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U 9611040169 960827 4
KOHN95-211 PDR
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1 2
IN RE: WILLIAM F.
KITCHENS 3
4 5
l 6
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7 8
1 I
9 l
10-11 Enforcement Conference before the Nuclear L
12 Regulatory Commission, before Forrest M.
- Brown, l
l 13 Certified Court Reporter and Notary Public, at 101 l
i 14 Marietta Tower, Suite 2900, Atlanta, Georgia, on the 15 19th day of September, 1991, commencing at the hour 16 of 9:30 a.m.
17 18 e
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20 21 i
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22 23 BROWN REPORTING, INC.
24 1100 SPRING STREET, SUITE 750 ATLANTA, GEORGIA 30309 25 (404) 876-89.79
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3.
MR. EBNETER:
It's 9:30 even though that 1
4
- clock is slow.
Are-all of.your participants 1
5' available?
6 MR. DOMBY:.
Yes, Mr. Ebaeter.
7 MR. EBNETER:
Okay, s t a i' f, everybody for 8
the NRC available?
We will get started.
9 Good morning, everyone.
This is an 10 Enforcement Conference by;the U.S.
Nuclear 11 Regulatory Commission,-hereafter referred to as the 12 NRC, with Mr.
W.
F.
Kitchens, a licensee of the-13 NRC.
Mr. Kitchens holds Senior Reactor License No.
j 14 SOP-20467-1.
15 The subject of this conference is the set 16 of activities performed and authorized by Mr.
i 17 Kitchens, an NRC licensed and SRO at the Vogtle 18 Generating Plant, hereafter referred to as Vogtle, 19 during a plant outage in October 1988 with specific i
20 reference to October 12th and 13th, 1988.
21 The Enforcement Conference is held 22 pursuant to NRC policy as defined in 10 CFR 2,
23 Appendix C.
I 24 The purpose of the enforcement conference 25 is to:
(1) Provide Mr. Kitchens a full opportunity
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D 3
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1 to place any information he may consider pertinent l
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to the issue at hand on the record.
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And (2) for the NRC staff to obtain 1
4 additional information that we think'is necessary to-5 make an informed decision on enforcement to be 6-taken.
l 7
This Enforcement Conference will be l
8 transcribed.
If you so request, you will be 9
provided a' copy of the Enforcement Conference 10 transcript when it becomes available.
If you l
L 11 request it, we will make it available, but we will 12 place it in the public document room when.we release 13 enforcement action.
14-The aganda has been provided to you and I 15 think the court reporter you have a copy of the 16 agenda, sir?
17 The major issue to be discussed is the 18 results of an NRC Office of Investigation Case No.
19 2-90-001, dated March the 26th, 1991, which 20 concluded that the actions of the Georgia Power 21 Company SROs and assistant general manager for l
operations are potential willful violations of the 22 23 Plant Vogtle Technical Specifications.
o
}
24 We understand you disputed the number of
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25 valve openings during this time period.
For the
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1 purposes of this' conference, we do not intend to 2
debate any specific number, but we will assume that 3
three valve openings occurred for this conference.
4 On June 3rd, 1991, Mr. Sniezek, the 5
Deputy EDO, sent you Notice of Enforcement and 6
Demand for Information which you responded to and we l
l 7
have reviewed that response.
)
L i
8 Mr. Sniezek will now give some opening or 9
give you some opening remarks from his perspective.
10 Jim.
11 MR. SNIEZEK:
Good morning.
My name is 12 Jim Sniezek and we welcome you.
[
13 Mr. Kitchens, we appreciate your detailed i
14 August 29 response to our June 3rd demand for 15 information.
The information you pro'vided was very 16
. helpful-in our understanding the circumstances 17 surrounding the event in question.
t l
18 Today's nuclear power plants, as we are j
I 19 all fully appreciate, are very complex facilities to i
20 operate.
The job of the plant operator is a tough 21 one, and demands absolute 24 hours2.777778e-4 days <br />0.00667 hours <br />3.968254e-5 weeks <br />9.132e-6 months <br /> a day attention 22 to safety details.
23 At the root of our discussion is your 24 understanding of those requirements, specifically i
25 the technical specifications in place on October l
i
l E:
1 12th and 13th, 1988, which govern the valve l
2 manipulations associated with the injection of 3
hydrogen. peroxide into the reactor coolant system 4
for the purposes of chemical cleaning.
5 We would like to hear from you regarding l-6 your October 1988 interpretation and thoughts 7-regarding these technical specifications, under what 8
plant conditions they applied, and.how you arrived 9-at the conclusions you did in October, 1988.
10 In addition to the specifics involved in 11 this event, I am concerned with the overall~
12 operation and management of the plant.
I am also 13 interested in your views on command and control at 14 Plant Vogtle.
Some disturbing issues came to light 15 in the information you,.the other two operators, and 16 your company provided in response to the NRC's l
17 request.
l 18 I am concerned that the operations l
19 superintendent on shift would become so immersed in 20 diesel problems and their rectification that he 21 seemingly completely ignored the rest of the plant.
22 I'm not sure that this is the most prudent and i'
23 productive use of the senior SRO oversight nor is :-
24 consistent with the plant's procedures for conduct fs 25 of operations.
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l 6
1 As you are aware, we have requested to 2
interview you and your company in these enforcement 3
proceedings.
We will talk to your company this 4
afternoon.
I understand you have about a 15 minute l
5 opening statement you would like to make.
I would 6
ask that you try to limit your presentation to that 7
time, since we have thoroughly reviewed the 8
information you, your company and the other 9
operators submitted, and have numerous questions.
j 10 For our part, we will save all our questions until 11 you complete your remarks.
12 If you would like, you may proceed at 13 this time, Mr. Kitchens.
14 MR. KITCHENS:
Thank you.
I do have 15 about a 15 minute presentation.
My name is William 16 F.
Kitchens.
I go by Skip Kitchens is what most l
17 people call me.
I am the assistant general manager 18 for plant support at Georgia Power Company's Plant 19 Vogtle.
I am here to discuss my involvement in the 20 chemical cleaning operation that was conducted 21 during the first refueling outage for Plant Vogtle l
22 Unit 1 in October 1988.
l 23 First and foremost, I assure you that I 24 did not intentionally violate the technical 25 specifications.
And I did not intentionally i
_ ~
l 5
I' 7
1 authorize?any such technical specification i
2 violation.
I accept full responsibility for the 3
operationsLperformed during this chemical cleaning, 4
and after this long investigation period, I welcome 5
this opportunity to discuss my decisions concerning.
4 6
this matter with you.
I will answer any questions 7-that you have concerning my involvement in this 8
matter.
9 First, I'd like to introduce the people 10 that I requested to attend today.
To my right is 11 Mr. Art Domby, my counsel, as well.as the' Georgia 12 Power Company counsel.
13 I have Mr. George Hairston, senior i
14' vice-president, Georgia Power Company; Mr. Ken i
15 McCoy, the vice-president, Vogtle Project; Mr. Dave 16 Repka, who is counsel for Georgia Power Company; Mr..
17 John Hopkins, who's shift superintendent at Plant 18 Vogtle; Mr. Jeff Gasser, who is the unit l
19 superintendent at Plant Vogtle; Mr. Mark Ajluni, who 20 is the manager of safety.
These people are here at 21 my request.
22 First, I want to just give you a little 1
[
23 bit of my background.
You probably know it, but to l
24 be sure, I earned a bachelor of engineering science 5
j 25 degree from Georgia Tech in 1974, and a master of w
l I
i' 8
1 engineering degree in Nuclear. Engineering from the
-2 University of Virginia in 1975.
I obtained my SRO 3
instructor's certification from the NRC for Plant 4
Vogtle in 1983, and my senior operator's license for 5
Vogtle Unit 1 in 1986.
6 I am a registered professional engineer 7
in the states of Georgia and Florida.
I have 8
approximately 16 years of experience related to 9
nuclear power plant engineering, licensing start-up 10 and operation.
11 I've worked on the Vogtle project fer 12 about 12 years.
I became the operation 13 superintendent for Plant Vogtle in 1983 and the 14 operations manager in 1986.
I became assistant 15 general manager for plant operations in 1989, and 16 assistant general manager for plant support which is 17 my present position in August of 1991.
18 I would like to start my presentation 19 today with just a brief time line summary of events, 20 to place in perspective some chronology of what 21 happened and when.
These are mostly just to get the 22 facts in order.
23 In June of 1987, Vogtle Unit I was placed 24 in commercial operation.
Starting around December 25 of
'87, our outage planning began including chemica.
i l
(,
l 9
1 cleaning planning, that is when we started to 2
discuss plans for performing the chemical 3
decontamination during our refueling.
4 In April of 1988, we completed that l
l 5
process by a decision was made to add chemicals at 6
cold shutdown with loops not filled.
This decision 7
was made by our outage and planning personnel along 8
with chemistry and technical people.
I was 9
knowledgeable of this cleaning process, but I was 10 not detail involved in the method and the plant 11 condition for which the chemical cleaning would be 12 involved.
13 On October 8, 1988, we began the shutdown 14' of the unit and began the first refueling outage for 15 Unit 1.
On October 12 and 13th, we added hydrogen 16 peroxide while we were in cold shutdown on mode 5 17 and in loops not filled conditions.
I will 18 discussion that in a little more detail.
19 Also, in the fall of 1989, tech spec l
20 compliance for this particular chemical cleaning was 21 revisited after a concern was raisen during a review 22 for proposed tech' spec revision.
I'll also discuss 23 this in a little bit more detail also.
i 24 In June of 1991, I received my -- the 25 notice of Enforcement Conference and demand for l
\\
10 l
1 information, and my response was in August the 29th.
1 2
What I'm about to discuss concerns the 1
3 October 12th chemical condition and it's a summary l
4 of these events.
As you know, there's some detail 5
in my response of August 29th, so I don't plan to go
)
6 into great detail here, but to summarize the key l
7 points.
8 On October 12th, 1988, I observed a shift 9
relief in the control room, obtained the plant 10 status in the control room. -At that time, Unit 1 11 was in cold shutdown.
There was a Recticona system 12 draining operation in progress per our procedures 13 and schedule.
14 Also, not related to this. event, but for 15 your information, Unit 2 was in hot functional 16 testing preparing for its initial turbine load at 17 this time.
I did perform observe shift relief 18 for some of the personnel on both units and obtained 19 a status for both units.
20 During my period in the control room 21 early that morning, I was in the control room around 22 6:00 o' clock and I will discuss my times in eastern 23 time.
Around 6:00 a.m.,
I was in the control room 24 at least somewhat before this time.
During my tim *a 25 in the control room on that day, the oncoming l
11
- )
1-operations on shift operations supervisor was-Mr.
2 Hopkins, requested an interpretation by me for'the
.3
.use of tech spec 3.4.1.4.2 for the addition of 4
chemicals, that is,-for the specific addition of 5
hydrogen peroxide that was planned.
l 6
I looked at the tech spec brieflyLwith 7
him and discussed'the matter some and asked that 8:
this chemical addition be placed on hold pending 9
further review.
This seemed a little unusual to be
-10 entering immediate operator action statement.
I had 11' not been aware that we would do that for this l
12 particular scheduled event.
Because I'didn't take l
[
13 the time right then to want to make the decision, I 14 decided to put the matter on hold and not add 15-chemicals until later when I had had a time ~to do a 16 more thorough review of it.
17 I attended a preshift status meeting.
18 This meeting was around 7:00 o' clock a.m.,
and it's l
19 in our service building which is inside the 20 protected area at the plant not too far from the 21 control room.
This was a meeting where it was like 22 a preshift meeting of oncoming supervisors in the 23 plant and outage people and management people to g
~
24 obtain the status of the outage, the schedule type 25 status, and discnss any problems that needed to be t
e-i 12 1
_ worked on that: day by those people.
2 At~this meeting, the status of the
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3 chemical cleaning was brought up and we.did inform 4
the~ people at that meeting that it was on hold 5
pending.a further review by me and others for a tech 6
spec compliances.
7 After.this meeting, I completed a review 8
of the tech specs, including the tech spec basis and 9
the final safety. analysis report, held a discussion 10 with the on shift _ operations supervisor,_and our 11 deputy operations manager at that time, and I 12 provided my concurrence to add chemicals in the 13 current plant conditions.
I understood the plant 14.
conditions to be that I was-giving my concurrence 15 for to be mode 5 cold shutdown with loops not 16 filled.
17 That was the conditions of the plant that 18 I assumed in making-my decision.
But I did provide 19 concurrence to enter the action statement C for that 20 tech spec, which is an intermediate operator action 21 statement, in order to open these valves to add 22 chemicals.
l 23 We did discuss specific administrative 24 controls to be placed and documentation to be used j
25 just as we would entering action statements for tech l
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l 13 1
specs as we did routinely do in the plant.
I will 2
go:over my basis for my decision in just a moment.
i 3
One other thing is about a day or so 4
later, after me.--
after I provided my decision and-5 concurrence to enter the action statement to add 1
l 6
chemicals, I discussed my tech spec interpretation j
with our manager of nuclear safety and compliance.
7 8
And in discussing this with the manager of nuclear 9
safety and compliance agreed to initiate a tech spec 1
'10 change, a tech spec revision, so it would avoid the
-11 need to enter an action statement.
12 He and I-discussed it and we suggested a 13 footnote in the tech spec similar to others that are l
14 used sometimes.
Because of that, and his agreement 15 to initiate a tech spec change request to revise the 16 tech specs, I'did not issue a formal written -- I 17 didn't issue a written tech spec interpretation on 18 this site.
I didn't feel the need to because by the 19 next time we would have used that interpretation, we 20 would have been in an outage, and we would have had 21 the tech specs revised by then, which as it turns 22 out was the case.
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23 Let me discuss with you the basis for my 24 decision.
This is the basis for the decision that I 25 made on October 12th.
Based on what I know now, my l
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decision.would be different.
I'm providing you this.
information.as to why I decided the way I did on I
2 3
October 12th.
4 First off, one of the primary basis for 5
my decision was in the front of the technical 6
specifications we have some limitations and rules 7
for compliance with technical specifications.
