ML20199C989
| ML20199C989 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Crystal River  |
| Issue date: | 11/30/1995 |
| From: | NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS (OI) |
| To: | |
| Shared Package | |
| ML20199C716 | List:
|
| References | |
| FOIA-97-313 2-94-036, 2-94-36, NUDOCS 9711200218 | |
| Download: ML20199C989 (135) | |
Text
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NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
Title:
In the matter of Interview of ..
Bruce Hickle Docket Numbar: 2-94-036 Location: Crystal River, Florida
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Date: November 30,1995 Work Order No.: NRC-429 Pages 1-134 f
NEAL R. GROSS AND CO., INC.
f]lL1 Court Reporters and Transcribers E)EllBIT / 7 1313 Rhode Island Avenne, N W.
Washington, D.C. 20005 PAGE / OF /3(, PAGE(S) g 94_ (202) 234 4433 f
k g --
12 g 8 971117 LIAW97-313 PDR h
f 1 _ UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 2 NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 3 +++++
4 OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS 5 INTERVIEW 6 --+-----------------------.-------x 7 IN THE MATTER OF: :
8 INTERVIEW OF : Docket No.
9 BRUCE HICKLE : 2-94-036 10 :
11 -- -------------------------------x 12 Thursday, November 30, 1995 13 14 Crystal River Plant 15 Administration Building 16 15760 W. Power Line Street 17 Crystal River, Florida 18 19 The above-entitled interview was conducted at 20 1:15 p.m.
21 BEFORE:
22 JAMES D. DOCKERY Senior Investigator 23 JIM VORSE Senior Investigator 24 CURT RAPP Reactor En;4ineer 25 f l4 <<w "W "
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i (l ?-APPEARANCES: . ,
2' -On Behalf.of the Nuclear. Regulatory Commission 3- JAMES DOCKERY, Senior Investigator 4 Region II- NRC Office of Investigations.
5 ~401 Marietta Street 6 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 -
- 7. JAMES VORSE, Senior-Investigator 8 Region II NRC Office of Investigations 9 401 Marietta Street 10 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 11- CURT RAPP, Rehctor Engineer 12 Region II NRC 13' 401 Marietta Street 14 Atlanta, Georgia 30323 15-16 On Behalf of the Interviewee, Bruce Hickle 17 MORRIS " SANDY" WEINBERG, JR., ESQUIRE 18 Corporate-Counsel - Florida Power Corporation 1 97 101 East Kennedy Boulevard, Suite 3140 20 Tampa, Florida 33602 21- DANIEL F. STENGER, ESQUIRE
.22 Corporate Counsel - Florida Power Corporation L 23 1400'L Street, N.W.
I
- i. 24 Washington, D.C. 20005-3502 l
i 3
1 P-R-O-C-E-E-D-I-N-G-S 2 MR. DOCKERY: For the record, today's date is 3 November 30th, 1995. The time is approximately 1:15 p.m..
4 My name is James D. Dockery. I'm a Senior Investigator 5 with the NRC Office of Investigations.
6 During this proceeding, which is being recorded 7 for transcription, the Office of Investigations will 8 conduct an interview of Mr. Bruce Hickle. This interview 9 pertains to OI investigation number 2-94-036. The 10 location of this interview is the Administrative Building 11 at the Crystal River Nuclear Plant.
12 There are others in attendance during this 13 interview and I'm going to request that they identify 14 themselves and their affiliation, starting with Mr. Rapp.
15 MR. RAPP: My name is Curt Rapp. R-A-P-P. I am 16 a Reactor Inspector with Region II NRC in Atlanta, 17 Georgia, 10 MR. VORSE: My name is Jim Vorse. V-O-R-S-E.
19 I'm a Senior Investigator with NRC's Office of 20 Investigations, Atlanta, Georgia.
21 MR. STENGER: Dan Stenger, attorney with Winston 22 Strawn in Washington, D.C.
23 MR. WEINBERG: Sandy Weinberg with Zuckerman, 24 Spaeder from Tampa. And we have explained to Mr. Hickle 25 that both Mr. Stenger and I represent Florida Power, not 1
4 1 Mr. Hickle as his individual lawyer.
2 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Before we proceed with Mr.
3 Hickle's testimony or evidenca, Mr. Weinberg, would you 4 like to make a statement regarding some dccuments that you 5 provided us?
6 MR WEINBL'RG: Yes. We had -- There had been-7 some requests to Mr. Hinman for some additional documents, 8 and in fact, he's still looking for some additional 9 documents. Eut he had referred to a packet of documents 10 that he had identified that he had pulled following his 11 learning about the September 5th, 1994 evolution. And 12 that's been turned over to you and it plots data which 13 indicated that there was a draw-down, both on the 4th and 0
14 5th, from which he concluded that there was a September 15 4th evolution.
16 He also referred to, and we've provided a copy of 17 the problem report 94-0149, after SP-630 that he talked 18 about, and included in that document he had included as an 19 attachment at the time a procedure discrepancy report that 20 he had received from Mark Van Sicklen on May 10th, 1994, 21 with regard to Curve 8 issue, in that. He said he was 22 addressing that to a certain extent in the problem report.
23 Also, in Greg Halnon's testimony this morning, 24 the continued testimony, you all had, I think specifically 25 Jim Vorse had asked for some documentation that in fact
5 1 Mr. Fields and his crew were aware that the swap -- swap 2 pump or pump B or the makeup pump was actually out or 3 unavailable on September 4th and 5th at the time that the 4 evolutions were done. And he has gathered a group of 5 documents that indicate -- that we've turned over -- that 6 indicate that he was.. They include the procedural 7 approval and transmittal sheet. It includes the relief 8 checklist for the NSS and the ANSS, showing that they had 9 reviewed the shift logs for the shift before. It 10 indicates that the inboard pump seal leak for makeup pump 11 1B was degraded equipment. It indicates that as to that 12 1B that it had been tagged so that it appeared -- and that 13 was footnote two -- so that it appeared -- this appeared 14 to document what Mr. Halnon had indicated earlier about 15 the knowledge of the Weiss and Fields crew.
16 Thanks.
17 MR. DOCKERY: And we acknowledge receive of 18 those documents.
19 MR. WEINBERG: Appreciate it.
20 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, would you raise your 21 right hand, please.
22 THE WITNESS: (Complies.)
23 Whereupon, 24 BRUCE JAMES HICKLE, 25 being first duly sworn by the Investigator, was examined !
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6 1 and testified as follows:
2 DIRECT EXAMINATION 3 MR. DOCKERY: For identification purposes would 4 you state your full name, please.
5 THE WITNESS: Bruce James Hickle.
6 MR. DOCKERY: And your date of birth and Social 7 Security number? . ~'
8 THE WITNESS: Is 9 MR. WEINBERG: - Finally found somebody nip age.
10 Everybody at this plant has been younger than me. 'I feel 11 good.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Some of us feel worse.
13 MR. VORSE: Tru s t me . (Laughter . )
14 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, before we vent on the 15 record here today, I, myself, and Mr. Vorse provided you 16 with our credentials by way of advising you of our 17 identity. Is that correct?
18 THE WITNESS: Yes.
19 MR. DOCKERY: And also, I've provided you with 20 the verbiage of Title 18, Section 1001 of the United 21 States Code and explained how that applied to this 22 proceeding. Is that correct?
23 THE WITNESS: Yes.
24 MR. DOCKERY: And do you understand that 25 application?
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7
- 1. 'THE-WITNESS: Yes, I understandfit.
2 MR. DOCKERY - Thank you. :(
-3 We're-here to discuss today, Mr. Hickle, is the 4 events of;possibly late 1993, certainly 1994 and into i 5 1995, regarding the OP-103B Curve 8 and certain evolutions 3
6 that -- of the makeup tank that were conducted during'mid 7 1994.
8 What was your position during the time of the
, 9 events.in question?
10 THE WITNESS: Director of Nuclear Plant 11 Operations.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. By way of background could 13 you give us your educational background and experience.
14 TH WITNESS: I have a Master's Degree in 15 Mechanical Engineering and Nuclear Option.
16 MR. WEINBERG: You're going to need to speak up 17 because this is being recorded, and if you put your hand 18 over your mouth it's really going to be hard for it to be 1
19 -picked up because your voice is pretty soft.
- 20 THE WITNESS: All-right. Let me-repeat that. I 21 have a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering, Nuclear 22 Option. I began employment-in the nuclear industry in
- 23. 1973, I believe it was January of '73. I worked at Point E 24 Beach as a' technical assistant for a little less than two
- 25' years. I worked at_ Corporation in a variety of
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8 1 engineering assignments, performing safety analyses and 2 environmental impact analyses for a couple of years. I 3 left EdS in 1976 and became employed at Omaha Public Power
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4 District9 where I held several positions: senior engineer, 5 licensin g administrator, health, physics supervisor,
' H4 k 6 chemistry and radiation protection supervisor. And the 7 titles, I believe the titles are correct. They may have 8 been managers or supervisors.
9 I came to Florida Power Corporation from Omaha in 10 1982 -- no, December of '82. I was employed as a 11 chemistry and radiation protection manager for a short 12 time. Then I wept into license training. I've held ss,6 /
13 positions of syst-em operations manager, of operations area
,-e,J i 14 manager where I was responsible for maintenance, 15 operations, chemistry, radiation protection, director of 16 quality programs for approximately two years, and the..
17 director of nuclear plant operations.
18 MR. DOCKERY: You are currently director of 19 nuclear plant operations and did you -- have you held the 20 same position since 19937 21 THE WITNESS: I believe in '93, yes.
22 MR. DOCKERY: So for probably the entire time 23 that we want to cover the issue that we're looking at.
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24 THE WITNESS: I was in the directo 25 plant manager's position. 'TDN
9 9
1 MR. DOCKERY: We've had, as I'm sure you've been 2 told, we've taken a considerable amount of testimony on 3 this subject and I guess the easiest way to begin is to go 4 back in time to when -- begin with your kr.owledge of when 5 Curve 8 first became a matter of some concern to the 1
6 Operations Department.
7 THE WITNESS: The curve itself became an issue 0 -- well, you said become an issue to the Operations 9 Department. Some of the issues predate this, but I think 10 the --
11 MR. DOCKERY: That's fine. If you can take us 12 back further that would be helpful.
13 THE WITNESS: All right. Okay. Well, back in 14 '92/'93 time frame our limit for maintaining hydrogen in 15 the reactor coolant system changed. And that was because 16 an industry standard had changed and we had committed to 17 maintaining the hydrogen concantration in the reactor 18 coolant system at the industry stendard, 19 MR. DOCKERY: Which was?
20 THE WITNESS: Twenty-five -- a min'. mum of 25 21 cc's per kg.
22 In order to de that, pressure in the makeup tank 23 had to be increaued, hydrogen overpressure. The -- We 24 never actually maintained our chemistry consistently at 25 that limit, and INPO pointed that out, Institute of
10 1 Nuclear Power Operations, pointed that out to us in one of 2 their plant evaluations that they did around 1993 I would 3 say.
4 And what INPO told us is basically you have this 5 limit, it's an industry limit, there's a good reason for 6 it and you're not consistently meeting it. And they felt 7 like we should take actions to be responsive to that 8 limit.
9 We discussed that and we challenged our operating 10 crews with consistently meeting the 25 cc's per kg, which 11 meant that the makeup tank pressure had to be increased 12 and maintained at an increased level to be able to do 13 that.
14 Sometime along that cime frame we also -- we also is -- I don't recall whether it was pre '93 or before, but I 16 recall that we also put a variable overpressure alarm 17 function in by design change into the system.
18 The operators' attention really became focused on 19 the issue efter the refueling that occurred in '94, as I 20 remember, where we ran a surveillance procedure that was a 21 surveillance procedure that tested makeup tank -- makeup 22 pump flow, simulating high pressure injection conditions.
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23 And e-4cc of our operators on the control board felt like
<T4 a' 24 when he ran the test that he saw some indications of 25 cavitation in one of our makeup pumps. And at that point
I 11 1 the question started to arise relative to the validity of 2 the operating curve that we had in place. And the 3 operating curve I'm talking about is the pressure curve 4 that the operators had to maintain for makeup tank 5 operation'pressurelevelcurveA'.
p.-c.tV 6 MR. DOCERRY: What we refer to as Curve 8, for 7 simplicity cake?
8 THE WITNESS: Yes, yes, Curve 8.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Thank you.
10 THE WITNESS: That's really when the -- to 11 answer your question -- that's really when the operation 12 -- well, Operations was involved. There was Operations 13 involvement with maintaining the new hydrogen limit. The 14 Operation concern really became focused after the outage 15 when the curveillance procedure was run, or the operators' 16 concern.
17 MR. DOCKERY: What was the operators -- what was 18 the nature of their concern? What troubled them about 19 Curve 8?
20 THE WITNESS: Well, I talked to Mark personally 21 about it and --
22 MR. DOCKERY: If you would, please, we've got 23 mult.iple names here. Would you use the last name?
24 THE WITNESS: I talked to Mark Van Sicklen 25 personally about it after the outage. And his concern was
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1 that he thought he saw some evidence of makeup pump {
2 cavitation. And he thought that if we had an accident !
3 that if the makeup pump were actually cavitating under the l 4 test _ conditions, that that could also happen during an ;
5 accident. And that sounded like a valid-concern to me.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Did he seek you out to advise you 7 of that or was it more mentioned in passing?
8 THE WITNESS: I don't recall how I found out 9 about it, but you have to remember thr* I spend -- at that 10 point I was spending a lot of time in the control room.
11 And it may have been that he mentioned it to me or it may 12 have been I heard it, about it, the concern, from Greg. I -
13 don't really recall. But I knew that I had learned about 14 it and I -- !
15 MR. DOCKERY: Greg would be Greg Halnon?
16 THE WITNESS: Greg Halnon, yeah. I don't know 17_ how it came to light exactly.
l 18 MR. DOCKERY: What, if any, action did you take 1
19 to deal-with the concern about Curve 8?
20 THE WITNESS: Well, Greg and I talked about it ,
21 and;I was concerned that, you know, if Mark -- if Mark's 22 -- if Mark was right, if what the operators thought they 23 saw was valid, then we needed to know it. So we pursued
- 24. trying to identify _whether or not that question was valid 25 or not with Engineering and with Operations.
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13 1 MR. DOCKERY: Did Mark Van Sicklen ':r anybody 2 else in Operations relate to you or did you come to know 3 that they were having -- felt they were being burdened by 4 operating within Curve 8 due to the hydrogen requirements?
5 THE WITNESS: At any time or what time are you 6 questioning?
7 MR. DOCKERY: Well, I guess maybe you could 8 characterize it certainly better than I did. Did that 9 become an issue, the operability?
10 THE WITNESS: Well, let's separate the issues 11 here.
12 First, I was concerned that by maintaining the 13 hydrogen level they had a very small window that they had 14 to operate the plant in. And I felt like that was a lot 15 of work for the operators.,#I,- t'that represented operator 16 burden on shift. 'I
! 17 On the other hand, I did not recognize it at the 18 time, for valid reasons, as a safety issue. I felt that 19 they were -- I wanted to address it from the standpoint of 20 getting it resolved so that they did not have to make 21 adjustments to makeup tank pressure almost every shift. I
. 22 felt like that was too often and it would eventually lead 23 to a distraction .for them. But, from the feedback we were 24 getting it was entirely doable. Now, that's one issue.
25 The other issue was the one that came up after I
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14 1 the outage, which was the one I was really most concerned 2 with, and that was the potential for the makeup pump 3 cavitation. That was a safety, nuclear safety question.
4 And that was the one that I really wanted to address first 5 and primarily. I felt like the operator burden issue was 6 one that we had time to look at, but the makeup pump 7 cavitation needed to be looked at promptly by Engineering.
8 MR. DOCKERY: What was done? How was the 9 problem dealt with? The issues, you might say. ,
10 THE WITNESS: Well, as I recall we had a problem 11 report that addressed the experience with SP-650 -- no, 12 630, I guess it was. And I'm not certain of that, but I 13 seem to remember it, there was a problem report that was 0
14 written. And after that the issue was referred to 15 Engineering for evaluation.
16 But, Engineering was asked, and did work with our 17 operators to try to get as much first-hand information 28 from them as they could so they could do the evaluation.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Did you have a -- my term -- point 20 man to deal with this issue, designate a point man?
21 THE WITNESS: Well, my point man is our 22 operations manager, Greg Halnon.
-23 MR DOCKERY: What -- Maybe we can move along 24 chronologically, you could tell us about each significant 25 event with respect to this issue that occurred.
b 15 1 THE WITNESS: Well, that's going to be hard for ,
2 me to trace a two-year old event. I'm having trouble even 3 now reconstructing the time line. I can remember --
4 MR. DOCKERY: Excuse me.
5 COURT REPORTER: Could I ask you to please move a 6 little closer to the mike?
7 THE WITNESS: Okay. (Complies.)
8 I say that's going to be difficult because I 9 don't have a recollection of the exact time, you know, 10 this is a two-year old memory. I can remember certain 11 interfaces that occurred. I can remember concerns that I 12 had. I can remember conversations, but I can't put them 13 all in order very well. If you have questions 14 specifically about what occurred first, what occurred 15 next, maybe I could answer those for you.
16 MR. DOCKERY: When was the -- you said SP-630 17 occurred in June?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, it was right after the 19 cutage. I don't recall the exact date --
20 MR. WEINBERG: Well, let me show you problem 21 report 94-0149 and ask you if that --
22 THE WITNESS: Okay. (Examining document.)
23 MR. WEINBERG: Is that the one you're talking 24 about?
25 THE WITNESS: This is the one that I referred
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16 ,
1 to.- Okay. I 2 MR. WEINBERG: Does that help you with the 3 dates?
i 4 THE WITNESS: The date on the -- the date at.the 5 time of occurrence is 5/10/94. So-that would be the date ,
6 that the SP was run. f 7 MR. DOCKERY: Maybe we'll try this another way.
8 Cut to the chase, so to speak.
9 On September the 5th, 1994, there was an event (
10 that is really sort of the basis for our being here, we, being the NRC, today. When did you become aware --
11 What 12 is.your understanding of what occurred that day and when .
13 did you become aware of it?
14 THE WITNESS: Okay. First, let me talk about my
. 15: discovery. I learned about it a few days after it ,
16 occurred, and I don't recall the exact date, but I found ,
17 out in a gymnasium in town, from one of our System 18 engineers.
19 MR. DOCKERY: And that is?
20 THE WITNESS: And that's Phil Saltsman. And 21 Phil works out at the same gymnasium as I do. And it's 22 not unusual for us to talk about the plant. You know, we got a lot of Florida Power people there. And Phil came up 24 to me and~ asked me whether or not I was aware that a 25: makeup tank test, .lue characterized it as a test, had been. ,
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I performed. And I told him that I was not, what did he :
2 know about it.
3 He said, well, he said, they -- and I don't 4 recall his exact words, but he said something along the 5 lines that they allowed the makeup tank pressure to go 6 into the unacceptable region of the curve to test the 7 validity of the curve. And he was indignant because he 8 was not consulted as our System engineer.
9 The reason he was talking to me wasn't because he 10 recognized the operational significance of what had 11 occurred, I'm sure. It was because he had the expectation 12 that if they were performing any kind of a test on his 13 system, that as the system owner that he would have been 0
14 consulted and been included so that he could have been 15 there to participate. That's the discovery. That's how I 16 discovered what had occurred.
17 Now, you asked me what had occurred.
18 MR. RAPP: Excuse me, before you get into that.
19 THE WITNESS: Okay.
20 MR. RAPP: Could you put a date with this?
21 THE WITNESS: I can, but I'm going to have to 22 consult my notes here.
23 MR. DOCKERY: That's fine. I should have 24 mentioned --
25 THE WITNESS: Okay, I
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18 1 MR. DOCKERY: -- at any point consult any 2 documentation you need or if you need to consult with your 3 attorneys, feel free and we'll go off the record.
