ML110380516

Firstenergy'S Motion to Strike Portions of Petitioners' Combined Reply

ML110380516
Person / Time
Site:	Davis Besse
Issue date:	02/07/2011
From:	Polonsky A FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Co, Morgan, Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, LLP
To:	Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel
SECY RAS
References
RAS 19569, 50-346-LR, ASLBP 11-907-01-LR-BD01
Download: ML110380516 (31)

Text

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION BEFORE THE ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD

)

In the Matter of )

) Docket No. 50-346-LR FIRSTENERGY NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY )

)

(Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Unit 1) ) February 7, 2011

)

FIRSTENERGYS MOTION TO STRIKE PORTIONS OF PETITIONERS COMBINED REPLY I. INTRODUCTION In accordance with 10 C.F.R. § 2.323(a), FirstEnergy Nuclear Operating Company (FirstEnergy or FENOC) files this motion to strike limited portions of Joint Intervenors Combined Reply in Support of Petition for Leave to Intervene, (Combined Reply) dated

January 28, 2011.

1 As discussed below, the Combined Reply impermissibly includes new arguments, references, and an attachment not within the scope of their original Petition without satisfying the standards governing late-filed contentions set forth in 10 C.F.R. §§ 2.309(c) and (f)(2). Accordingly, this new information should be stricken.

II. BACKGROUND On December 27 and 28, 2010, Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, Dont Waste Michigan, and the Green Party of Ohio (Petitioners) jointly filed their Request for Public Hearing and Petition for Leave to Intervene (Petition).

In response, FirstEnergy and the NRC Staff timely filed Answers to the Petition on January 21, 1 As required by 10 C.F.R. § 2.323(b), counsel for FirstEnergy contacted Kevin Kamps, Petitioners representative, in an attempt to resolve the issues raised in this Motion. Petitioners did not agree to the relief requested in this Motion. Counsel for the NRC Staff authorized FirstEnergy to state that the Staff does not oppose the Motion.

2 2011.2 On January 28, 2011, Petitioners filed their Combined Reply to FirstEnergys Answer and the NRC Staffs Answer. As discussed in Section IV below, Petitioners Combined Reply contains new arguments, references, and an attachment not contained in their Petition.

3 III. LEGAL STANDARDS A reply is intended to give a petitioner an opportunity to address arguments raised in the opposing parties answers. A reply may not be used as a vehicle to introduce new arguments or support, may not expand the scope of arguments set forth in the original petition, and may not attempt to cure an otherwise deficient contention.

4 As the Commission has stated: It is well established in NRC proceedings that a reply cannot expand the scope of the arguments set forth in the original hearing request. Replies must focus narrowly on the legal or factual arguments first presented in the original petition or raised in the answers to it. New bases for a contention cannot be introduced in a reply brief, or any other time after the date the original contentions are due, unless the petitioner meets the late-filing criteria set forth in 10 C.F.R. § 2.309(c), (f)(2).

5 The Commissions prohibition on new arguments in replies is rooted in the Commissions interest in conducting adjudicatory hearings efficiently and on basic principles of fairness. The Commission has recognized that [a]s we face an increasing adjudicatory

2 FirstEnergys Answer Opposing Request for Public Hearing and Petition for Leave to Interven e (Jan. 21, 2011); NRC Staffs Answer to Joint Petitioners Request for a Hearing and Petition for Leave to Intervene (Jan. 21, 2011).

3 In a Motion to Strike, FirstEnergy cannot address whether the new arguments, references, and attachment identified herein provide an adequate basis for an admissible contention. Therefore, if the Board decides to consider the new arguments, references, and attachment contained in the Combined Reply, then FirstEnergy requests an opportunity to respond to the admissibility of the new information in writing and/or during the oral argument currently scheduled for March 1, 2011.

4 See Entergy Nuclear Vt. Yankee, LLC (Vt. Yankee Nuclear Power Station), LBP-06-20, 64 NRC 131, 182, 198-99 (2006) (granting in part a motion to strike and finding that petitioners impermissibly expand[ed] their arguments by filing a second declaration from their expert in a reply brief that provided additional detail regarding the proposed contention); Nuclear Mgmt. Co., LLC (Palisades Nuclear Plant), LBP-06-10, 63 NRC 314, 351-63 (2006), affd , CLI-06-17, 63 NRC 727 (2006) (refusing to consider references to various documents identified in a petitioners reply that were not included in the original petition).

5 Palisades, CLI-06-17, 63 NRC at 732 (citation omitted).

3docket, the need for parties to adhere to our pleading standards and for the Board to enforce those standards are paramount.

6 It has further stated: NRC contention admissibility and timeliness requirements demand a level of discipline and preparedness on the part of petitioners.

But there would be no end to NRC licensing proceedings if petitioners could disregard our timeliness requirements every time they realize[d] . . . that maybe there was something after all to a challenge it either originally opted not to make or which simply

did not occur to it at the outset.

7 Accordingly, a petitioner must include all of its arguments and claims in its initial filing. Allowing a petitioner to amend or supplement its pleadings in reply to the applicants or NRC Staffs answers would run afoul of the Commissions clear directives: Allowing contentions to be added, amended, or supplemented at any time would defeat the purpose of the specific contention requirements . . . by permitting the intervenor to initially file vague, unsupported, and generalized allegations and simply recast, support, or cure them later. The Commission has made numerous

efforts over the years to avoid unnecessary delays and increase the efficiency of NRC adjudication and our contention standards are a

cornerstone of that effort.

8 Moreover, because NRC regulations do not allow the applicant to respond to a petitioners reply, 9 principles of fairness mandate that a petitioner restrict its reply brief to addressing issues raised in the applicants or NRC Staffs answer. Allowing new claims in a reply not only would defeat the contention-filing deadline, but would unfairly deprive other participants an opportunity to rebut the new claims.

10 Thus, [i]n Commission practice, and in

6 La. Energy Servs., L.P. (Natl Enrichment Facility), CLI-04-25, 60 NRC 223, 225 (2004) (LES).

7 Duke Energy Corp. (McGuire Nuclear Station, Units 1 & 2; Catawba Nuclear Station, Units 1 & 2), CLI-03-17, 58 NRC 419, 428-29 (2003) (internal quotation marks and citations omitted), quoted approvingly in LES , CLI-04-25, 60 NRC at 224-25.

8 La. Energy Servs., L.P. (Natl Enrichment Facility), CLI-04-35, 60 NRC 619, 622-23 (2004) (internal quotes and citation omitted).

9 See 10 C.F.R. § 2.309(h)(3).

10 Palisades, CLI-06-17, 63 NRC at 732.

4litigation practice generally, new arguments may not be raised for the first time in a reply brief.11 Any improper arguments should be stricken.

12 IV. BASES FOR MOTION TO STRIKE As detailed in the following table, Petitioners Combined Reply contains new arguments, references, and an attachment that should be stricken. The relevant pages of the Combined Reply also are attached to this Motion. The specific text and attachment that FirstEnergy seeks

to strike have been lined out using the Cross Out Text function in Adobe Acrobat. Location of New Information in Petitioners Combined Reply 13 Description of New Information Section Entitled Uncertainty (relating to Contention 4 regarding SAMA analysis)

• On page 45, strike the last two sentences of this section, which state:

In the aftermath of Davis-Besses 2002 hole-in-the-head fiasco, NRCs Office of Inspector General reported in December, 2002, that not

only FENOC, but also the NRC itself, had prioritized the companys profits over public safety, risking a major radiological disaster.

FENOCs committing to 95 th percentile confidence levels in its SAMA analyses would be a small but important step in the right

direction towards redressing its past profit of safety [sic] excesses, one of many

it should undertake.

These last two sentences refer to

FirstEnergys discovery, during a 2002

refueling outage, of corrosion of the

Davis-Besse reactor vessel head from boric acid leakage. They also make allegations directed at the integrity of

the NRC and FirstEnergy. For example, they accuse FirstEnergy of elevating

profits over safety. Petitioners did not identify these issues in their Petition, and neither FirstEnergy nor the NRC Staff raised them in their Answers.

11 LES, CLI-04-25, 60 NRC at 225; see also Changes to the Adjudicatory Process, 69 Fed. Reg. 2182, 2203 (Jan. 14, 2004).

12 A licensing board has the authority to strike individual arguments and exhibits.

See, e.g., 10 C.F.R. § 2.319 (stating that the presiding officer has all the powers necessary to take appropriate action to control the prehearing . . . process). See also Tenn. Valley Auth. (Bellefonte Nuclear Power Plant Units 3 & 4), LBP-08-16, 68 NRC 361, 376-77, 399-400, 407, 429 (2008) (granting the applicants motion to strike portions of petitioners reply that contained new arguments and factual allegations (includi ng a new affidavit and reports) in an attempt to cure deficiencies in the proposed contentions in the petition to intervene).

13 Puzzlingly, the pagination on Petitioners Combined Reply ceases at page 28. By FirstEnergys count, the entire Combined Reply, including attachments, is 125 pages. For the sake of simplicity and ease of reference, page numbers cited in the table above were inserted by FirstEnergy into a pdf copy of the Combined Reply.

5Location of New Information in Petitioners Combined Reply 13 Description of New Information Contention 4a

• On pages 46-48, strike the text beginning In addition to population density on page 46

through the sentence ending downwind over vast areas. on page 48.

