11/21/02

Oak Harbor, Ohio - The mood was one of distrust and anger at the public hearing here last night about the federal government's failure to uncover the problems that eventually led to the rust hole in the lid of the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor.

Though the crowd assembled in a high school auditorium numbered no more than 60, speaker after speaker attacked both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and FirstEnergy Corp., owner of the reactor.

The hearing was supposed to be the capstone to a months-long review of the agency by a special "lessons learned" task force of NRC staffers pulled from across the country. The task force last month delivered its own scathing criticism of how the NRC does its business.

But the crowd would have none of it. The task force members themselves quickly became targets, even as a few FirstEnergy employees sat quietly in the audience.

"It is time for an independent review of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Davis-Besse management," lawyer Howard Whitcomb said to the task force members, who lined up across the foot of the auditorium stage like so many paper cutouts.

"This review should focus on an independent and critical assessment of the integrity of both the NRC and FirstEnergy management," said Whitcomb. He is an Oak Harbor resident and former NRC inspector.

"Why wasn't there an independent review?" demanded Port Clinton resident Helen Spalding. She brushed aside the explanations of why the NRC rejected a completely independent review of the plant and instead created a number of special teams to oversee Davis-Besse's rebuilding as well as to examine the agency's problems as a regulator.

Tim Dussel of Fostoria repeatedly pressed the panel members to explain how the agency could have missed the corrosion.

"How could that be missed with all those inspections? You're talking about hundreds of people's lives here," he said. "No one is being held accountable for anything.

"There's been many questions asked and no answers. You guys wishy wash around, and there's no answers. Many of us want to ask questions of FirstEnergy. People here feel you are a buffer between the two."

Todd Schneider, a spokesman for FirstEnergy, said the company is considering holding a public forum to respond to community concerns. Such a meeting probably would not take place until after the plant restarts.

"We're pretty busy now."

On the whole, "the community does support us," Schneider said. "They have trust in the people who work there [at Davis-Besse] because they know them personally."

Amy Ryder of Ohio Citizen Action recommended that the NRC revoke FirstEnergy's license. "If FirstEnergy thought this agency would revoke their license, they never would have let the degradation happen.

"Other plant operators would take much more caution," if they feared losing their license, she said. "That is a recommendation with teeth."

Arthur Howell, chairman of the NRC task force, responded, "All of us agree that what happened is unacceptable, and we need to take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again."

Paul Gunter, who heads the reactor watchdog project of the Nuclear Information and Resources Service, was not satisfied with the NRC's answers.

"If there is anything to be understood tonight, it's that when you abandon your principles, what can you expect for the [nuclear] industry? That leaves the plant open to running wild with production over safety," Gunter said, "and sets you up not as a regulator but as an accommodator."

Howell responded: "These are all important issues, and are being reviewed by other parts of the agency."

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:

jfunk@plaind.com, 216-999-4138

jmangels@plaind.com, 216-999-4842