The Battle for Safety at Pilgrim Nuclear Plant (secret cell phone recording of NRC officials)

Yesterday I was listening in on the NRC’s meeting with Pilgrim plant concerning their SRVs on my cell phone At the end of the meeting I trying to wake up my cell phone, trying to prepare for the beginning of the public comment part of the meeting. I dropped the phone call and had to call back. I was shocked to learn there was no other people willing to make a comment or ask a questions to the NRC when I called right back. By the time I called back, the meeting had ended. I made notes for discussion with the NRC officials for the public part of the meeting. Generally the NRC will just let me give my spiel, they won’t openly discuss the issues with me. I immediately called the meeting contact person Mr. McKinley thinking he would schedule a phone discussion over the SRVs later. I thought I was just leaving a voice recording on his phone. He answered my call and immediately wanted to discuss my issues. I have on phone recording app on my cell phone for years…I record automatically every phone call on my cell phone.

Basically I feel the NRC employees and especially the agency's operating plant staff are extraordinarily people...but bad national policy is inhibiting the employees from driving dangerous chaos out of the national fleet. They are a captured agency. 

This might be a big deal if a big and embarrassing nuclear event occurs in the industry within the next few years, especially concerning Pilgrim.  

Technically recording the phone call without getting consent is illegal…especially if it is a government official.  I certainly risk being taken to court over this or my special access to the NRC is going to come end. I thinks this discussions reflect very well on these employees and the NRC in the whole.
 

Private cell phone recording of Mr. McKinley Chief, Division of Reactor Projects, Branch 5 and Mike Mulligan concerning Pilgrim SRV meeting.

From McKinley, Raymond 

To steamshovel2002@yahoo.com 

Thu, Jul 9, 2015 11:59 AM EDT 

Mike,
Thank you for listening in on the enforcement conference and providing your insights yesterday evening. You asked a question about how the LOOP initiating event frequency factored into the risk analysis and if that initiating event frequency is ever updated. I reached out to one of our Senior Risk Analysts, and I think I can better address that question. If you have some time, I can give you a call or you can call me. We can set up a time today or on Monday to discuss further. Let me know if you are available.
Thanks,
Ray McKinley Chief, Division of Reactor Projects, Branch 5 U.S. NRC Region 610-337-5150

Private cell phone recording between, Christopher Cahill Senior Reactor Analysis, Chief McKinley and Mike Mulligan 

We discussed this below 2.206 in 2013...I read this below italicized paragraph to Mr McKinley. I clearly stated the date. The NRC

2.206: "The repeated nature of the failure of the safety relief valves means Entergy doesn't know the mechanism of the failure.. .it is a common mode failure. The design and manufacture of these valves are defective and it is extremely unsafe to operate a nuclear plant with all safety relief valves being INOP. A condition adverse to quality..." 

discovered during the 2015 inspection Entergy had failed to disclose a SRV failed to operate in the 2013 blizzard LOOP. I believe Entergy "not disclosing" this on their own in 2013 should have led to a red finding whether from sloppiness or an intentional falsification. I didn't like Mr. Kckinley's response to me. I won't get confrontational to him in this setting, after all I need to respect he is a high US governmental official. He said nobody in Entergy or the NRC knew at the 2013 time frame the SRV's were defective or should be considered a common mode failure. Everyone realizes my below italicized is a true statement today. How come I knew in 2013 these valves were defectives valves and Entergy and the NRC didn't didn't...I had the information in their document system. Remember energy yanked out the three stage SRVs in the spring 2015 outage because they were unsafe. They are a defective design.

Further, the NRC was negligent with knowingly allowing Pilgrim to start-up with these defective components, allowed Pilgrim to get into the next outage just a month or two away. Months later in the 2015 outage the NRC mysteriously discovered the failure of the SRV to operate, Pilgrim burying this in their documents and not reporting it to the agency. This SRV failure to operate discovered by the NRC forced Pilgrim to remove the defective 3 stage and replace it with the 2 stage. This whole vendor dragging their feet on the SRV investigation and the incompetence of pilgrim supporting the operational period between the 2015 blizzard and the outage stinks with allowing the plant to operate with bad valves for convenience. Basically dragging your feet on investigations and false reporting to the NRC pays off allowing pilgrim to get to the outage. They replaced the unsafe valves in the outage. I contend these valves were unsafe before they put them in the plant and entergy and the NRC should have known it.

If the agency post blizzard 2015, and even in Blizzard 2013, if the agency did a complete and competent investigation of the undying material facts of the SRVs, they would have discovered in the available information and documentation, certainly post 2015 blizzard, those SRVs were dangerous. If the NRC would have uncovered all the facts and the available evidence, the agency would have force Pilgrim to replace those SRVs before state-up.

There is nothing but mostly licensee and NRC not challengable assumptions behind all of this including the violation level. They play these games in the dark and they have nothing to be afraid of.       

As these officials told me, the complexity of poor design of these valves and the degradation mechanism...the situation is too complex to model. The NRC was forced to go outside their risk modeling and basically depend on the skill of the craft to come up to a violation level.

It is extraordinarily simplistic and constitutes a falsification, everyone using just two valve failures as keying a violation level. You see the dangerousness what they are setting up, it is the best view of information they selective chose to show the public. It is not the full story. It is nothing but a pyramid scheme based on not public information...you seeing a false facade they are projecting to you.

We are talking about high government expert officials...to explain to me how they came up with the violation level. The first official called in the region I risk specialist, then the second official needed or wanted to call in laboratory to complete the discussion surrounding the violation level and the LOOP frequency. It is so complex, they need to keep calling these experts with a higher education, it becomes a bottomless black hole with never an answer to your question.               

2.206: Request Emergency shutdown of Pilgrim surrounding their SRVs 

March 7, 2013:

"The repeated nature of the failure of the safety relief valves means Entergy doesn't know the mechanism of the failure.. .it is a common mode failure. The design and manufacture of these valves are defective and it is extremely unsafe to operate a nuclear plant with all safety relief valves being INOP. A condition adverse to quality..."    

Request:  

1) Request an immediate shutdown the Pilgrim Plant.

2) This is the second time I requested a special NRC inspection concerning the defective SRV valves.

3) Not allow the plant to restart Pilgrim until they fully understand the past failure mechanisms of the four bad new three stage safety relief valves.

4) Request the OIG investigate this cover-up to keep an unsafe nuclear plant at power.