These portions of the Reply present new arguments that were not identified in the

Petition. Petitioners directly assert for the first time (and certainly with respect

to Contention 4a) that a severe accident

at Davis-Besse would involve a radiological release into the Great Lakes

and would result . . . [in] large, consequences of an international scope to downstream drinking water supplies

in the U.S. and Canada, thereby affecting Native American populations and metropolitan areas like Toronto and

Montreal. As a result, Petitioners argue, FENOC and NRC itself must much more seriously address the risks

of an intentional terrorist attack at Davis-Besse. Petitioners also compare

a postulated severe accident at Davis-

Besse to the 1986 nuclear accident at

Chernobyl.

Contention 4a

• On pages 48 through 55, delete the text beginning We again point on the bottom of page 48 through the text ending forty-year mark of age-related degradation. at the bottom of page 55.

• On page 78, delete the following phrase at the end of the last sentence of the first full paragraph: as well as NRC OIGs very serious finding in the aftermath of the Davis-

Besse hole in the head fiasco of 2002 that

profit had been prioritized over safety.

These portions of the Combined Reply again refer to FirstEnergys 2002 discovery of corrosion of the Davis-

Besse reactor vessel head, and contain

further allegations concerning the integrity of the NRC and FirstEnergy.

For example, Petitioners accuse

FirstEnergy of unrepentant neglect of Davis-Besse and the NRC of chronic complicity. The Combined Reply also discusses, for the first time, operating history/performance at Davis-Besse and

other U.S. nuclear power plants (e.g., TMI-2, Browns Ferry, Rancho Seco)

dating back four decades.

6Location of New Information in Petitioners Combined Reply 13 Description of New Information Attachments

• The following Attachment to the Combined Reply also should be stricken:

Davis-Besse Atomic Reactor: 20 MORE Years

of Radioactive Russian Roulette on the Great Lakes shore?! (prepared by Beyond Nuclear on November 19, 2010)

This document is cited on pages 29, 50, and 55 of the Combined Reply and appears to be the primary source of much of the new information on pages

46 though 55 of the Combined Reply that FirstEnergy seeks to strike for the reasons set forth above. For example, this Attachment discusses operating history/performance at Davis-Besse and

other U.S. nuclear power plants.

The Licensing Board should strike these new arguments, references, and the attachment that Petitioners present for the first time in their Combined Reply. These portions of the Petitioners Combined Reply fail to focus narrowly on the legal or factual arguments first

presented in the original petition or raised in the answers to it.

14 Instead, these portions of the Combined Reply impermissibly attempt to expand the scope of Contention 4 and provide new bases and supporting material for the contention, without addressing the criteria for late-filed or amended contentions in 10 C.F.R. §§ 2.309(c) and (f)(2). Petitioners cannot now try to bootstrap their initial Petition with entirely new information that is not narrowly focused on the legal or factual arguments presented in the FirstEnergy and NRC Staff Answers, 15 and to which FirstEnergy and the NRC Staff have no opportunity to respond. Accordingly, the new arguments, references, and attachment identified above should be stricken.

14 Palisades, CLI-06-17, 63 NRC at 732.

15 Changes to Adjudicatory Process, 69 Fed. Reg. at 2203.

7 V. CONCLUSION For the foregoing reasons, the Board should strike the new arguments, references, and attachment impermissibly provided in Petitioners Combined Reply to FirstEnergys and the

NRC Staffs January 21, 2011 Answers to their Petition.

Executed in Accord with 10 C.F.R. § 2.304(d)

Signed (electronically) by Alex S. Polonsky Kathryn M. Sutton Alex S. Polonsky

Stephen J. Burdick

Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20004

Phone: 202-739-5830 E-mail: apolonsky@morganlewis.com

David W. Jenkins

Senior Attorney

FirstEnergy Service Company Mailstop: A-GO-15

76 South Main Street

Akron, OH 44308

Phone: 330-384-5037 E-mail: djenkins@firstenergycorp.com COUNSEL FOR FIRSTENERGY

Dated in Washington, D.C.

this 7th day of February 2011 Finally, FENOC questions (at its Answer, Page 131) why Joint Petitioners cited Dr. Edwin Lymans testimony in the Indian Point (Units 2 and 3) license extension proceeding, and how it applies to this Davis-Besse license extension proceeding. Joint Petitioners cited Dr. Lymans testimony to emphasize the important of scientific conservatism, as embodied in 95 th percentile confidence levels as opposed to mean values. Joint petitioners insist that such confidence levels are necessary to adequately protect people and the environment against the hazards of radioactivity, to successfully mitigate against severe accidents. In the aftermath of Davis-Besses 2002 hole-in-the-head fiasco, NRCs Office of Inspector General reported in December, 2002, that not only FENOC, but also the NRC itself, had prioritized the companys profits over public safety, risking a major radiological disaster. FENOCs committing to 95 thpercentile confidence levels in its SAMA analyses would be a small but important step in the right direction towards redressing its past profit of safety excesses, one of many it should undertake. SECTION-BY-SECTION REBUTTAL FENOC and NRC staff make similar arguments; therefore Joint Petitioners reply to NRC staffs Answer would be applicable here below, as appropriate. FENOCs Arguments Against Contention 4a: Use of Probabilistic Risk Assessment Techniques, (Pages 83 to 92 of FENOCs Answer); Joint Petitioners FENOCS USE OF PROBABILISTIC MODELING UNDERESTIMATED THE TRUE CONSEQUENCES OF A SEVERE ACCIDENT (Joint Petitioners Petition and Request, December 27, 2010, beginning on Page 104) In this contention, Joint Petitioners assert that FENOCs use of probabilistic modeling underestimated the deaths, injuries, and economic impact likely from a severe Page 45 of 125 A TTACHMENT accident by multiplying consequence values, irrespective of their amount, with very low probability numbers, making the consequence figures appear minimal. FENOCs claim that this contention is inadmissible is incorrect. At Page 89 of its Answer, FENOC states: Petitioners citation to a 1985 decision involving Indian Point also is inapposite. Specifically, Petitioners note that the Board stated that the Commission should not ignore the potential consequences of severe-consequence accidents by always multiplying those consequences by low probability values.

But the Boards statement is taken out of context. In that decision (which pre-dates the SAMA analysis requirement in Part 51 by more than a decade), the Board noted that, due to the high population density near Indian Point, a low probability accident at Indian Point may result in greater consequences than the same accident at another site.

The Board did not hold that it is inappropriate to consider the probability of a severe accident in assessing the associated risk. In fact, in that proceeding, the Commission instructed the Board to consider serious accidents with equal attention to both probabilities and consequences.

This is consistent with the definition of risk articulated by the Commission and used in numerous nuclear regulatory contexts, including SAMA analysis. [FENOCs reference to footnotes removed by Joint Petitioners] Joint Petitioners take issue with several aspects of FENOCs argument. First is its apparent attempt to downplay population density risks at Davis-Besse. Davis-Besses neighbors include: Detroit, Michigan; Toledo and Cleveland, Ohio; and Windsor, Ontario. These major metropolitan areas are all located within 50 miles of Davis-Besse. Given such population density, a severe accident at Davis-Besse, certainly one involving a radiological release, would likely result in large, not small, consequences. In addition to population density, Davis-Besses Lake Erie shoreline location raises additional risks. Lake Erie serves as the headwaters for the drinking water supply for many millions of people downstream, not only in the U.S. and Canada, but also in numerous Native American and First Nations. Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec -

Page 46 of 125 two of the largest metropolitan areas in all of Canada, are downstream of Davis-Besse on the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. A severe accident at Davis-Besse, especially one involving a radiological release, would result not in small, but rather large, consequences of an international scope to downstream drinking water supplies.

