- FirstEnergy Corp. says its rust-damaged and long-idled
Davis-Besse nuclear power plant is almost ready to make electricity again.
With most repairs and renovations complete, the utility yesterday began
its formal attempt to win government permission to restart the Toledo-area
reactor.
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- FirstEnergy delivered to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission
a 180-page report making the case for why the plant deserves to resume
splitting atoms. A company official called it "a major milestone."
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- The utility has spent 21 months and more than $500 million
overhauling the plant's equipment, management and procedures after workers
in March 2002 found a pineapple-sized hole in the reactor's steel lid.
The cavity, carved by acid from a coolant leak that had gone unnoticed
at least four years, is considered the closest brush with nuclear disaster
since the Three Mile Island accident in 1979.
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- FirstEnergy's restart readiness report describes the
work done to satisfy the special NRC panel that is supervising Davis-Besse's
repair.
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- Changes have included replacing the reactor's lid, installing
equipment to detect even tiny leaks of the reactor's 90,000 gallons of
coolant and adopting procedures to monitor the plant's "safety culture"
- the level of concern that workers and managers have for safety issues.
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- A spokesman said about 300 activities remain to be done,
most minor. One of the more important is testing two recently modified
emergency pumps, which would be called on to force coolant back into the
reactor in the event that a pipe breaks. The pumps had to be altered because
research showed they might fail if they sucked in debris blasted loose
by steam jetting from a broken pipe.
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- The NRC has the final say about Davis-Besse's readiness.
It must conduct more inspections and hold a public meeting before approving
the plant's restart. A federal grand jury's continuing criminal investigation
into whether FirstEnergy's record-keeping intentionally misled the NRC
about Davis-Besse's deteriorating condition also could affect the restart
timetable.
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- A FirstEnergy spokesman said the plant should be ready
for nuclear heat-up by Dec. 11 and be at full power by year's end, assuming
the NRC approves.
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- FirstEnergy officials previously have predicted, and
then missed, many dates by which Davis-Besse was to have been ready. Investment
analysts are watching closely to see if the utility meets this latest one.
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- They also are following the criminal investigation, as
well as whether FirstEnergy is sued by customers or punished by regulators
for its major role in causing the widespread Aug. 14 blackout.
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- Because of those uncertainties, the bond rating agency
Standard & Poor's yesterday said it is keeping FirstEnergy on credit
watch for a possible downgrade of its debt to "junk" status.
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