Mr. VENTO. Seventy minutes, one hundred minutes.

Mr. CRESWELL. Then. Mr. Michelson went into this area; there was extensive voiding in the system.

Mr. VENTO. Some damage occurred to the fuel to some extent. We do not know how much yet, how much of it was cladding or substantial deterioration of rods, I guess. But in any case, you are going to, you know-what would the operator, in terms of what he was doing, what would he have seen in these instances when that was happening?

Mr. CRESWELL. Well, the operators observed some of their instrumentation coming back on-scale which would have indicated perhaps, a return to criticality.

However, what is theorized is that with the loss of water in the reactor coolant system, the detectors started sensing an increased amount of gamma rays.

Mr. VENTO. You know, these are the fundamental questions. The day after that there was no confidence in some of the indications of levels of radioactivity, either inside the containment vehicle at the ceiling or outside; we have the Chairman of the NRC in here suggesting that we think there is something wrong with that gage.

Remember that testimony?

So the operator at least saw some of these. He had his readings in terms of radioactive breakdown or the cladding or something in the materials, that maybe the rods had not gone all the way back in. There was some still some reaction taking place.

Would that have been a likely circumstance?

Mr. CRESWELL. Well, there were some boron samples taken; that is a chemical analysis that is performed to see how much boron there is in the system.

Mr. VENTO. In other words, it is the lack of it that would have indicated it was being used.

Mr. CRESWELL. For example, the samples showed the level of boron was decreasing. That would have indicated a possible return to power or criticality situation.

Mr. VENTO. In other words, that was the information that was available and should be available on an almost automatic readout on the panel, is it not?

Mr. CRESWELL. No. Boron analysis has to be done by a technician in a lab.

Mr. VENTO. Was that going on at this time or not?

Mr. CRESWELL. I believe there were two samples taken at this time. Mr. VENTO. What period of time are we talking about?

Mr. CRESWELL. It is around 6 o'clock, 6:30.

Mr. WEAVER. Do they have their own analysis facilities at the plant? Mr. CRESWELL. That is correct. It is routine that you run these boron analyses.

Mr. VENTO. At 6 a.m. How many minutes into it? Two hours. That is 120 minutes into it. They are running a boron sample.

Mr. CRESWELL. Do not hold me to those figures.

Mr. VENTO. OK, I appreciate your efforts to try and keep us on track here, and we will recheck it if it becomes a major issue. They had the information from boron samples that tells them boron is being absorbed, that there is some radioactive activity going on which is of an unusual nature, considering the status of the reactor.

Mr. CRESWELL. Well

Mr. VENTO. It is a possible

Mr. CRESWELL. They had an indication that there was a reduction in the boron concentration in the reactor.

Mr. VENTO. What type of variation are we dealing with here? Is it significant? Would it be as significant during-if it had occurred here or not I mean, would it be something that is very critical in reading or is there a wide latitude in terms of which you could accept the reading?

Mr. CRESWELL. To me it would have been significant.

Mr. VENTO. To you it would have been significant, and therefore on the basis of the types of procedures that a plant such as TMI operates if something had been significant to you, it should have been significant to them. Would that be a fair assessment?

Mr. CRESWELL. I do not know that that would.

Mr. VENTO. What do the procedures call for in that instance? Mr. CRESWELL. We are still in the process of our investigation. Mr. VENTO. We are just trying to understand it. We want to know if the operator had an opportunity and you suggest that it would have been significant at this particular point. What other indications were there that something was not going right as we proceed beyond this. Two pumps have been turned off. You have got a boron sample reading. You also see there is a continued decline in terms of pressure then. Were the other two pumps on?

Mr. CRESWELL. No; the pressure is really not-I do not think there is a direct-that I recollect-a direct correspondence with pressure. I may be wrong, but I do not recall one.

Mr. VENTO. What about-what about the temperature? What about the temperature of the core? Are there direct readings on temperature which would be-which an operator would pay attention to in these particular instances?

Mr. CRESWELL. Well, if he cuts the pumps off, he would be-he should be looking for natural circulation. And then he should be looking at the temperatures and pressures in the steam generator. Mr. VENTO. Temperatures and pressures so that they would have obviously indicated-they would have been higher, right?