Two B
of those are in tech spec 3.0.1 and 3.0.2.
They are 9
general rules that I read at that time and believed 10 to apply to this particular situation.
11 Just briefly, they say that compliance 12 with the limiting conditions for operations 13 contained in the succeeding specifications is 14 required during the operational modes or other 15 conditions specified therein, except that upon 16 failure to meet the limiting conditions for 17 operations the associated action statements action 18 requirements shall be met, and that noncompliance 19 with a specification shall exist when the 20 requirements of the limiting condition for operation 21 and the associated action requirements are not met 22 within the specified time intervaln.
23 We did discuss this, and I believed at
_ :24 that time that this was that we were fully 25 complying with that-part of the technical i
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15 1
specifications in performing this chemical cleaning, 2
opening the valves and entering the action 3
statement.
4 I did not know of any prohibition by 5
regulatory guidance associated with any voluntary 6
entries into action statements where immediate is a 7
specified time interval.
I don't mean to' imply that 8
I think just because something is not prohibited, 9
that that means it's okay to do.
I don't.
But I do 10 think that a factor in my decision was that there 11 was no guidance from our company, from the NRC, or 12
.anyone that related to that particular item, and we 13 do have.some guidance on other things, that seem at 14 least in my mind related.
15 There's no definition of immediate in our 16 technical specifications.
We discussed the 17 definition of immediate as we have many times at 1
18 Plant Vogtle and had previously discussed.
We did 19 not have a particular definition.
There's no words 20 like there are in some tech specs prohibiting this 21 particular action that we were going to take.
22 The technical specification basis for 23 tech spec at hand states that the locking closed of 24 the valves is to preclude the possibility of an 25 uncontrolled boron dilution.. I looked at the basis T
t 4
16 1
of the tech specs to find out why would there be an 2
LCO for these valves, and it specifically states 3
that uncontroliad boron dilution.
4 Based on my experience, both in reviewing 5
the standard review plan, which our FSAR was written 6
in accordance with, or the analyses in the FSAR were 7
considered the standard review plan, it provides 8
operator response times in specific modes for 9
specific analyses.
And this particular one, the 10 boron dilution event, it gave a time period 11 specified of 15 minutes for operator action could be 12 assumed by the analyst that performed that 13 particular safety analysis.
14 We had had one previous case of entering 15 immediate operator action statement a year earlier 16 at our plant or in June of 1987, that involved a 17 digital rod position indication system.
And my 18 experience with voluntary entry into immediate 19 operator action statement was limited to that case.
20 I know of no other case that I was involved in or
-21 that I know about where anyone actually did an 22 interpretation to do that.
23 In this particular case, I won't go over 24 the details, but it does involve in mode 3 an LCO, a 25 limiting condition for operation, involving a
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digital rod position indication system that's 2
required to be operable in that mode.
And the 3.
action statement is, if you don't have at least.one l
4 for each control rod, immediately open the reactor 5
trip breakers.
6 We had had a problem for 1987 where we immediately opened reactor trip breakers upon 7
l 8
withdrawing shutdown bank rods, when one of the rod 9-digital rod position indicators failed, and it 10 happened a couple of times, it was intermittent.
11 But actually on the second occurrence, the operators 12 instead of immediately opening trip breakers i
13 inserted rods to a point where they got the required 14 indication back, and then they opened.the trip 15 breakers.
16 In order to troubleshoot-and be able to 17 find this problem and we trouble we worked on 18 this a lot.
We finally came up with a trouble 19 shooting plan wherein we would pull this particular 20 rod that was giving us the problem and when we got 21 the indication of failure of the digital rod 22 position indication system, we would take some l
l 23 action to switch data trains.
t j.
24 There's two data trains that can provide t
25 this information.
Usually they are both in service, i
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'18 l
1 but if.one of'them fails,: you have to' switch'-either1 2
to A'or B channel.
We wrote.into our procedures to l
3 do that first prior to opening the reactor trip 4
breakers.
?
5
'There was discussion then about is that 6-permissible in. light of the immediate operator
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7 action that simply says open a reactor trip breaker I,
8 and a decision was made at that time'that it was 4
9 permissible to take a few moments to do this 4 --
10' troubleshooting action.
And we did that'.
And as 11 you know, it is written up in our licensee event 12 report that-way.
13 So my experience as well as reviewing.the I
14 tech spec bases and these other items helped'in my 15-basis for the decision that day.
I.also looked at 16 our final safety analysis report.
I looked in the 17 action analysis section, Chapter 15.
18 I was a little bit familiar with that 19-overall boron dilution event and the way the 20 analysis was done, so I thought there would be some 21 information in there to help us with this decision.
22 Looking in the Chapter 15, I did find 1
23 that there's an initiator, one of the assumed 24 initiators for an uncontrolled boron dilution is 25 failure to secure chemical addition.
It is not
.m._.
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i 19 1
adding chemicals under controlled means, but it's j
2 failure to secure chemical addition.
3 My review indicated that an analysis was.
4 performed, it was in place to allow controlled i
5 chemical addition.
At that time, I believed that 6
was what the FSAR was saying.
7 I believed also that as long as we 8
. performed this under controlled manner it would be 9
in conformance with the assumptions and analyses 1
10 made in the FSAR.
And I also noticed that, once j
11 again, in this particular action analysis, it states 12 the 15 minute operator response time period in this 13 action analysis.
14 I didn't stop there, I looked in Chapter 15 9 of the FSAR.
Sometimes in the other chapters of 16 the FSAR where they describe components they do 17 provide limitations or assumptions that are made by 18 people who write the FSAR.
19 In Chapter 9 in the chemical addition 20 section, it specifically says the chemical mixing 21 tank is used primarily in'the preparation of 22 chemicals for. corrosion product oxidation during the 23 refueling shutdown, which is what we were doing as 24 was the operation at hand.
That provided me some 25 additional belief that our system was designed to do
4 i
20 1
this, and our FSAR was designed to do this and, 2
therefore, our tech spec was allowed.to do it.
3 One other thing that I did was I 4
performed a check of the reactivity effects of 5
adding chemicals for the existing plant condition.
6 I perisrmed a simple calculation from an equation 7
that's in our plant technical data book and based on 8
that operator check, if you will, it showed that by I
9 Opening the valves for five minutes or less, we
)
10 wouldn't even dilute the reactive coolant system by
)
11 one part per million.
It would take over 30 gallons j
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12 to do that.
So we did not.think this was a real 13 safety hazard, it would not have a negative effect 14 on plant safety, or reactivity of the reactor.
15 Let me summarize the basis that I used 16 back in 1988.
I believed that immediate was a 17 specified time interval and I believed that 15 18 minutes was an appropriate interpretation for the i,
19 time interval for operators to use for that.
That 20 is what I believed in October 1988.
21 In this case, we used five minutes 22 because we, based on the experience of the 23 operations supervisor, knew that we could perform 24 those functions within five minutes.
The basis of 25 the tech specs appeared to me to contemplate the
_ _ _... _ _. _ ~ _.
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f 21 1
purposeful addition, what they appeared to be I
2
-precluding is uncontrolled dilution.
3 I believed in October 1988 that 3
4 compliance and nuclear reactor safety were assured 5
and so I authorized the chemical addition.
t 6~
Approximately a year later, in the fall 4
7 of 1989, we went through a reevaluation of this 8.
decision at the plant.
During the week of September 9
lith, 1989, concern was raised, I believe in 10 processing a technical specification change request, 11 the technical support department brought up the i
l 12 question and asked, of course, why did'we need this 13 tech spec change, why was it being requested, and 14 someone in that-department raised a concern that 15 what we had done in 1988 was prohibited by tech.
3 16 specs or was a tech spec violation.
17 So in September 15th, 1989, I met with my 18 boss, the plant general manager, George Bockhold, 19 and Allen Mosbaugh, who was at that time acting as 20 general manager for plant support.
We discussed 21 this 1988 chemical addition.
I told them what I 22 knew about it, and brought a few facts with me from 23 the log books that I had gotten prior to going to 24 the meeting that Mr. Bockhold requested.
25 After that meeting, I prepared a memo, a
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i i
I 22 1
1 memorandum back to Mr. Bockhold, that' summarized our 2
discussions in his office, and I think you have that 1
3 in my submittal.
14 Then the next working day, the next 7
5 Monday, September the 18th, I submitted a deficiency 6
card for formal reevaluation of reportability.
This i.
7 deficiency card is what triggers our nonconformance.
j
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8 reporting system.
I initiated this because of our 9
concern and I wanted it to be reviewed independently 10 of me.
I 11 On September 19th, 1989, I briefed the r
p 12 plant review board on the addition of-chemicals that 13 occurred in 1988.
I basically presented to them the 14 deficiency card, and the memorandum that I had 15 written to Mr. Bockhold, and by way of' facts that 16 they had.
17 By this time, we had initiated or plant 18 manager had initiated a review by our licensing 19 department, and the plant review board referred
- 20.
or deferred voting on reportability of this 21 deficiency card until that position was made.
- 22 On September 26, 1989, I was contacted by 23 Jack Stringfellow, one of our corporate office 24 licensing engineers.
He was performing this review, 25 this providing this position,for us on entering
_ _. _ _. _ _ - _ _ _. _ _ _ _ _ _. _ ~. _... _. _. _ _
l.
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4 23 i
l 1-immediate operator. actions.
2 BOc. Stringfellow informed me that the 3
current boron dilution analysis assumed that RMWST 4
valves were closed ~,
i.e.,
there was no current i
5 analysis for allowing us to open these valves and J
6 mode 5' switch not filled.
This was the first time 7
that I realized that I had placed the plant in an
{
8 unanalyzed condition at that time, because of not 9
being in a current analysis.
10 I reviewed the reportability -- in light 11 of that new informat' ion, I reviewed the 12 reportability with Mr. Stringfellow and John 13 Aufdenkampe, who at that time was our support 14 manager, and a preliminary conclusi,on was this was 15 not reportable.
16 On November 17th, the plant review board:
17 reviewed the deficiency card one final time and 18 looked at the corporate position paper and also 19 looked st the Westinghouse safety analysis and 20 determined this not to be reported.
21 That concludes my presentation, sir.
22 MR. SNIEZEK:
Okay, thank you, Mr.
23 Kitchens.
I had some questions I specifically was 24
' going to ask based on the responses that I received J
25
'from you and the other operators in the company.
,. (
4 4
24
]
1 1
You covered a couple of those questions during your 2
presentation, but I still have several others.
3 Before we start getting into questions on j
4 the information that-you submitted, there are a few 5
questions based on your presentation that I'd like 6
to clear up in my mind, and I think the others may
{
7 have a few questions also.
So I want to start 8
there.
I i
9 You went through the basis for your 10 decision on October 12.
The question is did you 11 discuss your decision with anyone else and did l
12 anyone else question or challenge your decision you 13 made based on the issues that you reviewed?
14 MR. KITCHENS:
Prior to us.actually 15 implementing that decision, the persons I remember 16 discussing this matter with, that is, discussing the
{
17 actual decision with.
Was Mr. Hopkins, and Walter j
l 18 Marsh, who was our deputy operations manager.
1 19 We had I had discussed the matter with 20 several people during that morning, but the actual 21 decision that I mada was made only with those two 22 gentlemen present and I relayed my decision to Mr.
j 23 Hopkins.
24 MR. SNIEZEK:
Did either of them disagree j
25 with any part of your logic, your right to make the I
25 1
decision?
2 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
I'm not aware of 3
any disagreement, they did not bring up any 1
4 disagreement with my decision.
5 MR. EBNETER:
Are you aware that anyone
{
6 else did in the plant or did any operators question 7
or refuse to carry out the action?
8 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
No one at the 9
time that we made this decision, that I made this i
10 decision, no one questioned the decision or told me 11 they didn't think it was right.
I'm not aware of 12 any operators or anyone in the plant who were 13 reluctant to perform this operation.
14 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So, Mr._ Kitchens, no.one 15 suggested that there may be a violation of this tech 16 spec?
17 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, to answer your 18 question, the reason I was asked to look at it, was t
19 I believed the oncoming shift crew thought this was 20 an unusual activity.
They did not say.
We think 21 this is a tech spec violation, but probably in the 22 back of their minds they wanted to make sure we 23 would be in compliance with tech specs, but nobody 24 suggested to me if we open these valves and add 25 chemicals in this condition of the plant, we will l
. _ _ _ _ ~ _ _ _ _. _.. _
s 26 1.
violate the tech specs.
'2-MR.~LIEBERMAN:
.So compliance:was not an
)
3 issue?
~4 MR.' KITCHENS:
Compliance with the. tech 5
specs was an issue that I performed a review on to
-6 make sure that it was -
.that we would be in 7
compliance, but once I made the decision, once I 8
concurred with the decision'to add the chemicals, q
9 I'm not aware of anyone saying, I think this is a.
10 tech spec violation or-I think this is wrong, until 11 a year later.
12 MR. SNIEZEK:
I have.one other question-4 13 on your presentation, and this is a difficult 14 question.
When you found out on the morning of the 15 12th, that there was a question regarding the 16 evolution of chemical addition, what was your 17 mindset going into doing your review?
Was it one of 18 is.it okay to do it, is it allowed and is it safe, 19 or was it what can I use for a rationale for 20 proceeding since it was a critical path item?
21 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, my mindset in making 22 the decision was simply to determine if it was an 23 appropriate decision to make from the point of view 24 of compliance with the tech specs and from safety of 25
.the plant.
I didn't have any preset goal to make
27 1
this decision be that it's okay to add these 2
chemicals.
3 I don't have I can't think of any 4
motivations that I had at that time to make it come i
5 out that way, that this operation that we were going 6
to perform was on the schedule, was planned to be 7
done for the purpose of reducing radiation exposure 8
to our refueling workers once we were ready to take 9
the reactor vessel head off in performing fueling.
10 And that was something we had not done previously, 11 but I did not have any reason to want to make this 12 decision to be right or wrong.
It just seemed like l-13 it tas right and so I made the decision to do it.
14 MR. SNIEZEK:
Does anyone have any other j
15 questions on the presentation?
16 MR. EBNETER:
Yes.
