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 Workers created a large opening in the 2.5-foot-thick wall of the shield building housing the Davis- Besse nuclear power plant in October in order to replace the reactor's lid. Inspectors then discovered a hairline crack on one of the sides of the opening. Concrete engineers have concluded the cracks have not weakened the building, but a watchdog group has raised more questions with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. OAK HARBOR — “The Union of Concerned Scientists is questioning whether the building housing the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor was properly designed and remains structurally sound.
The challenge comes about three weeks after contractors cutting a hole in the building to replace the reactor’s lid noticed a long hairline crack on one side of the opening.
In a letter to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the watchdog group has asked whether engineering specifications for the building’s concrete walls were adequate to begin with.
While noting that the existence of numerous tiny cracks does not necessarily weaken the building, the group wants to know just how much of the building’s main walls have been inspected with instruments for interior cracking.
The questions could delay the restart of the reactor unless Davis-Besse’s owner, FirstEnergy Corp., can show that its inspections, analysis of the cracking and original engineering documents show that a healthy margin of safety was built into the 35-year old reactor building.”
— John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer
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 Sub-surface, hairline cracks were found Oct. 10 near the large opening cut in the side of the shield building housing the Davis-Besse reactor. OAK HARBOR — “FirstEnergy Corp. said Monday that structural and concrete engineers examining the “shield building” that houses the Davis-Besse reactor had found “indications” of hairline cracks in the reinforced-concrete wall.
In a letter to investors issued after the close of the stock market, after the close of the stock market, the Akron company said engineers had not yet determined whether the cracks located electronically in two places inside the building’s 21/2-foot thick wall could affect the integrity of the building and its ability to protect the reactor.
The company said its investigation into the cracks will continue. The reactor is shut down for major repairs, but the letter indicated the company hopes to re-start the reactor in late November.”
— John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer
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 Attorney Terry Lodge and other protestors demonstrate outside the Toledo Edison building at Levis Square in downtown. They were there to bring attention to a resolution they are proposing that would speak to the need for independent inspection at the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant, as well as protection of public health and public safety and alternative energy. THE BLADE/DAVE ZAPOTOSKY TOLEDO — “Emboldened by the recent discovery of a 30-foot, hairline crack in a concrete outer structure at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, anti-nuclear activists on Wednesday delivered a resolution to Toledo City Council that, if adopted, would state city opposition to renewing the plant’s license in 2017.
‘There’s a lot of unanswered questions that should be addressed before there is even any consideration to allow that plant to restart,’ local lawyer Terry Lodge, who is leading a challenge to FirstEnergy’s 20-year license renewal application, said during a rain-swept news conference outside Toledo Edison offices in Levis Square. Davis-Besse’s license is set to expire in 2017.
City Councilman Steven Steel, who met with the group of about a half-dozen protesters, said later in the morning that while he had not yet read the resolution, ‘in principle I’m in agreement’ with shutting down Davis-Besse.
‘There are really frightening safety concerns at Davis-Besse,’ Mr. Steel said, citing a history of trouble that includes the near-failure of the plant’s reactor head in 2002 and the more recent breakdown of reactor nozzles that prompted the installation of a second replacement head.
‘We keep coming closer and closer and closer to catastrophe,’ he said. ‘We need to transition away from things that are pollution and to renewable sources of energy.’”
— David Patch, Toledo Blade
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Fault’s effect on operation uncertain
 The containment tower at Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station THE BLADE/LORI KING OAK HARBOR — “The shield building surrounds the reactor containment structure, made of 1 ½-inch thick steel. It is intended to protect the containment structure from external damaging forces. It was built in the early 1970s.
The crack parallels a reinforcing steel (rebar) rod in the concrete and runs along a plane parallel to the shield building’s surface, so if it existed before the hole was cut, it would not have been visible, Ms. Young said.
She said she did not know whether the crack was big enough to have been detected by ultrasonic means during plant inspections.
Viktoria Mytling, an NRC spokesman, said her agency already had inspectors at the power plant to oversee the reactor-head installation when the cracked concrete was discovered.
Because it did not involve the containment structure itself, the crack ‘is not a reportable event,’ Ms. Mytling said, but once FirstEnergy has completed its assessment of the problem, the NRC will independently review that finding.
‘We don’t have an immediate safety concern because the plant is shut down,’ she said, adding that the crack ‘doesn’t look, at this point, really deep or bad’ and may simply be a product of the hydro-blasting technique used to create the access hole for the new reactor head.”
— David Patch, Toledo Blade
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 Workers create a large opening in the side of the outer containment building at the Davis- Besse nuclear power plant in Oak Harbor OAK HARBOR — “Contractors preparing the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor for a new lid have encountered a problem that could keep the power plant idled longer than expected.
