Monday, June 27, 2016

Junk Plant River Bend: Sending a message to the NRC.

Out there in the ether of current time, I knew the NRC had a continuing interest in River Bend's junk and obsolete simulator and the serious issues with junk master-pact safety breakers. I chose a opportune time and issue to call the senior resident inspectors. I wanted to let my buddy NRC inspectors to know I was staying abreast of currents issues and had a particular issue with the NRC inspector not finding a large issue with not professionalism with licenced operators. They being poorly trained and continuing to bungle dealing with plant trips and  conservatively following the regs and their procedures. I idea the licenced troops are too intimidated to get the NRC to help them fix their organization.  

 Personally I think the trouble here is Entergy's management is too ideologically doctrinaire...management is a tyrant and you must follow our orders without thinking. The high corporate financial pinheads without any nuclear training are running or destroying the plant. The troops or employees have a passive/aggressive organization disorder. Basically as a protest, the troops are bureaucratically sabotaging the management the plant. Say if management orders or request a operator to do something, he knows the request will lead to trouble for the plant, he will carry out the request without providing his valuable input and he might actually throw sand in the gears. The inspector told me Entergy had recently replaced senior management. It seems like the passive/ aggressive strategy has worked for the troops. I think there still is a huge gap of mistrust between the senior management and the troops. The idea that management can pick and chose the facts to support an agenda to boost senior management bonuses without qualms about using intimidation. 

 The industry recently has talked about severe financial pressures threatening the operation of fifteen to twenty plants. The nuclear industry has never before faced this kind of pressure. Is that how this plays out, this severe pressure increasingly disconnects integrity and truthfulness from between senior management and the troops.

 My objective on the discussion between the senior resident and me was to"take a read" on the "resident" and send a message higher NRC management. I had the opportunity to pick a sensitive time frame to speak to the NRC resident and enhance my message. Many NRC residents have spoken of the independent republican teabagger territory of the south. The local people and captured news media don't keep keep nipping at the heals of NRC and at a particular deep south nuclear plant like they do in the liberal northeast. There just isn't much broader interest in nuclear safety in the independent deep south, the breakaway territories of Republicanland. I had a list of talking points on paper. 

 Basically, the licenced operators collectively aren't trained properly  and aren't qualified to be running the plant. The NRC is afraid to put this information in NRC documents. I wanted the senior resident to comment on the disclosed Entergy root cause analysis below. He was too cagey to speak at all about it.     
May 12, 2016

SUBJECT: RIVER BEND STATION – NRC SPECIAL INSPECTION REPORT 05000458/201600

 "Additionally, the team observed that during the root cause evaluation the licensee determined that the operating crew that was on-shift at the time of the event had multiple issues with communication, weakness in teamwork, and haste prior to the loss of SDC event."

Page 19
This was that horrendous not disclosed inspection circulating in the NRC's ether when I first called the River Bend Senior NRC's resident inspector. The NRC bills themselves as a sampling regulator. The plant system is just too big to inspect everything. The NRC also is a symbolic reporter of record. They only pick a few symbolic issues to violate out of many. In other words, they only pick a few symbolic violations to represent to the public out of many violations. Say they go looking at a problem and find 10 violations. They just pick a few symbolic violations out of the ten to disclosed to the public. The outsiders never see all the violation. The NRC is happy if the licencees documents and fixes the undisclosed violation  in  the dark "smoked filled rooms" of the not publicly disclosed secret document system. 

So on the big picture with simulator issues nationwide, they are saying to the other licencees to secretly fix your simulator fidelity before we come in to find violations. 

If the NRC was a legitimated US regulator, they would order to all licencees, we suspect simulator fidelity issues nationwide and order them to identify all simulator fidelity issues like at River Bend in their simulators, report to us on any mismatch and then fix it. This is a giant regulatory failure at River Bend and it is in all of the plants. We need to see the magnitude of all nuclear plant simulator violation nationwide on one NRC document, to ascertain why the NRC can't do their jobs.             

I feel the NRC thinks the plant is overloaded with past violations...the licencees is overwhelmed answering and fixing NRC identified violations. So the solution to this problem is for the agency to not issue anymore violations(No findings were identified during this inspection.). These guys need a prolonged mandated shutdown to reorganize the plant. 

Basically the same rendition of the agency is a toothless organization.    
May 25, 2016
EA-15-043 
SUBJECT: RIVER BEND STATION – NRC SUPPLEMENTAL INSPECTION REPORT 05000458/2016010
The NRC determined that misalignment of the simulator configuration to the design basis of River Send Station led to negative operator training, which complicated the operators’ response to a reactor scram on December 25, 2014. The NRC concluded that your staff identified appropriate corrective actions to address the root cause, contributing cause, and extent of cause of the simulator configuration misalignment. During the on-site portion of the inspection, NRC inspectors determined that your staff’s extent of condition evaluation was too limited in scope. The simulator testing activities used were not effective in identifying differences between the simulator and River Bend Station operating characteristics of components and systems that resulted in negative operator training. In response, your staff conducted an additional extent of condition evaluation, which was provided to the inspectors on March 29, 2016, after completion of the on-site portion of the inspection. The inspectors performed an in-office review of the information and, due to concerns regarding the adequacy of the sample selection, determined that the extent of condition evaluation was inadequate. Based on these determinations, the NRC concluded that the inspection objective involving the extent of condition was not met.
The NRC has determined that completed or planned corrective actions were insufficient to address this performance issue. Specifically, the extent of condition review was insufficient. Therefore, the White finding will remain open and continue to receive consideration as an Action Matrix input until inspectors verify that all inspection objectives have been met. You should notify the NRC of your readiness for a re-inspection when corrective actions have been completed.
No findings were identified during this inspection.
I am trying to give you my setup to the call to the River Bend residents. What is spinning in the ether of time. I make the call on the morning of May 11. The phone rings for a prolong period of time. He must have call waiting capabilities. I think he is busy. Then he answers me in a hushed voice. I tell him who I am. He knows me by my name. He says in a low voice, "I am in a important meeting. "Can I call you back Mike". I am chagrined with him answering the phone. I call these residents all the time. I often go to voice mail, leave a recording. I often get a call back by these busy government officials. I often just call them back and eventually they answer the phone. I would say about 90% of the time they will answer a cold call on the fly and will talk for awhile.

On May 12 I get a e-mail message from the region IV Head public affairs officers. Mr. Dricks once worked in NE. Me and him go back a long ways. When you a get a e-mail or call from a Mr Dricks, it signifies the NRC has put you in Siberia. I generially hate all NRC public affairs officers. I feel their intent is to stiff arm you. They are information disruptors. They make the conversation as painful as possible so you won't call them back. They generially have no current information in their heads. I always ask myself, are these guys that stupid or are they professional actors tasked to look stupid? I just get from these guys, they never whole heartily act for my interest. I always get from these guys they act like corporate public relations hucksters. There primary ends is to always protect the agency and industry, not be truthful US governmental communicators. It doesn't have to be like this. Half of his problem is he lives in Texas now.   



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