Mr. CRESWELL. When he cut off the reactor coolant pumps? Mr. VENTO. Yes; what would happen? What would you expect to happen? What would the operator he would have had to make a judgment on temperature. Is it appropriate for us to make a judgment that there should be a corresponding temperature response to cutting off the pumps and watching a convection current? Mr. CRESWELL. There should be a response.

Mr. VENTO. No, no. We are not trying to assess. In other words, are we in other words, should we know a temperature difference at this point? There has to be some corresponding response, does there not?

Mr. CRESWELL. The system should respond to cutting off those pumps; that is right.

Mr. VENTO. It was not responding, though, was it?

Mr. CRESWELL. Well, you are getting into a lot of fairly fine detail that I would really have to get the charts out and go back and look

Mr. VENTO. There is a temperature question. There is a pres question. There is question with regards to radioactive informa that he is being fed. Is there any other information that is con back to him which will tell the operator-is there any other autom aspects of this that would correct what was going on at this part lar instance?

Mr. CRESWELL. I do not recollect any automatic action that w have corrected the situation at this point.

Mr. VENTO. At this point.

Well, what happens in this sequence, then? This convection sys is apparently-there are some other activities happening in term the breakdown in fuel. There are building up some gas pressure in the system, it is theorized, at this point.

Mr. CRESWELL. There would be with a significant decrease of wa inside the core the possibility of zirconium water reaction; that wo be released with the hydogen. It has been discussed.

Mr. VENTO. That has been discussed.

Mr. WEAVER. We are going to have to close here. We have got t very important people to interview.

Mr. Creswell, I want to thank you in particular for your answ and to ask you if there are any other things that you are able to dr from your excellent work on Davis-Besse-and I want to comme you for that and really thank you for that.

We owe you a lot. You are the kind of person we need in governme Are there any other things-not conclusions-but areas of simil ity or interest between Davis-Besse and Three Mile Island that y would like to comment on, that you would like to help us draw insig from?

Mr. CRESWELL. I do not believe so. We mentioned the previous plan at Davis-Besse. That is the most germane thing.

Mr. WEAVER. Right; and I intend to follow up and get the da use the data for some comparative studies here and see if there a any significant things.

Well, I want to thank you very much for testifying. I appreciate Mr. CRESWELL. Thank you.

Mr. WEAVER. Why do not Mr. Gallina and Mr. Higgins-would yo mind coming up and sitting down here and would you please identi yourselves.

Mr. HIGGINS. My name is James Higgins. I am a reactor inspect also in region I. And I, together with four other inspectors fro region I, arrived on Three Mile Island site at approximately 10:0 a.m. on Wednesday morning.

Mr. WEAVER. Right, and you are stationed where, sir?

Mr. HIGGINS. Region I of the NRC, which is King of Prussia, jus outside of Philadelphia.

Mr. CHENEY. You arrived shortly before 5 a.m.?

Mr. HIGGINS. At 10:05. In region I our first notification of the even at Three Mile Island was shortly before 8 a.m. When we were firs notified of it, we set up our instrument response center shortly after 8.

About 8:15 the decision was made in region II to send a team to the site. We left region I, Mr. Gallina and myself, and we had five of

us. We left at 8:45 from region I, driving our emergency vehicle, and we arrived at Three Mile about 10:05.

Mr. WEAVER. And you went together? You were in the same vehicle? Mr. HIGGINS. We had five of us in one vehicle.

Dr. GALLINA. I am Dr. Charles Gallina, and an investigator with region I, USNRC. On the day of the incident I was acting as emergency planning officer, coordinating emergency response to the site.

As Mr. Higgins mentioned, we left our office at approximately 8:45. We had Mr. Higgins as our reactor inspector, and we had three other health physicists with us, plus a station wagon full of health physics monitoring equipment.

Mr. WEAVER. Would you have been able to accomplish anything helpful had you been on the site earlier, in your opinion?