Plant owner FirstEnergy Corp. shut down the Oak Harbor plant near Toledo almost two weeks ago in order to install a new, upgraded reactor lid, equipped with components more resistant to the heat and stress cracking that have plagued Davis-Besse in the last decade.
Replacing the lid was supposed to take about two months. At this point, work is on schedule.
The new and potentially big problem is a tiny crack – what a spokesman called a ‘barely visible indication’ of a crack – running some 30 feet vertically in the reinforced concrete of the outer shell of the reactor’s containment building.
That huge structure, which the industry calls a ‘shield building,’ is 2 1/2 feet thick, made of “nuclear grade” concrete and packed with reinforcing steel bars.
The building’s job is to protect the reactor from anything striking it from outside – anything from tornado debris to a terrorist in an aircraft.
That’s why cracks in the concrete could be a problem.”
— John Funk, Cleveland Plain Dealer
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— Editorial, Toledo Blade
 The latest head was installed on top of the Davis-Besse reactor in 2002. It came from a mothballed nuclear plant in Midland, Mich., where it had sat for 25 years without being used because that power station was never completed. The thought was that it would not begin to show symptoms of deterioration for 15 or 20 years.
OAK HARBOR — “FirstEnergy said the new head, which replaces the head installed in 2002, features control rod nozzles made of material less susceptible to cracking. Originally planned for 2014, FirstEnergy said it voluntarily accelerated Davis-Besse’s new head installation after modifications were required to 24 of the 69 control rod nozzles on the current head during the site’s spring 2010 refueling outage.
‘Advancing the installation of the new reactor head provides additional margins of safety and reliability for long-term plant operations,’ James Lash, president of FirstEnergy Generation and chief nuclear officer, said in a statement.
Davis-Besse’s new reactor head measures nearly 17 feet in diameter, is eight feet tall and weighs more than 82 tons. The head was made by Areva in France, and a comprehensive, pre-service inspection was conducted by FirstEnergy Nuclear personnel before it was shipped to the United States and transported to the plant last November.”
— Crain’s Cleveland Business
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 LINDSEY, OH — “A groundbreaking ceremony took place Tuesday for a new $5 million emergency operations center for the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station.
‘We are a significant part of the community,’ said Barry Allen, site vice president at Davis-Besse. ‘This will be a state-of-the-art facility.’
Construction has begun, and as Allen spoke bulldozers, excavators and dump trucks groaned and roared in the background.
Allen said the 12,000-square-foot building will be used for all types of emergency drills, including Nuclear Regulatory Commission exercises and training for local county governments.
The facility will mirror two facilities being built by FirstEnergy in Ohio and Pennsylvania.”
— James Proffitt, The News-Messenger
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Neither seen as imminent threat, but plant safety ‘degraded’
 David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists. OAK HARBOR — “Two Davis-Besse direct-current electrical systems were in ‘an unanalyzed condition that significantly degrades plant safety’ for years, according to an event report posted Wednesday on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Web site.
While the government regulator acknowledged the two issues existed long before Japan’s Fukushima crisis, it did not see either as an imminent threat. It allowed FirstEnergy Corp. to continue operating the Ottawa County nuclear plant at full power…
David Lochbaum, nuclear safety engineer for the Cambridge, Mass.-based Union of Concerned Scientists and a former NRC trainer, said Davis-Besse’s wiring is among many electrical issues gaining prominence at America’s 104 nuclear plants in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster, which began with a March 11 tsunami and was exacerbated by myriad electrical problems that rendered safety systems inoperable at multiple plants in Japan…
Mr. Lochbaum said he finds it amazing that the first post-Fukushima look at Davis-Besse’s wiring configuration ‘magically vaporized all the clouds or curtains or whatever had been hiding this safety violation for all those decades.’
He said that if the nonqualified electrical component had shorted out, an electrical fault could have disabled all of the safety equipment sharing that panel.”
— Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
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 This undated photo made available by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission shows a 5-by-5-inch hole in a section cut from the top of the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse nuclear plant in Ohio. Discovered in February 2002, the hole was eaten by boric acid that spilled from inside the reactor through cracks in the vessel head. Only three-eighths of an inch of steel cladding remained, making a reactor breach likely in as little as two months, by the NRC's estimate. (AP Photo/Nuclear Regulatory Commission) LACEY TOWNSHIP, NJ — “Federal regulators have been working closely with the nuclear power industry to keep the nation’s aging reactors operating within safety standards by repeatedly weakening those standards, or simply failing to enforce them, an investigation by The Associated Press has found.
