IR 05000298/1982012

IE Insp Rept 50-298/82-12 on 820426-29.No Noncompliance Noted.Major Areas Inspected:Offsite Committee & Support Staff

ML20054G109
Person / Time
Site:	Cooper
Issue date:	05/25/1982
From:	Randy Hall, Jaudon J, Westerman T NRC OFFICE OF INSPECTION & ENFORCEMENT (IE REGION IV)
To:
Shared Package
ML20054G106	List: IR 05000298/1982012 ML20054G105
References
50-298-82-12, NUDOCS 8206210108
Download: ML20054G109 (5)

Text

.

'

.

APPEND U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY' C0PNISSION

REGION IV

Report: 50-298/82-12 Docket: 50-293 License: bPR-46 Licensee: Nebraska Public Power District Post Office Box 499-Columbus, Nebraska 68601 Facility Name: Cooper Nuclear Station Inspection at: Nebraska Public Power District Offices Columbus, Nebraska Inspection conducted: April 26-29, 1982 In5pector: _ .

,f II 7t.--

. P. Jaudon, Reactor Inspector, Reactor Project Section C Dafe w

Reviewed: h N T. F. Westerman, Chief, Reactor Project Section A fMa[~ p a Date Approved: p -

J/z;/yt_

' R. E( Hall, Chief, Reactor Project Section C D'at(

Inspection Summary Inspection Conducted April 26-29, 1982 (Report 50-298/82-12)

Areas Inspected: Routine, unannounced inspection of the offsite committee and offsite support staff. The inspection involved 23 inspector-hours by one NRC inspecto Results: Within the two areas inspected, no violations or deviations were identified.

8206210108 820603 PDR ADOCK 05000298 G PDR

,

.

-2-

'

DETAILS Persons Contacted ,

'Nehraska Public Power District R. Boyle, Engineering Manager Nuclear

• R. Buntain, Division Manager of Power Operations J. Douglass, Chief Draftsman J. Ferneau, Records Supervisor W. Irby, Training Manager

• R. S. Kamber, Senior Division Manager, Power Operations J. Pilant, Division Manager, Licensing and Quality Assurance

• K. Walden, Licensing Engineer

• J. Weaver, Licensing Manager The NRC inspector also contacted other personnel including administrative, clerical, engineering, and quality assurance personne * Denotes presence at the exit interview conducted April 29, 1982. Offsite Committee The purpose of this inspection was to ascertain whether or not the offsite review functions were conducted in accordance with the Technical Specifi-cations, Section The Nebraska Public Power District offsite comittee is titled " Safety Review and Audit Board (SRAB)." The NRC inspector found that the SRAB operated in accordance with SRAB procedures, which w re unnumbere These procedures, which are listed be. low, were reviewed:

SRAB Charter, Revision 1, July 31,1981 SRAB General Requirement Procedure, Revision 3, July 31,1981 SRAB Meeting Procedure, Revision 3, July 31,1981 SRAB Routing Procedure, Revision 2, July 31, 1981 SRAB Audit Procedure, Revision 4, August 21, 1981 The NRC inspector found no discrepancies between these procedures and the Technical Specification requirements for SRA The NRC inspector reviewed the minutes of SRAB meetings 68 (Jan.16,1981).,

69 (April 16, 1981), 70 (Aug. 3, 1981), 71 (Dec. 3, 1981), and the agenda

_

for the meeting 73 conducted March 16, 1981. It was noted that the licensee conducted SRAB meetings at twice the semiannual frequency specified .

in the Technical Specifications. It was also noted that the minutes reviewed contained identification of all documents reviewed, a summary of discussions held, and SRAB recommendation J

.

,

-3--

One of the Technical Specification requirements for SRAB is to ". . .

detect trends which may not be apparent to a day-to-day observer." The NRC inspector found that this was accomplished by SRAB review of quality assurance (QA) prepared trend charts at each meeting. The QA trend charts were based on input of all nonconformance reports (NCR's) to a computer data base. The trend analysis was subdivided into failure type, system, and vendor categories. The charts, thus produced, showed a chronological record of NCR's by months for various categories (e.g.,

