ML033360405
| ML033360405 | |
| Person / Time | |
|---|---|
| Site: | Davis Besse  |
| Issue date: | 10/07/2003 |
| From: | NRC/RGN-III |
| To: | |
| References | |
| Download: ML033360405 (141) | |
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1 1
PUBLIC MEETING 2
BETWEEN U.S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION O350 PANEL 3 AND FIRST ENERGY NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY OAK HARBOR, OHIO 4
5 Meeting held on Tuesday, October 7, 2003, at 6 2:00 p.m. at the Camp Perry Clubhouse #600, Oak Harbor, Ohio, taken by me, Marie B. Fresch, Registered Merit 7 Reporter, and Notary Public in and for the State of Ohio.
8 - - -
9 PANEL MEMBERS PRESENT:
10 U. S. NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION 11 John "Jack" Grobe, Senior Manager, Region III Office 12 & Chairman, MC 0350 Panel William Ruland, Senior Manager NRR 13 & Vice Chairman, MC 0350 Panel Christine Lipa, 14 Projects Branch Chief, Region III NRC Christopher Scott Thomas, 15 Senior Resident Inspector U.S. NRC Office - Davis-Besse 16 Jack Rutkowski, NRC Resident Inspector 17 FIRST ENERGY NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY 18 Lew Myers, FENOC Chief Operating Officer Mark Bezilla, Vice President/Plant Manager 19 Mike Roder, Manager - Plant Operations Rick Dame, Reliability Unit Supervisor 20 Greg Dunn, Manager Outage Management and Work Control 21 Steve Loehlein Manager - Nuclear Quality Assessment 22 Mike Ross, Restart Director 23 - - -
24 25 MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
2 1 MS. LIPA: Okay, good 2 afternoon, everyone. I would like to extend a welcome to 3 FirstEnergy and members of the public for accommodating 4 this meeting today. This is a public meeting between the 5 NRCs Davis-Besse Oversight Panel and FirstEnergy Nuclear 6 Operating Company.
7 My name is Christine Lipa. Im the Branch Chief in 8 Region III, the Region III office for the NRC, and Im 9 responsible for the Inspection Program at Davis-Besse.
10 Id like to go through the next slide, right.
11 Okay. What were going to cover today are some NRC 12 Oversight Panel activities, focusing on those since our 13 last public meeting, and then the second part of this 14 meeting is to allow FirstEnergy to present the status of 15 activities and their Return to Service Plan.
16 The next slide is the agenda. Were just going to 17 go through introductions in a moment here. Were going to 18 summarize last months public meeting. Well discuss the 19 NRCs activities since that last public meeting. And then 20 well turn it over to FirstEnergy for their presentation.
21 Well have a break after about an hour and 15 minutes, I 22 would say, and then, in the middle of the presentation, 23 and then well continue as necessary. And we definitely 24 have room at the end, after the business portion of the 25 meeting for members of the public to ask questions of us.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
3 1 So, Ill start off with introductions on the NRC 2 table here. To my left is Bill Ruland. Bill is the Senior 3 Manager in the agency and the Division of NRR, and hes the 4 Vice Chairman of the Oversight Panel. Bills actual 5 position is Director, Project Directorate 3 in the Division 6 of Licensing Project Management.
7 To my right is Jack Grobe. Jack is the Senior 8 Manager in the Region III Office and hes the Chairman of 9 the Davis-Besse Oversight Panel.
10 Next to Jack is Scott Thomas. Scott is the Senior 11 Resident Inspector for the NRC, stationed here at the 12 Davis-Besse facility.
13 Next to Scott is Jack Rutkowski. Jack is the 14 Resident Inspector of the facility.
15 We also have Monica Salter-Williams, and she is 16 another Resident Inspector here at the facility.
17 We have Nancy Keller in the foyer, with the 18 handouts.
19 Viktoria Mitlyng is our Public Affairs. And, there 20 she is.
21 And we have Sam Collins. Hes the Deputy EDO in our 22 headquarters office.
23 We also have Randy Baker. Randy is Reactor Engineer 24 in our branch in Region III.
25 And, I dont think Ive forgotten anybody for NRC.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
4 1 And then, go ahead, Lew, if you want to introduce 2 your table there.
3 MR. MYERS: Thank you, 4 Christine.
5 At the end today we have Steve Loehlein. Steve 6 Loehlein is the Manager of Quality Oversight.
7 Mark Bezilla next to him. Mark is the Site Vice 8 President.
9 And Rick Dame next to me. Rick is from our Perry 10 Plant. He spoke at our last few meetings. He came here to 11 help us with the Integrated Test Plan as Integrated Test 12 Plan Manager.
13 Mike Roder, the Operations Manager, is next to him.
14 And Greg Dunn, the Work Control Manager. Greg, move 15 forward. Greg is next to him. Greg is our Work Control 16 Manager.
17 And then Mike Ross is with us today. Mike is the 18 Restart Test, Restart Director of our plant and responsible 19 for making sure that the issues identified are properly 20 implemented.
21 We also have some guests in the audience today. I 22 would like to go ahead and get that out of the way, if I 23 can.
24 MS. LIPA: Go ahead.
25 MR. MYERS: My first two MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
5 1 slides.
2 Fred von Ahn is with us. Fred is the Vice President 3 of our Oversight Group from our corporate office.
4 And then Joe Hagan is with us today. He is in the 5 audience here. We believe people at the nuclear industry 6 know Joe. Joe is, there has been some organizational 7 changes since our last meeting.
8 Everybody hear me okay?
9 AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, your voice is 10 garbled.
11 MR. MYERS: How about now?
12 Better? Okay.
13 Joe Hagan is with us today also. Joe is the new 14 Senior Vice President of Overseeing Engineering and Support 15 Services and reports to Gary Leidich, the President and 16 Chief Operating Officer of FENOC Nuclear Operating 17 Company. As you know, Bob Saunders retired recently, and 18 Gary has been named as the new President of FENOC. Joe 19 came to us in Garys old position.
20 Joe has a really broad-based experience in 21 operations as Senior Vice President of Nuclear Operations 22 at Excelon. I knew Joe from his Entergy days when he was 23 Vice President at the Grand Gulf Nuclear Power Plant and I 24 was at the Perry Plant. Joe has a Bachelor of Science 25 degree in Electrical Engineering, which is strange, but is MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
6 1 completing Executive Management and Development Program at 2 Harvard. He has an SRO license from Hope Creek, so has a 3 good broad base in operations experience and has about 26 4 years of nuclear experience. And, Joe is well known to the 5 industry and I believe that he will add a lot to our FENOC 6 team.
7 Do you have anything you want to add, Joe?
8 MR. HAGAN: I think youve 9 covered it.
10 MR. MYERS: Thank you. Thats 11 it.
12 MS. LIPA: Thank you, Lew.
13 The good news is were closer this time than we have 14 been in the past, so we can hear each other; unfortunately, 15 not everybody in the room can hear us.
16 Okay. I would also like to ask if there are any 17 public officials or representatives of public officials in 18 the room?
19 MR. ARNDT: Steve Arndt, 20 County Commissioner.
21 MR. KOEBEL: Carl Koebel, 22 County Commissioner.
23 MS. LIPA: Okay. Thank you.
24 Okay. When you came in today, there were copies of 25 the October edition of our monthly newsletter, which looks MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
7 1 like this, and copies of the slides for this meeting.
2 The newsletter provides background information, also 3 discusses current events, and on the back page has 4 reference information about how to contact the NRC if you 5 have additional questions or concern. Weve included the 6 email address and phone number for Viktoria, our Public 7 Affairs folks in Region III. There is also the address for 8 our web page where youll find a lot of helpful documents 9 on the Davis-Besse efforts here.
10 We also have a public meeting feedback form that you 11 can use to provide comments. And feel free to give us your 12 comments. Weve already received comments about having 13 trouble hearing, but feel free to provide that.
14 It will be important for everybody to check their 15 voices and their microphones today as we communicate.
16 The next slide is a summary of the September 10th 17 public meeting that was held here last month. I was not at 18 that meeting, but I can tell you that the transcript for 19 that will be available probably within about a week. And 20 what you see here are the topics we discussed last month.
21 And well go on to the next slide, which is the NRC 22 activities since the September 10 public meeting.
23 The first item I want to mention is we issued an 24 Integrated Inspection Report on September 29th, and that 25 report contains one nonsite violation regarding the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
8 1 hydrogen analyzers that the Licensee discovered had been 2 inoperable due to a valve lineup issue. That report also 3 contained Resident Inspector observations and radiation 4 protection baseline inspection activities.
5 There are also four of our Restart Checklist items 6 that are closed in that report. And in the NRC update, we 7 have the whole Restart Checklist, and youll be able to see 8 the items that have the check marks, but the ones that we 9 closed in that report, were Item 2.c.1 on the containment 10 sump, Item 3.d on the Boric Acid Corrosion Management 11 Program, and Item 3.h on the Radiation Protection Program 12 and then finally 6.g, which was a license amendment 13 associated with flow balance testing of the high pressure 14 and low pressure injection systems.
15 The next item is, on October 1, last Wednesday, we 16 held a public meeting in the Region III office, and we 17 discussed the Licensees efforts to-date to address and 18 improve and monitor Safety Culture at the facility.
19 Licensees presentation materials are on our web page. We 20 also have a transcript that will be posted in about three 21 weeks, and our inspection of this area continues.
22 The next item is the CAL, Confirmatory Action Letter 23 was updated. We updated that letter to close two items.
24 The first one was the quarantine of the materials from the 25 reactor pressure vessel head and the control rod drive MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
9 1 mechanism nozzle penetrations; and the second item was the 2 root cause assessment that the utility has done. So, that 3 CAL has been updated to address those.
4 Then the fourth item is not on the slide, is we did 5 issue the final significance determination for the yellow 6 finding associated with containment emergency sump. So, I 7 didnt have time to get that on the slide. I have a copy 8 that, I will give to Rick Dame.
9 The next slide is continuing NRC activities. And, 10 what we have going there are, the first item is the Safety 11 Culture/Safety Conscious Work Environment. The NRCs 12 inspection in this area is evaluating the Licensees 13 process and tools for monitoring the improvement in the 14 Safety Culture and Safety Conscious Work Environment and 15 the effectiveness of the Employee Concerns Program. The 16 inspection is in progress and a public exit will be 17 scheduled when that inspection is complete.
18 The next item is the Normal Operating Pressure 19 Test. The inspection is in progress this week and last 20 week and it covers inspection of the upper and lower vessel 21 head area and the leak tightness of the reactor coolant 22 system in general.
23 The next continuing activity is Resident 24 Inspection. There are three Resident NRC Inspectors 25 stationed permanently at the site, who inspect a broad MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
10 1 spectrum of activities and areas of Operations, 2 Maintenance, and Testing. And the Resident Inspectors 3 issue reports every 6 to 7 weeks.
4 And finally, our Restart Checklist. I already 5 referred to the monthly update that shows the items that 6 are checked off. What weve done to-date is closed 18 of 7 the 31 Restart Checklist items, and each of the ones thats 8 closed has a check mark and there is a reference for which 9 the report number contains the basis for closure.
10 The next slide are some upcoming NRC activities. We 11 plan public meetings in the near future to discuss some 12 recent inspection activities. The first one is the System 13 Health Review Design Issues. This meeting will be held at 14 the Davis-Besse Administration Building tomorrow at 9:30 15 a.m.
16 The Corrective Action Team Inspection has completed 17 the on-site portion of their inspection and they plan to 18 present their results publicly once they finalize their 19 conclusions, and well get that date issued as soon as its 20 available.
21 The next item, we are working to schedule a public 22 meeting at headquarters to discuss the High Pressure 23 Injection Pump Design Modifications.
24 The next item is the Review of the Inaccurate and 25 Incomplete Required Records and Submittals Inspection. The MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
11 1 NRC is planning a specific three-person inspection team to 2 come out and assess the Licensees effort to address that 3 Restart Checklist Item, which is 3.i, and the results of 4 that inspection will enable the NRC to gain confidence in 5 the quality of the Licensee submittals for reasonable 6 assurance of their accuracy going forward.
7 The next item is the NRC is also preparing to 8 conduct a Restart Assessment Team Inspection, and thats as 9 the utility nears the point where it will seek NRC 10 authorization for restart. That inspection will review the 11 readiness of the plant equipment and the plant staff to 12 resume plant operations safely and in accordance with 13 requirements. Those inspection findings will be considered 14 by the Oversight Panel in making its recommendation on 15 possible restart dates and times.
16 The final bullet on that page is the Backlog 17 Inspection. The purposes of that one is, as the utility 18 has a number of work items that theyve been working off, 19 there are some that they plan to defer until after restart.
20 And the purpose of this inspection is to understand what 21 those items are; work items, such as equipment issues or 22 procedure changes or corrective actions, and what the basis 23 is for deferring those until after restart and make sure we 24 understand what they are.
25 So, these are the upcoming NRC activities and that MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
12 1 completes my portion of the presentation.
2 Ill turn it over to you, Lew.
3 MR. MYERS: Thank you, 4 Christine.
5 Our first slide here -- can you go back -- indicates 6 the Building Blocks that we put in place several months ago 7 on our journey to return the plant back to service. As you 8 notice, "The Quest to get OUR Plant Back", not only to get 9 it back, but to get it "Better and Beyond".
10 Today our desired outcome is to demonstrate that we 11 have identified and addressed meeting material and people 12 issues at our plant requiring attention for restart.
13 We also would like to provide results of our Normal 14 Operating Pressure Test that we just completed. It was a 15 7-day test that took us 13 days to do, and we would like to 16 talk about our people, our plant, and our processes, and 17 their performance.
18 Finally, I would like to communicate the actions 19 both from a material condition standpoint and also a people 20 standpoint that are required yet to be done in our minds 21 before our restart.
22 And with that, we have, today, Ill talk about the 23 outage accomplishments; the NOP Test, Greg Dunn and Mike 24 Roder will discuss that; and there is some specific issues 25 that they will discuss and those areas about some of the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
13 1 Human Performance problems that we did have.
2 Rick Dame will talk about the organization and the 3 processes that we demonstrated a few months ago that were 4 going to monitor our organizational effectiveness during 5 this test.
6 From an oversight perspective, Steve Loehlein will 7 give you his perspective. And then there is some licenses lessons 8 learned from the NOP Test that we just finished, and were 9 still getting data in. As we sit here today, we have our 10 pagers going off on new information. And, so, Mark Bezilla 11 will give you as much information as we have from that 12 test.
13 There is some remaining actions that Mike Ross will 14 talk about, having to do with our HPI pump and some 15 electrical issues that were taking now. And then, 16 finally, Ill leave you with the overall conclusions.
17 Next slide. Ive already done Joe Hagan, once 18 again, is our new site, our new Senior Vice President 19 overseeing Engineering and Support Services.
20 I knew Joe as the site Vice President at Grand Gulf.
21 Joes from the Pennsylvania area. I always wondered while 22 he was at Grand Gulf he talked pretty funny down there.
23 Were real pleased to have him here with us today.
24 Next slide. We also continue to improve the 25 management of our plant from a credential standpoint, and MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
14 1 weve been absent a Plant Manager. Ive been sort of 2 acting as the Site Vice President. I will continue to do 3 that until after restart, but we have hired a gentleman, 4 Barry Allen, as our New Director of Operations/Plant 5 Manager for the Davis-Besse Plant. He will be reporting to 6 Mark once we make that transition.
7 Barry has good experience at the B and W Plant, the 8 Arkansas Plant; he has a Master degree in Civil 9 Engineering, a strong, strong System Engineering 10 background; SRO certification and RO certification, both on 11 Combustion Engineering; and the B and W plant, he has 12 experience in both places. Hes got about 17 years of 13 nuclear experience.
14 First area I would like to talk about is some of the 15 outage accomplishments that weve made since the beginning 16 of this outage. If you go back and look at the outage, the 17 outage has been going on for 20 months now. And its been 18 a very intensive outage in identifying problems and then 19 going to fix the problems.
20 Weve made what I think is tremendous strides. Our 21 company has made tremendous financial obligations to this 22 plant to get it restarted, and theyve treated us 23 extremely well at the site.
24 Weve installed many modifications that we think 25 will improve the margin of safety beyond the original MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
15 1 design basis of the plant. We take a strong management 2 action to improve the safety focus of our managers and our 3 employees and to ensure the safety-related activities do 4 receive the attention warranted by their significance. And 5 we thought this 7-day test really helped pull our 6 organization together and let us focus on some key issues.
7 The next slide. We just completed what we call our 8 Restart Test Plan. Our Restart Test Plan had several 9 objectives. It had, one of the objectives was to ensure 10 the plant and personnel safety. Our Restart Test Plan was 11 performed with no issues of safety significance.
12 Now, we did have some issues, and in our mind from a 13 management standpoint, they were very significant. We did 14 have some human performance problems and those problems, 15 once again, will be discussed later and well spend some 16 time discussing those, but from a, from a nuclear safety 17 standpoint, we accomplished our objectives.
18 We conducted all the post maintenance and 19 modification testing that we had on our plate 20 successfully. In fact, the overall performance of the 21 plant was already in good equipment performance.
22 And, if you go back and look, were always measuring 23 our leakage in gallons per minute. Our limit is one gallon 24 per minute identify leakage. Our leak rate, our operator 25 tells us, you can only measure to a certain tolerance. Our MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
16 1 leak rate came out to be I think.01 gallons per minute, 2 the way we measured it. That boils down on our reactor 3 coolant system.76 teaspoons per minute, which is not very 4 much. So, the plant came up extremely solid and we were 5 pleased with that.
6 The results of our overall Restart Test Program are 7 being assessed as we sit here today. And we will generate 8 an overall report late next week, and that report will 9 summarize the entire outage, if you will, and the 10 performance of all the, both the technical issues and 11 management issues to-date.
12 We will then take that report and provide it to, the 13 overall assessment to our Restart Over -- our Independent 14 Oversight Panel, the Restart Overview Panel. And then they 15 will make comments to Gary Leidich for his approval.
16 It will identify, that report will identify the 17 remaining actions we need to take before restart. And that 18 report will be used as the basis document to ask the NRC 19 for permission to restart the plant. These actions will 20 then be added to our Corrective Action Program, and well 21 make sure we take the necessary corrective actions prior to 22 restart.
23 Overall, the 7-Day Pressure Test took 13 days, and 24 it was extremely successful in testing our systems, our 25 equipment, our organizational teamwork, if you will; how MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
17 1 the organization responds to issues, the Safety Culture of 2 our plant, many of our new programs, like our Leak Rate 3 Program; our operating procedures were also tested in great 4 detail.
5 In general, in order to go up to near normal 6 operating pressure/temperature, you have to do all your 7 surveillances, you have to use your integrated leak rate 8 test procedures, you have to use your ingrated thorough 9 procedures. There was only a few procedures, like reactor 10 start procedure that we had at this time period. And we 11 found some areas for improvement in those procedure areas 12 that we will be addressing before the plant starts up.