Dr. GALLINA. Well

Mr. WEAVER. This is something you think, well, if I could have gotten there an hour or two earlier I could have helped them do that. Dr. GALLINA. I think from some of the testimony we have heard, that the majority of the incident, or at least the initial phase of the incident, culminated by the receipt of radiation alarms that came in at, I believe, approximately 7 o'clock at the site. And this initiated their site emergency and their general emergency.

That was the key to their notification process. Now, had we been there at 8 o'clock, relatively, say, to 10 o'clock, we still, I think, would have been there after the major part of the first phase of the incident had occurred.

So, I personally do not believe at this point in time, from my standpoint, the areas I was responsible for, that an earlier notification would have caused any significant change in our response or

Mr. WEAVER. What if you or Mr. Higgins or both had been onsite at 4 o'clock in the morning?

Mr. HIGGINS. I like to think that I would have recognized the situation, but I probably not-probably not much different.

Mr. WEAVER. Dr. Gallina?

Mr. CHENEY. In other words, you think your action would not have been much different.

Mr. HIGGINS. Partly that. Part of the thing that people do not understand is that the NRC has personnel that have been involved with reactors for a considerable period of time.

But as far as individual inspectors who are thoroughly knowledgeable in individual plant systems, parameters, location of gages, arrangement of piping systems, details of procedures, that type of thing, the NRC does not, except for maybe one project inspector who is assigned to that plant.

Most of the inspectors are not familiar with the very nitty-gritty details as the operators are who operate it every day.

And therefore they are not able to gather the information and make the types of decisions and judgments that would have to be made in a situation like this. And that is why I say probably not.

Mr. WEAVER. Do you have any other comments, Dr. Gallina?

Mr. GALLINA. Well, I think it is the combination; in other words, upon our arrival at the site we bring our expertise and background on nuclear energy, engineering, et cetera, and it is the team work that

is set up between the NRC, you might say, in conjunction with licensee who is most familiar with that plant.

That enables us in the first couple of days to bring it to a st condition.

Mr. WEAVER. What did you-what was the situation that confro you? I assume you went immediately to the control room.

Mr. HIGGINS. Well, when we arrived-we arrived at the front g the five of us. We proceeded after some minimal delay to the un control room, initially.

And at that point there was some delay getting to unit 2 beca of the contamination problems which started to exist; airborne ra activity problems had started to exist in the plant.

Mr. WEAVER. Tell us about it.

Mr. HIGGINS. Well, I guess we arrived and made it from the outs gate that is, the north gate before you even come onto the island at 10:05. At that point the gate was chained shut. The majority people were being kept out on the road.

And we showed our identifications and were admitted fairly peditiously. We went to the island, went to the unit 1 control roc and there the offsite emergency planning kinds of things were bei run by Mr. Seilinger.

We identified ourselves to him

Mr. CHENEY. Who is he?

Mr. HIGGINS. He is the unit 1 superintendent, and he is acting in t capacity of emergency planning and controlling offsite activities. We-after being there and getting the basic status of the situatio of both plants, unit 1 and unit 2, as best we could from the personn there, we decided that some of us would proceed to unit 2.

Around that time unit 2 control room was being evacuated of unne essary personnel because of high airborne radioactivity levels. Person nel that were in the control room that were essential were required 1 get into respiratory protection equipment, into the masks, and ther was a delay in getting masks for us so that we could go over and g into the control room.

Two of us-two of the inspectors that had arrived, Mr. Kneele and myself, got masks, respirators, and proceeded over to the uni 2 control room, which is a fair walk.

Mr. CHENEY. When you are talking about high levels, you are talk ing about high levels outside the containment?

Mr. HIGGINS. In the control room.

Mr. CHENEY. But what do you mean by "high?"

Dr. GALLINA. The materials that had been pumped over, the liquic that had been pumped into the auxiliary building was offgassing radioactivity. Now, since it was not of a particulate nature-well, it was a mixed nature of radioactivity that was getting into the unit 2 control room; air detectors detected it.

The system that normally takes iodides out of the control room was working, but we were not dealing solely with iodides. As a matter of fact, at the time there was no iodine, but the xenon gases were getting into the control room. Until they could identify the fact that iodine was not present, the operators had to go in respira