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UNITED.5TATES OF AMERICA,

NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION'

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I! In the Matter of:!

2! IE TMI INVESTIGATION INTERVIEWqi

31 of Gary R. Capodanno! Section Manager

44 Mechanical Design: GPU

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Trailer #203,

9! NRC Investigation SiteTMI No..: lear Power Plant10i Middletown, Pennsylvania

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June 1, 197912! (uate of interview)131 July 6, 1979

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(Date Transcript Typeo)14!

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21|NRC PERSONNEL:

22' Bob MarshAnthony N. Fasano

23i J. G. Hover (GPU)

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y MARSH: The date is June 1, 1979, the time is 12:03 PH and this is Bob

2 Marsh. I'm an Investigator with the U. S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission1

31 assigned to the Region III Office in Chicagc, Illinois. This afternoon wei

41 are located at the Corporate Offices of the GPU Service Corporation, locatedi

Sj at 260 Cherry Hill Road in Mountain Lakes, New Jersey. At this time wei

6| will be conducting an interview of Mr. Gary R. Capodanno who is a Section

7 Manager, Mechanical Design. Prior to st::rting I'd like to go around the

8, table having each individual identify himself, spell his last name and

indicate his position. Tony if you would start.g

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FASANO: Anthony N. Fasano, Inspection Specialist, NRC.

!CAPODANNO: Gary Capodanno, Section Manager, Mechanical Design, GPU.

141

HOVER: J. G. Hover, Manager, Generation Division Support.

161

MARSH: I thank you. Mr. Capodanno before we began we had a few words,

17|concerning this two page memo you have in front of you and without going

into detail I'll just indicate that that memo indicates the purpose of'

NRC's investigation, the scope of it, and the authority under which it'si being conducted. It also addresses the rights of the person being inter-

21{viewed and on the second page there are listed three questions that I would,

22|! like to get your response to at this time. First question reads, do you

23

understand the above making reference to the two page memo?241

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lj CAPODANNO: Yes.!

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3 MARSH: The second question reads, do we have your permission to tape this

4 interview?i

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Gj CAPODANNO: Yes.

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MARSH:8 And thirdly, do you want a copy of this tape?

91

10| CAPODANNO: Yes.'

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ujMARSH: Okay fine. There is a fourth question that is not called out ong

the second page but is covered in the body regarding your right if you so'

141 desire to have a company representative present and it's my understanding

that that is Mr. Hover's capacity kindly in this interview.

16:Il CAPODANNO: Yes, that's correct.

17!i

18iMARSH: Okay. Mr. Capodanno to begin with if you would could you give us a

brief resume of your background, your experience in the nuclear field and a

description of your d'.cies with GPU and then following that in your owni

21(

words could you describe to us your association with the incident at Three

Mile Island on March 28 staring with how you first received notification

and going through the approximate first three day period. What the sequence24

of your involvement was.'

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1 CAPODANNO: Okay. Do you want to go back to day one as far as my experience

2j goes?

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4 MARSH: Just a brief resume to get an idea of what your experience in the

Si nuclear field has been. -

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7j CAPODANNO: Okay. I initially started with the Consolidated Edison Company

8 it was my first job out of college. Projects that I was involved in there

g covered some work on the Indian Point Station and some work on the new unit

101 that they were anticipating buying at that time which was gonna be a BWR

plant. In both instances I was involved with some Systems work. The

] iemainder of my work at Con Ed was on Fossile Plant Systems and I was with

] that company about 2 years a little less. Second assignment work that I

14| had was with Foster Wheeler Company which had no involvement in the nuclear,

industry at that time. I was with them about 2 years. Following that I

was with Burns and Roe for a period of 7 years working on totally nuclear! projects. First as a Systems Design Engineer and subsequently as a Group17!'

Supervisor with Systems Design Engineers on Forked River and Three Mile18f

Island Nuclear Stations. After I left Burns and Roe I was at a ESASCO for19i

a brief period, 3 months again non nuclear work and then came to GPU Service

! in August of last year and my present position is Section Manager for21!

Systems Design. My functions at GPU are Systems Engineering Design. The22j

: group that I had is responsible for either design work which is fairly new231

i with GPU for systems in all their plants or modifications to systems in all24j

their plants as well as review engineer, engineer review activity for;

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1: projects that GPU had going with other architect engineering companies..

2j That basically is what I've been doing since I been here. As far as the

3 accident goes, on the morning of March 28 I think approximately 9:30 in the

4 morning, I think is when we first got the word that something had happened.

