Friday, August 10, 2007


OAK HARBOR, Ohio, Aug. 9, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
Davis-Besse last night got kudos for its 2006 operating performance.

But federal regulators kept mum about the status of possible sanctions against FirstEnergy Corp. (NYSE:FE) for seeking a $200 million insurance payment for the plant's old reactor head that nearly blew apart in 2002.

The NRC is expected to spend at least two more weeks reviewing FirstEnergy's rationale for the insurance claim, Viktoria Mitlyng, an agency spokesman, said.

Last night's meeting was called exclusively to discuss the Ottawa County nuclear plant's 2006 operation. It was held in the plant's administration building off State Rt. 2. About 50 people -- most of them affiliated with the NRC or the utility -- attended.

The facility, 30 miles east of Toledo, was operated safely with no major issues identified by NRC inspectors last year, said Bruce Burgess, chief of the agency's reactor projects branch in its Midwest regional office near Chicago.

Davis-Besse's next extended outage is to be in late December, when its reactor is set for its biennial refueling, Mark Bezilla, the plant's vice president, said.

In addition to normal NRC inspections, outside assessments that were mandated as part of the plant's 2004 restart order will continue through the end of 2008 at FirstEnergy's expense, Mr. Burgess said.

Those are in addition to periodic assessments made of the plant by the industry-funded Institute for Nuclear Plant Operations. Based in Atlanta, that group was formed in response to the half-core meltdown of Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Pennsylvania in 1979.

The World Association of Nuclear Operators, a global organization dedicated to improving safety at every nuclear plant in the world, will be at Davis-Besse starting next week for a two-week assessment that is in addition to the other reviews.

That association, established in response to the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev, Ukraine, also was on site in 2005 and 2006, Mr. Bezilla said.

FirstEnergy wants to put issues related to Davis-Besse's old reactor head to rest so that it can proceed with its plans for a 20-year license extension.

Mr. Bezilla said it now plans to submit Davis-Besse's application to the NRC in 2010, and hopes to get approval by 2012. The plant's existing operating license expires in April, 2017.

FirstEnergy lost nearly $650 million from the two years Davis-Besse remained idle after the near-rupture of the plant's old reactor head, a potentially disastrous event that has been studied extensively throughout the United States, Europe, and Japan.

The cost to replace the reactor head itself was about $200 million; the rest was a combination of other plant improvements and lost power during the outage, the longest in the plant's history.

The plant resumed operation in 2004.

FirstEnergy filed a claim months ago with an insurance carrier in hopes of getting compensation for the reactor head. Two outside contractors it hired for that claim have portrayed the event as a fluke, in contrast to earlier findings by both the company and the NRC.

The NRC, through a process known as a 'Demand for Information,' has reserved the right to impose sanctions if it believes the company has presented misleading information.

In another development related to Davis-Besse, Terra Community College announced Tuesday that it will hold a meeting Wednesday to explain possible job opportunities in the nuclear industry for its first 16 students of a new FirstEnergy training program. They are scheduled to graduate in May.

The utility is offering to reimburse tuition costs for the two-year program for a limited number of students it selects.

Information about the program will be distributed at the meeting at 6 p.m. in Terra's Building B, Room 101. The community college is at 2830 Napoleon Rd., Fremont.

Contact Tom Henry at:
 thenry@theblade.com
or 419-724-6079.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0203-18802059


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