4 MR. DOCKERY: (Examining documents.) All right.
5 To the best of my recollection it was 9/13/94, that 6 evening.
7 MR. DOCKERY: September the 13th, '94.
8 Ti!E WITNESS: Right.
9 MR. DOCKERY: When you say that evening, what i 10 time in the evening?
11 THE WITNESS: I'll estimate it that it was i
12 around 6:00 o' clock, six p.m.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. You were going to describe 14 to us our understanding (sic) of what occurred that Mr.
l 15 Saltsman was troubled by.
i 16 THE WITNESS: Well, I think I explained. He 17 didn't give me very much information in the gym, just 18 enough to make me question how that evolution occurred and 19 I didn't know about it and I didn't see it in our daily 20 work schedule.
21 MR. DOCKERY: So did you take steps to 22 investigate further?
23 THE WITNESS: Yeah. The next day I -- the next 24 morning I went in before my NGRC meeting, Nuclear General 25 Review Committee, off-site safety committee meeting. And
19 1 I talked to Greg Halnon and I told Greg what I knew and I 2 asked him to look into it. I told him specifically what 3 my concern was affitwasn'tatestthatwasonourdaily 4 schedule. I did not know about it and it would seem like 5 the kind of thing that you would have to have a procedure 6 and it would be pre-planned work activity.
7 And I questioned him, I said, please find out 8 first what did they do. See if you can get the details, t 9 And secondly, tell me whether or not, who, you know, who 10 was involved with this, and did we have a procedure. What 11 kind of procedure was used. And that kind of a procedure 12 would require my signature when it got reviewed by the 13 plant review committee. And I knew that I hadn't seen 14 anything.
15 And I thought at the time it was also possible i
16 that Phil Saltsman characterized it incorrectly. But it 17 needed to be looked at right away.
18 MR. DOCKERY: What did you find out had 19 occurred?
20 THE WITNESS: Well, Greg came -- I talked to 21 Greg either later that evening or I think it was the next 22 morning. And he told me that, he said, you know, it's 23 pretty much the way Phil Saltsman described it to you. He 24 said, it looks like there was a test that was performed.
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25 They did operate the plant in a way that caused the pg
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i 20 1 parameters to move 111to the unacceptable region of the i
2 makeup tank curve. They did sustain operation there for 3 some period of time and it did look like -- and they did 4 write a problem report on it, he told me. And he gave me 4
5 a copy of it.
6 And he said, what they're trying to do is to 7 prove the validity of the urve, they got some suspicions 8 on it. And he and I both agreed that it looked like it 9 was a problem the way that it was conducted.
10 MR. WEINBERG: Had he talked to Weiss and 11 Fields?
12 THE WITNESS: I believe thac's how he got the 13 information. But I can't say for sure who he talked to.
14 MR. WEINBERG: But you had asked him to 15 investigate it?
16 THE WITNESS: I asked him to investigate it the 17 very next morning that I found out about it, i 18 MR DOCKERY: How long did it take to determine 19 that yes, there is a problem? I mean, when did you decide 20 or when was the decision made that, we've got a real 21 problem here?
22 THE WITNESS: Oh, I decided we had a real 23 problem when Greg confirmed that a test had been done
- 24 without a procedure and that the plant was allowed to --
25 was intentionally put into an unacceptable region of one
(
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21 1 of our operating curves and sustained the operation there.
2 MR. WEINBERG: Were you upset?
c 3 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I was very upset. At that 4 point, before I went any further I felt it was time to 5 start letting people know what potentially had happened.
6 And I called Pat Beard and I told Pat right away about it.
7 My immediate -- my immediate supervisor is Gary Boldt, but 8 he was not in, he was not at the plant, he was on a 9 business trip somewhere.
10 MR. DOCKERY: What was Mr. Deard's reaction?
11 THE WITNESS: Well, he listened. I told him I 12 thought it was a problem and I told him that I intended to 13 notify NFC about it, of the suspected problem. I also 14 told him that we hadn't looked -- I explained to him the 15 extent that we had looked into it and that we still had to 16 look into it further. And that I personally had not 17 talked to the shift supervisor or assistant, but there was 18 enough information there to know that it was going to lead 19 to some kind of an operating issue.
20 So he thanked me for the information, asked me to 21 get back to him when I laaew some more. And from there I 22 went down to talk to Ross Butcher, our resident inspector.
23 Ard I also asked to call the Region and talk to the Region 24 myself as opposed to using our resident as a conduit.
25 And I believe I talked to Carey Landis. I don't
22 1 recall whether there was anyone else on the line at the l 2 Region on che first conversation.
3' MR. WEINBERG: Was Butcher on the line with you? (
4 'A M E W I T N E S S : Bu(' Butcher was there.with me. {
/ nut i 5 And I told Carey what I knew and I also told carey that we !
6 would be looking at it harder and that I would get back to [
\
him when I had more information.
7 I really, we just wanted 8 to give them, Ross and Carey as well, a heads up. We try 9 to do thEt as a matter of courtesy on any issue that has ;
10 potential regulatory significance.
11 MR. DOCKERY: What followed? What were your ,
12 next actions? !
t 13 THE WITNESS: The next thing I did was-after
- 1 14 calling the NRC was to put together a management review
- n.,,wk 15 - committeej ManaNrreviewpanel. Now, this is not a :
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16 - method, you know, for handling problems at the plant that 17 we customarily used, but I felt like because of what I 18 felt at that point to be a very significant issue, and I 19 was pretty upset about it I wanted some other people
/-wt ;
, 20- with some significant operating and engineering experience !
21 . to participate with me in looking-at it. And I wan*ed to j 22 make sure that any actions that we_took as a result were ,
- t 23 righty And that we had the right-perspective. And I
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24- didn't want-to do_that solely by myself or with just Greg '
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1 So I asked several people to participate on the j 2 ' management review panel. And -- okay. l 3 MR. VORSE: What was your -- before you formed 4 this panel -- I'm sorry to interrupt, but before you !
5 formed this panel what was your mind set as far as what f f
6 you should be doing with these people, the shift people? ,
7 THE WITNESS: Well, I felt they had the right to 8 a hearing. At least the supervisor and assistant shift-9 supervisor since they were the two people that were in ;
10 charge of that shift. And I intentionally didn't jump to .
11 conclusions. I had enough information to think we had a l t
12 problem where our operating practice significantly l' e-
- 13 deviated from our standards. On the other hand I didn't 14 want to overreact.
15 So my conclusion was that we would hold a ,
16 management review panel very soon and -- which turned out- !
17 -to be the next day. And I would ask the people on the l 18 panal for their advice. And based upon what we heard I 19 would make the decision as to what disciplinary actions
. 20- were required, _if any, and follow-up actions.
t 21 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, wo've been told this, I
22 but I've forgotten. Do you recall the date of your review '
l l
23 -panel?-10r.perhaps,:Mr. Weinberg,--you have it? l
'24 THE. WITNESS: I've got-it here someplace.
25- MR. WEINBERG: September 15th.
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I 24 [
1 THE WITNESS: All right.' September 15th, 2 MR. DOCKERY: What were the mechanics of the i
3 review panel? Was it -- Did the indi -- First of all, 4 - who -- !
5 MR. WEINBERG: You want to know who was on it? [
r 6 MR. DOCKERY: No -- well, yeah, that's where I l 7 was going.
8 MR. VORSE: How was it conducted, in a room j 9 or -- t 10 MR DOCKERY: That was my second -- }
11 MR. WEINBERG: Oh. Why don't you explain who ;
12 was on it, how you selected them, what they brought to the 13 table, and then where it was and how it was conducted.
14 THE WITNESS: All right. Okay. The people on L 15 it were my9 elf, Greg Halnen, Ron Davis. Ron was a former 16 shift supervisor. He's our maintenance manager. Because 17 he was a former shif t supervisor I thought his opinion +
18 would be useful. Paul McKee, who was the plant manager r
19 that preceded me. I selected him for obvious reasons.
20 Paul was also an operations manager for many years. Ralph 21 widell was our director of training at the time. I wanted 22- him on the board because I wanted to be able to receive 23 his counsel with respect-to any training, issues that might 24 be significant or related to this. PaulTangkky nur 25 (phonetic) was o9r. engineering director. Since-thore were s
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R1 technical issues that were still on the table regarding 2 the makeup tank and we wanted to look at these and see 3 what issues were still open, if any, that needed to be ;
4 addressed, I wanted Paul there. And Joe Mesada, who was j 5- the manager that reports to Paul. And Joe was also 6 _ responsible for many of the engineering actions that were ;
7 taken as a result of technical issues with the makeup 8 tank. That was the representation. .
9 We had the meeting in a conference room on the 10 second floor of the nuclear administration building. We -
11' had the meeting in the morning, the following morning from 12 the day after I called the NRC.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, was this a meeting to O
14 discuss the issue or was this a hearing type situation?
l 15 THE WITNESS: It was both. We had set forth two ;
16 objectives. First, we wanted to take a look at all of the 17 technical issues that were still outstanding with respect 18- to the nakeup pump and makeup tanks. "akeup tank. .the- Tjf p -
19 makeup = pumps. And also we wanted to review the evolution '
(d,FJ 20 that occurred. And in doing so we interviewed the Syst-ems,,-
-21 shift supervisor, Rob Weiss, and Dave Fields, the shift 22 supe rvisor.
Were those the.only two !
23- MR. DOCKERY:
24 individualo from-the shift?
25- THE WITNESS: Those were the only two f
i
)
i
- 26 i i
1 individuals that we interviewed, yes. I i
2 MR. DOCKERY: Were they tbc only two individukls {
I 3 interviewed at that panel? l 4 THE WITNESS: Yes, they were.
4 5 MR. DOCKERY: Did they at that time explain why t 6 they felt their actions were justified?
7 THE WITNESS: Yeah, they did. We -- Are you 8 asking me what_they said?
9 MR. WEINBERG Yeah.
i 10 THE WITNESS: Okay. They explained that they 11 felt like they had a valid technical concern. Let me 12 preface this by saying they came across very professional
- 13 at the meeting. And sincere. And it appeared they were ;
l 14 doing their best to at that meeting to answer our 15 questions. They did not ecme across as defensive.
16 What they told us was -- and I:11 just paraphrase 17 and summarize it. That they felt they were following our 18 procedures, that they had gotten together and discussed -- -
19 they were still concerned about this makeup tank curve.
l 20 ThatLEngineering had issued a letter which looked to them 21 like the issue was going to be closed out. And they still 22 felt like all of their questions had not been --'or E
23 concerns had not been addressed.to their satisfaction.
24 So it-was.-- the way Dave Fields put it, it was 25 really our last chance to try-to get some information
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27 1 together which we thought could be used to further assess 2 the situation. So on the shift that night we all got 3 together -- and he made it sound like it was sort of 4 sponteneous -- we all got together and we decided that we 5 could run this test. And we, he said, we felt like, you 6 know, literally -- my word, literally -- we were using our 7 procedures and we talked about whether or not we needed to l 8 have a special test procedure and we decided that no, we 9 really didn't think we needed to. !
10 We asked him why he didn't inform the nuclear i 11 shift manager, why he didn't consider this-an usual -'
12 evolution. I never felt like we got a real good answer 13 other than that, well, we thought we were within our 14 operating procedure, and we could do this.
15 And they went ahead and they also explained that t 16 they.took some safety precautions, they stationed a 17 dedicated operator in the auxiliary building to vent the t
18 makeup tank in the event that we would hav'e an accident, a 19 loss of coolant accident while all this was going on. And 20 that they took the makeup tank up to the high level, which
=21 was the high level allowed by our procedure. And then ,
22 drained it and watched what happened to pressure and '
23 plotted pressure. And-that the pressure went into the 24 unacceptable region of the curve and it stayed there for 25 about 30 minutes. And at that point they were getting_
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28 1 down to the-low-level of -- the minimum level that they 2 could-operate the tank at. And at that point they 3 terminated the test.. Plotted the data and wrote a problem 4 report to turn the data over so it could be assessed.
5 So they didn't -- they didn't create any 6 perception with the manager of the review committee at 7 that time that they were trying to hide anything. It 8 looked like they were telling us all the information that 9 they had. Later we found they weren't.
10 And that they didn't, you know, that in hindsight 11 .they seemed to be a little penitent, you know, a 1.ittle 12 remorseful that maybe they didn't make the right decisions 13 with respect to the use of our procedures. But they 14 really wanted us to believe their intent was sincere.
15 And that's pretty much the impressions that they 16 left us with.
17 MR. DOCKERY: What did the panel decide?
18 THE WITNESS: Well, we, you know, I've got it 19 documented in a letter, but -- here. But I'll summarize 20 it.
21 First, the panel decided that they used extremely 22- poor judgment. They didn't follow our procedures. That 23' they were trained.and should have'known better. That they
-241 -probably had good motivations, but wrong methods. And we 25 -also felt like they were -- we really felt like they were
l l
29 !
i 1 professional and were trying to bring the right !
2 information forward to us . We didn't see any ,
3 defensiveness. We felt like they needed to be counseled, i 4 and I later provided counseling to them. .i
, 5 MR.-VORSE: Did you counsel them? l f
5 THE WITNESS: Yes. I specifically counseled
-7 both individuals.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, let me interject and 9- ask a question. Does this facility have some sort of ;
10 progressive discipline program as many others do?
i 11 THE WITNESSr We have a progressive discipline _
i i
12: policy.- And the application of that policy has latitude. ;
13- In. fact, what I would call it is a guideline, not a strict 14 set of procedures.- &tt it provides, ,
steps -- steps of 15 discipline which can involve' counseling, letters in files,
,. 16 disciplinary --
17 MR, DOCKERY: The typical progression --
18- THE WITiiESS: -- days off, firing, that kind of ;
19 thing.
20- MR. DOCKEP'It That's fine.
21 THE WITNESS: All right. ,
22 FK. VOS.SE: Did - -the discipline at this stage 23 was limited to a verbal counseling, is that correct?
?
l24 inns WITNESS: That-was what --1that's what the i 2!L committee recommerded.
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1 30 1 MR. DOCKERY: Who was the ultimate deciding 2 official, do you --
3 THE WITNESS: I was.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Did you accept the panel's 5 recommendation wit'4 respect to discipline?
6 THE WITNESS: Yes. That's what I did.
7 I think the mitigating circumstance was the way 8 they conducted themselves in the meeting. And the fact 9 that we really felt like they recognized that some errors 10 had been made. That's the way they came across.
11 Now, the counseling was what was recommended.
12 Now, if their response to the counseling had not been
- 13 cons t ructive, then I would have gone further at that time.
14 They also -- We also said that since they didn't write a 15 procedure to do this evolution and they should have, 16 they're going to write it after the fact. And that was 17 just to reinforce the management expectation and make sure 18 that they really were thinking hard, very hard about what 19 the expectation meant.
20 21 And 22 we had some technical things we wanted to look at. We 23 wanted to go back and take another look at the makeup tank e4 curve and also take a look at the data that was in the
- 25 problem report and see if there was any validity to their l
ff h
31 1 contention that the makeup curve wasn't right, and-thain.
2 date-show-that it wasn't right. Again, their contention.
3 And we wanted to go back and take a look at any 4 modifications planned or any modifications proposed or 5 that could be proposed to reduce operator burden, because 6 we felt like some of their actions -- and they didn't say 7 this, but it was just the feeling that, you know, there 8 was a lot of work every shift that they had to do to 9 maintain this limit, and if we could amove that, that 10 that would be beneficial to all the shifts.
11 So those were the main things that we addressed.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. We've -- in a very general 13 fashion we started with when the me'eup tank -- myriad 14 concerns about the makeup tank Curve 8, the hydrogen l 15 solution began to be an issue, moving through your 1
16 knowledge, at least generally, that certain people in 17 Operations had some concerns with operating with Curve 8.
18 And correct me if I'm misstating this, up to the point 19 where you become aware that an event occurs on September 20 the 5th and if that event justifies a certain level of l 21 discipline for the people involved, i
22 What went wrong?
23 MR. WEINBERG: Why did it occur?
24 MR. DOCKERY: Right.
25 THE WITNESS: In my mind it was a case of
32 1 extremely poor judgment and possibly some group think.
2 MR. DOCKERY: Some what?
3 MR. WEINBERG: Some what?
4 THE WITNESS: Group think.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Would you explain what group think 6 is?
7 THE WITNESS: Group think is a rationalization 8 process where people in a group get together and discuss 9 something and gradually that process leads them to an 10 incorrect decision or action. That's group think.
11 MR. RAPP: Let me just follow up on that point a 12 little bit, this group think process that everybody comes t
13 to the.same conclusion. Is that becaust everybody views 14 the issue the same way or is that because one individual 15 leads the group in that direction?
16 THE WITNESS: I think -- well, you know, the 17 classic process is usually some -- there's usually someone 18 that leads the thinking. And it's usually -- it's the 19 consensus process and there's usually somebody that 20 stimulates the thinking and direction that it takes. Now, 21 in this case I don't know I wasn't there. I can only 22 speculate.
23 MR. DOCKERY: Would you speculate for us.
24 THE WITNESS: Well, I think the strongest 25 personality that we had on shift at that time was our i
-- __ __ ___ _.__m___- _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ _.
33 I chief operator, Mark Van Sicklen. Mark -- Mark could ;
i 2 easily exercise control of situations by the way that he -
-l 3 interacts with-people. And I don't feel like either.the t 4 shif t supervisor or the assistant shif t supervisor were at S this point -- now, you're asking me two years later with a l 6 lot more information than I had at the time, but I don't !
7 feel like either the assistant or the shifter exercised 8 the leadership that they should have on that shift.
9 MR. DOCKERY: It's my understanding that Mr. Van j
, 10 Sicklen_is a Union shop steward. Is that correct? 1 11 THE WITNESS: Yes, he was at the time. !
12 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, that's all -- [
- 13 THE WITNESS: I believe he was at the time that 14 e.he evolution was performed. But I also believe that t 15 sometime after that he -- I don't believe that he ;
16 continued as a Union steward.
17 MR. DOCKERY: I -- I don't know much about these 18 issues. Were Mr. Weiss and Mr. Fields bargaining unit 19 employees?
20 THE WITNESS: No, they were exempt employees.
21 They were supervisors. See, they're the two people that
. 22 were responsible for the conduct of that shift. f 23 MR RAPP: During the -- I'm sorry to interrupt ,
24 here. - During the management review panel did Mr. Fields .
25- at any time say that I was forced into doing this by Mark I
L ev -
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34 1 Van Sicklen, he coerced me and cajoled me to doing it?
2 THE WITNESS: Oh no, certainly not, and I don't 3 think that that happened --
4 MR. RAPP: Did he say, I'm not responsible 5 THE WITNESS: --
in that area.
6 MR. RAPP: -- did he say I'm not responsible for 7 what happened?
8 THE WITNESS: No. No, not at all. In fact, 9 during the management review committee, Fields, and 10 afterwards when I counseled him, he accepted 11 responsibility for al). the actions on shift. He said, I 12 am the shift supervisor. Everything that goes on on my 13 shift is my responsibility, and I accept full 14 responsibility for this, and actions taken should --
15 disciplinary actions or something along those lines, 16 shoLld be directed toward me.
17 He wanted to make sure that -- and we wanted to 18 make sure that he knew he was accountablo, that he was 19 responsible for that shift.
20 MR. VORSE: Mr. Hickle, we went -- the shift 21 supervisor and assistant shif t supervisor went from verbal 22 counseling to removal from this shift. What prompted 23 that?
l 24 THE WITNESS: Well, discovery -- discovery of 25 the second evolution that occurred on the 5th,
t I
35 i
1 MR. VORSE: My understanding, Mr. Hickle --
2 MR. WEINBERG Well, that wasn't his question. ;
3- His question was how did they get to be taken off shift as t 4 opposed to being fired. f 5 MR. VORSE: We're going from a verbal counseling l 6 and the's when we came down here to interview them in ;
t 7 December neitbur one of them was doing shift. What 8 prompted that action to be taken?
9 THE WITNESS: Oh, okay. You're asking me why ;
10 they were taken off of shift.
11 MR. VORSE: Yes, sir.
t 12 THE WITNESS: Rob was scheduled to come off of ;
I 13 shift, Rob Weiss. Even before this evolution occurred we -
14 were going to take him off and he was going to work in 15 doing some of our procedures upgrades in Operations. And !
16 Rob had done some of that work in the past. He was 17 capable of doing good in administrative work.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hi~kle, c did he know that? Was I
19 he aware that he was scheduled to be taken off shift?
