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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION
*****
DISCUSSION OF FULL POWER OPERATING
LICENSE FOR WATTS BARR
*****
PUBLIC MEETING
*****
U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
One White Flint North
Rockville, Maryland
Wednesday, January 31, 1996
The Commission met in open session, pursuant to
notice, at 2:00 p.m., Shirley A. Jackson, Chairman,
presiding.
COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SHIRLEY A. JACKSON, Chairman of the Commission
KENNETH C. ROGERS, Member of the Commission
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STAFF SEATED AT THE COMMISSION TABLE:
KAREN D. CYR, General Counsel
JOHN C. HOYLE, Secretary
PARTICIPANTS ON BEHALF OF WATTS BARR UNIT 1:
OLIVER KINGSLEY, JR., President, TVA Nuclear
O.J. ZERINGUE, Senior Vice President, Nuclear
Operations
JOHN SCALICE, Site Vice President, Watts Bar
RICHARD PURCELL, Plant Manager, Watts Bar
MARK MEDFORD, Vice President, Engineering &
Technical Services
ROBERT BRYAN, Manager, Nuclear Engineering
NRC STAFF:
JAMES TAYLOR, EDO
WILLIAM T. RUSSELL, Director, NRR
STEWART D. EBNETER, Region II, Administrator
JOHNS P. JAUDON, Deputy Director, Division of
Reactor Safety, Region II
FREDERICK J. HEBDON, Director, Project
Directorate, II-3, NRR
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P R O C E E D I N G S
[2:00 p.m.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Good afternoon, ladies and
gentlemen.
The purpose of today's meeting is for the
Commission to be briefed on the readiness of Watts Barr Unit
1 for the issuance of a full power license. I should say
that the Commission, however, will not be voting today on
whether a full power license should be issued.
The Commission was last briefed on the Watts Barr
on September 11th, 1995, which covered the results of the
second hot functional testing that was completed in August
1995 and the NRC's independent operational readiness
assessment team inspection. Since the last briefing the
staff authorized fuel load and operation up to 5 percent
power in order to perform low power testing. Watts Barr has
now completed fuel loading and low power testing.
The Commission will first hear from the Tennessee
Valley Authority, Applicant for Watts Barr Unit 1, followed
by the Staff presentation.
I would like to welcome the representatives of
TVA, but I am not done yet.
The burden is on the Tennessee Valley Authority to
show that Watts Barr Unit 1 meets NRC licensing standards
and that there will be adequate protection of public health
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and safety for the operation up to full power. This
briefing should cover the licensee's self-assessment of fuel
load and low power operations, the status of the remaining
actions to be completed prior to Commission consideration of
the full power operating license, and the results of the NRC
public meeting, in terms of any issues to be followed up
from the meeting January 25th of this year.
The Commission is specifically interested in the
radiation monitors, the fire protection program and in the
current status of any pending allegations, particularly as
they might affect full power operation. In addition, the
Commission is interested in whether TVA has reexamined its
decommissioning funding assurance since the last briefing.
Following the licensee's briefing, the NRC Staff
will provide its independent assessment of fuel loading and
low power operation and the status of the remaining actions
to be completed. The regulatory requirements, especially in
key areas, should be clearly delineated. Any exemptions
from NRC's regulatory requirements or deviations from
regulatory guidance should be so noted, together with
justification. The overall documentary record should be
clear and complete.
Although the burden is on the licensee, it is the
NRC's legal responsibility to determine, prior to issuing a
full power license, that all NRC's licensing requirements
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have been met and that there will be adequate protection of
public health and safety, once the plant is operating.
Therefore, the Commission decision to authorize the Staff to
issue a full power operating license is not bound by the
licensee's schedule. This plant has been under construction
for a long time and we are not looking to unduly delay a
process, but the NRC will not reach a decision on issuing a
full power license until we are fully satisfied that there
will be adequate protection of public health and safety.
I understand that copies of the presentation
slides are available at the entrance to the room.
So, Commissioner Rogers, unless you have any
opening comments?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Nothing more to add, thank
you.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You may begin, Mr. Kingsley.
MR. KINGSLEY: Good afternoon, Chairman Jackson,
Commissioner Rogers. I am Oliver Kingsley, President of TVA
Nuclear.
I would like to introduce those at the table who
will be making the presentation and all the members here.
We have Rick Purcell, he is our plant manager; John Scalice,
Site Vice President. Ike Zeringue, seated to my immediate
right, is our Senior Vice President of Nuclear Operations,
he has had oversight and brought this plan in. Mark
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Medford, our Vice President of Engineering and Technical
Services, he will be answering some of the questions that
you posed to us earlier; and Bob Bryan, a Senior Engineer in
our Nuclear Engineering Department is also here.
We also have a number of our staff here, who can
go into detail on any question. They are available to come
to the podium and address those questions as needed.
I am happy to report that we have completed our
preparation for escalation of power at the Watts Barr
Nuclear Plant Unit 1. We have successfully completed the
low power test program. We are pleased to be here today and
request that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission issue a full
power license for Watts Barr Unit 1.
As you will recall, when we were here last for our
Browns Ferry briefing on November the 9th, there were
several specific issues that we talked about, key things we
are all concerned about, both the NRC and Tennessee Valley
Authority, items which we were and still are committed to
pay close attention to. I want to followup on these items
before we go into the details of Watts Bar.
May I have the first slide, please.
[Slide.]
MR. KINGSLEY: Chairman Jackson, you asked in
November if starting up both Browns Ferry 3 and Watts Barr 1
would strain our ability to manage these activities. I am
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proud to be able to confirm my previous answer, that we can
and have done it right. Browns Ferry 3 startup has been
successful and uneventful. We began startup, took the plant
critical on November the 19th. The testing has been
completed and fully satisfactory. The unit is now operating
at full power and performing well. In fact, it was released
for full dispatch to our electric system operations in late
December.
We are here today to discuss taking that next
step. That is, bringing Watts Barr Unit 1 to full power.
You asked before about the stability of our management team.
In fact, I think you said, no nomadic management. I again
confirm my response, we have a strong, experienced,
permanent management team in place and functioning well at
Watts Bar. The organization has matured through several
plant evolutions. I have total confidence in their ability
and we plan to keep that team intact.
We are continuing significant senior management
involvement in oversight at Watts Bar. Ike Zeringue and
others detailed to the site will remain on either a full-
time or a more limited basis. In other words, as long as
necessary to ensure successful operation and this plan is
brought in correctly and everything is done right.
You told us to be thorough and careful in our
preparations. We have. You told us to continue rigorous,
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aggressive self-assessment. We have. You will hear more
about this as we get into our detailed presentation.
I would now like have the next slide and review
the agenda.
[Slide.]
MR. KINGSLEY: John Scalice will discuss Watts
Bar's conservative approach since fuel load. He will
address continuing self-assessments underway at the site.
John will also discuss the transition to an organization
structure and culture.
Rick Purcell will discuss plant performance,
specifically, people, procedures, processes and plant
equipment. He will discuss how we are keeping backlogs low.
Rick will cover planned power ascension testing activities.
Bob Bryan will discuss our radiation monitoring
system. Its design, testing and operations.
Ike Zeringue will conclude our presentation by
giving you his insights about readiness and monitoring
oversight, readiness to proceed to full power.
If there are no questions, I will ask John to
begin our presentation.
MR. SCALICE: Chairman Jackson, Commissioner
Rogers, good afternoon. I know that you are updated fairly
well with the activities leading up to fuel load. So I
think I can go through those fairly quickly. In fact, the
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first slide is self-explanatory.
[Slide.]
MR. SCALICE: We previously discussed with you our
plan to drive our work backlogs down very low and this was
done for the close of construction and to maintain the
working backlogs very low. We have been successful in this
area. Accordingly, our engineering design is current. Our
drawings and our procedures are up-to-date and our
maintenance backlogs are low and being maintained at a very
low level.
We have corrected equipment problems as they have
arisen. Mr. Purcell will discuss some of those equipment
problems. None of these equipment problems, however, have
put into question any of our construction completion efforts
and we are correcting the issues as they arise. We are
completing all of the work. We are not putting anything
over the fence. We are starting off right, so we do not
have to look back, but look ahead and continue our
improvement.
Since receipt of the fuel loading and low power
license on the ninth of November we are continuing to strive
to conduct our activities in a cautious and deliberate
manner.
[Slide.]
MR. SCALICE: Fuel loading commenced on November
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10th and was completed on November 13th. We then proceeded
to tension the reactor head and enter Mode 5. That was
accomplished on November 17th. We took some time at that
point to conduct some engineered safety features testing, in
fact, two weeks. The opportunity existed and we chose to
take it to redo some very important surveillance procedures.
They tested the diesel generators and all the
subordinate equipment under conditions of loss of offsite
power and loss of coolant and postulated events. Two weeks
we utilized for this testing and the tests were very
successful. They gave an opportunity to our operators, one
more time, to check out that equipment. It also allowed us
to make current these surveillance procedures, as we enter
into an operating phase.
We then increased temperature above 200 degrees
and entered Mode 4 on December 15th. As we increased
temperature to approach Mode 3, we had to spend some time
and return back to mode five, because we experience some
difficulties with the number four reactor coolant pump oil
lift system. At that time we made that repair and, of
course, did, through our concern for extent of condition,
look at the remaining pumps. Mr. Purcell will talk about
this.
We also extended this outage to take an
opportunity to repair a packing leak on our residual heat
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removal suction valve. It was the appropriate time to do
it. The reactor had not experienced any decay heat. Again,
we chose to complete the work at the proper time.
We increased temperature above 350 degrees and
entered Mode 3 on December 28th. We reached initial
criticality, Mode 2, on January 18th. Our low power testing
was subsequently completed on January 22nd. This included
the evaluation of the results of the low power physics
testing and the remaining sections of that power plateau.
The results were evaluated and the testing was completed and
the results were satisfactory. We are now ready to go to
full power operation.
May I have the next slide please?
[Slide.]
MR. SCALICE: While we were performing all of
those activities, we have continued to be self-critical in
our approach for getting ready for operations. The
processes that we used during the hot functional testing
were carried forward into our operating phase. We utilized
our training manager, as we did during the hot functional
test, to lead a group of people to perform self-assessments,
consisting of managers from each of the departments,
managers from our corporate organization and some from our
quality assurance organization.
Self-assessments is going to be a way of life at
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Watts Bar. We are continuing to look at this and we are
instituting a process that will maintain a continuing self-
assessment program throughout the first cycle and into the
remaining operation of the plant. The managers on the
assessment team reported strengths and weaknesses.
I am happy to say that the performance has been
good, but improvement is needed in some of these areas. We
are not just striving for acceptable performance, but we are
striving for excellence. Our standards are high.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Where did you decide
improvements were needed?
MR. SCALICE: We believe we needed some
improvement in the area of operator awareness and our status
control issues, in our log keeping and we have instituted
corrective action in these areas. We have seen an improving
trend in each of these areas since fuel loading.