Such large consequences of international scope to downstream drinking water - and also agricultural irrigation water -- supplies would also extend, of course, to the northern shore of Lake Erie itself. Due to such risks of an international incident involving a catastrophic radiological release into the Great Lakes (drinking water supply for 40 million people altogether in both countries, engine for one of the biggest regional economies on the entire planet, and heart of one of the worlds largest trading partnerships between the U.S. and Canada), FENOC and NRC itself must much more seriously address the risks of an intentional terrorist attack at Davis-Besse, as opposed to the flippant bureaucratic dismissal embodied by FENOCs response to Alleged Need to Consider Intentional Acts at its Answer, Page 86. To do otherwise is to risk unimaginable peril. FENOC argument, and NRCs policy position, effectively assumes that the risk of a terrorist attack at Davis-Besse is zero. As shown by the events of September 11, 2001, such a risk calculation is dead wrong. As alluded to by the title of Dr. Edwin Lymans report, Chernobyl on the Hudson? The Health and Economic Impacts of a Terrorist Attack at the Indian Point Nuclear Plant, (Union of Concerned Scientists, September 2004, available at http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/sabotage_and_attacks_on_r eactors/impacts-of-a-terrorist-attack.html), Joint Petitioners are determined to do Page 47 of 125 prevent a Chernobyl on the Great Lakes - as by intervening in this proceeding, and demanding that accurate SAMA analyses be carried out by FENOC in order to prevent a severe accident - or attack - from ever taking place at Davis-Besse. And of course, an element of Joint Petitioners Contentions One (Wind), Two (Solar), and Three (Solar and Wind Combined) is that those renewable energy alternatives to Davis-Besse would not incur the risks of severe accidents or attacks unleashing catastrophic amounts of radioactivity into the Great Lakes Basin to blow with the wind and flow with the water to fallout downstream and downwind over vast areas. Joint Petitioners do not disagree with the reasoning behind the cited Commission instruction to the ASLB in the 1980s Indian Point proceeding cited above, that regarding serious accident risk, equal attention should be paid to both probabilities and consequences. In fact, that is the very definition of risk itself. However, FENOC misconstrues Joint Petitioners challenge. Joint Petitioners are not enemies of probability determinations. But Joint Petitioners are enemies of FENOCs systemic underestimation of risk probabilities due to its flawed models and methodologies. FENOC has consistently underestimated risk in its SAMA calculations by inappropriately and improperly underestimating probability values, as Joint Petitioners have shown in Contention Four. FENOC has then multiplied consequences by improperly and inappropriately low probability values to arrive at seemingly low overall risk values. In fact, FENOC determined that not a single one of the Severe Accident Mitigation Alternatives it had considered in its ER SAMA analysis proved to be cost-beneficial. We again point to the December 2002 NRC Office of Inspector General report, documenting that both FENOC and NRC itself prioritized profit over safety at Page 48 of 125 Davis-Besse, resulting in the close brush with a major disaster best known as the hole-in-the-head fiasco - the reactor lid corrosion incident first publicly revealed in early 2002. Revealingly, at FENOCs ER on Page E-21 is the following passage: Deleted reactor vessel rupture event AV. A frequency for this event was not published in NUREG/CR-5750 (Reference 6), so this event lacks a justifiable frequency. Based on the large LOCA frequencies in NUREG/CR-5750, this event should be a negligible contributor to the total CDF. (Note this was put back in the SAMA analysis model.) What this passage reveals is a lesson learned in the nuclear power establishment - a hard lesson learned at Davis-Besse itself. How probable was it that an atomic reactors reactor pressure vessel lid would corrode to such an extent that a breach could result in a loss of coolant accident to the nuclear core? At one time, not only the NRC, but even its contractor which performed NUREG/CR-5750, believed that a reactor vessel rupture event was so improbable that it need not even be considered in analyzing large Loss of Coolant Accident risks, including in SAMA analyses by nuclear utilities seeking 20 year license extensions. However, Davis-Besses hole-in-the-head revealed that accident scenarios long thought impossibly remote actually do happen in the real world, due to such factors as nuclear utility greed and disregard for public safety, combined with NRC complicity at the highest levels of the agency (putting profit over safety, in the words of NRCs OIG, December 2002). Interestingly, FENOC saw fit, in the aftermath of its near-disastrous, scandalous, and even criminal lid corrosion incident, to put back the reactor vessel rupture accident scenario it had previously deleted. What had previously been considered an accident scenario so fleetingly improbable so as to not merit any further Page 49 of 125 consideration, nearly became a 100% severe accident probability on the Great Lakes shoreline, 20 miles east of Toledo in early 2002. All it took was for FENOC to neglect and cover up its reactors boric acid leak for a long enough period of time, and for NRC to look the other way and allow them to get away with it.

What Joint Petitioners fear is that FENOC has already begun to forget such hard won lessons learned, by improperly downplaying risks due to inappropriately underestimating accident probabilities. But the 2002 hole-in-the-head was not Davis-Besses only close brush with a low probability disaster.

As documented in Beyond Nuclears November/December 2010 backgrounder, Davis-Besse Atomic Reactor: 20 MORE Years of Radioactive Russian Roulette on the Great Lakes Shore?!, Davis-Besses September 24, 1977 TMI precursor incident had a 7% core damage probability (CDP), according to NRC Commission Document SECY-05-0192, Attachment 2, Results, Trends, and Insights from the Accident Sequence Precursor (ASP) Program, Table 11, Significant accident sequence precursors during the 1969-2005 period. (Pages 20-26; Joint Petitioners accessed this document online at http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/secys/2005/secy2005-0192/attachment2.pdf.) Fortunately, this asp did not unleash its full venom on Davis-Besse, as a nearly identical accident sequence precursor did at the Three Mile Island (TMI) Unit 2 on March 28, 1979, leading to a 50% meltdown of the core, the worst atomic reactor accident in U.S. history thus far, with untold radioactivity releases to the environment, causing countless human health consequences to this day.

Page 50 of 125 What was the probability that a stuck-open PORV (Pilot-Operated Relief Valve) could lead to a core meltdown considered to be, before it almost happened at Davis-Besse in 1977, and before it actually did happen at TMI in 1979? Tragically, NRC Region III inspector James Creswells courageous refusal to shut up about the lessons that should have been learned from the Davis-Besse near-miss went unheeded by his superiors at NRC, and certainly by the nuclear power industry itself, until it was too late. Davis-Besses 1977 TMI precursor incident has been determined by NRC to be the fourth most serious accident sequence precursor during the 1969 to 2005 time period. It was only surpassed in severity by the 1979 TMI meltdown itself (with a 100% CDP, by definition), the 1975 Browns Ferry, Alabama fire (assigned a 20% CDP), and the 1978 Rancho Seco, California steam generator dryout (assigned a 10% CDP). By the way, prior to it actually happening at Browns Ferry in 1975, what was the probability considered to be of a severe accident being caused by a nuclear power plant inspector checking for drafts in insulation with a lit candle, causing a fire that would lead to complete loss of control over the atomic reactor? Joint Petitioners point here is that accident scenarios considered to be of very low probability or even unthinkable have been inappropriately and improperly underestimated by the nuclear power industry time and time again in the past. FENOCs SAMA methodologies and models are repeating that serious mistake in this present 20 year license extension application proceeding.

This must not be allowed. The potential consequences - the radiological risks -- to the public and the environment are too great. These are the very risks that FENOCs SAMA analyses are supposed to guard against. But due to its disregard for all severe accident scenarios considered as having too low a probability of actually occurring, not a single Page 51 of 125 SAMA was determined by FENOC to be cost-beneficial. Joint Petitioners challenge this disregard for accident risks based on improperly low probability determinations. Davis-Besses 1977 TMI precursor accident was not unlike the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster of 1986. Before Space Shuttle Challenger exploded on lift off, the probability of such an accident occurring was considered to be 1 in 100,000, largely determined through expert judgment. After the disaster actually occurred, expert judgment, coupled with a real world data point, re-calculated the risk to be 1 in 25.

Warnings by junior level safety engineers at NASA and its subcontractors went unheeded by senior management, which put an overriding priority on meeting the launch schedule. Tragically, given the faulty O-rings, this gave deadline a deadly meaning for the astronauts on board, as the nation watched in horror on live television.

Strikingly, a very similar dynamic played out with the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003. Junior safety officials warned about the damage done to the shuttles heat shielding tiles due to falling debris on lift off, but these warning went unheeded senior level decision makers preoccupied with operational details, until things went fatally wrong. Yet again, a vanishingly small probability risk, it was thought anyway, shocked the country with its deadly consequences. FENOC (including its forerunner Toledo Edison) already has a long history of underestimating risk probabilities at Davis-Besse in the past. This must not be allowed to be repeated in the license extension SAMA analyses. As retired NRC Region III safety inspector Dr. Ross Landsman has warned (in the context of serious quality assurance violations with the design, fabrication, and use of dry cask storage containers for highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel - a problem that Davis-Besse itself also has Page 52 of 125 on-site), such nuclear power industry and NRC short cuts on safety are not unlike what caused Space Shuttles to crash to the ground. Risk probabilities are ignored, dismissed, or downplayed at catastrophic peril, especially when atomic reactors are involved. Not to be outdone by the 1978 Rancho Seco steam generator dryout, Davis-Besse suffered a loss of cooling to the reactor core for 12 minutes on June 9, 1985.

This accident also involved drying out of steam generators. Like a scene straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, Davis-Besse plant personnel were sent racing down darkened corridors with bolt cutters, not knowing if they had the proper keys or access cards to open locked security doors, in order to cut through chains securing valves, so that they could manually open them to restore cooling water flow to steam generators, in order to cool the reactor core, with each passing minute increasing the risk of a loss-of-coolant-accident, nuclear fuel damage, a meltdown, and even a catastrophic radioactivity release to the environment. David Lochbaum of Union of Concerned Scientists has explained that an operator raced through the plant taking five manual actions in four different locations (including re-installing the fuses) in a dangerously substandard, previously intentionally disabled motor-driven startup feedwater pump, in order to restore cooling to vital reactor systems. Lochbaum concluded that Davis-Besse came within 37 minutes of partially uncovering the core of its cooling water supply, and 41 minutes of completely uncovering the core; as he has pointed out, TMIs core was never fully uncovered, but it was uncovered enough to half melt down. Before it actually happened that day at Davis-Besse, what was the probability considered to be that While at 90-percent power, the reactor [would trip] with main feedwater (MFW) pump 1 tripped and MFW pump 2 unavailable? And before it Page 53 of 125 actually happened that day, what was the probability considered to be that, in addition to the above reactor trip, and feedwater pump trip and unavailability, Davis-Besse operators [would make] an error in initiating the steam and feedwater rupture control system and [would isolate] EFW [emergency feedwater] to both steam generators?