20 THE WITNESS: I didn't talk to him personally, 21 but my understanding was that he did know that, that he j 22 was scheduled to come off shift prior to the evolution, 23 and he did come off when he was supposed to. That's my L 24 understanding talking to Greg aoout it.
.'25- MR. DOCKERY: Was that intention -- ;
i
_ _. _. . . _ , - . _ . . ~ . _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ . , _ _ _ . _ _ . . _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ . . _...-..__ _
i 36 )i
- 1. THE WITNESS: Greg Halncn. l l
2 MR.-DOCKERY: - - that personnel move, was it- l 3 documented'anywhere in advance? i 4- THE WITNESS: Not that I say, no. !
i 5 'MR.-DOCKERY: Why, and I realize-that we're ,
6 getting in some minutia that you wouldn't necessarily be
- 7 involved-in. .
8 THE WITNESS: Well, and I have to be very i
9 careful to only answer these questions as to what I know, l 10 .not what I believe, unless you ask me what I believe.
11 What I know is, I don't know.
12 MR. DOCKERYs We're vsry interested in what you 13 believe. I would caution you to charccterize what you 14 believe versus what you know, and we'll do fine, i
15- THE WITNESS: Okay.
16 Let me get back to the answer to your question. i 17 Dave Fields was -- we had-no immediate plans J
.18 right after the event _on the 5th to take Dave off of ;
. 19 shift, It wasn',t part of the immediate disciplinary :
W../
action that we had al'--ded. But the issue became a much 20
$$r 21 larger regulatory issue than I anticipated it would, And 22 it was starting to become a major distraction to Dave.
23 MR. VORSE: Would you give us more detail about '
24 the regulatory' issue. What -- were you getting pressure ;
25 from the NRC?
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37 1 THE WITNESS: We were getting a lot of attention 2 from the NRC. I know that the Region was very concerned 3 about it. And sometime around that time we knew that the
$ 4 NRC"had referred it to 01 for investigation, which was
- 5 usually a sign of that the Region conside. , it to be a 6 significant issue.
7 And I was concerned that Davs would not be able 8 to stand watch effectively with such a major distraction.
9 And he was really starting to feel and reacting to some of 10 the external pressures. He was getting a little short 11 fused. And I remember having a conversation with Greg I 12 because at one point, and I wasn't sure whether or not he 13 didn'P. buy in to some of the standards that we discussed 14 in our counseling session or -- or was it a case where he 15 was starting to react to the external pressure and he was 16 becoming a little defensive and he felt a little bit 17 threatenec.
18 In any case, I thought that it was best that he 19 cor . .d: of shift because I didn't think that with that 20 envirciment that he could perform his responsibilities 21 safety without distraction.
2,
~
And I also told my boss, I told Pat, I believe I 23 also told Gary, and I believe I also told Pat Beard, that 24 I was going to pull him of f of shif t because -- And in my 25 mind-it was also related to disciplinary action inasmuch i
Y 38 1 as it was an outgrowth of t.he makeup tank event, and I 2_ really was a little concerned with Dave's attitude at that 3 point. But I was willing to wa t ann see how he did off 4 shift and how this whole issue p,rn>J out.
h
( 5 I thought it was also possible that once ne came 6 off shift and we got past the -- some of the regulatory 7 pressures that he felt, that he might bounce back and be 8 all right.
L 9 So that's what we did. So I talked to Greg and I 10 said, Greg, we really need to take him off shift, I think, and I explained why. I told him I had been through 12 an OI investigation once before in my career and I know 13 how much time it takes and if you are principally involved 14 with it how much pressare you can feel. So it's better, I 15 thought, just not to have him on shift.
16 MR. DOCKERY: During this time period was there 17 any consideration given to discharging or terminating the 18 employment of either Mr. Fields or Mr. Weiss?
19 MR. WEINBERG: You mean before the end of the 20 year, '94?
21 MR. DOCKERY: Actually what I'm referring to is 22 up to this -- we are now up to the point where Mr. Fields 23 was taken off shift.
24 MR. WEINBERG: Just December 1 of '94.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Okay, i
_ . . _ _ . .._._._.m._...-._ . . - _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ . _ . _
k
-39' 1- HMR. RAPP: :And we show up on about the 3rd..- l 2- MR. WEINBERG: ' You showtd-up.a few days-later,.
3; but: I,think everybody knew you >ero coming a little bit
'4 ' before that.
5 _THE WITNESS: Okay. What was the question, 6 please?
7- MR.'DOCKERY: Was there any discussion --- As 8 part.of_the -- 'With respect to the disciplinary action 9 contemplated at any time against Mr. Weiss and Mr. Fields, 10 was consideration given to terminating their employment 11 with-FPC?'
. 12 MR. WEINBERG: This is before the end of 1994.
13' THE WITNESS: Not serious consideration. I 14 would only add that when I first discovered the event and 15 Greg. told -- confirmed that it had occurred, and this was 16 before the managers review committee, I was so angry that 17 I remember making a' statement to Greg that we ought_to j . 18 fire the whole shift. And that was one of the reasons I 150 . wanted some help in assessing it, because of my emotional 20 . reaction to it. But not serious consideration.
21 MR. DOCKERY: The -- I need to-step back. Jim, 22: Lif you're through with that subject, step back and as --
- 23. iin your-position'as_a senior manager of this-plant -- I'
!24 wantLto get'into~your expectations regarding_this issue.
i.
25- And again I have to go back to looking at what went wrong I
l
, . . . . - _ , ..;. - , a .- . _, , ._
7 4
40 1 There.
2 -Were:you aware -- I believe you've already. 3 3- testified you were, but we'll clarify it -- that Systems 4 . Engineering was in the process of considering Curve 8 15 along with several other issues in an attempt to address
.6 Operations' concerns?
7 THE WITNESS: Yes, absolutely. And I was 8 involved with that.
9 MR. DOCKERY: In what capacity?
10 THE WITNESS: Well, I felt like I was cataly,-ing 11 some of the actions that were taken to address the issue.
.12 I had talked, personally talked to Mark Van Sicklen, and i 13 I'm not sure but I think one other operator right after 14 che outage --
15 MR. DOCKERY: Do you recall who that would have 16 -been?
17 THE WITNESS: I'm not positive.
18 MR. DOCKERY: If I suggested to you that it may
-19 have been Bruce Willms --
20 13E WITNESS: I would say that's probably who I 21: talked to. It was one -- he was tha most likely person I 22 would have talked to. I know I talked to Mark. And I was 23 conc >rned about it and I recall taking the issue back to 4 personally and telling him that, you know,
.24 Paul Tang a 25 this is important, if the makeup pumps are cavitating we w-, -
41 1 need-to know it, and let's take a look at it and take a
-2 look at it hard.1 Very serie"ely t=ke e icek at it k=ed 52 44 3 Nell, Paul already was, but I felt like I needed to 4 reinforce the importance of the issue from a management 5 perspective.
6 Secondly, there was a lot of back and forth and a 7 lot of discourse had occurred between myself and Greg and 8 at times even the operating crews. I'd ask them a 9 question or two just to try to get some feedback whether 10 they were getting answers. But I also knew that it was a 11 complex technical issue and there -- and it was iterative.
l wH l
12 And I knew that Engineering,were having some legitimate
-u V 13 technical challenges with addressing it.
14 So, given all of that I, you know, I recognized 15 that why it was going on for the. length of time that it 16 did. But what I was most concerned about was that we 17 reach an end point -- Two things. First, that we reach
( 18 an end point that reduced operator burden on shift. And 19 secondly, that the operators got all their questions 20 answered. I didn't want any lingering questions. I
- 21 wanted the issue put to bed.
I 22 So sometime around August -- and the reason'I 23 ' remember this is it's the only documentation I have that E
24 this actually occurrcd, these things actually occurred. I l
(- 25 went into the control room and-I talked to, I believe it l:
y
42 1 was Mark again, and I asked Mark, I said, Mark are'you 2 satisfied, are you getting the kind of response -- and the 3 whole time I had been getting feedback from Greg Halnon 4 and from Engineering, and we discussed it, the issue, 5 several times in Pat Beard's staff r.eeting. And it was 6 one of his issues where he would bring people in and we'd 7 have presentations, technical presentations as to what 8 progress, what other things were occurring and needed to 9 be addressed.
10 So there was a lot going on that I was involved 11 with. But I always wanted to try to get back to the 12 source ,pf'the customer, which I felt were our control
/ nJ f 13 board operators. And I went back in and I talked to Mark 14 on this occasion. Anti I said, are you satisfied re you
, 15 really getting what you need here/ And Mark said, well, I 16 only got this, I only -- I don't remember exactly what he 17 told me because to be honest with you he told me a lot of 18 things that didn't all make a lot of sense to me, but ic 19 left me with the impression that he still felt that they 20 weren't getting answers to their questions.
21 So I went back to Greg, and it was the first week 22 in August, a nd I said, Grea, we've got to do something 23 more. I know a loc has been done. And I think Greg was 24 setting a little frustrated because I know he was doing 25 everything he could to bring this issue to closure, and to
b 43 1 satisfy our operators.
2L But I'came?in to his office and I said,-Greg, 3 Lwe've got to do_something more. Let's do this. I said, I 4- talked to'-- talked to Mark, and I.said, I don't even 5- understand the issue, I don't even understand the 6 questions any more. I said, so let's get them to -
7 articulate exactly what's on their minds, get them to 8 write it down, put it on paper. Let's not rely on a
- 9 spoken. question any more.
10 And'then, and I said,- don't just canvas that 11 shift, canvas every single operator that you have and ask 1 12 chem to articulate their concerns. I said, then the next 13 thing I want to happen, I want a face to face meeting vf5 14 between Engineering and our Operatsens. And I said, not
-ve r 15 our operating engineers, a face to face meeting between 16 our operators and our engineers. And I want those 17 questions gone over. Now, if they don't have any answers, 18 that's fine, then I want schedules to address them.
19 And that meeting occurred that same week. Greg 15 44 20 -put out an E-Mail, which )Me reason I remember this
+#
21 particular one is because of the E-Mail. Greg put out an 22 electronic mail to all of the shifts and a meeting was 123 conducted a face to face meeting to try to get the-
~24_ concerns down in writing.
25 MR. DOCKERY: This was in August?
l l
. . ~ -- . - - .. -. ~ .. ~ . . - - - - . . . . - - . . - . . . . - - -.- -.-
44 1l ; THE ~ WITNESS :-- This was-in-August._
2' MR DOCKERY:: Were you referring'to the August 3 Sth meeting?L Yeah,fthat was the August _Sth meeting ;
4- THE WITNESS: I think. Yeah,'that was the 5 August 5th meeting.
6-_ MR. STENGER: Yes, that was also an_E-Mail.
7 THE WITNESS: - Now, here's the E-Mail,-and this 8 was date'd -- what's the date-of that -- August 9th. Let's 9 see. (Examining documents.)
10 MR, WEINBERG:- Well, it's.possible the-meeting 11 happened before, but there were -- Show -- Why don't you 12 read-the E-Mail.
! 13 THE' WITNESS: Okay. Let me read the E-Mail.
i 14 Again, it's hard.for me two years later to construct the 15 exact sequence, but --
16 "There is'an ongoing discussion on this issue of 17 -hydrogen pressure in the makeup tank. I have talked to 18 Mark Van Sicklen and understand the concerns. I discussed 19 this with Bruce and Gerry Campbell and will be working to 20 resolve the-questions. It is important, and Bruce has
. 21 -asked if anyone'has a concern please write it down and G 22 sendLit to me, even'if it is not-new I need to get all-
'23 ' perspectives-of thisLissue so we can address.the right 24' areas. It-eppears what has.been' addressed has not 25 _ satisfied the concerns to date, so I need to be absolutely
-k_.'.
s t
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'45 1 = clear-._on_the questions." 4
-2 That's exactly'what I asked Greg-to do.-
'3 MR. DOCKERY: And that:is a --
4 THE WITNESS: Electronic --
5 MR. DOCKERY: -- 8/9/94, 2 : 00. p.m. ,_ j ournal, one 61 of Mr. Halnon's journal: E-Mail's?
7 THE WITNESS: That was Greg's follow-up to what 8 I: asked him to do. And he did it.
9- Then sometime -- let's go back to your original 10 . question. I may have already answered it.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Well, I think we're in the process 12 of -- let me ask you this.
13 LTHE WITNESS: Okay.
14 MR DOCKERY: Was Systems Engineering under your 15 span of control and authority at that time?
16 THE WITNESS: No.
17 MR. DOCKERY: It was not.
18 Did you-have any interface with any Systems 19 Engineering management regarding this issue?
20 THE WITNESS: Yes. Let me clarify something.
.21 Systems-Engineering at that-point reported to my 22 supervisor, Gary Boldt. - And Gerry Campbell was our System
- 23f Engineering manager, I believe during that period.
24 Our Design Engineering group ~ reported through 25' Paul Tang [ay, who was our engineering director. Paul o
g ,
pk u
g -- W % -++ w k - - > - . .mw ~
46 ;
1, --reported directly to1 Pat Beard, our : senior vice president.
2 Now that organization's been changed:since that time.
When I said that System Engineering was not under
~
3 4 my authority, 'I assumed your question meant that did they 15 . report to me?
6 MR. DOCKERY: Yes, sir.
7 THE WITNESS: Okay. No , they did not report to 8 me.
9 MR. DOCKERY: That being the case, and I think 10 you've already testified that you knew that Systems 11 Engineering was working on this problem. Were you 12- satisfied with the response that Systems Engineering was 13- providing?
14 THE WITNESS: System Engineering was -- our 15 System engineers from my perspective were primarily 16 facilitators and between Operations and Design Engineering 17 to get a' resolution to the-issue.
18 I think the actual technical questions that were 19 posed, the validity of the curve of the makeup tank curve 20- had to be answered by our Design Engineering group. The 21 System Engineer -- they were the engineering group-that 22 were used to working with our operators face to face.
23 'See, you remember,.at that time'our~ Design Engineering l 24 group,ipart,of it resided down at our General Office l
t 25 complex and part of it was on site. And we used our l
y l
L.._~__.._________..__
t 47 ;
~
1~ System Engineers as'our -- more to handle technical ;
interfaces-.with. Operations at'that point,
-2 3 -MR. WEINBERG: Is that why you talked to 4
Tang l}w/ay.[ >
5 Sb THE WITNESS: Well, I talked to Tan y because atf 6 ILthoughtTangy'ay'sgrouphadtoresolvetheissue. They .
7 were-the -- JI 8' MR.,WEINBERG: That's design --
9- THE WITNESS: -- Design -- that was the Design.
i 10 _ group.-
.11 MR. DOCKERY: Were you satisfied with Design
- 12 Engineering's -- or did you have any reason to be 13 dissatisfied with Design Engineering's response on this 14' issue?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes, frankly. It was one of the
. 16 few technical issues that we have wrestled with that --
- 17 that every time we thought we had an answer there'd be
- 18 another wrinkle, there'd be another related issue.that we 19 would have to factor in. And what I was-conc -- - I wasn't 20 fas --
21 Your question was was I concerned with our Design 22 Engineering group. I was concerned that we couldn't bring 23 'the problem rapidly to closure. It was very, very complex 24 and_they~were having some problems with it. .
25- MR. DOCKERY: If you were asked to lay blame for
- e~ -
r w'. *S e , - - - m.- 1-w,-
48 j 1~ that, I realize you're probably reluctant to do this, but 2 where would you place the blame?
3 THE WITNESS: When our plant was originally 4 designed I think some of these issues could have been 5 sorted out, and I don't think they were. In going back 6 for, you know, for 15, 20 years and trying to dig up old 7 design bases and calculations and sort things out after 8 the fact is very, very difficult.
9 MR. DOCKERY: This is highly subjective, Mr.
10 Hickle, but on a scale of one to ten where would you --
11 ten being the most complex -- where would you place the 12 complexity of the issue surrounding the 25 cc's per 13 kilogram hydrogen, Curve Number 8, makeup tank 14 operability, all those questions?
15 THE WITNESS: About a nine and a half.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Indicating your belief that it was 17 a highly complex situation?
18 THE WITNESS: Only because of all of the other 19 things that you mentioned, that had a bearing on the 20 calculations that had to be performed to validate the 21 curve.
22 MR. VORSE: What were your feelings about the 25 23 cc's hydrogen?
24 THE WITNESS: I felt it was a limit we should 25 try to maintain. Since it was contained, I believe it was
i y
,49
,1 EPRI water chemistry guidelines, it was part of that.- And-2 we had comitted to it, and the other B&W plants were 3 committed to it as well.
4 MR. VORSE: When you committed to this did 5 isomeone do a -- did someone do a study that Crystal River, 6- you're unique equipment and reactor vessel and all.of that
- ? compared to others, did anyone do a study to see if the 25 8 cc's was best for Crystal River?-
9 THE WITNESS: We challenged INPO. And we went
.10 back I recall, but without a lot of detail, it's been so 11 long ago. I know we went back to B&W too to try to 12 understand the basis for that and, you know, whether it 13 was a valid requirement or not.
14 But the reading we were getting is yes, you 15 should maintain it because of just general corrosion rates
- 16 in the reactor coolant system, first. And secondly, 17 because of I think it's stainless steel 304 stress 18 corrosion, trying to minimize attack.
19 And there wasn't any good reason that I could see
= 20 from the feedback we were getting, both from INPO and some 21 from-B&W and considering that EPRI had endorsed the limit 22 'that it-wasn't a valid limit.
23 MR. VORSE: Did you feel -- did you feel that it 24- caused any; excessive. burden on the reactor operators to.
25 maintain?-
,e.. ,w - ,_ ~ -- ,,-,y,m., . , , -
__. _ _ _ . _ - . ___ .. _. - ._. _ _ _ _ . _ . _ . - .__ _.m.
~
50
- l- THE WITNESS: Yas. I didn't think it was -
s 2- excessive, because I-asked them. I said, look, is-this 3 something -- I' don't want to ask you to do something.you j
- 4 cant do here, you know. I want you --- This is=our 4
5 limit, I want to follow the limit. On the other hand, 6 tell me if you can't do it. I mean,_obviously, if it just 1
- 7 ---if we just can't do it, then you tell me-and we won't 8' ~do-it and then we'll challenge the limit or we'll 1
9 challenge something else to remove the operator burden.
10 -But the feedback-I was getting was, yeah, we can l 11 do it. It's a big pain in the neck.
12 MR. VORSE: Who's giving you that feedback?
13 THE WITNESS: The operators on shift and Greg.
14 MR. DOCKERY: How many operators does that p 15 population comprise?
16 THE WITNESS: Well, I asked L. ore than one shift.
17 I'd stop in and chat with them. I couldn't --
18 MR. WEINBERG: Well, how many in all are there?
19 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah --
20 MR. VORSE: How many you got?
21 MR. WEINBERG: At the time, how many shifts?-
22 THE WITNESS: Well, we had -- I'd have to look 23 in the' organizational. chart to tell you the exact figure.
Thep're not all control-board operators either, so they're 25 'not all as concerned'with that limit.
E,_ w ,-- - . - ----4 , --.,h--.--- - , - , . - r y --
- .- - . - - , . - - - - . - - - . - - . _ . - - - . . . - - - ~ . . . - -
k 51 1 'MR. DOCKERY: Well, what is the'popu3r'--
2 generally.tre population you're referring to? More than-13 twenty?-
4- THE WITNESS: We have about 80 -- I think we 5 have 75 to 80 people in Operations. Most of those are 6_ operators, Some are operating engineers.
7 MR. DOCKERY: Was there-any significant number 8 of people purely with respect now to the 25 cc per 9 kilogram of hydrogen figure who were particularly opposed 10 or vociferous about that, that limit?
THE WITNESS: I think Dave Fields' shift 12 probably was the shift that didn't control -- and I'll 13 have to tell you honestly, this is more of an impression 14 because I can't show you records, but my' impression is 15 that when we had problems with maintaining 25 cc's per kg L
16 it tended to be Dave's shift and it didn't appear they 17 were as aggressive-in trying to maintain it.
