'd 4 planned today, and I correct?
5 MR. BARSTOW: Yes. That is correct .
6 MR. O ' BRIEN : So, we ' re at the top of the 7 hour8.101852e-5 days <br />0.00194 hours <br />1.157407e-5 weeks <br />2.6635e-6 months <br /> according to my time here . I propose that we 8 take an hour long caucus and add on the back of that 9 an hour long lunch and resume at 11 o'clock you -- oh, 10 it ' s nine o'clock, 12 o'clock your time. Is that 11 fair?
12 MR. BARSTOW : Thank you.
13 MR. O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, you - -
14 MS. ROELOFS: We said yes . I'm sorry. We 15 were on there.
16 MR. BARSTOW: Yes. That's fine.
17 MR . O'BRIEN : Okay . So, we wil l then go 18 off the record until 12 o ' clock Eastern time, 11 19 o'clock Central, at which point we' 11 resume with 20 questions and answers relative to 8, 10, 11 and 12.
21 We are off the record. Thank you.
22 (Whereupon, the above-entitled matter 23 went off the record at 9:59 a.m. and 24 resumed at 12:01 p.m.)
25 MR. O'BRI EN: Good afternoon everybody .
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82 1 It's the top of the hour, so why don ' t we begin. I'm 2 going to do a couple of administrative things first .
3 Court Reporter, are you with us?
4 COURT REPORTER: Yes, sir.
5 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you. Marcia?
6 MS. SIMON: Yes.
7 MR. O'BRIEN: Nick?
8 MR. HILTON: Yes.
9 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you , sir . Scott?
10 MR. SPARKS: Yes, Ken.
11 MR. 0' BRIEN: Thank you . Mr. Barstow , are 12 you ready to begin?
13 MR. BARSTOW: Yes sir, Mr. O'Brien.
14 MR. O'BRIEN: Sounds good. So, we' re 15 ready to begin with our questions and answers after 16 our caucus and our lunch break.
17 And I'll start off with identifying that 18 we have no questions relative to AV 8. But we do have 19 some questions relative to AV 9, and I'd ask Marcia to 20 begin.
21 MS. SIMON: It ' s actually AV 10.
22 MR. O'BRIEN: Excuse me, AV 10. I did 23 that earlier. Thank you, Marcia.
24 MS. SIMON: Okay. I don't want anyone to 25 be confused. Yeah, I have a couple of questions NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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83 1 related to AV 10.
2 So, it was stated several times, Ms.
3 Hernande.z stated several times this morning during the 4 discussion of AV 10 that responsibility for validating 5 assumptions belongs to the MCR staff.
6 And we've been told in several PECs that 7 one of the OCC's roles is to provide guidance and 8 support, including technical input to the main control 9 room. And Mr. Blankenship f or one , indicated that his 10 concerns on November 11, 2015 were addressed when he 11 heard conversations that led him to believe the OCC 12 had engineers looking at the issue .
13 So , my question is , are you saying , when 14 you say responsibility for validating assumptions 15 belongs to the MCO staff, are you saying it was not 16 appropriate for the operators to rely on information 17 provided by the OCC in deciding whether their concerns 18 about moving forward had been addressed?
19 MS. ROELOFS : I'm sorry. I was on -- this 20 is Ms. Roelofs. Mr. Williams will answer your 21 question. He was having a l ittle trouble with his 22 camera, but I think he has it on now .
23 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you. Yes, Ms. Simon ,
24 we do we do expect our operators to challenge 25 assumptions .
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84 1 And also we do expect them to understand 2 the basis of the answers to those assumptions that are 3 put into the calculations.
4 So, when we talk about the main control 5 room and their responsibility to understand the 6 controls, understand the mechanisms , understand the 7 f undamental aspects of the evolutions that they're 8 going to be put in place, and the controls on how 9 they're going to operate the plant , that's how we're 10 correlatin g that the -- those responses .
11 We also expect the OCC to be a supportive 12 f unc tion for the control room . And get whatever the 13 control room needs so they can understand how the 14 evolution is going to occur, what to expect and the 15 con trols in play.
16 So, we do have a , we do see that the OCC 17 did not get the information that was needed for the 18 control room. But we also see that the control room 19 should have been challenging where those answers are ,
20 and how are we going to be doing this evolution.
21 And that ' s how we're correlating the two 22 entit ies , the OCC and the main control room.
23 MS. SIMON: Yeah. I want to follow up on 24 that a little bit . And I might ask Mr. O'Brien to 25 jump in, or he might jump in anyway .
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85 1 MR. O' BRIEN: I just jumped in Marcia.
2 MS. SIMON: I think Mr. l(b)(7)(C) Italked 3 about , and I think - - Mr . 1(b)(?)(C) !talked about how 4 engineering was consulted in the occ during 5 discussions that day.
6 And I believe Mr. Blankenship talked about 7 overhearing Mr. Sprinkle in the control room talking 8 about some input from engineering. And so, I guess 9 again , my question is, to what extent can the 10 operators r e ly on that input?
11 I mean, if for instance Mr. Blankenship 12 said he had to remain at the controls, he couldn ' t do 13 the work to ensure the evolution would be successful.
14 He had to rely on others to do the calculation and the 15 research.
16 Was he , was that appropriate for him to 17 do?
18 (No response) 19 MS. SI MON: I can't hear you.
20 MS. ROELOFS: We were conferring, Ms .
21 Simon.
22 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, Ms. Simon. So, it was 23 correct for him to say that he cannot divorce himself 24 from the active control 's position while he's 25 monitoring and controlling the plant.
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86 1 However, he can also get a relief. They 2 can step back, the team can step back, have a pre-job 3 brief.
4 And he could ask the questions, where did 5 you get the heat up rates? Where did you get the 6 pressuri.z er level based upon temperature issues? And 7 what to expect? Is that a t humb rule? Is that 8 something we ' re just, how we correlate those numbers?
9 And it occurs all the time when you have 10 complex evolutions where t h e control room steps back, 11 pull the individuals that are going to be performing 12 those tasks , and having a pre-job brief.
13 Now, we don't believe any of these 14 individuals had any deliberate misconduct in their 15 evolut ion. They just did not question or challenge or 16 understand the evolution good enough.
17 I mean, they missed the -- they relied on 18 the thumb rule . They should have understood that it 19 was things that didn't have a technical basis behind 20 it.
