3 accused of lying about reactor(indicted)-Ohio, First Energy, Davis-Besse

[Kolesar]

According to the indictment, Geisen, Siemaszko and Cook omitted key records and created false documents while claiming that the Davis-Besse reactor lid had been completely cleaned and every part of it inspected in 1996, 1998 and 2000. Geisen also is accused of lying to NRC staff about the inspection results during a meeting.

The three men and other FirstEnergy officials, including higher managers, repeatedly visited NRC headquarters to argue for delaying a shutdown until a regularly scheduled refueling in April 2002, the document says.

When NRC engineers, certain the reactor was leaking, demanded inspections by Dec. 31, Geisen and Cook are alleged to have offered a "risk assessment" based in part on false documents.
...snip...
At that time, inspections revealed corrosion of the reactor's lid, created by leaks that had been ignored for up to six years. The NRC ordered the reactor shut down until further notice and created a special oversight panel for the plant. Federal authorities later estimated the reactor lid would have ruptured in as little as 60 days had the corrosion hole not been discovered.

Other investigations revealed that critical safety systems designed to prevent a meltdown of the reactor's core in the event of a rupture had been severely limited by years of poor maintenance and might not have kept radioactive steam and debris from escaping the containment building.
...snip...
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a Lakewood Democrat and FirstEnergy's harshest critic, commended White's work but said FirstEnergy itself should be held accountable.

http://www.cleveland.com/ohio/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/news/113774992055330.xml&coll=2

[rucky]

1. Public Energy, Public Healthcare, Public Education

and Prisons & Emergency Management.

Anybody who thinks corporations can be trusted to run this stuff has been smoking their tennis shoes.

[occuserpens]

2. Edgar Poe goes nuclear

This is a real modern horror story, nothing to do with "terrorist WMD", "dirty bombs", etc.

[Kolesar]

3. FE funds all the gops &many Dems in Ohio.

FE funded oppostion to our reform package last year (RON). FE funded Beast/Cheney. FE "funds" the press & broadcasters by putting their useless PR ads on the air--that helps them get complimentary ink in the papers & broadcast media.

[struggle4progress]

4. Nuke plant owner agrees to $28 million fine

... As part of the agreement, FirstEnergy has admitted that the government can prove plant employees knowingly made false representations to regulators ...

Company and Nuclear Regulatory Commission investigators concluded that managers had ignored the rust hole because they were focused on profits rather than safety ...

http://www.wkyc.com/akron/akron_article.aspx?storyid=46505

[NNadir]

5. Does anyone know Exxon's fine for lying about global climate change?

Given the ratio of the number of people injured by the vast, deadly, Beese Davis disaster that has wiped out Ohio to the number of people who have been impacted by global climate change, I would guess that Exxon has paid a substantial fine.

Does anyone know how much it is?

[Kolesar]

6. That company blocked our election-reform initiatives last November

By funding Ohio "First" to block Reform Ohio Now. That company hugely funds election campaigns in Ohio, they fund both party's candidates, but favors the gop. FE is a criminal enterprise. Kucinich called for PUCO to yank their contract as a regulated monopoly after they caused the blackout of 2003. I concur.

That company has overcharged us ratepayers by billions of dollars for stranded costs for Davis Besse, Perry and Beaver Valley nuclear plants. It is no wonder they have all the cash they need to control Ohio politics. I suppose if they had shut down Davis-Besse months earlier, it would have cut into their political budget and the budget all those stupid PR commercials they run. So says the Akron Beacon Journal:

A consumers' counsel must enjoy public confidence and jealously protect a reputation for independence. This past week, news accounts have suggested Tongren has faltered on both counts.
One of the more contentious and complex pieces of legislation to clear the Statehouse in recent years involved electricity deregulation. Much discussion turned on "stranded costs," reflecting investments made by FirstEnergy (with the approval and often the urging of regulators) that the company expected to recover over time. How much would the Akron-based firm be permitted to collect before the deregulated market took effect?