118 MR. STENGER: The question is whether Dave was 19 vociferous in complaining about that limit.
20 THE WITNESS: Oh, Dave Fields never complained o -21 about the limit. The only one that I even discussed --
22 discussed it with were the control board operators, for 23 the most part. And maybe once Rob Weiss. Maybe once or 24 twice...But Dave never -- nevcr expressed any --
25- articulated any concerns to me.
l:
l l
, . _ _. . _ . _ _ . _ - _ _ m _ _ _ _
i 52 1- :MR. VCRSE:
Let me ask -- I'm sorry..
2 MR.-DOCKERY: Go ahead. Go first.
3 MR.'VORSE:
-The new Curve 8 that you have, not 4- the old one back in September of '94, but the new Curve 8, nHe 5 cis it still an o effe burden to maintain 25 cc's?
.AV ,
6 THE WITNESS: I don't believe so.
t 17 MR. DOCKERY: Have you had any complaints in 8 that regard?
9 THE WITNESS: No.
10- MR. RAPP: Are you meeting 25 cc's per kg?
11 THE WITNESS: Yes, 12 MR. RAPP: I wanted to follow along with a 13 question here. You-said that none of the operators had 0
14 complained about it. Were you involved in management 15 meetings that kicked around this decision to go to 25 cc's 16 per kg?
17 THE WITNESS: Yes.
18 MR. RAPP: And was there anybody at those 19 management meetings that said that we don't need to do 20 this, we don't have a problem, or this is going to be a 21 very technically challenging evolution, we've got to do a 22 -lot of fancy footwork here to make this-thing go?
23- MR. WEINBERG: You mean did people challenge o 24 whether we should be doing this?
25 THE WITNESS: No. 'Now, remember, the manager i-i l-
53 1 meetings that I was involved with were the ones that for 2 the most part involved Greg. They may have' involved Pat 3 and his staff when we discussed it in Pat Beard's staff 4 meeting. And that kind of -- The only feedback along 5 those lines was just that we need to keep working hard on 6 the issue because it is additional work for our operators.
7 And that feedback came from me in those meetings.
8 MR. RAPP: When did this issue with the plant 9 not nieeting the EPRI guidelines first surface?
10 THE WITNESS: Well, let me add, too, there was 11 never anyone in any of those meetings,'because I may have 12 created an impression that I was waving the red flag and 13 nobody -- everyone had on their sun glasses. That's not 14 t rue , no.
15 Everyone in the r.trting took the issue very, very 16 seriously. So, everyone Ic,,7nized it as somewhat of an 17 urgent issue I felt.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Urgent?
19 THE WITNESS: Urgent.
20 MR. DOCKERY: The --
21 MR. WEINBERG: You mean the operator burden, you 22 mean?
23 THE WIThESS: The operator burden, yes.
24 MR. RAPP: Okay. Well, we'll --
25 THE WITNES3: Just from the standpoint that --
s
'54 ;
'1I urgent-from the standpoint that I wanted it.
2 MR. RAPP . My. questions are not'related yet to -i 3 the operator burden, r:y questions are more related to the 4 decision process that went into saying, yes, we're going -!
5 to go to.25 cc's per kg. ;
6 TH8 WITNESS: Oh.
7 MR. RAPP: When did this issue first surface, 8 that Crystal River was not meeting the EPRI guidelines?
9: THE WITNESS: It came out as an INPO eva]uation.
10 MR. RAPP: What date or time range?
11 THE WITNESS: Back in '93, '9 -- '93, I think it
- 12 was. It may have been the early part of '94. No , it was 13 '93.
14 MR. RAPP: This -- Let me put it this way then.
When INPO comes out and does an evaluation, I 11 5
- 16 . won't call it inspection, I'll call it evaluation, if they 17 have findings that they have had previously do those carry ,
18- a lot of significance?
.19 THE WITNESS: Yes, they do, more significance i
.20 than -- recurring findings have more significance than
! initial findings.
22 MR. RAPP: And how reactive is or how seriously 23' are those repeat issues viewed?
24: THE WITNESS: Well, very seriously. They're 25'ilike repeat NRC' violations. They're not desirable.
i t
-.. . - . - - . . . - . - .- - ~ . . . . . . . . . .~. -. . . --.
l 1
55 11-You're better off -- it's okay to disagree but you:have to 2 bring the issue to closure so that you don't have a repeat >
3' violation, Tor a repeat finding in the case.
4- MR. VORSE: What do repeat findings do to you?
5- Doesuit hurt your bond rating, does it get the Public 6 . Utilities Commission,on you, or what -- how does that 7 affect -. ,
8 THE WITNESS: Indirectly it could. Repeat 9 findings have a bearing on your overall INPO evaluation.
10 I mean, they rate you on a scale of one to I think it's
,11 four.. And if you have a very high rating, which is not 11 very good, that may or may not have an it 'luence, t
13 So those ratings are normally(held
- A 4 pt in confidence, 14 however, our board of directors J4 aware of them. And -- ,
l l 15 I don't know what influence they really have in the 16 investment community, but they can. You know, our
.-- 17 management philosophy I think is what's really important
, .18 here. If it's a_ valid requirement, then we want-to try to 19 meet-it if we can.
20 And when INPO has an-issue, whether they're
-A W 21 repeat findings or not, just like,Jn our't violations, we
<vv ,. 6 22 try to understand the issue as well as we can first, and 23 then we try-to respond to it secondly. And if we disagree i 24 we taar to very up f ront just say no, we don't think we can L 25 do-this and here's why, we think we got a better way of 1.
-- , . , , . - . . , . . . ., , - _ - - + ,
._ ._ . _ . . . ~ . - _ __._ . _ _-~ _.____ _ _ ___._ _ _ _ -.
56-r l' doing it.
2- In this case, we_ looked at it and we really_ felt JL like we should.be meeting the 25 cc's per kg, that it was 4, a valid requirement.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, I believe you stated 6 that the 25 cc per kilogram figure was a -- intended to be 7 a minimum standard.
~8 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes.
9- MR. DOCKERY: What, if any, are the safety 10 implications of 25 cc's minimum?
11- THE WITNESS: Well, if you operate at less-than 12 25 cc's per kg the largest risk is, as I understand-it, is 13 accelerated corrosion in your primary system. Because 14 what the hydrogen is supposed to do is combine with oxygen 15 that you have in your system. Of course, oxygen causes 16 corrosion. And that's why you try to keep an excess of f
17 hydrogen, to scavenge the oxygen from water, which is not 18 corrosive.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Is that an operating safety 20 concern or is it a long term-safety concern?
21- THE WITNESS: I consider _ chemistry limits to be 22 as important as all-of our other operating limits, as a 23- general statement. Chemistry limits can have an ef fect, a 241 direct effectlon fuel performance and accelerated 25= corrosion rates mean that you have more activated: crud in w-+ m *"r -
s' jp And 1 your g coolant _ system, more radioactivAty.
WW
-2 ~ radioactivity l minimizing the amount tnat you createj svAnd ,
+t 3- -thel transport of -that is very, -very7important in a nuclear 4 plant.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Was the 25 cc limit -- or did the ;
- 6. 25 cc-limit have any impact on plant life?
7 THE WITNESS: Perhaps. You know, that would 9 depend on what your long term -- what the effects were ef-J with respect to degradation causer components-caused by
+4 10 corrosion over the life of the plant. Very, very hard to 11 p.? edict exactiv.
12 MR, RAPP: Did Chemistry ever come forward and 13 say that, oh, we've got this real high oxygen problem, 14 we're going to -- and we got this -- because of that we're 15 having accelerated corrosion in reactor components or RCS 16 components? !
17 THE WITNESS: No, on the contrary. One of the 18 first things we looked at when INPO pointed out that we 19 weren't meeting the 25 cc's per kg limit was that our 29 oxygen -- we didn't have detectable oxygen-in the reactor 21 coolant system.
22 And I questioned, you know, that was one of my 231 first questions. It's a good question. But what I found 24 -_out was.that the way that we sample _ reactor coolant we 25- can't-really tell if there's residual oxygen, for example,
59
.i 1 'in the reactor vessel or not. And you could have it there t 2 and without sufficient surplus of hydrogen it could be 3- doing some damage. But when you sample-it you'd still see-4 no oxygen. And that's because of the transport of the ,
5 oxygen and the way that it chemically reacts in transport 6 et cetera.
7 MR. RAE'P : We kind of got away from it a little 8 bit. I got from -- got here a copy of the INPO evaluation 9 report.that was performed in 1992 --
10- THE WITNESS: Okay.
11 MR. RAPP: -- and particularly that section L
L 12 there that's marked along the right margin or along the 13 margin there --
14 MR. WEINBERG: So this is a 1992 - -
15 MR. RAPP: - - 2 INPO evaluation.
16 MR. WEINBERG: On page nine, appendix one, it 17 'looks like.
18 MR. RAPP: - Under the part there that's labeled, 19 I believe, Chemistry. In the margin there on that page 20 there's a date, it says 1992, and underneath of it it
- 21 says, in parenthesis, 1991, What's the significance of
- 22 that date,- 1991 in parenthesis?
23 THE-WITNESS: Well2that refers to an issue that-24 was addressed in the 1991 INPO evaluation.
p 25 -
MR. JaPP: So then that would be a repeat
~
j ';
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59-
-- I finding.
~
-2 THE WITNESS:- IT don't,know if it was exactly.
3 I'd have to look at the report. I don't recall whether it 1
4 was exactly -- sometimes INPO will have an issue that's- ,
S- related and they'll-document the previous finding in the:
6 report. So I don't know if I would call this one a repeat 7 or not. I'd-have to look at the report more carefully, 8 I'll be willing to do that if you want me to.
9 MR. DOCKERY: If you feel that's significant 4
10 enough then I think we should go off the record and afford 11 him the opportunity to read that document.
4
. 12 THE WITNESS: Okay.
13 MR. DOCKERY: We'll go off the record.
14 (Whereupon, a recess was taken at 2:36 o' clock 15 p.m.. . after which the proceedings resume at 2:48 p.m. on 16 tape number three as follows:)
17 MR. DOCKERY: We're back on the record, and Mr.
18 Hickle, I need to remind you that you continue to be under 19 oath here.
20 THE WITNESS: I understand.
21 MR. DOCKERY: And while we were off.the record,
- 22 ~ Mr, Hickle-had an opportunity to review at least parts of 23- an INPO -- 1992 INPO report.
24 THE WITNESS: Right.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Carry on.
4 W
=~+e --i-w '-u- e , .re- , - y H % 'w-u4 er tu y w- 3-
d I
60 l' THE WITNESS: All right. Let me for the record 2 rephrase:the question.
3 Is the Chemistry finding CY-2191 in Appendix One >
4 of the Crystal River 1992-INPO evaluation-report a repeat
~
5 finding.- No, not in my judgment.
6- There's a statement in Appendix One, and I'll 7 read that. Appendix One is a listing of findings from 8 previous-evaluations where corrective actions have not 9 been completed but are progressing.on a reasonable 10' schedule. Current status as determined by the INPO team 11 was also provided.
12 I also went back and read the Chemistry findings 13 of the '92 report-and to make sure that we didn't have one 14 addressing hydrogen. And I-didn't nee one there.
15 MR. WEINBERG: So does thtt mean that there was 16 a finding in '91 that is still being addressed in '92, but 17 you're not being criticized in '92 for not addressing it?
18 THE. WITNESS: Anything that we haven't wrapped 19 up from the previous evaluation but we still are working 20- on, they rewrite it in Appendix One and they note the 21 progress that we've made.
22 KR..WEINBERG: So you all weren't being'
-23. criticized in '92' for-not having addressed the concerns 24 Efrom '91?-
- 25 1mE WITNESS: No , if that was the case, then it
e 4 s - .- -n >- ,,,,-w-- ,
- - -- .- - ~ . - . . . .- .- .. .-.,. - . ..- . .-
l 61 Iz 1would occur-in the body of-the. report as a repeatLfinding.
2: .MR. WEINBERG :: Okay.
3 MR. RAPP: You say there was nothing concerning 4~ hydrogen in-here.. What's this Item A at the top af-the- -!
-5 .page. I think it's the following page.
6 THE WITNESS: Well,- this is -- No , this is --
7 .what you're looking at, Curt, is Appendix One, and this 8 does address hydrogen.
9: This is the -- Let me characterize this as a 10 continued finding. It's not a continuing issue because we 11 had not closed it out, we were still working on it. So it 12 appears in' Appendix One as a continuing finding.
.13 It's not a repeat finding. ;- repeat finding is 14 when they write you up twice- for the sa.ne thing because 15 you're telling me you closed it out and you're all done.
16 They come in here and they say, no, you didn't, you didn't 17 address.the issue, or you didn't address it thoroughly.
18 That's the differnace.
19 MR. RAPP: Okay.
20 THE WITNESS: Now, whu you're pointing out is 21- in Appendix One and that is a continuing --
22 MR.-RAPP: That's just a continuing issue.
23 THE WITNESS: Right, and that does address
. 24 -hydrogen,
, 25 - MR. WEINBERG So would that-mean that the
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. ~ _ . ~ . . . .. . . - . - - - - . _ _ . - .- ..
62 1-. issues-st6rted being-addressed as a' result of-the '91- '
2 report as. opposed to the '92. report?.
3 THE WITNESS: Yes. And I said '92, but I think 4' I also. prefaced that as that was my best recollection. It 5 was the '91 INPO report that identified the issue
- 6. originally to us.
7 MR. RAPP: When the INPO report came out -- I'm 8 pretty sure that you-get a copy of it --
9 THE WITNESS: Oh absolutely.
10 MR. RAPP: -- or you're involved in a review of 11- it. Do you recall what the review of this report was, 12 what happened, what transn' red, or what *he conversation 13 was about the chemistry issue, the hydrogen issue in 14 particular, why it's still being -- why it hasn't been 15- resolved yet? Not necessarily with the INPO but within 16 FPC management?
17 THE WITNESS: The only thing I can recall is 18 that there were some operating issues related to 19 maintaining the limit, the 25 cc's per kg limit that were 20 not fully evaluated. And we wanted to make sure that --
21 for example, we wanted to make sure that we didn't have a 22 problem with-hydrogen entrainment in the suctions cf the 23 makeup l pump. And if you get-the hydrogen too high in the 24 _ makeup tank, that can become a problem.
25 1And while we wanted to meet --.you know, we felt l
l l
i
63 1 that it was a good thing to do from a chemistry 2 standpoint, we aleo wanted to assure ourselves that we 3 didn't create some other problem by doing it.
~4 And that's when some of these technical 5 evaluations started going on. That's also the reason it 6 was a continuing issue, because we hadn't gotten there 7 yet. We hadn't gotten the issue analyzed to the point 8 where we thought we could do it.
9 MR. RAPP: Has anyone ever explained or are you 10 aware of what the basis for the EPRI hydrogen, dissolved 11 hydrogen limit is?
12 THE WITNE"s: I may have seen it inasmuch as we 13 asked B & W, our B & W chemistry people to evaluate it.
14 And I know that they responded to us. And I'm sure that I 15 read it, but I don't recall at this point what was in 16 there.
17 MR. RAPP: Has anyone ever questioned or asked 18 if this 25 cc's per kg is really applicable to Crystal 19 River?
20 THE WITNESS: We -- Yeah, I did. Even after 21 getting the initial input we went back and questioned it 22 again back in '94. And we went out and we actually 23 surveyed /' What are the other B & W plants doing. And we
,pv 24 found out -- and we also looked at their system 25 configurations to see if they had similar technical issues
C4 1 _that we had in maintaining it,
- 2= And what-I-recall from that, but I can't quote it- .
3 exactly, was that the other;B & W plants generally observe 4
~
that limit. So all the feedback we got appeared to me 5 like it was domething we should be striving for. 4 6 MR. RAPP: If all the other B & W plants are 7 meeting it what makes it so difficult for Crystal River to t 8 meet that?
9 THE WITNESS: They've all got different 10 mechanical configurations. The heights, for example, the 11 heights of their makeup--- the elevations of their makeup 7
12 tanks, the pipe runs are different, the elevations -- the 13 borated water water storage tank, which is where we have 14 to take suction from with our makeup pumps. And ) that 15 we-had a loss of coolant accident. We switched over from 16 the makeup tank to the borated water storage tank. It's a 17 great big tank, but it makes a difference what the 16 elevation of the water is because that has a bearing on 19 whether or not the pumps can function properly and they 20; get adequate net-positive suction head.
21 or, you know, there's other issues like hkMn
-22 beratexing-at.; hydrogen entrainment and all these things.
%'Y 23 But all of these things combined, if your mechanical i
24 Leonfigurations were identical from plant to plant they'd 25 all have the same trahnical challenges we do, but we found i -
i
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ . s - - ,, . , . . - , . , - . . .
65 1 out they weren't. Every plant when they build it, even 2 though the bystems are generally laid out similarly, the 3 tanks are in different elevations, which changes the whole 4 picture.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Did that make it more difficult 6 for this particular plant to meet that goal?
7 THE WITNESS: Mado it ' ore difficult for us than 8 the other plants, it appeared to us, from that l
9 inforustion.
10 MR. VORSE: Did anyone express reservations to
~
11 Mr. Beard about difficulties? Not reservations, but 12 express to Mr. Beard the difficulty that this particular 13 plant has to maintain the 25 cc's per kg?
14 THE WITNESS: Oh yeah, definitely. That came up 15 in onri of the issue reviews that we did in one of Pat's 16 staff meetings. The results of the bench marking when we 17 went out and looked at the other plants were discussed.
18 Dectuse, jou knot, Pat, that was one of Pat's first 19 questions. Pat s0id, well, look, why are we having so 20 many problems. What are the other D & W plants doing.
21 And I know that be provided -- was provided 22 feedback on it because I was in that meeting.
23 MR. VORSE: Did he say or did he give you the 24 impression that he didn't really care what difficulties 25 people were having?
i
l 66 1 THE Wil' NESS: Oh no, not at all. No, the only 2 thing Pat cared about was getting the technieni issues 3 addressed and operating safely. There was never any 4 question in my mind that those vere Pat's top priorities.
5 MR. VORSE: He never said, I don't care what 6 problems we're having, I want that 25 cc's, you make it 7 happen?
8 THE WITNESS: Pat would never say that about 9 anything. That's not the way that Pat manages. Pat 10 Board.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, among various 12 operators that we've interviewed there was an opinion that 13 the philosophy was 25 cc's or else.
14 THE WITNESS: Or else what?
15 MR. DOCKEi1: By the implication was you either 16 get 25 cc's or your job might be in jeopardy.
17 THE WITNESS: I don't know why they would think b
18 that.
19 MR. DOCKERY: They were pretty strong in that, 20 in that feeling. And the other thing -- these are 21 impressions of mine now -- the other thing that they 22 seemed to feel strongly about is we don't know why 25 23 cc's. It -- literally we have testimony that it came down 24 25 cc's, don't ask questions, do it.
25 THE WITNESS: I know that that's not the way the f
u_ _ - _ _
4 67 1 information was given to our operators bectuse -- in fact, 2 I seem to recall reading either a journal entry or 3 something that Greg put together where he tried to 4 describe it. I know our engineers met with our operators 5 on more than one occasion to try to answer their 6 questions and explain this.*
7 There were some that didn't like it, because as I 8 said, it was extra work on chift. And they viewed it as a 9 nuisance. But from my vantage point I believe that they 10 had every opportunity to ask questions or express concerns 11 if they had those. And we certainly didn't, and I never 12 did over give our operators any ultimatums. They have our 13 operating licens,es. I mean, they're the people that are
- e, is t y 14 licensedtop[e{yoperateourplant.
15 And our operating philosophy is and practice is 16 to try to be very responsive and sensitive to the concerns 17 that they have.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Aow was the need for 25 cc's per 19 kilogram of hydrogen conveyed to you?
20 THE WITNESS: Well, the need was conveyed by --
21 by INPO 'A the evaluation report.