13 We were also able to do, once again, all of the post 14 maintenance testing and post modification testing. Weve 15 installed about a thousand monitors in the plant, so 16 hundreds of mods since the plant was shut down. And what 17 that does is it sets us up as a plant to have all that 18 paperwork behind us prior to restart. Thats a little 19 different than what other plants has been in extended 20 outage has done. We wont face that backlog of paperwork 21 to be closed out. Basically, we have it all closed out 22 already with some exceptions. So, in my mind, that sets us 23 up to really focus on a good controlled restart of the 24 plant.
25 One of the purposes of the test is to take a few MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
18 1 moments to talk about the Restart Test Plan. Everybody 2 thinks its a 7-day test, but its a lot more than that.
3 The first thing we did, on May 6, we completed the 50-pound 4 pressure test and then somewhere around May 25th, we 5 completed the 250-pound pressure test.
6 The significance of that is, we worked on over a 7 hundred valves that are first off the reactors. Those 8 valves, we need to make sure theyre in good stead. And if 9 you go look at the total population of work, there was over 10 a thousand valves worked on over this outage, so there was 11 a lot of maintenance performed.
12 One of the other items we did is cut a 17-foot hole 13 in the Containment to install the reactor vessel head. We 14 had to reweld the steel liner in, and then the concrete 15 structure and rebar, we reinstalled that.
16 We then took Containment and did probably the best 17 Integrated Leak Rate Test weve seen. Ran a short test, 18 shown to be very structurally sound. We completed that on 19 April 9th. Thats part of the Restart Test Plan also.
20 Then the final part of that was this Normal 21 Operating Pressure Test. And basically we took the plant 22 here up to 2155 pounds of normal operating pressure and 23 about 532 degrees, which is the normal temperature. We 24 completed that test October the 5th.
25 Basically, all the equipment we think ran well. We MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
19 1 did have some equipment problems, we addressed this 2 equipment problem, while we were up. Nothing required us 3 to shut down. But weve completed that test now. We think 4 that puts us in good stead to go forward.
5 Next slide. One of major Building Blocks we worked 6 on this outage is the material condition of our Containment 7 building. You can now go in our Containment building with 8 just a lab coat routinely for inspection. So, typically, 9 when you dressed out, you used to have to wear Anti-Cs in 10 Containment all the time; now you can go in there with just 11 a lab coat.
12 For detailed inspections, youre required protective 13 clothing, such as youre seeing here in the picture. There 14 is several of our inspectors that are, that were in the 15 Containment during the Normal Operating Pressure Test.
16 Just because our reactor is critical or up in pressure 17 doesnt mean you cant go in Containment.
18 And these are a group of our happy inspectors inside 19 our Containment, and doing walkdowns to make sure that the 20 equipment was leak tight. So, its not anything that you 21 cant walk around and look for. So, I think we looked at 22 like 1,300 components or so during the inspection.
23 Next slide.
24 The outage has many accomplishments. First, Reactor 25 Vessel and Reactor Coolant System, our new head has access MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
20 1 openings that are in place for vessel head and our stand 2 for inspection.
3 The Control Rod Mechanism Nozzle Inspection Repair 4 is complete.
5 We replaced the Reactor Vessel Head and its in 6 service.
7 The Reactor Vessel Head transporting and handling 8 equipment is in good stead.
9 The Service Structure and Access Openings are there.
10 The original Reactor Head Nozzle Samples have been 11 shipped off; and original Reactor Head has been shipped 12 offsite. That was a happy day when we shipped the head 13 offsite a few weeks ago.
14 We also installed what I would call a FLUS 15 Monitoring System. I guess, dont ask me what that stands 16 for. The FLUS Monitoring System is basically a humidity 17 monitoring system; first of a kind in the United States.
18 Were very pleased to have that installed. It allows us to 19 life time look for very, very small leaks in the bottom, 20 bottom head of our reactor. So, its a new technology for 21 the United States. Im very, very excited about that 22 technology.
23 From a Reactor Coolant System standpoint, we 24 replaced our Code Safeties and our PORVs. The Safety seal 25 plate modification has been installed. That was a major, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
21 1 major modification that we put in this plant. In fact, 2 its a very costly modification. But, it allows you not to 3 go down and put a temporary seal plate in place every 4 refueling, and that really is a difficult job, and it sets 5 you up to have leakage down on the vessel. So, that 6 modification we think really adds value to the plant.
7 The Reactor Coolant System Deep Drain Valve 8 Maintenance was completed. Once again, about a hundred 9 valves repaired there.
10 The Thermal Sleeves for the High Pressure Injection 11 Lines were cut out on 2-1 and 2-2 and we replaced the pump 12 sleeves we had indications there, or rather than try to 13 justify it away, we just went ahead and replaced them.
14 And then we did a complete full upload and fuel 15 inspection test to verify the fuel was in the best possible 16 condition that we could put it prior to restart. And we 17 believe that we have very good integrity. In fact, we 18 rebuilt several bundles in some areas where there is high 19 flow that, where you get flow induced vibration, we 20 replaced some fuel pins with stainless steel pins.
21 From a Reactor Coolant standpoint also, we went into 22 and replaced the rotating assemblies on the 1-1 and 1-2 23 Reactor Coolant Pumps. There is four Reactor Coolant 24 Pumps. And then, we replaced the 1-1 Reactor Coolant Pump 25 shaft.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
22 1 And then all four Reactor Coolant Pumps, they have 2 to break down the pressure to 2150 pounds pressure. They 3 have like a sealed cartridge with like four seals in them.
4 They break the pressure down to near atmospheric pressure.
5 So, we replace all the seal cartridges in the pumps with 6 the new 9000 series; major accomplishment there.
7 There is these Thermowells in our Reactor Coolant 8 System that had cracks in them, been a long time concern in 9 our plant. Those Thermowells have now been replaced and 10 repaired with permanent replacements on both the cold leg 11 and the hot leg.
12 From a Containment standpoint a lot of work went on 13 in our Containment. Reactor Vessel Head replacement and 14 support stand has been, is completed. The Containment 15 structure, I talked a little bit about. The Boric Acid 16 Extent of Condition Inspections in the Containment. If you 17 want to go look at the event that we had, where most of the 18 damage was done, was probably in the Containment.
19 So, we walked down every inch of that Containment, 20 all the ventilation systems and tons of cable trays. And 21 the Containment right now I think anyone that seen it is, 22 what I would call, in excellent material condition.
23 Containment Emergency Sump Modification was a major, 24 major modification. It allowed us to, you know, increase 25 the size of our sump from like 50 square feet to 1300 MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
23 1 square feet. So, that gives us a ton of margin that we 2 didnt have before from a safety standpoint.
3 And then finally, we discovered along the way that, 4 we didnt think fiber was too good in Containment, so we 5 could have probably tested it away, but we made a decision 6 to go ahead and just remove all of the fiber that we had in 7 our Containment and replace that with newer insulation.
8 That effort is complete now. If you go look at our 9 Containment, thats probably one of the lowest fiber 10 Containments that I know of in my experience.
11 Also from the Containment standpoint, the 12 Containment Air Coolers, we showed those pictures several 13 times. We have replaced the coolers basically in all of 14 our Containment Air Coolers, so theyve got a lot more 15 margin. They were 20-year-old heat exchangers and we 16 replaced the registers and also a couple of the motors on 17 the Number 2 and Number 3 Containment Air Coolers.
18 There is this area between the Containment and the, 19 the shield building that you see from the road, the 20 Containment steel wall called the annulus. When you go in 21 there, its sort of a hot, muggy place. We decided to go 22 in there and apply some coatings to make sure that that 23 area stays water tight. And weve installed a new membrane 24 around the annulus.
25 The Containment dome, if you will, is I think about MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
24 1 an acre. We had people laying on their backs for months up 2 there with chipping hammers, I guess you would call them, 3 chipping the paint off the Containment dome and we 4 completely restructured that dome with new coating. As you 5 recall, the coating on the dome was probably 20 some years 6 old. So, putting this new coating up there will give us a 7 lot of additional margin.
8 Also, from a Containment standpoint, we worked on 9 our Bridges, our Polar Cranes, the In-Mast Sipping Mast has 10 been improved, fuel handing equipment has been improved, 11 fuel transfer equipment has been improved.
12 And I remember we had some issues back when this 13 outage started on refurbishing the Polar Crane. Weve used 14 that crane now for like 18 months now, or 15 months, and 15 its really working well. Its a much better tool than we 16 had before; the controls on it, its greatly improved.
17 The Containment moisture seal is a, if you go look 18 at where the Containment steel wall touches the ground of 19 the base, there was some questions about that connection 20 there. If you just think about an area in your house, like 21 around your bathtub or something, you can see a little ring 22 there connecting. So, we went back and put a seal in place 23 around the entire Containment.
24 The purpose of that is, there is some questions 25 about a possibility of during the event of moisture getting MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
25 1 down between the concrete and the liner. And, once again, 2 this was not in the original design but it adds additional 3 margin to our plant.
4 From an Emergency Core Cooling standpoint, weve 5 done a lot of discussion here about the High Pressure 6 Safety Injection System in our plant. In general, weve 7 had a tremendous facility down in Alabama, of all places, 8 running for the last few months. Ive been there several 9 times. And weve been testing all the components on our 10 High Pressure Safety Injection Pump.
11 I think we probably know more now about bearings and 12 wear rings than most plants in the United States. At 13 least, I believe we do. But its an elaborate test 14 facility, the facility at Wiley Labs. Thats coming to 15 fruition. We now have a bearing in place that weve 16 tested, weve looked at; we know that bearing would work 17 during an event. And we probably know more about our 18 bearings and our pressure injection pump than any plant in 19 the country, I think.
20 From a Decay Heat standpoint, we made 21 modifications. Our Decay Heat System, weve added a better 22 filter.
23 Post-LOCA Boron precipitation is an issue after a 24 LOCA, where you, the Boron that shuts your reactor down can 25 precipitate out, and there is a Boron precipitation mod MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
26 1 that we installed, we think greatly enhances the Boron 2 precipitation system that we had installed in this plant.
3 That was a major modification.
4 Decay Heat Pumps, once again, the Cyclone 5 Separators.
6 And finally, there is a big pit that we showed 7 several times in the basement of our plant where decay heat 8 valves are and the two motor operated valves, and that pit 9 is under water during an event. So, its always been an 10 issue of leak tightness of the pit. And we went in and put 11 a stainless steel tank in. I called it the Gary Leidich 12 tank. Hell appreciate that.
13 The tank is its no longer a pit, its a tank. Its 14 a stainless steel tank. Weve tested that, the leak 15 tightness of that tank now, and it is in good stead. And 16 that does away with a longstanding issue at this plant that 17 I know Mark was glad to see us get rid of from his earlier 18 days here.
19 Electrical Systems. We went through and did a 20 system review of our electrical systems. We had to replace 21 batteries, Electrical Transient Analysis; you heard about 22 ETAP. It would have been very easy for us to go back and 23 take the electrical program that we had in place and 24 upgrade that program, and, but wed still have been left 25 with an antique program with a lot of money in it.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
27 1 We made a decision to install this new ETAP 2 software. There was days I wondered if that was a good 3 decision or not. Weve basically proven with ETAP now.
4 There is two or three issues we had to go and test.
5 I got a page a while ago, we just tested one of the 6 devices; work lines. So, out of thousands of devices, 7 were down to a handful, like four items, and that were 8 testing to make sure they would operate under a lower 9 voltage than the normal grid voltage. Preliminary results 10 indicates that this equipment is working fine. And 11 assuming thats the case, then the ETAP program will be 12 complete.
13 What that does is leaves us with a very 14 sophisticated Electrical Distribution Monitoring Program 15 where we can analyze what happens in the plant during about 16 any condition you come up with. So, from a safety margin 17 standpoint, in my mind, were much, much better off with 18 this program than what we had in the past.
19 One of the other things we did, is we had 28 Motor 20 Control Centers that we installed Thermal Overloads on.
21 The reason we installed the Thermal Overloads on this 22 equipment was during the System Reviews, and part of the 23 NRC reviews, a question came up about a piece of equipment 24 of thermal -- not having Thermal Overloads, and it could 25 actually cause the bus trip.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
28 1 So, we went back and looked at that and wound up 2 agreeing with it; installed about 28 of these Thermal 3 Overloads. Were having to adjust some of those now. And 4 to ensure that they dont cause equipment reliability 5 problems, but that work is accomplished.
6 Additionally, from an Emergency Diesel Standpoint, I 7 remember sitting in here a year or so ago talking about our 8 emergency diesel pumps. And, you know, thats one of 9 Ms. Lipas favorite areas. It probably didnt meet 10 industry standards that I thought we could meet. And I 11 think we made good progress there today.
12 If you go look at our room, weve installed a new 13 motor operated Potentiometer. We had issues about 14 temperatures in the room. We ran ventilation systems down 15 to the control, control boards for the emergency diesel 16 generator, installed duct work there.
17 But what Im most pleased with is this new, for 18 years, the diesels had been on the (a)(1) list, I think 19 since like early 90s, because of the emergency diesel 20 generator air start system; it did not have dryers.
21 What the purpose of dryers is, you know, as you 22 compress air, you wind up with a lot of humidity in the 23 system, and that humidity can get in your carbon steel 24 lines and cause rust over the years. We went back and 25 replaced all the air supply lines to the diesel and I think MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
29 1 there was 200 welds that we had to install.
2 And we installed air dryers. Im really proud of 3 these air dryers. I cant figure out how they work, but 4 theyre mill style type air dryers. Im used to the old 5 style air dryers. I think all the older people like 6 myself, ask me, how do these work. What we find is, 7 theyre giving us very good quality air to our diesel.
8 MS. LIPA: I have a question 9 for you, Lew. Another one of my areas Im interested in 10 are batteries. I see here you have Train 1 Station Battery 11 Replacement. Was that based on performance or age or what 12 was the reason you replaced Train 1 and what is the 13 condition of Train 2?
14 MR. MYERS: Right now, I think 15 its based on age. And, Train 2 is, its fine, I think.
16 Do you know?
17 MR. RODER: Its set to be 18 replaced.
19 MR. MYERS: We tested it and 20 its slated to be replaced at the next outage. So, its 21 coming to the end of its life also. So, its been awhile 22 since I looked at that. Anything else, Christine?
23 MS. LIPA: No. Thank you.
24 MR. MYERS: Then, finally, the 25 last area -- from a -- is our Instrument and Control MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
30 1 Systems. I brought with me today, I think I brought with 2 me, a relay that caused us a lot of grief along the way.
3 This is a 20-year-old relay that goes in our emergency 4 safeguard systems.
5 Weve ordered replacement relays using the same 6 model number. They came back and the internal relay is 7 quite a bit different than the older relay. Its not as 8 heavy duty. We questioned the performance of that relay.
9 Wound up going back and getting another set of relays of, 10 similar to this and installed them.
11 That testing is complete. We wound up testing our 12 emergency equipment during the integrated testing that we 13 do as part of going to Mode 4. So, our new relays work 14 well.
15 Radiation monitoring upgrades have been completed in 16 both the control room and in some of the obsolete Victoreen 17 equipment that we had, has been replaced.
18 Another area that Im extremely proud of right now 19 is the Air Operated Valve Program. If you go look at our 20 systems, our Air Operated Valve Program really didnt sort 21 of exist. Weve gone in since the outage started and 22 looked at 83 valves. So, we have what I think is a state 23 of-the-art Air Operated Valve Program now. We wound up 24 functional with 83 valves; from a functional standpoint, 25 there is 17 valves we had to do quite a bit of physical MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
31 1 work to, but now we have a complete functioning Air 2 Operated Valve Program.
3 Next slide.
4 From a Plant Systems standpoint, one of our goals, 5 there is a term called Maintenance Rule. Maintenance Rule 6 (a)(1) means a system is not performing to the standards 7 and the reliability that you would expect. We had several 8 of our systems in the (a)(1) what we call red Maintenance 9 Rule Status; Aux. Feed, Instrument Air -- I mean Instrument 10 Isolation Valves on the Reactor Protection System, the 11 Station and Instrument Air, Containment Air Monitoring 12 System, Emergency Diesel Generator Air System, and 13 Essential and Miscellaneous AC.
14 And well come out of this outage, we believe, with 15 every one of those systems in the, whats called the 16 Monitoring Mode. In other words, weve done the fixes. We 17 think we fixed the problem, and we should be in the 18 monitoring mode. So, weve addressed all those issues.
19 Next area.
20 From a Management/Human Performance --
21 MR. GROBE: Lew, will there 22 be any systems that are not in the monitoring phase?
23 MR. MYERS: Our intention is 24 no, unless we find something along the way thats put 25 there, but our intention is no. We think weve addressed MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
32 1 all the systems that we knew about that were in the a(1).
2 Another thing, if you go look, I dont know if I 3 have it here or not, but, but I think all the operator 4 workarounds, the temporary mods too, weve done all those.
5 So, we should be coming up basically pretty clean.
6 MR. GROBE: Just a quick 7 question on the Air Operated Valves, we were waiting for a, 8 there was one pair of Air Operated Valves that was a bit 9 more risk significant than the remainder of them, they were 10 component heat exchanger outlet valves.
11 MR. MYERS: Right.
12 MR. GROBE: And we were 13 waiting for an analysis of those valves and whether they 14 would function. Do you know what the status of that 15 analysis is?
16 MR. MYERS: Greg, you got 17 that?
18 MR. DUNN: No, sir, I dont.
19 MR. MYERS: I did, but its a 20 little outdated.
21 MR. BEZILLA: Jack, I think 22 youre referring to SW1356, 7 and 8 valves Containment Air 23 Cooler Outlet Valves, and the issue has to do with Nitrogen 24 backup?
25 MR. POWERS: Jim Powers, let me MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
33 1 answer that.
2 MR. GROBE: Im not sure its 3 on, Jim. (microphone) 4 MR. POWERS: Weve been 5 proceeding with the analysis, Jack. We targeted to finish 6 it at the end of September, but some of the emergent issues 7 in preparation for the Mode 4 change and Normal Operating 8 Pressure Test have delayed getting it done, but it ought to 9 be complete in the coming weeks. So, thats underway with 10 Ken Birds safety analysis group at the plant.
11 MR. MYERS: Is that the cross 12 valve?
13 MR. POWERS: Thats the 14 cooling water valve, decay heat --
15 MR. MYERS: Okay, decay heat.
16 MR. POWERS: -- exchanger 17 service water 1424, and the other two valves in that 18 series.
19 MR. MYERS: Okay.
20 MS. LIPA: So, youre 21 estimating about two weeks?
22 MR. POWERS: Approximately.
23 MS. LIPA: Thanks, Jim.
24 MR. THOMAS: One other 25 question, I didnt see service water on your a(1) lift list, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
34 1 whats the status of service water?
2 MR. MYERS: You know, going 3 back, thats a system we had tested when we had some, the 4 instruments we used to test with, the flow rates, we had 5 some questions about that. We also have some questions 6 about the, the amount of uncertainties weve added into the 7 calc.
8 What we know is the flow going through the service 9 water system today is probably better than weve seen 10 before, which added on that service in. And the PSC now, 11 well have that resolved probably in the next week or two.