We have extensively exercised our equipment and
processes that support the site and things are working as
they should be. Rick will discuss in more detail how the
plant's status is proceeding.
Nuclear Assurance performed the reviews and they
have ongoing reviews in accordance with their audit
programs. They witnessed the entire fuel load activity and
they are conducting round-the-clock assessments during our
power ascension test program. The site appreciates the
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quality assurance insights. They realize more fully their
value and they utilize their services.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
MR. SCALICE: In keeping with the ongoing process
that we established several years ago for communicating with
our employees, we held an "all hands" meeting. I conducted
several meetings with all participants on the site,
including contractors and TVA employees. We took another
opportunity to express what the management expectations were
for entering an operational environment. We reenforced
sensitivity to employee concerns. We talked about a
successful transition to the operating organizational
structure.
Since that time, as construction has completed,
over 1,800 employees exited the site. During that time
concern resolution staff met with the employees in an exit
process. As part of that exit, we conducted a survey and
asked them if they would feel free to express any of the
concerns that they may have to their supervisors. We had
very good response and the exiting employees indicated a
willingness to talk to their supervisors about any of their
concerns.
A number of issues continues to trend downward.
We did have some concerns during that exit process. None of
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them were safety significant and we continue to anticipate
improvement in this area.
MR. KINGSLEY: Chairman Jackson, I want to
interject here, not only about Watts Barr but our other
facilities, we have had, as you are aware, a long-standing
problem with employee concerns. We had it at Browns Ferry,
we had it at Sequoyah. We have seen dramatic improvement,
not only at Watts Barr but at other facilities. We have
closed the employee concerns special program. We are not
going to ever take this for granted, but we are extremely
pleased with the distance we have come and improvement we
have been able to make in this whole area.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Since you raised it, let me ask
you more broadly about any outstanding safety concerns,
whether brought forward by TVA employees, former employees
or members of the public, particularly as it may relate to
any decision with respect to Watts Bar.
MR. KINGSLEY: We have reviewed this in detail.
We know of no outstanding safety concerns, whether brought
by the general public, whether brought by people outside of
Tennessee Valley Authority or employees, that would preclude
licensing of Watts Barr for full power operation.
MR. SCALICE: If there aren't any more questions,
at this time I will turn it over to Rick Purcell, the plant
manager.
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MR. PURCELL: Thank you John.
[Slide.]
MR. PURCELL: Chairman Jackson, Commissioner
Rogers, as Mr. Kingsley indicated, I will be discussing the
performance of our personnel, the performance of our
procedures and our processes and the performance of the
plant equipment through the testing we have completed to
date.
As Mr. Scalice indicated, we have continued our
self-assessment efforts, similar to the program we used
during our preoperational test phase. Since November of
last year we have completed over 500 documented assessment
observations. These observations support the conclusions of
our performance that I will be presenting.
The performance of our personnel continues to
improve. Based on our observations and the observations of
our management in the field, we are confident that our
personnel are ready to operate Watts Barr in a safe and
conservative manner. We are not measuring our performance
against the standards of a near-term operating license
plant; we are measuring our performance against the
standards of a mature operating plant.
We are continuing to strive for excellence. We
are continuing our self-critical focus. We are continuing
to evaluate our performance and feedback what we observe to
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the line organization so they can improve. We are ensuring
that our threshold to problem identification is low. We are
continuing to work as a team and we are ensuring our
management is actively involved in the field and in the
activities of our people.
We are paying particular attention to the
performance of our operators. We have observed that our
fuel loading and our initial testing is being conducted in a
cautious and deliberate manner. Our operations personnel
are demonstrating a conservative decisionmaking approach.
For example, our operators, early in the testing, were able
to identify a rod position deviation during the initial
testing of the control rod system prior to bringing in a
deviation alarm. We revised our cold rod drop --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me stop you there. You
also had a subsequent control rod deviation during your
physics testing?
MR. PURCELL: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Was that an event related to
the initial control rod position indicator problem or was a
separate reason, and what does that suggest to you in terms
of the effectiveness of corrective action?
MR. PURCELL: Overall through the testing of our
control rod drive system and our analog rod position
indication system, we identified five instances that
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required investigation. Three of them involved personnel
error and two of them involved problems with the equipment.
Let me just quickly run through them.
The first one I mentioned, when we were first
testing the rods and stroking the bank out, we noticed one
rod in the bank was not moving and we noticed a rod in an
adjacent bank was moving. The operator stopped it as soon
as he saw the first sign of indication on the analog rod
position indication system.
Our investigation determined that the cannon plugs
on the reactor head had been rolled. Our SOS, our senior
reactor operator on shift, stopped the testing when they
observed this and required that an independent test be
performed to individually check out and verify the proper
connection of all rods. We determined this problem to be
personnel error. When the work was done it wasn't done
correctly. We have evaluated the procedure used and made
changes, so that on subsequent refuelings we won't have this
problem.
Subsequently, in testing we did identify that we
had a slipped rod during our bank swapping testing. We
identified this immediately during the bank movement when we
had a slipped rod. We received the rod deviation alarm and
the operators identified the rod through the analog rod
position indication system. We stopped the testing and we
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confirmed that, in fact, the rod had slipped 14 steps. We
went through our procedure that we use for realigning a
misaligned rod. This is not necessarily a common
occurrence, but it does happen with this system. We
realigned the rod, we went back and installed test equipment
and monitored the performance of this bank and this rod
specifically through the remaining rod swaps and identified
no other occurrences on this rod or any other rod.
One other problem that our operators identified
was a potential containment penetration problem by close
monitoring of our control room instrumentation. Once they
observed this, they entered the applicable technical
specification limiting condition for operation statement,
without hesitation, which shows that they are doing exactly
what we trained them to do.
While we have seen good performance, we have not
always performed up to our standards. Our standards are high
and we do have room for improvement. I would like to
briefly discuss three examples.
Back in November, our operator awareness of the
boards didn't meet our standards. It pointed out five
instances where operators were not aware of some anomalies
with the indication, nor were they aware of enunciators that
were in on our enunciator boards. This was indicative of
accepting the conditions of a preoperational phase and not
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meeting our standards of an operating phase.
We addressed the specific examples with all of our
operating crews. We reenforced our expectations and we took
actions to correct the performance. Since December we have
seen good performance and the performance continues to
improve.
Another example --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You specifically monitor
performance relative to this particular issue?
MR. PURCELL: Absolutely. We do this and, in
fact, one of the actions we took after this was to require
our senior reactor operator on shift, every shift, to walk
down the board with the reactor operator to ensure that they
are being cognizant of the boards. Myself and my direct
reports do go into the control room and we will do impromptu
walkthroughs with the reactor operators to ensure that they
are maintaining the awareness that we expect. We have also
restructured our shift turnover meeting to be more attentive
to plant status, so that the whole focus of our operating
staff is on plant status and awareness of the plant
conditions.
Okay, we identified two examples where
surveillance logs didn't identify out-of-spec readings.
While the technical evaluation determined that there was no
safety concern, this performance is unacceptable. Our
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extent of condition review of this incident involved
reviewing surveillance logs back to the beginning of the
fuel loading operations, which involved approximately 4,400
readings that we reviewed. We found no other occurrences of
this performance.
Again, we discussed this with the crews. We
reemphasized our performance and to date we are satisfied
with the performance of our surveillance logging activities.
As a third example, we identified several problems
with configuration control. Again, while none were safety
significant, these examples are unacceptable. We recognize
the importance of our configuration control system and we
are treating each occurrence, a total of ten, very
seriously. We have evaluated each for the root cause to
identify actions needed to prevent recurrence. We are
trending our configuration controls issues separately and
have seen a recent improvement in the trend. However, we
are going to continue to monitor this carefully.
Now, these examples are meant to point out the
perspective of the type of problems we found and the in-
depth actions we take to address the problems and to fully
review the extent of condition, to make sure that we
understand exactly how far the problem goes and assure that
our actions are going to correct the problem.
Going beyond operations, in the area of operation
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support, we have observed that our maintenance department is
responsive to operations priorities. The quality of the
work in the field continues to be good. We have recently
established fix-it-now crews, or FIN teams, that rotate with
the operating crews. We find that this provides a better
response of our maintenance crews to our operator needs,
attending to their priorities.
Overall, since receipt of our low power license,
our people have demonstrated that they understand our
expectations for high standards and conservative
decisionmaking and are prepared to operate this plant
safely.
The next slide, please.
[Slide.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Have there been any items in
your backlog that the Staff has identified that requires any
working before you would get a full power license and you
have met all of your backlog goals?
MR. PURCELL: We have met our backlog goals. We
have looked at each of the items in our backlog to assure
ourselves, and the staff has also looked at that to verify
that we have completed all of the actions we need to take
prior to continuing the power ascension test program.
One of the actions that I did with my staff was to
specifically look at all of the outstanding work orders,
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from the perspective of a plant leaving an outage, looking
at those items that were not completed and satisfying
ourselves that there was nothing outstanding that would
impact the material condition of the plant. So we did an
extensive review, item-by-item.
I would like to now turn to procedures. Overall,
our procedures and our processes are proving to be
effective. Our power ascension test program procedures and
our operations system operating instructions have
demonstrated the effectiveness of our procedure review and
validation process. Our surveillance procedures are also
proven to be effective. We recognize the importance of our
surveillance instructions to satisfy the technical
specification surveillance requirements. So we are watching
their performance very closely.
We did identify two instances, through our
reviews, where 12-hour, the required 12-hour, channel checks
were not performed within their required interval. We
investigated these two instances and determined the cause to
be a procedure error and the error was due to an improperly
stated conditional applicability statement as to when the
surveillance instruction was required to be performed.
As part of our extent of condition review, we
rechecked all of the surveillances with conditional
applicability statements back to the beginning of fuel load,
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at the time of the receipt of the low power license, and
this involved approximately 2,700 readings to verify that we
had no other problems in this area. There were no other
problems identified. We corrected the procedures. We
trained the crews on these instances and we are satisfied
this should not recur.
In the last six to nine months, we have performed
our 18-month surveillances, we have performed several cycles
of our quarterly surveillances and we have performed our
conditional surveillances up to Mode 2. We are satisfied
with the performance. They are showing good results. We
believe our procedures to be of good quality and we
recognize that as we continue to use the procedures we will
continue to have opportunities to improve them and we will
be looking to do that.
Next slide, please.
[Slide.]
MR. PURCELL: Our testing program to date has
shown that the plant equipment is performing as designed.
In our last presentation we briefed you on the status of our
hot functional test tube. The fuel equipment problems that
we had noted during the performance of hot functional test
tube during the recent heat up have shown that the
corrective actions we have taken were all effective and the
equipment performed well.