In the end, the figure was set at $8.7 billion, as part of a practical compromise, one consumers' counsel Tongren helped to facilitate, achieving real benefits for consumers. The trouble is, Tongren sat on a report that had concluded the "stranded costs" should be less than $4 billion.

Perhaps the report would have made little difference. (The consumers' counsel paid a consulting firm $579,000 for the work.) That doesn't excuse the failure to make the information available for public debate. Tongren neglected his duty. It doesn't help, either, that the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio acted similarly with a separate consultant's report that reached the same conclusion.

Tongren compounded his problem by destroying the document after the office's records-retention policy narrowed (misguidedly) from five years to one. More, the Columbus Dispatch reported this week that the consumers' counsel has spent all too much time on the golf course, at fund-raisers and other events wining and dining, getting cozy with the executives of the companies his office oversees. A watchdog shouldn't be so sloppy.

http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/2003/timetogo.htm

The Ohio Consumers' Council colluded with FE to shred the report. Tongren resigned after this editorial.

[NNadir]

9. So the answer about Exxon is a description of First Energy?

If they "shut down" Beese Davis, do you have any conception of how much carbon dioxide would go into the air?

Oh wait, I know the answer to this question: Ohio politics doesn't matter anymore because everyone in Ohio died from Beese Davis, which was the most important environmental disaster in the history of the world, because it was nuclear.

In comparison to global climate change, which is trivial, the vast deadly overweening tragedy at Beese Davis will eliminate all life on earth.

Because the owners of Beese Davis are involved in political scandal, the managers of Exxon are not.

The only energy issues we need to be concerned about therefore are nuclear issues because nuclear starts with an "N" and Global Climate Change starts with a "G," and Exxon starts with an "E."

Before the death of everyone in Ohio from the vast tragedy at Beese Davis, in which the violation of law was discovered before one person was injured, I used to recite the following truth: There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[Kolesar]

11. You should be disgusted w/FE for harming the progress of nuclear generatio

The real question here was whether FE's leaders should have shut the thing down when they knew there was a problem. Damn the earnings.

I understood your analogy with Exxon destroying the atmosphere &supporting their own lying campaign, I just thought it was tangential from the thesis of this thread and I did not feel like composing a response.

[NNadir]

12. Oh. I thought you didn't understand the question.

A decision about energy does not depend on the ethics of every major organization supplying that energy.

I regret many decisions made by many nuclear energy officials - the worst in history having been the decision of the Glorious Anti-Imperialist Soviet Socialist Working People's State which deliberately was in violation all of its own rules and did in fact create a disaster. Such an outcome is a warning on the benefits of a one party state of the type that existed in the former Soviet Union and now exists here.

It is too much to expect that any undertaking involving human beings will be free of moral, ethical or technical error. However we must, if we wish to think clearly, weigh the consequences of these errors. Thus it is well that a system of criminal checks exist and that punishment is assessed, just as it was at Beese Davis.

(I note that all of the workers involved in the cover up have lost their jobs.)

Now if the reactor head at Beese Davis had blown - it did not - it may have caused injury, even death, thereby raising the number of fatal commercial nuclear accidents in the United States from zero to one. I fully expect that such an accident will in fact happen someday somewhere. But again the issue is comparative and not absolute. If and when such an accident does occur, it does NOT mean that nuclear power is less safe than it's alternatives any more than a plane crash does not make flying a plane more dangerous than driving an SUV.

If we insisted that every energy technology be risk free, we would have to absorb the much higher risk event of having no energy.

I NEVER see fines leveled against Exxon for global climate change, even though the risk is much greater than the risk associated with Beese Davis. I NEVER see threads started here on this subject, that Exxon pays nothing for promoting global climate change.

One questions therefore, why the payment of fines - leveled in order to make people obey the existent rules generate such press and so much comment here - whereas there is little such comment on the non-existence of rules applying to global climate change.

In my position, one hears a continual rhythmic bleating chorus that goes sings this lotus inspired song: "Besse-Davis, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Chernoybl, Chernobyl..."