And to make matters even worse, and before it actually happened that day, what was the probability considered to be that, in addition to all of the above, the PORV [would actuate] three times and then not reseat at the proper RCS [reactor coolant system]

pressure? All of those low probability events aligned on June 9, 1985 at Davis-Besse, causing what the Nuclear Regulatory Commission referred toas the worst [accident] since Three Mile Island in 1979, reported Tom Henry of the Toledo Blade. NRC calculated the accident had represented a 1% CDP risk. But the accident should not have come as a surprise to the nuclear utility and the NRC. A report prepared for the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power just days after the accident suggested that the coolant-water episode at Davis-Besse was foreshadowed by no less than 48 problems concerning the auxiliary feed-water system just since July, 1979. And, as Lochbaum dubbed it, decades of decadence at Davis-Besse were the root cause: had any of the numerous equipment problems been addressed in a timely manner, rather than multiple simultaneous shortcuts on safety taken and maintenance jobs long deferred, the entire accident could have been avoided. In retrospect, the nuclear utilitys unrepentant neglect of Davis-Besse, and the NRCs chronic complicity, that led up to the 1985 accident were forerunners of the profit over safety attitude, and lack of safety culture, that ultimately resulted in the 2002 hole-in-the-head, which the U.S. Government Page 54 of 125 Accountability Office would call the most serious safety issue confronting the nations commercial nuclear power industry since Three Mile Island in 1979, a conclusion echoed by U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich of Cleveland, who declared that NRC was ill equipped, ill informed and far too slow to react, and that NRCs reaction to Davis-Besse was inadequate, irresponsible and left the public at grave risk.

Significantly, Congressman Kucinich, then Chairman, and now still ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Committees subcommittee on domestic policy, with oversight on NRC, delivered a strong statement of opposition to Davis-Besses 20 year license extension at NRCs environmental scoping meeting at Camp Perry, Ohio late last year. (Beyond Nuclear, Davis-Besse Atomic Reactor: 20 MORE Years of Radioactive Russian Roulette on the Great Lakes Shore?!, November/December 2010.) Joint Petitioners deep concern over FENOCs woefully inadequate SAMA analysis - and their motivation for intervening against the 20 year license extension -- stem in large part from the fact that Davis-Besse is one of the most problem-plagued atomic reactors in the entire country. NRC acknowledges that Davis-Besse has suffered six (out of a total of 34 incidents so designated nationwide) significant accident sequence precursors between 1969 and 2005. Incredibly, this is three times worse than any other American nuclear power plant. The 34 year long history of dismissing severe accident risks at Davis-Besse, until it was almost too late to prevent catastrophe, cannot and must not be allowed to be repeated in this license extension proceeding.

The risks are too significant, and will only be more so after Davis-Besse surpasses the forty-year mark of age-related degradation.

Page 55 of 125 SAMA analysis is troubling to Petitioners. A several-decade-old, flawed code being the most current, established code for NRC SAMA analysis is troubling. Similarly, FENOCs dismissal of Joint Petitioners concerns about lack of quality assurance on the MAACS2 code is reflective of a dangerous attitude apparent across the nuclear establishment regarding the safety significance of QA. QA problems, as mentioned just above, have been identified with dry cask storage, as by industry whistleblower Oscar Shirani, and NRC inspector Ross Landsman. But they have also been identified repeatedly at DOEs Yucca Mountain Project, by the GAO. Beyond Nuclear, Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario, and Dont Waste Michigan - Petitioners in this proceeding - have contended serious QA problems with the Fermi 3 new reactor proposal 30 miles northeast of Davis-Besse at Detroit Edisons Fermi nuclear power plant site, an issue that will now be heard by the ASLB. FENOCs dismissal of QAs significance - as by its implication at Page 100 that NRC can do a lesser job of QA than DOE (that a SAMA analysis is to be held to a lesser standard than a DOE Documented Safety Analysis - is reflective of a troubling trend apparent across the nuclear power industry and its regulatory agency. The fact that FENOC identified not one single SAMA that proved cost-beneficial seems to echo this trend, as well as NRC OIGs very serious finding in the aftermath of the Davis-Besse hole in the head fiasco of 2002 that profit had been prioritized over safety.

FENOCs assertion at Page 101 that A SAMA analysis is not safety-related perplexes and troubles Joint Petitioners. It seems to indicate a perilous disregard by FENOC of the safety significance of SAMA analyses, and may explain why and how FENOC found not a single SAMA to be cost-effective. Of course the public bears the Page 78 of 125 1Davis-Besse Atomic Reactor:

20 MORE Years of Radioactive Russian Roulette on the Great Lakes shore?!

INTRODUCTIONFirstEnergy has applied to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for a 20 year operating license extension at its nearly 34-year-old Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Oak Harbor, Ohio, just over 20 miles east of Toledo.

1 If approved, Davis-Besse would be permitted to operate for 60 years, until 2037 (its original license, granted in 1977, is currently set to expire at the end of 40 years of operations, in 2017). Beginning a decade ago, NRC has rubberstamped 59 of 59 license renewals sought by industry, 2 including at the oldest operating reactors in the U.S., despite some of them having very serious, documented safety risks due to age-related degradation. The NRC Office of Inspector General, however, has reported serious problems with NRCs license extension program: NRC staff have cut and paste the nuclear utilitys own work, sometimes word for

word, falsely presenting it as independent safety analysis, then once license extensions are rubberstamped, destroyed the working documents that formed the basis for renewal approvals.

3But Davis-Besse is one of the most problem-plagued atomic reactors in the entire country. For example, NRC acknowledges that Davis-Besse has suffered six (out of a total of 34 incidents so designated nationwide) significant accident sequence precursors between 1969 and 2005, three times more than any other American nuclear plant. This includes the September 24, 1977 stuck-open pressurizer PORV (Pilot-Operated Relief Valve) at Davis-Besse, an almost identical accident precursor that unfortunately did lead to a 50% core meltdown at Three Mile Island (TMI), Pennsylvania just a year and a half later. NRC has calculated that this 1977 accident precursor at Davis-Besse had a 7% core damage probability (CDP), making it the fourth most serious accident in the entire industry during the time period in question, surpassed only by the 1979 TMI meltdown, 1975 Browns Ferry, AL fire (assigned a 20% CDP), and the 1978 Rancho Seco, CA steam generator dryout (assigned a 10%

CDP).4 (However, it deserves mentioning that the Fermi 1 plutonium breeder reactor located in Monroe, Michigan - 30 miles across Lake Erie, and visible with the naked eye, from Davis-Besse - also suffered a partial core

meltdown just a few years earlier than NRCs timeframe above, in 1966.

5) But the 9/24/77 TMI precursor accident was but the first of numerous times We Almost Lost Toledo, but one of many skeletons in Davis-Besses closet. Three Mile Island meltdown precursor incident, September 24, 1977 Very fortunately for Toledo and points downstream and downwind, including Cleveland, the fledgling, six-month-old Davis-Besse reactor was only operating at 9% power 6 when a spurious half-trip of the steam and feedwater rupture control system initiated closure of the startup feedwater valve. This resulted in reduced water level in SG [steam generator] 2. The pressurizer PORV lifted nine times and then stuck open because of rapid

cycling.7 Obscured by such NRC techno-engineering Nukespeak 8 is that this unforeseen break-in phase accident created instant chaos in the Davis-Besse control room, bewildering the highly trained operators, leaving them in complete confusion for over 20 minutes as they tried to stabilize the suddenly and inexplicably out-of-control reactor. Over three hundred bells and flashing lights were simultaneously signaling alarm as a water column displaced the steam bubble shock absorber and filled the pressurizer on the very top of the reactor, risking any sudden jolt fracturing safety-significant pipes, and as the Number 2 Steam Generator risked boiling dry, which could cause dangerous overheating and even a loss-of-coolant-accident in the hellishly hot reactor core. Operators grasped at straws, rashly deciding to chuck emergency manual procedures that only seemed to be making matters worse in this unprecedented accident situation. Luckily for the unsuspecting cities just to the east and west, an operator spotted a gauge reading that resolved the perplexing puzzle, and corrective action was taken at the 26 th minute of the crisis that brought the situation under control.

9Despite such a wild roller coaster ride, almost no one within the industry, including at reactor design firm Babcock and Wilcox, grasped the gravity of this accident. Most NRC officials were of the mindset that Davis-Besse personnel had acted appropriately, that the situation had been satisfactorily resolved, and that there were no more lessons to learn from the incident. However, an NRC regional inspector, James Creswell, from the Chicago office refused to shut up. After first exhausting normal channels by working, in vain, within the system, Creswell - at great personal risk to his career and livelihood - bypassed his nay-saying chain of command and Page 116 of 125 2directly communicated the significance of the accident, and his unresolved concerns, to the attention of NRC Commissioners Bradford and Ahearne, as well as their technical staff, on March 22, 1979. Tragically, it was too

late -- the TMI meltdown occurred just six days later, following an almost identical accident sequence as had begun to unfold at Davis-Besse 18 months earlier. Creswell was later honored by NRC for his efforts, as the agency tried to clean up its ruined image after the TMI disaster.

10Later in 1977, Davis-Besse experienced another significant accident sequence precursor, when Emergency Feedwater (EFW) pumps became inoperable during a test. NRC reported During EFW pump testing, operators found that control over both pumps was lost because of mechanical binding in the governor of one pump and blown control power supply fuses for the speed changer motor on the other pump. NRC calculated that this incident had a core damage probability of 1/200, or 0.5%.

11 But Davis-Besses very bad first year of operations was just the beginning.

The Worst Accident Since TMI -- Loss of cooling to reactor core for 12 minutes, June 9, 1985 Due to a convoluted combination of equipment malfunction and unavailability resulting from deferred maintenance, inexplicable spurious actuation in safety critical systems, operator error, and even overzealous security precautions that interfered with emergency actions, on June 9, 1985 at Davis-Besse, several steps had been taken along the pathway to meltdown, but fortunately that journey was halted in time.