12 Isnt that right, Mike? Was that the timetable set 13 for that?
14 MR. ROSS: Yeah, thats 15 correct.
16 MR. MYERS: So, its an issue 17 that we have to get resolved yet.
18 From a Management/Human Performance standpoint, we 19 completed all of our Root Cause Training, Corrective Action 20 Program, which we have had some there. And we know there 21 is still work to be done there, but we believe our program 22 is sound.
23 And I tell you, we done, we could have made some 24 management decisions at the very beginning not to put 25 everything in our Corrective Action Program. I remember MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
35 1 talking about that. I said, no, the Corrective Action 2 Program is what got us into this mess and its what needs 3 to be to get us out. So, we dumped all of our issues into 4 our Corrective Action Program, where I thought it 5 belonged.
6 The Problem-Solving Decision-Making Nuclear 7 Operating Procedure was used a lot during this 7-day, more 8 than I hoped during this 7-day period. I can tell you that 9 my belief is that if wed have taken a structured approach 10 when we found the reactor vessel head issue during the 11 refueling outages or something, doing CRs; those two 12 programs changes alone, we would not be sitting here today, 13 because we would have got enough people involved in the 14 reactor head issue had we asked that question on where it 15 came from, and got in more detail.
16 So, I really believe that the Corrective Action 17 Program and Problem-Solving and Decision-Making Operating 18 Procedures is fundamental in the way we do business, and 19 standards that we set to ensure that we properly address 20 issues.
21 Standards and Expectations Training has been 22 completed for all our employees.
23 We have a Safety Culture Model, once again, we 24 modeled our Safety Culture Model after the INSAG-4. Thats 25 the best model wed seen.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
36 1 Then, we brought Doctor Sonja Haber in. She used 2 behavior rather that characteristics. We did an analysis 3 of our model compared to that. Made sure we had 4 cross-functioning addressed, all of the behaviors with 5 their characteristic.
6 So, weve made changes to that, but we think that 7 our Safety Culture model now is, I mean, I really believe 8 its a state-of-the-art model and I think its a tremendous 9 management tool; another way of looking at things that 10 would help ensure the plants do have a positive Safety 11 Culture and safety-related activities receive the attention 12 warranted on a daily basis.
13 Operability Training of all of our SROs and 14 engineers is complete. Thats where we had questions on 15 our Operability Review. We needed to put more rigor in 16 that area. Were always striving to improve in that area.
17 We think weve seen good progress, and then weve brought 18 in a new management team Ill talk more about in a second.
19 One of the things that I do consistently to try to 20 ensure that our organization is functioning well from, with 21 all these Management/Human Performance changes we have, is 22 I have what I call 4-Cs meetings, and the purpose of those 23 meetings is to get direct feedback from our employees.
24 What Ill do is, Ill allow a private facilitator to 25 meet with a group of about 20 employees, write down all MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
37 1 their concerns, so theyre not telling me their concerns 2 that they want to specifically. I take their concerns, 3 their issues, and work on them, and then come down and 4 spend about four hours with individuals.
5 You know, if I go back and look at the end of the 6 meetings, I always take a survey. So, right now, I have 7 survey results from about 700 people, over 700 to indicate, 8 and Im really pleased with some of the things that I see.
9 About 99 percent of our people, in fact, would say they 10 would use the Corrective Action Program without fear to 11 address the safety-related issue. It would not bother them 12 to use our program. About 98 percent of our people said 13 they would raise an issue to their supervisor.
14 Now what I think has changed is were also getting 15 the same response now from the management standpoint; that 16 they would raise their issues to the management team of our 17 plant. In my mind, from a Safety Culture standpoint, is 18 one of the most important issues that I know of is people 19 are not afraid to raise issues to management.
20 97 percent would raise concerns to the NRC, if 21 needed, and thats a good sign. And then 80 percent said 22 they thought that the communications that were having with 23 our employees now has improved from the good to fair 24 category. So, we continue to make progress in that area, I 25 believe.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
38 1 From a management standpoint, weve worked hard to 2 increase the technical skills. One of the things we 3 thought was missing from a Safety Culture standpoint is 4 technical qualification of management experience here; you 5 go back and look at Root Causes.
6 Years ago we used to have a Management Training 7 Program consisting of getting an SRO and getting 8 operational experience on your plant. I dont know how you 9 manage your plant if you dont have good operational 10 experience on it.
11 You know, if you go look, we brought in a team now I 12 think is as good as any. If you go look at the managers 13 that we have in place now, theyre proven. There is like 14 186 years of experience in these seven managers. And all 15 have SRO experience of some kind.
16 So, they have strong operational experience, and 17 that tells them how to use their technical specifications, 18 how to address those safety-related issues. A lot there to 19 gain in that SRO experience. Even Joe has a strong 20 operational background. So, we consistently look at that 21 for the executive levels at our company now.
22 Five of the seven managers have extended outage 23 experience; myself, Mike Ross, Bob Schrauder was here for 24 the original startup, Randy Fast was here for, involved 25 with South Texas restart.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
39 1 If you go look at the manager area, weve also 2 worked to strengthen that area a lot. All the line 3 managers now have engineering degrees, thats a level 13.
4 Ten of those managers are SROs.
5 Our human -- our personnel are, Lenny Price is in 6 charge of our Human Resources now. Thats a position where 7 you need an SRO. Ten of our managers are at the SRO level, 8 SRO Cert. or something. They have over 300 years 9 experience and proven experience, and two have extended 10 outage experience also. So, we thought it was important to 11 have a few people down there.
12 Once again, if you go back and look at the original 13 page I showed you, now, the purpose of the journey is not 14 to get the plant restarted; the purpose of the journey is 15 better and beyond.
16 So, increasing our management talent and having the 17 kind of people there that will do good succession plan, 18 make sure we have good managers in the future is extremely 19 important to FirstEnergy Organization.
20 With that, I think that pretty well covers what I 21 think are all, some of the, you know, thats just a few of 22 the accomplishments thats taken place during this outage.
23 The other day when I started putting this together, I 24 decreased the number of slides I had by 50 percent. So, 25 that gives you the stuff I took out of here. I still MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
40 1 didnt cover all the stuff on my slides.
2 So, theres just been a lot of things accomplished 3 both from a hardware standpoint and software standpoint and 4 people standpoint and program and process standpoint. And 5 today Im sitting here, and my overall conclusion is that, 6 you know, the sum of all these things are serving us well 7 and could have prevented this reactor vessel head issue 8 from happening. Thank you.
9 Greg.
10 MR. DUNN: Good afternoon.
11 Im Greg Dunn. Im the Manager of Outage Management and 12 Work Control. My desired outcome is to communicate some of 13 the equipment challenges that we faced during the normal 14 operating pressure and temperature test during that 13-day 15 period.
16 Those items for the most part were addressed 17 utilizing our Problem-Solving Decision-Making Process that 18 Lew had mentioned previously; utilizing that tool to bring 19 to conclusion the cause of the problems and effect 20 corrective actions. Some of those corrective actions were 21 completed during the testing activities. Some of those are 22 yet remaining, and Ill cover those as we go through each 23 challenge.
24 The first challenge -- next slide, please -- is our 25 Containment Spray Pumps. Containment Spray Pumps serve to MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
41 1 perform a function of quenching steam to control pressure 2 inside the Containment building on a post-accident 3 condition. The issue that we encountered was the 4 Containment Spray Pumps failed to start on several 5 occasions when they were demanded under tests.
6 Initially, prior to the Mode 4 or the NOP Test, we 7 had done some initial problem solving on those components 8 and our focus was on the over current or instantaneous 9 current trip function. Several adjustments were made in 10 the trip set points and in fact some components were 11 replaced to address the potential for faulty Solid State 12 Trip Device in the electrical switch gear.
13 One trip did occur once we were in the Mode 4 or NOP 14 Test; that was on the #1 Pump, and we put together 15 Problem-Solving Decision-Making Team to further focus into 16 the cause of the failure. We also engaged the vendor for 17 assistance in that, because we knew that there was 18 something additional other than the instantaneous trip, 19 which was our focus previously.
20 The probable cause was concluded to be a spurious 21 trip from that same solid state trip device, what is called 22 the ground fault trip device. In that circuitry, there is 23 a ground fault detected between the phases of the operating 24 circuit and it causes the trip function to occur.
25 We assessed that and evaluated that that was a MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
42 1 nuisance trip for our station. Several years ago, more 2 than ten years ago, modification was done to the station to 3 improve the ground circuitry. We have high resistance 4 ground circuitry in the Davis-Besse station, and that 5 ground fault trip is not a necessary function for our 6 application.
7 So, as a result, the application for pump 1 and 8 modification was implemented which replaced the breaker and 9 replaced the solid state trip device with one that did not 10 contain the ground fault trip.
11 We then subsequently tested those components and 12 restored them to service after demonstrating reasonable 13 assurance of operability. We elected not to modify the 14 sister pump or Pump #2. That pump had had its solid state 15 trip device and breaker replaced with refurbished 16 components prior to Mode 4 and our conclusions of cause for 17 the failure of that solid state trip device was the ground 18 fault portion of that. And once demonstrated reliable, the 19 component was acceptable as installed. So, we elected not 20 to replace that component.
21 We did however want to demonstrate the reliability 22 of those components, and so for the next ten days 23 alternating days, both Pump 1 and Pump 2 were tested to 24 demonstrate their ability to start on demand.
25 Ongoing corrective actions yet remaining, we have MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
43 1 engineering change thats under development for the 2 evaluation of eliminating those Solid State Trip devices 3 for the ground fault trip, so thats our extent of 4 condition.
5 We have not reached conclusion on the need to 6 implement that as once the Solid State Trip device or 7 ground fault trip is demonstrated to be reliable, its 8 acceptable in its application; however, it is or could be a 9 nuisance trip that is unnecessary, and were reviewing 10 that, for potential for eliminating that in up to 15 11 applications.
12 The decision for or the review and extend of 13 condition, we do consider a restart item, we have not 14 concluded whether the elimination of that trip is in fact a 15 restart item.
16 MR. GROBE: Before you go 17 on. There was a couple, maybe even two or three, breaker 18 trips prior to entering into Mode 4. Was there a 19 Problem-Solving Decision-Making Procedure implementation on 20 those breaker trips?
21 MR. DUNN: Yes, sir, there 22 was; and the conclusions there were that it was the Solid 23 State Trip Device that was initiating the trip. We were 24 not able to repeat that trip upon test.
25 The components were replaced with refurbished MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
44 1 replacement components and then demonstrated up to 25 2 different cycles of the breaker to demonstrate reliability 3 of the component. And also set points were adjusted, the 4 spray pumps were running at an in rush current on start 5 close to the instantaneous trip set point and so the 6 instantaneous trip on that Solid State Trip Device was 7 increased in the belief that that was the cause of the 8 trip.
9 We believe we are correct that the cause of the trip 10 was a Solid State Trip Device, but instituted by the ground 11 fault not by the instantaneous trip that we had originally 12 thought.
13 MR. THOMAS: How many starts 14 under load? The 25 cycles werent under load. How many 15 cycles were under load?
16 MR. DUNN: Starts under load 17 I believe were three.
18 MR. MYERS: We saw a failure 19 of about nine times. You went back and look at this chart 20 you look at, there was like nine cycles between failures.
21 So, we put the spreadsheet together and looked at, heres 22 the number of cycles that we see before we see a failure.
23 MR. GROBE: Whats the 24 critical path on elimination of Solid State Trip, ground 25 fault trips; you said youre still evaluating?
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
45 1 MR. DUNN: Were still 2 evaluating the appropriateness of eliminating that trip.
3 We believe in our initial assessment that it is a nuisance 4 trip or unnecessary. We need to complete that review.
5 There are 15 different applications, the spray pumps being 6 two of those, the Containment Air Coolers being four 7 breakers of those, and there is some distribution motor 8 control centers that make up the balance of those 9 components.
10 The Containment Spray Pumps are unique in the 11 application that they do in that they have their own motor 12 starter; essentially utilize the breaker as the motor 13 starter for that application. So, we need to conduct that 14 extent of condition review and validate the appropriateness 15 of elimination prior to making that decision.
16 I dont believe the physical work of eliminating 17 that, should that be the option that we choose, would 18 affect the critical path sequence for our restart.
19 MR. RUTKOWSKI: Greg, you 20 sent some Solid State Trip Devices out for testing, I 21 believe. Have you got the results back yet?
22 MR. DUNN: We have some 23 preliminary results.
24 Help me out, Mike, its NLI.
25 MR. ROSS: Thats right.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
46 1 Nuclear Logistics Incorporated.
2 MR. DUNN: Nuclear Logistics 3 Incorporated, and we were able to repeat on the bench the 4 ground fault trip. Unfortunately, when we attempted then 5 to repeat that on the bench with instrumentation attached, 6 we have not been successful. So, I said, this is a 7 spurious-type trip item. Again, we were able to repeat it 8 on the bench on two occasions. And thats the input that 9 we have at this point in time for the testing.
10 MR. RULAND: Your slide said 11 that your initial problem solving was focused on the over 12 current trip. Was that a problem with the way you were 13 doing the problem solving? Maybe you could amplify like 14 what that statement implies.
15 MR. DUNN: I believe our 16 focus was as a result of the indications we were receiving 17 from the field in the initial in rush current on the 18 component when it was being started, the current draw was 19 near the trip set point of the Solid State Device for the 20 instantaneous over current. So, thats what drew us to 21 that being the focus.
22 We unfortunately do not have the instrumentation for 23 detecting the phase-to-phase ground fault condition on the 24 circuitry. So, that is not something that we have the 25 ability to monitor and to detect that as an input. So, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
47 1 based upon our field information, thats why our focus was 2 on the in rush current.
3 MR. RULAND: I appreciate those 4 technical details, but Im more interested in, in 5 retrospect, as you think back on your initial 6 problem-solving focus, did it indicate to you a problem 7 with how you were doing the problem solving, or not? If 8 not, why not?
9 MR. MYERS: That statement 10 bothers me. Our most probable cause, because the closeness 11 of that in rush current was the over current. That was the 12 most, thats the highest probability. So, if you look at 13 what are the causes, because it was spurious; it was not 14 something we saw every time. So, what can be causing 15 this?
16 Our most probable issue was the over current, and 17 thats the reason we attacked that first. We figured out 18 that wasnt, then we went to the next area and that was the 19 plan. So, it was a process of elimination.
20 MR. RULAND: But it didnt 21 indicate, Lew, that there was a problem with the way you 22 were approaching this problem-solving problem. I think I 23 have too many problems in there. You get the idea.
24 MR. DUNN: I would agree and, 25 probably, your question in retrospect was the involvement MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
48 1 of the supplier of that Solid State Trip Device and the 2 insights provided there on the function or nuisance-type 3 failure of this, of the ground fault circuitry; and that 4 was information that could have been made available 5 earlier, should we have engaged that vendor more 6 rigorously.
7 MR. RULAND: So, maybe I should 8 infer from that, that your problem-solving process wasnt 9 perfect; youve learned something about how you might 10 approach it differently in the future. Is that a fair 11 characterization of it?
12 MR. DUNN: Yes, sir, it is.
13 And, I believe Steve later in the observations that he has 14 during our NOP Test also covers some improvement 15 opportunities on how we apply the Problem-Solving 16 Decision-Making Process. I agree with that.
17 MR. RULAND: Thank you.
18 MR. GROBE: Greg, I believe 19 there were two breaker problems during the NOP Test, and 20 two on Containment Spray Pumps just prior to the NOP Test.
21 Werent there two other breaker problems on pressurizer 22 units also?
23 MR. DUNN: Yes.
24 MR. GROBE: You talked about 25 in rush current, that would be on a motor start. What was MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
49 1 the conclusion of your problem solving on pressurizer 2 heaters?
3 MR. DUNN: We have not 4 reached a conclusion on the problem solving on the heaters; 5 that was on the nonessential heaters. On that portion of 6 our electrical distribution is not high resistance ground 7 pole protected, so those components we believe 8 appropriately do have the ground fault protection in the 9 Solid State Trip Device.
10 The troubleshooting that we have done to-date has 11 not been able to repeat the fault under monitoring 12 conditions. That is an ongoing item thats on our restart 13 issues, but it does address the nonessential heaters to the 14 pressurizer and we have not reached any conclusions on 15 those components to-date, Jack.
16 MR. GROBE: When did those 17 failures occur?
18 MR. DUNN: Within the last 19 six days.
20 MR. GROBE: Its the exact 21 same equipment, right? The equipment, regardless of 22 whether the function is a safety-related function or not 23 safety-related function, its the same equipment?
24 MR. DUNN: The breaker is the 25 same, yes, sir.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
50 1 MR. GROBE: Okay.
2 MR. MYERS: One thing about 3 these Solid State Trip Devices, theyre not new, theyre 4 refurbished. Internals are something like 20 years old.
5 So, there may be some enhancements later on we want to go 6 look at there too, send them back to the manufacturer to 7 get refurbished. Theyre putting parts in there, old ones 8 that are probably the same age, so we may be seeing some 9 age-type degradation.
10 MR. GROBE: Lew, you made a 11 comment a few minutes ago about failure after nine cycles.
12 Im not sure I understand that.
13 MR. MYERS: Well, went back, 14 what we did is put a matrix together with all the starts 15 and failures we had, restart, off start, you get failures.
16 You look at it; you say, how often do you get failures?
17 About one out of nine, which you have to restart it. You 18 restart it, it would work okay.
19 So, I remember looking at that matrix; and that was 20 Gary Leidich and myself; it was about one out of nine times 21 when you start out the load and you see a failure.
22 Is that pretty accurate, what Im saying?
23 MR. DUNN: Yes.
24 MR. GROBE: It just seems 25 extremely odd that within the past two and a half weeks or MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
51 1 so, there has been four failures on these breakers with 2 these Solid State Trip Devices and no significant prior 3 failure history.
4 MR. MYERS: Once again, 5 understand, you got to get through this. Maybe its 6 something phase-related; we just dont know. Weve got to 7 keep checking out until we figure out whats going on.
8 MR. GROBE: Okay, thank you.
9 MR. MYERS: Once again, we 10 pulled one of them out, we sent it down to the labs for 11 testing. Were doing everything we possibly can to figure 12 out whats going on with those Solid State Trip Devices.
13 MR. RULAND: So, its still 14 more follow-up. This is not completely resolved.
15 MR. MYERS: No.
16 MR. DUNN: Thats correct.
17 Next slide, please.
18 The next challenges we incurred are the thermal 19 overload relays. The thermal overloads, Lew mentioned 20 previously, were installed as a portion of our design 21 change to the facility to improve our overall electrical 22 distribution. The intention of the installation of the 23 design change was for protection of the bus for the 24 electrical distribution.
25 During the NOP Test, and we did experience some MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
52 1 loads where the thermal overload tripped during normal 2 operating current conditions, and during that thermal 3 overload trip, the component is supposed to be removed from 4 the bus or from service, and some of those loads remained 5 running following the overload trip. In particular, it was 6 the service water pump discharge strainer, of particular 7 note.
8 Our investigation into this also utilized the 9 Problem-Solving Decision-Making. What we learned there was 10 the sizing of our thermal overload relays. We canvassed 11 the industry and manufacturer for the standard for sizing 12 of these overload relays, and the basis for that is based 13 upon protection of the component. Recall, however, our 14 purpose for installation of the thermal overloads was 15 protection of the bus.
