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Local Companies | Article
published September 19, 2002
Operators
quizzed on reactor oversight
Procedures revised, Besse officials
assert
By KELLY LECKER
BLADE STAFF
WRITER
OAK HARBOR, Ohio - Federal regulators pressed
Davis-Besse officials yesterday about what role inaccurate
information on internal reports played in the failure of the nuclear
plant’s management to notice a football-sized hole in the reactor
head.
Jack Grobe, the chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory
Commission oversight panel, said reports filed by plant employees
indicated that the reactor head had been cleaned when it actually
had a layer of boric acid on it.
"How can that not be a
significant contributor" to the corrosion, he
asked.
(For complete coverage of Davis-Besse go to www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse)
The
panel was meeting with Davis-Besse officials to hear what the
company was doing about problems with management and work standards
that caused Davis-Besse operators to miss cracked nozzles and a
six-inch hole in the reactor head. The latter left only a thin layer
of stainless steel to keep the radioactive steam from leaking out of
the reactor head and into the containment building, which is the
last line of defense for the public.
Davis-Besse officials
said they have installed a new management team, set up panels to
review and revamp work procedures, and met with employees to go over
work and safety procedures and hear their concerns.
Much of
the discussion focused on what Davis-Besse considers a major problem
that led to the degradation: Managers did not set high standards and
were rarely in the plant. Workers, as a result, felt they could not
report problems to them.
Mr. Grobe questioned how - in a
plant where managers relied on employee reports instead of seeing
conditions themselves - the corrosion would have been found if the
reports said the head was cleaned of boric acid. The acid is an
important element used to control the nuclear process, but it is
highly corrosive and tends to eat away at carbon steel like that on
the reactor head.
An audit of engineering operations after a
refueling outage in 2000 was a glowing report, commending engineers’
efforts in cleaning the head. An inspection team looking into
unidentified leaks in 2000 and 2001 was not concerned because
inspectors talked to system operators who said the head had been
cleaned. Four years earlier, a report stated the head was cleaned
and leaks were fixed.
But in each of these cases, there was
still a layer of boric acid on the head, eventually eating away six
inches of carbon steel to create the cavity on the reactor
head.
An arm of the NRC is investigating whether Davis-Besse
managers intentionally put false information on the reports. This,
along with other aspects of the review by the commission’s Office of
Investigations, will help determine whether fines should be levied
against Davis-Besse and whether a criminal investigation should
proceed.
Steve Loehlein, manager of quality assessment at
Davis-Besse, said workers reported the head was clean because the
standards at the plant had dropped to the point where boric acid was
acceptable.
"Cleaning the head to many people meant cleaned
the best it could be done," he said. At one point, workers spent 280
hours trying to clean the head and there was still boric acid on
it.
Still, Lew Myers, chief operating officer of FirstEnergy
Nuclear Operating Company, said there were other signs that should
have pointed managers to the problem, including air filters that
were changed every other day because they were clogged with rust
particles.
Mr. Myers said a main focus at Davis-Besse now is
to have managers in the plant and involved in the process, including
meeting with workers before a reactor head cleanup.
"It’s bad
when the president of FENOC says, ‘I was in the containment building
more than most of the managers last refueling outage,’" Mr. Myers
said.
About a third of the Davis-Besse work force responded
to a survey focusing largely on employee confidence. Forty percent
said they thought management cared more about safety than costs, and
less than half felt that corrective actions to fix problems were
effective or investigated thoroughly.
Mr. Myers said the
company is trying to gain the trust of workers by having weekly
meetings with small employee groups and through a largely
independent panel that has met with workers to gauge their
concerns.
Mr. Grobe said Davis-Besse officials have a long
way to go. "Your challenge is to get in the hearts and minds of
every member of your organization," he said.
For
complete coverage of Davis-Besse go to www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse
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