Opinion ID: 150668
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Davis-Besse's Submissions to the NRC

Text: In accordance with federal regulations governing the nuclear industry, Davis-Besse was obligated to respond to the NRC Bulletin with written statements, signed under oath or affirmation. 10 C.F.R. § 50.54(f); see also 42 U.S.C. § 2011 et seq. Federal regulations also require that all information provided to the NRC be complete and accurate in all material respects. 10 C.F.R. § 50.9(a). Davis-Besse hired Rodney Cook to coordinate the response to NRC 2001-01. Between September 4 and November 30, 2001, FENOC submitted a series of serial letters (SLs) containing the information requested in the Bulletin. Various conference calls and meetings between FENOC employees and the NRC also took place between September 4 and December 4, 2001, when the NRC finally permitted Davis-Besse to continue operation until an accelerated shutdown for RFO13 in February 2002. The five letters at issue in this case and charged to contain false statements in the indictment against Siemaszko, Geisen, and Cook are: SL 2731, September 4, 2001 (count 1); SL 2735, October 17, 2001 (count 2); SL 2741, October 30, 2001 (count 3); SL 2744, October 30, 2001 (count 4); and SL 2745, November 1, 2001 (count 5). Count 1 also included allegations of concealment of material facts in several of the serial letters and meetings between FENOC and the NRC. Siemaszko was convicted of the first, second, and fifth counts of the indictment. In approving Davis-Besse's continued operation until RFO13, the NRC relied on all of the serial letters: Based on the information provided in your responses [dated September 4, 2001, as supplemented by letters dated October 17, October 30, November 1, and November 30, 2001] and the information available to the staff regarding the industry experience with VHP nozzle cracking, the staff finds that you have provided sufficient information to justify operation until February 16, 2002, at which time you will shut down the [plant] ... and perform VHP nozzle inspections as discussed in your letter dated November 30, 2001. The commitments contained in your letter dated November 30, 2001, were integral to the staff's finding. The serial letter submitted on November 30, 2001, SL 2747, was not readily discoverable in the record. FENOC's first submission to the NRC in response to NRC 2001-01 was SL 2731 on September 4, 2001. Siemaszko was tasked with reviewing the inspection tapes from previous RFOs and providing information for NRC 2001-01's section 1.d. inquiry, Cook was in charge of putting together the information, and Goyal was to review the submission. Siemaszko sent a draft of the section to Goyal, who returned comments on August 9, 2001. In that draft, Siemaszko prefaced his response with: The response is limited in scope to discuss the issues associate [sic] with the type, scope, qualification requirements, and acceptance criteria for the Reactor Pressure Vessel Head Inspections within the last 4 years. The draft stated, inter alia, that a guidance procedure other than BACCP was used in RFO 11 and RFO12, that [t]he head cleaning was limited by the opening size of the weep holes, and that, during RFO12, [n]o evidence of nozzle leakage was detected. 95% of the nozzles were inspected. Goyal questioned the ninety-five-percent assertion given the amount of boron visible on the top of the RPV head during RFO12, and Siemaszko subsequently sent another draft asserting that [n]o visible evidence of nozzle leakage was detected[, m]ajority of nozzles were inspected, and stating that the procedure used was the BACCP. Later, after Cook questioned the meaning of majority, Siemaszko stated that ninety percent of the nozzles had been inspected. Drafts circulated to Siemaszko on August 22 and 23, 2001, contained a ninety-percent visual inspection assertion. Goyal expressed concern regarding the ninety-percent claim in emails to Cook and Siemaszko, leading Cook to delete the ninety-percent statement. In emails copied or sent to Siemaszko, Goyal also questioned the assertion in the draft that all of the CRDMs were inspected given the amount of boric acid deposits obstructing the view and also cautioned that a notation should be included stating that the weep holes and the two-inch gap at the top of the RPV head impeded a 100-percent visual examination. The final letter included a statement that a gap exists between the RPV head and insulation, the minimum ... is approximately 2 inches, and does not impede visual inspection. The letter also asserted that Davis-Besse's BACCP procedure had been utilized in both inspections and that [t]he scope of the visual inspection was to inspect the bare metal RPV head area that was accessible through the weep holes to identify any boric acid leaks/deposits. Siemaszko's limiting preface was not included in the later drafts, which also incorporated information added by others editing the document, nor was the limiting preface included in the final letter to the NRC. SL 2731 also described the boron deposits discovered during the 1998 inspection as an uneven layer of boric acid deposits scattered over the head ... [and] some lumps of boron, with the color varying from brown to white. Of the 2000 inspections, SL 2731 noted that [s]ome boric acid crystals had accumulated on the RPV head insulation beneath the leaking flanges. These deposits were cleaned (vacuumed), that [i]nspection of the RPV head/nozzles area indicated some accumulation of boric acid deposits, and that the RPV head area was cleaned with demineralized water to the greatest extent possible. Referencing the review of the videotaped 1998 and 2000 inspections conducted in May 2001, following Oconee, SL 2731 also noted that indications such as those that would result from RPV head penetration leakage [like at Oconee] were not evident. SL 2731 also asserted that a full inspection, unimpeded by boric deposits, would take place during RFO13. The green sheetthe cover document listing contributors and allowing space for each to initial and date when he or she received and approved the document to be sent to the NRCfor SL 2731 listed Siemaszko as responsible engineerplant engineering, but see attached was noted in place of initials. The FENOC secretary in charge of maintaining the green sheets testified at trial that attachment sheets often were used for signatures but she could not recall whether that had