Sj A member of our staff, Mr. Jim Moore, who is another Section Manager in

6 Mechanical Components Area came by and gave us a brief description of what

7 he then understood to be the occurrence and we had a meeting that morningI

g with Mr. Moore, myself, George Lehmann, Bob Keaton, Duke Wilson was there

g for a time, my boss, Don Krumburger, this was sometime after 9:30 in the

10|m rning. The purpose of that meeting was to review what we then knew about

what had occurred, to make some assignments of people to send to the site,

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12 and assignments of activities in the home office. What we then understood

was there was some question about activity release, keeping in mind that we

didn't really know the severity of the accident at the time, we were looking'

15; at problems of effects on in containment equipment as far as I was concerned

and se16i ndary plant equipment as a result of the accident. I'm making some

investigation as to what happened into the secondary plant side, caused the

plant to trip, we understood it then to be a loss of instrument air. My

people, George Lehmann was to be involved in that, and another one of my

individuals, Julian Labromavitch was also to go to the site that day with

Mr. Moore and Lehmann to investigate what happened in terms of the steam,

22:. generator. We had some word that there may have been some damage to the

22tt steam generator. Labromavitch had been working prior to that as an Engineer

associated with the steam generator so he had some knowledge of that, we,

24jalso felt that based on his previous work experiences expressing that he

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!lj might be of some value. The other people involved in the meeting we worked

2j with there that morning were to begin make assignments, Mr. Broton who wasI.

3j gonna be involved in some computerized retrain analysis, data collection.

4f Rich Lense I believe was also assigned to go to the site at.that same

Sj meeting to collect data. So we had aries of collecting data, analyzing the -

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6j effects of the accident on primary, secondary plant systems, other people

7 were involved and I really forgotten who we had selected that day to lookI

gj at the effects of the activity releases, to find out just what they were.

g| I believe Ed Wallace in Licensing was also had made that assignment or was

10 given that assignment I should say. That took us through fair part of theI

g morning. My rest of my day was basically spent getting those people assigned,

describing to them what happened, arranging for them to go to the site. A

little later in that day Mike Marel who subsequently went to the site the

14 f 11 wing day had been at a conference in one of the local motels and I had

gotten a hold of him, got him back to this office because there was a

g decision made that he would act as the interface in this office with the

17 people that we were sending to the site to coordinate information, to try

to pull together a picture of what was occurred. That's pretty much what

took up the first day. The remainder of the day I didn't involved in doing

anything specific it was a matter of trying to keep informed of the informa-

tion that was sketchy coming in and somewhat confused. And we made not

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additional work assignments beyond that, the ?eople that we sent to the

site were on their way they hadn't arrived and I hadn't heard back from

! them.24|

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iMARSH:

1{Before we go into a second day Tony why don't you approach your

g! questions on the first statement to him at one at a time.I

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4 FASANO: All right. You mentioned some information on activity release

5 early in the morning, could you go a little bit further into that, into

6i what detail you had and what was your involvement?.

7

CAPODANNO: Not that much really. Th'e information that we had was simplyg;

g that there had been some kind of a release and in the meeting that we had

10fit started about 9:30 or so, we were trying to make work assignments and

g stuff who would do what. It was really a question of to determine what was

j the release, what was the offsite dose and the analysis of the investigation

of that was gonna be done by Ed Wallace as I recall, he's the Licensing

Manager. We, myself, people in my group did nothing beyond. We didn't try

ana y e any g r mn any ca cu a ns to make any detemhadons in15

that. We simply had been told that something was happening was part of

that morning meeting. We selected somebody to investigate it further.

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FASANO: As far as the, apparently you got Mr. Marel to be the interface

for information.20i

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CAPODANNO: That was the plan on the first day yeh.22|

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23!FASANO: And you were then informed by Mr. Marel of the status. To what

24lextent was information coming in?

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1 CAPODANNO: What happened as I recall was that we got Mike back from that

2 meeting that was out of the building, he was in for a time, again I wouldi

3| say there was a problem with information, we didn't really know what was,

4| going on and he was told that he was gonna have to hang around the office

S;i and find out what was going on. He subsequently, 'as I recall later in the '

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Si day ended up in one of the conference rooms on the second floor herewith.

/ I think probably Wilson and Keaton and some other people getting some

information. But there was no real coordination effort going on that time8

gj because of the general confusion about exactly what was happening. So

10| during that first day he had that assignment but he didn't really get:

involved in specifically getting information from the people that we had

sent to the site and try to interface any activities between site people

and home office people.

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15| FASANO: Let's see, how long have you been with GPU?.

