Troubled reactor in Ohio is restarting

WASHINGTON - A puff of smoke and spray of water came from an Ohio nuclear plant Monday as workers brought it back online after a two-year shutdown ordered when leaking acid nearly ate through a protective steel reactor cap.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission gave the plant permission to restart, beginning a process expected to last 10 to 14 days to bring it to full power.

"This basically is a new Davis-Besse that we're going to be starting," plant spokesman Richard Wilkins said. "It's new in many ways, not just the equipment but also the way we operate the plant."

Corrosion on the reactor vessel at the Davis-Besse plant, east of Toledo, Ohio, along Lake Erie, was the most extensive ever found at a U.S. nuclear reactor. It led to a precautionary review of 68 similar plants nationwide.

NRC officials blamed plant operators for allowing the erosion of safety standards that caused the leak to go unnoticed for years. The plant is owned by FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron, Ohio, the company that a U.S.-Canadian government task force said shares much of the blame for August's Northeast blackout.

The NRC came under fire for not detecting the leak sooner. As a result, regulators have agreed to make changes to its safety and inspection procedures. On Monday, the agency said the plant can safely operate after numerous repairs and changes in management, but environmentalists complained that only 16 of 49 recommended changes in how NRC oversees nuclear power plants have been made.

The NRC will monitor the startup round the clock and is assigning three full-time inspectors to the plant. Most nuclear plants have two inspectors.

In addition, the NRC will require the plant to undergo an independent inspection each year for five years. The commission's oversight committee will continue to monitor the plant "until we are satisfied that the plant is up and operating in a stable condition," said James Caldwell, regional administrator for the agency's Region III office in Lisle, Ill.

The plant was closed in February 2002 for routine maintenance when inspectors found corrosion on the reactor vessel, where leaking boric acid had eaten almost through a 6-inch-thick steel cap.

FirstEnergy Corp. spent about $600-million for repairs and replacement power while the plant was prevented from producing electricity.

During the shutdown, regulators also found design flaws in Davis-Besse's cooling system pumps, which led to prolonged repairs. FirstEnergy replaced the damaged reactor vessel head, installed a new leak monitoring system and overhauled plant management.

The company asked the NRC on Feb. 12 for permission to restart the plant, saying the plant could now be operated safely.

Two teams of NRC inspectors said at the February meeting that they saw marked improvement in plant operations and worker performance. Although the inspectors found widespread problems during a December review, they said none was serious enough to be a safety problem.

Environmental groups questioned, though, whether the plant was really committed to safety. A report released Monday by the Ohio Public Interest Research Group identified several unresolved problems at the plant, such as the failure to fix two leaking pumps needed for cooling water.

"We are not confident that the NRC is capable of putting safety first," said Sarah McKinney, an environmental associate with Ohio PIRG who wrote the report.

The NRC's Caldwell said he and the inspection team that evaluated the plant were "not aware of any equipment problems that would preclude restart."

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