16 We also discovered that we had introduced a relay 17 race condition utilizing latching relay which is energize 18 trip, also energize to start. We had a condition where we 19 had a spare, or excuse me, an auxiliary contact which was, 20 then caused the load to be maintained energize even after 21 the thermal overload had tripped. So, that was an 22 unintended consequence of the design modification that we 23 had made.
24 Problem-Solving Decision-Making collected data over 25 several components which had been tripped. Service water MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
53 1 Number 3 Discharge Strainer, Service Water Number 2 2 Discharge Strainer and Emergency Diesel Air Compressor 3 Number 2 of particular note. What we learned is our 4 operating currents on those components are very close to 5 the trip set point for the thermal overloads. As a result, 6 that sizing close to the normal operating current resulted 7 in nuisance trips or premature trips for those components.
8 The corrective actions implemented in the immediate, 9 which addressed Service Water Number 2 and Service Water 10 Number 3, were testing thermal overloads validating their 11 ability on the bench to not trip at the normal operating 12 current and then replacing those thermal overloads in the 13 field.
14 We did subsequently test those thermal overloads on 15 the bench after they were removed and demonstrated that 16 they would trip at the normal operating currents exhibited 17 by the components. So, that was just a, this is my opinion 18 on this item, is the variance in the component and its set 19 point and what its actual trip is at.
20 Corrective actions addressed 28 different circuits, 21 where these thermal overloads were installed, which raises 22 their set point to 115 percent versus the 100 percent 23 thermal overload setting in the original design. And there 24 are 15 separate circuits where we need to make wiring 25 changes to eliminate the potential for that relay race MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
54 1 condition.
2 Those are restart items to be completed prior to 3 restart of the station.
4 Next slide, please.
5 MR. GROBE: Just a quick 6 comment. Why are the overloads sized close to the normal 7 operating current?
8 MR. DUNN: When we looked out 9 in the industry for information on what the set points for 10 the thermal overloads should be, that included other 11 nuclear stations as well as the manufacturer of the 12 component, and the normal application of the thermal 13 overload was to protect the component. So, it is set just 14 above the operating current, so it would trip out before 15 the equipment or component would do damage as a result of 16 an electrical issue on the circuitry.
17 Our purpose of installing this was to improve the 18 protection of the electrical bus, so the fault which did 19 not result in an over current trip of the component, but 20 running in an overload condition, would in fact trip on a 21 thermal overload and protect the remainder of the 22 components on the bus.
23 So, it was our information from the industry on the 24 normal set points of that and the set conservatively to the 25 over current condition of the component. And several of MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
55 1 those service water strainers in particular were set very 2 close to the normal operating current. And some of that is 3 some variance in what the name plate value should be versus 4 the actual conditions in the field.
5 MR. MYERS: When we finish, 6 well wind up with the best load. Well have a relay 7 protect the bus and also protect the component, 8 particularly when you find these things based on your 9 component.
10 MR. RULAND: Can you go back to 11 the previous slide just for a minute?
12 You list two causes there and I would call these, if 13 I may, you know, technical causes of the problem. Do you 14 go beyond that and answer the question why you had this 15 problem?
16 MR. DUNN: Those Condition 17 Reports remain in the Corrective Action Program. I dont 18 know that I can say that we have completed and come to the 19 conclusion. On the surface or the apparent cause is the 20 design application did not take into account in one 21 particular instance the relay race. We introduced that by 22 activating an auxiliary contact that should not have been 23 activated.
24 MR. RULAND: And, I mean, this 25 was a design mod that you had done relatively recently?
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
56 1 MR. DUNN: Yes, sir, but I 2 would say, on the apparent surface, the design modification 3 was not as good as it should have been, and we learned some 4 things by the actual testing of those components once 5 placed in service.
6 MR. MYERS: You asked, are we 7 going to do a preop test on these things. When you buy 8 these things, you buy them. What we know, how you buy them 9 based on the component. Thats the standard textbook you 10 go to buy one, you know. So, the components run. More 11 than ever, you wind up when you install them, you have to 12 adjust them, you have an adjustment on them.
13 So, when we bought these, we bought them based on 14 the component, what we know right now. In other words, 15 adjust them to 115 percent. Then they trip; still protect 16 the component and protect the bus also, so we could go to a 17 larger, we could go to a larger thermal point.
18 MR. RULAND: I understand.
19 Again, the technical details are not my focus. Im more 20 interested in the --
21 MR. MYERS: The mod.
22 MR. RULAND: -- the 23 modification process, how you did that selection. And, 24 again, youre saying that youre not done yet --
25 MR. MYERS: Right.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
57 1 MR. RULAND: -- doing the root 2 cause.
3 MR. MYERS: We also know, we 4 have with us Sergeant & Lundy, who did the mod for us.
5 They did the mod at other nuclear plants. They bought 6 these thermals for other plants. And, you know, how they 7 buy the mod, the thermals; you know what Im saying. So, 8 they buy them based on the component, you know. Thats a 9 lot of the issues right there. Were not through, but 10 we --
11 MR. RULAND: Okay, you just 12 said, that raises some other questions, about, okay, if 13 they made this mistake here, did they make this mistake 14 anyplace else, right? Once youve told me that Sergeant &
15 Lundy, theyve made these mods other places, so -- and 16 youre continuing to pursue that, right?
17 MR. MYERS: Right, right.
18 MR. RULAND: Good.
19 MR. MYERS: What you expect to 20 find, you expect to find them tripping earlier than.
21 MR. RULAND: I understand.
22 MR. MYERS: Okay.
23 MR. DUNN: Next slide, 24 please.
25 Next item I would like to discuss is the Auxiliary MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
58 1 Feedwater Pump Testing, and the problem incurred was 2 surveillance test of the Auxiliary Feedwater Pump Number 1; 3 response time exceeded the acceptance criteria of that 4 surveillance.
5 Again, utilizing the Problem-Solving 6 Decision-Making, the ultimate cause we learned was 7 misalignment of the governor valve linkage coupled with 8 installation of the new valve.
9 During this extended outage period, the governor 10 control valve for that auxiliary feedwater pump turbine was 11 replaced. That, we believe, coupled with misalignment of 12 the governor valve leakage, which had been we believe in 13 place since approximately the year 2000, resulted in the 14 response time exceeding the acceptance criteria.
15 Acceptance criteria is 40 seconds. The testing that 16 was conducted on the auxiliary feedwater system included 17 the prior to NOP Testing, which is done with auxiliary boiler 18 border steam, and also demonstrated flow capability from 19 the storage tank to the steam generators once in Mode 4.
20 And then upon reaching Mode 3, having sufficient energy in 21 the steam generators to drive the response time testing, 22 doing a response time testing of the auxiliary feedwater 23 pumps.
24 The timing associated with that was approximately 40 25 seconds as the acceptance criteria. First test, I believe, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
59 1 was in approximately 40.3 seconds with added time placed 2 onto that due to instrument inaccuracies.
3 What we had done initially is thought the steam admission 4 emission valve was the cause of that issue. We had done 5 some adjustments to that steam emission valve and saw 6 improved performance. We were however concerned with 7 whats called the preconditioning and that the testing had 8 taken place on the component and you could get improved 9 performance just simply by having it warmed up and having 10 recently cycled the valves.
11 So, we set up for a subsequent test following 12 reaching ambient conditions upon the component, and once 13 again, we exceeded the acceptance criteria on that occasion 14 of 40.1 seconds.
15 So, continued with the Problem-Solving 16 Decision-Making efforts. What we learned through attempted 17 adjustments of the governor linkage that we actually made 18 the performance degrade, and as a result of that we were 19 into the cooldown in accordance with our license amendment 20 requirements and the cooldown was in progress to go back to 21 Mode 4/Mode 5 conditions.
22 We continued in our problem solving, essentially 23 concluded what was required was complete disassembly of the 24 linkage of the governor, to the governor control valve. We 25 utilized our existing maintenance procedures to readjust MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
60 1 and realign that linkage while it was reconnected and then 2 demonstrated significantly improved performance of the 3 component.
4 So, what we believe, is eliminated a longstanding 5 issue with the adjustment of that linkage and that had not revealed 6 avail itself by exceeding the acceptance criteria until the 7 new governor valve was installed during the outage.
8 We also then demonstrated reliability of the 9 component by doing repeated demonstrations of performance 10 and successively longer times following, allowing cooldown 11 with the last test performed approximately 30 plus hours 12 beyond the last test and demonstrating good performance and 13 repeatable performance of the component.
14 So, what we learned there is we had an issue with 15 the linkage adjustment. That linkage adjustment did not 16 affect performance from exceeding the response time once 17 the new valve was in there this outage, it did avail reveal itself 18 needing to be addressed.
19 Weve also looked at the Number 2 Auxiliary 20 Feedwater System and both systems are now performing 21 equally; whereas, the number one system had always had --
22 Lew wont like this term, but we utilized the term 23 "giddy-up", where essentially the turbine would come up to 24 speed and once the governor would take control, it would 25 initially ramp down by clamping down on the steam flow and MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
61 1 then before it continued up in its ramp. So, you would 2 have a hump in the revolutions per minute, as the turbines 3 coming up to speed.
4 MS. LIPA: Greg, now that you 5 know what you know on that, do you think that there 6 probably should have been an opportunity to identify that anomaly 7 and not only on the trace it previously, even though it meant the 8 time, that there was something strange about the trace that 9 should have been pursued?
10 MR. DUNN: In retrospect, I 11 would say thats correct. We have had that delta between 12 the two systems and did not reconcile that delta as to, and 13 for quite some number of years. So, there could have been 14 an opportunity, this is only conjecture on my part, 15 identifying that during our initial testing and returning 16 the system to service this outage.
17 MS. LIPA: Do you think 18 thats something to share with the industry or something 19 unique you learned there? Im sure youll provide me with 20 that.
21 MR. DUNN: Yes.
22 Next slide, please.
23 MR. GROBE: Greg, I 24 apologize. Was this the first time that the auxiliary 25 feedwater pump had been tested since the shutdown in MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
62 1 February? Did you test them on aux. border boiler?
2 MR. DUNN: We did test them 3 on aux. border boiler. Initial testing on the aux. border boiler also 4 initially had some issues with the governor control valve 5 where we had two suspected issues; one was the replacement 6 of the valve and it is physically tighter, tighter 7 tolerances since its new than the other component on the 8 number 2 side; and also that we believe we had bumped the 9 trip throttle portion of that during the conduct of the 10 testing.
11 So, we were able to repeat the auxiliary border boiler 12 testing and not redemonstrate the deficiency. I dont 13 believe that that was any preliminarily indication, but 14 there is always that potential.
15 But, yes, we did do auxiliary border boiler steam testing.
16 We also did the flow testing once achieved in Mode 4 and 17 then the response time testing in Mode 3.
18 MR. GROBE: Okay, thanks.
19 MR. THOMAS: You spoke to 20 about every issue, every challenge so far except for one, 21 and that is your breaker coordination issue. And I was 22 wondering if thats going to be, if youre going to talk 23 about that, or is that, youre going to talk about it now 24 or is it somewhere else?
25 MR. MYERS: Its in my MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
63 1 presentation.
2 MR. ROSS: Ill also talk 3 about it.
4 MR. THOMAS: Okay.
5 MR. DUNN: The last item I 6 would like to discuss is equipment challenges, the actual 7 results of our walkdown. One of the main objectives we had 8 for the Mode 3 NOP/NOT Test, the Normal Operating Pressure 9 and Temperature, was to do a complete walkdown of the 10 Reactor Coolant System and also the main steam system, 11 secondary, essentially the entire plant to determine and 12 validate the leak tightness and determine what rework would 13 be required prior to restart.
14 The walkdown during the Normal Operating Pressure 15 Test looked at approximately 1342 items. There is another 16 400 and some items which are still ongoing inspection, 17 which are being inspected once achieved cooldown 18 conditions.
19 Of that, we identified 163 items of note and that 20 breaks down as indicated on the slide. Some of those are 21 at very low threshold. Just documented in accordance with 22 our Boric Acid Control Program, that is 31 items.
23 We had several items which were addressed during the 24 Normal Operating Pressure Condition. What we had done was 25 expanded our Fix-It-Now Team or our maintenance team, which MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
64 1 addresses issues as they arise, and several of these were 2 packing adjustments or tightening of bonnets or valves, et 3 cetera, that were addressed on the spot.
4 There were 47 of those that were completed and 5 reinspected satisfactorily during the test. Another 24 6 that were completed that required reinspection now that 7 were in Mode 5. And there are 61 items that require 8 addressing prior to restart.
9 Those break down into many items, such as additional 10 adjustments per packing glands that are required. There 11 are several items in there which are air operated valves, 12 motor operated valves, where we elected not to make any 13 packing adjustments while at the Normal Operating Pressure 14 Condition, because that would then challenge the potential 15 for affecting stroke times for those components. So, those 16 will be adjusted and retested in the mode, in the shutdown 17 condition.
18 And then we have 24 items which will require repack; 19 meaning the adjustment was not successful and repack of the 20 packing gland will be required.
21 No items will require a deep drain condition or 22 draining below the flange level of the reactor vessel. I 23 consider that a success in that we did over one hundred 24 valves which were first off isolations to the reactor 25 vessel which required the deep drain to implement that MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
65 1 work, and none of those items will require rework during 2 this shutdown condition.
3 So we do have those to address and will be addressed 4 as part of the restart.
5 With that, I would like to turn it over to 6 Mr. Roder.
7 MS. LIPA: Before we go on to 8 Mr. Roder, this will be a good point for a break. Lets 9 see if there is any questions on this equipment issue.
10 MR. GROBE: Thank you. I did 11 have a question. During the inspection of the pressurizer, 12 there was I believe an instrument valve, isolation valve, 13 approximately a foot off the pressurizer that a body to 14 bonnet leak was missed by an inspector, picked up by NRC 15 inspector that was accompanying him. You decided to 16 perform some additional inspections after the down pressure 17 and repressurization.
18 How did you go about doing those additional 19 inspections and what were the outcome of that?
20 MR. DUNN: Essentially, what 21 we had done, since there is a question as to the ability of 22 the inspectors to identify items, we had regrouped the 23 inspectors, done a brief, essentially swapped the teams.
24 The teams were made up based upon the work inside the 25 D-rings or the enclosures around the steam generators or MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
66 1 the building. And we swapped those teams so there was a 2 different set of eyes going in and inspecting those same 3 areas.
4 That was completed. There were several items of new 5 leaks identified; however, were not certain whether those 6 were as a result of the temperature transient in having new 7 leaks or whether they were actually items that were missed 8 by the previous inspectors. Nonetheless, we do have 9 pretty, we have high confidence, based upon our low 10 threshold for identifying boric acid on components that we 11 have a good tight Reactor Coolant System.
12 I think Lew mentioned earlier, and Marks going to 13 cover later in the testing, our Reactor Coolant System 14 Integrated Leakage Test measured at.006. So, were very 15 confident that the Reactor Coolant System is in a very 16 tight condition, and those leaks were properly identified, 17 but do concur there was some challenge and there were some 18 items with the inspectors that identified items that could 19 have been missed by our inspectors.
20 MR. GROBE: Could you give me 21 a sense, are we talking, obviously with that low leak rate, 22 there couldnt have been big leaks that were missed, but 23 were there five items or 50 items that were identified on 24 the second walkdowns?
25 MR. DUNN: I dont know an MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
67 1 exact number. My recollection is four, but I dont know 2 that for sure.
3 MR. GROBE: Approximately 4 five would have been good enough. I was looking for an 5 order of magnitude. Okay, thanks.
6 MS. LIPA: Anybody else have 7 questions for Mr. Dunn?
8 Okay. So, well take a ten minute break. Im 9 showing 3:35. So, 3:45. Thank you.
10 (Off the record.)
11 MS. LIPA: Were ready to 12 begin.
13 Are you ready? Okay, go ahead.
14 MR. RODER: Okay, can 15 everybody hear me? Okay, good.
16 My name is Mike Roder. Im the Operations Manager 17 at Davis-Besse.
18 My desired outcome is to demonstrate confidence in 19 addressing recent operating issues.
20 First, going to talk about two of the issues weve 21 had and Ill follow-up with our plan to address those 22 issues.
23 Next slide, please.
24 The first issue was an event that is, was an 25 inadvertent opening of valve Core Flood 1B, which allowed MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
68 1 inventory back flow through the decay heat system. Because 2 of the pressure in the decay core flood tank, one or more 3 relief valves lifted and the inventory ended up in the 4 reactor coolant drain tank.
5 Subsequent to the event, Core Flood 1B valve was 6 closed by the control room operators and shift manager 7 directed Reactor Coolant System pressure to be reduced to 8 about 575 to 600 pounds. At that point, I put a hold on 9 Reactor Coolant System heatup activities to investigate the 10 event.
11 A problem solving decision-making team was 12 established to address the equipment impact and a root 13 cause investigation was initiated to assess the 14 performance.
15 The causes of the event were found to be poor 16 procedure and that there was no specific section to put the 17 core flood tanks into service. The applicable steps were 18 located in various places in the procedure and were not 19 grouped well to prevent this type of an event.
20 Operator performance was another cause in the prejob 21 brief did not identify the potential for this inadvertent 22 opening of Core Flood 1B, and therefore, the crew was not 23 monitoring the flow pressure that was interlocked with the 24 valve.
25 Although Just-In-Time Training for the heatup was MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
69 1 done, no -- this evolution, this particular evolution was 2 not trained on.
3 Immediately actions taken were that the heatup 4 procedure was changed to place all the applicable steps 5 required to put the core flood tank in service in one 6 location and in sequence to prevent this event from ever 7 occurring again.
8 The on-shift licensed individuals were, received 9 training on the simulator to cover this event, the lessons 10 learned, and the new procedure revision to prevent 11 recurrence.
12 The second event -- next slide, please.
13 The second event in the Reactor Protection System 14 Trip was shut down bypass by high pressure. This caused a group 15 one control rods to insert. These rods had been removed 16 for trippable activity which was seen as a conservative 17 measure.
18 A root cause investigation for this event was also 19 conducted. The causes were found to be, again, poor 20 procedure and the specific sequence of activities were not 21 dictated by procedure, rather it relied on operator 22 knowledge and memory to carry out the actions to avoid 23 pitfalls. Another cause was operator performance with 24 regard to awareness in monitoring of the Reactor Coolant 25 System pressure and how the plant cooldown activity could MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
70 1 cause this trip to occur. And an incomplete prejob brief 2 was performed, which did not cover the shutdown bypass high 3 pressure trip or its set point.
4 Subsequent to this, our relief crew created a 5 specific sequence on how the cooldown activities were to be 6 performed. That specific sequence then became the road map 7 and we aligned the procedure, the cooldown procedure to 8 that road map. We also created prejob brief reports for 9 each and every evolution in that new cooldown sequence. We 10 conducted simulator training for each and every evolution 11 in that sequence.
12 Then, additional measure, we added some intrusive 13 FENOC or First Nuclear Operating Company oversight to the 14 simulator and to the control room.