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CAPODANNO: Since August of last year.17;,

ISIFASANO: Since August of last year. I guess then this is not a fair ques-tion. I was going to ask if you had any other experience of communication

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with the site and is there is it a general difficulty or just because of211

this particular situation?i

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23|| CAPODANNO: I think it was a matter of magnitude. Normally, either with

2 41

this plant or the other plants that I've been involved with theres been no25i

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1; great communications problem. There a sizeable organization between service1

2! corporation and operating counties. So under normal circumstances it wasi

3| really a question of finding out who you should talk to and then you had

4| really no problem getting a hold of that individual and getting an answer.t

5| In a case of the accident it was I don't really know a kind of communications

6jnetwork that was needed just didn't exist. The normal telephone routes

7 were overloaded, and it was very difficult getting informatior, back and

forth.g

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10|FASANO: And you had no I guess there was no specific line that could

; be kept open?

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CAPODANNO: What we ended up, no there was no predesignated hot line if she

will, we ended up during the early days of selectina a phone or several'

phones we kept those lines open. Of course people were moving onsite and15!

16:| trailers were getting set up and so on so that those lines kept changing.

We kept lines open but there was a difficulty as I understand from the

people onsite who were primarily working out of the Observation Center at,

18;

that time to get back to this office. There's obviously an abundance of

phones here if you could get the call through but between trying to locate20j

people onsite and the availability of communications equipment to them21!

; onsite I think that's were the big breakdown occurred.22]

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23!| FASANO: You were relying on the people you had dispatched from this office

24|| I assume?

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1: CAPODANNO: Personnally from my work I was. But there's other people

2 involved here, Wilson, Keatca and so on that were direct communication with

3| other people at site. The idea was that we normally provide an engineering

4 support service and it's easier to deal with our engineer who knows how we

5 work here and what he was supposed to be doing onsite. That's not to say

61 that we didn't talk to other people in the past or subsequent to March 28i

7| but the initial plan of not knowing what the exact situation was and we're

8 really not having a good feel for how bad things awfully turned out to be.

,9 I personnally did not engage in any direct communication with people onsite.

10fI was waiting to get the word from those that were in direct communication

d with the normal site personnel.I

12!

FASANO:g So the three areas that you might of been involved were the specific

14! cause, activity you mentioned someone else had taken over ...

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CAPODANNO:16 ... What were assigned to look at what in the secondary plant

had specifically caused the trip. What the effects of the trip and the

f releases were on equipment and systems within containment anct then the

secondary plant.,

, 91a.

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21|, FASANO: On the effects of equipment, what kind of information co you have

to even evaluate or did you have sufficient information to evaluate?!

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i CAPODANNO: On that first day not really, we didn't really have a good24!

handle on. I believe that Jim Moore told us that there was an estimate of,

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!1| something like 30,000 gallons of water that were released inside containment.

h At that time we didn't know that there'd even been a release into the Aux

Building and they didn't have a good handle on what the impact on the!

containment atmosphere was didn't know about the Aux Building condition4

Sj initially and had no information to lead _me to conclude that there had been1 anything impacted in this in the Turbine. Hall at all other than whatever6i

initially caused the reported loss of instrument air, the plant trip.7

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8!FASANO: The effects then were basically the fact due to being underwater,

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say in the Reactor Building ...10

lifCAPODANNO: Weil I think the initial plan was that if we were ever able to

get enough information that we could say things like well let's supposition,13

j let's say that there had been a trip, the trip might of resulted in loss of

feedwater or cooling water to some component that would be something that

we'd investigate, to see if there had been equipment damaged. You know

initially the way that we got the accident was, it wasn't as bad as I said17

it turned out to be and we didn't realize of the morning of the first day18!

that we were looking at such a serious situation. The thing was more

geared toward some problem with activity release, cleanup and we thought40|,

that there would be a major problem in certain areas possibly with equipment211

damage either inside containment or outside of containment. And that as a,

22|! Systems Guide I was primarily what I was supposed to be looking at, what

23|i happened to the systems, what potentially could of happened to equipment.

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1! FASANO: Okay. As far as your steam generator I guess would be the same1

2 type of evaluation.

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4{ CAPODANNO: Yeh, the reason that Julian Labromavitch went down on the steam

5 generators, he used to be in the Components Group and had done a lot of

6 work on it prior to his reassignment to my group and as I said his background

h with Electric Boat was as a stressing also was felt that he'd be a good guy

g to send down as far as assessing steam generator damage.

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FASANO:10f Did he feed back any information as to his conclusions to damage

gj or?