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As Mr. Scalice indicated, we did have a problem
while entering Mode 4 with our number four reactor coolant
pump, specifically the lift oil system on the motor. We
inspected the motor to identify what the cause was and we
identified the cause to be a clogged suction strainer on the
lift pump. We identified the debris, the type of debris, in
the strainer was most probably due to a modification that
was performed on the motor back in the 1992 time period.
Since then we have implemented our operational foreign
material exclusion program. So we are confident that this
was an old problem.
To ensure --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Are you confident that you have
unearthed all such problems?
MR. PURCELL: Yes. Yes, as part of our extent of
condition we did go into the other three reactor coolant
pumps, which had not displayed a problem with the lift oil
system. We did find some debris in the suction strainer,
but not to the extent that we found in the number four
reactor coolant pump. So we believe that we have corrected
this problem.
In our reviews, as part of the extent of
condition, we don't just focus on the reactor coolant pumps,
we look at all the types of work for all similarities. We
investigate other corrective action documents and other
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recurrent maintenance problems to assure ourselves we do not
have a generic problem here.
I briefly discussed our performance on the analog
rod position indication system. What I didn't discuss was
the problems we had on calibrating the analog rod position
indicators. We did have some difficulty on the initial
calibrations. Working with Westinghouse, we identified this
to be due to the larger jack shafts we have in our
assemblies. We modified the calibration procedure, as far
as what rod configuration to perform the calibration in. We
did perform that calibration and, subsequent to that, we
performed two approaches to criticality and the analog rod
position indicators worked without problem.
We are continuing to be aggressive on our backlog
goals without backing off the emphasis of identifying
problems. If you look at the table in the slide, you will
see that the table identified is the backlog goals that we
had established during our last briefing before the
Commission. Then we show in the table the current backlogs.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: The only one where you don't
meet your goals is NRC requirements and open items. Would
you address that?
MR. PURCELL: That is one that I will specifically
address. The NRC open items, we established a target, an
expectation, of 30. Based on the open commitments we have
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on NRC open items, we expect that we will meet that goal at
the completion of our power ascension test program. Many of
those commitments are contingent upon completion of the
testing. Once we complete the testing and are fully in our
operational mode, we will be below that goal.
MR. SCALICE: I would note that at the last time
we spoke to you this number was 261. We have been driving
it down. It is now 42 and we are continuing to drive it
down to this projected target.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It is not 30 yet?
MR. SCALICE: It is not 30 yet.
MR. KINGSLEY: The 30 was picked out, kind of out
of the air.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: It is okay, so were they all.
MR. KINGSLEY: We are fully up to date on every
one of these.
MR. PURCELL: If I can briefly just overview the
data on the table. Our current backlog, the total, is below
our backlog goal, which means that we are performing better
than the goal we established for ourselves. The first two
entries, corrective maintenance and other work orders, both,
are below their goal. I will point out that the corrective
action program documents, you will note that under the
backlog goal we have N/A, the current backlog is 79.
We had originally established a quantity for the
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backlog goal, but we saw this as potentially creating an
environment where we were going to encourage people not to
identify problems. We are placing our emphasis on people
identifying problems. So we do not want to establish a
backlog quota.
What we are doing instead is we are choosing to
monitor the timeliness and the cycle time of when a problem
is identified, how quickly the corrective action is
implemented and the action item is closed out. Now, against
those goals of cycle time for each corrective action, our
performance has been very good.
So, in summary, we have established aggressive
backlog goals for ourselves. We have made significant
progress in reducing these goals to a very workable number,
and the backlog that we are dealing with is very manageable.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How many control room
deficiencies and operator workarounds do you have?
MR. PURCELL: Let me address control room
deficiencies first. In our plan of the day, which is
published every day, we list separately control room
enunciators out of service and our control room indicators
out of service. We have established goals for ourselves
which we believe are very aggressive comparing to other
plants.
For example, in today's plan of the day, our goal
. 28
for enunciators out of service is to be less than five, and
today we are at four. It has been difficult working toward
these goals, driving these numbers down. Our fix-it-now
teams have helped us quite a bit in this area. Our main
control room instruments out of service, our goal is also
five. We are currently at eight. About two weeks ago we
were up around just under 20 on these numbers and we have
been continuing to drive these down.
We go over every one of these items every day to
make sure that they are getting the priority they need to
support operations. We have also reviewed each one of these
to ensure that none of these adversely impact the operator's
ability to operate the plant.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I was going to ask you more
about this later, but is radiation monitor unavailability an
operator workaround?
MR. PURCELL: No, I don't believe it is. Let me
explain that.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Please do.
MR. PURCELL: Mr. Bryan will be discussing that in
detail, but additionally in the plan of the day we have a
separate entry in here for radiation monitors work orders,
not radiation monitors out of service, any work order on the
radiation monitoring system, to make sure it has the proper
visibility and is gaining the proper attention. Now, if we
. 29
do have a radiation monitor out of service, depending upon
the applicable tech spec or ODCM requirement, we will take
the action statement required, which often involves sampling
or temporary monitors. We are not intending to rely on
those. We are driving these work orders to be complete. We
are driving these monitors to be put back in service because
we do not want to rely on compensatory actions. Our status
today shows we have no work orders open on our radiation
monitoring system.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: So having to have grab samples
taken has no impact on the operators, you are saying, under
any circumstance?
MR. PURCELL: Has no impact on the operators, no.
No, ma'am, it doesn't. As the aggregate effect, if you had
a large number of radiation monitors out of service, well
then you have to look at the aggregate effect and that can
only be negative. We are driving that down to zero.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Why was your enunciator goal
four instead of zero?
MR. PURCELL: With the number of enunciators that
we have in the control room, that are several in number, we
can never expect that if we do have a work order come up on
them that the number could be zero. What we are trying to
do is, we are trying to drive it down to a number that
indicates that as soon as the problem is identified we will
. 30
quickly address it and turn it around and put it back in
service.
So should it be zero? Yes, it should be zero. Do
I think it can be zero consistently? No. We are
establishing what we believe to be, from our experience and
involvement with other plants, to be a very aggressive goal
and we are doing pretty good against it.
MR. SCALICE: We have benchmarked this against
other facilities and this is well within the industry
numbers for enunciators out of service, based on the
timeframe it takes to identify and then repair the
enunciator.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, are these what I would
see on your lights up on your board when you are running?
MR. SCALICE: Yes.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, I have seen a number
of plants that are blackboarded.
MR. SCALICE: No, our goal for lit enunciators is
zero. These are enunciators that are being repaired because
for some reason, either an instrument in the field is under
repair or the enunciator itself for that particular device
may have failed. A relay may have worn out and we are going
after the repair. Our goal for lit enunciators is zero, as
it is in the rest of the TVA facilities.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Okay, thank you.
. 31
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How do you measure the
effectiveness of your corrective actions, pick an area?
MR. PURCELL: Let's look at our configuration
control. Since October of last year we have identified ten
issues on configuration control. One of the actions our
operations manager has taken is, he has issued a trend purge
to require further evaluation of that. To monitor the
effectiveness of those corrective actions, we monitor the
trend in the performance or the recurrence of configuration
control problems. So, in that example, we measured the
performance in the field or of the occurrence of the
problems and we look to see that we are turning around the
trend, the adverse trend of occurrence.
MR. SCALICE: There is a cumulative effect of
corrective actions that we do look at. We have performance
indicators for many items in the plant. That, coupled with
the trend that we do, the trending program in maintenance,
if there is any repeat maintenance, in addition our system
health reports that our system engineers prepare on a
quarterly basis, indicates the health of each of the systems
in the plant that is looked at.
Of course, the plan of the day and the existing
work requests are out there, that is kind of a human trend
process where the managers, together, look at the
difficulties that are out there and how quick we are
. 32
repairing them. We get feedback from the operations people,
because we have management that goes out in the field and
talks to the people, and I think this in combination and the
way the plant performs gives us an indication that we are
able to monitor how well we are doing.
MR. ZERINGUE: It is fairly well controlled from
the perspective that our process requires, when an event
occurs, we look back to determine if there are any similar
events. If there were similar events, then we do an
evaluation to understand why the initial recurrence control
did not work properly.
MR. PURCELL: In the area of housekeeping, we are
continuing to maintain our standards high. We have put a
lot of effort into cleaning up the plant and to improving
the material condition of the plant. The plant looks good.
It looks real good and we are maintaining it at that level.
We see that a clean plant and a good looking plant affects
the way the people work in the plant.
It is a motivator in that it affects the way they
will approach a job, it affects the way they will work a job
and it affects the way they leave the job, as far as the
material condition and the cleanliness of the equipment. So
we see this as an important motivator and we are continuing
in this area.
The next slide, please.
. 33
[Slide.]
MR. PURCELL: The precritical testing and the low
power testing has been successfully completed. We have
successfully verified the core design. The test results
have been evaluated and they meet the acceptance criteria.
The test packages have been approved and have been processed
to our records.
Since completing the low power testing on January
22, we have used the time to turn our focus to the balance
of plant systems, our turbine generator support systems, our
heater drain systems, to prepare the balance of plant
secondary equipment for the power ascension and putting the
generator online.
The slide shows the remaining major test plateaus
and some of the key testing upcoming, some of the testing we
will be doing in the remainder of the test program.
In summary, I would like to close by saying that
we have demonstrated that our people can operate the plant
safely and conservatively, that our procedures are of good
quality, the plant equipment is performing well and the
plant is in good material condition. Our backlogs are low
and we are ready to continue with the power ascension
testing program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. PURCELL: Okay.
. 34
I'll turn it over to Bob Bryan.
MR. BRYAN: Thank you, Rick.
Chairman Jackson, Commissioner Rogers, I would
like to make four main points about the radiation monitoring
system at Watts Bar.
The system conforms to the requirements and
criteria that TVA established. The system meets the
applicable regulatory requirements and the commitments that
we made to the Commission. The system is operational and,
since receipt of our low power license, has exhibited a high
availability. The system is ready to support power
operation and it will perform its required functions.
May I have the next slide, please
[Slide.]
MR. BRYAN: The majority of the system was
installed in 1979. Subsequently, we both identified and
corrected design and construction problems. Specifically,
we had problems and inconsistencies in our design
documentation and we had damage to monitors and missing
parts, due to the long construction period.
In correcting these, we performed a monitor-by-
monitor evaluation of the system, not just our technical
specification monitors but every monitor in the plant. We
revised our documentation and modified our hardware as
required.
. 35
Over the last two years we have refurbished and
upgraded much of the system. In doing this, we replaced
detectors in electronics, we replaced the main control room
meters and we added digital flow control systems to our
building of fluent gas paths. We have subsequently verified
the operation of the system through our preoperational and
start up test program.
May I have the next slide.
[Slide.]