Could you tell me, it 17 sticks in my mind that the valves were opened at 18 6:25 in the morning; is that correct?
I don't have 19 that chronology.
l 20 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't know.
21 MR. EBNETER:
It's in the chronology.
22 The reason I'm asking you, it seems to L' a 23 discrepancy, if that is the correct time, and I can l
24 tell you it's in that large book back there.
- Well, 1
I 25 it may be a discrepancy, but I'm trying to correlate 1
I 1
l 28 e
i i
1 here your presentation says that you attended the i
2 status meeting at 7:00 a.m.,
and then you proceeded 3
to review, and then made the authorization.
Unless 4
there's some discrepancies in these times, Central
}
5 time, I thought the valves were opened at around
?
6 6:25, because they were earlier than the decision.
7
. MIL KITCHENS:
Mr. Domby just showed me 8
the functional test form that was used that day 1
9 apparently, and it has the shift supervisor's i
{.
10 permission to perform functional test dated at 6:25
/
11 Central to be 7:25' Eastern.
That doesn't I don't 4
i 12 know when that valve was actually opened.
13 MR. EBNETER:
All of these times 1
14 mentioned in your presentation are what, Central 1
l 15 times?
16 MR. KITCHENS:
Those are Eastern times, f
17 so to answer your question, at 7:25 Eastern time the
[
18 unit shift supervisor provided permission to perform e
' 19 the functional test.
i 20 MR. EBNETER:
So j
21 MR. KITCHENS:
And it's performed at 22 7:05, or 8:05 Eastern time is when the valves were j
j 23 opened at 8:05 Eastern time.
i 24 MR. EBNETER:
And you did all of this 4'
25
~ analysis then within 15 minutes?
J e
m
29 1
MR. KITCHENS:
The part where in my i
2 office a discussion with on shift operations 3
supervisor and deputy operations manager, I would 4
say that's a reasonable amount of time, I would say.
5 MR. EBNETER:
You went into the tech 6
specs and FSAR and all of this other material, read 7
it and analyzed it and discussed it in 15 minutes; 8
is that true?
9 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, that's true, l
10 however,. I had been asked this question sometime 11 between 6:00 and 6:30 in the morning, Eastern time.
12 And I had the time to think about it and time to go 13 back to my office and do a little bit of looking 14 into it before the 7:00 o' clock mee, ting.
15 After the 7:00 o' clock meeting, which 16 probably lasted 15 minutes or so, maybe 10 or 15 17 minutes, the meeting in my office with Mr. Hopkins 18 that Mr. Marsh joir'd us was probably 15 minutes.
I 19 did have time t o 10014 at the FSAR and I did have 20 time to look at the I had already looked at the 21 tech specs and the basis.
22 I felt that the review of the FSAR that 23 was done was thorough.
And I would have taken more 24 time, had I needed had I felt I needed more l
25 time.
I didn't feel pushed as far as the time.
l
~.......
.~.- =,_
i e
30 i
j-1 MR. EBNETER:
Okay, I have one other 2
question.
With regard to your comments on September i
3 26, 1989, with regard to reportability, I think, and l
4 the reporter can correct me if I am wrong, I think 5
.you made-the statement that this was the first time 6
that you realized you had placed the plant in an 7
t' l
8 MR. KITCHENS:
That's correct, sir, on 9
September 26.
10 MR. EBNETER:
Do you not think that's a i'
11 reportable condition to the NRC?
j 12 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
I don't think 1
13 that's a reportable condition to the NRC, because 14 it's my understanding the reportability requirements j
15 are that you have placed in the plant in an l
16 unanalyzed condition that significantly compromises 17 plant safety.
18 On the 26th of September, of 1989, in our 19 discussions, that is one of the items we looked at.
i 20 That's the reason I brought it to Mr. Aufdenkampe's 21 attention, thinking we may have enough information 22 now to make a reportability determination, i.e.,
it 23-may be reportable, we don't have to wait any longer.
24 but after talking it over with Mr. Stringfellow and 25 Mr. Aufdenkampe we determined that basically th-
t 31 i
1 discussed it more than I, but we all determined that 2
the event did not significantly compromise the' plant
!~
3 safety.
I 4
Based on a previous analysis that had l
5-been'done, Jack Stringfellow told us that from the i
6 time of opening the valves if you just left them 7
open, assuming you had-the proper shutdown margin, 8
which-is required by tech specs, that' operators 9
would have approximately eight hours to take 10 action.
That was approximate time frames that he J
]
11 thought were right.
So opening the valves for j
12 approximately five minutes, we felt when we had p
13 eight hours wasn't in a condition that significantly 14 compromised plant safety.
I,.
15 The reason that we waited to bring it i
16 back to the plant review board was to have that i
j 17 particular issue resolved through the re-analysis j
18 that Westinghouse was helping us with to submit our i
t-l 19 tech spec change.
Once that came back, we did
~
20 confirm that even though we had placed the plant in
\\,
21 an unanalyzed condition, this particular case did 22 not significantly compromise plant the safety.
23 MR. EBNETER:
Was that Westinghouse j
24 analysis not done in March of this year?
4 25 MR. KITCHENS:
There was I believe i
a 1
4 n
4 ie 1
32 1
there was another Westinghouse analysis done this.
2 year.
3 M R '. EBNETER:
In March of this year, I 4-believe there.was a Westinghouse analysis that was 5
done that came to the conclusions.that opening those 6-valves was precluded:by the tech specs.
j 7
MR. KITCHENS:
In March of 1991?
8 MR. DOMBY:
Mr. Ebneter, I am not sure of f
9
_the particular date, I know there was a re-analysis-3 10 performed in support of the I'm sorry.
11 MR. EBNPPER:
Okay, go ahead.
4" 12 MR. DOMBY:
I-know that there was a i
13 re-analysis performed in order to support the 4
}
14 licensing design change request.
15 MR. EBNETER:
That may be what I am t
i 16 talking about.
17 MR. DOMBY: Right.
4 18-MR. EBNETER:
Was that not March, though, j
19 of '89?
r 20 MR.-DOMBY:
I think March pardon me, 3-t t
21 March of
'89.
i 22 MR. EBNETER:
March of
'89, it's in this 1
i 23
-submittal offering.
Is that not dated March of j
i 24 1989?
Just trying to get these facts together so I
(
l l
25 can understand how these decisions were made.
l
]
33 1
MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, I'm not aware of' 2-a March 1989 one.
t i
3 MR. McCOY:
Mr. Ebneter, if I can clarify t
4
'that, I think I did the right thing, there are only 5
two analysis performed, to my recollection.
One was i
f 6
performed in October of 1988 by Westinghouse, and 1
I 7
that was in support of the change to the tech specs l
I 1
8 and that was the' basis that Skip was referring to i
9 that our licensing manager and tech support manager 10 in itself had referred to.
1
]
11 In March of this year, another, a second 3:
12 analysis was done, or I believe it was August of
[
13 this year.
(
14 MR. EBNETER:
I may have my dates wrong 15 but I think --
16 MR. McCOY:
There was a second analysis 17 done at our request that looked into specific 18 additions of this event in 1988 to verify in 19
' preparation for this conference the exact safety 20 submittals.
21 MR. KITCHENS:
Locate, Jim, which one you 22' want.
i 23 MR. EBNETER:
Fine.
I will concede that 24 I may have my date wrong, I don't have my copy with 25
'me.
That's all I have.
~. -
I 4
34 1
MR. SNIEZEK:
Well, in any event, that i
2 November 14th, 1989 letter from Westinghouse to Mr.
3 McCoy was before the November 17th, PRB review and 4
the determination that it wasn't reportable.
And 5
the analysis by Westinghouse, at least the summation-6 in the letter, says re-analysis of the boron s.
j 7
dilution event was necessary since dilution of mode i
i l
8 5B total shutdown, loops not filled, and, 6,
{
9 refueling, had not been analyzed due to precluding 10 such an event by verifying certain valves to be 11 closed.
12 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, that's the 13 reason that we had this analysis performed.
In 14 other words, in 1988, when I made the decision, I
' ave a current analysis 15 did not know that we did not h
l-16 that assumed allowing opening these valves under 17 controlled conditions.
18 Once we knew we did not have that 19 analysis, we had to do such an analysis to support 4
20 this tech spec change that we eventually got in 21 February of 1989.
l 22 MR. SNIEZEK:
I understand that, but the 23 point in question is how it's probably more a J
24 point we shotild be asking the company this 1
25 afternoon, how they could determine that such an i
5 4
4
- - -. ~. - - _.. -
I.
35 1
event was reportable to the NRC.
i 2
MR. KITCHENS:-. S :.., I can answer what I 3
think,-and that is that if you place ~the plant in an 4
unanalyzed condition that may be reportable to the 5
NRC, but-it's reportable if it's a condition that 6-significantly compromises plant safety and this
'7 November 14th, 1989 letter that you were just 8
discussing, if you read the next to the last 9
paragraph says, based upon these results it is 10 concluded that the chemical addition to the RCS 11 during modes 5B and 6 as defined above does not 12 violate the licensing basis acceptance-criteria for 13 a boron dilution event, and if you look in the 14 attachments to it, that gives times,and times to 15 criticality,-it shows that opening the valves for a 16 short period of time does not significantly 17 compromise plant safety and, in fact, is allowed, 18 and that's why we were able to get our tech specs 19 changed.
i i
20 MR. SNIEZEK:
I understand that, but in 21 my mind that's sheer luck after the fact analysis.
'22 MR. EBNETER:
Are there other instances 23 where you have placed the plant in an unanalyzed 24 condition that we don't know about?
25 MR. SNIEZEK:
Which you are aware of?
I
36 e
i 1
MR. KITCHENS:
.Not to my knowledge.
Not 2
to my personal-knowledge, but when we do 3
reportability, reviews, at the plant excuse me, 1
3 4
we have a procedure that's written based on FSAR 50, l
j 5.
72, and 73, and many other reporting requirements 4
6 and we use those requirements out of it.
7 Placing the plant in an unanalyzed l
8 condition is obviously a deficiency or something you 9
don't want to do.
But it's my understanding it's
{
j 10 reportable only, when it's judged to significantly 1
11 compromise plant safety, but just to answer you t
12 today, I don't know of any other cases like that.
i
]
13 There may have been, I'm sure that analysis would be 14 done.
I don't know personally.
1 15 MR. HAYES:
Mr. Kitchens, did you have a 2
16 representative on the planning committee for the 17 outage?
18 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, I did.
I had one of 19 the SROs that worked for me, worked very' closely 20 with the outage and planning people in planning this 21
. outage.
22 MR. HAYES:
And what was his function as 23 a member of that committee?
24 MR. KITCHENS:
His function was to assist 25
'in planning the outage, to assist in scheduling
- ~....
r i
i l
37 1
activities in the right order, to assist in making 2-sure that the operations department would be ready 3
to support the outage by scheduling of personnel and 4
_have procedures properly written, that type of f
5 thing.
1 6
MR. HAYES:
Did you get briefed by your l
7 representative on that committee on an ongoing basis-8 prior to the outage?
9 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, I did, i
(
10 MR. HAYES:
Did that individual bring to 11 your attention any tech spec concerns at all?
12 MR. KITCHENS:
Any. tech spec concerns at 13 all?
Yes, sir, a few.
i 14-MR. HAYES:
The concerns that were 15 brought to your attention, did they involve this l
16 partiewIsr evolution?
17 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
No tech spec j.
18 concern was brought to my attention concerning the 19 addition of chemicals for RCS contamination.
20 MR. HAYES:
Are you aware of any.
t,-
21 discussion during that preplanning of a potential 22 tech spec problem or concerns concerning the 23 chemical addition?
24 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
25 MR. SNIEZEK:
Are there any other 4
38 1
questions regarding Mr. Kitchens' presentation?
2 MR. PARTLOW:
Yes, Skip you've described 1
3 a situation where you had made that decision on the 4
. morning of the 12th, and you were apparently -- you 5
were confident in it and there was apparent 6
consensus in the plant that that was the right-7 decision to make.
8 Now, you had at.that time procedures 9
where when there was a question about tech spec-
)
10 interpretation within the operations department, you 11 wrote it up, and documented it and had it available 12 for future use.
13 Why, then, two days later, did you pick 14 this particular tech spec to feel that maybe I
15 something better be done to change the tech spec 16 with the NRC, not just local there in the plant, but 17 why two days later.did you feel that that needed a 18 change?
19 MR. KITCHENS:
Referring to my 20-discussions with the manager of nuclear safety and 21_
compliance a few days later?
22 MR. PARTLOW:
Yes.
23 MR. KITCHENS:
I was prepared to write a 24 written tech spec interpretation.
The way that our 25 procedure was written then and still is written,
i i
39 1
f 1
although now it's much better, we have made some 2
improvements in it, if an operator or anyone, 3
particularly an operator, needed concurrence or 4
needed an interpretation made, needed higher 5
management to decide on how to do something or i
6 whether or not something would be in compliance, i.
7 they were directed by the procedure to ask, and 1
8 there's a certain line of people that they could 9
ask.
10 Also, it states in there that this may be 11 followed up by written tech spec interpretations and 12 the written ones would be such things where, if it 13 appears that interpretation might be needed to 14 assure uniformity on shifts and consistency between 15 the shifts.
I was prepared to write a tech spec 16 interpretation for this item to say what I had 17 decided that morning.
I just, as I usually did, 18 then, I discussed tech spec interpretations with the 19 manager of nuclear safety and compliance to get 20-another view.
21 Many of the' tech spec interpretations, 22 although it wasn't required, was for anyone else 23 other than the office manager to actually sign them, 24 I did that for most all of them.
And this is one 25 where I asked him his opinion, and his opinion was I
i
i 1
40 i
1 that we shouldn't have to enter an action statement 2
to perform routine refueling operations, and he 3
thought it would be preferable to change'the tech 4
spec rather than add another interpretation to our 5
interpretation.
6 MR. PARTLOW:
Is this the only tech spec j
7 that falls within that kind of general philosophy?
8 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
There's been 9
many tech spec changes requested by us that were 10 initiated as tech spec interpretations and later 11 became tech spec changes to clarify the words.