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CAPODANNO: No. Not the first day and he ultimately ended up working in13

the Control Room onsite and doing some analytical work onsite and I see

g nothing that every indicated he actually got into doing any kind of analysis

on the steam generator itself. Once he got.there the situation was such,

he ended up doing other things.

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FASANO: Has there ever been a conclusion drawn as to the effect on the

steam generators to this date?

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22|, CAPODANNO: I can't say it was certain, you know. I wasn't involved in iti and neither was Julian so as far as my group or my people we didn't do it,

23!whether or not some other group has I'm not certain.

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1 FASANO: As far as the second and third day, did you get involved at all1

2! with activity releases or instrumentation or systems with respect to waysi

3) of releasing activity?|

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5; cap 0DANNO: Well on the second day I wasn't even in the office. There was -

6 someting going on another project and again not knowing how bad things were

I was out of the office taking care of that. On that day Mike Marel and

g Rick McGaughy were in my group were sent to the site. I came back to the

g office on that Thursday evening late about 8:30 or so and there was nothing

g ing n here so really things didn't start hopping at least for me until101

h Friday morning. I came in at the normal type about 8 o' clock 8:15 I'd say

y and then by a little after 9 things really started to break loose. We were

ge ng a caHs from ne she to look at tWgs lhe decay heat13

system, pumps, supply data on the pumps and relief valves, the system

arrangements. That was a very long day, I think we were here till son.3. thing

g like 2:30 in the morning following up from 8 o' clock one morning till 2:30

in the morning the next day. During the course of that Friday, we looked'

at quite a number of things. There was i11 kinds of requests from the181

site, to supply data on say relief valves, electromatic relief valve to

look at systems, possibly failures in various systems, how we'd get around20j

them. I believe that same day we started looking at connection of the21!

recombiner, possibly means to inert containment, scme investigations on,

22!! using the spent fuel, system components trying to cross type on the decay

! heat and special cooling system for cleanup both the activity and water.24l

So it was really tnat Friday that we started going at it.

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IfFASANO: So directly, so direct involvement as far as emergency plan or the

2! paths of release of activity, you didn't get involved in that?I

31

CAPODANNO: No I never did. And all the questions were addressed as far as

Si analysis of systems and component failures,!

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7 FASANO: As you got your information on the first day, was this then did

gj you report this to Mr. Wilson or Mr. Krumburger or would you run your own

g{ more or less making your own decisions?

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] CAPODANNO: Actually it was going the other way around. Information was

y coming to me and there wasn't that much on that Wednesday. I didn't get

any direct information from site to report to anybody else, it was all

coming to me from Wilson, Keaton, Krumburger.

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FASANO: Do you have any other questions?

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171; MARSH: I have no questions.

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FASANO: Well just take maybe a few minutes now if you'd like, it's up to20t

you if you'd like to give any suggestions as from your observations and,

211

experience in this event what you might consider things that might be

helped in the future to maybe better cope with similar situations.'

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1! CAPODANNO: I think tnere's several things that cid come to mind. One of|

the problems and I'm sure is that everybody is addressing is an engineering2!

I

organization or a support organization to an operating company from this31

4f office, number one we needed better communications which I think is obvious.

The ability to get information back and forth readily is something that I-

5i

6| just think ... vital. The second thing is the availability of the informa-7 tion in this office. We had a fair amount of drawings on mag cards of the

8. specs and all, however, I would think that a much more comprehensive set of

files on any plant that you have might be available to the central engineer-g

10 ing pe ple.Secondly, there are some things that are in forms of list,

f information on equipment location that from my experience with A/E even wegi

,,j made a lot of lists of various things like valves, equipment and so on.

But there was additional lists that I think perhaps with the benefit of

hindsigh would also be well to generate or amend existing lists for example,

we went through finding in subsequent days after finally finding locationsof inst rentations specifically. If you look at a typically instrument

17| list produced by Burns and Roe I'm not sure by other A/E's, they'll be4

reviewed for approximate locations by when I came questions with flooding,

how soon is something gonna go under water, that required some detail

checking. We came to questions even later on, weeks after that about'

21! ultimate means to measure water level in containment. And we looked at

things like measuring lines going through electrical penetrations, again it,

22!

was a surge list, where was this stuff exactly located and which ones canyou pick.

So I think that there's a lot of information that from a normal

25i design stancpoint is that it doesn't seem much benefit in collection it but,

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If after this accident I don't think to get more definitive information on

2j equipment locations, be it the instrumentation or pumps, valves that youi

3 have a good handle on where all these things are, what their power sources

41 are, what their operating modas are in a more concise form. Some of the'

5' things that we looked at concerned containment isolation valves. We were

6i looking at some of the larger valves, and saying that you know what radia-'

7 tion level could we expect this equipment crap out, where is it located.