21 And they should have asked for the 22 technical basis behind it before moving forward.
23 MS. SIMON: So, if the thumb rule came 24 from the OCC, you' re saying correct me if I'm 25 wrong, but you' re saying that the operators were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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87 1 ultimately responsible for validating that .
2 And they coul d not rely on the engineers 3 in the OCC saying that they had calculated , they had 4 done calculations based on this rule of thumb , and it 5 was going to be okay?
6 MS . ROELOFS : Ms. Simon , we need one 7 moment to confer .
8 MS. S IMON : Okay .
9 (Off mic comments) 10 MR . WILLIAMS: Yes , Ms. S i mon . And I 11 think I might be confusing you with the way I'm 12 answering this .
13 When an operator asks a question and he's 14 challenging an assumption , the individu als that go and 15 support that operator, whether it maybe engineering in 16 this case , they do go in and perform and calculate and 17 do those act i v i ties to provi de answers for those 18 operators to -- so they understand how to control the 19 plant .
20 And it's the responsibility of the 21 operator to understand those answers that they' re 22 gett ing from engineering that they ' re going to u ti li ze 23 to operate the plant. And it's not an outage thing.
24 It ' s not a -- becau se we also have the 25 same issues with online. If there ' s a condition NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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88 1 report that they need engineering's help and 2 as s istan ce wi th when they have parameters or 3 evolutions online as well , they ask for the right 4 resou rce, which maybe engineeri ng , to provide some 5 technical background or help and assistance with it .
6 The engineers are proficient in these 7 methods t o get that profes sional , the technical help .
8 But then it ' s embedded , I mean, it ' s incumbent on the 9 operators to understand what ' s the basis , where the 10 i nformation is coming from before t h ey make 11 determinations to move forward.
12 MS . SIMON: Okay . Ken , do you h ave any 13 follow up on that?
14 MR . O ' BRIEN: Oh , just a couple . And I'm 15 not sure who will answer thi s. So , I want to make 16 sure I clearly understand the points you're trying to 17 make . Because to be frank with you, I 'm at a compl ete 18 loss.
19 As I u nderstand the testimony , individuals 20 in the control room raised questions regarding an 21 evolution they were being asked to do . Or it was on 22 the s c hedu le to do , however you choose to p u t it .
23 To conduct activity that had never been 24 performed before . Had no procedural guidance to do .
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89 1 under an IPTE process. Had never been run in the 2 simulator.
3 And yet at the same time you expec t the 4 NRC to understand that you believe it's their job, 5 after having raised all of those questions, to then 6 second guess the information that they get back from 7 the Ops control center as it relates to the 8 acceptability of doing things that they just 9 identified that they'd never done before, had never 10 been tested before, had never been trained on before, 11 had no guidance to do , and had no procedures to do.
12 Is that the position you want me to 13 understand?
14 MS . ROELOFS : Mr. O'Brien, we're just 15 con ferring briefly for a moment.
16 MR. O'BRIEN: I thought you might -- I 17 thought you might have to .
18 MS. ROELOFS: Yes. Okay. Thank you, sir.
19 Be right back.
20 (Off mic comment) 21 MS. ROELOFS : Mr . O'Brien , Mr. Williams is 22 prepared to answer your q uestion .
23 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you very much.
24 MR. WILLIAMS: Mr. O'Brien. Mr. O'Brien ,
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90 1 statements out that, but not all the statements that 2 we ' re making here.
3 We also agree that there are better 4 formality and the technical rigger from the OCC should 5 have been better. We also believe that when there's 6 uncertainty, that individuals pursue getting 7 understanding of those uncertainties.
8 You know, they should use the simulator.
9 They should have done just in time training, IPTEs.
10 We talked about that the other day that, and how they 11 handled this evolution.
12 So, I'm not just talking about the 13 operators. I am talking about the OCC staff as well.
14 If an operator has a question and he doesn't think 15 that his question was answered to his understanding, 16 then he should ask and say that. And say, I don't 17 understand how you're corning to those conclusions.
18 But we ' re not, also I expect that when he 19 gets , when he asks a q u estion that we present that 20 information to him, to give him the knowledge he needs 21 to be able to perform his task.
22 And it's not just Mr. Blankenship as was 23 mentioned in the original base line for this question.
24 But also Billy Johnson as the assistant manager as 25 well.
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91 1 And then also the other reactor operators 2 as a team , both the OCC and the cont r o l room , they 3 should have all the understandings that they are 4 comfortabl e to perform the evolution . And perform the 5 tasks and the preparations to make them ready to be 6 able to perform this evolution in a controlled, 7 deliberate manner .
8 Now , as it pertains to this Apparent 9 Violation , I wou ld like t o turn it over to cou nsel and 10 see i f they have anything .
11 MR. O'BRIEN: No, it ' s -- I don ' t hear 12 anybody . Is somebody else going t o speak?
13 MR. LEWIS: I ' m just trying to start my 14 video . Excuse me .
15 MR . O'BRI EN : Thank you , Mr . Lewis .
16 MR. LEWIS: There we go. In the root 17 cau se analysis the -- and apparent cause analys i s ,
18 there was a clear identification that operator 19 f u ndamentals were an issu e .
20 The opinion was , and I think our opinion 21 is that the OCC did not do a good enough job in 22 analyz i ng the issue a nd managing the risk and 23 assessing the risk.
24 Bu t it ' s also clear that the control room 25 did not act conservatively enough . They did not NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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92 1 validate the assumptions that were their duty as the 2 licensed operators.
3 I don't think it falls on Mr. Blankenship 4 that he was at the controls . I think he appropriately 5 raised it with Billy Johnson.
6 And I think once those concerns were 7 communicated to Mr. Johnson , it was his obligation to 8 validate the assumptions, to ask for a simulator run.
9 To put the procedure in place, and to do those things 10 that an operator, that you would expect an operator to 11 do before performing, as you said, this first of a 12 kind evolution.
13 So, the fact that there was some 14 information corning from the OCC, did not excuse or 15 absolve the reactor operators from trying to validate 16 assumptions.
17 Again, I 'm distinguishing Mr. Blankenship 18 who was at the controls, and who relayed the 19 information to Billy Johnson. And therefore, was 20 assuming that Mr. Johnson was doing the communications 21 with Mr. Johnson himself.