In fact of these three events, only one involved fatalities whereas global climate change, air pollution, oil wars, coal mine accidents, poisoned waters, and strip mined land are routinely ignored and have been occurring every damn day for decades and will soon get worse, not better.

Ignoring risk is not the same as creating safety.

It is completely disingenuous to call my reference in this discussion tangential in the glaring light of this truth:

There is no such thing as risk free energy. There is only risk minimized energy. That energy is nuclear energy.

[Kolesar]

13. Your state's AG nailed FE for scamming the New Source Review

...excerpt...
The New Source Review provisions state that when major upgrades are done to a coal-fired power plant, the owner must install pollution control equipment to reduce emissions to levels similar to those from a new plant
...snip...
Power companies have been abusing New Source Review by refitting power plants to extend their lifetimes while claiming that the new fittings are merely inconsequential maintenance. Meanwhile our corrupt federal government has been quite permissive, even encouraging these companies to behave this way. In fact, President Bush's "Clear Skies Initiative" includes a duplicitous weakening of the standard defining "minor work" versus "major upgrades" to coal-fired plants.

But the attorneys general of New Jersey and Connecticut, together with prominent New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, took First Energy to court on the New Source Review issue and nailed 'em. In the absence of enforcement by a conscientious federal government, these attorneys general made the case that the Sammis plant was emitting huge amounts of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide that traveled downwind to their states, harming the health and property of their states' citizens. In 2003, the Sammis plant emitted 164,000 tons of sulfur dioxide-more than the sulfur dioxide emissions from all the power plants in New Jersey and Connecticut combined.

Before a second trial was held to address remedies for Ohio Edison's violations of the law, the parties began negotiations and reached a comprehensive settlement that will reduce air pollution emissions from four of the company's coal-fired power plants.
...more...

[we can do it]

7. I Wonder If I Can Get In Trouble For Saying This - But Here Goes

I was working for FE when the whole Davis-Besse thing came to light - shortly afterwards, you should have seen all the pallets of files being shrink wrapped and taken out of the building (between 6 & 7 AM). They were being sent to the Perry Plant - I think to be shredded up.

[philb]

8. info should be sent to Kucinish

[aztc]

10. Nuclear Industry Advocates Encamped

Sadly, there are a handful of dedicated employees and supporters of that industry encamped on this board intent on building MORE nuclear plants, and they can only answer the often repeated question of 'What to do with the waste' in the same fashion as Karl Rove deals with facts about the Bush regime.

What about the waste material 'temporarily' stored at over 100 facilities in the US of A right now?

** Note, I did not ask what CAN be done, or what France is doing. I did not ask about safety statistics in relation to other industries or sources of energy. I am pointing out that after decades of massive subsidies the industry not only has not responsibly answered this question, but all too often incidents like Davis Besse are pooh-poohed away by those living off the proceeds, when they are caught.

Who knows how many others are hiding the truth to protect their interests.

[Kolesar]

14. Former nuclear engineers, consultant get court dates

12:44 p.m.

John Funk
Plain Dealer Reporter

Court dates have been set for two former FirstEnergy Corp. nuclear engineers and a consultant who are accused of lying to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission about the condition of the Davis-Besse power plant near Toledo.

Former Davis-Besse engineer Andrew Siemaszko and consultant Rodney Cook have been ordered to appear before a federal magistrate in Toledo this Friday to enter pleas. Fromer Davis-Besse engineering manager David Geisen is scheduled for next week Wednesday.

According to a five-count indictment, the lies in the fall of 2001 were part of an effort to avoid a temporary shutdown for an emergency safety inspection. The trio were the only former employees charged following a grand jury investigation of more than two years. A fourth employee accepted a plea deal and one year of probation in exchange for his cooperation.

The Justice Department fined the utility $28 million, money that is not tax deductible and cannot be passed on to rate payers, in an agreement that commits FirstEnergy to cooperating with U.S. Attorney Greg White's ongoing investigation.

http://www.cleveland.com/newslogs/plaindealer/index.ssf?/mtlogs/cleve_plaindealer/archives/2006_01.html#107786