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Local Companies | Article
published September 10, 2002
NRC to update
residents on efforts at power plant
By TOM
HENRY
BLADE STAFF WRITER
OAK HARBOR, Ohio - Three meetings will take
place in the Oak Harbor area next week to update residents about
developments at FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse nuclear
plant.
(For complete coverage of Davis-Besse go to http://www.toledoblade.com/davisbesse
On Tuesday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s
oversight panel will have its two monthly meetings - one at 2 p.m.
and the other at 7 p.m. - in the Oak Harbor High School auditorium.
The school is at 11661 West State Rt. 163.
The discussion
will focus on progress made to restart the plant, including the
recent removal of the damaged reactor head and installation of a
replacement cap.
On Wednesday, the NRC is to hear FirstEnergy
officials explain how they plan to address human error problems at
Davis-Besse that the company acknowledged during an Aug. 15 meeting
in Lisle, Ill. That meeting will be in Davis-Besse’s energy
education center at the nuclear complex along State Rt. 2, about 25
miles east of Toledo. It will be open to the public, NRC spokesman
Jan Strasma said.
In a related matter, U.S. Rep. Dennis
Kucinich (D., Cleveland) told The Blade yesterday that he recently
asked for yet another probe into the NRC’s handling of Davis-Besse
because he has lost faith in the government agency.
The U.S.
General Accounting Office notified the congressman last week that it
will investigate the NRC’s decision to let Davis-Besse keep
operating until Feb. 16, when the plant began its latest refueling
outage.
Three weeks later, in early March, workers found a
basic, severe, and unexpected problem: Massive footprint-shaped
corrosion on top of the reactor head. The rust, so deep in one area
that only a thin layer of stainless steel remained intact, has since
been described as the nation’s closest brush with a nuclear disaster
since Three Mile Island. In late November, nearly three months
before the latest outage began, NRC staffers recommended what would
have been the nation’s first emergency shutdown of a nuclear plant
since 1987. They feared Davis-Besse had hairline cracks in
reactor-head nozzles but had no idea the corrosion was so
severe.
Senior NRC officials, after meeting with FirstEnergy,
agreed to let the plant remain in operation until Feb.
16.
The NRC’s Office of Inspector General has been doing its
own inquiry into that decision. Several other investigations are
under way, as well.
Mr. Kucinich said he made the request for
the GAO report as a member of the House oversight committee and
after consulting with U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D.,
Toledo).
"It’s very clear the NRC had failed to live up to
its responsibility to monitor the activities at Davis-Besse," Mr.
Kucinich said. "That plant should not be reopened until the GAO does
its report."
A different congressional probe was authorized
in May by the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee at the
request of U.S. Rep. Paul Gillmor (R., Old Fort).
The GAO
report could take months. FirstEnergy is still optimistic it can get
NRC authorization to restart Davis-Besse before Dec.
31.
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