happened in this instance. Goyal was listed as responsible engineermechanical design and testified that he refused to sign the green sheet until Cook and Siemaszko assured him in person that there was no problem and that Siemaszko could see the whole head. On October 17, 2001, FENOC sent SL 2735 to the NRC after the NRC notified the plant that SL 2731 was not entirely responsive to NRC 2001-01 and was insufficient to guarantee safe operation until RFO13. Siemaszko, as plant engineeringsystems engineer, initialed and dated the green sheet for SL 2735. He maintains, however, that he signed the green sheet before the submission was finalized and never saw the final version sent to the NRC. SL 2735 contained a table detailing the status of each nozzle at each inspection (nozzle inspection table). The table indicated whether each nozzle had been recorded and whether leaks were apparent on each nozzle. After the NRC's request for more information, Geisen had asked Siemaszko to review the inspection videos and to prepare the table. In an interview with investigators in 2002, Siemaszko stated that he spent weeks preparing the table. According to Siemaszko, after submitting a draft table including only the 1998 and 2000 inspections, he was told to include the 1996 inspection. Because he had never seen the head in 1996, he relied on information from others to complete the table. He included a note addressing the scope of the 1996 inspection: 100% of nozzles were inspected by visual examination. Since the video was void of head orientation narration, each specific nozzle view could not be correlated by nozzle number. Nozzles 1, 2, 3, and 4 which do not have sufficient interference gap were excluded. The remaining 65 nozzles did not show any evidence of leakage. For the 1998 and 2000 inspections, each nozzle had one of the following notations: (1) no leak observed, indicating that a visual inspection was sufficient and no video record was needed; (2) no leak recorded, indicating that the nozzle inspection was recorded on the video; or (3) flange leak evident, indicating that the nozzles were not visible due to boric acid deposits. Siemaszko sent the table to Goyal and Cook on October 17, 2001. In a deposition after he was fired, Siemaszko stated that before he emailed the table to Goyal and Cook, he took the table to Geisen and Dale Miller, a compliance supervisor, on a diskette and that the three completed the table together. Siemaszko maintained that Miller and Geisen dictated the additional footnotes. Evidence revealed that Siemaszko did send the document to himself from a borrowed work station before sending it to Goyal and Cook, but, at trial, Miller could not remember being involved in drafting the footnotes and Geisen did not testify. Miller did recall editing out the last two sentences of the footnote at a later date. Goyal also testified that he notified Siemaszko that he had not seen 100 percent of the nozzles in 1996 as indicated in the table. The version of SL 2735 submitted to the NRC contained the nozzle inspection table as Attachment 2, with the footnote as to the 1996 inspections stating that the entire RPV head was inspected. Since the video was void of head orientation narration, each specific nozzle view could not be correlated. The sentences lined out by Miller included the caveat about four of the nozzles being obscured. The letter also stated that 50 of 69 nozzles were viewed in 1998, 45 of 69 were viewed in 2000, and the reason some nozzles were not viewed in 2000 was because they were obscured by boric acid crystal deposits that were clearly attributable to leaking... flanges from the center CRDMs. The letter noted that the visual inspections in 1996, at which time sixty-five of the sixty-nine nozzles were inspected, and in 1998 and 2000 consisted of a whole head visual inspection as required by the BACCP. The document also asserted that none of the videos indicated boric acid chrystal deposits that would have been attributed to leakage from the CRDM nozzle penetrations. Based on the assertion that all nozzles were leak-free during RFO 10 as demonstrated in the table, FENOC conducted a risk analysis that determined that the earliest a crack could develop was May 1996, after RFO10 concluded. In the worst-case scenario, that crack would take seven-and-one-half years to grow to beyond a safe size, and, therefore, Davis-Besse could safely operate until RFO13. This risk analysis formed the basis of Davis-Besse's representations to the NRC that a delayed inspection was safe. On October 30, 2001, FENOC submitted two further serial letters to the NRC, both of which contained the nozzle inspection table. SL 2741 included a risk analysis and reiterated that the inspections in 1996, 1998, and 2000 constituted a whole head visual inspection of the bare head in accordance with BACCP procedure. SL 2744 contained still photographs from past inspection videos. Siemaszko provided the representative photographs, and Geisen wrote the captions. Siemaszko was not included on the green sheets for these letters. On November 1, 2001, FENOC submitted SL 2745, which contained a plant specific assessment expanding on the risk assessment provided in SL 2741. Siemaszko was not listed on the green sheet. Kendall Byrd, who was a senior engineer in the safety analysis and probabilistic safety assessment group in 2001, prepared SL 2745 and testified that, in conducting the risk assessment, he credited all nozzles but four as being free from popcorn deposits at RFO10 in 1996 based on Siemaszko's nozzle inspection table, which stated that the entire head was inspected in 1996, and information provided in SL 2731, which stated that four nozzles were not visible in 1996. Byrd also spoke with Goyal, but not in relation to preparing SL 2745, regarding Goyal's 1996 inspection and whether he had any discomfort regarding where we were going with [the responses]. Byrd did not have any conversations with Siemaszko in preparation for SL 2745. Siemaszko also met with the NRC on November 14, 2001, to discuss the inspections. Those present included Byrd and Dr. Alan Hiser, an NRC staff member. Byrd testified that Siemaszko did state that he felt I believe it was secure in his heart regarding the condition of the head. Hiser recall[ed], ... not verbatim, ... something along the lines of he would swear on the stack of bibles as to how good the inspection and the activities that they performed in 2000 were.