12 Even NRC admits that Davis-Besse faced a 1% core damage probability when, despite the reactor being scrammed, 13 there was a complete loss of feedwater to steam generators essential for core cooling. NRCs summary of the incident states: While at 90-percent power, the reactor tripped with main feedwater (MFW) pump 1 tripped and MFW pump 2 unavailable. Operators made an error in initiating the steam and feedwater rupture control system and isolated EFW [emergency feedwater] to both steam generators (SGs). The PORV actuated three times and did not reseat at the proper RCS [reactor coolant system] pressure. Operators closed the PORV block valves, recovered EFW locally, and used HPI [high pressure injection] pump 1 to reduce RCS pressure.

14 Such technical language obscures the fact that plant personnel had to sprint through darkened corridors with bolt cutters, not knowing if they had the proper keys or access cards to open locked security doors, in order to cut through chains securing valves, so they could manually open them to restore water flow to steam generators in order to cool the reactor core, with each passing minute increasing the risk of a loss-of-coolant-accident, nuclear fuel damage, and even a

meltdown.15As Dave Lochbaum at Union of Concerned Scientists clearly relates, Davis-Besse came within 37 minutes of partially uncovering the core of its cooling water supply, and 41 minutes of completely uncovering the core; as he points out, TMIs core was never fully uncovered, but it was uncovered enough to half melt down.

16 As if describing a tense scene from an Indiana Jones movie, Lochbaum also recounts how Now that the main feedwater pumps and the backup auxiliary feedwater pumps had all crapped out, workers turned to [a dangerously substandard, previously] intentionally disabled motor-driven startup feedwater pump. An operator raced through the plant taking five manual actions in four different locations (including re-installing the fuses).

17As summarized by Tom Henry in the Toledo Blade, Davis-Besse experienced a 12-minute interruption in the feedwater flow to steam generatorsThe potentially catastrophic event idled the plant for more than a year.

18Henry added the Nuclear Regulatory Commission referred to the 1985 accident as the worst since Three Mile Island in 1979A report prepared for the U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy Conservation and Power just days after the June 9, 1985, event suggested that the coolant-water episode at Davis-Besse should not have surprised the NRC. The report said 48 problems concerning Davis-Besses auxiliary feed-water system had been reported by [FirstEnergy forerunner] Toledo Edison since July, 1979. The plant unexpectedly shut down 40 times between 1980 and 1985 - at least half of those times because of hardware problems and at least nine

times because of human error.

19 (emphasis added) Dubbing it decades of decadence at Davis-Besse, Lochbaum has emphasized that had any of the numerous equipment problems been addressed in a timely manner, rather than multiple simultaneous shortcuts on safety taken and maintenance jobs long deferred, the entire accident could have been avoided.

20In fact, two of the incidents in the early 1980s mentioned by Henry also rose to the level of significant accident precursors, according to NRC. On April 19, 1980, Davis-Besse lost two essential busses, causing a 1/1000 core damage probability; NRC reported When the reactor was in cold shutdown, two essential busses were lost due to breaker ground fault relay actuation during an electrical lineup. Decay heat drop line valve was shut, and air was drawn into the suction of the decay heat removal pumps, resulting in loss of a decay heat removal path.

21 And on June 24, 1981, Davis-Besse lost a vital bus, coupled with the failure of an EFW pump, as Page 117 of 125 3well as a main steam safety valve lifting and failing to reseat. NRC reported With the plant at 74-percent power, the loss of bus E2 occurred due to a maintenance error during CRDM [control rod drive mechanism] breaker logic testing. A reactor trip occurred, due to loss of CRDM power (bus E2), and instrumentation power was also lost (bus E2 and a defective logic card on the alternate source). During the recovery, EFW pump 2 failed to start due to a maladjusted governor slip clutch and bent low speed stop pin. A main steam safety valve lifted, and failed to reseat (valve was then gagged). This resulted in a 1/500, or 0.2%, core damage probability.

22In addition, then-owner Toledo Edison was fined for an odd incident not unrelated to the 1985 close call. In a misguided, botched attempt to appease anti-nuclear watchdogs after the loss of coolant accident, a former U.S.

Nuclear Navy submarine commander was brought onboard as plant manager, supposedly in order to make Davis-Besse ship shape. However, his command and control approach left a bit to be desired with the public and even his fellow employees, and he left after just a couple of years. The final straw came during the holidays in

the mid to late 1980s, when the plant manager entered the Davis-Besse control room visibly drunk, cursing the busy reactor operators, and having to be physically restrained and dragged out by plant security when he tried to

pick a fight.

23Again, the major fiascos of Davis-Besses first decade of operations would be followed by more.

Direct hit by tornado, June 24, 1998 An F2 tornado, with wind speeds of 113 to 157 miles per hour, scored a direct hit on Davis-Besse, with the funnel cloud passing between the cooling tower and the containment building. The control room operators, running the reactor at 99% power, had little to no advance warning of the twister, until alerted by the guard shack, which had spotted it approaching the plant. Although the reactor was then immediately scrammed, a large amount of radioactive decay heat in the core would need to be actively cooled for many hours, even days. As a safety precaution, operators immediately attempted to initiate the plants two emergency diesel generators (EDGs).

However, the first EDG initially failed to start, and was forced more than once over the course of the next day to be declared inoperable due to overheating of the room housing it. In addition, the second EDG was later declared inoperable due to an apparent problem with the governor control. This uncertainty of the operability of the EDGs was a very serious concern, as the tornado had caused extensive damage to Davis-Besses electrical switchyard, as well as to the regions electrical transmission lines, leading to a complete loss of offsite power that lasted for nearly 27 hours3.125e-4 days <br />0.0075 hours <br />4.464286e-5 weeks <br />1.02735e-5 months <br />. Thus, the EDGs were needed to cool the thermally hot core, as well as to cool the irradiated nuclear fuel storage pool, for over a day. Complete failure of both the offsite power supply, as well as the EDGs, could lead to core damage and even a meltdown in a short period of time, as well as boil off of the radioactive waste storage pools cooling water supply, which could cause spontaneous combustion of the irradiated nuclear fuel within a day or two. Such a reactor meltdown and/or pool fire could result in catastrophic

radioactivity releases.

24 In addition to the dicey electricity supply to run vital safety and cooling systems, Davis-Besses emergency alert system and communications were largely destroyed or inoperable. For example, most of the emergency sirens across Ottawa County no longer worked after the electrical distribution system was so severely damaged. Ironically, when needed most, the emergency sirens did not work. Thus, the public would have been in the dark had there been radiological releases, and Davis-Besse could not even communicate with the State of Ohio or neighboring counties to coordinate emergency response.

25 3/16 thsof an inch from a meltdown?! The reactor with a hole in its head, March, 2002 The infamous 2002 reactor hole-in-the-head fiasco, due to Davis-Besses multiple conditions coincident with reactor pressure vessel (RPV) head degradation - namely, cracked control rod drive mechanism nozzles, a massive acid corrosion hole through the reactor lid, exacerbated by potential clogging of the emergency sump, as well as degradation of the high-pressure injection (HPI) pumps during core cooling water recirculation - is considered by the U.S. Government Accountability Office as the most serious safety issue confronting the nation's commercial nuclear power industry since Three Mile Island in 1979.

26 (emphasis added) As recently summarized by Tom Henry in the Toledo Blade, in 2002, Davis-Besse's old nuclear reactor head nearly burst. The lid was weakened by massive amounts of acid that had leaked from the reactor over several years. The acid induced heavy corrosion on top of the head. Radioactive steam would have formed in a U.S. nuclear containment vessel for the first time since the 1979 half-core meltdown of Three Mile Island Unit 2 in Pennsylvania if Davis-Besse's lid had been breached. The only thing preventing that was a thin stainless steel

liner that had started to crack and bulge, records show. Correcting the problem kept the Davis-Besse [reactor] idle Page 118 of 125 4a record two years. Federal prosecutors later described the incident as one of the biggest cover-ups in U.S.

nuclear history. Two former Davis-Besse engineers were convicted of withholding information and put on probation; the utility itself wound up paying a record $33.5 million in civil and criminal fines; this represents the largest single fine ever proposed by the NRC.

27 (emphasis added) NRCs own Office of Inspector General concluded that not only FirstEnergy, but also the NRC under the chairmanship of Richard Meserve, had prioritized the nuclear utility companys profits over public safety.

28 U.S. Representative Dennis Kucinich (Democrat-Ohio), responding to the GAO report entitled NRC Needs to More Aggressively and Comprehensively Resolve Issues Related to the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant Shutdown 29- an investigation he had requested in the first place - said The General Accounting Office (GAO) Report highlights shocking, serious and dangerous systemic problems at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). Problems that call into question whether the agency can, as it is currently run, continue to perform its most

fundamental functions-to protect public safety. This report reveals failures at almost every rung of the bureaucratic

ladder at the NRC.

The crisis at Davis-Besse is the most serious safety issue to face a commercial nuclear power plant since Three Mile Island. The GAO report shows that the NRC was ill equipped, ill informed and far too slow to react. The NRCs reaction to Davis-Besse was inadequate, irresponsible and left the public at grave risk.30 (emphasis added) The Northeast Blackout of 2003 - caused by FirstEnergys sagging money tree?! The U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force reported in its Final Report on the August 14, 2003 Blackout in the United States and Canada: Causes and Recommendations 31 - regarding the second biggest power outage in history, affecting 55 million people in 8 U.S. states and Ontario - that the main cause involved FirstEnergys failure to trim trees in its Ohio service area, combined with extensive maintenance backlogs as well as computer and communications system breakdowns. Could it be that FirstEnergy, in the midst of paying over

$139,200,000 in costs 32 (replacement power, repairs, etc.) associated with the hole-in-the-head fiasco (costs which would grow to over $600 million altogether) at Davis-Besse due to the hole-in-the-head, and facing intense scrutiny by NRC and other government agencies such as the U.S. Department of Justice (which would eventually lead to civil and criminal charges and convictions), was experiencing cash-flow challenges and other distractions that contributed to these tree-trimming and maintenance backlogs? Ironically, the power outage forced the shutdown of dozens of atomic reactors in the U.S. and Canada - a safety pre-caution during such grid instability.Two holes in your reactors head are better than one?! March 12, 2010 Tom Henry has also reported that Davis-Besse resumed operation in 2004 but was unexpectedly sidelined again for several weeks earlier this year [2010] after a 25-year-old reactor head the utility had installed to replace the original one showed signs of premature aging. Officials said the device was made of an inferior alloy. Several of its metal nozzles became brittle and starting cracking.