15 Next slide, please.
16 The cooldown activity was then completed event-free 17 and error-free.
18 To address these issues, we created a Collective 19 Significance Condition Report and put together a team 20 consisting of industry peers, our FENOC Operations Program 21 Manager, some Human Performance expert help from our Perry 22 station, and some others, including operators, to aid in 23 this review.
24 An Operations Action Plan has been developed, which 25 includes interviews of each licensed operator on MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
71 1 expectations and standards, conducting an interview of a 2 team that consists of senior management individuals, and 3 the assessment or these interviews will help us in 4 reconstructing the operator crews to maximize the crews 5 teamwork.
6 Key operation procedures will be strengthened by the 7 intensive review, the same intensive review we went through 8 with the cooldown procedure; operator training will be 9 improved by installing newly named training manager to his 10 position; also utilizing the simulator training on each 11 task in the heatup/startup sequence and focusing on 12 operator fundamentals through this process, such as 13 communications, briefings, and identifying the box or the 14 limiting parameters that we need to stay in to do the 15 process.
16 Also, operational oversight will be strengthened by 17 establishing specific expectations of oversight, selecting 18 peers from top performing plants, and they will be required 19 to report shiftly to senior management on their 20 observations.
21 Next slide, please.
22 In conclusion, the Restart Test Plan was 23 successful. We exercised the equipment, process, and 24 people to achieve Normal Operating Pressure and Normal 25 Operating Temperature conditions. And then we were cooled MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
72 1 down and apparently on our Decay Heat System.
2 So, equipment challenges were identified and Greg 3 discussed those, and some operator performance challenges 4 were also identified.
5 I am deeply disappointed in these operator 6 performance issues; however, I am also confident that the 7 actions weve taken will in the next few weeks, will 8 strengthen my people, strengthen the teamwork, strengthen 9 our integrated plant procedures, and strengthen the 10 oversight to assure an error-free start.
11 Questions?
12 MR. THOMAS: Yeah. A couple 13 times you mentioned performance issues and you werent very 14 specific. Could you be more specific in the types of 15 performance issues that you identified?
16 MR. RODER: There were, I will 17 say there was two main performance issues; one was the 18 operator not understanding their limiting parameters of 19 what we have been calling the ceiling, floor, and walls 20 temperature/pressure parameters they need to stay in; plus 21 fundamental operator knowledge should be, where is the box 22 that I need to stay in. Thats one performance issue.
23 The other issue was prejob briefing, and those 24 parameters and the appropriate indicators to watch, were 25 not discussed, were not anticipated, and therefore, another MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
73 1 fundamental operator action that should have been done, the 2 prejob brief was not adequate.
3 MR. THOMAS: I understand that 4 the root cause is still underway in determining all these 5 issues associated with this. I was wondering if youve 6 reached a point that you can, to where you can discuss the 7 corrective actions that youll implement for the first item 8 that you talked about?
9 MR. RODER: First item being 10 the core flood?
11 MR. THOMAS: No, the 12 watchstander, inattentative.
13 MR. RODER: There is several 14 items were doing. I mentioned the Operator Action Plan, 15 and several items in there. First of all, were going to 16 be interviewing, as I mentioned, the licensed operators, so 17 that we can form our four shifts. Were doing that to 18 optimize the teamwork on the shift. Were also doing that 19 to ensure that the interviews will be on expectations and 20 behaviors.
21 So, we are also ensuring ourselves that the licensed 22 operators understand expectations and behaviors, because 23 there is examples here where they do not meet 24 expectations.
25 Well also be doing some intensive review of those MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
74 1 procedures on plant heatup, startup, shutdown and cooldown, 2 to understand and develop prejob briefing forms that 3 specifically identify the limits of where the box is for 4 each evolution. That will go into our simulator training 5 and that will be trained on to identify those areas.
6 We will also have management oversight in the 7 simulator to ensure that the operators understand and 8 adhere to expectations and the fundamentals which I 9 mentioned are adhered to. One of the fundamentals being 10 understanding plant parameters, where youre at, and what 11 limits are applicable at the time of the evolution.
12 MR. THOMAS: Okay.
13 MR. GROBE: I misunderstood on 14 your slide 34, the just prior slide of this one.
15 The interviews with the Senior Reactor Operators and 16 the Reactor Operators, I thought you were talking about 17 interviewing them in the context of what might have gone 18 wrong to understand the cause, but it seemed from what you 19 just said a minute ago, these are something else. Could 20 you go into that in a little more detail?
21 MR. RODER: Thats correct.
22 The causes are still under way, and applicable people are 23 participating in those root causes. This interview is more 24 of an assessment interview to ascertain what, what 25 strengths and what weaknesses individuals have, and that MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
75 1 will help us to optimize the crews. Were going to be 2 restructuring our operating crews, and then well be 3 training as a new crew. So, thats the purpose of those 4 interviews, to ensure the operators understand expectations 5 and assure they have the appropriate behaviors, optimize 6 the crew by placing specific individuals together.
7 MR. GROBE: Is there some 8 reason that you believe that the procedural challenges that 9 youve found in these procedures is limited to the 10 Operations area? I believe there is some complex 11 Maintenance procedures and Testing procedures also.
12 MR. RODER: One of the 13 outcomes were looking for out of Collective Significance 14 Team is to address that issue on procedures.
15 MR. GROBE: Okay, so thats 16 still an open question.
17 MR. RODER: Work in progress, 18 thats correct.
19 There is no doubt in my mind, that the plant 20 integrated procedures need work. Beyond that, I dont have 21 the total scope yet.
22 MR. GROBE: Now, these are 23 procedures, I dont believe that would change substantively 24 from prior to shutdown. Is there something new and 25 different now that resulted in these procedures not being MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
76 1 sufficient?
2 MR. RODER: Well, I think the 3 procedures are merely one piece of the puzzle that led to 4 these events. One of the other pieces is the operators in 5 the performance had ongoing simulator training, but some of 6 their skills have degraded over the last twenty months, and 7 I think its, thats part of it, the procedures have not 8 been updated, and they need to be looked at.
9 There were several equipment challenges along the 10 way, which certainly challenged us. I think we operated 11 and made appropriate decisions with those, but I dont see 12 that there is, like you said, there is nothing substantive 13 thats changed in the procedures.
14 MR. GROBE: Okay. Could you 15 talk a little bit, there was an uncanny similarity between 16 the two issues, the one that occurred on heatup and one 17 that occurred on cooldown. Could you explain why the 18 actions that you took on the heatup situation were not 19 effective? Go ahead.
20 MR. RODER: Your 21 characterization is right. Thats whats most disturbing 22 about these two events, is they appear to be almost 23 identical, different situations, but identical causes.
24 That is, that is the whole purpose behind our Collective 25 Significance Review and the Operations Action Plan is being MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
77 1 put together, is to address those issues.
2 MR. GROBE: Okay. So, I 3 guess the bottom line is, its too soon to tell, because 4 youre doing the Collective Significance Review, and until 5 the root causes are understood, but you have identified 6 several actions that youve already initiated regarding 7 training, crew oversight, and some procedural enhancements 8 and some assessment and optimization of the crews.
9 We have a public meeting tomorrow to talk about 10 System Health, and well have one the next couple of weeks 11 on the Corrective Action Program. Maybe at the time of 12 that Corrective Action Program, would you be ready to get 13 into a little bit more detail on what plans youre taking 14 and how youre going to monitor the effectiveness of those 15 plans prior to restart?
16 MR. RODER: I would be happy 17 to update you on that, yes.
18 MR. GROBE: Okay, any more 19 questions?
20 MR. MYERS: Jack, we do 21 thousands of evolutions a week, you know. There are a 22 couple here that weve seen, when we did this Mode 4 test, 23 we do all of our surveillances; Integrated Leak Rate Test, 24 Integrated ESS Surveillances, all these events, all the 25 calibration procedures and everything. What we dont do is MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
78 1 those procedures for reactor startup and normal plant 2 operations and some of those we should do. And so, there 3 is a population there we need to go back and look at.
4 But we get a lot of them and a lot of the activities 5 perform very well, you know, start up Reactor Coolant 6 Pump. There is a few here that, that causes issues. When 7 we look at these, what I see, we built more flexibility 8 into the way we operate than what Im accustomed.
9 Once we saw each one of these, what support items, 10 they were able to take that same issue as a very easy 11 management approaches, and now then after cooldown, 12 pressure back up, and cool back down again. It was not 13 only event-free, we did it completely error-free, you 14 know.
15 So, you know, and the same thing was true of the 16 cumulator. The cumulator in/out, in/out, in/out. You 17 know, we put those cumulators in and out.
18 You know, and a lot of this goes back to the balance 19 point between supervision, adult supervision, training and 20 procedures, you know. And that triangle is something 21 thats widely used in the industry. And if you go and look 22 at it, our operators have not been operating the plant for 23 two years. Thats a long time. In fact, thats longer 24 than the normal training program for a licensed operator.
25 So, we have to get them back into a very controlled MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
79 1 operational mode, you know, and really control that mode 2 very well, and make sure we got the right teamwork on 3 shift.
4 My belief is this Mode 4 test really helped us a 5 lot. I know there is things for us to go do here, but you 6 know, Im the president and Im pretty excited about it, I 7 think its going to really improve the startup of the plant 8 once its all said and done. We ought to be making 9 improvements to the plant, because we have to do that error 10 free.
11 MR. GROBE: Okay.
12 MR. DAME: Okay, can everyone 13 hear me back there, in the back of the room?
14 Okay, my name is Rick Dame. Im going to be talking 15 about Operational Readiness Assessment results and were 16 going to carry through with the theme talking about people 17 and processes and behaviors. We talked about a lot of 18 technical stuff earlier, so were going to be focusing on 19 people, processes and behaviors.
20 So, for folks who arent familiar with my particular 21 background in the role of helping out at Davis-Besse, as 22 Ive talked previously the past couple of meetings with 23 regards to an integrated Restart Test Plan. What that was, 24 is a detailed test plan from Mode 4 through the 7-Day NOP 25 Test that weve been talking about, back down to cooldown MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
80 1 and then up to a hundred percent.
2 Background which allows me to be successful in 3 helping out in that area, Ive done that at the Perry 4 Nuclear Power Station, used my vast background as a Senior 5 Reactor Operator and planning for refuel shutdowns and 6 startups, as well as Ive been involved with a number of 7 big integrated tests going all the way back to pre-Ops test 8 days through power upgrade. So, a little bit of background 9 as far as why I was brought in to help out in that area.
10 However, what Im here to talk about today is 11 Operational Readiness; and again, as part of my background 12 Ive been an Assessor for World Association of Nuclear 13 Operators as a host peer at the Perry station, focusing 14 specifically on conduct of Ops and Organizational 15 Effectiveness.
16 So, with that setting the stage, Desired Outcome of 17 my presentation is to share with you the observations and 18 conclusions of the Operational Readiness Assessment that we 19 did during the 7-Day Normal Operating Pressure Test.
20 One thing with regard to the duration of the test, 21 we talk about 7 days, but we heard Lew talk about 13 days; 22 the assessment team we assembled actually had the luxury of 23 looking at the organization for almost 25 days. So, well 24 talk about a lot of the information we found here and the 25 results and some of the conclusions from that.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
81 1 The assessment methodology we used was an Integrated 2 Assessment Team. Youll see from an upcoming slide, we set 3 up a very diverse integrated team to take a look at the 4 organization. Well take a look at that here shortly.
5 We applied industry recognized standards of 6 excellence, and again, I mentioned World Association of 7 Nuclear Operators. Their standards look very much like the 8 Institute of Nuclear Power. We have some of the people 9 from INPO, which is better known here today. So, theyre 10 very familiar with those standards.
11 Also mentioned, I was brought in to set up the 12 Integrated Restart Test Plan. This assessment is actually 13 a portion of that plan. So, with that, well go to the 14 next slide.
15 MR. GROBE: Rick, before you 16 go on, youre mentioning of INPO reminded me of something I 17 wanted to ask Mike. I apologize for interrupting.
18 I think awhile ago there was a program that INPO 19 introduced called something like Human Performance 20 Evaluation System or something. I dont remember the exact 21 acronym. Does that system exist within Davis-Besse as far 22 as looking at precursor activities and things of that 23 nature?
24 MR. RODER: Yes, in fact, most 25 notably, its part of our prejob briefing expectations, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
82 1 where we would look for the precursor activities, those 2 type of things; also comes into play as far as the 3 evaluation of the root cause and on the trail end, if you 4 will.
5 MR. GROBE: Okay. I think 6 Im going to want to learn a little more about how youre 7 applying that system in this context.
8 MR. RODER: All right.
9 MR. GROBE: Okay, thanks, 10 Rick.
11 MR. DAME: This slide up 12 here, I want to thank Fred von Ahn, who is part of our 13 corporate oversight that actually put this slide together.
14 It depicts the Integrated Assessment Team.
15 If you take a look at this particular diagram, 16 youll see a block where its labeled "plant staff." When 17 we originally set up this assessment, we werent quite sure 18 how many types of issues we would run into, so we actually 19 assembled a team that had some planned exercises. I can 20 tell you over the 25-day duration that we looked at the 21 organization, we saw more than enough activities to make a 22 thorough and critical assessment.
23 So, that particular block diagram plant staff 24 actually became the Davis-Besse Line Organization and we 25 set up management oversight to confirm activities and other MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
83 1 evolutions associated with the 7-Day Test; and the 2 Davis-Besse staff actually performed 165 observation cards, 3 which is going to be part of the actual assessment 4 reports. So, we have a lot of information from the in-line 5 staff as far as what they saw, some of their behaviors for 6 what they saw.
7 Associated with the Integrated Assessment Team, 8 youll see down at the bottom lower lefthand side "External 9 Operational Assessment." What this portion of the 10 Assessment Team functioned as, it was more or less peers 11 from outside the Davis-Besse organization. We brought in 12 four highly seasoned nuclear executives that have been very 13 successful at a number of plants helping to turn around 14 their performance.
15 This team also included nonDavis-Besse individuals 16 within FirstEnergy Nuclear, including myself, and we also 17 had the luxury of having input from INPO peer and 18 operations that helped out with regards to looking at 19 organizational effectiveness and conduct of Ops.
20 Off to the lefthand side, and Steve Loehlein, our 21 Quality Manager, will talk about this one as it comes time 22 in the presentation, but Quality was doing a large number 23 of observations during this period of time.
24 I want to back up just one more step. I mentioned 25 165 observations by the internal line management, the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
84 1 external team did a total of 76. So, we have a lot of data 2 and a lot of information to look at.
3 Currently, where were at, I held up a book talking 4 about all the data. Were up in the upper righthand side, 5 sort of product finalization. I have the task of 6 assembling the final report with observations, conclusions, 7 and then corrective actions going forward will be in our 8 Corrective Action Process here at Davis-Besse. And my task 9 is to get that done in about a week or so for Mr. Lew 10 Myers.
11 Next slide.
12 Okay. I talked a little bit about how we informed 13 some of these observations, summaries, and conclusions. It 14 was mentioned we had a lot of information available to us, 15 but most of these observations are supported by three 16 independent observations from members of the team. Most of 17 these have come from the external team; several did come 18 from the internal team, which well talk through.
19 The first observation, and if you look back at the 20 history of how we got into the situation that were trying 21 to recover from, one of the things that we were, wanted to 22 look at very closely was Critical Assessment of 23 Organizational Performance.
24 I mentioned we did a lot of observations by the 25 in-line peers. And in general, if you compare the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
85 1 observations from external to internal, the external peers 2 tended to look and find the equal amount of things that the 3 station is doing real well, but at the same time they also 4 found about half of the areas, again, of pretty much equal 5 balance of things that were opportunities for improvement.
6 The Davis-Besse line organization, when we started 7 out taking a look at this, it wasnt necessarily that same 8 balance, but there is some opportunities to improve there.
9 For example, if you take a look at the Davis-Besse 10 organization, the data bears out that a lot of the new 11 management team is more self-critical than what I would 12 call some of the older line Davis-Besse team members. What 13 that does is create an opportunity that can be, you can 14 sort of shrink that differential or delta through things 15 like coaching and observations.
16 This observation program is actually a great tool to 17 do that and through this 25-day duration, as we kept 18 talking about some of the observation results, we did see 19 an increase in some of the additional coaching that was 20 being done by team members to help raise the 21 self-criticalness of the organization.
22 I know Kathy Fehr had helped me out quite a bit with 23 this. She was very excited to say, hey, Rick, people are 24 paying attention to this program that Im in charge of.
25 So, its something we have to keep the momentum going and MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
86 1 well be looking at that going forward for our Corrective 2 Action Process.
3 Additionally, I mentioned about the new management 4 team. This is also a big opportunity for a lot of the 5 in-line long term Davis-Besse individuals who are now in 6 positions of management and supervision to help create a 7 change in the organization. In fact, one of the words that 8 one of the external peers uses, a great opportunity. Now, 9 weve been looking at a lot of equipment issues, but for 10 this new management team, were really going to focus on 11 being change agents.
12 So, again, its a great opportunity. We saw some 13 information here, and again, its been shared across the 14 board with the management team at Davis-Besse and senior 15 management.
16 Moving on to the next bullet. One of the things --
17 no, back.
18 Shift management oversight of operational activities 19 can be improved. Every external peer took a hard look at 20 Operations, conduct of Ops, and a lot of the items that 21 Mike Roder just talked about in regard to the action plan 22 and improvements, the external team has supplied some input 23 to the root cause teams and also the operations management 24 on ways that we think we can get better.
25 So weve utilized this opportunity to assess the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
87 1 organization to more or less pick the brains of some of the 2 best in the industry, again, some of these senior execs, 3 INPO peers, to help out and improve the level of 4 performance within the Davis-Besse Operations area.
5 So, again its something we picked up on, one of the 6 observations to characterize some of the things we saw, was 7 sometimes we would see shift management oversight drop down 8 a level to try to help out. Thats admirable, but at the 9 same time part of the role is to maintain proper oversight.
10 Again, Im very confident that Mike Roder is taking a look 11 at all our observations and understands fully what needs to 12 be done to help improve that situation.
13 Next slide.
14 MR. RULAND: Rick, did you go 15 into this process thinking that this was part of the way 16 you were going to examine this, was not only benchmark your 17 staff, but benchmark the assessment folks too? Is that 18 true? I guess I didnt understand that going in.
19 MR. DAME: Yeah, one of the 20 things, again, because of the number of different issues 21 and for, put it this way, lack of opportunities to do 22 exercises because we were actually watching real life 23 activities, is I decided as part of this assessment plan to 24 go ahead and put this database in place.
25 It was used during the deep drain evolution that was MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
88 1 done before I got here to work on some valves, proved to be 2 a very valuable tool. I thought it would be a very good 3 way of assessing how the organization looked at itself and 4 how it interacted.
5 So, again, I sort of added this, I guess, as I went 6 along, saw it as an opportunity to do this.
7 MR. RULAND: Actually, Ive 8 never seen that done before where youre assessing how the 9 assessors worked.
10 MR. DAME: I think its real 11 good information.
12 MR. RULAND: Yeah, its good 13 information.
14 MR. MYERS: Could I? We did 15 go into this with that in mind, you know. We got our 16 management observation working. I have the data here. I 17 can sort it all different kinds of ways. How effective is 18 it? I believe the outside people dont know that.