22 MR. O 'BRIEN: Thank you , Mr . Lewis. If I 23 might add a follow up to this? I want to make sure I 24 clearly understand also, and it's probably going to be 25 directed to Mr . Williams, not you, Mr . Lewis .
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93 1 Is that in the context of the description 2 you agree that the control room and the OCC may have 3 been able -- or , should have done a better job .
4 I want to ask again to make sure I clearly 5 understand your expectation that the control room 6 should have taken actions, especially when the shift, 7 excuse me , the_l(b_)_(?_)_(C_)________~ who was also aware 8 of this issue, also knew it was not a -- it was a 9 first of a kind evolu tion , also had to have been aware 10 that there were no procedures?
11 Also was aware there was no training?
12 Also aware that the shift had changed? That it ' s not 13 also his responsibility to completely stop the 14 evolution as th~-(b_)_(7_)(_c _) _ _ _- since he recognized it 15 I t violates a l l the individual s ' licenses 16 along with the facilities ' license, of conducting 17 activities without procedures and without having 18 previous training , and without conducting testing?
19 I want to make s u re I understand , that's 20 your position?
21 MS. ROELOFS: Mr. O'Brien , we need just a 22 moment here .
23 MR. O'BRIEN: Well, before you go , I want 24 to add on top of that , recognizing, recognizing that 25 this was a change in the process, and each of these NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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94 1 individuals that we ' ve talked about , have 2 re sponsibili t ies.
3 I s it not a responsibility of the facility 4 as a whole to ensure safety in this regard? And isn't 5 everybody that I j u st articul ated , responsible fo r 6 that activity? Thank you .
7 (Off mic comment) 8 MS. ROELOFS : Mr . O'Brien , Mr. Williams is 9 prepared to answer this q u estion .
10 MR. O'BRI EN : Thank you , Ms . Roelofs.
11 MR. WILLIAMS: Thank you, Mr. O'Brien . A 12 long q uest ion. A lot of different s t atements made .
13 I believe your question pertained to Mr* l(b)(?)(C) 1-14 We believe that the environment 15 fun damentals had gaps in performance. And that 16 includes Mr -l(b)(?)(C)
I-17 But we do not believe t hat those gaps in 18 performance were deliberate.
19 MR . O' BRIEN : Mr. Lewis -- Mr . Williams, 20 if I may ask onto that . So , you would ask the NRC to 21 take as fact that one senior re -- one licensed senior 22 reactor operator chose not to fo llow his license and 23 the requirements.
24 Another senior reactor operator , Mr.
25 Sprinkl e, chose not to fol low h i s l icense and the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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95 1 requirements. And the 1 ...(b-)(-7)(_c_) _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ___, for the 2 facility as a whole , chose not to follow the 3 facilities' license in conducting activities that were 4 not in accordance with plans , procedures, protocols 5 that had the potential to challenge the integrity of 6 the RCS.
7 And that that all happened just by 8 happenstance?
9 MS. ROELOFS: Mr . O'Brien, we'll turn that 10 question over to our counsel, please.
11 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you.
12 MR . LEWIS : I 'm just thinking for a 13 second.
14 MR. O'BRIEN: Not a problem. Take your 15 time, Mr. Lewis.
16 MR. LEWIS: We've not seen any indication 17 -- well, first let me get back . It's recognized and 18 TVA has agreed that the performance of the operators 19 and the OCC were not sufficiently conservative .
20 That they did not meet their standards.
21 That is different from saying that they recognized 22 that they were violating their license .
23 Poor performance happens. And when it 24 does, it needs to be corrected. But, you cannot 25 simply assume that a performance was poor. And NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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96 1 therefore, everybody recognized that they were 2 violating their licenses . That is the disconnect.
3 So, we look at this and we see efforts to 4 evaluate this evolution. And they were cl-e arly 5 insufficient.
6 We don ' t see the evolution being 7 completely ignored. We see poor performance . We see 8 people not meeting operator fundamentals. And that is 9 the difference.
10 I n your questions you' re assuming that Mr .
11 l(b)(?)(C) I, for example, knew that this was a violation 12 of the licenses . I've never seen any basis for that 13 assertion.
14 You're assuming that he knew that there 15 weren't procedures in place. I don ' t know if that is 16 true. I don't know if everything in the record that 17 indicates whether he was aware whether Billy Johnson 18 had put some procedure in place or not.
19 But there were a lot of assertions built 20 into your question. Again, we ' re not condoning 21 anybody ' s performance as adequate. They cl-e arly 22 failed to meet TVA's standards .
23 But, we ' re also, have come to the 24 conclusion that it was mistakes and poor performance, 25 and really poor operator fundamentals . But, extending NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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97 1 to , you know , poor performance in the OCC fo r not 2 adequately evaluating and managing risk as the root 3 cause analysis to that.
4 So, there's plenty of blame to share aro 5 -- to spread around. What we don't see is someone, 6 you know, recognizing that this was a violation of the 7 NRC r ules, and proceeding despite that recognition.
8 MR. O ' BRIEN: Thank you, Mr. Lewis.
9 Marcia?
10 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you, Ken. And I 11 am going to get back to the apparent cause ana l ysis 12 report now.
13 And the reason I 'm trying too under - - I 'm 14 trying to understand the, I guess, the relative role 15 or roles of the OCC and the main control room, because 16 I'm looking at the language that was changed between 17 the draft report and the final report, and I think I 18 can just, if it ' s okay with you, I ' ll just read the 19 phrases that were changed .
20 I think it ' s, rather then put the document 21 up . If we need to, we can do that. But, I don't 22 thin k it's necessary.
23 So, for example, the draft report said, 24 during the discu ssions related to plant heat up with 25 the concurrent removal of the residual heat removal NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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98 1 flow path in support of performing 1 - SI - 0905, the OCC 2 and the MCR made an erroneous assumption related to 3 the capacity of the excess let down system.
4 In the final report , it was essentially 5 the same , except the reference to the OCC was removed.
6 And it simply said the MCR made an erroneous 7 assumpt ion related to the capacity of the excess let 8 down system.
9 And I'm trying to understand why that 10 would be removed if the OCC -- it seems from the 11 information we've heard over the past couple of days, 12 especially related to Mr. l(b)(?)(C) ~ and saying that, 13 you know, they used a rule of thumb and it was 14 incorrect.