81 It was available in terms of going from say valve lists and then finding a

gj penetration drawing and matching that valve to the penetration and then

10 p ssibly looking at a general arrangement in a pipe drawing. Some of the

tasks that we did during the course of the accident were to collect that

] information in a more useful fnrm, that stuff is not in the daily reduction

f ma 's perf rmance. So what I'm saying is that kind of stuff we went13

j back and looked at it and so we did and tried to make that a little more'

standarc list that you do as a general rule that can be elpful.15!

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17;,! FASANO: The transducers in particular, let's say for the reactor coolant

pressure, their location. tiow acout the location of the tap off on the

vessel itself or the pipes?

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cap 0DANNO: Well you know you get into other things like I'c.,on the activi-

ties that we're looking into of course it's just relocating instrumentation,'

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23{raising it so it won't flood out, we were frustrated by the inability to

; vent or at least have the capability to vent remotely. ,

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1: FASANO: Vent what?

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31 CAPODANNO: The reactor vessel itseTf, or to ent the cancy canes, vent the

4 steen generatcrs. It's all there but it was all startup ven's that somebody

Sj 'had tc get to manual, that's things that we are considering. But thosei

6| abilities, it was very frustrating when you look at 1 diagrax under those

7 situations and you see the valves in there but you can't ru.1 it you can'ti

3| operate, you can't get to it.

.

9!' 10j FASANO: On the, you mentfor.ed the candy canes, they seem to be hign point

11 of taat particular design, ao you have,any comments on that?

wCAP 00 ANNO:g Well you know considering that we had gas trapped in there,

some of us thought that it would be a good idea to be able to vent th:t

,g remotely, other people weren'y quite so sure. I though that it would be a

y good idea, you knowing the venting is on the piping now it's really 6

question of just making it a remote operator. Some of the information I'd' '

. 181 say also in the NSSS equipmint should of been more readily a sailable and I' /

dor't mean that it wasn't nere but I can pick up the Bel'Stean Generttor191

" ' " * * *** " "9 ' * * " ** " *20'

we were concerned abcut.21! We . sere looking at hooking up alternate instrumen-,

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22{tation for the steam generator le/el instrument, it was difficult to find

'

23| out just what the internals of that looked like. We had the steam generator! paneal and we had a set of low bac4 drawings from B&W, Lyrchburg. I scy24!

under normal circumstances you wouldn't thInk 'of it but now that ki,d of2S;t

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1! detail was harded to come by, just where are the level taps, where are some

2 of the openings in tne shroud and we started looking at making level measure-1

3j ments and flooding steam generators. If we found a person that was really

4! faniliar with the intarnals of the thing, it was great but you knew I'm

5 generally familiar with in-depth familiar with the internals of that steam

6| generator. And those of us in that situation had some difficulty even

7; though we had the documentation it wasn't as easy to find the information!

'

8! ***

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10| FASANO: You finally have evaluated most of this iaformation I mean finally, . , ' have gotten access and have it available?9

12i

CAPODANNO: L wa've collected it, the information both here and sent it

to the site. I'll say we found it. The stuff that we ffnally needed and

13; got largely was found somewnere either nere or some of it onsite. I think

163what needs to be,done in the long run is to come back and think through all.

the informatf oa that you nceu ard out together a very comprehensive file.'

I think the, I'm familiar with the Burns and Ras drawing list and the18t

instrument list including ... Had no trouble with that and the people that

uked and I explained it to who didn't have mucn difficult and I think

that kind of a list is pretty easy to follow. You found your way through.

Some of the NSSS data that we were looking for was harder to find because,

22!! of the way it was filed ir, this office.

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1 FASANO: How about photographs of installed equipment?

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3j CAPODANNO: I think that would be excellent, somebody here suggested tha:

4j the some tapes and photographs would be made of the plant, all parts. ISj think that's an excellent idea.

!

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7{ FASANO: I have no further questions.i

8|

MARSH: Nor I so the time being 12:30 PM reading '439 on the meter we'llg

terminate the interview with just a word of thanks for coming in, appreciate101

your comments.

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73| CAP 00 ANNO: Thank you.,

t14!

MARSH:15! Recognizing your still steady pretty busy.

16;'

CAPODANNO: Yeh.17|

18(

MARSH: Okay, so at 12:31 we'll terminate the tape.,

20!

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241

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