12 MR. PARTLOW:
Now, Skip, as I understand 13 it, it was a year later in September of
'89, that 14 you first realized that the plant had been in an
~
15' unanalyzed condition?
16 MR. KITCHENS:
That's correct.
17 MR. PARTLOW:
Does that mean did you 18 also realize at that time that regardless of intent 19 that the technical specifications letter and intent i
I 20 had been violated?
I 21 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, at the same time, 22 when I learned about us not to open valves, which is 23 same thing that I learned, I placed the plant in an 24 unanalyzed condition.
In the same phone call from 25
'the licensing issue engineering, he also told me c:
O a
i l
5 41
]
1 the position paper.he was writing which stated there 2
was no legal basis for not doing what we did.
In i'
5 3
other words, there was no tech spec violation 4
f 4
associated with.this particular thing, that was his 5
opinion.
6 MR. PARTLOW:
By that we should not
'7 continue to initiate such things, that is, we should 8
.not enter action statements such as immediate 9
operator action statements or action statements 10 where it's implied that immediate operation be a 11 part of the action statement.
We should not do 12 those, because we could place the plant in an 13 unanalyzed condition.
14 At that time, I did not,believe-there to 15 be a technical specification violation at that time.
16 MR. PARTLOW:
You say today your decision 17 would have been different?
18 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
19 MR. PARTLOW:
Why?
20 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, today there's 21 several reasons.
One is I now know that the 22 analysis that was in the FSAR at that time was not 23 really well written and I misunderstood part of it, 24 whatever, and in reading the FSAR I clearly thought 25
'this was analyzed you.
I now know that wasn't the
1 42 1
4 1
case then, so I would not have done this, even if I j
2 still thought it was a tech spec compliance that it 3
was okay, even if I did think that.
4 Another reason is I have written guidance 5
from my management that says, don't do this.
6 A third thing would be the letter I 7
received from Mr. Sniezek that basically, I believe, 8
I know what the NRC's position is, that it is 9
prohibited to enter immediate opera' tor action on a p
10 voluntary basis.
I believe that to be the one 11 message I got from this letter.
So there's three l
12 reasons I would not do this today.
13 MR. LIEBERMAN:
I would like to go back j
14 to'the question Mr. Hayes asked about planning for
-15 this-outage, and you indicated that no one raised a 16 question concerning this tech spec during that l-17 planning period.
If someone had raised a question 18 concerning that tech spec during that period, 19 recognizing this hypothetical question, give me your y
l 20 state of mind and your views back then, what would 21 your course of action have been for when this 22 addition would have been done?
i 23 MR. KITCHENS:
If someone had come in
{
24 during the planning period and presented me with 25
'this issue that chemistry and outage of planning a
W
4 43 a
1 want to do this and we have this tech spec?
2 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Yes.
3 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, I thought that I
4 thought that very question myself and I'm not sure 5
of the answer.
Probably because as part of the 6
planning we probably would have either made a i
7 written. tech spec interpretation ahead of time or 8
got the tech spec changed, possibly if we still f
9 believed it to be okay, would have written a 10 procedure to cover doing it in that way.
But I 11 don't know, I can't go back and say what if this had 12 happened.
13 It may be that a similar type of decisica 14 would have been made, but it's possible that we 4
15 would have gotten more people involved and a 16 decision would have been made differently.
I'm not 17 sure.
It depends a lot on the timing of it and who 18 would have raised the question.
19 MR. DOMBY:
Mr. Lieberman, just to be 20 clear, your question obviously assumes something 21 that did not occur and, moreover, it's an improbable 22 assumption.
There were operations representatives 23 in the planning process.
It turned out that 24 apparently on the day of the specific task to be 25
' performed the issue was spotted.
And so your
- i..
o i
l i
i 44 i
i question in the first instance assumes that other 0
2 individuals trained at the plant knowledgeable of l
3 operations would have spotted this. issue and that, i
-4 in fact, did not occur.
5 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Well,'the purpose of my m
6 question was to determine whether the answer might l
7 have been perform the addition at a different mode 4
{
8 with the loops not in the condition they were in.
9 MR. KITCHENS:
That would have been 10 certainly one of the options to do that.
We may 11 have changed the sequence of performance of the 12 items.
I l
13 I'm not sure that based on the technical 14 reviews that were performed there was a specific I
15 plant condition that we thought was the optimum for 16 being able to reduce the radiation exposures, and 9
17 one of those specific conditions, I believe, 18 involved not having reactor fuel pumps running,
[
19 being on the RHR system, and having reduced i
20 inventory to such that you would control the surface
+
i 21 area that.you were actually cleaning, the fuel and 22 reactor vessel and the RHR pipe.
23 So I don't know how to speculate on the 1,
24 answer.
We may have done it in a slightly different
~
' condition prior to venting the tubes and the steam 25
]
4 45 1.
1 generator, or we may have made a tech spec 2
interpretation or asked for a change.
I'm not sure, 3
sir.
1 f
4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Bringing it back to what i
5 actually occurred, 7:00 o' clock, quarter after 7:00, i
^
6 whenever, when you were actually.considering this 7
issue, did you consider the question of stopping the 8
addition and going back to a different mode that did 9
do the addition?
10 MR. KITCHENS:
If so, only briefly.
The 11 particular question that I was addressing was 12 assuming that we are in this condition, in the mode 13 environment and the loops not filled, is it 14 acceptable from a compliance point of. view and a 15 safety point of view.
16 It may be that if I had decided no, this 17 is not acceptable, that we would have one of the 18 options would have been to refill or to do something 19 differently.
I'm not sure.
But I did not spend 20 much time the morning of October 12th, thinking of 21 what other conditions should we put the plant in or 22 should we put the plant in to perform this 23 evolution.
24 Once I,
in my mind, decided it was okay 25 to be done, and I authorized it to be done, I don'*
i 46 1
recall being asked about it after that.
6 j
2 MR. LIEBERMAN:
In your thought process, 3
did you recognize that you were dealing with it j
4 says in your submittal, dealing with an ambiguity, 5
and there was more than one way to interpret that j
6 tech spec?
7 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't understand 8
ambiguity, more-than one way to interpret that.
9 MR. LIEBERMAN:
In your response, on Page 10 4, I reviewed the FSAR to confirm what I was talking 11 about regarding a technical specification 12 ambiguity.
So?
13 MR. DOMBY:
Is this in the attachment?
14 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Yes.
It's in the top 15 paragraph there, about five lines down.
16 MR. DOMBY:
I'm sorry.
17 MR. LIEBERMAN:
It begins with the third, 18 top of the page third.
19 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes.
The ambiguity, the 20 question, the concern that was raised by the 21 operators on shift, we have this thing, this 22 operation that's scheduled to be done and our 23 procedures are written that says to do this in this 24 mode, that we have to enter an action statement on, 25
~
we weren't prepared to do that.
We didn't think of
47 1
that.
The operators had this concern or this 2
question in their mind, hey, this is what we're 3
going to do.
4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So when this was 5
presented,' I have to presume by your submittal that 6
you recognized that maybe different courses of 7
action could be taken consistent with those tech 8
specs?
9 MR. DOMBY:
I think the words stand on 10 their own, don't they, Mr. Lieberman?
I mean I 11 don't see the statement made that he was looking at 12 a variety of different courses of action or 13 different courses of action were presented to him.
14 I am afraid I don't understand the question.
l 15 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Let me try one more 16 time.
17 The statement says, resolving technical 18 specifications. ambiguity, and I'm trying to 19 understand what was a technical specification
{
20 ambiguity that you were trying to resolve.
21 MR. KITCHENS:
I was trying to resolve-22 whether or not it was acceptable to enter this j
23 action statement, action statement C of the tech 24 spec we were talking about, in order to perform the 25 chemical cleaning.
48 1
MR. LIEBERMAN:
And if it wasn't 2
acceptable to do-that, what courses of action would 3
you have had available.
4 MR. KITCHENS:
Since I didn't'come to the 5
conclusion that it'wasn't acceptable to do that, I 6.
didn't pursue any other courses of action.
7 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So you did not even 8.
consider 9
MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
If I thought it
-10 wasn't acceptable, I would have said, we can't do 11 this, and not allowed it to be done, and then we 12 would-have had to determine some other course of
.13 action.
I thought it was acceptable to do so I 14 didn't pursue any other courses of action.
15 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So you are saying when 16-you were focusing on this issue, it never even 17 entered your mind that what you eventually did might 18 not be consistent with the tech spec.
19 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, what wm yes, that 20 entered my mind.
That's the reason I did a review j
i 21 of this, to make sure that what we did was 22 consistent with the tech spec.
23 MR. LIEBERMAN:
When that entered your j
24 mind, did you consider the impact of that position?
{
25 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, I did.
I 1
)
=
- - - - _ _ - - - -..... -. ~
. ~. -. -. ~.. -
i i
i Y
49 i
-1 considered-the impact on the tech specs and I i-1 2
believed at that time that it was in compliance.
)
3 And I considered the impact on safety of the reactor j
4 as far as.the diluting the boron concentration.
i 5
MR. LIEBERMAN:
Did you consider the 6
impact on the schedule?
I i
7 MR. KITCHENS:
No.
I didn't consider the i
i l
8 impact on the schedule.
There was an impact on the 4
9 schedule by me placing the operation on hold during j.
10 that morning.
11 The whole issue of adding chemicals added j
12 time to the refueling schedule, didn't reduce the
{
13 refueling schedule.
Had we decided not to add i
14 chemicals, we would have saved some time on the 15 fueling schedule.
So it wasn't a schedule item.
It i
16 was a tech spec compliance and safety issue and 17 radiation protection issue of the personnel.
18 MR. LIEBERMAN:
If you had wanted to Skip 1
19 the chemical addition and just go forward, could you j
20 have done that under your own authority, or would I
21 you have had to check with someone else before you 22 made that decision.
23 MR. KITCHENS:
I could have done that 24 under.my own authority.
I could speculate that l
25 others in the outage,and planning department or 4
k i
\\
5 50 1
(
1 chemistry or HB'may have went -- since they did not 2
work for me at that time, they may have gone to 3
their bosses and gave recommendations that'we do i
4 something differently, but I had the full authority i
5 to say no, we are not going to add. chemicals at this a
6 time, that this is not in compliance with tech
[
7 specs, and either I could have came up with another 3,
8' alternative to add chemicals and discussed it with d
i 9
those individuals, those tech' support ~ individuals Y
j 10 that are associated.with chemistry and radiation 11-protection, or I could have just said no, we are not i
12 going to do it during'this outage.
13 We had fairly clean reactor coolant 14' systems.
I don't believe we had any fuel leak at l
.15 that time.
This wasn't a vital thing.
This wasn't 16 something we had to do, at least in my mind, it 17 wasn't something that it's critical that we have to 18 do this.
It was a good idea that we wanted to do, 19 so that we could reduce the exposures to employees 20 at the plant.
That was all.
21 I believe I.could have said, no, we are 22 not going to add these chemicals, let's proceed on 23.
with the schedule.
I believe I had the authority to 24 do that.
25-MR. LIEBERMAN:
But you are telling us I
51 1
that you did not consider changing the status of 2
water in the loops-to add chemicals at a different 3
mode?
That was not considered?
4 MR. KITCHENS:
If it was, it wasn't'--
it 5
was very minor.
I don't believe I that that was 6
a subject of our discussion.
I believe it would 7
have been a subject of discussion, if I had decided 8
or others had decided we can't do this.
9 MR. SNIEZEK:
I was_really going on Mr.
10 Lieberman's line of questioning a little bit later 11 but since he opened it up let me pursue it.a little 12 bit more.
13 Who approved the outage schedule, the 14 outage schedule?
Who was the ultimate overall 15 approver of the outage schedule?
.16 MR. KITCHENS:
You mean the final outage 17 schedule or how 18 MR. SNIEZEK:
These are the 57 things we 19 are going-to do in this outage and this is the 20 sequence we're going to do.
21 MR. KITCHENS:
Do we have an approved 22 schedule here?
23 MR. DOMBY:
Yeah.
24 MR. SNIEZEK:
Was that level above you 25' the organization?
..m.
5
~
52 a
j
-1 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, that level was 2
above me.
3~
MR. SNIEZEK:
I don't know have to know
[
4 exactly who it was.
i 5
MR. KITCHENS:
The plant general manager f'
6 at least approved that schedule who was my boss.
7 MR. SNIEZEK:
I would assume that if you i
f 8
had elected'to eliminate at that time chemical f
9 cleaning from the schedule, that same individual l
10.
that approved the schedule would have had to have i
11 been informed and gone along with the decision to I
12 eliminate from the schedule; is that right?
)
13 MR. KITCHENS:
You are probably right, 14 yes, sir, I believe that would have happened, but in 9
15 answer to Mr. Lieberman, I can't really that's 16 almost a speculation, but I'believe others, myself, 17
.I probably would have told my' boss, I deleted this f
i 18 from the schedule, but even had I not, others i
19 probably would have said, hey, boss, Skip put this 20 out that we wanted to do it.
This probably would 21 have happened, yes, sir.
22 MR. SNIEZEK:
And you would have had a 23 chance of being overturned that day?
24 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
Any time 25 something goes to my boss, if he doesn't agree with
53 1
d 1
me, he could have overturned me or decided you 2
mean me deleting this operation from the schedule?
3 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's correct.
4 MR. KITCHENS:
And he would have said, 5
no, wait, let's think about that this, that may have 6
been the time we discussed alternatives or-7 something.
I'm speculating.
8 MR. SNIEZEK:
Because in one of the 9
submittal responses, I forget which one it is, it 10 said this had to be done before the reactor coolant 11 system was opened?
12 MR. KITCHENS:
That was our plan to do it 13 before the reactor coolant system was open.
That 14 still is the way we continue to do,it.
15 MR. SNIEZEK:
Also, as part of the 16 response, I believe it was the utility's response, 17 it indicated there was a cost benefit analysis that 18 showed 35 man rem saved at a cost of a hundred and 19 something thousand dollars, I forget the exact 20 number.
21 Was there an analysis done before the 22 decision was made to do chemical change or was there 23 an after the fact analysis?