individual vendors, systems, etc.) and a " trend" line based on a least mean squares curve of the monthly data points. The NRC inspector noted that although QA prepared the trend curves, all followup action was left to the operations division. The NRC inspector determined by interview that the trend programs in use were not normalized for activity volum For example, vendor trends were based on the number of NCR's written against the vendor, but did not reflect the volume of activity with the vendor. Similarily, component failures of like equipment in various systems did not appear as such unless the " failure type" was identified as identical. This type of trend information was not available in the trend program, but apparently could be found by QA followup. The NRC inspector could not find any examples of either SRAB or the operations division requesting QA followup to define trend information more clearl This was expressed as a concern to licensee management. Licensee manage-ment stated that unsatisfactory trend areas had been probed, but agreed that there had been no effort made to extract available data from the QA program to aid specific inquirie The SRAB audit schedule had been promulgated by memorandum (R. S. Kamber, dated Feb. 8, 1982). The NRC inspector noted that this audit plan scheduled the majority of audits during the second year of the biannual cycle. The NRC inspector also noted that the schedule included a statement that all audit reports for 1982-1983 were to be completed by January 15, 1984. Thus, by schedule, the report of an audit scheduled to be conducte.d in May 1982 was not required to be completed for 20 months. Licensee management stated to the NRC inspector that the audit schedule had been poorly worded and that audit status, including reports thereof, was an agenda item for each SRAB meeting. It was further stated that audit reports would be completed in a timely manner.

'

The NRC inspector noted that a task force had been formed under SRAB auspice to study issues related to staffing and trainin The NRC inspector

noted that this task force had identified the need for a comprehensive l training plan for the offsite staff. SRAB had endorsed this recommenda-j tion, and the NRC inspector reviewed a draft plan for such training. The

'

NRC inspector noted that this training plan had not as yet been fully implemented, although, as described in paragraph 3 of this report, some training modules had been completed. The NRC inspector expressed concern

,

e

, . ,

.

, ,

-4- -

tnat this SRAB recommendation had not yet been fully implemented. The NRC inspector concluded that, in this instance, the SRAB had properly exercised its review and audit functions, as delineated in the Technical Specifications. Review of the licensee's action in this area will be conducted during a future inspection. This is considered to be an open item pending further review. (8212-01)

3. Offsite Support The purpose of this inspection was to determine whether or not support staff functions were performed by qualified personne'i. Groups included in this inspection were licensing, training, engineering, quality assurance, drafting, and document contro The NRC inspector found that the licensee did not have any training plan for the support staf It was found that there had been some ASME code training recently completed and that there had been one lecture held on procurement. There had not been any systems training conducted, although every interviewee from licensing, engineering, and quality assurance indicated that such training was needed and all were aware of repeated requests for such training. The NRC inspector did not identify anyone in these three groups who had ever been permanently assigned to the sit From these two facts, the NRC inspector concluded that the experience level of the support staff was low and that there was no implemented plan of action to readdress the situation. This was expressed as a potential weakness to licensee managemen The licensee's manning level and authorized strength in the nuclear engineering department (supervisors, engineers, coops, and technicians)

was 21 on board and 26 authorized. This ' represented a significant increase over the 12 on board and 18 positions found during a 1979 inspection; however, it was not considered to be heavy manning comparatively, especially in view of the lack of site experience discussed abov The NRC inspector checked the licensee's status of drawing revisio Based on the rate of update during 1982 to date,-it appeared that the revision backlog was approximately 2 months or less for those design change packages released by the site. No information was available

during this inspection on the number of design changes completed, but not released by the site. It was noted that the licensee is about to commence an outage; therefore, the drawing backlog could be assumed to be at a near minimum point. The NRC inspector found that the licensee J

.

. Whs .

<

-5-gave priority to updating drawings which did not concern hangers or support During this part of the inspection, the NPC inspector briefly toured the licensee drawing vault; there were no questions concerning the adequacy of this vaul The licensee maintained an action item tracking system (AITS) in the licensing section. The NRC inspector reviewed the master AITS boo It was noted that'several sorts were used to identify action items and that the master list was frequently updated. It was concluded that the licensee was maintaining a working system to track commitment The NRC inspector reviewed the licensee's offsite training record These records were brief. The licensee was in process of placing these records in a computer data base. One lesson plan for a lecture on pro-curement was reviewed. This lesson plan was found'to be in the format of a script rather than a lesson' plan. There were no visual aids, and the lesson plan had not been prepared by the general office training staff. The NRC inspector expressed concern that there might be a loss of effectiveness if visual aids.and professional techniques were not integrated into what little training was undertake The NRC inspector reviewed some documents which indicated that the licensee had experienced difficulty in recruiting either replacement or additional personnel for the professional staff, both at the general office and at

.

the site. Although this problem is not unique to this licensee, the compar-atively lean manning noted could, in-the NRC inspector's judgement, lead to a situation detrimental to safe operation with the loss of just a ~few key personnel. This was expressed as a concern to licensee management, who seemed aware of the potential problem, but did not enumerate any specific remedial action that had been take There were no violations or deviations identified in this area of the inspectio . Exit Interview An exit interview was conducted April 29, 1982, with Mr. R. S. Kamber and other licensee personnel denoted in paragraph 1. At this meeting, the scope of the inspection and the findings were summarize m