15 But, there were discussions in the OCC 16 related to that. Why it was appropriate to r *e move 17 that language?
18 MS. ROELOFS : Ms. Simon, this is Ms.
19 Roelofs . We will turn that question over to our 20 counsel to respond to , please.
21 MS. HERNANDEZ: Hello, this is Monica 22 Hernandez. I attended Mr. (b)(?)(C) PEC . And there he 23 said that he had two very strong opinions.
24 The first one was that the OCC cannot make 25 operational decisions. Only the MCR can . And the NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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99 1 second is that the MCR is responsible for validating 2 assumptions.
3 And those two very strong opinions went 4 into the revision and finalizing of the report. So 5 again , t h e changes were made to align t h e report with 6 the ACA team's understanding at the time that the 7 report was finalized .
8 MS. SIMON: That sounds like Mr. l(b)(?)(C) 9 opinion was put into the report . But was the rest , do 10 you k n ow whether the rest of the ACA team was i nvol ved 11 in discussing that at all?
12 MS. HERNANDEZ : Well, M~ (b)(?)(C)~id say that 13 he identified issues and provided suggestions for 14 those changes to the authors of the report , which were 15 Ii~?)I l(b-)(7-)(-Cl_ _ _ _ _____.l and 1 and ... ....(b-)(?-)(C_l_ _ _l* And that 16 they were either accepted or rejected those changes, 17 as well as changes that other team members had 18 provided .
19 And then after they made those changes ,
20 another draft of the report was provided to the whole 21 review committee. And that ' s when they discussed the 22 report and f ina l ized i t.
23 MS. SIMON: Do you know if that -- never 24 mind. I'll forget that one .
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100 1 question , as far as we know, they all agreed with 2 those chan ges .
3 MS. SIMON: Okay. And then so your view 4 is it's based on the opinions M~ (b)(7)(C) stated in his I 5 PEC?
6 MS. HERNANDEZ: Correct.
7 MS . SIMON: Those statements related to 8 the OCC cannot direct the operators to proceed, and 9 sorry . I know the second one . Okay.
10 So, I 'm trying to understand . Can the OCC 11 decide that they believe something is safe or feasible 12 to proceed with?
13 Is it -- I mean, is that a decision the 14 OCC can make? Not deciding to direct the operators to 15 do it, but just deciding whether it's safe to proceed 16 or feasible to proceed.
17 And that may be an appropriate q u estion 18 for TVA then you, Ms. Hernandez. I don ' t know, 19 whoever you think is appropriate .
20 MS. ROELOFS: Yes, Ms. Simon. We're 21 conferring in the room really quickly here. And then 22 we will respond to the q uestion .
23 (Simultaneous speaking) 24 MS . ROELOFS : Ms. Simon , Mr. Williams is 25 prepared to answer your question .
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101 1 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, Ms. Simon. Sorry for 2 the delay. I was just looking up something in our 3 procedures.
4 The OCC , of course they can do a review or 5 look into assumptions and plant configurations and 6 analyses of the plant operations and make in their 7 mind, make conclusions whether they feel it's safe to 8 perform these activities or not.
9 But , if you look at the span of authority 10 of the OCC, the shift manager and the l i censed SRO of 11 record are the ultimate decision maker authorities for 12 plan t operations. The shift manager has the f ul l 13 responsibility and authority for nuclear safety. His 14 authority may not be usurped to transferred at any 15 time.
16 So, while the OCC can understand the 17 situation or understan d the evolution, they can't --
18 their span of authority does not allow them to make 19 decisions for plant operations .
20 MS. SIMON: So, is it is it fair to say 21 that the OCC has to make decisions like that because 22 they 're trying to schedule act i vities?
23 So, in other words, if they ' re trying to 24 schedule activities they might look into it to decide 25 whether it ' s safe to proceed for that reason?
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102 1 I'm trying to understand.
2 (No response) 3 MS. SIMON: I can ' t hear you.
4 MR. O'BRIEN: I think they're waiting to 5 decide which one is going to answer.
6 MS. ROELOFS: Yes, one morn this is Ms.
7 Roelofs . One moment please , Ms . Simon .
8 MR. O' BRIEN: Thank you, Ms. Roelofs.
9 MS. ROELOFS: Ms. Simon could you please 10 rephrase your question? Or repeat?
11 MS. SIMON: Okay . Yeah. I guess I'm --
12 we ' ve been told that the OCC, one of their 13 responsibilities is scheduling activities and, you 14 know , monitoring a critical path and things like that.
15 And so, I ' m just, I guess, inferring from 16 that that as part of doing that, the OCC has to make 17 decisions about whether an activity is feasible at a 18 given time. I guess that's kind of what I'm getting 19 at.
20 I s that true?
21 MS. ROELOFS: Mr. Williams is prepared to 22 answer that .
23 MR. WILLIAMS: Yes, Ms. Simon. I do 24 believe the OCC does, and should, look at different 25 evolutions and understand where they're going to lay NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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103 1 out and potentially put them into the schedule and 2 sequ e n ce them o u t .
3 We have, that ' s one of the reasons why we 4 have Ops representation in the OCC . Laying out the 5 schedu le does not mean t h at they have the authority to 6 make decisions on plant operations though .
7 They can p u t it in the schedu le and then 8 talk to the shift. And if the shift has issues with 9 that , the main control room has issu es with that , then 10 they have to resol ve those issues .
11 But , the u lt imate authority and the final 12 decision maker is the main control room .
13 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you. I think I'm 14 -- that makes it clear for me . Thank you .
15 MR . O'BRI EN : Marcia, before you go on , I 16 have one follow up question if you wouldn ' t mind.
17 MS . S IMON : Su re .
18 MR . O'BRIEN: So , my follow up question ,
19 and I'm not sure who will answer this. I want to make 20 s u re I understand , the ACA effort, the apparent cause 21 effort and the Level II report that was done was 22 i ntended to assess t h e conditions and the events that 23 happened on November 11.
24 Is that a correct statement?
25 MS . ROELOFS : Mr . O ' Brien , We have Mr .
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104 1 Staggs here will answer your question.
2 MR. O'BRIEN: I'm sorry . I didn't catch 3 the name?
4 MS. ROELOFS: Mr. Staggs, Randy Staggs.
5 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you.
6 MR. STAGGS: Yes, sir. And I'm waiting 7 for my video to come on .
8 MR. O' BRIEN: I appreciate that. Thank 9 you , sir.
10 MR. STAGGS: Yes, sir . And in reference 11 to your question of the purpose of root cause, I'm 12 just going to read what the problem statement was .