22 MR. DOCKERY: But you -- you took it your own 23 from that report that I must do *his?
24 THE WITNESS: Well, no, as a matter of fact I 25 think back in '92 I probably was not tne Director of
68 1 Nuclear Plant Operations. I think that's right around the '
2 time frame I -- I would have to look at the exact dates i
3 but I think I was probably in quality programs at thr.t 4 point the -- when the issue originally came up with-tha --
usk &
5 the-Init4alINPO.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Are you aware of any document that 7 was put out advising that the pertinent --
8 THE WITNESS: I would have to verify that. I 9 don't recall the exact date that I went into this 10 position, for the record, but I believe that it came after 11 the INPO report. I was involved with the issue though 12 very early. ,
13 MR. DOCKERY: I guess what I'm -- what I'm 14 getting at here is perhaps a PR, what could be considered 15 a PR problem in that we have testimony from various 16 individuals that, yes, we know that EPRI study and we know 17 about INPO study and we know that Mr. Beard wanted it, but 18 there didn't appear to be any clear understanding among 19 the rank and file of why it was wanted except that it was 20 good chemistry.
21 THE WITNESS: Well, that was primarily the 22 reason. 7f they understood that much --
23 MR. DOCKERY: That was all they needed to know?
24 THE WITNESS: Well, no, no, that isn't what I 25 said.
- . _ . _ ._._ -- m._.___ . . . _ . _ _ . . _ _ _ _ . . _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ .
I i
I l
69 1 MP. DOCKERY: I --
2 THE WITNESS: If they understood that much then 3; at least they understood the purpose and our interest in j 4 that limit.-
5 MR.=RAPP: Well, wc - the individuals we talked 6 to said even during meetings with Chemistry Chemistry 7 couldn't give them a-good reason for it. So here- !
l 8 you're -- the site is asking the " experts" or the people 9 that should know and they're saying,-we don't know, we're !
10 just being told to get 25 cc's per kg.
t 11 THE WITNESS: The only thing I can -- I can-say 12 with certainty is that we -- I know we communicated the ,
13 basic :easons for the -- for the finding for the INPO o
14 issue. And when I say basic reasons, that there was a 15 need to maintain proper chemistry to maintain corrosion 16 rates. And I'm sure they were aware of that, all of them.
17 If they had a requirement for additional 18 technical justification beyond that there's a lot of 19 mechanisms that we have in out plant to ask questions and j 20 express concerns, from simple things like grab me by the 21 arm when I'm in the control room and ask mej t I,pf to more 22 formal systems like documenting employee concerns or 23: -writing precursor cards, although I'll adniit the precursor 24 card wasn't widely used at that point. Memos, all kinds 25 of things.
e, -e*I- -. ,<4r z..e,- - - - -* r-e. sw,-wr, -e ..mw--,.c-~ ---~--,-m-,, +w-.-~, , d- = m w-r re- -e-r,e*,--, -,---e,-- -
70 l 1 So they have a respon -- you know, our operators I 2 -- everyone in our plant has the responsibility if they 3 'have a question or concern to not -- to not sit on it and 4 grumble about it, but to pursue it and try to get an 5 answer. And all I can tell you with certainty is for 6 - those things that were articulated we did our best to {
l 7 address them. i 8 MR. RAPP: Do you think the operators in the <
9 control room, the people that weru running the plant day-1 10 to-day, unde 4173d what Curve 8, the makeup tank la overpressure c217%. was based on? :
12 THE WITNESS: No.
13 MR. RAPP Did that give them adequate .
. t 14 directions or control over the day-to-day operation of 15 that_ plant? Did -- I'm sorry, let me -- did that impact ,
16 their ability? ,
17 THE WITNESS: Let me clarify when I said, no. ;
18 and then I'll answer your next question, Curt.
19 No , I don't think that anyone in the plant,
=
20 including myself, recognized it as a design basis curve. ;
21 I don't think anyone knew what the calculational basis was 22 and could have said that if we exceed this curve we are
- 23) outside_of our design basis. I certainly didn't know j
24 that.- That - - in fact I didn't recognize that until after 25 the -- the -- the reassessment of the curve chat we did 4 - !
L Y
v
,-w---,,Ae ,,-n- -, e a -.,~r,-,-v -r,,----,en, u m ,m . N .w . , . ..r -, L , - 5 , c. ---em e w w -.e n.-,--n-env.,-,.,-w.y.N w w ,. -sr~a, m m ww.~,,,m e e -m -w,m,--e
-. ~ . --. -~ ..-..--. .- _- - - -..-..- - - - - ..-..--.. .- .
71 later. I know that our operators didn't either, 1
f 2 Now, your next-question was, did that have an i 3 impact on the way they operated? It should not have had 4 an impact on the -- a significant impact on the decisions {
i
=5 that were made when the evolution was performed on the 4th 6- and the 5th. Whether that was a design basis curve or an 7 operating curve shouldn't -have made any dif ference at all.
8 They -- they should not have with forethought and- f 9 planning-put the plant in a condition that is 10 unacceptable, that is outside of our operating limits, and ;
- 11 intentionally sustained operation in that area. That was 12 wrong. It was contrary to our operating philosophies.
13 Contrary to their training and every operating standard 14 that we have, as far as I'm concerned. And that's one of
{
15 the reasons I reacted to it the way I did when I 16 discovered it.
17 On the other hand, in fairness , if they had 18 recognized that that was a design basis curve I think wo 19 would have provided another -- if we had recognized that I 20 think we would have looked at it and said,.well, maybe we 21 need another curve that's a little bit lower that we try 22 to operate to rather than operating right un to that
- 23 limit, which is the design basis limit, because we would
= 24- want margin. We would want operating margin. So -- so I 25' would say that while it didn't -- I don't think it had an
,u--r ...w,--m.e- =.-~w- - - -a--, ,,%,----.m 4 ,-, ,#,,e . .e-aa-m- <*wser-- w = , , -+m. + - - - -e- g- s--v---m-p-ve- -,v-Tr-e. -e
72 1 impact one way or the other on what occurred on the 4th ,
l 2 and 5th, I think we would have operated a little bit l 3 differently if we had recognized it as a -- as a design 4 basis curve inasmuch as we wouldn't have let the operators 4
5 take the plant right up to the curve during nnrmal OPS.
6 We want to -- would want to maintain margin.
7 MR. RAPP: Do you know -- excuse me. Do you 8 understand how this curve 8 was generated the --
9 THE WITNESS: No.
10 MR. RAPP: -- the conditions that went into it?
11 THE WITNESS: No, I did not review the 12 calculations.
I 13 MR. RAPP: In -- well, I'm not necessarily 0
14 saying did you review the calculations. Did you 15 understand the basis of -- the basic analysis that went 16 into it?
17 Basically what this Curve 8 as we've been told 18 represents here is plant response -- makeup tank response 19 during a large break LOCA, assuming worst case flows and 20 worst case instrumentation error and worst case type 21 scenarios. We've been told that this curve did not apply 22 to day to day operation of the plant. That only -- the 23 only time that this curve would be used would be to pick a 24 point on the curve --
25 THE WITNESS: To start from.
l.
73 1- MR. RAPP: -- to start from. And as long as you 2 start from there you can operate over here in the .
3 unacceptable region and you're just fine. !
4 THE WITNESS: Well, I don't know if you're just 5 fine. You're not just fine from my point of-view inasmuch l 6 as -- it's very plain, I mean, what the instruction --
7 You're saying that you could have an accident -- well, I !
8 don't know exactly what you're saying. It's not fine to .
I 9 me to be in the unacceptable region of the curve for any -
10- reason. -;
11 MR. RAPP Well, excuse me, I'll rephrase that. !
l 12 As long as you pick your starting point within the i 13 acceptable region, as long -- if you have a LOCA, you're I
_ 14 protected. ;
15 THE WITNESS: Oh, yeah, I -- that was explained 16 to me.
17 MR. RAPP: And then that's -- and that even f 18 occurs if you're outside of that curve.
19 .THE WITNESS: Yeah. ;
20 MR. RAPP: Because it doesn't, matter where you 21 end_up, it matters where.you start.
22 THE WITNESS: Right. And that I became aware of 23- recently. When I say recently, it was a few months ago.
24 MR. RAPP - Let's -- let's take -- this'11 be:
'25 painful but we'll do_it. Let's walk through the operating-h m --v,.-m.,,r- mww.. .,.-..-vn-.w,,,.-,.,-,.,,....-.-
-,,,..-,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,_,.m,-,_-,.mw__,,
v,_, ,,,,.m
74 1 procedure. Are _ you f amiliar with OP-402, tdue makeup tank, 2- system operations?
3 THE WITNESS: I don't have it memorized.
4 MR. RAPP: Do we have that OP-402 still 5 available?
6 MR. WEINBERG: The old one, is-that what you 7 want? !
8 MR.~ STENGER: I think this is the old one. You 9 might want to just --
30 MR. RAPP: Okay.
11 MR. STENGER: -- question Bruco to make sure 12 that - - ,
13 THE WITNESS: I'm not sure I would recognize one !
- c. -
14 revision to the next. ,
f 15 MR. RAPP: Okay. This is -- Rev 75 was in ,
16 effect but there's no -- there's minor changes in this one 17 that don't effect anything.
18 Basically -- let me find the section I'm --
19 MR. DOCKERY: I'm going-to ask a question while 20 he --
21 MR. RAPP: Surely.
12 2 ~ MR. DOCKERY:- -- looks for-that.
23 - Mr. Hickle, we'have heard, and this is totally 24 . unrelated to what we've been discussing, but as a filler 25- here, we have heard from many people or many instances i
- - .- J --.=e e, -
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75 1 wherein the evolutions of the 5th and as it turns out the 2 4th were likened to Chernobyl. Have you heard that that 3 comparison?
4 THE WITNESS: Yes.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Do you know where that emanated 6 from?
7 THE WITNESS: As I understand that -- that was a l 8 statement that was made -- made by someone very, very high 9 in the Nuclear Regulatory Commission organization, .
10 possibly by one of the commissioners. But I don't know -
11 that because I heard this information secondhand. :
l 12 MR. DOCKERY: To your knowledge was that -- was 13 Chernobyl first uttered by -- by somebody in FPC or by 14 - somebody in the NRC?
15 THE WITNESS: Well, I tould say the NRC, but I 16 don't know what utterings -- I mean, all together I don't !
17 know what people utter all the time. ,
18 MR. DOCKERY: Well, I understand --
19 THE WITNESS: I wouldn't characterize it in any 20 way, shape or form like Chernobyl.
21 MR. DOCKERY: Well, I think we all have a little 22 -- we might have a little bit of trouble with that 23 analogy. -i
-24 THE WITNESS: Okay. 4 25 MR. DOCKERY: ~ But it has been termed it was i
A r
76 i
1 bandied about with respect to the evolutions on those two 2 dates and it's -- we just wondered if you knew the genesis ,
3 of it? !
4 THE WITNESS: No. I -- I don't know the genesis
- - i 5 of that. I don't agree with that analogy.
6 MP. DOCKERY: That's fine.
MR. VORSE: Mr. Hickle, let's switch gears again 8 while he's looking. We need to get into this, you know, 9 just for the record, but, you know, you did participate in 10 these -- you know after you found out about the September -f 11 4th evolution --
12 THE WITNESS: Yes.
13 MR. VORSE: -- that the shift did. You did have 4
14 some participation in that ultimate decision and all that.
15 THE WITNESS: Yes.
16 MR. VORSE: So can you just kind of explain to 17 us how that --
18 MR. WEINDERG: As far as the termination of Mr. i 19 Weiss and Mr. Fields?
20 MR. VORSE: Yeah, what dialogue you had and --
L 23 and what, you know, who made the decision and what was the 22 basis of that-decision and that type of thing?
L 23' MR.-WEINBERG:- Okay. 4 24- THE WITNESS: All right.
25 MR.-VORSE: Will you do that for me?
u
..- =. ;. - .. - - - - -
i 77 1 THE WITNESS: Surely. I was consulted prior to 2 a meeting that occurred at our general office complex as 3 to what my recommendation would be with respect to ,
4 additional disciplinary action for'the operating shift 5 involved-with the evolutions on the 4th and che 5th of 6 September.- I was consulted by Gary Boldt, my supervisor.
7 The reason I didn't attend the meeting.was :
8 because I was off-site. I had another commitment some-9 place and out of town. All right. I was away for a few 10 days and I don't remember exactly for what reason. And I 11 made my recommendation. We discussed -- I discussed what l 12 my assessment was of the situation that occurred on the --
13 on the 4th and made a recommendation to my boss as to what 0
- 14 should be done. And when I got back from my trip I was ,
15 informed what decisions had been made. Now, 1 know that 16 Greg Halnon, Gary Boldt and Pat Beard were present at the 17 meeting at'the general office complex where that decision !
18 was -- was finally determined.
19 MR._VORSE: What was your -- what was your 20 decision that should be done?
21 THE WITNESS: My -- my reco - .they didn't go as 22 far as-I recommended. I recommended that the shift 23 = supervisor, the assistant-shift supervisor, and the two
'24 chiefs be-terminated. Terminated meaning terminated from 25 employment with Florida Power. But, of course, the Y W7*-" TT VN Y WT"P- e+MD- W~-'nt- e-rhwJ6 m 4m+e e' ++-**e--*d- -e-g-T '-"*+d-+r
78 1 decision that came back was that the -- the shift 2 supervisor and assistant vould be released from 3 employment. And the chief operators would be removed from 4 shift operations, which is what occurred. And I -- I was 5 satisfied with the outcome of that.
6 MR. VORSE: What was the basis for your 7 decision?
8 MR. WEINBERG: For his recommendation?
9 MR. VORSE: For his recommendation.
10 THE WITNESS: For my recommendation?, As a plant
<p V 11 manager I can correct judgmental errors. I can probably 12 correct team problems like group think. But I can't 13 correct integrity issues. And when I sense that somebody 14 hasn't been straight or honest, which was my feeling in 15 this case, then I felt that they really don't meet our 7 hir< p i 16 corporate culture and they shouldn't be working,$her6. 1 4 17 And that was the -- that was strictly and solely la the reason that I recommended termination was I felt they 19 were untrustworthy. I felt they had more than enough --
20 those four individuals had more than enough opportunity.
21 with all of the dealings they had with myself, the 22 counseling sessions, the management review panel, even the I
23 NRC and OI, to reveal that they he' performed two 24 evolutions right from the start. And if they had, as I 25 said, I don't believe that it would have led to i
79 1 termination. And the fact that they didn't and had that 2 opportunity, I felt like they were deliberately concealing 3 information that was important to our understanding. And 4 that wasn't a trustworthy act in my opinion.
5 MR. VORSE: I'm -- in their defense, Mr. Hickle, 6 I'm just going to say that -- that -- that when we did 7 interview them we did not ask the question had this ever 8 been performed before. They were also advised by 9 corporate counsel not to answer anything unless 10 opecifically asked. So I just wanted to run that by you 11 and let you know that that's one, you know, one aspect 12 that, you know, we -- we probably should have asked that 13 question but didn't. And they felt that they were 14 instructed not to answer the question unless asked.
15 THE WITNESS: There's one other thing though.
16 Nor did I ask the question or anyone else in the 17 management review panel whether there -- they had done 18 this before. We really just didn't have any reason to ask 19 that question. But the other consideration is this, they 20 only submitted the data in the problem report which proves 21 their point.
22 MR. VORSE: Everything looked -- everything?
23 THE WITNESS: It sort of supported what they had 24 to say. The data the night before, and I learned this 25 from our system engineer, and from our shift supervisor, I
l
l l
80 1 Dave Fields, was more scattered, and even Dave told me it 2 really didn't look like it was conclusive information. So 3 we went home and we thought about it and we all came back 4 and we did it again. This time we let the parameters 5 stabilize more on the beginning of the test. That's --
6 that's almost his exact words.
7 That bothered me a little bit, too, because the 8 bad data and the good data would have been important to 9 technically evaluate, to understand -- to understand the 10 situation and to try to resolve it. And the fact that 11 they -- they withheld that, they didn't give it to us.
12 They only gave us the good information, or good from their 13 standpoint that proved their point, really made me 14 question after the fact their motivation, which is also an 15 integrity issue.
16 So there were really a couple of things, you 17 know. I recognize that we didn't ask them about whether 18 they had done the evolution twice. I really thought 19 though that they should have come forward with it. And I 20 still recall Dave Fields' response to me and I can quote 21 it.
22 MR. WEINBERG: When you --
23 THE WITNESS: When I confronted him and just sat 24 down with him and asked him whether or not his shift had 25 performed two evolutions and he said rather matter of l
81 1 factly, oh, oh, yes. And I said, well, have you -- you 2 know, you didn't tell me about this, have you told Greg 3 or, you know, this didn't come out, why not? Well, we P
4 didn't think that I
- it would,f, paraphrase, v do us any good.
5 said, okay. I said, did you tell NRC or OI? And he said, 6 no. And I said, well, you realita that I think this is an 7 important -- you must realize that I think this is an 8 important fact that needs to come ouc and I'm going to 9 have t o notify the NRC, but I want you to know this. And 10 he said, quote, and I can quote it becauae I'll never 11 forget it, "well, now that you know, I guess I'll have to 12 tell NRC". And that made a very big impression with me.
13 And that was his -- his statement to me.
14 So, everything that I had, it wasn't just the 15 fact that they -- they didn't divulge this, it was the 16 other things that really made me question the integrity of 17 all of the information that we had gotten and the accuracy 18 of it and the integrity of the individuals involved.
19 MR. WEINBERG: Can I ask a quick couple of 20 things and then I want to -- I had a note about doing 21 this, I might as well cle se it out.
22 When they appeared before the management review 23 committee did they describe in some detail the process 24 they went through her. ore deciding to do this evolution on 25 the 5th that they described?
1 l 82 1 THE WITNESSt Yeah, they -- that -- in fact that 2 was a mitigating factor in the initial discipline. They 3 said they -- although they didn't write a test procedure 4 or talk to the shift manager and handle it as an unusual ,
5 evolution, what they did instead was they didn't think 6 that they really needed to do all that. But they did take 7 all the compensatory actions. They stationed an operator 8 in the auxiliary building to vent the makeup tank in the 9 event we got in a loss of coolant accident. They 10 discussed all of the other problems that could occur, he
- L&
11 told me, he didn't really speci -
very specific.
n0s
- 12 So they -- we got the impression that they had 13 really thought the thing through. That maybe if they had 14 written a test procedure and had a safety analysis and the 15 plant review committee review it, that they might have 16 done it just about the way they did it if they could have 17 gotten a procedure approved.
18 MR. WEINBERG: Did they -- you mentioned the 19 word spontaneous before, however, they dio lead you to 20 believe that it was a decision that they had made while 21 they were on shift that night?
22 THE WITNESS: Yeah, that was the feeling that we 23 gnt, that it was -- but I don't recall the exact words 24 that led us to believe that. It was something along the 25 lines that we -- we started talking about it, I think he
83 i said, we started thinking about it. And decideu that we .
2 could run this evolution and then try to validate this l l
3 curve.
l 4 MR. WEINBERG: Did people in the committee, :
5 because we didn't really talk about what people said, did 6 people ask thom why they had run it on the midnight shift 7 and not just waited and asked, you.know, for permission 8 from you or Greg Halnon or from the shift manager?
9 THE WITNESS: We didn't ask about their urgency, i 10 if that's what you're driving hp g7But we asked why they 11 didn't notify the shift mt ager. We have what I consider 12 to be fairly specific guidelines for notifying the shi.ft 13 manager or -- or myself in the event that they're doing !
14 something that constitutes an unusual evolution. ;
15 Something out of the ordinary or there's special safety ,
16 considerations. And there's some guidelines we give in 17 our administrative instruction for that.
18 But they've all had training -- aside from the 19 guidelines we've all been trained in-depth on -- on what i 20 that really means, so they have the right sensitivity. [
. 21 And.so we asked, why didn't you notify the shift manager?
- 22 That -- that seemed very surprising to us. We have a h 23 shift manager that's on shift around the clock, holidays '
- 24 and weekends. It's the senior person that has authority 25 of the plant manager and is supposed to be cued in on I
f
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_ . _ _ _ . - - _ . - _..__=__ _ _ _ _ _. _ _ _ ______ _.. _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ . . _ _ _ .
l 84 1 these kinds of things- . And also we have schedules that we 2 maintain, dsily work schedules. And special tests that 3 are supposed to be in the -- preplanned and on those 4 schedules. So we asked them why not?