MR. BRYAN: Since receipt of the low power
license, the overall system availability has been greater
than 95 percent. This does not mean that we have periods of
time when the system is unavailable. This availability is
based on an average of the availability of each individual
monitor. For our tech spec monitors, the availability is
almost 97 percent. For our ODCM monitors, we are running
somewhat lower, principally because of circuit noise on two
monitors that we identified after we had both the radiation
monitoring system and balance of plant systems in operation
together for the first time. We have corrected these
problems and we now expect that the performance of our ODCM
monitors will match the performance of the system at large.
We have spare parts available for the system. We
have adjusted our inventories to stock more of the parts
that are in highest demand. We made these decisions based
. 36
on both our start up experience and also industry
experience. To date we have not had any availability loss
due to a lack of parts.
As Rick mentioned, the radiation monitoring system
is being tracked at a very high level at our plant. It is
discussed each day in the daily meeting. The system
engineers provide a weekly trend report of the availability
of the system.
May I have the next slide.
[Slide.]
MR. BRYAN: Chairman Jackson, Commissioner Rogers,
we have corrected the problems with the radiation monitoring
system. The system has been refurbished, upgraded and
tested. The system is operating well and I am pleased to
report that currently all monitors are in service. The
system is ready to support and is fully capable of
supporting full power operation at Watts Bar.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You have had some violations
associated with sample probe location, sample line
construction and environmental qualifications?
MR. BRYAN: That's correct.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Tell me about what you believe
were some of the causes of the problem and what have you
learned about it that has been propagated into the rosy
picture you just presented?
. 37
MR. BRYAN: I think there were several things that
were included in that. One, I think our criteria initially
were somewhat confusing on the issue. In correcting the
problems what we did was, we went through and we walked down
every sample line, developed detailed walk down isometrics
of the lines, including all of the beams and fittings.
We went in and we corrected deficiencies that we
found in that and, as I mentioned before, as part of this on
assuring that we had good sampling of our gaseous flow
paths, we put in basically state-of-the-art digital flow
control systems. So we recognized the problems and we took,
I think, very effective action at resolving them.
In one particular case, that was the violation in
1994, we moved the monitor to a new location and provided a
completely new sample line and new isokinetic probe for that
monitor alone.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I understand some of these
monitors are 15 years old or more. Have you identified any
needs on the line for some more enhancement of the system?
MR. BRYAN: I think right now, what our basic
approach is, the monitor seems to be performing well. We
have experience with these monitors at our other facilities.
If we get to the point that the monitors are not performing
well, if we get to the point where spare parts become a
problem, I think we will make a decision at that point in
. 38
time to upgrade the system. As long as we can provide a
high availability with the system, we feel like the system
will work well for us.
MR. SCALICE: As part of the trending program we
do look at this specific system along with the other systems
on a quarterly basis. All of these ingredients are reviewed
by the system engineer and presented in his report. This
report is evaluated by the management team and we look at
the availability of the equipment.
As Mr. Bryan said, many of the components have
been changed. The isokinetic system, probe system, has been
modified and the rate meters in the control room have been
changed. In the areas where we had some age-related
concerns, such as electroload capacitors, we have modified
that, as well as looking at the electroload capacitors in
our storeroom for shelf-life concerns. So we monitor this
coupled with the availability and performance of the system.
Of course, like any other piece of equipment, the
trend will dictate the actions that we take.
MR. ZERINGUE: Chairman Jackson, what John was
referring to is our system health report. We put that out
on a quarterly basis and evaluate the performance of a
system and we refer to it as our system health report. For
this particular system, we are trending availability on a
weekly basis. We are doing that to ensure ourselves we can
. 39
maintain long-term reliability with this particular system.
We are trending it on a monitor-by-monitor basis.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Are there any commitments that
you have made with respect to the radiation monitors, that
you subsequently sought deviations or have deviations from?
MR. BRYAN: No.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: None?
MR. BRYAN: No commitments that we changed what we
requested. Under Regulatory Guide 197 we requested and the
Staff approved five deviations. Three of those were for
accuracy. We requested rather than a generic range, some
plant-specific ranges. We had one deviation on allowing us
to use the accuracy requirements under Provision 3 Reg Guide
197 instead of Reg 2.
Our last deviation was to allow the use of
portable high-range monitors for post-accident emissions, as
opposed to using a fixed in-plant system and that followed,
basically, a staff recommendation, subsequent to the issue
of Reg Guide 197.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Mr. Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No, I don't have any
additional questions on the monitors.
MR. BRYAN: Thank you.
At this time I would like to turn the presentation
over to Mr. Zeringue.
. 40
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask that same question,
in terms of deviations or significant deviations or
exemptions with respect to fire protection?
MR. ZERINGUE: Let me call on our site engineer
manager, Walt Elliot, sitting behind me.
Walt, if you would come over and give an overview
and talk about fire protection, please?
MR. ELLIOT: My name is Walt Elliot. I am the
site engineering manager at Watts Bar.
Our commitments for the fire protection program
are basically that we comply with the general design
criteria three, of Appendix A of 10 CFR 50. We comply with
the 10 CFR 50.48. We comply with Sections G, J, L and O of
Appendix R. Those are specified in our fire protection
report. In that fire protection report there are seven
specific deviations for alternate ways of complying with
specific provisions.
A couple of examples, one of which is, we use
portable, hand-held lanterns and lieu of eight-hour
emergency light packs in some specific areas in the plant.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Portable hand-held lanterns?
MR. ELLIOT: Batteried large flashlights.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Not candles?
MR. ELLIOT: That's right. No, not candles.
Under the provisions of 3(a), their requirements
. 41
for instrumentation, we, for example, have provided
alternate instrumentation that is available to the operator
in lieu of what is specified there. Those deviations are
all specified in our fire protection report submittals and
have been approved by SER.
A couple of specific areas that I should mention
in regard to fire protection at Watts Bar. One is
integration seals and, more specifically, that for cable
penetrations we have qualified our cable penetration seals
as far as fire rated barriers. We have used the guidelines
of IEEE 634 in developing those qualifications. As a part
of that, we have walked down all the penetrations in the
field, established the configuration. We have upgraded
those field configurations where they were found deficient
and we have made sure that those configurations were bounded
by test.
The IEEE 634 test is a very rigorous test. It
subjects a full scale penetration assembly to a standard
time temperature profile. That time temperature profile
goes to 1000 degrees Fahrenheit in the first five minutes of
the test. It remains above 1500 degrees for about two-and-
a-half hours for a three-hour barrier and it goes up to
about 1900 degrees at its peak temperature, a very rigorous
test. We met the acceptance criteria, which is no flame
through, it must pass the hose screen test on the subsequent
. 42
exposure to the fire and the cold side temperature must
remain below 700 degrees Fahrenheit, which we passed on the
most recent test that we conducted at Omega Point Labs by
about 100 degrees margin. The outer material in these fire
penetration assemblies uses ceramic fiberboard and that is a
noncombustible material. At the Watts Barr facility we have
a damming board on each side of that penetration seal which
is installed.
For the area of thermalag, our thermalag program
has been subjected also to rigorous test standards, which
TVA has conducted. We have conducted that test, the test
for fire test, at Omega Point Laboratories. We have
conducted ampassity test at both Omega Point Laboratories
and at our TVA laboratories. We have done seismic tests for
the thermalag material. We have also done material testing
to make sure that from lot to lot the material is the same.
We have conducted that test on every lot that has gone into
the plant. We have made sure, in comparing the criteria,
that what we are putting in the plant is bounded by what was
tested.
In both the areas of penetration seals and
thermalag, our field installation and our documentation
programs are complete.
MR. ZERINGUE: Chairman Jackson?
May I have the last slide please?
. 43
[Slide.]
MR. ZERINGUE: I have been at Watts Barr now 11
months observing overall performance. I have seen the
organization grow and mature. In particular, I have seen
the significant increase in ownership. Now, I judge that
from several perspectives, one being the material condition
of the plant. That facility is in very good condition. It
is being taken care of. Another aspect I look at is problem
identification, problem identification by the line
organizations. In May of last year our line organizations
were identifying about 60 percent of the problems at Watts
Bar. Today, we are at about 90 percent. So we have seen
significant improvement in that regard and those are one of
the other things that we trend.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: How did the other 40 percent
get identified of the 60 percent?
MR. ZERINGUE: Our oversight organizations.
We have also seen the interdepartmental interfaces
solidify and teamwork growth. Our operations organization
has taken a very strong commanding approach to operation of
the facility and that is important and it is necessary. But
along with that, we are seeing the acceptance of that role
by the other organizations and, in fact, encouragement of
it.
I think part of that has to with the fact that
. 44
operations, while taking a strong commanding role, is
providing the necessary support to the other organizations
at the facility, supporting maintenance with tag outs,
chemistry with chemical conditions in the plant. So we are
seeing the teamwork grow.
I will note one significant item by which we judge
this. There was a significant improvement between the first
and the second time we entered Mode 4. I use that as a
comparison base, because that is a point in time through a
startup when a significant amount of the plant equipment is
put in service and it requires significant coordination and
communication between the two organizations, between the
organizations on the site. It happened and it happened
well.
So, from an organizational perspective, we are
continuing to improve. The teamwork is growing, the
ownership is growing.
As for the physical plant itself, all the work is
done. We don't have any large backlogs. We have defined,
established, working backlogs to maintain efficiency in our
work processes. Now the adequacy of the plant, we tested
that through our preoperational test program, through our
hot functional test program and, most recently, through the
low power test program. As far as the core design, we
verified that through our low power physics testing and it
. 45
showed excellent agreement between predicted results and
measured results.
Now, throughout all these evolutions we have
continued to evaluate the performance of our people, our
processes. We have identified some areas to improve. Rick
mentioned some, John mentioned some.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Are you going to mention some?
MR. ZERINGUE: I hadn't planned to, but I can do
that.
Overall, however, we have been --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I want you to mention some.
MR. ZERINGUE: Okay. One of the areas I think is
significantly improving is the interdepartmental
coordination, the coordination in our scheduling efforts.
Part of the reason for the significant improvement we saw
between the mode transition was improvement in that
coordination. Really, what I am saying by that is, looking
ahead, that is an area we continue to watch and will have to
keep watching, particularly throughout the remainder of the
power ascension program. That is an area I am watching
closely, planning ahead and thinking ahead.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Well, I would like to just
ask you a question, since you talked about interdepartmental
cooperation. What is the mechanism, what mechanisms are in
. 46
place to connect your training programs with your
operational programs on an ongoing basis? You are talking
about getting ready to go to full power operation, that
means you are going to be in continued operation beyond
that. That is a time when it is very important that the
training programs be maintained. What mechanisms do you
have in place and when will they be fully operational, if
they are not right now, for close ties between your
operational staff and your training staff?
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me tag onto that, because
it came to my mind when you talked about awareness of the
board and kind of operator awareness of plant configuration
and it struck me that, presumably the operators have been
through robust training. So I think that is an interesting
sort of piece to tag on to Commissioner Rogers' question.