13 MR. O' BRIEN: Excuse me, sir. I didn't 14 say -- excuse me , sir. I didn't say the root cause.
15 I said the apparent cause.
16 MR. STAGGS: Yes , sir. I agree. That's 17 what I thought I had said, was the apparent cause. If 18 I said root cause, I apologize.
19 Yes , sir . So, I want to say then from the 20 apparent cause, the object was pressurizer level. The 21 defect that was being analyzed , and experienced an 22 u nexpected rate of pressurizer level rise, with the 23 consequence requiring compensatory operator action to 24 regain control of pressurizer level .
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105 1 with the understanding of the apparent cause 2 as s o cia t ed wi th that act i vity . And I b el i eve du r i ng 3 the course of that investigation, it didn't stand out 4 to strip to a root cause to identify other learnings .
5 MR . O ' BRI EN : We l l , I appreciate that .
6 So , I have a follow up question to that. And I want 7 to make s u re it ' s , I und erstand clearly , b ecau se this 8 is a question we ' ve asked around a number of different 9 ways .
10 So, given that its intent i on was to 11 discuss and understand the issues associated with the 12 November 11 event , I ' m struggling to u nderstand how 13 the report would be changed or otherwise modified to 14 identify a perceived or proceduralized responsibility 15 of the OCC that may, or may have not, have been in 16 fact in play on November 11 .
17 That i s , that t h e OCC cannot and does not 18 make decisions when that maybe factually what the 19 procedu re says , but may not be what ac t ually occu rred .
20 And I 'm trying to make sure if I 21 understand this , is TVA by their descriptions today ,
22 and information they provided in response to the 23 Apparent Violations , articulating that they have 24 evidence that indeed the OCC did not , in any way ,
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106 1 procedures, and did not in any way , shape, or form, 2 direct or otherwise provide unsubstantiated g u idance 3 to the main control room? As opposed too 4 theoretically not allowed to do?
5 MS. ROELOFS: Mr. 0' Brien, we ' 11 turn that 6 over to our counsel to respond based on their 7 investigation .
8 MR. O' BRIEN: Thank you very much.
9 MR. LEWIS: We don't have any evidence 10 that the OCC directed the control room. It is clear 11 that the OCC looked at the evolution and provided 12 their views .
13 We don't have evidence that that 14 overstepped the bounds as the root cause analysis 15 determined. And as a fact as indicated in the 16 apparent cause analysis.
17 The apparent cause analysis indicated that 18 the OCC did not do an adequate job in looking at and 19 managing risk . I believe that's the words .
20 But, that ' s as stated in H.11 of the ACA.
21 And the r oot cause subsequently went further and said 22 that , you know , they did not -- that they engaged in 23 their non - conservative decision making.
24 That's different from the decision making 25 that occurred in the control room. That's their NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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107 1 decision about , should we recommend this evolution?
2 Do we think it ' s safe?
3 The information that was passed onto the 4 control room . That does not mean that they u s u rped 5 the a u thor ity of the control room or directed them .
6 The control room still as the license 7 holder and the shift manager and senior SRO should 8 have questioned that if they were uncertain. They 9 should have put a procedu re in place. They should 10 have run it on the simul ator . They should have done 11 a lot of things they didn't do.
12 So, yes , the OCC's performance had 13 problems. But we don ' t have any indication that the 14 OCC directed the evolution or usurped the operator ,
15 the control room operator ' s dec i sion making author i ty .
16 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Mr. Lewis. What 17 I'm really tryin g to get at is , I'm trying to get at 18 the apparent change to the apparent cause assessment 19 analysis that removed the previous dialog regarding 20 the OCC ' s responsibility.
21 And my understand that it was remov,e d at 22 the direction of individuals based upon a theoret ical 23 response role and responsibility for the OCC ,
24 versu s any specific facts that demonstrated that that 25 was exactl y the case .
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108 1 And it sounds like you have no direct 2 eviden ce to prove the answer one way or the other .
3 Which to me would appear to indicate that changing 4 what was in there originally , mi ght be incorrect .
5 Bu t , I' m not sure of that . I have to 6 finish reviewing all of the information. That's what 7 I'm trying to get at .
8 Thank you for your answer, Mr. Lewis.
9 Marc i a?
10 MS . S IMON : Okay. Ms. Hernandez, I 11 actually want to ask you something , because you said 12 something in -- when you were speaking this morning .
13 And I, my notes that I wrote down have part of it.
14 But , I want to make sure that I u nderstood 15 it correctly. I think you said something to the 16 effect of that during the apparent cause analysis , the 17 team fou nd n o evidence reflecting t h at t he OCC caused 18 or contributed to the main control room ' s decision.
19 Is that, am I remembering correctly? Or 20 21 MS. HERNANDEZ: Ms. Simon , I would have to 22 go back a n d see what I said to conf i rm . Bu t , what I 23 said was that whatever is fine.
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109 1 that the report was finalized.
2 MS. SIMON : Okay . And the rea son I 'm 3 asking is that I' m pretty sure you said something 4 abou t cau se , or whether the OCC cau sed or contributed 5 to .
6 And I wanted to ask some questions about 7 that . So , if you' d like to -- if it 's relatively easy 8 for you to check and see.
9 I don't want to mischaracterize what you 10 said. So, I just want to make sure.
11 MS. HERNANDEZ: Okay. I ' ll look . I will 12 look for that. Thank you.
13 (Off mic comment) 14 MS . HERNANDEZ: Ms . Simon?
15 MS . S IMON: Yes?
16 MS. HERNANDEZ: I found the -- what I 17 said. And I said the ACA team 's findings are 18 consistent with TVA ' s understanding that as of January 19 21 , 2016 , t he date the ACA report was finalized , TVA 20 management had no apparent appreciation that OCC 21 involvement caused or contributed to decision making 22 of the MCR staff on November 11.
23 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you. So, I got 24 part of i t. I appreciate that.
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110 1 representative in the OCC that day. And so , if Mr.
2 Sprinkle as the OCC Ops representative provided input 3 or analysis to the main control room that turned out 4 to be i ncorrect , and the main control room operators 5 proceeded based at l east in p art o n that input, isn 't 6 Mr. Sprinkle ' s action wouldn ' t that be an OCC 7 cont ribut ion to t h e decision t hat was made by the main 8 control room?
