FirstEnergy is being raked over the coals by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission for safety lapses at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station ... and it should be.

The NRC also is examining its role in the plant's corrosion problem by investigating how the corrosion slipped by its inspectors and by critiquing its decision to allow the plant to continue operating from Dec. 31 to February.

These are positive moves. We fully expect that the lessons learned from these investigations will lead to improved safety at Davis-Besse and at nuclear plants around the country. We also expect that after changes are implemented, the NRC will allow Davis-Besse to begin producing electricity again.

But then some official says something that makes us wonder whether the NRC gets it. Take, for example, the statement last week attributed to Brian Sheron, the NRC's senior licensing and technical official:

If the NRC had known that boric acid had eaten a football-sized hole in the top of the reactor head, leaving only a thin layer of stainless steel to protect against a potentially disastrous accident, he said, "we probably would have rethought whether we could approve anything beyond Dec. 31."

Say what?

That's an unbelievable statement. To think that the NRC would have considered allowing Davis-Besse to continue operating with such significant damage to the reactor head is scary.

This is what Sheron should have said:

"If we knew then what we know now, we would have ordered the immediate shutdown of the plant and not waited until Dec. 31."

Anything else is an abrogation of the NRC's duty to protect the public. The agency is on the hot seat right now, and rightly so. Statements like this can only reinforce the notion that the NRC cares more about the health of the nuclear industry than the safety of the public.

Originally published Tuesday, November 5, 2002