MR. ZERINGUE: We had talked earlier about the
assessments we do. We are doing assessments now through the
low power test program and our training manager is leading
that assessment. John can provide some very specific
information in that regard. So we are coupled in that
regard.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask the question in
another way. The weaknesses that you identified with
respect to operator awareness in terms of plant
configuration because that is an operational issue --
. 47
MR. ZERINGUE: Yes.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- that is something that you
felt needed to be addressed?
MR. ZERINGUE: Yes , not only is the assessment
program been overseen by the training manager, of course, I
do want to address the fact that all of our training
programs are fully accredited and we have --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I know, accreditation is -- but
the issue is, I think the question was, tying them together
and seeing the result of that and how people actually do
their jobs.
MR. ZERINGUE: In the process of the exercising of
the core direction program, for instance, one of the main
ingredients is to evaluate what the barriers are for
preventing failure and also what the shortfalls may have
been that were experienced during those occurrences. An
ingredient that we have placed at Watts Bar, that we have
put into effect, is that any time we do incident
investigations associated with any occurrences, a member of
the training staff is included on the incident and event
team.
We also require that the design changes, the
events that occur in the plant, are reviewed by the training
organization and they are reviewed to be placed back into
the training program. We conduct training on-shift as it is
. 48
necessary to make sure that we inform the entire crew of
occurrences that take place in the plant.
In the case of the overall assessment, these over
500 observations, both Rick Purcell and myself get the
feedback from the training organization, track all of these
issues to closure. There are assigned individuals with
action items required to address these issues. It is all
tied back into things like procedure changes, if necessary,
and then brought back into requalification program for the
operations staff, both licensed and non-licensed stock
voters, for the chemistry staff and for the maintenance
organization.
So anything that occurs in a plant is incorporated
into our training and retraining programs. The people are
assessed of these conditions and then get examined on it
during their requalification process.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: What mechanisms do you have
in place to check how well shift-to-shift communication is
taking place? I am sure you have systems in place to do
that, but what do you have in place to check how well those
systems are working?
MR. ZERINGUE: I think that I would like at this
time to bring this to our operations manager, Mr. Mende, and
let him discuss this issue.
MR. MENDE: We have discussed the operator
. 49
awareness issue in quite a bit of depth here, I think. The
awareness items we saw in our functional testing and during
the original safeguards testing were things like enunciator
awareness and those items. We seem to have done a pretty
good job on that. As a matter of fact, they have been
identified as a recent strength and my personal observations
on shift while probing the operators and, as Rick mentioned,
the impromptu interviews to identify whether the operators
were aware of the reason for enunciators being in, have
shown a significant improvement in that area.
To address your specific question, recently I was
interviewing operators on their knowledge of a recent 50.72
report that we had made to the Commission and I got an
inadequate answer from the reactor operator there. So we
identified that we do have some weaknesses in shift-to-
shift. We do have processes for doing that, through shift
turnover and shift briefings and we document many of those
things, but we have not achieved, fully, the shift-to-shift
communications that we are expecting and we are going to
continue to focus in that area.
As Rick mentioned, one of the actions we have
taken is to facilitate the shift briefing by the utilization
of the shift support supervisor. This has shown marked
improvement in the plant awareness status and what-have-
you. It still has some work to go in the shift-to-shift
. 50
conveyance of events and those type of things and we are
focusing in that area.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Very important area.
MR. ZERINGUE: Yes, sir.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. ZERINGUE: As I mentioned earlier, Chairman
Jackson, we have had some problems, but we have recognized
them. Ownership is better. We need to improve in some
areas, but overall the operation of the facility has been
very effective. We have been safe, cautious and controlled.
At this point in time we are prepared to receive the full
power license, to move through the remainder of the test
program and safely and cautiously bring this unit into
commercial operation.
MR. KINGSLEY: I would like to have Mark Medford
address the adequacy of how we will handle our
decommissioning process, Chairman Jackson.
MR. MEDFORD: Chairman Jackson, Commissioner
Rogers, TVA has had decommissioning in rates since 1977. We
have had a dedicated decommissioning fund since 1982. We
were among the first in the industry in both of these areas.
We currently have in excess of quarter billion
dollars in our decommissioning fund. Periodically, we
review our estimates for decommissioning costs. We most
recently did that in the fall of '95. We based this review
. 51
on the experience gained to date in decommissioning within
the industry, review of publications, such as NRC NUREGs on
the subject. Then we compare the estimates that we have
against those in the remainder of industry to ensure they
are adequate.
Comparing our current estimates for need and the
amount of money in the decommissioning fund, we are on track
for decommissioning at the present time.
MR. KINGSLEY: We are now happy to address any
other questions that either you, Chairman Jackson, or
Commissioner Rogers might have.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you a couple of
questions. Let me go back to a suction strainer issue. You
know that there was another plant in which there was an
incident involving suction strainers in the ECCS system.
So, again, I am asking you, you have looked at this area in
terms of debris clogging throughout the plant, but
particularly as relates to ECCS and there are no issues
there?
MR. SCALICE: Yes, that's correct. We have
established a thorough foreign material exclusion program.
At the time that this event occurred, and that was an oil
suction strainer on the motor, we had been doing a
modification, basically a plumbing modification, to the oil
lift system and some damming material was utilized to work
. 52
on the oil system. Apparently, that got left in the
strainer. Now, that was still a problem at that time from
foreign material exclusion, but our program is fully in
effect now and all of the maintenance utilizes foreign
material exclusion programs. It is looked on, it is an
ingredient, a checksheet from both the maintenance
organization and from the quality organization during the
witnessing of the maintenance in the plant.
MR. ZERINGUE: In addition to that, Chairman
Jackson, we have a detailed containment close-out
inspection. So we go through the containment at all levels
and verify that there is no debris, there is nothing in
there that shouldn't be in the containment, nothing that
could potentially clog a flow path.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How close are you to
implementing the vehicle bomb mode?
MR. SCALICE: I will address that. The
requirement, as you are aware, is the 27th of February.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's for operating the site?
MR. SCALICE: That's for 1996. We requested an
exemption at that time that the rule came into place to be
treated like the operating facilities, because of the timing
associated with the design and the procurement of the
materials. We are on schedule to finish that prior to that
date. Our current date for the completion of all the work
. 53
and the closure on the design and the a vaulting of the
materials is scheduled for the 22nd of February.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And that can't be accelerated?
MR. SCALICE: We looked at the acceleration of
that and, with additional work and recesses, we think we can
take about five days off of that program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Are you ready to implement the
maintenance rule?
MR. SCALICE: Yes, we are. I would like to, if
you will, get into some detail on that. Again, Walt Elliot,
our engineering manager, will discuss the maintenance rule.
MR. ELLIOT: Walt Elliot, the engineering manager
of Watts Bar.
As John has said, we are on schedule to implement
the maintenance rule. Our schedule for implementation is
July 10th of 1996. As far as the activities that we have
completed to date, we have issued a maintenance rule
compliance program for all the TVA plants. We have modified
the system health reports that have been discussed earlier
to include monitoring that's required out of that
maintenance rule. The report for the first quarter starts
that reporting.
We have prepared the draft instructions for
implementation on site for the maintenance rule. We have
developed training modules for engineering support
. 54
personnel, and we have begun to train our system engineers
and our maintenance component engineers to the maintenance
rule requirements, and we are trying to present that as a
benefit, as a positive, to Watts Barr and to the system
engineers and the maintenance component engineers.
We have a planned assessment in March of this year
that we will be conducting to make sure that our program is
on track for implementation.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you.
Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Without giving us a specific
starting date for our timetable, what is your timetable for
power ascension and power range testing?
MR. SCALICE: At the present time, we are prepared
to increase power above 5 percent.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think he wants you to --
MR. SCALICE: Post the obtaining of the full power
license, the power ascension program, as indicated on the
slide that Mr. Purcell had, and maybe we could put that back
on there, indicates that we should be able to complete that
program in the spring of this year. There are various
plateaus that take place. We expect that within the next
several days, given the full power license, we will be able
to put the turbine on the line, sink the generator, and then
proceed up to 30 percent power.
. 55
MR. ZERINGUE: The program duration is
approximately two-and-a-half months.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I guess it was the timing on
this that I was curious about. These are just the steps,
but not how much time you would spend between them.
MR. SCALICE: As Mr. Zeringue indicated, it is
approximately two-and-a-half months from the start.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Thank you.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have any questions?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No, I don't have any other
questions.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you, Mr. Kingsley.
MR. KINGSLEY: Thank you very much.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We will hear from the NRC
Staff.
MR. TAYLOR: Good afternoon. With me at the table
are Bill Russell, Stew Ebneter, Johns Jaudon and Fred
Hebdon. Also here are senior residents from Watts Barr and
other specialists who may be called upon as appropriate.
The Staff will brief the Commission on TVA's
performance and its issuance of the low power license, and
their readiness to operate the plant up to full power.
Johns Jaudon will start the presentation by
discussing the Staff's inspection effort. John has been an
SES dedicated to this site for an extensive period of time.
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He will be followed by Fred Hebdon who will discuss the
licensing activities associated with Watts Bar. Finally,
Stew Ebneter and Bill Russell will provide their
perspectives on TVA's overall performance at Watts Barr and
the readiness for full power.
John.
MR. JAUDON: Chairman Jackson, Commissioner
Rogers, good afternoon.
May I have Slide 2, please.
[Slide.]
MR. JAUDON: Since the low power license was
issued, we have monitored Watts Bar's operational
performance closely. The operations senior resident has
been onsite since August of 1993, thus the overlap between
the construction and operations inspection programs has been
assured.
The nominal operations staffing for a single unit
site is a senior resident inspector assisted by a resident,
or N plus 1 manning. This has been supplemented at Watts
Barr with two additional operations inspectors on special
assignment. The site manning has been at the N plus 3 level
at Watts Barr through the licensed activities to date.
This has allowed around the clock inspection of
all significant licensee activities. We project this
enhanced manning through power ascension testing if a full
. 57
power operating license is granted.
The construction senior resident inspector
remained onsite through 1995 assisting as needed. He has
been especially helpful in looking at allegations related to
construction issues because of his detailed knowledge of a
site.
May I have Slide 3, please.
[Slide.]
MR. JAUDON: The observed conduct of operations
can be characterized as careful and cautious. This
deliberation is obviously being fostered by TVA management.
There were no regulatory problems with fuel load, and it
proceeded well. Maintenance made an error in connecting
plug-in connectors during the final control rod drive
mechanism installation. This was detected during
preliminary rod testing and quickly rectified.
The operations staff exhibited some initial
growing pains. For example, two daily surveillances were
missed soon after fuel load. These errors were also
detected quickly and the corrective action effected.
Control room demeanor and communications have been
acceptable and are improving. TVA management has been
responsive to feedback from their own self-assessments and
also from observations from the NRC. The affect of earlier
errors mentioned above was not significant in a technical
. 58
sense. As a result, we found operations performance to be
acceptable and to have an improving trend.