9 MS . ROELOFS: One moment, Ms. Simon , we' re 10 con ferring to determin e who will answer .
11 (Off mic comment) 12 MS . ROELOFS : Ms. Simon , Mr . Staggs is 13 prepared to answer your question.
14 MR . SCAGGS : Yes , ma'am . And before I 15 answer , could you , could you just repeat the question 16 so I can do the best I can to answer it complet-e ly?
17 MS . S IMON : Okay . I wi ll try my best to 18 repeat it .
19 So , Mr. Sprinkle was the OCC operations 20 representative that day . And so the question is , if 21 Mr . Sprinkle , as the OCC Ops representative provided 22 inp u t or analysis to t h e main control room t hat turned 23 out to be incorrect, and the main control room 24 proceeded , at l east based in part on that inpu t ,
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111 1 made by the main control room to proceed?
2 MR. SCAGGS: Okay. Thank you, ma ' am .
3 Relative to the OCC contribution, well, first I'll go 4 back and talk about the, I 'm going to call it the life 5 of the apparent cause, whi ch transitioned into a root 6 cause .
7 So, when the apparent cause was being 8 completed with the transition to the root cause, it's 9 my understanding that the evidence wasn't there to 10 support that specific input from the OCC.
11 Subsequent to that , when the root cause 12 was initiated to look at the organizational and 13 programmatic issues associated with that day in the 14 OCC , that is when it was determined that the OCC and 15 the main control room were both contributors to that 16 event.
17 Does that answer your question, ma'am?
18 MS. SIMON : I think so. So, although Mr.
19 Sprinkle was interviewed as part of the apparent 20 cause, nothing came from that interview, to your 21 knowledge , that would have led the team to be l ieve 22 that there was a contribution on his part as the OCC 23 Ops representative?
24 MS. ROELOFS: Ms. Simon, we'll turn that 25 over to our counsel .
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112 1 MS. HERNANDEZ: Ms. Simon , when Mr.
2 Sprinkle was interviewed, he said that the decision 3 was made by Ops. And he also said that he never 4 directed anyone to proceed .
5 He in fact described his discussions with 6 Mr. Johnson as collaborative.
7 MS. SIMON : Is this based on the interview 8 notes?
9 MS . HERNANDEZ : I 'm sorry. The NRC 10 interviews.
11 MS. SIMON: The NR oh , okay. Thank 12 you . But, and there was nothing in the ACA interview 13 notes to expound on that , that you're aware of?
14 Because the ACA team would not have had 15 the NRC interview notes.
16 MS. HERNANDEZ: Right. The ACA t -e am' s 17 notes do state that Mr. Sprinkle stated that a 18 decision was by Ops. And I quote, decision by Ops.
19 Is what the notes say.
20 MS. SIMON: And those notes are pretty, 21 pretty brief and not very extensive, right? Those 22 interview notes?
23 I mean, I've seen them. There I s r you 24 know , there's not a lot of detail there to quote Mr.
25 Hill from the day, from yesterday and the day before .
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113 1 You know , there ' s certainly not transcripts, right?
2 MS. HERNANDEZ: Right . But , assuming that 3 he would have been asked the same questions that the 4 NRC asked, he would have provided the same answer that 5 he did to the NRC.
6 And we can take the NRC transcripts as 7 what he would have told the ACA team had they asked.
8 MS. SIMON: Do you know the questions that 9 the ACA team asked him?
10 MS. HERNANDEZ: I do not.
11 MS. SIMON: Okay . That ' s fine . I also 12 want to ask kind of the same question on Mr _ l(b)(7)(C) 13 that I just asked about Mr. Sprinkle.
14 In his OIG, one of his OIG interviews 15 anyway, Mr* l(b)(7)(C) I indicated that there were 16 extensive discussions in the OCC that morning about 17 whether excess let down would work. And he indicated 18 that engineering was consulted and had told him and 19 others that excess let down could handl e it.
20 And in his PEC, Mr -l(b)(7)(C) lalso referred 21 to the discussions. And he said that there were 22 several hours of discussions. And he also 23 acknowledged the input from engineering.
24 And so, again , you know , my question is, 25 if some OCC personnel spent several hours discussing NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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114 1 whether it was feasible and advisable to heat up an 2 excess let down, and engineers provided input , isn't 3 that indicative of OCC involvement, or a contribution 4 to the MCR's decision to proceed?
5 MS . ROELOFS: Ms. Simon , we will turn that 6 question over to our legal counsel.
7 MS . SIMON : Okay .
8 MR. LEWIS: Yes. This is Mr. Lewis. I 9 don 't believe , at least I'm not aware that the ACA 10 team intervi ewed Mr ~(b)(?)(C)
I-11 Clearly the RCA team did, and has an 12 interview summary. Which suggests to me that a 13 difference between the two reports and a recognition 14 of greater involvement by the OCC was the result of 15 that d i scu ss i on with Mr .1(b)(?)(C) 1-16 Can you repeat your question too, just --
17 oh, I know what I was go ing to say.
18 I don ' t think Mr ~(b)(?)(C) !indicated there 19 was two hours of continuous discussion. I think he 20 was indicating discu ssions occurred at different times 21 over a two hour period .
22 I don't think i t's fair to assume that 23 they were deliberating over this, you know. He 24 describes a break out session and some discu ssions and 25 then periodi c q u est i o n s .
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115 1 I just wanted to correct that sentence.
2 I had never gotten the sense from the statements I've 3 seen from Mr . 1(b)(?)(C) Ithat it was a continuous two 4 hour dialog.
5 MS. SIMON: Thank you, Dave. Yeah. I 6 don't know if it was a continuous dialog . But he did 7 say in his PEC , I did ask him how long the -- how many 8 hours they were discussing.
9 And he -- he actually said it was three or 10 four hours. And you may be right, he -- maybe he was 11 referring to the ultimate time that it took for them 12 to make their decision to go forward .
13 MR. LEWIS: One of the things that's very 14 hard to reconstruct is, you know, what discussions 15 were occurring when. Particularly five years later.
16 It appeared to us when we were r *e ally 17 trying to figure out who said what when, that there 18 were discussions early in the morning at turn over.
19 And prior to moving into Mode 4 .
20 And there were probably discussions later 21 in the day. So, that was actually over quite a wide 22 period of time .
23 And I think in that sense, what Mr.
24 l(b)(7)(C) l said is correct. I cannot tell you, and we 25 don ' t have a precise enough record to say that when it NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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116 1 actually came to time to perform the surveillance and 2 move RHR from service, that that was a two hour 3 discussion.