33 Lochbaum reports In March 2010, workers at Davis-Besse discovered indications that two CRDM nozzles in the reactor vessel head purchased to replace the original head that CRDM nozzle leakage damaged beyond repair have through-wall cracks that leaked borated water onto the carbon steel reactor vessel head.

34 In all, 24 of the 69 CRDM nozzles were found to have flaws, Henry reports. The new vessel head was supposed to last 15 years, but was failing after just 6 years. Apparently, an inferior metal alloy, now being phased out across the industry, was used in the lids manufacture, and Davis-Besse inspectors missed the problem when the lid was purchased from Consumers

Energys built, but never operated, Midland nuclear power plant in Michigan.

35 Lochbaum points out that The CRDM nozzle leakage identified in 2002 clearly constituted significant conditions adverse to quality - the NRC imposed the majority of its $5.45 million record fine for it. This federal regulationrequired the licensee to take corrective action to preclude recurrence. The 2010 recurrence demonstratesthat Criterion XVI (Corrective Action) in Appendix B (Quality Assurance Criteria for Nuclear Power Plants and FuelPreprocessing Plans) to 10 CFR

[Code of Federal Regulations] Part 50 -- had been violated. In response to this latest regulatory violation, on April

5, 2010, Dave Lochbaum at UCS filed a petition with the NRC entitled Request for Restoration and Maintenance of Adequate Protection of Public Health and Safety at the Davis-Besse Nuclear Plant, citing NRC regulations and requirements that allow for zero reactor coolant pressure boundary leakage during operation with the requirement to shut down the reactor within six hours if such leakage occurs.

36 Despite this, NRC allowed Davis-Besse to return to service in early summer, 2010.

Page 119 of 125 5 Radioactive Risks Piling Up on the Lake ErieShorelineThe U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) estimates that Davis-Besse had, by the spring of 2010, generated about 557 tons of highly radioactive irradiated nuclear fuel.

37 DOE projects that if Davis-Besse operates for a total of 50 years (till 2027), it will generate over 900 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel.

38 If it operated a decade beyond that, as FirstEnergy has applied to do, the reactor would generate yet another 20 to 30 tons of irradiated nuclear fuel annually, or an additional 200 to 300 tons during that additional decade of operations. Davis-Besses indoor pool for storing high-level radioactive wastes was packed to the gills by the mid-1990s, at which point it proposed loading horizontal outdoor bunkers (unfortified) of concrete and steel - dry storage casks - to serve as overflow parking. NRC identified serious problems with 3 of the NUHOMS dry storage casks, manufactured by Vectra Technologies (later taken over by Transnuclear, Inc., a subsidiary of the French government owned nuclear giant Cogema, now called Areva) fully loaded with irradiated nuclear fuel at Davis-Besse. The casks were discovered to have been built below technical specifications: the aggregate used to fabricate the casks outer concrete walls - essential for radiation shielding -- was poor quality, and the steel alloy walls of the inner metallic canisters actually containing the irradiated nuclear fuel were ground too thin along the weld lines, in violation of technical specifications. The Toledo Coalition for Safe Energy challenged the safety and

quality assurance of this proposal in 1994, but was overruled by NRC, which allowed loading of casks to begin in 1995. These faulty casks remain fully loaded with high-level radioactive waste onsite at Davis-Besse to this day, 15 years later.

39The vast majority of Davis-Besses irradiated nuclear fuel is still stored in its pool - vulnerable to cooling water drain downs or boil offs due to accident (such as heavy load drops), natural disaster (such as tornadoes), or intentional terrorist attacks. Without cooling water, wastes in the pool could catch fire within hours, resulting in 25,000 latent cancer deaths, due to large amounts of such hazardous radioactive isotopes as Cesium-137 escaping in the smoke and blowing downwind, depositing lethal fallout as far away as 500 miles.

40 However, as time goes on, more and more dry casks are being loaded with older irradiated nuclear fuel at Davis-Besse, in order to free up room in the storage pool for the hellishly hot and radioactive rods just removed from the operating

reactor core during re-fueling outages. Dry casks themselves are vulnerable to accidents, are not designed to withstand terrorist attacks, and will eventually degrade with exposure to the elements and need to be unloaded and replaced with new containers.

41 NRC recently updated its Nuclear Waste Confidence Findings and Rule, asserting that the nations spent nuclear fuel can be safely stored for at least 60 years beyond the licensed life of any reactor and that sufficient repository capacity will be available when necessary.

42 NRCs confidence in the opening of a repository is suspect: President Obama has cancelled the proposed Yucca Mountain, Nevada repository, the only deep geologic dumpsite to be studied for high-level radioactive waste disposal in the U.S. for the past 23 years. NRC

is thus perpetrating a con game 43 on the American people, and blocking any consideration of irradiated nuclear fuel generation risks in new reactor combined construction and operating license application proceedings, as well as in old reactor license extension proceedings, such as the one now underway at Davis-Besse.

Thus, NRC has already blessed high-level radioactive wastes remaining at Davis-Besse for a century, until 2077. If NRC rubberstamps a 20 year license extension, the irradiated nuclear fuel could remain onsite until 2097. However, the NRC Commissioners have also directed the NRC staff to conduct additional analysis for [even] longer-term storage, ordering staff to submit a plan to the Commission for the long-term rulemaking by the end of the calendar year [2010].

44 Thus, NRC could soon approve irradiated nuclear fuel remaining at Davis-Besse - on the shoreline of the Great Lakes, 20% of the worlds surface fresh water, and drinking supply for 40

million people -- for centuries into the future, despite the safety, security, health, and environmental risks. High-level radioactive wastes are one of the most hazardous substances ever generated by humankind. While electricity is but a fleeting byproduct, irradiated nuclear fuel will remain deadly and need to be isolated from the living environment forevermore.

45 Without radiation shielding, it can deliver a lethal dose of gamma radiation in seconds or minutes, even decades after removal from the reactor. Alpha particle emitters, however, such as Plutonium-239 -- a microscopic speck of which, if inhaled, could initiate lung cancer -- will remain hazardous for hundreds of thousands of years. Other radioactive isotopes will remain deadly far longer - Iodine-129, for example, has a 157 million year hazardous persistence.

Page 120 of 125 6 Ongoing Problems As shown, Davis-Besses woes are not confined to the past. Radioactive leaks have occurred in recent years.On July 31, 2006, FirstEnergy publicly admitted four occurrences of inadvertent releases of radioactive liquids that had the potential to reach groundwater, adding Davis-Besse to the growing list of 102 reactors in the U.S. that have leaked radioactivity into the environment since the early 1960s (and as the reactor ages, such leaks will become more likely).

46 These four inadvertent releases of radioactive liquids were, specifically:

[1] Following a primary to secondary leak, contaminated secondary resin was transferred to the South Settling Basin, where it remains. The Davis-Besse South Settling Basin was designed to accept spent resin from backwashed secondary polishing demineralizers. Spent resins from the secondary polishers are no longer directed to this basin. [2] Water from the Backwash Receiver Tank leaked into the ground from a break in a 3-inch line located between the Backwash Receiver Tank and the South Settling Basin. The line break was excavated and repaired, and 7 cubic yards of contaminated soil was sent to a disposal facility. [3] Primary grade water was spilled onto the ground near the Borated Water Storage Tank while draining the Hydrogen Addition System. Approximately 20 cubic yards of contaminated soil was excavated from the area and shipped to a disposal facility. [4] While pumping water from the North Settling Basin to

the Collection Box, the discharge hose from the pump fell out of the Collection Box and spilled water containing low-level [sic, emphasis added] tritium (4E+04 pCi/L) [that is 4 X 10,000 picoCuries per liter, twice the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencys permissible concentration level for tritium contamination

under the Safe Drinking Water Act] onto the ground.

47 In October, 2008, Davis-Besse admitted an uncontrolled release of tritium - carcinogenic, mutagenic, and teratogenic 48 -- discovered by a fluke when workers checked fire protection systems.

49Of course, Davis-Besse - as with every operating reactor in the U.S. -- has permission from NRC, EPA and other government agencies to release radioactivity into air, water, and soil on a routine basis, 50 despite the fact that every radiation exposure, no matter how small, carries a health risk, and those risks are cumulative.

51Then, on June 25, 2009, an explosion took place in Davis-Besses electrical switchyard. Well over a year later, NRC is still investigating the accident, criticizing FirstEnergys response as too narrow in scope, including its failure to specify how it will prevent such explosions from happening again.

52And in November, 2009, a Davis-Besse security guard inexplicably managed to shoot himself in the leg, calling into question the competence, and even safety risks, associated with the reactors security force.

