Feds say no cause yet for Ohio nuke plant cracks

PORT CLINTON, Ohio (AP) — Fed­eral inspec­tors are con­vinced that a nuclear reac­tor along Lake Erie is safe to oper­ate even though they said last Thurs­day it is not clear why small cracks appeared in a con­crete shell that pro­tects the plant.

Tests on the con­crete have not given inspec­tors any rea­son to keep the plant shut down, said Cyn­thia Ped­er­son, a regional direc­tor with the U.S. Nuclear Reg­u­la­tory Com­mis­sion who over­sees plants in the Midwest.

“We have a very vig­or­ous inspec­tion we did and it’s still ongo­ing,” Ped­er­son told con­cerned cit­i­zens dur­ing a pub­lic meet­ing near the Davis-Besse nuclear plant, which is just out­side Toledo. “There is a high-level of assur­ance the con­tain­ment build­ing is safe.”

The NRC allowed the Davis-Besse nuclear plant to begin pro­duc­ing elec­tric­ity again in early Decem­ber, less than two months after the first cracks were found.

The plant was shut down for main­te­nance in Octo­ber when crews dis­cov­ered a 30-foot hair­line crack in the outer con­crete wall that’s designed to pro­tect the reac­tor from any­thing that might hit it from out­side, such as storm debris or an air­plane. More cracks were found soon after near the bot­tom of the 224-foot tall shield struc­ture, lead­ing to closer inspec­tions that found cracks close to the top of the wall.

The com­mis­sion signed off on restart­ing the plant fol­low­ing sev­eral tests and after its owner, FirstEn­ergy Corp., assured it that the cracks don’t pose a threat.

The com­mis­sion has given Akron-based FirstEn­ergy until the end of Feb­ru­ary to find out what caused the cracks.

Until the cause is known, there’s no rea­son to order closer inspec­tions at other plants with sim­i­lar con­crete shields, Ped­er­son said.

It’s pos­si­ble that the cracks have been around for a while, she said. “Con­crete has a ten­dency to crack,” she said.

U.S. Rep. Den­nis Kucinich, an Ohio Demo­c­rat who has been a long­time oppo­nent of the plant and its owner, has crit­i­cized the NRC’s deci­sion to allow the plant to reopen until more is known.

He also said FirstEn­ergy down­played the scope of the cracks and waited too long to tell the pub­lic about where they were found. “This is the first time we’ve heard FirstEn­ergy admit this,” Kucinich said Thursday.

FirstEn­ergy offi­cials said they didn’t want to release a full report until their inves­ti­ga­tion was complete.

Howard Whit­comb, who lives in Oak Har­bor a few miles from the plant, ques­tioned how reg­u­la­tors could assure any­one the con­crete shell is safe with­out know­ing the cause.

“You don’t know,” he said.

At full power, the plant makes enough elec­tric­ity for around 750,000 cus­tomers, pri­mar­ily in Ohio. The company’s elec­tric sys­tem has 4.5 mil­lion cus­tomers in Ohio, Penn­syl­va­nia and New Jersey.

Davis-Besse was shut down this fall to replace an 82-ton reac­tor head, a steel lid that sits atop the reac­tor vessel.

FirstEn­ergy said the new reac­tor head is made of bet­ter mate­r­ial than the for­mer reac­tor lid that had cracks in its noz­zles. The plant was shut down for four months in 2010 for repairs to those cracks that the NRC said were dis­cov­ered before they could do damage.

The plant also was shut down from 2002 to 2004 because of an acid leak in a dif­fer­ent reac­tor head.

Reg­u­la­tors fined FirstEn­ergy $5.45 mil­lion and the com­pany agreed to $28 mil­lion in civil penal­ties fol­low­ing what the NRC said was the most exten­sive cor­ro­sion found at a U.S. nuclear reac­tor. The NRC said FirstEn­ergy mis­led the agency by pro­vid­ing incom­plete and inac­cu­rate infor­ma­tion about the acid leak.

Posted by Staff Reports on Jan 20 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.