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In light of an ongoing debate over nuclear power, this is the latest in ongoing safety problems at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station in northern Ohio, between Toledo and Sandusky.
Judging from comments on the article linked below, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich's remarks, it appears that FirstEnergy is attempting to cover up the latest issues discovered at this power plant. Some comments allude to the possibility of Davis-Besse becoming the next Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.
From https://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/06/davis-besse_story.html :
Judging from comments on the article linked below, and Congressman Dennis Kucinich's remarks, it appears that FirstEnergy is attempting to cover up the latest issues discovered at this power plant. Some comments allude to the possibility of Davis-Besse becoming the next Three Mile Island or Chernobyl.
From https://www.cleveland.com/business/index.ssf/2012/06/davis-besse_story.html :
Davis-Besse's cracked shield building is safe the NRC has concluded
Published: Thursday, June 21, 2012, 7:26 PM Updated: Friday, June 22, 2012, 12:20 PM
John Funk, The Plain Dealer By John Funk, The Plain Dealer
Federal regulators have accepted FirstEnergy Corp.'s analysis that the Great Blizzard of 1978 damaged the massive building housing the Davis-Besse nuclear reactor - but not enough to keep the plant idle.
In a report issued amid a chorus of critics Thursday, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission agreed with the company's analysis that the storm of Jan. 25-27, 1978, which began as rain, drove moisture deep into bare concrete walls of the building, where it froze within a day or two.
The cracks were not discovered until last year, when contractors were using high-pressure water jets to cut a large hole in the building to install a new lid on the reactor. A similar operation in 2003 did not reveal any internal cracking in the massive building, a fact that critics are using to blast both the company and the NRC. (Oh really? If the damage dates back to 1978, why hasn't it been discovered all these years? ~OMk)
"Why must FENOC trace the cracking back to January 1978 and not to the "heavy shading event" of 2005, a sarcastic David Lochbaum, of the Union of Concerned Scientists asked. "Because old, small cracks are easier to pencil-whip away than new, small cracks."
The 280-foot-high structure, which was built between 1970 and 1977, has never been waterproofed; and despite the NRC's earlier demands to know why, the agency appears to now have accepted the company's reason that waterproofing was simply not called for in the original plans. Yet other nearby concrete buildings are waterproofed.
The report agrees with the company's conclusions that the myriad cracks in the building's 2.5-foot reinforced concrete walls have not weakened it to the point that it cannot function - though it is weaker than it was designed to be and will need regular inspections, said Charles Casto, the head of the NRC's Midwest division.
"The question is does the building maintain the strength required. Our conclusion is that it does meet the strength requirements for safety. We have independently verified that the building is safe," he said.
Most of the cracking in the concrete occurred along heavy steel reinforcing bars buried inside the wall. When the company calculated the strength of the damaged wall, it conservatively left out the strength of the steel bars themselves, said FirstEnergy spokesman Todd Schneider. Those calculations showed that even then the building still would have a reserve safety margin.
"Our next step will be to perform calculations and testing to determine the exact capacity of the re-bar in cracked areas," he said. "This information will help us determine what additional actions, if any, are required."
FirstEnergy must this summer paint the colossal building with a waterproof coating. And it has until December to come up with calculations proving that the walls can still meet its licensing specification that it can stand up to an external impact of 4,000 pounds per square inch.
Meanwhile, the agency is preparing a new set of inspections to make sure the coating is applied and the company continues to take bore samples of the building's concrete -- and samples from the walls of nearby buildings that the company said have been waterproofed.
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and an anti-nuclear group, Beyond Nuclear, separately have questioned the storm thesis, pointing out that if that were true, the cracks would all be on the side of the southwest side of the building where the storm wind pushed the hardest.
The report notes that there are more cracks on that side but that cracking has been found elsewhere as well.
Casto, of the NRC, said because of its shape the cylindrical building would be uniformly soaked, in a storm of that magnitude.
Kucinich, on the floor of the U.S. House, called the company's reasoning a "snow job and a "fable."
"Can they [FirstEnergy] be believed when they claim a snowstorm 34 years ago created cracks that appear today? Are buildings all over northern Ohio falling apart today because of the blizzard of '78? Or is this just another in a series of desperate lies used to keep a plant going that should either be shut down or massively repaired," he said in prepared remarks.
Schneider said FirstEnergy turned to a team of the best independent concrete experts in the industry to help figure out what caused the cracking.
The NRC will schedule a public hearing on its report in August.