19 MR. DAME: And, again, we see 20 opportunities based on the data we got here to improve our 21 overall performance.
22 Talked about some of the things we saw in 23 Operations. One of the characteristics or observations and 24 this was overlapped by a number of the external peers, 25 including myself, is we saw performance shortfalls and sort MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
89 1 of how you view things relative to standards of 2 excellence. Identified the monitoring of plant parameters 3 and trends and in turn anticipating the operational impact 4 of these trends.
5 So, again, the team has shared some of the 6 recommendations for how to get better in this area with the 7 operations staff.
8 Probably the most significant differential we saw as 9 part of this assessment is wanting to look at standards to 10 make sure what we were doing at Davis-Besse was aligned 11 with industry best practices. And probably the one very 12 tangible piece of evidence we saw, and again, it was 13 observed by a number of peers, was the briefing process 14 used here in Operations.
15 They have a very seasoned staff of SROs and we 16 watched a lot of briefs; and what would happen is those 17 individuals will provide in great detail the evolution, 18 where were going, but sometimes based on the observations, 19 we werent quite sure if everyone was totally engaged with 20 the activities.
21 So, there is a technique thats used throughout the 22 industry called reverse briefing. And how that would work 23 is, lets say Im an operator working for you. You would 24 say, Mr. Rick Dame, were going to carry out this operation 25 of activity.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
90 1 And what I would do is go out and take a look at all 2 the procedures, review them, understand all my precautions, 3 limitations. Ask questions of myself, whats the worst 4 things that can happen; what are some of the parameters I 5 should be sensitive of as Im moving the plant. Then I 6 would come back and I would explain to you, my supervision, 7 that this is the direction were heading.
8 It gives an opportunity also for the shift 9 management oversight to calibrate or reinforce certain 10 expectations if they didnt hear them correctly. So, 11 again, its a nice interactive approach. And again, weve 12 sat down and talked with Operations. The Root Cause Teams 13 are in motion, have also seen this. But were going to go 14 ahead and institute that.
15 And its worked in the industry. We mentioned INPO 16 lessons learned. We have a lot of information that those 17 root cause teams are looking at, Human Performance and 18 Operations. And one client in particular, I.3-2000, they 19 had a lot of similar issues with what were seeing here at 20 Davis-Besse, and were going to apply a lot of lessons 21 learned there; one was used to institute reverse briefing.
22 So, we think thats going to be real successful 23 going forward. Its used at our three FENOC stations and 24 Mike is going to be rolling that out as we go forward.
25 Last bullet sort of piles on to the previous bullet MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
91 1 in regards to preoperational briefs, the delta we saw.
2 Again, we have plans to fix that going forward.
3 Next slide.
4 MR. GROBE: Before you go on, 5 Rick, you found examples other than the two that resulted 6 in equipment maturations that Mike talked about in the area 7 of monitoring plant, monitoring of parameters and trends, 8 and anticipating impact of those trends?
9 MR. DAME: Yeah, we saw, Ill 10 bring out one example of what we saw; it was actually a 11 post-maintenance test that was being conducted by an 12 operator that was on the service water system. There was a 13 Condition Report written to evaluate. Unfortunately, I 14 dont have all the details, but the observation was done by 15 one of our senior executives that was out in the field 16 watching the evolution.
17 There was really sort of a lack of questioning 18 attitude with regards to what was going to happen once the 19 valves got manipulated. A relief valve ended up being 20 opened, which was not an expected occurrence during the 21 post-maintenance test evolution that was being witnessed.
22 And, again, a Condition Report was written.
23 But there is another example where if you had a 24 prejob brief before you went out in the field, improved 25 communication, one of the things you ask is what is the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
92 1 expected response when you manipulate these valves. So, 2 again, thats just one example. We saw several others.
3 MR. GROBE: Mike, the 4 Collective Significance Review, which you had mentioned on 5 the last slide of your presentation, Root Cause and 6 Collective Significance Teams are formed. Whats the scope 7 of the data that theyre looking at?
8 MR. RODER: Theyre using 9 several additional Condition Report, other than the two I 10 talked about. In addition, theyre using the observation 11 database, and also the quality field observation database.
12 So, its quite extensive. Essentially covers a time frame 13 for the scope. That time frame is from initial vacuum 14 down.
15 MR. GROBE: So, all of the 16 data that came out of Ricks group and Quality group, 17 Steves group, all of that will be put into this?
18 MR. RODER: Thats correct.
19 MR. GROBE: Good.
20 MR. MYERS: If you wanted to 21 talk, Mark Christian is back there with us, hes the leader 22 of that team, so hes the sponsor of it.
23 MR. GROBE: Thats the only 24 question I had right now, but I am keenly interested in the 25 outcome of that activity.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
93 1 MR. DAME: Okay. Next slide, 2 please.
3 A couple other things that we heard of previously 4 that Mike Roder talked about, with regards to operational 5 procedures, a lot of the folks on the outside took a look 6 at these and we felt overall based on the observations and 7 quality of operations procedures below that observed in 8 industry leading performers.
9 Some of the actions that are being taken, weve 10 heard about, especially take a look at integrated 11 procedures; its a good action to move forward with. And 12 again, the briefing process that we just described, the 13 reverse briefing, should help flush out some additional 14 issues as you go forth.
15 Again, the behavior thats stressed at this station 16 and every other station in the nuclear industry is when you 17 find a procedure issue, you should stop, contact your 18 supervision, correct the procedure going forward. And 19 thats something that we got to make sure that were 20 doing. Again, its part of that observation coaching 21 activities that need to be occurring to make sure that 22 were not proceeding without making sure that our 23 procedures are correct and support the activities that 24 were performing.
25 The next area bullet, weaknesses were observed in MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
94 1 the procedural compliance area. These two sort of go hand 2 in hand to some degree. In talking to some of the 3 operators, there has been a lot of operator savvy thats 4 probably been lost through the years. Again, the reverse 5 briefing process can help find out some of these areas 6 where maybe we need to make more details with regard to 7 procedures, but again, if your procedures arent good, 8 there is probably some tendency in the past to try to get 9 from point A to B with the procedures that you had in 10 hand.
11 I think that was some of the procedural compliance 12 issues that we saw. Again, its fixable. Its correctable 13 with the actions that are going to be taken by the 14 Operations staff, but we need to be sensitive about that; 15 we do everything at this facility through procedures.
16 MR. GROBE: Before you go on, 17 you indicated a failure to stop when procedures were found 18 to be not adequate and weaknesses in the area of procedural 19 adherence. This sounds like a dialogue that we had maybe 20 three months ago in the Maintenance area. I was wondering 21 if you had any thoughts or observations regarding the 22 similarity between what was being seen in the Maintenance 23 area and what was in Operations are?
24 MR. DAME: Okay, Im not 25 familiar with the details of Maintenance observations, but MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
95 1 with regards to procedural compliance we did have some 2 other observations in areas; one was in the Maintenance 3 area and one was in the Engineering area, but there wasnt 4 a number of them that tended to overlap. There was more 5 seen in Operations than other areas.
6 MR. GROBE: I was looking more in 7 the context of extent of condition. If youve addressed 8 this problem in the Maintenance area and now youre seeing 9 it in Operations, are there other areas where it hasnt 10 been flushed up yet?
11 MR. MYERS: We would have 12 Engineering, we would have Chemistry and HP, Operations, 13 then we look at Maintenance, and now were able to refocus 14 in the Operations area. I guess were seeing some of the, 15 some of the same type of issues.
16 Once again, I hate to say I expected that, but I 17 expected to see some issues in Operations, when you ask 18 Operations to run for the first time in two years. So, I 19 think weve seen some of the things that we did see in 20 other areas. I guess, Im just not overly, I guess Lessons 21 Learned, Ive looked at, has told me to go look for them.
22 So, were seeing some of the indications that I sort of 23 expected.
24 MR. GROBE: Okay.
25 MR. MYERS: And whatever it MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
96 1 takes, strong corrective actions there, thats what were 2 doing, making step changes in performance, is what well 3 do.
4 MR. DAME: Okay, next slide 5 please.
6 Ive heard a lot this afternoon about the 7 Problem-Solving Decision-Making Process. Ive been talking 8 about a lot of opportunities for improvement. I want to 9 talk about a couple good things here with regards to the 10 problem-solving process that we saw. One, its firmly 11 ingrained in the organization when theyre running into a 12 complex problem, theyre almost immediately thinking 13 Problem-Solving Decision-Making Plan and putting a team 14 together.
15 What was particularly pleasing to the Assessment 16 Team, one of the problems we had when we first started this 17 assessment was shift managers looking out, asking for help 18 from the organization, because there had been some 19 indications based on some previous Condition Reports that 20 maybe that wasnt always occurring.
21 I can tell you that every situation that the Op 22 staff ran into was, lets stop, and make a conservative 23 decision, okay, lets engage the organization, lets use 24 the entire team to help out.
25 One of the byproduct as you see in this MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
97 1 problem-solving process that hasnt been talked about 2 either is just teamwork. When you start pulling various 3 disciplines together, you gain a firm appreciation for 4 maybe what a maintenance technician has to do if youre 5 maybe an engineer; or if youre an operator, what a design 6 engineer has to do with regard to solving problems.
7 So, its sort of a byproduct. Again, we saw a lot 8 of good teamwork throughout a lot of these different 9 Problem-Solving Decision-Making processes.
10 With that said, we saw a number of opportunities for 11 implementation of the Problem-Solving Decision-Making 12 Process. Again, we had a lot of good external talents, 13 who were taking a look at this, and some of the 14 recommendations that came out of this should probably be 15 used across the fleet at FirstEnergy Nuclear, facilitator 16 or program owner for problem solving.
17 It was talked about at one time, but I think now we 18 have some run time on this fairly new process, that thats 19 something that would certainly help out with not only the 20 efficiency, but also the quality, the consistency with how 21 we approach problems. So its something that will probably 22 end up in our Condition Report Process, Corrective Action 23 Process.
24 There is some opportunities to improve the 25 flexibility of the process. That was observed by not only MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
98 1 our team, but also the Quality team that was taking a look 2 at the different problem solvings.
3 When we go to address a problem, this was a 4 suggestion from Mark Bezilla, you look at the way we run an 5 outage, we have a dedicated center, work support center.
6 Maybe we should start thinking about doing that for 7 problems, because a lot of the tools you need during 8 initial setup, it would be good to have in one nice place, 9 a nice area to go ahead and congregate to solve problems.
10 So, again, a lot of suggestions came from the team we had 11 on the outside.
12 Along the lines of Quality also, we had this new 13 Engineering Assessment Board. One of the individuals said, 14 why dont we start using some of the complex problems, 15 putting those results in front of the EAB, we call them, to 16 see if the quality is where it needs to be. Again, a lot 17 of good ideas were kicked out as we watched this process.
18 Again, throughout the evolution, the assessment 19 period, some of these problem-solving plans I would say 20 were textbook, others we had some room for improvement and 21 we recognize that.
22 Next slide, please.
23 MR. GROBE: Could you address 24 in a little bit more detail on the flexibility of the 25 process? You indicated there is opportunity to improve the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
99 1 flexibility process. Im not sure I understand that.
2 MR. DAME: Yeah, as one of 3 the co-authors of the process back at the Perry station, 4 eventually became a FirstEnergy product. One of the things 5 when we laid it out, was lets say you have a problem that 6 has five potential causes. The way the instruction is 7 written, the way its being interpreted, you almost have to 8 work through all five of those simultaneously before you 9 can start getting it rolling.
10 The original intent was, when we put it together, 11 was, okay, lets say the first possible cause involved was 12 maybe checking some instrumentation in the field. Well, 13 there is no reason why you cant go ahead and get a 14 notification, work order going, get some INC technicians, 15 maybe an engineer out there to take a look at that. That 16 will get some data that will help the team continue to move 17 forward to some of the other potential cause, at least 18 proving or disproving them.
19 Again, that flexibility, when you read through the 20 procedure right now, isnt apparent to everyone. Again, 21 being involved when we initially drafted it, that was the 22 original intent. I think we can improve there. What that 23 does is improves the efficiency of the process and also 24 obtains information as quickly as possible to help the team 25 solve the problem. So, when we look at flexibility, its MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
100 1 more or less what was observed, Jack.
2 MR. GROBE: Okay.
3 MR. DAME: Okay, next slide, 4 please.
5 Couple other observations here, and this was one 6 that the station is firmly aware of, and its an 7 opportunity to use our corporate assets and also fleet 8 assets; and there has been strength in certain technical 9 disciplines we feel needed to get replenished. This was an 10 observation mostly from our senior and nuclear executives, 11 and they felt this was necessary to sustain organizational 12 improvement going forward.
13 One specific area was electrical engineering. Im 14 glad to hear your background, Joe, as far as what you bring 15 to the table, because thats one of the things the station 16 recognizes were going to have to get better going forward, 17 and Assessment Team also saw that based on some of the 18 problem-solving efforts in the electrical area.
19 So, thats something the station recognizes, they 20 understand it; and again, well be looking to improve in 21 that area.
22 Next bullet, Engineering/Operations Interfaces, 23 not as strong as observed in industry leaders. This was 24 again picked out by the external peers, and one of the 25 things Im very confident to say is Davis-Besse has now got MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
101 1 a new System Engineering Manager that I know very well, 2 Brian Boles, who is from my station, the Perry plant. And 3 some of his career moves; hes been a System Engineer 4 Manager at the Perry station, hes been the Ops Manager, so 5 hes played both sides of the fence and he understands the 6 expectations and the needs of the Operations organization 7 with regard to System Engineering support.
8 As one of the first actions were going to do to 9 make sure that support is there during our power ascension, 10 were going to make sure we have system engineers and also 11 Maintenance support scheduled, staged, and ready to support 12 Operations in the startup of all major pieces of equipment 13 through startup.
14 That did not occur on every instance through this 15 Normal Operating Pressure Test. Case in point, Aux.
16 Feedwater Pump Number One Program. We have people out 17 there ready on station. It certainly allows an 18 organization to be more effective to respond to issues if 19 they happen to occur. So, again, I think thats a good 20 addition to the team, that will help that interface.
21 Last bullet item, improvement opportunities exist in 22 performance of Management observation and coaching. Again, 23 they have a great tool here, this observation database.
24 Theyre using it, but one of the things with the 25 assessment, and again, me digging into details, sometimes MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
102 1 youll see in the comments some observations that would 2 require coaching. Sometimes that coaching is applied; 3 sometimes that coaching isnt documented and there is a 4 dropdown lift where you have Sat, Unsat, and Aid.
5 Sometimes we are providing coaching, but the data isnt 6 reflecting it, because were not selecting the proper 7 buttons so to speak.
8 There is some opportunities there potentially just 9 improving our training in that area. The other thing is an 10 intervention. One of the toughest things when youre 11 watching something is sometimes understanding when an 12 oversight role to intervene, thats something we could 13 probably brush up on, because there was several good points 14 brought up by managers or supervisors observing things and 15 it didnt look like there was a proper action taken to 16 intervene; lets talk about this right now; lets coach; 17 lets improve our standards and performance and go 18 forward.
19 So, again, those little details that we saw in the 20 database from the line management we dug through.
21 Last slide, please.
22 In conclusion, and again, the recommendations, a lot 23 of them are going to go into the Corrective Action Process, 24 a lot of them are already being used by the Root Cause 25 Team, specifically in the area of conduct of Ops, but the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
103 1 Assessment Team to a whole felt processes and programs used 2 at the Davis-Besse station supports safe and reliable 3 operation when implemented properly. So, that was 4 comforting to hear from our external peers we brought in.
5 Station Management demonstrated effective 6 operational decision-making when collectively engaged. The 7 caveat "collectively engaged" the reason we put it down 8 there, maybe more of a function of how were set up as an 9 outage organization, being a day shift/night shift type 10 crew, but the management team very, very effective when you 11 get everybody on the same page, initially, promptly, when 12 an issue comes up.
13 A lot of good dialogue was observed; everyone 14 from senior managers to managers challenging each other.
15 Concerns of Ops was always part of that discussion, so that 16 is a great thing to see. And people on the Observation 17 Team picked that up.
18 Last, but not least, weve already talked about it, 19 there has to be some improvements in Operations 20 performance going forward. Got an action plan. So, we 21 need to address that prior to restart.
22 So, thats probably the big thing if you think 23 restart what needs to happen, at least in the views of the 24 Assessment Team.
25 In the area of organizational effectiveness, I did MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
104 1 ask some of the external peers if they felt we had 2 everything in place, the right actions moving forward to 3 support plant restart from organizational effectiveness.
4 Maybe some fine tuning, we get the Corrective Action 5 Process, and well learn from that and go forward; 6 although, primarily the concerns were in Ops performance 7 and Im real confident with Mikes plan and also the teams 8 plan to help improve Ops performance.
9 That concludes my presentation. Any questions?
10 MS. LIPA: Any questions?
11 Okay.
12 MR. LOEHLEIN: Okay. Can 13 everybody hear me in the back?
14 Thanks, Rick.
15 There is a lot of commonalty of, obviously since we 16 are a part, QA was part of the assessment.
17 MR. GROBE: Hold on just a 18 second.
19 Lew, we need to do a time check. You still have 20 quite a bit to cover, and Im particularly interested in 21 getting Steves insights and I think Mike Ross is going to 22 wrap it up with whats left before restart, but I think 23 its important that we get done in a timely basis, so well 24 be able to accept public comments before dinnertime.
25 MR. LOEHLEIN: What I could do --
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
105 1 MR. MYERS: Dont keep asking 2 questions. (laughter) 3 MR. GROBE: If the 4 organization were comprehensive enough to answer all the 5 questions before we asked them.
6 MR. LOEHLEIN: Jack, what Ill 7 try to do, since there is so much that you heard before 8 from Rick Dame and others, since we have a lot of common 9 observations, Ill try to do things more by differences 10 perhaps.
11 MR. GROBE: Okay, thanks.
12 MR. LOEHLEIN: Go to the next 13 slide right away.
14 We were looking at, heres the one thing we were 15 doing different from others, were also, in addition to 16 looking at the same things everybody else was looking at, 17 were evaluating the effectiveness the Restart Test Plan 18 itself.
19 Next slide, please.
20 Here I would say were in general agreement over, QA 21 was, in terms of the plant condition, equipment 22 performance. Generally, the plant showed itself to be leak 23 tight, and the plant walkdowns were effective in 24 identifying the issues requiring attention on the Boric 25 Acid Corrosion Control Program.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
106 1 And if you want a comment, maybe nobody has 2 mentioned yet; the walkdowns that were done at 50 pounds 3 per square inch and 250 pounds per square inch were really 4 beneficial to these teams now going through high 5 temperatures and the plant at elevated mode. It was much 6 more efficient. I think we got a better outcome as a 7 result of those walkdowns that had been done before.
8 Next slide, please.
9 Under Organizational Effectiveness, high points 10 there is that this was an opportunity for the organization 11 to demonstrate its ability to focus around supporting 12 operations, it seemed to do.