5 And that's when they got into well, you know, we 6 just started talking about it and we looked at the 7 procedures and we just thought it was something we could 8 do on shift and, you know, could do.it tonight and just l l
9 didn't think about it, was basically the message that the) :
10 conveyed.
11 MR. WEINBERG: Did -- did --
12 THE WITNESS: We thou"ht about it and just 13 really didn't think we had to.
14 MR. WEINBERG: Did they have an -- at that point ,
15 was thoro _ plenty of opportunity during that discussion to 16 explain to you that they had actually done it the night 17 before?
18- THE WITNESS: I thought so.
19 MR. WEINBERG: Would it have made some '
20 difference to you now in retrospect concerning this issue ,
21 of whether it was spontaneous, spur of the moment, i~ you !
22 had known that they had done the -- the evolution the ,
23 night before?
2 41 - THE WITNESS:
Would it have made a difference, 25 in what way?
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35 l
1 MR, WEINBERG: Did -- is that -- in retrospect 2 does that raise some quencion about the truthfulness of 3 what they told you in the management review committee as 4 to spontaneity now that you found out that they actually 5 did he procedure the night before?
6 THE WITNESS: Well, it certainly made it look 7 less spontaneous. They had time to -- they did it once, 8 didn't get their results. They had time to go home, sleep 9 on it, think about it, come back, talk about it again and 10 then do it. There was more opportunity to get the shift 11 manager involved. It makes the whole thing look a lot 12 more divisive is-real-ly is-re11y what it -le: g 4/
13 It makes it -- the fact that they had more 14 opportunity, and we talked about this -- more opportunity 15 to cue the shift manager in and didn't almost puts a 16- flavor in and it's nothing that I would accuse them of but 17 it's just another thing that makes it look -- for me to 18 question their integrity, You know, why didn't they tell 19 that shift manager? Why didn't they bring it up in 20 passing conversation? That shift manager is in the 21 control room at least once every single shift.
22 And it almost looks like they -- they could have 23 been trying to conceal the f act they were doing this, And 24 again, it's nothing I would ever accuse them of, but when 25 you take that data point sith all of the -- all the other
i 86 1 information that had a bearing on the decision as to what 2 to do from a-disciplinary point of view, it all added up 3 that you -- I couldn't trust them.
i 4 MR. WEINBERG: The -- and'this is the last !
5 thing. The safety -- the indication by them to you all 6 that they had taken precautions as to safety by stationing ,
i 7 somebody at the header to vent, had some significance in i 8 your-decision back in September of ' 94, right? !
i 9 THE WITNESS: Yes. l l
10 MR. WEINBERG:- If in re:rospect, as you -- as l 11 -you-now have learned that apparontly the same precautions !
12 were not taken on the September 4th evolution, did that 13 also raise some questions in your mind recently when you 14 were making the decision as to your recommendation?
l 15 THE WITNESS: Not specifically, no. I -- I 16 think if I had thought about it in that context it would 17 have, but I didn't specifically think about it from that 18 angle. -
19 MR. WEINBERG: You would have expected them to 20 have told you that they hadn't taken the same precautions v 21 the night before? f
-27 THE WITNESS: Well, they didn't even tell me 23 they performed the -- the testi_so I wouldn't-expect them {
- 24 to tell me anything.
i 25 MR. STENGER: - While we're on tF,,s, just '.o [
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87 1 complete it, did they present any sort of chronology 2 during the management review panel meeting?
3 THE WITNESS: I think Rob Weiss or someone put 4 together a -- it looked like a little point paper.
5 MR. WEINBERG: Is this it? (Tenders document.)
6 THE WITNESS: Yes, that's it.
7 MR WEINBERG: This is the document, OP-103B 8 Curve 8, verification 9/5/94, that people talked about 9 before. ;
10 THE WITNESS: I think that came from either Rob 11 Weiss or Dave Fields, but I don't know which, or they 12 might have even prepared it together.
13 MR. RAPP: Does that chronology just address the 4
14 --
the 9/5 -- the operations that --
15 THE WITNESS: Yes.
16 MR. RAPP: -- took place on 9/5 or does it go 17 into receiving a letter on 9/.' and discussions --
- 18 THE WITNESS: Oh, 19 MR. RAPP- -- on 9/3 and --
20 THE WITNESS: Okay. No, it goes back to --
21 starts at 9/2/94 where they say that they received a 22 letter addressed to me from Engineering, which -- and I 23 think I talked about that when we were discussing time 24 lines.
25 MR. WEINBERG: Actually it goes further --
l i
-l 88 !
1 THE WITNESS: Which proposed -- which -- what 2- this says is proposed closing all-issues conterning -- !
3 concerning makeup tank' hydrogen overpressure. <
l 4 MR. RAPP: Okay. So this -- this chronology !
5 then just represents more than just what happened on 9/57 !
6 THE WITNESS: Right. Let me add to it. This !
. i 7 does say, and this is in Dave Fields' or Rob's own hand, !
8 Operations nanagement asked "A" shift -- }
I 9 MR. WEINBERG: Is that his shift?
10 THE WITNESS: Yeah. -- if they had any ;
11 continuing concerns with the issues, So, Greg followed up i 12 on what I asked him to do. I hadn't noticed that before. !
13 But Greg did follow up and went back to the shift and 14 asked them if that letter came out, whether they were i 15 satisfied.
16 MR. STENGER: On September 2nd? ,
17 - THE WITNESS: Yeah. Well, I --
18 MR'.- WEINBERG : It. indicates sometime between 19 September 2nd and --
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah.
l 21 M
.R. WEINBERG: -- September 5th. >
2
'22 THE WITNESS: And the time that the evolution 23 occurred on the 5th.
L 24' MR. WEINBERGi If you go to the second' bullet .
25 -that -- read that and tell us if that would suggest that
_ . . _ _ . . _L. .-.__.a.,-,-.- - . . - . . - - - - , , _ . , . _ . . - , - . - . _ . ~ . . , .
. . _ _ . - - ,.-..J
l 89 j 1 actually they're going back until the May time frame?
2 THE WXTNESS: All right. The next bullet says, 3 "A" shift -- "A", alpha, shift had performed SP-630 HPI 4 full flow test during refuel and did have concerns about 5 the makeup tank DWST swapover point, hydrogen entrainnent, 6 and makeup pump had positive suction head. {
l 7 MR. WEINBERG: So that would be the issue back 8 in the May time frame, right?
9 THE WITNESS: Yes.
10 MR. WEINBERG: Now, was there anything between 11 the May issue that is referred to in this summary, the 12 September 2nd memo and the summary and September 5th that 13 you can recall that Mr. Weiss and Mr. Fields raised with 14 the management review committee when they appeared before 15 you all on September 15th?
16 THE WITNESS: Not to my recollection.
17 MR. RAPP: Let me -- hold on for one second, no, 18 that's okay.
19 The September 2nd letter, during the management 20 review did -- did either Dave Fields or Rob Weiss explain 21 how that letter was presented to them?
22 THE WITNESS: I don't recall them specifically 23 covering --
24 MR. RAPP: The context.
- 25. THE WITNESS: -- that.
l 90 1 MR. RAPP But what they told -- what they said 2 during the interviews was that basically the letter was 3 brought up to control room, and Carl Bergstrom was the 4 individual that brought it up, and he basically -- this is 5 what they said. That he-basically enld them, Engineering 6 is going to close these issues unless you've some more 7 data to give them.
8 And then so that -- that probably shaped a lot of 9 the mind set with why they said, well, Engineering is 10 getting ready to close all of our issues.
11 THE WITNESS: That -- the first time I've heard 12 that in today. Those words.
13 MR. DOCKERY: Would that characterization square 14 kith your reading of the September 2nd, 1994, memorandum?
15 THE WITNESS: I didn't think the memo -- I 16 didn't think at the time it vould necessarily put the 17 whole issue to bed. There were still some peripheral 18 things tntd were being looked at. I would have to review, 19 you know, to be able to ta7.k more specifically about it.
20 I haven't looked at it in a long time.
21 MR. DOCKERY: Well, okay, we'll afford you that 22 opportunity to -- let me just make the comment that based 23 on our interviews to at least some of the engineers, that 24 memorandum was very pivotal to their belief that we've 25 lost.
91 l
i 1 THE WITNESS: To engineer's lost or the j 2 operators?
3 MR. DOCKERY: The operators. Well, certainly 4 "A" shift. I think r.here may have been others that felt, i 5 this is it, we've -- we've lost the battle.
6 MR. WEINBERG: Just read the first par 1raph, or 7 the whole thing.
8 THE WITNESS: (Examines document.) Okay.
9 MR. DOCKERY: I'd solicit any cominent you have 10 on it.
11 THE WITNESS: Well, the only consent I have 12 really I made earlier. And that's that when I received 13 this memo I wanted to make sure that if we were putting 14 the issue to bed that -- that unless our operators had 15 other information, that this was the best technical 16 assessment that we nad.
17 And there comes a point when in any technical l
l 18 issue or anything else once you've done everything you can l
l 19 do and put your best technical effort at it and you come 20 up with an answer, then you reach a point where is there 21 -- the question you have to ask then is is there anything 22 else that would cause me to want to look at it harder?
l 23 Any other information maybe we haven't assessed? Any
! 24 other questions on the table that haven't been answered?
25 Any other information? And then if not, then if there's
92 i still a lack of acceptance, then there's -- then you reach 2 a point where you're dealing more with an attitude then 3 with -- with facts.
4 So, you know, what I was concerned with when I 5 saw this memo was, okay, have all the facts been I
6 addressed? Do we know all the facts here? Now maybe our 7 operators don't like it but they sure have the right to S have their issues understood and addressed. ,
And now once 9 they're addressed, okay, if there's nothing else, now we 10 got to get on with it.
11 And I -- and that's basically my feedback. But I 12 did tell Greg to go back and nake cure that everything was 13 addressed. And that's probably why Carl when he delivered 14 the memo asked whether or not there was any other 15 information that they had.
16 MR. DOCKERY: You mentioned the test or the 17 standard or best technical assessment possible. The fact 18 is that Curve D changed.
19 THE WITNESS: Sure.
20 MR. WEINBERG: Curve 8, Jim.
21 MR. DOCKERY: Curve 8, changed.
22 THE WITNESS: Oh, I know what you're talking 23 about. Now, but -" but that's -- today we know that, but 24 at the time that we received this memo and we had put our 25 best engineering ef f ort forward and there was no
4 93 1 additional information on the table or any other questions 2 or any other technical information, operating data or 3 anything else, then we're dealing with opinions unless we 4 know that the technical assessment hadn't been done 5 correctly or thoroughly. There wasn't any reason to 6 believe that at that point.
7 MR. DOCKERY: At that point. Irrespective of 8 whether it was properly collected or not some additional
, 9 data did become available three days after the date of 10 this memo. And that did cause a change to Curve 8.
11 THE WITNESS: Not directly.
12 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. Then explain how.
13 THE WITNESS: That the -- and I'm not --
I can't 14 get into a lot of technical depth but I do know that the 15 information that the operators plotted, the empirical 16 information that they -- that they plotted, did not 17 directly prove the curve to be inaccurate, mainly because 18 cf -- of the issue that Curt brought out earlier. But it 19 did cause us to go back and take another look at the 20 curve. And during that time some other peripheral issues 21 came up which caused the curve to change. And beyond that 22 I can't get into more -- more detail than that.
23 MR. DOCKERY: Well, maybe I'm over simplifying, 24 but the fact in my mind or what I-believe to be true is 25 that the operators maintained they could not operate the
4 I 94 1 plant very well within the confines of Curve D and the 25 2 cc's per kilogram hydrogen figure. And it yet turned out 3 at a later date that that seems to have been the case.
4 And my question to you is this. I don't mean to 5 make these pronouncements. Did Enginetch up to the 6 point of that September 2 memorandum, in your opinion, do 7 an adequate job of dealing with that issue?
8 THE WITNESS: In hindsight, no.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Okay.
10 THE WITNESS: No.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Of course, that's all any of us 12 have here is hindsight.
13 THE WITNESS: Right. But at the time I had no e' 14 reason to believe that the information we had was /> F/ 6I+ /
-J &
15 accurate.
16 MR. WEINBERG: Does the fact --
17 THE WITNESS: Or was inaccurat~. I'm sorry.
18 MR. WEINBERG: Does the fact that ultimately 19 there were errors in the curve justify anyone in your --
20 on the operation siae of your plant to on his own conduct 21 operations or evolutions which intentionally violate 22 curves?
23 THE WITNESS: No, no, no. And, no, I don't 24 think --
25 MR. WEINBERG: And why is that?
95 1 THE WITNESS: No. Wel.'., the means doesn't 2 justify the end obviously. Why is that?
3 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah, is it something more about 4 ~ a nuclear than a law firm, for example, or a OI office?
5 THE WITNESS: Well, nuclear safety for one. We 6 can't -- we can't allow our operators to pick and choose 7 the operating limits that they'll follow and those that 8 they won't. Those that they'll take seriously and those 9 that they won't. The -- their license conditions don't 10 allow them to do that. They have to operate by the 1.1 operating limits that we give them.
12 MR. RAPP: Let me get back to what I was going 13 to do here a little bit ago and it plays into this ssme 1 .
14 area. I don't know how familiar you are with the actual 15 plant operating procedures, so we'll try and step throuch 16 this I guess. What I have here is a couple o. sections 17 out of OP-402 that were used during that September 4th and 18 Sth event. If you want to take a look at them for a 19 second that's fine.
20 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I'll take a look. (Examines 21 document.)
22' MR. RAPP: Well, basically the section I've 23 given you there on top is the gas addition procedure and 24 if you go the step, I think it's 18 or.something like 25 that, where the arrow is beside the step one.
l l
-. ,, .- . .-- -. - ~ - - . - - - . . -..._ .- .- - ._ .. - .._ .- . - .-
96
~
1 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I see it. .
2- MR. RAPP: Okay. So if you go to that 3 particular step in the procedure -- right there, the step 4 18 or whatever_it is?- Right there the step 18.
-5 THE WITNESS: I see it. I see it.
6 MR WEINBERG: Everyone should1 turn --
7 THE WITNESS: Oh, all right.
8 MR. WEINBERG: -- to the page.
9 THE WITNESS ' Eighteen. Keep _-- keep going I 10 guess, 11 MR. RAPP: Okay.
12 MR. WEINBERG: Do you know what --
13 MR. RAPP: I think it's right.here -- I'm sorry.
14 Nineteen, 419.8. Point eight. .I'm sorry. Right there.
15 MR. WEINBERG: Right.there.
16 MR. RAPP: Okay. So it says, establish H' ,
17 pressure. Refer to Curve 8 for overpressure, maximum 18 overpressure. Okay. All right, so that -- that 19 particular part_of the_ procedure says, look at Curve 8 and 20 for whatever level you're_ operating at get your maximum
'21 pressure.. And basically that's -- as far as you 22 understand that's what Dave Fields did on the 4th and the-
-23 5th,. correct?
24 THE WITNESS: Dave Fields said that ne used 25 OP-402.
. t
'l i
97 1 1 MR. RAPP - Okay. So he did that part of the 2- procedure? He~got a point-and'made sure he didn't exceed- i 3 that on the curve. But if you take and turn to the next ,
4 page was the bleed operation --
5 MR. STENGER: Do you know that that's correct by .
6 the way that -- I mean if you -- I don't have a_very good 7- copy of this.- Do you-know if that's -- if he started on
~8 the curve or --
9 MR. RAPP: Yes. +
10 MR. STENGER: -- he started to the left of the 11 curve?
12 MR. RAPP: I think he started on the curve
'13 - because if you look at the information Pat Hinman gave us 14 it --
15 MR. STENGER: That could be.
1.
16 THE WITNESS: He said he started on the curve --
17 MR. RAPP: -Okay. Fine. But in any event --
18 MR. STENGER: On or near.
- 19. MR.'RAPP: Yes, In any event if you look at the 20 point in the procedure there for s bleed operation, which 21 I-think is---Lis this_page right here, system bleed, is 22 _ Curve a referenced in that section of the procedure?
- 23. THE WITNESS: No, it's only referenced in the hydrogen.
25 MR. RAPP: Okay. So what -- what does that lead l
98 11 the operator to believe? It,'s only referenced in tne fill 2 section._ As an operator how would you think that, the 3 system would respond? I mean, Curve 8's being not 4 mentioned there in the bleed section.
5 THE WITNESS: Well, that's true.
6 MR. RAPP: What would that -- as an operator 7 what would that lead you to conclude?
8 THE WITNESS: I don't *hink I would draw a 9 conclusion about the operating curve from that. Let me 10 give you an analogy. It might be easier to see where I'm 11 -- what I'm trying to say.
12 We have pressure temperature limits that we have
.13 ' to maintain for reacto: coolant system. And -- and those 14 .are in our technical specs or addressed by technical 15- specifications. But not every evolution that we perform 16 with respect to -- not every step in the procedure that we 17 may use that affects reactor coolant system operation
(<[m.s s' 18 necessarily is-going to ref -- take:you back to that
<4TV 19 curve. So --
20 RMR . RAPP: Well, that's a little bit different 21 area here. Tech spec actions are continuous items over 22 the critical operating range.
23 THE WITNESS: Well, these are cur --
24 PU1. RAPP: . I understand what you're saying 25 there. That's a little different issue than what I'm f
I -
.2-_--.. , _ . , ____,u-- - , . . , .
. _ . . . . . ... .. -.... ... _.__ _ .._.,.~._..._ _., . . . _ . - . _ _..- _m _ _ _
i 99 1+ trying tx) bring up here.- We've got'a situation where the 2 fill -- the part;of the procedure that says to add [
3--hydrogen specifically references this limit curve and it Okay. That's pretty clear.
4 says, don't exceed it.
5 The bleed procedure doesn't reference that 6 particular curve as a limit and says, you know, -- it says 7 - .it doesn't'say anything about it. Okay. I would be
- 8. expecting that if I'm on this part of the curve and I 9 start to do a bleed, then I'll stay in a safe range. That 10 I won't have any problem with an overpressure. Because 11 the alarm or the limit is not referenced. That I should 12 be staying either on the curve or coming into the 13 acceptable region where it's safe to operate. Not going
,-+
14 out here in the unsafe area where -- where I'm going to 15 get an alarm end it's not sa--- not acceptable to operate.
16 Does that seem unreasonable?
17 THE WITNESS: Does your expectation seem 18 unreasonable? No. But I wouldn't find it unreasonable to 19 expect just the opposite either. I -- I don't know that I 20 would have an expectation, but it doesn't seem 21- unreasonable that you might have that.
22 MR. RAPP: What.-- you said earlier that 23 . operating out here in this unacceptable area was a real 24 problem with what took place or one of the major issues, I 25 should say, of a real problem or one of the major issues
100-1 of what happened. Why is operating out here an' issue?
2 THE WITNESS: It's an unacceptable region of the 3- curve.
4 MR. RAPP: Okay. So what's -- what's the 15 corrective action'for that?
6 THE WITNESS: To respond to the annunciator 7' alarm and return the. plant to the acceptable region of the 8 curve .
9- MR. RAPP: And do you know how that's
-10 ;.ccomplished?
11- THE WITNESS: We can accomplish that by venting.
12 We can-reduce -- or we can reduce level, but that isn't 13 the way they do it, they vent, to make it --
14 MR. RAPP: Do you know how the venting is J
15 accomplished?
16 THE WITNESS: Yes. There's two manual valves 17 'behind our Hayes, one or two -- behind our Hayes analyzer 18 that has to be opened up by our building operator. and *.nen 19 the vent is actually accomplished from the mair. control
-- 20 board.
21 . MR. IU4PP: Okay. So how -- so since you're 22 familiar with that how.long would itDan operator to get 23 -down to that local area.
L24 ' THE WITNESS: Not very long, it's not a 25 contaminated. area and we have-an operator that's normally
+ -- -- ,a e + , . . , ~ . +
w a - --- - . -e- -m- ~ <e .
. f[
101 1 -in the auxiliary building. They would radio him and tell
-2 him?they're ready to perform a vent.