24' MR. DOMBY:
I think that should be 25 directed at the company, Mr. Sniezek.
Do you have
{
I 54 1
personal knowledge of the reasons for the company 2
MR. SNIEZEK:
The reason why I asked the 3
question is to understand if he had the knowledge of-4 the analysis.
5 MR. DOMBY:
Okay.
6 MR. KITCHENS:
I had knowledge that j
7 people were looking at this, and determining the 8
cost and the benefit,-the cost mostly being schedule 9
cost and time on the schedule.
That's basically the 10 cost of doing this, versus the benefits, which was 11 reduced radiation exposure.
12 I don't remember details of that, but I 13 know that that was done by our HP chemistry and 14 outage people.
I believe that they discussed it 15 with other plants who had performed the same 16 chemical decontamination and they believed that we 17 would reduce radiation exposure.
As far as how much 18 or how many person rem, I am not aware of that.
I 19 may or may not have even been told that at that 20 time.
21 MR. SNIEZEK:
Well, in both your response 9
22 and the utility's response you indicated that you 23 had made a decision to eliminate it.
How do you a
24 make the decision to eliminate something if you 25 don't know what you lose by eliminating it, if you
l 55 t
1 werent aware of the total person rem reduction you 2
expected from that?
3 MR. KITCHENS:
I obviously don't 4
understand your question.
j 5
10t. SNIEZEK:
If you did not know hori 6
much. person rem reduction you expected from the
{
7 chemical cleaning operation, and yet you said you
{
8 had the choice of eliminating it, if you had arrived I
1 l.
9 at that conclusion and the utility responded in a 1-
{
10 like manner, and your response to the utility, you r
l 11 said that was the your decision to go ahead with j
12 chemical injection actually lengthened the outage 1
l 13 schedule, I. don't understand how you could logically 14 arrive at a decision, if you had arrived at that 15 decision, to eliminate the chemical injection if.you o
}
16 didn't kc.ow what benefit you were eliminating as far
,1 17 as person rem exposure.
la MR. DOMBY:
I guess under the 19 hypothetical, that was originally posed that if it 20 was determined it was a noncompliance, you know, 21 could you have eliminated it from the schedule, and
)
22 I think Mr. Kitchenq said he thought he had the 23 authority that he could have done that with as you 24 ~
indicated.
25 MR. SNIEZEK:
I understand the authority,
l 56-i
'l but how do you arrive at a decision, if you don't
,1 2
know the consequences of the decis' ion?
3 MR. KITCHENS:
I believe that I knew l
4 enough of the consequences of the decision.
If 5
there was a noncompliance with tech specs involved l
6 in doing this, we would not have done it.
We may i
7 have done something slightly differently, we may 8
have used some other options that you were asking me l
9-to speculate on, but since I didn't determine it was 10 a noncompliance, I didn't go -through and determine f
i 11
'all the other options as to what to do, but there l
12 are many things that, you know, you could say, we l
l 13 don't want'to do that because we wish to lower F
14-radiation to our personnel,.that would be~in
~
15 noncompliance and I can't do that.
16 I can't authorize, let's don't do that, I
i 17 even though I know we won't be in' compliance with j
J
~
18_
tech spe7s, because I want to reduce radiation i
1 19 exposure.
There's some things that you h.
e to do j
20 and comply with tech specs is one of tL6m.
That's j
i l'
21 what I've tried to do.
1 22 MR. SNIEZEK:
Are there any other 23 questions on Mr. Kitchens' presentation itself?
If j
4 4
24 not, we can get into the responses to the questions i
i 25 we had on the responses.
i
.. - ~.-
~ - -
I 57 1
i
)
1 Let me start with some of the questions I i
2 had coming into this conference, some of which i
3 you've. answered up to now.
One of the things you 4
addressed in your presentation and I was going to l
5 explore it in my questions was your 1987 experience 6
that you referenced lin your response relative to the i
i 7
meaning of the word "immediate" in a different 8
action statement, which you covered briefly in your J
9 opening statement.
4 i
10 Help me understand, in that instance in
/
i 11 1987, did you voluntarily go into an action l
12 statement or did the plant conditions merely place.
13 you into that action statement and you did some 14 troubleshooting before you took the action specified 15 in the action statement?
16 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, I understand the 17 question.
In my mind, we voluntarily entered that 18 action statement.
I would like to explain why.
1 19 This is a different set of circumstances than 1
4' i
20 opening the valves.
When that occurred back in 21 1987, the first time that we entered the action i
l 22 statement was not voluntary, i
23 The operators were withdrawing control 1
24 bank, shut down bank rods in mode three.
When they 25 got to a certain point in the, withdrawal of rods, i
J 4
a
1 i
58 L
1 1
one of the rods lost its indication on the:-digital 2.
rod position indication-system.
They got urgent 1
3 failure alarms, et. cetera, for that rod, they 4
couldn't tell where it is.
i
{
5 They went to the procedure.
The e
6 procedure verbatim from the tech spec said, open 7
reactor trip breakers and they did so.
That's e
j-definitely not no voluntary entry, they didn't know 9
that-was going to happen.
10 We did<a lot of troubleshooting.
We j
11 procured a simulator to try to' determine what this
~
j 12 problem was.
We spent days trying to figure it i
13 out.
When we couldn't finally coul'd not find a I
i 14 bug in the system, a problem, we restarted the I
15 reactor, the problem didn't' recur.
3 16 Sometime later, a few days later, and 1-17-
.it's in the LER, in doing another reactor start-up, 18 preparing for another reactor start-up, and when i
l 19.
they pulled the rods out, the same shut down bank
~
20 B had at a slightly different location, but the same 5,
l 21 rod, digital rod position indication system failed
't 22 again the second time.
Definitely not a voluntary, j
23 they didn't expect it.
1 t
i 24 This time, instead of reaching over and "I
j 25 opening the retractor trip breakers, the operator
?
i
- i
59.
1 inserted the rod.a. step, and the problem went away.
2 The problem!didn't exactly go away, but he got 1
3' indication of the rod that it was an unusual 4
indication, so he opened the reactor trip breakers, 5
i 5
the right thing to do.
6 Okay, we troubleshot it again.
We worked 7
on it, we couldn't find it.
So we sat up some.
8 troubleshooting and rewrote our procedure and we 9
said, let's pull this rod, you know, this one rod 10-that has a problem, expect that it's going _to happen 11 again, and let's be ready for it.
This time when it 12 happens again, instead of opening the reactor trip 13 breaker, we are going to change to data A only and 14 see if the problem is still there..If it's still-15 there, we are going to change to data B only.
If 16 the problem is still there, then we.will open the 17 trip breakers, but we will have gotten some data in 18 the meantime, some troubleshooting to know which 19 data train is it on both of them, perhaps, and I 20 think we had some recorders hooked up to determine 21 is it in the coil stacks out at the reactor or was 22-it in the electronics in the cabinet, or where.
i 23 But we were expecting the problem to 24 happen again and we pulled the rod, hoping it would 25 happen so that we could find the problem and fix it,
4 l.
60 1-and it took a moment or-two, a few minutes, to ask 2
do this.
3 We changed the procedure, instead of 4.
saying if you lose indication if you get this 5
alarm and you lose indication, observe the open 6
reactor trip breakers in modes three or four or 7
five, we changed the procedure to say, check-data A 8
only and check data B only immediately.
If that 9
doesn't solve the problem, open the reactor trip
{
10 breakers.
4 11 So in my mind, you know, we discussed 12 this immediate operator action, is there any time 13 interval involved, and we believed it depended on 14 the safety significance of the. outage, how promptly 15 you would have to take action, immediate operator 16 action.
In that case we decided the significance of 17 the item -- in order to find the problem, we could 18 take a few minutes to troubleshoot before we go open
~
19 the trip breakers.
20 I'm not saying that's the same thing as 21 adding chemicals, but I will say that was my one 22 other experience of immediate operator action 23 statements and others other than me were involved in 24 this particular one, and I perhaps learned a wrong
'25 lesson that to believe that immediate does mean some i
s
61 1
specified time interval depending on the safety 2
significance of the item.
That's what I believed in 4
3 October of 1988 and I just relayed my year's 4
previous experience to you to try to help you 5
understand maybe why I made that decision.
4 6
MR. SNIEZEK:
You are using that as a 7
correlation only as far as what the word "immediate" 8
means?
9 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, only what the 10 word "immediate" means and that we had done some 11 thinking of that word "immediate" previously at 12 Vogtle.
I thought my actions in 1988 were 13 consistent with the ones we had agreed to in 1987.
14 That was the only thing.
15 MR. SNIEZEK:
Let me go back a second, in 16 your presentation you indicated I questioned 17 whether you meant the basis of the tech specs is one 18 of the questions that I had.
You indicated you read 19 the basis of the tech specs, in fact, you quoted or 20 at least paraphrased a portion of it.
The portion 21 you paraphrased on the basis was the locking closed 22 of required valves on mode 5 valves not filled 23 precludes the possibility of uncontrolled boron 24 accident in the reactor coolant system, the emphas."
25 on the word " uncontrolled" versus " controlled."
Y
1 a
1 62 l
1 make that differentiation.
2 Now, when you continue reading the 3
technical' specification basis it says, this action i
4 prevents flow of the RCS to the RCS of unborated I
5 water, a closing flow past absorption of unborated 1
j 6
water.
These limitations are consistent with1the 4
7 initial conditions assumed for the boron dilution 0
8 accident in the safety analysis.
9 You also said you read the safety 10 analysis.
The safety analysis didn't specifically a
l~
11 talk loops not' filled.
This tech ~ spec does, and it i
12' says, these limitations establish the initial l
i 13 conditions for that analysis.
)
l l
14 Did you consider that last portion of the 15:
basis of the tech spec in your decision.
16 MR. KITCHENS:
The sentence states these 17 limitations are consistent with initial conditions 18 in the safety --
19 MR. SNIEZEK:
And this action prevents 20 flow to the RCS of unborated water by closing flow 21 flaps of sources of unborated water?
22 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes.
I considered all of 23 that that you read the day that I made the 24 decision.
The last sentence, is limitations are 25 consistent with the initial conditions, I looked at
3 q,
63 J
1-the initial conditions in the FSAR and, as I
}
2 mentioned earlier,.one of.the initiators, one of the
)
3 initial conditions was failu're to secure chemical i
4 addition, which I thought erroneously' meant you can 5
perform a chemical addition, but if-you fail to 6
secure--it, if you leave it going, you would be in an 7'
uncontrolled dilution.
8 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's true?
9 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes.
10 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's true.
11 MR. KITCHENS:
That was my thinking in 12 October of 1988.
I looked at-the initial 13' conditions.
I looked at these words.
And I thought 14 that as long as it was a controlled evolution, we 15 would meet all the conditions.
We met the initial 16 conditions when we entered this mode, we have it 17 under our control.
We have administrative 18 controls.
We know how long it's going to be opened 19 and untagged and unlocked, and I really thought that 20
-those.with those' administrative controls in place, 21 we would be in compliance.
22 MR. SNIEZEK:
I understand, I 23 understand.
24 Mr. Kitchens, have you read Mr. Boles' 25 and Mr. Cash's responses?
~ ~...
a 64 1
MR. KITCHENS:
Trying to remember.
I 2
have~ read either their responses or drafts of their 3
responses.
4 MR. SNIEZEK:
Okay.
l 5
MR. KITCHENS:
Portions of them, I 4
6 believe.
7 MR. SNIEZEK:
Let me ask you a couple of 8
questions relative to their responses.
9
.MR.
KITCHENS:
May I hold on~just'a
.10 minute.
11 Mr. Sniezek, I don't recall reading their 12 responses.
But I may have, or'I may have read part 13 of them.
14 MR. SNIEZEK:
Okay.
I'm getting into my 15 command'and control. concerns at this time with some 16 of these questions.
In light of their responses, as 17 well as in light of the utility's response, I have 18 had a serious concern about the command and control 19 of the plant, at least in the 1988 time frame.
20 Let me just and some of this is 21 paraphrased.-
Let.me tell you a few things that were 22 in their responses in case you don't remember what 23 they were.
In Mr. Boles' response, he was a unit 24 shift supervisor, he indicated on Page 1 of his
,25 enclosure that the shift briefing at turnover would
J 65 4
1 have been the first instance that I knew my 2
responsibilities as shift supervisor included 3
'overall responsibility for the chemical cleaning 4
evolution.
5 On Page 4 of his enclosure, he said, I'm
~
6 paraphrasing, lack of awareness of technical 7
specification applicability was caused by my 8
inexperience and lack of guidance that I had an l
9 imprecise understanding of the term "mid loop" and
.10
" loops not filled."
i 11 I also did not fully appreciate the 12 actual condition of the reactor coolant system, that 13 is, the addition of nitrogen into the primary side 14 of the steam generators placed the pnit in a loops 15 not filled condition.
16 He also said on Page 5 of his enclosure, 17 this11s paraphrased again, not a verbatim quote, i
18 that he either did not know that nitrogen had been 19 added to the steam generators during his shift or l
20 did not recognize its significance.
He indicated he 21 did not understand the steam generator draining 4
i 22 evolution.
23 Mr. Cash indicated in his response on 24 Page 3 of his letter that he did not properly 4
l 25 understand the definition of loops not filled.
1
._.m.
66 1
In light of those types of statements, 2
some of which I paraphrased, do you believe that a
3 these two' individuals were technically ~ qualified to 4
serve in the capacities as shift supervisor and 5
operating superintendent on shift in that time 6
frame?
7 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
I believe they 8
were technically qualified.
I do believe that they
[
9 had some technical inadequacies in their knowledge 10 or experience base that I wish we had more of back-l 11 in that time frame.
I guess the only one I didn't 12 understand what_of what you-read was the first one, 13 but'I get the gist of_your question.
14 MR. SNIEZEK:
Let me go back to it.
That
~
15 was at Mr.' Boles' response.
He indicated that the 16 shift briefing at turnover would have been the first 17 instance that I knew my responsibility to shift
- 18 supervisor included overall responsibility for the 19 chemical cleaning evolution.
i 20 It sounded to me that he didn't even know 21 it was going to be done on his shift or that if it 22-was going to be done, he knew he would be 23 responsible for the overall evolution.