13 The organization also recognized the need for 14 problem-solving teams. I would say that problem-solving 15 process is clearly now embraced by the organization. And 16 we thought the decision to stop heatup whenever there was a 17 question on safety-related equipment was a good decision 18 from a Safety Culture standpoint, sent the right message to 19 the organization.
20 In terms of some things that maybe we saw different; 21 there were several examples in the last number of weeks in 22 which QAs feeling is that they demonstrated somewhat of a 23 weakness in understanding at configuration control, 24 configuration management, particularly as it relates to 25 mods process, and were recommending that some trending be MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
107 1 done there. Ill get to that on my recommendations slide.
2 In terms of problem-solving process, a lot has been 3 said about how good the organization has gotten on 4 recognizing when to use it. There was some really good 5 examples how it was applied, particularly from a blown fuse 6 issue which they found in a lamp socket. That was a 7 textbook case we think of the process working exactly as 8 intended.
9 Where we saw areas for improvement were when, when 10 dealt with a challenge of a very short tech spec compliance 11 issue, the organization would have a tendency to do, as 12 Greg mentioned, have as a priority the need to do some 13 troubleshooting. They had a tendency to drive them away 14 from the more specific requirements of the process, and 15 thats why we recommended to Rick that the process be 16 revised to say in it what you do about improving these 17 teams so that you can separate out troubleshooting 18 activities more clearly from those that belong to the 19 team.
20 Another area along there is, the team would finish 21 its job as it saw it, and during the initial problem 22 solving, sometimes the handoff to those that were going to 23 finish up all the work in the Corrective Action Programs 24 base wasnt as clean as it needs to be. So, thats another 25 area for improvement.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
108 1 Procedure compliance is one you were asking about 2 before, Jack. You know we reported on procedure compliance 3 here the last few months and QA looked at it last quarter 4 already, and we are getting more and more data, much more 5 data than folks have that were involved in the Normal 6 Operating Pressure Test.
7 We are getting more insights. And one of the clear 8 ones is in Operations procedures that are performing 9 testing. These are generally done, or written by the 10 engineers, but performed by Operations. And we are seeing 11 in those cases where the Operations crews tend to use the 12 existing, what I would call, interim processes to get 13 through the procedure, but we really need to have for the 14 future is Engineering and Operations working together on 15 making permanent improvements. So, thats one of the 16 advice were providing on procedure compliance area.
17 And were, we have been focusing on procedure 18 compliance as part of this cores assessment activities 19 too, and procedure compliance, so were wrapping up this 20 quarter now. Well have more to share with the 21 organization on that shortly.
22 Next slide, please.
23 Conclusions on the Restart Test Plan was, we believe 24 the Restart Test Plan did succeed in providing the insights 25 that Management needed on the plant equipment and on the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
109 1 processes and the people. There was however an emphasis on 2 control room activities, and organizational response to 3 emergent issues.
4 Reason for putting that in there is part of what we 5 were talking about earlier and the importance of the 6 collective significance of the operations issues, I think 7 partially comes out of this. We were getting a lot of data 8 on control room activities and emergent issues, but maybe 9 some of the data that would have helped us see what had 10 gone wrong in heatup, were in the barriers and perhaps in 11 training and procedure content. And we didnt get a lot of 12 data from, from this plan to support that.
13 That was something that this particular Restart Test 14 Plan did not give us data on, but well have to get from 15 elsewhere and the Collective Significance Condition Report 16 should give that to us.
17 Our observations and conclusions overall are similar 18 to the rest, or to Rick Dames team; mentioned that the 19 cooling system is tight. Organization has learned how to 20 respond to emergent issues. We also conclude there is some 21 additional work remaining in some organizational weakness 22 areas.
23 Next slide.
24 And, those are in the area of talking about 25 organizational weaknesses appears to have factors in the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
110 1 performance shortfalls, specifically occurred on Operations 2 procedure, content and compliance, Operations training and 3 fidelity.
4 What I want to talk about thats different, maybe 5 havent heard about, is if were going to prevent 6 unintended plant responses, we really dont want to be down 7 to the last barrier as the only place where they can 8 prevent it. So, oversight I think needs to be improved in 9 areas of procedure content, training, and the simulator 10 exercise that follows it, and prejob brief just prior to 11 evolution. Those things should follow in sequence all 12 singing the same song, make sure the right things are going 13 to happen and we need to do more oversight on how those 14 things happen in that sequence and remain intact.
15 Next slide, please.
16 This slide just lists the bullets that are under the 17 Collective Significance. Were recommending and clearly 18 its self-evident, they follow through on collective 19 significance to find the causes and implement the 20 appropriate Corrective Actions. Thats what this is.
21 Now, this is a combination of recommendations that 22 we have, from having observed the Normal Operating Pressure 23 Test and what we observed over the last quarter. I 24 mentioned earlier the training on Configuration Management 25 Process. The implementation of effective trending is the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
111 1 one that we have been discussing here, that we believe the 2 necessary component in Corrective Action Program.
3 Ensuring the quality and execution of key Operation 4 procedures has been discussed before here today.
5 And, improve the coordination of Problem-Solving 6 Process with the Corrective Action Program, I mentioned.
7 And that last bullet is just something Im going to 8 continue to relate to the organization, thats the need for 9 interdepartmental management challenges. Thats managers 10 challenging each other on why we know what we think we 11 know.
12 Next slide, please.
13 Now, heres where I talk about what I think we 14 learned about oversight of this whole evolution.
15 Rick mentioned, and I see the same thing. We do 16 better as an organization as an oversight role if we have 17 assistance from outside. Thats true, whether its us in 18 Quality Assessment or whether its Line Management, so I 19 think we should continue to do that.
20 And, I mentioned earlier that second bullet. Im 21 going to change the focus somewhat on Quality Oversight, so 22 that we are going to be looking more at cross-functional 23 activities and interfaces as opposed to being in our 24 individual function areas. I think that will help us pick 25 up some of the organizational weaknesses.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
112 1 I think thats my last slide.
2 MR. MYERS: Were trying to 3 finish this in about 20 minutes?
4 MR. GROBE: Actually, Mark, I 5 think this might be a question for you. I was just looking 6 at your slides. Could you make sure that you identify in 7 your slides a little bit more detail of what Steve 8 addressed on slide 51? He kind of lists a number of steps 9 there in increment appropriate actions. I guess Im 10 interested in your thoughts on how youre going to monitor, 11 measure, and evaluate the readiness of the organization to 12 support effective operations activities that prevents 13 unintended plant responses.
14 Do you understand my question?
15 MR. BEZILLA: I think so, Jack.
16 Let me get through there and at the end if I havent 17 addressed that, just ask that again; is that okay?
18 MR. GROBE: Yep.
19 MR. BEZILLA: Okay, very good.
20 Okay. My next slide.
21 My desired outcome for today is to provide you with 22 an overview of what we learned from the Normal Operating 23 Pressure Test.
24 Next slide.
25 First, let me start by reflecting on what our MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
113 1 Restart Test Plan consists of; and Lew talked about this, 2 so Im not going to go into it again. We had the 3 Integrated Leak Rate Test, and as Lew said, that was very 4 successful.
5 We did the 50 Pound Reactor Coolant Test, found 6 items and addressed them. 250 Pound Test, found items, and 7 completed them. And then we did this Normal Operating 8 Pressure Test, which allowed us, Ill say, to uncover 9 additional plant issues that we needed to address.
10 All right. And, the bottom line here is, that from 11 our Restart Test Program standpoint, were well along on 12 completing our Restart Test Program.
13 Next slide.
14 Just a little detail here. We commenced the plant 15 heatup on September 13th and we were excited in that were 16 now able to assess our plant, our people, and our processes 17 in action and operation. We had some challenges, and Greg 18 and Mike talked about those, and Rick and Steve talked 19 about some of the conclusions and recommendations.
20 What I would like to note is that when we were 21 confronted by these issues; we stopped, we complimented implemented the 22 problem-solving and decision-making efforts, and we worked 23 the problems to resolution, at least in the interim stage.
24 All right.
25 I believe our responsive in most cases established MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
114 1 an overriding priority towards nuclear safety and ensured 2 that the issue received the attention warranted by its 3 significance.
4 My conclusion is that the plant issues were 5 investigated and managed.
6 Okay. Next slide.
7 Our NOP Test was greater than 8 days at, Ill say, 8 normal pressure. As Lew said, it was 13ish or so, for the 9 duration, but we were greater than the 7 days.
10 During the test, we inspected over 1300 components 11 with good results. And as you heard, we actually did an 12 additional check through on the D-rings after we had had a 13 slight cooldown and then a recovery due to the Aux.
14 Feedwater Pump issue that we had covered earlier.
15 Our overall Reactor Coolant System leakage, I 16 believe was the best in the plants history and it was 17 approximately.006 gallons per minute, when we did the, it 18 was either a 6 or 8 hour9.259259e-5 days <br />0.00222 hours <br />1.322751e-5 weeks <br />3.044e-6 months <br /> test.
19 We were also able to demonstrate the responsiveness 20 of our undervessel leakage monitoring equipment, which is 21 the FLUS System. And this use of the FLUS System is a 22 first for a U. S. nuclear plant. Well currently be the 23 only U. S. nuclear plant that will be able to continuously 24 monitor for Reactor Coolant System under vessel leakage.
25 We also proved that our new and improved Reactor MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
115 1 Coolant System Leak Monitoring Program worked and it worked 2 pretty well. We put in a.08 gallon a minute leak right rate 3 through the sample system, and our program showed a.06 4 something leak rate. And that was the correlation that we 5 were looking for.
6 Next slide, please.
7 MR. THOMAS: Quick question 8 about FLUS. So, did you get enough data and have you 9 evaluated its performance sufficiently to place it on line 10 for the next heatup?
11 MR. BEZILLA: Scott, we know 12 that its sensitive to steam, okay. When we put a little 13 bit of steam up there, it responded; when the steam went 14 away, it quit responding. The answer to your question, 15 Ill have to get back to you. Ive not talked to my guy 16 since we performed the test.
17 MR. MYERS: We plan to use it 18 during startup. Its our intention to use it.
19 MR. GROBE: So, your Reactor 20 Coolant System Leakage Monitoring Procedure will be amended 21 to include the FLUS and actions?
22 MR. MYERS: Thats our 23 intention.
24 MR. GROBE: Okay.
25 MR. BEZILLA: We performed over MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
116 1 700 post maintenance and modification tests and inspections 2 and that was an item in the Restart Test Plan.
3 Most of our primary and secondary equipment was 4 exercised at essentially normal operating pressure, near 5 normal operating temperature and secondary system was 6 essentially ready to go, other than spinning the main 7 turbine.
8 I also believe that we demonstrated a positive 9 Safety Culture and teamwork amongst our staff.
10 We focused on nuclear, radiological, industrial, and 11 environmental safety, and we worked together to resolve 12 problems and issues. And as the team said earlier, weve 13 exercised our problem-solving and decision-making skills.
14 Some are real good; some we needed some improvement with, 15 but nonetheless, we did have opportunities to exercise 16 those skills.
17 MS. LIPA: Mark, whats your 18 assessment of the reactor coolant pumps? I know we talked 19 about the gaskets at previous meetings and are you willing 20 top give us a specific inspection of those at this time?
21 MR. BEZILLA: I was going to 22 cover it in a little bit, but Ill answer it now, if you 23 like.
24 The Reactor Coolant Pumps, what we did is we 25 monitored those on the way up at various pressure levels.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
117 1 I think it was five hundred, a thousand, fifteen hundred 2 and then normal pressure. And what we saw was that the 1-1 3 and 1-2 were dry between the seals and the pump covered 4 bowl; and on the 2-1 and 2-2, we saw a little bit on the 5 way up on 2-2, and we saw a little bit up on the 2-1; and 6 then 2-1 stop, and 2-2 stopped, and then 2-1 started.
7 So, what we ended up with was normal pressure. We 8 had a little bit out of 2-1. And were into removing 9 insulation and taking a look at the outer surface area now 10 to see if there was any issues with that outer gasket on 11 the 2-1 pump. 2-2 was our initial concern, but it was, it 12 was not leaking at normal pressure.
13 MR. GROBE: Let me make sure 14 I understand what you said. A little bit of leakage youre 15 talking about is from an inner seal.
16 MR. BEZILLA: Thats correct.
17 We went in at those various pressures, opened up the drain, 18 and what we saw was a cup or thereabouts. We have pictures 19 of it. In less than a minute, the guys had a camera, they 20 were taking pictures of it, and it was less than a minute 21 from the drain and stop standpoint. 2-1 was the only one 22 that we saw any leakage out, when we were sitting there at 23 2155, normal pressure.
24 MR. GROBE: Okay.
25 MR. THOMAS: Just one more MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
118 1 question on the coolant pumps. So, when they open the 2 leak-off valve, was it pressurized or did it, I guess the 3 question that Im trying to ask here is, how can you verify 4 the, I guess, integrity of performance of the outer gasket 5 if the space in between is not pressurized?
6 MR. BEZILLA: Thats a very good 7 question, Scott. What we did is about two days into the 8 normal pressure, we stopped, opened up the valves, and we 9 didnt open them up again until we were on the way down.
10 Okay. So, we left them there for like 5, 6 days, which we 11 believe was sufficient to pressurize the inner space and 12 give it a chance to see if there would be any through 13 leakage on the outer gasket.
14 MR. THOMAS: Okay.
15 MR. BEZILLA: Okay. Next slide, 16 please.
17 Upon completion of the Normal Operating Pressure 18 Test, we commenced the plant cooldown. During that 19 cooldown, we experienced reactor trip. Mike previously 20 discussed that. And as Mike said, although this was 21 disappointing, I believe our response was good.
22 Again, we stopped the evolution. We commenced 23 fact-finding with a crew. We implemented problem-solving 24 and decision-making. We took prompt action with the crew.
25 And, on remediation of the things that we believed were MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
119 1 necessary to ensure an eventless and error-free cooldown, 2 which included procedure changes, prejob brief 3 preparations, training of the crews that were going to do 4 the evolutions, and changes to, Ill say, the cooldown 5 window and segments of that cooldown.
6 And then, as Lew had mentioned, we did conduct the 7 remainder of that cooldown evolution event-free and 8 error-free.
9 MR. THOMAS: Mark, since we, in 10 prior public meetings, discussed that this NOP Test would 11 be done without reactor heat, could you just clarify why 12 control rods were, or one safety group was out and clarify 13 reactor trip, just...
14 MR. BEZILLA: Sure, Scott. Our 15 procedure, we had talked about the flexibility in our 16 procedure, which is one thing were going to tighten up on, 17 in our heatup and cooldown procedure, it allowed us to 18 withdraw one group of control rods; in this case, it was 19 safety group one, which was four rods.
20 And our license amendment request also stated that 21 you could even do the test with trip breakers open and rods 22 in, or with trip breakers closed and one safety group 23 withdrawn.
24 We had a Boron concentration such that we could pull 25 all the control rods out and wouldnt have a critical MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
120 1 reactor. So, the decision to pull the control rods, Scott, 2 was, Ill say, a very conservative decision.
3 In the cooldown, when we did that, we pulled that 4 one group of rods, and when you do that, you invoke a new 5 lower pressure, high pressure trip, and which lowers it 6 from 2300ish,.350 something, I dont remember the exact 7 number,.350 some pounds to like 1900 pounds; and that was 8 the new high pressure trip.
9 Then when we were doing our cooldown, we got above 10 that parameter, 1900 pounds, and caused a reactor trip and 11 had those four rods inserted in the core.
12 Okay. Next slide.
13 So, conclusions. Christine, just a couple items 14 that I know you had talked about before, you all were 15 interested in. Decay Heat 11 and 12 Valves, which are the 16 two first off valves from the Reactor Coolant System to the 17 decay heat removal system. There was a concern about 18 body to bonnet leakage. And we did not see any body to 19 bonnet leakage upon inspection yesterday, I believe, 20 yesterday or the day before.
21 And if youll remember, we had gone and done a 22 torque adjustment on the bolts, had actually gotten some 23 additional torque on the bolts; inspected all the bolts, et 24 cetera. So we believe that issue is complete. There is no 25 issue, no further action required on those valves.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
121 1 And on the bottom nozzles, which I know everybody is 2 interested in, we didnt see anything when they were 3 pressurized. Myself and a few others, we didnt see 4 anything obvious.
5 When we cooled down, we took the insulation off and 6 took a visual look, didnt see anything obvious there. And 7 were in the process of doing our crawler robotic camera 8 inspection. And were about 80 percent complete, and have 9 not had any adverse results so far. So, were almost done 10 and really have not seen anything yet. Okay?
11 And the other item of note would be the control rod 12 drive flange area. And, we were installing shielding and 13 then we were going to get into the inspection of those 14 areas. I dont believe weve done that yet. Have not got 15 the results of that.
16 And then the reactor coolant pumps, covers to bowls 17 area, we had to remove some insulation to take a look at 18 those. We havent gotten results. I dont believe, based 19 on overall Reactor Coolant System leak rate, I dont 20 believe were going to see anything on those areas, but we 21 will check those thoroughly. Okay.
22 So, Ill say, my conclusion from this Normal 23 Operating Pressure Test is it did enable us to assess our 24 plant, people, and processes. And youve heard about a 25 number of the issues, right, and the recommendations on MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
122 1 what to do with those issues. On a positive side, I 2 believe we focused on safety, again, nuclear, industrial, 3 radiological, and environmental.
4 We demonstrated the Reactor Coolant Systems 5 integrity. We demonstrated improvement in a number of our 6 programs. We demonstrated our advance technology, the FLUS 7 System, Under Vessel Leakage Detection System response in 8 this, and we demonstrated good Containment and System 9 Health.
10 All right. And the final thing that I would like to 11 say, is were confident we know what the issues are, right, 12 and were taking action to address those issues and our 13 focus is going to be on improving our performance. If we 14 ever think we got to where we need to be, that probably 15 means were in trouble, right? So, our focus is on always 16 getting better.
17 And thats how we looked at this Normal Operating 18 Pressure Test. We understood that others had had 19 problems. We didnt want to have problems on the restart.
20 We did this Normal Operating Pressure Test and we found 21 issues. Thats exactly what we wanted to do. We werent 22 happy with some of the issues we found, but thats exactly 23 what we wanted to do, and we set about solving those 24 problems.
25 Thats really all I had, Jack, I think.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
123 1 MR. GROBE: I have just one, 2 and, again, Im very interested in a couple weeks hearing 3 the progress and focus going forward in these 4 organizational effectiveness areas.
5 And maybe its just a question for that and not 6 today, but I would be interested in your assessment of 7 whether the operating performance -- and its really not 8 the operators, its the organization.
9 It would be like blaming the offensive production of 10 the football team on the quarterback. You need the 11 blocking and running backs and you cant drop the ball, 12 receivers have to run routes, and it all works together.
13 Its organizational effectiveness is what were talking 14 about.
15 I would be curious at that meeting, or now if you 16 want to respond to it, whether or not you believe the 17 organizational effectiveness was sufficient to support 18 restart; and, and if not, how youre going to measure the 19 effectiveness of these improvement actions that you have 20 kind of very briefly sketched out here today and well talk 21 in more detail in the future how youre going to measure 22 the progress of those.