3 See, they were doing that. At that point they 4 were doing~it every shift, so it wouldn't -- just about 5- every --
6 MR. RAPP: Well, it's a little confusing on my 7 part._ The initial description we had from the operators, .
8 Dave Fields and Rob Weiss was that they had to have 9 someone stationed in a contaminated area to open th:
10 valves. You're telling me it's not contaminated?
11 THE WITNESS: Not -- not the' area behind the 12' Hayes analyzer. Now, you know, was it contaminated at the 13 time? Maybe that's the question. I -- I couldn't tell 14- you. But I -- I know that venting the makeup tank -- what 15 I can tell you is it's a very, very short duration. It 16 doesn't require.a whole lot of pre planning.
17 E!. RAPP: My -- my point in this thing is is 18 there's been some sort of emphasis placed on the immediacy 19 of attention to this alarm. That this alarm you had to go 20 to:immediately and take care of it. It's -- it's been
- 21 represented to us this alarm is not a high priority alarm. .
22 It's what's called a level three alarm, which is a regular 23 white light'on the control board. That you had.to have an 24 auxiliary operator go out and manually open some isolation
- 25 valves and potentially dress out. Okay. That's an issue, w-_'- - - w _-w w- m.- _ e z m v w.- w + e-ar- +- W- -* i rgw --T
~, . , - . - - .~ -. - - . . - . . - .
..-..-. - .- ~. --
I
- 102-1=-to potentially dress out. .Then you have to have'an '
-2 operator-from the main control board actually open thei ;
i 3 vent--valve and to-release the overpressure. So you~ add up 4_ all'of those time issues that come in here into play. - The >
5 fact of immediacy, of immediate attention to this alarm 6- does not seem to. play out real well.
71 THE WITNESS: Uh-huh. I understand your point, f
'8 but'I think what's-important is the intent,=ic's-how-you got'into that alarm condition to start with. If you're c
10 doing.a normal pressurization or filling the tank and .
11 pressurizing the bubble in the makeup tank and you hit 12 that alarmi then you send somebody out to do those things t t
13- and respond to the alarm immediately. Even if it takes
'14 you a few minutes to accomplish what you're talking about, 15 I wouldn't have any problem with that. -
Because the alarm i
(-
16' is --11t's not a red alarm. The annunciator is'a normal 17- priority. alarm and our operators-are trained to take
_ 18 prompt action to respond to these things. Now -- prompt 19 and reasonable action, j ,
20 - Now in the case where these evolutions were 21-' performed, what's different here-is that first they-22'. thought about-it and'said, we're going to maneuver-the j 23 plant or allow the plant through our maneuvering'to 4"
24 violate this curve or to-go into the unacceptable region 25 of tP.e makeup tank curve. Then we're not going to take C-r + , - + - ma w-o.=~ we--w- m-, e vo,--.m =--e-(-- v,ww. - r -. -a -'--- r- - -----
- = . - . - . - . - - . _
.103 1 prompt'and reasonable action to address'it, we're going.to 2 - sit,here for-30 minutes and we're going to-watch 11t and 3 "e're going to take empirical data- Andethen when that's 4 all done, just so that we don't get down to the low level 5- of the makeup. tank,.which.is the 55-inch level, we -- then 6 we're going to go ahead and we're going to dispatch 7 somebody and'we're going to go ahead and address this 3 Lalarm. -That's very different. That's very different.
- 9. When -- when you're sitting in the cockpit of an 10 airplane and you get a landing -- and you get an alarm 11: that1you're outside of your maneuvering speed or your --
12 -your -- I'm drawing an analogy here -- your maximum air 13 speed, we'd expect -- we'd expect our pilot, especially if 14 we're on that dammed airplane, to take some prompt and 15' reasonable action to return the airplane to the proper 16 maneuvering speeds. Even-thougn there might not be any t
17- immediate uhreat there.
18 But here's a case where-the pilot sat there.in 19 the cockpit and scratched his head-and said, I don't
. 20 believe this limit'really is a valid: limit to start with 21 so I'm going to gather some data for the engineers-back at-22- .the field and I'm going to go ahead -and let
- uis airplane
'__ 23 . accelerate beyond this maneuvering limit and I'm-going to
' 24 put it through some tight turns, some steep turns. And 25 I'm going to do that for well, as long as I need to to get
__., ,,. ~ _ . , , , - _ . _ . _ , . - . , , .-__,m.,m.__,.-,e, , - , , ,
104 1 enough= data. And then I'm going to take-some actions and 21 - that are prompt and prudent to get the airplane back 3- under the maneuvering speed. That.-- that's how I' feel-4 about what happened on shift. I think that's the 5 - difference.
6 MR. RAPP: All right. So let me -- let me see 7 if I can put this correctly then. Your -- your contention 8 is not that'the alarm wasn't responded to promptly, is that-they --
10 THE WITNESS: As a forethought.
11 MR. RAPP: -- intentionally maneuvered the plant 12 in a situation in which it was in alarm?
13 THE WITNESS: The forethought and the sustained 14 intent to maintain it there and not take prompt and 15 prudent actions.
16 MR. RAPP; Okay. _ 4gtI 17 THE WITNESS: It's K non conservative -- very 18 non conservative - very -- when you -look at nuclear 19 safety you have to be first -- first' concerned with 20 conservative decision-making with every single thing you 21 ;do. And that's-definitely notla conservative decision, 22 safe decision-making.
23- MR. RAPP: Let me get tofanother -- another 24: ~little --
25 THE WITNESS: Okay.
105 -
1 MR. RAPP: -- area along the same lines. . Was 2 -- this an. unauthorized evolution?
3- THE WITNESS: For.off the record can I.use the 4 rest room?
5 MR. DOCKERY: Yeah, we'll go off the .. cord a. -
6 minute please.
7 (Off the record.)
8 (Whereupon, a short recess ensued at 3:50 p.m.,
9= after which the proceedings resumed at 3:54 p.m. as 10 follows:)
-11 101. DOCKERY: We're back on the record. And, 12 Mr. Hickle, I'll remind you that you continue to testify 13 -under oath here.
14 THE WITNESS: I understand.
15 MR. DOCKERY: Curt, d you have more questions?
16 MR. STENGER: Was this an authorized evolution?
MR ~. RAPP: Yeah, unauthorized evol -- thank you.
18 Was this an unauthorized evolution?
- 19. THE WITNESS: Yes,.it was.
20 MR. RAPP: And how was that determination 21 reached?
22 THE, WITNESS: Well, the evolution clearly 23 doesn't meet ~- -meets'the criteria of an unusual evolution L 24: by the training that our operators.had and also by the i
25 guidelines that are established in AI-500, which is our
l 106 1 conduct of operating -- conduct of operations procedure.
2 MR. RAPP: Is there a mechanistic or a logic 3 process that could have been used in order to determine if 4 this would have tallen under the unusual evolution 5 guidance by AI-500?
6 THE WITNESS: There's an aide that's in AI-500 7 that -- it's a checklist that can be used by the operating 8 shift to make that decision.
9 MR. RAPP: Is that AI-500 kept in the control 10 rvom -- accessible in the control room?
11 THE WITNESS: I believe so.
, 12 MR. RAPP: We had discussions earlier in 1
13 previous interviews that there's a procedure called NOD-12 14 that essentially would perform the same activities, go 15 through and see if additional 5059 reviews or procedural 16 reviews are required. And based on what we -- what was 17 discussed during that interview the individual told us 18 that no additional procedural reviews were required or any 19 special reviews. Would you agree with that?
20 MR. WEINBERG: With regard to?
21 MR. RAPP: With regard to this evolution.
22 THE WITNESS: I think they should have had a 23 specific procedure to cover what they did. I do not
, 24 believe that their operating procedure allowed them to l
! 25 take thL actions that they did. They should have had a l
l i.
107 1 procedure. They should have had a safety analysis. They 2 should have had a plant review committee review of that 3 procedure. It probably should have been on our schedule.
4 And our system engineer should have been consulted, 5 because our expectations for our system engineers and 6 interfaces ars clear el.st the system engineer is consulted 7 on anything going on on his system. And also the shift 8 manager or myself should have been informed and we should 9 have had had an unusual evolution briefing. That's what I 10 expect should have occurred.
11 MR. RAPP: I believe you said earlier that --
12 excuse me. You said earlier that basically the procedure 13 that they used would have been the test procedure that O
14 would have been written?
15 THE WITNESS: Yes. Yes, I -- that's the e r +-
16 procedure I think they should have had,yhcre the specific "S tV 17 work instruction -- PRC approved work construction or 18 by+*G procedure for test pyocedure.
W There's different methods 19 that they use, but 3 still would be work m con e 45Liactson;;
m Orv af >
20 safety analysis PRC review.
/ mv 21 MR. RAPP: Was any of that done after the fact 22 when ti. .ir procedure was generated as follow-up, part of 23 the management follow-up?
24 THE WITNESS: Yes. I asked them to develop 25 a test procedure, which I know they did. And I'm not sure
108 1 -- I don't recall whether PRC reviewed their test 2 procedure or not. And I'm not convinced it would have 3 been approved if they had but -- but it would have 4 required a procedure to do anything like that.
6 THE WITNESS: Plant Review Committee.
7 MR. WEINBERG: OPay. Okay. Do you have anything 8 else?
9 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Vorse?
10 MR. VORSE: No.
11 MR. DOCKERY: Just hopefully the final little 12 bits and pieces.
13 THE WITNESS: All right.
14 MR. WEINBERG: I just wanted to see if there 15 was any questions along these same lines here and I -- if 16 not --
17 MR. RAPP: No, my next -- I intend to try and 18 close this out when --
19 MR. WEINBERG: You have seen what they did after 20 the fact, right?
21 MR. RAPP: The procedure itself?
22 MR. WEINBERG: Yes.
23 MP, RAPP: Not particularly, no, huh-uh.
24 MR. WEINBERG: Because that's around.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Okay, that's a question I do have.
l
109 1 (Discussion among parties.)
2 MR. DOCKERY: Can he continue while you're 3 looking for it?
4 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah, absolutely. Go ahead. I 5 don't promise anything.
6 MR. RAPP: Okay. Earlier you said that you did 7 not recognize this Curve 8 as a safety issue for a valid 8 reason. What particular reasons were involved in that?
9 THE WITNESS: I didn't recognize the curve --
10 well, I said two things. First, I said that I didn't 11 recognize it as a decign basis curve because that was not 12 communicated to me.
13 The other thing that I said, and I'm not sure 14 what you're referring to, was that my first focus or 15 concern about -- this was when we were trying to 16 reconstruct the time . ines and I was having some 1: difficulty with the sequencing. But I recall saying that 18 I didn't -- just a minute, let me think. Oh, I said the 19 first -- what I meant to -- what I was trying to say was 20 the first thing I focussed on was the operator burden.
21 And I didn't really start to personally become concerned 22 about a nuclear safety issue until after the refueling 23 outage when the concern about the performance of SP-630 24 came out. And then -- then the issue became, well, maybe 25 the makeup pumps were cavitating, and that's when the
110 1 whole thing really put on a different color to me. It was 2 more of a nuclear safety issue at that point. And I was 3 -- I was even more determined to try and get it resolved.
4 MR. RAPP With that more related to the 5 potential cavitation issue --
6 THE WITNESS: Yeah, the cavitation --
-7 MR. RAPP: -- rather than Curve 8?
8 THE WITNESS: -- of the makeup pumps, yeah. Did 9 I answer your question?
10 MR. RAPP: Yes, yes.
11 THE WITNESS: Okay.
12 MR. RAPP: You found out about this event from 13 Phil Saltsman on 9/13. I believe the problem report was 14 generated on 9/7, What transpired in the time frame that 15 -- that you did not know about the problem report?
16 THE WITNESS: I don ' t kn ow . I can't tell you 17 for sure that I didn't -- I can't tell you for sure 18 whether or not I saw the problem report before I talked to 19 Phil Saltsman or not. I really can't recall. The only 20' thing I can say for sure is that it never registered as a 21 -- as a potential operating concern until I talked to Phil 22 Saltsman. It was then that I started to think about how 23 they got that data and what kind of procedure they had.
24 See, at that -- during that period of time not --
25 all problem reports would eventually make their way to me
1 111 il and:I'd get:a chance to look at them.. But I didn't review 2 them all the next morning, that would depend on the= ,
3 significance of the issue. And if they were very 4 significant or somebody recognized'them as.significant 5 they'd bring them in and I'd look at them-the very next 6 day or sometitnes at the time that they were generated. No t
7 one called me'to-discuss thic one, so it was routed. But 8 when I -- when I first saw it, I can't be certain.- ,
9- MR. RAPP: But at first glance it did not appear 10 as a -- as a unauthorized test?
11 THE WITNESS: If I saw it the only thing I can 12 say is I -- I didn't read between the lines and start 13 thinking about how that data was gathered.
14 MR. WEINBERG: Did the' problem report focus on 15 operator conduct?
16 THE WITNESS: No. The problem report strictly 17 addressed the technical issue. And the fact that it --
18 that -- that there was data that was gathered, which made 19 the curve look questionable. So I don't know if in 20 hindsight if I looked at that thing I don't know if there 21 was anything.in there that would have really caused me to 22 think:hard aboutJit as to how that data was gathered. Or 23 if there was I didn't -- it didn't ring a bell.
- 24. MR. RAPP: The management. review panel, was that 25 your particular idea or --
1 I
112 1 THE WITNESS: That --
2 MR. RAPP: -- where did it come from?
3 THE WITNESS: -- that -- that was my idea.
4 Since that time we've refined the process and we're using 5 it more regularly on some of our problem reports that have 6 more significance than others. But that was just my 7 effort to try to heighten the attention that was given to 8 chis, bacause I thought it was significant, and to get 9 some help for myself, 10 MR. WEINBERG: Why did you just interview Dave 11 Fields and Rob Weiss?
12 THE WITNESS: Myself?
13 MR. WEINBERG: The management review board.
14 THE WITNESS: You mean why not interview other 15 people?
16 MR. WEINBERG: The other operators that were 17 involved, yeah.
18 MR. WEINBERG: Or engineers or whatever.
19 MR. RAPP- Okay, 20 THE WITNESS: We felt like we -
I felt like --
21 I can't speak for the others but I felt like we heard 22 everything we needed to hear. They -- they did not come 23 across as-1 b not kooperative . They came across as very cooperative and professional and we thought we had 4f Ti 24 25 the whole story. Plus those are the two people that were
113_ ;
1 -- responsible for the shift.and we were'more concernedLabout- ,
2 why they authorized 11t, what controls. More concerned l 3 'about-the -- the SRO responsibilities and the way that 4 they were-fulfilled than the other responsibilities on the 5 shift.
6 MR. RAPP: You said that the -- the outcome of 7 this management review panel was a verbal reprimand for 8 Dave Fields and Rob Weiss.
9 THE WITNESS: Right.
10 MR. RAPP: We -- we've had some discussion 11 earlier that -- that just prior to this maybe,_I don't
( 12- know, two or three weeks, there was some discussion about 13 whether to renew Dave Fields' license, but --
14 MR. WEINBERG: Prior to this?
15 MR. RAPP: Yeah, prior to this September 5th 16 event.
17 THE WITNESS: I think what the testimony was is 18 that --
in that that issue came up in the December time 19 frame.
20 MR. WEINBERG: Yeah. That his license was --
21 that that went in-in early December and that that 22 conversation took place sometime-in the -- in the later 23 fall area. He might ask him, but that's --
24 MR. RAPP: Well, in any event here the situation 25 is is-that you have a situation where you have an operator
l l 114 1 who you're questioning whether they should hold a license 2 or not and in view of this why was just a verbal reprimand 3 the --
4 THE WITNESS: I didn't --
5 MR. RAPP: -- the acceptable map?
6 THE WITNESS: I didn't question -- well, let me 7 back up and clarify that. Obviously we thought of a whole 8 range of actions that we could take or should take 9 immediately after the management review committee.
10 Including, you know, whether they should continue to stand 11 the watch. You know, to retrain. Is there any necessary, 12 you know, what do we need to do here? And what we decided 13 was counselling, and then later on I went down and watched 14 the crew on the simulator and did an assessment myself 15 just to see whether or not -- just to -- really to give 16 myself more confidence that we made the right decision in 17 leaving them on shift. And I saw a very good crew 18 performance. They did very well that time. That day. So 19 at that point I was satisfied leaving them on shift.
20 But Dave's, Dave's attitude really changed as --
21 as this issue developed and he became -- he became more 22 involved with responding to, you know, our own questions 23 and NRC's questions. And -- and there was some talk about 24 whether he should hold a license, and to be honest with 25 you I don't remember all that in detail. But I do know 1
115 1 that we took him off shift mostly because of the 2 distractions we felt he was under and some of his own 3 behavior, which was very agitated and aggravated and 4 sometimes confrontational.
5 MR. RAPP: In going back over the 25 cc a per kg 6 it's come out that -- that Chemistry was trending this 7 level and that this was also being put out at the plan of 8 the day meeting that they, Chemistry, was so in the 9 negative trend there was a question raised by the senior 10 managers that -- I would presume that to be Gary Boldt or 11 Pat Beard -- that, you know, why aren't we meeting this --
12 THE WITNESS: Well, Pat, Gary, me, it could be 13 any number of people. We -- we tried to trend all of our 14 -- my -- o vou want to finish the question, I jumped in?
15 MR. RAPP: No, I think you're --
16 THE WITNESS: Okay.
17 MR. RAPP: I think you're along the right lines 18 here.
19 THE WITNESS: All right. We tried to trend all 20 of our important chemistry parameters and we still have a 21 chemistry trend sheet that's part of our normal plan of 22 the day. I think chemistry is real important and I try to 23 keep important information --
24 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, let me interrupt you 25 for just a second.
. _. -_ _ __ - . _ . _ _ _ _ . . - ~ _ _ _ . .
116 ,
1 Mr. Weinberg, it's'not -- you don't really need .
2 Lto-be looking for_that'right now.
3- -MR.- WEINBERG: Okay.
- 4. MR. DOCKERY: -You have scribe duties.
51 MR.-WEINBERG: All right. :
6 MR. DOCKERY: We don't -- we can look at it
- t 7 afterwards.
8 MR. WEINBERG: I'm sure that.Ron Bright can get 9 it for.you. I thought I had it but --
10 MR. DOCKERY: My question about it wasn't that 11~ significant. I believe he'll be able to answer it.
12 MR. WEINBERG: Okay.
1 l 13 THE WITNESS: Okay. Where --
c, 14- MR. DOCKERY: I'm sorry.
15 THE WITNESS: -- where I'm headed with this was 95 &
16 hydrogen was,important to us , ut a number of other things ts h M 17 were and we keep all of those parameters in front of us as 18 part of the plan of the day. And we discuss anything 19 that's not in specification the same way we would discuss 20 conditions where we're in action' statements and tech specs 21 _or any off normal-condition.
22 When we're not meeting a critical chemistry 23= parameter :: ~ cencidcr that sn _that u: tr h en the plan - im &
24 nf the dayr-we consider that'to be an off normal condition 25' and it gets discussed like1 everything else. So_I don't-l l .:
I I
1 - _ _ --_ _ _ , _ u. . . __ __ -_ _ _ . . _ _._ _..______ _ _ _ . . _ . _
117 1- think it got any more air time or any more attention than 2 any other off normal parameter in our plan of the day.
3 MR. RAPP: That's kind of contradictory or 4 counter to what people have told us. As a matter of fact, 5 we were provided with some information t;at said that 6 basically that -- that operators felt like Chemistry was 7 out to show off, that Operations wasn't meeting their --
8 meeting their responsibilities and that they were sending 9 -- that Chemistry was sending these reports to -- to God.
10 THE WITNESS: Well, I -- now operators don't 11 normally attend our morning operational meeting. That's l
12 --
that meeting's chaired by myself now and at that time 13 I'm not sure, it may have been our scheduling manager that 14 we had chairing it. But I was at almost all of them it's 15 really my meeting. And our ops representative is usually 16 Greg Halnon or one of his alternates if he can't be there.
17 So the operators aren't there, so they wouldn't really be 18 able to tell you what goes on at the meeting.
19 But, as I said, you can ask Greg or some of the 20 other people that attend that morning meeting, they can 21 share their perspectives. But I never felt like it got a 22 heck of a lot of more air time than anything.