Systems and components have performed well to
date. There was a problem with the valve strainer on the
suction side of the oil lift pump which was discussed in
some detail. The troubleshooting and repair caused about a
one-week schedule slip for TVA.
Some procedural problems were identified as
surveillance procedures were used for the first time. These
were identified and procedure changes were made as
appropriate. There was no safety impact from these
procedure problems, and the problems may have served to
assure that the operators remained very attentive as they
performed evolutions under procedures for the first time.
The plant did experience a problem with the
individual rod position indication system. It was aligned
for each control rod. It worked when the control rods were
moved in banks. However, on the bank withdrawal in
preparation for initial criticality, it was found that when
additional banks were withdrawn to a fully out position, the
individual rod positions indicated an outward drift. While
it is reasonably obvious that control rods cannot drift
beyond the fully withdrawn position, the technical
specifications required that the indicated rod position from
the individual rod position indication always be within plus
. 59
or minus 12 steps of the demand or step counter position.
TVA working with Westinghouse found that this
drift was caused by their unique combination of heavy jack
screws, light boron carbide control rods and the original
rod position indications system. With multiple groups
withdrawn, an apparent inductive coupling caused the
indication to drift. TVA recalibrated the rod position
indication so that the rods would remain within the plus or
minus 12-step technical specification requirement. The
approach to startup was TVA's first opportunity to detect
this phenomena and they took appropriate corrective actions.
Initial criticality occurred January 18th. The
actual rod positions and boron concentration were in close
agreement with those predicted before startup. Physics
testing was monitored closely by a regional inspector and an
NRR specialist. The residents went to around the clock
coverage to follow performance during the initial critical
operations. We found that TVA continued to operate in a
controlled and cautious manner.
Can I have Slide 4, please.
[Slide.]
MR. JAUDON: There have been few allegations
received since the last time the Commission was briefed.
Current they are for Watts Barr 28 allegations open in
Region II and one open in NRR. However, 22 of these open
. 60
allegations, stretching back to 1989, are in the Department
of Labor process. Technical aspects of these, and not all
of them have technical aspects, have been resolved. One
allegation is in the final closure process, that is all
inspection activity and documentation thereof is complete,
and the final letter to the alleger is being written.
Five technical allegations are open. All have
been inspected or assessed for impact if fully substantiated
on the licensing decision and found not to have an impact,
but the documentation and inspection are not fully complete.
All the recent allegations, except one, are of narrow scope.
One allegation is of broad scope and has required extensive
inspection followup. Mr. Hebdon will discuss some of the
issues related to this concern.
May I have Slide 5, please.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You said 22 at Department of
Labor and five, that's 27.
MR. JAUDON: And one in the final closure process,
five plus one. One is back with the enforcement and
investigation coordination staff and they are drafting the
final letter to the alleger.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: That's 28. Isn't there one
other?
MR. JAUDON: And one in NRR.
May I have Slide 5, please?
. 61
[Slide.]
MR. JAUDON: In summary, Watts Barr operations
since the issuance of a low power license have been
conservative and acceptable. Their performance is typical,
in my experience, of a newly licensed plant. We shall
continue to inspect them closely. In addition to the
coverage provided by the residents and normal regional
support, we plan to do a team assessment during the power
ascension, if a full power license is granted.
Are there any questions about the inspection
activity?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I have one question about
the control rod position indicators. Are there any other
reactors that use this particular system?
MR. JAUDON: It is my understanding that other
reactors that have the heavy jack shafts and the boron
carbide have gone to a digital rod position indication as
part of the changeout. Watts Barr elected to keep the
original rod position indication, and that made them unique.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I see.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Have you reviewed the
maintenance backlog, and are there any items in that backlog
that, in your opinion, need to be worked before the granting
of the full power license?
MR. JAUDON: I am going to ask our senior resident
. 62
for operations to answer that, if I can.
Mr. Van Dorn.
MR. VAN DORN: Yes. Kim Van Dorn, senior resident
inspector.
We selectively look at those backlogs and
certainly look at all the things that are carried on the POD
on a regular basis, on a daily basis. More indirectly, what
we do is evaluate as well their process of evaluating and
see what effect they have on systems and how they prioritize
them, and that is really more effective for us, I think,
rather than look at very backlogged item. We approach it
with sampling and to assure ourselves that they are
effectively evaluating and putting the right priority on
those issues. We have attended meetings, and they take a
very conservative approach.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: How do you do your sampling?
MR. VAN DORN: Well, obviously we have system
knowledge, and we can pretty much tell them from the types
of issues that are being discussed in the plan of the day,
and we also, obviously, regularly tour the plant and we look
for equipment problems that we see out there. If we see
anything that is an anomaly, of course, we validate that
they are tracking it, and we look into specific aspects of
that.
So it is just from our normal knowledge of what is
. 63
going on in the plant, and what we see them addressing in
the morning meetings, and how management is reviewing that,
and what those issues are.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Have you reviewed any operator
workarounds, or control room deficiencies, and are there any
that should or could be corrected before exceeding 5 percent
power?
MR. VAN DORN: The definition of operator
workaround is a difficult one. I think TVA is still working
on what that exact definition is. Certainly, there are --
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have a definition?
MR. VAN DORN: My definition would be, if it
drives them out of being able to comply with the procedure,
if it make something inoperable and they have to take
something like compensatory actions to meet a tech spec,
such as that, other than provided for compensatory actions,
like there are in rad monitors, if there is something
special that has to be done and they have to put -- for
instance, assisting, an operator have a valve to make sure
that it would close in an event, or something like that.
Those types of things I would consider operator workarounds,
and we know of none.
However, there are, obviously, some control room
enunciation things which TVA talked about. Those aren't
good but, in a practical sense, there are going to be some
. 64
of those, and we look at those daily. We walk the boards,
and see what tape records are out of service, and so forth.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do we have any standards
relative to control room enunciators? This goes back to
Commissioner Rogers question he posed to TVA, or is it that
we just monitor and look at what is?
MR. VAN DORN: I don't think we have prescriptive
regulatory standards.
MR. RUSSELL: The requirements that are imposed
are imposed on individual systems as it relates to
operability of those systems, particularly those that are
called out with procedures that relate to, for example,
technical specifications.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: When you are looking at things
like enunciators, you are looking at it relative to that?
MR. RUSSELL: Relative to regulatory requirements
because there are enunciators in the control room that are
not related directed to regulatory requirements. So, if
there is an enunciator out, it makes it difficult for them
to follow an alarm response procedure, and that alarm
response procedure is required, where they, instead of using
that enunciator, have to use the plant process computer,
that would be a workaround.
We have recently put out some guidance, and a
workaround to the Staff is a degraded or nonconforming
. 65
condition for which you are still operable, but you
substitute some type of human performance for that degraded
or nonconforming condition where you are not within the
specific actions where there are previously approved
compensatory actions.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And so, following on his
comment, you have identified none?
MR. RUSSELL: I have not personally reviewed. I
am responding generically. Based upon what he described,
based upon that, there would be no workarounds at this point
in time.
MR. EBNETER: I should probably tell you, we
discussed this at the public meeting last week, and whatever
definition you use, I am quite sure you will find there are
some workarounds at Watts Bar, and there are a number of
workaround definitions. Every station I go to has a
different definition. We are working on one internally, and
I believe INPO is working on one, but I don't know of any
standard definition. But I think the general definition, if
I had to describe it real quick, I would say it is anything
that puts an additional burden on the operators that
shouldn't be there because you are noncomplying or in a
degraded condition.
But I think the simple answer is, there are
probably some workarounds at TVA Watts Barr no matter how
. 66
you define it. I think there are some at every plant.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: But you are satisfied yourself
that there are none that we should particularly --
MR. EBNETER: I don't know of any. I have relied
primarily on the resident staff for that. That is one of
the things that I have listed here as an area that needs
improvement when I get to my section. One of them was
listed as, there is a need to clarify the concept of
workarounds and compensatory measures in the total scope of
maintenance and corrective action program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. I don't want to preempt
your program.
MR. EBNETER: I won't go over that one.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Yes, you will.
[Laughter.]
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Thank you.
MR. JAUDON: Are there any more questions?
[No response.]
MR. JAUDON: Apparently there are no more.
Fred Hebdon will brief the status of licensing
issues.
MR. HEBDON: Since the issuance of the low power
operating license, there have been relatively few licensing
issues associated with Watts Bar. However, ANR has been
reviewing two concerns from members of the public which I
. 67
would like to discuss.
Slide 6, please.
[Slide.]
MR. HEBDON: The first issue pertains to a letter
from a concerned citizen regarding the Watts Barr fire
penetration seals. The Staff has reviewed the information
in the letter, and has reviewed the fire protection program
at Watts Barr in detail. The Staff concludes that Watts
Barr meets the applicable regulatory requirements. The
results of that evaluation are documented in the safety
evaluation report, and also in numerous inspection reports.
The draft license contains a condition to require
implementation of the fire protection program, and so it
becomes essentially part of the license, and that requires
implementation and maintenance of the program.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You have "meets," are those the
regulatory requirements?
MR. HEBDON: Those are the regulatory
requirements.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have any questions?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No.
MR. HEBDON: Slide 7, please.
[Slide.]
MR. HEBDON: The second issue includes an
extensive concern, which includes a number of parts. One
. 68
part is associated with the licensing basis of the radiation
monitoring system at Watts Bar.
For background, the requirements that must be met
before a plant can be licensed are defined in the
regulations, including the general design criteria. Over
the years, the staff has prepared a number of guidance
documents, such as regulatory guides and NUREG reports that
define methods that are acceptable to the Staff for meeting
the requirements in the regulations. However, in general,
these documents are not regulatory requirements.
In addition, the industry has developed numerous
documents, such as ANSI standards, some of which describe
methods for meeting regulatory requirements. To varying
degrees, the Staff has endorsed these documents as an
acceptable method for meetings the regulations.
An applicant may choose to commit to one or more
of these NRC or industry-referenced documents. If an
applicant commits to a document, then they must meet all of
the guidelines contained in the document, or they must
request authorization from the Staff for a deviation. The
Staff must specifically approve each request.
An applicant may choose not to commit to a
specific document but may, instead, choose an alternative
approach to meeting the regulatory requirement. When an
applicant chooses to do this, the NRC must evaluate the
. 69
alternative approach to determine if it meets the
regulations.
As the Staff reviews an application, the reviewer
will often use the guidelines contained in a regulatory
guide or ANSI standard as a measure of whether the
application meets the regulations. This does not mean that
the regulatory guide or ANSI standard becomes a requirement
or even a commitment. It does not mean that the application
must meet every guideline in the standard to be found
acceptable.
In the specific case of the radiation monitoring
system at Watts Bar, the system must meet 10 CFR 20.1302 and
General Design Criteria 60, 63 and 64. In addition, TVA has
committed to regulatory guides 1.21, 1.45, 1.68 Revision 2,
and 1.97 Revision 2, which addressed, at least in part, the
radiation monitoring system.