4 I think that it was probably a range of 5 discussion s over the day from the morning until the 6 RHR evolution. And I wish we could pin it down 7 better. We really tried hard .
8 MS. SIMON: That's fine. That's fine.
9 MR. LEWIS : Yeah .
10 MS. S I MON: Your answer also actually got 11 to the next question I was going to ask , which you 12 partially answered , which was whether Mr .l(b)(?)(C) l was 13 interviewed on this.
14 Because my understanding is , he was on the 15 apparent cause analysis team. And I guess I -- it 16 seems to me given that he was on the team and in the 17 main control room and the OCC, and in the OCC that 18 day, even if he wasn ' t an official member, that they 19 might have interviewed him.
20 But, it sounds like they didn't as far as 21 you can tell?
22 MR. LEWIS: I' ve seen no interview notes 23 or other indication he was interviewed.
24 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you . My last 25 questions have to do with Mr. l. .
(b_)(_
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117 1 letter, I guess , from I think it was ~l (b_)(7_)(C
_ l_ _ ~I
- 2 And I was just wondering, so he said in 3 that that he believed the problem statement should 4 also address the poor assessment of risk by work 5 con trol operations and the outage control center on an 6 emergent work activity that ultimately placed the 7 plant in an unexpected operating condition requiring 8 compensatory operator action to regain control of 9 pressu rizer level.
10 And I just wanted to make sure that it was 11 clear , were any changes made to the report as a r *e sult 12 of this, of his review and his comments?
13 MS. ROELOFS: Ms. Simon, Mr. Barstow will 14 address your question.
15 MS. S IMON: Thank you .
16 MR. BARSTOW: Hello, Ms. Simon. I guess 17 what I would say is no . My answer is no, I don't 18 think there were changes to the apparent cause.
19 But , I also believe and may ask counsel to 7
20 weigh in, but my understanding was that Mr. ~l (b_l(_ l_(C_l _ __ ,
21 insights in his letter were put into the root cause's 22 theater for that invest i gation .
23 I'm sure that it was comprehensive. But, 24 I'll ask counsel if they have anything to add . Go 25 ahead .
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118 1 MR. LEWIS: This is Mr. Lewis. No, we 2 don't have anything to add .
3 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you. And that, 4 .... )(?_)(_c )_ __.l letter was sent to Mr .
Mr . l(b_ (b)(?)(C) Do you 5 have -- did you have any indication whether that was 6 distributed to the other members of the ACA team?
7 MS . ROELOFS: Ms . Simon , we'll ask our 8 counsel to respond to that question. They have the 9 answer based on their investigation.
10 MR. LEWI S: I don't recall who, we would 11 have to look at the transmittal. But, I do not know 12 whether that letter was distributed to other members 13 of the team.
14 MS. SIMON: Okay. Thank you .
15 MR. LEWI S: I do believe that the comments 16 were recognized as good. And reinforced the decision 17 to do the root cause analysis .
18 And were essentially, you know, viewed as 19 being items that would be dis that would be 20 addressed by the root cause analysis.
21 MS. SIMON: Okay.
22 MR . LEWIS: As opposed to going back and 23 working on the apparent cause analysis. At that point 24 it was pretty clear that what should be happening is 25 a full root cause analysis .
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119 1 And you know, to start working on that 2 process.
3 MS. SIMON : Okay. But as far as you know, 4 there were no changes made to the report to reflect 5 that there was input suggestin g , you know, further 6 work? Or a broadening of the investigation, being 7 done ?
8 MR. LEWI S : I am not aware --
9 MS. SIMON : I can't hear you.
10 MR. LEW I S : I' m not aware of changes be ing 11 made . I think Mr. Barstow is correct. But, I've 12 never really looked at drafts to see if there were any 13 changes after the date of ~l (b_)(_? )_(C_l _ _ ~I letter.
14 But , I think Mr. Barstow is .
15 MS . SIMON: Okay . Thank you . I think ,
16 Ken , I think that's a l l the questions I have.
17 MR . O ' BRIEN : Thank you , Marc i a . Mr .
18 Barstow, at this point in time we don ' t have any 19 f u rther questions on the remaining AV's .
20 I' d like us to move to closing commen ts if 21 you're prepared .
22 MR. BARSTOW: Th ank you, Mr. 0 ' Brien.
23 Yes, we ' re prepared to go to closing comments.
24 MS . ROELOFS : Could Mr . O ' Brien j u s t give 25 u s one minute to recollect our paperwork over here .
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120 1 And we'll be back on the record in 30 seconds.
2 MR. O'BRIEN: Thank you, Ms. Roelofs.
3 MS. ROELOFS: You ' re welcome.
4 (Pause) 5 MS. ROELOFS: Mr. 0' Brien, I apologize for 6 the brief wait. We ' re ready to move into closing 7 remarks, starting with our counsel.
8 MR. O ' BRIEN: Thank you.
9 MR. LEPRE: Yes . This is Mike Lepre with 10 Pillsbury. We'd like to thank the NRC for the 11 opportunity to participate in this PEC . We've heard 12 a lot of i n formation .
13 Sorry , my camera. Let me put my camera 14 on. Can you hear me?
15 MR. O'BRI EN: Yes.
16 MR. LEPRE: Okay. Can you hear me?
17 MR. O'BRIEN : Yes . I can see you and hear 18 you, sir .
19 MR. LEPRE: Great . Thank you. This is 20 Mike Lepre with Pillsbury. We'd like to thank the NRC 21 for the opportunity to participate in this PEC .
22 You've heard a lot of information over the 23 past few days. So, our final comments will be brief.
24 This matter has played itself out over the 25 past five years or so. TVA believes that the NRC has, NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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121 1 and continues to pursue a theory that the events of 2 Novembe r 11, 2015 were continually covered up as part 3 of an intentional concerted effort among the numerous 4 TVA employees .
5 We certain ly believe and hope that the 6 evidence presented during this PEC , along with TVA's 7 written respon ses and the PEC ' s in written statements 8 for the ten individuals that proceeded it, has 9 disabu sed the NRC of this notion .
10 The NRC has provi ded no direct evidence of 11 deliberate misconduct. Rather , the NRC appears to 12 merely assume , speculate, a n d con jecture that TVA ,
13 that ten TVA employees knowingly intended to violate 14 NRC requirements. That assumptions , speculations and 15 con jectu res woul d not hol d up in lit i gation.