Time after time, officials at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission have decided that original regulations were too strict, arguing that safety margins could be eased without peril, according to records and interviews.
The result? Rising fears that these accommodations by the NRC are significantly undermining safety — and inching the reactors closer to an accident that could harm the public and jeopardize the future of nuclear power in the United States.”
— Jeff Donn, Associated Press
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— PR Newswire
 OAK HARBOR — “Four activist groups challenging the relicensing of FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant have persuaded a federal three-judge panel to let them have a seat at the table.
In a 65-page ruling, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s Atomic Safety and Licensing Board said the groups — Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environmental Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Don’t Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio — should be “admitted as parties in this proceeding” because two of their four contentions have at least enough merit to explore further.
The groups jointly petitioned the NRC to get what is known as ‘intervener status’ for the licensing proceedings. FirstEnergy wants to extend the life of Davis-Besse by 20 years when the current license expires, allowing the plant to continue operating until April, 2037, instead of April, 2017.”
— Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
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 Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station OAK HARBOR — “In the fall of 2001, inspectors with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission were so concerned about possible corrosion at Ohio’s Davis Besse Nuclear Power Station [1] that they prepared an emergency order to shut it down for inspection. But, according to a report [2] from the NRC inspector general, senior officials at the agency held off – in part because they did not want to hurt the plant’s bottom line.
When workers finally checked the reactor in February of 2002, they made an astonishing finding: Corrosive fluid from overhead pipes had eaten a football-sized hole in the reactor vessel’s steel side. The only thing preventing a leak of radioactive coolant was a pencil-thin layer of stainless steel.
The Davis Besse incident has resurfaced in the wake of the ongoing nuclear crisis at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant. Stories recounting close ties [3] between Japanese nuclear regulators and utilities there have reinvigorated critics who say the NRC has not been an aggressive enough U.S. watchdog.”
— John Sullivan, ProPublica
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CARROLL TOWNSHIP — “A nonprofit science organization has handed Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station an unfortunate distinction as one of 13 nuclear facilities in the U.S. involved in significant “near-misses” last year.
The Union of Concerned Scientists released its first report on safety performances at U.S nuclear power plants, focusing also on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s role in such events.
The report, ‘The NRC and Nuclear Power Plant Safety in 2010: A Brighter Spotlight Needed,’ identified 14 close calls involving safety or security issues at 13 facilities. There were 40 violations in all 14 incidents.”
— Melissa Topey, Sandusky Register
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Replacement of the reactor vessel head will start in October 2011
OAK HARBOR — “FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company’s Davis-Besse 893 MW PWR at Oak harbor, OH, near Toledo, will enter a fuel outage in October 2011, which is earlier than called for in the usual outage schedule.
During this outage, which will extend into 2012, a new reactor head with new control rod channels, or nozzles, will be installed at the plant. The nozzles are actually tubes that guide the control rods through the reactor’s lid and into the core.
FirstEnergy had originally scheduled the lid replacement for 2014. However, inspections revealed new cracking in the reactor’s second lid much earlier than expected by engineers and the NRC. The NRC and the utility determined an earlier replacement date was a better solution than trying to extend the life of the current head which was installed in 2004.”
— Dan Yurman, The Energy Collective
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NRC panel to hear from 4 opposition groups, utility
PORT CLINTON — “Four activist groups that contend FirstEnergy Corp.’s Davis-Besse nuclear plant is unworthy of a 20-year license extension are to appear Tuesday before the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s licensing panel.
But the panel, called the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board, told the groups it will refuse to hear about the plant’s safety record, including the near-rupture of its original reactor head in 2002…
The NRC said the panel will decide if the groups are allowed ‘admittance to the [licensing] proceeding.’”
— Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
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40 speak at ‘People’s Hearing’ to take videotaped testimony
 TOLEDO — “The so-called “People’s Hearing” was organized in response to a pair of officially sanctioned NRC meetings the agency held on Nov. 4 at Camp Perry, the Ohio National Guard base west of Port Clinton.
Activists from the Green Party, the Michigan and Ohio chapters of the Sierra Club, the Monroe-based Coalition for Nuclear Free Great Lakes, and Beyond Nuclear, a national group in Washington that opposes nuclear power, felt the affected public was underrepresented at the NRC meetings, in part because they were held two days after the election and at a site far removed from metropolitan areas.
Though Saturday’s event almost could have been mistaken for a rally, participants said it is important for the NRC to get opinions beyond Ottawa County because residents from southeastern Michigan to Cleveland live within the same 50-mile radius which would take the brunt of any radioactive fallout should an accident occur. Davis-Besse is Ottawa County’s No. 1 employer and one of the greatest contributors to its tax base.”
— Tom Henry, Toledo Blade
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