53 ConclusionThe litany of serious close calls listed above could have led to loss-of-coolant in the Davis-Besse atomic reactors core, meltdown, and a catastrophic radioactivity release on the Great Lakes shoreline, between Toledo

and Cleveland. How bad might that have been in terms of casualties and property damage? The 1982 NRC and Sandia National Lab report, Calculation of Reactor Accident Consequences, or CRAC-2, found that a major radioactivity release from Davis-Besse could cause 1,400 peak early fatalities, 73,000 peak early injuries, and 10,000 peak cancer deaths. An $84 billion figure for property damage was given. However, population growth in the past 28 years must be accounted for, which would likely make such casualty numbers even worse today. And when adjusted for inflation to present day dollar values, property damages could now top $185 billion. And it has recently been revealed that NRC, EPA, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) disagree about which agency would lead the longer term clean up after a major radioactivity release, and where the funding would come from, calling into question disaster planning and severe accident mitigation analysis upon which Davis-Besses 20 year license extension approval by NRC would be based.

54The TMI and Fermi 1 meltdowns, the Davis-Besse Sept. 24, 1977 incident, and the 1986 Chernobyl reactor explosion and fire represent break-in phase accidents - new reactors, at significantly elevated risk due to unrecognized design flaws, construction mistakes, or inexperienced operators working the bugs out the hard way. Even during middle age, as shown by Davis-Besses June 9, 1985 incident - even with more experienced staff and broken in systems -- risks still persist at atomic reactors. However, as reactors age and their systems, structures and components degrade and wear out, break down phase accident risks significantly increase. Such risks are made even worse as experienced plant personnel retire from the workforce. The year 2000 Indian Point, Page 121 of 125 7NY steam generator tube rupture, as well as the 2002 Davis-Besse hole-in-the-head fiasco, are examples of such old age breakdowns.

55If the first 34 years have been this troubled, what kind of unpleasant surprises does Davis-Besse have in store in the next several decades? Is an additional 20 years of operations at Davis-Besse, which has already repeatedly experienced more brushes with disaster than almost any other U.S. reactor, worth the risks?

Incredibly, 60 years of risky reactor operations and radioactive waste generation at Davis-Besse may be just the

beginning. The nuclear power industry, NRC, DOE, and national nuclear labs are now pushing for 80 years of operations at U.S. atomic reactors.

56 Will the radioactive Russian roulette at Davis-Besse end before its too late? Davis-Besse should be shut down as soon as possible, and replaced with safe, secure, clean, reliable, and ever more cost competitive energy efficiency 57 and renewable alternatives 58 such as wind 59 and solar power.

60Prepared 11/19/2010 by Kevin Kamps, Beyond Nuclear. For more information, contact Beyond Nuclears Radioactive Waste Watchdog, Kevin Kamps, by calling (301) 270-2209x1, or emailing kevin@beyondnuclear.org. You can also check out Beyond Nuclears website at www.beyondnuclear.org

.Endnotes 1 See http://www.nrc.gov/info-finder/reactor/davi.html

.2 See NRCs Status of License Renewal Applications and Industry Activities at http://www.nrc.gov/reactors/operating/licensing/renewal/applications.html

.3 NRC OIG, AUDIT REPORT, Audit of NRCs License Renewal Program, OIG-07-A-15, September 6, 2007.

4 NRC Commission Document SECY-05-0192, Attachment 2, Results, Trends, and Insights from the Accident Sequence Precursor (ASP) Program, Table 11, Significant accident sequence precursors during the 1969-2005

period, pages 20-26, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/commission/secys/2005/secy2005-0192/attachment2.pdf

.5 John G. Fuller, We Almost Lost Detroit, Readers Digest Books, 1975, Berkley, 1984.

6 Mike Gray and Ira Rosen, The Warning: Accident at Three Mile Island, Chapter 2, Toledo, September 24, 1977, W.W. Norton and Company, New York, 1982, 2003, page 32.

7 NRC SECY-05-0192, ibid.

8 Hilgartner, S., Bell, R.C., O'Conner, R., Nukespeak: The Selling of Nuclear Technology in America , Sierra Club Books, 1982.

9The Warning , ibid.10The Warning, ibid. 11 NRC, ibid., citing LER [Licensee Event Report] 346/77-110.

12 David Lochbaum, Davis-Besse: Back to the Future, Issue Brief, Union of Concerned Scientists, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/20050609-db-ucs-backgrounder-feedwater-event.pdf

.13 SCRAM originally referred to the Safety Control Rod Axe Man - literally, a man with an axe who would have chopped a rope to drop a control rod into the uranium pile in hopes of snuffing out an out of control chain reaction

-- at the worlds first atomic reactor, built by Enrico Fermis team at the University of Chicago squash courts under the football stadium. Scram now refers to the automatic insertion of control rods to shut a reactor down due to off-normal conditions. Even after scramming, reactors must be actively cooled for days due to hellishly high thermal heat from radioactive decay in the cores irradiated nuclear fuel.

14 NRC, ibid., citing LER [Licensee Event Report] 346/85-013, entitled Reactor Trip and Total Loss of Feedwater Event at Davis-Besse, dated Dec. 18, 1985.

15 See, for example, NRC, Loss of Main and Auxiliary Feedwater Event at the Davis-Besse Plant on June 9, 1985, Report NUREG-1154, US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Washington, DC, July 1985, as well as NRCs Oct. 15, 1985 INFORMATION NOTICE NO. 85-80: TIMELY DECLARATION OF AN EMERGENCY CLASS, IMPLEMENTATION OF AN EMERGENCY PLAN, AND EMERGENCY NOTIFICATIONS (http://www.orau.org/ptp/PTP%20Library/library/NRC/Info/in85080.PDF

), and NRCs July 10, 1986 Page 122 of 125 8 INFORMATION NOTICE NO. 86-55: DELAYED ACCESS TO SAFETY-RELATED AREAS AND EQUIPMENT DURING PLANT EMERGENCIES (http://www.orau.org/ptp/PTP%20Library/library/NRC/Info/in86055.pdf) 16 Lochbaum, Davis-Besse: Back to the Future, ibid.

17 Lochbaum, Davis-Besse: Back to the Future, ibid.

18 Tom Henry, Toledo Blade, Public asked for its input on license extension at Davis-Besse: Nuclear plant seeks OK for 20 more years, Nov. 1, 2010, http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20101101/NEWS16/10310341

.19 Tom Henry, Toledo Blade , Davis-Besse Reactor Near to a Dismal Record, Aug. 31, 2003, http://www.ohiocitizen.org/campaigns/electric/2003/dismal.htm

.20 Lochbaum, Davis-Besse: Back to the Future, ibid.

21 NRC Commission Document SECY-05-0192, ibid., citing LER [Licensee Event Report] 346/80-029.

22 NRC, ibid., citing LER [Licensee Event Report] 346/81-037.

23 Personal communication with Toledo Safe Energy Coalition attorney Terry Lodge, November 7, 2010.

24 See, for example, Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants (NRC, NUREG-1738, 2001), as well as the 1982 NRC/Sandia National Lab report, Calculation of Reactor

Accident Consequences (CRAC-2).

25 See: NRC news releases, both dated June 25, 1998, NRC TEAM DISPATCHED TO DAVIS-BESSE NUCLEAR PLANT, (http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps11598/www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/1998/98-40iii.html), and NRC INSPECTION TEAM MONITORING DAVIS-BESSE PLANT RESPONSE TO TORNADO DAMAGE AND LOSS OF OFFSITE POWER, (http://permanent.access.gpo.gov/lps11598/www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/news/1998/98-40aiii.html

);see also LICENSEE EVENT REPORT (LER) 1998-006-00, Tornado Damage to Switchyard Causing Loss of Offsite Power, EVENT DATE 6/24/98, REPORT DATE 08/21/1998.

26U.S. General Accounting Office, Report to Congressional Requestors, NUCLEAR REGULATION: NRC Needs to More Aggressively and Comprehensively Resolve Issues Related to the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants Shutdown, GAO-04-415, May 2004.

27 Tom Henry, Toledo Blade, Public asked for its input on license extension at Davis-Besse: Nuclear plant seeks OK for 20 more years, Nov. 1, 2010, http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20101101/NEWS16/10310341. For more information on FirstEnergys record-breaking fines and penalties, see NRC NOTICE OF VIOLATION AND PROPOSED IMPOSITION OF CIVIL PENALTIES - $5,450,000; (NRC OFFICE OF INVESTIGATIONS REPORT NO. 3-2002-006; NRC SPECIAL INSPECTION REPORT NO. 50-346/2002-08(DRS)); DAVIS-BESSE NUCLEAR POWER STATION, April 21, 2005, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc collections/enforcement/actions/reactors/ea05071.html as well as U.S. Dept. of Justice press release, Firstenergy Nuclear Operating Company to Pay $28 Million Relating to Operation of Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Jan. 20, 2006, http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2006/January/06_enrd_029.html. For more information on this Davis-Besse near-disaster, and its aftermath, see the extensive coverage by Henry in the Toledo Blade , as well as by John Funk and John Mangels in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, beginning in early 2002 and continuing for months and even years after. Also search for Davis-Besse at www.ucsusa.org for numerous reports and backgrounders by Dave Lochbaum. For instance, Lochbaums Walking a Nuclear Tightrope: Unlearned Lessons of Year-plus Reactor Outages, viewable at http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/walking-a-nuclear-tightrope.html , provides a detailed chronicle of Davis-Besses over two year shutdown.