That's what 24 I' walked away from, from that response.
25 MR. KITCHENS:
As far as the others go,
J 67 1
1 think there was some inadequacies by some of our 2
operators as to the knowledge and definition of what 3
mid loop means.
You know, the real term in the tech 4
4 specs is loops not filled and, again, that's not 5
defined anywhere.
We have since that time defined 6
loops not filled.
That term is used primarily in 7
the sections of the tech specs that are associated 1
8 with decay removal.
9 In other words, I believe the real reason 10 loops not filled in the tech specs is associated 11 with decay removal and having decay removal systems 12 or steam generator decay removal, it looks like that 13 someone thought this would be a convenient item to 14 put this item about the valves, which happens to my 15 mind to be a shutdown type item, not a decay removal 16 item.
17 There seems to be some confusion by --
18 there seems to be by that time some confusion by the 19 operators, I think it sort of relates to that, is 20 what is loops not filled as it relates to this valve 21 manipulation versus loops not filled as it relates 22 to the decayed removal.
23 I don't believe any of the operators 24 would have thought they could use the steam 25 generator as the decay removal source if the tubes
68 j
1 had been vented with nitrogen.
But I'm not sure 2
that they understood that same thing applied to our 3
. limiting condition for LCL with the valves, but we 4
-did set up our procedures so that prior to draining, 5
prior to draining the RCS we placed those controla 6
in place.
We did that very conservatively, maybe 7
too early.
But as far as the specific question,.I 8
do believe that Mr. Boles and Mr. Cash were 9
competent senior reactor operators in that time 10 frame.
11 MR. SNIEZEK:
Would a competent shift 12 supervisor know that nitrogen had been added to the 13 steam generator during his shift or was being added 14 during his shift?
15 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, j
16 MR. SNIEZEK:
Would a competent shift 17 supervisor understand the steam generator draining 18 evolution?
19 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't know what you mean 20 by that question.
I don't know what you mean by
{
21
-- I didn't understand steam generator drainage.
22 MR. SNIEZEK:
These are Mr. Boles' 23 words.
24 MR. KITCHENS:
I can't answer that 25 MR. SNIEZEK:
You know.
t 69
+
1-MR. KITCHENS:
for Mr. Boles.
j 2
MR. SNIEZEK:
If a shift' supervisor did 3
not understand the stear cinerator draining i
4 evolution, would that be oka2 l
5 MR. KITCHENS:
If bo didn't understand 4i j
6 the overall^what we were trying to do by doing l
7 MR. SNIEZEK:
And what impact it could 8
have.on the draining evolution.
-9 MR. KITCHENS:
Over the controls in that 10 he was the one allowing him to perform this draining 11 evolution, I would say that's not acceptable.
12 MR. SNIEZEK:
Let me read a few points in 13 your conduct of operations manual,-procedure 14 10,000-C, Section 2.4, for the on shift operations 15 supervisor, who is the senior SRO on shift; is that 16 correct?
17 MR. KITCHENS:
That's right, that was the 18 term we used at back in 1988 for the senior SRO 19 of the shift.
I will read f
20 MR. SNIEZEK:
Functions 1
21 four of them are to maintain a broad perspective 22 of operational conditions affecting the safety of 23 the plant as a matter of the highest priority at all 24
- times, l
25 Another admonition or function is that he
t i
I 70 l-F 1
does not become involved in any single operation 4"
'2
.that distracts him from multiple operations when i
j 3
multiple operations are required in the control i
j 4
room.
Ensures as shift activities are conducted in i-5 a manner that. keeps personnel radiation exposures as 6
low as achievable, tours plant areas on a routine i'
7 basis, noting conditions of the plant and equipment l
8 and monitoring grounds performance.
c l
9 In light of the responsibilities of the l
10 OSOS, as specified in the procedure, was Mr. Cash's 11 focus almost exclusively with the-problems 12 associated with the diesel generator keep warm tank 13 appropriate during that time frame?
14 MR. KITCHENS:
I'm not aware that Mr.
15 Cash was focused almost exclusively on the emergency 16 diesel generator during that time frame.
If he was, 17 I would say that would not be appropriate.
18 He should have been concerned about that, 19 about the open statement that we had made during his
- 20 shift, but I do not believe he should be exclusively 21 focused on that.
22 I observed part of the end part of Mr.
23 Cash's shift, and I did not observe him to be 24 exclusively focused on that.
25 MR. SNIEZEK:
These are questions coming
i 71 i
l 1
up based on, responses that we received.from Mr. Cash 2
so I am taking what i
a-4 3
MR.- KITCHENS:
I haven't discussed their
-4
' responses ~with them or that I
'what you read to 5
me, is'the'first time that I have' heard this'.
Maybe
'6 that's why I am not as prepared to answer questions 7
out of their response.
8 MR. SNIEZEK:
Would you describe for us 9
the process you used to prepare your response to the 10 NRC?
11 MR. KITCHENS:
The response for the.
12
.' demand for information?
13 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's correct.
14 MR. KITCHENS:
I gathere,d a lot of 15 information together, the deficiency card that I 16 wrote, the memos to Mr. Bockhold, the minutes of the
{
17
. meetings from the PRB, I gathered all of that 18 information together.
l l
19 I wrote each of the sections of my 20-response at different times.
I didn't necessarily 2
21 write the first one first, the first one second.
l 22 But I thought about the questions that you asked me.
23 and tried to answer those questions as honestly and 24 as fully, you know, in as much detail as I could,
,25 based on.my knowledge and memory and also based on
._..... _ ~.... - - ~,. _.
i 72 1
information that I could find and actual tank 2
documentation that I could find.
3 I got some assistance in writing that 4'
from my counsel,.some comments and editorial type 5
assistance, but the overall writing of the thing was 6
my best attempt at answering the questions and the 7
information that you requested.
8 I sat down with a pencil and wrote 9
sections of that and had people review sections of 10 it, and rewrote it and had it typed.
11 I checked information in the attachments 12 to try to make sure I was sending the correct 13 information, almost from a quality standpoint to be 14 make sure'that I was sending you the right 15 information you asked for.
16 MR. SNIEZEK:
Were your response and that i
17 of the utility, Mr. Cash, and Mr. Boles coordinated 18 in any way?
19 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't understand what 20 you mean coordinated.
I did not participate in the
-21 writing of their responses or the writing of the 22 company's response.
23 MR. SNIEZEK:
To the best of your 24 knowledge, did anyone in the company or employed by 25 the company review all four responses for i
l 73 1
consistency?
2 MR. KITCHENS:
Any one person?
3 MR. SNIEZEK:
One or multiple persons
)
4 review the four responses for consistency.
5 MR. KITCHENS:
Let me ask.
1 1
4 6
(Discussion ensued off the record.)
7 MR. KITCHENS:
I do not know.
I'm not J
8 aware of any one person or groups of persons who 9
read them all for consistency.
10 MR. SNIEZEK:
Do you have any
\\
11 information, portrayal to this matter, of which you 12 are aware which is not addressed in your response?
13 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
1 i
14 MR. SNIEZEK:
I have one final question:
15 Was there a procedure for chemical injection in both 16 five loops not filled?
17 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
There's a i
la chemistry department procedure that was a guiding 19 procedure for their activities during the outage and 20 at different plant conditions and had them initiate 21 various procedures, and there was a procedure that 22 was developed for the outage, and one section of it 4
23 was for this chemical decontamination that I believe 24 had it done at after we had drained down to the mid 25 loop condition.
. ~. - ~
... - - ~ ~
74 1
1 So there was a chemistry department 2
procedure, I was
--.in 1988, I had not seen that 3
procedure or read that procedure.
I knew that the a
4 chemistry department had made such a procedure, but 5
I did not know the details of it.
There was one, I 6
believe.
7 MR. SNIEZ3K:
It's my understanding it 8
was not reviewed by the PRB or operations or 9
approved by the plant manager.
Does that comport 10 with your understanding?
11 MR. KITCHENS:
To the best of my 12 knowledge, that's true.
I don't know that the PRB 13 or plant manager reviewed it.
I don't know.
14 MR. SNIEZEK:
Can you explain why that's 15 okay?
16 MR. KITCHENS:
We have I don't know if 17 I can explain why that's okay, that particular i
18 item.
But in general, departmental procedures we I
19 have about 20 well over 2,000 procedures at the 20 plant and for the PRB and the plant manager to have 21 to review them all would be would be very 22 difficult.
But we do have rules and administrative I
f 23 controls and requirements for which ones do, and 24 procedures also are supposed to get 25 interdepartmental reviews.
75 1
This particular one, I would have thought 2
again in hindsight, this particular procedure which l
3 is sort of like a guide for chemistry for what they I
4 do'during refueling, should have gotten some 5
interdepartmental review.
And I don't have any 6
knowledge that it did or did not.
But if that's I
'7 what you are asking me, I would have thought someone l.
8 other than just chemistry would have reviewed it and 1
9 gave a few comments for the plant conditions that l
10 they were going to do that.
11 MR. SNIEZEK:
Are'you aware of other 12 procedures in the plant today that are as 13 significant as this one which include the 14 manipulation of valves, potential boron dilution 15 paths, that are just departmental procedures and not I'
16 getting PRB and plant manager review or 17 interdepartmental review?
j 18 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
We recently l
19 well, in the last y e a r',
have tried to improve our 20 procedures and our procedure review program and 21 improve our interdepartment reviews.
We looked at a 22 lot of these procedures in a programmatic way to try 23 to determine which ones need interdepartmental 24 review and which one would need plant review board 25 type review or plant manager, and I believe that we i
i l
4
76 1
strengthened our program over the last year or so in 2
that area.
3 I am not aware of any procedure right now
)
4 that makes mode changes or performs, you know, i
j 5
integrated type plant evolutions that don't get
[
6 interdepartmental reviews one way or the other.
I'm 7
not aware of it.
8 MR. SNIEZEK:
That concludes my l
j 9
questions.
f 10 MR. EBNETER:
Just one, I guess.
l-11 This tech spec _that we're discussing, i
I 12~
certainly very positive tech spec, it specifically 13 says locked, secured, and so does the basis.
.14 Are there any other tech specs that are 15 in the plant that are this specific that you use 16
.this philosophy or we can do it any way as long as 17 we have 15 minutes to review it?
18 MR. KITCHENS:
Are there any other that I 4
19 would use as philosophy on today?
20 MR. EBNETER:
At that time, was it widely 21 used philosophy?
22 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
I.'m not I'm 23 not sure that I do understand your question.
Are 24 you asking would you ask it one more time, 25 please?
77 1
MR. EBNETER:
The issue to me on this 2
tech spec is not whether it's immediate, which means 3
15 minutes or four hours or anything else.
It's the 4
fact that the tech spec is very specific.
It says 5
lock and secure.
Yet there's a philosophy 6
prevailing here that, well, don't worry about that, 7
legally we can interpret to mean 15 minutes and we 4
8 can bypass the tech spec, is that true?
Is that the 9.
philosophy or was that the philosophy at Vogtle?
10 MR. KITCHENS:
Other than the i
11 MR. EBNETER:
Put it a little 1
12 differently, does the legal, specific legal 13 interpretations take precedence over safety at i
14 Vogtle.
15 MR. KITCHENS:
No, absolutely not.
16 MR. EBNETER:
Now.
17 MR. KITCHENS:
Now or then.
18 MR. EBNETER:
Now or then, that's all I 19 would ask.
20 MR. PARTLOW:
Skip, you've described how 21 in reaching your decision on the morning of the 12th 22 of October, that it was based upon your own 23 research, your own experience and your counsel with 24 others, namely Mr. Marsh, a more experienced 25 operations manager _than you, and that that was one
)
78 1
element that led to'your competence, his speaking of
~2 immediate seems to mean 15-minutes, and so1forth.
3 Now, have you read the company's response 4
to the NRC?-
5 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, I've read-the 6
company's response.
7 MR. PARTLOW:
As I read that response, 8
Mr. Marsh is now somewhat disavowing of being a part 9
of those events that morning.
And'he doesn't really 10 remember the details that maybe he was talking about-11 immediate in another context than you were talking i
12 about it,'and that even though opening those valves 13 would not represent a violation of the tech specs, i
14 doing that, he says now, would not be a good idea.
i 15 What do you think, have you talked to Mr.
16 Marsh personally since this came up?
How do you 17 feel about that, that here one of the people who you 18 say was part of this thing you relied upon their 19 counsel now tends to disavow that?
20 MR. KITCHENS:
I have not talked to Mr.
21 Marsh in any detail on this.
And early 1989 I'm 22 sorry, get my -- early 1990, Walter Marsh called me, 23.
telephoned me, and told me that someone from the NRC l
24 office of investigations had called and wanted to 25
' talk to him about something gnd he didn't know what i
i
=
79 1
it was.
2 I have not been advised by our 3
investigators, but I did have some idea of what it 4
was, and I purpos;ely didn't talk with Walter Marsh 5
about that, beesuse I didn't want anybody to say 6
that I tried to influence Walter in any way or f
7 anything, and just didn't seem like the right thing 8
to do.
]
9 I have not talked to Walter about the 10 events of that day, probably since 1988.
Walter 11 Marsh was there.
Walter Marsh was in my office, and i
12 Walter Marsh, when we were discussing immediate, 13 stated at another plant that he worked at the 14 question of what does immediate mean came up, and 4
15 for consistency they established a policy that 16 immediate means at their plant to initiate their 17 reaction within 15 minutes.
18 MR. PARTLOW:
Did he ever say to you.
I 19 don't think this would be a good idea, Skip?
8 20 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir, he never said 21 that to me.
22 MR. McCOY:
If you would like to address 23 the issue of the company response there and what was!
24 intended, I do not believe the way you characterized 4
4 25 that was what I intended in the response that I
. - -.. ~.
80 1
wrote.-
I did not have 2
MR. SNIEZEK:
Well, excuse me, why don't i
3 we get into that this afternoon in the discussion by 4.
the utility?
5 MR. PARTLOW:
That's all.
6 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Skio, operations 7
procedure 12,006-C has to do with closing certain 8
valves,-valves at issue.