23 And Pat is very -- Pat and Gary Boldt are very 24 insistent that we operate our plant according to the 25 limits and the requirements that we have established. And
118 1 they challenge everything that's not right, not just 2 hydrogen. So it wouldn't be unusual for Pat -- I've seen 3 Pat challenge something that in my mind is a rather very, 4 very minor issue, but he likes things exactly right and we 5 know that. But that's the standard and that's what we try 6 to operate to.
7 MR. RAPP: That's all the questions that I have.
8 THE WITNESS: Okay.
9 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, when -- when you were 10 apprised that Curve Number 8 was a design basis curve as 11 opposed to an operating curve or what's also been termed 12 as an administrative curve, were you surprised?
13 THE WITNESS: Was a design -- say the question 14 one more time, please?
15 MR. DOCKERY: When you learned -- if this is an 16 appropriate way to say it, that Curve number 8 was a 17 design basis curve --
18 THE WITNESS: Okay.
19 MR. DOCKERY: -- as opposed to an operating or 20 what we have been told could also be termed an 21 administrative curve, were you surprised?
22 THE WITNESS: Yes.
23 MR. DOCKERY: You testified dust a few minutes 24 ago that it was "not communicated to me" that it was a 25 design basir curve.
119 ,
4
.1 THE WITNESS - Right.
2 MR. DOCKERY: WouldLyou_have, expected that it.
'3 would have been? Or to put it another way, how would you 4 have expected.to know --
5' THE WITNESS: I-think so. I think so-because of 6 - a31 of the_ time that we spent working on it and looking at-7 it I would-think that at some point there would have been f 8 an awareness created that it was a design basis limit.
9 And -- and why I can't - - I can't -- why it wasn't I can't 10 say.
11 MR,-DOCKERY: Where would you place the 12 responsibility to make that known?
13 THE WITNESS: Our Engineering organization needs 14 to provide a technical basis for the curves and the limits 15 that they provide to Operations. So I -- t?.y're the only 16 ones that would know that, so I would expect 1. to come 17 from them.
18 MR. DOCKERY: Okay. That was a very significant 19 . point to the many of the operators that we interviewed. I 20 think the question that we put to them was, had you known
-21 this was.a design basis curve would you have done what you 22 did or what was done by those other operators?
23- Universally the answer was, no, absolutely not. It had l
24 made a distinct difference'to them.
25 THE WITNESS: I -- I don't think they would have 4 --u---s
- se um w- F We w w- +u -7 >7w "Si e * - - &s-t-m'A- w- w-r-'
- . ~ . - .. --- -
120 1 done it,_ what the other oper -- I don't think the other 2- shifts ,let's-put it that way, would have done what this 3' -- what Dave Fields shift did, whether it was a design 4 basis -- whether they. knew that or not. If they knew it
-5 they probably wouldn't even given it serious consideration
'6- or even remote consideration..
7 MR. DOCKERY: Well, that was the first --
8 THE WITNESS: Okay. All right.
9 MR. DOCKERY: -- distinct-impression we got, 10 yes, 11 THE WITNESS: What I'm trying to say is when 12 this thing -- when I first discovered what happened on the L Of k<h*
p, 13 Sth, Iknewitwoul$takeverylongapd'theothershifts 4' $r 14 would know that this was an issue. So before that 15 occurred-I wanted to just test the water myself and make 16 sure that -- that my sensitivities were right. That, yes, 17_ this was-an unusual evolutio . Yes, they should have made ps) vv~/retto 18 notifications eut-o6 procedures, et cetera.
-s t Y 19 So I sat down with at least two and probably 20 three shift supervisors, one on one and, I asked them,_I 21 said, let.me pose a situation,-and I gave them a scenario.
22 And I said what would you do -- would you do that -- first 23L of-all, what would you use -- would you do this and if you 24 would do it what -- what would you use to do it? And 25 every one of them told me -- well, they either told me one-
..~J ,~ . .m e. . , _ _ . , %. ~ , . - , ,
l l
121 1 of two things. No, we wouldn't do it or yeah, I might 2 consider it but I'd have to have a procedure and it'd have 3 to be an approved procedure and a safety analysis.
4 So with that feedback I felt s lot more 5 comfortable and this was -- I believe this occurred before 6 the management review committee. I did that the same --
7 same dcy we were trying to gather information up and get 8 ready for the management review committee. Because I just 9 wanted to make sure that I wasn't overreacting to it.
10 And I also had the suspicion, which bothered me 11 even more, that, you know, is it possible that we missed 12 something and our other operating shifts would -- would --
13 would -- would routinely do something like this or make 14 this kind of decision. And that -- that rattled me a 15 little bit and that was the reason -- that was the reason 16 I sat down with the other shifters and talked to them.
17 And -- but the feedback I got made me feel pretty 18 good, that it wasn't the kind of thing or the kind of 19 decision-making that would go en. That's what I was 20 worried about, is this the kind of decision-making that 21 might go on some other night. You know, have we nissed 22 succ. china in the way that we've conveyed our standards?
23 So that's a more Shorough answer co your question.
24 MR. DOCKERY: You've just now stated that you 25 would have had an expectation that the f act that Curve 8 d
l
-._a.._ __ _ _ _ _ _ . . _ _ .. _ _ _ ._ _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ . _ _ _ _ _ . _
122 1 was a design basis curve that that would have been 2 conveyed to you?
3 THE WITNESS: I think I should have known that.
4 MR. DOCKERY: Where would you placa -- and I'm 5 talking about more than just on engineering now. Where 6 would you place that responsibility under the 7 circumstances as we know them?
8 THE WITNESS: Well, one of our - let me clarify 9 this because I think we're going down the wrong path here.
10 One of our corrective actions was to go back and take a 11 look at all of our operating curv(s and figure out whether 12 or not there were any others out there that were design 13 basis limits that maybe we didn't know about. And I would 14 -- I don't know that I have a -- I have an expectation 15 only because they spent so much time looking at that 16 makeup tank curve that somebody should have said, hey, 17 this is a design basis limit.
18 But that -- that isn' t the kind of communicati di 19 that would routinely occur with curves that are developed.
20 So what I'm concerned about is I didn't want to answer 21 your question in a way, yes, I expect engineering. Yes, I 22 would expect somebody in thac engineering organization 23 when they deliver the curve to tell us what the basis is 24 for it. But it didn't -- Go ahead.
25 MR. WEINBERG: But does that mean that it really J
l . . - . - . _ _ .- __ _ _ _ - - - . _ _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ . _ _ - _ _ _ _ _ _ - _ - _ . _ _ _ _ _ _ - . _ _
i l
123 1 doesn't so much matter to you whether -- what the basis 2 is. If you're given a curve, you, from the operations 3 side intend to abide by it?
4 THE WITNESS: Well, sure. Absolutely.
5 MR. DOCKERY: Dy the same token thoJgh it was 6 extremely significant --
7 THE WITNESS: Once it's accepted by operations.
8 MR. DOCKERY: It was extremely significant to 9 the operators to the point of they were somewhat -- they 10 were truly taken aback to learn that it was a design basis 11 cu rve . Could I -- I see some significance there to the 12 fact of a necessity on the part of operations, anybody 13 dealing with this curve, to Know that that's what it is.
14 Now, the curve was undergoing some degree of 15 scrutiny during that period of time and yet it wasn't 16 until after the events of the 4th and 5th it was even 17 known to be a design basis or pointed out?
18 THE WITNESS: And I've thought about that. I 19 don't think there's any argument that that was information 20 that would have been very useful and may have influenced 21 decision-making. Nevertheless, I don't think it was the 22 cause for the decisions that were made.
23 it DOCKERY: Something I have a degree of 24 confusion on and maybe you can clear it up. During our 25 interviews,.the OI interview of Mr. Fields and/or Mr.
l l
l
4 l
124 1 Weiss, I'm not sure, one or both of them asserted that 2 Curve number 8 as it existed in 1994 -- September of 1994 3 was only considered to be ~alid through, I believe, fuel 4 cycle number eight. Does that --
5 THE WITNESS: That does not ring a bell with me.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Is there any way we can determine 7 whether there's any validity to that? Let me place the 8 question --
9 THE WITNESS: Well, we can -- we can certainly 10 find out. But we'd have to direct that question to -- I 11 think --
12 MR. DOCKERY: It may be a tocally 21 valid 13 statement, in which case I want to clear it up.
14 THE WITNESS: We have to direct that question to 15 Paul Tanguay and I'm sure he could find an answer to it.
16 MR, VORSE: What -- what will be the number of 17 the next refueling outage?
18 THE WITNESS: Ten.
19 MR. VORSE: Are you number ten?
20 Tile WITNESS: Refueling ten, it begins in 21 February .
22 MR. STENGER: Did Fields or Weise give you a 23 basis for that?
24 MR. DOCKERY: I don't recall them doing so. And 25 that's why_I -- it is of course subject to some question
-w e - , p. r m-. --r-. --
--wmw -.- -
125 1- it's --
2 KR.-WEINBERG: It wasn't an excuse for not 1
3 abiding' by it? )
1 4 MR. DOCKERY: No.
5 MR.-WEINBERG Okay.
6 MR. DOCKERY: No. i t
7 MR. WEINBERG: It's just an observation?- I 8 - MR. DOCKERY: Yes. j
-9 MR. RAPP: I guess what they were trying to 10L point =out was that a calculation was clearly marked valid 11 Ethrough refueling cycle eight and it w'as just another !
I 12 example of the oversight that Engineering was having in l 13 analyzing this issue. They didn't even recognize that the 14 curve wasn' t- validated.
15 MR. WEINBERG: Well, yes, but that's -- but that :
16- doesn't mean it's invalid for refueling cycle number nine.
t 17 Mk. RAPP No, that's true. That's true.
18 MR DOCKERY: No. It's just an assertion -- l
- 19 MR. WEINBERG: Right, ;
20 MR. DOCKERY: -- that could have some 21 significance. '
22 - MR. STENGER: Help me with that again, Curt,-you 23 said the-curve was marked? ,
24f MR. RAPP: ' No, the calculation,
' 25 MR. STENGER: Oh, the cale okay. .
i 7
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q.._g-q.w,,,p. 9p,...m, ..-e, w y,, . -,l-c... ,..s.,-3 m.m.., __v,er,.. w v
126 1 MR. RAPP: The calculation that generates this 2 curve was marked that it was valid only though refueling 3 eight.
4 MR. STENGER: We -- we can check on that, take 5 an action ana feedback to you.
6 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, you and others have 7 identified two individuals as the most prominently 8 identified with concern about Curve 8. Most prominent 9 being, I think, Mr. Van Sicklen, but also to some extent 10 Mr. W111ms. Did any of your shift rupervisors during the il same period of time voice their concerns about Curve 12 number 8? Similar concerns.
13 THE WITNESS: Not that I recall, no.
14 MR. DOCKERY: And when I say concerns about --
15 I'm talking about the validity, the operational validity?
16 THE WITNESS: Now, Mark -- Mark -- Mark was the 17 sort of -- sort of the spokesperson for his shift. In 18 fact, I never had any other shift really express concerns, 19 it was primarily just that shift.
20 MR. DOCKERY: When we were --
21 THE WITNESS: That I --
that I recall that stand 22 out where they came back again several times.
23 MR. DOCKETY: As we discussed the decision-24 making process regarding discipline -- disciplining of Mr.
25 Weiss and Mr. Fields immediately after the management
4 127 1 panel, you stated that one of the -- within the context of 1
discipline, you explained to them an-expectation that they 2 !
l
..3 . would come.up with~a test procedure to -- that would have i
.4 covered, as I understand it, the evolution they performed. j 5 Was that completed?
6 THE WITNESS: Yes. .;
- 7. MR. DOCKERY: Was it -- did you review it for ,
t 8 acceptability?- ;
9 THE WITNESS: No .-
10 MR. DOCKERY: Did it -- was it overtaken by 1 11 events? I mean did it become --
12 THE WITNESS: I'm not st?re. I think we can find 13 it. As I said, I don't recall that it went to the-PRC for 14 review, but it may.have. -
c 15 MR. DOCKERY: I guess what I-m asking -- well, 16 -you wouldn't know if you didn't review it.
17 MR. WEINBERG: I know. I mean, it exists. I 10 thought I cotild put my hands on it but obviously-I can't.
19 THE WITNESS: That wasn't --
20 MR; WEINBERG: It's around somewhere.
21 MR. DOCKERY: Sandy -I'm not honestly sure what 22 vali - what significance it has to me, I just wondered ,
23 if --
L2 4 -- MR.LWEINBERG: 'I think you've got it probably '
25- ~somewhere but it.is -- it is around. Done-sometime-in F
l I
i l
128 !
1 like the October time frame and it's just sort of an 2 exercise.
3 THE WITNESS: My only concern was that they-did 4 it. I wasn't concerned at all about their results. The
- l 5 point I was t'rying to prove is, you didn't write it, now 6 sit down and write it and maybe the next time you have one !
7 to write you'll think about it.
8 MR. DOCKERY: Sounds'a little bit like 500 times 9 on the chalkboard, I will not do this again.
10- THE WITNESS: Well,-well,- may be but -- but 11 nevertheless they missed that, so they needed to do it.
12- MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Hickle, absent the events of ,
13 September 4th and 5th what expectation would you have had :
14 of how this issue would have been resol -- eventually ,
15 resolved? The issue being the validity of curve 8?
16 THE WITNESS: If we had not discovered the previous evolution, is that what you're asking?
17 18- MR. WEINBERG: How would it all come --
19 MR. DOCKERY: If neither of those evolutions had <
20 ever occurred, what -- where was this -- where was this H21 situation --
22 THE WITNESS: Oh, I see.
.23 MR.-DOCKERY: -- trending? Where was it going?
t 24 MR WEINBERG: Like on September 2nd --
25 THE WITNESS: Yeah, I understand.
i
..,-.-,.i.d.-,_,-._.-.___._,-.,.,J._..,,_....-._.-,__-._ -
129 1 LMR. WEINBERG: -- when the memo came,-what were 2 you --
3 THE WITNESS: I understand.
4- Well, I think we would have con -- continued to }
5 pursue valid questions that came up regarding the curve. >
6 If there were issues that had not been previously f 7 ~ addressed we would have looked at them. .But other than ,
8 that I don't--- l[ - probably Dave Fields and his crew 9 would still be_on shift.
10 MR. DOCKERY: Clearly, at-least in our 41 -interviews there was a -- a point where one or more i 12 . operators thought, I've got to -- I've got to take matters -t 13 into my own hands. I'm imputing that and it was based on 14 that September 2 memo. And you mentioned that -- that 15 ends don't justify means, we don't mean to imply they do, ,
16 but it does appear to be a ver -- a' strength of feeling ;
l '.' over this issue that caused them to take pretty serious l 18 action. Now, in any way would you characterize what f 3
19 occurred as a -- was there a personality conflict going on 20 'here that you were aware of? ,
21 THE WITNESS: I don't think so. I -- as I said
- 22- originally I --1when_we_got down_to-the management review 23 committee we never characterized their actions as i
- 24 malic'ious.--We thought their intent was valid, you know, .
or constructive. - It was the means that they used that was a 25 t.
'f
~- Y 4 w+
ym uw -wi.., - - . ~ g --,,-a,. i--
?
130 1 the problem.
2 MR. DOCKERY: Well, they were -- certain -- the 3 operators that we talked to while not unanimous there was 4 a -- a strength of conviction that Engineering in the --
5 Engineering was not being responsive to them -- was not 6 paying attention to them and they were highly dissatisfied 7 with the responses they were getting.
8 THE WITNESS: They didn't get the answer they 9 wanted as f ast as they wanted, that's true. But 10 Engineering, in my opinion, was being as responsive as 11 they could be under the circumstances.
12 MR. RAPP: I think -- I think the whole issue 13 goes back to whether or not the operators understood how 14 this curve was developed and what it actually meant. That 15 it -- this curve was not being -- to be used for day-to-16 day operation. It was just to pick a point and -- and 17 tha';. was it. My impression is that the operators thought 18 this was like a continuous use curve. That -- that the 19 plant should be within these bounds at all times. Did --
20 did that come across during any of the conversations that 21 -- that you had with, like, Mark Van Sicklen or Bruce 22 Willms?
23 THE WITNESS: Not specifically, no.
24 MR. RAPP: Not specifically. Okay.
25 MR. DOCKERY: Do you think that the two >
131 1 individuals who were -- ended up being discharged from 2 .their employment here -- would you characterize them as 3 rogue operators?
4 THE WITNESS: Not rogue, no. I'd characterize 5 Dave Fields as sometimes lacking -- sometimes lacking 6 management identification. Sometimes a bit adversarial 7 and temperamental, but not a rogue. And.I would 8 characterize Rob Weiss as usually a fairly level-headed 9 operator.
10 MR. DOCKERY: I don't have any more questions.
11 MR.ERAPP: We ran out.
12 THE WITNESS: Oh, that's good.
13 MR. VORSE: Now we're going to give you an 14 opportunity to tell us anything *2at's on your mind that ,
15 we should have asked that we didn't ask.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Any points that you perhaps 17 expected to be brought up that weren't. You have the 18 opportunity to bring them up now if you wish.
19 THE WITNESS: Well, just one statement. And 20 maybe -- maybe it's a -- maybe it's more feedback than 21 valid testimony. But as a plant manager I have to be 22 extremely concerned about the way that our operators and 23- really all the people in our plant follow their 24 procedures, the way that they-fulfill the standards, the 25= operating standards, that are set before them. And we p-
J 132 !
I want people to ask questions. We -- we want them to bring i r
2 up concerns. We've got formal systems in place to let 3 that happen if the informal ones are -- they're not i 4 comfortable with those. Employee concerns, problem 5 reports,-precursors, you name it, management-tours.
6 And we want them to question things that don't ;
7 look right. And I felt that the questioning attitude that 8 Mark displayed and some of the others was admirable.
9 However, we can't let, in operation of a nuclear power ,
I 10 plant, we can't let people take operating limits into 11 -heir own hands. I don't careRif they're right or how 12 right they are os-maybe or think they are it doesn't ;
mM V 13 matter. They have an obligation to follow the limits and L 14 the precautions and the operating requirements that are 15 set. And Public Health and Safety and everybody's safety l ,
16 in that plant depends on it. And I think that's -- it's l 17 something that we absolutely never ever compromise.
L 18 And I have to think very strongly when I take 19 disciplinary actions,'very hard. And I take disciplinary actions with people about tee things.dA M ' M ' ' '%
20 21 Number one, I have to be fair. But number two, I
- 22. can't ever give a message to the people in that plant that 23 discretion -is allowed when it comes to operating that kg_
24 plant safely and by our requirements. Because whh ( do R25 that I should step down, I should no longer be a plant i
i
133 1 manager.
2 And I think in this case we did that. And I 3 think that the -- the actions that were taken with Dave !
4 and with Rob were fair. And I think they were right. And 5 I think our people in the plant got the right message from 6 it. And whatever comes from all of this, I don't want 7 that message oo be lost. And if I had to do it all over 8 again I would have done it very similarly.
9 MR. DOCKERY: One simple question then. I 10 promise it will be the end. Would the mere fact of having 11 conducted evolutions on the 4th and the 5th of September, L 12 1994 have given you cause to discharge Mr. Weiss or Mr.
13 Fields?
O 14 THE WITNESS: Not if they told me that 15 initially, no.
16 MR. DOCKERY: Is there anything else you'd like 17 to add?
18 THE WITNESS: No, that's it.
19 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Weinberg?
20 MR. WEINBERG: No, I don't think so. Not now 21 with regard to Bruce, no.
22 MR. DOCKERY: Mr. Stenger, anything?
23 MR. STENGER: No.
24 MR. WEINBERG: No, other than the -- Bruce will 25 give him -- given the same opportunity to read and sign
134 1 it, the deposition.
2 THE WITNESS: Yes.
3 MR. DOCKERY: Not deposition. The transcript?
4 MR. WEINBERG: The transcript.
5 MR. DOCKERY: The transcript of the interview,
-6 yes, we'll -- we acknowledge that request.
7 We will go off the record.
8 (Whereupon, the proceedings were concluded at 9 4:30 o' clock p.m.)
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