The concern that we are reviewing attempts to draw
the connection that the statement in the safety evaluation
report commit TVA to Reg Guide 4.15, and this assumed
commitment requires that TVA meet all the guidelines
contained in ANSI standard 13.10 because it is a reference
in Reg Guide 4.15.
TVA has stated in a documented letter that they
are not committed to Reg Guide 4.15. The Staff agrees that
TVA is not committed to Reg Guide 4.15 and has considered
. 70
this in its assessment of the Watts Barr application. Thus,
the assumption that TVA has committed to Reg Guide 4.15 and
ANSI standard 13.10 is not correct.
Thus, the Staff concludes that Watts Barr meets
the applicable regulatory requirements and regulatory guides
to which TVA has committed, except for specific deviations
which have been reviewed and approved by the Staff.
To date, the Staff has received a number of
specific technical concerns about the radiation monitors at
Watts Bar. The Staff has reviewed and inspected each of
these concerns, and has concluded that although the system
at Watts Barr does not necessarily meet a specific
guideline, such as ANSI standard 13.10, the Watts Barr
design will perform its intended function, meets the
applicable regulatory requirements, and is, therefore,
acceptable.
A concern has also been raised about the
reliability of the radiation monitors at Watts Bar. The
Staff has inspected this aspect and concluded that the
problems TVA has encountered have been due primarily to
system startup. The Staff believes that the system meets
regulatory requirements and commitments and the performance
to date has been adequate.
Those were the comments that I had on the
radiation monitors.
. 71
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you, would you put
that slide back.
MR. HEBDON: Certainly, Slide 7.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: For the two bullets, where you
have the Watts Barr licensing basis and then what TVA has
committed to --
MR. HEBDON: That's correct.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: -- have there been any
exemptions with respect to the actual regulatory
requirements?
MR. HEBDON: There have been no exemptions in the
area of the radiation monitors. There have been some
deviations to Reg Guide 1.97. I believe there are five
deviations to Reg Guide 1.97.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: And they have all been
documented?
MR. HEBDON: They are documented in the SER. They
are reviewed by the Staff, and five have been approved.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you have any questions?
MR. RUSSELL: If I could just provide one process
piece of information, the Commission, by rule, requires that
an applicant identify differences between their application
and criteria and standards that are described in the
standard review plan that is in effect for licensing of that
plant. This is an aid to Staff to focus on those areas of
. 72
the application where they are taking positions that are
different than generically approved positions.
That does not imply that because they are
different they are less safe or they are not acceptable.
The generic approval is one way of meeting the regulations.
Where they deviate from that, there may be a case specific
reason that the licensee has. But we review that to make a
determination as to whether it provides the necessary
commitments to meet the regulations.
Each of those deviations is typically documented
in our safety evaluation in the application first and then
in the safety evaluation.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I want to thank you for that
lesson, Mr. Russell.
The point is simply that the regulatory basis is
clear; what the licensee has committed to is clear; that if
there are exemptions from the regulatory requirements, they
have been so documented and granted; that if there are
deviations, that they have been evaluated and so noted in
the SERs or supplemental SERs. And you are telling me that
all of that is true?
MR. RUSSELL: That's correct.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. I understand that there
was an independent inspection of the radiation monitoring
system conducted by Region IV. Now, what about the results
. 73
of that inspection, is there someone here who was involved?
MR. EBNETER: Mr. Jaudon has attended the exit
interview. If you would like to hear directly, that
inspector is here, and we can have him.
Dr. Nicholas, would you take the mike, sir.
This gentleman is from Region IV, has nothing to
do with Region II, and he will write a completely
independent report signed through his management.
MR. NICHOLAS: My name is Bill Nicholas. I am the
senior radiation specialist from Region IV, and myself and
Larry Dickinson performed an independent inspection of the
radiation monitoring system of Watts Barr and we found it
acceptable and met the regulations. The official report
will be issued next week, and it should be issued on
Wednesday, February 7th.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
Do you have any questions, Commissioner Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Just one, nothing on the
radiation monitors. I did have another question on
exemptions.
MR. HEBDON: I did have one other comment. The
draft full power license is identical to the low power
license except for the authorized power level and a
statement that the full power license supersedes the low
power license.
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The license would contain five exemptions which I
am prepared to discuss, and could I have Slide Number 8, it
lists those exemptions.
[Slide.]
MR. HEBDON: The first one is a requirement to
return picture badges by people who are not TVA employees.
That allows TVA to implement the hand geometry security
system.
There is an exemption to the requirement for a
criticality alarm system provisions in 70.24. That was
originally granted in a special nuclear material license
that TVA had prior to issuance of the low power license. It
is a Part 70 license that they had initially.
There is a schedular exemption from an Appendix J
requirement associated with air lock tests. That allows
them to have that exemption until the end of the first
refueling outage, and that is associated with the new Option
B of the Appendix J.
There is a schedular exemption that I believe you
discussed with TVA in some detail associated with the
implementation of the vehicle bomb rule.
The last one is an exemption to not include the
ingestion pathway portion of a full participation exercise
that TVA was required to conduct in November of '95.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Just say a little bit about
. 75
that. The slide says the State of Tennessee participation.
MR. HEBDON: Right. There is a requirement in the
regulation that TVA conduct a full participation exercise,
any licensee applicant conduct a full participation exercise
within two years of issuance of the full power license. The
last full participation exercise by TVA was in November of
1993, so the two years had essentially expired. As a
result, they had to conduct another full participation
exercise, and the State of Tennessee, through TVA, had
requested that they not do the ingestion pathway portion of
that exercise because they had done it in the earlier
exercises and they had also exercised those capabilities
because the Sequoyah plant is also located in Tennessee, and
so they had requested that and the Staff had approved that.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I see. All right. Thank
you.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Are there any emergency
preparedness issues or concerns from FEMA or any other state
or local agency with respect to Watts Bar?
MR. EBNETER: Not to my knowledge.
MR. HEBDON: No. We have received from FEMA the
finding that they are required to make on the offsite
emergency planning, the reasonable assurance finding, and
that has been completed after the exercise in November.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
. 76
MR. HEBDON: If there are no additional questions,
then Stew Ebneter will discuss his perception of the plant
condition.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Let me ask you one last thing
with respect to radiation monitoring. I know there were
some preoperational tests done, and they were at an approved
vendor facility; is that correct?
MR. HEBDON: There was some calibration of some of
the individual detectors that were done. Some of those are
done on site and some of those are done at vendor facilities
using the geometries that different detectors are calibrated
in different ways.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Do you require any power
ascension testing in the sense that you have these in a
vendor facility, obviously you are not in a radiation
environment.
MR. JAUDON: Let me answer that. What Reg Guide
1.21 states and what TVA plans to do, as they have told us,
and are writing procedures to do is to take grab samples
once they get a source term, and compare those to the
monitor readings, and that is a program that goes on
throughout the life of the plant, really, to validate that.
MR. EBNETER: We have the inspector here, George
Kudat, who will be monitoring this throughout, if you would
like to hear from him?
. 77
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Sure.
MR. KUDAT: I am George Kudat, senior radiation
specialist from Region II.
And if you will just ask your questions, I will be
happy to answer them. Do you want me just to summarize my
findings?
Regarding the calibrations, one of the first
things that I looked at, at Watts Bar, because of some of
the earlier problems did involve calibrations and the loss
of some records mainly, I reviewed the vendor documents to
make sure that the calibrations were done properly at the
vendor facilities, or they had done some calibrations onsite
for some of the iodine monitors.
Another area that was of importance to review is
specifically for some of the sample lines was the
construction and the installation of the equipment. On all
those, initially, approximately one year ago, we had some
findings. You referenced some of the violations that was in
that inspection report. Management paid a lot of increased
attention to that overall system, System 90. They have an
independent review that was done, led by TVA but many
outside contractors from Bechtel, Stone and Webster, went
through, reevaluated all the monitors, walked down the
lines, reviewed the calculations, reviewed all the
procedures that go with the calculations, and I subsequently
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came in and reviewed that review to verify that they did
cover all the monitors. That appeared to be a very
thorough, very professional job.
Then I was present for much of the preoperational
testing. Your question regarding the preoperational
testing, the monitors have been set up right now as they
will work during operations. There will be some changes to
the setpoints because of changing background levels for some
of the monitors during power ascension, possibly, and
further into after they receive an operating license. There
will be some changes to some of the monitors, but many of
them already have fixed setpoints. So that has been
established, and we will be monitoring that, modifying the
systems, where applicable, during the power ascension, I am
sure.
I have verified the training for personnel that
deal with the system. That involved a complex group of
people from operations to chemistry to the health physics
personnel. They have all been well-trained. Where they
have found problems, they have addressed it. They have
addressed all those through increased coordination. There
were some problems originally on some of the set up of the
monitors for some of the filter paper, that problem was due
to some misunderstanding between groups of who was
responsible. That has been addressed properly now.
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Management has increased the attention to, I think, the
daily review of the system through the plan of the day,
discussions have proven very fruitful to addressing a lot of
the problems that we saw actually one year ago.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. EBNETER: Slide 9, please.
[Slide.]
MR. EBNETER: The transition to the operating
regime has gone very well, and Mr. Jaudon and Mr. Hebdon
discussed some of the features.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Before you go on, let me ask
one other inspection question. We have inspected thermalag
and seal penetrations, were there any --
MR. JAUDON: Yes, we have, extensively. I don't
have Mr. Miller here who was the inspector in that area, and
I don't think Mr. Madden is here either who was the NRR
representative who assisted him, but we looked at their
configurations, we looked at what they installed. Mr.
Madden, I think, went down and witnessed the testing, some
of the testing in the laboratory when they were qualifying
the configurations of thermalag.
MR. EBNETER: I can tell you personally I know
that I sent the Staff my own note on the thermalag
installations, on the materials and the qualifications of
that material. When I toured the plant, I talked with the
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installers, and they commented to me that the NRC inspector
is around regularly to see them on the installation. The
NRR Staff actually did the qualification of the
configuration, and Mr. Madden did those inspections.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay.
MR. RUSSELL: The testing that was witnessed
involved both thermalag testing and the fire penetration
seal testing that was done recently, and that is documented
in the Staff's safety evaluation report.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I think there is someone who
wants to speak.
MR. WEST: I am Steven West, the chief of the fire
protection section in NRR. Mr. Madden is in my section and
I can just add a little bit more.
They did a total of 14 fire protection inspections
at Watts Bar, and with respect to the thermalag
installations and the penetration seals, they did detailed
inspections beginning kind of cradle to grave review of the
test plans before tests were conducted at the test
laboratories, witnessed the qualification tests and made
several inspections to witness installations and followup
inspections.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Since I have you here, and Mr.