Was that procedure 9
relevant to the tenant closure issue?
i l
10 MR. DOMBY:
Can I see that procedure?
I 11 MR. LIEBERMAN:
- Sure, a
- 12 MR. SNIEZEK:
Is that the clearance
.13 procedure?
14 MR. KITCHENS:
No, I think,I know, but I 15 want to make sure what procedure I'm looking at.
16 I've got one.
l 17 MR. DOMBY:
What is the, Skip?
18 MR. KITCHENS:
Exhibit 6,
is that the 19 same one, revision nine that you are looking at?
20 MR. SNIEZEK:
Is that 12,006-C unit j
21 cooled down to mode shutdown, that's the exhibit.
22 MR. KITCHENS:
We have revision nine n
23 which was the revision in effect in October of
'88.
24 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Was that procedure 4
l i
25
'followed in October of '88?
i
p 4
81 1
MR. KITCHENS:
To the best of my 2
knowledge, it was, yes, sir.
3 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Does that procedure 4
authorize opening the valves in the condition that 5
you were in?
6 MR. KITCHENS:
I'm not aware that this 7
procedure authorizes opening the valves or not.
It 8
doesn't say anything about opening these valves i
9 after you've made the change into it.
10 What this procedure does do is provide 11 administrative controls for making sure that we have 12 administrative controls in place when we prior to 13 entering the condition where the limiting condition 14 fact for operation is applicable.
15 In other words, to make mode changes or 16 to make changes into plant conditions where tech 17 specs are applicable, we have controls in these unit 18 operating procedures.
This is one of the unit 19 operating procedures.
This particular one is for 20 cooling down the plant to go to cold shutdown.
If 21 you will notice in it, there are many times where we 22 make things to do that we do it prior to going to a 23 certain mode that's required by the tech specs, 24 that's what they do.
25 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So that doesn't mean on-
82 l
1 ycu are in that mode, you can't open a valve that 2
you have closed before you entered the mode?
z 3
MR. KITCHENS:
I don't understand the 1
4 question.
5 MR. LIEBERMAN:
As you entered a mode or 6
condition, you have to have a particular valve 7
locked, you could later on open a valve, seems to me i
i 8
that 9
MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, you could.
One 10 of the very -- another basic tenet in the tech 11 specs, you know, tech spec 3.0.4 doesn't allow you 12 to do that.
13 Entering into an operational mode or 14 other specified condition shall not be made unless 15 the conditions for the LCO are met without reliance 16 on provisions contained in the action statement.
17 So if you have an LCO, you have to meet 18 the LCO before you go into the mode where it's 19 needed unless there's a specific statement that says 20 3.0.4 is not applicable.
Many times, though, once 21 you are in that mode, if you need to enter the 22 action statement, you can do that.
23 We can't enter mode one with many things 24 out of service, but once we're in mode one, if we 25 have the need to do maintenance or anything else on
t 83 1-it, we can enter that and we do.
And I think other 2
plants do.
3 So this is simply a compliance with the
.4 tech specs the way we believe we're supposed to 5
ccnply-with them.
6 MR. LIEBERMAN:
So this procedure did not 7
enter into the decision on how that tech spec should 8
be interpreted or whether the valves should be 9
opened and closed at various time periods?
10 MR. KITCHENS:
No, sir.
This procedure 11 just insured that we had the plant in the right 12 initial conditions and we had-administrative 13 controls over the valves, but as far as the decision i
14 made to open these valve after we,were already in 15 this mode, this procedure in itself didn't enter 16 into my decision.
17 I knew we had this procedure and I knew 18 that it provided those controls.
We also have a 19 surveillance procedure that ensures we have these J
20 controls in place.
21 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Let me just ask one or 22 two more questions concerning your dec?Alonal 23 process on that date, because obviously we on this 24 side of the table have to make a decision, how we 25 view how you acted on that day and exercised
-.m c.
84 1
judgment.
And I realize people have to make 2
decisions all the time, and some decisions involve 3
issues which are black and white, and other I
4 decisions. involve shades of gray where you have to 4
5 choose between alternatives.
6 In this case, you had to interpret this 7
tech spec, was that an issue of shades of gray where 8
there were alternatives to consider or did you see
{
9 it as pretty clear that there's rea'lly only one
{
10 interpretation?
4 il MR. KITCHENS:
Well, initially, I saw it 12 as a shade of gray.
When I was first asked about 4
l 13 it, I wasn't sure.
It seemed to be in the gray 14 area.
So that's why I placed the operation on 11 1
15 hold.
After I did look into it, I did what I L
16 thought was a thorough review, I came away with the J
17 feeling that this is not gray, this-is the right 18 thing to do.
We're in compliance with the tech 19 spec.
l 20 I didn't walk away with any bad feeling i
21 that, hey, this might be second guessed or this i
22 isn't a good decision or anything like that.
Once I i
23 had looked at the spec and the basis and the FSAR 1'
24 and discussed it with others, I didn't think it was 25 a gray item, so to_ speak.
1.
l
_.-_.__.m 85
)
4 1
MR. LIEBERMAN:
But during the thought J
\\
2 process as you were getting to that decision, I 3
think you said earlier you really didn't give much i
4 consideration to a reading of the tech spec that E
5 would indicate that you couldn't do it in this mode 6
and, therefore, if you wanted'to have a chemical 1
7 addition, you would have-to stop, refill, and then
[
8 add chemicals, that'you didn't give a lot of thought 9
to that?
{
10 MR. KITCHENS:
If I had thought it was t
11 not acceptable to do, I would have-decided not to do i
12 it.
I would not have allowed it to happen.
Then we 13 would have gone into what are we going to do now, 14 what are the alternatives.
s 15 It's not just as simple as and I'm not 4
16 sure really what your question was, but when you are 3
i, 17 in a loops not filled condition and the steam i
18 generator tubes have been drained, it's not f-19 just a matter of filing back up again.
We are 20 required to run reactor j oint pumps, fill and vent 1
21 the RCS.
22 You know, that would have been an option j
23 if we had said, this is not acceptable to do, but i
24 you know, in thinking about it now, I didn't think 25
'about it then, but thinking about it now, that one
a i
86 1
doesn't if this happened and we decided we l
2.
weren't going to do this today, that probably would 3
be a good option, because in doing all the of 4
manipulations to get you back in loops fill, you are 5
probably going to add just as much radiation 6
exposure to the employees that have to do this as 7
you are going to gain by the chemical cleaning, so 8
it doesn't make sense that we would have done that 9
option.
10 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Is it fair to say that 11 you knew the result you wanted to get, that meaning 12 you wanted tc be able to do it in conditions you
)
13 were at, and then you confirmed that result and then 14' proceeded accordingly?
15 MR. KITCHENS:
No, that's not correct.
I 16 didn't know any decision that I wanted to make.
All 17 I wanted to do was a thorough enough review to be 18 able to make the_right decision.
19.
I didn't have a reason to want to say, we this is okay to do this, therefore, I'm going to 20 21 stick my neck out and say it's okay to do it.
That 22 didn't come into play.
I didn't have I don't 23 know the right' word, but I don't think of being 24 motivated to say, yeah, let's do this, this is okay 25
'let's think of all the good reasons why it's okay.
i
_. -. ~.-.
87 t
1 That's absolutely not true.
I 2
MR. LIEBERMAN:
No, I didn't mean it like 1
3 that.
What I meant was.you had a desire to be able 4
to meet the schedule to do what the~ planners had 4
5 planned, and.you proceeded to do your analysis.and j
6 you became comfortable that you could do it, and you 7
proceeded doing it.
{
{
8 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, I guess so, if you i
i 9
say it that way.
I thought that performing this 10 chemical addition was something that we needed to do 4
11 because it was had been thought.out in order to 12 reduce people's radiation exposure, but again, I 3
13 didn't think of it as a vitally important thing.
I 14 definitely didn't think of it as something that we i
\\
15 would consider, you know, going into any gray areas 2
{
16 of compliance or safety for.-
It wasn't that i[
17 important to be done.
18 I would liked to have done the chemical 19 cleaning because it had been cleaned and others had j
20 thought it was good to do but not at the expense of i
21 safety or at the expense of compliance with the tech 22 specs.
'3
'l 23 MR. LIEBERMAN:
And so the impact of 2.4
'doing it, reading the tech spec the way NIC is
[
25
' reading the tech spec, just was not considered at 4
1 i
J
+
88 1
all?
2 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't understand your 3
question'.
4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Well, NIC-is reading the i
i
.5 tech spec that you were prohibited from doing what 6
you were doing.
The impact of that, if you wanted 7
to have the chemical addition as you just said, i
8 would have taken a lot of extra effort, the thought i
l 9
of that extra effort was not considered at all in
{
10 your thought process?
l 11 MR. KITCHENS:
The thought of the extra l
12 effort was not.
The question of whether this was p
13 allowed or prohibited or not was considered but, you 14 know, the question of does this action statement and 15 this LCO can we use this LCO, this action 16 statement while we are in this LCO performing this 17 cleaning, whether they are in conformance with tech 18 specs or not, i.e.,
was considered.
Since I didn't 19 think it was I am not aware of us going.and 20 thinking of other options and thinking of other ways 21 to do chemical cleanin'gs.
That would have been the 22 obvious next thing.
23-If we had said, no, we can't do this in 24 this particular plant condition, but since I thought 25 it was okay to do, and obviously other people
l 4
89
)
1 thought it was acceptable and not prohibited to do, l'
2 we did it, we didn't need to spend a lot of time 3
discussing.our alternatives.
'4 MR. LIEBERMAN:
Now, you didn't spend any 5
time considering other alternatives?
}
6 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't believe so, I j.
7 don't recall that we did.
8 MR. LIEBERMAN:
I have no further i
i 9
questions.
[
10 MR. SNIEZEK:
Let me ask a follow-up to 5
l
]
11 Jim Lieberman's question.
I
- 12 Putting yourself back in the October '88 13 time ~ frame, not today's time frame, in your position i.
14 at that time, was it your practice,,if you had a j
15 question on tech spec interpretation, to discuss it 16 with the resident at all as'a general rule?
i 3-17 MR. KITCHENS:
Back in the 1988 time 18 frame?
19 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's right.
20 MR. KITCHENS:
As a general rule, yes.
J 21 MR. SNIEZEK:
Was it discussed with the 22-resident inspector in this instance?
23 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't, I don't 4
24 specifically recall discussing this with the 25 resident inspector.
I believe the resident i
t_
1 4
90 I
1 inspector knew of this.
I believe one was present
'during our outage meeting where we discussed we were 2
L 3
making this interpretation.
The resident
.4 inspectors, at that time and still today, get copies 5
of our' operating logs, and based on the questions t
}
6 they'ask me, each day, and weekly basis, I believe
]
7 they read them very thoroughly.
8 I don't believe there's any doubt that 9
the resident inspectors knew that we entered this a
action statement-to add the chemicals.
If there 10 i-11 was,-it's because they didn't they weren't 12 listening.
I didn't'make an effort to go and say to 3
j '
13 any of the resident inspectors, I want to make sure i
14 you concur with this item.
I thought they knew i,-
15 about it and they did concur.
16 On some items, today more than in 1""8, 17 much more so today, for.some times we go and talk to 18 the resident inspectors about items like this, or 19 other items that are compliance or safety issues 20 just to tell them what we're planning to do an 21 sometimes we get good feedback from them that helps 22 us to make a decision, back in the 1988 time frame 23 we did that and probably not enough.
I don't 24 believe we did enough of that, but I believe the 25 resident inspectors knew about this particular
-.~.. _ -. -. - - - -
i 91 e
1 item.
I don't remember them voicing any a
2 disagreement with the decision to me at that time.
3 MR. SNIEZEK:
That's why I wanted to put 4
it.back in the 1988 time frame and not today's time l
5 frame.because I know there is a difference.
6_
MR. HAYES:
I just have one question,.are 7
you saying our resident inspactors then attended or 8
possibly attended the 7:00 a.m. meeting on that 9
date, where you went from one building to another?
j 10 I think that was'your testimeny.
11 MR. KITCHENS:
That's correct.
12 MR. HAYES:
And the resident inspectors 13 were there during that planning or outage meeting i
14 was concerned as you recall?
15 MR. KITCHENS:
In this particular one I 16 can't say for absolutely sure thero was a resident i
17 inspector there.
Normally at least one of them will 18 come to those meetings that we have, they're almost 19 always there.
20 MR. HAYES:
Thank you.
21 MR. SNIEZEK:
Anybody else at the table l
22 have anything, anybody else from the NRC have any 23 questions that you want to raise?
24 MR. McGURREN:
My name is Henry J.
25'
'McGurren, I am with OJC enforcement.
And I think
4 i
4 1
92 1-the let me just follow up initially on something' 2
that Mr. Hayes just asked about the 7:00 a.m.
3 meeting and I assume that's Central time; is that t
l 4
correct?
5-MR. KITCHENS:
No, that's Eastern time.
6 MR. McGURREN:
The 7:00 a.m.
meeting was 7
Eastern time?
8 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, that's correct.
9 MR. McGURREN:
And it says here in your 10 response, on Page 2, that at the 7:00 a.m.
meeting i
11 the chemical addition evolution came up for 12 discussion.
And I think you indicated that there 13 might have been an NRC representative at that 14 meeting; is that correct.
15 MR. KITCHENS:
That's possible, I think 16 that's very possible.
17 MR. McGURREN:
At that meeting, did you 18 discuss the concern about the consistency with the 19 tech spec.
20 MR. KITCHENS:
At that meeting, this item 21 came-up.
It was a scheduled item to be done on that 22 shift.
And we, either myself or Mr. Hopkins, maybe 23 both, gave the status that that item is on hold 24 pending a review of the tech spec for compliance.
25 And that was we didn't go,into all the basis and
i 93 1
the FSAR in that meeting.
2 That was a scheduled meeting.
It was 3
made clear that item is not proceeding, it's on hold 4
because we're looking at there's a tech spec 5
involved here and we're looking at it.
That was the 6
extent of it.
