Employee Sabotage at Millstone Plant and the Happy Talk of Everyone

June 28: Honestly, if a investigation of this nature was ongoing, would they admit it to me?

June 27: An aid to the region 1 administrator called me this morning. They threw my complaint into allegation, I didn't request that. Now it may interfere with my worthless 2.206. He said I didn't have enough evidence to throw it into a deeper or more immediate investigation. He asked me if I had more information and I told him that is a area I can't get into. I heard his little fingers tapping on his computer keyboard all though this conversation...so this is in official documents. All I was trying to do is raise NRC awareness through multiply channels and get it documented. I consider this a success. I warned this aid that the public might see this through a different lens than the agency’s policies and procedures.

I am in a process of continually updating this blog and polishing it. This is definitely going into a 2.206 process with my intent to get this onto the official record. 

 June 24@1130am   Ok, so I want to talk multiple pathways into the NRC. I called the region 1 top administrator Bill Dean’s office. At best, I wanted to get a short recording on his phone. I got to the secretary, couldn’t leave a message, then wanted me to talk to one of his aid, wasn’t available. Finally she connected me to enforcement. I asked her to sum up our discussion, then give it to Bill. I told her I neither trust enforcement or the allegation department…the excuse to stick it in a secretive investigation and then make it disappeared.  

June 24@9:30am Talked to the senior resident. It is basically a simple shrink tube like rubber material they slide over a cable connection for environmental conditions. Just like the pictures below. Those ty wraps and the plastic bag were slipped inside the Raychem boot around the cable and intentionally they shrunk the boot around the foreign material. Well, the resident didn’t say it was malicious, as they haven’t have looked over it yet. She said she would be making a note about I think it is malicious.

She said this won’t be inspected until the third quarter of this year and I (me) am guessing we won’t see the results until Feb 2015…

I told her you are our heroes and thanked her for the hard work. Told her, “you are dealing with an encyclopedia worth of weak and useless rules that make you powerless to control the behavior of a plant like this.” Your nation doesn’t give you enough power, where a giant corporation like this has any fear of you at all. Dominion can falsify nuclear safety documents at will and they have absolutely no fear they will be held accountable in any meaningful way. Our nation as yet, doesn’t give them any meaningful incentive to want to change their bad and corrupt behavior.  

I am astonished this inspector's alarm bells aren’t going off big time…they are falsifying federal documents. What if all their documents submitted to the NRC are falsified or maliciously incomplete???

"foreign material (ty-wraps and a plastic bag) were found inside the cable environmental seal (Raychem boot) of the 'A' phase"

June 22@3:30pm: I put a call into the Millstone residents and left a message for them to call me on this LER.

Are they talking about the inside metal electrical box with the foreign material? 

 

This guy is a mess:

1) Feb 3:repeated issues with unit 3's  turbine- driven auxiliary feedwater pump and special inspection
 

2) May 25: trip of both units due with some kind of relay problem in the switch yard and failure of unit 3's non safety instrument air and another special inspection...

Unit 3 issues with turbine- driven auxiliary feedwater pump during the LOOP event.
 

3) inoperability of Unit 2's turbine- driven auxiliary feedwater pump for fourteen years due ty-wraps and a plastic bag foreign materials. Was that materials part of the work done on 2000. Say, was the plastic bag holding parts that went into the job...was the ty wraps actually going to the 2000 job?

Event date: April 10, 2014      

Report date: June 9, 2014

This employee gets a thrill out of secretly damaging nuclear safety equipment and taking a chance…a thrill game…with breaking a host of company rules. 

We don't know what kind of plastic bag it was and was their illegal drug residue inside the bag??? I can't believe the ty wraps would have anything to do with this Job.

LER 2014-004-00 (Unit 2)

DOMINION NUCLEAR CONNECTICUT, INC. MILLSTONE POWER STATION UNIT 2 LICENSEE EVENT REPORT 2014-004-00 FOREIGN MATERIAL FOUND IN A MOTOR LEAD RENDERED A MOTOR DRIVEN AUXILIARY FEEDWATER PUMP INOPERABLE
 On April 10, 2014, with Millstone Power Station Unit 2 in MODE 6 at 0% reactor power, while de-terminating the motor leads for the 'B' Motor Driven Auxiliary Feedwater (MDAFW) Pump motor, foreign material (ty-wraps and a plastic bag) were found inside the cable environmental seal (Raychem boot) of the 'A' phase. An inspection of the electrical motor leads revealed no damage occurred. This motor was last re-terminated In May 2000. The motor leads to the other phases did not have any foreign material inside the Raychem boot. Since the Raychem boot was not in the as tested environmentally qualified (EQ) configuration the 'B' MDAFW pump was considered inoperable. The direct cause was an historical inappropriate maintenance practice which rendered the MDAFW pump inoperable. Plant Technical Specifications (TS) 3.7.2.1 Action d, states in part, that in operating MODES 1, 2, or 3, with two AFW pumps inoperable, the plant must be in at least HOT STANDBY within six hours and in HOT SHUTDOWN within the following 12 hours. A review of the control room logs for the past three years determined there were 4 occasions where there were two AFW pumps inoperable for longer than allowed by TS.