16 As we pointed out in detail during this 17 PEC , and in our written s u bmittals , many of the 18 apparent violations and allegations are based on 19 inaccu rate characterizations of t he facts .
20 Others take prior statements and testimony 21 entirely out of context and misinterpret the speakers' 22 words . Still othe r s rely on documents that TVA 23 believed it didn ' t even provide to the NRC.
24 Given all this , the staff should find, as 25 with any adjudicatory body, that if these matters were NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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122 1 to proceed to the next level , that the apparent 2 violations do not satisfy the Commission 's we ll 3 established legal standard for demonstrating 4 deliberate misconduct.
5 Yes, mistakes were made on November 11 .
6 They have been studied and corrected. And a new and 7 improved TVA has emerged .
8 As TVA has explained, it doesn't dispute 9 certain of the violations. But with one limited 10 exception, there was no deliberate misconduct by TVA 11 or its employees .
12 And certainly there was never any 13 concerted or individual effort to provide any 14 inaccurate or incomplete information to the NRC .
15 I'll now turn it over to Mr. Rausch.
16 MR. RAUSCH: I too would like to thank you 17 for the opportunity to discuss these Apparent 18 Violations.
19 And even though that we do not agree with 20 everything in the Apparent Violations, we take 21 ownership over the RHR event. We understand what 22 caused it , and have taken actions to make sure it 23 doesn't happen again.
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123 1 significant progress to improve behaviors at -every 2 level of the organization.
3 At Watts Bar in 2015 , our procedural use 4 and adherence , operator fundamentals , and work 5 environmen t were not up to standard. We have 6 implemented a number of corrective actions to create 7 and sustain a culture that we as nuclear professionals 8 can be proud of.
9 I want to mention four t h ings t h at show me 10 our actions h ave been effect i ve . We completed our 11 root cause evaluation of the November 11 , 2015 ,e vent 12 effectiveness review on J une 6, 2018 .
13 And that effectiveness review validated 14 that all corrective actions to prevent recurr,e nce ,
15 con t inue to be effective.
16 The NRC completed a follow up inspection 17 of the NRC confirmatory order and the chilling effect 18 letter on October 24 , 2019. The NRC inspectors did 19 not identify any finding or violation of more than 20 minor significance.
21 The NRC inspection team also determined 22 that Watts Bar continues to make progress in improving 23 their safety conscious work environment.
24 On J uly 27 , 2017 , a confirmatory order 25 established an independent monitor for three years .
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124 1 A recent June 2020 semiannual independent auditor 2 report , which was the last of t he three year 3 requirements , identified that the ERBs or Employee 4 Review Boards , are being effectively implemented in 5 accordance with the procedure, and that all 6 confirmatory order and chilling effects letter 7 requ iremen ts are being met .
8 We made changes to our Employee Concerns 9 Program in October 2019 . And those changes have gone 10 through a f i rst s i x month's effectiveness review.
11 The NRC allegation data shows that 12 allegation s have gone from 21 in 2019 to three in 13 2020. Meaning only that four allegations have been 14 received during this new Employees Concerns Program 15 model. In many cases , concerns are now being resol ved 16 in less than 48 hours5.555556e-4 days <br />0.0133 hours <br />7.936508e-5 weeks <br />1.8264e-5 months <br />.
17 We recognize that the improvements that 18 we ' ve made don ' t negate our responsibility for our 19 past deficiencies . We also recognize that we still 20 have work to do.
21 But TVA and its employees are ready to 22 c l ose this chapter so that it becomes a part of our 23 history . And we can remember and learn from it.
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125 1 do not want to go back to how we were in 2015.
2 As we've communicated throughout this 3 hearing, we are prepared to fully accept Violations 4 that are fair, based on facts , and are consistent with 5 the NRC ' s own regulations.
6 TVA has a responsibility even greater than 7 that of other ut ilities to operate its plant in a safe 8 and reliable manner. To earn and maintain the trust 9 of the people of the Tennessee Valley. And that the 10 responsibility includes own ing up to TVA's mistakes 11 and correcting them once and for all.
12 TVA also has a responsibility to its 13 employees. Even when they haven't performed at their 14 very best, to ensure that they are treated in a manner 15 that is consistent with law and applicabl e 16 regulations.
17 I am hopeful that the NRC' s findings 18 following this conference will meet these criteria so 19 that we can move forward . Thank you for the 20 opportunity to speak.
21 MR. O ' BRIEN: Thank you, Mr. Rausch. I 22 have just a few comments to provide here as we wrap up 23 our three days of dialog.
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126 1 important. In closing this pre - decisional enforcement 2 con fere n ce , the r e are two points that I want to make 3 sure everybody is aware of, and after three days of 4 comments and perspec t ives on both sides , I think i t's 5 very impor tan t .
6 The Apparent Violations discussed during 7 this conference are s ubject to further review and 8 maybe subject to change prior to any resulting 9 enforcement action .
10 Secon d , the statements or views ,
11 expressions or opinions by me, any NRC employees at 12 this conference , or the lack thereof , are not i n t-ended 13 to represent final agency determinations or beliefs.
14 We intend to take the information you've 15 provi ded us , the information from our other PECs , and 16 look at all the information to make sure that our 17 fi n a l ac tions , as we propose , will be fu ll y supported 18 and fully appropriate to the circumstances.
19 I want to than k all of you for your 20 patience, your words of wisdom, your words of advice ,
21 and your words of information to help the agency do 22 the best that they can i n the job that they're charged 23 with.
24 Unless there are any other comments , and 25 I want to make sure before I go o n e step further, and NEAL R. GROSS COURT REPORTERS AND TRANSCRIBERS 1323 RHODE ISLAND AVE., N.W.
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12 7 1 ask the Court Reporter if there ' s anything they need?
2 COURT REPORTER: Yes, Mr . Chair. B-e fore 3 we go off the record, or after we go off the record ,
4 I have a few spelling questions.
5 MR. O 'BRIEN: So, after we go off the 6 record , I ' d ask if TVA can help you with those .
7 With that then, I will c l ose this 8 conference , and it is completed. Thank you very, very 9 much . And we are off the record.
10 (Whereupon, the a b ove-en titled matter we nt 11 off the record at 1:12 p .m.)
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