7 MR. McGURREN:
Then your response goes on 8
to state that after this meeting, and I believe i
9 consistent with what you said today, you met with 10 Mr. Marsh and Mr. Hopkins?
11 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
)
12 MR. McGURREN:
And based upon the i
13 discussion that followed, you made your decision 14 whether to continue the addition or not.
Looking i
15 back on that decision, do you think it, that you did 16 just discussing Mr. Marsh and Mr. Hopkins, do you 17 think that was prudent, and I mean that in terms was 18 there someone else that you could have discussed 4
19 this with, for instance, the planning committee or 20 maybe someone above you in the making of this kind 21 of decision?
4 22 MR. KITCHENS:
Well, that is a good 23 question.
Thinking back in 1988, back in 1988, I 24 was the operations manager, and has been stated in 4
25 here and I think in my response, the highest ranking ;
'1 S
4
.. ~ ~.. -
4
+
94 1
manager that was licensed.
We had made an 2
organizational change earlier in the year and were f
3 in the process of making an organizational change.
l 4
for our offsite technical support.
So we weren't as 5
strong as we are now in the area of licensing l
6 support, technical support for issues.
7 I don't know who in 1988 I would have 8
called other than probably Jim Swartsfeger, who I 9
did call a couple of days after the fact.
I did not j
i 10 call Jim that day.
I don't know if we attempted to
'11 call Jim or not.
I don't remember, but I did talk 12 with him.
13 As far as my boss, yeah, I wish now that 14 I had discussed it with my boss or my. boss's boss, 15 but I didn't at the time.
My boss at that time was 16 not a licensed SRO and frankly wasn't real 17 knowledgeable of the technical specifications.
He 18 was a very good boss, very technically good person 19 and good manager, but normally when we talked about 20 technical specification issues, I gave him advice, 21.
not the other way around.
22 His boss I think was much more competent 23 and, you know, I wish now in hindsight I had asked 24 their. opinion.
25 MR. McGURREN:
Just for the record, can
95 1
you tell us, who was your boss and who was his boss, 2
when you say your boss?
3 MR. KITCHENS:
My boss was Mike Bemmell 4
and his boss was George Bockhold who is the plant 5
general manager.
6 MR. McGURREN:
In some of the questions 7
earlier asked by Mr. Hayes, you mentioned that you 8
had a representative that was on the planning 9
committee, is that. correct, that you had had some 10 discussion?
11 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes.
You referred to this 12 as a committee.
I am not sure there's really a 13 committee, but there's a group of people that worked 14 on the outage, the preparation for,the outage, and I 15 had a person in operations who was a licensed senior 16 operator working for me who provided input for the l
17 preparation of the outage and he helped me to get 18 the operations department ready for the outage, yes, 19 sir.
20 MR. McGURREN:
What was his name?
21 MR. KITCHENS:
His name was Ricky Barlow.
22 MR. McGURREN:
Mr. Barlow.
Did it ever 23 occur to you on this morning of October the 12th, to 24 talk to Mr. Barlow about this tech spec?
~
25 MR. KITCHENS:
I believe Mr. Barlow was 4
i l
{
96 1
1 in our 7:00 o' clock meeting.
}
2 MR. McGURREN:
In your response, you i
3 don't mention his name.
4 MR. KITCHENS:
I didn't mention the names i.
5 of any of the persons in the 7:00 o' clock preshift 6
status meeting.
There's probably two dozen people l
7 there.
8 MR. McGURREN:
But did you discuss this 9
problem with him?
10 MR. KITCHENS:
I didn't, I don't recall 11 discussing it in detail looking at the basis and the 12 FSAR with him.
-No, sir, I don't.
13 MR. McGURREN:
Now, since he was in the 14 planning of this evolution, he was involved in this, 15 do you think it was prudent that you did not discuss 16 this with him?
17 MR. KITCHENS:
The only discussion I 18 really would have been prudent to have with him 19 would have been like a little coaching session to 20 say, Ricky, did you know about this and why didn't 21 you bring this up, you know, earlier and that kind 22 of stuff.
But, you know, you wouldn't do that in a 23 meeting in front of a bunch-of people.
24 MR. McGURREN:
I'm sorry, I didn't hear 25 that.
97 1
MR. KITCHENS:
I say but that's not the 2
kind of discussion you would have in a meeting in 3
front of a bunch people.
Ricky Barlow was not a 4
tech spec expert.any more than myself, Mr. Hopkins, 5
the others that participated in the decision, you 6
know, helping me to decide to make the decision.
7 So discussing it with Ricky Barlow simply 8
because he was on the committee to plan the outage I 9
don't I can't really agree with what you say 10 about it being prudent or imprudent.
I don't 11 understand that question.
12 MR. McGURREN:
I understand that.
13 MR. KITCHENS:
This was a scheduling 14 person that attempted to schedule things.
He did 4
15 bring several questions to me during the planning of 4
i 16 the outage.
17-(Discussion ensued off the record.)
18 MR. McGURREN:
Are you finished?
I think 19 you were in the middle of a sentence.
1 20 MR. KITCHENS:
You know, Ricky Barlow was 21 a big help to me getting planning for the outage, l
22 but he was a newly licensed SRO, subordinate to me, 23 with not as much experience as me.
So on the 24 morning of October 12th, I don't understand, I mean, 25 I don't believe that he would have been a crucial i
I l
98 1
person to get in touch with concerning this item.
2 MR. McGURREN:
Even though he was 3
involved with i
4 MR. DOMBY:
I think he 4
j 5
MR. McGURREN:
-- this planning 6
evolution.
7 MR. DOMBY:
I think he answered your 8
question.
9 MR. McGURREN:
That's all you have on 10 that?
1 11 MR. KITCHENS:
That's all.
12 MR. SNIEZEK:
Any other questions from 13 the staff?
14 MR. MATTHEWS:
Have one quick question.
15 My name is David Matthews in the office of Nuclear 16 Reactor Regulations.
Skip, in the other submittals 17 which we have available to us, there was a great 18 deal of discussion in those submittals with regard i
19 to the confusion associated with' loops not filled, 20 as adverse to mid loop operation.
Yours didn't 21 appear to reflect that same level of conclusion.
22 Putting'yourself back in the 1988 time 23 frame, was there any indecision on your part as to 24 plant status or the distinction that can be drawn 25 between loops not filled and mid loop operation?
99 1
MR. KITCHENS:-
Back in the 1988 time 2
frame,.I don't believe I had any reservations about 3
the fact that we were in a loops not filled 4
condition or that we would shortly be in a loops not 5
filled condition during the time I made my tech spec 6
decision.
'7 I believe that I knew, as did obviously 8
at least one other SRO oncoming person, that you 9
would be in a loops not filled condition if the I
10 steam generator tubes were not filled with water.
11 I will say I did not know what level in i
12 the reactor itself was assumed in the analysis.
And 13 that's why we put in the procedure to put these 14 administrative controls in place prior to draining 15 down out of the pressurizer.
16 On September 26, one additional thing I 17 learned from my telephone conversation _with Mr.
18 Stringfellow, is that he did tell me there was a 19 specific amount of water which related to a specific 20 elevation in the RCS by which the analysis was made, 21 and we changed our tech spec interpretation to, back 22 in, you know, in the spring or maybe it was in 23 February, or so, to include that.
But as far as 24 me 25 MR. MATHEWS:
To be a clear line of
4 100 i
i i
demarcation of loops not filled?
2 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
I made a 3-written tech spec interpretation on what loops not 4
filled meant after the Unit 1 outage.
We later 5
changed that when I got this additional information 6
and I provided it to Mr. Wordsbold who was at that i
7 time the manager, but as far as in 1988, the morning 8
of 1988 I made my decision assuming we were in the 9
proper conditions for'being in loops not filled.
10 MR. MATTHEWS:
Okay, thank you.
11 MR. SNIEZEK:
Are there any other 12 questions that are very important for us to know the 13 answer to so we can make a decision on this case?
14 MR. LUEHMAN:
I have two questions.
Jim 15 Luehman, Office of Enforcement.
16 One question is you said you consulted 17 with Mr.
or that the question was raised by the 18 two SROs on shift, was there also any consultation 19 with or do.you remember the positions of the reactor 20 operators on these shifts as to the their 21 interpretation of the technical specification at 22 issue?
23 MR. KITCHENS:
I don't recall any 24 discussion with reactor operators or consultation 25 with reactor operators during the morning of October m
l 101 2
1 12th.
I probably,.as the operations manager, talked 2
to them that morning and said hello and looked at 3
their boards, but I don't recall this tech spec 4
interpretation issue being talked about with them, I
5 not in my involvement.
6 I did talk about it with the on shift 7
operations supervisor, very probably with the shift j
j 8
supervisors, although I don't remember my 9
discussions with the shift supervisor other than I 10 remember being in the control room looking at the b
11 tech specs.
12 To answer your question, I don't believe 4
13 I had any discussions with the reactor operators 14 associated with this decision.
15 MR. LUEHMAN:
Okay, just one other 16 question for clarification.
Earlier you talked 17 about a chemistry department procedure.
Now, my 18 understanding of that procedure is it's very general 19 in nature, is that that's not the procedure that 20 would be used that was used by the operators to 21 actually put the chemicals into the plant; is that 22 correct?
23 MR. KITCHENS:
Which procedure are you 24 talking about?
25 MR. LUEHMAN:
What I'm saying, earlier
4 102 1
you referred to a general chemistry department i
1 2
procedure.
3 MR. DOMBY:
Can we get that?
4 MR. LUEHMAN:
I'm asking specifically, is 4
5 that the procedure, is that just a 1
6 MR. KITCHENS:
There was a general i
7
. chemistry department procedure that gave that was 8
basically an outline for when the various functions 9
that chemistry would perform during the outage when i
10 they would be performed.
That was the one I was i
11 discussing.
i 12 There's another specific system operating i
j 13 procedure that the operators go by to add chemicals.
4 14 MR. LUEHMAN:
Okay.
15 MR. KITCHENS:
And there's~also a 16 specific chemistry procedure associated within that.
17 MR. LUEHMAN:
Then my question is with 18 relation to the last two procedures, could those 19 procedures be used and were they used in the 20 conditions the plant was in, loops not filled, to 21 add the chemicals on October 12th and 13th?
22 MR. KITCHENS:
I believe they could be 23 used and, to the best of my knowledge, were.
But I 24 don't I wasn't there.
I've looked at~
those 25
' procedures and the procedures that were in effect in i
i
i 103 1
88 didvnot.have,anye,11mitationey g any bitVYroiild have procluded,theize.beinge 2
usede 3
duri g t frame g
4 MR. SNIEZEK:
Is there one more 5
question?
6 MR. MERSCHOFF:
One more.
Skip, Ellis 7
Merchoff of region two, is violation of a tech spec 8
reportable?
9 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir, that's a i
10 condition prohibited by tech spec.
11 MR. MERSCHOFF:
Did the PRB then in 1989 12 conclude that even though this manipulation put you 13 in an unanalyzed condition the tech specs were not 14 violated?
15 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes, sir.
The PRB did 16 consider three particular things.
There's a lot of 17 things you have to consider for reportability.
18 One of the questions that was raised was 19 were we in an condition prohibited by tech specs, 20 and we believe that we were not in a condition 21 prohibited by tech specs, at least at that time.
22 And the PRB voted their reportability after having 23 considered that.
24 MR. MERSCHOFF:
Thank you.
25 MR. EBNETER:
This is the end of our
_ _. ~ _
t 104 1
1 presentation.
Do you want to make a closing i
2 statement, if you sense it's appropriate to do so?
3 MR. KITCHENS:
Yes.
I would like to, if 4
you would allow.me to.
t 5
We welcome the opportunity to discuss l
6 these matters with you.
Nuclear safety is of 7
paramount importance in the work that we do at Plant j
8 Vogtle and compliance with the tech specs is one way 9
mandatory way that we ensure nuclear safety.
10 I want you to know I feel a moral l'
obligation for certainly plant in-service 12 operations.
I accept' responsibility for the actions
{
f 13 that were taken in October 1988.
I provided 1,
14 approval to open the chemical addition valves, but I 15 did so only after careful review and consultation 1
16 with others.
I was not aware of any disagreement by.
17 the operators on shift.
i 18 This evolution was well documented and 19 discussed in meetings with many people present.
The 20 first potential concern arose a year later, I 21 initiated the deficiency card to have the issue 22 reviewed for reportability.
It was reviewed by our 23 licensing section in the corporate office, by the 24 nuclear safety and compliance department and by my 25
' boss, all. independently of me.
The plant review
4 e
i' J
I i
105
)
1
. board also reviewed this issue, and these parties 2
determined no violation occurred.
3 The basic' issue at hand is whether or not it's permissible to voluntarily. enter a tech spec 4
i-
'5 statement that has immediate as the specified time i
6 range.
I believe that's one basic issue.
7 I now understand, based.on our corporate 4
8 office position, that we should not voluntarily i
9 enter an immediate operator action statement.
It t.
i 10 could put.the plant in an unanalyzed condition.
i j
11 I also now know that the analysis for 12-this boron dilution event that - was in effect in 13-October of 1988 did not assume that the chemical j
14 addition valves would be opened for short periods of 3
15 time.
i l
16 In hindsight, the decision I made in J
17 1988, in October 1988, was wrong.
However, based on j
18 the information available to me at that time, 19 including the FSAR description, I believe the 20 decision was made carefully with concern for reactor 21 safety _and concern for compliance..
I assure'you 22 there was no willful tech spec violation.
I would 23 not allow that to happen, I will not allow that to 24 happen.
8 25 Now, I r.ecognize NRC's position and I
l s2 l'
106 I
readily accept that it's not permissible to 2
voluntarily enter such an immediate action i
3 statement.
That's my statement.
l 4
MR. EBNETER:
All right.
Thank you, Mr.
5 Kitchens, for coming and personally, I suppose, and, 6
Mr. Domby, I thank you.
We will, if you so request, I
7 provide you with a copy of the transcript, when it 8
becomes available we will provide it.
We will 9
provide notice to the PDR if we issue any 10 enforcement action.
Other than that, this 11 conference is now closed.
12 (Conference concluded at 11:45 a.m.)
l 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25
-