The 'A' phase motor lead was properly re-terminated. During the most recent MPS2 refueling outage (spring 2014) in april or after.

 

In the above, we don’t know how bad the situation is because the rules say you need only report events (4) back three years, while the employee sabotage and the beginning of the safety component inoperability occurred fourteen years ago. You know, the rule say, if you kill a guy and don't get caught for 3 years, the courts can't prosecute you? The rules are set up where where if you got ten drunken driving convictions in 15 years and killed three people, but now the courts and newspapers can only look back 4 years where you only have one DUI conviction. Who creates such unfair rules for the public...why and who do these rules serve? Do you for one second believe the public would vote for this of game...they would find it acceptable? I got a solution for this, be diligent and don't break the rules creating such a horrible record.  

Basically this is a Raychem electrical cable boot or rubber covering. They heat it up and it shrinks to a leak proof shape around the electric cable. It sounds like the employee stuck the ty wraps and plastic bag inside the rubber seal. It can't be a simple oversight, somebody kicked the wrench in the hole unseen and by mistake...

This had to be malicious and with intent!!!

What is a ty wrap?

I believe it is these guys?

Ty wraps;




I am saying, you can create a set of so called legal rules and laws where your behavior is portrayed to outsiders much better than what has actual happened. The record is inaccurate and it is portrayed to outsiders much better than what you really earned. Nothing more damages a safety culture than this. It is like a child with his report card changing his "D" grades into a "A"s before the parent sees the report cards.  

In a six months period, the NRC reported a host of so called low level events where the plant staff looked at problems shallowly. Dominion always gain a benefit from this cheating, where they repeatedly use their errant bad judgement in a way that favors not spending money and drives the plant to be less conservative than the public would expect out of Dominion. Do you ever see them make a bad or inaccurate judgement where it drives them to be more conservative or cause them to wast money?   

Inspection Report 2014002

Unit 3

Description. On February 23, Dominion performed post-maintenance testing on the ‘A’ SW pump and the pump did not meet its acceptance criteria. The acceptance criteria included the requirement for running amps to be less than or equal to 84.1 amps and the results at the three testing positions were 85, 82, and 85 amps. The 84.1 amp value is the nameplate current value listed on the motor. Operations consulted the engineering department for assistance in disposition of the results and engineering concurred that the acceptance criteria could be changed to 85 amps and the ‘A’ SW pump returned to an operable state. Engineering concluded that exceeding the motor nameplate current by 0.9 amps would not result in any significant short term motor degradation. Based on engineering’s assessment, operations changed the acceptance criteria to 85 amps and declared the ‘A’ SW pump functional.

The inspectors questioned the basis of this assertion, because the service factor of the ‘A’ SW pump is 1.0, which would imply that even a small increase in amperage could have adverse consequences to the motor. Dominion generated a CR with the inspector’s concerns (CR541081) and upon further investigation found that they had not considered whether the motor will start/accelerate as designed during a degraded bus voltage consideration or what impact there would be on the bus if the motor is running and the station encounters a degraded bus voltage condition. Dominion operators placed the pump in a pull to lock condition and entered Technical Requirements Manual 3.7.4 for having one SW pump non-functional.

The inspectors questioned the basis of this assertion, because the service factor of the ‘A’ SW pump is 1.0, which would imply that even a small increase in amperage could have adverse consequences to the motor. Dominion generated a CR with the inspector’s concerns (CR541081) and upon further investigation found that they had not considered whether the motor will start/accelerate as designed during a degraded bus voltage consideration or what impact there would be on the bus if the motor is running and the station encounters a degraded bus voltage condition. Dominion operators placed the pump in a pull to lock condition and entered Technical Requirements Manual 3.7.4 for having one SW pump non-functional.

Specifically, Dominion had not tracked, trended, or reviewed the performance of the installed cards that had been repaired with NSR parts. Based on interviews, the inspectors determined that Dominion assumed none of the repaired cards had failed, because the overall failure rate of all 7300 cards was believed to be very, very low. Contrary to Dominion's assumed failure rate for cards with NSR parts, the inspectors identified two instances of repaired cards which had been returned to NAPS for additional repairs after an in-service period of a few years. Therefore, the inspectors concluded that Dominion's assessments were based, in part, on an unverified assumption regarding the failure rate of cards repaired at NAPS because the performance history (e.g., failure rate) of the installed affected cards was not fully understood.

 

If they never pay a price for bad behavior, how do you ever expect them to change and evolve in a positive way? The moral hazard. The two special inspections and the erratic operation of the TDAFW leading to the potential of confusing the control room operators in a serous accident. How pathetic and powerless is the NRC, where they can't make them fix this core cooling safety pump at the first opportunity. How pathetic weak and powerless is the agency in doing our greater good. 

The is the Veteran Administration in the nuclear industry!!!    

