NRC Approves Reopening of Nuclear Plant

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission voted unanimously today to authorize the reopening of an Ohio nuclear plant closed for nearly 18 months after extensive breakdowns of safety-related equipment.

The NRC approved the restart 5-0 after praising improvements at the plant, located 23 miles east of Toledo on the Lake Erie shore.

“There’s been an example set here and a standard for getting a plant out of trouble,” Commissioner Fred Bernthal told officials of Toledo Edison Co., which runs the plant.

Bernthal and others said they were impressed by the utility’s $167-million investment in maintenance, engineering, training and other programs and a commitment to make an additional $90 million in improvements after this year.

“We have more than adequate confidence that this plant is in fact ready,” said Victor Stello, the NRC’s executive director of operations. “We think it has the potential to be one of the best-performing plants.”

Joseph Williams, senior vice president of the utility, said the plant schedule calls for a nuclear reaction on Dec. 16 and power production two days later, with operations up to 100% by the end of the year.

The state of Ohio has withdrawn support for Davis-Besse’s emergency evacuation plan, and a task force set up by Gov. Richard Celeste to review the plan is not due to report its findings until next month.

The NRC denied the state attorney general’s petition asking the commission not to vote on restart before then. The attorney general said today that he would ask a federal appeals court to delay the restart until the evacuation issue is addressed.

Williams indicated that the utility would go ahead with its start-up schedule.

“I have permission to start up, and unless something happens to stop me from doing that, I intend to proceed,” he said. “I hope that he (Celeste) doesn’t hold up our operation until the commission is through because I believe that would be a needless cost to the consumer.”

Davis-Besse, jointly owned by Toledo Edison and the Cleveland Electric Illuminating Co., was shut down June 9, 1985, following an extensive breakdown of plant equipment including 12 safety-related parts and systems.

Two sets of pumps failed during the incident, halting the flow of cooling water to the radioactive reactor core, but were restarted 12 minutes later--averting core damage that could have led to radiation releases.

The NRC, citing inadequate care of plant equipment as a major deficiency, proposed a record $900,000 fine against Toledo Edison.

Williams said 14,000 maintenance work orders were completed during the long plant outage and 2,293 remained to be done. “We’ve determined that these are not required for restart,” he said, adding that most will be done while the plant is in operation.