28 Event Inquiry Regarding NRC's Regulation of Davis-Besse Regarding Damage to the Reactor Vessel Head, Case No.02-03S, December 30, 2002, http://www.nrc.gov/reading-rm/doc-collections/insp-gen/2003/02-03s.pdf 29 U.S. General Accounting Office, NUCLEAR REGULATION: NRC Needs to More Aggressively and Comprehensively Resolve Issues Related to the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plants Shutdown, ibid.

30 Statement of Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich on the GAO Report on the Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Plant, May 18, 2004, http://www.kucinich.house.gov/News/DocumentSingle.aspx?DocumentID=26006

.31 April 2004, https://reports.energy.gov/BlackoutFinal-Web.pdf

.32 See the Feb. 13, 2003 entry regarding Davis-Besses long shutdown at http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/davis-besse-ii.pdf , in Dave Lochbaum of UCSs report Walking a Nuclear Tightrope: Unlearned Lessons of Year-plus Reactor Outages, viewable at http://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear_power/nuclear_power_risk/safety/walking-a-nuclear-tightrope.html

.33 Henry, Nov. 1, 2010, ibid.

Page 123 of 125 9

34 http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/20100405-db-ucs-petition-pressure-boundary-leakage-1.pdf.35 Tom Henry, FirstEnergy acted appropriately over Davis-Besse event, NRC says, September 11, 2010, Toledo Blade,http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20100911/NEWS16/9100370

.36 http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/20100405-db-ucs-petition-pressure-boundary-leakage-1.pdf.

37DOE/EIS-0250, Final Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, Appendix A, Inventory and Characteristics of Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level Radioactive Waste, and Other Materials, Table A-7, Proposed Action spent nuclear fuel inventory (MTHM), page A-15, February 2002, http://nepa.energy.gov/nepa_documents/EIS/EIS0250/VOL_2/VOL2_A.PDF

.38 DOE/EIS-0250, Final Environmental Impact Statement for a Geologic Repository for the Disposal of Spent Nuclear Fuel and High-Level Radioactive Waste at Yucca Mountain, Nye County, Nevada, Appendix A, Inventory and Characteristics of Spent Nuclear Fuel, High-Level Radioactive Waste, and Other Materials, Table A-8, Inventory Modules 1 and 2 spent nuclear fuel inventory (MTHM), page A-16, February 2002, http://nepa.energy.gov/nepa_documents/EIS/EIS0250/VOL_2/VOL2_A.PDF

.39 Personal communication with Toledo Safe Energy Coalition attorney Terry Lodge, November 7, 2010.

40 Technical Study of Spent Fuel Pool Accident Risk at Decommissioning Nuclear Power Plants (NRC, NUREG-1738, 2001). See also Robert Alvarez, Jan Beyea, Klaus Janberg, Jungmin Kang, Ed Lyman, Allison Macfarlane, Gordon Thompson, Frank N. von Hippel, Reducing the Hazards from Stored Spent Power-Reactor Fuel in the United States, Science and Global Security, 11:1-51, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, January 2003.41 Kevin Kamps, Get the Facts on High-Level Atomic Waste Storage Casks, NIRS, updated July 15, 2004, http://www.nirs.org/radwaste/atreactorstorage/drycaskfactsheet07152004.pdf

.42 NRC news release No.10-162, NRC APPROVES UPDATES TO NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENCE FINDINGS AND RULE, September 15, 2010.

43 Con game, U.S. slang for confidence game, is defined by the World Book Dictionary (Doubleday and Company, Inc., Chicago, 1985) as a fraud in which the swindler persuades his victim to trust him, especially with money or valuables.

44 NRC, NRC APPROVES UPDATES TO NUCLEAR WASTE CONFIDENCE FINDINGS AND RULE, ibid.

45 Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele, Forevermore: Nuclear Waste in America , W.W. Norton, New York, 1985.46 Paul Gunter, Leak First, Fix Later: Uncontrolled and Unmonitored Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants, Beyond Nuclear, April 2010, http://www.beyondnuclear.org/reports/

.47 Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station Response to Groundwater Protection - Data Collection Questionnaire, included as Attachment 2 (question 3, page 2 of 3) in July 31, 2006 submittal from Gary R. Leidich, President and

Chief Nuclear Officer, FENOC, addressed to the Document Control Desk at NRC, entitled

SUBJECT:

Groundwater Protection - Data Collection Questionnaire.

48 Tritium: A Universal Health Threat Released by Every Nuclear Reactor, March 2010, http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/Tritiumbasicinfofinal.pdf

.49 Tom Henry, Davis-Besse radioactive leak is fixed, October 25, 2008, Toledo Blade

, http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20081025/NEWS16/810250355

.50 Routine Radioactive Releases from Nuclear Power Plants in the United States: What Are the Dangers? Beyond Nuclear, Jan. 2009, http://www.beyondnuclear.org/storage/documents/rrus.pdf

.51 All Levels of Radiation Confirmed to Cause Cancer, NIRS press release, June 30, 2005, referring to the findings of the U.S. National Academies of Science (NAS) in its BEIR VII, or seventh Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation report, on "Health Risks from Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation,"

http://www.nirs.org/press/06-30-2005/1

.52 NRC to push probe of Davis-Besse blast, Toledo Blade, November 2, 2010, http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20101102/NEWS16/101109957

.53 Tom Henry, Davis-Besse security guard injured when gun discharges, Toledo Blade, November 28, 2009, http://www.toledoblade.com/article/20091128/NEWS16/911280355

.54 Douglas Guarino, Agencies Struggle To Craft Offsite Cleanup Plan For Nuclear Power Accidents, Inside EPA, originally posted and dated Nov. 10, 2010, http://environmentalnewsstand.com/Environmental-NewsStand-Page 124 of 125 10 General/Public-Content/agencies-struggle-to-craft-offsite-cleanup-plan-for-nuclear-power-accidents/menu-id-608.html.55 David Lochbaum, Union of Concerned Scientists, U.S. Nuclear Plants in the 21 st Century: The Risk of a Lifetime, May 2004, http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nuclear_power/nuclear04fnl.pdf

.56 Matthew L. Wald, An 80-Year Run for Nuclear Reactors?, Green: A Blog about Energy and the Environment, New York Times, November 2, 2010, http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/11/02/an-80-year-run-for-nuclear-reactors/.57 Max Neubauer, R. Neal Elliott, Amanda Korane, John A. "Skip" Laitner, Vanessa McKinney, Jacob Talbot, and Dan Trombley, Shaping Ohios Energy Future: Energy Efficiency Works, American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE), Summit Blue Consulting, ICF International, and Synapse Energy Economics, ACEEE Report E092, March 2009. http://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/publications/researchreports/E092.pdf

.58 Dr. Arjun Makhijani, Carbon-Free and Nuclear-Free: A Roadmap for U.S. Energy Policy , RDR Books, Muskegon, MI and IEER Press, Takoma Park, MD, 2007, http://carbonfreenuclearfree.org/

and http://www.ieer.org/carbonfree/

59 U.S. Department of Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Wind Powering America, Ohio Offshore Wind Map and Resource Potential, http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/windmaps/offshore_states.asp?stateab=oh and Ohio Wind Map and Resource Potential, http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_resource_maps.asp?stateab=oh

.60 Toledo area companies pioneering solar panel manufacture include Willard & Kelsey Solar Group LLC (http://wksolargroup.com/ ) in Perrysburg, Ohio, Xunlight Corp. in Toledo (http://www.xunlight.com/), and First Solar Inc. (http://www.firstsolar.com/en/index.php), which is based in Arizona but has its only North American factory in Perrysburg Township, Ohio.

Page 125 of 125 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA NUCLEAR REGULATORY COMMISSION ATOMIC SAFETY AND LICENSING BOARD )

In the Matter of )

) Docket No. 50-346-LR FIRSTENERGY NUCLEAR OPERATING COMPANY )

)

(Davis-Besse Nuclear Power Station, Unit 1) ) February 7, 2011

) CERTIFICATE OF SERVICE I hereby certify that, on this date, a copy of FirstEnergys Motion to Strike Portions of Petitioners Combined Reply was filed with the Electronic Information Exchange in the above-captioned proceeding on the following recipients.

Administrative Judge William J. Froehlich, Chair Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: wjf1@nrc.gov

Administrative Judge Dr. William E. Kastenberg Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: wek1@nrc.gov

Office of the Secretary

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Rulemakings and Adjudications Staff

Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: hearingdocket@nrc.gov

Administrative Judge Dr. Nicholas G. Trikouros Atomic Safety and Licensing Board Panel

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: nicholas.trikouros@nrc.gov

Office of the General Counsel

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Mail Stop O-15D21

Washington, DC 20555-0001

Brian G. Harris Megan Wright Emily L. Monteith E-mail: Brian.Harris@nrc.gov; Megan.Wright@nrc.gov; Emily.Monteith@nrc.gov

2 Office of Commission Appellate Adjudication U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Mail Stop: O-16C1

Washington, DC 20555-0001 E-mail: ocaamail@nrc.gov

Kevin Kamps

Paul Gunter

Beyond Nuclear

6930 Carroll Avenue, Suite 400 Takoma Park, MD 20912 E-mail: kevin@beyondnuclear.org;

paul@beyondnuclear.org

Michael Keegan Dont Waste Michigan

811 Harrison Street

Monroe, MI 48161 E-mail: mkeeganj@comcast.net

Signed (electronically) by Stephen J. Burdick Stephen J. Burdick Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP 1111 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, D.C. 20004 Phone: 202-739-5059 Fax: 202-739-3001 E-mail: sburdick@morganlewis.com COUNSEL FOR FIRSTENERGY DB1/66479670