On January 23, 2014, the Unit 3 TDAFW pump failed a required surveillance test. During the starting sequence, the pump tripped on overspeed due to mechanical binding in the turbine governor linkage. Dominion entered TS LCO 3.7.1.2(a) action (C) which provided up to 72 hours to repair the failed pump before requiring Unit 3 to be shutdown to Mode 3. Troubleshooting efforts revealed that the mechanical linkage between the governor and the turbine control valve (3MSS*MCV5) was binding due to a degraded cam follower bearing and a mechanical link that had been installed incorrectly. Although repairs had been completed, it became apparent thatthe required post-maintenance tests, including a full flow test at full power, could not be completed prior to the expiration of the LCO on January 26, 2014. Dominion requested enforcement discretion from compliance with TS 3.7.1.2 for a period of 72 hours. The NRC reviewed the request in accordance with IMC 0410, NOED, and granted a one-time 48 hour extension to required action (C) of TS LCO 3.7.1.2(a).Dominion completed the post-maintenance testing and restored the TDAFW pump to an operable status within the additional time granted.

Obviously, the NRC's ROP is not reporting to the community in a way portraying the full and accurate dangerous condition this site is in. We aren't fairly giving the public the opportunity and incentive to change Millstone and Dominion. The NRC just doesn't have enough horsepower to make these guys change and become better corporate citizens. The dangerous conditions I am talking about is, a nuclear accident or the plant being operated in such unreliable manner as a third world country's puppet regime would be ashamed to have them operating in their country. 

Need I remind everyone the NE grid is in a terrible crisis without sufficient power capacity this summer and into the foreseeable future. You say boo in this condition, the cost of grid electricity doubles or triples.

05000423/2013005: Introduction. The inspectors identified a Green Finding (FIN) for the failure to follow Dominion Procedure OP-AA-102, “Operability Determinations,” and establish adequate compensatory measures to restore reliability to the Unit 3 TDAFW following an overspeed trip on November 4, 2013. Subsequently, the TDAFW pump tripped again on overspeed during surveillance testing on December 18, 2013.

Discussion. The TDAFW pump tripped on overspeed on November 4, 2013 and December 18, 2013, during scheduled surveillance testing. Dominion attributed the initial test failure to condensate in the steam lines without fully evaluating other potential causes that could contribute to the failure to start. As a result, the reliability of theTDAFW to respond to a start signal was reduced. Compensatory measures established following the November 4 test failure and subsequent revisions to the prompt operability determination were inadequate and did not prevent the December 18 failure. Additional compensatory measures were subsequently added.

In August 2013, Dominion adjusted the governor compensator on the TDAFW pump such that the speed sensitivity of governor was reduced in order to prevent spontaneous oscillations from occurring at low flow rates. Subsequently, on November 4, 2013, the TDAFW pump tripped on overspeed during the start sequence during a quarterly surveillance test. A prompt operability determination (OD000561, Revision 0) assessed the cause of the trip as being due to a buildup of condensate in the steam supply lines to the TDAFW pump. Compensatory measures were established to eliminate the source of the condensate by ensuring the steam traps were adequately draining the steam supply lines. The operability determination attributed the probable cause of the overspeed trip as being caused by the failure to properly operate and maintain the steam traps in the steam lines such that condensate accumulated in the steam lines and caused the throttle valve to fail to close due to hydraulic drag. On November 5, the ‘D’ steam line isolation valve to the TDAFW pump was closed. The ‘D’ steam supply line remained isolated until December 18, 2013.

Dominion Engineering considered several other potential causes in the analysis in OD000561, Revision 0, but determined that they were likely not involved in the overspeed trip that occurred on November 4. Subsequent revisions to the initial operability determination (Revisions 1 and 2) provided further rationale to justify why governor and throttle valve potential failure modes did not require compensatory measures to restore reliability. As a result, Dominion did not conduct any further testing of the governor, the governor linkage and the throttle valve, 3MSS*HCV5, nor did they establish compensatory measures that would have addressed these other potential causes. On December 5, CR534403 identified that “there was a discreet (vs. smooth) change in the acceleration rate” of the TDAFW pump during pump startup that had not been observed prior to the maintenance on the governor in August. A timely recommendation by the root cause team to test the throttle valve and governor for binding prior to the next scheduled surveillance test was not implemented prior to the second overspeed test failure on December 18.

OD000561 (Revisions 0, 1, and 2) was narrowly focused on the malfunctioning of the steam traps as the source of the condensate building up in the steam lines. On December 18, Dominion unisolated the ‘D’ steam supply line and another overspeed trip subsequently occurred during the surveillance test. The root cause evaluation was still in progress and the causal assessment had not been fully completed when operations restored the ‘D’ steam line to service in preparation for the surveillance test.  

Dominion focused on the malfunctioning steam traps upstream of the steam admission valves as the primary cause of the test failures requiring compensatory measures. The other potential causes of the problem were not fully investigated. They did not use conservative assumptions in the decision making process and did not demonstrate that the other potential causes were not valid when formulating compensatory measures to restore reliability. Dominion did not fully investigate nor recognize that condensate was trapped in the steam line between 3MSS*AOV31D and 3MSS*MOV17D (downstream of the steam admission valve) which may have caused or contributed to the turbine overspeed condition. They also did not further investigate possible degradation of the governor, linkage, nor throttle valve binding as potential causes.