23 So, again, Im not sure if thats a fair question 24 for today since youve got so much work still ongoing in 25 Root Cause and Collective Significance area.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
124 1 MR. BEZILLA: Jack, I think a 2 couple weeks would probably be more appropriate. Based on 3 the preliminary findings and my loose involvement, we 4 weighed out an action plan, but we need the Collective 5 Significance Team and the Root Cause Team to complete their 6 assessments. Then, we need to look at their 7 recommendations and make sure we have things captured and 8 we have it couched appropriately, because it will probably 9 be adjustments in our Action Plan. I suspect there will be 10 some additional things we want to put in there based on the 11 teams conclusions.
12 I would say were pretty close with the teams.
13 Theyve given me some of their preliminary findings, and we 14 used that to, say, draft the action plan. More work to 15 follow. I think a couple weeks would be most appropriate.
16 MR. GROBE: Okay, good.
17 The other thing is, I think its clear that in a 18 number of aspects that I dont like the phrase safety 19 culture, its become kind of a term of art; I prefer the 20 one you folks use, is better organizational effectiveness 21 in human performance.
22 You have a Restart Readiness Review Process that you 23 go through, looks like its just a wealth of attributes of 24 the organization in both of those areas; organizational 25 performance and human performance. And Id be interested MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
125 1 also in whether there were any things that occurred during 2 the NOP Test that when you reflect back on your assessments 3 caused you to focus differently on the information that you 4 were gaining from those assessments. Okay.
5 MR. MYERS: Mike?
6 MR. ROSS: Thanks, Mark.
7 Good afternoon. Im Mike Ross, the Davis-Besse 8 Restart Director, and Ill be addressing the remaining 9 activities needed for plant restart.
10 Some of these items were previously discussed at the 11 public meeting on Safety Culture. They include completion 12 of 10CFR 50.9 training on the Davis -- by the Davis-Besse 13 staff. This effort does include training of the general 14 work force, not just a supervisory staff and is scheduled 15 to be completed by October 17th.
16 The day long site alignment/teamwork sessions with 17 all employees. These meetings start on October 12th and 18 are scheduled to finish by October 24th.
19 The Strengthening of the Calculation Program; our 20 contractor for this activity has completed the requested 21 assessment and we are reviewing their recommendations.
22 Next slide.
23 Strengthening our Condition Report Process. The 24 actions include; Apparent Cause training for Condition 25 Report evaluation -- evaluators; establishment of an MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
126 1 Apparent Cause Review Group consisting of report analysis, 2 of Condition Report Analysts; and Corrective Action Report 3 Trending.
4 Trending of the Corrective Action Program has been 5 started with the issuance of our first report and the other 6 items that we rolled out in November.
7 Shifting to plant activities, modifications that 8 need to be completed. ETAP. The remaining items resolve 9 establishment of a minimum operating voltage for six 10 hydromotors. Testing will determine, that will determine 11 the voltage requirements is in progress and complete on one 12 of the two different types of motors we have at 13 Davis-Besse. The second type will be tested near the end 14 of the week, and preliminary results on the first test show 15 it meets the minimum voltage requirements as built.
16 The cable replacement contingency has been developed 17 if needed and this issue is scheduled to be resolved by 18 October 16th.
19 Testing has shown that there is no need to replace 20 several motor-operated valve contacters that were in 21 question. That issue has been brought to conclusion 22 without additional field work.
23 The electrical system as it relates to ETAP issues 24 and final approved calculations should be ready for restart 25 the second week of November.
MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
127 1 High pressure injection pump, final modifications.
2 Pump removal activities are in progress with the first pump 3 being prepared to be shipped today. The Wiley Lab testing 4 is near completion and the results continue to support our 5 present course of action. The testing of the modified 6 pumps and project completion is beginning of November.
7 Repair of the Containment Air Coolers. This 8 includes the replacement of all Containment Air Cooler 9 Bellows, the reenforcement of the return piping trees and 10 supports. Additionally, electrical modification of the 11 motor operated valves at the inlet of the caps to close on 12 loss of power and slowly reopen on restart of the coolant 13 will be required.
14 These items will give a final repair that addresses 15 the water hammer damage that did occur at Davis-Besse.
16 Scheduled completion of this work is the end of October.
17 There is an outstanding relief relay of the available issue 18 on that mod, and we were assessing schedule impact, if any.
19 Electrical Breaker Co-ordination. The approved 20 course were taking will involve changeout of 81 motor 21 control center bus and incorporate a drum reset --
22 (Request to go off the record.)
23 MR. ROSS: As to the 24 Electrical Breaker Co-ordination, the approved path we are 25 taking will involve changeout of 81 motor control center MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
128 1 breakers, or buckets, to incorporate a properly sized fuse 2 protected disconnect breaker. This will ensure electrical 3 coordination of 14 different plant motor control centers.
4 Complete new bucket assemblies for these 81 loads are 5 expected on site the last week of October, with field 6 installation by the second week of November.
7 We do have some air-operated valve work to complete 8 yet. That work is scheduled and not expected to impact the 9 overall schedule.
10 Next slide.
11 MS. LIPA: Before you go on, 12 Mike, the first part of your slide talks about the 13 Condition Report Process, and this is an area well want to 14 get more detail on when we have the Corrective Action Team 15 Inspection Public Meeting to understand specifically, more 16 detail on what things youre doing in that Corrective 17 Action Process.
18 MR. ROSS: We understand that 19 we will provide that.
20 MS. LIPA: Thank you.
21 MR. ROSS: Additional items 22 that will need to be completed are the actions to address 23 the NOP Test Lessons Learned and additional testing of the 24 Restart Readiness Review.
25 In conclusion, our Restart activity list is getting MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
129 1 smaller with resolution of all issues in progress.
2 Im open for questions. If not, Ill turn back to 3 Mr. Myers.
4 MR. MYERS: Let me sort of 5 summarize, before I answer a question you asked earlier. I 6 think the purpose of management is to define the big 7 problems, activities are performed in a safe, effective 8 manner, and improve the overall reliability of our plant.
9 We made technical changes that we went over earlier, 10 have been made to improve the overall safety of the plant.
11 Containment sump, one of a kind; new safety system 12 improvements in RHR, high pressure injection, are 13 impressive. I think our Electrical Distribution System is 14 going to be state-of-the-art much better than many of the 15 other plants that are out there.
16 The NOP Test demonstrated a lot of things.
17 Demonstrated areas of improvement that we made in light of 18 our people to safely operate the plant. We have some 19 operational issues that we need to address. I would direct 20 those into the, more the reliability and ensure effective 21 operations. And at no time do I feel the public health and 22 safety was threatened by any of these issues that I saw 23 during the NOP Test.
24 The response to emergent issues, I thought was quite 25 good. Theres areas for improvement there, which need to MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
130 1 come out of the box real quickly, you know, but we used our 2 Nuclear Operating Procedure and Decision-Making Process 3 effectively. Had it been used earlier, we wouldnt be 4 sitting here today.
5 Condition of the plant equipment. We were able to 6 run off our secondary equipment; the feed pumps, the 7 condensate pumps, circulating water system, theres a plume 8 coming out of the cooling tower, was a pleasure to see.
9 All our equipment ran well.
10 Integrated integrity of the Reactor Coolant System.
11 We replaced the reactor vessel head. That was a major, 12 major accomplishment in the time we did, replace it, and 13 have it work as well as it did. New control rods are in, 14 they move effectively. Look for leaks, that was 15 effective. Incore monitoring instrument nozzles are being 16 inspected now. Were about 80 percent of the way through 17 that. And weve installed the FLUS System, one of a kind.
18 Well be the only plant in the United States that can 19 monitor for small leaks under the vessel. We think that 20 demonstrates a positive safety culture.
21 Next slide.
22 Davis-Besse personnel are demonstrating a good 23 safety culture. We demonstrated the right level of 24 management attention to safety-related activities. Even 25 when we had problems, you know, Mark and myself both were MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
131 1 out here at 1, 2:00 in the morning. We understood our 2 problems, the breaker problems. We were there when they 3 recycled the breakers, what, 66 times. We watched them 4 cycle about half of those ourselves.
5 We continue to own with the, with the Containment 6 Spray issue until, when we told engineering, swapping the 7 components out is not another acceptable answer. Were 8 going to do something different. So, we knew our problem 9 and we tried to address it.
10 We did that on the reactor trip. Ill have to talk 11 about that for a second. We had the rods pulled out as a 12 conservative measure. If we had had the rods in, which we 13 did when we cooled back down, we wouldnt be talking about 14 this issue today, you know. We would not have got an 15 actuation and you wouldnt be saying anything about it. We 16 did that as a conservative measure.
17 Looking back on it, our operators were not as 18 responsive as they should have been. They shouldnt have 19 left the trip come in. We should be able to operate and 20 cool down with the rods withdrawn; no doubt about it. But 21 well fix that problem. Its an issue we have to go 22 address.
23 Davis-Besse is completing the action necessary to 24 move safe operations. The HPI pumps are still outstanding, 25 the breaker coordination is still outstanding, and I think MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
132 1 the final and most important thing we talked about today is 2 effective implementation of our operational activities.
3 Weve got to get that so we demonstrate that we can do that 4 better.
5 But, once again, I dont know of a single situation 6 sitting here today with the public, where we didnt 7 demonstrate the necessary management attributes to protect 8 the health and safety of the public. Thank you very much.
9 MR. GROBE: Lew, thank you.
10 Just one question, actually maybe a concern.
11 At this point, in the plant recovery effort, its 12 easy to see the light at the end of the tunnel from a 13 hardware perspective. Its more challenging to see the 14 light at the end of the tunnel from what I call a software 15 perspective.
16 I noted that you put many hard dates on the hardware 17 discussion. And I didnt see many dates on the software 18 action necessary for restart. So, maybe when we talk in a 19 couple of weeks, you can flush that stuff out.
20 You talked about Corrective Action Program, 21 Engineering Program; I know youll talk about that some 22 tomorrow. And these other activities, in particular the 23 Lessons Learned from the most recent several weeks work.
24 MR. MYERS: That was 25 intentional. I think we have a game plan on Corrective MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
133 1 Action. I think our Corrective Action is much improved.
2 Weve used it throughout this process. Weve gone back to 3 look at a lot of engineeering issues and stuff, and the 4 apparent cause issues and weve got action were going to 5 take there.
6 From an operational standpoint, it would be unfair 7 for me to tell you right now all the actions were going to 8 take in Operations to ensure effective implementation of 9 the processes and procedures, but well nail that. Okay?
10 And we did nail it when we cooled back down. And we nailed 11 it when we put the other cumulator in service. So, well 12 just continue to nail the issues.
13 MR. GROBE: Okay. Any other 14 questions? Okay, very good.
15 MS. LIPA: Good, thank you.
16 What were going to do now is take a ten minute break and 17 were going to be ready for public questions and comments.
18 Thank you.
19 (Off the record.)
20 MS. LIPA: We would like to 21 open up the microphone for anybody who wants to address the 22 NRC folks up here. Well start with local members of the 23 public first and we would like to limit each person to five 24 minutes, and state your name for the transcriber.
25 So, go ahead, is there anybody who has a comment or MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
134 1 question for us?
2 While youre thinking about questions, I would like 3 to let everybody know that well be back here again 4 starting at seven to provide a brief recap of what we 5 talked about this afternoon, and then also allow anybody 6 who couldnt make this afternoons meeting to come back, to 7 come this evening, and find out whats going on and ask us 8 questions.
9 Was there anybody who had a comment or questions for 10 us this afternoon?
11 Come on up.
12 MR. KORFF: Okay. My name is 13 Joseph Korff. I live on Lake Erie. I boat a great deal 14 out here. My background is in electrical engineering. And 15 I toured this facility when it was under construction, 16 whenever that was in the late 60s.
17 What Im hearing here does not give me a lot of 18 comfort right now. What Im hearing is that they basically 19 have a new management team, and by their own admission, 20 operators either lack the savvy or have forgotten how to 21 operate the plant over the last 20 months. One of the 22 quotes was "theyre extremely disappointed".
23 I also see a timeline over there that says they 24 expect to start up November 25th. Well, if that happens, I 25 want to be in Florida when it does, because I dont think MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
135 1 theyre anywhere near ready to do this yet.
2 I think your question, do they have the 3 organizational structure to support the startup. If you 4 ask me, I get one vote; my answer is no, its not there.
5 They havent demonstrated it out there by their own words 6 and admissions.
7 Im also, Ive got to take a shot at you guys a 8 little bit on this too. I mean, the hole developed while 9 you were on duty. Okay, you had Resident Inspectors here, 10 as I understand it, and the hole that all this is about was 11 while your Resident Inspectors were out and about looking 12 for holes, I would hope. It didnt happen.
13 So, youre trying to get comfort from them that they 14 know what theyre doing to start up, and I really need to 15 get some comfort from you that when you have your Resident 16 Inspectors here, that theyre actually going to snoop and 17 look and poke and prod to make sure a football size hole 18 doesnt open up again.
19 And these are more statements than questions, but if 20 you find a question in some of these things, I would 21 appreciate your responding. Thanks.
22 MR. GROBE: Thank you very 23 much.
24 MS. LIPA: Thank you. Let me 25 just address a couple things and then you can go ahead, MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
136 1 Jack.
2 We did have some discussions today about some of 3 these operating and performance issues that you mentioned; 4 and as you noted, the Licensee plans to do what they call a 5 collective significance.
6 First of all, let me tell you we share your concern 7 and we had dialogue on the same topics with the Utility 8 earlier today. So, were really planning to see what comes 9 out of this collective significance and what kind of action 10 the Utility has in the works. They expressed today that 11 they have confidence that they will find what needs to be 12 found and take some actions, but we havent seen those 13 actions yet and we plan to. So, I want to let you know 14 that part.
15 The other thing is, with the Residents on duty, I 16 just want to let you know that we do have a very good 17 inspection program. Were certainly trying to learn from 18 the Lessons Learned Tasks Force on what happened here and 19 how we can strengthen that inspection program, but we do 20 have Residents. We now have three. And, they do snoop, 21 look, poke, prod. Those are the words that you used. They 22 do that.
23 I cant explain why the hole wasnt found 24 necessarily, but I can tell you that we do have highly 25 trained inspectors that are out here every day looking at MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
137 1 multiple activities and multiple components readily.
2 MR. GROBE: Thank you. Just 3 a couple of other comments. It doesnt matter and it 4 hasnt mattered throughout this entire process what dates 5 FirstEnergy puts up. Those dates have changed over the 6 months, the many months, and you can rest assured that this 7 plant wont restart until this panel makes a recommendation 8 to our leadership that we think sufficient actions have 9 been taken that the plant can restart safely and can 10 operate safely into the future.
11 That approval process includes our Regional 12 Administrator in Chicago, as well as consultation with the 13 Director of our Headquarters Office thats responsible for 14 all 103 reactors in the United States, and the deputies, 15 Deputy Director of Reactors in Washington.
16 So, the plant wont restart until were convinced 17 its safe. So, you can go to Florida, if you like, thats 18 fine, but you dont need to go to Florida because this 19 plant is going to restart. We will make sure that it will 20 be safe at restart.
21 To address your question regarding what happened in 22 the past, we equally are concerned about that. And the 23 head of our agency chartered a, what we call a Lessons 24 Learned Task Force. I think this occurred early fall last 25 year. And they conducted a couple public meetings out here MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
138 1 in the Oak Harbor area to gain insight, and into their 2 charter, as well as all the activities that they were 3 conducting from local folks. Spent several months looking 4 at why this happened, from the standpoint of the NRCs 5 inspection and oversight programs. And, those encompass a 6 much broader spectrum than just the two Resident Inspectors 7 that were here at the time.
8 There is a whole host of structure that supports the 9 Resident Inspectors, including region based inspectors, our 10 office of research at headquarters, our Office of Nuclear 11 Reactor Regulation that analyzes generic issues and 12 communications with Licensees.
13 There is a whole host of things that didnt work as 14 optimal as it should have, and we would have loved to 15 identify this earlier. It was identified as a result of an 16 agency generic activity that we charged all licensees 17 similar to Davis-Besse to do inspections of the reactor 18 head, because of a generic concern regarding head nozzle 19 penetration cracking. So, this was identified as a result 20 of an NRC regulatory activity.
21 So, the Lessons Learned Task Force issued a report.
22 That report was reviewed by a Senior Management Team. They 23 accepted, I think it was, 49 of the 51 recommendations.
24 Those were signed and the commission itself receives an 25 update every six months on the implementation of those MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
139 1 actions, that were necessary to improve the NRC regulatory 2 oversight.
3 So, I just wanted to make one other comment. Its 4 very easy to single out the operators, as I said earlier, 5 as you might single out the quarterback. If the Cleveland 6 Browns or the Detroit Lions, for example, are not producing 7 enough offensive fire power. But, the operators, they 8 cant perform their functions unless theyre supported by 9 an organization thats doing the blocking and tackling and 10 running the pass routes and all of those other things that 11 are necessary for organizational success. The operators, 12 like the quarterback, also have to throw the right pass, so 13 they have a responsibility here too.
14 It is not appropriate to single out the operators in 15 isolation of the other elements in the organization that 16 have to contribute to success. I expect when in a couple 17 of weeks when we hear FirstEnergys Root Cause and 18 Collective Significance, that there will be many actions in 19 many aspects of the organization.
20 Thank you very much. Those were very good 21 questions.
22 MR. RULAND: Jack, just one 23 thing I would like to add. Recently, the office, basically 24 the staff of the NRC sent the commissioners a semi-annual 25 update on the actions that the staff is taking on the MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
140 1 Davis-Besse Lessons Learned Task Force. That is a public 2 document. Were on track on the actions, and were going 3 to make sure that this goes on the Davis-Besse website, if 4 it isnt already there.
5 Youre welcome to take a look at this, to look at 6 all the actions that the NRC plans on taking to, to clean 7 our house, to look at what we need to do to, to do our 8 inventory program.
9 So, those actions are on track and well work and 10 make them public, the status of those actions.
11 MR. GROBE: Thanks, Bill.
12 That was excellent.
13 MS. LIPA: Any other 14 questions or comments for us?
15 One more chance.
16 Okay. Well, like I said, well be back at 7 tonight 17 for another opportunity for comments and questions. And, 18 well be around for a little bit here yet, if you want to 19 come up and ask us questions.
20 Thank you.
21 (Off the record.)
22 - - -
23 24 25 MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO
141 1 CERTIFICATE 2 I, Marie B. Fresch, Registered Merit Reporter and 3 Notary Public in and for the State of Ohio, duly 4 commissioned and qualified therein, do hereby certify that 5 the foregoing is a true and correct transcript of the 6 proceedings as taken by me and that I was present during 7 all of said proceedings.
8 IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and 9 affixed my seal of office at Norwalk, Ohio, on this 10 20th day of October, 2003.
11 12 13 14 Marie B. Fresch, RMR 15 NOTARY PUBLIC, STATE OF OHIO 16 My Commission Expires 10-10-08.
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 MARIE B. FRESCH & ASSOCIATES 1-800-669-DEPO