Hebdon, will you just reiterate for the Commission the
regulatory basis for the Watts Barr fire protection program?
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MR. HEBDON: I believe that was on Slide 5, if we
could have that back, please.
[Slide.]
MR. HEBDON: Would you like to discuss some of
those?
I am sorry, that was Slide 6.
MR. WEST: Yes. Just quickly, if you look at the
bullet that says "Meets," and then there are four sub-
bullets under that, the actual regulatory requirements would
be General Design Criterion 3, and 10 CFR Sections 50.48,
and it would be Paragraphs A and E. And then the two
following dashed bullets, the Appendix A to the Branch
Technical Position and the sections that are listed of
Appendix R would be the licensee commitments they made to
meet the regulatory requirement.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Okay. Thank you.
MR. EBNETER: Continuing, overall the integrated
plant performance has been very good. The material
condition of this plant is excellent. The equipment has
been reliable. The backlogs are low, which indicate they
are taking good care of maintenance in a prompt, timely
manner.
The people performance of the TVA staff has been
good. They have performed well. We have not seen any
identified trends of inadequate human performance. There
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are examples of human performance in procedures and
equipment areas, but nothing really egregious.
Procedures have been effective and, again, once
again, there have been some problems with procedures,
clarity and omissions of certain parts of the procedures,
but they have not been really significant.
By the way, the procedure issue is what
contributes to the human performance error. When the
procedures are bad, the staff has a problem following and
doing the work correctly. So those two are interrelated.
The management overall has been very good at Watts
Bar. There is stable senior management there, and they have
retained their managers there that were placed there about a
year ago, as Mr. Zeringue commented, he has been there about
11 months now, and I think that has worked very effectively.
They have added consultants to add support to the
licensee management, for example, Westinghouse and Duke
Power Company has supplied some consultants. The management
has effectively used their quality assurance organization.
There is an extensive trending and assessments are in place,
and they appear to be working well. The management actions
have been cautious and conservative.
Two major issues I wanted to comment on that have
been fixed, and I think TVA mentioned both of them. One of
those is, they have made a significant improvement in their
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root cause analysis, and the extent of condition reviews,
they now identify the scope and breadth of problems very
well that they commented on the reactor coolant pump, the
one pump had an issue, they looked at all four, and there
were several other conditions they mentioned, but we think
that is a significant improvement.
The second one I wanted to mention was
management's involvement has built a much better management-
worker relationship at Watts Bar. This was the source of
many of the difficulties over the years, and we saw it
reflected in statistics of employee concerns and DOL
complaints.
This is best illustrated, I think, by the fact
that the 1,800 exit interviews they conducted, there was
less than .4 percent that raised issues, and over 95 percent
of the people they interviewed reflected confidence in TVA
management by willingness to go through TVA line managers,
and that is a significant change.
That confirms really what we have found also in
the past. We conducted an extensive inspection in August
and September of what they call their employee concerns
resolution program and we found the same sort of indicators.
Our focus has been on operations and the
inspections. We have provided around the clock shift
coverage on the major evolutions, and we have done extensive
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back-shift inspections. This enabled us to see a full
spectrum of the TVA activity on different shifts, and these
results have been very positive. We continue and will
continue in the future to have these open meetings that we
have at TVA Watts Bar, and with both the public and the
media invited, and we think they are important to keep the
public and the media informed.
Having said all of that, there is still a need to
have close inspection coverage in the future if and when a
full power license is granted, and even during low power
operations, if they continue. The reasoning behind this,
TVA staff is still learning. You heard part of that today
and, in addition, there are still some areas that need some
work, and TVA identified some of those.
The ones I have identified pretty much correlate
with what TVA did. Improvements can be made, for example,
in work control and scheduling, which I think Mr. Zeringue
commented on. We don't have any regulatory issue with
those, but it is clear that there could be improvements made
and some of the interfacial could be improved.
The one I commented on before, and I will just
reread it, there is a need to clarify the concept of
workarounds and compensatory measures in the total scope of
the maintenance and corrective action program.
We discussed this extensively at our last meeting,
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and it was clear to me they do not have a precise definition
or expectation that can be conveyed to the staff, to their
staff. As a consequence, it makes it difficult to say that
they don't have any workarounds, and I do think that needs
attention. They indicated in that meeting that they were in
the process of defining workarounds for Watts Bar, and I
believe Mr. Mende told me that he had a questionnaire or
some system in process to get the operator feedback to them
on what should be included in that definition, but that has
not been completed.
As a result of that, we will continue our resident
inspection coverage at N plus 3, and we will supplement that
with region-based inspectors and conduct an additional team
inspection. If and when power ascension occurs, we will do
a mid-power ascension team inspection to bring some of these
areas back together.
Region II and I don't have any problem at this
point with recommending the issuance of the full power
license. If you need anything answered, I will be glad to
try to answer it or we do have many of our staff member here
who participated in the inspection to clarify anything.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: You would live next-door to the
plant?
MR. EBNETER: Yes, ma'am.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: I just have one comment, and
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then I will let Commissioner Rogers ask his questions. You
know, you talk about taking grab samples in lieu of the
working radiation monitor. In general, that is an
operational methodology and this is probably more to TVA
than it is to you. It doesn't seem like a good thing.
MR. EBNETER: And I would agree with you, and
particularly if you don't watch it. You may be able to live
with one grab sample, but you certainly don't want to have
two or three stations that you need to take grab samples,
particularly during an emergency, the staff won't be able to
respond.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right. So I would not like to
see us in a position where, because there is some wiggle
room, that there is some cumulative effect of having a
number of radiation monitors not working.
You were about to say something, Mr. Taylor?
MR. TAYLOR: No. I agree with all that has been
said. When it comes to operator workarounds, you almost
have to look at the whole plant where they operations are
going on and where we have seen problems is where there is
an accumulation where equipment is operable but in some type
of condition which requires specific operator actions to
keep the equipment running.
A lot of the equipment has automatic features.
That is the best way to run the plant, to be basically an
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automatic. In many cases, due to problems, you will see
people lose the automatic feature, but still able to operate
the plant manually. This is particularly true in balance of
clamps, heaters, heater drains.
The reason we have talked a lot about operator
workarounds is because we have seen stations where events
are complicated because when the plant trips and there are
transients, there are just too many places where the
operators have been forced to be, say, on manual which do
cause problems. So I think it is one of those terms that is
getting more and more used, and I think the industry is
become more and more conscious -- I am not speaking
specifically to TVA, but across the board -- at what it
means to operators when equipment isn't in automatic as it
should be, and then the responsibilities of operators,
particularly in transients, accumulate and sometimes they
are not fast enough to keep up with everything.
Do you agree with that?
MR. RUSSELL: Yes. In fact, let me illustrate
with one example that is probably fairly significant. The
steam tunnel area of a boiling water reactor has a
ventilation system to keep the temperature down, and
temperature monitors in that room are one of the systems
that are used to initiate protection for a potential
steamline break.
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Some facilities on loss of that ventilation have
as short a time as 15 minutes for operators to take action
to verify that there is not a steamline break and to bypass
that automatic system or you can get the mainsteam isolation
valves automatically closing as a result of a ventilation
problem. It is particularly acute in the summertime when
temperatures are higher and you need ventilation.
Those types of things, which are, in some cases,
related to balance of plant equipment or nonsafety
equipment, when the failure of that equipment impacts other
equipment where rapid operator action has to be taken, those
kinds of things are the kinds of things we are looking for
to identify and correct.
MR. EBNETER: Your concern is justified, I think,
if you look back at plants that we have had trouble with
over the past from our meeting this morning. The ones who
get on the plant list typically have a large number of so-
called "workarounds."
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Right, and if there is an
incident and you were worried about the radiation increasing
in an area, one wouldn't have to be sending somebody to that
area to grab a sample, right?
MR. EBNETER: Certainly.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: I think both presentations
have been quite complete. I think we have had a good
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opportunity to ask questions, but I would like to just raise
the question with you once again, and that is, how confident
are you that the resolution of the allegations received to
date has gotten to the point here you can rule out safety
issues as delaying a full power license?
MR. EBNETER: I am pretty confident of it, but I
will let Mr. Jaudon elaborate some on it since he monitors
the plant close.
MR. JAUDON: I have looked at these, I have had
inspectors go out and look at them. I look at them in two
levels. First is, without looking at the issue or any
specifics, if the issue is true, what kind of a problem does
that cause. And then, second, after we have inspectors look
at them and what do we find, and do we think it is correct
or is it fully substantiated, partially substantiated or not
substantiated. So we look at them in two different ways.
I am confident that even if they were all full
substantiated, there wouldn't be a safety issue, and most of
them are not substantiated or not fully substantiated, only
at best partially.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: And one can say that about
all 29 allegations?
MR. RUSSELL: The point that I have been
emphasizing in the various meetings is to make sure that we
follow the agency procedures for handling any late filed
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allegations. That is not to say that while the Commission
is deliberating on what action the Commission should take
that we won't receive additional allegations. If we do, we
will promptly inform the Commission while this is pending
with the Commission and we will follow the agency
procedures.
We do have one issue that is currently pending
before the Commission that the Commission could decide to
pass back to the Staff to handle in accordance with 10 CFR
2.206 relating to information that is currently before the
Commission. We are working with the general counsel's
office and, as you have heard, we have inspections that are
underway that are addressing some of these issues
I have not yet seen, for the one that is in NRR,
the package, should we handle this as a 2.206, which would
address the notification that would be published in the
Federal Register, along with the determination as to why
immediate action is not taken. Well, that is essentially
the same as completing the late filed allegation process.
That is, if true, would there be an impact, et cetera. That
aspect needs to be completed.
As you have heard, the inspection is nearing
completion, work is going on within the Staff, but that is
not yet completed. So, were the Commission to vote to
authorize the Staff to proceed with licensing, I would want
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to at least make sure that that aspect is completed before
authorizing a license, that is, at least the notification as
it relates to the petition.
This is not a requirement. This is more as it
relates to the late filed allegation process to look at
those, to make judgments as to whether there is anything
which would be significant or be a bar to licensing. That
is because the petition requests action be taken against the
low power license which would, in fact, be superseded if a
full power license were to be issued.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: Did you have anything more
you wanted to add?
MR. EBNETER: No, sir.
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No, I have no additional
questions.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: Well, let me thank all of
today's participants for the briefing this afternoon, both
Tennessee Valley Authority and the NRC Staff.
The Commission must now reach a decision on
whether to authorize a full power operating license for
Watts Barr 1. As I said in my opening remarks, the
Commission will not vote today. Commissioner Rogers and I
will be concurring -- conferring, rather, and concurring on
whatever we decide, taking into account what we have heard
today, as well as looking at any late filed allegations.
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Unless you have any further comments, Commissioner
Rogers?
COMMISSIONER ROGERS: No.
CHAIRMAN JACKSON: We are adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:08 p.m., the briefing was
adjourned.]
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01/31/1996